Must read: Nvidia, UK house prices, WPP, Royal Mail, GDP preview
ii’s head of investment rounds up the morning’s big news.
10th July 2025 08:50
by Victoria Scholar from interactive investor
GLOBAL MARKETS
Following the rally on Wall Street, the FTSE 100 has opened higher with miners such as Anglo American (LSE:AAL), Rio Tinto Ordinary Shares (LSE:RIO) and Glencore (LSE:GLEN) leading the gains, up over 3% each as copper prices rise amid the trade uncertainty. Fresnillo (LSE:FRES) is also up sharply with safe-haven gold extending gains as tariff talk continues. Now Brazil is the latest country at the centre of the US trade offensive, threatened with 50% tariffs. Another top gainer on the FTSE 100 is WPP (LSE:WPP) after the appointment of a new CEO that investors are getting excited about.
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US futures look set to give back some of yesterday’s gains. In a slew of mega-cap tech news, NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) became the first public company to reach a market value of $4 trillion (£2.9 trillion) thanks to a rebound in tech stocks and a more than 40% rally since May. In a tough week for Elon Musk with Grok’s anti-Semitic remarks, and a sell-off for Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), X’s CEO Linda Yaccarino has announced she is stepping down.
The latest Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) minutes from its June meeting revealed that “most participants noted the risk that tariffs could have more persistent effects on inflation”. Fed policy members are divided over the outlook for interest rates, having refrained from cutting all year amid concerns about an upward effect on inflation from tariffs. It looks likely that at least one cut is on the cards this year with 10 policymakers expecting two 0.25 percentage point reductions before year-end versus two members expecting one cut and seven anticipating no change. Fed watchers will be paying attention for more clues from Fed speakers Waller and Daly later today.
RICS HOUSE PRICE BALANCE
The latest RICS house price balance was unchanged at -7% in June versus the previous monthly, slightly better than the -8% reading pencilled in by analysts. However, it is still the third negative reading. There were some bright spots in the report with its new buyer enquiries turning positive for the first time in 2025.
After a challenging period for the housing market following the stamp duty increase in April, the market appears to be stabilising, particularly with the potential for two more rate cuts this year, which could help drive an improvement in buyer demand as the year progresses. However economic uncertainty remains a key headwind for the market.
ROYAL MAIL
Royal Mail has been given the green light to reduce its second-class letter delivery service to every other weekday and cancel Saturdays as part of reforms from the regulator to the so-called Universal Services Obligation (USO). Ofcom said this could save between £250 million and £425 million. Meanwhile, the six-day a week first-class letters delivery service will remain in place. Delivery targets will also be eased – the company now has to deliver 90% of first-class mail the next day, down from 93% and 95% of second-class mail must arrive in three days, down from 98.5%. Royal Mail’s parent company International Distribution Services, which acquired the business earlier this year, said this is “good news”.
Royal Mail has long been consulting on and campaigning for reforms to the USO. The way that people use Royal Mail has drastically changed over recent years and therefore the USO was in desperate need of reform to play catch up with this shift. With a structural decline in letter demand amid the rise in emails and online communications, letter deliveries have halved since 2012, and Royal Mail’s revenues have suffered a sharp drop too. That’s resulted in painful financial losses for the business in recent years. Today’s reforms could help reduce costs for Royal Mail and help create more accommodating conditions for a path back towards profitability.
WPP
WPP has appointed Cindy Rose as CEO, replacing Mark Read on 1 September. Read will remain at the company to support Rose until the end of 2025. It comes a day after WPP issued a full-year profit warning, which the company attributed to a “challenging trading environment” and macroeconomic pressures.
Rose boasts an impressive CV having spent nine years at Microsoft rising to chief operating officer. Her tech background will be valuable to WPP, which is trying to navigate a rapidly changing ad landscape with the swift ascent of very high-quality AI content that risks cannibalising WPP’s core offering. WPP hopes that Rose will lead the company to integrate AI in a way that boosts its business, rather than having AI steal it.
Under Read’s tenure, WPP’s share price faced a tough decline, winning business has been challenging, and it lost its crown as the world’s leading ad company to Publicis. A bigger focus from Rose on tech and AI will be the best way for the company to regain ground.
The market has given its seal of approval to Rose with WPP jumping towards the top of the FTSE 100 on the news, which alleviates a lot of C-suite uncertainty for the ad giant.
FRIDAY UK GDP PREVIEW
In data out on Friday, the UK economy is expected to grow by 0.1% on a monthly basis in May. This follows a contraction of 0.3% in April, which was the biggest decline since October 2023, reversing course from an expansionary reading in March. April’s decline was caused by a drop in legal activities linked to the stamp duty increase. Plus, higher energy bills, the National Insurance increase and tariff uncertainty took their toll.
After an unfortunately timed cluster of headwinds in April, it appears as though the only way is up. Consumer sentiment is already showing signs of improvement and Friday’s GDP data could add to the cheerier mood, with the potential for a rebound in activity, particularly in the key services sector. Plus, anticipation of easier monetary policy is helping to boost sentiment and the real economy. The Bank of England lowered interest rates in May with the market anticipating two more cuts this year.
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