Homebuilders, miners buoy stockmarket
Mobile Telecoms firms paced Thursday´s advancers in terms of percentage gainers but it was gains for the major homebuilders and miners that provided the greatest support to the market.
Shares in the former were propped up by news that the European Commission had ruled that the UK National Broadband Scheme for 2016-2020 complies with European Union's rules on state-aid.
For the latter two sectors, slightly more favourable poll results for the 'Remain' camp in the 23 June Brexit referendum appeared to have stoked investor demand.
The latest Ashcroft poll revealed that 65% of those surveyed expected the 'Remain' camp to prevail versus the 35% who expected the opposite result.
Shares of housebuilders may also have derived a degree of support from a retreat in longer-term bond yields as the latest crop of Fedspeakers appeared to adopt a slightly more dovish tone than that heard from some of their peers over recent days.
Speaking from Singapore, St.Louis Fed president James Bullard said he preferred not to pre-judge the course of action that he and his peers on the Federal Open Market Committee, the US central bank´s rate-setting body, would embark upon when they met to decide on policy on 15 June.
"I'm keeping an open mind, I want to look at the data as it's available at the meeting," Bullard reportedly said.
In a similar tone, later in the day US Fed governor Jerome Powell said another rate increase may be "appropriate fairly soon" if incoming data confirmed America´s economy was rebounding strongly from the weakness that was apparent over the previos two quarters.
Miners also atttracted a bid after Reuters cited local media reports from China which said analysts at the country´s central bank were in favour of maintaining a slightly loose monetary policy.
Construction and materials was the worst performer after brick-maker Ibstock reported a slow start to the year for its UK clay business had lasted four months before reaching a positive plumb-line.
While its directors expected another year of progress, and its full-year views were broadly unchanged, the company added that growth of UK brick sales into the key new residential sector were slower than expected due to destocking in the builders' merchant supply chain.
Top performing sectors so far today
Mobile Telecommunications 5,202.90 +1.31%
Food & Drug Retailers 2,744.56 +0.90%
Mining 9,029.73 +0.89%
Forestry & Paper 14,595.19 +0.74%
Household Goods & Home Construction 17,312.12 +0.54%
Bottom performing sectors so far today
Industrial Metals & Mining 1,154.27 -3.14%
Oil Equipment, Services & Distribution 13,153.66 -1.68%
Industrial Transportation 2,942.69 -1.19%
Construction & Materials 5,274.82 -0.94%
Travel & Leisure 8,535.37 -0.84%