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LONDON (Alliance News) - Positive Chinese private sector data and a rise in oil prices were helping London stocks to trade higher midday Wednesday, whilst investors await the minutes of the most recent Federal Reserve policy meeting in search of clues on members' thinking ahead of the US central bank's next policy meeting at the end of the month.

The FTSE 100 index was up 0.5%, or 27.45 points, to 6,118.68. The FTSE 250 was up 0.4% to 16,791.20 and the AIM All-Share was up 0.2% to 713.51.

In European stock trading, the French CAC 40 index was up 0.3%, while the German DAX 30 was down 0.3%. In Asian trade, the Shanghai Composite index snapped a run of four successive sessions of gains to end down 0.1%. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong closed up 0.2%, and the Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo ended down 0.1%.

China's private sector activity expanded the most in eleven months in March on stronger services activity and a renewed expansion of manufacturing output, survey data published by Markit and Caixin showed.

The Caixin composite output index climbed to 51.3 in March from 49.4 in the previous month. Any score above 50 indicates expansion, while a reading below 50 suggests contraction in the sector. The General Services Business Activity Index rose to 52.2 in March from 51.2 in February.

He Fan, chief economist at Caixin Insight Group said: "Overall, the services sector developed well, but the economy is riding choppy waves, indicating the lack of a solid foundation for a recovery."

"The government needs to push forward with 'supply-side reform' to encourage the development of emerging industries," the economist added.

Oil prices continued to be driven by market sentiment on the upcoming oil producers meeting in Doha, Qatar later this month, and whether or not it can bring a freeze to oil production.

On Tuesday, Reuters reported that all signs suggest the meeting on April 17 will deliver an agreement to freeze output, citing Kuwait's OPEC governor and two sources

"There are positive indications an agreement will be reached during this meeting... an initial agreement on freezing production," she said. The OPEC governor is usually a country's number two OPEC official, after the oil minister.

The comments suggested Iran's aim to raise supply will not scupper a deal aimed at supporting prices and addressing the oversupply issue in the oil market.

At midday Wednesday Brent crude was quoted at USD38.64 a barrel, compared to the USD37.66 a barrel at the London stock market close Tuesday. Oil prices will likely see more volatility in the afternoon when the US Energy Information Administration discloses at 1530 BST changes to its crude oil inventories in the week ending April 1.

Futures indicated a higher open on Wall Street, with the Dow 30, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite all pointed up 0.3%.

The minutes of the March 15-16 Federal Open Market Committee meeting are released at 1900 BST, after the London close, with the promise of more clarity about the upward path of US interest rates, following contradictory messages from Fed officials.

The last meeting revealed a more dovish than expected dot plot of Fed members' interest rate expectations. Since then a number of policymakers have used speeches to suggest that an April US rate hike was still on the table, but Chair Janet Yellen maintained a dovish tone.

"It will be interesting to see from the minutes whether any consensus on a hike was even close or if they're as far away from a hike as they appear from their public comments," said Craig Erlam, senior market analyst at Oanda.

"While these minutes are dated to an extent, with the meeting now having taken place around three weeks ago, they should still offer valuable insight on the path of rates this year and what could speed this up or apply the breaks even harder," Erlam added.

The next Fed meeting is on April 26-27.

In UK corporate news, CRH was one of the best performers in the FTSE 100, up 2.3% after JPMorgan Cazenove lifted its recommendation to Overweight from Neutral. The bank said it believes the Irish building materials company's "attractive" valuation offers an "interesting entry point".

Miner and commodities trading house Glencore said it has entered a deal to offload a substantial stake in its agricultural business to a Canadian pension fund, the latest step in the group's push to divest assets as it looks to reduce its debt pile.

FTSE 100-listed Glencore said it had agreed to sell a 40% stake in its Agricultural Products business to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board for USD2.5 billion, a deal which had been flagged by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

The sale of the stake in the business values the agricultural arm, which handles wheat, corn, biofuels, cotton and sugar, at USD6.25 billion in total. Glencore was down 1.1%, as miners traded amongst the worst blue-chip performers for the second day in a row.

EasyJet was the worst FTSE 100 performer, down 2.3%. The low-cost carrier said the number of passengers carried rose in March year-on-year, but its load factor declined following cancellations due to strikes in France.

The company said the number of passengers carried grew by 4.3% in March to 5.7 million from 5.5 million in the same month the year before. Load factor declined by 1.3 percentage points to 91.3% from 92.6%. easyJet said there were 611 cancellations in March, with the majority due to air traffic control strikes in France.

Tullow Oil was one of the best performers in the FTSE 250 index, up 2.5%. The oil and gas company said it has received successful results from drilling the Wisting exploratory appraisal well in offshore Norway.

Tullow said the well encountered an oil column of 22 metres in a 1,402 metres horizontal section with 1,250 metres of net light oil pay. The main reservoir in the well was thicker than originally anticipated, it added.

Tullow expects the results from the well to provide an increase to in-place volumes in the Central South and Central West segments of the Wisting project, improving overall certainty over reserves at the site.

HSS Hire was the worst performer in the FTSE All-Share, down 11%. The tool and equipment hire company said its full-year results had come in line with its expectations, with its pretax loss widening on higher depreciation charges and administration costs.

HSS said revenue rose 10% to GBP312.3 million for the year ended December 26 from GBP284.6 million the year earlier, but its pretax loss widened to GBP13.8 million from GBP8.5 million, as both cost of sales and administrative expenses ramped up.

Cyan Holdings' share price more than doubled after the smart metering and lighting technology group said it has secured an order for around GBP10.0 million for implementing smart meters of electricity in Iran.

Cyan won the contract with telecommunications contractor Micromodje to implement around 360,000 smart meters using Cyan's CyLec's advanced electricity metering infrastructure.

The company said the hardware shipments are expected to start towards the end of 2016. The order follows Cyan having secured an initial purchase order with Micromodje in February

By Neil Thakrar; neilthakrar@alliancenews.com; @NeilThakrar1

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