The London equities markets ended lower on the day Thursday on sell-offs in the mining sector and declines in oil as crude prices fell. The FTSE 100 was down 0.73 percent to 6,060 and the FTSE 250 dropped 0.72 percent to 9,925.6.
Some of the biggest gainers on the day were in the online gaming sector. The advances came after the American Gaming Association recommended that the US Congress undertake a one-year study to determine whether it would be better to legalize and regulate online gambling rather than to try and outlaw it. The significance of the recommendation, according to some analysts, is that this was the first indication that the AGA would support online gaming.
BetOnSpsorts was up 5.2 percent to 169p, PartyGaming added 4.6 percent to 152¾p, 888 Holdings gained 2.95 percent to 244p, and Sportingbet rose by 2.4 percent to 431p.
In the banking sector, Lloyds TSB was up 0.2 percent to 533p after ABN Amro reiterated its “trading buy” recommendation on the bank, saying that the same factors that allowed it to add 9 percent to revenues in the last half of last year were still operative presently.
Miners lost ground on the news that China had increased interest rates. Antofagasta dropped 4.4 percent to £23.58, while Anglo-American was down 3.4 percent to £23.34 and Xstrata declined by 3.2 percent to £20.15.
In the oil sector, meanwhile, Royal Dutch Shell’s B shares were down 2.2 percent to £19.93, BP dropped 2 percent to 683½p, and Cairn Energy was off 1.5 percent to £23.57. Besides the decline in crude oil prices, the news from China on interest rates was also a factor in the sector’s retreat.