UKX FTSE 100 Index

By Barbara Kollmeyer, MarketWatch

Commodity-related stocks help drive gains

The U.K.'s main stock benchmark pushed higher Tuesday, inspired by gains for Asia and after an upbeat session on Wall Street, with commodity-related stocks taking the lead.

How markets are performing

The FTSE 100 rose 0.7% to 7,714.36, after closing up by less than 0.1% to end at 7,663.78 on Monday.

The pound was buying $1.2967, up from $1.2942 late Monday in New York. Sterling was bruised Monday after Liam Fox, the U.K.'s international trade secretary, said in a weekend interview (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/liam-fox-says-there-is-a-6040-chance-of-no-dealbrexit-lpsgm2gdf) that there's a 60% chance the country will crash out of the European Union without a deal with the bloc.

What's moving markets

U.K. stocks and other assets perceived as risky were getting a boost after the S&P 500 brushed off trade jitters Monday (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stock-futures-wobble-as-trade-worries-rumble-on-2018-08-06) to close just shy of a record close reached in late January. The index still gained just 0.4% on the session, though.

Given the heavy representation of commodity stocks in London's benchmark, higher materials prices also gave the U.K. index a boost, with copper and platinum prices climbing. Oil prices added to Monday's gains, inspired in part by the reimposition of U.S. sanctions on Iran, something that could block crude exports from the country.

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Global trade tensions hovered in the backdrop as China kept up its war of words with the U.S., with a late Monday editorial in China's People's Daily (http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0806/c90000-9488193.html) saying the country won't give in to "trade blackmail." China threatened (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/china-threatens-new-tariffs-on-60-billion-of-us-products-2018-08-03) to place tariffs on $60 billion of American goods last week if the White House goes ahead with its plans to impose new levies on Chinese products.

What are strategists saying?

"With copper up 0.7% the likes of Rio Tinto and Anglo American rose anywhere between 1.3% and 2%, " said Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex, in a note to clients.

"BP and Shell jumped 0.8% and 0.5%, respectively, as Brent crude crossed $74 per barrel following the resumption of the USA's sanctions on Iran," he added.

Stocks in focus

Among heavily weighted commodity shares, BP PLC(BP.LN) (BP.LN) rose 1.5%, while Rio Tinto PLC (RIO.LN) (RIO.LN) gained 1.9% and BHP Billiton Ltd. (BLT.LN) (BHP.AU) jumped 2.3%.

Shares of investment company Standard Life Aberdeen PLC(SLA.LN) rose 2.6% after posted results and said it would launch a share buyback plan worth 1.75 billion pounds (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/standard-life-aberdeen-operating-profit-falls-8-2018-08-07) ($2.27 billion) in the next few days.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 07, 2018 05:27 ET (09:27 GMT)

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