Time to wrap up, here’s today’s main stories:

It didn’t do Kamala Harris much good, of course, but apparently US consumer confidence rose at the start of this month.

The index of consumer sentiment producer by the University of Michigan, and just released, has risen to 73.0 this month, up from 70.5 in October.

Inflation expectations dipped, to the lowest since December 2020, with people anticipating inflation would be 2.6% in a year’s time, down from 2.7% last month.

Surveys of Consumers director Joanne Hsu explains:

Heading into the election, consumer sentiment improved for the fourth consecutive month, rising 3.5% to its highest reading in six months. While current conditions were little changed, the expectations index surged across all dimensions, reaching its highest reading since July 2021.

World food prices rose last month to their highest level since April 2023, driven by an increase in the cost of vegetable oils.

The United Nations’ world food price index, which tracks the price changes in various edible commodities, increased by 2% in October to to 127.4 points last month from a revised 124.9 points in September.

The report found that the prices of all food categories rose, apart from meat.

The Vegetable Oil Price Index jumped by 7%, with prices reaching a two-year high, due to higher costs for palm, soy, sunflower and rapeseed oils.

Dairy prices rose 1.9%, which the UN attributes to pricier cheese and butter prices, and seasonally low milk production in Western Europe.

Cereal prices rose by 0.8% in the month, with costs pushed up by “concerns over unfavourable weather conditions affecting winter crop sowing in several major northern hemisphere exporters”

The UN adds:

Additionally, the re-introduction of an unofficial price floor in the Russian Federation and rising tensions in the Black Sea region exerted upward pressure on prices.

The US stock market has hit fresh record highs at the start of trading in New York.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 index have both hit record intraday peaks.

The S&P 500 is up 7.7 points or 0.13% at 5,980, putting the 6,000-point mark in sight for the first time.

Investors still seem upbeat about US stocks following Donald Trump’s election win, anticipating deregulation and tax cuts…

Veteran investor Carl Icahn says he’s not seen such an unbalanced stock market many times before.

Presenting Icahn Enterprises’ third-quarter results today, Icahn says:

“I strongly believe that our portfolio – both for the investment segment and the controlled businesses – has significant opportunities ahead. Rarely have I seen a stock market with such extreme valuations – with some companies trading at unjustifiable premiums and others being massively undervalued.

These undervalued situations have created great opportunities for activists. To take advantage of these opportunities when they occur, we have always maintained a war chest of liquidity.

That “war chest” is currently made up of $2.3bn of cash and cash equivalents.

But Icahn is using some of it to extend his stake in oil refinery business CVR Energy.

He’s also halving the dividend paid to investors in Icahn Enterprises, from $1.00 per depositary unit to $0.50, to help fund the CVR deal and keep that warchest stocked…

Yesterday, the Bank of England showed that it expects Rachel Reeves’s budget to add almost half a percentage point to inflation at its peak in just over two years’ time.

That’s due to measures such as the addition of VAT to private school fees and the £1 increase in the bus fare cap to £3, plus the assumption that the long-running fuel duty-freeze will end (although Reeves extended it last week).

Today, the central bank’s chief economist says it must look beyond the temporary inflation boost from last week’s budget.

Huw Pill has explained that it’s important to focus on anything that might add to longer-term price pressures.

In a briefing to businesses, Pill says:

“To a large extent, we will have to look through and interpret [the measures in the budget] in a way that allows us to have a good sight of these underlying and more persistent components of inflation that really have to be the focus of what’s driving our policy decisions.”

The boss of Land Rover manufacturer JLR has said the company is opposed to tariffs, after Donald Trump won the US presidency for the second time promising levies on all goods imports.

Adrian Mardell, JLR’s chief executive, said that the company would be “resilient” if tariffs were increased, although he added that he was hopeful that future policy “isn’t quite what it’s being said today”.

The British carmaker, which is owned by Indian conglomerate Tata, exported 95,000 cars to the US in the year to March, more than a quarter of all the cars it produced. Those exports would face a 10% tariff if Trump follows through on a repeated pledge to impose a “baseline tariff” on all goods.

Mardell expressed his objection to increased taxes on business during the UK budget, as well as the prospect of “potentially even more significant” changes ahead in response to a question about Trump.

Speaking as JLR unveiled a profitable quarter to September (see earlier post), he said:

Everybody hates taxes and tariffs. This is the environment we are in. Of course all of us would dislike an environment where we go into larger tariffs.

The company said it was too early to say whether it would raise prices or seek to start producing vehicles within the US if tariffs were imposed.

Shares in UK retailers have dropped this morning, as they continue to count the cost of last week’s budget.

Marks & Spencer (-4.5%), JD Sports (-2.7%) and Tesco (-2.5%) are all among the fallers on the FTSE 100 today, pulling it down to a three-month low.

On the smaller FTSE 250 index, bakery chain Greggs (-6.8%) and pub group Mitchells & Butler (-6.7%) are also weakening.

Companies across the economy have been adding up the cost of Rachel Reeves’s decision to lower the earnings threshold at which employers start paying national insurance contributions from £9,100 to £5,000, and increase the rate from 13.8% to 15.0%.

M&S said it faced a £60m bill, while Sainsbury’s is facing a £140m cost.

It’s not just retailers, of course; BT said the measures in the budget would cost it £100m. while Serco flagged a £20m bill this morning.

And supermarket chain Asda has just warned that it also faces a £100m bill from tax changes in last week’s Budget, which could lead to higher prices.

As the Bank of England explained yesterday, there are four ways that companies can deal with the increase in NICS contributions. They could raise prices, they could swallow the cost through lower profits or becoming more efficient, they could raise wages by less than otherwise, or they could cut staff.

Asda’s chairman Lord Stuart Rose has called the increase in employer taxes is “a big burden for business to carry”.

Rose says it is likely to lead to higher prices in the shops:

“We are a very efficient industry, as retailers. We will do everything we can to mitigate this cost.

“But of course, you can’t deny it will probably be inflationary to some degree. We’re just working through the details of that now… We’re looking at the impact.”

Prison contractor Serco is also among the stock market fallers, after being hit by a double-whammy of bad news.

Serco told shareholders this morning that it had failed to retain a key contract with the Australian Government’s Department of Home Affairs to provide onshore immigration detention facilities and services for detainees held there.

Ths contract will run out on 10 December. Had Serco won it again, it would have bene worth £165m of revenue in 2025 and £18m of underlying operating profit.

Serco also reported that the UK government’s changes to employer national insurance contributions will cost it around £20m per year.

Shares are down 10%, at the bottom of the FTSE 250 index of medium-sized companies.

Britain’s stock market has dropped to its lowest level since the market wobble this summer.

The blue-chip FTSE 100 share index is down 72 points today, or -0.9%, at 8068 points. That’s the lowest since 8th August, and the index’s fourth daily fall in a row.

Miners are still among the top fallers, reflecting concerns that China’s latest stimulus measure isn’t beefier.

Housebuilder Vistry is now down almost 20% after it issued a second profit warning in as many months and said cost overruns on building projects were worse than previously thought.

UK supermarket chains Tesco (-2.9%) and Sainsbury’s (-2.5%) are also among the fallers; yesterday, Sainsbury’s warned that it will face a £140m bill from changes to employer national insurance contributions [NICs].

Land Rover maker JLR has reported a 10% year-on-year drop in quarterly profits after shortages of aluminium held back production.

Sales dropped by 6% to £6.5bn in the quarter ending in September compared with a year earlier, while profit before tax - excluding some one-off items - was £398m, the company said today.

Despite the supply chain difficulties, it marked two years of profits for Britain’s largest automotive employer, which has undergone a turnaround programme to try to earn more money from each car it makes.

Those efforts appear to have paid off as JLR has avoided the steep fall in profits experienced by several manufacturing rivals. Stellantis and Nissan this week announced thousands of job losses, but JLR said that it was continuing with a £500m investment in upgrading its factory at Halewood, Merseyside.

The company said the aluminium shortage was only temporary, and that it still expected to make revenues of £30bn this year.

Adrian Mardell, JLR’s chief executive, said the company was still seeing “strong global demand for our products”. JLR has been slower than rivals to switch to electric production, which could make it difficult to meet emissions targets, but has meant it is much less exposed to slowing growth in demand for electric cars.

Mardell said:

JLR has delivered a resilient performance in [the second financial quarter], resulting in a 25% increase in first half profits year-on-year. Our teams responded brilliantly to the aluminium supply shortages we experienced in the quarter, so we could deliver as many orders as possible to clients.

Back in China, a 10 trillion yuan (£1trn) program to refinance local government debt has been reportedly rolled out.

It’s a sign that Beijing is taking steps to support its economy, before Donald Trump takes office.

According to the Xinhua News Agency, Chinese lawmakers have approved a State Council bill to raise the ceiling on local government debt by 6 trillion yuan (about £650bn).

This will allow local officials to swap hidden debt for newly issued bonds.

Local governments will also be able to tap another 4 trillion yuan (£430bn) set aside for new special local bonds for the same purpose.

The move could cut systemic risks in the Chinese economy.

Finance minister Lan Fo’an told a briefing the plan was:

A major policy decision taking into consideration international and domestic development environments, the need to ensure the stable economic and fiscal operation, and the actual development situation of local governments.

Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.

Two days after the US election result, countries around the world are digesting what impact Trump 2.0 will have on their economies – especially if the president-elect kicks off a trade war.

China would obviously be in the firing line, given Donald Trump’s suggestion he could slap a 60% tariff on Chinese imports at the US border.

And with that in mind, presumably, China’s ambassador to the United States has warned that there are no winners in tariff or trade wars.

Ambassador Xie Feng also warned against wars over science, technology or industry, in a speech at a U.S.-China Business Council dinner on Thursday seen by Reuters.

Xie encouraged U.S. companies to invest and operate in China, and said he was looking forward to strengthening dialogue and cooperation on global challenges such as climate change and artificial intelligence.

Striking a concilliatory pose, Xie argued for the merits of partnership:

“China and the United States can achieve many great and good things through cooperation, and the list of cooperation should be stretched longer and longer.”

“The more success stories of mutually beneficial cooperation, the better.”

“Cooperation”, though, wasn’t top of the agenda during Trump 1.0; in 2018, Washington imposed trade sanctions on China, including restrictions on investment and tariffs, prompting tit-for-tat retaliation from Beijing.

This time round, China’s president Xi is presiding over a far worse domestic economy; if Trump imposes new tariffs, analysts reckon it could affect $500bn worth of Chinese goods.

ING’s global head of macro, Carsten Brzeski, predicts that the Trump administration will initally focus on domestic policy, including immigration and extending/expanding tax cuts, before turning to trade issues….

Brzeski told clients:

We think the earliest timing for tariffs to be implemented is the third quarter of 2025. China would likely be impacted first, with a gradual series of tariffs introduced on different products from other countries coming in later.

Tariffs would be a blow for US consumers – already reeling from the global spike in inflation in 2022 and 2023 – as they’ll be passed on by importers.

Last night, America’s top central banker said the US economy was performing well, with stronger growth than other major economies, falling inflation and a solid jobs market.

Jerome Powell also insisted he would not resign if Trump asked him to leave his role, following reports that some of the president-elect’s advisors would like Powell to resign.

Asked it he would quit if asked by Trump, Powell responded with a blunt “no”. Powell also said the White House demoting Fed governors from their leadership roles is “not permitted under the law”.

The agenda

• 7.45am GMT: French trade data for September

• 9am GMT: UN’s monthly food price index

• 1.30pm GMT: Canadian non-farm payroll report for October

• 3pm GMT: University of Michigan US consumer confidence index