An early Christmas present for UK investors

It's another step towards easy money for investors after Jerome Powell’s dovish speech last week. British stocks rallied this morning after a surprise drop in UK inflation, fuelling hopes that the Bank of England will cut interest rates early next year.

Annual consumer price inflation declined to 3.9% in November, while 4.4% was expected in the Reuters consensus of economists. The figure is down from 4.6% in October. Core inflation also eased much more than expected to 5.1% from 5.7%. This comes after eurozone inflation also had a bigger decline than previously forecast.

The FTSE 100 jumped 1.3% after the release of the data, while the pound declined to USD 1.2663 the 10-year gilt fell to 3.56%. Real estate and banks stocks rose after the announcement.

In other news, Dial Square Investments has completed its acquisition of EnergyPathways Ltd. and has begun trading on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker EPP. The company raised 2 million pounds through the issue of 50 million new shares at 0.04 pound each, reflecting a market capitalization of 6.3 million pounds.

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority will proceed with changes to the country's stock market listing rules to capture the "risk appetite the economy needs to achieve growth," despite potentially resulting in more company failures.

Things to read today:

• The startups that wanted to emulate Tesla on their way out (Wall Street Journal).
• The airline accounting problem (The Atlantic).
• The strange remoteness of Spain and Portugal (Financial Times).
• Biosourced" products: greenwashing or added environmental value (The Conversation).
• 2023 in news pictures (New York Times).