London pre-open: Shares to slip back as miners remain under pressure

London stocks are expected to slide back again on Friday, mirroring a downbeat Wall Street finish overnight and a mixed Asian session, while the pound recuperates.

The FTSE 100 index was being called 12 points lower by City traders ahead of the open, having finished at 7,683.97 the previous session.

Sterling had recovered a tad overnight from its bruisings at the hands of Parliament and the dollar, climbing back above $1.3, though losing 0.1% more to the euro at 1.1167, around its lowest levels against the single currency since March.

While some European equity markets hit one month highs this week, market analyst Michael Hewson at CMC said investors are still a little wary, particularly since commodity markets have continued to look extremely weak, with copper, platinum and palladium prices hitting multi month lows.

"If the global economy is supposed to be growing then commodity prices are telling us a completely different story. Since the beginning of June, all three metals have declined well in excess of 10% and are well below the highs of the year."

The prospect of further trade skirmishes between the US and Europe and China is keeping a lid on markets, with President Trump also criticising the Federal Reserve.

"These remarks by the US President, criticising the pace of US rates rises as well as the strength of the US dollar, particularly against the Chinese yuan and the euro pulled the US dollar down from its highest levels this year. Against the Chinese yuan in particular the US dollar has risen over 8% in the last three months, though most of this has happened once it became clear that the US President was serious in implementing the steel and aluminium tariffs that he first announced on the 1st March this year."

The slide in the US dollar also prompted a sharp reversal in US 2-year treasury yields which had earlier made new 10-year highs.

Looking ahead, this morning at 0930 BST UK public sector borrowing numbers are due, with markets expecting a modest increase to £3.6bn for June from £3.4bn in May.

This weekend’s will see a G20 finance ministers meeting in Buenos Aires, where US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin will be able to respond to questions on US trade policy. Currently there are no bi-lateral meetings planned with Chinese officials to move things forward on trade.

In company news, oil companies, including BP and Royal Dutch Shell, breathed another sigh of relief after a federal judge dismissed a New York City lawsuit against the companies for their role in contributing to climate changes. As with similar rulings in San Francisco and Oakland last month, the district court judged that problems associated with climate change should be tackled by Congress.

Emergency home repairs group HomeServe said trading has been as expected during its traditionally quieter first quarter. Ahead of its annual general meeting, where shareholders will wave off chief executive Martin Bennett as he steps down after 15 years on the board, the FTSE 250 group reiterated that it saw good prospects for growth in the year ahead, with attractive opportunities in all its geographies.

Beazley’s first-half profit fell as the insurer paid out more for claims and investment returns declined but top-line growth was strong as rates firmed. Pre-tax profit for the six months to 30 June fell 64% to $57.5m (£44m) from a year earlier. Gross written premiums rose 15% to $1.32bn.

Unilever announced the successful completion of the first tranche of its share buyback programme to buy €3bn of shares and said it would start of a second tranche of equal size on Friday, as it returns value to shareholders following the disposal of its Spreads business.