28th Jan 2015 10:50
LONDON (Alliance News) - London stocks are mixed Wednesday, with early morning gains being erased as investors look again to take their cues from US earnings and focus on the outcome of the first monetary policy meeting of the year by the Federal Reserve.
The FTSE 100 is down 0.3% at 6,793.99, the FTSE 250 is flat at 16,359.78 and the AIM All-Share is up a fraction at 689.36. The CAC 40 in Paris is down 0.8% and Germany's DAX 30 is off 0.6%, as concerns over Greece continue to affect sentiment.
"Nerves continue to get the better of traders as the wait for meaningful government policies from Athens continues to preoccupy investor thinking," says Alastair McCaig at IG.
Wall Street is forecast to rebound modestly from Tuesday's falls, when the DJIA dropped 1.7% as index heavyweights Proctor & Gamble, Caterpillar, DuPont, United Technologies and Pfizer among others, fell short with earnings and outlook. However, Apple bucked that trend after the US market close with record quarterly earnings on strong iPhone sales.
The DJIA is called to open 0.2% higher, the S&P 500 is seen up 0.6%, and the tech-focused Nasdaq 100 expected to open 1.3% higher, lifted by Apple's record first quarter net income of USD18 billion, the biggest quarterly income in US corporate history.
In a light day for European economic news, attention is squarely focused on the policy statement from the Federal Reserve's FOMC meeting due at 1900 GMT.
"Tonight will see the FOMC statement released and speculation is that it could well keep phraseology similar to the last statement as it stalls for time," says McCaig at IG. "The slightly cooling economic data that has come out of the US is one reason why there is a little less pressure on the Fed to start raising interest rates, but another is the corporate picture."
US earnings later Wednesday include Boeing, Citrix Systems, Facebook, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, General Dynamics and Qualcomm.
In Asia, Japan's Nikkei closed up 0.2% at 17,795.73 Wednesday, recovering from earlier lows. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong ended 0.2% higher at 24,861.81 and the Shanghai Composite closed down 1.4% at 3,305.738.
Brent crude is quoted at around USD49.05 a barrel Wednesday, and US benchmark West Texas Intermediate is quoted at USD45.16 a barrel. Gold is steady, quoted Wednesday morning at USD1,288.62 an ounce.
Among UK companies, Experian is the best performing stock in the FTSE 100, up 3.6%, after saying it will buy USD600 million worth of shares over the next 14 months, pledging to return surplus capital to shareholders from time to time, as the information services company outlined its strategy to analysts and investors in London.
Severn Trent is up 1.4% after the utility company launched a GBP100 million buyback programme and joined peers in linking its dividend growth in coming years to retail price index measure of inflation, after it accepted the UK water regulator's final determination on the pricing regime for the next five years.
ARM Holdings, which designs chips for Apple and other mobile phone manufacturers, is up 1.6%, lifted by Apple's results overnight.
Among the FTSE 100 losers, Johnson Matthey is down 6.9% after reporting only a small increase in adjusted pretax profit to GBP96.5 million.
Copper producer Antofagasta is down 4% after disappointing with its 2015 production targets, after meeting guidance for 2014.
By Ian Edmondson; [email protected]
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