Sector movers: Financials pace gains

Insurers and banks led the way in the last session of the week, with the former boosted by Beazley's full-year numbers and the latter by news that US financial sector regulation was about to be easened up.

Beazley reported a 3% jump in full-year profit on Friday as premiums written increased and the company lifted its dividend.

In the year to the end of December, pre-tax profit rose to $293.2m from $284m in 2015 as gross premiums written increased 6% to $2.2bn.

As a backdrop, financials such as Barclays, Prudential and Royal Bank of Scotland were among the best performers amid reports US President Donald Trump is prepared to scale back much of the Dodd-Frank legislation that was put in place after the financial crisis. Prudential and Barclays both have large US operations.

Aviva also did well after receiving a positive endorsement from analysts at JP Morgan who reiterated their 'overweight' stance on the shares.

On the other side of the Pond, the KBW index of lenders' shares was up by 2.25% to 93.15.

Among Electronic & Electrical names, it was Halma that pushed the sector gauge higher as analysts at Barclays lifted their target on the stock from 1,070p to 1,150p.

They also upgraded their recommendation from 'neutral' to 'overweight', telling clients: "The pullback in the shares, as well as rotation within the sector towards more cyclically exposed stocks, leaves them trading on a 12-month forward PER of 21.9x our current estimates, representing a 13% premium to the UK Capital Goods sector average, which compares with their five-year average premium of 30% and 10-year premium of 22%."

Top performing sectors so far today

Electronic & Electrical Equipment 5,312.61 +2.51%
Life Insurance 7,858.34 +2.45%
Insurance (non-life) 2,771.24 +2.17%
Banks 4,360.74 +1.64%
Real Estate Investment & Services 2,478.45 +1.35%

Bottom performing sectors so far today
Mining 16,292.93 -3.22%
Industrial Metals & Mining 2,418.62 -1.65%
General Industrials 5,990.99 -0.29%
Forestry & Paper 19,022.22 -0.28%
Chemicals 12,601.53 -0.21%