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London open: Stocks rise on positive Wall St cues, retail sales eyed
London stocks rose in early trade on Friday, tracking a fifth day of gains on Wall Street as investors put aside their worries about inflation and looked ahead to UK retail sales data.
At 0825 GMT, the FTSE 100 was up 0.6% to 7,279.49, while the pound was up 0.2% to 1.4131 against the greenback and flat versus the euro at 1.1272.
With little in the way of corporate news, investors will be watching out for the release of the latest UK retail sales figures for January at 0930 GMT.
"Where Wall Street goes, other markets follow, and this bounce back from last week's lows is no different," said Lee Wild, head of equity strategy at Interactive Investor. "Traders are quickly getting used to higher bond yields, higher inflation and another round of hikes in global interest rates that will follow, so much so that US stocks are recovering twice as fast as in London. Markets will remain volatile, for sure, but we've just found out that big investors can't stay out of this market for long, and demand for equities typically picks up in the weeks before tax year-end."
UK retail sales are a potential catalyst for the London index on Friday. Economists are looking for month-on-month retail sales growth of around 0.6% from January, excluding fuel, following the ugly 1.6% slump the month before.
"The Bank of England will struggle to hike interest rates without an improvement in consumer spending, but that will come as an anticipated decline in the cost of living feeds through to more significant growth in real wages," Wild said.
In company news, Segro rallied after taking the wraps off what it described as another strong set of financial, operating and portfolio performance metrics for the 2017 year, with a record level of development completions during the period, almost all of which have been leased.
Balfour Beatty edged higher as it won a share of a huge contract to design and build an 'automated people mover' at Los Angeles International airport.
Rio Tinto rose after saying it had been told by Mongolia to find a domestic power source for the $5.3bn expansion the Oyu Tolgoi mine by 2022.
Croda was just a smidge higher as it agreed to buy AIM-listed crop enhancement developer Plant Impact for around £10m.
On the downside, BGEO, formerly Bank of Georgia, fell despite posting an 8.1% jump in full-year profit.
Temporary power supplier Aggreko was hit by a downgrade from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, but Restaurant Group was up after being lifted to 'hold' from 'reduce' at HSBC and Standard Life Aberdeen gained on the back of an upgrade to 'outperform' from 'market perform' by Bernstein.
Evraz nudged up after an initiation at 'buy' from Deutsche Bank, while ConvaTec rallied after an upgrade at JPMorgan and LSE advanced after Societe Generale reinstated the stock at 'buy'.
Market Movers
FTSE 100 (UKX) 7,279.49 0.62%
FTSE 250 (MCX) 19,676.64 0.52%
techMARK (TASX) 3,312.97 0.58%
FTSE 100 - Risers
SEGRO (SGRO) 574.00p 3.39%
Standard Life Aberdeen (SLA) 365.60p 1.56%
Just Eat (JE.) 897.20p 1.49%
Micro Focus International (MCRO) 2,108.00p 1.49%
Centrica (CNA) 127.95p 1.23%
Royal Dutch Shell 'B' (RDSB) 2,303.50p 1.08%
Scottish Mortgage Inv Trust (SMT) 455.19p 1.06%
CRH (CRH) 2,515.00p 1.04%
Anglo American (AAL) 1,744.00p 1.04%
Antofagasta (ANTO) 941.80p 1.03%
FTSE 100 - Fallers
Mediclinic International (MDC) 576.40p -0.17%
Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 6,438.83p -0.08%
GKN (GKN) 414.80p 0.00%
Smurfit Kappa Group (SKG) 2,554.00p 0.00%
Halma (HLMA) 1,212.00p 0.00%
Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) 275.10p 0.00%
Morrison (Wm) Supermarkets (MRW) 217.70p 0.00%
G4S (GFS) 256.90p 0.00%
Paddy Power Betfair (PPB) 8,250.00p 0.00%
Schroders (SDR) 3,375.00p 0.00%
FTSE 250 - Risers
Inmarsat (ISAT) 441.85p 2.40%
Dairy Crest Group (DCG) 582.00p 1.93%
Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 415.03p 1.87%
Wood Group (John) (WG.) 614.60p 1.86%
Ultra Electronics Holdings (ULE) 1,471.00p 1.80%
Hunting (HTG) 581.50p 1.75%
ZPG Plc (ZPG) 345.73p 1.75%
Tullow Oil (TLW) 176.10p 1.73%
Playtech (PTEC) 768.60p 1.72%
Ferrexpo (FXPO) 295.90p 1.72%
FTSE 250 - Fallers
Aggreko (AGK) 765.60p -2.77%
BGEO Group (BGEO) 3,325.60p -2.19%
Telecom Plus (TEP) 1,182.16p -1.32%
Ocado Group (OCDO) 480.95p -1.30%
Intu Properties (INTU) 205.30p -0.68%
Provident Financial (PFG) 688.00p -0.66%
OneSavings Bank (OSB) 389.40p -0.66%
Capital & Counties Properties (CAPC) 280.50p -0.60%
Galliford Try (GFRD) 855.00p -0.58%
Millennium & Copthorne Hotels (MLC) 530.20p -0.53%