UK stocks climb to highest level since February 2020

The FTSE rose 0.6 per cent to 7,062 points, breaching the 7,000 threshold for the first time since late February last year when the coronavirus swept into Europe, led higher by financials, basic materials and industrial stocks. The move followed strong retail sales and employment figures released in the US on Thursday and record quarterly GDP data from China, which often moves markets despite analysts’ long-held misgivings about the validity of the statistics.