Away from the excitement of the never-ending Eurozone crisis, leading shares have been given a boost by better than expected US data.
Signs of hope for the world's biggest economy came from the final revision of second quarter GDP, showing a rise of 1.3% compared to first estimates of 1% growth and expectations the figure would come in at 1.2%. The growth was helped by consumer spending growth and stronger than expected exports.
At the same time weekly jobless claims also improved, falling from 428,000 in the previous week to 391,000 last week.
The news has seen the FTSE 100 come off its worst levels, with the leading index now down 6.38 points at 5211.25. Dow futures are indicating an 88 point rise when Wall Street opens. But Annalisa Piazza at Newedge Strategy said:
All in all, today's US GDP data remain soft, confirming that the economy was running well below potential in the second quarter. One-off factors explain part of the weakness but the overall outlook is also not very encouraging. At the time of writing, we expect third quarter GDP to run at around 2.5% quarter on quarter annualized, still not exceptionally strong but certainly better than in the second quarter.
