- FTSE 100 falls 27 points to 10,314
- Gold, silver and copper rebound lifts miners
- Australian central bank hikes rates
- Plus500 and AG Barr jump on updates
4.58pm: FTSE falls
The FTSE 100 retreated from all-time highs, down 27 points at 10,314.
Precious metals surged, with gold up 7%, trading hands at $4,986, and silver was up 13% at about $87 per ounce.
4.09pm: Some chunky falls for some big FTSE stocks
London's benchmark index remains firmly on the back foot as it heads into the final half hour.
Stocks in the media/data publishing/might-be-affected-by-AI space are the main weight, with RELX down almost 17% now, LSEG down 12.7% and Experian down 10%.
Sage Group, Pearson, and Informa are next, down 7-8%.
Asset manager ICG is down 7%, medical devices maker ConvaTec 5.3%, retailer Next 5%, retailer JD Sport 4.7%.
These are some chunky drops. AI worries (see below) explain some of them. The dollar has moved about today, but currently the pound is up 0.3% at $1.370, where it was a week ago.
Some analysts are also talking about the Reserve Bank of Australia delivering a rate hike earlier, and German 30-year bond yields climbing to their highest level since 2011 due to a surge in government borrowing to fund infrastructure and defence.
"Markets showed mixed reactions globally," says Axel Rudolph at IG, with US equities retreating from their all-time highs, while gold surged more than 5%, heading for its biggest daily gain since 2008, and silver rallied by 11%.
3.30pm: For LSEG, "AI is an enabler" says analyst
With LSEG and other shares sharply lower on the back of Anthropic’s release of open-source plugins, Max Harper, analyst at Third Bridge, said the 8% fall "has raised market concerns that proprietary software, such as Workspace, could be rendered redundant, potentially leading to a loss of pricing power".
Having spoken to a number of executives in the financial space, Harper said they told him AI is "an enabler, not a threat" and that proprietary data is "difficult to replicate via AI alone".
As part of its "LSEG Everywhere" strategy, the group is implementing what's called model context protocol (MCP) to make its "AI Ready" content (ie data that is structured, licensed, and historical) easily accessible to LLMs within platforms such as Anthropic's Claude, and Microsoft Copilot and others.
It is, says Harper, a "core defense in protecting data and can also serve as a growth enabler".
He says: "Pricing power may shift to data rather than platforms. LSEG is positioning itself as a data provider, allowing third-party AI tools to act as the 'answer engine'.
"Our experts note that many of these data sources aren’t public, enabling monetization regardless of the interface."
2.53pm: US opens unevenly, PayPal leads decline
US stocks opened positively, but most were not able to sustain this, with the Nasdaq down 0.3% already.
The Dow Jones is up 0.25%, with the S&P 500 down one point.
Biggest faller on the Nasdaq 100 is PayPal, down 17.5%, after ditching its CEO.
Thomson Reuters is down 10.8% on the AI worries mentioned below.
In Europe, all the major indices are in the red now, led by the FTSE and its group of media and publishing names.
1.19pm: Business information publishers hit by AI worries
RELX PLC, Pearson PLC and Informa PLC shares have slumped after Anthropic released new 'agentic AI' tools for corporate legal teams.
Anthropic launched the tool on its GitHub page last week. But Bloomberg reported the development today, and it has been picked up by other finance outlets.
The US AI company said the tool can automate legal work such as reviewing contracts, triaging non-disclosure agreements, composing briefings and providing templated responses.
It is designed to aid productivity for companies' in-house legal teams, one of 11 plugins designed to automate specific tasks within a company.
RELX, LSEG and Informa are all business and financial information publishers. Experian is a credit checker, Pearson is a provider of educational content and assessments. They are all seen as facing AI risks. Shares in RELX (which owns LexisNexis, a provider of information and analytics to law firms) are down 12%, LSEG is down 7.8%, Eperian 7.5%, Informa 4.5%.
In Europe, sector names like Wolters Kluwer had tumbled almost 10% in Amsterdam and Thomson Reuters was over 9% lower in US pre-market trading.
12.12pm: London retreat
The FTSE retreat has deepened, with some sizeable drops.
RELX is down 10.6%, Experian is down 7.9%, LSE down 7%, JD Sports 6%, Pearson 4%, Sage 3.8%, Informa 3.%, Intertek 2.2% and Ashtead 2%. Most of these have a lot of exposure to the US and the dollar.
There are also AI concerns for some of these names.
"The main story across FX continues to be the recent recovery in the US dollar," says market analyst David Morrison at Trade Nation.
"It was generally firmer again this morning, posting early gains versus most other currencies."
The cash dollar index pushed up towards 97.50, which means that it has rallied around 2% from the four-year low of 95.25 hit last Tuesday, Morrison says, meaning the index has made back around 50% of the losses from its mid-January high above 99.00 to its recent low.
"That’s quite an achievement given the extent of the negative sentiment towards the greenback.
"Some credit for the improvement has been given to President Trump for picking Kevin Warsh as his preferred candidate to replace Jerome Powell as Fed Chair."
Meanwhile, US stock futures benchmarks are mostly green. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq have been called 0.2% and 0.5% higher, while Dow Jones futures are just below flat, down 0.02%.
Palantir shares are up over 11% in premarket trading, after releasing earnings overnight, while PepsiCo, which posted numbers today, is down 0.7%.
11.18am: Share movers
Hardide PLC shares surged 27% after it received a follow-on order worth US$1 million from a North American customer.
The order is expected to be delivered in the second half of the financial year, and Hardide said it now anticipates FY26 financial performance will be ahead of previous expectations.
It is also planning to start an infrastructure upgrade programme at its plant, to improve operational efficiency and support higher demand.
Shares in flexible power producer Quantum Data Energy rose 10% after the company reported record monthly electricity generation and revenues from its gas-powered site, and confirmed progress on a third flexible power project.
The Pyebridge gas-powered facility delivered around 1.8GWh of electricity in January – its highest monthly output to date – and average revenues were about £290,000 per megawatt, with electricity sold at £127/MWh – around 62% above the market average.
Hydrogen Utopia International shares traded higher in early trade, but have flattened off now. The company detailed a planned business model for producing sustainable aviation fuel from waste plastics in Saudi Arabia.
The company said the illustrative model sets out a proposed route using plasma-assisted waste-to-syngas, gas clean-up and Fischer-Tropsch upgrading. The model assumes around 200,000 tonnes per year of mixed waste plastics.
Shares in Shearwater rose 9% after the cybersecurity firm announced a £9 million three-year contract renewal and expansion with a global financial organisation.
Going the other way, Trellus Health shares dropped 19% after the company warned that its cash runway extends only into late first quarter 2026, despite new contracts and progress across its core business lines.
The AIM-listed digital health group reported continued traction in the clinical trials market, securing preferred vendor status with two global contract research organisations (ICON and PSI), plus a third agreement that remains active with AstraZeneca.
Mila Resources dropped 29% after news of lower-than-expected grades from a maiden diamond drilling programme at the Yarrol gold project in Queensland, Australia.
The company did however tell investors that drilling demonstrated continuity of gold-bearing structures, with intercepts of about 5 g/t gold traced from surface to about 230 metres depth, and up to 6.8 g/t gold at depth.
10.26am: Grocery inflation eases
Grocery inflation in January eased to the lowest in nine months, according to the Worldpanel survey by Numerator (formerly the Kantar data).
Like-for-like grocery price inflation softened to 4.0%, the lowest since last April, down from 4.3% in December and 4.7% in October and November.
UK grocers grew take-home sales 3.8% in the four weeks to 25 January, the same level of growth as in December.
Promotional spending rose by 10.9% year on year, marking the fastest rate of growth since October 2024.
Sainsbury’s sales were up 5.3% over a 12-week period, with Tesco at 4.4% and Asda sales down 3.7%.
Aldi sales grew 3.8%, Morrisons 2.5%, and Lidl 10.1%. M&S grocery sales beat the big three grocers, up 6.9%, and ahead of Waitrose’s 5.5%.
10.09am: Gold and silver trading
Online trading platform IG says it has seen a 166% weekly jump in silver trading, with a whopping £14 billion in UK trading volume last week on a notional basis, for these were spread bets/CFDs.
There was a 50% increase in the number of people trading silver versis the previous week and a 273% increase month on month.
Gold saw a 75% week on week increase in number of trades, or 34% in the number of traders, with trades up 1318% month on month and traders up 220%.
I wonder how many of them made money.
IG's chief market analyst, Chris Beauchamp, says this sort of thing is "so often the case with any market that begins to see such dramatic moves in one direction".
"In a period when equity and FX markets have been relatively calm, the parabolic moves in precious metals have become the go-to destination for those looking to exploit market volatility.
"With silver up 10% in early trading today, it seems that even the huge drop over the weekend will not be enough to dent the appeal of the metal, since the fundamental conditions that drove the rally in the first place remain intact."
9.47am: FTSE falls into red
The FTSE has dropped into the red, with pther Eurpoean indices also dropping off in the past hour.
Not sure what triggered this yet.
Leading the fallers are RELX, JD Sports, Sage, Pearson, Experian, Informa, London Stock Exchange, Burberry, Entain and InterContinental Hotels.
Mostly consumer-facing and with strong dollar exposure. The GBP/USD has lost earlier gains, moving from $1.37 to $1.367, while the DXY dollar index has perked up.
On the Continent, the German DAX has slippd from a gain of 1.2% to 0.7%.
9.26am: Premium finance charges fall
Consumers paying for insurance monthly are saving a combined £157 million a year (or put another way, companies are no longer getting £157 million) following a drop in premium finance charges, according to a review by the Financial Conduct Authority.
More than half the firms assessed by the regulator reduced the cost of monthly payment plans, with average annual percentage rates falling 4.1 percentage points since 2022.
The change has cut the average annual cost of premium finance by £8 for motor policies and £3 for home cover.
Firms considered at higher risk of failing to provide fair value made steeper reductions of 7 percentage points, saving drivers £14 and homeowners £4 per year.
The FCA said it had used new powers under the Consumer Duty regime, introduced in 2023, to press for fairer pricing without needing to introduce new rules. Nearly half of all motor and home policies (about 23 million in total) were paid monthly last year, often by customers who could not afford annual payments.
8.59am: Big US news
Some news from across the pond, first that the monthly US employment report scheduled for Friday will not be published on time, due to the government shutdown, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has said.
The report is one of the most closely watched economic indicators each month, with data on new jobs, the unemployment rate and wages for January, as well as revisions to previous employment nunbers.
While the shutdown is expected to be resolved this week, the BLS said it would not have enough time to complete all its work in time.
Next, there has been a near-7% afterhours surge in Palantir, after the government data contractor beat Wall Street expectations after a wobble that had left the stock almost 30% down from its November highs.
The numbers were strong, but there are questions.
Next, Elon Musk's SpaceX has acquired Elon Musk's the artificial intelligence start-up xAI, in a move that deepens the billionaire’s efforts to centralise his commercial empire.
A memo from Musk published on the rocket company's website described the merger as an “innovation engine” combining AI, space technology, satellite internet and media.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but sources familiar with the transaction have been cited as saying it valued xAI at $125 billion and SpaceX at $1 trillion, making SpaceX the most valuable private company in history.
8.29am: A plus for Plus
Plus500 is the top riser on the FTSE 250, up 7% after announcing its prediction markets tie-up with Kalshi.
The plan is to launch a new consumer-facing trading platform in the US including products from Kalshi, which on its economics predictions page, for example, currently offers bets on how much government spending will Trump cut in 2025, whether unemployment in January will be above or below 4.4% and 4.3%.
Plus says it intends to take advantage of its existing technology and infrastructure to bring these products to market, with customers gaining access to Kalshi Exchange and clearing provided by Plus, building on the clearing arrangements with CME/FanDuel announced in December.
Analyst Stuart Duncan at Peel Hunt said that although no financial details have been disclosed at this point, he expected the development to be received positively.
Rae Maile at house broker Panmure Liberum says: "It is, at this stage, not possible to quantify the impact of either of these developments in estimates but it is yet another reminder of the company’s constant rate of development as well as its ability to partner with a broad range of counterparties, leveraging its proprietary technology, its clearing memberships and its risk-management skills and infrastructure."
The company reports results next Monday.
8.15am: Miners lead FTSE to new highs
The FTSE 100 has strolled to a positive start, up 23 points to 10,366, venturing into record intraday territory.
Powering the advance are rises for precious metals miners Endeavour Mining and Fresnillo, up 5.7% and 4.3% after retreating the previous two days.
Anglo American is up 3% as copper prices also rebound. Antofagasta, Rio Tinto and Glencore also being well supported.
Among other heavyweight stocks on the index, Rolls-Royce and BAT are both among the top risers.
7.54am: Plus and Wizz
Plus500 has launched a new prediction markets product for US retail traders, marking its first direct-to-consumer move into the fast-growing but controversial area of financial markets.
The FTSE 250-listed trading firm said its US platform, Plus500 Futures, will now offer regulated event-based contracts through Kalshi.
Plus500 had already entered the space as a clearing partner to the FanDuel-CME platform, but this launch gives it direct exposure to retail traders.
Wizz Air carried 5.35 million passengers in January, up 8.5% on the year before, as the airline passed the 500 million passenger milestone and reached 1,000 active routes.
The FTSE 250-listed carrier filled 84.4% of its 6.34 million available seats, a dip of 1.6 percentage points compared with January 2025.
Analysts at Citi recently warned that the group's planned 20% expansion comes at a challenging time, with schedule data suggesting Ryanair is stepping up growth on Wizz’s key routes, raising the risk of price cuts.
7.38am: Gold and silver shining again
For gold and silver, the 50-day moving average has "revived the urge to buy" for many investors, says market analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya at Swissquote Bank.
"By the time Europeans came to their desks, the slump in gold and silver prices was largely over," she says, looking back at the previous session, with gold's 50-DMA standing more than 20% below last Thursday’s peak, and for silver it is nearly 40% below last week’s peak.
That is "an early answer to a complex question", but Ozkardeskaya acknowledges that "we still don’t know whether this marks the end of the metals debacle", but seems that is the level at which dip-buyers re-emerged.
The gold volatility index is also cooling, she notes, a further sign that support near these 50-DMAs could hold.
Metals are up again this morning, with gold trades up 5.6% to $4,922 an ounce at the time of writing, while silver climbs 9.7% to $86.85/oz.
"Ironically, risk appetite appears to be recovering as investors return to gold and silver," she adds, noting the surging stocks in Asia and both US and European futures higher.
"But gold’s latest behaviour is a concern," she says. "Traditionally, gold acts as protection against market risk. But it is now behaving like a risky asset — worse, at times like a meme stock — and its negative correlation with risk assets has faded. Highly speculative, leveraged positioning is largely responsible for this unusual behaviour.
"The problem is that most diversified portfolios have exposure to gold, meaning this volatility affects all risk profiles. That is disquieting.
"It will be interesting to see whether the latest slump helps temper gold’s meme-like symptoms and restores its reputation as a boring, low-risk safe-haven asset. Because today, that description no longer fits."
She says that appetite for the US dollar, other major currencies, and sovereign bonds "remains fragile, and that should continue to underpin the bullish case for hard commodities."
One factor to watch, Ozkardeskaya adds, is the US 10-year Treasury yield, "which could come under persistent upward pressure if expectations grow that new Fed leadership will seek to shrink the Fed’s balance sheet — pushing yields higher and increasing the opportunity cost of holding non-interest-bearing gold.
"Whether that would be enough to halt or reverse the metals rally will depend on how quickly trust in the US erodes."
Attention should now turn back to earnings, she concludes, assuming the worst of the metals stress is behind us for now, with Palantir jumping 5% in after-hours trading after its report.
7.17am: FTSE 100 to take a breather
A calmer start is anticipated for the FTSE 100 on Tuesday as it takes a breather having reached new all-time highs, while metals prices creep back up after their severe wobble in recent days.
London's blue-chip share index has been called 10 points higher, after surging 118 points to finish at a record closing high of 10,341.56 the day before.
On Wall Street overnight, stocks also flirted with record highs, with the Dow Jones adding over 1% and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq climbing 0.5% and 0.6% respectively.
Asian markets are powering higher this morning, with the Nikkei leaping 3.9% higher in Tokyo to a new record, the Kospi and Sensex jumping over 5% and 2.8% in Seoul and Mumbai, while the Shanghai Composite rises 1.3% as investors play catch-up with the turnaround seen in Europe and the US yesterday.