FTSE Up Marginally In Cautious Trade

(RTTNews) - The U.K. market is marginally up at noon on Monday with investors making some selective purchases ahead of a slew of corporate earnings announcements and some crucial economic data this week.

Optimism about U.S. and China striking a trade deal sometime soon is also contributing to the positive mood in the market.

AstraZeneca, HSBC Holdings, BP and Associated British Foods are scheduled to announce their earnings on Tuesday.

GSK, Barclays, Haleon, Lloyds Banking, Endeavour Mining, Whitbread, Shell, Natwest and Standard Chartered are among the several other companies slated to report their earnings this week.

The benchmark FTSE 100, which advanced to 8,453.80 earlier, was up 13.02 points or 0.15% at 8,428.27 at noon.

Entain is rising more than 4.5%. Melrose Industries, Diageo, JD Sports Fashion, Berkeley Group Holding, Associated British Foods, Persimmon, Hikma Pharmaceuticals, WPP, Barclays, Croda International, Intercontinental Hotels Group and EasyJet are up 1 to 2.2%.

Taylor Wimpey, GSK, Fresnillo, The Sage Group, BT Group, Howden Joinery and Natwest Group are also notably higher.

Deliveroo is up nearly 18%. The British meal delivery company has suspended its 100 million pounds ($133.13 million) share buyback program after receiving a proposal from DoorDash to buy all of its shares.

Marks & Spencer is down 2.2%. Babcock International, Standard Chartered, Beazley and Weir Group are also notably lower.

A report from the Confederation of British Industry said that the sales gauge for the United Kingdom rose to -8 in April 2025, the highest in six months, up from -41 in March, beating market expectations of -20.

Still, the CBI's outlook for May dropped to -33, the lowest in over a year.