FTSE 100 Makes Gains as Banks Return to Favour: Index Spreads
Financial Market Comments from David Jones, Chief Market Strategist, IG Index.
In mid-morning trading shares in London are positive, with the FTSE once again challenging the week’s earlier highs.
Banks are back in favour this morning with RBS and Lloyds topping blue chip gainers, catching some of the momentum that saw US financials higher on Thursday.
RBS has pushed out to its best levels since October and this could well be signalling the start of a more positive attitude by investors to the majority state-owned banks.
There is a fair bit of data out of the US this afternoon, with Retail Sales ahead of the open likely to be the main event.
Expectations are for a slight drop for the February numbers and as long as this is not much worse than the -0.2% expected, we shouldn’t see too much of a dent in sentiment.
At the moment we are expecting the Dow Jones to start off around 20 points higher than Thursday’s close, putting it comfortably through the 10,600 level.
This had proved quite a barrier to progress over recent days and a finish above here today could position global stock markets for more growth next week.
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Good Luck!
DB
The above comments do not constitute investment advice Clean Financial accepts no responsibility for any use that may be made of them.
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