'Financial Times': Despite New Entrants to the FT-100, a Lackluster Session in London
DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN ANCHOR: Well, as we mentioned earlier, bit of a lackluster session for the European market.</s>DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, exactly. We have got London, in particular, down, despite some new entrants to the Financial Times 100. Christopher Swann, of the "FT," joins us from their London newsroom now with an update on what new stocks are in the index and what the index is doing. Good morning.</s>CHRISTOPHER SWANN, "FINANCIAL TIMES": Good morning. Well, the index has again seen the triumph of the new economy stocks over the old economy stocks. We've seen such icons of British culture drop out; as Rolls-Royce, the aircraft engine maker; Hanson, the building materials maker has also dropped out. And in their stead, Baltimore has bounced back into the index. The Irish high-tech company has been promoted back in March, but then dropped out again. And we've seen quite a lot of yo-yoing in the London index as technology stocks have come in and out of fashion.</s>MARCHINI: So this has introduced more volatility?</s>SWANN: Yes. There has been a pickup in volatility, yes, since the high-tech stocks were first sort of bounded into the index back in March. And, but they now seem to be stabilizing somewhat. And, I mean it's rather ironic considering that we've had a bit of a fading of the enthusiasm that we had earlier in the week in high-tech stocks. And again we've seen those losses continuing today with a fall in Logica, despite very positive results. And also a fall in Bookem (ph), which is -- it is just announced it's issuing some new shares. Obviously not much appetite for those at the moment.</s>HAFFENREFFER: Aside from the declines that we are seeing for the FT 100 index and the rejigger of the index itself, what sort of trading day is it in Europe today?</s>SWANN: Well, at the moment, it's looking pretty flat in the main indexes. As I said, the technology stocks have continued to fade. There's some surprise that oil shares haven't benefited more from the rising oil price. Again, this continued to rise up -- also to nudge up towards $34 in Asian trading. But we've had very, very good profit figures from Total Fina, profits up 165 percent and yet no apparent benefit. And it looks like traders have already priced in these rises, BP's pretty flat as well.</s>MARCHINI: Yes, worth noting of course that the price of oil continues to rise in London this morning. We've got North Sea Brent up 17 cents at him $33.15. Christopher, switching gears, we are looking at a rather sharp drop, about three-quarters of cent in the value of the euro. What's going on there?</s>SWANN: Well, it seems like some of the Asian investors in particular, who piled into the euro when it was rallying in May and June, are finally throwing in the towel. I mean, there have been fears for a long time that investor enthusiasm would kindly crack. It seems also that investors are continuing to reflect on comments earlier in the week by Gerhard Schroeder suggesting that the euro's fall was really not that serious, and that it was beneficial to exporters, and this is at odds with European central bankers who've been trying very hard talk the euro higher.</s>HAFFENREFFER: All right, Christopher Swann, at the "Financial Times," thanks for the update this morning.