 Okay, very good morning to everyone. Monday 15th of July. Hope everyone had a good weekend. Certainly better than Roger Federer. So close but so far. But not going to dwell on that. Going to get ready for the trading week ahead. And as per usual, a bit of an overview for the main highlights of the next five trading days. Not just a review of the news and a look at the charts this morning. So before I get into that, let's just have a look at how things reside this morning across asset class. And you can see equities right out the gate this morning. Fairly aggressively, you can see the DAX just as I've literally turned the mic on. The DAX, if I put this on a minute chart, you know, such a fast moving instrument when certainly the cash market gets underway, you can see from 8am just zoomed higher here, taking out some technical levels of the previous range highs. Now just testing up and around some of the higher levels that we've seen towards last week. Comes with overall US stock futures similarly at their highs. And this is one of the things I want to explain in the briefing. It does come as Chinese GDP has hit a 27 year low. You would think logically, well, that's not good, surely. And one of the world's largest emerging markets starts producing gross numbers that have been the worst in three decades. But this again is kind of reflection of like with the US and the Federal Reserve. Worse, it gets the more the authorities, whether that being the government or the central bank throw at the issue. And the more powerful the stimulative measure comes, whether monetary or fiscal, to help prop things up. And certainly that might explain a little bit of what we've had. I mean, I'll show you some charts about how China performed overnight. And it rallied, not the opposite of what you might normally think. So a little bit of a pick up in the equity index futures, obviously from an equity point of view for the states. This is record territory and does of course come as we head into the earning season of which we are looking at a profit recession from US companies. But again, we'll dig into that in a bit more detail in a moment. FX markets pretty quiet, actually, not too much going on at all. And that's reflected in the major pairs, both Euro dollar cable broadly flat, as is the Dixie Gold as well, not too interesting at this point, trading around its pivot, maybe a support level. Technically, I can see how that would work out from prior price action from the end of last week. But with the equity move, fixed income futures, T notes down about seven tick, spoons down on the opposite side of things, a little bit of a divergence between the two this morning. But let's get straight into the news. I'll leave the charts for Sam to discuss. But this is the week as an overview. And as you can see, I had highlighted and bold on the line was Chinese data, GDP, industrial production, retail sales, and fixed asset investment, some of the major data to get the week under the way underway. And so let's just have a quick look at things. And as you can see here, that was the headline, which a lot of people are talking about this morning, China's second quarter GDP growth slows to a 27 year low. But as per that former line, more stimulus is expected. And I was looking at a couple of numbers this morning when I was on the train in the way in to work. And in terms of the tax cuts that the Chinese government have done since we've had this escalation in trade war over the last kind of 18 months, it works out at roughly about 300 billion dollars. And the government has performed about 300 billion in other fiscal unplanned measures to help propel the economy or mitigate the downturn. And the people's Bank of China have cut the reserve requirement ratio six times since the beginning of 2018. And just given the nature of this economic kind of growth slowdown in China, we can imagine that more of that type of action is to come. Not only though that there were a couple of other highlights, the retail sales, the industrial production out of China were in fact actually better than expected. And so it might go some ways to explain why we're having a bit of a more positive read through because of the net consequence of what this type of growth data does mean for the policy reactions. I mean, this is just having a look at the annual percentage change quarterly of Chinese GDP growth. As you can see in terms of the real rate, you know, just moving down to around these levels, which would be below the trough of the financial crisis in itself going back to then that 27 year statistic. How did China perform overnight though? Well, originally dipped, although this is slightly dated now because it's a fixed graphic, but we dipped and look, we've recovered so sharply, so quickly. If you remember, there was a briefing I was doing. I think it was Thursday or Friday and we were looking at non-farm payrolls and we were looking at the S&P 500 dip rally. We had a similar situation towards the second half of last week in US equities, dip and then rally. And it's a similar type of thing we're getting here. So very much, I feel a reflection that the market, at least for the moment, is more focused on the following effects of policy rather than it is the real effect of the actual, what the data signifying in itself at that point. Back to the calendar though, Chinese data out the way. It is earning season. So as you can see here, you've got US earnings firms reporting today, Citi. If we go to Tuesday, you can see at the bottom here, you've got JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs. You've also got Johnson & Johnson. Then you get some other interesting companies like IBM, Netflix reporting on Wednesday. The latter obviously forms part of the so-called Fang stocks, those that are quite highly sensitive to market confidence. So that would be particularly interesting. Thursday you get tech giant Microsoft. You also get the German heavyweight SAP reporting pre-market open on Thursday morning. And so yeah, earning season, not the busiest, it really does start to pick up pace really next week. But we get the first of the banks, and regardless of Citi being the biggest, the smallest or anything like that, remember, it's the first of its sector to report. And so therefore tends to have slightly more focus for the market. And so net reaction could be that however well Citi have done, irrespective of the fact that other banks will have slightly different product mixes, revenue mix and so on. It kind of translates. The market will see that as then how well that industry or that sector is performing. So Citi will be quite interesting later, the other banks to follow Tuesday. With that being said, with earning season, while we're on the topic, earning season is expected to project a 2.8% earnings drop. This is what Q2 earnings growth year on year percentage is set to look like by expectation. And for overall, the S&P 500 to be negative, defensive utilities, healthcare probably outperforming. And so typical kind of rotation if you like, would be out of cyclicals and also not just technology getting hit, but materials given this global growth, slowdown, story, and the effects of the ongoing trade war. Looking at technology in particular, I did mention Microsoft are reporting this week. So quarterly earnings per share growth for technology stocks in the S&P 500. Well, actually we're looking at a earnings recession here. So back to back quarters of negative growth in terms of their earnings per share. So certainly it's quite an interesting era obviously that we're in at the moment, because just looking at the charts this morning, US equities cross the board at record high territories, despite the fact that we're in a back to back quarters of earnings recession. So it's going to be quite interesting certainly going further forward as we get, I think, into the next six months, 12 months, 18 months. If we start to get consecutive quarters, it's like, well, how much more can the likes of the Fed continue to prop up the market? And this leads us in then to the next interesting discussion point, which is the Fed and how many times they're going to be cutting. Because as we know, and we discussed here in the briefing many times, they've only got a limited amount of room for maneuver with rates coming and residing at two and a quarter to two and a half percent. Very different from prior occasions that we've had in the previous economic downturns over the last 10 and 20 years. Now, if we go back to the calendar, there are quite a lot of Fed speakers this week. Today you've got Feds Williams. Tomorrow you get Feds Evans and Bostick. Wednesday you've got Feds Beige Book, which is basically the 12 regional districts of the U.S., or comprised of the way the U.S. is managed, all come together and they report a localized update on the specific regions. So good insight into the health of the U.S. economy on that level. You then get Bostick and Williams speak again on Thursday. You've got Rosengren and Bullard speaking on Friday. So just like the end of last week post-Powell when we had a number of Fed speakers, there's more coming. And I feel that is to some extent trying to manage expectations then of the likelihood or not of a 50 basis point rate cut because you remember they've got only till basically this week and Monday and Tuesday next week before they go into the blackout period. So I think they're going to want to be as clear as possible and hopefully we'll get clarification of whether or not basically this number, 23.5% for 50 basis points, either it's got to go up or down. And we're going to be looking to these speeches as to ascertain whether or not markets need to reposition themselves for a credible 50 basis point threat or not. And I think, and I've said this before, I think it's going to be not the case. I think the Fed will not cut 50. I think they will cut 25, not just because of the limited ammunition that they have with rates being so low at the moment. But this is the crib sheet for the feds, hawks and doves, kind of the way in which they lean from a policy perspective. So in this Bloomberg graphic, you've got a couple things, board of governors, the voting regional presidents, the alternative voters who switch in every 12 months basis on a calendar year, and then the current non voters. So again, from the top explanation here, it's the voting members which are going to, of course, carry the most sway given that they have the opportunity to actually put their hand up and vote for the direction of policy in the actual meetings taking place at the moment. The other thing, of course, though, is the this plus or minus figure. Now the more heavily minus down to minus two to dovish the member, the more positive the figure, the more hawkish. Now one of the interesting ones and someone who's speaking on Friday and someone who spoke last week is James Bullard. He is a voting member of the FMC and he's a minus two. Now the interesting thing and one thing that I think supports the reasoning why the Fed will not, at least at this point, go 50 basis points is that James Bullard has said only a few days ago that he thinks 25 basis points cut would be adequate, not 50. And if the most dovish member of the Fed is not committing to 50, but 25, I think then that's very telling. If he's only there, I'd say others are nowhere near given how outlyingly dovish he is to getting down to that aggressiveness of a rate cut. So yeah, this is a good crib sheet. I did tweet it at the weekend, so if you need it as a refresher, remember every time one of these guys speaks you should know well in advance on your calendar, what are they speaking on, are they a voter, non-voter and what is their policy stance. It's the absolute 101 of trying to interpret these speeches as they come out. Okay, other things to have a look at from a from an oil perspective. I did briefly want to touch upon this. WTI crude this morning is trading absolutely flat 60-21 to the cent absolutely unchanged. But this is what Bloomberg saying oil trades in 60 on storm disruption as glut concerns linger. A couple of interesting points here I wanted to point out on the oil side. So at the weekend we know we had the storm. Barry make landfall hitting around the Louisiana area about 73% of crude output was halted on Sunday. Some producers though on the offshore facilities are preparing to return workers back to platforms now that that storm has made landfall and moving inwards so you know I guess geographically if you want to see so a lot of the offshore facilities are placed here so this would have been if you remember last Wednesday and Thursday when the storm was coming inbound and picking up pace but now Barry's moved more in land it means that these facilities whether patterns are returning back to some degree of normality and business can return as per usual. So that that storm has now passed and I don't see that really being a factor now to move market prices going forward not unless something new was to develop in the Atlantic of which there are no signs of at the moment. So that would have been a positive catalyst to help lift prices but that's now passed and if you look overnight one of the things that we've seen was Chinese GDP obviously now looking at the demand part of the dynamics of driving oil and growth potential in China slowing down but as we've discussed the various stimulative measures that now are likely to be kind of increased on behalf of the Chinese government and central bank which might help to turn that around but still it's kind of a that's a laggard effect you would say and at the moment Chinese growth is slowing. Also I know if you remember 9 a.m. on Friday last week we had the International Energy Agency the IEA and they said that production cuts by OPEC and its allies failed to prevent the return of a surplus in the first half of 2019 as supply exceeded demand at a rate of 900,000 barrels a day. So again another very interesting factor here is that the market is you know somewhat oversupplied but it's almost being counteracted by this idea that you've got this recent weather system but more importantly you've got these ongoing tensions in the Persian Gulf as well which are keeping prices supported. So there's a lot of indecision I feel at the moment in the crude market you've got this this balancing act between this global growth story which is one of fragility at the moment and certainly coming into what's likely to be quite a downbeat earning season are all kind of negative contributing factors however you've got this obviously constant supply shock risk coming out of particularly as I said the Gulf region. So what this has led to is quite an interesting statistic and I think this is quite interesting if you're trading oil medium term is that hedge funds haven't been this indifferent to crude in six years. What I mean by this is that the the CFTC put out the speculative future positioning in the market they put that out every week and a lot of hedge fund managers will look at this as to give them a better sense and idea of the markets leaning whether there's more long or short positions in the market but the problem is if you combine the bets on WTI crude rising or falling those bets have reached their lowest now since March of 2013 and I think that's quite telling so I think from a fundamental perspective you've got this kind of equilibrium if you like of positives and negatives which does I think mean that you could start to see an area of consolidation in crude oil until something starts to to move ahead either the growth concerns start to accelerate and that starts to then dampen the demand even further or we get more tension in between Iran and the U.S. and Saudi and so on. Okay otherwise final parts on the calendar I'd suggest to be aware of from the UK you've got UK CPI coming out Wednesday retail sales on Thursday and then from the U.S. it's not just about of course monitoring Fed speakers U.S. data is equally now important as well as to ascertain this this idea of of how aggressive the Fed might be going forward U.S. retail sales on Tuesday industrial manufacturing production also Tuesday and you get the University of Michigan prelim figure on Friday as well so quite a few things there to to get your teeth into. Okay so that that's really it from me I'll let Sam jump on and talk about the charts from a more technical perspective so with that I'll wish you a great week ahead and I'll catch up with you in the chat room on trading life thanks very much. Thanks and I hope everyone had a good weekend. So the cricket yesterday I'm sure there'll be a couple sore heads this morning fantastic for English cricket final was absolutely incredible commiserations to New Zealand is anyone following us from that part of the world commiserations just having a look here at equities as I mentioned earlier on the DAX was pushing and that in turn helped the S&P push higher here and taking it longer term that trend channel that was was so good last year beginning of last year to the mid part September October before that breakdown eventually in December you can see if that was to get hit today that looks to come in around 31 so about eight or so points away from where the third test of this top end of the trend channel would come in so definitely have that marked up on the charts you can see not too far away and if the last two reactions from a technical point of view are anything like that would be a great place to take some profit short term so have that marked up for sure let me just move the lower point of that trend channel just above the camera so you can see that there obviously back from February last year and then even more medium term potentially Tennessee if that wasn't to hold you've got all kind of trend lines just in the mix around that area that could come in of course above there still a way to go but 30 50 maybe I'll be a longer term target before we start to potentially slow down a bit looking more intraday here at the S&P and we've put the pivots on just for a bit of a guide you can see last few days we've had decent pushes above the all-time highs to then come back and retest the pivot acting pretty good as well as arguably the the previous high and similar for on Friday we saw late into the session just before four o'clock before that European close the previous high on Thursday acting as a level support so keeping an eye on on that if we were to push on at the moment it's enjoying a push higher you can see not far away from that trend channel coming in just above the R2 so I still would definitely look to to have that on to the downside we've had good support this morning if I just draw it's on a 15 minute draw up here around 30 17 so as a bit of a line in the sand you could you could say maybe looking to potentially get short below that we've only got the two tests on this trend line to maybe see how that reacts as well and that could lead to a push lower but at the moment sentiment seems firmly to the upside well that will be interesting to see what happens around 30 and around those kind of levels the NASDAQ pretty similar this morning in pushing higher as is the Dow Jones really extending of course making that new all-time high you know last week the last of the the three main ones to do so and look over at the currencies today the euro just spiking above that high that we had good resistance from Friday evening to this morning so keeping a close watch if we were to to drift back down to that level as well you can see really nice trend line from Friday's low to today's low squeezing in price action as well before that push higher to the upside obviously the main key point to have marked up on the R1 is the higher that we had back from Thursday as well so as we drift higher or if we continue to drift higher this sort of trend line would continue to do so as well as a bit of a line in the sand that could well be it along with the previous highs that we've had for the last eight or so hours that's a pretty key point there as well if we were to extend our legs and push higher than the level seen from last week and just putting this onto a four-hourly chart you can just see the importance of all of that point so these were previous lows before we did push lower on the fifth 10 days ago so above that 1350 would be an area as well to keep an eye on so maybe you can see here it's quite a tight zone so quite a lot of resistance up there even if we were to push on moving over to the pound here it's going to put this on a 60 minute time frame and you can see relatively quiet start to the morning unlike the euro which obviously just did push higher there to the upside you can see what was you know really key resistance you know the breakdown before again on the fifth where we had some you know fair bit of dollar strength that's somewhere I would keep an eye on I know we had a brief go at testing above it on Friday evening and we're looking to come back and test that this morning albeit just falling short that's going to be a really key area if the dollar is to continue any weakness that we saw last week in terms of moves lower obviously the pivot has acted quite well we're keeping an eye on this trend line that would mark up by the time it comes down or potentially comes down to that trend line and pivot as well a breakthrough there and you'll be looking down to sort 87 where we had some support from last week as well some quite key levels that have held as well to the downside you can see the lows that we had on the afternoon of the 10th and then the 11th and the 12th all marking up around the S1 so quite a bit of support below in what's pretty much a flat morning so far for the pound despite a tiny bit of dollar weakness that we've had in the markets and a quick look over the other currencies that we really focus on here Aussie dollar has been on a great run hasn't it since that multi well the test of the the yearly low we had a brief pullback before pushing higher last a couple of days helps with some dollar weakness and you can see if we were to continue to push higher than this area the high from what's that the fourth would be the main kind of target to to have marked up similar to the S&P in that those previous highs of the days of acting as support for opportunities to get long so even shorter term just having a look and dropping it down to 15 minute how we react around any of these previous highs so this is Friday's high here obviously we could argue we broke through that trend as well so even if that wasn't to work you could argue along from around that trend line is also not a bad trade to have a look at however for these kind of markets if the trends to the upside was to break aggressively you're not want to not going to want to get in too too aggressively on that so Aussie dollar pushing higher thanks to you know the move this morning and it sustained a you know relatively decent start to the week and a look over at the yen pivot acted really well today as initial support and similar to the dollar pair or some of the dollar pairs in that we are you know pretty flat really here I mean the push lower that we've seen this morning over the last sort of 15 minutes or so and he was checked might be helped by the fact that he did push on but just seeing in in Europe anyway the euro stocks is just coming off a touch from those highs the DAX perhaps looking to start following that suit as well so the upside you can see price from the previous low of Friday and then this morning is held as resistance that's a decent line in the sand where the sellers should be in control of that and then to the downside keeping an eye on this trend line from the lows and that pivot as that could obviously be really handy in containing price before you know break down to that pivot as well so I think it could be down to buyers in control above here sellers in control below there as well and a quick look over the DAX here as you can see just you know coming off a touch the euro stocks start to switch over before coming back to the DAX you can see already pushed back to that R1 having found resistance from levels on the 11th so keeping an eye on the on the DAX you have quite a few previous highs that we have broken through which we could have tracked buyers but you can really see strong push above this trend this morning not saying we're going to get a full reversal to there but maybe going in too aggressively on these highs might just be a bit of a bigger risk I'm going to look at gold and oil to to wrap things up you can see gold relatively flat for the day just up a couple of dollars Friday was pretty rangeband before the back end of the session as we broke on having a look at this obviously from the upside still fair way away probably worth having on one of these kind of trend lines to the brief resistance we've had for now 14-17 bit of a breakdown this morning that's somewhere I would have marked up really between the pivot and that I wouldn't be too interested in getting involved having a look to see if we've got anything from the downside not amazing looks relatively choppy for for gold and that's kind of in tune with the price action that we've had here just dragging this to the last few weeks you can see no real direction in this big-term range where you've got the double top you've got multiple tests of this this low as well not necessarily waiting for either of those to come in but you might start to get a clearer reaction from that you could argue we are getting squeezed in as well just from both directions over the last few days going back to the ninth certainly from the top and the bottom so maybe patience at least on the Monday anyway waiting for breaks of that before really looking to get in and look over at oil here you can see if I just put this on a longer term chart we we have found some really key resistance here definitely at a point where people would have looked to have taken profit for more medium term you can see support initially on the 13th and 7th of May before the breakdown we had on the 23rd which signalled a decent push down to almost 50 well yeah but just below 51 dollars decent rally back in the first real test of that area as you'd expect on Thursday offering a really strong level of resistance if that was to go at any point to this week then you'd be looking back at previous highs you know 61 64 and then key breakdown points from anywhere above 62 last few days on the sessions anyway you can see we have been trending lower so to get that bullish feeling back well I mean there's a couple of trend lines you can see maybe a break above that would be would be half interesting the low of the weeks of the day I should say so far was also quite a key level that we had back on Thursday Wednesday as well and that previous high so keeping a close eye on those two points the low and that trend line around the pivot which isn't necessarily the most respected one but just as a guide it might be that you finally would get another push if we were to get above that point pivot looks key as well as you had some resistance late there on Friday we're just holding up however on the previous sort of resistance point from the Asian session as usual any questions please do let us know the strategy report will be will be out before midday so even if there's any questions regarding that please feel free to do so but I hope you will have a good good trading day just quick look over that calendar just to reiterate likely to be relatively quiet on the on the data front into the afternoon and things look a little bit more interesting Tuesday Wednesday Thursday as well so just plan the day and week accordingly but I hope you have a great one as well