FTSE 250 movers: Premier Oil gushes lower; Fresnillo rallies
London’s FTSE 250 was down 1.9% at 21,346.57 in afternoon trade on Monday as worries about the coronavirus intensified.
Premier Oil slumped as oil prices fell amid on coronavirus concerns. Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com, said oil was being dented by fears of slower Chinese GDP growth and a hit to the global tourism industry - "two of the key drivers of crude demand".
Going the other way, precious metals miners Fresnillo and Hochschild rallied in line with gold prices, which benefited from a flight to safety.
Oanda analyst Craig Erlam pointed out that gold is "the ultimate safe haven in times like these".
"We were already seeing evidence of it coming back into favour at the back-end of last week but interest has clearly jumped over the weekend as the situation has worsened somewhat," he said.
Computacenter was boosted by an upgrade to ‘buy’ from ‘hold’ at Berenberg.
"We downgraded Computacenter to hold too early,” it said. We have, however, reassessed our view after recent trading and are now much more confident about the company’s long-run growth outlook.
"The US business has turned a corner, Germany remains very strong and the UK is making margin progress. Heading into next year, structural tailwinds look set to persist and the early attempts at cross-selling between the US and European businesses should improve."
FTSE 250 - Risers
Fresnillo (FRES) 648.60p 1.98%
Hochschild Mining (HOC) 172.20p 1.41%
Contour Global (GLO) 202.00p 1.41%
Computacenter (CCC) 1,812.00p 1.12%
Fisher (James) & Sons (FSJ) 2,040.00p 0.99%
Bakkavor Group (BAKK) 135.00p 0.90%
Watches of Switzerland Group (WOSG) 379.80p 0.74%
Sabre Insurance Group (SBRE) 308.50p 0.65%
Beazley (BEZ) 545.00p 0.65%
Centamin (DI) (CEY) 129.35p 0.58%
FTSE 250 - Fallers
Fidelity China Special Situations (FCSS) 223.00p -6.89%
Premier Oil (PMO) 106.65p -5.33%
Spirent Communications (SPT) 230.00p -4.76%
Kaz Minerals (KAZ) 453.70p -4.74%
Ferrexpo (FXPO) 141.60p -4.42%
Future (FUTR) 1,466.00p -4.31%
Schroder Oriental Income Fund Ltd. (SOI) 246.00p -4.28%
RHI Magnesita N.V. (DI) (RHIM) 3,356.00p -4.11%
Trainline (TRN) 479.50p -4.10%
Clarkson (CKN) 2,930.00p -4.09%