London pre-open: Stocks seen lower after BoJ stands pat

(ShareCast News) - London stocks are set to open lower on Tuesday following a mostly weaker session in Asia, after the Bank of Japan decided to keep interest rates unchanged in negative territory.The FTSE 100 is seen starting 29 points lower than Monday's close at 6,145.Central bank meetings will remain in focus for the rest of the week as the Federal Reserve's two-day meeting kicks off later on Tuesday, while the Bank of England rate announcement is due on Thursday.There are no major UK data due, but the US calendar is pretty busy. PPI final demand is at 1230 GMT, along with retail sales, Empire manufacturing, business inventories and the NAHB housing market index."It's no secret the manufacturing sector is under pressure, not only in the US but globally as well so today's March Empire manufacturing survey isn't expected to offer up too much optimism apart from a slightly improvement on February's -16.6, to -10.3, making it the eighth consecutive monthly contraction," said CMC Markets' Michael Hewson."The retail sales data for February look set to be the most important data point today, with expectations of a decline of -0.1%, after three successive months of modest gains."Sainsbury's reports positive fourth quarter sales Sainsbury's posted positive sales growth in the fourth quarter, the first quarterly sales growth in more than two years, good news it would expect to boost its shares and its bid to acquire Home Retail Group.With transactions and volumes both heading in the right direction, the supermarket group grew total sales 1.2% and like-for-like sales 0.1% excluding fuel.Legal & General boosted its full year dividend by a fifth to 13.4p per share in its annual results on Tuesday and committed to more progressive increases, against market expectations.The dividend had already doubled in size since 2010, with UBS earlier forecasting that growth in the distributions would have to slow to 6% a year between 2016 and 2019.Net cash generation at the FTSE 100 firm was also up, by 14% to £1.26bn, with operating profit up 14% to £1.46bn. Legal & General reported adjusted earnings per share of 18.58p, up 11% in 2014.Online grocery home delivery firm Ocado said group gross sales rose 15.3% to £312.4m in the quarter to 21 February.Average weekly orders were up 16.9% to 214,000, although the average order size fell to £111.41 from £114.72.Ocado said it had cash and cash equivalents of £38.3m and external borrowings of £66.5m.Chief executive Tim Steiner said post period the company shipped more than 250,000 orders in a single week for the first time."We believe our focus on customer satisfaction and commitment to improving what we offer to consumers through innovation and our proprietary IP will support further growth. Notwithstanding the tough nature of the marketplace, we expect to continue growing ahead of the online grocery market."