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Footsie picks up on bargain hunting early on

After last week’s mauling, one or two bargain hunters were seen sniffing around the London market this morning with the FTSE 100 index was up around 25 points, and at the top of the list was Carphone Warehouse with a rise of over 4%.

In the beaten down sectors, there was some good news from Easyjet which reported its June load factor remained strong at 86.9% and passenger numbers grew 19.5% to 4.1m compared to last year. Although loads on a rolling 12 month basis fell to 83.3% from 84%, total revenue per seat continued to improve and it said that to date nearly 70% of seats for H2 had been sold. These are good figures, and any sniff of an oil price fall would certainly set the shares alight.

Over the weekend the press was reporting more bad news from the housing market with thoughts that Persimmon will make 1,000 staff redundant when it speaks tomorrow to follow on from job losses at Barratt Developments and Taylor Wimpey. The latter’s shares are down again today and you have to say there is a real chance of shareholders being left with nothing.

On the results front, Morgan Crucible saw turnover rise by 13% in H1. On a like-for-like basis, excluding acquisitions, revenue growth was expected to be around10%, and 4% on a constant currency basis. There was some reassurance on organic revenue growth guidance for the full year and consequently the shares were marked up 4% here. MGCR is a decent company operating in a sector with poor sentiment at present, so it is certainly one to watch for the future.



Head of Research at Blue Index, specialists in trading Contracts For Difference
07/07/2008

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