The FTSE 100 finished its final trading session of January with a 1.8% drop to 6,407 points, its lowest so far this year. Just six of its constituents posted a share price rise for the day – none of them in real estate. The FTSE 250 was also down.
Markets in the UK and elsewhere have seen volatile swings in recent days, not only over ongoing worries about the economic hit from the pandemic, but since retail investors banded together to boost the price of shorted stocks such as those in GameStop, a US video game retailer.
The Financial Conduct Authority, the UK’s watchdog, this afternoon used its Twitter account to warn UK investors buying such US stocks to exercise “extreme caution”, adding: “Volatile markets are unpredictable and mean you can quickly lose money”.
Some of the best real estate gains were seen by U+I (up 6.1% to a fresh eight-month high of 87p), RDI REIT (up 4.7%) and Impact Healthcare (up 3.6% to 115p to equal an all-time high from 2019, after a positive stock market update this morning).
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