Tuesday preview: Fed speak, BP in focus

Financial markets' focus on Tuesday is likely to be on speeches from the heads of the Federal Reserve banks of Chicago and St.Louis at 1500 BST and 2345 BST, respectively.

Also due out in the US is the JOLTS labour market survey for the month of June, which includes closely-followed data on job vacancies and workers' voluntary separations or quits.

On home shores, property website Nationwide will release its house price data for July at 0700 BST. Consensus is for the annual rate of increase to have picked up from 10.7% in June to 11.6% for July.

No major economic data are scheduled for release in the euro area.

Overnight, rate-setters at the Reserve Bank of Australia are expected to hike their cash rate by 50 basis points to 1.85%.

On the company side of things, oil giant BP is scheduled to publish its first half results with the shares having traded only a tad higher since mid-June when Brent crude prices peaked.

A government windfall tax on oil and gas company profits has likely capped their advance in the meantime.

That targeted 25% levy will be on top of the 40% headline rate already paid by firms in the sector on their UK profits.

At least, the threat of a negative impact from the levy on BP's plans to invest £18bn into the UK economy by 2030 appeared to have receded after government clarified the 2025 sunset clause, Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK said.

Tuesday 2 August

FINALS

NWF Group

INTERIMS

Standard Chartered, Rotork, Braveheart Investment Group, BP, Fresnillo, Keller Group, Greggs, Travis Perkins

FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

TR Property Inv Trust, Coca-Cola HBC AG (CDI), Tatton Asset Management, Johnson Matthey, Discoverie Group

AGMs

Syncona Limited NPV, Caffyns, Tanfield Group