Gilts at 6% and oil at $105: how London still ended the week up

The FTSE 100 closed on Friday just above 10,550, up about 1.1% on the day, and that single session was the week. Strip Friday out and London was heading for a second losing week in a row; include it and the index finished roughly 90 points, or about 0.9%, above the 10,461.95 it closed at on 2 October.

Nothing a London-listed company did explains that shape. The week was set by two prices the market does not control: the 30-year gilt yield, which touched 6% on Wednesday for the first time since 1998, and Brent crude, which ran from just over $100 on Monday to $105.60 on Thursday before falling back to about $102 on Friday after Donald Trump ruled out striking Iran before next month's US midterms.

Our daily notes tracked the mood turning with them. Monday was the week's only Risk-on reading; Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were all Cautious; Friday was Mixed. That sequence is the story. London spent four sessions absorbing an external shock and one session being paid back for it.

How the week unfolded

Monday brought the week's clearest piece of UK corporate news, and it had little to do with the index level. BT Group acquired TalkTalk and its wholesale arm PlatformX out of administration on a debt-free basis, protecting around 2.5 million retail and wholesale connections — including links supporting emergency services and healthcare — at an expected cash cost of roughly £400m in the 2027 financial year. The FTSE 100 closed up 0.34%, or 35.99 points, at 10,497.94, rebounding after the previous week's 2.2% fall, its worst since April. Ithaca Energy rose 2.2% after agreeing to buy Suncor's offshore oil and gas assets for $842m in upfront cash, and London Stock Exchange Group added about 1.5%.

The rebound did not survive a second session. By Tuesday our note had moved to Cautious, with Brent holding above $100 and Saudi Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser warning that global oil stockpiles could take up to two years to rebuild even once the Iran conflict ends. Wednesday is where the week broke. Fresh tanker attacks near the Strait of Hormuz pushed Brent back above $101, the 30-year gilt yield hit 6% — its highest since 1998 — and the banks went with it, as Standard Chartered, HSBC and Barclays each fell more than 3%. The index dropped 83.19 points, or 0.79%, to 10,458.50.

Shell's third-quarter trading statement that morning was almost incidental by comparison. It held 2026 cash capital expenditure guidance at $24bn-$26bn, including roughly $4bn earmarked for the ARC Resources acquisition, with upstream production guided to 1,680-1,880 thousand barrels of oil equivalent a day and refinery utilisation of 93%-101%. The shares edged up 0.54% to 3,651p.

We flagged the Federal Reserve's September minutes twice as the week's scheduled catalyst, due at 7pm UK on Wednesday — after London had shut, which is why the effect landed on Thursday. They came in hawkish, and more decisively so than our Wednesday note had implied. All 19 officials had backed September's increase to 3.75%-4.00%, 16 of 18 projected at least one further rise this year, and the minutes stated that another increase would likely be appropriate by year end. Thursday's session was then squeezed from both sides, with Brent up 5.4% at $105.60 on Hormuz supply fears. The FTSE 100 closed down 0.16% at 10,441.60, the week's low close, and the FTSE 250 fell 0.39% to 23,943.88.

Friday reversed almost all of it. Brent eased to around $102.72, gold climbed 1.5% and copper rose 1.3%, and the miners carried the index to a close about 1.1% higher, with the FTSE 250 up more than 1% alongside it. London managed that while Wall Street went the other way: the Nasdaq Composite had fallen 1.25% overnight to 27,193.34, its worst day of the week, after a Financial Times report that OpenAI's revenue is running well short of figures published elsewhere revived doubts about AI-spending economics. The FTSE 100's thin technology weighting, usually the complaint, was the reason it did not follow.

The names that moved it

Tesco was the week's one genuine corporate event and the only company catalyst we previewed. Thursday's note pencilled in first-half group revenue of about £37.2bn, roughly 3% ahead of last year; the reported figure was £37.35bn, up 3.7%. Adjusted operating profit rose 6.5% to £1.78bn for the 26 weeks to 29 August, adjusted diluted earnings per share rose 12.2% to 17.3p, and the interim dividend was set at 5.05p. More consequentially, Tesco lifted the floor of its full-year adjusted operating profit guidance to £3.15bn-£3.3bn from £3bn-£3.3bn and raised the buyback to £950m from £750m. UK like-for-like sales were up 1.5%, with food up 2.4%. Booker, which we had flagged as the lagging arm after a 3.2% like-for-like decline in the June quarter, remained the weak spot at -2.6%.

The banks were the week's cost. Wednesday's falls of more than 3% at Standard Chartered, HSBC and Barclays did most of the index damage, and HSBC carried a second, separate story. A Tuesday Financial Times report said the bank plans sweeping cuts to its UK wealth management arm, with roughly half of management and specialist roles at risk and adviser headcount down by close to 70%, as chief executive Georges Elhedery pushes AI-driven servicing for wealth clients. The shares fell around 1.8% to 1,446p on the day the report broke.

Miners were the other side of the ledger and the reason the week finished in the black at all. Fresnillo rose 3.3% on Friday, Antofagasta around 3% and Endeavour Mining 2.5%, with Antofagasta leading the FTSE 100 risers as gold and copper firmed. For anyone tracking how narrow that leadership was, the screener shows how much of the index sat out Friday's move.

Among the rest, JD Sports appeared in our notes twice, among the risers on both Wednesday and Thursday alongside Reckitt and Marks & Spencer. Imperial Brands reaffirmed full-year guidance on Thursday and announced a fresh £1.5bn share buyback. National Grid said on Monday that a strong first half should take underlying earnings-per-share growth slightly above the 13%-15% range it guided to in May. BP and Shell did what they do when crude is the story, cushioning the index on the days oil rose and giving ground on Friday when it fell.

What to watch next week

Hays reports on Monday 12 October, the first UK trading statement after a Friday with an empty corporate diary. The Federal Reserve's next policy meeting runs 27-28 October, and the minutes published this week put a further increase formally on the table before year end. The dated event shaping UK rates and the long end of the gilt curve is Chancellor John Healey's first Autumn Budget on 28 October.