The FTSE 100 is under intense pressure following the Fed interest rate decision and ahead of key corporate earnings. Futures tied to the index are down by more than 1.08% and are trading at their lowest levels since January 8.
What’s happening: The overall weakness of the FTSE 100 index is mostly a follow-through what happened during the American session when the Dow Jones fell by more than 600 points. This happened after the Fed warned that the US economy will go through a deterioration phase in the next few months. This is important because Footsie has many companies with American operations.
The FTSE 100 is also reacting to the corporate earnings from the United States. While companies like Facebook and Tesla released impressive numbers, their share prices declined in extended hours.
Later today, some of the American firms to watch will be Mastercard, Comcast, Danaher, and Sherwin-Williams. In the UK, the companies that will publish their results are Anglo American and TalkTalk. The latter will publish its earnings ahead of the results from BT Group and Vodafone.
On the four-hour chart, we see that the FTSE 100 index has been in an overall downward trend in the past few days. The index is now trading at the psychological level of 6,500. The 25-day and 15-day exponential moving averages. The RSI has also moved to the oversold level. Therefore, there is a likelihood that the index will continue falling when the session happens. A clear break below 6,500 will see it continue falling to the support at 6,437.