Sector movers: Precious metals drive markets to close on a high

The markets closed higher on Friday driven by natural resource companies after the price of precious metals rose.

The FTSE 100 closed up 57.51 points (0.95%) at 6,129.98, while the FTSE 250 ended at 16,796.08, up 32.43 points (0.19%).

At 1532 BST, the Brent front-month futures contract was down 1.05% or 50 cents at $47.19 per barrel. Concurrently, the WTI was down 1.12% or 50 cents to $44.24 per barrel.

Precious metals were firmly in positive territory, as a report on US non-farm payrolls showed 142,000 jobs were added in September, comfortably below the 201,000 reading analysts had estimated.

The industrial metals sector rose by 5.12%, but is still in negative territory on the year to date.

Randgold Resources rose nearly 166pp as spot gold prices rose over 2% to $1,136.73 an ounce – up $23.12. Glencore also continued its rebound from Monday’s slump, up nearly 4p on the day. On the FTSE 250, Petra Diamonds ended up nearly 5p at 86.65p, while Nostrum Oil & Gas rose despite oil prices dropping around 50 cents per barrel for Brent and WTI.

Banking sector also did well following news the Financial Conduct Authority is considering a deadline of spring 2018 for any final payment protection insurance claims being lodged. The news would allow banks to finally reinvest or return to shareholders any money they've been saving to cover outstanding claims.

The construction and materials sector took the biggest hit of the day, down 0.7% and pushed down by Renew Holdings which released a very vanilla market update on Thursday saying trading was in line with expectations.

However, the biggest drop of the FTSE 100 was Experian, after it was revealed the credit agency was hacked. Information stolen included names, addresses, social security, driver’s licence and passport numbers of those who applied for T-Mobile USA postpaid services or device financing.