London pre-open: Stocks seen up after dovish Fed statement

London stocks looked set to edge up at the open on Thursday, taking their cue from an upbeat session on Wall Street on the back of dovish comments from Fed chair Jerome Powell.

The FTSE 100 was called to open eight points higher at 6,949.

The Fed left interest rates on hold at between 2.25% and 2.5% on Wednesday, as expected.

"The US central bank dialled down its language, and dropped the phrase ‘further gradual increases’ in relation to rate hikes," said CMC Markets analyst David Madden. "The Fed also said they would also be ‘patient’ when it comes to hiking rates. Regarding the balance sheet, the Fed aims to operate with an ‘ample supply of reserves’, and that helped lift investor sentiment too."

Investors will be digesting the latest survey from Nationwide, which showed house prices rose by 0.3% month-on-month in January, a touch above consensus expectations for a 0.2% increase and following a 0.7% drop the month before.

On the year, prices were up 0.1%, better than the flat reading expected but down from the 0.5% growth seen a month earlier.

Pantheon Macroeconomics said: "The uncertainty created by Brexit largely is responsible for the further decline in year-over-year growth in house prices to near-zero, from a broadly stable rate of about 2% in the 18 months before November.

"The slowdown has occurred at a time when growth in real incomes is improving, thanks to rising nominal wage growth and falling inflation. Mortgage rates flatlined last year - the rate for a 5-year fixed-rate mortgage at a 75% LTV held steady at 2.0% throughout 2018 - and the supply of credit has remained constant. As a result, this is a sentiment-led deterioration in house price growth, which chimes with the drop in measures of consumers’ confidence since November, when it became clear that the Withdrawal Agreement would not be ratified seamlessly."

Elsewhere, the latest survey from GfK showed that UK consumer confidence was unchanged in January, with the index remaining at -14.

Meanwhile, consumers were the least optimistic about the outlook in seven years.

In corporate news, drinks giant Diageo said first half net sales rose 5.8% to £6.9bn with organic growth partially offset by unfavourable exchange. Reported operating profit (£2.4 billion) was up 11.0%, driven by organic growth, while pre-tax profits were up to £2.6bn from £2.2bn.

Unilever churned out underlying sales growth at the bottom end of its guidance for 2018 after growth at the Marmite and Ben & Jerry's slowed in the fourth quarter.

New boss Alan Jope, who took over from Paul Polman in November, expected market conditions in 2019 to "remain challenging" and anticipate underlying sales growth will be "in the lower half" of the group's medium-term 3-5% range.

BT Group updated the market on its trading for the third quarter on Thursday, with reported revenue falling 1% to £17.56bn.

The telecoms giant said underlying revenue was down 0.9% in the three months ended 31 December, as growth in its consumer business was offset by regulated price reductions for the Openreach network operation and declines in its enterprise businesses Adjusted EBITDA was broadly flat at £5.55bn, driven by revenue growth in the consumer business and restructuring related cost savings, offset by the revenue decline in Openreach and enterprise.