Sector movers: Travel and Leisure boosted as airlines put pandemic behind them

Travel stocks paced gains on the stock market at the end of the holiday-shortened week, led by WizzAir after the Eastern Europe-focused low cost carrier told investors that it was putting the pandemic behind it.

Its share price was still far from doing the same with the Russian invasion of Ukraine but its stock did climb sharply on Thursday, hitting a more than one-month high.

Wizz Air said it was expecting to ramp up capacity beyond pre-pandemic levels for its summer schedule as it forecast a better-than-expected final quarter.

Its London-listed peers all found a bid on positive read-across from the news.

In other sector news, analysts at Liberum reiterated their 'buy' recommendation and 800.0 target price for shares of Easyjet and for similar reasons.

"The demand outlook remains positive, with strong forward bookings and capacity set to match pre-pandemic levels this summer," the analysts said.

They also pointed to the possibility that the company's pricing might allo wit to offset the headwind from fuel costs.

"The fuel cost headwind is significant, despite hedging, but this could be offset by pricing. The unit revenue outlook is encouraging, with easyJet helped by catching up with peers on ancillary revenues."

Going the other way, precious metals miners were at the bottom of the pile as the European Central Bank sounded a more dovish note than expected at Thursday's policy meeting, pushing the greenback higher and dragging on gold and silver futures.

Top performing sectors so far today

Travel & Leisure 6,886.00 +2.97%

Retailers 2,941.90 +2.26%

Personal Goods 28,970.44 +1.91%

Automobiles & Parts 2,260.99 +1.57%

Real Estate Investment Trusts 3,362.09 +1.51%

Bottom performing sectors so far today

Precious Metals and Mining 11,734.71 -1.22%

Leisure Goods 19,055.49 -0.33%

Software & Computer Services 1,843.16 -0.30%

Industrial Transportation 3,530.82 -0.25%

Gas, Water & Multiutilities 6,466.75 -0.24%