By Sara Sjolin, MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The U.K.'s benchmark stock index headed
for its second weekly loss in a row on Friday, with mining firms on
the decline as metals prices moved lower across the board.
The FTSE 100 index dropped 0.3% to 6,767.66, setting it on track
for a 0.6% loss on the week.
Dragging the benchmark lower, miners posted some of the biggest
losses. Shares of Anglo American PLC lost 1.4%, Fresnillo PLC
dropped 1.4%, Glencore Xstrata PLC (GLCNF) fell 0.9%, and Rio Tinto
PLC gave up 0.8%. The losses came as metals prices pulled back,
with gold falling 0.3% and silver dropping 1.1%.
Shares of HSBC Holdings PLC (HSBC) gave up 0.5% after Goldman
Sachs removed the U.K. heavyweight from its pan-European conviction
buy list and its "Directors of Research Focus List".
More broadly, investors in the U.K. and the rest of Europe
waited for the latest jobs data from the U.S. After two sluggish
readings for December and January, investors are braced for another
soft jobs report likely to be distorted by the extremely harsh
winter in large parts of the country. Economists polled by
MarketWatch expect 140,000 new jobs to have been added to the
economy in February, which is better than the disappointing 113,000
in January, but still below the 2013 average. The data come out at
1:30 p.m. in London, or 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time.
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