Monday 02 February 2026 6:16 pm
The FTSE 100 hit a unruffled myth on Monday despite being swept up in a world sell-off of metals and tech stocks that had pushed Asian and European stock markets deep into the crimson earlier in the day.
The UK’s blue-chip index closed up 118 components to complete the day at an all-time excessive of 10,341, after opening down some 0.5 per cent as merchants internationally dumped volatile and commodity-based mostly stocks.
The myth close technique the FTSE 100 has now climbed nearly four per cent this year, after outperforming nearly each and every predominant index in 2025.
Treasured metals persisted to suffer from the exceptional volatility witnessed in direction of the close of the week. The distance trace of gold, which already started falling sharply at the close of closing week, cratered 9 per cent to $4,403 an oz. in Asia buying and selling. Silver slumped by as valuable 16 per cent to lower than $72 an oz. after a 30 per cent wreck on Friday.
Each metals pared lend a hand a pair of of these losses at some level of buying and selling in Europe. The silver trace had all but erased its earlier descend, while gold staged a a small bit less dramatic comeback.
Endeavour and Fresnillo sink, as Unilever and insurers rally
The whipsawing across treasured metals, which came off the lend a hand of every and every hitting a string of unruffled records, used to be evident across the FTSE 100’s silver and gold miners. Fresnillo, a producer of gold and silver, plunged over seven per cent at market starting up, sooner than making improvements to a pair of of these losses. Shares in Endeavour and Antofagasta demonstrated a identical pattern.
“No longer for the predominant time in newest market ancient past, we’re witnessing a spectacular unwinding of leveraged positions, this time in treasured metals,” acknowledged John Wyn-Evans, head of market evaluation at Rathbones.
“The appealing pullback in gold appears to be more take care of a liquidity and positioning tournament than a switch in the long‑time length case for the asset. After a strong crawl‑up pushed by momentum solutions, short squeezes and leveraged buying, that same positioning has unwound without be conscious, amplifying plan back strikes.”
Earlier on Monday, equities in Asia suffered their worst session since they were left reeling from Donald Trump’s ‘liberation day’ tariff bulletins in April closing year. South Korea’s Kospi index – a bellwether for the synthetic intelligence replace – plunged by bigger than 5 per cent as fears that tech stock valuations were overstretched coursed by markets. Hong Kong’s Dangle Seng fell by as valuable as 2.2 per cent.
Despite a threat-off mood prevailing, the FTSE 100’s defensive bias helped it whisk the worst of the equities rout earlier in the day. Manufacturing tools rental firm Ashtead, which generates nearly about all its income in North The us, used to be buoyed by strong manufacturing knowledge in the US, while Astrazeneca’s stock trace climbed after its shares were listed on the New York Stock Alternate for the predominant time.
Tech companies largely overlooked out on the restoration in wider equity markets, after a flurry of earnings from synthetic intelligence companies compounded fears that tech valuations would per chance presumably even be overstretched. Futures on New York’s tech-heavy Nasdaq were down one per cent, with the index making an are attempting poised to lengthen a crawl of losses sparked by Microsoft buying and selling update that showed development in its cloud division used to be slowing. They then climbed sooner than the index opened up.
“It’s regular of the 2026 fixed stream of advanced knowledge waft,” wrote Jim Reid, global head of macro review and thematic approach at Deutsche Financial institution. “This follows a January that managed to each and every shock and fright in just a few ways, but mute delivered exceptional based mostly beneficial properties across all global resources.”
