Investors have been given something else to think about other than the Greek debt negotiation epic, in the form of the conclusion of the latest Federal Reserve meeting.
“There still remains a great deal of indecision amongst investors about when the Federal Reserve might look at raising interest rates. While today’s meeting isn’t likely to see a move in rates the main focus is likely to be on the tone of the statement and the resulting press conference from Fed Chair Janet Yellen,” opines Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at spread betting firm CMC Markets.
“There is likely to be a nod to concerns about the situation in Greece, given the verbal interventions in recent days by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, which suggests significant concern in the US government of possible ripple out effects,” Hewson speculated.
The meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee has put the release of minutes from the most recent meeting of its Bank of England counterpart, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), in the shade.
The MPC voted unanimously to keep UK interest rates unchanged, but Alex Lydall, senior trader at Foenix boutique Foenix Partners, reckons it might not be long before Ian McCafferty and Martin Weale, who have a bit of form when it comes to voting in favour of an interest rate hike, get off the fence.
Despite US markets looking set for a firm opening, UK blue-chips have surrendered early gains.
The FTSE 100 is down 39 at 6,671, with property stocks featuring prominently among the laggards.
British Land (LON:BLND), Land Securities (LON:LAND), Intu Properties (LON:INTU) and Hammerson (LON:HMSN) sport losses ranging from 1.7% to 2.2%.
Property companies may be in the soup but house builders such as Persimmon (LON:PSN) and Barratt Developments (LON:BDEV) are wanted, after mid-cap peer Berkeley Group (LON:BKG) impressed with its full-year results.
The company, which is focused on London and the south-east, posted a pre-tax profit of £539.7mln for the year to the end of April, up 42% on the previous year.
Berkeley’s shares storm 8.4% higher to 3,423p, but fellow FTSE 250 constituent Betfair (LON:BET) is down 82p at 2,432p, after it warned that investment was crucial to keep up with rivals in the gambling sector.
Bid news has put a bit of pep in a couple of small caps.
Anite (LON:AIE), which performs testing of handsets and telecoms equipment, looks set to go Dutch, after Keysight Technologies of the Netherlands won the UK company’s backing for a 126p per share cash offer. Anite’s shares rose 24.5p to 127.5p.
Promethean World (LON:PRW), meanwhile, is mulling an indicative 40p a share proposal from Hong Kong-listed NetDragon WebSoft.
The UK company, which makes electronic whiteboards that have supplanted old-fashioned blackboards in many classrooms, saw its shares recover to 33.76p from 27.25p but that is still about one-sixth of the price at which it floated with much fanfare back in 2010, in what was a text-book example of how to tick off patient shareholders.