FTSE 100 Live: Stocks drop amid US-Iran war mixed messaging; House prices up May 1, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. Markets are scrambling for some messaging this morning as tensions around the Iran war drag on. Donald Trump faced a deadline for today whether to formally end the war in Iran or make the case to the US Congress for extending it. But an official [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Stocks drop as oil holds firm over $110; UK growth slashed April 29, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. Oil prices are holding firm tipping over the $110 mark, bringing the cost of a barrel closer to the highs of $118 it peaked at earlier in the Iran war. Brent crude – the international benchmark for oil – advanced another one per cent on [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Stocks dip as oil edges higher; BP posts profit boom April 28, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. Oil returned to a three-week high comfortably over the $105 mark on Monday and those gains look set to continue today. Brent crude – the international benchmark for oil prices – edged over $110 on Tuesday morning as it once again appeared peace talks in [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Stocks dip as oil prices surge to three-week high April 27, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. There’s set to be little relief in markets this morning as investors return from the weekend to oil hitting a three-week high. The price of Brent crude – the international benchmark for oil prices – rose two per cent to over $107 on Monday morning. [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Stocks jitter as inflation surges; Trump extends ceasefire April 22, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. Inflation has surged this morning follow the outbreak of war in Iran. Fresh figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has shown the consumer price index rose by 3.3 per cent in the 12 months to March 2026. That’s up from three per cent [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Stocks flat as Trump’s deadline looms; Job vacancies shrink; Primark gets spin-off April 21, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. New unemployment figures this morning have showed an unexpected twist where the joblessness rate slipped under the five per cent mark. But this was accompanied by a blow to the market with the number of vacancies fell by an estimate of 29,000 in the three [...]
EV sales surge as oil shock drives shift from petrol April 20, 2026 Electric car sales are accelerating across Europe, as rising fuel prices and tensions linked to the Iran conflict push drivers away from petrol and diesel. Battery electric vehicle (BEV) registrations jumped 51 per cent year on year in March across 15 European markets, with over 224,000 new electric cars sold in one month, according to [...]
‘No more Mr Nice Guy’: Oil prices spike as Trump renews Iran power plant threats April 20, 2026 The price of oil has been driven higher by the latest round of escalations in the Middle East renewing fears of a drastic global energy shock. Brent crude – the international benchmark for oil prices – jumped over six per cent on Monday morning to over $96. It follows a weekend of tensions where shipping [...]
FTSE 100 Live: Stocks slump on renewed Iran threats; UK to be ‘pushed to brink’ of recession April 20, 2026 Good morning and welcome back to the City PM liveblog. Markets are returning from the weekend to a fresh round of volatility. The mood ended last week on a high following the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz but that sentiment was quickly squashed over the weekend as tensions renewed. Shipping in the Strait of [...]
FTSE 100 jumps as Strait of Hormuz fully open following ceasefire April 17, 2026 The Iranian regime has reopened the Strait of Hormuz following a ceasefire in the Middle East between numerous warring nations. Tehran’s foreign minister said on Friday afternoon: “In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon, the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire”. Traffic [...]
