Sector movers: Metal prices drive markets up

Industrial metals and mining stocks helped the London markets continue their rise on Friday, also boosted by Thursday’s release of the Federal Reserve minutes.

At 16:00 BST The FTSE 100 ended up at 6,429.83, down 0.86% or 55.01 points, while the FTSE 250 was 0.53% or 89.87 points higher at 17,093.68.

The Brent front month futures contract was down 1.00% or 53 cents to $52.52 per barrel, while WTI futures rose up 0.34% or 17 cents to $49.60.

After a week of constant oil price rises, oil and gas service providers saw the biggest rise of all the sectors, driven by Petrofac terminating its contract with ZPMC, which had been viewed by the market as unfavourable. The oil and gas service provider announced the decision after performance issues over the construction of its deepwater multi-purpose offshore vessel.

Three-month delivery contracts of primary aluminium (up 3.5%), lead (up 5.5%), nickel (up 5.9%), tin (up 1.7%), copper (up 3.0%) and zinc (up 10.4%) were heading higher, also helping push up industrial metal and mining companies’ stocks.

Glencore again led the risers on the back its decision to cut 500,000 tonnes or around a third of its annual zinc production. The move was to combat declining prices, and would reduce fourth quarter 2015 mine production by around 100,000 of contained zinc metal.

"The main reason for the reduction is to preserve the value of Glencore's reserves in the ground at a time of low zinc and lead prices, which do not correctly value the scarce nature of our resources," it said.

Miners in general were up on Friday industrial metal prices rose, including Vedanta Resources and Kaz Minerals on the FTSE 250 and Anglo American and BHP Billiton on the FTSE 100.