LONDON — London's blue-chip stocks are set to gain modestly this year although the outlook is colored by the British government's determination to stick to the end-December deadline for a trade deal with the European Union, a Reuters poll found. Prime Minister Boris Johnson's insistence that he will not extend the post-Brexit transition period leaves little room to avoid a potentially damaging "no-deal" outcome if negotiations with Brussels founder. A survey of more than 20 fund managers, strategists and brokers, taken over the past two weeks, found the FTSE 100 index was expected to rise about 7% to 7,510 by end-2020 from Tuesday's close. Most of the responses came in before the steep sell-off in global stocks in the first two days of this week as investors began to seriously fret about the coronavirus epidemic's potential damage to the global economy.

Source: International New York Times February 26, 2020 11:15 UTC