London pre-open: Stocks seen touch higher as investors eye US trade data

London stocks were expected to open just a touch firmer on Tuesday following uninspiring sessions in the US and Asia.

The FTSE 100 was seen starting the session eight points higher than Monday’s close at 7,180.

With no major UK data releases due, investors will turn their attention to the US.

CMC Markets’ Michael Hewson said: “The main focus today as European markets look to open slightly lower is the latest US December trade numbers for December which are expected to show a deficit of $45bn. Given the propensity for Donald Trump to tweet about how US economic data has been when it’s been good, it’s quite likely that we could see some comments about the size of the deficit, particularly in relation to recent comments that have been made about surplus countries like Germany, and China, whose numbers are out later this week.”

The US trade data is at 1330 GMT.

In corporate news, fourth-quarter profits from BP fell short of target and the oil colossus said cash flow will not increase in 2017 as it hikes its level of disposals and capital expenditure to return the business to growth in the medium term.

A fourth-quarter underlying replacement cost profit of $400m resulted in a full year profit of $2.6bn, a 56% drop from the previous year.

DCC’s third quarter profit was “strongly” ahead of the previous year and in line with expectations as the business support services firm agreed to buy Esso’s retail petrol station network in Norway as part of its plan to extend its presence in Europe.

The company bought Esso Norge, the third largest network in Norway with about 20% of retail volumes, for 2.43bn Norwegian kroner (about £235m) in order to build its retail petrol station business in Europe.

UK and North America passenger transport operator FirstGroup posted an update on trading for its third quarter to the end of December 2016.

The group said the trend of overall trading and expectations for the full year was unchanged, and that reported group revenue increased by 12.8% in the third quarter, benefiting from favourable currency translation.

Group revenue in constant currency was flat, with growth in North America offset by previously announced rail franchise changes and First Bus trading

Housebuilder Bellway reported a rise in housing completions in the six months to the end of January and said it expects to build 5% more homes this year.

The company posted a 6.5% jump in the number of housing completions compared with 2016 to 4,462, while the forward order book rose to £1.12bn from £1.03bn, comprising 4,487 homes versus 4,434 the year before.

The average selling price of private completions rose by more than 4% to £291,000 and for the full financial year, Bellway expects to achieve at least this rate of growth in private average selling price following investment in higher value locations over recent years.