London’s FTSE 100 was trading 0.3 per cent higher at 6,843 early on; it has not surpassed this level in intraday trade since 7 July.

Equities edged higher on Monday despite a raft of disappointing manufacturing purchasing managers’ indices (PMIs) from China, the Eurozone and UK.

“It appears that investors are holding onto the outside prospect that the European Central Bank might announce further steps to help boost growth and demand later this week,” said chief market analyst Michael Hewson from CMC Markets UK.

He said that these hopes are also outweigh ongoing geopolitical tensions between Ukraine and Russia, “thus limiting downside for now”.

As for Tuesday’s session, the focus will be on the UK construction PMI due out at 09:30, which is forecast to decline from 62.4 in July to 61.5.

Meanwhile, the widely-followed ISM US manufacturing index in the States out at 15:00 is expected to follow in the footsteps of other global production data and show a slowdown in August. The index is predicted to fall to 56.8 from 57.1 in July.

US construction spending figures are also due and are expected to show that spending increased 0.9 per cent in July after a 1.8 per cent fall in June.

Weir, miners gain

Engineering firm Weir Group jumped in early deals after Credit Suisse upgraded the stock from ‘neutral’ to ‘outperform’ and higgled its target price from 2,540p to 3,060p. The same bank downgraded sector peer IMI from ‘outperform’ to ‘neutral’.

Mining stocks were performing well as risk appetite returned after a subdued session on Monday. Anglo American, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Glencore were all putting in decent gains.

However, precious metals producer Polymetal inched lower as investors gave a cool reaction to plans to re-prioritise its project pipeline following the acquisition of the large Kazakh gold deposit, Kyzyl, earlier in the year. The changes include the slowing of certain development work and the termination of the Albazino expansion.

North-focused housebuilder Redrow rose as it lifted annual profits 91 per cent and was bullish about the forthcoming 12 months after strong increases to its land bank and order book. Other housebuilders, however, were mixed with Barratt Developments and Persimmon in the red and Crest Nicholson making gains.

Materials testing group Exova was a high riser as the stock rebounded after some heavy falls over the last few days. Maiden interim results from the company on Friday showed that losses widen significantly in the first half.

FTSE 100 – Risers
Weir Group (WEIR) 2,718.00p +2.99%
Glencore (GLEN) 366.95p +1.41%
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) 293.40p +1.35%
Rio Tinto (RIO) 3,274.00p +1.33%
Anglo American (AAL) 1,543.00p +1.28%
Mondi (MNDI) 1,025.00p +1.28%
BHP Billiton (BLT) 1,929.00p +1.26%
Antofagasta (ANTO) 789.50p +1.15%
G4S (GFS) 267.30p +1.02%
ARM Holdings (ARM) 986.00p +1.02%

FTSE 100 – Fallers
SSE (SSE) 1,502.00p -1.12%
Barratt Developments (BDEV) 365.80p -0.81%
BT Group (BT.A) 382.80p -0.73%
Persimmon (PSN) 1,324.00p -0.68%
Randgold Resources Ltd. (RRS) 5,055.00p -0.59%
Kingfisher (KGF) 307.00p -0.52%
Ashtead Group (AHT) 978.00p -0.51%
IMI (IMI) 1,348.00p -0.44%
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) 2,299.00p -0.39%
Smith & Nephew (SN.) 1,049.00p -0.38%

Source: ShareCast