LONDON: British shares rose on Monday as oil stocks rallied following the attacks in Paris at the end of last week and France's air strikes in Syria, prompting investors to avoid risk and tourism-related stocks.
French warplanes pounded Islamic State positions in Syria on Sunday as police in Europe widened their investigations into coordinated attacks in Paris that killed more than 130 people.
The UK's blue-chip FTSE 100 index was up 0.7 percent at 6,158.57 at 0921 GMT, slightly outperforming European indexes.
"I don't expect it to (have) a long-lasting effect. I think this is (an) initial, scared reaction and even by the end of the day we could see a lot of it erased out of the market ... it's a human tragedy, but I don't think it's going to be a financial tragedy," Jasper Lawler, market analyst at CMC Markets, said, adding that individual sectors, such as travel and leisure, had been impacted, rather than the index as a whole.
British travel and leisure companies were at the bottom of the index, with the FTSE 350 travel and leisure index down 1.1 percent.
Tourism company TUI fell 4.1 percent, while cruise operator Carnival retreated 1.9 percent. Hotelier Intercontinental Hotels Group was down 2 percent.
International Consolidated Airlines was down 2.1 percent, as was easyJet, which fell 2.6 percent.
Among mid and small caps, Wizz Air was down 2.4 perecnt, and Flybe fell 2.6 percent.
Oil stocks were pushed higher after oil prices rose following the French air strikes in Syria.
Royal Dutch Shell rose 2.4 percent and BP was up 1.9 percent.
As investors sought refuge in tangible assets, gold miner Randgold Resources rose 1.5 percent and precious metals miner Fresnillo was up 1.9 percent on the back of higher gold prices.
Miners Glencore, Anglo American and BHP Billiton all rose between 3.3 percent and 4.5 percent.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.