Eli Lilly's Mounjaro added to China's state insurance list for diabetes treatment

 SHANGHAI, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Eli Lilly's popular drug Mounjaro will be added to China's state-run health insurance scheme ​from January 1 for patients with type 2 diabetes, ‌the National Healthcare Security Administration said in a website notice on Sunday.

Inclusion in ‌the national reimbursement list makes drugs more widely available to the public in a country with a population of 1.4 billion, but an increase in sales volume is often mitigated by lower prices.

Mounjaro, ⁠a once-weekly injectable therapy, ‌was introduced in China in January this year following the launch of Ozempic, a similar diabetes ‍therapy from rival Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk, in 2021.

Ozempic was first added to China's reimbursement list in 2022.

Sales of Ozempic in the greater China ​region rose to 5.76 billion Danish crowns ($898.5 million) in ‌2024, according to Novo's annual report.

Lilly did not immediately respond to a request for the price of Mounjaro as a diabetes treatment under China's reimbursement list - a figure negotiated with the government.

Mounjaro is also sold for obesity and obstructive sleep apnea in ⁠China.

Patrik Jonsson, Eli Lilly's international president, ​said in an October earnings call that ​Lilly had seen an "initial stocking" in the markets it had launched Mounjaro outside the U.S., with the ‍big ones in ⁠the second quarter being China, Brazil, Mexico and India.

"Since then, we have seen a lift in the performance also ⁠in those markets in Q3 and a continued very strong performance globally," he ‌said during that call.

($1 = 6.4105 Danish crowns)

Bond Traders Defy Fed and Spark Heated Debate on Wall Street

(Bloomberg) -- The bond market’s reaction to the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate cuts has been highly unusual. By some measures, a disconnect like this, with Treasury yields climbing as the central bank lowers rates, hasn’t been seen since the 1990s.

What the divergence indicates is a matter of heated debate. Opinions are all over the place, from the bullish (a sign of confidence that recession will be averted) to the more neutral (a return to pre-2008 market norms) to the favorite culprit of the so-called bond vigilantes (investors are losing confidence the US will ever rein in the constantly swelling national debt).

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But one thing is clear: the bond market isn’t buying President Donald Trump’s idea that faster rate cuts will send bond yields sliding down and, in turn, slash the rates on mortgages, credit cards and other types of loans.

With Trump soon able to replace Chair Jerome Powell with his own nominee, on top of everything else is the risk of the Fed squandering its credibility by caving to political pressure to ease policy more aggressively — which could backfire by fanning already elevated inflation and pushing yields higher.

“Trump 2.0 is all about getting long-term yields down,” Steven Barrow, head of G10 strategy at Standard Bank in London. “Putting a political figure at the Fed will not get bond yields down.”

The Fed started pulling its benchmark rate down from a more than two-decade high in September 2024 and has since cut it by 1.5 percentage points to a range of 3.75% to 4%. Traders see another quarter point cut after the next meeting on Wednesday as virtually assured and are pricing in two more such moves next year, which would bring its rate to around 3%.

Yet, key Treasury yields — which serve as the main baseline for the borrowing costs paid by American consumers and corporations — haven’t come down at all. Ten-year yields have risen nearly half a percentage point to 4.1% since the Fed started easing policy and 30-year yields are up over 0.8 percentage point.

Normally, when the Fed moves short-term policy rates up and down, long-term bond yields tend to follow. Even in the only two easing cycles outside of recessions over the past four decades – in 1995 and 1998, when the Fed cut only 75 basis points each time — the 10-year yield dropped outright or rose less than they have during the current episode.

Treasury Secretary Bessent says he has divested his soybean farm

 WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a key figure in implementing President Donald Trump's economic agenda ​including tariffs, disclosed on Sunday that he has recently ‌divested his interests in a soybean farm to comply with the ethics agreement he ‌signed last January when he joined the administration.

The divestiture comes four months after the U.S. Office of Government Ethics informed the Senate Finance Committee in an August 11 letter that Bessent had failed to ⁠comply with certain terms ‌of the agreement aimed at avoiding any potential conflict of interest.

"I'm involved in the agricultural industry. I ‍run a soybean farm," Bessent initially told CBS' "Face the Nation" program while discussing the U.S. trade situation for U.S. farmers. He quickly added: "I actually ​just divested it this week as part of my ethics ‌agreement. So I'm out of that business."

The New York Times has reported that Bessent owned as much as $25 million of soybean and corn farmland in North Dakota, including thousands of acres that earned him as much as $1 million a year in rental income.

As part ⁠of his ethics agreement, Bessent pledged ​to divest his Key Square Group hedge ​fund and other assets to avoid conflicts of interest. Many of the divestitures were to be completed by ‍April 28, 2025.

In ⁠an August statement issued by the Treasury Department, Bessent said he had completed all but 4% of the asset divestitures ⁠required by his ethics agreement and intended to divest the remaining assets by ‌the end of the year.

Why these 2 stocks have shockingly blown away Nvidia

 This is The Takeaway from today's Morning Brief, which you can sign up to receive in your inbox every morning along with:

What we're watching

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Economic data releases and earnings

Two of the hottest stocks of 2025 aren't what you think.

They have nothing to do with Meta (META), Nvidia (NVDA), Google (GOOGL, GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), or Tesla (TSLA). They also have nothing to do with bitcoin (BTC-USD), AI, or humanoid robots.

But they have everything to do with the real state of the US economy.

The two names: Dollar Tree (DLTR) and Dollar General (DG), whose stock prices have gained 55% and 65% year to date, respectively. Nvidia's stock is up 35% on the year.

What each of these two retailers — which operate thousands of stores across the country and serve as vital consumption points for households — said on their earnings days blew me away this week.

Dollar General's third quarter same-store sales rose 2.5%. Dollar Tree's same-store sales gained 4.2%. For perspective, Target's same-store sales fell 3.8% in the most recent quarter.

Dollar Tree said it captured 3 million new shoppers on top of a customer base that already totaled 100 million.

"Approximately 60% of these incremental shoppers came from higher-income households, those earning over $100,000, 30% from middle-income households, those earning between $60,000 to $100,000, with the rest from lower-income households, those earning under $60,000," Dollar Tree CEO Michael Creedon said of the gain.

"At the same time higher-income households are trading into Dollar Tree, lower-income households are depending on us more than ever," he said. "For example, the average spend for lower-income households grew more than twice as fast in the third quarter as the average spend for higher-income households."

If this doesn't smack of an affordability crisis in the US, then maybe I need to retire from this gig and find another career. Maybe apply for a job in the finance department at Dollar Tree — assuming AI agents haven't taken that job yet.

The dark mood on the economy was echoed by Creedon's counterpart at Dollar General, Todd Vasos, who said Dollar General also saw an uptick in customer traffic.

"Within the basket, an increase in average unit retail price per item was offset by fewer items on average," Vasos said. "This traffic and basket composition is consistent with what we have historically observed when our core customer feels more pressured on their spending as they come in more often, but have smaller basket sizes."

Trump Warns Netflix-Warner Deal May Pose Antitrust ‘Problem’

(Bloomberg) -- US President Donald Trump raised potential antitrust concerns around Netflix Inc.’s planned $72 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., noting that the market share of the combined entity may pose problems.

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Trump’s comments, made as he arrived at the Kennedy Center for an event, may spur concerns regulators will oppose the coupling of the world’s dominant streaming service with a Hollywood icon. The company faces a lengthy Justice Department review of a deal that would reshape the entertainment industry.

“Well, that’s got to go through a process, and we’ll see what happens,” Trump said Sunday when asked about the deal, confirming he met Netflix co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos recently. “But it is a big market share. It could be a problem.”

Bets on prediction marketplace Polymarket showed a 23% chance of Netflix closing the acquisition by the end of 2026, down from around 60% just before Trump’s comments. Warner Bros. rose 1% in early trading on the Blue Ocean trading platform, while Netflix dropped 1.4%.

The $72 billion deal would combine the world’s No. 1 streaming player with HBO Max, which has raised red flags from competition regulators. The Justice Department’s antitrust division, which would review the transaction in the US, could argue that the deal is illegal because the combined market share would put Netflix well over a 30% threshold.

Netflix has “a very big market share, and when they have Warner Brothers, you know, that share goes up a lot,” the president said, adding that he will be personally involved in the decision-making process.

Netflix is expected to argue that other services such as Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok should be included in any analysis of the market, which would dramatically shrink the platform’s perceived market dominance.

Netflix’s Sarandos met with Trump at the White House recently to lobby for the acquisition, Bloomberg reported earlier. Trump confirmed that meeting. Netflix wasn’t any kind of all-powerful monopoly, the executive argued at that time, and had suffered its own subscriber losses a couple of years earlier, according to people familiar with the matter.

By choosing Netflix, Warner Bros. jilted Paramount Skydance Corp., a move that risks touching off a political battle in Washington. Paramount is backed by the world’s second-richest man, Larry Ellison, and has touted longstanding ties to Trump. The acquisition of Paramount, which closed in August, has won public praise from the president.

Robinhood to enter Indonesia with brokerage, crypto trader acquisition

 Dec 7 (Reuters) - Robinhood Markets will acquire Indonesian brokerage firm Buana Capital Sekuritas and licensed digital asset trader Pedagang Aset Kripto, ​marking the retail trading platform's entry into one of Southeast Asia's ‌major crypto hubs, the company said in a blog post on Sunday.

Indonesia is among the ‌world's leading adopters of cryptocurrency, backed by supportive regulation and a tech-savvy young population, making it a prime target for U.S. firms seeking growth in Asia.

The country has more than 19 million capital market investors and 17 million ⁠cryptocurrency traders, underscoring its appeal ‌for both stock and digital asset trading.

"Indonesia represents a fast-growing market for trading, making it an exciting place to ‍further Robinhood’s mission to democratize finance for all," said Patrick Chan, Head of Asia at Robinhood.

Acquiring a brokerage eases a company's entry into new markets by helping ​meet regulatory requirements and build presence, while buying a licensed digital asset ‌trader speeds access to crypto products.

Robinhood did not disclose financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of 2026. Pieter Tanuri, majority owner of both Indonesian firms, will stay on as a strategic adviser to Robinhood, the company said.

Robinhood's commission‑free, app‑based platform is ⁠widely credited with disrupting U.S. retail trading ​by drawing in a new generation of investors ​and changing how Americans engage with stock markets.

The deal signals a new phase for the retail trading platform, which has ‍gained broader market ⁠recognition this year after joining the benchmark S&P 500 index. The company also announced its entry into prediction markets in March.

Shares of the ⁠company, which went public in New York in 2021, have gained nearly 268% so ‌far in 2025 - as of December 4 close.

Japan revises economic data to show bigger contraction in July-September period

TOKYO (AP) — Japan’s economy contracted at an annual pace of 2.3% in the July-September period, the government reported Monday, as exports suffered from the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs and public investments slipped.

The decline in Japan’s gross domestic product, or the sum value of its goods and services, translates to a 0.6% on-quarter fall, and marked a lowered revision from the preliminary data released last month, which had shown a drop of 1.8% at an annual rate, or 0.4% on-quarter, according to the Cabinet Office.

The annualized rate shows what the economy would have done if the same rate were to continue for a year.

Exports dropped 1.2% in the quarter compared to the previous quarter, unchanged from the preliminary figure, while private residential investment fell 8.2%, slightly less than the 9.4% fall seen in the earlier data.

Trump implemented higher tariffs on imports from many countries earlier this year.

In September, the U.S. lowered the tariffs surcharge on nearly all Japanese imports to 15% from an earlier plan for a 25% tariff. The tariffs on autos are a serious blow to Japan’s economy. Japan has promised to invest $550 billion in the United States, in an accommodating move announced during the tariff negotiations.

Analysts say the drop in private residential investment observed in the July-September quarter was mainly due to revisions of Japan’s building code that caused housing starts to plunge from earlier this year.

Imports slipped 0.4% during the quarter, while private consumption gained 0.2%, according to revised data.

The tariffs have strained bilateral ties between Japan and the U.S., its most important alliance partner.

Japan now has its first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, who remains popular, partly because of her assertive nationalist-leaning comments. She is also fostering hopes for an economic revival, although prospects remain unclear.