With oil falling below $30 a barrel for more than just a moment this time, leading shares are heading lower once more.
Commodity companies are among the main fallers, as poor lending data from China reinforces the recent fears about a slowdown in the world’s second largest economy.
Investors have ignored a rebound on Wall Street and are paying more attention to falls in Asian markets following the latest Chinese figures. There is also nervousness ahead of the latest US retail sales numbers due later.
So the FTSE 100 has fallen 44.02 points to 5874.21, with German and French markets also lower.
Anglo American is down 23.25p at 239.7p after Thursday’s bounce, while BHP Billiton has lost 35p to 622p following news it will write down the value of its US shale assets by $7.2bn.
But Experian has added 13p to £11.45 as the credit information business unveiled a 6% rise in third quarter revenues, helped by strong growth in its North and Latin American businesses.
In the mid-cap index Moneysupermarket has dropped after a worse than expected peformance from its insurance business in the fourth quarter. It said full year revenues were likely to grow by 14% but insurance revenues fell by 10% in the fourth quarter. It said:
At a time when we were finishing the migration to our new technology platform, we experienced stronger competitor marketing activity than anticipated and chose to maintain our margins.
