Sector movers: Miners drag FTSE 350 lower, Electricity and Retail stocks gain

Industrial Metals & Mining fell to the bottom of the leaderboard for the FTSE 350 on Wednesday, following the release of Chinese of foreign trade that economists at Pantheon Macroeconomics said reflected the "dire state" of domestic demand.

Month-on-month, seasonally adjusted exports fell 6.4% - compared to 0.6% in July - while imports were down 4.8%.

That served to narrow the country's foreign trade surplus from a record $101.26bn in July to $79.39bn for August, versus a consensus forecast of $92.7bn.

Craig Botham, chief China+ economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said: "The weakness in imports, meanwhile, reflects the dire state of domestic demand, without which the trade surplus would be falling more rapidly.

"Export data by country reveals a broad-based slowdown in August - this was not driven by isolated pockets of demand weakness."

Going the other way, Electricity stocks rallied as the new Prime Minister took a putative windfall tax on energy off the table.

Retailers were also on the up, despite negative comments out of analysts at Jefferies and JP Morgan, possibly on investor optimism ahead of the PM's announcement of a freeze on energy price bills expected the next day.

Top performing sectors so far today

Electricity 10,863.46 +4.11%

Chemicals 11,687.73 +1.30%

Retailers 3,276.09 +1.30%

Precious Metals and Mining 9,829.36 +1.28%

Automobiles & Parts 1,574.32 +1.16%

Bottom performing sectors so far today

Industrial Metals & Mining 6,476.70 -2.82%

Oil, Gas and Coal 7,832.16 -2.11%

Banks 3,263.18 -2.02%

Food Producers 5,634.13 -1.87%

Telecommunications Service Providers 2,706.82 -1.84%