Ignoring the US-China trade war headlines, Wednesday’s trading turned positively perky as the afternoon went on.
The Dow Jones ended up trailing behind its peers after the bell. Instead of joining in with the European growth, the Dow came over all shy this Wednesday, unable to cross 26000 like the futures had promised. The dollar, meanwhile, dipped as the US PPI reading for August came in lower than forecast, missing the 0.2% estimates to fall from 0.0% to -0.1%; this left the greenback down 0.1% against the pound and 0.3% against the euro.
As for the FTSE, a dull session came alive in the afternoon, the index’s sizeable commodity sector helping it over the SSE-led drop from the energy stocks. With Hurricane Florence approaching the US, Brent Crude rose 0.6% to trade around $79.60 per barrel, in turn lifting BP (LON:BP) and Shell (LON:RDSa) by 1% and 0.8% apiece. The miners, meanwhile, paid little attention to the day’s trade war dispatches, the likes of Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) and BHP Billiton (LON:BLT) following copper higher. All this allowed the FTSE to climb half a percent, pushing it back above 7300.
The eurozone indices were more mixed. Though the CAC manged to rise 0.7%, sending it the right side of 5300, the DAX could only add 0.1%, leaving it short of 12000.
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