Upbeat earnings lift FTSE 100 after three-day selloff

Housing minister Robert Jenrick said on Thursday a second national lockdown in Britain was not inevitable and the government will do everything to avoid one, even as a study by Imperial College showed England's COVID-19 infections doubled every nine days. In company news, BT Group Plc jumped 6% to the top of the FTSE 100 after Britain's biggest fixed-line and mobile operator raised the lower end of its annual profit forecast.

London's FTSE 100 inched higher on Thursday as a clutch of positive earnings offered some respite after a three-day selloff due to concerns over surging global coronavirus cases. The export-heavy FTSE 100 index rose 0.3%, with oil major Royal Dutch Shell Plc jumping 2.1% after it posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit and increased its dividend.

Lloyds Banking Group Plc added 2.2% after the domestic lender posted a forecast-beating quarterly profit, boosted by a home-loan lending boom. The domestically focussed mid-cap FTSE 250 firmed 0.3%, led by gains in real estate and retailer stocks.

"In a period of fear, you typically are much more focused on earnings as it allows you to have a sense of the difference between the wheat and the chaff," said Sebastien Galy, senior macro strategist at Nordea Asset Management. "It helps to create this quite differentiation between companies which eventually will fade in the background and which will continue to outperform because they're able to adapt much better and faster."

The UK market has come under pressure this week on concerns that an accelerating second wave of infections could prompt more drastic lockdown restrictions. Both the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 are set for their biggest weekly declines since early June. Housing minister Robert Jenrick said on Thursday a second national lockdown in Britain was not inevitable and the government will do everything to avoid one, even as a study by Imperial College showed England's COVID-19 infections doubled every nine days.

In company news, BT Group Plc jumped 6% to the top of the FTSE 100 after Britain's biggest fixed-line and mobile operator raised the lower end of its annual profit forecast. WPP Plc fell 3.9% after the world's biggest advertising company said its quarterly like-for-like net sales fell 7.6%.