News

Blue Index News and Press Releases. Please visit this page often for regular updates regarding Blue Index as an organisation.

Full House Buy

The FTSE 100 makes further progress to the upside, taking out the last intraday high of October at 4,534, at least temporarily. The question now is how far further the rebound from last week can carry leading UK stocks, with the squeeze ahead of the US Presidential election today being as much of a driver as anything else. It did the cause of stocks no harm that Morgan Stanley called the bottom of the market, with a change of its “full house” sell signal in June last year, to a “full house” buy now.

Weekly Traders CFD Diary

October 27th: A Familiar Story It would appear that those looking for the financial markets to return to normal have got things wrong. This is now the new normal state of affairs. 5% initial markdowns for London shares on the open, following 10% down in the Far East overnight. Of course, there will be the odd triple digit up day to kill off the weaker bears, but the pattern is essentially now set in stone. The only problem is that at this rate of decline the FTSE 100 could be well down on even the 5 year lows around 3,700 where we are now.

Banking Issues

Banks were in focus at the end of last week, the weekend and today. The big splash was made by Barclays’s creative funding method on Friday, and the mauling the company received almost universally about this. The pitch for the company as to why it was done did not include the ability to maintain “fat cat bonuses” which taking Government cash would probably not allow. The shares bounced off the 160p support area of Friday, and certainly seem to be rather oversold as compared to many of its rivals. A couple of them were active today on the back of trading statements. In the case of Lloyds TSB (LLOY) there was not good news in the run up to its takeover with HBOS (HBOS). It said that due to the fall in the housing market, and corporate collapses this year, there could be writedowns of up to £400m. This has not been helped by losses in the credit card and overdraught areas.

A Collapse For BT Group

Today has shown how it is not just companies in the financial area that have gloom and doom to dish out. Telecoms group BT (BT.A) saw its share price collapse on the back of the revelation of poor performance at its Global Services division. The big surprise here is that this news could take a fifth off the already very low share price, with the intraday low touching 100p at worst.