Market Commentary and Intraday News

UK Market Falls Moderately As Eurogroup Meets

254 days ago

(RTTNews) - The UK market is moderately lower in afternoon trading Monday, ahead of a meeting by European finance ministers to discuss the region's debt crisis. The Asian stocks fell and the U.S. index futures point to a lower open.

The Eurogroup, an informal gathering of the Finance Ministers of Eurozone, is set to meet in Luxembourg on October 8 before the full meeting of the ECOFIN Council on the next day. German chancellor Angela Merkel will visit Athens on Tuesday in support of Greece's reform efforts.

Greece is racing against time to secure a deal with the troika, comprising the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank, on the 13.5 billion euros of austerity measures.

Spain and the reform efforts by the government so far will likely be among the main topics coming up for discussion, apart from deliberations on an EU-wide banking union.

Germany's exports grew unexpectedly in August as declining shipments to euro nations were offset by higher demand from other countries, which further lifted hopes of growth in the largest Eurozone economy, data from Destatis showed.

Meanwhile, investor confidence in Eurozone improved for a second consecutive month in October, but remained below economists' forecasts, data released by think-tank Sentix revealed. The Sentix Index rose to -22.2 in October from -23.2 in September. Economists had forecast an improvement in the reading to -20.9.

The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone bluechip stocks is losing 1.24 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 50 index, which includes some major U.K. companies, is falling 0.75 percent.

The FTSE 100 index is losing 0.74 percent.

Evraz is declining 5.4 percent. Vedanta and Eurasian Natural Resources are losing 3.8 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively.

Barclays is losing 2.3 percent and Royal Bank of Scotland is falling 2.2 percent.

Imperial Tobacco is falling 2.1 percent after it was downgraded by Nomura.

Cookson Group is declining nearly 14 percent after the materials science company said its full-year performance as a whole is now expected to be materially below the board's previous expectations.

Specialist recruitment consultancy Michael Page expects full year operating profit to be slightly below current analyst expectations, owing to challenging conditions. The stock is falling over 1 percent.

Elsewhere in Europe, the German DAX is losing 1.3 percent and the French CAC 40 is falling 1.20 percent. Switzerland's SMI is dropping 0.31 percent.

Asian stocks ended mostly lower on Monday, with commodity-related stocks coming under selling pressure. Australia's All Ordinaries fell 0.26 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.9 percent. China's Shanghai Composite Index, which opened after a week-long holiday, dropped 0.6 percent.

In the U.S., futures point to a lower open on Wall Street. In the previous session, the major averages pulled back well off their early highs, ending the session mixed. The Dow gathered 0.3 percent, while the Nasdaq slid 0.4 percent and the S&P 500 edged down less than a tenth of a percent.

In the commodity space, crude for November delivery is falling $1.11 to $88.77 per barrel and December gold is losing $8.0 to $1772.8 a troy ounce.

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