A positive surprise in growth in the US: the annual rate increased to 4.3%

15:40

The American economy grew at an annual rate of 4.3% in the third quarter of this year. This is compared to an expected growth of 3.3% and compared to an annual rate of 3.8% in the second quarter. This is the biggest jump in growth in the last two years. Today’s figure is published two months late following the strike in the American government, which is also expected to damage the growth figures for the fourth quarter.

Wall Street futures signal slight declines at the opening. In Europe, trade is stable.

15:19

About an hour before the opening of trading on Wall Street – the contracts on the leading indices are now trading without a clear direction and with minimal changes.

stock Zim traded higher in early trading in New York (Tue), against the background of an update it published regarding a possible acquisition of the company, which is run without a controlling owner.

The board of directors of the shipping company started a process of strategic examination of alternatives, after receiving a purchase offer several months ago from CEO Eli Glickman together with businessman Rami Ungar. The offer was rejected and a process was initiated, in the framework of which Zim received interest from several parties, and as far as is known also received binding offers for the purchase.

11:36

stock we stone which was issued about two months ago, joins the Russell 2000 and Russell 3000 indices. The Russell 3000 index includes most of the stocks on Wall Street that meet the criteria of a floating commodity, and the Russell 2000 index is the index of the smallest stocks among those 3000 – with an average value of about 4.7 billion dollars.

Navan, which has weakened by 36% since the IPO, is currently traded at a value of approximately 4 billion dollars. The company provides solutions for business travel management. According to CEO Ariel Cohen, the addition to the indices is an exciting milestone for the company and increases its visibility among investors.

10:30

Trading in Europe is now conducted with slight decreases in the leading indices – the DAX and POTSI indices rise by 0.2%, the French CAC unchanged.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Monday approved the diet pill of Novo Nordisk giving the Danish drug company an edge in the race to bring a potent oral weight-loss drug to market as it tries to close the gap on rival Eli Lilly.

The pill contains 25 milligrams of semaglutide – the same active ingredient found in Wegovy and Ozempic injections – and will be sold under the brand name Wegovy. Novo already markets oral semaglutide for the treatment of type 2 diabetes under the name Rybelsus.

09:44

The dual treasury company Move strategy Received a warning letter from Nasdaq management because its share price fell below the price of one dollar, so it does not meet the conditions to continue trading on Nasdaq.

In the first step, the company has a period of 180 days (until mid-June 2026) to return to complying with the conditions and achieve a share price of over one dollar for 10 consecutive trading days. After that she may be able to get another extension of the period. A technical solution to the issue could be a capital consolidation (reverse split). Zoz’s stock has lost 82.7% since the beginning of the year and is currently trading at a value of $68 million, which is lower than the value of the bitcoins it owns.

08:50

In Asia this morning there are gains in most markets – the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong increases by 0.2%, Shanghai increases by 0.8%, the Kospi by 0.2%, the Nifty index in India decreases by 0.2% and the Japanese Nikkei is unchanged.

Wall Street futures are stable this morning and unchanged.

Yesterday, Wall Street registered gains at the beginning of the shortened trading week, which increases the chance of a year-end rally, while gold climbed to a historic high amid rising tensions between the United States and Venezuela.

The Nasdaq index added about 0.5%, the S&P 500 by about 0.6%, and the Dow Jones index strengthened by about 0.5%. The three main indices thus recorded a third day in a row of increases. Trading will close tomorrow at 20:00 Israel time and there will be no trading on Thursday.

● Bill Ackman offers Elon Musk to co-issue SpaceX in an unconventional way

Tesla increased by 1.6% afterThe court in Delaware returned Musk’s options, which are currently worth about $13 billion. but, UBS lowered its delivery forecast for the 4th quarter to 415,000 vehicles, about 5% below the consensus. Yesterday it was reported that at least 15 people were killed in about 12 cases in the last decade, where passengers were unable to open the doors of a Tesla vehicle after an accident.

Nvidia It came after a report in Reuters that the chipmaker wants to start shipping tens of thousands of H200 chips to China by mid-February. However, Reuters added that since China has not yet approved purchases of the chips, the schedule may change depending on the decisions of the Chinese government.

Alphabetical (Google) announced infrastructure company Intersect Power for $4.75 billion. The move fits into a broad wave of investments by the technology giants, which seek to rapidly expand the capacity of the data centers and the required energy.

The battle for Warner Brothers’ core assets is ramping up. Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle announced that he is putting up a personal guarantee in the amount of 40 billion dollars for the purchase offer of Paramount . The move is intended to strengthen Warner’s board of directors’ confidence in the financing sources of the deal and to face the competing offer of Netflix. stock Warner Bros and stock Paramount They went up by about 3% yesterday.

solaredge continued its recovery journey and jumped by about 7%. Market officials already see a “light at the end.” Since the beginning of the year, Solaredge shares have more than doubled their value. The market is rewarding the stock against the background of the efficiency plan led by the CEO who took office about a year ago, Shoki Nir.

In the US, traders are betting that the 10-year bond yield in the US will drop to 4% within weeks. According to Bloomberg, traders are loading options positions on US government bonds, betting on a rally in the bond market that will return the 10-year bond yield to a level of about 4% in the coming weeks – a level not seen since the end of November.

This bullish bet comes despite the fact that American bond yields have actually risen in recent weeks, with the 10-year yield touching 4.20% at the beginning of the month. Since then, it has been volatile, and traded around 4.16% yesterday, as investors analyze the latest macro data and the words of Fed officials in an attempt to assess the timing and extent of further interest rate cuts.

According to Alex Zebzinski, Meitav’s chief economist, there are actually reasons that are pressing for the increase in yields, mainly there is an assessment that a turn in the policy of the central banks is approaching after a period of interest rate cuts. “The ECB and the central banks in Sweden and Norway left interest rates unchanged last week. The Bank of England decided to lower interest rates by a narrow majority despite the surprising and significant drop in inflation. In Canada, Europe, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, the markets assume that the central bank’s next move will be an interest rate increase.”

Cryptocurrencies are trading this morning down about 1%. Bitcoin at about 88,000 thousand dollars and Ethereum at 2,990 dollars.

● Analysis | Bitcoin winter? History shows what happens after the currency plunges by 30%

Meanwhile, Michael Saylor’s strategy bolstered its cash reserves to $2.19 billion and stopped buying bitcoins last week. The world’s largest bitcoin holding company appears to be preparing for a prolonged “crypto winter.”

The company raised 748 million dollars through the sale of shares, also in the two weeks prior to that the company purchased Bitcoin to the extent of 2 billion dollars, which brought its total holdings to 60 billion dollars. Earlier this month, the company established a reserve fund in the amount of 1.4 billion dollars, designed to finance future dividend and interest payments, in order to allay concerns that the company will be forced to sell Bitcoin if the currency’s prices continue to fall. Bitcoin is down about 30% since hitting an all-time high in early October, and Strategy stock has fallen more than 50% in that time.

The company’s mNAV ratio, the value of the company’s assets, after adjustments, less debt, stood at about 1.1 on Monday, which indicates that investors still fear that the ratio could turn negative, after previously trading at a significant premium.

The company owes annual interest payments and dividends of approximately $824 million, according to analyst Lance Vitanza from TD Cowen, who maintains a “buy” recommendation for the stock. The company’s software operations do not generate sufficient free cash flow to cover interest and dividend payments, and Bitcoin itself has no dividend.

Tomorrow gold jumped to a historic high, for the 50th time this year against the backdrop of escalating geopolitical tensions and expectations of further interest rate cuts in the US. The money also set an all-time record.

The price of gold rose up to 1.2% and traded near $4,500 per ounce, as it continues its gains after the sharpest daily jump in more than a month. Traders are betting that the Federal Reserve, after three consecutive interest rate cuts, will cut again in the coming year, which supports non-interest-bearing assets such as precious metals. Gold’s status as a safe haven asset strengthened last week also due to the worsening of geopolitical tensions, especially in Venezuela, where the US blocked oil tankers as part of increasing pressure on the government of President Nicolás Maduro.

The best also identify characteristics of periods of recession in the American labor market. “The American labor market data were weak and showed a stronger than expected decrease in the rate of wage increases, an increase beyond the forecast in the unemployment rate, an increase in the number of people who were fired and people who finished temporary work, an increase in part-time workers, a decrease in the rate of temporary workers, and more.”

The annual growth rate of jobs in the American private sector dropped to 0.8%, “the job market picture pretty much reflects the state of the economy outside of AI effects, at the same time, if it weren’t for AI they might have recruited more workers and the job market situation would have looked better.”

According to CNBC, layoffs were a key feature of the labor market in 2025, when a series of large companies announced thousands of job cuts, due in part to the penetration of artificial intelligence. In fact, according to the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, artificial intelligence was responsible for nearly 55,000 layoffs in the US this year.

In total, about 1.17 million job cuts were recorded in 2025, the highest level since the corona epidemic in 2020, when about 2.2 million layoffs were announced by the end of the year.

In October, US employers announced approximately 153,000 layoffs, and in November, more than 71,000 layoffs, with AI cited as the reason for more than 6,000 of them that month, according to the data.

At a time when inflation is burdensome, tariffs make costs more expensive, and companies are looking for ways to reduce expenses, artificial intelligence has become an attractive short-term solution. A study published by the MIT Institute in November found that AI is already able to perform the work of about 11.7% of the American labor market, and save up to about $1.2 trillion in wages in industries such as finance, health and other professional services.

However, not everyone is convinced that AI is the real reason for the wave of layoffs. Fabian Stefani, an AI lecturer and researcher at Oxford University’s Internet Institute, previously told CNBC that AI may be used as an excuse. According to him, many companies that were successful during the Corona period “recruited excessively”, and the recent layoffs are actually a form of “market cleaning”.

“To a certain extent, it’s about firing employees who didn’t have a sustainable long-term perspective. Instead of saying ‘we were wrong two or three years ago,’ the companies find a scapegoat, and say it’s because of AI,” he added. The main companies that mentioned artificial intelligence as part of their layoff and streamlining strategy in 2025 are mainly Amazon, which laid off 14 employees, and Microsoft, 9,000.

An AI-driven rally pushed US stocks to new highs this year. But despite this, the main indices in the US have so far lagged behind the British stock market in 2025.

The political and economic uncertainty did not prevent London’s flagship index, the POTSI 100, from rising more than 21% since the beginning of the year, slightly more than the Nasdaq (as of the beginning of the week), the S&P 500 index, a little behind with an increase of only 17% since the beginning of the year.

In his review, Russ Mold, the investment manager at the British investment house AJ Bell, claimed that the Potsey index may register new records in 2026 as well, after setting a series of records during the current year. The last record, 9,930 points, was set on November 12.

According to him, a combination of an increase in company profits, generous cash returns to shareholders and mergers and acquisitions activity contributed to increases in the index this year, with the help of falling interest rates. “Assuming all other conditions remain equal, the signs are currently quite positive. Analysts expect a 14% growth in the profits of the companies in the FTSE index in 2026, and an increase in dividends alongside a continuous wave of own share purchases may continue to support the overall return of British shares,” he said.

Mold added that the index is a good exposure to both global growth and inflation, as it consists of cyclical stocks, commodities and financials, with a “stable base of dividend yield from infrastructure companies and basic consumer products”.

“And most importantly – analysts have started raising their forecasts for the years 2026 and 2027. This is a sharp change compared to the pattern of recent years, and if this momentum continues, it may give an additional boost to the index and the entire British stock market in the coming year,” he said.

Chris Rush, investment manager at Kingswood Group (IBOSS), also told CNBC that he sees potential for further increases in British stocks, but emphasized that they should be part of a diversified investment portfolio. “Despite this year’s strong performance, British stocks are still unloved and are trading attractively priced relative to their historical averages,” he wrote. “The combination of these factors strengthens the case for keeping British assets as part of a dispersed portfolio, also in light of the uncertainty expected in the coming year.”

However, Mislav Mateika, head of global and European equity strategy at JP Morgan, claimed that British stocks tend to perform well precisely because investors are “very pessimistic about everything else”, as the British market is seen as a liquid, defensive and high-quality market.

The British stock market is one of a number of indices outside of Wall Street that benefited this year from a broad trend of dispersing investments away from the US. These moves, which followed President Donald Trump’s “Emancipation Day” tariffs, were nicknamed “Sell America”, “Anywhere but the USA (ABUSA)” and even “Trump Dump”. However, towards the end of the year, this rotation seems to have weakened: the gaps in the outperformance of some international markets narrowed, while US stocks returned close to their highs.

Speaking at a roundtable in London earlier this month, Mislav Metyka said that many international investors he spoke to recently felt “a lot of discomfort” about British stocks. “The fear is about growth, taxes and politics,” he said. Looking ahead to 2026, Teika presented a mixed picture regarding the British market.

“It is still extraordinarily cheap,” he added. “There is logic in a positive attitude towards Britain, but I don’t put it in overweight, because there is no convincing angle, there is no clear acceleration in growth.”

Mateika, who spoke even before the Bank of England reduced interest rates on December 18, noted that one of the ways to invest in British stocks is to focus on companies that are sensitive to interest rates, given the expectations for up to four more interest rate cuts in the coming year. Shares of residential construction companies and financial services companies posted gains after the bank’s decision on Thursday.

However, Mateika argued that the British market does not have a “tipping point” or catalyst for growth, as there is in competing markets such as Germany or China. “We think that in absolute terms the index will rise by 5% to 10% next year, because we think most markets will rise,” he said. “But we are not overweight, simply because there is no strong fundamental story driving the market.”