London pre-open: Traders waiting on Eurozone CPI data while oil slides

7th Jan 2015 07:56

UK stocks were expected to open slightly lower on Wednesday ahead of the release of Eurozone consumer price data which was expected to show the single currency area on the brink of deflation.City sources predict the FTSE 100 will open between 12 to 15 points higher than Tuesday's close of 6,366.51.The index suffered a near 0.8% fall in the previous session, following an already weak start to the week and the New Year over previous sessions.Overnight, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.74% to 17,372 while the Nasdaq-100 dropped 1.2% to 4,110.83 and the S&P 500 retreated 0.89% to 2,002.61.West Texas intermediate crude futures closed 4.272% lower at $47.99 a barrel, while Brent crude futures touched five and a half year lows.Commenting on the above, James Hughes, chief market analyst at Alpari UK, explained to clients that: "The oil price is the only thing that investors can focus on at the moment and with the drop in both WTI and Brent crude oil continuing it currently seems that there is no light at the end of the tunnel."Many will be asking just how much lower this oil price can go before some kind of stabilising effect kicks in, however after every $10 fall experts have been calling the end of the slide but have seen it continue to drop like a stone."As of 07:35 front month Brent crude futures were losing another 2.06% to reach $50.07 per barrel.Stocks to watchDespite a record-breaking Christmas week, Sainsbury's third-quarter like-for-like sales declined 1.7%, which was better than the 3.2% fall City analysts had expected. The supermarket group, the first of the Big Four to report after the festive period, warned that it expected the fourth quarter to be "similar to that of our first half", which fell 2.1%.In December budget airline Easyjet saw a 3.2% increase in the number of passengers flown to reach 4,634,977, whilst the company's load factor improved by half a percentage point to reach 88.4%. On a rolling 12-minth basis the number of passengers carried grew by 6.5% to hit 65.3m.In 2014 homebuilder Persimmon achieved a 17% increase in legal completions to reach 13,509 new homes, for a 36% rise in the number of new homes delivered to the market over the last two years. The average selling price improved by 5% last year, to reach £190,500.