With Turkey raising its tariffs on US goods, a move that helped out the lira in the latest currency crisis twist, Wednesday got off to a fairly calm start.
The FTSE dipped 20 points after the bell, which, though not great, is a surprisingly small drop given Brent Crude slipped more than half a percent and copper plunged 2%, taking the metal to a fresh 13 month low. That left the UK index just above 7600, but with the danger of falling under that key level if the commodity losses gather pace as the day goes on.
As for the pound, it continued to struggle against the dollar, barely sitting above $1.272, while pushing a bit higher against the euro, holding around €1.122, its best price in over a week. Having weathered Tuesday’s disappointing wage growth data – in part thanks to the unexpected drop in the unemployment rate – the next test for sterling this Wednesday’s is July’s inflation reading. Estimates have the figure nudging up from 2.4% to 2.5% month-on-month, a level last seen in March.
The day’s biggest winner was Hikma Pharmaceuticals, which found the right prescription to allow its 2018 rally to continue. The key feature of its interim results was a revision to the full year guidance of its Injectables and Generics divisions; the former got a boost as production issues at Pfizer caused a shortage of injectable opioids in the US that Hikma stepped in to fill, while the latter saw a better than expected performance despite the ‘competitive’ environment. Add onto the hiked forecasts a 54% surge in operating profit to $174 million and investors were more than happy to swallow a Hikma pill, sending the pharma-firm 9% higher to a £18-teasing 15 month peak.
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