LONDON: Britain’s FTSE 100 ended its strongest month of the year on a quiet note on Wednesday as a choppy day for sterling, thanks to an increasingly cloudy picture painted by polls about next week’s general election, gave investors little reason to chase the rally.
The UK bluechip index, dominated by dividend-paying exporters whose profits benefit from a weak local currency, hit a record high earlier in the session but lost those gains to finish the day slightly lower. Those moves closely tracked sterling which was knocked around by various polls that pointed to a range of possible outcomes — from a hung parliament to a solid Theresa May-led Conservative win.”You really can’t run a portfolio around poll results,” said Eric Moore, a portfolio manager at Miton Group, who added he had not changed his portfolio much and remained wary of UK consumer stocks. “If there is a hung parliament you’ve got to be quite worried for the pound and the UK 10-year yield on gilts,” Moore warned. A poll from YouGov published overnight on the distribution of seats after the June 8 vote pointed to a loss of 20 seats for Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative party that would leave her short of an overall majority in a parliament where she lacks potential coalition partners.
