Things are looking a little brighter in the global markets after a positive start on Wall Street.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up nearly 150 points in the first hour of trading, but there is no likelihood of the volatility easing, given the continuing crisis in Greece, the efforts to try and sort out the Eurozone mess, this week's G20 gathering, the conclusion later of the US Federal Reserve meeting and on Friday, a Greek confidence vote and the US non-farm payroll numbers.
As investors remain uncertain, the latest US data showed that private sector employers added 110,000 jobs in October, higher than the expected 100,000. September's number was revised upwards to 116,000 from 91,000. Annalisa Piazza at Newedge Strategy said:
Today's ADP report seems to confirm that the US labour market has stabilized, creating a decent amount of jobs each month. The picture remains sluggish if we consider that the pace of job creation is not strong enough to bring the unemployment rate down to pre-recession levels. However, a slow pace of job creation is still better than zero-growth.
After the ADP report, we still expect non-farm payrolls to rise by around 90,000 in October, with private payrolls up by 120,000 from 137,000 in September.
Meanwhile the FTSE 100 is currently 29.44 to 5451. 01, while Germany, France and Italy are up just under 1%. Lloyds Banking Group remains the biggest faller, down 2.27p to 28.29p or 7.5% following news that chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio is stepping down temporarily due to ill-health. Separately Shore Capital issued a sell note on the bank as part of a sector review, saying:
Given the significant uncertainty around the macroeconomic and regulatory backdrop in the UK, coupled with growing competitive pressures in retail banking, we struggle to justify why investors should own the shares at this point in time.
