🚀 US GDP growth lower than expected in Q4 2025

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Market Overview
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Year To Date Performances:

1. The American economy stalled significantly in the final quarter of 2025, with GDP growth plunging to a mere 1.4%, well below the anticipated 2.5%, as the fallout from a record 43-day government shutdown and cooling consumer demand took a heavy toll. While President Trump took to social media to blame the "Democrat Shutdown" for a potential two-point hit to growth and renewed his pressure on the Federal Reserve for lower interest rates, official data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis attributed the deceleration to a sharp 16.6% drop in federal spending and a contraction in exports. Compounding the "stagflationary" feel of the report, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, the core PCE, remained stubbornly firm at 3%, effectively trapping central bank officials between a slowing labour market and prices that refuse to hit their 2% target. Despite the headline weakness, a 2.4% rise in private domestic sales suggests that underlying business and consumer appetite remains resilient, even as the broader economy grapples with the lingering visibility gap caused by the longest funding impasse in U.S. history.

2. As the United States orchestrates its largest military buildup in the Middle East since the 2003 Iraq invasion, global oil markets are bracing for a potential "price shock" following President Trump’s ten-day ultimatum for Iran to reach a nuclear agreement. Brent crude has already surged to a six-month high above $72 a barrel, reflecting a growing geopolitical risk premium fueled by fears that a conflict could shutter the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow chokepoint responsible for nearly one-third of the world’s seaborne oil trade. While the White House remains confident in a well-supplied global market, energy analysts warn that even a calibrated Iranian retaliation involving mines or short-range missiles could render the waterway uninsurable, potentially catapulting prices past $100 and threatening a "stagflationary" blow to the global economy. With Iran already conducting live-fire naval drills alongside Russia and China in the Persian Gulf, the next week of diplomacy in Geneva represents a critical tipping point between a surgical military intervention and a broader energy crisis that could disrupt the 14 million barrels of oil flowing daily to major Asian economies.

3. A series of high-stakes legal battles has pushed the tech industry’s "privacy versus protection" debate to a breaking point, as newly unsealed documents and landmark lawsuits accuse Meta and Apple of prioritizing encryption over child safety. In a Santa Fe courtroom, New Mexico prosecutors revealed internal Meta messages warning that the move to end-to-end encryption on Messenger would "cover the rocks" of some 7.5 million annual child abuse reports, effectively blinding the company to exploitation that its own staff feared would go undetected. Simultaneously, West Virginia has launched a first-of-its-kind government lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the iPhone maker’s "rotten" record—submitting a mere 267 abuse reports in 2023 compared to Meta’s 30 million—stems from a conscious choice to allow iCloud to become a "vehicle" for predators under the guise of absolute privacy. As Mark Zuckerberg takes the stand in Los Angeles to defend Instagram against claims of addictive design and mental health harms, the unsealing of these internal warnings suggests that the industry’s most cherished security feature may now be its greatest legal liability, potentially forcing a radical redesign of how the world’s most popular communication platforms operate.

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