 Okay, morning guys, hope everyone's well. Let's get this briefing started. So we are Thursday, 26th of September. Three more trading sessions to go of quarter three. Of course, Monday next week we'll round up the final day of September. Final day of Q3. So we'll move into October. It'll be interesting to see how the likes of Corporate America got on as we... Well, and Europe really perhaps more importantly as we hit that sort of quarter three earnings season. But let's get... I mean, I'm just showing you the charts here. I'd say that what's happened this morning and let's say what's happened overnight market's been pretty subdued. You've got reasonable amount of sort of consolidation. If I just pull up a quick look just to set the tone. This is the S&P 500. Let me just get rid of that ellipse. So just draw a couple of lines up here. We got this level that we've been looking at. The low from the 23rd of September that got broken on the 24th of September quite sharply. We had that low on the 24th posted and that kind of got a really strong couple of tests yesterday. Once in the morning, once in the afternoon, in the end it kind of just about did the business and we had to move higher into the US close last night. And that kind of got us back up above this price point 29.82. So that was 23rd of September low and really that's formed some support throughout the Asian session although we kind of slipped through it in the last few hours and it's kind of acting almost as a little bit of a centre point if you like for what's been very tight consolidation. If you think about it, let me just add a sort of fib series to... Let's just take that move that we had here. You've got a 50% fib of let's just take that 24th of September sort of range going down actually to the low of 25th of September. You might, I don't know, you might draw it there as well. There's a few options for where you locate the top of this fib series but either way both of the 50 fibs are coming in around about that low from the 23rd of September and this is where we're consolidating. So actually pretty subdued overnight, not really much market action to look at from an equity point of view when you're looking around some of the other asset classes. Well, let's check cable here which had that nice move lower through yesterday. Obviously we'll talk about that, we'll talk about Boris getting dragged back from New York early and then the showdown in the Commons. Certainly the pound devalued through yesterday's session as a result of this and we're testing yesterday's low just over the last sort of 15, 30 minutes but we are still trading around about those loads from yesterday. So a little bit of weakness here for the pound and that's looking like it may well be a feature of this morning. If that level from yesterday breaks, let's check the commodity space. Gold's been on the downside yesterday. Let me just add a level right there. So we've got a low here from the sort of back on the 20th. We almost got there and that sell off from yesterday. I'm just going to mark that up with a couple of double bottom from yesterday just above that low from the 20th and so then we've rebounded somewhat overnight but we didn't quite make it back to the pivot. We didn't quite make it to the double bottom from the 23rd of September and so technically just kind of not quite clean and we're just drifting lower here now I forgot but I'd say generally speaking things are relatively quiet as we start and look at last night and we look at this morning's action so far. Let's get into the headlines then. What are you guys reading about as you open your web browsers this morning and of course if you're in the UK then it's obviously dominated as per usual by the Brexit latest and so Boris in the Commons yesterday I mean it was quite extraordinary. I don't know if you saw any of it, saw any of the sort of Commons live action or if you saw any of the action I don't know if you watched the news last night. It was quite extraordinary. I don't think I've ever seen it fired up quite like that an unbelievable session of Boris being defiant and ultimately as expected I think watching last night I don't think anything happened that was particularly surprising you could have predicted it pretty clearly Boris coming out very defiantly saying that ultimately the Supreme Court really it wasn't their place to make a decision on this. It was a parliamentary decision and really just ramping up that strategy of his where it's about preparing for the general election and he's positioning himself as the people's champion and it's the people versus parliament but it's not even just parliament now he's now adding the Supreme Court so it's really the people versus the establishment with Boris being the people's champion wanting to get Brexit done but being blocked on every path by the establishment so what happens next? You know the deal here basically Boris on the sidelines is trying to make some effort to negotiate a deal remember that he's got until the 19th of October we've got an EU summit on the 17th of October the 19th of October is the deadline given that new bill that was voted through parliament a couple of weeks back if there's no deal by the 19th he has to legally request an extension of Brexit but will Boris do that? Well firstly two things will he organise and negotiate a deal let's deal with that one first I don't think so I think history tells us that trying to get this deal trying to solve this Irish backstop problem has proved nigh on impossible and ultimately I think it comes down to is Boris willing to sacrifice Northern Ireland to solve the backstop and take the UK out of the EU on the 31st of October and even if he did that by essentially saying that Ireland will remain aligned with EU regulations but the rest of the UK will not and effectively putting a customs border in the Northern Irish Sea if he did go for that I don't know if that would get voted through parliament anyway so even if he did use that as a strategy would parliament vote it through? So really I guess it comes down to the 19th of October will Boris request an extension? I don't think so I don't think it's really in his interests to do so I think Boris will go ahead and try and leave the EU on the 31st of October with no deal but you saw what the Supreme Court's done this week so you would have thought the Supreme Court would again vote and rule on that and make that illegal and maybe that plays into Boris's hands I reckon that's his strategy now leave on the 31st with no deal it gets ruled illegal by the Supreme Court we then have an election and then Boris representing the people versus the establishment that's his plan so what's going to happen over the next few weeks with regards to the pounds value well I think in the near term I think the downside's the pathway and I'm going to go to the daily chart here and that's because we've moved a lot higher in recent weeks if we just mark up a few lines here the 120 handles key we went down to test that area twice in August 9th of August and then again on the 3rd of September where we indeed did break it briefly but that 120 handles pivotal that's the 2017 and 2016 low then we ramped higher over the last few weeks as Parliament got a bill through that supposedly prevents no deal Brexit so that's helped to lift the pound and of course we moved up to this 126 handle area and we've come off now this week as tensions have escalated in Parliament Boris has been forced to come back from the UN General Assembly early what can Parliament do in the next few days they can actually look to try and put through a bill that actually forces Boris to request an extension earlier than the 19th of October but will that make any difference I mean Boris isn't going to request an extension on the 19th never mind earlier so I'm not really sure Parliament reconvening is going to change much other than keep the Brexit uncertainty levels elevated we've then got the Conservative Party conference next week normally what happens is the Prime Minister or the Conservative leader asks the Parliament for a recess of a few days so the Conservative Party can have their party conference but actually they do need MPs to vote this through there is talk that actually Labour are going to block it and that actually Parliament won't go into recess whilst the Conservatives have their party conference enabling the let's say the opposition to remain in Parliament to debate Brexit further what that means for the party conference in Manchester I don't know other than if it does cut the ironically if it does cut the Conservative Party conference short and well it's held in Manchester this conference and if it's cut short that's bad news for the Manchester economy because these conferences are massive and the big Conservative road show turns up and they do a lot of consumption and they spend a lot of money and if it's cut short well then that's bad news for the Manchester economy and Manchester's Labour so actually it could be ironic Labour could shoot themselves in the foot if they block a recess for the Conservative Party conference it's actually bad news for one of their own constituents so there's a few different angles to look at here but in the end be aware of where Cable's trading now that sell-off yesterday has brought us to the high that we saw mid-September if you take the 9th, the 10th and the 11th of September then you got a triple top just shy of the 124 handle we're kind of sat there now so keep an eye there any kind of breach of that today let's say and I'd expect this market to drift down to 122 over the next well maybe into the end of the week let's just say alright so that's the Brexit your Brexit update obviously headline risk elevated what else is going on let's talk Trump, why not you can't not talk Trump obviously so he's in the middle of another impeachment saga and you know the story here the Democrats are suggesting that he has been withholding money from the Ukrainians in return to trying to get information about Joe Biden's son maybe some kind of dodgy dealings here with a Ukrainian company where Joe Biden's son sits on the board and somehow Joe Biden managed to get the prosecutor to step down from investigating this company and like it does sound a bit dodgy so Trump's been trying to get some info on this the Democrats have said that in the telephone conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian president Trump threatens the Ukrainian president and said I'm withholding military aid $391 million and withholding it unless you give me information on Biden that's what the Democrats are saying and they're saying that's an abuse of power you should be impeached Trump's obviously been just brushing it off and obviously the transcript of this telephone conversation was released to the press yesterday and it's kind of you know as a neutral I'd say the what you see in that transcript is kind of in the middle ground so in that transcript and if I scroll down on the screenshot here I'll highlight what he said he said Trump said there's a lot of talk this is talking to the Ukrainian president there's a lot of talk about Biden's son that Biden stops the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great so that's Boris's quote so he did bring this topic up with the Ukrainian president however I mean from the transcript what he did not do is threaten to withhold funding in return for this information so you kind of got this middle ground here he's kind of stepped over the line maybe but I don't know maybe he hasn't I don't think there's actually I don't think the Democrats have much of a case here personally I don't really you know I'm not a Democrat I'm not a Trump fan so I'm kind of a neutral and I don't really think that the Democrats have got much on this and it's purely just an election process scandal that they're trying to exaggerate and blow up but ultimately in terms of impeachment risk I don't think there is one what Trump did do in Trump fashion was try to throw out another snip bit of a headline to try and distract people so he talked about China and he said yesterday that actually we may get a deal done a lot sooner than you might think was his kind of throw away comment now being a skeptic when it comes to Trump I personally think this was purely thrown out there like throwing a dog a bone if you like to distract the press from the Ukrainian impeachment situation so I don't buy too much into his comment what is important on the US-China trade war risk is next week's negotiations you've got China representatives delegate a delegation coming to Washington for further talks that's where we're going to get some proper news Trump's throw away comment yesterday I don't think particularly relevant what else is happening before we look round the market it's interesting here's one ECB's Lautenschlager has stepped down why is this important two reasons number one perhaps more importantly number one is she's the German representative on the ECB's governing council so she's stepped down she hasn't been quite clear and forthright about the exact reasons but most likely it's because of her opposition to the dovish direction that the ECB have taken at their last meeting where they cut rates marginally from minus 0.4 to minus 0.5% on the deposit rate side but they also restarted their QE program remember they're going to start printing 20 billion euros a month open-ended so there's no deadline they're going to print it until it's not needed anymore who knows that's probably forever but anyway Lautenschlager has stepped down that just shows that there's a lot of division up at that top level at the ECB council there's a big fracturing and it's not just Lautenschlager that's been voicing her opposition to the point where she's now stepped down you've actually got the German representative, Lautenschlager not that she is anymore, she's resigned but you've got the Austrian representative you've got the Belgian representative you've got the French ECB representative all saying were opposed to this move, now what's critical what's interesting about that those four economies make up more than 50% of the eurozone so you've got effectively monetary policy representatives representing more than half of the region opposing the ECB's actions now Draghi's done it he's cut rates and he started QE but where does this put Lagarde remember Draghi was he obviously tries to maintain a neutral stance he's Italian you could say therefore being more sympathetic to the let's say peripheral southern part of Europe that does require stimulus Lagarde is French Lagarde is taking over from Draghi does that subtly shift the sort of dovish sort of dominance at the top of the ECB and will Lagarde be less dovish will there be political influence on Lagarde from France that then sees the ECB step a little bit further away from this dovish move they've taken, I don't know, we'll see so this is quite an interesting development obviously Germany will replace Leitenschlager and they'll go light for light the other point was that she's the only single female on the entire 25 person ECB council so they are now without a female until November the 1st and Lagarde comes in and she'll be president and obviously female but most likely Germany will replace Leitenschlager with another female representative but it just caught my eye this morning and just shows you that there's division there's not a consensus on that council and that just ups the ante and makes things a little bit more uncertain as to where the ECB might go in the future a couple of stories to finish on before we look at the markets the economy weakens across the board this is early indicators so Bloomberg have this economic gauge aggregating the earliest available indicators from financial markets and businesses they kind of gather together a whole bunch of different metrics and I'll show you which ones in a minute but this is their gauge this is their speedometer if you like and the economy is struggling we're across down into number 3 now that means that the economy is cooling this is a fifth month in a row so they're using indicators for trade factory prices, small business confidence, lots of different they're using stock levels in iron ore, iron ore prices and so on so about 10 different metrics all of which are thought to be a lead indicator towards economic activity going forwards and again Bloomberg reporting that it remains in the blue for a fifth month in a row final point on the headlines you saw this yesterday I assume Saudi Arabia is all output bouncing back I was talking about this at the start of the week having been in Saudi last week this is not a surprise they're back to 8 million barrels a day and as the Saudi energy minister said on Monday they expect to be back to full capacity by the end of next week so this story is very quickly drifting into the ether and perhaps not something we should be too concerned about from an oil supply risk point of view so let's finish by having a look around the markets then just finishing on the data calendar for today's session so let's give them that, I was just talking about oil let's have a look in here at the crude oil situation, as I speak it's just hitting new lows for the session let's just mark up a few levels here other than I've got the pivots on this chart but if we put a couple of levels in place, you've got this low point that we had from yesterday, that's the low of the week so far and as those headlines hit the wires yesterday, obviously that was a negative as the supply comes back online I'm going to pick out that low here not that I don't think it's going to be important today but the 23rd of September low, that got broken on the 24th and that really set up this downward trend that we saw going into that low from yesterday afternoon we bounced I will put in this level which was what's the day Tuesday's low kind of roughly, a bit messy but formed some resistance last night and we're drifting though, we're down through the pivot this looks bearish and I'd say we'll be drifting down towards the 56th handle probably over the course of the next hour or so, yesterday's low ultimately being that key price point on the downside but if we look at the daily chart it's definitely a different picture well, actually let me just draw a trend line here let me just get rid of that one and draw a new one this is a daily continuation chart and you do have some it depends on where you draw it I'm going to draw it roughly here but you do have somewhat a trend, upward trend support coming in which might as not today but like tomorrow if we were to get down to yesterday's low tomorrow 55-55 you may well see this double support then that's the lower the week plus this trend line coming in so just be aware of this trend line this extends back through August and September so just be mindful of that but when you look at this chart we're kind of bang in the middle here of the range in the last few months and we've now retraced most of that Saudi drone strike spike to the upside and if Saudi oil production gets back to full capacity next week then we will retrace the whole lot we'll get back to worrying about things like the US-China trade war risk and the demand side negative risk that that presents so that's your crude chart let's have a look at the euro dollar let's have a look at about light and Schlager and the ECB there and the euro right now you need to be conscious of the fact that we're testing yesterday's low so this is an important level of course I'll just mark that out yesterday's low we had some downsides throughout yesterday's session let me mark in the low point from back here earlier on in the week on the 23rd of September so we broke that that coincided with S2 setting up an extension lower almost down to the 110 handle here so we're testing yesterday's low now the 110 handle just below there, I mean yesterday's low is at 110.03 so it's basically on that 110 handle and if I go to the daily chart that was the low point on the 16th of September there's obviously a psychological level but do be conscious that perhaps the biggest level now is the double bottom of 2019 which is the third and the 12th of September's lows so we have had a couple of forays down below 110 this month already looks like we're setting up for maybe another one so keep your arm yesterday's low really important support level being tested on Eurodollar as I speak as that euro is weakening you're actually getting a bit of upside on the DAX so stocks are okay you're seeing upside on the S&P as well it's trying to get up towards the high point from yesterday let me mark the level here for the DAX which was the high going into the close yesterday really is yesterday's high we're almost there so a little bit of upside here for stocks mild, it's mild but the euro weakness perhaps helping where the DAX just pushing higher but it's quite quiet on the headline front this morning we've had a bit more Chinese news I should just say three minutes past eight Chinese Commerce Minister says US and China are closely communicating and preparing for making trade talk progress next week so slight positive upbeat comment from the Chinese about next week so that's maybe helped here just edge the sentiment positive for stocks but do remember the proof is always in the pudding and we'll find out from the trade delegation next week of course exactly how things go I'm going to finish the briefing by looking at the headlines and so let me switch up my screenshot and we'll finish off here so we've got US, I mean this morning nothing really of no so we've got some data at 9am money supply, annual growth of M3, money supply out of Europe we've got some loan data really this afternoon we're looking at US GDP now do be aware this is the final reading for quarter two remember quarter two that's April, May and June we're now at the end of quarter three this is so old for this data that it's actually not particularly relevant so whilst this is in bold on my data calendar here I personally wouldn't have it in bold I don't know who put it in bold it's very old news I know it sounds important US GDP but it's quarter two not really relevant initial jobless claims then coming at 1.30 pending home sales coming in at 3 o'clock so from a data point of view it's not that interesting today we'll have some retail sales I know we'll have more interesting we've got some inflation related data tomorrow so from an economic data point of view nothing major but check out this speakers chart you don't see many more speakers than that in one day so there are headline risk on the central bank front Kaplan's getting involved he's dovish but he's a non-voter ECB's Deguindos he's dovish Cunliffe from the Bank of England he's also dovish Bullard's dovish as well Feds Clarida is kind of neutral you've got Daily so we're probably going to be spoiled for monetary policy related headlines but to be honest just understand the Fed made their move last week they cut rates the ECB have made their move so actually the Bank of England might be more interesting from Cunliffe are the Bank of England going to cut rates for their next meeting but I'd say by and large you've got a lot of chat here from central bankers I don't think much of it is going to be particularly market relevant that would be my feeling alright so I guess it's just listening the fall out from the commons but otherwise it might be more of a technical day to seeing the DAX sneak up through yesterday's or just testing yesterday's high now the Eurodollar testing yesterday's low so we're at some interesting price points today's low alright that's it from the desk for the briefing guys enjoy your session and we'll catch up tomorrow