UK Stocks Open in the Red despite Global Markets Continue Rally

Global stocks rally higher as the main focus for the week remains Fed Chair Powell’s speech on Friday.

The FTSE opened lower today trading at -0.23% on the day, a counter trend to global stocks that are still marching higher. The NAS100 is up 0.31% and the DAX is 0.27% higher on the day.

Investors and traders are still confident of the AI-tech driven bets, and the likelihood of a change in the Fed’s monetary policy for September. In that respect, the market is in great anticipation for Powell’s speech from Jackson Hole.

Casting some doom today on UK stocks was the report of the disappearance of top UK businessman and billionaire while on a yacht of the cost of Sicily. Mike Lynch, known for the sale of his start up Autonomy Corp to Hewlett Packard.

The businessman has been living under a cloud of criminality, charged with fraud for inflating the value of his start-up. The yacht trip was supposedly a celebration for having recently been acquitted of all charges.

Another factor hindering today’s FTSE performance is a strong pound, cable hit 1.30 big figure again. While a strong currency defends from imported inflation, it also makes British products more expensive to export.

Technical View

The day chart below for the FTSE shows a market back into bullish territory, with prices above the Ichimoku cloud. However, we can still see a sideways range, which has been ongoing since mid-June.

The current bullish leg has found resistance at 8,367 (green line), which corresponds to a previous attempt higher. To confirm the market is back in a full-blown bull trend, we would need to see a close above the all-time high of 8,481 (orange line).

The next resistance level is at 8,367 (green line), if that breaks the market will find resistance at 8,411 (red line), which corresponds to the most recent attempt to trade higher. That peak also gave way to a sharp drop, so I expect major resistance on that level.