Market update: US equities higher on earnings; China’s poor trade data spur hopes of easing – 10.07.2013

Source: Henderson Global Investors

In Wall Street it was another positive end to trading on Tuesday as the Dow Jones finished up 0.5% and the S&P 500 gained 0.7%. US companies are reporting second quarter profits and there is a buzz that companies will produce better than expected results over the next few weeks. Shares in Caterpillar jumped 2.6% — the biggest winner among Dow stocks. Fedex shares rose 4% because of recent rumours that influential investor William Ackman will be making an investment in the delivery firm.

In London this morning the markets looked to be moving ahead as trading began, helped by the news that fashion giant Burberry have seen a strong rise in first quarter revenue. However, news from China, the world’s biggest consumer of metals, of a fall in both imports and exports has had a negative effect on mining companies. This comes after steady increases in exports over every other month of 2013 — in many cases these figures had been grossly inflated to encourage capital into the country. The biggest faller in mining was Fresnillo, down 4%. House builder Barratt Developments rose 1% and is the most recent sign that the government’s Help to Buy scheme is paying off. This has not been enough to pull indices up, though, at the time of writing both the FTSE 100 and the FTSE Eurofirst 300 are down 0.4%.