 Hello, and welcome to the Outlook for the Week Ahead. If you're based in the UK, I hope you've enjoyed the long weekend, and congratulations to Her Majesty for the Platinum Jubilee, but straight back down to business, and let's talk about some of the major headlines from the weekend to be aware of, and also an Outlook for the Week Ahead. We've got, of course, things like the ECB meeting, Chinese trade data, and bookended with US inflation metrics, of course, critical at the moment to try and assess the Fed's policy maneuvers going forward. Kicking things off, though, let's talk about oil prices. And the reason why is a really interesting article on Bloomberg, and that's that the US may allow more sanctioned Iranian oil onto the global markets, even without a revival of the 2015 nuclear accord. Remember, they've been trying to crack that accord for months and several round of negotiations, but have failed at every turn. Of course, this was the one that was disrupted by the former US President Donald Trump. Now, what Biden could decide here, according to this report, is the need to bring down record high pump prices ahead, of course, of November's midterm election and does that outweigh the benefit of strictly enforcing sanctions? Of course, needs must. Biden is particularly weak in the polls at the moment. It's looking very pessimistic from that perspective, going into the midterms and his control on the Congress, particularly that in the Senate. And so he's looking to do everything he can in order to change the direction of what energy prices meant for prices at the pump, which, of course, is impacting the consumer and therefore the electorate. Biden, all of this timing has come as Biden is aiming to participate in a re-add summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council at the end of this month. So as you might have read or heard about last week, he's softening the rhetoric as well, not just with Iran, potentially, but also with Saudi Arabia and specifically Mohammed bin Salman, who he's had a big falling out with over recent years since he took the helm at the White House. And this has all come as Russia being suspended from OPEC is meaning that other countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are going to have to fill that void and pump more. And of course, Biden wants Saudi to do that in combination, particularly or potentially with the more relaxation around the enforcement of Iranian sanctions means more oil on the market, the prices of energy he's looking to bring down in the oil space, which will bring down then prices at the pump for the U.S. consumer ahead of the midterm. So all of this very tactful in that situation. In separate news then, a few other things that I would mention over the weekend. Saudi Arabia, they've actually raised oil prices for its biggest market of Asia by two dollars 10 analysts really looking for an increase of around a dollar 50, so quite a bit more than expected. And that means from June, the price is going to be around six and a half bucks above the benchmark that it uses. And the rationale really for this is because some of the major economies like we've had in China over the last two weeks or so, starting to see some a bit of a turning point, perhaps peak covid with the spread that has meant they've had very onerous lockdown start to be gradually loosened. And that means then that demand should start to pick up. And it's that's the Saudi see it time to start raising prices again as that starts to pick up sticking with Biden overall. Another interesting article on Bloomberg from the weekend was this and this is in a similar vein where President Joe Biden's Commerce Chief, a lady called Gina Raimondo said it might make sense to lift tariffs on some goods as a way to tame the hottest inflation in almost four decades. So almost like a multi-pronged attack here from the administration looking to directly try to influence then the amount of crude oil in supply to directly bring oil prices down or at least to stop them being so hot. But at the same time, reviewing the tariffs that have been in place ever since the Trump era and have somewhat intensified under Biden and whether or not that could be relaxed in order to just bring prices for general goods a little bit lower. One of the things here is still an aluminium, which of course are very critical to the relationship between the US and China. That's said to be not really on the table at this point in time. But what is then are other products, household goods, bicycles, these types of things that the Commerce Secretary said, these sorts of things make sense to perhaps see some relaxation in those tariffs and asked if the administration would consider ending duties on billions of dollars of imports from China. This was the type of response that was issued from the weekend. So again, I think everything that comes out now from US politics has very much squarely got the midterm results in mind. So not too surprising in terms of the commentary and the pivot that we're seeing towards being a little bit less strict with a number of these things coming out of the White House. Other things to be aware of just having a look and update on the Ukraine situation. The latest there is that Russia has taken aim today, Sunday at Western military supplies for Ukraine, launching airstrikes on Kyiv, the capital that it claimed destroyed tanks donated from abroad. And of course, this comes in the context of what we heard last week where the US announced plans to deliver some 700 million US dollars worth of security assistance to Ukraine. So somewhat symbolic with these actions, of course, Putin trying to send a signal directly to the US and to others within NATO. And in recent days, Russian forces have focused capturing Ukraine's eastern cities and particularly then continuing their push in airstrikes and cities in villages in the Donbas region, of course, on the eastern side, which borders land with the Russian country. Other things then to just quickly talk about. This could be very much a talking point, specifically domestically in the UK. How much of influence is it going to have on the British pound? I would say perhaps not too much. We've been here, it seems, many times before. And essentially, this is about a vote of no confidence. What's emerged in the FT today? Just a short while ago is that Boris Johnson's key allies are preparing to defend him in a challenge to his leadership. As they conceded, it was increasingly likely that the rebel conservative MPs had reached the key threshold trigger for a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson potentially as soon as this week. Now, how this works, if you're American, it's a little bit complicated. But essentially, for such a vote of no confidence to take place, the name you need to listen out for is Graham Brady, who's the chair of the influential 1922 committee of backbench Tory conservative MPs. And he must receive 54 letters calling for Boris Johnson to go in order to then get the process underway on the vote of no confidence. Should Johnson avoid a vote in the coming days, then the next thing that we need to be looking out for about whether or not he's going to have longevity in his position as the leader of the country is going to switch to results of two crucial by elections, which we're going to see on the 23rd of June to give you a bit of a flavour of what these are. This is going to be Johnson's challenge in Wakefield is an area in particular. So again, these are all very much kind of litmus tests to see how much ground the conservatives have lost through the various different scandals, particularly that we've had more recently with the current government. Johnson's challenge in Wakefield is highlighted by a new poll that's come out this weekend, suggesting that the Labour Party was on course to take back that seat, which was gone conservative for the first time in the last election in 2019. It's the first time it flipped from red to blue since 1931. And that was when he had that really big result. Now, to give you a bit of an idea here, I've got a map of England and you can see here these blue areas. These were all the areas that switched changed political allegiance from one party to another. And you can see here, here in the Midlands, but also in Northeast Wales and also in the north, you can see areas like Wakefield here. This is what's known politically in the UK as the red wall, typically those who've always voted Labour. But as we saw in the previous 2019 election, a lot of those flipped and it's these ones that could be quite key to determine the shift of powers or not on whether Boris Johnson could stay or go. The other area is in Tiverton and Honerton, a Tory stronghold with around a 24,000 type majority. But the bookmakers have installed the Lib Dems as odds on favourite to win. So a lot of the conversation is this isn't about Labour being the victors here. In fact, perhaps they're not so popular. It's the alternate shifts that we're seeing to alternative parties like the Liberal Democrats or the Greens, for example. The Prime Minister will attempt to shift, of course, to focus while all this is going on. A couple of things that you should be aware of. He's going to look to focus on the domestic situation, again, sympathising with the British public about the cost of living crisis. Of course, coming after this really triumphant jubilee weekend, of course, he'll try and play that to his strength, I'm sure. He's due to deliver a speech on Tuesday about the housing situation and a growth strategy ahead of a joint speech on the economy with the Chancellor as well this week. So all of these things just looking to deflect off and defend against a lot of these other things I've been talking about. The other thing I wanted to mention on a single stock basis was Elon Musk continue to get somewhat mixed signals here because Elon Musk on Saturday said that the electric vehicle maker's total headcount would increase over the next 12 months. But the number of salaried staff should be little changed. And a lot of people have seen this as a bit of a backtracking from an email sent just two days ago or prior to that tweet this weekend, saying that job cuts at Tesla were pending of around a 10 percent margin that actually saw Tesla shares finish down around 9.22 percent on Friday's session. So it's a really significant move about those job reductions. But he's kind of reverse tacked on that over the weekend. So typical Musk using Twitter to put out that new commentary and again has shifted the narrative once more. Quick look at the week ahead. Christine Lagarde, the ECB president, of course, is probably one of the key things to look out for. It's almost three months now, if you can believe it, since the Fed actually started to deliver its first in a sequence of rate hikes that we're seeing at the moment. Of course, we're very much expecting that 50 back-to-back move June, July as well, still to come. The Eurozone counterpart Lagarde will this week announce an end to bond purchases and formally begin the countdown to increasing borrowing costs in July is what herself and the other members of the senior governing council have been hinting towards. The majority of the council seems to be in support of a slightly smaller move, but market participants will be closely watching any remarks that she says, as per normal with every used to be meeting, there'll be a press conference. She's going to be challenged on this. Some of the more hawkish members have been talking about a 50 basis point move in order to match what the Fed have been doing, for example. And so what does she have to say about this? Again, the consensus seems to be leaning a little bit more towards a more incremental 25 basis point stepstone approach. However, the likes of Deutsche and some other banks are starting to fall into the 50 camp last week. Lagarde's also going to unveil new forecasts that have informed her decision on policy for this meeting, but that gives a little bit of projections that may invite comparisons with the OECD's latest global economic outlook, which is going to be due as well on the day prior to the ECB meeting. So that will give us a bit of visibility about the thinking at the moment about what they think for inflation, growth, and so forth. Otherwise, the other major thing happening this week is the US CPI and figure. It's going to come at the end of the week on Friday. It's expected to show inflation accelerated on a month to month basis during parts of record gasoline prices, excluding fuel and food. The core measure probably posted another sizeable advance that indicates potentially more sustained price pressures. But how much of this is new information? Perhaps not too much. The main thing is, is that economists are calling for kind of a repeat of an 8.3 percent year over year increase, which does then mark somewhat the peaking of what we've had, of which has led to quite a severe reversal in the dollar, which has propped up then some of the reversals in the likes of the euro currency and so on that we've had of late and the switch in your movement that we'd been seeing in the months prior. So, yeah, probably not going to detract too much from the current course of direction, the Fed around at the moment in the context of this data to come, but also in on farm perils that we had at the end of last week. A few other things to mention. Australia, interesting commentary coming out of the treasurer Jim Chalmers today on Sunday. He basically said the Australian consumer prices have accelerated from the 5.1 percent recorded in the first three months. He's basically saying inflation has gone even higher at this point. The Reserve Bank of Australia meets on Tuesday and another rate hike is anticipated as inflation continues to outstrip forecasts and the economy is holding up a little bit better than expected at the moment. Other things that I'm watching are in China, where Chinese trade data is due on Thursday, inflation data on Friday going to be closely scrutinized after the most recent purchase and manager index figures for May pointed to some improvement as the lockdowns have begun to ease in China. So I'm looking out for any more confirmation of that pattern of behavior to come out of that. The other final things, German factories in Tuesday, industrial production the next day. So midweek, I like to show improvement at the start of the second quarter, picking up from some of those supply disruptions that we've had in various different supply chain bottlenecks of late and that is it. So feel free to like and subscribe to the channel if you found that briefing interesting and useful. Any questions at all for me, feel free to leave a comment below. Be more than happy to help. But otherwise, have yourself a great week ahead. Take care.