US job market weakens in December, fuelling hopes of more stimulus – as it happened

Oil prices continue to climb and have touched 11-month highs today, boosted by Saudi Arabia’s voluntary output cut and rising stock markets. Brent crude has rallied 1.73% to $55.32 a barrel while US crude has gained 1.5% to $51.59.

Bitcoin has scaled new highs, rising to $41,799 today, after breaking through $40,000 for the first time last night. It is still up 5.7% at $41,760. Rival cryptocurrency ethereum rose 3%.

Demand from institutional investors has increased as people are buying bitcoin and other digital currencies as a hedge against inflation. But sceptics say bitcoin has no intrinsic value.

And the European Medicines Agency, the EU regulator, said it may decide on the Oxford University/AstraZeneca coronavirus jab by the end of this month. AstraZeneca is expected to file for approval in the EU next week.

Newsflash on Reuters: The Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the UK regulator, has approved Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine for use, according to the health ministry.

The UK has bought 7m doses of this vaccine – see previous post – but has ordered a further 10m shots, the health ministry said. Almost 1.5 million people have been vaccinated in Britain so far.

At the moment, two coronavirus vaccines are available in the UK: the mRNA one developed by German biotech firm BioNTech and US drug giant Pfizer, and a more traditional vaccine from Oxford University and British drugmaker AstraZeneca.

A third Covid vaccine, from the American biotech firm Moderna, could be approved by the UK regulator for emergency use as soon as today, Bloomberg is reporting. It has already been given the green light by regulators in the EU (earlier this week) and the US. The Moderna vaccine is similar to the Pfizer/BioNTech jab and has produced equally strong results in late-stage clinical trials, with efficacy of 94%.

This is certainly exciting news, but unfortunately Britain has ordered just 7m doses of the Moderna vaccine while the European Commission has ordered 160m doses for member states.

The Moderna shot was not part of the portfolio of vaccines bought by the UK until those results were released – and UK approval won’t make much of a difference to the UK’s goal of vaccinating the most vulnerable by mid-February.

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8 Jan 202105.49 EST

Mark Sweney

Shares in Reach, the publisher of titles including the Daily Mirror, Daily Express and Manchester Evening News, soared by a quarter after the publisher significantly upgraded its profit forecast for 2020.

Reach, which was forced to cut 550 jobs last year to weather the pandemic, said that its forecast of £130m to £135m in underlying profits followed a record digital performance. Analysts had estimated full year profits of about £122m.

The company, which like all publishers struggles against giants such as Facebook and Google for digital income, said that digital revenue grew by 25% year on year in the fourth quarter last year. This compared to a 13% rise in the third quarter.

Despite the boost in digital income the company, which remains heavily dependent on print income, newspaper sales were down 11.7% in the fourth quarter. The rise in digital revenues helped limit the fall in total revenues to 10.2% in the quarter. This is a significant improvement over the 14.8% fall in total revenues in the third quarter last year.

Malcolm Morgan, media analyst at Peel Hunt, says:

Even though the shares have regained all of their Covid price fall, we expect the progress shown today to boost the share price further.

In contrast, Marks & Spencer’s clothing sales have been hammered by the pandemic. Here is our full story:

Britain’s biggest housebuilder, Barratt, has lifted its forecast for home sales in the current year.

The housing market has been surprisingly strong despite the pandemic, but is now slowing, according to Halifax, one of the UK’s biggest mortgage lenders.

The FTSE 100 index is back in positive territory, just about, at 6,857.

Pets at Home is the biggest riser on the FTSE 250 index, with the shares up 7.1%, after the retailer lifted its annual profit forecast for the second time in five months following strong Christmas sales.

It has benefited from a surge in demand for pet food, toys and accessories as more people than usual have been buying puppies and kittens during the pandemic.

The company, which has been allowed to stay open during Covid-19 lockdowns because it has been deemed an essential retailer, now expects to make a profit at last £77m this year.

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More good news from the eurozone after Germany’s strong industrial production data: The unemployment rate across the eurozone dipped to 8.3% in November from 8.4% in October, the second month it has fallen – taking economists by surprise.

The EU’s statistics office Eurostat said the number of people out of work fell by 172,000 from October to 13.609 million, although it was up 1.425 million from a year earlier because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, the unemployment rate among young people (under 25) rose markedly, to 18.4% November from 18% the month before. Some 2.629 million young people were out of work, up 64,000 from October.

Looking at the unemployment data by gender, the jobless rate for women fell to 8.8% from 8.9% while for men it dropped to 7.9% from 8%.

Sterling is also having a good day. It has extended gains against the euro to 89.94p, up 0.6% on the day.

The dollar has risen slightly ahead of the non-farm payrolls report at lunchtime, the latest data on the US jobs market which should give some indication as to how much more stimulus will be needed to boost the economic recovery.

Against a basket of major currencies the greenback is up 0.13% this morning, after its biggest gain in over two months yesterday – but is still on track for a weekly decline.