Sector movers: Pearson lifts London market as resource stocks continue struggle

Decline in natural resource stocks could not hold back the London market on Wednesday, nudged higher by Pearson and commercial real estate companies.

The FTSE 100 closed 0.72% or 43.40 points higher at 6,061.19, while the FTSE 250 was up 0.45% or 76.38 points at 17,075.94, as Pearson (up 5.16%) lead the blue chips higher after Exane BNP Paribas upgraded the stock to ‘outperform’ from ‘neutral’.

Property groups rallied, including Land Securities and British Land, after Moody’s said London’s office real estate market will see rapid growth over the next 12-18 months. However, resource mid to large caps continued to struggle.

At 1645 GMT, the Brent front-month futures contract was down 3.25% or $1.25 to $37.20 per barrel, while WTI was down 4.34% or $1.62 at $35.73 per barrel, as a relatively stronger dollar piled further pressure on both benchmarks.

Furthermore, the Brent-WTI spread fell below a dollar earlier in the session with both contracts lurking either side of $37-level, before the WTI retreated sharply on US inventory data. According to the Energy Information Administration, the US Department of Energy’s statistical arm, the country’s commercial oil inventories rose by 4.8m barrels over the five days ending on 11 December to reach 490.7m.

Elsewhere, selected base metals saw marginally positive trading on the London Metal Exchange. At 1635 GMT, the three-month copper delivery futures contract registered a 0.5% uptick to $4,592.50 per metric tonne, still within range of six-year lows. Concurrently, primary aluminium (up 1.2%), nickel (up 1.0%) and tin (up 0.9%) contracts headed higher, but zinc (down 0.7%) and lead (down 2.3%) headed lower.

On the FTSE 100, BG Group (down 1.08%) was among the biggest fallers but Anglo American (up 2.62%) bucked bearish headwinds following a marginal uptick in the copper price. Most of the midcap fallers came from resource sector, with Nostrum Oil & Gas (down 4.37%), Kaz Minerals (down 3.94%) and Vedanta Resources (down 3.92%) among the biggest FTSE 250 fallers.