Plenty of bricks in the coming week.

Last week, the latest labour market data for the US continued to indicate a certain amount of weakness, not disastrous, in jobs. The Job Openings and Labour Turnover Survey for the US reported that job openings fell to 7.15 million in November 2025, the lowest level in over a year, suggesting a potential slowdown in hiring. Then, on Friday, as the Financial Times reported, U.S. employment growth slowed more than expected in December amid job losses in construction, retail and manufacturing. However, a decline in the unemployment rate to 4.4% suggested the labour market was not rapidly deteriorating. I like to keep an eye on the Citi Economic Surprise Index, as it gives a good sense of how an economy is performing relative to expectations. For the US and the eurozone, both indices are starting to trend downwards, not dramatically, but worth keeping an eye on. Don’t even ask about what direction it is heading in the UK; it’s fallen off a cliff, and even I was surprised by how much.

This week, as I mentioned on Friday, the 4th-quarter earnings season starts with JPMorgan, followed by most of the US global and domestic banks. Then, in the coming weeks, there will be a steady stream from all industries and geographies.

Geopolitics has been much in the headlines in the past week. Markets tend to shrug off geopolitical developments unless they directly affect commodity prices, particularly oil prices. Trump’s intervention to remove Maduro has had little impact on the oil price so far. We have been reading over the past few days about the unrest in Iran, the US president has made it known he could order military strikes on Tehran. Trump bombed Tehran in June, so he is not averse to the idea. One has to watch that one as it could create so volatility in oil markets.

Aside from earnings and geopolitics, what other bricks can we put into the wall of worry for the coming week? Probably the most significant US policymakers get an inflation update via the consumer price index for December. Since the reopening of the government, US inflation data has been lagging, so it has been treated with some caution. Later this week, it will catch up as we get December’s report, and it is likely to influence the Fed’s rate decision at the end of the month. Odds are currently no change from the Fed. Updates to US retail sales, industrial production and producer prices will also be released throughout the week.

As for the UK, we get the monthly GDP report, where the expectation is that UK GDP will shrink by 0.1%month over month. On Tuesday, we get the results of the S&P Global Investment Manager Index survey. That will be interesting to see if there has been any change in what was quite a bullish December report.