Greater London, England -- (SBWire) -- 12/22/2010 -- Financial spread betting expert Nick Serff, Market Analyst at City Index (http://www.cityindex.co.uk), looks at EU market activity surrounding equities on 15th December:

"Equity markets remain festively quiet ahead of this morning’s expiry beginning at 10:15am. This morning sees the expiry of the December contracts for stock index futures, stock index options and stock options. This is the final triple witching of the year, the others being on the third Friday of March, June and September.

At 9.30am this morning the FTSE100 was up +4 points to 5885, the CAC40 up +13 points to 3901 and the DAX up +5 points to 7029.

Astrazeneca, the pharmaceutical heavy weight was the biggest loser on the day trading down around -159.5p (-5.06%) to 2993.5p after failing to gain approval for its new heart drug Brilinta. The company were hoping to gain approval in order to rival Plavix, the world’s second best selling drug.

Autonomy, the source of several rumours of late, was having a better day trading up +63p (+4.3%) to 1528p after strong US news from Oracle, Accenture and RIM, all of whom reported better than expected results overnight. Panmure Gordon raised Autonomy’s price target to 1726p from 1693p and retains its buy rating.

GKN was also fairing well this morning following an upgrade to buy from hold by Societe Generale, the automobile components provider was up +49p (+2.29%) to 218.7p.

With markets this quiet it is quite a struggle to find stories of note, and in turn a signal or indication as to where markets may be heading next. My guess would be that once this morning’s expiries are out of the way it could be the end of this year for most investors. Expect these quiet periods of low volume and low volatility to continue for the rest of this year."

Keep up with market activity on the move with City Index’s spread betting iPhone app. Learn more about it at http://www.cityindex.co.uk/trading-platform/iphone-trading-platform.aspx.

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