RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO May 18th  2012

Morning Report

The FTSE 100  is trading down 1.2%, edging further into the red and underperforming its European peers, as heavily-weighted mining stocks drag.

Social media giant Facebook's IPO prices at $38 a share, at the high end of a range that had been boosted earlier this week. The popular social networking website has the largest valuation of any IPO to debut in the U.S.

With markets in turmoil, those investors wishing to remain long of equities are taking refuge in defensive favourites such as utilities SSE, National Grid, Severn Trent and United Utilities, and telecoms stocks BT and Vodafone.

Xstrata, Polymetal International, Vedanta Resources and Rio Tinto lead the mining sector lower, while Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland are the hardest hit of the banks. In the mid-tier, revenue and profits at bourse operator London Stock Exchange came in ahead of expectations, with the group boasting of strong performances across all four of its business divisions.

THE FTSE 100              @ 10:15       Down         65       @      5,272 THE DOW JONES            closed         Down         156      @     12442 THE NASDAQ               closed         Down         60        @      2813 Exchange Rates

GBP – USD       @      10:15                    1.5791 GBP - EURO     @      10:15                    1.2451

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