Concern Over Doha Discord Begins To Ease

Discord in Doha has left oil prices weaker and has prompted a drop across European equity markets. Oil has recovered from its initial knee-jerk reaction selling to settle at around a 3% loss, bolstered by lower supply from Kuwait where oil workers are on strike protesting over pay.

An agreement always seemed highly doubtful when Iran had said it would not freeze out, having just come out of sanctions and Saudi Arabia said it wouldn’t if Iran didn’t. As soon as Iran shunned the meeting by not sending its oil minister it was an un-done deal.

The oil price is defining the top and bottom end of the FTSE 100 on Monday after the Doha talks collapsed without agreement. The oil and gas sector is naturally leading the declines on the UK benchmark after dashed hopes of a production freeze sent oil prices lower. Equally, travel and leisure stocks are amongst the top risers as the biggest beneficiaries of cheaper fuel, helped by a broker upgrade to Tui (LON:TUIT) and Thomas Cook (LON:TCG).

Shares of British gas-owner Centrica (LON:CNA) fell to the bottom of the FTSE after the company announced a 1.5% drop in its UK household energy customers. Efforts to reduce costs including the axing of 3000 jobs are being ignored by investors focused on excessive executive pay.

ARM Holdings (LON:ARM) is the second biggest decliner ahead of its and US tech company quarterly reports this week. The falls come on top of a sharp drop last week as investors fear a slowdown in tech sector earnings.

US markets are expected to open lower on Monday in line with the drop in the oil price that has caused global equity markets to retreat. But with almost 100 S&P 500 companies reporting this week, focus is likely to soon shift to the quarterly results.

Notable earnings before the US open: PepsiCo (NYSE:PEP), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), M&T Bank Corporation (NYSE:MTB) and Hasbro (NASDAQ:HAS).

Notable earnings after the close: IBM (NYSE:IBM), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Kinder Morgan (NYSE:KMI)

USA pre-opening levels:

• S&P 500: 6 points lower at 2,074
• Dow Jones: 49 points lower at 17,848
• Nasdaq 100: 13 points lower at 4,530

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