Nerves are once again fraying as investors wait on news of a U.S.-Iran deal that they have now been promised for some time. They may be waiting a little longer, with President Trump's attention now turned to Beijing, with a bevy of billionaires in tow. Meetings with President Xi are expected to cover trade, AI and Taiwan to name a few.
The "More for Less: 2026 Wireless Affordability Tracker," found that when adjusted for inflation postpaid unlimited plans are 10% less than last year and almost 35% less than five years ago. The proliferation of plans - the tracker says that it found more than a thousand - has driven prepaid options down more than 50% during the past five years.
A new research paper published by a trio of Federal Reserve economists suggests that the prediction market platform is a useful method for measuring macroeconomic expectations - and it may even be better than some traditional methods. "Our results suggest that Kalshi markets provide a high-frequency, continuously updated, distributionally rich benchmark that is valuable to both researchers and policymakers," the researchers wrote.
On Wednesday, the original cryptocurrency surpassed $97,000 for the first time in two months and is up more than 6% in the last week. The jump in Bitcoin came after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell issued a remarkable statement that accused President Donald Trump's administration of directing a baseless criminal investigation at him in order to intimidate the agency. Meanwhile, the price of gold and other precious metals shot up as investors fled towards safe haven assets.
The Bank of England is expected to lower interest rates on Thursday after inflation fell to an eight-month low in November. The Monetary Policy Committee is tipped to cut the base rate from four per cent to 3.75 per cent - the fourth such rate cut this year, following reductions in February, May and August. This would bring borrowing costs down to the lowest rate since the beginning of February 2023.
The U.S. Federal Reserve's latest interest rate cut of a quarter percentage point lowered the benchmark federal funds rate to a range of 3.5%-3.75% in mid-December. This move continues to spark optimism among market participants, as valuations of most risk assets are directly tied to the risk-free rate, at least when it comes to modeling out a company's discounted future cash flows. Bond yields have also come down considerably in recent months (lower yields mean higher prices), so investors are winning across the board.
