Articles

• People realise UK public finances are under pressure
• I do not accept that we are raising taxes to fund welfare

Well, she can be more bold today as markets have given her some degree of confidence in terms of the initial reaction to the budget yesterday. The pound is sitting higher while the bond vigilantes are not showing up as 10-year gilt yields drop to 4.42% at the end of Wednesday. That being said, the OBR has come out to say that none of Reeves’ measures in this budget “have a material affect on our forecast – either positive or negative”. The body outlines that both taxes and spending are significantly higher in this budget, with the former being rather evident as the UK tax burden (or revenue if you want to look at it) set to exceed post-war highs in the coming years.

This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.

• Prior -24.1

German consumer morale picked up a little heading into the holidays with GfK noting that “consumer sentiment is currently at almost exactly the same level as last year”. Adding that while it does “show a certain stability in consumer sentiment”, the flip side is that “it shows that consumers do not expect a drastic recovery in the short-term”. In terms of economic expectations, that is seen sliding back down to -1.1 from 0.8 in October.

This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.

It’s been a positive week for risk trades in general and that will see off investors into the Thanksgiving holiday break which starts today. The holiday typically stretches through to the weekend with US economic data releases also absent from the calendar, after having been pushed forward to yesterday.

As a reminder, both the US stock and bond markets will be closed today and will only be open for a half-day tomorrow. So, that will take out a lot of the energy and animal spirits from markets over the next two days. To our US readers who are enjoying the break, have a wonderful long weekend and happy turkey day! 🦃

This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.

• FT: China aims to replace foreign imports with its own tech and dominate exports
• Fitch warns Japan’s new stimulus could add fiscal risk to its A/Stable rating
• Recap – BoJ’s Noguchi tempers December hike bets, urges measured, step-by-step tightening
• Wood Mackenzie: China nearing peak oil demand as growth drops toward zero by 2027
• AMD Technical Analysis with Video: Bulls Defend Support After a Steep 27% Correction
• Talking innovation at the FIX Southeast Asia Multi-Asset Trading Conference 2025
• NAB’s Auld: RBA may need to hike rates by early 2026 as economy nears capacity
• BoK reveals split vote as three members signal openness to near-term rate cuts
• RBNZ’s Hawkesby: Further rate cuts face “high hurdle” as easing cycle ends
• Headline gains mask a weaker October as China’s industrial profit recovery loses steam.
• BoJ’s Noguchi: Policy easing to fade only if wage gains sustain inflation momentum
• JPMorgan: S&P 500 could top 8,000 by 2026 with deeper Fed rate cuts
• PBOC sets USD/ CNY mid-point today at 7.0779 (vs. estimate at 7.0733)
• Bank of Korea leaves its base rate on hold at 2.5% as widely expected
• Australian data: Q3 Private Capital Expenditure headline +6.4% q/q (vs. +0.5% expected)
• Financial Times says “Japan needs to end its dangerous debt delusion”
• New Zealand November business confidence 67.1% (up from 58.1% prior)
• Japan to boost short-term JGB issuance by ¥7tn to fund stimulus, Reuters reports
• WSJ: Trump urged Japan’s Takaichi to soften tone on Taiwan in private call
• Deutsche Bank lifts 2026 gold forecast to US$4,450 as structural demand strengthens
• RBNZ’s Hawkesby says policy now stimulatory but warns on global independence risks
• HSBC warns OpenAI may stay unprofitable to 2030 amid trillion-dollar compute bills
• JPMorgan now expects Fed rate cut in December after dovish Fedspeak shift
• New Zealand Q3 retail sales show huge jump, much improved from Q2
• investingLive Americas FX news wrap 26 Nov:NZD soars on Hawkish Cut/GBP rallies on budget
• BofA turns cautious, sees muted S&P 500 gains as valuations and AI risks rise
• Major US indices close higher for the 4th consecutive day
• Carney to meet Trump at World Cup draw as Canada-U.S. trade talks remain frozen

It was another session dominated by data and central-bank commentary from New Zealand, Australia and Japan.

New Zealand kicked things off with a strong set of Q3 retail sales numbers, followed by an eye-catching surge in business surveys. November business confidence jumped to 67.1%, an 11-year high, while firms’ own activity delivered its best reading in more than a decade. Fresh off Wednesday’s rate cut, the RBNZ continued reinforcing that further easing is now off the table, with Governor Hawkesby emphasising improved economic momentum in a round of post-decision media appearances. The NZD extended its gains across the session.

The Australian dollar also traded higher. Australia’s Q3 capital expenditure report was exceptionally strong: new capex rose 6.4% q/q (vs 0.5% expected), the biggest increase since 2012, with plant and machinery investment hitting a record high. Analysts at one of the major banks flagged that, after yesterday’s inflation upside surprise, rate hikes may need to return to the RBA discussion in the first half of next year.

From Japan, BoJ board member Asahi Noguchi reiterated the need for a “measured, step-by-step” approach to policy normalisation. Importantly, he avoided endorsing growing expectations for a December rate hike, stressing instead the importance of adjusting policy only at the right moment. The yen briefly firmed ahead of his remarks but later eased on the neutral tone.

China data showed industrial profits up 1.9% in the January–October period, but October alone fell 5.5% y/y, the weakest in five months, underscoring fading momentum after September’s strong rebound.

US markets will be closed Thursday for Thanksgiving, reopening for a shortened session on Friday. No major data releases, Treasury auctions or Fed speakers are scheduled for the day.

Asia-Pac
stocks:

• Japan
  (Nikkei 225) +1.1%
• Hong
  Kong (Hang Seng) +0.34%
• Shanghai
  Composite +0.49%
• Australia
  (S&P/ASX 200) flat

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.

China is rapidly narrowing the space for foreign companies to trade with it, pursuing a model in which self-reliance overrides openness. As the FT argues, Beijing increasingly sees no imported product it cannot eventually redesign, produce more cheaply and control domestically. The country remains a major buyer of semiconductors, software, large commercial aircraft and advanced manufacturing equipment — but only temporarily.

China treats these purchases as a student absorbs training: essential for now, but merely a stepping stone. Its industrial policy is geared toward replacing foreign suppliers in every strategic sector, and ultimately exporting these same technologies abroad. The message for global manufacturers is blunt: China may still be a huge customer today, but it is working relentlessly to ensure it will no longer need them tomorrow.

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The narrative underscores long-term competitive pressure on global tech, aerospace and industrial-equipment exporters, heightening concerns around market access, supply-chain decoupling and strategic overdependence on China.

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This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.

Fitch Ratings warned that Japan’s new stimulus package could add fiscal risks if it leads to a sustained loosening of policy and pushes government debt higher. While the package is large — roughly 3.4% of GDP — Fitch said its true fiscal impact is unclear because some measures are non-fiscal, spread over multiple years, or face implementation risk.

Fitch noted Japan still has rating headroom after recent stronger fiscal performance, but stressed that persistently higher spending or rising real interest rates could threaten the country’s A/Stable rating. The agency continues to expect debt/GDP to decline gradually in coming years, but reiterated that Japan’s exceptionally high debt and weak medium-term growth remain major vulnerabilities.

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The Fitch caution may moderate JGB bullishness and raises focus on Japan’s debt path and policy mix, though the agency’s tone remains measured rather than overtly negative.

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.

Wood Mackenzie expects China’s oil demand growth to slow sharply over the next few years, approaching zero by 2027 as the country nears peak consumption.

• Senior analyst Alan Gelder said gasoline and diesel demand are already in decline, with only modest growth remaining in jet fuel — and even that driven mainly by petrochemicals rather than transport.
• Crude runs are expected to edge higher in 2026 compared with 2025, but weak underlying demand means growth will be limited.

Gelder highlighted large inventory builds earlier this year, followed by recent drawdowns as prices softened. He said the key uncertainty for global oil markets in 2026 is the extent to which China rebuilds commercial inventories, especially given limited growth in crude runs and rising refined-product exports. How much surplus crude ends up in Chinese storage will have a significant influence on the trajectory of global oil prices.

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The shift toward near-zero demand growth reduces China’s role as the global oil demand engine and places greater emphasis on inventory flows. Traders will closely track Chinese crude storage decisions, which could tighten or loosen balances quickly.

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Wood Mackenzie is a global energy and resources research and consultancy firm known for its analysis of oil, gas, power, metals and mining markets

• provides data-driven forecasts, asset valuations and strategic insights to governments, producers, traders and financial institutions
• firm is widely regarded as a leading authority on long-term energy trends and commodity market fundamentals.

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.

For the second half of last week, I was in Singapore attending the FIX Southeast Asia Multi-Asset Trading Conference 2025. It was a fairly engrossing event with plenty of interesting topics being shared and discussed throughout.

The conference started on time, more or less as these thing usually go, with a breakfast session for attendees to get to meet and greet. I’m not a coffee person, so I only helped myself to a croissant and tea while speaking to some of the organising members and the early attendees. It was nice to get to know people from other facets of the industry in sharing experiences and intellect on the vast difference that is global financial markets.

Before you know it, they rang the bell informing us that the event was about to begin and we moved from the breakfast room to the conference room. It was a nice change of pace in having to just focus on one screen for a day rather than multiple screens I would say.

The focus of the event is as per the name itself, that is to understand the technological changes in the industry and how this is all leading to everyone having access and capacity to participate in the many assets that financial markets have to offer. The event agenda comprised of the following topics and speakers:

• Markets in Motion: Structure, Innovation & Market Mechanics (Jean-Remi Lopez, Winnie Khattar, Larry Tabb)
• Accelerating Singapore’s Market Momentum: Liquidity Trends, Initiatives and Product Expansion (Bliss Chang)
• Market in Focus: Vietnam’s Emerging Market Upgrades (J.P. Riña, James Busch, Anthony Le, Hang Le, Khashayar Surti)
• 24/5 Trading of the US Markets: Should Institutional Investors Take Notice? (Abhishek Janaki, Robb Baiad, Jimmy Redbourn, Alexander Thorhauge)
• AI in Action: How Trading Desks are Experimenting with GenAI (Andrew Jim, Benoit Doumas, Pooja Kumari, Michael Smith)
• Fireside Chat: Foster Innovation and the Application of AI (Ankit Mittal, Kenneth Gay)
• Fireside Chat: Asia Unlocked: Liquidity, Access, and Innovation (Meiyan Ding, Kelly Kong)
• Panel: Are Tokenized Assets Ready for Prime Time? (Edward Mangles, Boon-Hiong Chan, Sagar Desai, Andrew Scott)
• Panel: Blueprint for the Truly Multi-Asset Trading Desk (Roland de Marsangy, Michael Bok, Julien de Jaillon, Matthew McLoughlin, Mike Powell)

There were plenty of discussions surrounding the use of AI and how it is transforming the industry as a whole. From back office systems to actual trade implementations, everyone can agree that the speed in which the technology is capturing the space is rather breathtaking. But again, the key thing in moving all of this forward is efficient and proficient usage of the technology and not just for the sake of convenience while sacrificing actual results at the end of the day.

On how AI can be used in trading, I would argue the point made about it being an assistance tool to the trader is perhaps the most compelling. It will take years still, if even possible, for AI to understand the subtle nuances in reading markets and understanding holistically what goes into a trade. It’s complex and something even us as humans, with years of expertise and knowledge, still struggle with. And even until this day, the landscape of markets is always evolving and we as traders also have to. So, to expect technology to compensate for that is still quite a stretch I would say.

Sure, there are algos and AI tools spewing out trade systems and pattern recognition and what not. However, it really cannot compare and cannot be expected to perform consistently in the long-run as markets are constantly changing and evolving all at the same time alongside the people who are actually involved in it.

As such, the case of using AI as an assistant tool is made more plausible in it helping us to summarise what may be our best trade executions in terms of timing, asset class, performance selection, etc. And it being able to quickly chart historical patterns in our trading to identify the kind of risk measures that we are using and to tweak that where necessary in our future trades.

All of that seems to carry more weight than expecting AI to replace humans in fundamental trade execution at the end of the day, at least for now.

Besides that, I found the topic of tokenisation to be rather interesting and how it will eventually change up the whole financial system landscape in terms of democratising assets and making them accessible to everyone and anyone.

There’s still some ways to go on that of course, as regulatory lines continue to be the main hurdle. There’s no one single body in the world that can be tasked to handle this space and that’s the main issue that is blocking tokenisation from really taking flight.

But the idea here is one as shared from the conference, that being akin to if you’ve heard a song playing in the shopping complex. You’ll whip out your phone to ask what song that is. And the next step is that you won’t be recommended to travel 6-7 kilometres to the record store to pick up a vinyl copy just so you can listen to the song again. You’d instead be pushed to the digital route of listening to the song on iTunes or Spotify and that will be instant, just a touch of a button away.

And that’s essentially where we’re headed in terms of how democratisation of assets is going to work in the future.

No more having to deal with sell side representatives. No more needing to deal with fund managers. No more having to pay extra fees to invest in funds because you’d otherwise have no access to. Instead when tokenised, access to these funds will easily be with just a tap of a screen on an exchange. Quick, seamless, easy.

I found that part of the conference to be most interesting but again, it’s not something that we might see in the next decade. But given time, expect the idea to keep coming back around and regulators having to keep fighting to control the space and prevent necessary fraud and also to *cough* protect their own interests.

In rounding things off, it was a sharing session on how firms are all pivoting towards a genuinely multi-asset trading desk setup. And that’s something that we here at investingLive can also relate to. It’s not just a one person fit for each and every category in the market, but instead it is a one person fit for all categories.

You can’t just be a trader in wanting to focus solely on FX or equities or bonds. In a world that is so fast-paced as it is now and how interconnected markets are, you have to be a trader for everything. And if not, at the very least have the necessary knowledge and understanding in making that connection between markets.

Of course for the bigger firms, it’s all about “leveraging assets” to “move the needle”, “streamlining” processes to “maximise efficiency and synergy”. To cut out the corporate lingo, it’s really just about maximising profits and reducing costs.

In this day and age and with the technology that we have, it doesn’t make sense to have silo traders who are just focused on their own asset class. You need flexibility and that’s where the idea of a multi-asset trading desk comes in.

However, it’s not just about the people and the number of staff. It’s also about the solution offering to clients and how quickly the desk can pick up on opportunities across different markets and to use that expertise and strong suit to capitalise on trades to make profits.

And that’s something I wholeheartedly agree as well. Knowledge is everything when it comes to trading. You may not use everything that you know in a trade but it is always better to be in the know than to be left out and having to be sidelined just because you didn’t understand something well enough.

In the current landscape, no person can truly say that they’d be better off trading just FX or equities or bonds or commodities without looking at each and every market. Everything is interconnected and it’s always best to understand what is happening in other markets before it comes back to bite at you.

We may not think that we’d need that now but when the opportunity comes, it really, really does pay to know your sh*t. Otherwise, these are still good things to keep in your back pocket.

It’s basically just like an umbrella. Even if it’s the summer and it almost never rains, it’s best to have it in case of that 5% chance it does one day. And in trading, sometimes that 5% chance is all it takes to make or break your livelihood.

In ending, I just want to offer my thanks and a big thumbs up to the FIX Trading Community for organising a really cool and successful event here in Singapore. Looking forward to the next one!

This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.

China’s industrial profits remained positive over the first ten months of the year, rising 1.9% from a year earlier, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

The January–October increase marked a slowdown from the 3.2% gain recorded in the January–September period, signalling some loss of momentum as weak domestic demand and uneven manufacturing performance persist.

For October alone, industrial profits fell 5.5% y/y, highlighting renewed pressure on margins even as upstream cost conditions have stabilised. The figures cover larger industrial firms with annual operating revenue of at least 20 million yuan.

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The data underscores patchy manufacturing momentum, offering limited support for China-sensitive commodities and adding to the argument for further targeted policy support.

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.

AustralianQ3 Private Capital Expenditure

• Building capex rose 2.1% q/q (previous 0.2%).

• Plant and machinery capex jumped 11.5% q/q.

• New capital expenditure increased 6.4% q/q (forecast 0.5%, previous 0.2%).

more to come

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.

That figure is up from the £9.9 billion headroom as set out in their forecast in March. As for the other details:

• Budget extends freezes of personal tax thresholds for a further 3 years from 2028-29 to 2030-31
• The freezing of personal tax and employer NICs thresholds raises £8.0 billion
• Increases to dividend, property, savings tax rates raises £2.1 billion
• NICs on salary-sacrifice pensions raises £4.7 billion
• There will be a total increase in receipts by £14.9 billion on personal tax changes
• To impose tax on properties worth over £2 million
• Charge on electric, plug-in hybrid cars starting from April 2028, which raises £1.4 billion
• Reforms to gambling tax raises £1.1 billion
• Budget policies increase spending in every year and by £11 billion in 2029-30
• As a share of GDP, the budget delivers third-largest medium-term tax increase since 2010
• Probability of meeting current budget target is at 59% (previously 54% in March)
• 2025 GDP growth seen at 1.5% (previously 1.0%)
• 2026 GDP growth seen at 1.4% (previously 1.9%)
• 2027 GDP growth seen at 1.5%
• 2025 CPI inflation seen at 3.5% (previously 3.3%)
• 2027 CPI inflation seen at 2.0%
• Debt as a share of GDP seen at 95% this year and to end the decade at 96%
• Full document

This feels a little odd as some of these things feel like they should be part of the budget announcement itself. Markets are already of course taking to it and reacting accordingly with UK gilt yields tumbling lower while the pound spiked higher for a brief moment before settling a little bit.

10-year yields in the UK are down from 4.50% to 4.46% while GBP/USD pushed up from around 1.3155 earlier to 1.3185 currently with the high earlier touching 1.3200.

The big round numbers are what we’re looking for and they are a positive, especially the fiscal headroom indicated in the headline. So, no need for Reeves I guess? Seems like we could just call it a day unless she messes up the delivery.

This article was written by Justin Low at investinglive.com.

New Zealand November business confidence 67.1%, the highest in 11 years

• prior 58.1%

Business activity 53.1%

• prior 44.6%

New Zealand posting solid numbers yet again.

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Earlier:

• RBNZ’s Hawkesby says policy now stimulatory but warns on global independence risks
• New Zealand Q3 retail sales show huge jump, much improved from Q2

The news from yesterday has lifted the NZD:

• investingLive Asia-Pacific FX news wrap: AUD up (high CPI), NZD up (rate cut), JPY up (BoJ
• investingLive Americas FX news wrap 26 Nov:NZD soars on Hawkish Cut/GBP rallies on budget

This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.