It's been a bumpy morning for the FTSE100. After opening lower, Britain's index of leading blue-chip shares managed to recover some ground, but with the beleaguered financial sector dominating market sentiment yet again, the index traded lower for the fourth session in a row today, down by 0.5% at 5287.4.
Banking stocks took a heavy battering after US investment bank, Merrill Lynch unveiled a $5.7bn writedown.
Barclays topped the list of losers, shedding a hefty 9% to 310.25p, while Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS and Standard Chartered Bank were all down as well, by 6.9%, 5.7% and 3.9% respectively.
The FTSE100 managed to outperform other European markets, however, thanks to its heavy weighting of energy stocks.
Strong results from BP lifted the sector. Shares in the oil company were up by 1.8% to 528.75p. Analysts were not greatly surprised by the firm performance given record high oil prices recently.
Tullow Oil was another strong gainer on the FTSE100, up 4.4% to 779.15p. Cairn Energy and Royal Dutch Shell also added to their share price, up by 3.8% and 1.4% respectively.
"Apart from BP results and obviously the other oil companies, the market would have been a lot worse," said David Buik at Cantor Index.
Miners also dominated the morning's gainers, with Antofagasta, Vedanta, Xstrata and Anglo American all well placed in the FTSE100 winners, with gains of 5%, 5.1%, 2.6% and 2.4% respectively.
The slowing UK economy and crumbling housing market, highlighted again by grim mortgage approval figures this morning, is also sending a chill through the retail sector this morning.
Marks & Spencer, Next and Tesco all saw their shares tumble, by 0.9%, 2.6% and 2.7%.
