Reuters: Hot Stocks: British shares rally broadly after Fed, IMI leads gainers

Reuters: Hot Stocks Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

Keep More Customers Increase customer retention and trial conversion rates by 30% with data you already collect. From our sponsors

British shares rally broadly after Fed, IMI leads gainers Aug 22nd 2013, 11:10 Thu Aug 22, 2013 7:10am EDT * FTSE 100 up 0.8 percent * IMI leads on brighter outlook * Miners boosted by robust China data By Tricia Wright LONDON, Aug 22 (Reuters) - Britain's top shares recovered some poise after recent steep losses on Thursday, helped by mining stocks following encouraging data from top commodities consumer China and an optimistic outlook from engineer IMI. The rally extended across a range of sectors, suggesting a broad upturn in sentiment as some took the view that the U.S. Federal Reserve may wait longer than anticipated before winding down its stimulus programme. The FTSE 100 was up 48.98 points, or 0.8 percent, at 6,439.82 points by 1032 GMT, following three straight days of losses which saw the index shed 1.7 percent. IMI rose 4.7 percent to a record high on Thursday after the company forecast improved trading as it posted a slight rise in first-half profits boosted by fatter margins at its severe service business. Europe's second-quarter earnings season is drawing to a close, with 90 percent of STOXX Europe 600 companies having reported numbers, of which 55 percent have beaten or met forecasts, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine data. The FTSE 100 has fallen nearly 4 percent from an early August peak, dogged by uncertainty over when the Fed will start to scale back its huge bond buying programme which has fuelled a rally in world equities over the past year. But traders say that these declines should be seen in the context of seasonally thin trading volumes, which can exaggerate market moves. By mid-session on Thursday the UK benchmark had traded just a quarter of its already thin 90-day daily average. "We still see opportunities... even through this volatility, namely led by cheap valuations," Atif Latif, director at Guardian Stockbrokers, said. According to Thomson Reuters Datastream, the FTSE 100 trades on a 12-month forward price/earnings ratio of 12.1 times against its 15-year average of 14.7 times. Expectations that the Fed would start scaling back its stimulus as early as next month have hit market sentiment. But some noted the fact that minutes from the Fed's July policy meeting, released late on Wednesday, gave little indication of the timing of a reduction as a positive. "Tapering might be pushed out by another month or so... Maybe the sell-off was a little bit overdone going into the minutes," Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets, said. Miners outpaced the market, notching up a 1.5 percent rise after activity in China's manufacturing sector hit a four-month high in August. Antofagasta and Vedanta Resources, with respective gains of 2.4 percent and 2.2 percent, were among the best off, while Kazakhmys rose 0.5 percent despite posting a more than 35 percent drop in first-half core profit. (Reporting by Tricia Wright; Editing by John Stonestreet) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions