Proactive Investors - The FTSE 100 is predicted to inch higher as trading begins after the long Easter weekend, buoyed by more encouraging inflation data.
London’s blue-chip index has been called two points higher on Tuesday morning on spread-betting platforms, having closed the past week at 7,952.62.
US stocks had a mixed session overnight, with the Dow Jones and S&P 500 falling 0.6% and 0.2% respectively, but the Nasdaq adding another 0.1% as most of the tech lumbered higher megacaps (Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Tesla were the exceptions).
This morning, investors in the UK are waking up to news that shop price inflation faded to a more than three-year low last month.
Shop prices in March were up 1.3% on a year ago, according to an index compiled by the British Retail Consortium and NielsenIQ, which was down from 2.5% in February, below the three-month average of 2.2% and the lowest since December 2021.
Non-food inflation retreated to 0.2% from 1.3% a month earlier, while food inflation softened from 5.0% in February to 3.7% in March, the lowest reading since April 2022.
It was the tenth consecutive deceleration in food inflation.
Meanwhile, annual house price growth edged up in March, according to Nationwide.
UK house prices were up 1.6% compared with a year ago, compared to 1.2% in February.
On a monthly basis they were down 0.2%, however, following 0.7% growth the month before.