News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

07 November 2025 | William Buckhurst

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO NEWS

Opec+ stated that after making another modest output hike, it would pause with 137k barrel per day increases, matching those scheduled for October and November. Reports noted that the first quarter is normally a period of weaker demand.

As expected, the Bank of England left interest rates unchanged at 4%. But it was a close-run thing as the MPC voted 5-4 to leave rates unchanged, with Governor Andrew Bailey casting the deciding vote with the other four voting for a 25bps cut while the minutes from the meeting set out the views of each member of the MPC for the first time. The Bank stated that September inflation of 3.8% was “likely to be the peak”.

The Reserve Bank of Australia also left interest rates unchanged as higher inflation and strong houseprices led policy makers to stand still. They described the labour market as “a little tight”.

The US October ISM Services index was 52.4 vs 50.8 expected and Prices Paid increased to 70.0, above estimates with readings for New Orders and Employment of 56.2 and 48.2 respectively both up on the prior month and above forecasts. The report showed a lack of confidence in the continued strength of the economy.” With the continued lack of non-farm payrolls reports due to the government shutdown, the October ADP private payrolls report showed jobs growth of 42k vs 30k expected.

Zohran Mamdani, recently described as a “communist lunatic” by Donald Trump, won the New York mayoral elections.White House federal agencies also said that it will not permit Nvidia to sell scaled- down AI chips to China, known as the B30A, which can be used in large clusters to train large language models.

COMPANY NEWS

Diageo reported organic net sales growth of 0% in Q1 (compared with consensus of -1.2%) and lowered guidance because of continued soft demand in the US and “severe weakness” in China. By category, tequila is now underperforming as it laps tougher comparison periods from its peak last September. This is, however, being partially offset by green shoots of recovery in Ketel One Vodka, Bulleit Bourbon and Johnnie Walker.

Novo Nordisk announced its fourth profit warning (they tend to come in threes) and the shares fell 4.5%. Pretax earnings declined 30%to DKK23.68bn vs DKK25.61bn expected with sales rising 5.1% as GLP1 sales were below forecasts. The company lowered its full year guidance, now seeing sales growth of 8-11% vs 11.4%.

Vestas Wind Systems defied doing business in the worst sector this year by reporting pretax earnings that were much better than expectations and therefore the shares rose 14.8%. Margins and free cash flow were better too.

AMD was caught up in the AI sell off but still managed to close 2.51% up after reporting results that were above consensus estimates. Data Centre revenue increased 22% to $4.34bn vs $4.14bn expected.

Another week another announcement from OpenAI. Amazon announced that its AWS unit had signed a $38bn deal to supply OpenAI with computing power.

Shares in Uber travelled 5.06% lower on in line results but guidance was weaker than the market wanted.

The largest listed company in the UK, AstraZeneca closed 3.1% up after reporting quarterly results which came in above consensus estimates. Product sales were $14.37bn vs $13.97bn expected with management particularly confident the momentum would continue.

Shares in Shopify finished 6.94% lower even though the print was good and monthly recurring revenue increased 10% to $193m. The company guided to strong sales growth with sequential free cash flow growth.

FLIGHT TO LOWER TAXES

With Rachel Reeves declining to reiterate Labour’s manifesto commitment against broad based tax hikes at her pre–Autumn Statement press conference, Michael O'Leary was more on the front foot after announcing results from Ryanair. He said: "You know, we support growth, but Rachel Reeves hasn't a rasher's how to deliver growth. Until she starts recutting these insane taxes and stop trying to tax wealth, the UK economy is doomed to continue to fail."

Ryanair rose 4% as quarterly profit after tax increased 20% to €1.72bn with revenue rising 8.2% to €5.48bn. Total operating expenses rose 3.3% as overall customers in the first half rose 3.2% to 119m with a load factor of 95%. The company slightly raised its full year customer guidance to 207m, perhaps with taxpayers leaving the UK.

PALAN-TEARS

The AI theme was dealt a blow this week as Michael Burry, the investor who became a household name after predicting the financial crash in 2008 and inspiring the film The Big Short, disclosed put options worth about $900 million against Palantir and $187 million against Nvidia – therefore predicting that the stock prices in those companies will fall.

However, the CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, was not particularly pleased, saying on CNBC that “the two companies he's shorting are the ones making all the money, which is super weird. The idea that chips and ontology is what you want to short is bat**** crazy,” referring to Palantir's data 'brain' that links and interprets data for its AI systems. He accused short sellers of manipulating the market and said he would be “dancing around” when these investments fail. Results were ahead of expectations, but the valuation remains high.

THE WEEK AHEAD

• Egyptian Parliamentary Elections
• US and German CPI
• UK GDP

A busy earnings season coming to a close:

• Monday – Chegg, Occidental Petroleum, Barrick Gold
• Tuesday – Sea Ltd
• Wednesday – Nu Holdings
• Thursday – Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Applied Materials, Walt Disney

THE WEEK IN HISTORY

1994: Quaker Oats acquired Snapple for $1.7bn. The purchase was a defensive move to block a potential takeover by PepsiCo. Quaker was unable to successfully market Snapple, which had a distinct brand identity based on quirkiness and independent distributors. In March 1997, Quaker sold Snapple for just $300m.

2016: Trump 1.0. After a volatile night, stock markets are calm after Trump’s surprise win. His conciliatory victory speech – which eschewed the divisive language used throughout the campaign – gave investors hope that he would not immediately attack.