Greater London, England -- (SBWIRE) -- 10/29/2010 -- Joshua Raymond, Market Strategist at spread betting provider City Index (http://www.cityindex.co.uk) commented:

“The miners continued their recovery from weakness earlier in the week to push the FTSE 100 back towards the 5800 level and in the process hit a new 6 month high of 5773.

Stronger than expected GDP data from China has helped to blindside traders from the initial fears surrounding growth after their surprise interest rate hike earlier in the week, and this has helped to rally the prices of key metals which have subsequently lifted key heavyweight mining equities on the FTSE 100.

Stronger than expected data from key emerging economies usually triggers a knee jerk reaction to the key mining stocks and this is firmly what we have seen today, with the Chinese data lifting miners such as Kazakhmys and Xstrata 2%.

The mining sector had lost as much as 5% after 3 days of falls but we started to see investors come back into the market yesterday to pick them up from their lows. Now that data has shown Chinese growth slowed less than expected in the third quarter, this has injected a bit more confidence that demand for commodities from the world’s fastest growing economy is unlikely to wane quickly, pushing the mining sector back towards its 6 month highs.

We have seen traders buy into food producers today after French form Danone beat forecasts to announce a 15% rise in third quarter sales. This has lifted optimism in the sector with strong buying pushing up the share prices of UK peers Reckitt Benckiser and Associated British Foods.

Travel firms have been a very interesting sector today with TUI Travel’s shares slumping 9.5% after the firms CFO quit amid a write off of £117m owed by its customers.

The firm said that having filled a £29m hole in its cash balances, a further audit has discovered a new £88m of irrecoverable balances. The news has hit its shares hard with investors now questioning the professionalism of key people within the firm. The holiday company also restated its 2009 results which has left a taste of disappointment amongst its shareholders.

On the flip side to this coin, Intercontinental Hotels shares have rallied strongly today after French hotel group Accor raised its 2010 profit target whilst British Airways shares have also surged 2.8% after its US peers reported strong earnings, raising optimism that the UK carrier will tow a similar outperforming line.”

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