FTSE 100 Competition Results week 1
First week of our latest FTSE 100 competition. 73 of the 100 gained in value
Congratulations to our week one leader Veronica Mackay, second placed Sammy’s Granny, and third placed Mulberry Lodge. Sandy Paton in fifth is the only male entrant on the top eight, so well done ladies!
Thank you for entering our FTSE 100 competition that started this week. This competition was different in that your notional £50,000 investment was based on the prices at close of the trading day prior to the start of our competition i.e. Friday 4th March.
That turned up to be a pretty stormy day for the stock market. The escalating situation in Ukraine with a fire at the Europe’s largest nuclear power plant after shelling by Russian forces fuelled the London market’s worst day of the week. The FTSE 100 saw around £66 billion wiped off its value during that single trading session. The index ended at 6987.14 after dropping below the symbolic 7,000 mark.
Other
key indicators at the start of our competition:-
The
price of Brent crude oil - $113.92 per barrel
UK
natural gas price - 500p per therm.
On
currency markets, sterling bought $1.3214 or 1.2104 euros.
Rarely has the price of a barrel of oil been as closely tracked by the general public and although jumping above $130 on Tuesday, it closed this weekend at $111.85. Oil prices corresponding had major effects this week on share prices. No surprise then that Shell (+7.1%) and BP (+3.6%) were among the better performers.
Russian-linked stocks and financial firms also experienced volatility. Evraz and Polymetal both released updates saying that they didn’t consider themselves to be at risk of being affected by Russian sanctions.
Then on Thursday steel firm Evraz, which is 29% owned by Roman Abramovich, saw its shares drop before being suspended by the financial watchdog due to the links with the oligarch. Shareholders will continue to own the stock but they can’t sell it so value is current zero. Polymetal may suffer the same fate.
73 of the 100 shares made positive moves over the first week of our competition.
Best
performers this week were:-
Pearson
plc +26.4%
M&G
plc +21.6%
Flutter
Entertainment +11.9%
ITV
plc +11.3%
Glencore
plc +11.0%
Electrocomponents
plc +9.2%
Poorest
performers this week were:-
Evraz
plc -100%
B&M
European -8.0%
Rio
Tinto plc -7.8%
RELX
plc -6.5%
Persimmon
plc -5.5%
Burberry
Group -4.3%
At the foot of our competition table are entrants who had some holdings in Evraz. They need to hope to some resolution by the end of the contest that allows trading to establish a price.
