A very good morning for Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSa) allowed the FTSE to ignore issues in both its mining and banking sectors.
The oil giant rocketed 3.5% higher after it restored an all-cash dividend, lifting Shell to a 12 day peak. This growth couldn’t come at a better time for the FTSE, which jumped more than half a percent largely on the strength of Shell’s gains and the subsequent 0.9% rise from BP (LON:BP).
This meant the UK index ignored a pretty bloody mining sector, with the likes of Rio Tinto (LON:RIO), BHP Billiton (LON:BLT) and Anglo American (LON:AAL) down anywhere between 0.9% and 1.7%. As for the banks, despite a generally positive set of stress test results that showed the UK could withstand a ‘disorderly Brexit’, the fact that RBS (LON:RBS) and Barclays (LON:BARC) only just squeaked a pass has weighed on those stocks, with the latter especially unhappy as it fell 1%.
The FTSE also received a bit of a helping hand from sterling, which dipped 0.1% against both the dollar and the euro. That mild decline is likely due to the rather grim picture of the UK economy painted by the OECD, with GDP expected at just 1.5% in 2017, 1.2% in 2018 and a truly woeful 1.1% in 2019.
Elsewhere, despite Republicans struggling to restore momentum to their – increasingly unpopular – tax plan the Dow Jones is set to open around 50 points higher to hit yet another 23600-plus all-time high. There are a couple of non-tax reform related events of interest this Tuesday afternoon, namely a testimony from prospective Fed chair Jerome Powell – with investors on the lookout for hints about the pace of rate hikes post-December – and the CB consumer confidence reading.
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