The FTSE 100 remained within touching distance of 10,300 on Friday as investors held off making big bets amid uncertainty around US tech and the Middle East. 

There was little in the way of UK corporate news to fire markets up on Friday, and the FTSE 100 ticked 0.3% higher in mid-morning trading as investors awaited US Non-Farm Payrolls.

“The tone remains cautious, with global macro and tech sentiment continuing to set the pace rather than domestic developments,” said Anna Macdonald, Investment Strategy Director, Hargreaves Lansdown.

Attention has firmly been on US tech shares this week after a wobble caused by Broadcom’s result, which hit AI-related shares. 

US tech staged a late rally after the session started in the red yesterday, but futures were pointing to a lower open again on Friday, and performance here will likely dictate trade going into the weekend. 

“The FTSE 100 held its ground on Friday as its lack of tech and AI exposure proved to be a benefit,” said AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould.

“Broadcom’s failure to keep pace with soaring AI-related expectations with this week’s earnings and outlook prompted a wave of selling among related companies and led to weakness across Asia and Wall Street. The correction was compounded by a continuing lack of progress towards a US-Iran peace deal – though oil prices remain below $95 per barrel on hopes a breakthrough can be found.

“There will be scrutiny of the US jobs release later. After April’s strong data, investors will be watching to see if the headline figure falls within the 85,000 to 96,000 range analysts expect and whether unemployment stays at 4.3%.”

Falling tech shares were reflected in declines for Polar Capital Technology Trust, which may present a buying opportunity for one of the best-performing FTSE 100 constituents year to date. 

Miners were lower again as concerns about tumbling Asian stocks lingered. Anglo American and Glencore were both down around 2%. 

UK-centric stocks were again back in favour, with Rightmove adding 2%. Sainsbury’s was 2.3% higher. 

With the Lloyds share price dipping beneath 100p after reaching the heady heights of 112p early this year, are they starting to look cheap?

One would look back to where they were a couple of years ago and think not. But a lot has happened since then, and sentiment towards FTSE 100 banks has improved dramatically.

In many respects, the doubling of Lloyds from 50p – where it spent nearly 3 years – brought the company back to where it should be, rather than pushing it into ‘overvalued’ territory.

Lloyds and many other banks were trading at around 50% of their book value for years. Lloyds now trades at 1.2x book. This is a fair valuation for a bank of its size and reflects the quality of its asset base.

But it’s the earnings outlook that will drive the price higher from this point forward, with the motor scandal behind them and the group on a firm footing.

Lloyds delivered a confident first quarter, with statutory profit before tax up 33% to £2.0bn and a return on tangible equity of 17.0%. But beneath the headline strength sit several pressures that could yet weigh on the share price, particularly if the UK economy turns.

There was a warning sign from impairments – a whisper of a warning, but a warning nonetheless. The underlying charge of £295m was lower than a year ago, but it masks a £101m hit from updated economic scenarios, with £151m reflecting a darker outlook tied to the Middle East conflict. That was only partly cushioned by releasing a £50m buffer previously held against tariff and political risk. These provisions were made in the earlier stages of the war, and after a prolonged period of higher fuel costs, there may well be more in Q2.

Margins are the second concern. The banking net interest margin of 3.17% looks healthy and is being propped up by the structural hedge, which is now expected to generate £7bn-plus this year. But Lloyds openly flags asset margin compression, “in particular in the UK mortgages portfolio”. If hedge tailwinds fade or rates move against them, that support could diminish.

Its fortunes are tightly bound to UK mortgages, UK consumers, and UK businesses. With the economic outlook deteriorating enough to force a higher provisioning charge this quarter, any further weakness in employment or house prices would hit Lloyds harder than most.

The question is how bad the UK economy will get later this year if inflation rises to 4%, as some economists predict.

Trading at a 9.8x forecast earnings multiple, Lloyds shares are marginally undervalued relative to the benchmark and offer upside if the economy avoids a doomsday scenario.

For investors seeking pure-play exposure to AI infrastructure after the recent bout of profit-taking in the sector, CoreWeave and Nebius are two of the leading pure-play listed options.

Both rent Nvidia GPU capacity to AI labs and enterprises, both are scaling at a rate of knots, and both count Nvidia as a shareholder. But they are built and funded differently, and that will matter in the coming years.

CoreWeave (Nasdaq: CRWV), listed since March 2025, is a focused AI hyperscaler. CoreWeave describes itself as ‘The Essential Cloud for AI’. It sells GPU compute on usage-based and committed contracts, wrapped in storage, networking and software. This is a capital-hungry, debt-financed, single-purpose model.

Nebius (Nasdaq: NBIS), the Amsterdam-based group led by Arkady Volozh and carved out of the former Yandex, is structurally different in that it offers an end-to-end AI stack with developer services.

Its core AI cloud business is 98% of revenue, but the wider entity also holds stakes in Toloka, Avride, TripleTen and ClickHouse.

There is a significant difference in revenue generation. CoreWeave posted Q1 revenue of $2,078m, up 112%, with a $99.4bn backlog. Nebius reported group revenue of $399m, up 684%, with core AI run-rate revenue of $1.9bn, roughly a fifth of CoreWeave’s revenue.

But profitability sets them apart. CoreWeave reported a $740m net loss and adjusted EBITDA of $1,157m (56% margin), but adjusted operating income of just $21m after accounting for $536m of net interest.

CoreWeave is heavily funded by debt – a risk analysts have highlighted- and is probably the reason for its much lower price-to-sales ratio than Nebius.

Nebius is less geared. Group adjusted EBITDA was $130m in Q1(32% margin), core AI margin up to 45%, and net income of $621m, though that leans on a non-cash gain on its ClickHouse stake.

Nebius closed the quarter with $9.3bn cash. CoreWeave converts more to cash EBITDA but carries heavy debt. Nebius is smaller but better capitalised.

Both rely on bg deals with the world’s leading tech firms. CoreWeave signed a $21bn commitment with Meta in March, plus a multi-year deal with Anthropic.

Nebius’s headline win is a Microsoft GPU agreement worth up to $19.4bn, alongside a $27bn Meta partnership.

NVIDIA has invested $2bn in each of them.

CoreWeave is the most established incumbent, with vast backlog but a debt load that is weighing on its profitability. Nebius is the nimbler, better-funded challenger with a diversified structure that is favoured by the market at this point in time.

Interestingly, they have similar market caps despite widely different top lines.

CoreWeave is 36% higher year-to-date. But Nebius, one of the UK Investor Magazine’s Top Picks for 2026, is 188% higher so far in 2026.

Both are leveraged bets that compute demand will keep outrunning supply. Both are likely to receive additional large-scale compute deals.

Drinks brands owner Distil (LON: DIS) says Ardgowan Distillery Company has agreed to the early conversion of £3m of convertible loan notes issued in July 2021. This will give Distil a 10.5% stake. It will also receive a payment of £395,000. The Distil share price jumped 72.8% to 0.07p.

Shares in corporate finance business Marechale Capital (LON: MAC) continue to rise following yesterday’s news that it is acquiring broker Stanford Capital Partners along with global asset tokenisation platform Blubird Global and NJC Capital Management VSA Private Fund and its manager. The payment is 75.2 million shares issued at 1.75p each, which values the businesses at £1.32m. There will be £1.06m raised at the same price. The share price improved a further 26% to 4.6p.

Metir (LON: MET) has completed the first sale of a PFAS (synthetic chemicals that persist in the environment and body) detector unit in the US. There is a field test evaluation with a PFAS decontamination specialist in the UK. Metir has taken full ownership of the IP for the PFAS testing. The share price gained 18.5% to 0.8p.

Helium One Global (LON: HE1) says that the Galactica-Pegasus helium development project, where it has a 50% working interest, has secured a three month helium offtake agreement with a US industrial gases purchaser at around the current spot market price. The share price rose 6.28% to 0.575p.

FALLERS

Portmeirion (LON: PMP) announced a fundraising late on Wednesday evening. It raised £15m at 50p/share and a retail offer could raise up to £2m more. The homeware brands company will use the cash to reduce net debt and to invest in the US Amazon online business that has been brought in-house. There could also be small bolt-on acquisitions. The share price is two-fifths lower at 55.5p.

Tertiary Minerals (LON: TYM) raised £985,000 at 0.05p/share. Directors will subscribe £15,000 when the company is not in a close period. The cash will finance work on the Target A1 silver oxide discovery. The share price declined 11.5% to 0.0575p.

Legal services provider Gateley (LON: GTLY) says weak transactional volumes and global volatility hit its full year figures. Revenues will be better than expected and underlying operating profit in line with expectations at £21m-£22m, despite the lower margin due to the deferment of corporate and property transactions. The results will be announced in July. The share price fell 13.4% to 57.5p.

Switch Metals (LON: SWT) has outlined high priority lithium and tantalum drill targets at the Issia project. Soil sampling at Kabore showed a substantial lithium pathfinder anomaly. Zraty is a tantalum bearing pegmatite target. The share price slipped 8% to 11.5p.

Ex-dividends

Billington (LON: BILN) is paying a final dividend of 11p/share and the share price slid 10.5p to 402.5p.

Central Asia Metals (LON: CAML) is paying a final dividend of 7.5p/share and the share price fell 8.8p to 139.8p.

Helios Underwriting (LON: HUW) is paying a dividend of 10p/share and the share price slipped 8p to 214.5p.

Keystone Law (LON: KEYS) is paying a final dividend of 17.2p/share and the share price fell 14p to 550p.

Michelmersh Brick Holdings (LON: MBH) is paying a final dividend of 3p/share and the share price dipped 2p to 78p.

Robinson (LON: RBN) is paying a final dividend of 3.5p/share and the share price is unchanged at 135p.

Renew Holdings (LON: RNWH) is paying an interim dividend of 7p/share and the share price fell 11.5p to 865.5p.

Tandem Group (LON: TND) is paying an interim dividend of 3p/share and the share price is unchanged at 170p.

Winvia Entertainment (LON: WVIA) is paying a final dividend of 5.9p/share and the share price declined 17.5p to 257.5p.

CMC Markets shares soared on Thursday after delivering one of its strongest sets of results on record, with the trading and investment platform reporting a 15% rise in net operating income to £392.6 million for the year to 31 March 2026 and a 20% increase in pre-tax profit to £101.3 million.

This was the best yearly performance outside the Covid-boosted FY2021, driven by volatility caused tariffs, conflict, a parabolic run in gold and silver, and what he called AI-driven speculative behaviour across commodities.

CMC Markets shares were 12% higher at the time of writing.

Trading platform companies thrive in higher-volatility environments as traders become more active in capturing market moves.

However, rather than leaning on the retail trading surge such conditions typically produce, CMC pointed to the growing weight of its institutional and B2B operations, which it likened to running “an exchange-level service” for partner platforms and their underlying clients.

This may give CMC an edge over competitors in the years to come.

The Australian stockbroking arm was a standout, with net operating income up 32% to A$140.3 million, driven by rising client activity and assets under administration. A neobank API partnership drove what the company called exceptional growth in new account openings and trading activity, underlining the scalability of its wholesale distribution model.

Treasury and capital markets chipped in around £5.5 million of trading income, and CapX private market holdings added roughly £2.4 million in unrealised gains. CapX is fast becoming one of the UK’s leading platforms for small-cap fundraising.

On guidance, the company said it had made a positive start to FY2027 and expects net operating income to increase by at least 17%, to between £460 million and £480 million. The volatility caused by the war in the Middle East should help sustain revenue momentum this year.