How much further has the dollar rally left to run?

Here are the big questions we are asking at FT Markets ahead of the first full week of December.

What now for the dollar?

It was going to take a terrible US jobs report for November to derail investors’ expectations that the Federal Reserve will lift interest rates this month. And the report was far from catastrophic, with the economy adding 178,000 jobs last month.

“This was the last hurdle on the path to a December hike, and it has been cleared convincingly,” said Luke Bartholomew, investment manager at Aberdeen Asset Management. “It is now incredibly hard to imagine what would stop the Fed from lifting rates.”

With the jobs hurdle out of the way, one key question will be how much higher can the dollar go on expectations of further Fed rate rises next year? The US currency is already trading at a 13-year high against a basket of currencies.

For now, at least, the path seems clear until we get the Fed’s own assessment of the outlook for the economy and interest rates at Janet Yellen’s press conference on December 14.

Will Brent crude oil take out the high it reached after Opec’s supply cut deal?

Although crude oil notched heady gains after the Opec production cartel agreed its first output cut since 2008, there are doubts over whether the gains are sustainable.

One key question will be whether Brent crude manages to burst through the $54.14 intraday high it touched on Thursday. The answer is likely to depend on how quickly the market gets signs that Opec members are serious about following through on the agreement to cut production by 1.2m barrels a day to about 32.5m b/d for six months from the start of January.

Italy’s referendum, and what next for eurozone monetary policy?

Shares in Italy’s banks are likely to be in the forefront of any reaction to Italy’s vote on Sunday on constitutional reform, which has become a proxy for the leadership of centre-left prime minister Matteo Renzi. His pledge to resign in the event of a No vote has raised concerns over the efforts to recapitalise Italy’s banks. The result is expected in the early hours of Monday morning.

The next big item on the watchlist after the Italian referendum is the European Central Bank’s last meeting of the year on Thursday, when it will also publish forecasts for growth and inflation.

Most analysts expect ECB president Mario Draghi to announce an extension of the central bank’s €80bn-a-month bond-buying programme, something that has arguably been made more necessary by the global rise in bond yields in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in the US election.

According to analysis from HSBC, an extension to the ECB’s monetary easing programme is likely. “In our view, the underlying inflation situation warrants further easing,” says James Pomeroy, economist.

“We expect the ECB to announce another six-month extension of quantitative easing at €80bn per month. It might also address the question of tapering, using its new 2019 forecast — where we think inflation will be very close to its ’below but close to’ 2 per cent target — as a hook to say how it intends to unwind QE1”.

How closely will the pound track the Brexit Article 50 hearings in the Supreme Court?

The hearing on the government’s appeal against an earlier ruling in a lower court that Parliament must vote on the UK’s Brexit deal will be the most transparent part of the process so far — the hearings will be transmitted live.

The pound rallied hard on Thursday after the minister in charge of Brexit, David Davies, signalled that the UK might be prepared to pay for sustained access to the EU single market.

Investors would probably be well advised to avoid making big calls on the ins and outs of the hearing, but the extent to which it sets the tone for the pound will be an important theme of the week, and could reveal how much control the government will have over the wider Brexit process.