Sector movers: Miners recover as oil slump hits London market

Resource stocks recovered on Monday following a further uptick in metal prices, but primary London market indices began the week lower in wake of the ongoing oil price decline.

The FTSE 100 ended 0.29% or 17.58 points lower at 6,034.84 points, while the FTSE 250 came in 0.17% or 29.01 points lower at 17,076.86.

At 1718 GMT, the Brent front-month futures contract was down 2.01% or 74 cents to $36.14 per barrel, having retreated to $36.06 at one point – its lowest level since July 2004 – before mounting a tepid recovery over the European session.

Concurrently, WTI was also down 1.04% or 36 cents to $34.37 per barrel having fallen to $34.17; its lowest level since 2009.

Base metals recovered across the board with selected futures contracts extending the previous session’s gains. The three-month copper delivery futures contract was up 1.3% to $4,736.00 per metric tonne in late afternoon trading on the London Metal Exchange. Additionally, primary aluminium (up 1.2%), nickel (up 1.5%), lead (up 2.7%) and zinc (up 1.3%) futures were also in positive territory. However, tin (down 0.5%) headed lower.

Miner Glencore (up 2.71%) and Antofagasta (up 2.14%) ended the session among the FTSE 100’s biggest gainers, but oil giant Royal Dutch Shell (‘A’ shares down 1.47%) took a hammering.

Glencore benefitted further when Citi reiterated its ‘buy’ rating on the company's latest investor day. Citi said the diversified mining and trading company will be able to deliver on the promises made, with possible asset sales holding the greatest potential to move markets.

FTSE 250 gainers were also led by resource stocks Acacia Mining (up 4.83%) and Centamin (up 4.34%), while Riverstone Energy (down 3.72%) and Petrofac (down 3.06%) were among the biggest midcap fallers.

Finally, the story of the session belonged to soft drinks bottler Coca-cola HBC (down 3.13%), a top faller as the company continued its share buyback programme.

It announced, before the markets opened on a low trading day, that it had repurchased another 100,000 shares for an average price of 1,498.35 per share, taking the total number of shares repurchased to 2,899,088.