A £300 million stake sale by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund today put pressure on Sainsbury's during another dour session for the FTSE 100 index. The supermarket’s shares slid 5% or 13.7p to 274.3p after Reuters reported the disposal of more than 100 million shares at a price of 280p.

Wall Street markets closed slightly lower last night after weekly initial jobless claims of 258,000 topped expectations as the highest figure since August 2023. The releases gave a nudge to expectations of a quarter point cut by the Federal Reserve in November,

They think that the GDP growth will be slower in the second half than in the first, but household spending should start to provide more meaningful support beyond that.