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British Gas disappoints despite price rise - Latest Market Analysis

After a day largely spent in negative territory due to the continuing impasse over the US debt situation, the UK market took comfort from better than expected economic data, and rebounded by the close, as the FTSE 100 ended the day 16.5 points higher at 5873.

Despite the unthinkable scenario of the US defaulting, as opposition parties fail to agree terms of a resolution, investors took comfort with both US weekly jobs claims and pending home sales numbers beating expectations. The Jekyll and Hyde nature of recent data in the US continues.

European markets failed to recover to the same extent though with both the DAX Xetra in Germany and the French CAC 40 lower by roughly 1% by the time London closed. European markets suffered following disappointing results by Volkswagen, BASF and Credit Suisse, suggesting corporates were not performing as well as their US counterparts, where the reporting season has got off to a positive start.

Strong results from BAE Systems, BT and Shire saw their shares amongst the FTSE 100’s leaders, each rising over 3%, whilst banking stocks recovered following weakness earlier in the week. Shares in Centrica fell 7.3p to 313p after suggesting wholesale energy prices remained high and had contributed to a fall in earnings in its first half update. The company had been in the news of late after increasing electricity and gas prices to retail customers via its British Gas supply division.

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This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by John Dance .