Good morning from London, I’m Thomas Warner and the FTSE 100 is celebrating its fortieth birthday with a slight uptick from last night’s close - despite falls overnight for both the Nasdaq and the S&P500.
Topping the early leaderboard is Entain, boosted by a new board appointment but the main story is in supermarkets - J Sainsbury PLC (LSE:SBRY) and Tesco PLC (LSE:TSCO) shares are up this morning after fresh figures from Kantar showed it was the busiest Christmas since 2019.
A record £13.7 billion was spent at supermarkets in the four weeks to 24 December, with 488 million shopping trips were made over the period. Grocery price inflation fell to 6.7% in December, marking the fastest month on month drop that the market research firm has recorded. The traditional retailers accounted for a combined market share of 70% during the 12 weeks to 24 December, but discount alternatives Aldi and Lidl are still snapping at their heels.
Outside of supermarket news the Institute of Directors has announced it wants to see interest rates start to come down sooner rather than later to help give business a bit of a new year lift, but today’s macreconomic focus is mostly the US, with minutes from the last Federal Reserve policy meeting, plus a raft of data, including MBA mortgage applications, ISM manufacturing PMI, ISM prices, Redbook index and crude oil inventories. And you can stay abreast of all that right here on Proactive.