London pre-open: Stocks seen higher on positive US cues, data in focus

London stocks are expected to open higher on Wednesday, taking their cue from a positive US session, ahead of a raft of important data releases.

The FTSE 100 is called to open 18 points higher than Tuesday’s close at 6,402.

On the data front, investors will eye the release of UK services PMI for October. In the US, the ADP employment report is at 1315 GMT, trade balance figures are at 1330 GMT and ISM non-manufacturing is at 1500 GMT.

“Given the improvement seen in the manufacturing numbers earlier this week and the continued resilience of the construction sector, hopes are high that the start of Q4 looks promising for a strong end to the year,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.

“In September we saw a sharp drop off in activity, but this could well have been a temporary lull ahead of the Rugby World Cup, which started at the end of that month. Given some of the resilience seen in some of the retail data for October we could well see an improvement in October to 54.6 from 53.3.”

Strong food growth boosts Marks & Spencer half-year sales

An increase in sales has led Marks and Spencer to post a 6.1% increase in profit before tax.

The FTSE 100 retailer released its half year results to 26 September on Wednesday.

Overall sales were up 1.4% on a constant currency basis to £5bn, driven by a 1.7% increase in UK sales. It was primarily due to strong growth in the food business, with the retailer saying it outperformed the market by approximately 3%.

However international revenues were down 5.1%, largely hit by exchange rates.

General merchandise sales also dipped 0.4% due to challenging trading conditions in the UK retail sector.

That led to the company reporting a half year profit before tax on £284m, and a 4.9% underlying earnings per share increase to 14.1p.

Insurer Legal & General posted a 14% rise in net cash generation for the first nine months of the year as it said it is ahead of its target to deliver £80m of operating cost savings this year.

Net cash generation rose to £943m from £827m from the same period last year, while assets under management at the company’s investment management arm rose 8% to £717bn.

The company said the performance reflects improved efficiency and increasing scale in the UK protection and savings business, as well as the implementation of its capital lite strategy for new UK pension risk transfer business.