Dust settles in London

The FTSE 100 closed Friday up 0.21 per cent on a ragtag day where the dust settled after yesterday's global losses.

Commodities garnered the most interest with Tullow Oil up 5.29 per cent, BG Group rising 4.42 per cent and Lonmin climbing 4.08 per cent.

Cairn Energy and BHP Billiton rose 3.92 per cent and 3.71 per cent respectively.

Construction materials provider Wolseley dropped 3.96 per cent, cruise specialist Carnival was down 3.78 per cent and software firm Invensys slid 3.4 per cent.

Thomson Reuters and London Stock Exchange Group fell 3.09 per cent and 2.78 per cent respectively.

Outside the FTSE 100, Taylor Wimpey rose 12.73 per cent and other property firms Berkeley Group and Bellway followed suit as the government is expected to announce plans to bolster the industry on Monday.

Bradford & Bingley continued its torrid fortune hitting record lows to close down 20.94 per cent at 63.25p. Last year its stock price stood at over £4.

Ryan Kneale, market analyst at City bookmaker BetsForTraders.com, said: "The chaos of yesterday appears over, but the dust hasn't settled yet and isn't likely to for some time.

"Traders are once again extremely nervous and the cocktail of economic issues for them to deal with is potentially explosive."

He added further pressure was mounting on banking stocks.

"Our clients have once again been betting in huge numbers on the share price of the Royal Bank of Scotland group falling," he said.

We are attributing this to news just in that Moody's have stripped RBS of their Triple A status. It would appear that our clients are still stubbornly bearish UK banks."

David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Index, said: "The past five weeks have seen the FTSE 100 drop by around 13 per cent and move back to levels last visited in March.

"Optimists may feel that it is always darkest before the dawn so a turnaround cannot be too far away. However, it is also dark a long time before the dawn and, whilst a couple of weeks ago investors were starting to believe that maybe the worst was behind us particularly for the financial stocks, events over the last couple of days have suggested there could be further tough times ahead for the world’s banks – a view that has continued to weigh on the indices."