Market overview: Alex Salmond may resign, reports say
1630:Close UK stocks have ended the session slightly higher despite the victory of the no camp in the Scottish referendum.
Aberdeen Asset Management
317.60p
17:09 11/08/17
Abrdn
155.20p
16:40 03/05/24
Afren
1.79p
16:34 14/07/15
Apple Inc.
$183.38
13:09 03/05/24
FTSE 100
8,213.49
16:59 03/05/24
Lloyds Banking Group
52.18p
16:49 03/05/24
NATWEST GROUP
305.00p
16:35 03/05/24
SSE
1,709.50p
16:49 03/05/24
1629: Scotland´s Alex Salmond has indicated his intention to resign, Spain´s El Pais reports.
1429: Quantitative easing (QE) by the European Central Bank is now the baseline scenario from Barclays Research. The first quarter of 2015 is what they now have penciled in.
1348: French President Francois Hollande saidFrance has carried out its first airstrikes in Iraq, hitting a logistics depot held by the Islamic State extremist group.
1242: Heading into the US trading session Goldman Sachs analyst say Apple´s new iPhone may add between 0.1 and 0.7 percentage points to US retail sales. Alibaba´s IPO will also be closely watched for any signs of investor disappointment. Overnight the company priced its offering at $68 per share. However, there is criticism from some corners regarding the company´s ownership structure which gives barely any influence to retail investors despite being owners on paper.
1241: In the aftermath of last night´s Scottish referendum Fitch Ratings has said the vote has no implications for its ratings on the UK´s sovereign long-term debt.
1023: Data from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and EPFR Global, in a report entitled ´No for Europe´, shows that bond funds have seen their largest weekly redemption of this year, of $3.8bn, although equity funds witnessed $5.5bn of inflows. European equity funds however saw their largest weekly redemptions in more than three years ($4.6bn). Of this last amount $1bn came out of UK equity funds before the Scottish referendum. Emerging market and high-yield bond funds also registered outflows.
0948: In a research issued this morning analyst at Morgan Stanley write that: “our conversations with UK and Nigerian legal experts suggest that Afren may only face modest financial penalties, with little risk to asset ownership. However, with uncertainty around both the original findings and the expanded review, we remain ´equalweight´.
0812: The FTSE 100 is up 40 points at 6,859 as markets breath a sigh of relief with shares of Scotland-based companies such as SSE, Aberdeen, Lloyds, RBS and Standard Life rising strongly. The pound is up 0.8% against the dollar at $1.6525 - a two-week high. “The risk that the UK would inherit Scotland’s share of the national debt, but without the income coming from oil, risked pushing the debt/GDP ratio and current account deficit into dangerous territory. This is what had been weighing on sterling," said Tom Elliott, strategist at financial consultancy deVere Group.