Amec Foster Wheeler leads gains among oil equipment and service stocks

Oil equipment and services stocks saw another day of gains, with shares in Amec Foster Wheeler spearheading the advance in the wake of its latest interim figures.

Amec reported higher sales and lower earnings in the first half of the year which were better than the market expected, with the engineer also impressing with cost-cutting and its continued expansion into renewable energies.

Recently appointed chief Jonathan Lewis also announced the company would undertake a strategic review the results of were to be announced on 15 November.

Shares in Petrofac were boosted alongside it.

To take note of, analysts at Barclays singled out Petrofac and Tecnicas Reunidas as the "better protected names" in the European Engineering & Construction space, with the former being their 'top pick'.

"In light of the meaningful divergence in performance of the Offshore and Onshore equities (+20%/-5% in the past six months) [...]

"Balance sheets of the E&C companies look healthy across the sector, in our view, while our cash flow analysis emphasises the onshore names that are offering 4-6% dividend yields from 2016F onwards. In light of all above we believe it is prudent to keep exposure to the better protected onshore names, Petrofac (Top Pick, GBP11.65) and Tecnicas (OW, EUR38.0) in particular," they said in a research report dated 9 August.

For its part, Spirax Sarco drove gains among Industrial engineers after announcing the purchase of Brazil´s Hiter Indústria e Comércio de Controles Termo-Hidráulicos.

Food & drug retailers also clocked in with a healthy performance on Tuesday, boosted by news that sales on the High Street jumped by 1.1% on a like-for-like basis in July, according to data from the British Retail Consortium, defying some glum surveys on the economy in the wake of the referendum vote.

Ocado was the best performing stock in the sector, even after ending its profit-sharing agreement with Morrisons, which saw the grocer take roughly 30% of the capacity of the online specialist's new Customer Fulfilment Centre in Erith.

Another day of gains for steel rebar futures pushed Evraz higher. Rebar closed 0.7% higher at 2,589 yuan per tonne in overnight trading on the Shanghai Futures Exchange.

Top performing sectors so far today

Oil Equipment, Services & Distribution 14,717.93 +5.36%

Industrial Engineering 9,513.97 +2.28%

Food & Drug Retailers 2,602.73 +1.84%

General Industrials 5,169.92 +1.67%

Industrial Metals & Mining 1,719.59 +1.63%

Bottom performing sectors so far today

Life Insurance 7,004.88 -0.35%

Electricity 9,007.46 -0.24%

Real Estate Investment Trusts 2,963.74 -0.09%

Alternative Energy 0.00 0.00%