| London stocks were steady in early trade on Thursday as equity markets reopened after the Christmas break, despite huge gains on Wall Street. At 0830 GMT, the FTSE 100 was trading at 6,705.95, flat as a pancake even after the Dow surged more than 1,000 points on Wednesday, racking up its biggest one-day points gain ever. This followed Wall Street’s worst-ever performance on Christmas Eve. In currency markets, the pound was up 0.2% against the dollar at 1.2660 and down 0.1% versus the euro at 1.1118. Stephen Innes, head of Oanda Asia Pacific trading, said: "It didn't take much to persuade the bargain hunters into action as early retailer reports are all pointing to a strong holiday season while investors took comfort in Kevin Hassett's, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, affirmation that Jerome Powell’s job is '100% safe’. "And oil bulls finally had something to cheer about with WTI recovering north of 9 % reflecting gains in US equity markets but also supply discussions. "The surge in online purchases over the holiday season should be a reminder for the markets never to underestimate the purchasing power of the US consumer, as Mastercard payments tracking between November 1 and Christmas Eve leapt 5.1% from a year ago." Adding to the upbeat tone in the US were reports that a US government delegation will travel to Beijing in the week of 7 January to hold trade talks with Chinese officials. Still, the buoyant mood failed to spill over into UK trading, where things were decidedly more quiet, as is often the case during the period between Christmas and New Year. A survey of company directors from the Institute of Directors revealed that business confidence in the British economy has declined to the lowest level since the EU referendum. About 57% of more than 700 company directors surveyed said they expected things to get worse, while less than 20% expected an improvement. This was the worst net score since the IoD started its confidence survey in 2016. Meanwhile, UK retailers were faring pretty well after the latest data from Springboard showed that the number of people heading off to the Boxing Day sales has dropped for the third year running despite heavy discounting. Marks & Spencer, Next and Primark owner AB Foods were all in the green, although Debenhams retreated. According to Springboard, the number of shoppers to shopping centres, high streets and retail parks had fallen 3.1%year-on-year by 1600 GMT on Wednesday. Unsurprisingly, there was little in the way of UK corporate news. Evraz gained ground as it confirmed it was looking at a potential combination of coal assets with fellow producer Sibuglemet. The company, responding to media speculation about a joint venture, said it was exploring ways to increase the long-term security of supply of a wide range of coking coal grades required for the group's operations. Elsewhere, contracts for differences online service provider Plus500 surged to the top of the FTSE 250 after saying it expects its full-year performance to be ahead of expectations as the "strong momentum" reported last month continued. "The group has continued to perform well since the implementation in August of regulatory changes by the European Securities and Markets Authority," the company said in a trading statement. British American Tobacco, BT and Dixons Carphone were among the companies whose stock went ex-dividend. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment