Morning Market, Wednesday 4th June 2008

The FTSE was down about 65 points this morning at 5,992, whilst the FTSE 250 was also down 65 points at 9,922.  Both are now under the 6k and 10k levels.

Last night over the pond the DJI closed down nearly 101 points at 12,402.85, up about 60 points up from its low, whilst the S&P500 closed down 8 points at 1,377.65 and the Nasdaq down just over 11.05 points at 2,480.48.

In the Far East today the Nikkei 225 closed up 226.40 points at 14,435.57, whilst in Hong Kong the Hang Seng was down about 59 points at 24,317 by lunchtime chow time.

Staying in Asia, oil was down again to just over US$124 bbl.

Back here in London, there were a few heavyweights that went ex-div, so dragged down the FTSE somewhat.  These included: National Grid, down 24p at 724p; Vodafone, down 6.5p at 156.2p; and Enterprise Inns, down 13p at 447p.

Backj to oil, where the heavyweights fell back tdue to the drop in price of the black stuff.  BP was down 12p at 592p, and RD Shell was down nearly 40p at 2,045p.

The miners also suffered, with Vedanta Resources down 40p at 2,384, Xstrata down 74p at 3,971p[, and Antofagasta down 15p at 673p.

On to the housebuilders, where it was real doom and gloom.  Persimmons was down another 16p at 440p after a UBS downgrade to ’sell’ this morning, whilst Bellway was down 25p at 5778p, and Redrow 15p at 208p.

On to financials, where Man Group was down 10p to 614 after an Investec downgrade to ‘hold’ from ‘buy’.

News from Lehman Brothers, who have said they are looking at a $4 bln rights issue, caused their shares to fall 10%.  This didn’t help the banks, with HBOS falling 12p to 340p, Barclays down 7p to 353p, but RBS actually risiong 2p to 247p after an upgrade to ‘overweight’ from ‘underweight’.

British Airways was up 2p at 232.75p as hopes of some decent passenger numbers were due today.

On to retailing, where Kingfisher was up a penny to 139.8p after a near 9% increase in 1st quarter profits. Broker Seymour Pierce liked the nbews, upgrading its stance to ‘hold’ from ’sell’.