Market overview: Stocks wait on result of Greek negotiations

1630:Close Stocks ended the day slightly lower amid low trading volumes as a results of the Presidents' Day holiday in the US, which meant that many traders were away from their desks on Monday. Tullow Oil did best on the top flight index after positive comments out of analysts at Morgan Stanley. Centrica was at the bottom of the pile by the end of trading on the heels of negative coverage in the Sunday press. Britain's big energy companies are preparing for a mauling by the competition regulator, the Mail on Sunday reported. That came as investors kept a close bead on the news-flow coming out of Brussels regarding the negotiations between Greece and its creditors.

1528: Banks' dividend yields are high as the market appears to be assigning low credibility to dividend forecasts.

1500: Spain's economy minister, Luis de Guindos, has reportedly said that an agreement on Greece will be reached. On the other hand, going into today's meeting of Eurozone finance ministers Austria's own finance minister said that Greece cannot have new terms included in its existing programme.

1400: Analyst Kathryn Leonard at Numis has upgraded her view on shares of Hunting to 'buy' from 'reduce' and increased her target price on the shares to 554p from 487p previously.

1011: In a research note issued today Morgan Stanley named Tullow as its most-preferred large-cap oil stock.

0915: Stocks have begun the morning on their back-foot, led by losses in the likes of Centrica and SSE. That comes on the heels of weaker than expected GDP data out of Japan and ahead of critical discussions, on Monday evening, between Greece and Eurozone finance ministers. According to Japan's Cabinet Office the country's GDP expanded at a 2.2% pace in the last three months of 2014 (consensus: 3.7%). Overnight the CBI revised its forecast for the rate of growth expected in the UK's GDP this year to 2.7% from a previous estimate of 2.5%. FTSE 100 down 4 points to 6,870.82 points.