26th Mar 2014 07:41
LONDON (Alliance News) - UK stocks are set to continue higher Wednesday after gaining on Tuesday on the back of some strong earnings, reasonable economic data, and the absence of any further escalation of problems in Ukraine.
US consumer confidence reached a six-year high on Tuesday. Investor confidence appears to be improving, along with the weather in the US, as worries over tensions in Ukraine that have been dragging equities lower recently have eased. The DJIA closed up 0.6% on Tuesday, while the S&P 500 gained 0.4%, and the Nazdaq Composite closed down 0.2%.
In Asia, the Nikkei is up 0.4%, the Hang Seng Composite is up 0.9%, while the Shanghai Composite is down 0.2%.
Spread betters are indicating UK stocks will continue where they left off Tuesday, by pushing higher. The FTSE 100 is called to open 0.2% higher at 6,613.00
In a light day of scheduled blue chip releases, Lloyds Banking Group has grabbed the headlines after the UK Treasury said Tuesday evening it will sell another 7.5% of the bank, reducing its holding to about 25%. This is the second set of shares sold by the government since the bailout during the financial crisis. The shares have been placed at 75.5 pence each, meaning the government will raise GBP4.2 billion in the sale.
Already released this Wednesday, Tui Travel has said its trading in line with expectations, while energy company SSE has announced a price freeze.
Outside of the FTSE 100, Bellway have released interim results, while preliminary full-year results are out from Marshalls, Lamprell, Moss Bros, EnQuest, and Vislink.
In the economic calendar, the German Gfk consumer confidence survey recorded 8.5 for April, unchanged from the previous month, as expected.
Still to come in a light morning for economic data, Italian retail sales are due at 0900 GMT, with sales expected to have risen by 0.4% month-on-month in January, which would reverse the 0.3% decline recorded in December.
The main economic focus Wednesday will be in the afternoon with the release of US durable goods orders for February at 1230 GMT. Economists expect orders to have risen by 1.0% over the month, reversing the 1.0% decline recorded in January. The US Markit Services PMI for March also is due to be released, with economists expecting a pick up in activity to 54.2, from 53.3 in February.
Ahead of the equity market open, the pound and the euro are little changed against the dollar, currently trading at USD1.6510 and 1.3805 respectively.
In US corporate news, Facebook has announced another purchase, spending USD2 billion on virtual-reality gaming startup Oculus VR Inc. Last month Facebook acquired the instant messenger WhatsApp for about USD19 billion.
By Jon Darby; [email protected]; @jondarby100
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