Tuesday preview: US retail sales, Ocado in focus

Investors' focus on Tuesday will be on the US retail sales report covering the month of June.

At 1230 BST the Department of Commerce is expected to announce that retail sales were unchanged last month after a 0.1% rise in May.

In parallel, Commerce is scheduled to release import price figures for the US in June.

At 0900 BST meanwhile the ZEW institute will release its economic confidence index for Germany in July.

The results of the European Central Bank's latest Bank Lending Survey, which are due out at 0800 BST, will also be scrutinised.

On the company side of things, Ocado's interims will almost certainly be in the spotlight.

The day before, analysts at Bernstein slashed their target price on the shares from 1000p to 260p, telling clients that the online grocer would need "significantly" more capital because online grocery had not bounced back as anticipated after the pandemic.

Furthermore, the company's customer fulfilment centres had not ramped as expected.

The extra capital needed would be on top of the roughly £1.45bn of debt that it would need to refinance over the next 2-3 years.

Such was the company's situation that it needed to "seriously consider its options".

Intermediate Capital Group meanwhile will update investors on its assets under management during the first quarter of its 2025 fiscal year.

According to UBS analyst Haley Tam, investors could be expected to focus on the alternative asset manager's fundraising, fee earning AuM and what it might have to say regarding the launch of new funds.

Tam estimated that third party AuM reached $100.1bn, which would be 27% ahead on the year earlier level. Fee earning AuM meanwhile was pegged at $71.53bn and funds raised over the three months to June at $3.06bn.