Sector movers: Grocers gain on survey data, miners fall amid profit-taking

15th Nov 2016 16:39

(ShareCast News) - Food and drug retailers paced gains on the market, with Tesco leading the way a day before its Capital Markets Day.Sales at the grocer continued to accelerate, rising by 2.2% over the 12 weeks to 6 November, their best showing in three years, according to Kantar Worldpanel."Much of Tesco's growth has come from more affluent shoppers returning to the store, and average spend per trip is up by 2.1% to £20.69," said Fraser McKevitt, Kantar's head of retail and consumer insight.Shares in Morrison's and Sainsbury's also advanced, despite Kantar's figures showing their market shares were unchanged.Nonetheless, that was a far better showing than Asda, which saw its slice of the cake drop 100 basis points to 14.2%, according to figures from a rival survey published by Nielsen.Oil stocks were also higher, buoyed by market-chatter referencing remarks from top Saudi officials about the need for producer countries to reach an agreement to curb output and thus prop up oil prices."A last round of diplomatic efforts amongst oil ministers has rekindle some hope of an OPEC oil meeting, carrying oil prices off three-month lows," said Jasper Lawler, Market Analyst at CMC Markets.Mining stocks were on the opposite end of the leaderboard, leading to the downside following their recent breakneck advance.Overnight, rebar futures in Shanghai fell from $469.4 a tonne to $465.1, alongside drops in spot iron ore and thermal coal prices.Adding to the selling pressure, analysts at HSBC weighed in with a rather gloomy prognosis for the copper market, telling clients that there was "limited visibility" on improved Chinese demand and a mooted increase in US infrastructure spending."Both of these issues are driving sentiment at present, but there is limited visibility on whether these are materialising to gauge the impact on fundamentals," they said.In the same report the broker initiated coverage of KAZ Minerals and Antofagasta at 'reduce' with target prices of 100p and 470p, respectively.Top performing sectors so far todayTechnology Hardware & Equipment 926.48 +4.89%Food & Drug Retailers 3,136.28 +4.27%Oil Equipment, Services & Distribution 14,818.92 +4.26%Oil & Gas Producers 7,488.26 +3.12%Industrial Transportation 3,070.30 +1.60%Bottom performing sectors so far todayMining 14,180.60 -4.93%Industrial Metals & Mining 2,400.13 -2.25%Mobile Telecommunications 4,575.60 -0.75%Construction & Materials 6,717.84 -0.72%Insurance (non-life) 2,648.96 -0.49%