London pre-open: Stocks seen higher as investors eye FOMC minutes

London stocks were set for a firmer open on Wednesday as oil prices bounced back and investors awaited the release of the latest FOMC minutes.

The FTSE 100 was seen opening 20 points higher than Tuesday’s close at 6,111.

Data out of China provided some encouraging news earlier, as the Caixin services purchasing managers’ index rose to 52.2 in March from 51.2 the previous month, beating expectations for a reading of 51.4.

As far as the Federal Reserve minutes are concerned, CMC Markets’ Michael Hewson said “we could well get some colour on the divisions on the committee, and how much disagreement there actually was with respect to the surprisingly dovish tone”.

“In the wake of the March meeting and the dovish press conference, apart from one dissenter and a paring back of the ‘dot plot’ projections there was little sign of the dissent shown in the following week from a number of mainly non-voting members.”

EasyJet passenger numbers up but load factor down

FTSE 100 low-cost carrier easyJet saw passenger numbers increase in March, but its load factor decreased as hundreds of flights were cancelled due to industrial action.

A total of 5,728,114 passengers flew during the month, up 4.3% on a year earlier. On a rolling 12 month basis to 31 March, the airline carried 70,761,515 passengers, up 7.2% on the prior 12 months.

The airline’s load factor in March was 91.3%, down 1.3 percentage points on March 2015, while its rolling 12-month load factor of 91.5% was an improvement of 0.6 percentage points.

EasyJet cancelled 611 flights during the month, the vast majority of which were due to strike action by air traffic controllers in France.

Auto Trader's chief executive and finance director have together sold £32.3m worth of shares in the company.

The pair made the sale at a price of 370p after the expiry of an agreed lock-up period from the FTSE 250 group's flotation a year ago at 235p.