Investing.com – U.K. equities were lower at the close on Thursday, as losses in the Forestry & Paper, Mining and Software & Computer Services sectors propelled shares lower.
At the close in London, the Investing.com United Kingdom 100 lost 0.68%.
The biggest gainers of the session on the Investing.com United Kingdom 100 were Merlin Entertainments PLC (LON:MERL), which rose 9.41% or 32.00 points to trade at 372.00 at the close. Burberry Group PLC (LON:BRBY) added 3.81% or 58.50 points to end at 1592.00 and Shire PLC (LON:SHP) was up 3.63% or 113.00 points to 3222.00 in late trade.
Biggest losers included WPP PLC (LON:WPP), which lost 8.18% or 114.00 points to trade at 1280.00 in late trade. Capita PLC (LON:CPI) declined 4.97% or 8.75 points to end at 167.40 and EasyJet PLC (LON:EZJ) shed 3.99% or 67.00 points to 1612.00.
Declining stocks outnumbered rising ones by 1255 to 647 and 145 ended unchanged on the London Stock Exchange.
In commodities trading, Gold Futures for April delivery was down 0.58% or 7.70 to $1310.20 a troy ounce. Meanwhile, Crude oil for delivery in April fell 1.25% or 0.77 to hit $60.87 a barrel, while the May Brent oil contract fell 1.48% or 0.96 to trade at $63.77 a barrel.
GBP/USD was down 0.18% to 1.3735, while EUR/GBP rose 0.32% to 0.8889.
The US Dollar Index Futures was up 0.01% at 90.62.