Positive earnings from British homebuilder Barratt and pharmaceutical company GSK have contributed to a strong start for UK stocks this morning, with both the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 starting well.

This upbeat start to the day in the UK continues a largely positive day yesterday on the other side of the Atlantic. Wall Street closed yesterday’s sessions with gains in all three benchmark indices, driven largely by strong performances from Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Tesla.

However, there was no respite for Facebook owner Meta Platforms, whose share price fell a further 2.1% during the session. This latest day of losses means that, in just four trading sessions, Meta Platforms’ share price has fallen almost 32%, wiping around $280 billion from its market capitalization in the process.

In yesterday's news, we wrote about exercise bike maker Peloton Interactive, whose share price increased 21% during Monday’s session amidst reports of takeover interest from Amazon and Nike.

Yesterday, Peloton shares surged again, this time by more than 25%, after announcing that current CEO and co-founder, John Foley, would be stepping down to be replaced by Barry McCarthy, the former chief financial officer of Spotify and Netflix. Peloton further announced that they would be laying off approximately 20% of their workforce, in an attempt to cut costs after announcing a larger than expected quarterly loss.

Another company that enjoyed large gains on Wall Street yesterday was cybersecurity firm Mandiant.

Mandiant’s share price rose almost 18% during the session after reports emerged that Microsoft was considering a takeover bid for the company and that discussions to that effect were being held between the two.

Cyber-attacks have been on the rise in recent years, and this potential acquisition could help Microsoft improve protection for it clients. Last year, the tech giant purchased two other cybersecurity firms and further pledged to spend $20 billion on improving cybersecurity over the next five years.

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Depicted: Admirals MetaTrader 5 – Mandiant Daily Chart. Date Range: 21 May 2021 – 8 February 2022. Date Captured: 9 February 2022. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.

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Depicted: Admirals MetaTrader 5 – Mandiant Daily Chart. Date Range: 30 April 2018 – 8 February 2022. Date Captured: 9 February 2022. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.