London pre-open: Stocks set for early gains on US-China trade talk hopes
By Alexander Bueso
Date: Friday 15 Nov 2019
(Sharecast News) - Stocks in London are being called to start the last session of the week higher following somewhat upbeat remarks from a top White House official overnight regarding the current state of US-China trade talks.
According to US national economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, a deal between Beijing and Washington is "near", but the US President is not yet ready to "sign off".
Against that backdrop, the Footsie was seen rising by 30 points to 7,322 at the start of trading.
That followed a mixed session on Wall Street due precisely to investors' caution regarding the most likely endgame to trade negotiations between the two economic powers.
Commenting on Thursday's price action, Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK, said: "Sentiment also took a knock due to apparent disagreements between the US and China over a failure to agree on specifics when it comes to agricultural purchases, and also pointed to the difficulties in trying to square the circle of an agreement.
"Essentially, we appear to be back where we were a few weeks ago, with the only difference being there doesn't appear to be any desire to make things worse between the two parties for the time being."
For later in the session, the spotlight was expected to be on a spate of economic releases scheduled for later in the session, including readings on US industrial production and retail sales for the month of October.
Across the Channel meanwhile, the market spotlight would be on euro area consumer price data for that same month.
No major economic reports were scheduled in the UK.
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PHE Hotel Group on Friday said it was making some changes to its board after a shareholder revolt at May's annual meeting against two board members. The company said deputy chairman Kevin McAuliffe was stepping down from his posts on the audit and remuneration committees as he was " no longer deemed to be an independent director", but would stay on in his main role overseeing corporate governance. It added that Nigel Jones would retire from the board before the 2020 annual general meeting. Major independent shareholders had told the company they were concerned about the independence of the duo given they had served on the board for more than nine years. "In anticipation of Mr Jones's retirement, the company is currently looking for an additional independent non-executive director to join the board," the company said.
Future reported that its full year profits almost tripled, rising by 189% to £12.7m on the back of a 70% leap in revenue. The publisher said the surge in turnover was largely due to the performance of its higher margin media division, which saw its online audience grow by 44%, or 31% in terms of its like-for-like portfolio
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