Tuesday, 15^th October: An optimistic outlook on Brexit pushed sterling higher against the dollar on Tuesday, which n turn caused the FTSE to reverse the gains made in the morning session by lunch time. Chief Brexit negotiator Barnier sparked most of this optimism by saying a deal remains possible before the end of this week. After id-day, GBP/USD was up more than 1.0% at $1.27708 and its highest since May this year.

Although most of the stocks on the blue-chip index were in red today, there were a few exceptions in safe territory. Ocado group was up more than 5.0% in the afternoon after it gained market share against the larger players in the industry. Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury and Morrison all experienced a fall in market share, whilst Aldi, Lidl and Ocado gained as revealed by Kantar.

In the world of house builders, Bellway was having a difficult day as the market wasn’t very welcoming of their preliminary results. Although they managed to hit record sales and boost profits, the market instead focused on the margin warning they described due to a stall in house price inflation as well as cost pressures the entire sector have been hit by. At the end of the day, the group were trading lower on the FTSE 250 by 3.49% but managed to reverse most of the damage the share price was hit with in the morning session.

At the end of the day, the FTSE 100 managed to reverse most of the mid-day losses as it closed only 0.03% lower at 7211.64.