London midday: FTSE pops higher as investors shrug off Microsoft, Nvidia drama

13th Nov 2026 11:00

(Sharecast News) - London stocks had turned positive by midday on Friday as investors shrugged off the latest twist in the scandal involving Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, and news of an outage at Microsoft.

The FTSE 100 was up 0.2% at 10,882.07, reversing earlier small losses.

The big news overnight was a global Microsoft outage, which began around 1800 GMT on Thursday. Users are currently unable to send or receive emails through Outlook, with Teams, AI-assistant Copilot and other Microsoft 365 services also affected.

Microsoft said it was working on a fix. In its latest update on Friday morning, the US tech giant said it was seeing "encouraging recovery progress in Europe, with service availability and email delivery performance improving across a growing portion of affected Microsoft 365 infrastructure".

There was no immediate explanation for the outage. However, Microsoft's executive vice president of Copilot, agents and platform, Charles Lamanna, posted overnight on X that there was "no indication this is the result of a malicious or cyber activity".

Meanwhile, Nvidia remained in focus following reports that Jensen Huang - who resigned from his position as chief executive on Thursday - had had an affair with a second employee at the company.

Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, said: "The market narrative has moved on from Jensen Huang and his liaisons with customers and employees, and has turned towards Microsoft. The company is experiencing the world's biggest ever service outage, with 999 services affected. At this stage there is no suspicion of a cyber attack or malice that has caused the outage and it is instead down to 'elevated load', ie, too much compute is being used, which is knocking out servers and has a domino effect.

"This is the third Microsoft outage in a year, and raises questions about whether Microsoft can service its AI enhanced products. The market does not appear overly worried about the situation, although the stock price is down 3% in pre-market trading. If services are not back up and running in a quick and smooth fashion, then the sell off could get worse."

In equity markets, Aviva jumped after saying it expects earnings per share to grow broadly in line with its 11% target this year after general insurance premiums rose 19% to almost £12bn in the first nine months of the year driven by Direct Line and the new home insurance partnership with Nationwide.

Land Securities gained as it reiterated full-year guidance after interim rental income rose by more than expected.

BP and Shell were among the top performers on the FTSE 100 as oil prices remained elevated.

Asos shot up after an upgrade to 'buy' from 'add' at Peel Hunt, which lifted the price target to 560p from 475p.

Market Movers

FTSE 100 (UKX) 10,882.07 0.17%

FTSE 250 (MCX) 24,826.74 -0.36%

techMARK (TASX) 6,205.67 -0.67%

FTSE 100 - Risers

Centrica (CNA) 159.15p 2.78%

Aviva (AV.) 757.90p 2.71%

Land Securities Group (LAND) 703.00p 1.51%

Shell (SHEL) 3,714.50p 1.32%

SSE (SSE) 2,724.00p 1.30%

Compass Group 11 (CPG) 33.88p 1.13%

BP (BP.) 573.30p 1.11%

Associated British Foods (ABF) 2,024.00p 0.95%

Legal & General Group (LGEN) 315.50p 0.89%

Airtel Africa (AAF) 286.00p 0.84%

FTSE 100 - Fallers

3i Group (III) 2,638.00p -2.58%

Weir (WEIR) 2,348.00p -1.68%

WPP (WPP) 413.40p -1.52%

Vodafone Group (VOD) 116.40p -1.31%

Computacenter (CCC) 4,912.00p -1.13%

Rolls-Royce Holdings (RR.) 1,355.00p -0.92%

ICG (ICG) 1,861.00p -0.85%

Barratt Redrow (BTRW) 327.40p -0.79%

Investec (INVP) 638.00p -0.78%

Standard Chartered (STAN) 2,216.00p -0.67%

FTSE 250 - Risers

ASOS (ASC) 475.50p 2.81%

B&M European Value Retail (BME) 344.00p 2.19%

Applied Nutrition (APN) 309.75p 2.14%

Globaldata (DATA) 66.85p 2.06%

AEP Plantations (AEP) 151.00p 1.48%

EnQuest (ENQ) 28.15p 1.08%

Ocado Group (OCDO) 348.40p 1.04%

Lancashire Holdings Limited (LRE) 652.50p 1.01%

Amaroq Ltd. Npv (DI) (AMRQ) 103.00p 0.98%

Wetherspoon (J.D.) (JDW) 1,037.00p 0.97%

FTSE 250 - Fallers

WH Smith (SMWH) 367.80p -7.18%

Dr. Martens (DOCS) 51.60p -4.44%

QinetiQ Group (QQ.) 478.40p -4.36%

Hays (HAS) 56.80p -2.82%

Keller Group (KLR) 3,004.00p -2.78%

RHI Magnesita N.V. (DI) (RHIM) 2,730.00p -2.67%

NCC Group (NCC) 155.80p -2.63%

Young & Co's Brewery 'A' Shares (YNGA) 1,074.00p -2.54%

Oxford Biomedica (OXB) 523.00p -2.24%

SDCL Efficiency Income Trust (SEIT) 31.50p -2.17%