FTSE 100 not expected to rise again after long weekend

The FTSE 100 is not expected to rise again after the Easter weekend but begin the foreshortened week on the back foot.

London’s blue chip index was heading for a 34-point decline ahead of opening trades on Tuesday, according to the IG spread-betting platform.

Overnight, Wall Street, which did not benefit from the four-day weekend, bustled higher as the dollar fell and bond yields eased.

The Dow Jones climbed 1.1% to 33,527.19, while the S&P 500 rose 1.4% and the Nasdaq Composite jumped 1.7% as a strong manufacturing PMI survey yesterday combined with a reminder of Friday’s impressive non-farm payroll numbers.

“That was enough for the FOMO massive to click the buy buttons as fast as they could until their mouses blew up,” said market analyst Jeffrey Halley at Oanda.

With a quiet day ahead expected, Halley also highlighted how upward pressure could start to be imposed on gas prices from the situation in Ukraine, which he said has been somewhat ignored by markets and the world, with Russian and Belorussian armed forces massing on Ukraine’s Eastern border, spurring fears that more ‘peacekeepers’ may soon be on the ground.

“That will expose yet another strategic European Union and German strategic misstep, placing Europe’s energy security in the hands of an unreliable totalitarian state to the East (think Nord-Stream 2)…Boots on the ground in Ukraine will see oil and gas prices, something the EU could do without right now.”

Story by ProactiveInvestors