London pre-open: FTSE seen rebounding ahead of Supreme Court ruling

The FTSE 100 is expected to rebound in early trading on Tuesday, ahead of the Supreme Court's decision on Article 50.

City sources called the blue chip index 21 points higher on Tuesday, after closing down 0.66% at 7,151.18 on Monday, its lowest point since 3 January.

Around 0930 GMT the Supreme Court is expected to deliver its ruling on whether the government must hold a parliamentary vote to trigger Article 50 and thus kick-off the two-year countdown to Britain’s exit from the EU.

The more dramatic rumours point to a potential constitutional crisis unfurling, though analyst Michael Hewson at CMC Capital said the likely outcome was that the government loses its appeal and is therefore forced to put the triggering of Article 50 to a parliamentary vote, "which in all likelihood will pass, given last month’s parliamentary debate and non-binding vote saw MP’s approve the government’s timetable to begin Brexit talks by the end of March".

The main UK data scheduled is that on public sector net borrowing from the ONS.

In Europe, a glimpse at the progress of the French and German economies will come via the latest flash manufacturing and services PMI’s for January.

In companies, BT issued a profit warning as it expects a £500m hit to cashflow after an investigation discovered accounting errors at the UK telecoms giant's Italian business, which comes on top of a slowdown at its UK public sector business. After an internal review carried out with KPMG, BT's earnings in Italy were found to have been overstated for several years.

Electronics retail group Dixons Carphone issued a trading update for the 10 weeks to 7 January on Tuesday, with revenue up 8% year-on-year in sterling, 3% in the local currency and 4% like-for-like. In the UK & Ireland, the FTSE 100 firm said like-for-like growth was 6%, while it was 5% in Southern Europe. Dixons’ Nordics region saw revenue shrink by 1% on a like-for-like basis during the period.

EasyJet reported a “solid” first quarter with revenue, costs and passengers numbers in line with expectations, while the budget airline reduced costs to mitigate against weak sterling and the impact of fuel. Passenger numbers rose 8.2% to 17.4m for the quarter ended 31 December 2016, compared to the previous year, driven by a 8.6% growth in capacity to 19.3m seats, while the load factor fell by 0.3 percentage points to 90%.