Morning Market, Tuesday 3rd June 2008

The FTSE was up about 21 points this morning at 6,029, whilst the FTSE 250 was up 38 points at 9,965. The banks seem to be coming off the floor.

Over the pond, last night the DJI closed down 134.5 points at 12,503.82, whilst the S&P500 closed down nearly 5 points at 1,385.67, and the Nasdaq down 31 points at 2,491.53. Economic weakness seems to be the feelings of woe. Today we see the US factory orders, with a slight dip from the April figure.

In the Far East today, following on from New York the Nikkei 225closed down nearly 231 points at 14,209.17, while in Hong Kong the Hang Seng recently closed down over 457 points 24,373.90.

Staying in the Far East, oil was down again as concerns over world economy will effect demand for the black stuff. Light sweet (Jul del) was down another half a buck to US£127.30 bbl, whilst Brent North Sea crude (Jul del) was down over 70 cents at at the same level - US$127.30 bbl.

Back here in London, it was the banks that were bouncing, even after the bad news fro Bradford & Bingley yesterday. This morning we saw B&B actually up a penny at 67.5p, whilst peers were up even more, with RBS up 7p at 233p, and Lloyds TSB was up 7p at 384p, and Alliance & Leicester was up 2p at 405p.

On to transport, where the airlines liked the oil price falling back. British Airways was up only a penny at 230p, but others did better. Ryanair Holdings had announced some decent full-year profits of €480.9m, up from €401.4m the previous year, and easyJet was up 5p to the good at 290p.

Back to oil & gas, BG Group was up 23p at 1,264 after announcing it announced it has signed two liquefied natural gas agreements with Petrobas of Brazil. Other oil heavyweights didn’t do as well this morning as the oil price affected both BP, down 2p at 602p, and RD Shell down 4p at 2,078.

The miners backed off after their recent interest, with Rio Tinto down 46p at 6,124, Vedanta Resources down 45p at 2,460, and Anto off 2p at 690p.

Findel was down 2p at 225p after a Goldman Sachs downgrade to ’sell’ from ‘neutral’, and a news price target down to 180p from 330p.