Sector movers: Oil, mining stocks keep London market in positive mood

Gains posted by metal and oil futures earlier in the session helped commodities linked stocks keep the London market in positive territory on Wednesday.

The FTSE 100 ended 0.46% or 29.27 points higher at 6,412.88, while the FTSE 250 was broadly flat at 17182.50. Oil futures dropped following an uptick in US crude inventories late in the session, while gold slipped on comments by Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen about an interest rate hike still being on cards for December.

At 1704 GMT, the Brent front-month futures contract for December delivery was down 3.24% or $1.64 cents to $48.90 per barrel. The WTI was down 2.94% or $1.41 at $46.49 per barrel, with both benchmarks shedding overnight gains after the US Energy Information Administration reported commercial crude inventories rose by 2.8 million barrels in the last week to a total of 482.8 million barrels.

The data implied a sixth successive weekly rise, while crude oil imports by the US dropped to the lowest level in almost 25 years. Precious metals appeared to reverse the previous session’s declines in early Asian trading, but comments later in the session by Fed’s Yellen turned the tide.

In her testimony before the US House Financial Services Committee, Yellen opined the central bank’s 15-16 December Federal Open Market Committee meeting would be a “live” one - in reference to the possibility of a first rate hike occurring then - should economic data support such a move. Fortunately for UK-listed commodities stocks, much of the decline came after the close of the market

Furthermore, base metal futures were broadly up in late afternoon European trading after the Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasised the country's GDP target for the next five years “should be” at least 6.5%. On the London Metal Exchange, primary aluminium (up 0.3%), copper (up 0.7%), lead (up 0.2%) and zinc (up 0.8%) three-month futures were all trading higher.

Glencore (up 5.36%) and Anglo American (up 3.86%) led the FTSE 100 gainers, while oil and gas midcaps Premier Oil (up 8.11%) and Petrofac (up 3.74%), along with temporary power solutions provider Aggreko (up 3.96%) made it to FTSE 250 gainers' roster.

Going the other way, housebuilders Taylor Wimpey, Berkeley Group Holdings and Persimmon continued their slide after Liberum downgraded the housebuilders’ stance to ‘sell’ from ‘hold’ on Tuesday.

Barratt Developments, British Land, Foxtons and Taylor Wimpey were also among property related stocks to trade lower. Finally, Countrywide slumped after saying the slow pace of recovery in housing sales transactions will most likely result in volumes for the year being at least 5% below 2014 at 950,000 in total. “We anticipate our EBITDA for full year will be less than £121.1 million achieved in 2014,” the company added.