London pre-open: Stocks seen up ahead of payrolls

(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to rise at the open on Friday as investors eye the latest US non-farm payrolls report.
The FTSE 100 was called to open 34 points higher at 7,163.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "Today's main event is the November payrolls report particularly given Powell's surprise hawkish tilt earlier this week, which places a much greater expectation of an acceleration to the tapering program when the Fed meets in less than two weeks' time.

"With the ADP report also showing a strong number on Wednesday, of 534k, expectations are for a similar 550k jobs to be added on top of the decent numbers seen in the past two months.

"The unemployment rate is also expected to fall further to 4.5% with a particular focus on wages, while the participation rate is expected to tick up to 61.7%."

On home shores, meanwhile, all eyes will be on Markit's services PMI for November at 0930 GMT.

In corporate news, Petropavlovsk said the UK's High Court had rejected a bid by its major shareholder JSC Uzhuralzoloto Group of Companies to stop the sale of a stake in iron ore subsidiary IRC.

JSC wanted a court order to force Petropavlovsk into a general meeting at which it would try to prevent the company offloading its 29.9% share in IRC to Stocken Board, a Liechtenstein-incorporated investment company.