News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

05 November 2021 | Charlie Todd

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO

• The Bank of England surprised everyone by not raising rates this week
• The Federal Reserve, as expected, begun tapering, did not raise rates, and continue to believe they are ahead of the curve on inflation
• In the US, the Democrats lost the Virginia governorship to the Republicans and only just scraped through in New Jersey, a state they should have won easily
• Australia’s central bank ended its policy of yield curve control in response to rising inflation

THE POLITICAL WEEK

After intense debate over the last few weeks, US politicians appear to have landed on a framework for a drug pricing deal which will implement caps on price hikes on certain drugs from 2023 onwards. Given some of the original proposals that have now been watered down, the deal is seen as not a bad result for big pharma and the sector rose this week on the back of it

COMPANY NEWS

• Standard Chartered released much weaker guidance for Q4 citing more evidence of a slowdown in China
• Novo Nordisk had very good results with sales growing 13% YTD and management stating that demand for its new obesity drug Wegovy continues to outstrip supply
• Despite the global chip shortage, Toyota enjoyed a solid set of results, good operating performance and updated guidance
• Zimmer Biomet lowered its guidance as Covid continues to weigh on elective surgery
• Moderna shares closed the week down sharply after reporting much lower Covid-19 vaccine revenue than expected

SMALL-CAP NEWS

Purple Drain: online estate agent Purplebricks warned this week that they are running out of properties to sell, with the imbalance of buyers and sellers severely restricting listings. They said they would instruct on around 22,000 properties on the six months to October, 37% down year-on-year. Shares fell by more than a third

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY

1928: Herbert Hoover is elected President of the United States. During his term the Dow Jones Industrial Average would fall more than 80%, the worst stock market performance under any president

2012: Disney buys LucasFilm, the company behind the Star Wars films, for $4.05bn

RE-OPENING TIMES

Quid Games: most people are talking about the new Netflix series, Squid Game, but a cryptocurrency that is used in a computer game based on the show started trading at $0.01 on Tuesday 26th Oct and was changing hands at $4.39 later that week. This then collapsed to zero as "investors" were involved in an elaborate scam

MARKET DATA

 As at 5^th November 2021. Source: Financial Express

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