The FTSE 100 is rising in the futures market ahead of the important final results by BP and trading statements by SSE and Virgin Money. The Footsie is trading at 6,525, which is substantially higher than yesterday’s low of 6,310.
FTSE 100 news: The top mover in the blue-chip London index will likely be BP, the energy supermajor. The company is set to publish its interim results before the market open. Analysts believe that the company made $52.15 billion in the fourth quarter, down by 27% year-on-year. They also see the adjusted upstream PBIT falling to about $1 billion.
In addition to BT, another FTSE 100 company that will publish today is SSE, a utility company. Virgin Money, the FTSE 250 company will also publish their trading announcements. Later this week, other firms to watch will be Royal Dutch Shell, BT, Vodafone, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
Other companies to watch will be silver miners like Polymetal and Fresnillo that soared yesterday because of the frenzy in the silver market. With silver price down by more than 2% today, these firms could be among the laggards.
The FTSE 100 index dropped sharply yesterday and reached its lowest level since December 21. On the daily chart, it moved below the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level. It also entered the Ichimoku cloud and passed the 25-day exponential moving average. Therefore, at this stage, the outlook for the Footsie is bullish based on the performance of its American counterparts like Dow Jones and S&P 500. Still, we should not rule out another drop to 6,400.
