28th Aug 2014 06:41
LONDON (Alliance News) - UK stocks will open slightly lower as markets express caution ahead of German inflation and unemployment data and US GDP later on Thursday.
Futures indicate that the FTSE 100 will open 11 points lower at 6,820.0 after closing at 6,830.66 on Wednesday.
US trading was largely flat on Wednesday, with the DJIA closing just 0.1% higher. The S&P 500 closed flat but for the second consecutive day above the 2,000 milestone, and the NASDAQ Composite closed down 0.1%.
In Asia, trading is weak Thursday, with the Nikkei in Tokyo closing the day down 0.5%, and both Hong Kong's Hang Seng index and Shanghai's SSE Composite trading down 0.3%.
UK share prices failed to show any real direction on Wednesday and remained broadly flat throughout most of the day but ending marginally higher.
Company news was dominated by the Kantar Wordpanel grocers market share data for the 12 weeks to August 17, which showed that Wm Morrisons Supermarkets, Tesco and J Sainsbury all lost market share to discount and upmarket supermarkets on a yearly basis.
However, Morrisons ended amongst the top gainers in the FTSE 100 as it managed to maintain a constant market share for the 12 week period compared to the immediately prior period.
German consumer price index will be announced at 1300 BST. The year-on-year figure for July was growth of 0.8%, and economists expect inflation for August to show the same result. The news will be eagerly anticipated by investors looking ahead of next week's European Central bank meeting, but market commentators believe that the ECB will be reluctant to make any changes to policy.
"Unless German CPI drops off a cliff when [Thursday's] CPI data is published then it is likely that we won?t see any action next week," said CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson.
German unemployment figures will be released in the morning, at 0855 BST. Economists predict that the figure will be unchanged at 6.7% from July.
In addition, US GDP figures will be released at 1330 BST. The annualised figure for the second quarter is expected to come in at a growth of 4% after a fall of 2.1% in the previous quarter.
In stock news, interim results have been released from FTSE 250 listed Xaar, Melrose Industries and Unite Group amongst many others.
By Neil Thakrar; [email protected]
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