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

UK Corporate Announcements

GKN announces a Q3 trading profit of £114m from £113m on revenues of £1.61bn from £1.48bn and states that a softening in its order books is now evident and will impact on Q4

Smiths News states that trading has been in line with the forecasts, on full year revenues of £1.8bn from £1.7bn and a pre-tax profit of £36.6m and states that it has a clear growth strategy

Bellway reports a full year pre-tax profit of £105m from £67m on home sales of £5226m from £4922m

Informa states that profit growth is on track at PCI remains on track despite the market weakness and states that group earnings quality continues to improve

N Brown sees mildy optimistic conditions this year and expects H2 performance to meet its targets and has optimism for H2

Carpetright announces results to date have met its forecasts as 12 week same store sales gained 0.6% and confirms its full year targets

UK Market News

Bumi will stay in focus as Nathaniel Rothschild resigns from the Indonesian coalminer he floated and he criticised the chairman of betraying shareholders

The SFO has dropped yet another high profile case, now officially ending the investigation into the collapse of Kaupthing and closes its case against Robert Tchenguiz

Qatar’s PM states that he is ‘looking in favour’ of a Glencore/Xstrata merger

The Telegraph suggest that RBS is considering legal against Santander on how it pulled out of the purchase of a number of its branches

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)  is expected to detail today how from 2013 it will tackle business models that look to unfairly treat consumers

Rio Tinto states that it rejected a request by Mongolia to renegotiate a deal agreed in 2009 over a planned $6.2bn mine due to start next year

Direct Line starts its official trading on the LSE today

UK Analyst Upgrades

Buy Kingfisher, Citi Says After Analyst Day

Derwent London Raised To Neutral From Underperform At Exane

Electrocomponents Raised To Sector Perform Vs Underperform: Rbc

Imagination Technologies Raised To Hold From Sell At Liberum

UK Analyst Cuts

Cookson Group Cut to Equalweight from Overweight at Barclays

Hargreaves Lansdown Cut To Underperform At Credit Suisse

Shaftesbury Cut To Underperform From Neutral At Exane

UK Insider Buying

Environment Recycling, (ENRT), 1 insider(s) bought 500,000 shares, £0.02

Interquest Group Plc, (ITQ), 1 insider(s) bought 18,000 shares, £0.39

Johnston Press Plc, (JPR), 1 insider(s) bought 90,000 shares, £0.11

Morgan Crucible Compa, (MGCR), 1 insider(s) bought 10,000 shares, £2.23

Sig Plc, (SHI), 1 insider(s) bought 119 shares, £1.05

Verona Pharma Plc, (VRP), 1 insider(s) bought 150,000 shares, £0.05

Major European Companies Reporting

Castellum AB, Q3, 1.765

European Market Summary

S&P has further cuts its long term credit ratings on 11 Spanish banks and short term rates on four, and the country stays high on the agenda as the FT writes that analysts still expect it to ask for a bailout

Also Spain is due to sell 123 and 18 month bills today, and Greece is to sell €1.2bn in 91 day bills, with some analysts suggesting that the worse it gets the better for Spain in the medium term as it would be in a stronger position to negotiate with Germany on the terms of any bailout

Portugal yesterday announced a further round of tax increases and spending cuts in its 2013 budget and sees a third year of recession ahead

Telefonica today prices the IPO of its German unit at €5.25 to €6.50 with shares expected to start trading October 30, the total size of the transaction is expected to around €1.5bn

Bloomberg details how Coca-Cola Bottling leaving the Greek bourse for London will leave the Athens exchange as the smallest amongst the developed markets tracked by Bloomberg, and smaller than the likes of Vietnam

Former Bosnian lead Radovan Karadic is to start his defence in The Hague today

S&P 500 Companies Reporting

Apollo Group Inc, Q4, 0.491,  Coca-Cola Co/The, Q3, 0.504,  CSX Corp, Q3, 0.429,  Forest Laboratories Inc, Q2, 0.078,  Goldman Sachs Group Inc/The, Q3, 2.276,  Intel Corp, Q3, 0.497,  International Business Machines Corp, Q3, 3.606,  Intuitive Surgical Inc, Q3, 3.481,  Johnson & Johnson, Q3, 1.212,  Linear Technology Corp, Q1, 0.45,  Mattel Inc, Q3, 0.991,  Omnicom Group Inc, Q3, 0.722,  PNC Financial Services Group Inc, Q3, 1.655,  State Street Corp, Q3, 0.96,  UnitedHealth Group Inc, Q3, 1.319,  WW Grainger Inc, Q3, 2.893

Major US Stock Movers After Hours

A123 came off 58% after hours as it detailed that it may seek bankruptcy protection as it faces a cash shortfall and expects to default on its debt

WD-40 came off just shy of 10% in late trading as it announced a lower Q4 than forecasts and also lowered its full year outlook

Bankrate fell 25% in late trading as it detailed weak Q3 numbers, as it cites cutbacks in its insurance leads business

US Market News

Bloomberg details Sprint insiders as responding to talk and stating that following its 70% stake sale to Softbank it has no immediate plans to take over Clearwire Corp and states its priority remains closing the Softbank deal which is expected to take 6-8 months, Clearwire gained over 16% yesterday on the speculation

Citigroup moved up to a six month high as it reported an unexpected six month profit, buoyed by bond trading revenues

Starbucks PR unit will be working hard today as it has been cited as an example of corporations avoiding paying tax in the UK, as details emerge that on its accounts its Starbucks UK unit has been loss making and paid no income taxes on its $1.2bn of revenues, as it used accounting transfers to allocate profits to subsidiaries in other countries

News Corp is reportedly looking to sell its IGN Entertainment video gaming site by then ends of the year, for around $100m

Overnight Market News

The Shanghai Securities News details how the securities regulator for the first time has made public the application process for M&A deals, and more importantly the criteria used to approve or reject the applications

Foxconn Technology the world’s largest manufacturer of electronics confirms report made by an advocacy group that it had found interns as young as 14 at a Chinese facillity

FX Summary

Alex Salmond responds to increasing talk and states that on any Scottish Independence a monetary union with the rest of the UK would work

Panama has stated that it is looking at ways in which it could have both the US dollar and the euro as its national currency

Commodity Summary

The chief of Freeport McMoran Copper states that demand in China was being sustained despite some recent wider market concerns on a slowdown in growth in the region, Goldman yesterday for example cut its 12 month estimates for copper used in homes, cars and power grids, by 11%

The larger gold producers in South Africa state they now favour legal remedies rather than continuing talks with unions, as around half of the nation’s manufacturing capacity remains idle as talks continue

Economic Data Due

07:00 EU27 September New Car Registrations, -8.9% previous

09:30 UK September PPI Input, 0.3% exp. 0.5% previous

10:00 Eurozone CPI 1.7% exp. 1.5% previous

10:00 Eurozone October ZEW Survey, -3.8 previous

13:30 US September CPI 0.5% exp. 0.6% previous

14:15 US September Industrial Production, 0.2% exp. -1.2% previous

14:15 US September Capacity Utilisation, 78.3% exp.