New photo Turmoil on London stock market: FTSE 100 index plunges to two-year low

Investors piled out of shares today amid growing pessimism on the global economy and sent the FTSE 100 index plunging to two-year lows.

Mining and commodity stocks led the falls, which dragged the blue-chip share index down by 173 points to 6,749 - a drop of 2.5 per cent. 

The Footsie has not traded at that level since November 2016, and it is now back well below the 6,930 mark which it first attained as long ago as December 1999.

Shareholders endured a second day of sell-offs that send the London market well into the red.

The FTSE 100 index is now trading back at levels not seen since August 2016.

In the Footsie, the oil and mining sectors - which because of their size have a big impact on the index - were down 2.4 per cent and 2.9 per cent respectively, as crude and metal prices sank.

Crude oil futures fell more than 2 per cent as a deal among OPEC members to cut output at their producer group's meeting later in the day appeared unlikely.

Copper fell for a fourth day after the chief financial officer of Chinese technology giant Huawei was arrested in relation to alleged violations of U.S. sanctions.

Investors were fretting that the arrest could drive a wedge between China and the United States just days after President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping agreed to a temporary truce in their trade war to give the two sides more time for negotiations.

SpreadEx analyst Connor Campbell put the turmoil down to 'an intense week for US-China relations'.

'The post-G20 trade truce is starting to feel like a distant memory, with Tariff Man Donald Trump, and now the arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou, serving to undermine whatever (naive) hopes of progress had built up on Monday,' he said.

'China has, obviously, been quick to criticise the arrest, while Huawei is demanding her release. It is yet another huge blow to what was already looking like a fragile and inchoate ceasefire, and has sent the markets into another value-eroding funk.

'Absent from normal trading on Wednesday due to the day of mourning for George HW Bush, the futures are indicating the Dow Jones is going to return to some rather nasty scenes. The US index itself is expected to drop 300 points, a loss in line with the situation in Europe.'

'Investors are in the mood to accentuate all the negative news at the moment,' said Ian Williams, analyst at Peel Hunt.

The FTSE 100 index hit 6,930 in December 1999, just before the dot-com bubble burst and sent global stock markets crashing.

Despite a recovery in the London market that took the Footsie to nearly that level in autumn 2007, the financial crisis then caused another crash, taking the FTSE 100 as low as 3,530 in spring 2009.

After another extended recovery, the blue-chip index finally exceeded its pre-dot-com high in spring 2015, when it went on to briefly crest 7,000.

Another major correction then took the Footsie back to just above 5,700 but since then it has hit all-time highs just below 7,900, in May this year. The index is now 14 per cent down from that mark.

Outside the FTSE 100, big Uk firms were faring no better: the FTSE 250 index of medium-sized corporations was down by 2.6 per cent on the day.

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News Pictures Turmoil on London stock market: FTSE 100 index plunges to two-year low

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