The FTSE 100 index closed up 39.47 points, or 0.4%, at 10,902.56 on Friday as London's stock market moved against weakness in US technology shares. The broader FTSE 250 fell 0.5% to 24,805.41, while the AIM all-share edged up 0.1% to 757.19. Over the week, the FTSE 100 gained 2.2%, the FTSE 250 rose 1.2% and the AIM all-share increased 0.3%.
In the United States, equity markets closed lower across the board. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.2%, the S&P 500 dropped 0.8% and the Nasdaq Composite declined 1.4%. Nvidia continued its steep decline, falling a further 3.4% as investors assessed the impact of chief executive Jensen Huang's departure on the company and the wider sector. Other major technology firms also retreated, with Advanced Micro Devices shedding 10%, Intel down 5.0%, Broadcom falling 6.1% and Micron Technology declining 4.6%.
David Morrison, an analyst at Trade Nation, said Nvidia serves as the 'cornerstone' of the artificial intelligence trade because it designs the graphics processors essential to data centres and helps finance the operators that depend on its chips. He noted that Nvidia had already lost more than a fifth of its value in four weeks before Huang's departure, suggesting investors harbour doubts about returns on current and future AI investment. The technology weakness weighed on London-listed tech investors, with Polar Capital Technology Trust down 3.4% and Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust falling 1.6%.
Separately, Microsoft clawed back early losses to trade 0.1% higher as it worked to restore services following a global outage affecting Outlook and other Microsoft 365 applications that began late Thursday. The company said it was seeing 'positive results' from its recovery efforts and ruled out malicious activity as the cause, instead attributing the disruption to elevated load on its infrastructure. Among London's blue-chip stocks, Aviva climbed 3.4% after reiterating confidence in meeting its three-year targets, while Wise jumped 7.8% after reporting higher half-year profit and revenue. WH Smith fell 6.1%, extending losses from its annual results announcement.
Ahead of a highly anticipated artificial intelligence stock listing, Anthropic said in a regulatory filing earlier this week that it plans to sell 825 million shares at 70-78 US dollars. At the top of that range, the initial public offering would raise 64.4 billion dollars in gross proceeds. Adding a separate 26 billion dollars non-voting placement with Alphabet, Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Broadcom, Micron, Microsoft and TSMC brings the combined total to 90.4 billion dollars, or nearly 100 billion dollars if the over-allotment option is fully exercised. Reports suggest final pricing could come next Wednesday with trading starting a day later, which would make the offering bigger than SpaceX's IPO in July, when Elon Musk's firm raised 85.7 billion dollars.
In currency markets, the pound was quoted at 1.3219 dollars late Friday, down from 1.3233 on Thursday, while sterling firmed against the euro to 1.1983 from 1.1968. Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at Ebury, said the dollar had posted one of its best runs of 2026 this week, driven by a hot October inflation report and hawkish comments from Federal Reserve member Christopher Waller. In commodity markets, gold was quoted at 3,878.82 dollars an ounce, up from 3,865.83 on Thursday, and Brent oil traded at 96.59 dollars a barrel, higher than 93.53 on Thursday.