REUTERS /Henry Romero
Good morning! Here are the major stories you need to know about this morning, ahead of markets opening in London and Paris.
Japanese Inflation Fell Below 1%. Excluding the effect of the sales tax hike, and volatile fresh food prices, Japanese inflation is now at its lowest level in more than a year, prompting concerns about the country's huge monetary stimulus.
Oil Crumbled After OPEC Refused To Agree An Output Cut. Brent crude settled below $73 per barrel after the announcement, the lowest in nearly four and a half years.
A Lawsuit Claims That Goldman Sachs, HSBC, And Others Rigged Metals Prices. Banks Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Standard Bank and a unit of chemical producer BASF conspired to manipulate platinum and palladium prices, according to a US lawsuit filed this week.
China Wasted $6.8 Trillion (£4.3 Trillion) Of Investment. The explosive construction market and a host of other projects wasted trillions of dollars of investment in China detailed by a new report, according to the Financial Times.
Russia Thinks Oil Could Drop Below $60 Per Barrel. Russia's most powerful oil official Igor Sechin said in an interview with an Austrian newspaper that oil prices could fall below $60 by mid-way through next year. Sechin is chief executive of Rosneft, Russia's largest oil producer.
German Retail Sales Jumped In October. Retailers recorded a 1.9% increase in sales from September, to October, a better than expected start to a seasonal splurge. Analysts were looking for a 1.5% rise.
European Inflation Figures Are Coming. At 10 a.m. GMT, European inflation figures are out. Analysts are expecting a 0.3% reading, but there's a chance the figure could drop to just 0.2%, a five-year low.
Mexico's President Is Effectively Disbanding Local Police Forces. After the murder of 43 students by a drug gang, allegedly with the co-operation of local police, Enrique Pena Nieto is proposing a totally unified Mexican police force.
Iraq Says Its Military Is Too Corrupt. Iraq's finance minister called for deep-rooted reforms to stamp out corruption in a military that collapsed in the face of an Islamic State advance, as he prepares to spend nearly a quarter of the 2015 budget on defence.
Asian Markets Are Up. Despite the inflation data, Japan's Nikkei jumped 1.23%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng is currently up 0.15%.