Unilever shares reached their record high level since the bountiful trade in 1999, in the early morning’s trade following the consumer giant’s second-quarter trade sales astonishingly exceeded many analysts’ predictions and estimates. The group said that the principal revenue went up 5.8 pc and the shares moved up to 5.1 pc earlier this morning.

Overall, it was yet again another apathetic start to the day’s trade with the FTSE 100 plummeting 0.1 pc while the FTSE 250 was flat line. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the day up to 0.5 pc at 12, 66.05 in spite of several rather sub-standard statistics.

Simon Denham at Capital Spreads said that the unexpected drop in the US new home sales and purchases had inadequate consequences on the Dow Jones which managed to close 60 points a little bit higher above the 12,600 level. Investors were instead fascinated by several reports on the news in the likes of Boeing and Caterpillar which the two big companies successfully raised their forecasted profits with rumors on QE3.

It might have been the result of the bottom picking for some participating bidders following three straight sessions of losses and albeit the market did withdraw from its highs later on again. Back into the FTSE 100, publisher Reed Elsevier was at the same time near the top of the blue chip index going further up 3.9 pc. The group said it would need to accelerate disposals of non-core businesses as well as a return of purchases of shares in order to offset the impact on earnings-per-share. Investec analyst Steve Liechti said that the shares are reasonably looking great because of the low valuation relative to the quality of the business and that the position for Reed is fairly positive.

On the other hand, investors were not at all impressed with the Royal Dutch Shell’s figures following the group reportedly showed quarterly profits excluding incomparable items of $5.72bn. among the mid-caps, technology group Laird was surging ahead climbing 9pc on the back of a good set of first-half numbers. The company intended for the underlying pre-tax profit to climb 7pc to £27.3m and augmented its interim dividend by 26pc.

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