FTSE 100 Live: UK stocks head lower led by mining sector sell-off Proactive uses images sourced from Shutterstock

• FTSE 100 down 31 points at 10,802
• Miners lead the decline 
• Scottish Mortgage heads Footsie
• Economy grows by 0.4%

9.27am: Scottish Mortgage heads the risers

Scottish Mortgage rose 1.8%, one of the few blue chips in the green, and the reason sits several thousand miles west.

US inflation eased for a second month in July to 3.4%, with core down to 2.5%, the softest in five months.

That has knocked the implied odds of a September Fed hike back to just above 40% and pulled the two-year Treasury yield down to 4.20%.

Lower yields flatter long-duration growth stocks, which is precisely what Baillie Gifford's flagship owns.

Then the AI infrastructure trade did the rest.

CoreWeave jumped on 112% revenue growth, Super Micro more than doubled earnings estimates, and Nvidia, a top ten holding, added 2.7%.

TSMC, ASML, Amazon and Meta sit nearby in the portfolio, with SpaceX preference shares accounting for more than a tenth of it.

8.30am: Miners drag FTSE 100 lower as metals rally runs out of road

Mining shares dragged the FTSE 100 down more than 50 points on Thursday, unwinding a chunk of the sector's recent gains as metal prices lost momentum.

Antofagasta, the Chilean-focused copper producer, was the worst performer, down 4.79% at 3,842p.

Rio Tinto fell 4.08% to 7,217p, Fresnillo dropped 3.81% to 2,897p, Endeavour Mining lost 2.71% at 4,176p and Anglo American slipped 2.59% to 3,953.5p.

The selling follows an unusually strong stretch for the sector, with copper reaching record levels on the London Metal Exchange last week above $14,200 a tonne.

Much of that move was driven by supply worries rather than demand, including the Democratic Republic of Congo's ban on exports of copper concentrate and the continued diversion of metal into US warehouses ahead of possible import tariffs.

Goldman Sachs has since played down the Congolese ban, saying it expects little impact on global copper balances.

The demand side looks weaker.

Chinese imports of unwrought copper and copper products fell 11.5% year on year in July to 425,000 tonnes, with the seven-month total down 6.2%.

Consumer and producer prices in China also slowed last month, pointing to soft domestic activity in the market that consumes more than half the world's copper.

Precious metals were similarly subdued, with silver slipping back below $65 an ounce after touching a seven-week high earlier in the session.

Traders are waiting on US producer price figures due later, having seen consumer inflation ease for a second month to 3.4% in July.

That has trimmed the implied odds of a Federal Reserve rate rise in September to roughly 40%, from close to 50% a day earlier.

Elevated oil prices are also weighing on sentiment, with the Strait of Hormuz still closed and rhetoric between Washington and Tehran hardening again.

For a sector that has powered much of the FTSE 100's recent advance, the reversal is a reminder of how quickly the trade can turn.

7.30am: UK economy holds up

 

Not bad, all things considered. The economy grew 0.4% in the second quarter, down from 0.6% in the first, which counts as a decent result for a three-month stretch that included a war in Iran and all the energy price jitters that came with it.

June did the heavy lifting, up 0.3% when economists had pencilled in a flat month.

Services carried the quarter, with information and communication up 2.7% and computer programming up 3.7%, so the tech end of the economy is clearly still busy.

Manufacturing managed 1.0%, thanks largely to a 4.2% jump in pharmaceuticals, but utilities went backwards and dragged production to a standstill.

Construction eked out 0.3% and remains 2.0% smaller than a year ago, which tells you something about the state of the sector.

For the Bank of England, a resilient economy with a 2.9% GDP deflator does not exactly scream urgency on rate cuts.

Ahead of the open

The FTSE 100 is expected to open 23 points higher on Thursday, tracking a broad advance across Asian markets.

Korea, a global hub for the computer hardware industry, led the gainers as investors pushed back into technology stocks after the summer rout.

Confidence was helped by US inflation data showing prices slowing last month, easing fears of an imminent interest rate rise.

July's consumer price index reading came in line with forecasts and followed figures pointing to a softer jobs market.

That gives the Federal Reserve room to keep borrowing costs on hold for now.

South Korea's Kospi surged almost 5% in the opening minutes, with chipmakers SK hynix and Samsung clawing back losses from the sector-wide selloff that ran from late June through July.

Tokyo and Shanghai also advanced, though Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney dipped.

Bargain-hunting has supported the bounce, as have strong earnings from Amazon, Microsoft and, more recently, CoreWeave.

Oil slipped more than 1%, snapping a six-day run of gains, as traders watched the US-Iran standoff with the Strait of Hormuz still shut.