News & Insight • Weekly Newsletters

09 January 2026 | William Buckhurst

That Was The Week That Was

MACRO NEWS

There was continued fallout from the US mission in Venezuela. President Trump and other members of his administration also sustained their public comments related to needing Greenland with Trump also stating that “Russia and China have zero fear of NATO without the United States, and I doubt NATO would be there for us if we really needed them.” The comments came after EU leaders issued a statement warning that the US needed to respect the territorial integrity of Greenland and Denmark.

The US nonfarm payrolls rose a seasonally adjusted 50,000 in December, lower than the downwardly revised 56,000 in November and short of the estimate for 73,000. The unemployment rate fell to 4.4% from 4.6%, compared with the forecast for 4.5%.  Other data showed that services were still strong compared to weakness in the manufacturing sector.

Chinese PBOC held a 'work meeting' that placed emphasis on several plans to help generate stronger growth for the country. These included the continuation of further liquidity in the bond market and to effectively use tools such as interest rate cuts.

Precious metals continue to climb to new all-time highs.

Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, warned that Venezuela remains “uninvestable” without “significant changes” in a rebuke to Donald Trump’s call for oil companies to pour billions of dollars into revitalising its oil industry. Meanwhile, Chevron is negotiating with Washington to boost exports from its joint venture operations with Venezuela’s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and is preparing to process more oil at its Pascagoula refinery in Mississippi.

COMPANY NEWS

Christmas trading updates from a raft of retailers. As they tend to be, Next was the standout, with the shares rising 5% after stating that sales growth was 11% with UK online sales rising 9% and overseas online sales increased 38.3%. They did say that the UK had slowed.

Not far behind was Marks & Spencer as shares also rose 5% after stated that 3Q like for like sales growth was 6% vs 7% expected with overall sales of £4.99billion above consensus estimates as the company recovered from the cyber incident of last year.

Anything linked to UK footfall were under pressure as Greggs and Primark owner AB Foods finished noticeably lower. Greggs fell 7% as it stated in line results but mentioned a challenging year where “subdued consumer confidence impacted the food to go market.” AB Foods fell 14% on an unscheduled trading update and cutting guidance as they now expected sales growth at Primark to be in the low single digits.

Tesco issued its Christmas trading statement with UK like for like growth of 3.9% vs 4.8% expected sending the shares 6% lower. Although the miss, they were not worried about missing estimates and that strong sales volumes gave the business “great momentum going into 2026.” J Sainsbury figures were not much better.

Meta signed a series of electricity deals for its data centres, making it the biggest buyer of nuclear power among its peers, sending the uranium sector higher.

Diageo had a miserable 2025 and it did not start well as  it was reported that a distributor had asked courts to block the Diageo East African Breweries sale to Asahi.

Blackstone finished 5.57% lower following comments from President Trump that he was considering banning institutional investors from buying residential homes.

Foreign visitors have made up over 10% of clothing retailer Uniqlo’s sales in Japan for the first time, highlighting the tailwinds from a tourism boom and historically weak yen. Fast Retailing, Asia’s largest clothing retailer, which owns Uniqlo, raised its annual net profit forecast to ¥450bn ($2.9bn) after reporting revenue jumped almost 15% to more than ¥1tn.

COPPER NEWS

We have mentioned the rise of prices in precious metals but the performance in Dr Copper is not too far behind. The price of copper is up 13.04% over the month and 42.30% over the last year.

Glencore and Rio Tinto are in talks that could lead to the companies coming together in what could be anything from a full merger, creating a mining powerhouse focusing on copper, to other deals that might involve certain assets. Rio Tinto has tried to diversify away from iron ore.

The metal also reacted positively to comments at the CES show in Las Vegas, where CEO Jensen Huang announced that a new data centre had about two miles of cabling.

CHILLING NEWS

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spoke at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas saying that its new Rubin chips were in production and would be with customers soon. Huang noted that “demand is really high” with the new chip around 3.5x better at training and 5x better at running AI software than its predecessor Blackwell. CFO Colette Kress stated that demand had increased since its prior $500billion forecast and that the US government was working on licenses for the company to ship H200 chips to China.

The HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) sector was hit as Huang stated that it would be possible to cool racks for its next generation Rubin chips using water at a temperature that did not require a water chiller leading to some questions around positioning of chillers within data centres.

THE WEEK AHEAD

We get the US inflation data on Tuesday and retail numbers on Wednesday combined with Chinese trade figures.

Closer to home on Thursday, UK GDP is announced as well as industrial production and its trade balance. On the Continent we also receive European inflation data. On Friday we receive jobless claims in the States.

On a company basis there are trading updates from Games Workshop, Hunting and housebuilders Vistry and Taylor Wimpey. Over the pond we start earnings season, like we always do, with financials such as Bank of America, JP Morgan and Citigroup.

THE WEEK IN HISTORY

1782: the Bank of North America, the first commercial bank in the US, opens its doors. The bank would become the de facto central bank for the US until the First Bank of the United States took over in 1791.

1980: President Jimmy Carter signs legislation to provide the auto company Chrysler with $1.5bn in guaranteed loans. At the time, it would be the largest bailout of a private company by the government in history.