Given it’s a Brexit-baking, US-China trade talking, non-farm Friday the markets were remarkably muted as the morning went on.
The FTSE, at an effective 6-month high already, had little justification for anything bigger than a 0.1% increase, a move that keeps its above 7400 but only marginally. Its mining stocks rebounded after yesterday’s slide, but with its homebuilders hurt by news that house prices tumbled 1.6% between February and March (remember that latter month was fraught with even more Brexit uncertainty than normal).
Sterling struggled to build on its initial growth, cutting its gains to 0.1% against the dollar while seeing them erased against the euro, as reports of a one-year Article 50 ‘flextension’ offer from Donald Tusk was countered by news that Theresa May has asked the EU for a delay only until June 30th.
As for the US open, it looks like the Dow Jones Futures are holding off on doing much until they get a gander at the non-farm jobs report. The headline figure is expected to bounce back to 175k from last month’s bizarrely low 20k, with wage growth set to half from 0.4% to 0.2% and the unemployment rate to stay unchanged at 3.8%.
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