Sector movers: Rolls-Royce cash return lifts aero/defence stocks

Aerospace and defence stocks were leading the risers on Thursday after engineering giant Rolls-Royce impressed investors with an unexpected £1bn cash return.Shares in Rolls jumped over 7% today after the firm pledged to buy back £1bn of shares if it succeeds in selling its energy gas turbine and compressor business to Germany's Siemens."We do not believe the share buyback was expected by investors and, as such, we think it is likely to be taken very positively," analysts at Investec said.Rolls also announced yet another memorandum of understanding with a Chinese nuclear reactor vendor, its third in as many days. As with the other two MoUs, the agreement will see Rolls work more closely with the vendor, in this case CNNC, on civil nuclear power in China, the UK, as well as overseas markets. Sector peers BAE Systems, Meggitt, Senior, Cobham, Ultra Electronics and QinetiQ were also performing well this afternoon.Elsewhere, housing and construction stocks were rebounding as concerns about a sooner-than-expected rise in interest rates have dented sentiment in recent days. Before today's bounce-back, the sector had lost 5% of its value since Bank of England (BoE) Governor Mark Carney said on June 12th that a rate increase could come within six months.Barratt Developments, Ashtead, CRH, Travis Perkins and Taylor Wimpey were all in positive territory today, helped by comments from BoE policymaker Martin Weale who said that he didn't see the need for an immediate rate hike.Furthermore, a number of analysts have attempted to downplay fears among the housebuilders this week, saying that the recent falls have been overdone."Given we expect a rate hike to be associated with improving economic conditions, we expect limited impact on market conditions," JPMorgan said on Tuesday.Top performing sectors so far todayAerospace and Defence 5,015.49 +3.71%Construction & Materials 4,414.41 +2.20%Forestry & Paper 11,740.78 +1.87%Mining 16,642.62 +1.57%Tobacco 40,813.14 +1.45%Bottom performing sectors so far todayMobile Telecommunications 4,453.22 -0.53%BC