As expected, Wall Street has gained at the opening bell. Here are the snaps from the newswire:

• S&P 500 UP 4.64 POINTS, OR 0.14 PERCENT, AT 3,361.65 AFTER MARKET OPEN
  
• NASDAQ UP 66.23 POINTS, OR 0.61 PERCENT, AT 10,976.51 AFTER MARKET OPEN
  
• DOW JONES DOWN 12.32 POINTS, OR 0.04 PERCENT, AT 27,889.66 AFTER MARKET OPEN

Got any 2ps or £2s in your pocket? You aren’t alone.

The Royal Mint will not produce any new £2 or 2p coins for at least a decade, as its stocks remain high because of the slump in use of cash, a trend that has accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic.

The rapid decline in demand for coins has left the Mint, which has been producing coins in Britain for more than 1,000 years, with a mountain of excess stock.

You can read the full report here for a change:

The FTSE 100 is still in the doldrums, down by 0.4% at about 6,028 points, but it looks like US stocks are on course to gain ground when they open shortly.

Futures suggest the tech-focused Nasdaq will gain 0.5%, while the main benchmark, the S&P 500, will rise by 0.2%. The Dow Jones industrial average, which is more sensitive to single-stock movements, is roughly flat.

The EU has signed a deal with drug companies Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline to provide as many as 300m doses of a possible coronavirus vaccine.

Member states also have the ability to donate reserved doses to lower- and middle-income countries, an option if other vaccines such as one being developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca are successful.

The European commission, the EU’s executive body, has already signed a contract with AstraZeneca and is discussing similar agreements with Johnson & Johnson, CureVac, Moderna and BioNTech.

European commission president Ursula von der Leyen said:

With today’s contract with Sanofi-GSK, the European commission shows once again its commitment to ensuring equitable access to safe, effective and affordable vaccines not only for its citizens but also for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

Agreements with other companies will be concluded soon and build a diversified portfolio of promising vaccines, based on various types of technologies, increasing our chances to find an effective remedy against the virus.”

Former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, who accepted an advisory role with the owner of Paddy Power this week, previously described the company’s actions as “dirty” and “money-grabbing” after it took bets on the murder trial of former athlete Oscar Pistorius.

In an exchange with a company representative on BBC Radio 5 Live, Watson also said the company was “not remotely interested in anything other than making money”.

The emergence of the comments could prove awkward for the former shadow culture minister as he prepares to join his new colleagues at Flutter Entertainment, the owner of Paddy Power, on a salary described as “less than six figures”.

You can read the full report here:

Foreign-based cannabis firms could potentially be allowed to float on the London Stock Exchange - provided they produce medicinal cannabis or cannabis oil, and the financial watchdog is satisfied they aren’t breaking UK law.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) on Friday said it would have to be satisfied that the proceeds a company makes do not fall foul of the UK’s 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act, while meeting other requirements for a listing.

The FCA has issued new guidance following queries from overseas-licensed cannabis firms who are eyeing a London listing - especially those based in Canada, where medicinal cannabis has been legal since 2001 and recreational use is also permitted. Many companies are sizing up ways of expanding their businesses.

UK-based medicinal cannabis companies considering an IPO would need to prove to the watchdog that they had relevant Home Office licences.

The FCA noted that it would weed out listings for any recreational cannabis company, wherever they are based, given that possession and supply of cannabis remain a criminal offence in the UK.

The watchdog intends to issue fuller guidance in due course.

Shares in airlines, hotel groups and pub companies have tumbled, after it emerged that the government is weighing up tough new “circuit break” restrictions to avert a second wave of Covid-19 infections.

International Airlines Group, which owns British Airways, was the biggest loser on the FTSE 100, down by more than 10% by the early afternoon, while the aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce was not far behind, down 5%, and easyJet fell nearly 8%.

Ireland’s Ryanair will cut a further one in five of its flights scheduled in October, blaming Irish and EU governments for what it called “excessive and defective” travel restrictions.

The move comes on top of an earlier 20% reduction in flights in September and October, which it announced in August, blaming a drop in bookings and the introduction of fresh quarantine requirements.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has narrowed down the candidate list for the global body’s director general, with three women and former UK minister Liam Fox among the shortlisted candidates.

Five candidates have survived from the eight original nominees. They are Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria, Yoo Myung-hee of the Republic of Korea, Amina C. Mohamed of Kenya, Mohammad Maziad Al-Tuwaijri of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Liam Fox of the United Kingdom.

This means that Jesús Seade Kuri of Mexico, Abdel-Hamid Mamdouh of Egypt and Tudor Ulianovschi of Moldova have been knocked out.

A second round of the selection process will run until 6 October, when the five candidates will be whittled down to two. The full exlanation can be found on the WTO website.

There are fair few interesting insights in the latest furlough scheme data update.

• The arts and entertainment sector had the most workers on furlough. Some 45% of arts, entertainment and recreation workers were furloughed at the end of July, with accommodation and food services next at 43%.
• Some 2.26m women were furloughed at the end of July compared with 2.15m men.
• London had the highest take-up rate of 17% of workers furloughed against the UK average of 16%.

In a press release (that did not mention the 4.8m workers still absent from work) chancellor Rishi Sunak said the figures showed the furlough scheme was a “success”.

He was focusing on the number of workers in the retail industry on furlough, which halved from the start of the pandemic from 1.85m to 789,000.

Sunak said:

These figures show the success of our furlough scheme - making sure people’s jobs are there for them to return to.

That so many businesses have been able to get back to trading, and bring their staff back to the workplace is a testament to the impact the scheme has had.

It is not just Ryanair that is taking a bit of a battering from the increase in restrictions across Europe: British Airways owner International Airlines Group has now lost 10%.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 index is flat, but travel and leisure stocks shed the most among sectors with a 2.4% fall, Reuters reports.

Ryanair shares in Dublin are down 4.7%.

The FTSE 100 has fallen by 0.36% so far this morning, with a mixed picture across European stocks.

One reason for the stock market selloff in the UK may be the growing prospect of new coronavirus restrictions across the country. Health secretary Matt Hancock was this morning asked if he was considering a new national lockdown. He said:

I have learned over the last nine months not ever to rule anything out. However, it is not the proposal that’s on the table.

This is a big moment for the country. We are seeing an acceleration in the number of cases. And we are also seeing that the number of people hospitalised with coronavirus is doubling every eight days. We are now starting to see the effects in hospital.

Something that could be on the table, however, is restrictions on pubs and restaurants, which reportedly could be asked to shut or shorten opening hours, according to the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg.

That would be a huge blow to the hospitality industry, which is already suffering from social distancing requirements and reduced footfall - while the last government furlough support will end next month.

You can follow all of the UK political developments on the UK live blog here:

Some news from this morning for stock exchange followers: the London Stock Exchange Group is getting closer to selling the main Italian bourse to French rival Euronext.

The LSE has entered exclusive talks with Euronext to sell the Borsa Italiana exchange in Milan (see the pic of the grand building and interesting choice of statue), it confirmed today.

The French operator has seen off bids by Deutsche Boerse and Switzerland’s Six as it looks to add another bourse to its European network, Reuters reports:

Dubbed “Project Botticelli”, the LSE’s sale of the Milan stock exchange is politically sensitive in Rome because of concerns about who could take control of Borsa’s bond platform, which handles trading of Italy’s government debt.

The LSE is selling Borsa as part of regulatory remedies to see through its $27bn purchase of data provider Refinitiv. Offers for Borsa valued the Italian exchange up to €4bn (£3.7bn), sources had said before the LSE board met on Thursday to review the bids on the table.

NatWest Group, formerly known as Royal Bank of Scotland, is reportedly considering winding down its Ulster Bank business in the Republic of Ireland, after it became more challenging to turn around the struggling lender during the pandemic.

Such a decision by Ulster’s UK parent company would put 2,500 jobs at risk and could see the closure of 88 branches in the Republic, as reported by the Irish Times.

Ulster Bank made a loss in the second quarter of the year, and its parent company has been grappling with its high costs and low profitability for some time.

When asked about Ulster Bank at NatWest’s half-year results at the end of July, group chief executive Alison Rose said that Covid-19 presented “different challenges to the economy” and the group would “continue to consider all strategic options in relation to that business”.

Rose added that NatWest’s strategy to grow Ulster Bank’s business “organically and safely” hadn’t changed and noted it had grown both the personal mortgage and some of the commercial share in 2019. NatWest Group declined to comment on further outcomes.

Could there be a double dip in retail sales? That would certainly be one potential upshot of rising unemployment.

Here is the picture so far for overall sales volumes:

As well as the home improvement sales that the ONS highlighted, clothing sales were also a big contributor to retail sales growth.

Clothes sales rose by 13.5%, a sign that “discretionary spending continued to recover”, said Andrew Wishart, a UK economist at Capital Economics, a consultancy.

Having already exceeded their pre-virus level in July, the further rise in retail sales in August shows the striking rebound of consumer spending after the crisis. That chimes with the Bank of England’s payments data which, as we learnt in the September minutes yesterday, suggests that overall consumer spending may have already made a full recovery.

The strength of retail sales is particularly striking in a month when non-retail spending, particularly on restaurant meals due to the eat out to help out scheme, also picked up.

However, Wishart also offers the rather enormous caveat that there are big clouds on the economic horizon as winter draws in and support for UK workers’ incomes is withdrawn. He said:

But spending may yet stutter as the furlough scheme is wound down and unemployment rises, weighing on household incomes and job security. And other parts of the economy, such as investment, are taking much longer to recover. That’s why we think it won’t be until around the start of 2022 that GDP recovers to its pre-virus level. And with virus case numbers accelerating, the risk is it takes longer.

Some more details on the UK’s retail sales increase: it appears that the online sales surge since lockdowns redirected spending away from bricks and mortar shops has slightly abated - but it still looks like it could have a lasting effect.

The ONS said:

Online retail sales fell by 2.5% in August when compared with July, but the strong growth experienced over the pandemic has meant that sales were still 46.8% higher than February’s pre-pandemic levels.

There has been particularly strong growth in online food retail - up 90% year-on-year - which tallies with the booming demand for online grocery delivery (even if demand dropped back slightly in August). Online household goods sales are up by almost as much, at 80% year-on-year.

It’s looking like a fairly dreary start on stock market indices across Europe.

The FTSE 100’s declines have been led by industrials such as GKN owner Melrose, jet engine maker Rolls-Royce and weapons maker BAE Systems. Gold and silver miner Polymetal was the worst performer after its biggest shareholder sold its stake.

Across Europe the Stoxx 600 index was flat in opening trades. Germany’s Dax was flat, France’s Cac 40 was down 0.1%, and Spain’s Ibex fell 0.3%.