0930: UK construction output dropped by 6.3 per cent month-on-month in January. Last month consumers´ median inflation expectations rose to 3.6 per cent for over the coming year, as opposed to 3.5 per cent last month, the Bank of England´s latest inflation attitudes survey shows. Expectations over a five year time horizon held steady at 3.6 per cent.

0851: Stocks have jumped out of the gate early on, with miners and financials in the lead. Schroders has been upgraded to neutral (from sell) by analysts at UBS. That ahead of the release of this afternoon´s US employment report. No major data releases are expected today in the UK. Data out overnight in Asia is also giving shares an lift early on. As is often the case, the preliminary estimate for Japanese gross domestic product growth – in the last quarter of 2012 – has been revised sharply higher, to show a rate of expansion of 0.2 per cent. February export data from China was similarly robust, although some economists are wary of the possibility that it may be distorted by capital inflows. FTSE 100 up 38 to 6,477.