The UK market is trading lower on Wednesday, as investors wait anxiously for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to testify on the outlook for the U.S. economy before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.
St. Louis Fed President James Bullard and New York Fed President William Dudley said Tuesday that there is no case yet for curtailing bond purchases, given low inflation and mixed signals for growth prospects.
Retail sales in the UK declined unexpectedly in April, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics showed. Retail sales volume, including auto fuel, fell 1.3 percent month-on-month in April against forecast for a 0.1 percent increase. Sales, excluding fuel, dropped 1.4 percent compared with an expected 0.1 percent growth.
Minutes of the policy meeting released by the Bank of England showed that the call for additional stimulus by Chief Mervyn King was overturned by other policymakers for the fourth consecutive month.
As seen in previous months, King, Paul Fisher and David Miles sought an increase in quantitative easing by 25 billion pounds to 400 billion pounds.
The Euro Stoxx 50 index of eurozone bluechip stocks is falling 0.42 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 50 index, which includes some major U.K. companies, is advancing 0.64 percent.
The FTSE 100 index is currently losing 0.2 percent.
ARM Holdings is losing 3.8 percent and Polymetal International is down around 3 percent.
Burberry and Wm Morrison Supermarkets are dropping 2.9 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively.
Lloyds Banking is adding 1.7 percent after announcing that is still confident on capital position.
Elsewhere in Europe, the German DAX is falling around 0.3 percent and the French CAC 40 is losing 0.7 percent. Switzerland's SMI is down 0.4 percent.
Across Asia/Pacific, markets ended mixed. Australia's All Ordinaries slid 0.3 percent, China's Shanghai Composite Index slipped 0.1 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell around 0.5 percent.
Japan's Nikkei 225, however, climbed 1.6 percent after the Bank of Japan decided to keep its ultra-loose monetary policy unchanged, as expected.
In the U.S., futures point to a higher open on Wall Street. Besides Bernanke's speech, data on existing U.S. home sales as well as the minutes of the latest Fed meeting are expected today.
In the previous session, stocks posted modest gains after home improvement retailer Home Depot raised its outlook for the year and comments from two Federal Reserve officials suggested the Federal Reserve remains far from winding down its bond-buying program. The Dow rose 0.3 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the S&P 500 edged up about 0.2 percent each.
In the commodity space, crude for July delivery is falling $0.63 to $95.55 per barrel while June gold is advancing $6.8 to $1384.4 a troy ounce.
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