The FTSE 100 (^FTSE) continued to lag behind its European counterparts on Thursday, held back by a slightly stronger pound and underperformance in the basic resource sector.
London’s benchmark index fell almost 0.1% after opening, with mining shares among the top fallers again, while the CAC (^FCHI) rose 0.8% and the DAX (^GDAXI) was 0.4% higher.
The muted mood came as David Malpass, president of the World Bank, warned that the world is facing a “human catastrophe” from soaring food prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In an interview with the BBC, he said record rises in food prices would push hundreds of millions of people into poverty.
“It’s a human catastrophe, meaning nutrition goes down. But then it also becomes a political challenge for governments who can’t do anything about it, they didn’t cause it and they see the prices going up,” he said.
“It hits the poorest the hardest. That was true also of COVID. It’s affecting food of all different kinds: oils, grains, and then it gets into other crops, corn crops, because they go up when wheat goes up.”
The World Bank estimates there could be a 37% increase in food prices.
Read more: What Ukraine invasion means for consumer prices in the UK
Traders will also be looking ahead to comments from the central bank trio, consisting of Fed chair Jay Powell, ECB president Christine Lagarde, and Bank of England (BoE) governor Andrew Bailey, who are all due to speak in Washington DC.
Across the pond, S&P 500 futures (ES=F) were up 0.4%, Dow futures (YM=F) rose 0.3%, and Nasdaq futures (NQ=F) were 0.6% higher as trade began in Europe.
On Wednesday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 1.2% on the day, dragged down by Netflix (NFLX). The streaming giant saw its shares crash 35% after it revealed it expects to lose 2 million subscribers in the coming months. The Dow, on the other hand finished the day strongly higher.
Meanwhile, Tesla (TSLA) reported jump in sales and profits on Wednesday night, with revenues climbing from $10.4bn (£8bn) to $18.8bn in the first quarter.
It delivered a record 310,048 cars in the first three months of 2022, up from 184,800 in 2021. Shares are more than 5% in pre-market trading.
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US data due out today also includes weekly jobless claims which are expected to fall back to 177,000 from 185,000, while the latest April Philadelphia Fed survey expected to fall to 21.7 from 27.4.
Elsewhere, mainland China and Hong Kong stocks fell overnight amid worries about the Chinese economy.
The Hang Seng (^HSI) fell 1.5% in Hong Kong on Thursday, while the Shanghai Composite (000001.SS) dipped 2.3%, pulling MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan lower.
However, an overnight tumble in longer dated US treasury yields lent support to other benchmark indexes, with the Nikkei (^N225) climbing 1.2% in Tokyo.
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