London, March 16, 2026, 18:47 GMT
The FTSE 100 finished Monday 0.55% higher at 10,317.69, shaking off early nerves as energy stocks got a boost when oil prices slipped. BP and Shell both picked up more than 1%. Financials, consumer staples—including everyday product makers—and property investment trusts joined the rally. Segro jumped 2.8% and Hammerson surged 4.1% after Morgan Stanley upgrades. The FTSE 250 dropped 0.2%, its fourth loss in a row.
The timing of the rebound stands out—it landed right ahead of a stretch of central bank meetings. The Bank of England is up on Thursday, and rate cut bets have faded; investors are no longer assuming one as the default. According to a Reuters poll, most economists see the BoE holding at 3.75%. Dani Stoilova, economist at BNP Paribas Markets 360, put it bluntly: the odds of squeezing in another cut are “looking narrower and narrower by the day.” Reuters
UK assets have taken a beating, with Britain viewed as particularly vulnerable to energy imports. By Friday, both FTSE indexes were down for a second week running, and fresh figures pointed to a flat economy in January. “The real risk for Britain,” Berenberg analyst Jonathan Stubbs said, would be a sustained shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz and stubbornly high energy prices. Reuters
Mid-caps came under pressure Monday, with domestic worries mounting. S&P Global’s consumer sentiment index dipped to 44.1 in March, down from 44.8 in February—the weakest reading since January 2025. Households, meanwhile, reported the biggest hesitation on major purchases in over a year. “First concrete signs” that the war is already impacting the UK economy, economist Maryam Baluch said of the slide. Reuters
Rate markets are showing it, too. The yield on Britain’s two-year government bond has jumped 0.60 percentage point this March, while sterling picked up 1.4% versus the euro as traders flip from pricing in BoE cuts to weighing possible hikes. Short-dated rates are driving the action now, said Mizuho’s Jordan Rochester: “And now they matter.” Reuters
Macro moves didn’t tell the whole story on Monday. Close Brothers plunged nearly 15% after Viceroy Research revealed it’s short, taking aim at how the lender handles motor finance commission provisions. Close Brothers, for its part, said it “strongly disagrees” with the criticism, insisting its provisioning lines up with UK-adopted accounting standards. The company is set to report half-year numbers Tuesday. Reuters
London more or less followed the rest of Europe, with the STOXX 600 edging up 0.45% as falling oil prices cooled some of the recent jitters. Real estate and energy shares were out front for most of the session. Goldman Sachs bumped its 12-month call on the FTSE 100 to 10,800 from 10,400. “Policy will be on hold” this week, Raymond James strategist Jeremy Batstone-Carr said, flagging investor attention on updated forecasts and signals from central bank leaders. Reuters
Still, that rebound could be short-lived. The Bank for International Settlements urged central banks to “look through” a supply shock if it ends up being transitory, but chief economist Hyun Song Shin cautioned that prolonged conflict would only deepen the impact. Over at Goldman, analysts say a major oil supply hit could drag the S&P 500 closer to 5,400 this year—a clear signal that another crude spike would likely weigh on UK stocks and push the BoE further away from rate cuts. Reuters
