London midday: Stocks slip as oil majors reverse course, travel names drag

London's top-flight index is drifting lower after oil majors BP and Shell turned around and fell, adding to the selling pressure among travel and leisure names.

Weighing on the latter, on Sunday, the Prime Minister warned that the UK was facing a "tidal wave" of Covid-19 infections due to the new Omicron variant.

"There is a tidal wave of Omicron coming, and I'm afraid it is now clear that two doses of vaccine are simply not enough to give the level of protection we all need," Boris Johnson said.

Against that backdrop, as of 1234 GMT, the FTSE 100 was dipping by 0.21% or 15.27 points to 7,276.64.

"While market concerns about Omicron appear to be diminishing, the concerns of governments about the variant appear to be going in the other direction and increasing, with the UK government implementing a Plan B of new restrictions starting this week, as well as accelerating the roll out of its booster vaccination program," said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK.

"Against these increasing concerns of a rising Omicron wave, in Europe there is the already present wave of Delta to deal with, which is still on current evidence much more deadly, while there are still no reported fatalities because of Omicron anywhere in the world, including South Africa, where it was first reported."

Over the weekend, the results of a study in South Africa appeared to show that two shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine only offered 22.5% efficacy in protecting against symptomatic infection from the omicron variant - although they could stave off severe disease.

Nevertheless, other studies showed that providing a third shot of the same vaccine could boost protection against omicron to as high as 75%.

No major economic data was scheduled for release in the UK or US on Monday.

However, on Wednesday the US Federal Reserve was expected to announce an accelerated pace of reduction of its bond purchases.

Policy announcements from the Bank of England and European Central Bank were set to follow the day after.

Purplebricks crumbles

Online estate agency Purplebricks Group has delayed its results after it emerged it was facing potentially millions of pounds of claims. The Aim-listed firm was due to publish interim numbers on Tuesday. It had already warned they were likely to be worse-than-expected, on the back of challenging trading conditions, causing its share price to plunge by 30%.

Specialist recruiter SThree unveiled a 19% year-on-year rise in group net fees for the full-year, on the back of a 25% jump for the fourth quarter. The group also said that it had "excellent visibility" heading into 2022 thank to 43% growth in its order book. Nevertheless, it also announced the departure, due to personal reasons, of its chief executive officer, Mark Dorman.

Home repairs and improvement business HomeServe said it had sold policies shared with Piedmont Natural Gas Company to the same affinity partner for around $22m. The deal between Homeserve and US-based Piedmont was due to expire next April. Homeserve decided to sell the policy book rather than continue managing it in a run-down to the end of the arrangement.

Dunelm revealed on Monday that chief financial officer Laura Carr will leave the group in June 2022 to take up a new position elsewhere. Dunelm also stated that it had continued to see "strong trading momentum" since its first quarter trading update back in October.

Infrastructure specialist Costain Group said that it now expected an overall cash outflow in respect of its contract with SSE as a result of recent adjucation decisions, not all of which had been decided in its favour.

Market Movers

FTSE 100 (UKX) 7,279.18 -0.17%
FTSE 250 (MCX) 22,797.71 -0.57%
techMARK (TASX) 4,443.88 -0.13%

FTSE 100 - Risers

Fresnillo (FRES) 883.20p 2.55%
Darktrace (DARK) 404.40p 1.86%
Ocado Group (OCDO) 1,613.00p 1.77%
Smurfit Kappa Group (CDI) (SKG) 4,034.00p 1.77%
Ashtead Group (AHT) 6,292.00p 1.48%
BHP Group (BHP) 2,158.50p 1.43%
Royal Mail (RMG) 491.50p 1.40%
3i Group (III) 1,412.00p 1.40%
Antofagasta (ANTO) 1,389.00p 1.31%
Evraz (EVR) 607.00p 1.27%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 132.16p -3.80%
Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 118.92p -3.16%
Whitbread (WTB) 2,826.00p -2.48%
Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY) 45.39p -2.04%
BT Group (BT.A) 175.50p -1.65%
British Land Company (BLND) 511.00p -1.62%
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) 4,568.00p -1.59%
Royal Dutch Shell 'A' (RDSA) 1,633.60p -1.58%
Johnson Matthey (JMAT) 2,013.00p -1.56%
DCC (CDI) (DCC) 5,598.00p -1.51%

FTSE 250 - Risers

Jupiter Fund Management (JUP) 251.80p 7.70%
Moonpig Group (MOON) 358.00p 6.67%
Ashmore Group (ASHM) 294.60p 3.08%
Vesuvius (VSVS) 433.60p 2.46%
Spectris (SXS) 3,685.00p 2.39%
Trustpilot Group (TRST) 339.80p 2.23%
Renishaw (RSW) 4,598.00p 1.73%
Currys (CURY) 126.00p 1.53%
Hochschild Mining (HOC) 137.60p 1.40%
Watches of Switzerland Group (WOSG) 1,434.00p 1.27%

FTSE 250 - Fallers

Capita (CPI) 36.40p -19.47%
IWG (IWG) 260.90p -5.54%
Trainline (TRN) 260.00p -4.90%
SSP Group (SSPG) 225.20p -3.88%
easyJet (EZJ) 506.00p -3.73%
Genuit Group (GEN) 575.00p -3.69%
Wetherspoon (J.D.) (JDW) 837.00p -3.46%
Homeserve (HSV) 855.50p -3.33%
Wizz Air Holdings (WIZZ) 4,150.00p -3.33%
Cineworld Group (CINE) 45.60p -3.14%