As leading shares continue to head lower - on track for their worst day for two weeks - stocks with defensive qualities are in demand.
In particular this means utility shares are bucking the downward trend, with National Grid up 6.5p at £10.81, SSE adding 5p to £15.39 and Severn Trent 2p higher at £24.74.
Elsewhere Burberry is 7p better at £14.08 after analysts at Exane BHP Paribas raised their target price from £13.50 to £14.60.
But overall the FTSE 100 is currently down 77.40 points at 6832.03. Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex, said:
It’s one of those mornings where investors have woken up with the fear. The fear of a strong Trump performance in the US presidential debate this evening, the fear of more ineptitude from OPEC at their meeting in Algiers later in the weak, the fears of a ‘hard’ Brexit, the fears of further collapse from Deutsche Bank, which has fallen around 6% since the day began...
This left the FTSE with a 1% decline (admittedly a tad smaller than earlier in the session), with 1.4-1.5% falls for the DAX and CAC respectively. The tremulous tone of trading meant that the fact the German Ifo business climate reading hit a 2 year high of 109.5 fell on deaf ears, investors choosing to focus purely on the negative side of things instead.
