There are sparks of hope about the US-China trade deal phase one. The negotiation chiefs on both sides held phone calls early Tuesday after which Chinese VIce Premier Liu He made comments about having reached some form of consenus. This is closer than the two sides have been to a deal for a couple of months, but this still means that an actual agreement may not be ready before the new year.
Miners were the first to react and Fresnillo (LON:FRES) gained 3.6% in early trade. Building materials group CRH (LON:CRH) closely followed suit helped by a trading update showing that its EBITDA jumped 7% on the year.
Still, rather than rising the FTSE ended up deflated, dragged down by a 5.84% decline in the Compass Group (LON:CPG) after the company reported a pretax profit decline.
Sterling weakens against dollar, flat against euro
After a brief bounce higher late yesterday sterling plodded overnight only to weaken almost 0.3% this morning. The pre-election to and fro is not doing much for the pound with little new ground being covered by any of the parties. The pound is holding marginally better against the euro, trading almost unchanged against the common currency despite some positive EU economic indicators showing that German consumer confidence is on the rise.