Sector movers: Retailers rise to the top

Retailers led gains in the market, with Tesco and Sainsbury leading the pack north on the heels of the latest sector survey results.

During the last three months the former notched up its first market share gain in five years, with sales by 1.3% and market share by 0.1 percentage points to 28.2% according to figures from Kantar.

Sainsbury’s sales fell by 0.4% but its market share also grew by a percentage point to 16%.

Also released on Tuesday, data from market researcher Nielsen revealed that Tesco enjoyed its best year-on-year sales figures for over three years, with a 1.4% increase in money taken at the tills in the 12 weeks ending 8 October versus the same period last year.

A bounce in the pound, in particular, and move lower in longer-term Gilt yields may also have provided additional lift to shares in retailers.

StanChart and HSBC saw their target prices revised higher by analysts at UBS, from 600p to 630p and from 540p top 585p, respectively.

"Domestically, the economy appears to be holding up better than many had feared. But loan losses were never really the big issue for the domestic banking earnings outlook: defending net interest income against a backdrop of maturing interest rate hedges and BoE rate cuts was, and remains, the biggest issue. Still, another quarter of low loan loss charges is better than the alternative," UBS analyst Jason Napier said in a research note sent to clients.

Indeed, it was domestic-focused issues such as RBS and Aldermore which paced gains in the sector.

Fund managers worldwide increased their allocation to banks by the most in two years, according to the results of a survey from Bank of America-Merrill Lynch published on Tuesday.

In a separate research note BofA upgraded its view on banks to 'overweight', while cutting that on cyclicals to 'neutral'.

Drax was higher again following supportive comments from Credit Suisse on the previous day, as were Glencore and precious metals miners.

Worth noting, shares in Glencore notched a fresh 52-week high even as they closed on technical resistance around the 236p mark.

Top performing sectors so far today
Food & Drug Retailers 3,069.94 +2.60%
General Retailers 2,522.21 +2.25%
Banks 3,755.36 +1.94%
Mining 13,169.20 +1.91%
Electricity 9,195.07 +1.85%

Bottom performing sectors so far today
Personal Goods 30,501.51 -1.12%
Oil Equipment, Services & Distribution 16,661.44 -1.11%
Automobiles & Parts 7,671.19 -0.27%
Aerospace and Defence 4,606.37 -0.21%
Chemicals 12,877.52 -0.19%