London pre-open: Stocks to fall after late Wall St selloff

(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to fall at the open on Tuesday following a negative close in the US, as investors digest the latest UK jobs data. The FTSE 100 was called to open 37 points lower at 7,186.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "Soon after Europe had closed, it was being reported that Apple was planning to slow hiring and spending heading into 2023 in a number of key areas. This followed on from a similar decision by Google owner Alphabet last week to do something similar with respect to hiring in the latter part of this year and into 2023.

"These reports prompted US markets to slide back and close lower on the day, highlighting once again how fragile sentiment currently is ahead of next week, when we'll get to hear the holy trinity of big tech announce their latest quarterly numbers, with Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Meta all updating the markets.

"As a result of yesterday's late US sell off, markets in Europe look set for a lower open, with today's focus set to be on the latest UK unemployment and wages numbers, along with EU CPI."

Figures out earlier from the Office for National Statistics showed that real pay taking into account inflation fell by 2.8% on the year in the three months to May.

David Freeman, head of labour market and household statistics at the ONS, said: "Following recent increases in inflation, pay is now clearly falling in real terms both including and excluding bonuses."

In corporate news, sustainable waste management company Biffa said it had won a 10-year contract to provide logistics, sorting and counting services for the UK's first Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for drinks containers in Scotland.

Biffa will be the logistics partner for the scheme, with responsibilities including the collection of bottles and cans from around 30,000 locations. It will also build and operate three counting centres. No financial details were disclosed.

Drugmaker AstraZeneca's Enhertu has received European Union approval to be used as a monotherapy for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer.

AstraZeneca said that approval by the European Commission followed "ground-breaking" results from the DESTINY-Breast03 trial, in which Enhertu demonstrated a 72% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death versus trastuzumab emtansine.