US markets and FTSE 100 hit record highs
Both the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average have hit new peaks in the wake of the latest US jobs data, showing the economy in reasonably healthy shape and paving the way for further US rate rises.
But so far the 20,000 barrier for the Dow has proved elusive, with the index coming within a whisker at 19,999.63.
Meanwhile the FTSE 100 has also hit a new record, with the strength of the US currency lifting dollar earners.
On that note it’s time to close for the day. Thanks for all your comments, and we’ll be back on Monday.
Now this is getting too much: the Dow has hit 19,999.63 before dipping again. Less than a point below 20,000, and another new peak.
Updated
The Dow has come within less than 2 points of the elusive 20,000 barrier, but has slipped back:
19,998.22. Please tell me that's not the peak for the day. Come on, Dow!
— Paul R. La Monica (@LaMonicaBuzz) January 6, 2017
Updated
Heads up, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has now hit a new peak and is just 7 points shy of 20,000.
In Europe, the mood in the markets has stayed a little more subdued.
Germany’s Dax ended 0.12% higher at 11,599.01, France’s Cac closed up 0.19% at 4909.84 and Italy’s FTSE MIB finished 0.23% higher at 19,687.71.
Updated
Neil Wilson, senior market analyst at ETX Capital, said:
The bulls are out in force and there’s no stopping the FTSE in 2017. The blue index closed the week with yet another record high, finally closing above 7,200 after another strong session. It’s the seventh straight record close and means the index has risen for five consecutive weeks – the best performance since the Brexit vote in June.
We’ve also got US equities jumping with the Nasdaq and S&P 500 hitting fresh intra-day record highs.
And after a pretty soggy start to the US session the Dow Jones has also rallied and is now just 40 or so points away from the 20,000 mark. The session could yet see the 20k barrier finally broken. The great rotation from bonds into stocks – the Trump trade – is back on.
And the FTSE 100 is not the only record breaker, nor is all the attention in the US market on whether the Dow will breach 20,000:
Forget about #Dow20K, the S&P 500 just hit a record intraday high in today's trading of 2,278...last record high was Dec 13 last year$SPY
— Dominic Chu (@TheDomino) January 6, 2017
FTSE 100 hits new record close
A burst of life on Wall Street following further consideration of the US jobs data has helped push the FTSE 100 to a record close for the seventh day in a row.
Another closing high on Monday would see the index match the eight day record winning streak seen in 1997.
After an uncertain start, the index finished 14.74 points or 0.2% higher at 7210.05 - the first time it has closed above 7200.
This is the fifth consecutive weekly rise - the best performance since the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote last year.
The rise in the US currency on talk of further rate rises after the non-farm numbers has given a lift to the dollar earners in the FTSE 100, with Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems both among the leading risers.
Updated
After a negative start, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is now up 49 points at 19948 - back on its way towards 20,000.
And here is our economics editor Larry Elliott on Barack Obama’s final jobs data:
So that’s it. The last jobs report of Barack Obama’s presidency has been published and the figures encapsulate his eight-year presidency. Job creation in December was not bad at 156,000, simply a bit mediocre. Better was expected.
In Obama’s defence, he was left the worse possible legacy. The world’s biggest economy was in freefall when he arrived in the White House in early 2009. Lehman Brothers had gone bust six weeks before the November 2008 presidential election and the Federal Reserve had taken emergency action to stimulate growth as fears grew that the clock was about to be turned back to the 1930s.
The full Grapes of Wrath nightmare was avoided, but the economy lost jobs in every month of 2009 and didn’t start to recover until February 2010. Since then, jobs have been created every month...
So how does Obama’s record stack up? The answer is that it depends on what is measured and what it is measured against.
By the standards of his predecessors in the White House during the seven decades since the end of the second world war, Obama’s record is distinctly modest. The number of employed people increased on average by around 1% a year over his two terms. Only three presidents since 1945 – the two George Bushes and Dwight Eisenhower – have a worse record...
If the comparison is with other developed countries, the US does better, at least in terms of job creation and unemployment. Donald Trump arrives in the White House with the jobless rate at 4.7%, less than half that of the eurozone, and reasonably close to what the Federal Reserve considers to be full employment.
Larry’s full analysis is here:
So far the US jobs numbers have failed to put much of a spark in markets, albeit the Dow Jones Industrial Average is now just about in positive territory and the FTSE 100 has edged higher and could well see another record close. Connor Campbell, financial analyst at Spreadex, said:
It wasn’t a particularly bad jobs report... It just wasn’t good enough to secure a market-wide rise, the dollar instead being the only major beneficiary, rising 0.8% against the Japanese yen, 0.7% against the pound and 0.3% against the euro. This helped suppress investors’ appetite for the Dow Jones, which merely sat flat at 19900 after the bell.
The weakened pound (it also dropped 0.5% against the euro) caused the FTSE to ease over the 7200 line... though it wasn’t enough for the index to match the intraday peak struck during Thursday’s trading. The eurozone, meanwhile, was a dead-zone, with the DAX and CAC barely managing a 0.1% rise between them.
So that’s almost it for the first week of 2017. Bar that initially 7200-grazing flurry for the FTSE it’s been a painfully dull week, with investors seemingly reluctant to get on board with the all-time high-flirting indices, but content enough to let those same indices loiter just below a series of landmark levels. Though next week is even blander data-wise, a string of post-Christmas statements from the FTSE’s key supermarkets and retailers, and a dose of financial earnings from the US on Friday, could cause a bit more excitement.
Here’s our story on the US jobs market, from Katie Allen:
The US economy added more than 2m jobs in 2016 and finished the year with a pick-up in wages, suggesting Donald Trump will inherit a solid labour market from outgoing president Barack Obama.
The news of the strongest wage growth since 2009 also raised expectations that the president-elect’s first year in office will be accompanied by a series of interest rate rises from the US central bank.
In the final set of jobs figures for the Obama administration, December’s job creation missed economists forecasts, with 156,000 new jobs added rather than the expected 178,000. But earlier months’ figures were revised to show 19,000 more jobs were created than previously thought and pay growth was stronger than expected.
Paul Ashworth, chief US economist at the consultancy Capital Economics commented: “The more modest 156,000 increase in non-farm payrolls in December suggests that labour market conditions weakened just a fraction in the closing stages of last year. Nevertheless, that is still a solid gain, particularly as it followed an even bigger 204,000 increase in November.”
The figures from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a total of 2.2m jobs were added to the world’s biggest economy in 2016 after the creation of 2.7m in 2015.
The full story is here:
US factory orders dip
More US data, and a slightly disappointing set of factory goods orders.
New orders fell 2.4% in November after a drop in the volatile civilian aircraft numbers. Analysts had been expecting a decline of 2.2% although October’s figure was revised upwards from a gain of 2.7% to 2.8%.
And the underlying trend suggested that manufacturing is holding up. Excluding aircraft, orders rose 0.9% in November, the same as the previous month.
However Rob Carnell, chief international economist at ING, believes a rate rise could be more imminent:
The December Labour market report shows why it is wrong to write off a March hike from the Fed.
The key figure here is average hourly earnings – now rising at 2.9% year on year, its highest rate of growth since June 2009. Along with rising headline inflation the Fed is probably looking back to its 3-hike 2017 dot-diagram, and thinking ”told you so!”
We still think there may only be 2 hikes in 2017, but believe there is a very strong case for a March hike now, and are forecasting just that. Were we to see only 2 hikes in 2017, it is most likely to be because the Fed switches its attention later in the year to balance sheet adjustment, rather than rate hikes.
The rest of the report was somewhat mixed. Payrolls rose 156,000, lower than the consensus 175,00 (INGf 150,000). But this is still enough to more than absorb the growth in the labour force, so no grounds for real disappointment. And the unemployment rate ticked back up from 4.6% to 4.7% (ING forecast 4.8%), which is just noise caused by labour participation volatility.
In short, this report underlines that the US labour market is tight, and getting tighter. The Fed will not want to hang about before tightening again. This is the message we believe Janet Yellen will try to get across in her speech next Friday.
After raising US interest rates in December, the Federal Reserve predicted there could be three further rises in 2017. But after the jobs data, they may not come immediately, reckons Ian Kernohan, economist at Royal London Asset Management:
The latest payrolls report is in line with other evidence that the US economy continues to expand at a reasonable healthy rate. The Fed have signalled that they wish to continue with gradual interest rate rises, however given the uncertainty about the timing, size and composition of any fiscal stimulus, we expect them to hold off until they have greater detail on policy changes from the new administration. This suggests they will wait until the second quarter of 2017 before raising rates again.
Dow down after jobs data
Despite the US jobs market seeming in fairly robust shape despite a disappointing headline figure, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen back in early trading.
It is currently down 40 points at 19859 points, shying further away from the 20,000 barrier. But the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite both opened slightly higher.
Weak productivity has dogged the UK economy since the financial crisis and the latest update from the Office for National Statistics shows the output problem isn’t going away.
That’s bad news for living standards, as firms struggle to raise wages in line with inflation.
Not long now until the Dow Jones opens and some analysts are predicting that the index could hit the 20,000 mark for the first time ever today, after non-farm payrolls data undershot expectations but still showed a US labour market in solid shape.
Here’s Neil Wilson, senior market analyst at ETX Capital:
Could today’s NFP [non-farm payrolls] miss send the Dow to 20k at long last?
It’s touch and go – US equities could receive that extra leg of support they need after the monthly US jobs report was little short of expectations, but the data doesn’t really alter the broader narrative that says the Fed is on track to raise rates three times in 2017.
Jobs numbers missed their mark but this slight slip up alone is certainly not enough to stop the Fed from raising rates this year. The data is a little positive, a little negative. US bond yields and the dollar index both firmed having slipped a little over the last 24 hours, while stock futures turned higher.
Some more reaction to the US jobs numbers, this time from Kully Samra, managing director at the UK outpost of American brokerage Charles Schwab.
Despite December’s non-farm payroll numbers missing forecasts, the US economy still has a robust labour market. The case for investment in the US remains very much intact.
These figures should still be viewed as a justification of the interest rate hike last month, and we continue to expect the FED to raise rates throughout the year.
Today’s numbers do not alter the trends we are seeing in wider economic data, which shows a definite inflection in the economy. When coupled with the simultaneous inflection in earnings, this bodes well for the stock market in 2017.
We remain optimistic that this is an ongoing secular bull market in US stocks and the risk of it ending swiftly is low.
Bear markets tend to sniff out economic recessions and, with growth accelerating from its below-trend pace, the risk of that is also low.
Reaction to the US labour market update is proving fairly optimistic, despite non-farm payrolls coming in below expectations at 156,000. Some analysts are focusing on the improvement from November, while sentiment is also buoyed by signs of wage growth.
Here’s Paul Sirani chief market analyst at trading firm Xtrade:-
Figures released today show the US employment rate has risen since the nine-year low in November, implying there is a solid pace of hiring despite the proposed expansionary fiscal policy stance.
Average hourly earnings have rebounded after a dip in November, with nonfarm payrolls figures showing consistency despite a slight dip, indicating the economy is on a path to stronger growth.
This leaves economists optimistic about 2017, giving Donald Trump’s administration a stronger outset as the President-elect prepares to take over from Barack Obama.
And there’s this from Dennis de Jong at broker UFX:-
Despite the non-farm payroll reading coming in below expectations, employment in the US has been strong for some time now. It looks as though we are coming towards the end of an eight-year bull cycle fuelled by loose monetary policy.
The December interest rate rise came as no surprise and the latest minutes from the Fed suggest that more interventions will be required in 2017 to keep growth steady.
Although there is still plenty of uncertainty surrounding the President-elect’s Trumponomics, the markets have reacted positively to his economic stimulus programme.
The dollar looks likely to continue on its positive trajectory and there’s a very real chance that it will hit parity with the euro at some point this year.”
MPs are calling for higher penalties on firms that fail to pay the minimum wage, after nearly 700 companies were fined £1.4m for underpaying staff. The culprits include football clubs and restaurants.
If you’re wondering how the FTSE100 has reacted to those slightly disappointing US non-farm payroll figures, you needn’t bother. It hasn’t done much of anything at all.
The blue-chip index remains flatter than a Dutch dairy farm, up less than a point at 7196.23. Any rise at all will be the seventh consecutive all-time high. The record is eight in a row, set in May 1997.
US economy created fewer jobs than expected
The keenly-awaited US jobs release, known as non-farm payrolls, has landed.
The US economy created a worse-than-expected 156,000 jobs in December, some distance below the consensus forecast of 178,000.
On the plus side, October and November’s numbers were revised up to show 19,000 more jobs added than was previously reported. Overall, the US economy created 2.16m jobs in 2016.
The unemployment rate in December was 4.7%, up from 4.6% and bang on the consensus forecast.
Average hourly earnings increased by 10 cents, or 0.4%, offering some hope of momentum in the labour market and stronger economic growth.
We are just minutes away from learning how many jobs the US economy created in December, with the release of monthly non-farm payroll data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This will be the last jobs update of the Obama presidency. Market consensus is for 178,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.7%. Anything wildly different from that is likely to trigger major stock market movements.
For a reminder of how the US economy looked when Obama took over in 2008 versus how it looks today, check out this post from earlier.
Updated
Last year was a bad one for mergers and acquisitions, according to corporate intelligence firm Bureau van Dijk, which has issued a report drawing on data from deals database Zephyr.
The total global value (including debt) of takeovers slumped 21% from $6tn in 2015 to $4.7tn, while the number of deals declined 10% to 96,665. This was despite mammoth deals such as the $124bn “Megabrew” takeover of SABMiller by fellow drinks giant AB In-Bev.
Although dealmaking was on the wane, Zephyr pointed out that 2016 was actually ahead of every year since 2007, barring 2014 and 2015, which was a record.
Zephyr director Lisa Wright said:
After an extremely impressive year in 2015 it was always going to be difficult for 2016 deal activity to keep up such a blistering pace.
Geopolitical factors such as the UK referendum on Europe and the US election brought economic concerns, both before and after their eventual outcomes.
Based on the results from the last 12 months, it is clear that 2015’s momentum has not gathered even more pace, but it is worth noting that 2016’s value is not far behind 2014 and is still significantly higher than any yearly value generated between 2008 and 2013.
[...] It could be that dealmakers have simply been more cautious after spending so freely in 2015, which has led to the decline in volume which held down activity in 2016.
Here’s a prediction from City firm IG Index on how US stock markets will open, as we await the last monthly update on US jobs of the Obama administration. Predictably, given that we don’t know the outcome yet, it’s flat as your hat.
US Opening Calls:#DOW 19867 -0.13%#SPX 2266 -0.07%#NASDAQ 4964 0.00%#IGOpeningCall
— IGSquawk (@IGSquawk) January 6, 2017
After Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane issued a mea culpa on behalf of his profession, the Guardian business desk’s economic minds have been musing on what much-maligned experts can do to win back public trust.
They’ve come up with a list of five ways that economists can repair their battered reputations.
Manor Formula 1 racing team in administration
Just Racing Services Limited (JRSL), the operating company of Formula 1’s smallest and least successful team Manor, has gone into administration.
“During recent months, the senior management has worked tirelessly to bring new investment to the team to secure its long-term future, but regrettably has been unable to do so within the time available,” said joint administrator Geoff Rowley, of FRP Advisory.
“Therefore they have been left with no alternative but to place JRSL into administration”.
Manor is owned by Stephen Fitzpatrick, who is also the founder and chief executive of small energy supplier OVO Energy.
Here’s a round-up of what the major banks are predicting for today’s update on how many jobs the US economy created in December.
#NFPguesses
— RANsquawk (@RANsquawk) January 6, 2017
C. Suisse 210k
C. Agricole 185k
MS 185k
Goldman 180k
Consensus 178k
BoA 175k
Nomura 175k
Barclays 170k
UBS 170k
Citi 170k
The consensus forecast is 178,000. Anything above that could send the FTSE100 to a new all-time high and might also push the Dow Jones above 20,000, a watermark it has been flirting with for weeks.
Updated
Labour productivity data from the Office for National Statistics can be hard to unpick but Mariano Mamertino, EMEA economist at jobs website Indeed.co.uk, is having a go.
He’s concerned that low output signals trouble ahead.
Britain’s stubbornly low wage growth had given early clues that productivity was likely to struggle, and the post-referendum uncertainty was never going to help.
While the full impact of the Brexit vote has yet to be felt, the UK labour market remains in far better health than most economists would have predicted even a few months ago.
But such disappointing levels of productivity growth bely the economy’s apparent robustness and pose a serious threat to wage growth prospects.
Productivity is the ultimate driver of both wages and living standards - so with with inflation set to creep up steadily this year, increasing numbers of workers now risk seeing their wages fall in real terms.
With economists warning of ‘a decade of lost wage growth’ the prospect of Britons seeing both their earning and buying power shrink is a chilling one.
The UK’s productivity continues to lag far behind that of other major economies.
But hurt national pride aside, this is above all a clear indication that despite the short-term resilience, warning signs are on the horizon.”
Do we detect a note of scepticism out there at the suggestion that Brexit is to blame for Jamie Oliver shutting six of his restaurants?
I think we do. This is what Duncan Weldon, the head of research at investment firm Resolution Group, had to say about it.
Sorry, Jamie - don't think you can blame Brexit. https://t.co/YUPEpPpz50 pic.twitter.com/0eaDJrIBS6
— Duncan Weldon (@DuncanWeldon) January 6, 2017
The managing director of Belfast Airport is warning that a 12.5% corporation tax rate, designed to woo US business, won’t do much good without a transatlantic route in and out of Belfast. Our Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald writes:-
Northern Ireland won’t fully exploit a lower regional corporation tax unless a transatlantic air link is restored, the head of the province’s main airport has warned.
Despite United Airlines pulling out of Belfast International Airport thus ending Northern Ireland’s only air route to North America, passenger numbers were still up in 2016.
Results today show record growth last year in passengers passing through Belfast International with double-digit growth in traffic from July.
But Keddie warned that unless a new North American route opens up, the impact of a lower regional corporation tax of around 12.5% (aimed at wooing American direct investment just like the Irish Republic does) would be blunted.
Keddie said: “As a region, Northern Ireland has to have direct access to the USA which will underpin the inward investment drive.
We have the prospect of reduced corporation tax to look forward to next year but its impact could be blunted if we don’t have direct, point-to-point access for potential inward investors to Northern Ireland.
The value of digital currency Bitcoin is tumbling again, after it slumped in value by 20% yesterday. One Bitcoin is worth $918.57 at the moment, down a further 8.7%.
The slump follows a steady rise in the currency’s value that saw it reach $1000 at the beginning of the year. You can chart the rise and fall of Bitcoin more closely here.
Bitcoin is used to move money across the globe quickly and anonymously and is free of control from any central bank or government, making it attractive to those who want to get around capital controls.
Critics say this has made it a haven for nefarious types to trade in illicit goods and services.
Updated
British labour costs rose at their fastest annual rate since late 2013 in the three months after the UK voted to leave the European Union, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.
Growth in unit labour costs, which the Bank of England watches as a key driver of inflation, moved up to 2.3% year-on-year in the third quarter, the steepest increase since the final quarter of 2013.
Productivity remains weak though, with annual growth in output per hour just 0.4% in the third quarter, slightly up on 0.2% in the second.
Updated
Anyone planning to fly with British Airways on January 10 or 11 will still be able to do so, the airline says, despite planned strikes by some of its cabin crew.
Crew serving as BA “mixed fleet”, a segment of the workforce whose pay and conditions are not as good as those enjoyed by some long-serving staff, are planning a 48-hour strike after rejecting a pay offer from the airline.
BA said most flights would operate as normal on the two strike days, with some departure time changes affecting flights out of Heathrow.
After the Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane issued a chastening assessment of economists’ forecasting powers, our economics reporter Katie Allen has some recommended reading for you.
Here’s historian and columnist Timothy Garton-Ash on how economics is not a hard science.
Jamie Oliver to shut six restaurants
TV chef and professed healthy eating enthusiast Jamie Oliver is to close six of his restaurants, at a cost of 120 jobs.
The group’s chief executive Simon Blagden says post-Brexit “pressures and unknowns” are partly to blame.
Here’s the full story.
Updated
At 1.30pm we’ll get the latest update on US employment with the release of non-farm payroll data for December.
Let’s have a look at how things stand in the last month of President Obama’s tenure, compared to how they looked when he took over.
Forecast for non-farm payrolls in December 2016: Up 178,000
Non-farm payrolls in December 2008: Down 705,000
Unemployment forecast for December 2016: 4.7%
Unemployment in December 2008: 7.2%
Dow Jones in January 2016: Flirting with 20,000 mark
Dow Jones in January 2009: Record inauguration day low of 7949
US GDP in third quarter 2016: Up 3.5%
US GDP in third quarter 2008: Down 0.3%
A few other things have changed too. On President Obama’s inauguration day in 2009, Lady Gaga was a Number 1 in the UK with Poker Face.
More importantly, President-elect Donald Trump was yet to tweet for the first time, with the social media service still in its infancy.
How time flies.
Will the FTSE100 hit another record high today?
The folks at financial spread-betting firm Spreadex think it might turn out to be a damp squib. Here’s their financial analyst Connor Campbell.
Unlike the Next drama or Persimmon boost seen earlier this week there was no major earnings news this Friday to drive trading, leaving the FTSE to flounder around 7180.
The index couldn’t even take any solace from the pound’s slight weakening, with sterling dropping 0.2% against both the euro and the dollar.
Following the steady stream of PMIs since Tuesday the UK’s empty economic calendar suggests it might be hard for the FTSE to find any upwards momentum as the day goes on.
Or, at the very least, it may have to wait until the final Obama-era non-farm jobs report from the US this afternoon for something a bit more interesting.
Gatwick enjoys record passenger traffic
It may have lost out to Heathrow in the fierce battle to be chosen for expansion, but Gatwick Airport is in decent shape.
It welcomed a record 43m passengers through its doors during 2016, with long haul traffic up nearly 27% and cargo 13.3% higher in tonnage terms.
Gatwick credits Prince Harry with a 97% rise in passengers heading to Toronto, where he has visiting girlfriend Meghan Markle.
There has also been a sharp rise in flights to Belfast, which Gatwick is putting down to a Game of Thrones effect. Much of the hit dragon-based TV show is filmed in Northern Ireland.
Updated
The FTSE100 has started the day marginally down, putting a spanner in the works of its bid to match the all-time record for consecutive record highs. It will have to rise both today and Monday to measure up to the longest winning streak ever recorded, in May 1997.
The blue-chip index closed yesterday at 7195.31 and has started the day down about 9 points. Stronger-than-expected US jobs data later today could help push it back above the waterline.
Updated
Samsung estimates profits up 50%
South Korean electronics firm Samsung expects to report a 50% rise in profits in the fourth-quarter, despite the disastrous saga of its now infamous Galaxy Note 7 smartphone. The handset displayed a worrying tendency to explode before it was finally pulled from production altogether.
While Samsung’s smartphones tend to get all the attention, it was the firm’s semiconductor and display businesses that did the heavy lifting in the last four months of the year.
There hasn’t been too much news coming out of the City of London so far this year but easyJet has woken up on this frosty Friday with a smile on its big orange face.
December proved a bumper month for the no-frills airline, with passenger numbers up 15% on last year to nearly 5.6m. Load factor, the extent to which it filled its planes, was also higher at 89.9%.
Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, has been looking ahead to those eagerly-awaited US jobs numbers.
He’s not overly optimistic, in the light of a separate set of employment numbers released yesterday by the ADP Research Institute. Their figures suggest just 153,000 new jobs were added in December, down sharply from 215,000 in November.
For the last two years the November and December jobs numbers have been pretty strong numbers due largely to large amounts of temporary hiring that takes place in the lead up to Thanksgiving and Christmas.
In 2016 this jobs growth hasn’t been on anywhere the same scale with ADP for December showing half the additional jobs from twelve months ago while the November BLS numbers were also underwhelming, which might suggest that today’s number could disappoint.
Expectations are for a number in the region of 180k, but it wouldn’t surprise if we came in below that.
Updated
Let’s have a look at how traders are expecting Europe’s stock markets to open today. According to City trading firm IG Index, it’s going to be flatter than a pancake out there. US jobs data later in the day might change all of that, of course.
Our European opening calls:$FTSE 7195 -0.01%
— IGSquawk (@IGSquawk) January 6, 2017
$DAX 11576 -0.08%
$CAC 4898 -0.06%$IBEX 9482 -0.06%$MIB 19621 -0.11%
The agenda: US jobs data and Sky bid deadline
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the world economy, the financial markets, the eurozone and business.
With a fortnight to go until President Obama leaves office, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the final monthly jobs data (known as non-farm payrolls) of his eight-year administration. The US economy is forecast to have created 175,000 jobs in December. Unemployment is expected to be up slightly from 4.6% to 4.7%.
Over in the City of London, Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox has until 5pm today to lodge a formal bid for the 61% of BSkyB it does not own. Sky and Fox have already reached preliminary agreement on an £11.2bn deal, five years after Murdoch was forced to abandon a similar deal amid public disgust at the role of his media empire in the phone-hacking scandal.
The FTSE100 has closed at an all-time high for six days in a row, the longest streak of records since 1997. The blue-chip index will need to repeat the trick both today and Monday to match the eight-day record set 19 years ago.
Updated
