London close: Stimulus hopes drive triple-digit gains for FTSE 100

28th May 2013 16:49

While hopes have now faded for a long-term continuation of stimulus measures in the US, speculation surrounding continued monetary easing in Europe and Japan sparked a huge surge on equity markets on Tuesday.After reaching a 13-year high on Wednesday, the FTSE 100 dropped sharply in the latter part of last week on fears of a scaling back of quantitative easing from the US Federal Reserve as well as some gloomy economic data from China.However with UK and US markets closed for national holidays on Monday, traders were looking to play catch up after missing out on the previous day's rally seen elsewhere on European indices. The Footsie for its part bounced back with triple-digit gains on Tuesday, up 108 points or 1.6%.Helping the bullish mood today were comments from a European Central Bank board member who said that the bank could still cut interest rates if needed to support the economy and that the "possibility of further easing was not exhausted". Meanwhile, minutes from the Bank of Japan's latest meeting released this weekend showed that policymakers remained committed to their recent aggressive easing action until inflation reaches the 2.0% target."Clearly investors were distraught last week that the crutch supporting the US economy could be removed which devastated confidence levels. However, the recent announcements that officials from the Eurozone and Japan will be bucking the trend and continuing their support is sitting well with investors," said Financial Trader Shavaz Dhalla from Spreadex. "Thus, today's rally is a result of investors' first opportunity to shrug off the worrying comments from US officials and instead replace this with supportive comments from other global officials," he said.Sentiment was boosted further today by a survey of home prices and consumer confidence data in the States which both beat forecasts, with the latter surging to a five-year high.FTSE 100: Petrofac gains on broker commentsOilfield services group Petrofac was a high riser today after a positive note out on the stock from ABN Amro. The broker highlighted the fact that even after the forecast decline the company's return on capital employed is expected to be at 43% come 2015, from 49% last year. Tour operator TUI Travel was among the best performers, rising in sympathy with French peer Club Mediterranee after its shareholders Fosun International and Axa Private Equity joined forces to make a €540m bid for the firm.Drugs giant AstraZeneca higher after saying that it will continue to "vigorously" defend the intellectual property rights protecting its asthma medicine Pulmicort Respules. The company is appealing against a US court ruling that the patent protecting Pulmicort from rival drugs in the US is invalid. Sector peers Shire and GlaxoSmithKline were also in demand early on, with the latter being boosted by an upgrade by Deutsche Bank to 'buy'.Financial stocks were also performing well as markets on the whole rebounded from last week's sell-off. HSBC, Barclays and Standard Chartered were in positive territory, joined by part-nationalised lenders RBS and Lloyds which were both shrugging off downgrades by Citigroup today.Wood Group was also higher on news that its PSN business will continue to provide duty holder and asset management services to the Hummingbird Spirit floating storage offloading production vessel, under a new contract extension worth $87m from Teekay. Positive comments from Bank of America Merrill Lynch were helping share prices of a number of retailers this morning after the broker raised its target prices for Sainsbury, Marks & Spencer and Tesco.FTSE 250: Victrex jumps after first-half reportPolymer manufacturer Victrex was a high riser on the second-tier index after increasing its interim dividend by 15% despite a slight fall in profits. The company however still managed to beat profit before tax forecasts by 2.0% in the first half.Soft drinks maker AG Barr was also up as it managed to increase revenues by 2.4% in the first quarter in spite of the dismal weather.FTSE 100 - RisersAggreko (AGK) 1,812.00p +4.68%easyJet (EZJ) 1,300.00p +4.00%International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (CDI) (IAG) 283.80p +3.96%WPP (WPP) 1,190.00p +3.84%Melrose Industries (MRO) 264.70p +3.72%Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 1,389.00p +3.66%CRH (CRH) 1,440.00p +3.60%Weir Group (WEIR) 2,375.00p +3.49%Babcock International Group (BAB) 1,205.00p +3.34%TUI Travel (TT.) 369.20p +2.98%FTSE 100 - FallersEurasian Natural Resources Corp. (ENRC) 248.00p -2.67%Evraz (EVR) 143.90p -1.64%Anglo American (AAL) 1,540.50p -1.03%Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 4,945.00p -0.86%Severn Trent (SVT) 2,064.00p -0.34%FTSE 250 - RisersVictrex (VCT) 1,765.00p +8.42%New World Resources A Shares (NWR) 111.60p +5.48%Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) 46.29p +5.20%Ashtead Group (AHT) 666.00p +5.13%International Personal Finance (IPF) 555.00p +5.11%Telecity Group (TCY) 989.50p +4.99%Persimmon (PSN) 1,280.00p +4.92%Spirax-Sarco Engineering (SPX) 2,923.00p +4.88%Supergroup (SGP) 789.00p +4.57%Brewin Dolphin Holdings (BRW) 219.80p +4.32%FTSE 250 - FallersFirstGroup (FGP) 124.20p -2.51%Hochschild Mining (HOC) 241.50p -2.35%EnQuest (ENQ) 130.40p -2.10%Heritage Oil (HOIL) 148.90p -2.04%HICL Infrastructure Company Ltd (HICL) 128.10p -1.46%Daejan Holdings (DJAN) 3,900.00p -1.27%Inmarsat (ISAT) 643.00p -1.00%Carpetright (CPR) 635.50p -0.94%Dechra Pharmaceuticals (DPH) 702.50p -0.92%Devro (DVO) 336.00p -0.89%