London pre-open: Shares called higher on first trading day of 2026

(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to open higher on the first trading day of 2026, having closed the prior year lower but still enjoying its strongest yearly gain since 2009, closing just shy of the 10,000 mark.

The FTSE 100 was called to open 0.14% higher at 9,946. Volumes were expected to be thin, with most traders still away for the New Year holiday and little in the way of major corporate or economic news.

Looking ahead to next week, investors will be braced for jobs numbers from the US, while in the UK there are earnings reports from major UK retailers such as Tesco, Sainsbury's, Next Marks & Spencer and Greggs which will provide data on how much consumers spent over the Christmas period.

There was a dearth of news from the FTSE 350 list on Friday.

Outside the main grouping of companies, vision-based monitoring technology group Seeing Machines announced the formation of a dedicated team to support increasing demand from the autonomous driving sector.

The London-listed, Australia-based outfit has established Future Mobility Group, a team that will seek out new commercial opportunities as self-driving vehicle programmes across the world begin to scale, working with customers to embed its driver and occupant monitoring system tech. Seeing Machines said it is the first in its sector to create a specific team focused on supporting the full lifecycle of autonomous vehicle programmes.

Battery manufacturer Invinity Energy Systems said it had secured two new sales totalling 20MWh to Ideona, one of its commercial partners in Hungary, made up of two Endurium systems scheduled for delivery in the first half of 2026.

Invinity said on Friday that the sale was for use in two solar-plus-storage projects, representing its fourth and fifth sales into the Hungarian market, and represented repeat orders from Ideona, which previously purchased a 4 MWh VS3 battery system in September 2025.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com