FTSE 100 movers: Glencore drags blue chips lower

19th Aug 2015 14:38

(ShareCast News) - Following the downbeat overnight sessions elsewhere, the FTSE 100 shot lower in early trade and by the afternoon had failed to crawl higher.By 1545, the blue chip index was down 1.35% at 6,438.07 points, with only a dozen companies' shares in positive territory.Leading the fallers were shares in Glencore, which have halved since May to a new all-time lows as investors took fright at first-half results. As well as posting a 29% drop in core first-half earnings on the back of declining commodity prices, the commodities mining and trading giant cut its capex target for the full year and said earnings at its trading division would be lower than previously guided.With oil and metals prices remaining subdued, natural resources peers Rio Tinto and Anglo American were also down, while engineer Weir was hit too.Investors saluted Admiral Group after the insurer's interim pre-tax profits sailed 1% higher as it roped in a growing number of customers. Pre-tax profit of £186.1m beat consensus expectations for a drop in profit to around £163m.Another high flier was Hikma Pharmaceuticals, as the drug group reiterated full-year guidance in spite of the strong currency headwinds dragging its interim pre-tax profit 22.3% to $170m. Full-year revenue is expected to grow approximately 6% at constant currencies or around 2% at actual exchange rates.Housebuilder Persimmon also bounded higher, the day after reporting its own results. Having digested the numbers, and bullish opinions such as those from BofA Merrill Lynch, which suggest that the gives us confidence that the 2015 and 2017 10p dividends "could be revised materially upwards". FTSE 100 - RisersAdmiral Group (ADM) 1,529.00p +4.30%Hikma Pharmaceuticals (HIK) 2,490.00p +3.75%Persimmon (PSN) 2,146.00p +2.98%Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 4,040.00p +1.23%Severn Trent (SVT) 2,210.00p +0.78%Barratt Developments (BDEV) 645.50p +0.78%Prudential (PRU) 1,528.00p +0.66%Taylor Wimpey (TW.) 204.60p +0.44%London Stock Exchange Group (LSE) 2,617.00p +0.42%Sage Group (SGE) 524.50p +0.38%FTSE 100 - FallersGlencore (GLEN) 161.70p -8.18%Weir Group (WEIR) 1,371.00p -3.79%Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 768.00p -2.78%easyJet (EZJ) 1,698.00p -2.69%Ashtead Group (AHT) 924.50p -2.68%Shire Plc (SHP) 5,110.00p -2.57%Rio Tinto (RIO) 2,350.50p -2.55%Anglo American (AAL) 723.30p -2.51%Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 170.10p -2.30%3i Group (III) 514.50p -2.28%