Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) resulted in a 10 point fall in the FTSE 100 index, after JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) cut its rating on the stock to “underweight” from “neutral”.
Prior to the rating, U.K.’s biggest company was set for a fifth straight weekly gain after recording a five-year high in the previous session.
“Shell has been getting a bit of a kicking the last couple of days, and people have turned pretty bearish on the sector as a whole,” Yusuf Heusen, sales trader at IG Index said. The trader added that markets are pretty steady this morning and numbers yet to come from U.S. this afternoon may boost the sentiments.
The FTSE 100 companies earn about a quarter of their revenues from U.S. markets so the numbers due today of inflation and the Empire State Manufacturing Survey could help a bit.
Since January 30, Royal Dutch Shell plc (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) stocks have declined by 6.1 percent after touching a six month high. At 11:29 GMT, FTSE 100 was down 34.48 points to 6,494.93, down from the five-year high in the previous session, which was mainly boosted by the better-than-expected U.S. weekly jobless claims data.
For the fourth quarter, the oil company posted profits of $5.6 billion against the consensus of about $6.3 billion. However, when compared to last year, profits were up 15 percent.
Banking stocks were also weak, losing 1 percent. Traders believed that Federal Reserve’s comments on Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) and JPMorgan about improving their capital plans may have adversely affected the sector In U.K. Despite the overall grim scenario, some stock gained a bit due to favorable analyst comment.
British Airways owner International Consolidated Airlines Grp (LON:IAG) rose 3 percent on being added to the list of Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS)’s best ideas for Europe. IAG has also gained about 10 percent this week owing to a settlement of a dispute at its Iberia operation and the stock was also the FTSE’s top gainer on Friday.
Aggreko plc (LON:AGK), Thursday’s top blue-chip riser, also had an impressive week owing to an unexpected deal of supplying power to Mozambique and Namibia. The stock was up 1.2 percent on getting a ‘Buy’ rating from Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:DB) (ETR:DBK).
