Shares recoup early losses to make moderate gains

MIDDAY REPORT: Headline shares recouped early losses to post modest gains by midday, with weakness among miners and oil producers offset by strong performances from the banking community, but Autonomy taking a starring role.

At high noon, the FTSE100 was ahead 13.63 points at 5,756.15 with the FTSE250 up 35.2 points at 10,910.3 and the FTSE Smallcaps 1.38 points better at 3,075.68.

LONDON MARKETS

Weakness amongst commodity issues plagued the main index this morning as metals prices and crude oil eased, offsetting a strong start for bankers, but upbeat earnings news from the likes of Autonomy and Whitbread turned things around by midday, although investors remained cautious ahead of the spending cuts announcement and BoE MPC minutes.

Infrastructure software specialist Autonomy recovered from a slow start to surge to the top of the leaderboard, up 74p at 1,493p, after reporting revenue of $211m in the third quarter to end-September, up 10% from Q3 2009 and the highest Q3 revenues in the company’s history.

The banks put in a sterling performance, with Royal Bank of Scotland the best of the bunch, ahead 1.15p at 47.46p, while Standard Chartered gained 43p at 1,964p, HSBC added 7.9p at 668.3p and Barclays added 5.2p at 294.45p, while Lloyds grew 0.53p at 72.73p.