Market news round up, upgrades & downgrades courtesy of Cantor Index

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UK Corporate Announcements

ICAP details that six month revenues are seen coming in 14% lower from last year stating the macroeconomic environment remains difficult, but states it makes good progress in its structural review and saw an improvement in trading revenues in September

LSE states that it has had a positive performance over the past five months, and that AIM was performing particularly well

Homeserve announces it continues to grow its international operations and maintains its full year forecasts

Domino’s Pizza states it remains confident that it will meet the consensus on its full year earnings, as it reports Q3 sales of £136m

Topps Tiles announces that it traded positively in Q4

Porvair announces nine month revenues gained 12% and that it continues to trade well

Experian details five month organic revenues gained 1% and that it continues to explore options to sell its US businesses such as Pricegrabber after a proposed deal with Ybrant Digital passes its expiration date

WS Atkins states that it sees Q2 trading in line with the expectations

Shanks Group announces that it sees full year results slightly below expectations after a deterioration in UK and Dutch solid waste markets

UK Market News

Libor rigging moves back atop the agenda after Bloomberg details that internal RBS messages, which RBS is trying to keep secret – according to Bloomberg, detailed that one of its traders told colleagues that it was able to move global interest rates, unfortunate timing for RBS as talk increases that it is close to the point of recovery and is set to post a major restructuring next year

While the FT writes that the British Bankers Association is willing to give up its responsibility for setting Libor

The TNK BP story rumbles on, with yet more reports that its Russian part owners are preparing an all cash offer for the 50% owned by BP

Anglo American states that it plans to adjust to market conditions and in the short term plans to reduce its coal output on a case by case basis

Bernie Ecclestone responds to talk and states that there will not be an IPO of Formula One this year

FTSE 100 Ex dividends (net): Centrica PLC, CNA, (4.62),  RSA Insurance Group PLC, RSA, (3.41),  WM Morrison Supermarkets PLC, MRW, (3.49)

Estimated FTSE 100 Dividend Impact: 1.7 points

FTSE 250 Ex dividends (net): Anite PLC, AIE, (1.125),  Bovis Homes Group PLC, BVS, (3),  Derwent London PLC, DLN, (9.95g),  Dignity PLC, DTY, (5.36),  Drax Group PLC, DRX, (14.40),  Filtrona PLC, FLTR, (3.90),  Kentz Corp Ltd, KENZ, ($0.055g),  Murray Income Trust PLC, MUT, (13.25),  Oxford Instruments PLC, OXIG, (7.228)

FTSE Small Share Ex dividends (net): BlackRock Commodities Income Investment Trust PLC, BRCI, (1.4375),  Development Securities PLC, DSC, (3.20),  Henderson High Income Trust PLC, HHI, (2.075),  Morgan Sindall Group PLC, MGNS, (12),  North American Income Trust PLC, NAIT, (6.50),  Photo-Me International PLC, PHTM, (1.25),  Primary Health Properties PLC, PHP, (9.25),  Ruffer Investment Company Ltd, RICA, (1.60),  Vitec Group PLC/The, VTC, (8.50)

UK Analyst Upgrades

Drax Raised To Neutral Vs Underperform At Credit Suisse

EasyJet Added to Morgan Stanley’s Best Ideas List

Rexam Rated New Overweight at Barclays; PT 550p

UK Analyst Cuts

Domino’s Pizza Cut To Add From Buy At Numis

Bumi Cut to Underweight from Overweight at JPMorgan

UK Insider Buying

Sabmiller Plc, (SAB), 1 insider(s) bought 461 shares, £27.3

UK Insider Selling

Beazley Plc, (BEZ), 1 insider(s) sold 250,000 shares, £1.65

European Market Summary

Irish papers suggest that the government may be looking to sell a dollar denominated bond, in order to open up additional funding avenues outside its euro bonds

Geithner has stated that Europe is in a better position now than it was at the start of the year

Catalonia has called a snap election, and calls for a vote on independence, increasing concerns that the local independence political parties will be able to leverage distrust on national government austerity measures and could cause difficulties on any planned Spanish aid package, with Rajoy stating that he cannot say whether Spain will ask for a formal state bailout at the moment

Total’s chief is the first to publicly state that energy companies should not drill for oil in Arctic waters as the risk of pollution to the sensitive environment was too great

Germany is expected to approve a bill today that will pass legislation later in the year that would require additional fees for the ‘excessive use’ of trading platforms, and require traders to maintain a balance between orders and executed trades, due to widespread criticisms on how algo trading dominates the intraday flow of most of the major equity markets

While le Figaro has the President of the Autorite des Marches Financiers as stating that high frequency trading had made markets incomprehensible to individual shareholders and calls for wider transparency

Santander has completed a placing of shares in its Mexican lender at the mid of the expected range

Italy is due to sell up to €9bn in bonds today

S&P 500 Companies Reporting

S&P 500 Ex Dividends (gross):- ACE Ltd, ACE, (.49),  AvalonBay Communities Inc, AVB, (.97),  Boston Properties Inc, BXP, (.55),  Danaher Corp, DHR, (.025),  Deere & Co, DE, (.46),  DENTSPLY International Inc, XRAY, (.055),  Dow Chemical Co/The, DOW, (.32),  Edison International, EIX, (.325),  Fifth Third Bancorp, FITB, (.10),  Flowserve Corp, FLS, (.36),  FMC Corp, FMC, (.09),  Franklin Resources Inc, BEN, (.27),  Harley-Davidson Inc, HOG, (.155),  Host Hotels & Resorts Inc, HST, (.08),  Humana Inc, HUM, (.26),  Illinois Tool Works Inc, ITW, (.38),  Molex Inc, MOLX, (.22),  Molex Inc, MOLXA, (.22),  Molex Inc, MOLXB, (.22),  Nucor Corp, NUE, (.365),  Pioneer Natural Resources Co, PXD, (.04),  Ralph Lauren Corp, RL, (.40),  Sempra Energy, SRE, (.60),  St Jude Medical Inc, STJ, (.23),  Staples Inc, SPLS, (.11),  Stryker Corp, SYK, (.2125),  US Bancorp, USB, (.195),  Western Digital Corp, WDC, (.25),  Whole Foods Market Inc, WFM, (.14),  Windstream Corp, WIN, (.25),  Xerox Corp, XRX, (.0425)

Major US Stock Movers After Hours

S&P details that Kraft Foods is to replace Alpha Natural in the S&P 500, Alpha fell 2% after hours on the news

Sucampo gained over 14% as its Amitiza drug gets a priority review from the FDA

Jabil Circuit dipped 3% as it details that it now sees Q1 EPS coming in under its previous forecasts

US Market News

The US press writes that the leading Wall Street firms are looking to amend the research settlement agreement they made with New York attorney general Spitzer almost a decade ago

Intel’s CEO has reportedly stated to his employees in Taiwan that Microsoft is releasing Windows 8 OS before it was ready, in order to get it out ahead of Christmas

US home prices gained 5.9% in the 12 months to July, the largest yearly gains since 2005

The SEC details that clients of Hold Brothers did allow overseas clients to distort stock prices by rapidly cancelling orders

Barnes & Noble announces its electronic book, the NOOK,  will be available for sale for the first time in the UK, ahead of the run up to Christmas

Overnight Market News

On the Topix index over 900 companies went ex dividend today and that looks to have set the tone for Asian trading overnight, posting a softer session as doubts remains on the longer term success of any coordinated central bank stimulus measures

The FT details that both Toyota and Nissan are looking at ways to cut production in China on fears that political arguments going forward will increasingly use their production centres as rallying points for local protests

\The FT suggests that Sharp is looking to cut a further 18% of its workforce, around 10,000 jobs and sell its Recurrent Energy solar project as it continues with its turnaround plan

FX Summary

The euro will be back in focus following the Catalonia news, it has in recent days moved back to two week lows

The Fed’s Plosser states that QEIII announced recently would risk the Fed’s credibility and probably would not boost growth or hiring

Commodity Summary

The International Sugar Association states that the commodity will remain under pressure for a third year in 2013, it remains the fourth worst performing commodity in 2012 due to strong global production, with stockpiles up to four year highs

While gold is in track to post its best quarter since 2010

Economic Data Due

11:00 UK September CBI Reported Sales, 5 exp. -3 previous

15:00 US August New Home Sales, 380k exp. 372k previous

Economic Events

Fed’s Evans Speaks in Indiana