FTSE hits two-month low amid worries over US debt ceiling
The FTSE ended the day at 7,627.1, 135.85 points lower.
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Your support makes all the difference.London’s FTSE 100 index fished at its lowest point in around two months on Wednesday as concerns over the US debt ceiling negotiations continued to weigh on global sentiment.
The 1.8% fall that the index registered during the day was part of a wider global sell-off which hit markets on both sides of the Atlantic.
By the end of the day the FTSE had settled at 7,627.1, 135.85 points lower, after briefly hitting a low of 7,590.24 points earlier in the day.
“If concerns about the global outlook weren’t sufficient with the China recovery story looking increasingly flaky, we now have the increasingly loud sound of the debt ceiling deadline clock, and the continuing impasse between US policymakers finally attracting the attention of financial markets,” said CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson.
“The modest declines of the last two days have accelerated today, with sharp falls across the board, as sentiment continues to deteriorate, raising the question as to whether this is the beginning of a market puke that gets US lawmakers’ attention and generates the urgency required to preserve the fiscal integrity of the US government.”
In Europe, Paris’s Cac 40 closed down 1.9% while the Dax in Germany fell by 1.7%.
As markets were closing in the US, the Wall Street indexes were also down, with both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones dropping 0.7%.
On currency markets, the pound fell by around 0.4% to 1.237 dollars and by 0.2% to 1.15 euros.
In company news, shares in Marks & Spencer soared by 12.7% after the company said it had managed to increase sales despite pressure on households across the country.
Profits were also higher than expected, the company announced on Wednesday morning, pushing shares to their highest in a year.
It was evidence, bosses said, that the company’s turnaround plan is working as intended. The plan has seen dozens of big shops shut.
Meanwhile, shares in Aviva plunged by 5.4%. It came as an activist investor, Cevian Capital, announced that it had sold nearly its entire stake in the insurance giant
Cevian’s ownership had peaked at around 6.5%, or 150 million shares, in October last year. On Wednesday it revealed that it only had 60,000 shares left.
The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were Intertek, up 141p to 4,333p, Ocado, up 9.2p to 411.8p, SSE, up 30.5p to 1,900p, Fresnillo, up 5.2p to 661.2p, and Airtel Africa, up 0.4p to 117.6p.
The biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 were Prudential, down 69.5p to 1,101.5p, Aviva, down 24.9p to 398.9p, Persimmon, down 71.0p to 1,215p, Phoenix Group, down 26.6p to 555p, and Taylor Wimpey, down 5.6p to 117.5p.