Morning Market, Tuesday 29th April 2008

The FTSE was up about 30 points this morning at 6,121, whislt the FTSE 250 was actually down 14 points at 10,103.

Last night over the pond the DJI closed down just over 20 points to 12,871.75, whislt the S&P500 closed down just about 1.5 points at 1,396.37, and the Nasdaq did the opposite, up about 1.5 points at 2,424.40.  The Feds speak tomorrow after thier 2-day meeting, in which they will decide whther inteest rates come down another 25 points.  Or it doesn’t.

In the Far East today, Japan’s Nikkei was closed for a holiday, and in Hong Kong the Hang Seng was up about 280 points at 25,950 by its lunchtime.

Staying in the Far East with oil, the price of the blackstuff was backing off a little.  Hopes of the Scottish refinary strike getting sorted sooner rather than later look on the cards, which may have helped pull the price back from those dizzy heights of US$120 bbl. Light Sweet (Jun del) was trading at US$118.50 bbl, down 25cents, whilst Brent (Jun del) was down a similar amount at US$116.50 bbl, 2-bucks cheaper.

Back here in London it was the oil majors that were strong, despite prices checking today, as recent strength in the oil price helped figures.  BP was up 27p at 605p, RD Shell up 90p at 2,013p, BG Group was up 30p at 1,330, and cairn Energy was up 65p at 3,064p.

Insurer Friends Provident gave a decent update, saying sales up 11% on the same quarter last year, helping shares rise 1.1p to 118.3p.

Bank HBOS was up 2p at 498p despite this £4 bln rights issue that is coming.  Apparently.

The Bank of England will be announcing mortgage lending figures today, which are expected to be rather downbeat, and much lower than last year.

The mining stocks were down this morning, with Anglo giving mediocre results, causing Citigroup to downgrade to ‘hold’ from ‘buy’. With metal prices also falling, others dropped too. Anglo was down 45p to 3,296, BHP down 38p to 1,839, and Rio down 110p to 6,116.

British Airways was down another 3p to 219.5p after press reports that the airline may have to come clean and issue a profit warnbing.  Fuel prices and the Terminal 5 debacle causing massive costs to the airline.

Pub group JD Wetherspoon was up 12p to 281p after a decent trading update. Broker Altium gave an upgrade to Tim’s Martin’s pub group to added ‘buy’ from ‘hold’.

Genus, the animal gene working group fell 45p to 798 after a rather lack-lustre trading statement.

Premier Foods was down 2p to 132p after a UBS downgrade to ‘neutral’ from ‘buy’.

Game Group was up nearly 20p to 271.5p after some decent results.