In mid-morning trading we have seen a positive but still cautious start to the week for shares in London.

Investors managed to shrug off some of the overnight-weakness in Asian markets on the open this morning with the FTSE registering positive gains, but much of these have been given back so far. Miner, Kazakhmys is the biggest loser so far – down around 2% ahead of tomorrow’s full year results. Despite the continued strength in commodities, the shine has definitely gone off the mining companies in recent months and investors seem to be a little concerned that the two-year rise in their share prices has got ahead of the still-stuttering-global recovery.

Looking ahead to the US open, at the moment we are expecting the Dow Jones to start off around 20 points higher than Friday’s close. It is a busy week for economic data, culminating in the latest US non-farm payrolls on Friday. With this in mind, and considering the strong rally seen for much of last week in equities, the FSTE may well struggle to make any decent progress in the days ahead, and it would not be surprising to see some choppy but ultimately directionless sessions.