London’s blue-chip stocks ended the day markedly lower as poor Asian data and an uninspiring ‘Super Thursday’ did little for investor confidence.
Kicking off with the Bank of England, and as Alastair McCaig at IG said: “No doubt those overseeing the Trade Descriptions Act will be closely monitoring future ‘Super Thursdays’ as this has proven to be anything but.”
The Bank of England (BoE) kept the status quo and left interest rates at 0.5%, with a majority vote of 8-1.
Connor Campbell at Spreadex said: “Unsurprisingly the Bank of England saw only its one traditional hawk, Ian McCafferty, vote for a rate hike.
“Even though the reasons for this decision are fairly obvious, investors still appeared to be sobered by the confirmation from the central bank that ‘risks to the growth outlook were skewed moderately to the downside’ across August due to the price-eroding pressure of China.”
In Asia, core machinery orders in Japan, which declined for a second straight month, started the sell-off along with Chinese producer prices, which fell by a bigger-than-expected 5.9%.
In the US, stocks failed to provide any
Back in the UK, the FTSE 100 ended 1.1% or 73 points to 6,155, with miners weighing heavily on the index following the data from Asia.
Glencore (LON:GLEN) was the biggest faller as it dropped 7.8% to 132p while BHP Billiton was next, easing 6% to 1,060p.
There was a lot of retail news out today. Supermarket chain Morrisons (LON:MRW) softened 3% or 5p to 170p as it confirmed it is culling 11 stores to rectify some of its issues after reporting a 50% slide in profit in its interim results.
Elsewhere, Dunelm (LON:DNLM) shone brightly as the homewares retailer reported higher yearly profit and sales thanks largely to a boost in curtain sales. Despite the positive news, shares nudged 3p lower to 901p.
Argos owner Home Retail Group (LON:HOME) said like-for-like sales at the retailer fell 2.8% to £897mln in the second quarter due to a decrease in sales of electrical goods driven by TVs , tablets and white goods such as washing machines and fridges. Shares dropped more than 7% to 138p.
In small caps, Actual Experience (LON:ACT) signed a contract to supply services to the business communication services arm of US telecoms company Verizon. Shares jumped 30p to 265p.
Conversely, Cambridge Cognition (LON:COG) said the introduction of products allowing customers to use iPads led to a reduction in hardware sales, which hit the percentage increase in total sales. Shares dropped 12% to 70p.