Market overview: FTSE 100 ends lower as energy stocks drag

1630 (Close): London’s FTSE 100 closed at 6,811, down 0.2% on the day with the energy sector providing a drag after oil major Royal Dutch Shell missed quarterly forecasts and scaled back its investment budget.

1500: Pending home sales slipped 3.7% in December, which the National Association of Realtors (NAR) attributed to fewer homes available for sale and a slight rise in prices. However, the year-on-year gain was 11.7%, the highest since June 2013.

1330: US jobless claims dropped to just 265,000 in the week ended 24 January, the lowest since April 2000. Analysts had expected claims to fall to 296,000 from 307,000 the previous week. The 43,000 decline was the biggest plunge since November 2012.

1000: German unemployment fell 9,000 in January, less than the 10,000 drop that was predicted. The jobless rate remained at 6.5% in January.

0929: The Fed last night painted an improved picture of the economy, changing its language about recent job gains from “solid” to “strong”, and adjusting its view of the recovery from “moderate” to “solid”. However, it said it would still "be patient in beginning to normalise the stance of monetary policy" and highlighted that it was watching global economic developments. Lisa Hornby, the US fixed income portfolio manager at Schroders, said in an email that the statement suggests a rate hike “may be delayed” but that “a June 2015 hike is still on the table”. She said: "We believe that the Fed is aware of the risks to financial stability of keeping policy too accommodative, especially in the face of an unemployment rate of 5.6% and core inflation of 1.4%."

0830: UK markets have opened on the back foot, tracking declines on Wall Street last night, as investors reacted to the FOMC’s commitment to stay patient about rate hikes. Heavy falls from Shell and other blue chips in the oil sector weighing heavily in London, as oil prices were trading near their lowest in nearly six years. Shell said it has curtailed over $15bn of potential spending over the next three years as it reported adjusted annual profit growth of 12% in the fourth quarter to $3.3bn, well below the consensus forecast of $4.2bn.