[London] Opening market report, September 20th, 2016

London’s FTSE-100 has opened the day a shade lower with last night’s slide on Wall Street appearing to set some of the pace, although again we’re still seeing that temptation for traders to sit on their hands ahead of those big central bank announcements later in the week.

Blue chip stocks are currently looking evenly split between winners and losers, and even at the extremes of the board, moves are currently quite limited. Kingfisher – owners of the B&Q chain – are currently topping the index in the wake of a well received earnings update that showed no post-referendum wobbles, whilst its pharma giant GSK that is languishing, although losses here are limited.

Again we’ve got a quiet day ahead with little of note on the economic calendar other than a couple of construction readings from across the Atlantic before Wall Street’s opening bell. These numbers are unlikely to have much of a meaningful impact on market sentiment however, as it seems a stretch to imagine this could provide any meaningful shift to the Fed’s call tomorrow. It’s been a quiet first few minutes of the day’s trade and there would be little surprise if this mood was sustained for a while longer yet.