>>> What to look at today - 24th of December 2025

Asian stocks advanced, tracking gains on Wall Street, as data showing the US economy grew at its fastest pace in two years improved prospects for corporate earnings. The dollar weakened to hover around levels last seen in September. MSCI’s regional equities gauge extended its gains into a fourth day, rising 0.2%, with technology stocks leading. That came after the S&P 500 Index closed at a record high, amid low volume ahead of the Christmas holiday. Moves were more pronounced in commodities, with gold rallying to a record above $4,500 an ounce before paring gains. Gold’s haven appeal has been amplified recently by the US blockade of oil tankers linked to Venezuela. Platinum and silver both reached all-time highs, while copper topped $12,000 a ton for the first time. Risk appetite has remained firm heading into year-end, with tech stocks in demand even as strong US growth data scaled back bets on near-term Federal Reserve easing. After earlier concerns over high valuations and the billions pouring into artificial intelligence, traders are regaining confidence that companies will deliver solid earnings growth in 2026. Inflation-adjusted US GDP expanded in the third quarter at a 4.3% annualized pace, higher than all but one estimate in a Bloomberg survey. The economy maintained momentum through the middle of the year as consumers powered ahead and the most punitive of President Donald Trump’s tariffs were rolled back. While the October-November US government shutdown is expected to weigh on fourth-quarter growth, economists expect a modest rebound in 2026. Attention in Asia was also on the currencies market. The yuan extended its gains, edging closer to the key 7.0-per-dollar level, after the People’s Bank of China set a stronger fixing. The yen rose for a third day as traders remained on watch for signs of currency intervention following Tokyo’s warning against excessive moves.  Groundwork Collaborative Chief of Policy and Advocacy Alex Jacquez discusses the US economy and the Fed. The South Korean won strengthened after authorities warned against excessive weakness in the currency. The increased rhetoric comes as the currency neared the psychologically important 1,500-per-dollar level — a threshold breached only during the global financial crisis and the Asian currency meltdown in 1997. Also, India’s central bank announced fresh measures aimed at boosting banking liquidity with government bond purchases and foreign-exchange swaps aimed at supporting a weakening rupee, which has emerged as Asia’s worst-performing currency this year. In other corners of the market, Treasuries edged up ahead of a 7-year note auction, while a Bloomberg gauge of the dollar extended its slide into a third day. The dollar is heading for its worst annual performance in eight years, and the options market is signaling that traders are preparing for more downside in the final sessions of 2025 and beyond. The session after Christmas has historically been the most consistently positive day of the year for stocks, according to Bespoke Investment Group. In the 39 years since 1953 when the market was open Dec. 26, the S&P 500 has only declined six times. Meanwhile, Trump said he expects his Fed chair to lower rates if the market is doing well, the latest signal that the president is eager for a nominee committed to borrowing cost cuts as he nears an announcement of his choice to replace Jerome Powell. Money markets see a less than 20% chance of a Fed reduction in January. Elsewhere, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent backed the idea of reconsidering the Fed’s 2% inflation target once the US has sustainably brought price increases back down to that pace. US After Hours PATH +4.3% on news it will join S&P MidCap 400; NKE +0.5% ticks higher on insider purchases.

Nikkei -0.14% Hang Seng +0.17% CSI +0.21% Shanghai +0.46% Shenzen +0.93%

Eur$ 1.1793% CNH 7.0115 CNY 7.0249 JPY 155.82 GBP 1.3516 CHF 0.7871 RUB 77.9900 TRY 42.8487 WTI$ 58.41 +0.05% Gold 4,499 +0.30% BTC 87,215 -0.58% ETH 2,939 -1.20% SOL 121.8118 -2.15%

S&P -0.09% Nasdaq -0.07% EuroStoxx / FTSE -0.04% Dax / SMI /

Macro :
- Hedge fund Arnott Capital ramps up bets against shipping stocks
- Citadel to Return $5 Billion of Hedge Fund’s Profits to Clients
- Jane Street Hires DC Lobbyists as India Probe Presses On
- Billionaire Tory donor quits Britain for Switzerland
- China’s Battery Giant Needs New Markets After Dominating at Home
- Bolivia Clears SpaceX, Amazon to Operate in Country: President
- US Investors Put Millions in Mexican Soccer Before World Cup

Keep an eye on :
- AAPL US : Apple to Pause App Age Verification Plan After Texas Law Blocked
- 3407 HK : Asahi Kasei Treatment Granted Orphan Drug Status by FDA
- BYW6 GY : BayWa Sells Cefetra Group for About €125m
- BME LN : B&M Faces a Long Road to Recovery After Stock’s Worst Ever Year
- BP/ LN : BP Nears Sale of Castrol Stake to Stonepeak, WSJ Reports
- 1 HK ; CK’s Panama Deal at Risk After Cosco Demands Majority Stake: FT
- DVAX US : Sanofi to Buy Dynavax for $15.50/Share in Cash
- 489 HK : Carmakers BAIC, Dongfeng’s Spanish Partner Aims for Local Supply
- EBS AV : Erste Bank to Start Rebranding of Its New Polish Unit in 2Q
- FM US : First Quantum Minerals Sells Cobre Las Cruces Mine
- GM US : GM Investigating Air Bag That Exploded in Recalled-But-Unrepaired Pickup Truck -- WSJ
- GOOGL US : Waymo to Update Software Across Fleet After Major Power Failure
- NWG LN : Barclays, NatWest Through to 2nd Round of Evelyn Auction: Sky
- PSKY US : Ellison’s Vow to Backstop Paramount Bid Would Reshape Wealth
- PUMA CN : Puma Exploration Announces Increase in Kinross' Equity Stake (to 14.8%)
- SAN FP : Sanofi Says FDA Issued Complete Response Letter on Tolebrutinib
- SAN FP : Sanofi to Buy Dynavax for $2.2 Billion to Add Shingles Vaccine
- SNOW US : Snowflake in Talks to Buy App Monitoring Startup Observe Inc. For Around $1 Billion
- TWE AU : Treasury Wine Rises as Billionaire Goudet Becomes Major Holder

>>> Holidays Calendar - Merry Xmas

½ day trading today

Belgium, France, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain close at 1pm (TAL 1.05pm)

South Africa closes at 10am (TAL 10.15)

Ireland closes at 12.30 (TAL 12.40)
UK closes at 12.35 (TAL 12.40)

US, Canada close at 6pm

All other EU markets closed

>>> DYNAVAX / LYME DISEASE – READ-ACROSS VS VALNEVA

DYNAVAX / LYME DISEASE – READ-ACROSS VS VALNEVA
• DYNAVAX PROGRAM: Dynavax Technologies developing protein subunit Lyme vaccine + CpG 1018, preclinical, clinical entry targeted ~2027
• VALNEVA PROGRAM: Valneva lead asset VLA15, multivalent OspA-based Lyme vaccine, in late-stage clinical development with Pfizer
• TECH DIFFERENCE: Valneva uses alum-adjuvanted OspA antigens; Dynavax differentiates via TLR9 CpG adjuvant aimed at stronger, longer-lasting immunity
• RISK PROFILE: Valneva = near-term regulatory and execution risk; Dynavax = earlier-stage scientific and timeline risk, higher optionality
• COMMERCIAL READ-ACROSS: Advancing VLA15 de-risks Lyme vaccine demand, pricing, and payer acceptance, indirectly validating Dynavax’s opportunity
• STRATEGIC OPTION: Dynavax positioned as next-gen or follow-on entrant (durability, dosing, booster logic) rather than first-to-market
• INVESTOR TAKEAWAY: Valneva success would likely expand category valuation, benefiting Dynavax via platform credibility + long-dated upside

FT : Tech groups shift $120bn of AI data centre debt off balance sheets

Tech groups shift $120bn of AI data centre debt off balance sheets
Creative financing helps insulate Big Tech while binding Wall Street to a future boom or bust

Tech companies have moved more than $120bn of data centre spending off their balance sheets using special purpose vehicles funded by Wall Street investors, adding to concerns about the financial risks of their huge bet on artificial intelligence.

Meta, Elon Musk’s xAI, Oracle and data centre operator CoreWeave have led the way on complex financing deals to shield their companies from the large borrowing needed to build AI data centres.

Financial institutions including Pimco, BlackRock, Apollo, Blue Owl Capital and US banks such as JPMorgan have supplied at least $120bn in debt and equity for these tech groups’ computing infrastructure, according to a Financial Times analysis.

That money is channelled through special purpose holding companies known as SPVs. The rush of financings, which do not show up on the tech companies’ balance sheets, may be obscuring the risks that these groups are running — and who will be on the hook if AI demand disappoints.

SPV structures also increase the danger that financial stress for AI operators in the future could cascade across Wall Street in unpredictable ways.

“Eighteen months ago this would have been unfathomable, and fast forward to today, it’s very much the norm,” said a senior executive at one of the large financing institutions about the tens of billions of dollars flowing into SPVs to fund data centres.

“The tech industry can access meaningfully more capital than any other because of the credit profile,” he added.


Silicon Valley giants have traditionally generated a lot of cash and had little debt, giving these companies excellent credit ratings and high confidence from investors.

The race to secure computing power for advanced AI has pushed tech groups to borrow more than ever before, however. Tapping private capital funding through off-balance sheet structures protects companies’ credit ratings and flatters their financial metrics.

Meta in October completed the largest private credit data centre deal, a $30bn agreement for its proposed Hyperion facility in Louisiana that created an SPV called Beignet Investor with New York financing firm Blue Owl Capital.

The SPV raised $30bn, including about $27bn of loans from Pimco, BlackRock, Apollo and others, as well as $3bn in equity from Blue Owl.

The deal meant Meta could in effect borrow $30bn without any of the debt appearing on its balance sheet. This made it easier to raise a further $30bn in the corporate bond market a few weeks later.

Oracle has led the way in structuring large debt deals through third parties to pay for its enormous commitments to lease data centre power to OpenAI.

Larry Ellison’s tech group has partnered with builders and financiers such as Crusoe, Blue Owl Capital, Vantage and Related Digital to build numerous data centres that will ultimately each be owned by SPVs.

Its off-balance sheet financing deals include about $13bn invested by Blue Owl and JPMorgan, including $10bn of debt, into an SPV that owns its OpenAI facility in Abilene, Texas; a $38bn debt package to pay for two data centres in Texas and Wisconsin; and an $18bn loan for a site in New Mexico.

In each case, Oracle has agreed to lease the facilities from the SPVs. In the event of a default, lenders would have recourse over the assets — the data centre, the land it sits on and the chips that power it — and not the companies that manage the sites.

Raising off-balance sheet debt via an SPV has become more popular as the amount of capital needed to fund AI infrastructure has skyrocketed, stretching tech companies’ cash reserves. Morgan Stanley estimated that $1.5tn of external financing was needed to fund tech companies’ AI plans.

In many cases, investors in these data centre deals have been convinced that the financial risk ultimately still lies with the tech company leasing the site, should demand for AI services fall, resulting in a hit to the value of these huge computing facilities.

In the case of Beignet Investor, Meta owns 20 per cent of the SPV and has given a “residual value guarantee” to the other investors. This means that the social media group would have to repay the SPV investors if the value of the data centre drops below a certain level by the end of the lease and Meta decides not to renew.

Musk’s AI start-up xAI is pursuing a similar structure as part of a $20bn fundraise, including as much as $12.5bn in debt. The SPV will use the money to buy Nvidia graphics processing units and lease them to xAI.

CoreWeave said in March that it had created an SPV to fulfil a $11.9bn contract to supply computing power to OpenAI, which would “incur indebtedness to finance its obligations”. In July, it borrowed $2.6bn to fund its OpenAI contracts.

Private capital investors are keen to get in on the AI boom, boosting demand for these novel structures. Tech companies had borrowed about $450bn from private funds as of early 2025, $100bn more than over the previous 12 months, according to UBS.

This year, about $125bn flowed into “project finance” deals — long-term financing of infrastructure projects — such as the Meta and Blue Owl transaction, UBS said.

Data centre construction has become largely reliant on deep-pocketed private credit markets, a rapidly inflating $1.7tn industry that has itself prompted concerns due to steep rises in asset valuations, illiquidity and concentration of borrowers.

“There is risky lending and underlying credit risk built up in private credit already,” said one banker close to data centre financing deals. “This creates a very interesting set-up for the next several years, as you have two material risks to the outlook becoming more intertwined.”

The risk in these structures largely depends on how widespread they become. If multiple AI companies are using SPVs, stress can spread through the private credit funds behind them simultaneously with little transparency.

The AI data centre boom also largely relies on a small group of clients. OpenAI alone has made more than $1.4tn in long-term computing commitments across most of the sector’s big players.

Lenders across multiple different data centres could therefore be exposed to the same risks if one tenant falters. They also face uncertainty around access to power, AI regulation or technological shifts that make the current generation of AI hardware obsolete.

Not all of the big “hyperscaler” data centre companies have joined the trend. Google, Microsoft and Amazon — which all had large, established data centre businesses before the AI boom — have continued to finance construction using cash.

While Google and Amazon have recently tapped bond investors to raise more debt directly, the three companies have not yet disclosed any significant SPV financing.

Wall Street also is pushing into more obscure structures around data centre transactions.

A number of tech bankers said they had even seen securitisation deals on AI debt in recent months, where lenders pool loans and sell slices of them, known as asset-backed securities, to investors. Two bankers estimated these deals currently numbered in the single-digit billions of dollars.

These deals spread the risk of the data centre loans to a much wider pool of investors, including asset managers and pension funds.

Matthew Mish, UBS’s head of public and private credit strategy, said most investors “feel that actually it’s a good thing you ultimately end up with hyperscaler risk” given these companies’ strong balance sheets and credit profiles.

But Mish added SPV financings still “add outstanding liabilities” for tech companies, meaning the “overall credit quality for the hyperscaler would be worse than what’s currently being modelled”.

The Information : Snowflake in Talks to Buy App Monitoring Startup Observe Inc.

Snowflake in Talks to Buy App Monitoring Startup Observe Inc. For Around $1 Billion

The Takeaway
  • Snowflake is buying an observability startup that helps businesses monitor new AI applications they’re developing.

Snowflake is in talks to buy app monitoring startup Observe Inc. for around $1 billion, which would likely be the biggest deal in Snowflake’s history, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Observe, based in San Mateo, Calif., sells so-called observability tools that help developers to understand how their applications are performing and allows them to spot disruptions and outages. The deal would bring Snowflake into closer competition with software firms Datadog and Cisco’s Splunk.

Numerous observability startups have popped up in recent years, and businesses could use such software tools to monitor new AI applications they’re developing. In November, Palo Alto Networks agreed to buy Chronosphere, which sells observability software companies use to track performance of cloud servers and applications, for $3.35 billion.

Last year, Snowflake acquired TruEra AI, an observability startup focused on monitoring the performance of applications powered by large language models, for an undisclosed sum.

Observe already has close ties with Snowflake. The startup uses Snowflake’s database technology, which allows companies to pool large amounts of data into a central place to store raw data, known as a data lake. Snowflake’s venture arm invested in Observe in 2024 and Observe CEO Jeremy Burton is a director on Snowflake’s board.

Founded in 2018, Observe has raised more than $470 million from investors including Sutter Hill Ventures and Madrona Ventures, most recently at a valuation of $848 million including the money, according to PitchBook. Sutter Hill’s Mike Speiser sits on the boards of both Snowflake and Observe.

Snowflake recently started selling AI it says can automate customers’ workplace tasks ranging from resolving IT tickets and producing dashboards to handling customer service, joining a crowded field of software providers offering similar AI products. CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said earlier this month that Snowflake has surpassed $100 million in annualized revenue from its AI products, fulfilling a goal that he set internally earlier this year.

Snowflake shares are up 43% this year, giving it a roughly $77 billion market capitalization.

The company earlier this month said revenue rose 29% to $1.21 billion in the quarter that ended Oct. 31, beating its growth forecast for the quarter by 3 percentage points. It also slightly raised its growth projections for product revenue in the fiscal year that ends at the end of January to 27% from 25%, though the company’s overall revenue growth this year has been several percentage points slower compared to last year.

NYPost : Billionaire Louis Bacon wins defamation lawsuit against convicted sex o

Billionaire Louis Bacon wins defamation lawsuit against convicted sex offender Peter Nygard

Billionaire hedge fund manager Louis Bacon has won his long-running defamation lawsuit alleging that former fashion mogul and convicted sex offender Peter Nygard spread lies about him during a public spat over their adjacent properties in the Bahamas.

Justice Richard Latin in Manhattan said in an order on Monday that Nygard had admitted he had no evidence to back up his claims against Bacon, including that he was a murderer, narcotics trafficker and white supremacist. Bacon said in his lawsuit that Nygard’s claims were “brazen lies.”

Nygard’s lawyer, Peter Sverd, said in a statement on Tuesday that Nygard will continue to fight the case and expects to appeal.

Lawyers for Bacon, the founder of Moore Capital Management LP, did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on Tuesday.

Nygard, the founder of Nygard International, who was once one of Canada’s richest men, is serving an 11-year prison sentence in Canada for sexual assault.

Bacon and Nygard were neighbors in an exclusive gated community in the Bahamas and became embroiled in a bitter dispute over Nygard’s efforts to expand his property, which Bacon opposed.


In his lawsuit filed in 2015, Bacon accused Nygard of orchestrating an obsessive and malicious smear campaign to falsely link Bacon to arson, bribery, drug smuggling, the Ku Klux Klan and murder.

Nygard was found guilty by a Toronto jury on four counts of sexual assault in 2023. He was acquitted of a fifth count of sexual assault and one count of forcible confinement. Nygard has denied the allegations against him.