News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

21 November 2025 | William Buckhurst

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO NEWS

Fed minutes showed that the committee is divided. Odds of cut in December now as low as 33% down from a certainty.

The delayed non-farm payroll numbers in the US showed a rise of 119,000, more than twice as much as expected. But July and August numbers were – as usual – revised down.

A difficult week for the England cricket team and things weren’t much better for the Chancellor ahead of the Budget. The GfK consumer confidence index – a measure of how people view their personal finances – dropped by 2 points to minus 19, well below the long-term average. Meanwhile, a report from the ONS on Friday showed that public sector borrowing was £17.4bn last month, compared with expectations of £15bn. Finally, retail sales fell 1.1% in October, much worse than expected. All eyes on how the Chancellor is going to fill a fiscal hole estimated at between £20bn and £30bn.

UK inflation data was mostly in line with expectations. October CPI was 0.4% month on month with annual CPI of 3.6% slightly higher than forecast. Although energy prices rose less than they did last year period food and non-alcoholic beverages inflation is still high, rising 4.5% to 4.9%, led by products such as bread, meat, fish and vegetables. Following the data, markets are 88% certain of a rate cut by the Bank of England at the next meeting.

Crypto markets continue to be under pressure with Bitcoin now down a third since the highs in early October.

COMPANY NEWS

Nvidia beat expectations as they said that revenue for the last quarter was up an astonishing 62% year-on-year to $57bn (of which chips used in AI data centres was $51bn). They also raised forecasts. “There has been a lot of talk about an AI bubble. From our vantage point, we see something very different,” said CEO Jensen Huang.

The FT reported that Apple is stepping up its succession plan efforts, as CEO Tim Cook is due to retire after 14 years. John Ternus, Apple’s senior VP of hardware engineering, is widely seen as the most likely successor.

Palo Alto Networks finished 7.4% lower after reporting in line results as management announced that they had agreed to acquire cybersecurity firm Chronosphere for $3.35bn to boost their cyber offerings with the deal following the $25bn acquisition of CyberArk in July.

UK aerospace engineering firm, Senior, showed strong trading but guidance knocked 10% off the shares.

Diploma is a high-quality business and had results to match as they came in ahead of expectation, with guidance raised c.5% above consensus.

ABB held its capital markets day where they upped their margin forecasts while targeting revenue growth of 6% with an ambition to add 1.5% to revenue with bolt ons.

Shares in Ocado finished 17.4% lower on news that its largest customer Kroger was set to cancel some projects with the company as its automated warehouse network was falling short of financial expectations.

PDD Holdings, the owner of Temu, fell after quarterly revenue rose 7% from last year, but this fell short of analysts’ expectations. Management warned that consumer spending remained soft and that upgrade investments was holding back profit growth.

Halma is firing on all four cylinders as profits rose 29% and shares followed 9.2% higher. Guidance was also much better as they continue to benefit from the premium growth in photonics.

Eli Lilly became the first healthcare firm to grow to a market capitalisation of a trillion dollars.

UK BROADBAND PRICES

In a week where UK CPI came in sticky at 3.6%, Broadband prices could be another reason why inflation stays elevated.

Ofcom’s new regulations require telecom companies to display mid-contract price rises in pounds and pence replaced the previous system of linking price hikes to inflation. But it hasn’t done much to help the squeezed UK consumer.

TalkTalk said they would put up prices by £4 this week. Someone on the cheapest package gets hit with the same £4 rise as those on the most expensive plans. A few months ago, Virgin Media customers on the £25.99 a month plan were hit with a 12% increase under the fixed-price model, compared to a potential 7.4% rise under the previous RPI-linked system.

US K-SHAPED CONSUMER

Economists are talking about a K shaped economy in the US, where the rich get richer and the poor are finding life difficult. This was on show with retailers reporting.

Walmart said that it saw “strength across income cohorts…. but that the heavy lifting was done by middle and upper-income households in the US”. Revenues rose 5.8% to $179.5bn for the latest three months ahead of expectations. Target finished 2.77% lower on third quarter results that were in line with estimates. Comparable sales declined 2.7% vs the 2.1% decline expected, and average transaction amount fell 0.5%. The company lowered full year guidance. Home Depot finished 6% lower after reporting third quarter results and cutting guidance from -2% to -5%. They apparently missed expectations due to a lack of storms which resulted in greater pressure in certain categories.

THE WEEK AHEAD

• Economic data releases in the US start up again after the end of the shutdown: PPI and retail sales numbers on Tuesday; GDP, initial jobless claims, PMIs, and core PCE price indices on Wednesday, while Thursday markets are closed for Thanksgiving.
• In the UK, its Budget Day on Wednesday
• Earnings reports from: Alibaba, Dell, and Compass Group on Tuesday; and Deere & Co. on Wednesday

THE WEEK IN HISTORY

1986: “Tell Sid!” – the privatization and subsequent British Gas public flotation, one of the first major floats after Big Bang. The IPO valued the company at £9bn, the highest UK equity offering ever at the time.

2001: Burlington Industries, once the largest textile maker in the US, declared bankruptcy. One of the early victims, of globalisations, it simply could not match the labour-cost advantage of overseas, particularly Asian, mills.