London stocks were set to nudge lower at the open on Thursday as investors mulled the latest policy announcement from the Federal Reserve and disappointing earnings from Oracle.
The FTSE 100 was called to open down around eight points.
On Wednesday, as it its final meeting of the year, the Federal Open Market Committee voted 9-3 in favour of a rate cut, with the Federal Funds Rate being trimmed by 25 basis points to a range of 3.5% to 3.75%.
The decision was in line with analysts' expectations and similar to moves made in September and October, marking the sixth rate cut since September 2024 to bring borrowing costs to their lowest since 2022.
However, the scope of the dissent among policymakers was stark, with Austan Goolsbee and Jeff Schmid voting for no change to rates, while Trump-appointed Stephen Miran called for a 50bp reduction. This was the first time since 2019 that three FOMC members dissented.
Investors will also be mulling second-quarter numbers from Oracle, whose shares tumbled in after-hours trading.
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, said: "Oracle announced a higher-than-expected EPS growth - but that was due to a one-time income from the sale of a subsidiary. Cloud sales increased 34% - but were lower than expected. Revenue from its infrastructure business grew 68% -also lower than expected by analysts. And more dramatically, the company continued to burn cash last quarter: its free cash flow reached a negative $10 billion.
"To make matters worse, the company said that it expects capex to reach about $50 billion in the fiscal year ending May 2026 - $15 billion more than its September forecast - and investments at Oracle are financed by debt: overall, the company has about $106 billion in debt. Frankly, the report was not dramatically bad, but it came to confirm concerns around heavy AI spending, financed by debt, with an unknown timeline for revenue generation, sending Oracle shares down by more than 11% in after-hours trading."
In UK corporate news, Entain said on its chief financial officer was set to step down after 13 years with the gambling and gaming group.
Rob Wood, who is also deputy chief executive, will leave in March 2026. He is being replaced by Michael Snape, chief financial officer at International Distribution Services.
Workspace Group said it has exchanged contracts for the disposal of two additional low-conviction assets for a total of £11.8m, in line with September 2025 valuations, at a net initial yield of 5.7%.
Taking into account its latest disposals, Workspace has now exchanged or completed on a total of £106m of low-conviction asset sales, against its two-year target of £200m.
NCC Group said it expects to return to growth this year after the cybersecurity and software escrow business reported a small decline in both revenues and profits over the 12 months to 30 September.
Revenues were down 2.6% at £293.9m, as a 2.2% increase in turnover at the Escode division to £66.5m was offset by a 4.0% fall in the cyber arm to £227.4m. Adjusted EBITDA fell to £40.6m from £42.1m the year before.