London’s blue-chip stocks opened lower this morning with fallers outnumbering risers by two to one.
With Wall Street closed yesterday for Memorial day, Asian markets set the tone for the morning’s session.
China’s Shanghai Composite was 1% higher while the Hang Seng was 1.5% up after China said 1,000 infrastructure projects worth US$318bn would be open to private investment.
It was mainly flat however, with both the Nikkei and the Australian ASX flat overnight.
In the UK, the FTSE 100 was 19 points lower to 7,012 as it made a sluggish start to the short week.
Dragging the index lower were the big banks as the Royal Bank of Scotland (LON:RBS), Barclays (LON:BARC) and Lloyds (LON:LLOY) all eased more than 1% following last week’s foreign exchange scandal.
Meanwhile, Royal Mail (LON:RMG) led the risers as it received an upgrade from broker Cantor Fitzgerald to ‘hold’ from ‘sell’.
Last week, the company blamed tough competition for lower than expected revenue in 2014, but since then, rival Whistl has suspended its delivery business while City Link entered administration last year. Shares rebounded more than 2% to 514p.
In other broker news, oil and gas company SOCO International (LON:SIA) fell out of favour at JP Morgan Cazenove as it cut the company’s target price to 168 from 285p. Shares dropped 3% to 184p.
In small cap news, shares in Amur Minerals (LON:AMC) continue to rocket following the announcement that it had received a mining licence for its project in Russia. Shares were 27% higher today to 23p.
Conversely, San Leon Energy (LON:SLE) is to appeal against the decision of the International Court Arbitration in relation to a dispute with Avobone over the Siekierki asset.
The arbitration called for San Leon to pay £13mln and shares slid 20% today to 1p.