London pre-open: Stocks seen flat ahead of BoE
London stocks were set for a flat open on Thursday as investors eyed the latest policy announcement from the Bank of England.
The FTSE 100 was called to open unchanged at 7,039.
CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "Today’s policy decision is important in the context of how policymakers see how the UK economy will evolve over the next few months, given how different the economic picture is now, from when they last met back in March. We can expect the bank to raise their growth as well as inflation forecasts for a start, given the strength of recent economic data, and the positive outlook for Q2. Their biggest conundrum will be as to how they will decide on the durability of the economic rebound.
"No changes to monetary policy are expected, but we could start to see some taper talk. The recent pause in 10-year gilt yields is likely to have prompted a sigh of relief, however given the improvements that might be seen in the data in the coming months we might see some early discussions about reining back on the bond buying program in the form of modest tapering."
In corporate news, house builder Barratt said it expects full year results to be "modestly above" prior expectations after a strong start to the new year and was refunding £3.5m in Covid business rate relief.
The company forecast 2021 wholly owned completions to be between 16,000 and 16,250 homes and to deliver around 650 joint venture completions.
Next upgraded its guidance for annual pre-tax profit by £20m to £720m after sales beat expectations in the first quarter.
Full-price sales fell 1.5% in the 13 weeks to 1 May from two years earlier - exceeding the fashion retailer's previous central guidance for a 10% reduction.
Next said the post-lockdown sales surge was likely to be short-lived and left its sales guidance for the rest of the year unchanged at +3% from two years earlier.