Market Analysis

With markets braced for a lengthy standoff between Rome and Brussels over Italy's 2019 spending plans, investors see little that could change their gloomy view of Italian bonds other than a snap election that alters the makeup of the government.

Disruptions to cobalt supplies in the Democratic Republic of Congo are not expected to eradicate a glut of the material used to make batteries for electric vehicles, thwarting hopes that prices can be boosted from their lowest since March last year.

Oil prices have fallen sharply since passing a cyclical peak at the start of October, amid surging production and mounting concerns about the state of the global economy and the outlook for consumption growth in 2019.

The question for Theresa May over the next eight hours or so is whether she has the support of enough of her cabinet ministers to take a draft Brexit deal to a Brussels summit for rubber-stamping in a couple of weeks time.

Oil traders' worries over record supplies arriving in Asia just as the outlook for its key growth economies weakens have pulled down global crude benchmarks by a quarter since early October.

The liquefied natural gas (LNG) market in Asia appears to be coming to terms with the likelihood that China will still buy robust volumes over winter, but not quite at the rate it did last year.

Hedge funds have sold the equivalent of almost half a billion barrels of crude oil and refined products in the last six weeks, as worries about slowing demand replaced earlier concern over sanctions on Iran.

Japan's central bank has become the first among G7 nations to own assets collectively worth more than the country's entire economy, following a half-decade spending spree designed to accelerate weak price growth.

British Brexit minister Dominic Raab's "thumbs up" after a cabinet meeting on talks with the European Union was all sterling needed to jump nearly half a percent last Tuesday.