No buyers for the Footsie

Trends: No buyers for the FTSE - at Moneyweek.co.uk - the best of the week's international financial media.

At last, the FTSE 100 has "its head back above water", says Simon Watkins in The Mail on Sunday. After a month below 4,500, Britain's blue-chip index outstripped its major global counterparts last week, gaining 2.3% and hitting a 19-month high of 4,550, thanks to encouraging earnings reports and the news that Standard Life, Europe's biggest mutual life insurer, had completed the sale of a major tranche of equities to meet new solvency requirements.

Standard Life says it ditched 7.5 billion shares in just six weeks, says Bill Jamieson in The Scotsman. No wonder the FTSE 100 has so "starkly" underperformed recently. Now that the market is no longer "banging its head against a brick wall", it should bounce. Indeed, says Patience Wheatcroft in The Times. The completion of the sale without a major market slide has shown the "underlying resilience" of shares; along with encouraging recent economic data, this should entice potential buyers back in.

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