RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO  22nd June 2012

Evening Report The FTSE 100 ends 0.9% lower at 5513.69. Miners and oil & gas stocks are the biggest decliners. Banks did OK, though, shrugging off the Moody's downgrades earlier in the session.

Banking stocks  Lloyds, RBS, HSBC and Barclays all made gains this afternoon despite having their credit ratings downgraded by Moody's.

Lloyds, which was downgraded in a separate report to the others, was a high riser after saying Moody's has recognised "the substantial momentum we have made in de-risking our balance sheet and delivering on our strategy."

Helping provide a lift to banking stocks this afternoon were reports that the Bank of England's financial policy committee (FPC) will announce a reduction of between 20-30% in banks' liquidity buffers to support lending.

Heading the other way were the miners and oil stocks with Fresnillo, Petrofac, AMEC, Glencore and Kazakhmys among the worst performers.

Website Moneysupermarket.com made gains after Citi upgraded the stock to 'buy', while Domino's Pizza delivered gains after Canaccord Genuity raises its recommendation to 'buy'.

THE FTSE 100             closed             Down      52       @      5,513 THE DOW JONES            @ 17:00            Up       62       @     12635 THE NASDAQ               @ 17:00           Up        16       @      2875

Exchange Rates GBP – USD        @      17:00         1.5577 GBP - EURO      @      17:00         1.2418