Wednesday Morning Markets: FTSE Rises, Oil Jumps and Wetherspoon Warns Again

London’s FTSE 100 has rallied 1% on Wednesday morning, though the FTSE 250 has edged down 0.1%.

Sentiment is firmer on the continent, with Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 both up 0.8% and the Euro Stoxx 50 adding 0.3%.

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In commodities, Brent crude has surged more than 3% to $93.81 a barrel as U.S.-Iran strikes continued and Washington threatened to hit an Iranian nuclear site, raising fears of a sharper escalation.

Meanwhile, on the domestic data front, UK inflation cooled to 2.6% in June, down from 2.8% and slightly below the 2.7% consensus, offering some relief on the rate outlook.

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Precious-metals miners again lead the blue chips as gold and silver gain ground. Endeavour Mining (LON: EDV) has risen 2.95%, while Fresnillo (LON: FRES) has gained 2.30% after a second-quarter production report.

SSE (LON: SSE) has added 2.08%. On the downside, Games Workshop (LON: GAW) is down 1.94%, Burberry (LON: BRBY) has lost 1.66% and Sage (LON: SGE) has slipped 1.48%.

In corporate news, Bloomsbury (LON: BMY) confirmed it is a beneficiary of the approved $1.5 billion Anthropic copyright settlement, with a U.S. court listing 14,087 of its titles at around $3,000 each, split between author and publisher.

Energean (LON: ENOG) said a second oil train had boosted its Brent-linked liquids output.

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Greencore (LON: GNC) tops the FTSE 250, up 10.82%, after upgrading full-year profit guidance on strong Q3 volume growth and early Bakkavor synergies. Bridgepoint (LON: BPT) has risen 5.44%.

The standout faller is J D Wetherspoon (LON: JDW), down 8.09%, after chairman Tim Martin warned full-year profit would miss expectations on higher food, labour, energy and business-rates costs, despite like-for-like sales up 4% over the latest 12 weeks.

Funding Circle (LON: FCH) has declined 4.87% and Jupiter (LON: JUP) has lost 3.41%.