10 Things You Need To Know Before European Markets Open

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%.