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October 20, 2014 Share Print 0

After a bright start, leading shares are drifting lower again, with oil shares hit by the weakness in crude prices.

Petrofac, the oil services group, is the biggest faller in the FTSE 100, down 27p at £10.33 as three analysts cut their price targets. Goldman Sachs moved from £12.70 to £11.50, Societe General from £12.20 to £11.50 and Natixis from £15 to £13.

Goldman said the recent weakness in the crude price – Brent has dipped another 0.19% to $86 a barrel – could lead to exploration and production companies cutting their capital expenditure plans, with knock on effects to oil services businesses. SocGen agreed:

We now expect the very recent decline in oil prices may trigger another, more pronounced, round of E&P capex cuts (more cuts from international oil companies to protect their dividends and softening investment from national oil companies).

Meanwhile Tullow Oil is down 11p to 513p and Royal Dutch Shell A shares are 37p lower at £21.12.

Overall the FTSE 100 is down 26.31 points at 6283.98, despite a surge in Asian shares overnight with the Nikkei recording its biggest daily rise of the year in the wake of better than expected US confidence figures released on Friday.

via The Guardian

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Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse

Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.