FTSE 100 Competition Results week 1
See who made gains, who made losses and which shares did best
Prices as at 1st February 2021 form the base price when the FTSE 100 index stood at 6407. The first week of our competition proved a good one for some since at close of market on Friday 5th February, ten of the 100 had made more than 10% gains in the week! The FTSE 100, closed on Friday at 6504.
Whitbread shareholders enjoyed the news that the UK Government would be mass booking hotels to launch quarantine restrictions for travellers arriving to the country. On Friday the Premier Inn owner’s shares closed the day up 160p, or 5.13%, at 3,280p. That took them to a 18% gain on the week.
Other leading gainers in the first week of our contest were NatWest Group (+15%), JD Sports (+14%), Inter Continental Hotels (+12%), Lloyds Banking (+12%), Barratt Developments (+11%).
Positive news that the UK Government aims to vaccinate all under 50s by May did enough to push the pound up as markets closed but the strong pound and underwhelming jobs data from the US failed to liven up the FTSE 100.
Losers in the first week included shares that had done well recently. Pearson plc made the greatest drop, down 11%. BP and GlaxoSmithKline were both down 7%, while Unilever, Just Eat and Hargreaves Lansdown all made losses of more than 5%.
What did all this do to the leader board?
Well! congratulations to Ogg of Echt who is our first leader with a gain of 8% in the first week. 81 of our 113 entrants made gains and the greatest loss (-4%) was made by Dougal the Cockapoo. Things had better improve for him since we cannot award the wooden spoon’s prize of a bottle of malt whisky to a dog!
Look out for another update at the end of week 2.
