All I want for Xmas is accurate economic data

A Reuters Open Interest newsletter

Everything Mike Dolan and the ROI team are excited to read, watch and listen to over the weekend.

Hello Morning Bid readers! 

The last full trading week of 2025 was a rocky one, but it looks to end on a positive note – just like the year itself – as central bankers, deal makers and some head-scratching U.S. inflation data keep everyone from putting on their out-of-office messages just yet.

Wall Street's main indexes closed higher on Thursday, as Micron Technology soared 16% on a blockbuster profit forecast, and core U.S. CPI inflation in November rose by only 2.6% year-over-year, the slowest pace since March 2021. This soft report increased expectations for Federal Reserve interest rate cuts early next year.

However, almost no economists think this inflation figure is accurate, with some dubbing it a "Swiss Cheese" report, due to data collection issues caused by the government shutdown.

Investors also received U.S. November payrolls numbers this week. The economy added 64,000 jobs, above consensus expectations, after the massive drop in October, and the unemployment rate ticked up to a four-year high of 4.6%. But, again, caveats abound, as the 43-day government shutdown forced the Bureau of Labor Statistics to alter its methodology for this calculation.

Central banks were in the spotlight once again this week. The Bank of Japan on Friday lifted interest rates 25 basis points to 0.75%, the highest level in thirty years, with a hawkish steer from Governor Kazuo Ueda. The yen weakened, however, as it will take far more than modest tightening to guarantee the Japanese currency escapes the intervention "danger zone."

The Bank of England moved in the opposite direction on Thursday, cutting its policy rate to 3.75% from 4% – the sixth cut since August 2024.

However, with a surprisingly large drop in UK inflation last month and the economy appearing to stagnate, the BoE is arguably behind the curve and may need to play catch-up to offset tightening real rates.

While the European Central Bank kept rates steady at 2.0% on Thursday, it signalled a likely end to its easing cycle.

Dealmaking certainly doesn't look to be easing anytime soon. Warner Brothers Discovery on Wednesday rejected Paramount's $108.4 billion "hostile takeover" bid. Then on Thursday came the announcement of a $6 billion all-stock deal for a merger between Trump Media and Google-backed TAE Technologies. That was followed by news that TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, has signed binding agreements to give control of U.S. operations to a group of investors, including Oracle.

Meanwhile, global benchmark Brent crude futures plunged by nearly 3% on Tuesday to below $59, their lowest since early 2021, amid growing optimism that a peace deal was in sight in Ukraine.

Prices then briefly rebounded after President Donald Trump said on Wednesday in a post on his Truth Social platform that he had ordered a blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela. But crude was trading lower again early on Friday.

Despite all this geopolitical drama, the real driver of prices in the months ahead is likely to be far more prosaic: a spike in global oil supplies, both on land and at sea.

Speaking of drama, BP surprised energy industry-watchers with the announcement that Meg O'Neill would replace current CEO Murray Auchincloss, becoming the company's first outsider chief executive. This appointment offers the bruised $90 billion British oil company three clear strategic choices for moving forward: build, buy or be bought.

Staying in energy markets, Asia's imports of U.S. crude oil, coal and liquefied natural gas are on track to decline this year despite President Trump's efforts to boost shipments as part of his trade strategy.

At the same time, Japan has cut fossil fuel electricity generation to the lowest levels in more than a decade in 2025, thanks in large part to an ongoing recovery in nuclear power output.

For more commodities news, check out Reuters Open Interest to find out what is the real star on the London Metals Exchange right now (hint, it's not copper) and which agricultural trends to watch out for next year.

Morning Bid will be off for the next two weeks, but we'll be back in January. In the meantime, check out some reading, listening and watching recommendations from the ROI team.

I'd love to hear from you, so please reach out to me at anna.szymanski@thomsonreuters.com.

MIKE DOLAN, ROI Financial Markets Editor-at-Large: The Dawn of Everything: The New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow challenges much of what we think we know about the origins of civilization, including the creation of farming, cities and democracy. Definitely worth a read over the holidays!

RON BOUSSO, ROI Energy Columnist: I highly recommend Andrew Ross Sorkin's latest book, 1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History. It's a brilliantly written and thrilling account of the historic crash and its causes. The story has a lot of disconcerting similarities with what we're seeing in markets today.

GAVIN MAGUIRE, ROI Global Energy Transition Columnist: "How Big Things Get Done" by Professors Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner is a fascinating study on how megaprojects (from staging the Olympic Games to building subway systems and power grids) often fail due to poor planning, not execution. The book is full of fascinating details for anyone interested in big projects. 

ANDY HOME, ROI Metals Columnist: "The War Below" by my Reuters colleague Ernest Scheyder is a great primer on what makes some metals "critical" and how the West lost out to China in the race to develop them. Ernie also does a deep-dive on the green-on-green environmental clash between those who see critical minerals as a vital route to decarbonisation and those who resist the new mines needed to produce them.