 OK. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Good evening if you're at the side of the world. It would be good morning, good afternoon to those in other locations. We are welcoming you this evening to what is going to be a brief overview of what we saw in 2021. More importantly, about what we're looking at as traders and analysts as we head into 2022. Fy gyd yn ddweud eu tro, mae'n gilydd gworkais dod yn ystafell beth ond mwy o'r angen arfer ond gwell yn ofy o'r eu cyllidau. Rwy'n bwysig i gael bod y dysgu ddweud mewn gwir a chael ei gael yn bwysig, ond yn gyffredinio'r ysgrifell sy'n gilydd yn gwyn, rwy'n gyd, ond arall felly mae gen i'r holl yng nghymredd yma. Rwy'n gyd i, roi am adref. Rydyn ni'n dod gyda'r hynnog ddiant heref. Felly, dyna, rwy'n cael ei dyn�no. Yn hyn o'r oddodd yn ffainthio y panel arwain y gwir companies sydd yn wedi bod yn y cyfreidio yma yn ei ddiogel. Mae'n maeth arwr sydd y cefnodd ar y mae'r cyfle a'r grannu. Fy oeddaf yw rhoi ar wael, yn cyfnodd mewn Frydel, oed y maethauoedd yw Llywodraeth i'r ymddirysau. Mae'r ymddirysau a'r fallaitau sydd sydd erlai ymwyno'r cynhyrchu. Mae yn ystafodd gyfer y ffordd y mae'r ffordd. Following his academic endeavours, he became actively involved in the stock markets and obtained valuable knowledge during his apprenticeship as a banker and at a leading European bank. So it's a good knob and I believe to Mike. Yes, hello and welcome to our discussion for today and if you have any questions just feel free to use the chat to ask us live questions so we can answer if you have anyone in mind. Good stuff, thanks very much Mike and next up is Joseph Tahrir, he is a MENA analyst. Joseph is a professional technical analyst, avid researcher and trainer with over 10 years of experience in the financial markets. Joseph's insightful approach, excuse me to analysis, gives traders a solid understanding of what drives global financial markets and identifies trading opportunities using advanced Elliott Wave techniques. I believe it's Mesaulia Joseph. Thank you for having me, my pleasure to be here with you tonight. Good stuff, thanks very much and last but not least we have James Harlett joining us. He's our market expert from the UK and covers the South African markets with over 10 years of experience as a private trader and professional market analyst. James has carved out an impressive industry reputation able to both dissect and explain the key fundamental in the markets. He communicates the importance and relevance in a succinct and straightforward manner. So James has joined us from London so I believe it's good evening governor. Yes, good evening boss, nice and cold here as you might expect. Looking forward to going through the points this evening and very excited to hear what the other panelists have to say about these themes that you have in mind. Excellent. Last but not least, it's it's yours truly. My name is Patrick Munnally. I'm dialing in from a normally sunny but tonight quite cold Mallorca. I've been involved in the financial markets for the last 15 years as a self educated professional trader and money manager. I've mentored both privately and in a prop trading environment hundreds of private traders of all experience levels from complete novices to former CME floor traders. Not just the technical skills but the mental skills that are required to become proficient market operators. So now that you've been introduced to the panel, let's jump into a brief overview of 2021. So it was a year that saw huge inflation surprises across the globe. Only some of it were really driven by COVID. Economists have attributed the rising consumer prices over the past year to several factors, including supply chain breakdowns, labour shortages and a sudden burst of spending after widespread lockdowns during the COVID pandemic. Because of the spike in inflation that can be traced to the economic impact of COVID-19, the most important thing to tame is going to be inflation. And this is important from a perspective of the pandemic starting to become under control until the pandemic really recedes, inflation is going to remain a problem. And from a market perspective, no interest rates led to continued risk taking, the upswing that we saw in terms of the impact of mean stocks and crypto investing with many investors chasing those through the Wall Street bets and Reddit forums. 2021 also had a year of policy shocks in terms of the US and Europe, some of which positive and some of which were negative. They had varying impacts on assets and stocks. And really the last theme that has become really crucial for us, I guess as a global employee base, is the idea of how we're actually going to engage with employers in terms of our work situation moving forward and what that will mean for the impact of technology and how technology will enhance a more balanced work life work life situation. And last but not least, the key climate issue that is really facing facing the globe as a whole and how the disbursement of fiscal stimulus is going to impact that and how we might start to see significant changes in terms of green and ESG investing. So that's just a brief introduction there to 2021 in terms of the key themes from my perspective anyway and from a training perspective. I don't know if any of you guys have any input there with things that I might have overlooked with respect to 2021? Yeah, from my side, maybe a few words, what I expect the difference between 2021 to 2022. Maybe some words, the story of the further reserve driven markets will go on. So I think we had a 2021 that was ruled by COVID-19 by inflation and for sure by market driven, the money driven markets from the further reserves worldwide and this year 2022 could be a different one. I guess it's still a further reserve driven market but this time in a different way while 2021 was still supported by a constant money support from quantitative easing 2022 appears to become a year of normality known from the time before 2008. You might know that was the year of the Lehman bankruptcy in September 2008 and that was the start of the quantitative easing and I guess the year 2022 will be a year that might us bring the time before the bankruptcy. So that means the increasing interest, the higher inflation and money flow without the cheap money will rule the markets and I expect another tough year for the markets with more focus to regular economic results and money shifts in kind of reallocations between strong and weak assets and not only the cheap money from the central banks. Okay that's a good perspective Mike. Any of you other guys have a view on 2021 I guess being in the rearview mirror as such? No I mean I'm happy with what you covered I think as you say you know sort of the main themes to focus on are initially going to be how the central bank start to react to this this surge in inflation I think that brings us very much into this very sort of point where we are right now beginning the year so yeah I'm happy to sort of jump into the points that we've got lined up. Okay so I guess one of the key themes anyway from my perspective as we head into into the start of this year is the idea of the Omnicron variant moving us towards a more of an endemic scenario as opposed to the pandemic scenario that we've we've obviously faced over the past nearly two years now and certainly there seems to be a a change in narrative with within the scientific community whereby there is a move towards the the potential that we will that we will take this from being a you know a major global crisis to something that can be more more controlled in so far in so far maybe not controlled in terms of the virus but controlled in terms of our response to the virus and so having survived that major scare at the back end of last year consensus forecasts now for 2022 are clustered around a scenario of really continued strong growth potential for declining inflation especially into the back half of this year and gradual policy normalisation so while this goalie looks outlook may be the most likely outcome the risks around it are obviously still significant coven 19 distortions have made it really difficult to assess the underlying strength of the economy and let alone really making valid forecasts for the year ahead. The most important question is whether consumer spending patterns which were at the heart of the covid economic shock will return to pre pandemic norms this will be profoundly important for 2022 outlooks not just for the short term inflation trends but also for how the prevailing market narrative starts to evolve around since the global industrial cycle plays such a pivotal role in in most leading indicators a big decline in goods consumption which is entirely plausible later in this year could rapidly transform this overheating narrative that we've started the year with and the ideas of a recession scare so I guess tapering the pandemic support will be the great balancing act and challenge for the year to come if it happens too quickly risk derailing the recovery exiting too slowly risks propping up you know an unviable some unviable businesses and sectors to a huge expense to the public purse and what were your thoughts on that Mike? My first things that I think I hope that the covid will end quite soon because of the impact for everyone of us is not the best one and all of us would like to have a normal life back would I say that's what I see here in mind surrounding in Germany but from from a trader's perspective this is this what I do every day I trade the markets with my own money every day and from from this state is the big question will we see an ongoing covid 9 in pandemic for the next month or will we switch to the the enemy and this is this is a big question and from from the current state of the of the covid 19 development we might have the chance to switch from pandemic to endemic especially when we see the numbers in for example South Africa where we had a really really short term from the from the Omicron variant compared to to the data and the next one what we see here is that Omicron appears more infectious but less deadly and this one can be the chance for fast recovery for our economy but if not this can happens I'm no doctor I don't know what what happens in the background but if not the word is forced to find a way to live with the virus in an economic friendly coexistence that means we have to find a way to to live with the new future because of the money will end anytime because of it's it's endless it's not it's not endless and what we see especially here in Germany is that some businesses have plans to live with the virus and this process will ongoing pandemic or or endemic offer chances for me and you as active traders because what we have we have fear and we have optimism that drives the markets and what I do as a trader I try to find the way to to trade with the situations that the virus impacts when we see for example the earning season or whatever and the expectations that the companies have and this is what drives the markets was what brings the prices on or down up or down and these are the things that I see every day and I try to find the way so this is the big question where we see optimism or fear and this is at the word that we live at the moment good stuff I guess that brings us kind of nicely on to the next topic that I want to to raise with you guys and that's around the equity markets and specifically a phenomenon for the US equity markets as we head into into this year is the the idea that we are moving into the third year of the current presidential cycle which historically has proven to be a tricky period for US equity investors to navigate certainly in an index level it's obvious that the S&P currently is trapped in a bullish continuation trading range with increased volatility to both sides and as as risk rises correlation moves towards really being almost gauge to one asset class and leverage tends to come out of equities at that point the case in point being margin debt at the moment is falling at the fastest pace since Lehman's failure from $350 billion down to now $200 billion in recent months a pullback that starts in January given the seasonal patterns as you can see from the chart on the screen tends to lead to an April to September which are historically poor months for the for the S&P before we head into the back end of the year and we have better performance so in short the S&P 500 is looking like it's in for a choppy nine months and one might find the bull momentum gaining traction maybe into the back end of the year early to late November the rationale really behind the performance of the S&P during this midterm election cycle is based really on seasonality so the chart is likely due to the implementation of what are going to be probably perceived as unpopular measures to curve the ever-increasing deficit of the government tightening of the monetary policy with rate hike and tapering of the liquidity that's already starting to be felt in these early weeks of 2022 and so should 2022 behave in a similar fashion to the history of the US midterm election pattern it will certainly prove to be a challenging year for the stock market and from a from a chart perspective myself I've been tracking a the breakdown that we are currently seeing in the S&P 500 and I was just looking over at the live charts now we're seeing more weakness today and certainly versus the swing highs that we have at the 4579 area we can look we can look for a test down towards the 4500 area before potentially seeing some recovery into the February period if we just look back at at the seasonal chart you can see that from a seasonal perspective in the midterm election cycles we've tended to find a pretty tradable low there coming into the beginning of February so I'm certainly going to be paying attention to that from my from my own personal trading. Joseph do you have a view on the equity markets? Yes Patrick like as you mentioned if we start a collection here on the S&P markets it will still be considered as a collection because in 2021 the performance was was awesome for the S&P 500 and this is so if we retrace back like three to five or seven percent it would still be considered as corrective but because we mentioned Omicron with my colleague Mike let me talk about the the strict restrictions China is is implementing which is the zero COVID policy if the zero COVID policy is still there and the supply chain is still being affected by China and the prices are still going up inflation is there the policies the the trying tightening policies that the central banks are using the rate hikes the bottom the borrowing cost will be higher for the companies and thus will be deflected by less profits for the companies and we might see this selling pressure on on the stock market and last but not least like we saw the the rate decrease in China because of the last GDP numbers and because they do not have the inflation problem US and Europe have so basically China is more comfortable by decreasing their interest rates and focusing more on the economic growth that means the the big investors will tend to rotate we will have some kind of rotation from the US and this is into the Chinese stock market at the moment so basically a yes I will look into more selling pressure on the yes and this is in the coming sessions however as you mentioned it will still be corrective consider to be corrective compared to the 25 to 30 percent profit or the outperformance in 2021 we witnessed so basically I will be looking at the same numbers on the SP 500 Patrick and we'll be looking to to along the market again if we saw a after the rate decrease in China we saw a lower yuan and the higher dollar dollar against yuan we might see here the multinational companies in the USA working with China so if the dollar is increased on gained on the Chinese yuan we might see more profits for these multinational companies and here with the large cap stocks will be affected positively and we might see some another buying opportunities on the on the indices and on the stocks good points very good points especially about the potential migration out of US equities into China I mean the there's a big push in terms of the investment banking community towards the back end of last year pushing the idea that we would certainly see money potentially leaving the US and into Europe as as as one capital flow scenario but equally it looks more than plausible that we could see that that move to China as it's almost now that China are kind of reacting to the same issues that the the Fed had back in 2008 when they were getting some systemic risk and the only response they had obviously was going to be a huge monetary policy response and that's kind of what you're almost seeing now from the PBOC as they're already starting with the rate cuts etc to defend initially we've had Evergrande and I'm sure there are plenty more play more skeletons in that closet but Mike what do you think um yeah first of first thing I like your chart of the S&P 500 and I like to hear there's Joseph is having the same numbers like you and I have also the same numbers and and I personally wouldn't say goodbye to the bull market in the S&P 500 we have at the moment the correction and yeah I'm a bit considered about China because China is at the moment where it is the market gives the price and the price is right but there are some risks in China that I see China has a good opportunity how Joseph said before because of they are a bit more relaxed in the in the in the policy with the with the interests but the risk is for sure number one COVID-19 China is very restrictive in that case and the other one is likely effect from the real estate sector you you was talking about Evergrande with the money problem to pay back credits and to pay the interest and when China will have a big problem with the real estate sector this will this will affect other sectors like the financial sector that we've seen for example 2008 in for example in USA or the other sector is the construction sector this this can be a bit tricky for for the China economy when we come back to the to the USA I will come back to the S&P 500 and at the moment I see a bit more downside potential the chart that you have shown here shows the right numbers and I don't want to go into a chart analysis I would like to talk about the the very important things for me respective to the US markets there are a few things that I have in mind the first one is of course the inflation in USA as we have it in Europe too but the USA might have a bit bigger issue with the inflation and I guess a simple keep on going with the price increases will generally be a strong danger for the markets but I don't see this that we have still going on because a lot of the increase are based in very low prices during the first COVID-19 market shock many companies reduced the production capacity and cancelled orders from supply parts and the fast recovery from the economy was a surprise for many companies and it takes time to reactivate the supply chains inclusive the transportation either we will see a lower prices through a higher supply or we will see a lower prices through less demand these are two things that are seen USA and the last is the worst case for the economy and can affect the job market worldwide bips and at the end the worldwide economy grows this is the problem that we see that I see in the inflation the second one is how you mentioned before Patrick the midterm election in the USA this is definitely an event with a market influencing character what Biden is trying to do is Biden will still be the president after Trump that will build America better he has a program for this to support the country and to bring the economy to the next level I personally expect the Biden administration will try to support America's economy through the billion heavy support program and the government orders in that case will have the chance to boost the economy recovery and support the job markets but the real challenge for challenge for the market will be I guess COVID-19 the inflation progress and one of the very important thing is that the is the risk of a wrong fed approach and I guess a simple plus how you asked us before we will see a simple plus of 25% or so on I guess a simple plus of 20% a year is nothing that I expect at this at this time of the year I think we will it will be a good strategy to trade extreme events like extreme sell-offs or extreme buyovers in enthusiastic situations this is what I have in mind for the stock markets but also for the US dollar for example or for the commodities so that's my opinion good good okay well look let's let's move it on in terms of thinking about inflation and and specifically the divergence between potential central bank policies as we are all probably aware that you know the post global COVID recovery we all anticipate should continue into 2022 with a more gradual reopening of global service sectors as well as the easing of supply chain bottlenecks that have been plaguing the global manufacturing sector these developments should boost growth but they could also hold the recent commodity price rally and its tracks has ultimately pushed global inflation down the nascent g10 central bank policy divergence that we've seen so far could nevertheless flourish and give the FX carry trades a real boost as we head into 2022 2022 I'm anticipating to be a year of two halves firstly with the feds rates high expectations and fully up now I'm anticipating that we could see one one final leg higher in terms of the dollar and then two as we head into the back of the second half of the year as the relative gradual fed tightening cycle should keep US real yields and rates under pressure I think ultimately I think what will happen is maybe we see something similar to 2018 where you know the feds were or the market was pricing in a full tightening cycle for the fed and they made one move and then they had to back off because inflation you know just wasn't there and and so suddenly they find themselves in a similar situation we've already had goldman raised their their rate high expectations from December to three heights to January to four now you know maybe somebody's whispering in their ear and giving them the heads up on what's coming down the pike but there is a distinct change there in terms of their expectations and maybe what it's doing is setting up the market for the idea that you know we're heading into this really aggressive tightening cycle and then when that doesn't doesn't transpire that sets the stage then for equities to lift off into the into the back end of the year for the dollar to come under pressure and for the euro to to find its feet again so I mean you know the expectations at the moment as you can see on the screen are you know forecasting out now long run up to 2.5% but I mean certainly this year you've got them coalescing now around at least 1% and goldman are even more aggressive aggressive than that so in terms of the dollar index for me we're really sitting at a pivotal juncture we're either going to take this channel out to the downside and if we do I think we can be looking for at least a move back down to 92 and then potentially back down through the lows again or if we hold the channel as I anticipate we may do in this early part of the year get a move up one more high in terms of a test of potentially the 98 handle and then how that feeds into the euro dollar which is in this down channel versus last year the the up channel that we had in terms of the dollar can we get one more low in the euro close to that 110 and this major trend line on the monthly they even see even better and then from there build a real base to extend higher as the dollar rolls over once again so I mean those are two key forex trades that I'm watching as we as we head into the year. James I know you are an avid watcher of all things forex what are your thoughts? Yeah I mean first off you know you've definitely raised some some very interesting and I think very pertinent points there much of which I share you know I think in terms of my own trading how I like to sort of utilise these fundamental perspectives these macro inputs is that I'm always looking to establish a sort of base case scenario with regard to forecasts and projections and we all know how quickly these can change and so it's always interesting then to look at where the risks to these forecasts lie and I think as you've said you know with the US dollar so much is baked into the forecast at this point market positioning has been so elevated to the upside and I think that even over recent weeks we've already seen the chinks in the armor start to appear with what happens when the market expectations get ahead of themselves positioning gets ahead of the game and you know we've seen the US dollar failing to respond to that positive inflation release last week simply because it's already baked into the outlook there's no further information there there's no catalyst for continued buying so I think if we extrapolate from that point forwards into the year you know there's definitely a large risk that we see similar instances of either the Fed not living up to the market's expectations or simply underperforming in terms of the policy announcements made and also you know with regard to what happens with US data going forward as inflation starts to trail off over the year if other risks start to emerge then the USD you know knowing how quickly the market can get extended in terms of upside positioning with the dollar is certainly vulnerable to these downside risks and yeah I mean looking at the euro but also looking at some of our currencies the Canadian dollar the Japanese yen I mean we had the Reuters report this week you know reporting on the Bank of Japan discussing how to sort of telegraph rate hikes so obviously there's going to be some sort of catch-up in terms of other central banks kicking into gear this year which should create some interesting shifts in dynamic and yeah I mean the euro is certainly one that I'm looking at as well the dollar yen I think there's definitely going to be some interesting action there as we move through into into Q2 and the second half of the year and also you know with regard to the Canadian dollar at the moment I mean we're seeing a lot of strength tied in with oil prices obviously the Bank of Canada was one of the first off the mark last year in terms of tightening um and so there's a great deal of attention on how the Bank of Canada is likely to proceed now especially as we track these these movements in oil markets um so I think yes certainly keeping an eye on where these sentiment build-ups occur and where the risks lie in terms of you know identifying some more contrarian trades is certainly how I would go about playing these um these major themes yeah good stuff really good um Joseph yes better I think you've got a pretty strong view on on inflation like I've been following up with the tiny tightening policies I've been following up with the dovish tone for the federal reserve since last year and after seeing the inflation going out of control CPI near seven percent uh and Britain today the the the 5.4 percent was the CPI and Britain so it's the highest since three four decades and now the tightening policies we the the market is already discounting at eight hike in March as you mentioned like uh Goldman Sachs and Jacob Morgan they were saying that there it should be three or four hikes but like we're now hearing more about five six or seven hikes we were hearing about 25 basis point rate hikes now we're talking about 50 basis point rate hikes so basically uh the inflation is here however the tightening policies and the rate hikes are only we are only hearing about these stuff but they are not being implemented so if the federal reserve here general power needs to hold the tool and try to fix the market and try to take control over we need to see him stopping in early earlier than March this is in my opinion because okay even if we hear that the rates are are going to high however we're not seeing these hikes anymore the market is discounting the high that the US 10 years yield is trading near 1.92 percent and this is putting some buying pressure on on the dollar index as you mentioned and I like the graph by the way so I we might see some push higher to the for the dollar index in the coming future because of the higher yields however because of the different central bank policies uh we might not see a pressure on on the other currencies like even if we see higher dollar index we might not see the the euro drop or the pound for for Bank of England seven out of nine members were eject were ejecting or were against higher rates and after hearing the federal reserve going into these the the path of higher rates they already hired their rates by by 0.1 basis points so basically the pound I think is the most interesting currency to be in the 2022 and it will lead the way toward more more profits in the coming sessions so basically uh and we we heard the presence of China telling the telling the world that you need to watch out of the base of the hikes and this is because the higher interest rates will affect the economic growth and basically we need to we need to see when will the right take the hike happen and we we need to see by how much will it happen I'm afraid of buying the rumor selling the fact and when it comes to higher rates it's not enough for the inflation the only good thing we heard recently is the lower PPI in China lower PPI that means the CPI the coming CPI in China will be lower that means we might see a little bit of a turn of let's say a less pace less higher pace less pace of the inflation so if we because of the PPI and we might expect a worse CPI that means John Powell and his expectation of the inflation turning a little bit lower in the second quarter would be let's say near near reality and as you mentioned if uh if we started the rate hike and the inflation started to going down and we might be we might be surprised of a let's say stop this tightening policy and here we might see a drop in the dollar index and retest the previous lows as you as you mentioned I'm looking forward to long the the bound I'm looking forward to long the euro in 2022 I see a good opportunity in the currencies because the investors right now are don't have much uh let's say choices to choose in terms of investments the stock market is a is a is in an uncertainty uh the crypto currencies as well in retracing so basically holding the fiat currencies right now is the best choice to do and looking for the next step to to to put in your uh your investments good stuff okay well moving on directly I guess from currencies and certainly there you you started to reference them in terms of uh the commodity complex and um I'm really thinking I guess in terms of what we've seen so far in this cycle has been a um a brief outperformance by the industrial metals obviously driven predominantly by the reopening trade but um what we can be looking at now I guess uh this is a chart that I've been tracking for a while um is the is the gold chart which has been consolidating in this long-term triangle um consistently setting higher lows despite most importantly the rise in US rate high expectations uh so and we've obviously seen that rise in the dollar so um it's kind of counterintuitive to see the uh gold holding up as it is um and if potentially we now have rate hikes fully priced uh gold is got setting the potential here to break from the triangle to the upside certainly if we start to see that dollar weakness developing uh in the latter half of the early part of this year into the latter part of the year in total um this is something that's uh there's the old trader phenomenon when something is moving higher on bad news it uh it really really means that it wants to move a hell of a lot higher as uh as the good news develops for it so um gold is is a chart that I'm tracking and uh and you can see even today we're seeing that push up again towards the uh the triangle resistance we've got silver in a descending wedge pattern there and starting to push push higher as well and last but not least we have our old friend Dr Copper who's uh who's in this British consolidation pattern uh towards the top end of its range and and also looking at the potential for a breakout and uh and last but not least we have crude oil which has has really been the story of the the start of this year um driven not just by supply but also now geopolitical concerns we were talking offline before we we went live here about the issues in Russia and the Ukraine and how that could have a dramatic impact upon crude oil prices and then taking it right back from the beginning of the presentation where we're talking about ESG and and clean investing um one thing's for for pretty much absolutely certain that we've seen a nearly two trillion dollar ESG driven um capex cleanse from oil and gas exploration uh to take it to to multi decade lows and so at this stage if we've got a geopolitical spike maybe in in uh Russia and Ukraine you know does that send crude oil back up to 100 dollars a barrel and then what impact does that have on global growth and you know we all know where uh crude oil was trading um when we headed into 2008 and the implications of that crude oil spike um so i mean these commodities are are pretty finely balanced at the moment and if we if we do start to see that weakness translate into the dollar and and these commodities take off that could be a pretty meaningful meaningful shock to a lot of consensus views for the year ahead James yeah i mean again you know a number of great points there um i think in terms of you know the most sort of part and right now obviously these these geopolitical risks um around Russia and Ukraine present very sort of real risk of volatility um you know in the in the safe haven assets as well across the sort of risk complex um and i guess you know in terms of thinking about how we ended last year and how we started this year i suppose one of the big factors is um you know focusing on oil specifically is that with the passing of these omicron risks and with the sort of utilisation of a lot of pent-up demand that was in the the global economy looking ahead now if if the pandemic is reaching an endemic stage and if domestic and international restrictions start to ease further and the return of global travel comes back in in sort of a big way across this year then you know you'd have to think that over the first half of the year the outlook for for oil looks looks fairly solid i mean there's the holy grail of the european summer tourist season which you know was there was a lot of hope last year that it was going to return but obviously it didn't it never came to fruition and now with lots of lots of countries talking about scaling back restrictions over the coming quarters you'd have to think that heading into that period the demand from the aviation sector which of course is you know the the second largest sector in terms of demand for for oil globally is going to keep oil prices supported but then as we cross into the summer and as the summer tourist season especially in the west starts to weaken then it's a case of at which point does the oil supply tip over into surplus from deficit because obviously at the moment we're stopped still operating in a global deficit the OPEC have yet to you know fully scale out of their production cuts which are due to end in september so by that point you know we might be in a much more balanced state if a lot of these supply chain issues have have cleared up by that point as well and global trade is operating in a more sort of efficient manner and it might be a case of the oil market seeing a final push into sort of q3 q4 and then that might prove to be the end of that rally for now so yeah that's certainly going to be a chart that i'm tracking and then in terms of gold i guess to add another sort of a famous trader adage yeah it's a case of what can't go down must go up i mean we've had all of the usual inputs that were typically way on gold prices we've had higher equities prices we've had a higher us dollar and throughout all of this period gold has sort of managed to keep itself together so i think for now looking ahead especially you know in light of the conversations we've had around these us dollar downside risks you know you'd have to think that there there is some more upside in gold it looks from a technical perspective especially like a coiled spring ready to sort of explode for now so yeah oil and gold definitely looking for further upside especially in the near term and yeah that's that's sort of my my view on those good yeah that's a good point as well about the q3 q4 peat that we often see in in crude oil especially as that us driving season comes to a conclusion pretty much as we saw this year you you tend to see crude oil prices taper off into into the back ends that's a that coupled with as you said display issues could be could be a meaningful pivotal point for for crude oil this year mike i think you've got a couple of views to to share on the commodity complex yes for sure and i have i have the two two sectors that you mentioned before number one is the outperformance of the industrious versus the the precious metals and after them a few ideas regarding oil maybe we will have first look to the to the metals and the huge difference between between industrial and precious metals is the fact that precious metals have the reputation of an inflationary compensation that means the the current sidewalk movements that we see for example in the in the gold chart that you've shown before in the weekly or the monthly was it with the triangle are a sign of indecision or doubts about the sustainability of a high inflation i i guess the question is regarding the inflation when will we see the peak because of when we see a peak in the inflation i guess the gold price will not go up to the sky this is the thing that i see here because when we see a decreasing inflation rates the pressure on gold is gone and the second one is the ratio or better said the correlation between gold and silver to the US dollar in the last months we've seen a strong dollar was never good for a strong gold price and the opposite too and the question is now what will happen with with the US dollar and the inflation when we see an inflation peak in the next month we might see a dropping interest market and this will be the situation when i expect gold will fall again so the situation in the precious metals is a bit tricky but by the way for the moment i'm quite bullish in gold and and in silver especially through the seasonals we are still in the bullish seasonal for gold and silver and so we have the chance to get some following trades into the bull side that we've seen the breakout in silver and gold this is what i see at the moment but in the long term i'm not really sure if we will have really high prices in the gold market respective to the industrial metals on the other hand the rally is driven by a strong economic demand and partially limited availability and this is the fact in my opinion that the precious metals will be for the futures the better trades because of especially when we see the chart of copper it's it's a quite bullish market and we can trade copper fantastic with Ticknell and when you see a chart like this this is a bull market chart compared with the with the chart of silver and gold this is not really bullish this is um yeah actually not really something that i would like to trade in long term um but copper for example i guess copper will have a huge demand in the in the future because of the opportunity for copper in the in the new markets that the the usa and the rest of the world is interested of a green energy we need for example new new areas to transport the power from from the wind source to the people where they live and this needs a lot of copper for example and i guess these things will bring a lot of demand for copper and this will be fine for the for the for the for the uptrend and then let's switch over to the resurgence of oil in my opinion and i'm at the moment i'm i'm i'm bullish in oil and i guess we will see increasing prices the reason therefore is that in my opinion oil is still the lubricant for the economy and the way to a green industry will need a lot of oil for protection and transport for example for more the fuel and so on and as long as the economy can pay the high prices of oil we will see higher prices and how goldman sex said in the last study they expect prices between 100 and 125 in 2022 and nearly 150 dollars in 2023 and goldman said the economy will be able to pay this and this is what i guess will drive the markets to to higher prices that we've seen in history and the next one is is the opaque the opaque has the plan to be back at the pre-covid production in september 22 therefore the plan to increase the monthly output by 400 000 barrels but at the moment they have even now they have a problem to fill the plan that mines the riots in Saudi Arabia and Russia are also risk for the production and with these things in mind from this side there is more upside potential but we should ever ever have an eye what the economy is doing with the oil prices but too high prices will have negative effects to the world economy respectively the demand for oil and these are the things that will drive the oil price in the next months in my opinion good stuff very good stuff that's with me i add something Joseph the floor is yours yeah like i just want to mention something like a based on a small study i've made on the correlation between the gold and the inflation prices if we go back to 1970 1970s 1975 this like and 1980 1985 these two let's say brackets in history we had the highest inflation in all time so if you look back into gold the gold was yielding negative to be honest so basically the correlation was not positive between gold and inflation and it will never be gold will hold its prices against inflation on long term maybe five to ten years however they are not positively correlated on a short term the real estate investment trusts were like positively correlated more in terms of inflation rather than gold in gold at the moment you mentioned the real yields the real yields at the moment are negative so it's a good environment for for gold even if the yields are going up however if we adjust inflation from the yields and we took we take into consideration the real yields the negative yields real yields at the moment is a good opportunity for gold and will boost gold they are 99.8% positively correlated excuse me negatively correlated so basically we'll look into more upside momentum on gold and as James mentioned technically speaking gold is is forming a good structure to go higher 1860 is the first target if broken we can see much higher prices as for oil we need to we need to witness like the geopolitical tensions between Russia and and Ukraine at the moment and we need to see the strategic oil US and China that will use as a tool to put some pressure on the prices it didn't work with the 50 million barrels previously however we would look this time if both US and China like had a good connection or good let's say they put their hands together in terms of putting some pressure on the energies and we will see that if this will make some some change in the future but like I still see oil have some good resistance near 93 dollars per barrel and I'm looking forward to a big correction towards the 70 dollars 75 dollars again good stuff good stuff okay look let's uh let's move this on into the final topic here we've been running for about 45 minutes so uh we just want to finally touch on um the uh the hot market I guess of last year and not so hot as we've headed into uh the start of this year and that's the uh the crypto sphere um obviously we've had gollyloch conditions um which are ending and the liquidity tide that has potentially funded the uh the move that we've seen in terms of cryptocurrencies over the past year certainly um and now we need to I guess reassess are we looking at disproportionate harm to what has been a very uh by many people's assessment a very overvalued asset class uh particularly driven by by speculative flows we still haven't seen from a an institutional perspective and the two charts I'm posting I'll post the uh theorem one in a minute these are the the futures charts um so this is really a gauge of when the institution's got involved in the market and what the institutional flows are I mean we've obviously seen the uptake of um Mike Novigratz and his fund Galaxy and uh it was last year was all the rage but um we've certainly come into this year and there has been a uh let's say a position washout to put it mildly um we're now back testing some pretty pivotal levels certainly in terms of bitcoin that trend line trend line sorry I've got mark there um is uh is in peril of giving way and if it does then we could uh we could see another down draft in terms of bitcoin and a theorem uh again this is just the futures contract so this isn't the spot price going back to creation but in terms of the futures contracts and you've got to bear in mind that this is a lot of uh the big money managers are looking out of their trading desks uh you can pretty clearly see uh the channel downside objective there that could be in play before we see a really meaningful bounce in terms of ethereum and ethereum then has other challenges certainly from the whole NFT drive that we're seeing as well and whether or not ethereum is it's going to be a competitor in that space so um I'll be honest with you it's it's not my uh my sphere of expertise by any stretch of the imagination but from a technical perspective we seem to be uh pretty close to a precipice here so it's either a make or break type scenario uh from my perspective james you've uh you've been dabbling in crypto recently what what are your thoughts yeah I mean I certainly agree with you that one of the sort of you know the main the main themes to sort of focus on at the moment is definitely this increased level of institutional engagement and what that's actually done to the cryptocurrency markets because structurally there's been a sort of seismic shift in how these markets are behaving over the last sort of six months or so um and I mean it's almost at the point now where you can talk about crypto currencies uh almost like sort of euro spreads you know you have core spreads and you have periphery spreads with crypto currencies now we have the market leading coins obviously bitcoin like corn ethereum etc and then we have all of these alt coins which still see sort of outside gains from time to time behaving a much more volatile way and I think you know as this institutional engagement continues to increase that the sort of market leading coins especially um the ones that you've mentioned here are behaving much more like traditional market assets and you know as risk assets we've seen bitcoin and ethereum selling off as us rate hike expectations have kicked into gear this again is a theme that's likely to continue we've also seen a real dialing back of the volatility which sort of made these assets famous I mean we haven't seen any of the big sort of spikes or even any sort of the big drops really over the whole of this decline from recent highs and then I guess you know in terms of structural changes as well as you say there's been a massive positioning clear out and you have to think to yourself that a lot of the speculative cash that was chasing action in bitcoin last year certainly is either now out of the market and is looking at you know what's happening in this alt coin space or has moved into other areas I mean for example you mentioned nfts it's very feasible that a lot of the money that was made in bitcoin during these sort of effervescent periods last year has now been siphoned off into other areas and so you're left with um you know a lot more sort of um stable hands in bitcoin at the moment hence the sort of relatively boring price action um but I think you know looking ahead it's probably worth noting that open interest in bitcoin at the moment is around sort of all-time highs um which is interesting because if we think about the sort of dynamic with regard to it being a more like a traditional risk asset if we are linking it back to the conversation we've been having about downside risks in the US dollar this year um then what that actually would set up for the conditions are sort of ripe for a short squeeze in the near term so if we do see any sort of um under performance in the US dollar then it might be a case that we do actually see some some renewed upside um in bitcoin and as you say I mean looking at the charts they're obviously sitting on a precipice right now but I would say you know against the ropes but but not down so certainly going to be interesting to see what happens over these sort of coming months in bitcoin but again with these structural changes it seems unlikely that we go back to the sort of fireworks spectacle show that we that we saw last year. Good points so it's like Mike Tyson everyone's got a plan until the punch in the face. Don't we know it don't we know it um Joseph what do you think? Yep like to be honest I'm not following up with the cryptocurrency market at all but like I have some ideas about it and I would like to mention these hey tips to James I don't know if you agree with me like the cryptocurrency market the advantage should should have been that this market is decentralized it's free of and free from the effect of the central bank policies but right now you mentioned that bitcoin was affected by a rate hike and we are seeing lately some kind of correlation between bitcoin and the nasdaq and the tech companies so basically this is not what cryptocurrencies or the cryptocurrency holders would like to see in the future some effect from these policies or the central bank policies the decentralization something they want they want their money in their pocket they they they want to to move out from the bank sector and try to be free with their money to exchange it easily but in the future I think that the effect will still be there and from a technical point of view Patrick the investment in in in bitcoin I think five waves have completed on bitcoin and we are seeing the three wave pullback 29 900 is a is a is a target for me at least technically on the bitcoin 29 930 000 is a is a good support on a like medium term a view if it holds we might still looking too long but I would prefer to long other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum because it have the project of maybe NFTs and it's used for mining and I'm looking for some other payment solutions like the Ripple XRP the ADA the cardano so I believe that there is much more potential in these currencies I don't know if James agree other than the bitcoin because it's expensive and if it want to be traded by or used or to be the future I think it should be much more affordable so I would like to see the bitcoin falling back to some reasonable prices I don't want to mention these prices on this slide okay good stuff well that's that brings us to an end in terms of the the topics we thought as a panel were important to to keep your breast of as we head into the early parts of 2022 we will probably as we did next year do an update into the middle of the year and probably updates and if not dramatically change our views that's what we're hoping is that you you've got a sense of what we're thinking in terms of the current market situation the market dynamics the market narratives and the market structures and price points that we're paying attention to in the near term as always you know it's you know you're pretty much looking at tea leaves until until we get closer to some of these key events that we're heading into the Fed expectation and the rate height cycle obviously being absolutely paramount for for this year so what I'd like to do now is just briefly open up a Q&A here if anyone's got any questions with respect to anything we've covered or they have a topic that they feel is important to them that they'd like us to give a perspective on you can either type that into the Q&A or into the chat box and and I'm sure one of us will be able to to give some sort of informed perspective on it so we'll just we'll just open that up now and and let's see if we have any any issues that require clarity or or someone wants to open up a new topic for a discussion so like I say if you type into the chat box or into the Q&A box equally if you don't have a question it's helpful for us if you type an N as then we know we've done a really good job of explaining our thoughts and perspective on the on the current markets and and we can wrap the session up here well guys I am I'm guessing from the the current radio silence that a round of applause to to all of you as as you've done a fantastic job of of informing group on your your insights and perspectives as we head into the early part of this year and like I say we will will aim to reconvene middle of the year and and reassess where we're up to and where we see the next next major opportunities for the for the second half of the year so I'd like to thank my guests Mike Joseph and James for their time this evening thank you and we will we hope to join you all again in in the middle part of the year you can catch us all pretty much through the the tick mill blog with our updates near term in terms of trading opportunities and and our opinions on our markets and how things are developing pretty much on a daily basis so thank you very much guys for your time this evening and thank you for all those who attended I hope you've enjoyed this and got some value goodnight everyone good bye see you next time