FTSE 100 up 0.2% to 6,820
Gold down 0.1% to $1,287.81/oz
£/$ – 1.6598
The FTSE 100 rose 14 points before the weekend to close at 6,820.
Miners performed well in Friday’s trading. Fresnillo topped the index with a gain of 2.3%, and Randgold Resources rose 1.6%. Anglo American was 1.2% higher.
In the forex markets this morning, GBP was trading against the US dollar at 1.6628 and against the euro at 1.2661. The dollar was trading at 0.7614 against the euro and 104.14 against the Japanese yen.
Supermarkets made up the bulk of the day’s fallers. Tesco suffered the biggest sell-off, falling 6.6%. Morrisons fell 5.0% and Sainsbury’s was down 4.4%.
In Europe, the Paris CAC 40 rose 15 points to 4,381, and the German Xetra Dax gained seven points to 9,470.
In the US, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1% to 17,098, the S&P 500 rose 0.3% to 2,003, and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.5% higher at 4,580.
Overnight in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.3% to 15,477, and the broader Topix index gained 0.4% to 1,283. And in China, the Shanghai Composite rose 0.8% to 2,236, and the CSI 300 gained 0.7% to 2,355.
Brent spot was trading at $102.86 early today, and in New York, crude oil was at $95.63. Spot gold was trading at $1,289 an ounce, silver was at $19.42 and platinum was at $1,419.
And in the UK, Barclays has sold its Spanish retail and corporate banking operations to Spanish bank Caixabank for £632m. The deal will hand Barclays a loss after tax of around £500m and transfer over half a million customers to the Spanish bank.
