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Summary
- The benchmark FTSE 100 is set to open a tad higher
- FTSE 100 futures traded 0.26 per cent higher before an hour of market open
- Asian equities traded mixed after Wall Street ended in red
- Markit Services PMI for March 2021 is set to be released today
The headline FTSE 100 is expected to open a tad higher on Wednesday, 7 April, extending the gains made in the previous session. Wall Street ended marginally lower on Tuesday with Dow Industrials leading the losses. The tech-heavy index Nasdaq Composite and the wider share indicator S&P 500 managed to cap their losses within 0.1 per cent, while Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.29 per cent.
Following the bleaker close on Wall Street, Asian equities traded mixed with Japan’s Nikkei and South Korea’s Kospi hovering in the green, whereas China’s Shanghai Composite and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng traded in the negative region.
Nikkei 225 in Tokyo retreated after the lunch break but was still trading higher with slight gains of not more than 0.1 per cent; Kospi in Seoul managed to float 0.2 per cent higher. Shanghai Composite and Hang Seng traded 0.4 to 0.6 per cent lower.
ASX 200 of Australia traded nearly 0.6 per cent higher after recovering from the bottoms made in the early-afternoon deals. The June 21 futures linked to FTSE 100 traded 0.26 per cent higher, indicating a moderately higher start to the London equities on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, India’s Nifty 50 rose more than 0.8 per cent in the morning trades after the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) left the repo rates unchanged.
Investors and policymakers have been eyeing the response of businesses, the moment they restart their operations with the onset of second stage reopening. A large section of market participants has factored in the upcoming buoyancy in the UK shares on the back of large-scale reopening of non-essential settings and the ever-growing scale of vaccination programme.
Amid the major macro data, Markit Services PMI for March 2021 is set to be unveiled today, while ONS is slated to announce the Construction PMI for March on Thursday.
