Thanks for joining me. Next has promised it will not increase its selling prices this year as it received a boost from falling prices at the factory gate.
The retailer also increased its profit guidance for the year by £20m to £905m, up 4pc on the previous year.
5 things to start your day
1) Elon Musk’s Chinese rival toppled Tesla – now it’s coming for Britain | BYD’s rising popularity raises fresh fears over China’s carmaking dominance
2) ‘We are losing lots of companies – if we do nothing the UK market will fade away’ | Government must stop chronic undervaluation of British businesses, Peel Hunt warns
3) Airbus plots €1.8bn takeover of French cybersecurity business | Aerospace giant in talks to buy Atos amid growing interest in digital defence
4) Official at Thurrock council investigated after bankruptcy | Local authority left with £500m budget black hole after making high-risk investments
5) Matthew Lynn: The Bank of England is about to put the final nail in the Tory coffin | Cost of money is coming down in the City, but one body remains unconvinced
What happened overnight
Asian stocks slipped, tracking a weak start to 2024 on Wall Street as Japan’s markets reopened.
The mood was sombre in Tokyo as the market reopened from the New Year holidays with a moment of silence instead of a celebratory New Year’s ring of the bell after a major earthquake Monday left at least 77 people dead and dozens missing.
Dark-suited officials bowed their heads in a ceremony that usually features women clad in colorful kimonos. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 closed down 0.5pc to 33,288.29, while the broader Topix index gained 0.5pc to 2,378.79.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng shed 0.4pc to 16,574.36 and the Shanghai Composite index sank 0.4pc to 2,946.15.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 declined 0.4pc to 7,494.10. South Korea’s Kospi declined 0.8pc to 2,586.02. India’s Sensex, however, climbed 0.6pc.
Echoing a red ink day for stock markets in Britain and the eurozone on Wednesday, the S&P 500 lost 0.8pc to 4,704.81.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 top American companies likewise dropped 0.8pc to 37,430.19. The Nasdaq composite pulled lower with a drop of 1.2pc to 14,592.21.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bonds slipped to 3.91pc from 3.94pc late on Tuesday on a day in which the US Federal Reserve released the minutes of its December interest rate meeting.
While the minutes did not provide direct clues about when rate cuts might commence in the US, they indicated a growing sense that inflation is under control and a growing concern about the risks that “overly restrictive” monetary policy may pose to the world’s largest economy.
Paul Ashworth, Chief North America Economist at Capital Economics, said the minutes “were slightly more dovish that we were expecting – more in line with the message delivered by Fed Chair Jerome Powell in his press conference than the hawkish post-meeting comments from a number of other Fed officials.”
Robert Johnson is a UK-based business writer specializing in finance and entrepreneurship. With an eye for market trends and a keen interest in the corporate world, he offers readers valuable insights into business developments.
