London stocks opened lower on Tuesday, with the FTSE 100 down 0.3% at 9,251.72. The FTSE 250 slipped 5.72 points to 21,640.87, while the AIM All-Share inched up 0.2% to 768.64.
The dollar continued to soften ahead of Wednesday’s Fed decision, where a 25bp cut looks locked in. Traders are also watching signs of US-China progress, with Presidents Trump and Xi expected to talk on Friday to resolve TikTok’s future in the US.
Wall Street started the week on a stronger footing. The Dow added 0.1%, the S&P 500 rose 0.5% to another record, and the Nasdaq climbed 0.9%, also hitting a fresh peak. Tech remains the engine, with Nvidia alone making up around 8% of the S&P 500. Strip out the megacaps and earnings growth elsewhere was closer to 3–4%. US Treasury yields were steady, with the 10-year at 4.03% and the 30-year at 4.65%.
In the UK, unemployment held at 4.7% in the three months to July, as expected. Payroll numbers slipped by 142,000 on-year in July, while August saw a further 127,000 drop. Vacancies fell again, down 10,000 to 728,000, the 38th straight quarterly decline. Regular pay growth cooled to 4.8% from 5.0%, though total pay ticked up to 4.7%.
Among movers, easyJet fell 2.7% after JPMorgan cut the airline to ‘neutral’. Kier Group surged 7.7% after saying it had started the year ahead of expectations. Recruiters struggled, with SThree crashing 24% as third-quarter fees fell 12%. PageGroup and Hays slid 2.9% and 2.4% respectively in sympathy.