| Stocks pop as economic data cools. OPEC+ plans fail to sway traders. Tesla delivers first Cybertrucks. Here's what people are talking about. US consumer spending, inflation and the labor market all cooled in recent weeks, adding to evidence that the economy is slowing. Inflation-adjusted personal spending rose 0.2% last month after a downwardly revised 0.3% advance in September. Separate data showed recurring applications for unemployment benefits at the highest in about two years. The figures are consistent with expectations that the economy will moderate in the fourth quarter following the strongest growth in nearly two years. Cooler demand can help reassure the Fed that inflationary pressures will continue to abate, reinforcing expectations central bankers are done raising interest rates. OPEC+ intends to deepen oil production cuts as crude prices slump and forecasters see a surplus next year. Members have agreed to make 1 million barrels a day of additional supply cuts. The reduction comes alongside an anticipated extension into next year of Saudi Arabia's voluntary output curb of the same size. The agreement will head to a vote, and final details will be announced individually by each country. Traders were unimpressed by the move; WTI erased initial gains to sink as much as 3.6% in midday trading. After two years of delays and production snags, Tesla handed the first Cybertrucks over to customers at the firm's Austin HQ. CEO Elon Musk delivered a handful of vehicles to their new owners, including Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The vehicles start at $60,990, excluding savings, which Tesla estimates could take the purchase price down to $49,890. Earlier this week, Musk apologized for his choice of words on X and flew to Israel to tour areas that were devastated by the Oct. 7 Hamas onslaught, accompanied by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. After the visit, Musk appeared on stage (with Dealbook's Andrew Ross Sorkin) wearing a symbolic dog tag calling for the return of hostages held by Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US and EU. The S&P 500 rose 8.9% in November, the biggest monthly gain since July 2022. The index is 5% away from its record. But signs of buyer exhaustion emerged on Thursday, with Nasdaq 100 underperforming as megacaps came under pressure. US 10-year Treasury yields jumped 10 basis points to 4.35% on the view the market has moved too far in projecting rate cuts. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose, led by gains in Salesforce and Boeing. The yen fell for the first session in five ahead of the release of key Japanese labor data. Look for South Korea's trade balance, China's Caixin manufacturing PMI and Indonesia's CPI and S&P manufacturing PMI. Here's what caught our eye over the past 24 hours. - The NY Fed's John Williams says rates are at or near peak level and monetary policy is "quite restrictive."
- The San Francisco Fed's Mary Daly says she's not thinking about cuts and it's too soon to say whether hikes are finished.
- Cathie Wood clocks in her best month ever, even as her fanbase wanes.
- The EU is so worried about boosting Trump's campaign it's weighing conceding a key steel trade issue to President Biden.
- Overcrowded trades by multimanager hedge funds like Ken Griffin's Citadel are seen as a threat.
- Texas AG Ken Paxton sues Pfizer for allegedly misrepresenting the effectiveness of the company's Covid-19 vaccine.
- A Lego family fortune heir sells shares for about $930 million.
And finally, here's what Garf is interested in today: Crude oil's slide underscores the challenges that face major producers in the coming years, and the likelihood that all the major fossil fuels face secular deflation. OPEC's decision to add a plus sign by accepting new members points to one set of key problems: There's a wider range of oil producers, and it is harder to get them all to agree. There's also the revival of the US as a major oil producer and the slump in imports. But the real elephant in the room may be the accelerating move away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. When it comes to power generation, what looks like an unstoppable shift away from decades of reliance on coal, oil and gas is accelerating. The world could already see emissions peak this year, Climate Analytics said recently, as solar installations outpace even the most optimistic forecasts. The more conservative scenario in BloombergNEF's 2022 outlook has fossil-fueled generation falling below 50% of global output in 2026, with the combined output from solar, wind and geothermal surpassing fossil fuels by 2031. That scenario estimates how the energy sector might evolve in the absence of further major climate policy intervention. There's a decent chance, therefore, that the timeline laid out there needs to be brought forward, which means the demand profile for fossil fuels has a very obvious softening bias. That fosters doubts that any future forecasts for crude will hit $100 a barrel, absent extraordinary supply shocks. It also signals the potential that any such spike in oil prices could seem a lot less disruptive within a few years. Garfield Reynolds is Chief Rates Correspondent for Bloomberg News in Asia, based in Sydney. | 
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