UK shares open higher as the week begins despite a sell-off in China overnight.
FTSE 100 gained 39 points to 6,157 with nearly all of the Footsie members showing early advances.
Concerns over the Chinese market have been a weighty theme in recent weeks and look set to continue yet, not least due to economic data over the weekend.
That showed China’s factory output and fixed-asset investment were both weaker-than-expected last month.
Markets though were fixated on the upcoming US Federal Reserve meeting and the weakness in China was seen as a possible reason for the US central bank to hold fire on interest rates.
Expectation among a consensus of commentators of a hike has now dropped to 28%, having been heading towards 50% earlier in the year.
Miners were among the big gainers today. BHP Billion (LON;BLT) added 19p to 1,076p, Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) rose 40p to 2,423p while Anglo American (LON:AAL) added 10p to 728p.
The one exception was out of favour trader Glencore (LON:GLEN), which eased back 1% to 133p after last week’s bounce on the back of its huge debt reduction measures.
Banks were among the few losers seemingly following the appointment of a hard left politician John McDonnell as the new Shadow Chancellor by Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s new leader.
Barclays (LON:BARC) dipped to 258p, Lloyds (LON:LLOY) to 75.7p while BSkyB another company likely to be in the cross hairs in the event of a Labour election victory fell 13p to (LON:BSY).
Aga Rangemaster (LON:AGA) lowered after reports over the weekend said Whirlpool has pulled out of a bidding war with Middleby for the company as shareholders approved a US$201mln takeover last week. Shares eased 12% to 184p.
There were some big moves among the small caps.
Active Energy (LON;AEG) jumped 13% to 6.2p as it unveiled a partnership with a US firm over what it described as a revolutionary new way to treat biomass for fuel.
Seeing Machines (LON:SEE) rose 8% to 4.9p as it agreed a US$17.5mln deal to transfer the running of its fatigue monitoring systems for off road truck drivers to US group Caterpillar.
Record production and sales of palm oil helped Ivory Cost-based DekelOil (LON:DKL) 10% to 1.1p.
Motive Television (LON:MTV) said it is to make its TabletTV available on the new Apple TV platform. Motive will become one of the earliest developers for the Apple TV platform. Shares jumped 34% to 0.27p.
Conversely, HaiKe Chemical Group (LON:HAIK) said first half was as expected but due to the slowdown in China over recent months, the firm is unlikely to make a profit for the full-year. Shares dropped 26.9% to 9.5p.