London pre-open: FTSE to nudge higher ahead of payrolls

(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to nudge higher at the open on Friday following a positive session on Wall Street, as investors eyed the latest US non-farm payrolls report.

The FTSE 100 was called to open up around five points. At 0720 BST, Brent crude was flat at $95.51 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate was up 0.2% at $91.44.

All eyes will be on the non-farm payrolls report for August, along with the unemployment rate and average earnings, which are due at 1330 BST. Consensus expectations are for payrolls to have increased by 55,000 last month, while the unemployment rate is expected to have remained at 4.1%.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, said: "If the US jobs data comes in soft - both in terms of job additions and, ideally, wage growth as well - the Fed doves could gain some more ground, pulling yields and the dollar lower while supporting equity valuations.

"If, however, the US jobs data comes in strong - and that's a possibility; over the past six months, we have seen prints of around 170-180K job additions - the market focus, and fear (!), will remain on inflation. That could keep yields rising and weigh on equity valuations.

"Then, next week's inflation data might have the last word."

On home shores, figures from the British Retail Consortium and Sensormatic showed that retail footfall improved in August but remained below year-earlier levels.

Total UK footfall fell 1.7% year-on-year over the four weeks to 29 August, an improvement on July's 2.1% decline and an increase month-on-month.

High street footfall was down 3.1%, compared with a 3.8% fall a month earlier, while shopping centre visits declined 0.5%, improving from a 1.4% drop in July.

Retail parks continued to outperform, with footfall rising 1.0% year-on-year, although that was slightly weaker than July's 1.2% increase.

By country, footfall declined 2.1% in England, 1.3% in Wales and 0.1% in Scotland, while Northern Ireland recorded a 2.8% increase.

BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said cooler weather had helped bring shoppers back following a particularly hot July, as consumers stocked up on essentials and back-to-school items.

"Footfall improved on the previous month, though still down on last year," she said. "Retail parks were the standout performers but the overall picture shows high streets face an uphill battle."

Dickinson called for government action ahead of the Autumn Budget, arguing that lower business rates and energy costs would help retailers contain prices and support investment.

Sensormatic's Andy Sumpter said the figures suggested the pace of decline may be starting to ease, but cautioned that retailers still faced pressure from rising inflation and constrained household spending.

There was a dearth of corporate news, but flooring products business Victoria said it remains focused on delivering improvements to underlying earnings and cash generation, with productivity upgrades to its V4 ceramics line in Spain completed over the summer and Balta's rugweaving equipment now fully relocated from Belgium to Turkey.

Victoria noted rival Headlam's move toward administration and said it would assess any opportunities arising, while stressing that its UK operations continued to trade well and that it had no credit exposure to the competitor.

Across other regions, the AIM-listed firm said conditions remained volatile, with energy, diesel and input costs rising further since July, prompting additional mitigation measures.