Strong earnings help Admiral top FTSE 100 Admiral Group reached the summit of the FTSE 100 on Wednesday after the insurer impressed traders with forecast-beating annual earnings. The vehicle insurance specialist said its annual profit before tax rose 13 per cent to £299m from turnover of £2.19bn, up 38 per cent. Shares in the group climbed 9.2 per cent to £11.36, the best gain on the top-tier index by a clear margin. Marcus Barnard, analyst at Oriel Securities, said: "These seem to be a better set of figures than feared and above consensus expectations . . . driven by guidance following the third-quarter profit warning. We see a group which is sensibly slowing the growth rate and increasing premium rates, while tackling the emergence of bodily injury claims. Much of the rest of the leaderboard featured resource stocks, as valuations in the sector after two sessions of losses looked more tempting than the concern about the outlook for global growth which had sparked the selling. Kazakhmys led the sector, rising 2.1 per cent to 942p. There were five miners on the list of the 10 best-performing stocks. Overall, London's benchmark index remained aimless, slipping 4 points to 5,761.91, waiting for a sense of direction from US jobs data due at the end of the week. "The market is likely to continue lower until it completes a retracement of the entire December to February rally," warned James A. Hyerczyk, analyst at Autochartist. Based on this range of 5,328.70 to 5,964.00, investors should anticipate the next leg down to reach 5,646.35 to 5,571.38. Financial stocks remained under pressure as traders weighed the implications of the latest round of the Greek debt crisis. Stan Shamu, analyst at IG Markets, said: "Thursday is the deadline for Greek bondholders to accept a debt swap deal, and there are fears that the participation will not be big enough. After the relative calmness we have seen in global markets recently, one could just sense that a big move is just around the corner. It seems the sell-off was inevitable given the speed at which risk assets have traded up this year. With key market event risk drivers piling up into the end of the week, the volatility is likely to ramp up. In the meantime, Royal Bank of Scotland fell 2.2 per cent to 25.6p. Barclays was 1.8 per cent weaker at 234½p and Lloyds Banking Group fell 1.6 per cent to 33.6p, all among the biggest fallers on the market.