FTSE 100 watch: Footsie rallies as FBI clears Clinton in email review

The UK benchmark index has jumped in London in today’s session, after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) cleared Democrat Hillary Clinton of potential criminal charges, ahead of the US election tomorrow. In individual movers, shares in HSBC Holdings (LON:HSBA) have jumped today, outperforming the FTSE 100, after the Asia-focused bank posted better-than-expected quarterly results.

As of 12:30 GMT, the Footsie had added 90.15 points to stand 1.35 percent higher at 6,783.41. Sentiment has been upbeat today amid increased hopes that Clinton will win the upcoming presidential election.
“With the FBI reaffirming their conclusion that the Democratic candidate displayed no criminal wrongdoing in her use of a private email sever […], the markets seemingly let out a sigh of relief this morning,” Connor Campbell at Spreadex said in a note. “The thinking will be that this news may well swing any undecided voters back towards Clinton, therefore lifting her already substantial chances of winning Tuesday’s election.”

Hopes of a Clinton presidency have boosted commodity prices, fuelling demand for resource stocks. Glencore (LON:GLEN) is leading other London-listed miners higher, having added 4.58 percent to 248.70p.
In individual Footsie risers, HSBC’s shares are changing hands 4.76 percent higher at 623.10p after Europe’s biggest bank’s adjusted pre-tax profit surpassed analyst expectations.

“If you look at the underlying numbers, actually those showed that if you strip out the one-off items, revenues were up, costs were down and profits were up, and those are three things that markets like,” Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, told Reuters.
Tesco (LON:TSCO) has been at the other end of the spectrum, having shed 0.99 percent to 200.50p, after the supermarket’s banking unit suffered a hack over the weekend which saw money taken from 20,000 accounts.
**The FTSE 100 was 1.39 percent up at 6,786.20 points as of 12:36 GMT on Monday, November 7, 2016.**