LONDON MARKETS: U.K. Stocks Wobble Before U.S. Jobs Report

By Carla Mozee, MarketWatch

Retailers advance after January data

U.K. stocks seesawed Friday as investors awaited key U.S. jobs data due later in the day.

The FTSE 100 swung between gains and losses throughout the session, recently rising 0.2% to 5,913.21. Still, the index was looking at a 2.8% decline since last Friday, which would break two previous weeks of advances. It would also be the worst week in about a month.

Miners: Mining shares were volatile following a sharp rises in the previous session. Thursday's rally was helped by a slide in the U.S. dollar as weakness in the greenback tends to aid dollar-denominated commodities and related shares.

A "helpful combination of USD weakness, short covering, technical breakouts and brokers [were] suggesting a bottom for some base metals," said Mike Van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets, in a note.

How commodities and resource-related shares trade later Friday may depend on how the dollar reacts to the highly anticipated U.S. jobs report. The data are due at 1:30 p.m. London time, or 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Economists polled by MarketWatch expect nonfarm payrolls rose by 180,000 last month, down from a sharp rise of 292,000 in December.

Read: Why a January jobs slowdown may not be a bad sign (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-a-january-jobs-slowdown-may-not-be-a-bad-sign-2016-02-04)

After starting in the red, platinum miner Anglo American PLC (AAL.LN) drove higher by 11%, which adds to Thursday's 20% leap. "[L]ook back over the last fortnight and the stock has tacked on almost 40% -- a colossal gain for a blue chip, and one that for now anyway looks set to retain its FTSE 100 place," said Tony Cross, market analyst at Trustnet Direct.

Glencore PLC (GLEN.LN) (GLEN.LN) shares reversed course and tacked on 3.5%, building on Thursday's 16% bounce. Standard & Poor's, citing sector challenges, cut the commodities trader and miner's debt rating on Thursday to BBB-, the lowest level of investment grade.

Precious metals miner Fresnillo PLC (FRES.LN) picked up 1.5% but shares of iron ore producer Rio Tinto PLC (RIO) (RIO) (RIO) were still down by 1.4%.

Oil swings: Shares in BG Group PLC (BG.LN) gained 1.1% as the energy company beat expectations for full-year production targets (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bg-group-profit-slips-22-beats-production-target-2016-02-05-3485186). But underlying profit fell 22% in the fourth quarter, as oil prices collapsed. BG is being acquired by Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) (RDSB.LN). Gains for Shell shares accelerated, pushing them up 1.8%, and those in rival oil major BP PLC (BP.LN) (BP.LN) turned higher by 0.7%.

Oil prices wobbled Friday (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/crude-prices-steady-as-a-weak-dollar-lends-support-2016-02-05). West Texas Intermediate oil switched out of the red and rose 0.3% to $31.82 a barrel while Brent crude lost grip of gains and fell 0.1% to $34.41 a barrel.

Retailers: "Retailers are finding cheer off the back of reports showing January was a bumper month for U.K. high streets," or Main Street stores, said Trustnet's Cross.

Comparable-store sales in the five weeks to Jan. 31 rose 1.4% against the year-earlier period, said business advisory BDO in its monthly High Street Sales Tracker report.

"Although this reads as a fairly flat performance, the month was one of two halves with the first two weeks of the month showing consumers coming out in force for bargain hunting," BDO said in its report. Fashion retailers had a strong showing as sales rose 1.9%.

Among retail shares, department store operator Marks & Spencer Group PLC (MKS.LN) popped up 1.3% and apparel seller Next PLC (NXT.LN) gained 0.5%. Home improvement specialist Kingfisher PLC (KGF.LN) bulked up 2.5% and supermarket chain Tesco PLC (TSCO.LN) bounced up 2.4%.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 05, 2016 06:52 ET (11:52 GMT)

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