An Ugly Day for the Pound and the FTSE 100

What an ugly morning.

From the global indices to Brent Crude to cable, there have been painfully few chinks of light this morning, the markets covered in an almost impenetrable cloud of bearish fog.

Falling by over 2.5% the FTSE is around 100 points away from hitting lows not see since the aftermath of Black Monday back in August 2015.

The index is being mercilessly punished by its commodity stocks, Premier Oil and Anglo American leading the charge in the oil and mining sectors respectively.

The pound is also receiving a pounding, plunging to a 5 year low against the dollar as fears over both a potential Brexit and the lack of Bank of England rate hike collide with the day’s generally aggressive trading atmosphere.

One of the few (nay, only) bright spots this Thursday was Home Retail Group; the troubled owner of Argos and Homebase appears to be benefiting from sustained takeover talk, previously rejected bidder Sainsbury’s reportedly being joined by a partnership between former Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy and private equity investment firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice on the list of interested parties.

Over in the Eurozone and the DAX and CAC continued to barrel towards new lows, the German index now firmly below the 10000 mark to sit at its worst price since the start of October 2015.

This despite a stronger than forecast Eurozone wide unemployment rate, coming in at 10.5% against the 10.7% expected and a (downwards revised) 10.6% last month, the week’s cavalcade of calamities leaving little room for such region-specific niceties.

Turning to the US open and anyone hoping for a (red,) white (and blue) knight will be left wanting, the Dow Jones facing a 2% point drop when the bell rings on Wall Street.

A shrinking set of jobless claims, expected at 271k against last month’s higher than anticipated 287k, will likely make little difference to the terrified traders currently exiting the market en masse.