Sector movers: Hard Brexit concerns weigh on life insurers

26th Sep 2016 15:21

(ShareCast News) - Reports suggesting that Britain might be leaning towards a hard Brexit took their toll on the UK life insurance sector and weighed on cable in the process.Also over the weekend, reports also cited the Foreign Secretary as having indicated that an exit from the European Union might be triggered by May 2017.Linked to the above, research published on Monday by advisory firm KPMG revealed that while 69% of the chief executives polled were confident the UK economy will continue to grow in the coming 12 months, 76% said they are weighing up whether to move their business's head office or main operations out of Britain.To take note of, weakness in cable also tended to weigh on the share prices of retailers, given the risk that currency depreciation might stoke price increases that would detract from consumers' purchasing power.Retailers were likely also under the cosh following reports that Labour wanted to increase the national living wage to above £10 an hour, with Sports Direct and Kingfisher giving back some of their recent share price gains.In the case of food retailers, brokers weighed in with somewhat contradictory research.Jefferies revised its target price on Sainsbury lower from 280p to 250p, while Credit Suisse on the other hand lifted it from 290p to 315p.The Swiss broker also bumped up its targets on Morrisons and Tesco."While our revised top-line estimates remain consistent with a structural decline, the key change to our forecast is how much more of the decline is being borne by Asda (2021e market share: 10.9% from 12.7%). We also note that Morrisons has taken the bulk of our forecasted decline in one tranche by closing ~5% of its space. Other changes include materially lower growth at Waitrose after their negative commentary on the current environment and lower growth at Lidl due to their recent sudden CEO change," Credit Suisse analyst S. McGuire said in a research note sent to clients.In a separate note Credit Suisse also sounded an upbeat note on the steel producers within the Russian metal space, while saying it preferred MMK and NLMK over Severstal and Evraz.Top performing sectors so far todayIndustrial Metals & Mining 1,546.25 +0.71%Gas, Water & Multiutilities 6,611.37 +0.09%Automobiles & Parts 7,558.97 +0.03%Alternative Energy 0.00 0.00%Alternative Investment Instruments NULL 0.00%Bottom performing sectors so far todayLife Insurance 6,992.04 -2.68%General Retailers 2,537.25 -2.26%Industrial Transportation 3,068.69 -2.11%Food & Drug Retailers 2,809.31 -2.10%Fixed Line Telecommunications 4,434.64 -2.07%