Good morning from London where the FTSE 100 is down below 7,500 points on a day that’s started with an unexpected rise in inflation.
Figures from the ONS today show a very slight increase in December’s numbers, which arrested the steady downward slope we saw throughout the whole rest of the year to that point.
Despite some scary headlines though it appears that a bump in cigarette duty was the chief culprit and Paula Bejarano Carbo from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research dismisses today’s rise as statistical noise, rather than anything more significant.
Of more concern for the UK, or at least its biggest listed companies is the decidedly mixed performance of the Chinese economy. Some fresh figures today show the world’s second largest economy grew by 5.2% in 2023, but the property sector, which has been mired in a debt crisis for three years, continued to suffer in 2023.
Many of the FTSE’s biggest names are heavily exposed to the Chinese economy, and its little surprise that many of them are trading lower on the day today. Britain’s housebuilding giants are also trading lower this morning, perhaps hit by fears of slower interest rate cuts.
Over in the small cap space we’ve had a fundraise from Tirupati Graphite this morning, they were hoping to avoid it but have bitten the bullet and will be putting the money to good use at their facilities in Madagascar. We’ve got plenty of interviews to come today so stay tuned, stay warm and have a great day.