Reuters: Hot Stocks: Britain's FTSE steadies, eyeing central bank stimulus

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Britain's FTSE steadies, eyeing central bank stimulus Apr 4th 2013, 11:17 Thu Apr 4, 2013 7:17am EDT * FTSE 100 steadies after a fall * Hard-hit miners lead gainers * Positioning could limit downside risk from U.S. jobs By Toni Vorobyova LONDON, April 4 (Reuters) - Britain's benchmark share index steadied on Thursday, pressured by concerns about the strength of the U.S. economic recovery, but the prospect of more stimulus from global central banks kept a lid on the losses. The Bank of Japan pledged to step up bond purchases , while the European Central Bank may start to pave the way for future interest rate cuts at its post-meeting conference which starts at 1230 GMT. The Bank of England, as expected, left policy on hold and made no statement after its monthly policy meeting. The prospects of more and continued stimulus - a key factor behind equity market gains in recent months - helped take some of the sting out of the previous session's weak U.S. data. "The one thing that has helped the FTSE 100 today, to a certain extent, is the Japanese announcing (stimulus)," said Jonathan Roy, sales trader at London Stone Securities. "It has put a floor under the market given the weak data we had yesterday. If they hadn't done that, I wouldn't have been surprised to see the market lose another 100 points today." The FTSE 100 was down 0.06 percent, or 4.08 points at 6,416.20 by 1041 GMT. The index - whose companies derive around a quarter of their earnings from North America - fell 1.1 percent the previous session after data showed private companies hiring less and service sector growth slowing. The data knocked confidence in the health of the world's biggest economy, prompting investors to scale down their expectations for Friday's keenly-watched non-farm payrolls report, which economists expect to show 200,000 new jobs. "There has been market talk of a figure around 165,000," say Roy at London Stone Securities. "Anything above 200,000 will be good for the markets." Other traders said that market positioning was likely to limit any potential losses. Among the individual share moves on Thursday, miners led the way, clawing back some of the heavy losses suffered so far this year . Eurasian added 6.5 percent, while Vedanta gained 6.3 percent. "A contrarian play on buying mining stocks such as Kazakhmys , Petroplavosk and Vedanta, while a high risk strategy, could potentially yield some spectacular results," said Ronnie Chopra, head of strategy at Tradenext. "Surely the prices of some of these shares are at silly levels and could easily jump 25 percent in a blink of an eye. Stocks that warrant closer attention are those that have been hit very hard in recent weeks, some losing 50 percent of their value and others at 75 percent plus off their peaks." (Additional reporting by David Brett; Editing by Ruth Pitchford) Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

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