FTSE 100 movers: Banking shares drive index down

The FTSE 100 resumed its slide on Thursday, with the blue-chip index dropping 80.51 points (1.42%) to 5,591.79 points by mid-afternoon.

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Banking shares were under pressure, with Barclays and Standard Chartered among the top fallers, after Societe Generale’s profit warning added to worries about the health of the sector.

SocGen warned on Thursday that it would not achieve its targeted increase in profits this year due to tighter capital requirements and challenging market conditions.

“They weren’t alone; arguably the stock that kicked off the week’s woeful trading, Deutsche Bank has lost a huge chunk of yesterday’s market-lifting rebound with a 7% plunge this morning,” said Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex.

Concerns about a global sell off have hit other financial service providers and investment companies, including Aberdeen Asset Management and Hargreaves Lansdown.

Miner Glencore also plunged after it revealed an expected drop in production for 2015.

Copper production was down 3% to 1.5m tonnes after a 6% fall in the fourth quarter, zinc up only 4% to 1.4m tonnes after fourth quarter production was cut 20%, nickel was down 5% to 96,200 tonnes, ferrochrome up 12%, coal down 10%, oil up by 44%.

For 2016 guidance was also mostly as expected with copper of 1.39m tonnes, zinc, 1.10m tonnes, lead 285,000 tonnes, nickel 116,000 tonnes, ferrochrome 1.58m tonnnes, coal 130m tonnes, though oil guidance was lowered to 8,500kbbl.

ARM Holdings continued to fall a day after issuing its full year results, but this time due to comments from Bernstein.

The broker said the headwinds in the smartphone market in 2016, combined with slower royalty growth and the waning boost from the v8 product cycle, all meant that ARM Holdings current valuation multiples would come under pressure.

Royalty growth was set to slow towards approximately 17% in 2016, analysts Pierre Ferragu, Matthew Morrison and Rolf Bulk said in a research note sent to clients.

In the same note they downgraded their recommendation on the chip-designer’s shares to from ‘market-perform’ to ‘underperform’ and their target price from 800p to 760p.

Together with a spike in operating expenditures, the above meant analysts could be expected to mark down their estimates for earnings per share this year.

Of the few risers, Randgold Resources came out on top as investors fled to the safety of gold.

Gold prices had broken through the $1,200/oz barrier - its highest since May 2015.

Spot gold was up 3.52% to $1,239.30 at 1529 GMT.

FTSE 100 - Risers

Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 6,125.00p 7.46%
Fresnillo (FRES) 886.00p 6.75%
DCC (DCC) 5,200.00p 3.69%
Shire Plc (SHP) 3,664.00p 2.69%
AstraZeneca (AZN) 4,054.00p 1.12%
Imperial Brands (IMB) 3,554.50p 1.02%
London Stock Exchange Group (LSE) 2,199.00p 0.92%
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) 1,362.00p 0.22%
Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 528.50p 0.09%
Vodafone Group (VOD) 202.10p 0.00%