 Hello, welcome to this CMC Markets trading update. It's myself Jasper Lawlor, we're on the 15th of November 2016. Now this is a look ahead to the autumn statement, the first one for Chancellor Phillip Hammond since taking over in the wake of the Brexit vote. And so what I've got on the screen here is just a summary of some of the major UK assets that we typically trade on the CMC Markets platform, namely the main highlighted graph being the FTSE 100, the UK 100 as we trade it. But also down the bottom half of the screen here, you probably didn't find it too difficult to guess this as the British pound versus both the euro and the US dollar. And then we have the FTSE 250, slightly underperforming the main benchmark there. And then we also have Guilts. Now what we're trying to assess is can this autumn statement materially change some of the moves in the markets that we're seeing at the moment. Now naturally it's the economics that this statement could really affect. And so it's more likely to be the impact on Guilts and the British pound that we could see. Now there's been a lot of talk, particularly in the wake of the US election of infrastructure spending. Phillip Hammond has already abandoned George Osborne's target of balancing the books by 2020, giving himself a bit of room for maneuver for spending. Now were that to be a material increase in spending, that could theoretically be a boost to British GDP and a boost to certain areas of the stock market. So certain companies, big blue tip companies can gain that could be a benefit to the FTSE 100. You could argue that the FTSE 250 actually could start to make up some of this underperformance if it was UK firms that were to benefit from this extra government spending. But overall the forecast is for inflation to move higher and for growth to move lower. That's what most of the major institutions are forecasting for next year. And we've actually got the idea that there could actually be a £25 billion black hole. So that in itself does somewhat limit what the chancellor can do here in terms of spending. So we're probably not going to get the big spending boost that really could jolt the British pound higher or feasibly such as large amounts of spending that would actually make international investors worried about the state of the UK finances, perhaps even bring about cause for a downgrade from rating agencies, that would certainly be something that impacts gilts. That's not likely on the cards. So then we're probably now looking at what specific measures within here can really impact the market. I think overall what we've got to look at here is probably more a statement of intent rather than any big material changes. We've got to look at the overall context of this is that we're looking at Article 50 being triggered by the end of March next year. The chancellor doesn't really want to rock the boat. And so probably more going to be a taster of what's to come in the budget next year rather than big material changes. Obviously a cut to the corporation tax would be a big overall boost, but that doesn't seem likely his signal that he's just going to keep things on the path towards 17% corporate tax rate from 20 at the moment, but not going down to 15 as suggested by George Osborne. Stamp duty, that would obviously be something that impacts the home builders. Now there is talk of a plan to produce a fund for smaller family run type home builders. This would arguably be a slight net negative for the big listed home builders. So I think overall probably that's not going to be a big winner here unless we do get those stamp duty changes. Where else could tax cuts come if we're looking away from spending? Well, consumers have been holding up quite well. Still, even though we're looking at a higher inflation in the future, prices are still low at the moment. So probably not a need for a cut to VAT, although we'd all like to see it, obviously. VAT is probably going to say at 20%. It's not likely to drop to an emergency 17.5% or 15% like we saw in the financial crisis. And so that would obviously be a boost to retail as well. We to see something like that equally cut to business rates. That would materially impact some of the retail that's have brick and mortar stores, you know, supermarkets and then to a lesser extent the DOA chains, the electronics retailers that also have a bit of an online presence as well. So overall here is this statement going to materially affect the changes that we're seeing at the moment? There's a big drop in the bond market taking place at the moment. Can this change and change that? No. There's a move higher in stocks, a general belief in a US-led infrastructure boom. This can contribute to that on the UK side. If the UK joins the Trump revolution and higher move away from monetary policy to fiscal policy, that in itself can also boost the British pound. So we're seeing evidence of a slight bottom being put in here in a British pound after jumping as much as 20% a year today against the euro. We're pulling away from that parity mark. So, you know, maybe this can be the beginnings of a bottom for the British pound and potentially depending on how UK focused and how boosting this budget can be, you know, we actually might see an address and address all of this 5,150, 250 outperformance here. I've moved higher in the pound. Generally, it hurts the British put to 100 more than it hurts the 5,250. Equally, some spending boost may be away from the big projects like Heathrow and HS2, but towards smaller projects that more local companies, smaller 50, 250 companies can benefit from. You know, again, that would be readjusting that balance. So I hope that was useful. Just a quick snapshot here of just the overall economic environment here, how this autumn statement can generally boost these overall markets, like digging too much into the nitty-gritty, because I think probably this statement isn't going to go into the finer details with many, many changes that we're used to with George Osborne. I think this again will be more of a statement intent from Philip Osborne with maybe more concrete changes to come in the spring next year once we've got that article 50 triggered out of the way. Well, thank you very much. If you like the trading, there's Jasper signing out.