 Okay, very good morning to you final briefing of the week Friday 21st of August. So hope you are doing well First thing don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you're watching this on YouTube because Milan deep from our tech team It's going to be releasing a new video about algorithmic versus discretionary trading the pros and cons of both So that's going to drop on Saturday And then we've got Sam's regular weekly trade setup video as well coming out on Sunday My macro menu will be available as well my fundamental look ahead for the week the short three-minute read Will be on my Twitter account. So if you just follow me, you'll see a pin tweet on Sunday afternoon But yeah, let's get straight into it And what are we talking about then for the session ahead and I was going to start with the heat map a heat map of the Close of yesterday and as you can see once again You probably read now the Nasdaq 100 another record high and actually I'll come back to the heat map in a second If you actually look then at these charts Nasdaq reversing and some the entire sell-off that was seen following the FMC minutes The S&P is recovered and we are now scratch flat from that FMC minutes sell-off And in the currency markets cables fully reversed as the dollar has now continued to pair some of those inspired gains in that post-minute period so If you're listening to the briefing yesterday This was kind of our outlook of how we thought things would play out in that the reaction to the minutes was a little bit overcooked as by product of market positioning more than anything And that we would return to trend and it's kind of what we're seeing at the moment So equities back on the ascent again This comes despite that slight wobble in the jobless claims we had yesterday moving back north of a million So it was higher than expected But again, that was the kind of one of the main things that holds that view that look the Fed are not going to be in any shape or form looking to Change policy in a more hawkish way any time soon We're talking multiple years of low interest rates in my opinion And also setting us up then for the Jackson Hole symposium ended the month the Fed meeting Middle of September will be key And the expectation is is that they're going to continue to roll out probably on completion of their review some new of these policy tools So all in all markets, I've kind of reverted back to The overall trend that's been materializing of late which is generally supportive of fixed income futures equities with dollar weakness Gold has formed a relative range. I would say over the course of the last 48 hours defined by 1930 to 1960 We are though getting a little bit drawn to the upside of that range So interested to see how it fits in the near term. You've got the pivot level Which is about 49 which provided a little bit of support overnight the asia pacific session And then around that 1960 upside to keep an eye on in the more of a tighter $10 range But yeah, let's let's have a look at things so The mega cap tech names as you can see here the biggest blocks on the screen Larger block defining then the bigger the market cap This is looking at the s and p 500 by a sector breakdown So microsoft apple google facebook all all putting in a 2 plus type performance amazon 1.1 If a big outperformer again yesterday tesla Ever since they announced their stock split and obviously there's this Expectation of its inclusion in the s and p 500 their shares have just continued to rally They were up about 7% yesterday and their market cap is now 373 billion us dollars and in fact Tesla is now bigger than walmart Quite unbelievable the stats keep rolling in I think it's now a comparative terms by market cap within the top 10 largest companies now And obviously yesterday apple putting in another solid performance Although it's hit it before we did actually close the session Above now what would be a $2 trillion valuation for apple The other thing that a few people have been looking at Yesterday as well is the vaccine situation Just to update you with that Vaccine news has also helped to a certain degree to another element to help support things Pfizer and by the end tech said their coronavirus inoculation is on track for regulatory approvals early as october assuming clinical Success some analysts in this article on bloomberg suggesting then that potentially they could expect a vaccine to be approved by november And obviously that timing very sensitive because we've got the u.s. election happening in the beginning of that month and It would be particularly beneficial. I would say for the likes of donald trump if he can get that through Um, I guess what I was looking for in this article, which I couldn't find So I don't have definitive details, but having It gone through its various clinical assessments And having it got approval is not Implementation and distribution And that latter part is very complicated given the global scale of this pandemic. So it's not like a Silver bullet. That's it come november. That's the eradication of covet 19 far from it But obviously this would be at the short end of the timeline of expectations being a very quick turnaround in what would normally I was Listening to a couple of podcasts last weekend and A lot of these medical professors have been very surprised actually But I guess it's a reflection in the amount of money that governments have put forward into fast tracking these things But what would normally take several years in fact is actually taken several months even to get to where they've got to At the moment. So definitely a global response has been of the order Given the situation one thing though a caveat perhaps The telegraph have like a rolling coronavirus live updating feed and I did pick up something this morning Where I've highlighted it here in blue People who caught coronavirus in march may already have lost all of their protective antibodies This is according to a uk senior government advisor Who predicted seasonal vaccines for the virus? so basically this chap's part of the University of oxford he said in the latest research indicates antibodies which may protect against reinfection Deplete by about 10 to 30 percent each month so Yeah, I thought it was that was quite interesting. I mean obviously um, although I mean, I'm not in any shape or form probably qualified to to comment with real accuracy about Uh a pathogen or a virus but All I do know is that as much as you can base medical science on testing and knowledge accumulated from past Previous types of viruses in the end The evolution of it as we go further forward through time Is an unknown thing and so It's definitely something that I'd keep on my radar. Not that I think this is going to move anything but uh How this antibody and also the performance of these these drug trials vaccines and therapies perform And in the timeline distribution, I think and the kind of key things i'm kind of watching albeit at the moment I'd say covet generally is lower down the order of Driving forces that are moving markets intraday On a covet 19 front. Um, there has been a few things again a little bit of a Disparity of the current focus between mainland europe and the uk and then elsewhere when I say elsewhere I'm focusing predominantly uh in in australia where at the moment in australia things actually have started to improve Australia's headed for its lowest daily increase in coronavirus infections in five weeks And obviously that is welcome news for that region. Uh, given how quickly the reproductive rate Um was moving higher after that outbreak in melbourne So that's good news. Uh, and then in the us as we discussed yesterday We've seen generally declining rates across the board declining hospitalizations and so on in europe though things are getting a little bit more apprehensive I would say To give you a couple of stats. France recorded just shy of 5 000 new cases in the last 24 hours That's a level not seen since mid april. If you think about where we were in mid april In both the uk mainland europe, that was the peak of the kind of lockdown at that point in time italy's had its most cases since the middle of may And the situation has also been worsening in the uk cases in england search by more than a quarter in the week through uh to august 12th, so Yeah, definitely warrants monitoring and what happened yesterday basically was uh these two Uh the double act of europe mercola macron they they met In person as european authorities are weighing imposing restrictions To try and get hold of this new fresh wave of infections that are being seen What they don't want to do is cut off travel between these different nations That just impedes then the ability for the the eurozone economy to recover So they were discussing about how means and ways to try and counteract that and obviously what we've seen adopted in other countries Is more Localized lockdowns to get hold and control of of things rather than the national level which has the most severe negative Economic implications. So yeah, COVID-19. There's a couple things here. I don't think any of this news Intraday would form. I would say A decision-making or a key component for for being negative or positive I just think it's something to to be aware of in terms of the current state of play Something which is probably a little bit more Relevant for the open right now is talking about us and china because Guess what? Um china have confirmed that they plan to talk to us officials soon to review progress on their preliminary deal No date's been set as yet, but they're going to speak apparently in the near term. So again, this is exactly Kind of what I was I thought would be the case. I mean underlying this The trade secretary has been talking up and the treasury secretary the same in the u.s About how actually china have been picking things up and they're now purchasing higher volumes and they have done the deering to the deal so despite all the The bluff and bluster from trump as I said before He has to do that. That's just his political narrative He's got a spin in order to frame the situation on china, but all in all Things are going okay. So they're going to meet they're going to talk china are buying The fact that they've we've moved back to this kind of phase of perhaps renewed open dialogue While then one thing that's happened is the chinese yuan overnight Advanced beyond quite a key level If we just go to this chart here This is a look at the onshore yuan spot as you can see here This would be indicative them of the chinese currency strengthening which would be indicative then of I guess a couple of things one A lesser degree of threats from the trade war impeding the chinese economy and trade And then secondly more stabilization and improvements generally in mainland china, which we've been obviously monitoring and tracking post post the initial impact of the march Kind of april data that we had so here then if you look The yuan's trading is strongest point having hit that kind of symbolic 6.9 since where we were right back in Jan so this is when obviously some of the outbreak was starting to happen in mainland china But we're in a better situation than where we were at the peak of the global intensity on that big march volatile selloff that we had So for the moment, you know this trade war As much hot air there is flying around on the subject between these two nations again on a kind of political level Actually markets feel feel and reflect in price Relative comfort and I think that goes somewhere as well that explaining why equities have continued to hold up To a certain degree because this isn't a big tail risk. Of course for for risk The other thing of course when it comes to china and what generally helps this situation is the amount of liquidity That the central bank is providing to the system Chinese equities whether mainland or hong kong and heng seng will up overnight Underpinned again amid the continued efforts from the central bank to add liquidity They injected 150 billion yuan through seven day reverse repos and about 15 billion in 14 day reverse repos overnight This is the first occasion the central bank has utilized the latter Instrument in around two months. So they just continue To make the system a flush of liquidity which is being received positively in their local market And if their local market performs well china being such a key component on the global stage And generally for risk appetite on that level then that helps overall sentiment Um, the one thing someone was asking me about yesterday actually talking of china and these these kind of positive things We're hearing about china Uh was copper and so copper is not something I would normally look at minute by minute, but I was looking at copper last night and we're at quite an interesting level actually here right now Uh, which encapsulates a couple of key areas if I just put a Rectangle you've got these areas here. I mean, this is a multi-year chart We're looking at the last two years of price activity, but going back to 2018 An area which is basically three dollars, which has provided a good degree of support during May of 2018 when we broke through around that area It did create Directionally a decent push to the downside that area again providing an area of resistance through the early part of 2019 And we're right back up there here again at the moment and that level coinciding with around a trend line Going back to 2019 in the summer Where we were just prior to really the epidemic before it took pandemic status and in the retest we've had in mid july So you'll be interested to see keeping an eye on copper obviously copper Very highly correlated to the performance and appetite and people's forward looking at expectations of economic growth Out of china just given their mammoth kind of infrastructure and demand for these base metals like iron ore and copper for example In order to prop up their market in these times of I guess pressing economic situations So yeah a breakout here around these levels. It's not looking too likely today We've had a bit of a pullback But that three is something I'd be keeping an eye on going forward in the kind of period ahead not just today But in the weeks ahead any breakout there you can see there's not a great deal of Real clear near resistance Until we get right up higher Considerably higher really and if you look at the way copper has moved obviously A really strong in tandem with the equity recovery Um As as it's reacted overall to people's perception that due to the balance stimulus where the central bank or government spending that we're going to resume a fairly powerful bounce in growth globally going into 2021 Okay, a few other stories just to quickly wrap things up brexit Yeah, uh the least surprising news of the morning that I can bring to you here we've had seventh round of talks take place this week between the EU and the UK and Absolutely no progress the main sticking points the the fishing rights or access to fishing waters And then this kind of flat level competition um idea still the two main speed bumps and yeah, I just think that From a negotiation tactical point of view, there's no way you're going to be cutting deals this far out when it's october Basically is when the final All the tentative final negotiating round is to be held And with that in mind then that's in time for the agreement to be implemented In place in time for the end of the post brexit transition period, which is the end of the year, of course so What does this mean for sterling? Well, it means absolutely zero as far as today is concerned So, you know, I point it out because it's something you're going to read in the newspapers this morning Because they can't get enough a little bit of the brexit action, but from a market's perspective, this isn't going to bump Sterling at all because it's in completely in line with expectations The interesting thing here looking at cable. Obviously the the currency pairs got hit Your major dollar pairs your own sterling yesterday on the back of the dollar strength But look, this is the recovery that we were looking for the idea then that The the dollar would resume its trend and we're right back up there again in terms of cable Looking on the on the week having broken out and above Then that key area of technical resistance around at 132 level here looking at the futures We continue to remain fairly elevated overall certainly on the week We have had some uk data out this morning. Let me just show you quickly something UK retail sales month-to-month for july came in at 3.6 percent. I was actually above the expected 2% quite interesting here. I was just looking at The breakdown of the change in retail sale volume And if you can see here kind of still a reflection the sign of the times Even though lockdown has eased one thing is clothing and footwear in general high street footfall still remains very Low but online purchasing still Very high comparatively to give you a stat online retail sales did actually fall 7% in the month of july in the uk when compared with june But the strong gross experience over the pandemic has meant that sales are still 50 4% higher than February's pre-pandemic levels. So online retail sales have come down a little bit as People I guess go back to the high street slowly cautiously But we're still massively up in terms of the behavioral pattern is still there people are purchasing Online and not in person. So it does reflect to me still a little bit of apprehension and just the reality of The kind of protracted nature of getting this economy back on track again And that's with covid cases going up right now. If anything, so yeah, the retail sales number Hasn't had a really that too big an impact to be honest Just wanted to point it out and break down some of the data Looking at the session going forward then Definitely a couple of key data points coming out this morning for sure. So be vigilant. You've got the manufacturing and service flash PMIs for august coming out France 815 germ the 830 eurozone 9 and then the uk at 9 30 us afternoon CAD retail sales no 130 is coming out from the states us data comes in the form of the respective manufacturing service flash PMIs for market at 245s to 845 chicago And then you've got european consumer confidence flash reading at 3 p.m. This afternoon and Also, you do have options expires across the major Equity indices as well just to be aware of That is it. So Hopefully that was useful any questions at all Feel free to just drop me a message on the video and have a good day a good session And a fantastic weekend. Thanks very much guys