RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

EVENING REPORT 7 JANUARY 2011

Leading shares remained in negative territory as a weak jobs report in the US prevented Wall Street from heading higher.

The Dow Jones was down a couple of points after monthly nonfarm payrolls revealed just 103,000 jobs were added in December. Much less than economists had hoped for.

Back over here, miners were mostly lower as commodity prices struggled. Copper specialists Antofagasta and Kazakhmys, African Barrick Gold and other heavyweights posted losses.

Arm Holdings also gave back some of the gains inspired by its chip design deal with Microsoft yesterday.

There has been a further development in the simmering dispute between shopping centres operator Capital Shopping Centres (CSC) and 5% US shareholder Simon Property. The latter has been critical of CSC's proposed purchase of Manchester's Trafford Centres from Peel Holdings and has been mulling a near-£3bn offer for the UK company.

Budget airline easyJet sold 7.6% more seats in December than the same time last year and filled its planes slightly better as well. The no-frills carrier flew 3.66m passengers compared with 3.34m in December 2009. That takes the rolling 12-month figure to 49.72, up 7.9% on last year. It made no mention of the snow-related problems that rival British Airways said yesterday had cost it £50m. Sports Direct was also in demand as is electronics retailer Dixons.

Finally, Wellstream, the manufacturer of flexible risers and flowlines for the oil and gas industry, expected 2010 earnings to be ahead of expectations. The group, which recently agreed to be taken over by General Electric, said a strong second half performance in Brazil was primarily responsible for the better than expected outturn.

THE FTSE 100 CLOSED DOWN 35 @ 5984

THE DOW JONES AT 4.30 IS DOWN 53 @ 11,644

THE NASDAQ COMP AT 4.30 IS DOWN 9 @ 2700

Exchange Rates

GBP – USD 1.55 GBP – EUR 1.20