RAMSEY CROOKALL & CO

EVENING REPORT

4 NOVEMBER 2010

The Bank of England held interest rates at 0.5% today, denting any hopes of Britain joining the US in reviving its quantitative easing programme. But shares continued their upward path, helped by a strong opening on Wall Street.

Miners are still doing particularly well on hopes that the Fed’s stimulus measures will help sustain the global economic recovery. ENRC, Kazakhmys and Xstrata are all up 5% or more.

Mining giant BHP Billiton is enjoying a similar sort of boost, after yesterday evening’s announcement that the Canadian government has blocked the Anglo-Australian firm’s proposed $38.6bn takeover of fertiliser giant Potash.

In other sectors, Anglo-Dutch household goods giant Unilever is higher after making some optimistic noises about future price trends. Underlying price growth in the third quarter was negative at -1.2%, though this represented an improvement on previous quarters, and the trend is expected to continue for the remainder of 2010. For the first nine months of 2010 price growth was negative at -2.1%.

Among today’s decliners Rolls-Royce shares ended the day 5% lower after Aussie airline Qantas grounded its fleet of new Super Jumbo Airbuses after an engine exploded. Rolls made the engine in question.



THE FTSE 100 CLOSED UP 113 @ 5862

THE DOW JONES AT 4.30 IS UP 186 @ 11,401 THE NASDAQ COMP AT 4.30 UP 31 @ 2572 Exchange Rates

GBP – USD 1. 624

GBP – EUR 1. 1433













































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