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Sector movers: Tech, Basic Resources lead fallers
Technology stocks paced losses in London at the start of the week, much as on the other major international bourses.
Presumably, losses in the tech space were triggered by news that Cambridge Analytica, a Big Data firm closely associated with US president Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and with Brexit, might have inappropriately used data on 50m Facebook users which it gathered in 2015 and should have destroyed.
On Monday evening, Facebook said Cambridge had acquiesced to a forensic digital audit to ascertain if it continued to store information on those users, but not before the news erased roughly $40bn of market value from shares of the company led by Mark Zuckerberg.
In the wake of the allegations, authorities in the UK, the US and the European Union all called for greater scrutiny of tech firms, contributing to sharp selling in other members of the so-called FANG stocks, like Google, which saw over $20bn of market value rapidly evaporate.
Against that backdrop, Micro Focus were pummelled after the company's boss, Chris Hsu, tendered his resignation, and management lowered its profit guidance, which saw the shares nearly halve in value at one point during the session.
Right behind Tech at the bottom of the leaderboard were Miners, following the release of data that revealed narrower breadth in Chinese house prices gains last night.
Overnight, China's National Bureau of Statistics reported that new home prices rose in 44 Chinese cities in February, down from 52 in January.
Top performing sectors so far today
Real Estate Investment Trusts 3,054.95 +3.81%
Real Estate Investment & Services 2,787.85 +0.95%
Industrial Transportation 3,462.53 +0.33%
Household Goods & Home Construction 15,828.61 +0.20%
Alternative Energy 0.00 0.00%
Bottom performing sectors so far today
Software & Computer Services 1,698.37 -18.05%
Mining 17,482.79 -3.60%
Tobacco 43,303.18 -3.27%
Industrial Metals & Mining 4,409.71 -2.91%
Oil & Gas Producers 7,925.57 -2.23%