{"id":9121,"date":"2021-04-23T09:35:57","date_gmt":"2021-04-23T09:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2021\/04\/23\/ftse-100-slides-amid-rise-in-pound\/"},"modified":"2021-04-23T09:35:57","modified_gmt":"2021-04-23T09:35:57","slug":"ftse-100-slides-amid-rise-in-pound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/2021\/04\/23\/ftse-100-slides-amid-rise-in-pound\/","title":{"rendered":"FTSE 100 Slides Amid Rise In Pound"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div><p> \n<\/p>\n<div id=\"ctl00_CPI_dvBody\">\n<p> U.K. stocks edged lower on Friday as the pound strengthened in reaction to upbeat retail sales and PMI data released earlier in the day. <\/p>\n<p>The benchmark FTSE 100 dropped 22 points, or 0.3 percent, to 6,916 after closing 0.6 percent higher on Thursday. <\/p>\n<p>Exporters were moving lower, with British American Tobacco and Diageo falling about 1 percent amid sterling&#8217;s strength. <\/p>\n<p>BP Plc fell over 1 percent and Royal Dutch Shell was down 0.7 percent despite oil prices increasing in the world <span class=\"landLinks\">markets<\/span>. <\/p>\n<p>Senior Plc shares fell 2.2 percent after the company said trading for the three months ended March 2021 has been in line with expectations. <\/p>\n<p>FirstGroup shares surged 8.6 percent after the bus operator confirmed it is selling its U.S. school bus <span class=\"landLinks\">business<\/span> to infrastructure investor EQT in a \u00a33.3bn ($4.6bn) deal.<\/p>\n<p>In economic releases, the preliminary &#8220;flash&#8221; reading of the U.K. Composite Purchasing Managers&#8217; Index (PMI) rose to 60.0 in April, the highest reading since November 2013, from 56.4 in March.<\/p>\n<p>A deluge of new orders swept through British businesses in the month as the country lifted some of its Covid-19 restrictions, the survey said. <\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, U.K. retail sales grew more than expected in March as the easing of the restrictions related to the <span class=\"landLinks\">coronavirus<\/span> lifted consumer spending, a government report showed. <\/p>\n<p>Retail sales volume grew 5.4 percent month-on-month, faster than the 2.2 percent increase in February. This was the biggest growth since June 2020 and also better than the economists&#8217; forecast of 1.5 percent.<\/p>\n<p>On a yearly basis, retail sales advanced 7.2 percent, reversing February&#8217;s 3.6 percent decline and larger than expectations of +3.5 percent. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\n        window.fbAsyncInit = function () {\n            FB.init({\n                status: true,\n                cookie: true,\n                xfbml: true\n            });\n        };\n        (function (d) {\n            var js, id = 'facebook-jssdk'; if (d.getElementById(id)) { return; }\n            js = d.createElement('script'); js.id = id; js.async = true;\n            js.src = \"https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js\";\n            d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(js);\n        }(document));\n    <\/script><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<br \/>FTSE 100 Slides Amid Rise In Pound<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>2021-04-23 09:35:57<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.K. stocks edged lower on Friday as the pound strengthened in reaction to upbeat retail sales and PMI data released earlier in the day. The benchmark FTSE 100 dropped 22&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.unsplash.com\/photo-1531412501799-1b4c354ca957?ixid=MXwxMjA3fDB8MHxwaG90by1wYWdlfHx8fGVufDB8fHw=&ixlib=rb-1.2.1&auto=format&fit=crop&w=2734&q=80","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-euro-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9121\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/9122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pantheregroup.com\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}