Morning Market, Friday 14th March 2008

The FTSE was up about 23 points at 5,715 in its first hour of trading this morning, whilst the FTSE 250 was up 21 points at 9,822. Not a very confident start, after such a bad day yesterday considering the Fed’s news, but at least we’re not going lower.

Over the pond last night the DJI closed up 35.5 points at 12,145.7, reversing after a nasty fall on opening, whilst the S&P500 closed up 6.75 points at 1,315.5 and the Nasdaq up 19.74 points 2,263.61. Some positive news was that Standard & Poor’s reckons the banks have now written down enough to cover all the sub-prime losses they are exposed to.

In the Far East this today the Nikkei 225 closed down 91.84 points at 12,241.6, whiclst in Hong Kong the Hang seng closed down 64.53 points at 22,237.11 after investors heard that the Chinese Central bank may raise interest rates again this weekend.

On to oil, where in Far East tarding today the price of the black stuff actually hit US$111 bbl. Yes, US$111 a barrel. This has been blamed on the weak dollar.

Back here in London there wasn’t much exciting gong on. Insurance giant, the Pru, was up 8p at 662p after posting some decent figures of £2.54 bln operating profit, up 25% on 2006.

The Miners were back in fashion too, after commodity prices rose again. Gold is actually almost thru’ the US$1,000 ounce level, trading at US$997.7 ounce, and actually hit that level in futures trades. Mining stocks were up with BHP up 17p at 1,551, Rio up 65p at 5,462, Lonmins up 34p at 3,414, and Anglo up 20p at 3,150. All this after a sector upgrade by Lehman Brothers to ‘equal-weight’ from ‘underweight’. Vedanta didn’t do as well this morning, though, falling back 40p at 2,188.

International Power was up 6p at 387.7 as Deutche Bank upgraded the energy supplier to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ after a decetn set of numbers.

Supermarkets received a sector downgrade from Goldman Sachs, with Tesco to ’sell’ from ‘neutral’ and WM Morrison to ‘neutral’ from ‘buy’, resulting in Tescos down 7p at 387, Morrissons down 9p at 280.5p, Sainsburys down 4p at 335.5p and Marks & Sparks down 2p at 372.5p.

TUI Travel was up 2.25p at 258p on merger speculation.