LONDON (ShareCast) - Resource stocks were leading the way on the FTSE by the afternoon on Wednesday, boosted by rising metal prices and hopes that US law-makers can come to an arrangement over the impending 'fiscal cliff'.

Optimism was sparked at the weekend following President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner's unscheduled face-to-face meeting.

"It appears that negotiations over how to avoid the fiscal cliff at the end of the year are actually starting to go somewhere," market analyst Craig Erlam from Alpari said.

"Details of the discussions between Obama and Boehner haven’t been released but it now appears to be a case of deciding which entitlements to cut back on."

Evraz, Anglo American, Tullow Oil, Polymetal International, and ENRC were all making decent gains.

Anglo was also given a lift by Barclays Capital which upped its recommendation for the shares to 'equal weight', while BHP Billiton rose after selling its "non-strategic" interests in the East and West Browse Joint Ventures (JV), offshore Western Australia, for $1.63bn.

Insurers were also performing well, rising in part following a report out yesterday which showed the biggest global insurers are less reliant on short-term funding and not as connected with other financial institutions than the biggest of the large banks. The research was conducted by the Geneva Association, an insurance industry-funded think tank.

Meanwhile, Severn Trent was heading lower following a strong rise the previous day, as investors' interest turned to riskier stocks.

Elsewhere, engineering group Babcock was lower after going ex-dividend.

Costa and Premier Inn owner Whitbread was in the red, pulling back after its strong rise yesterday on the back of an in-line third-quarter trading update, in which it revealed that total sales were up 14.4% year-on-year.


FTSE 100 - Risers
Evraz (EVR) 262.20p +3.92%
Anglo American (AAL) 1,893.00p +3.27%
Admiral Group (ADM) 1,143.00p +2.51%
Tullow Oil (TLW) 1,178.00p +2.43%
Polymetal International (POLY) 1,135.00p +1.70%
G4S (GFS) 254.90p +1.47%
Weir Group (WEIR) 1,869.00p +1.30%
Kazakhmys (KAZ) 759.00p +1.27%
RSA Insurance Group (RSA) 123.80p +1.23%
Kingfisher (KGF) 275.10p +1.21%

FTSE 100 - Fallers
Intertek Group (ITRK) 3,061.00p -1.32%
Johnson Matthey (JMAT) 2,428.00p -1.18%
Severn Trent (SVT) 1,557.00p -1.02%
Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 267.30p -1.00%
BT Group (BT.A) 234.40p -0.97%
Whitbread (WTB) 2,464.00p -0.96%
Reckitt Benckiser Group (RB.) 3,943.00p -0.81%
Experian (EXPN) 1,020.00p -0.78%
Aggreko (AGK) 2,183.00p -0.77%
Hargreaves Lansdown (HL.) 704.50p -0.77%

NR

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