The FTSE 100 index suffered a third day of declines on Thursday as shares in major global miners continued to drop.
Emerging-market miner Kazakhmys (KAZ) experienced the worst sell-off, but it wasn’t the only miner in the doghouse. Amongst the 10 worst performers on the FTSE 100 on Thursday, eight were miners.
(To see the winners and losers on the FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and FTSE 350 each trading day, take a look at Morningstar’s Heat Map.)
“The FTSE 350 mining sector lost over another 2% in trading today and proved to be a big drag on the UK index,” said Joshua Raymond, chief market strategist at City Index. “The sector itself has lost 9% in the last two weeks alone and this has proven to be a handicap on the FTSE 100 as concerns over global growth and impending stimulus convince investors to downsize their risk exposures ... The movement in individual mining share prices has closely tracked a similarly bearish move in metal prices, where iron ore prices traded close to three year lows on fears over slowing demand in the midst of weak global growth and activity in China. Indeed one of only two stock sectors to rally today was tobacco firms, which is a typical defensive sector.”
Shares in the advertising giant WPP (WPP) also experienced price weakness after the firm announced interim results that fell below market expectations. Meanwhile, shares in Barclays (BARC) tumbled by nearly 2% after the bank announced that it had appointed Antony Jenkins to be its new chief executive officer.
The FTSE 100 index closed at 5,719, after losing 24 points. The FTSE 250 index closed at 11,326, after losing 62 points.
Investors are now looking ahead to tomorrow for hints from the US Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, about his intentions for future monetary policy actions.