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LONDON (Alliance News) - Corporate updates are driving individual stock movements in London Wednesday as the main indices remain soft, along with the pound, in the absence of fresh economic data and ahead of the Bank of England inflation report hearing during the afternoon trading session.
By mid-morning Wednesday, the FTSE 100 is down 0.1% at 6,819.82, the FTSE 250 is down 0.5% at 15,712.08, and the AIM All-Share is down 0.1% at 776.25.
Major European equity markets are also a little lower, with the French CAC 40 down 0.2%, and the German DAX down 0.3%.
The stock-market declines follow a lower close in US markets on Tuesday, with some market participants expressing concern over a report from the San Francisco Federal Reserve that suggested investors may be overestimating the amount of time before the first US interest rate rise, although this has not followed through to the US futures Wednesday, which are currently indicating a fractionally firmer start on Wall Street.
"Comments about market complacency regarding US interest rates jolted investors out of their slumber in the US session yesterday," said IG market analyst Chris Beauchamp.
Investor sentiment in the UK also remains subdued since more than one poll of voters in recent days have show a sharp narrowing of the gap between the "Yes" and "No" campaigns in the run up to the vote over Scottish independence in just eight days time.
Nervousness over a potential political upset on September 18 has been most clearly witnessed in the foreign exchange market, where the pound has plummeted in recent sessions, hitting another fresh multi-month low Wednesday of USD1.6050. Even against the euro, which suffered under the weight of negative interest rates in the eurozone, the pound has hit a three-month low Wednesday of EUR1.2399.
The pound and the prospect of Scottish independence will remain in focus into the afternoon session, as a number of members of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee will sit at 1445 BST to face questions from Parliament over the bank's recent inflation report. BoE Governor Mark Carney will be joined on this occasion by David Miles, Nemet Shafik, and known hawk Martin Weale.
Within the UK equity moves, ARM Holdings is leading the technology sector lower as investors express some disappointment over the launch of a raft of new products by Apple in the US on Tuesday. ARM is a key supplier of microchips that are used in Apple products. The stock is one of the heaviest FTSE 100 fallers, down 2.3%. Apple itself closed a little lower in the US on Tuesday and is continuing 0.3% lower in the US pre-market Wednesday.
"There was always the risk given the hype leading up to the event that we could see some share price weakness as expectations had been so high that Apple would have really needed to knock it out of the park, and they didn?t really do that," says CMC Markets chief market analyst Michael Hewson.
Admiral Group is the only heavier blue chip faller than ARM, down 4.7% after going ex a 49p interim dividend.
A number of the key Scotland-exposed stocks are continuing to underperform in the run up to the all-important vote. Aberdeen Asset Management is down 1.1%, SSE is down 0.7%, and Standard Life is down 0.7%.
Kingfisher is the stand-out gainer in the FTSE 100. The home improvement retailer announced that the head of its Castorama business in France, Veronique Laury, will take over as group chief executive. The positive market reaction comes despite the group also reporting a 6.5% fall in pretax profit in the 26 weeks to August 2.
Barratt Developments is up 0.8% after the housebuilder announced an impressive set of full-year results, showing a doubling in pretax profit, as its average selling price rose by 13%. Barratt also introduced a special dividend programme that will return an extra GBP400 million to shareholders through to November 2017.
By Jon Darby; jondarby@alliancenews.com; @jondarby100
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