London pre-open: Stocks seen down after US losses; GDP in focus

(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to fall at the open on Friday following a downbeat session on Wall Street on the back of hawkish comments from Fed chair Jerome Powell, as investors mulled the latest UK GDP data. The FTSE 100 was called to open down around 40 points at 7,416.

Stocks in the US finished lower after Powell said in a speech that he was not confident the Fed had reached a monetary policy stance to achieve the 2% inflation target and that there was still a long way to go.

On home shores, figures released earlier by the Office for National Statistics showed that GDP was unchanged in the three months to September, versus consensus expectations for a 0.1% contraction.

For the month of September, GDP rose 0.2% on the month following 0.1% growth in August, which was revised down from 0.2%. Economists were expecting no growth.

Darren Morgan, ONS director of economic statistics, said: "The economy is estimated to have shown no growth in the third quarter.

"Services dropped a little with falls in health, management consultancy and commercial property rentals.

"These were partially offset by growth in engineering, car sales and machinery leasing.

"In the month of September the economy grew slightly, with increases in film production, health and education.

"This growth was partially offset by falls in retail and computer programming."

In corporate news, drinks giant Diageo said it expects to see a slowdown in growth in the second half due to a weaker performance in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), one of its five key regions which accounts for 11% of group net sales values, is now expected to see an organic net sales decline of more than 20% in the second half compared with last year.

For the first half, organic operating profits for the group as a whole are now expected to be down on the previous year mainly due to LAC's declining sales, higher trade investment, lower operating leverage and adverse mix resulting from downtrading.

Updates from Chemring and Redrow were also out.