Sector movers: Real estate, Oil&Gas pace gains, mining down

Real estate investment trusts led to the upside despite the International Monetary Fund and European Commission's decision on Tuesday to take a knife - as might have been expected - to their forecasts for the British economy next year.

In the case of the Washington-based lender, economic growth in the UK was now expected to slow to a 1.3% clip in 2017, down from a previous forecast for a rate of expansion of 2.2%, as Brexit threw a "spanner in the works".

HSBC strategists were also out and about, with one telling Bloomberg investors in the FTSE 100 would face a reality check as the harsh realities of the decision to 'Leave' became apparent.

For its part, The Times's Tempus told readers to 'buy' shares of British Land, pointing to what in the column's view was "too wide" a discount between the price of the company's shares and the last published estimate of their net asset value.

Royal Mail shares gained, contributing to a positive performance for industrial transportation stocks, as the company said trading for the three months ended 26 June was in line with its expectations, with group revenue up 1% and UK revenue down 1%.

Parcel volumes in the first quarter were up 2%, driven by import parcels and Royal Mail account parcels as well as an improving trend in the consumer/SME segment.

OIl&gas producers were also on the up despite a retreat in crude oil futures on international markets.

Analysts at Barclays penned a note on Tuesday telling clients they did not share some of their peers' concerns regarding the sustainability of oil refiners downstream profitability - thanks to cuts to headcount and capacity reduction over the past five years.

"The outlook for free cash flow should also be reassuring with downstream capex in the coming five years set to average 25% lower than the previous five years and close to depreciation. This should be supportive of dividends for BP (OW, 600p), RDS (OW, 2450p) and Total (EW, EUR55), and for Repsol (OW, EUR16) and GALP (OW, EUR15), this is a source of FCF that we see as undervalued," they said.

Falling steel and iron futures overnight in Chinese trading dragged Evraz (industrial metals&mining) down again, with October rebar futures in Shanghai retreating tacking another more than 5% fall to Monday's losses.

Mining giant Rio Tinto also fell as it said second quarter iron ore production from its mines in Western Australia's Pilbara rose 8% to nearly 81m from the same time a year ago.

Pilbara iron ore shipments rose 6% to 82.2m tonnes, a performance that analysts at Canaccord Genuity labelled as "disappointing".

"This was a mixed production report, with a disappointing performance in key commodities iron ore and copper, and other misses in diamonds (always very variable), hard coking coal, titanium dioxide slag and uranium," analysts Nick Hatch and Tim Huff said in a research report sent to clients.

Rio's second quarter iron ore production and shipments missed their estimates by 8% and 9%, respectively. Mined copper output was 18% less than they had anticipated.

Fellow miners Glencore, Anglo American and BHP Billiton also slumped.

Top performing sectors so far today
Real Estate Investment Trusts 2,864.26 +1.91%
Industrial Transportation 2,968.05 +1.66%
Software & Computer Services 1,880.84 +1.58%
Oil & Gas Producers 7,706.08 +0.90%
General Industrials 4,899.82 +0.63%

Bottom performing sectors so far today
Industrial Metals & Mining 1,556.10 -2.71%
Mining 11,402.75 -2.44%
Oil Equipment, Services & Distribution 13,917.97 -1.32%
Automobiles & Parts 6,555.94 -1.13%
Food & Drug Retailers 2,585.55 -0.85%