Market overview: Oil drops to 2004 lows

1630:Close Stocks slipped lower after China’s central bank set a lower fix for the country’s currency, setting of a slide in oil prices. Front month Brent crude futures down by about 5% - to their lowest level since 2004 – sent oil stocks to the bottom of the leaderboard. Compounding matters, weekly stockpile figures from the US Department of Energy revealed an enormous 10.6m build in gasoline inventories. BAE Systems, Imperial Tobacco and retailers such as Next all benefitted from positive broker notes. Investors are now braced for tonight’s Fed minutes and little by little markets’ focus will likely shift towards Friday’s monthly US jobs report. To take note of as well, Bank of America Merrill Lynch pushed out its call for the first hike in Bank Rate from May to November 2016. FTSE 100 down 63.86 points to 6,073.38.

1553: Front month Brent crude futures now at $34.82 per barrel, their lowest since 30 June 2004.

1546: West Texas crude oil futures have slipped lower after the latest weekly DoE stockpile data revealed the largest build in gasoline inventories since May 1993.

1500: The ISM services sector PMI slowed from 55.9 to 55.3 in December. "The details are better than the headline, with new orders rising 0.7 points to 58.2 and business activity up 0.5 points to 58.7. The key employment sub-index rose marginally too, to 55.7 from 55.0, consistent with private payroll growth of about 225K in a couple of months' time. That's consistent with other surveys, notably the NFIB, and the very low level of jobless claims," writes Pantheon Macroeconomics's Ian Sheperdson.

1330: The US trade deficit shrank from an upwardly revised $44.6bn to $42.4bn for November (consensus: $44.0bn).

1315: US private sector payrolls rose by 257,000 in December according to consultancy ADP, that was comfortably ahead of 198,000 analysts had penciled in.

1019: Front month Brent crude futures are lower by 3.32% to $35.35 per barrel in ICE trading. US crude oil inventory figures are set for release at 15:30.

0930: UK Markit services PMI slips from 55.9 to 55.5 in December.

0900: The Eurozone's services sector PMI has printed at 54.2 for December, comfortably ahead of a preliminary reading of 53.9 for the month before (consensus: 53.9).

0845: Stocks have begun the morning notably lower again after China's central bank set an unexpectedly weak fixing for the country's currency. Some analysts fear that could feed into selling pressure in other asset classes. Miners are thus - predictably - the worst performers on the Footsie this morning. Oil futures are also under the cosh. That comes ahead of what will be a closely watched report on activity in the US services sector, given the weakness in manufactuirng. The US ADP payrolls report due to be released this afternoon may also lead to some volatility if it is too wide of the mark. On Friday the all-important monthly official US jobs data are set to be released. ARM Holdings is lower on reports that Apple may have lowered its internal sales forecasts for the iPhone. FTSE 100 down 61 points to 6,076.65.