Sector movers: Trade headlines continue to boost Autos, Food Producers

Even as trade negotiators from Canada and the US were meeting in Washington, and despite the still very real possibility that Ottawa might decide not to 'play ball', market commentary appeared to be generally positive - even if still somewhat guarded - regarding the likely outcome and what it might imply for global trade tensions.

Writing in the Financial Times on Wednesday morning, John Authers said: "The news [of a deal between Mexico and the US] supports those who think that President Donald Trump is 'crazy like a fox', aggressively staking out an extreme opening offer and then settling at something reasonable. I should at least bolster the hopes that a major trade conflict with China can be avoided."

Meanwhile, in the REIT universe, analysts at Berenberg sounded an upbeat not on shares of Intu Properties, initiating their coverage of the company's shares with a 'buy' recommendation and setting a target price of 230.0p.

Indeed, they named it their 'top pick' in the space, highlighting its "significant development pipeline, portfolio of high quality destination shopping centres and self-help potential."

At a 53% discount to their price-to-net asset value for calendar year 2018, the shares were underservdly cheap, they said.

Software was also near the top of the leaderboard, with gains in stock of MicroFocus helping to offset losses in Sophos after the former said it had kicked-off a share buy-back programme with an initial tranche of as much as $200.0m.

To the downside, Petrofac and Wood Group were out of love in the wake of their latest interims and in turn weighing on stock in Hunting ahead of its own set of six-month figures which were due to be published on the next day.

Shares of the major grocers were also weak, with Tesco faring worst, possibly influenced by a research note out from Barclays on grocers' 'switching' numbers - which tell from which rivals retailers might be taking market share - for the 12 weeks ending on 12 August.

According to the broker, the figures for Tesco made for a downbeat read.

"We have to concede that it is harder to find encouraging things to say about Tesco's apparent performance in this set of the switching data. This is not entirely surprising as recent sets of Kantar Worldpanel market share data already suggested an underwhelming performance," said analysts James Anstead, Nicolas Champ and Eric He.

"The major reasons to be concerned from a Tesco perspective would be that its switching performance against the discounters appears to have deteriorated."

Top performing sectors so far today

Automobiles & Parts 11,590.11 +1.92%

Leisure Goods 9,028.91 +1.26%

Food Producers & Processors 7,075.45 +0.81%

Software & Computer Services 1,899.09 +0.70%

Construction & Materials 6,544.74 +0.66%

Bottom performing sectors so far today

Oil Equipment, Services & Distribution 15,547.51 -2.00%

Food & Drug Retailers 4,244.85 -1.63%

Industrial Transportation 3,236.33 -1.37%

Forestry & Paper 24,462.54 -1.23%

Mobile Telecommunications 3,882.23 -1.18%