London pre-open: Strong rebound expected early on

25th Jun 2013 07:44

Markets are expected to open with solid gains on Tuesday morning, rebounding after having closed at levels not seen since early January the day before.Renewed concerns over a slowdown in China and ongoing fears about a scaling back of stimulus in the States prompted another steep sell-off across global equity markets on Monday, meaning that the FTSE 100 had nearly erased all of its year-to-date gains.City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open up 53 points from yesterday's close of 6,029."Looking ahead to today and the focus in going to remain on the US, with a few key pieces of economic data being released this afternoon," said Market Analyst Craig Erlam from Alpari."It's going to be interesting to see how investors react to the data now that any improvement will increase the chances of Fed 'tapering' in September, although I still think it will be December at the earliest.Stocks to watchConsumer packaging giant Rexam is to focus on its beverage cans business and sell off its Healthcare division as it admitted that full-year trading will below expectations. After the group had already warned in its first-quarter update in April that beverage can volume growth was lower than planned at 3.0%, the company has now revealed that the rate of year-on-year increase slowed down to just 1.0% in the five months to the end of May.Oilfield service company Petrofac reported "modest growth" in half-year net profit, driven by a strong operational performance and an active project portfolio. In a trading update for the six months to end of June, the group said it secured $2.6bn of order intake. The group backlog stood at $11.9bn at the end of May, up slightly from the $11.8bn at the end of December 2012.Industrial coding, printing and marking technology group Domino Printing swung into a pre-tax loss for the half year as difficult trading conditions across most of Europe persisted. The supplier of coding and marking products reported a pre-tax loss of £3.8m for the six months ended April 30th compared to a profit of £24.7m the year before. Revenue increased to £161.9m during the period from £151.0m, helped by strong growth in the US and Germany.Defence, security, transport and energy electronics company Ultra Electronics is to help EDF Energy with the construction and support of nuclear-reactor instrumentation at sites across the UK. The £16.1m contract is the first to benefit from Ultra's recent investment in a state-of-the-art nuclear-instrumentation manufacturing facility in Dorset, the company said on Tuesday morning.