UK Shares Spread Betting: Declining M&S Sales Weigh on FTSE Retailers

UK Shares Spread Betting: Declining M&S Sales Weigh on FTSE Retailers

This morning's corporate numbers are retail focused and don't make for very good reading.

High Street bellwether Marks and Spencer may not be the biggest retailer in the UK but today's numbers come as rather a shock.

For a stock that had, until this morning, appreciated some 20% so far this year some investors will be nursing a bit of a loss after their dire numbers.

The worry is its core merchandise unit which saw like for like sales decline a whopping 2.8%. This does not make for good reading when you consider that the previous quarter had seen a decline of 1.8% and the market was expecting some sort of a recovery with a rise of 0.2%.

This is a clear warning shot for the clothing retailer as not even their secret weapon Twiggy seems to be able to get shoppers through their doors.

On top of this, the hope was that any disappointment here would be propped up by good food sales, but even these came in worse than expected. This gave the stock a double hit and, at the time of writing, they are down some 3% on the UK shares spread betting market.

At the other end of the retail spectrum we've seen numbers from luxury brand Burberry which have also missed estimates.

Their share price is also down but by over 4% as doubts creep in about the ability of the stock to play on the emerging and Asian market over the longer term.

Although the two firms are very different the message is pretty similar in that consumers are feeling the pinch, particularly in the UK.

Crude oil prices have retraced some 6% or so from their recent highs but they still remain very elevated and, whilst they've corrected a little bit, prices at the pump don't seem to be getting any lower.

Unemployment is also still on the up as we'll see in tomorrow's labour market data and pay is being frozen across large swathes of the private and public sector.

Whilst consumers continue to struggle the FTSE can't seem to make up its mind about whether it wants to ignore these warning signs or carry on with another leg lower.

This morning, the UK index is trading at 5680, having already moved between losses and gains.

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