Welcome to Black Friday and the day after Thanksgiving when traditionally shops herald the start of the Christmas shopping season, open their doors ridiculously early and offer discounts on things people never knew they wanted on the busiest shopping day of the year in the US. As with most US cultural phenomena, we have decided to replicate this in the UK and today should see an extra £200m spent and overtime for police at various Tescos around the country.

In the UK, the annual pace of house growth is continuing to soften and has fallen from 9.0% to 8.5% as demand continues to weaken. Whereas previously, the housing market has upheld the UK economy, we have seen a bit of a reversal as broader economic data is now more upbeat and is reliant on continued economic growth and increased strength in the labour market.

Whilst the Americans were tucking into their deep fried turkey, pumpkin pies and watching football, the Dollar was strengthening on the back of events at the OPEC meeting. OPEC’s decision not to reduce output strengthened the US Dollar across the board, and also heralded more issues for the ECB which is moving more towards introducing Quantitative Easing as it realises it is running out of any other options.

Main figures out today are CPI from Europe and GDP from Canada. Happy shopping and stay safe!