London pre-open: Metals to lead rally

25th Oct 2010 07:41

City trading screens will be turning blue on Monday as the softer dollar gets commodity prices moving higher.Most Asian markets did well this morning as the G20 economic powerhouses promised to work together to avoid "competitive devaluation" of currencies. That was taken as a negative for the greenback.UK-listed resource plays are expected to race ahead in early deals, taking the FTSE 100 up over 40 points to a new s-x-month higher and within a whisker of 5,800.Pearson has raised full-year earnings forecasts again after all parts of the publishing and education group continued to "perform strongly" in the third quarter. The FT publisher reports sales for the first nine months of 2010 are up 7% at constant exchange rates and adjusted operating profit is up 15%. The firm is trading ahead of previous guidance and now expects full year adjusted earnings per share to be about 10% higher than 2009's 65.4p.BG has seen the run of successful drills on the Tupi prospect in the Santos Basin, offshore Brazil, rise to nine with the latest well hitting light oil. "The well encountered a 128-metre reservoir section and located the oil/water contact in the Tupi accumulation at the deepest of the potential depths previously being considered, further reducing uncertainty in estimating hydrocarbon volumes for the Tupi area," it said.Centrica has effectively shelved its £1.5bn plan to build two gas storage facilities in the North Sea and Irish Sea unless the Government finds a way to subsidise the proposal. The energy company would have increased Britain's storage capacity by a third, with the proposed Baird project containing 1.7bn cubic metres of gas and the smaller Bains project in the east Irish Sea holding 570m cubic metres, the Telegraph reports.