Tuesday 19 May 2026 6:30 am | Updated: Tuesday 19 May 2026 4:41 pm

As it happened: Choppy finish for FTSE 100 as global markets rocked by AI sell-off

By: Samuel Norman, Felix Armstrong and Mauricio Alencar

Breaking news concept with a digital globe, network connections, and binary code representing global communication — Soaring oil prices have fanned inflationary fears.

Welcome back to the Morning Wire liveblog.

Businesses have raised the alarm over falling vacancies as new data showed a further weakening in the jobs market.

Vacancies remained at a five-year low in April 2026, with a leading industry group saying recruiters were “pausing” plans to hire workers.

The British Chambers of Commerce’s head of policy Patrick Milnes said the “possibility of stagflation is very real” as a result of a weak jobs market and higher price pressures.

He said: “A further drop in vacancies, now at their lowest outside the pandemic for more than a decade, suggests businesses are pausing recruitment. This is unsurprising as labour costs remain a key concern.”

But welfare secretary Pat McFadden looked to the brighter side of new jobs statistics that showed youth unemployment rising.

He pointed to a 0.1 percentage point rise in the employment rate on the quarter and a higher rate than last year, reflecting how more people were in the labour force than at the same time last year.

Private sector pay growth slowed, at three per cent, while public sector pay was higher at 4.8 per cent.

Investment platform IG Group is the FTSE 100’s highest climber on Tuesday, up nine per cent on strong trading revenues, while tech retailer Currys leads the FTSE 250, jumping 13 per cent on the strength of its profit uplift.

The price of oil is moving lower after President Donald Trump abandoned plans to renew strike action on Iran.

Trump said he called off the plans at the request of Gulf leaders, who informed him that a deal is set to be made that is “very acceptable” to the US. The President added there would be: “NO NUCLEAR WEAPONS FOR IRAN!”

Though Trump the US would be ready to “go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice” if there was no acceptable deal.

We’ll be bringing you the latest on this and more.