Sector movers: Next casts wide shadow

4th Jan 2012 17:17

A trading update from fashion chain Next, in which it acknowledged disappointing sales in December at its High Street and edge of town stores, had a knock-on effect for the likes of Marks & Spencer, Burberry and Supergroup.The Personal Goods sector took a dive as two of the bigger players, Burberry and Supergrass, shifted into reverse following Next's update.Burberry is due to make its fiscal third quarter trading update on January 17th, while Supergroup was a bit more vague about the timing of its Christmas trading update, with its web site indicating it will be out some time in the middle of January. On a day when the market gave back some of yesterday's handsome gains, defensive stocks such as power producers SSE and Drax were in demand.The 800 pound gorilla of the Electricity sector, SSE, yesterday blew its own trumpet over its wind farm capability.The group announced that it now has over one gigawatt (GW) or one thousand megawatts (MW) of onshore wind farm capacity in operation for the first time.SSE's onshore wind farm capacity has increased from just 40MW six years ago, and now exceeds its conventional hydro electric capacity of 1,150MW for the first time.Top performing sectors so far todayElectricity 8,336.38 +0.74%Industrial Metals & Mining 4,242.60 +0.24%Oil Equipment, Services & Distribution 22,796.54 +0.15%Gas, Water & Multiutilities 4,715.78 +0.03%Aeronautics and Defence NULL 0.00%Bottom performing sectors so far todayForestry & Paper 5,055.00 -2.15%Personal Goods 19,432.03 -2.12%General Retailers 1,501.12 -1.97%Technology Hardware & Equipment 744.41 -1.69%Food & Drug Retailers 4,711.26 -1.52%jh