Happy Bonfire Night! It’s been another positive week for the FTSE 100 index, which stands at 7,314.57 points late on Friday afternoon. Earlier this morning, the Footsie hit its 2021 high of 7,331.25, before easing back since lunchtime. Even so, it’s ahead by 0.5% today and 1.1% for the week. It’s also gained 3.4% over a month and 3.9% over six months. In this calendar year, the index has climbed by 13.1% and has leapt by 23.9% since Bonfire Night 2020.
The FTSE 100’s biggest winners this week
Since last Friday (29 October), 60 FTSE 100 stocks have gained in value. The average rise across these winners was 2.7% (over two percentage points higher than the index’s return). Thus, 40 stocks have fallen in value, with losses ranging from a tiny 0.1% to a hefty 23.2%. These were the Footsie’s biggest winners over the past week:
| Company | Gain |
| BT Group | +13.3 |
| Royal Mail | +6.9 |
| Spirax-Sarco Engineering | +5.8 |
| Intertek Group | +5.5 |
| Experian | +4.8 |
The biggest winner by far is BT Group, whose shares have surged by over 13% this week, having crashed by 13% in October. In second place is another FTSE 100 share popular with retail investors, Royal Mail, which gained almost 7%. Taking the bronze medal is British engineer Spirax-Sarco Engineering, with a rise of almost 6%. Fourth place goes to inspection, product testing, and certification company Intertek Group, up 5.5%. And in fifth and final place is Anglo-Irish consumer-credit reporting firm Experian, with a gain of nearly 5%.
For the record, the five worst-performing FTSE 100 shares since last week lost between 5.9% and 23.2%, for an average loss of 11.1%. This goes to show that, regardless of how the Footsie moves, its individual members can produce a very wide range of results!