FTSE100 is tipped to go higher after global losses in markets yesterday on China growth fears.
The UK benchmark closed yesterday down around 56, or 0.92% to finish at 6,125, but today financial spread betters at IG are calling it to start ten points to the good.
US stocks finished last night also in the red with the Dow down 109 at 16,194 and Asian stocks overnight were disappointing, falling the most in three weeks as investors reeled at disappointing trade numbers from the globe's second biggest economy.
The Shanghai Composite Index is now down 73 points at the time of writing at 2,820, while Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 140 points overnight to finish at 16,642.
Michael Hewson, at CMC Markets, said yesterday’s trade numbers only served to highlight the mountain Chinese officials have to climb to in order to try and hit GDP targets for this year.
"The weakness of yesterday’s data merely serves to reinforce the importance of this weekend’s retail sales and industrial production data. A similarly abysmal showing here will inevitably raise expectations of further easing measures from Chinese authorities. This will become more inevitable if the ECB eases policy further tomorrow, which seems likely."
Investor attention is also firmly focused to the ECB meeting tomorrow, where it is thought there could be more stimulus measures announced and a possible move towards a negative base interest rate.
Corporate announcements expected:
Finals: 4imprint Group (LON:FOUR), G4S (LON:GFS), Hill & Smith Holdings (LON:HILS), Hochschild Mining (LON:HOC), Lookers (LON:LOOK), Mincon Group Eur0.01 (LON:MCON), Portmeirion Group (LON:PMP), Prudential (LON:PRU), Restaurant Group (LON:The) (LON:RTN), SIG (LON:SHI), StatPro Group (LON:SOG), Tri-Star Resources (LON:TSTR)