RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO       26th  March 2012

 Evening Report

The FTSE 100 finished up 0.8% at 5902.70, ending the session sharply higher and above the psychologically important 5900 level. The rise in the index started after a speech by the US Federal Reserve Chairman suggested the Fed's ultra-easy monetary policy would be sustained for now.

Tullow Oil’s exploration campaign in Kenya has got off to a pretty good start, with its first exploration well encountering more than 20 metres of net oil pay. The shares closed up 2.27%.

Fund manager Aberdeen Asset Management saw investors continue to return to equity markets in 2012. Assets under management (AuM) at the end of February stood at £184.4bn, up from £173.9bn at the end of 2011. Of the £10.5bn increase, £1.4bn was accounted for by net new business, with equities products seeing net inflows of £2.5bn, compensating for net outflows in other parts of the business.

Meanwhile, pharma titan AstraZeneca was under the weather after a US court dismissed its request for an injunction barring the FDA from releasing generic versions of its quetiapine drug onto the market.

Randgold Resources was on the rise, rebounding after last week's sell-off on the back of disruption concerns in Mali due to a military coup. Nomura said this morning that while the situation has stabilised somewhat over the weekend, the market will likely apply a higher level of political risk to Randgold's valuation in the short-term. Randgold's mining peers weren't performing as well today, with Polymetal, Vedanta, ENRC, Glencore, Rio Tinto and Xstrata among the heaviest fallers.

THE FTSE 100 closed                          Up          47        @     5,902 THE DOW JONES @ 17:00                        Up          124       @    13203 THE NASDAQ @ 17:00                           Up          39        @    3107

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD       @      17:00                              1.5937 GBP - EURO     @      17:00                              1.1957