Reuters: Hot Stocks: UPDATE 1-Britain's FTSE lags, miners and Unilever weigh

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UPDATE 1-Britain's FTSE lags, miners and Unilever weigh Oct 1st 2013, 15:49 Tue Oct 1, 2013 11:49am EDT * FTSE 100 closes flat, lags other European markets * Miners hit by falling gold, weak Chinese data * Unilever sales warning hits Reckitt, SABMiller * Investors calm over U.S. government shutdown (Adds closing prices) By Alistair Smout LONDON, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Britain's top share index closed flat on Tuesday, lagging other European bourses, as weakness in the gold price and poor sales from Unilever hit miners and consumer staples. The FTSE 100 edged down 2.21 points at the close, flat in percentage terms, to 6,460.01, with mining and consumer staples wiping more than 26 points off the index. Fresnillo fell 5 percent, the top FTSE faller, dropping along with other precious metal miners as gold extended losses in later session trade. Demand for safe-haven assets fell as investors took a sanguine view of a partial shutdown of the U.S. government that began overnight. Miners were down 1.4 percent, a top sectoral faller, as weak survey data from China pointed to faltering domestic demand, hitting the broader sector beyond gold-focused names. "Basic materials in general have really been hit. Manufacturing PMIs came in below expectations in China, and there's a feeling that we might be at the peak of the cycle," said James Butterfill, global equity strategist at Coutts. Unilever fell 3.4 percent to an 11-month low after the consumer goods company said a slowdown in its emerging markets business had intensified, prompting a cut to its third quarter sales expectations. Consumer staples such as Unilever had been the stock market's outperformers this year, up 20 percent by July. "There's an enormous gulf between emerging market index performance and the performances of stocks like Unilever," said Andy Ash, head of sales at Monument Securities. "Having said that, concerns with emerging markets for these stocks aren't anything new, and we're now 20 percent from the (2013) top in Unilever, so anyone selling today is a little bit late to the idea." Analysts at Nomura said the warning "creates uncertainty for some peers" such as Reckitt Benckiser. Shares in Reckitt were down 1.2 percent, while drinks company SABMiller fell 2.8 percent. The FTSE 100 underperformed every major index in Europe, which managed gains alongside the United States despite a U.S. government shutdown which potentially puts up to 1 million workers on unpaid leave. Although there were no signs of a resolution on the budget - which is needed to resolve the shutdown - analysts took the view that a compromise will be found, and that politicians will also agree to raise the debt ceiling later this month, thus avoiding a U.S. sovereign default. "Judging by the reaction of the U.S. markets, and now gold, investors don't seem to be too concerned about the shutdown," Fawad Razaqzada, analyst at GFT Markets, said. ($1 = 0.6175 British pounds) (Editing by Catherine Evans) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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