FTSE 250 closes at record high on recovery hopes May 7, 2021 The FTSE 250 mid-cap index closed at a record high this week as hopes of a stronger economic recovery lifted industrial and consumer discretionary stocks. The FTSE 250 index advanced 1.2 per cent, with industrial stocks, including Easyjet, IMI and Pagegroup, rising between 2.7 and 5.1 per cent. The FTSE 100 meanwhile rose 0.76 per cent, [...]
Wall Street opens higher after lacklustre jobs data May 7, 2021 Wall Street opened higher this afternoon, powered by gains for major tech stocks after new data showed US jobs growth fell well short of expectations. The Dow Jones opened 0.2 per cent higher, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were up more than 0.3 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively. Highly valued tech stocks [...]
SPAC frenzy holds valuable lessons for the UK May 6, 2021 | City Talk The explosive growth in Special Acquisition Purpose Company (SPAC) listings – shell companies listed on the stock exchange with the purpose of ‘reversing-in’ to another company and taking it public by the backdoor, has so far been a purely US phenomenon. However, other markets are now catching on. The value of listings by SPACs grew [...]
FTSE 100 rises slightly after Bank of England decision May 6, 2021 The FTSE 100 rose slightly this afternoon after the Bank of England monetary policy committee decided to hold interest rates at 0.1 per cent. Across the Atlantic, trading was also stagnant, with Wall Street’s main markets flat at the open. By the early afternoon, London’s premier index was up 0.1 per cent down at 7,047.31, [...]
UK funds back in favour off the back of successful vaccine rollout May 6, 2021 After a long period of neglect, investors are finally warming to UK funds again off the back of the success of the vaccine rollout. The latest set of Investment Association figures show savers invested £472m into funds in the UK All Companies sector. It comes as the country starts to open up and investors pin [...]
Semiconductor firm Alphawave prices London IPO at up to £3.2bn May 6, 2021 Canadian firm Alphawave has set a price range for its planned London float putting it on track for a valuation of up to £3.2bn. The company is just four years old and develops technology that pushes data through data centres and phone networks. It indicated plans to list in the capital last month and now [...]
Does an emissions scandal await the real estate sector? May 6, 2021 | City Talk In September 2015, news broke that Volkswagen (VW) had been selling cars in the US that had a so-called “defeat device” installed in diesel engines. It could detect when they were being tested and change performance to improve results. The German carmaker admitted to cheating emissions tests and it soon became clear that this was [...]
FTSE ends day with slump as Wall Street’s Nasdaq plunges nearly three per cent May 4, 2021 The FTSE 100 slipped back below the 7,000 point mark by the market close, despite a strong start to the week’s trading after the Bank Holiday weekend. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index fell 0.67 per cent by the end of the day, with banking stocks, including HSBC Holdings, Barclays and Standard Chartered posing the biggest drag on [...]
Joachim Klement, CFA: Three Geo-Economics trends to watch May 4, 2021 | City Talk “Today’s investors need to understand geopolitical trends as a main driving force of markets.” Joachim Klement, CFA Joachim Klement, CFA, has emerged over the last decade as one of the more insightful and compelling voices in finance. Well-reasoned, rigorous, humorous, and occasionally iconoclastic, his perspective, featured either on the Enterprising Investor Blog or on his [...]
Oxford Nanopore raises £195m ahead of London listing May 4, 2021 Oxford Nanopore has raised £195m in fresh funding ahead of its planned IPO in London later this year, it said this morning. The company has helped to track coronavirus mutations in the past year, which has made it somewhat of a darling of UK genetics work. The Oxfordshire-based scale-up said £125m of investment came from [...]