Morning Market, Wednesday 26th March 2008

The FTSE was down this morning after the Dow fell back last night in the US. The FTSE was off about 20 points at 5,669, whilst the FTSE 250 was up about 27 points at 9821.

Over the pond last night the DJI closed down 16.04 points at 12,532.6, whilst the S&P500 closed up 3.11 points at 1,352.99, and the Nasdaq up 14.3 at 2,341.05.  One thing to note ref the housing, is that a report showed home prices slumped nearly 11% from a year ago in the major US cities.

In the far East today, the Nikkei 225 closed 38.59 points down at 12,706.63, whilst in Hong Kong the Hang Seng recently closed up 152.49 points at 22,617.01.

Oil was up again in Far East trading, with New York’s main contract, light sweet crude (May del) up over 50c at US$101.75 bbl, and Brent North Sea crude (May del) was up 30c at US$100.90 bbl.

Here in London this morning Xstrata had a poor start, down about 10%, as news that Brazilian outfit Vale confirmed it had pulled out of bid talks with Xstrata, who were down 365p at 3,351.  Other miners were mixed, with Lonmin up 27p at 3,052, and Anglo up 37p at 2,879. Kazakhmys was doing well, up 5% so far, or 77p at 1,619, after an FT report said that the government of Kazakhstan is considering doing a deal with its largest copper producer and swapping some mining assets for a stake in Kazakhmys.

United Utilities was down 8p at 688.5 after some profit taking after te company said its results would be in-line with expectations.

Sainsburys was up 8p at 345, after the supermarket group reported a 4% rise in 4th quarter sales, showing that things aren’t so bad with trade after all.