Sector movers: Real estate, Travel and Leisure pace gains

(Sharecast News) - Interest rate sensitive real estate and construction paced gains on the stock market on Thursday as many analysts speculated that the Bank of England might be at or near its rate hiking cycle. "We can't rule out a final 25bp hike in Bank Rate next month, or in May. But if, as we expect, price rises continue to slow and labour market slack continues to emerge, then 4% should be the peak for Bank Rate and the next move will be down, though probably not until 2024," Samuel Tombs and Gabriella Dickens at Pantheon Macroeconomics said in a research report sent to clients.

Many investors had reached a somewhat similar conclusion overnight as regarded the US Federal Reserve, although in the US the margin of error was arguably a bit greater and even more so, perhaps, in the case of the European Central Bank.

For the moment however, sovereign debt was bid higher on both sides of the Pond, especially in the UK and euro area.

Travel and Leisure issues also did quite well as JP Morgan analysts told clients that the early summer looked "very encouraging" for airline yields.

Shares of RyanAir, Wizz and IAG all moved higher on the back of the endorsement.

Oil&Gas shares were lower but possibly more as a result of profit-taking in a classic 'sell on the news' reaction.

Brent crude oil futures were a tad lower in the background.

Banks were also down as a group, although the selling pressure was focused especially on the likes of StanChart and HSBC.

The former had been downgraded by analysts at Goldman Sachs, due to their outperformance vis-a-vis European lenders and the expected improvement in net interest income was increasingly reflected in the consensus.

Another reason was that because they saw "more limited benefit from higher policy rates in Hong Kong. We see better opportunities in UK domestic peers Natwest (Buy, on CL); Lloyds (Buy)."

Top performing sectors so far today

Industrial Transportation 4,139.93 +6.33%

Real Estate Investment Trusts 2,572.37 +5.93%

Household Goods & Home Construction 12,025.07 +5.46%

Real Estate Investment & Services 2,480.58 +5.36%

Travel & Leisure 7,630.94 +4.55%

Bottom performing sectors so far today

Oil, Gas and Coal 8,177.98 -1.54%

Aerospace and Defence 5,218.89 -0.78%

Banks 3,771.31 -0.78%

Industrial Metals & Mining 8,027.19 -0.65%

Retailers 3,313.80 -0.29%