London pre-open: FTSE to fall in opening trade

2nd Oct 2013 07:00

City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open around 23 points lower than yesterday's close of 6,460.01, ignoring gains seen in the US overnight and despite an ultimately flat session on Tuesday. Wall Street closed yesterday's session with decent gains despite the partial shutdown of the US government, with analysts saying that the news was largely priced in to markets. "With the Dow sinking 0.79% in anticipation of a lockout yesterday and Asian and European markets remaining fairly stable this could indicate the markets have already reacted to the news," said Alex Conroy, Financial Sales Trader at Spreadex.Meanwhile, on today's agenda are US crude oil inventories and MBA mortgage applications, while in the EU the focus will be on the ECB interest rate, and the producer price index reading. In UK company news, Tesco's first half underlying pre-tax profit fell 7.4 per cent to £1.4bn on the year as the UK supermarket chain's trading was hit by challenging market conditions. Trading profit for the six months to August 24th 2013 declined 7.6% to £1.6bn, weighed down by weak performance Europe were trading dropped 67.8% to £55m.Sainsbury enjoyed a stronger second quarter as its online shopping business expanded fast to now deliver more than one billion pounds of sales per year. Like-for-like sales grew 2.1% in the 16 weeks to September 28th, with total sales accelerating to 5.0% from 3.6% in the first quarter.Euromoney Institutional Investor on Wednesday confirmed the completion of its acquisition of HSBC's Quantitative Techniques (QT) operation. The online information and events group has re-branded QT as Euromoney Indices, and will sell HSBC purchase index calculation services for a minimum period of three years. Euromoney said it believes the acquisition creates an opportunity to build a new business providing independent index compilation services.Soft furnishings retailer Dunelm said the hot weather made a dent in sales at the start of the quarter, with significantly lower footfall, however it returned to growth over the remainder of the quarter and remains confident for future trading. In an update for the 13 weeks to September 28th 2013 like-for-like sales fell 5.3% compared to 3.0% growth the previous year.