RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

MIDDAY REPORT 4 MARCH 2011

Wall Street may have had its best day of the year so far yesterday but London is taking things a bit more sedately today.

The US non-farm payroll numbers at lunchtime will get the day traders excited, but may also show that the US economy's recovery is at last starting to generate a decent amount of new jobs.

Elsewhere, advertising giant WPP is lower even though it made over £1bn for the first time ever in 2010, but violence in the Middle East, which accounts for 1.7% of revenue, is a worry. Headline profit before tax increased 27.3% to £1.03bn.

Customers have flocked to online grocery specialist Ocado with gross sales up by nearly a quarter over the past three months. The firm, which has a long-term delivery deal with John Lewis grocery arm Waitrose, saw sales rise to £146.2m from £117.2m in the 12 weeks to 20 February.

Low cost airline easyJet saw a steep rise in the number of passengers carried in February from a year ago, though the gain was not as sharp as January’s. The number of passengers carried on the airline’s familiar white and orange planes rose 13.1% to 3.83m in February from 3.39m in February 2010. The sharp rise in the share price of oil explorer and producer Range Resources is as much of a mystery to the company’s board as it is to the watchdogs down at the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).

Finally, trading at beer pump specialist Brulines has gone flat recently and the second half will come in short of previous expectations.

THE FTSE 100 AT NOON IS UP 36 @ 6041

THE DOW JONES CLOSED ` UP 191 @ 12,258

THE NASDAQ COMP CLOSED UP 50 @ 2798

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD 1.6277 GBP - EURO 1.1663