Shares in London’s top index closed down slightly on Tuesday amid struggles for the mining sector as a rate cut from China’s central bank underwhelmed markets.
Glencore and Rio Tinto, both of which are to announce results on Wednesday morning, saw their shares fall towards the bottom of the FTSE 100. They were joined near the bottom by Anglo American.
Mining stocks are often impacted by news from China, which is a massive buyer of their products.
“Chinese stock indices saw a lacklustre reaction to the People’s Bank of China cutting its five-year loan prime rate by a larger-than-expected 25 basis points to 3.95%, the first rate reduction since June 2023 and the largest since that rate was introduced in 2019,” said Axel Rudolph, senior market analyst at online trading platform IG.
The FTSE 100 fell 9.29 points, or 0.12%, to end the day at 7,719.21.
Meanwhile European shares were hit by the reopening in the US after markets in New York were closed for Presidents’ Day on Monday.
On Wednesday the US central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee is set to release its latest decision, which Mr Rudolph said was weighing on US and European shares.
At the end of the day in Europe, Frankfurt’s Dax index had fallen 0.14%, while the Cac 40 in Paris had closed up 0.42%.
In New York, a little while after markets had closed in Europe the S&P 500 was trading down 0.65%, while the Dow Jones was 0.12% lower.
On currency markets the pound had gained 0.39% against the dollar at 1.2645 and 0.06% against the euro at 1.1691.
In company news, Barclays bank ended at the top of the FTSE 100 index with a 4.61% rise after it announced plans to cut around £2 billion in annual costs from 2026. It did not say now many jobs are expected to be lost.
The company also announced a £6.6 billion pre-tax profit in the last year. That is a 6% reduction from a year earlier, and slightly worse than analysts had expected.
Holiday Inn owner Intercontinental Hotels Group was the FTSE’s second-best performer as its shares rose 5.36%.
The business revealed that underlying operating profit rose 23% to 1.02 billion dollars (£810 million) in 2023. It also announced plans to return a similar amount of money to shareholders.
The biggest risers on the FTSE 100 were Barclays, up 12.8p to 161.8p, Intercontinental Hotels Group, up 424p to 8,334p, Aviva, up 13.5p to 443.8p, Centrica, up 2.6p to 133.4p, and Severn Trent, up 46p to 2,589p.
The biggest fallers were Rio Tinto, down 198p to 5,230p, Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, down 27p to 770p, Anglo American, down 58.4p to 1,719.6p, Airtel Africa, down 2.15p to 93.75p, and AstraZeneca, down 214p to 10,204p.