| London stocks ended higher on Tuesday, with sentiment underpinned by a pledge from Chinese leader Xi Jinping to open up the country's economy and lower import tariffs. The FTSE 100 finished 1.0% or 72.0 points higher to 7,266.75, while the pound edged up 0.08% versus the euro to 1.1478 and the dollar by 0.25% to trade at 1.4167. In a speech at the Boao Forum for Asia, seen by many as Asia's Davos, President Xi - who made no reference to the trade spat with the US - said he will "significantly lower" tariffs on car imports this year and ease restrictions on foreign ownership in the industry as soon as possible. He also said he would expand the protection of intellectual property. "The cold war and zero-sum mentality looks out of place in today's world. Arrogance or only focusing one's own interests will get nowhere. Only peaceful development and cooperation can truly bring win-win or all-win results," he said. This gave a new lease of life to the recent outburst of risk appetite, said Chris Beauchamp, market analyst at IG. "But a glance at the charts will show prices have bounced back to levels where momentum has evaporated over the past month, so the job is still definitely half-done," Beauchamp said. "President Xi has succeeded in batting the ball back into the US court, so we now watch and wait for a response - a firm negative will send equities tumbling back down, but if Mr Trump nods his approval of this first step towards negotiation we might see stock markets edge up once more. "Now is not the time to chase equities, particularly with earnings season just days away, but those who bought into last week's lows will be keeping their fingers crossed that this bounce has a bit more life in it yet." Indeed, reports surfaced later that US-China talks had hit a stumbling block over the tech sector during the previous week. The White House's demands that China curtail support for high-technology industries were met with the sort of reaction from Beijing that implied that a resolution may be some ways off, Bloomberg reported. To take note of as well, but perhaps with more positive implications for stockmarkets around the world, overnight the President of the Federal Reserve bank of Dallas, Robert Kaplan, said he still expected two more interest rate hikes in 2018. However, should the rate of economic growth in the States moderate afterwards, then "for me, the path of rate increases is likely a bit flatter". Against that backdrop, and Washington's response to Xi permitting, the next focus for markets was expected to be the release of the minutes from the Federal Reserve's March meeting on Wednesday, along with US inflation figures for the same month. In UK corporate news, Glencore, which took a beating on Monday on the back of US President Trump's sanctions against Russia, rose as it said chief executive Ivan Glasenberg has resigned as a director of Russian aluminium producer Rusal, in which it holds a stake of just under 9%. In a statement, the outfit said it was "taking all necessary measures in order to mitigate any risks" to its business as result of the designation of Rusal and its parent company EN+ as Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) by the Trump administration. Russian steel producer Evraz was on the front foot after heavy losses in the previous session, while miners also bounced back, with Anglo American, Antofagasta, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto all stronger. Luxury fashion house Burberry pushed up after better-than-expected first-quarter results from French peer LVMH, while Card Factory rallied as it promised to keep gifting investors more dividends and posted full-year results that showed growth in sales but smaller profits that are unlikely to improve much in the coming year. Elsewhere, Informa's proposed acquisition of UBM has received a number of regulatory approvals and the companies are confident they can complete the deal by the end of the second quarter of this year. Shares in both companies rose. In terms of sector, retailers rose while pub companies lost their fizz following mixed news. The BRC-KPMG report showed UK retail sales increased 1.4% in March on a like-for-like basis, improving from 0.6% in February and above the consensus expectation for a 0.1% decline. Year-over-year growth in total sales rose to 2.3%, from 1.6%. However, figures from Barclays showed consumer spending growth slowed well below the three-month average to 2.0% in March from 3.8% in February, well below the three-month average of 3.2%. Pub operators took a hit, with Mitchells & Butlers and Marston's both in the red. Workspace Group slipped after saying it has been given planning permission for a £15m major refurbishment at The Shaftesbury Centre in west London's Ladbroke Grove. In broker note action, Ascential was downgraded to 'hold' at Berenberg, while Aviva was cut to 'add' over at Alphavalue. Next was upgraded to 'reduce' at Alphavalue and Ted Baker was boosted by an upgrade to 'buy' at Goldman Sachs. | 
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