FTSE bounces back on US data

Britain's top shares rose on Friday, led by a rebound in miners after an unexpectedly strong US jobs report allayed fears about the economic recovery, setting the index up to test the key 6,000 level. The UK blue chip index closed up 56.79 points, or 1.0 percent, at 5,976.77, having sunk as low as 5,871.57 earlier in the session and endured sharp falls over the last two days.
The FTSE 100 volatility index, a measure of investor anxiety, fell 13.5 percent on Friday, its first one-day percentage drop since April 20. The lower the index, the higher the investor appetite for risky assets such as stocks. Crude oil prices rebounded as investors, who had dumped riskier assets after recent weak US data, became more upbeat after a US payrolls report showed private jobs had increased the most in 11 months, beating analysts' expectations. "If you're using the oil market as a barometer for how people think the economic recovery's going, I think we have seen opinions turn on their head today," David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Index, said.
"A big worry over the last couple of days was that it was a much more fragile recovery, and I think payrolls this afternoon have definitely calmed some of those nerves." However, David Morrison, market strategist at GFT Global, was not convinced that Friday's US data gave cause for huge optimism in the light of a batch of recent disappointing jobs readings.
"The non-farm payrolls are without doubt something that the market likes to focus on but they're not really telling the whole story here," he said. "I think the position on unemployment is very unclear ... I don't really see why the market's getting so carried away." Miners moved sharply higher as commodity prices bounced off their lows, with Anglo American, up 3.8 percent, the best sector performer. Buyers also came in for the banks. Royal Bank of Scotland topped the FTSE 100 leader board, up 5.6 percent, after it said profits were improving at its core business and hefty Irish loan losses would start to decline in the second half of the year.
The British banking sector was rattled on Thursday by Lloyds's 3.2 billion-pound ($5.25 billion) charge to cover compensation for people sold debt repayment insurance which they could never claim on or did not know they were buying. RBS said on Friday that while the impact from having to settle these insurance claims could be "material", it was too early to provide an estimate.
Elsewhere, BP firmed 3.1 percent after announcing a deal to hand its share of an Arctic oil exploration pact with Rosneft to 50 percent-owned affiliate TNK-BP. A parallel $16 billion share swap deal between the British oil company and Russia's state-controlled oil group Rosneft can now go ahead, the TNK-BP partners said in a joint statement, citing a decision by an arbitration panel. "It looks good news that they can proceed with the Arctic strategy," Oriel Securities analyst, Nick Copeman, said.
International Consolidated Airlines added 3.3 percent, helped by narrower first-quarter operating losses. And ITV climbed 4.9 percent, after J.P. Morgan issued a note on the free-to-air broadcaster in which it reiterated an "overweight" rating, saying that the longer term outlook for the broadcaster is better than its share price implies.