Sector movers: Technology misses out on gains for cyclicals
Cyclicals were again helping to buoy the FTSE 350 on Tuesday, although this time around it was Industrial Transportation, Real Estate Investment Trusts and Media that were doing best.
Reports overnight that Democrats in the US and the Trump administration were narrowing their differences was likely buoying investor sentiment towards these areas of the market.
Nevertheless, some analysts remained cautious about the prospects for a deal ahead of the elections, although one was widely at some point over the next few months, it appeared to have become a 'political football' ahead of the 3 November presidential vote.
A small gain for Royal Mail, whose shares were near multi-month highs, was propping up Industrial Transportation, while in the media space WPP was wanted.
The advance in WPP shares was a bit conspicuous, coming on the heels of estimate downgrades by analysts at Berenberg who judged on Tuesday said they now expected the impact of the advertising economy from Covid-19 to "last well into 2021".
Going the other way were technology issues following a downbeat quarterly earnings report out of US giant IBM.
Overnight, IBM reported a consecutive quarterly drop in revenues and declined to provide guidance.
Also in the headlines was a report from the Associated Press that the US Department of Justice was set to file an antitrust lawsuit against the search giant.
To take note of, technology had easily outperformed the wider market during the pandemic and some equity analysts, including those at Bank of America or Citi, appeared to see scope for stocks to largely tread water between the US elections and inauguration day.
Top performing sectors so far today
Industrial Transportation 2,118.70 +2.19%
Real Estate Investment Trusts 2,503.72 +2.16%
Media 7,189.87 +1.33%
Mobile Telecommunications 2,535.49 +1.32%
Industrial Engineering 13,883.70 +1.04%
Bottom performing sectors so far today
Oil & Gas Producers 3,449.13 -0.99%
Automobiles & Parts 2,760.11 -0.90%
Leisure Goods 26,238.71 -0.75%
Software & Computer Services 2,009.65 -0.75%
Technology Hardware & Equipment 2,318.84 -0.34%