Russell Shor

The Fed, yesterday, held the policy rate steady at 5.25-5.5%, which was largely expected. However, it did surprise with a dovish tone maintaining that growth “has slowed” and “inflation has eased.” The dot plot showed an extra cut for 2024, now numbering 75bps as opposed to 50bps as signalled in the September update. Moreover, the final hike as per September was omitted so the Fed funds rate is now 4.6%…

Core inflation for November printed at 4%y/y, which is unchanged, whilst headline inflation did moderate at 3.1% y/y (3.2%), albeit the pace of disinflation slowed from a month ago. The core month-on month reading was 0.3%, which equates to an annualised 3.66% - still higher than the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. This combined with the higher than anticipated jobs data has put a dampener on the prospects of rate…

Google has lost its antitrust court battle filed by Epic Games three years ago. A California federal jury decided in favour of Epic Games, maintaining that Google has a monopoly in its app store’s distribution and payments market. Epic suggested that Google used its monopolistic position to squeeze out profit from app developers.

Companies are set to ramp up their investment in AI projects. This is according to Piper Sandler, who yesterday published it latest enterprise spending report, which asked chief information officers where they are planning to spend money. According to the report, “Enterprise AI spending intentions doubled from last year,” with AI ranking as the top category for investment.

AAPL.us is currently trading around $195, just shy of its all-time high, set in July, of $198.23.

The FOMC statement is due to be released on Wednesday at 7:00pm GMT. The CME FedWatch Tool suggests an unchanged target rate at 5.25%-5.50%. Inflation is moderating and, although the NFP was higher than anticipated, the labour market does seem to be cooling. These all point at monetary policy being in restrictive territory, aiding in achieving the Fed’s 2% inflation target over the coming months. However, the market will be…

Friday’s jobs data was stronger than expected. The non-farm employment change printed at 199K, which was ahead of the 184K forecast. This resulted in a lower unemployment rate of 3.7% (3.9%), whilst average hourly earnings came in at 0.4% m/m, double last month’s 0.2% m/m.

At its investor event yesterday, McDonald’s said that it is planning to open 10,000 new restaurants by 2027. This will bring the number of stores to 50,000 - it currently has more than 40,000 restaurants as per its latest quarterly filing.

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) is due to release its monetary policy statement on 19 December and there is some assumption that the central bank will end eight years of negative interest rates. Whilst this is speculative, the prospect of policy shift resulted in the yen jumping by its highest levels since January. Earlier today BoJ Governor Kazuo Ueda said that the BoJ has several options on which rates to…

Bitcoin has had an astounding start to December. The cryptocurrency is already up around 17% and it is only the first week of the month. However, there is a question of whether it has run too hard too soon. Bitcoin’s daily RSI is severely overbought at 90.10 – a reading of 80 or above is considered as overbought. Given this reading, there may be a near-term price ceiling for the…

Mastercard (MA.us) announced an increase in its dividend and another share buyback program. MA.us will raise its quarterly dividend to 66c (57c), which is a 16% increase. It will also repurchase $11bn of its own stock once its current $9bn plan is completed – there is $3.5bn still outstanding.