By Shashwat Chauhan and Shristi Achar A
(Reuters) – The FTSE 100 rose on Friday helped by gains in energy shares while the domestically-focused midcap index was subdued amid concerns about a gloomy holiday season as a cost-of-living crisis worsens.
The blue-chip FTSE 100 closed 0.3% higher and the domestically focussed FTSE 250 midcap was flat. Both the indexes logged weekly gains of 1.4% on hopes of smaller rate hikes from the U.S. Federal Reserve and as worries about domestic politics eased.
Retail stocks slipped 0.5% on Black Friday, which typically marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season.
Britons will spend 8.7 billion pounds ($10.5 billion) over the Black Friday weekend (Nov. 25 to Nov. 28), according to research by GlobalData for VoucherCodes – up 0.8% year-on-year but masking a big drop in volumes once inflation is accounted for.
As of 1300 GMT, Barclaycard Payments, which processes one pound ($1.21) in every three pounds spent in the UK, had seen a 0.7% increase in the volume of payments versus 2021.
Craig Erlam, senior market Analyst at Oanda pointed out the effect of Black Friday for businesses.
“One thing that we going to learn from this is how well household spending is expected to keep up over the holiday period,” he said.
“Retailers need to have a strong Black Friday because they need to use some hope. If we get more data which suggests that people are not spending, then that would be very worrying time.”
Energy stocks were a bright spot, gaining 1% on higher oil prices.
REITS fell the most during the day, while residential property services provider LSL Property Services was down 9.9% after flagging a bleak fiscal 2022 outlook.
Berenberg does not expect the trough in UK homebuilders’ earnings to occur until 2024, the brokerage said in a note on Friday, reiterating its cautious view on the sector.
Among individual stocks, Devro surged 62% after Saria Nederland B.V. agreed to acquire the collagen casings maker in a deal valued at about 540 million pounds.
Man Group lost 1.1% after UBS cut the investment manager’s rating to “neutral” from “buy”.
(Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan and Shristi Achar A in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza, Shounak Dasgupta, William Maclean)
