THE LONDON REPORT
OUSEBUILDERS will come under scrutiny this week, with giants Persimmon and Barratt Developments set to update markets.
Traders will be hoping for further signs that there is an an uptick in mortgage availability, as banks repair their balance sheets and are able to resume lending to homebuyers, feeding through to the battered sector.
Barratt, set to issue a full-year trading update on Thursday, said in May it made hay in the spring house-selling season, but it also warned homebuyers are still struggling to get mortgages.
Persimmon, which faces similar challenges, is providing a trading update on Tuesday ahead of its interim results in August.
Howard Archer, chief European and UK economist at IHS Global Insight, said a Halifax house price report this week will likely show a rise in June, which could help boost shares in the housebuilder sector if Persimmon and Barratt adopt more optimistic tones.
But he warned “we are still far from convinced that house prices have bottomed out and we certainly do not think that we are at the start of a renewed sharp upward trend”.
Tullow Oil is set to update markets on Wednesday, and Premier Oil on Thursday, with the former thought likely to benefit from recently discovering 700m barrels of oil in Uganda.
Associated British Foods, set to update markets on Thursday, is expected to show an improvement in the second half of its financial year thanks to the opening of seven new outlets at its clothing retailer Primark.
And hedge fund Man Group is set to issue an update on Thursday. Shares of the firm are currently yielding an “eye-popping” 10 per cent, according to Motley Fool analyst David Kuo, about twice the market average. Kuo said traders are keen to assess how sustainable this payout is, as the group has suffered from plummeting fee incomes as its funds have dived in value.
The Bank of England is not expected to alarm markets with its base-rate decision on Thursday, with most expecting it to hold the rate at 0.5 per cent for a fifth consecutive month.