FTSE and sterling tentative ahead of April’s manufacturing PMI
After yesterday’s supermarket sweep things were comparatively quiet as Tuesday got underway, though there is still the latest UK manufacturing PMI to come.
The FTSE could only rise 15 or so points after the bell, keeping the index away from the 7550 highs teased on Monday. This despite a flurry of gains for FTSE 100 stalwart BP (LON:BP), which jumped 1.2% to hit an 8 year peak following its best quarterly results since 2015, alongside a near 5% increase from index-babe Just Eat (LON:JE), which unveiled a 49% surge in Q1 group revenue to £177 million.
As for sterling, the pound managed to settle against both the dollar and the euro, avoiding another round of fresh lows. Cable is up 0.1% and keeping its head just about above $1.375, while against its single currency rival the pound has risen 0.2% to re-cross €1.14, a level it dramatically abandoned last Friday.
Whether or not these gains turn into something more substantial, or whether they disappear completely, may be dependent on the state of April’s manufacturing PMI. The UK’s growth in the first quarter was bitterly disappointing, even when factoring in the (debatable) impact of March’s ‘Beast from the East’, so investors will want to see that things bounced back at the start of Q2.
According to analysts, however, such reassurances may be hard to come by, with forecasts having the manufacturing PMI falling from 55.1 to 54.8 month-on-month. Admittedly the manufacturing sector held up far better in March than its construction and services peers, so those figures on Wednesday and Thursday respectively may actually be the ones to watch.