World markets report

Dec 04, 2009

Share with
friends:

Comments (0) Print this article

The FTSE 100 added 0.3% yesterday to close at 5,313 as banks lifted the market. Top performer was Royal Bank of Scotland, which rose 4.7% despite board members' threats of resignation. Lloyds was up 4.4% and Barclays 2.3%, but HSBC slipped 0.03%.

After leading the market up on Wednesday, miners were at the foot of the table yesterday as metals prices slipped. Xstrata lost 3.8%, and Rio Tinto, Lonmin and Anglo American fell 3.3%, 2.8% and 2.6% respectively. Bucking the sector trend, however, was Vedanta, which added 0.2%.

Europe

In Europe, the Paris CAC 40 rose three points to 3,799; and the German Xetra Dax was 11 points lower at 5,770.

US

In the US, the Dow Jones fell 0.8% to 10,366; the S&P 500 lost 0.8% to 1,099; and the Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.5% to 2,173.

Asia

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 rose 0.5% to close at 10,022; and the broader Topix index added 0.2% to 889. In China, the Shanghai Composite index rose 1.6% to 3,317; and the CSI 300 gained 1.5% to 3,643.

Commodities

Brent spot was trading at $77.56 early today, and in New York, crude oil was at $75.81. Spot gold was trading at $1,203 an ounce, silver was at $18.77 and platinum was at $1,481

Currencies

In the forex markets this morning, sterling was trading against the US dollar at 1.6618 and against the euro at 1.1029. The dollar was trading at 0.6638 against the euro and 88.14 against the Japanese yen.

UK news

And today, the National Audit Office (NAO) said that bailing out Britain's banks cost the taxpayer £850bn, but that the final cost won't be know for many years. It also said the government had spent over £100m on 'advisors' during the financial crisis. In a statement, the NAO said "public support provided to UK banks by the Treasury was justified given the scale of the economic and social costs if one or more major banks had collapsed."

Comments (0)

Share with
friends:

Related articles

Leave a comment

This will be the name displayed with your comment.

This helps us verify comments are genuine. It will not be displayed anywhere on the site and is stored confidentially.

Please keep your comment within 1,000 characters and relevant to the main topic. We encourage healthy debate, but we don't allow insults or bad language. Anything off topic or unpleasant, we'll remove. Enjoy the conversation! Thank you.

captcha To prevent spam-related comments please enter the characters shown in the 'Captcha' box to the left.

By leaving a comment you accept our terms and conditions.


FREE - MoneyWeek's daily investment emailJohn Stepek

Our free daily email, Money Morning, is an informative and enjoyable analysis of what's going on in the markets. Written by our Editor, John Stepek, and guest contributors.
Sign up FREE to Money Morning here.

>