Pharma names lift FTSE, Barclays declines, USD jumps on hawkish Kaplan By Investing.com

Key Points

• FTSE 100 closing price of 6,970.60, +0.13%
• AstraZeneca (NASDAQ:AZN) shares rise to top of the FTSE
• Barclays falls despite increased profit
• Darktrace soars on trading debut
• USD jumps after Fed taper comments
• Oil retreats as OPEC+ production due to come back online

By Samuel Indyk

Investing.com – The FTSE 100 finished marginally higher on Friday but still closed below the psychological 7,000 as some hawkish comments from Fed’s Kaplan appeared to dampen risk appetite. Kaplan, who is traditionally one of the more hawkish members on the FOMC, said it would be appropriate to start talking about asset purchases.

Riskier assets were also dampened by a study from Imperial College regarding the Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) vaccine. The study suggested that healthcare workers who have only had one dose of the jab were at risk from Covid variants.

“In those who have not previously been infected and have so far only received one dose of vaccine the immune response to variants of concern may be insufficient,” Imperial College said in the study.

The double whammy sent the US Dollar Index to fresh session highs and helped weigh on both EUR/USD and GBP/USD. GBP/USD dropped further away from the 1.4000 handle while EUR/USD dropped back towards 1.2000.

In individual stocks news, AstraZeneca (LON:AZN) shares led the FTSE 100 higher after recording an 11% increase in revenue in the first quarter. The company had $275mln from sales of its Covid-19 vaccine and is now aiming to deliver 200mln doses per month.

On the other end of the scale was Barclays (LON:BARC). The company still recorded a mammoth profit but failed to release funds for expected credit losses as some of its UK peers have done earlier this week. The bank reported a 35% decline in FICC income which also seemed to drag shares lower while also adding that costs this year were likely to be higher than 2020.

Shares in cyber security firm Darktrace jumped as much as 40% on their first day of trading after the initial listing price of 250 pence per share, which valued the company at £1.7bln.

WTI and Brent crude futures both fell on Friday amid the broad risk-off tone and stronger USD. As a reminder, next week Saudi Arabia and the rest of the OPEC+ group begin to roll back on production cuts announced at the start of the pandemic.