Tobacco companies British American Tobacco and Imperial Brands are in the minority as stock market risers today
After a morning of steep losses across London stocks in reaction to today's Brexit vote, there's one industry that's proving to be resilient in the face of market turmoil.
While sectors such as banking have suffered today, two of the big four tobacco companies, Imperial Brands and British American Tobacco (BAT), are some of the only companies to be trading up today.
[stockChart code="BATS" date="2016-06-24 14:33"]
BAT has been one of the top 10 FTSE risers, adding 4.2 per cent by mid-afternoon, while Imperial Brands' stock had gained 2.4 per cent.
"Tobacco stocks are generally good defensive plays with decent dollar earnings that can benefit when sterling weakens against the dollar, as it did today," Sebastian Jory, strategist at Liberum, told City PM
Read more: Plain packaging: New UK cigarette rules are "plain crazy"
It should come as no surprise that tobacco shares are outperforming today. Despite making up just five per cent of the FTSE All Share index, tobacco producers have performed surprisingly strongly over the past decade.
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