London’s blue-chip continued to pare its losses throughout the day as it recovered from disappointing Chinese data and
SABMiller did its best to buoy the market, fizzing 8.6% higher, or 312p, to 3,933p after agreeing a £68bn merger with rival brewer Anheuser‑Busch InBev (ABI).
The brewer of Peroni Nastro Azzurro, and Stella Artois maker ABI have agreed a £44 per share cash deal with a partial share alternative for 41% of SABMiller's shares.
Meanwhile, the housebuilders rose as on official figures showing UK house prices rose 0.7% month-on-month in August.
This was the fourth successive month-on-month increase in a 0.6-0.8% range.
Howard Archer, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, doesn’t think house prices have done rising.
He said: “We expect house prices to see solid increases over the coming months amid firm activity. We expect house prices to rise 7% in 2015 and then by 6% in 2016.”
Persimmon (LON:PSN), up 1.6%, or 31p, to 1,967p was near the top of the index, as were Berkeley (LON:BKG), 1.2% higher, and Barratt Developments (LON:BDEV) which gained 1.3%.
Meanwhile, Bellway (LON:BWY) strengthened 87p to 2457p on news of record sales and higher profits, although the company noted continuing labour shortages. Shares gained some 3.6% to 2,455p.
AJ Bell Investment Director Russ Mould said: “The British love affair with their homes shows no sign of slowing down and Bellway has taken an average of 149 reservations per week since the start of August, an increase of 16% on last time and giving it confidence that it can grow volumes by up to 10% in the current year.”
This positivity helped the FTSE100 to recover ground throughout the day, but was not enough to push it into positive territory, ending 29 points lower to 6,342.
Over in the US, the Dow Jones industrial average was up two points at 17,134 and the Nasdaq Composite was five points to the good at 4,844, while the S&P 500 was just a tad below last night’s closing level at 2,017.
Global markets have been in a malaise all day after dismal Chinese trade data on Tuesday.
China's imports fell about a fifth, down for the 11th month in a row while exports fell 1.1% from a year earlier.
Joshua Mahony at IG said the data came as no surprise, but “it did show the path continues to be one of deterioration and a recovery seems out of sight – for now.”
This kept the miners in check, with Glencore (LON:GLEN) losing 3.8% to 116p while others including Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) and Anglo American (LON:AAL) also struggling.
In the small cap space, Tern’s (LON:TERN) Cryptosoft arm has signed a strategic partnership with cyber security specialist Device Authority. Shares jumped 13.8% to 18.5p.
Empyrean Energy (LON:EME) revealed an independent upgrade of its reserves volumes at the Sugarloaf project, in the Eagle Ford play, Texas. Shares gained 10.7% to 7.75p.
Conversely, Image Scan Holdings (LON:IGE) lowered 10.7% to 1.45p as total sales fell to £1.7mln, from £2mln the year before while sales, as preciously noted, were hit by delays in the product development though these issues have now been fixed.