The FTSE 100 has made a soft start to the new trading week with the benchmark lower by approximately 15 points. The pound is attempting to recoup some of its recent losses and is making small gains against the majority of its peers.
Financial stocks moving lower
The worst performing blue-chips in London come from the financial sector with Provident Financial (LON:PFG), RBS (LON:RBS) and Barclays (LON:BARC) occupying the bottom 3 slots on the FTSE 100 this morning. Provident Financial, Britain’s largest sub-prime lender, has seen it’s share price hit a 52-week low today as the firm continues to struggle after what has been a bad few months with profit warnings and staff layoffs. There are several bright spots however, with mining stocks enjoying a green start to the week. Rio Tinto (LON:RIO), BHP Billiton (LON:BLT) and Glencore (LON:GLEN) are all in positive territory, although some of the earlier gains seen in the trio have been pared back somewhat as the morning wears on.
UK keen to talk trade
Several new papers from the UK government are scheduled to be published this week outlining its stance on Brexit negotiations. There has been a worrying lack of clarity and cohesion amongst MPs in the past year since the referendum and many will be looking to these publications for further guidance on what post-EU Britain will look like. However, the waters are likely to remain murky for quite some time yet as these papers will merely reveal what the Brexit minister David Davis and his colleagues would like to see as the outcome of the talks rather than what the actual result will be. For instance the likelihood of an interim period after 2019 that Britain will remain in a customs union has increased markedly in recent weeks, but this appears to be simply a case of delaying the inevitable and it is unlikely that trade deals with other countries can be hammered out when there is still significant unknown factors in what the UK-EU trade terms after Brexit will be.