Market overview: Retailers, banks pace gains

1630:Close Retailers were near the top of the leaderboard on Friday, with markets apparently keying off of Tesco’s latest annual report. The sector was also the best performer at the pan-European level, with the DJ Stoxx 600 sector gauge rising by 1.10% to 307.06. Banks also did well, even in the face of warnings from IMF managing director Christine Lagarde regarding the risks that Brexit might entail for the economy. Coincidentally, IG’s Brexit binary was only attaching a 29% probability to such a scenario. Miners such as BHP and Antofagasta also fared well, despite drops in the price of copper and iron ore as the US dollar continued to bounce back. FTSE 100 up 34.31 points to 6,138.50.

1600: The University of Michigan’s consumer confidence index improved from a reading of 89.0 in the month before to 95.8, according to the preliminary results of the survey which are released nearer to the beginning of each month. Analysts had forecast a smaller improvement to 89.5.

1330: Three-month copper futures on the LME are down by 1.7% to 4,654.25.

1330: US retail sales jumped by 1.3% month-on-month in April, surpassing forecasts for a 0.8% gain by a wide margin. Excluding automobiles they also came in ahead of forecasts, rising by 0.8% (consensus: 0.6%). Producer prices were flat year-on-year in April (consensus: 0.2%).

1109: A profit-warning from satellite-operator Eutelsat have led analysts at Berenberg to question the explanations given by London-based Inmarsat to explain its own recently lowered near-term guidance.

1000: Eurozone GDP growth unexpectedly slowed in the first three quarters of the year to a 0.5% quarter-on-quarter pace, down from the 0.6% clip seen over the prior three months (consensus: 0.6%).

0959: The broadest measure of new credit growth in the People's Republic of China, so-called total social financing, came in at 751bn yuan for April ($115bn), well below the 1.3trn yuan anticipated by the consensus, but government borrowings surged, Capital Economics points out.

0930: UK construction output fell by 3.6% month-on-month in March (consensus: -3.0%).

0900: Stocks tripped at the start of trading as traders returned to their desks only to find a barrage of hawkish Fedspeak had come out overnight, helping to keep a lid on Wall Street and weighing on Asian bourses. Against that backdrop, the focus in Friday's session would be on the latest US retail sales and consumer confidence numbers due out later in the day. German GDP figures for the first quarter delivered a pleasant surprise, but as tends to happen with European macro data, markets largely dismissed the data as a bit of a one-off. A bounce in miners was helping to prop up the Footsie, offsetting losses among insurers, although the worst performers on the top flight index were Inmarsat (French rival Eutelsat's shares were getting pumelled) and Coca Cola HBG. FTSE 100 down 22.24 points at 6,082.02.