Thursday, 9 February: In the latest set of results from Thomas Cook, the firm has laid out plans to sell more upmarket holidays with the average cost of a getaway estimated to rise by 9%, the blame pinned on mounting competition. Despite demand rising for areas like Greece and a continuing resurgence in Spanish demand, this has been unable to offset the decline in areas such as Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt. The first quarter loss has totalled just under £50m and prices have risen as Thomas Cook pass on the cost of rising hotel prices in areas enjoying increased demand; such as Spain. With that in mind they are to chase higher margin quality holidays rather than volume and growth. Shares closed the day at the bottom of the 250, -7.71%.

Twitter gave the stand out blue chip results today, showing that Q4 losses nearly doubled. As we write shares are down 10.47% as they trade in the US. Despite Donald Trump doing his best to bring Twitter back into the spotlight, ad revenue has fallen and ‘active users’ has only risen by 4%. The slowest quarterly growth figure in their relatively short public career is worrying as many had expected better results given the recent proliferation of Twitter regarding the US elections and ongoing platform use for Trump’s policies.

On what was another fairly uneventful day, the FTSE came to rest +0.57%. After remaining flat for most of the morning London shares steadily ticked up, alongside other European indices and America has similarly rose as their session gets underway. Property firms and Insurers helped pull the index higher after the FCA ruled out a ban on holding property in investment funds.