(Sharecast News) - London stocks were set to fall at the open on Tuesday, having surged a day earlier as investors cheered positive news on Pfizer and BioNTech's Covid-19 vaccine.
The FTSE 100 was called to open 70 points lower at 6,116, after jumping 4.7% on Monday.
CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "For all of the optimism that we saw in yesterday's rebounds in travel, leisure, pubs, restaurants and other hospitality, we need to see evidence that consumer behaviour will start to change as well, and even then, overall capacity in all of these sectors is likely to be much lower than was the case pre-pandemic."
On the macro front, investors will be digesting figures from the Office for National Statistics released earlier, which showed that the UK unemployment rate rose to 4.8% in the three months to September from 4.5% as the pandemic continued to dent the jobs market. This was in line with analysts' expectations.
In corporate news, outsourcing contractor Capita said third quarter trading was in line with expectations as it delivered a small rise in core profit.
The company said contract losses and Covid-19 hit revenue, which fell to £803m from £902m. Adjusted core earnings rose to £115m from £111m.
"Our markets continue to experience a high level of uncertainty primarily as a consequence of the ongoing and unknown future impact of Covid-19. However, trading has remained in line with our expectations, and we continue to expect to comply with our debt covenants at 31 December 2020," the company said in a trading statement.
Capita added that it continued to make progress to strengthen the balance sheet with the disposal of non-core assets, including the proposed sale of its education software business.