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Summary
- UK shares experienced a topsy-turvy ride on Thursday
- Upbeat Wall Street phenomenally supported the London equities
- The Wall Street trio -- Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 -- jumped over 1 per cent, each
- In the late trades, FTSE 100 was hovering 0.39 per cent lower at 6,977.48
- Earlier in the day, the index collapsed as much as 2.58 per cent
UK shares experienced a topsy-turvy ride on Thursday with the benchmark FTSE 100 sliding more than 2.5 per cent, then reversing the losses very sharply after Wall Street started on a positive footing, bouncing back from the three-day carnage.
An upbeat Wall Street for the first time in the week, recovering from the monthly bottoms, provided a much-needed cushion to the London equities with all the market capitalisation based stock indices staging sharp U-turn after the Dow Industrials and Nasdaq Composite rallied more than 1 per cent each.
The equity market sentiments improved substantially after the number of US residents seeking unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in the pandemic era. The number of Americans filing for the unemployment benefits in the week ending 8 May decreased by 34,000 to nearly 473,000, the data released by the US Department of Labor indicated.
The gradually falling numbers of unemployment claims has seemed to have developed a partial confidence amidst the market participants, passing through the sharp turbulence in the market initiated by the fears of rising inflation in the United States.
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According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual inflation rate in the US has increased to 4.2 per cent in April 2021, the highest reading since September 2008, the peak of the subprime mortgage crisis during which the then fourth-largest investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy.
Wall Street has somehow managed to reverse its weekly losses partly with Dow Jones Industrial Average rising as much as 1.56 per cent to an intraday high of 34,110.96 from the previous closing of 33,587.66. Surprisingly, the worst-hit Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.66 per cent, to a day’s top of 13,247.87, while the broader share barometer S&P 500 rose a little more than 1.5 per cent.
Led by a strong recovery in the American indices, the domestic benchmark FTSE 100 staged an eventful comeback in the late trades but was still trading marginally lower. Earlier in the session today, the index collapsed as much as 2.58 per cent, owing to the overnight weakness of Wall Street, to two-week low of 6,823.60.
FTSE 100 chart (13 May)
(Source: Refinitiv, Thomson Reuters)
According to the latest data available with the London Stock Exchange, FTSE 100 was trading 27.15 points, or 0.39 per cent lower at 6,977.48. The mid-cap heavy FTSE 250 almost turned flat, trading at 22,094.25, down 0.06 per cent from the previous close of 22,107.84, while other wider indicators including FTSE 350 and FTSE All-Share traded 0.33 per cent, lower.
