Gold and silver miners are among the top risers, as precious metals prices have picked up on the back of the new tariff uncertainty.
Fresnillo shares are up 3.3% and Endeavour Mining 3.1% on the FTSE 100, while among mid-caps, Hochschild Mining has risen 3% and Pan African Resources 2.2%.
The price of gold rose to a three-month high above $5,170 an ounce in early morning trading, but has eased back to $5,125.
Silver was up 1.7% at $86/oz, having neared $88 in the early hours, at least a two-week high.
Copper prices spiked overnight, but were down in early European trading, though Antofagasta is up 1.4%, with Glencore and Anglo American shares also moving higher.
The FTSE 100 has opened 16 points lower at just below 10,671.
Leading the fallers are a disparate mix of companies, including Whitbread, ICG, Mondi, LSEG, DCC, Polar Capital Tech Trust and BAE Systems.
Top of the risers is JD Sports, after announcing a new £200 million share buyback.
On the FTSE 250, Johnson Matthey is leading the fallers, down 12.7% after cutting the price and payout for the big catalysts disposal it announced last year.
In company news, Johnson Matthey has cut the price it is selling its Catalyst Technologies (CT) division to Honeywell and agreed to extend the deadline, saying it plans to return around £1 billion to shareholders compared to £1.4 billion before.
The chemicals group said it has lowered the price to reflect the deferral of key licensing projects and reduced profitability from supplying catalysts because of what it described as a challenging market environment.
As a result, the agreed enterprise value of the business has been set at £1.325 billion on a cash and debt-free basis, down from £1.8 billion when the sale was agreed last May.
The new tariff situation “leaves a substantial amount of uncertainty, even if markets initially welcomed the perceived clarity of ‘only’ a 10% tariff on Friday”, says Jim Reid, macro strategist at Deustsche Bank.
Trump’s new 15% tariff under Section 122 can only remain in place for 150 days, he notes, meaning Congressional approval would be required by late July to extend it.
“That raises a key political question: will a small number of Republicans in either chamber be reluctant to support what could be framed as an extension of a consumer tax hike just three and a half months before the mid term elections?
“At that point, the administration faces a binary choice: try to secure an extension or allow the tariff to lapse. The latter appears the more likely outcome.”
The White House could pivot to other legal authorities to re-establish a more durable tariff regime, which Reid says the groundwork for such moves has almost certainly been laid and are also vulnerable to legal challenges.
Over the weekend, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer suggested yesterday that trade deals already agreed with other countries will remain in place.
“It will be interesting to see if the assurances from the likes of Greer ease concerns of those who have already agreed deals,” says Reid.
An emergency European Parliament trade committee meeting is taking place today, with chair Bernd Lange saying: “Nobody can make sense of it anymore – only unanswered questions and growing uncertainty for the EU and other US trading partners.”.
The FTSE 100 is expected to start the week on the back foot as traders chew over the US government’s fast-evolving tariff situation and a fall in UK job vacancies.
London’s blue-chip index has been called 13 points lower, after it added over 240 points last week to finish at 10,686.89.
Wall Street stocks also had a positive week overall, ending on the front foot after the US Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump’s broad-based tariffs were unconstitutional.
The White House immediately responded with plans for a 10% global tariff under new rules, increasing this to 15% on Saturday, the maximum tariff that can be imposed using the ‘Section 122’ authority, which only lasts until mid-July.
China’s Commerce Ministry urged the US to cancel tariffs as they are “are not in the interests of any party” and “fighting is harmful”.
Back in the UK, the number of job vacancy adverts have been revealed to have fallen 3% last month to the lowest level since 2021, according to the job site Adzuna, the first time below 700,000 in five years.
Asian markets are mixed this morning, with Japan’s Nikkei and the Shanghai Composite indices both down over 1%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shoots 2.2% higher and India’s Sensex is up 0.4%.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: finance.yahoo.com
