Investing.com – U.K. equities were higher at the close on Thursday, as gains in the Aerospace & Defense, Forestry & Paper and Construction & Materials sectors propelled shares higher.
At the close in London, the Investing.com United Kingdom 100 rose 0.63%.
The biggest gainers of the session on the Investing.com United Kingdom 100 were Fresnillo PLC (LON:FRES), which rose 4.63% or 61.50 points to trade at 1391.00 at the close. Johnson Matthey PLC (LON:JMAT) added 3.29% or 102.00 points to end at 3206.00 and BAE Systems PLC (LON:BAES) was up 3.28% or 18.80 points to 591.20 in late trade.
Biggest losers included Standard Life Aberdeen PLC (LON:SLA), which lost 7.53% or 29.30 points to trade at 360.00 in late trade. Capita PLC (LON:CPI) declined 4.49% or 8.50 points to end at 181.00 and Provident Financial (LON:PFG) shed 3.02% or 21.60 points to 692.60.
Advancing stocks outnumbered falling ones by 1203 to 724 and 135 ended unchanged on the London Stock Exchange.
In commodities trading, Gold Futures for April delivery was down 0.32% or 4.30 to $1353.70 a troy ounce. Meanwhile, Crude oil for delivery in March rose 0.40% or 0.24 to hit $60.84 a barrel, while the April Brent oil contract fell 0.51% or 0.33 to trade at $64.03 a barrel.
GBP/USD was up 0.38% to 1.4050, while EUR/GBP fell 0.18% to 0.8880.
The US Dollar Index Futures was down 0.21% at 88.72.