FTSE 100 Live: M&S and Tesco hail strong trading, Centrica upgrade; US inflation drops in December
arks & Spencer today said it had delivered a strong Christmas trading performance after seeing like-for-like sales growth of 7.2% in the 13 weeks to 13 December.
In a busy session for retail updates, Tesco boss Ken Murphy said the UK’s biggest supermarket chain had delivered a strong market share performance over the festive period. Both companies left their annual profit guidance unchanged.
Other updates today include from ASOS, Halfords. housebuilder Persimmon and Centrica, with the British Gas owner forecasting annual earnings ahead of market expectations at more than 30p a share.
US inflation fell by 0.1% month-on-month, adding to hopes that price rises may have peaked and that the Federal Reserve’s fight against price rises is working.
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FTSE 100 heads to the brink of 7800 points as drop in US inflation energises global stocks
London’s FTSE edged near 7800 points in afternoon trade as global stock markets took heart from a fall in US inflation.
The broad rally took the main UK stock index to levels last seen in 2018.
It was the second successive month US inflation fell, by 0.1% in December from November, taking the annual rate to 6.5% from 7.1%.
The decline raised hopes that peak inflation could be behind the world’s biggest economy and it opened the way for the Federal Reserve to adopt smaller rate hikes as it fights to get the rate of price rises back to its 2% target.
Srijan Katyal, global head of strategy & trading services at brokerage ADSS, said: “This further stokes speculation that the Fed will ease its pace of interest rate increases. Calibration will be key, meaning a 25-basis point raise is a likely outcome from the Fed’s January meeting.”
US inflation falls in December, Wall Street stock futures turn round to head for opening gains
US inflation fell by 0.1% month-on-month, adding to hopes that price rises may have peaked and that the Federal Reserve’s fight against price rises is working and putting stock markets on course for opening gains
The drop was better than an expected flat reading to the consumer price index, which rose 0.1% last time month-on-month.
It took the year-on-year rate to 6.5%, in line with forecasts and down from 7.1% and to its slowest in over a year.
Jobs data was also out and was better than forcast, showing fewer initial claims for unemployment benefits, at 205,000 last week, rather than the 215,000 expected.
After the numbers came out, futures trading cheered up to point opening gains for the S&P 500, of 0.4% to 4008.0, having been forecasting a drop earlier.
FTSE midday movers: Investors don’t rate Experian
Experian was among the biggest fallers on the FTSE 100 in midday trade after a broker downgrade hit the credit checking agency. RBS cut its rating on the stock to “underperform” from “sector perform” and cut its price target on the stock by 400p to 2500p. It was at 2836p in the early afternoon, down by around 2%.
Persimmon topped the leaderboard — up almost 7% at 1258p as traders focused on the strong points in a mixed trading update. While it said sales slowed dramatically in the second half of the year, its completion rate of new homes came in at the top of forecasts.