Tuesday preview: Fed's Powell, Ashtead in focus

Powell's testimony before the US Senate's committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, at 1500 BST, may offer an opportunity to glean further insights into the current state of thinking at the Fed.

Readings on retail sales and industrial production are due out ahead of his remarks, at 1330 BST.

In particular, investors will be keen for any signs that the expected bounce back in US economic activity is stronger than anticipated.

On home shores meanwhile, the April employment report is expected to reveal a jump in the unemployment rate from 3.9% in March to 4.5%, alongside a 850,000 surge in jobless claims.

Across the Channel, focus will be on the ZEW institute's economic confidence gauge for Germany, which is expected to show an improvement from a reading of 51.0 for May to to 58.5 in June.

On the corporate side of things, analysts at UBS estimate that Ashtead will post full year earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation of £2,428m, with profits before tax and amortisation pegged at £1,029m.

Earnings per share meanwhile are seen coming in at 158.3p (consensus: 175.0p).

Similarly, the Swiss broker said it was expecting financial year 2022 EPS to be about 18% less than the analyst consensus was anticipating.

On a more positive note, Sunbelt US volume growth was estimated to have dropped by 2.5% in the fourth quarter of the year, but was expected to be offset by still positive yield momentum, UBS said.

Volumes at Sunbelt Canada meanwhile were seen 13.5% higher, while A-Plant volumes in UK were expected to fall by 30%.

Tuesday 16 June

INTERIMS

Oxford Biodynamics

QUARTERLY PAYMENT DATE

Volta Finance Limited, Volta Finance Limited NPV (GBP)

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Business Inventories (US) (15:00)

Capacity Utilisation (US) (14:15)

Consumer Price Index (GER) (07:00)

Industrial Production (US) (14:15)

Retail Sales (US) (13:30)

ZEW Survey (EU) - Economic Sentiment (10:00)

ZEW Survey (GER) - Current Situation (10:00)

ZEW Survey (GER) - Economic Sentiment (10:00)

Q4

Ashtead Group

FINALS

Ashtead Group, Braemar Shipping Services, Checkit, Tatton Asset Management , Telecom Plus

AGMS

Altus Strategies , Andrews Sykes Group, Arbuthnot Banking Group, British Smaller Companies VCT 2, Clearstar Inc. (DI), Coca-Cola HBC AG (CDI), Concurrent Technologies, Epwin Group, Evraz, FDM Group (Holdings), Osirium Technologies, Serabi Gold

UK ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Claimant Count Rate (08:30)

Claimant Count Rate (07:00)

Unemployment Rate (07:00)