“Volumes have been light as the trading week draws to a close owing to the shutdown of US markets as Americans around the world celebrate Thanksgiving,” said Max Cohen, Financial Sales Trader at Spreadex.

Wall Street will re-open today at the usual time, but will close after a half day’s trade at around 18:00 London time. “We can expect this afternoon’s session to be a rather more lively affair when the US markets re-open as investors seek to squeeze all their trading into a small window before heading into the weekend,” Cohen said.

Nevertheless, in spite of the lull experienced on Thursday, the FTSE 100 still managed to register small gains, tracking another record performance from US benchmarks as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 set fresh all-time highs on Wednesday. Meanwhile, the FTSE All-World equity index was trading close to a six-year high yesterday.

Markets will this morning be digesting the news UK consumer confidence registered a surprise decline in October. The Gfk index showed a fall to a seasonally adjusted -12, compared to -11 the previous month, which also revealed a fall. The figure had been expected to rise to -10. This was the first consecutive monthly decline in the index since mid-2011.

In other UK news, house prices rose at the fastest pace in more than three years in November, data from Nationwide revealed on Friday. Prices jumped 6.5% year-on-year, compared to the previous month’s rise of 5.8% and the consensus forecast for a 6.2% increase.

Other data elsewhere this morning is expected to show that Eurozone inflation increased to 0.8% in November from 0.7% in October. Consumer prices in the bloc dropped sharply last month, prompting the European Central Bank to cut interest rates to 0.25% from 0.5%.

Precious metals group Fresnillo was a high riser this morning as metal prices gained across the board with increases seen in gold, silver, copper and platinum early on.

Antofagasta, African Barrick Gold and Kazakhmys were all trading higher, as comments on top metals consumer China from Standard & Poor’s also lifted sentiment. The agency reiterated its ‘AA-‘ long-term and ‘A-1+’ short-term sovereign credit ratings on China with a ‘stable’ outlook, citing robust growth prospects.

Even Rio Tinto was up despite the news that it plans to temporarily suspend alumina production at its Gove refinery in Australia as it is “no longer viable” in the current economic environment. The stock performed well on Thursday after the miner announced that it would ramp-up production at a lower cost at its iron ore business in Western Australia.

Housebuilders were in the red again for the second day after the government announced yesterday that it would be changing it Funding for Lending scheme to focus on small businesses, rather than mortgage lending. Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey, Barratt Developments and Travis Perkins were all extending losses this morning.

Credit checking group Experian was also trading lower this morning after analysts at Goldman Sachs downgraded their rating on the stock to ‘sell’ and cut their target price from 1,220p to 985p.

Source: ShareCast