European shares higher
NFP awaited
Financials lead the FTSE
Experian shares drop after hack
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) / Salesforce.com takeover chatter
There was a positive start to trading in Europe on Friday with the FTSE 100, French CAC and German DAX all up over 1% and futures pointing to a higher open in the US.
The keenly awaited US non-farm payrolls data released in the early afternoon is likely to prevent too many dramatic moves in benchmark indices. Consensus is for 200k jobs created in September, up from the disappointing 173k created in August. At the moment it seems that fears over global growth are outweighing concerns about a US rate-hike. A jobs number that beats expectations and gives the Fed ammunition to signal its confidence in the US and even global economy by hiking interest rates this year, may well trigger a rally in equities.
The financial sector has led the gains on the FTSE 100 with banks and insurers bolstered by a proposal by the FCA to put an end date on PPI claims. The various legal settlements for the share price of banks are like holes in the hull of a ship; every time one gets plugged up, it has a better chance of moving again. There are probably plenty more settlements to come for banks with Barclays (LONDON:BARC) about to pay $175m for CDS mis-selling, but PPI is a big one shareholders would be glad to see the back of.
Experian was bottom of the FTSE after the credit agency announced its servers containing details of T-Mobile customers were hacked. Data breaches and hacks are now a fact of life but Experian’s leak is particularly disturbing because it has lost another company’s data. The scary thing is that when you share your personal data with a company, not only do you have to trust they won’t lose it, but you have to trust all the companies they share your data with too.
Shares of Salesforce.com could be in play again on the open of US markets, having gained over 5% on Thursday on chatter of a takeover offer from Microsoft. The jump in Microsoft’s share price would suggest investors are cheering the tactic of the tech giant buying its way into proven success within the highly competitive cloud computing space.
Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU) shares are expected to open higher after reporting better than expected quarterly earnings.
USA pre-opening levels
S&P 500: 9 points higher at 1,932
Dow Jones: 67 points higher at 16,339
Nasdaq 100: 43 points higher at 4,216
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