Proactive Investors -
- FTSE 100 falls 38 points to 8161
- Caterer Compass impresses with more quarterly growth
- US futures pointing to mixed start
US stocks start lower but quickly rally
After a slight stumble at the start, Wall Street's main indices have quickly jogged higher.
The Nasdaq Composite index is already up 0.25% and the S&P 500 0.16% higher, while the Dow Jones is just lagging slightly in the red.
Meta Platforms and Tesla are among the key drivers, both up around 1%, followed by Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), with Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) roughly flat, offsetting small losses for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).
In London, the FTSE 100 has slightly slowed its tumble, down 0.47%, with the FTSE 250 down 0.41%.
London stocks take another dive
The FTSE 100 index has yo-yoed back down into the red, falling 27 points or 0.3% to 8,171, with the FTSE 250 down 84 points or 0.4%.
All but three of the largest 30 blue chips in London are now in the red.
Joining miners Anglo American (JO:AGLJ), Glencore (LON:GLEN) and Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) among the big fallers are telecoms companies Airtel Africa (LON:AAF) and BT Group (LON:BT), property developer Segro, Londonmetric, Unite Group (LON:UTG) and Land Securities.
Spotify and TNT Sports
This week is a big one for tech companies, starting today with Google parent Alphabet Inc and Elon Musk's Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) both reporting after the closing bell in New York.
Ahead of that there's been some early tech reporting, including Spotify Technology SA, whose US-listed shares have danced 14% higher in pre-market trading to a three-year high, after the music and podcast streamer smashed forecasts with seven million new Premium subscribers.
The Swedish-headquartered company's rapidly expanding podcast offering, which now hosts a quarter million shows, also helped to support advertising revenue growth.
Across the Atlantic, Warner Bros Discovery Inc's TNT network has had to increase its spending to try and keep the NBA basketball TV broadcast rights, one of its most lucrative sports content deals.
TNT has shown NBA games since 1989 with its current rights package costing $1.20 billion annually to the end of the next season.
"Regrettably, the league notified us of its intention to accept other offers for the games in our current rights package, leaving us to proceed under the matching rights provision, which is an integral part of our current agreement and the rights we have paid for under it," said TNT.
“We have reviewed the offers and matched one of them."
Paperwork was submitted to the league today and the sports broadcaster now expects the NBA to execute its new contract.
Telecoms watchdog to review spectrum fees
UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom has agreed to review the fees it charges mobile network operators including BT Group PLC to use mobile spectrum bands.
The former monopoly has been pressuring the regulator to review annual fees since March, when it wrote to the regulator to request a review.
“We have now considered BT’s request, and we consider that the evidence suggests that a fee review is justified,” Ofcom said in a statement published on Tuesday.
Sterling increasingly favoured
While the dip in the pound, down to near a two-week low, is seen as providing a boost to UK multinationals, analysts are predicting sterling will romp higher in coming months.
The pound is the best-performing currency among the G10 currencies so far in 2024, though July has seen an unwinding of the "carry trade".
This has been most visible in the USD/JPY, which has declined 2.8% so far this month, and that may get a further boost this week with US inflation numbers.
Europe’s largest asset manager, Amundi, is forecasting the pound will benefit from a more stable economy and government, from $1.2907 today to as high as $1.35 by the end of the year.
Yesterday, in a similar vein, the chief investment officer of RBC BlueBay said the UK was on the verge of becoming "the most politically stable country in the G7 for the first time in quite a long time"
JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) also predicted sterling will regain $1.35 by next March for the first time in what will be three years, which is also Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS)' long-term target for the GBP/USD.
Likewise, Citi said it sees the GBP strengthening against the euro to £0.82 from £0.8416 today, which would be the first time since the Brexit result in 2016.