A day after Elon Musk tempted financial institutions into the world of crypto currencies, everything remained calm on the FTSE 100. While Ocado revealed positive results following a recent share price rally, the FTSE 100 index barely flinched, as it awaits further news. 

Chris Beaucamp, chief market analyst at IG, described the lay of the land. 

“Stocks have moved modestly lower this morning, with the FTSE 100 dropping by around 5 points in early trading,” Beaucamp said.

“The February rally has finally run into some tougher ground, with European markets on the slide after a week of gains that has, for the most part, put the global equity market back on an upward path,” he continued.

FTSE 100 movers

A handful of companies have made modest gains today at the top of the FTSE 100. The top risers in the index are Whitbread (1.79%), M&G (1.43%) and Compass (1.41%). 

At the other end, Experian (-2.12%), Smurfit Kappa (-1.72%) and The Sage Group (-1.56%) are the day’s top fallers so far.

Ocado

Ocado improved its sales by 32.7% over 12 months driven by a mass exodus to online shopping during the pandemic. Despite positive financial results, Ocado’s share price dropped by over 3% on Tuesday’s early morning trade to 2,630p per share. 

“Given the surge in Ocado’s shares over the last year it was going to be hard for the stock price to avoid a fall this morning, but on balance a 2.5% drop seems a fair enough price to pay for the rally,” said Beaucamp.

Bitcoin

The digital currency continued to surge through the night reaching an all-time high of $48,000 before retreating. This came after Tesla confirmed it would be using $1.5bn of its cash reserves to buy bitcoin as well as accepting the currency for payments.

Bellway

Moving on to the FTSE 250, housebuilder Bellway built a record number of homes in the first half of the year, with its output up 6.3% to 5,321 new homes. The company’s revenue also shot up by more than 12% to £1.72bn over the same period, up from £1.52bn the year before.