Encouraged by Wall Street's strong finish to an up-and-down day, UK blue-chips are set to claw back most of yesterday's losses.
Spread betting quotes point to the FTSE 100 opening at around 5,930, versus last night's close of 5,874.
US benchmarks yesterday eventually made their mind up to travel in forward gear, with the Dow Jones average rising 103 points to 17,369, the S&P 500 climbing 10 points to 2,022 and the Nasdaq Composite firming up 19 points to 4,952.
Investors had more than half an eye on tomorrow's interest rate decision from the US Federal Reserve, and that is likely to be the case again today on both sides of the Atlantic.
Asian markets were mixed this morning with the Nikkei 225 down 317 at 18,566 in Tokyo and the Hang Seng up 20 points at 21,330 in Hong Kong.
The oil price showed signs of stabilising yesterday, but was down again this morning in screen-based trading, and is likely to be in focus again today.
“We hear all lots of guff from central bankers about how declines in energy prices are transitory yet the declines being seen right now have been going on for 18 months now. Since the last Fed meeting alone Brent oil prices have declined over 22%, while US prices have dropped over 24%, not to mention the fact that the latest US ISM manufacturing index has slipped into contraction,” writes Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at spread betters CMC Markets.
“Against this backdrop today’s US CPI [consumer prices] numbers for November are likely to act as a particularly noteworthy footnote. Expectations are for no change to the monthly number, while the year-on-year number is projected to rise from 0.2% to 0.5%, while core prices are expected to have risen to 2% from 1.9%,” Hewson noted.
On the corporate front, things continue to quiet down in the run-up to Christmas.
Carpet seller Carpetright (LON:CPR), chip designer Imagination Technologies (LON:IMG) and oil field support services provider Petrofac (LON:PFC) are the biggies scheduled to update the market.