London pre-open: Asia rally suggests stocks will rebound

London stocks are expected to pick themselves up on Tuesday morning as the summer reporting season gets into full swing.

The FTSE 100 was being called 32 points higher, having lost 23 points the previous session to close at 7,655.79.

Wall Street finished mixed overnight, as financials and tech stocks lifted the S&P into positive territory, whilst the Dow dipped a tad.

Asian markets have since charged higher, with analyst Jasper Lawler at London Capital Group suggesting the positive sentiment will transfer over to Europe, with tech shares likely to be in demand following an impressive set of results overnight from Google parent Alphabet.

He also warned that oil companies will also be in focus again, with Brent crude down 0.15% to $72.95.

"Oil surged up to 2% higher early on Monday, lifted by Trump’s threats on Iran; however, over supply concerns quickly dominated market sentiment pulling oil 0.2% lower on the day. The big fear for oil traders is that Saudi Arabia and other large oil producers are ramping up production ahead of the November deadline to comply with US sanctions on Iranian oil, this comes at a time when concerns over demand are starting to rise owing to increased global trade tension; over supply and falling demand is not a good combination for the oil bulls," Lawler said.

Tuesday data includes the CBI Industrial Trends survey at 1100 BST, where the headline balance for July is expected to fall to 9 from 13. This will follow a swathe of preliminary purchasing managers' surveys for euro area countries for the manufacturing and services sectors. The eurozone PMI results will be published at 0900 BST, with both indices forecast to retreat modestly.

In company news, BT Group said it has offered discounts to encourage communication providers to upgrade customers to faster broadband over the next five years. The company said the offer, made by its Openreach infrastructure arm, should bring superfast and ultrafast broadband to most homes and businesses.

Fizzy drinks maker Britvic said it was held back from fully capitalising on the hot weather in the third quarter due to the UK shortage of carbon dioxide. Still, the FTSE 250 company saw revenues bubble up 3.4% to £366.9m in the period from 16 April to 8 July.

AstraZeneca has agreed to sell the commercial rights to Atacand and Atacand Plus in Europe to Cheplapharm Arzneimittel for $200m on completion of the agreement, plus a time-bound payment of $10m and sales-contingent milestones. The deal is expected to complete in the third quarter.