FTSE 100 regains pre-Lehman footing
TEXT OF STORY
Stacey Vanek-Smith: 2009 has been a very rough year for the economy. And markets all over the world. But it looks like the year is ending on an up note. Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a high for the year. And it wasn’t just us — today Tokyo’s Nikkei Index is near its yearly high. The real star, though? The British stock market. Marketplace’s Stephen Beard has more.
Stephen Beard: The FTSE 100, the index of the London market’s top 100 shares, put on an extra spurt this morning. And it passed a milestone: The index has now regained all the ground it lost since September last year, when Lehman Bros filed for bankruptcy.
London’s doing much better than Wall Street. To recover its post-Lehman losses, the S&P 500 would have to rally by a further 11 percent.
Mike Lenhoff is a strategist with brokers Brewin Dolphin. He says London’s surpassed New York because it’s a more international market, plugged into the big emerging economies in the East:
Mike Lenhoff: I think what it reflects is the recovery that’s coming through in the global economy. And in particular the recovery that is being led — very differently this time around — by the emerging economies and in particular the Asian-Pacific region.
He says one-third London’s FTSE 100 is made up of energy and mining stocks that are booming on ever-rising demand from China.
In London, this is Stephen Beard for Marketplace.
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