The main market focus was on the ECB last week as Mario Draghi delivered his highly anticipated package of monetary easing measures. In the event he underwhelmed the market with a 10bps cut to the Deposit Rate Facility and a 6 month extension of QE (as expected), but crucially didn’t include an increase to the monthly buying total.

In the US, Friday’s closely watched payroll numbers came slightly ahead of expectations at 211k (vs 200k expected) and effectively gave the Fed the green light to raise rates at the FOMC later this month. The divergence between the ISM Manufacturing and non-Manufacturing surveys remained stark as the former fell further than expected to 48.6, now in contractionary territory, while Services fell to 55.9 (vs 58 expected) but remained in expansionary territory.

The UKs PMI numbers followed the global trend of weaker Manufacturing (52.7 vs 53.6 expected) and robust Services numbers (55.9 vs 55 forecast).

In Asia, Japan had some disappointing numbers with housing starts and construction orders falling short of forecasts. China’s official manufacturing PMI stayed in contractionary territory at 49.6 while non-manufacturing showed steady progress, increasingly to 53.6 in November.

Thanks to our friends at London & Capital.