The FTSE was up 17 points in early trading this morning despite of a poor session for Wall Street, driven by some disappointing earnings from the US and questions mount about the validity of Trump’s tax plan.
Barclays was the morning’s biggest faller, having announced its 3rd quarter earnings before the session opened. The group announced pre-tax profit of £1.11bn, which was down on the first two quarters of the year down on like-for-like profits for the same quarter last year. Short of its consensus forecast of £1.4bn with the markets division the main underperformer, shares fell 6% in early trading.
Meanwhile, the Pound received a boost yesterday with the announcement of GDP. FxPro analyst, Edward Anderson commented “On Wednesday the UK Office for National Statistics released Gross Domestic Product, that beat expectations, coming in with growth of 0.4% in Q3. The better-than-expected data helped push GBP higher against its peers with GBPUSD rising to a near 3-week high.”
It’s the Euro that will be in the spotlight today with the European Central Bank set to meet this afternoon. Spreadex analyst, Connor Campbell suggested “Analysts are expecting Mario Draghi and his colleagues to announce the next stage of their QE tapering programme; one potential scenario is that the bond buying continues until at least September 2018, but at €20 billion or €30 billion a month rather than the current €60 billion – which itself is down from €80 billion at the start of the year.”
The Euro has started the day on a positive note, up 0.1% against the Dollar and 0.2% against the Pound.
Over in the US, equity markets closed sharply lower on Wednesday as disappointing Q3 earnings dampened market sentiment. Accendo Markets analyst, Mike van Dulken noted “The Dow Jones suffered its largest one day drop since early September as Boeing weighed on the index, the S&P 500 saw Telecoms and Industrials underperform, while Chipotle fell 14.6%, and the Nasdaq dropped 0.5%.”