Huawei reprieve supports European shares

European markets and the FTSE are trading higher this morning boosted by the slight loosening of US-China trade tensions. President Trump’s decision to grant US companies doing business with Huawei a three months reprieve has been taken by stock markets as a positive signal boosting Asian markets as well.

In London banks, resources companies and health care group NMC Health are leading the way. Severn Trent demonstrated Tuesday that UK utilities are the rare sector to avoid the fallout of Brexit and the firm reported results showing both higher revenue and higher profits for its fiscal year ending in March. The rest of the sector’s shares also notched slightly higher with Centrica, National Grid and SSE all trading up between 0.7% and 0.9%.

Sterling slides as British Steel faces collapse

All of last week the pound has been on a downward trajectory, sliding against a backdrop of unsuccessful cross-party talks and just after it started stabilizing late Monday it is now once more in decline.

The currency has sunk 0.3% this morning partially weighed down by news that the UK’s second largest steel producer British Steel will go under unless it manages to raise GBP30 million in emergency funding by the close of day Tuesday. If British Steel closes down the potential fallout would be a loss of up to 25,000 jobs which would eventually be felt in the overall economic data.

OPEC’s decision to extend production cuts into June is balancing out the negative impact of the worsening US-China trade dispute and is helping Brent Crude prices nudge higher.

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