Early Morning Call: dollar stands firm ahead of busy data week

Equity market overview

Asia-Pacific indices recorded losses overnight, after a negative session in the US on Friday.

European equity markets also start the week lower. UK GDP expanded 0.5% on October month-on-molnth (MoM), a rebound after the 0.6% drop in September, and better than the 0.4% expected. Industrial production fell in October, but not as much as forecast. Output fell by 2.4% year-on-year (YoY). Economists expected a 2.8% fall.

This week, three central banks meet and decide on their rates for the last time of the year. Starting on Wednesday with he US Federal Reserve (Fed) which is likely to raise by half a percentage point to a target range of 4.25%-4.5%.

On Thursday, the Bank of England (BoE) and the European Central Bank (ECB) are also widely expected to raise rates by 50 basis points, taking borrowing costs to 3.5% and 2% respectively. The last time each of these three central banks met, they all raised their benchmark rates by 75 basis points.

Microsoft will buy about 4% in LSE group as part of a 10-year commercial deal to migrate the bourse operator’s exchange data platform into the cloud.

The Wall Street Journal revealed this weekend that Amgen is now the frontrunner in the Horizon Therapeutics deal. According to the paper, Amgen is in advanced talks to buy the biotech company as rival Sanofi announced it had dropped its bid, adding the deal could be finalised as early as today. It all started last month when Horizon Therapeutics said it was in talks with Amgen, Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Global Services unit.

Last week, Janssen decided to pull out, followed on Sunday by Sanofi who said the "transaction price expectations do not meet [their] value creation criteria". The Wall Street journal doesn't mention any price for the deal, but the Financial Times, citing sources close to the matter, says the transaction could be worth as much as $20 billion.

Commodities

US energy firms cut the number of their operating oil and gas rigs for the first time in six weeks. According to Baker Hughes on Friday, the total rig count in the US fell by four to 780.

The number of oil rigs in operation dropped by two to 625 and gas rigs also fell by two to 153.

Cryptos

The speed of the collapse of FTX has shaken the cryptocurrency market to the point that investors are heading for the exit.

In November, crypto investors pulled a record 91,363 bitcoin, worth about $1.5bn, the largest outflow on record.

Bitcoin has plunged 64% so far this year, and the online platform Coinbase's share price just hit a new record low.