London pre-open: Stocks seen lower after hawkish Fed minutes

London stocks were expected open lower on Thursday following the release of hawkish Federal Reserve minutes after the European close on Wednesday.

The FTSE 100 was seen opening down 60 points from Wednesday’s close at 6,105.

“All those concerns about monetary policy divergence at the beginning of the year, as markets speculated about the timing of further moves by the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy, appear to be back on the table again after a rather hawkish set of minutes from the most recent central bank policy meeting,” said CMC Markets’ Michael Hewson.

“It would appear that the improvement in the economic data in the past week or so along with last night’s minutes appears to have disabused markets out of this mistaken assumption, with the result that the probabilities of a move in June have risen from 4% to an almost one in three chance that rates could rise.”

On the data front, UK retail sales are at 0930 BST, while European Central Bank minutes are at 1230 BST.

In the US, the Philadelphia Fed survey, Chicago Fed activity index and initial jobless claims are at 1330 BST. Leading indicators are at 1500 BST.

Although market conditions in London remain challenging, theme park operator Merlin Entertainment said trading in 2016 has been "broadly" in line with expectations.

The operator of Alton Towers and the Legoland, Madame Tussauds and London Dungeon chains said the trading pattern was "reflecting the continuation of the key trends underlying the 2015 result".

Financial services firm Hargreaves Landsdown said assets under administration rose 9% to £60.3bn in the four months to April 30, despite a quarter of investors saying uncertainty over Britain's EU membership was “reducing their propensity to invest”.

Net inflows were down to £2.30bn from £2.75 billion in the same period last year, with cumulative total net inflows of £5.07bn in the ten months to April 30 compared with £5.00bn year on year.

Despite the “Brexit” uncertainty, total active clients rose 15% year on year to 822,000.

Business intelligence, exhibitions, events and academic publishing group Informa confirmed its full-year expectations on Thursday morning, as investors mustered for the company’s annual general meeting in London.

The FTSE 100 firm said it remained confident of meeting full-year expectations, despite some global macroeconomic uncertainty and geopolitical risk.

In the year-to-date, Informa has already traded more than 45% of annual revenue across its portfolio of exhibitions, and reported a strong performance from the top 20 shows on exhibitor revenue, visitor numbers and rebooking rates.