 Okay, very good morning folks. It is Friday 13th of August. I hope you're doing well and before I begin with the regular briefing Don't forget to check out the market watch podcast I'll be talking to the head of trading appears current a bit later on this morning and that latest episode will be going out today So we generally discuss the major things that have happened this week and have been an informal chinwag about What we feel about that in particular news stories and how it might impact the market going forward So do check it out. It's available on Apple as you can see here Spotify Google podcast or the other major platforms Otherwise, look, let's have a look and what are we expecting for the day ahead and things are pretty quiet And that really has been the case Through August so far. So despite things like a lot of Fed rhetoric jobs data inflation figures Generally speaking market volume and volatility has been quite low Yesterday healthcare technology shares pushed the S&P to a closing high for a third Straight session and for the 47th time this year And so here's just a quick look at the S&P 500 and how it's performed through the week And you can see we're pretty much at the upper extremity of that move And of course these on the higher time frame going back to you know, just looking at the price action really which we've had since that Initial dip that we saw going all the way back to a couple of periods here through the beginning of the year But you know in context from the the low that we had at the pandemic I mean, it's quite phenomenal how far we've come But you know just clearing out some of these lines for a moment One of the more interesting things here is that if you actually look at the shape of the volatility on these candles on a daily Continuation if we start then to draw in and zoom in to where we're at at the moment You can see then that the more near-term range over the last couple of months has been defined by this kind of trend channel here But just check out how Small the current ranges that we've been trading as you can see here And this really is the August price activity is what you can see here And it's not that unusual, you know We're going to the summer typically trading volumes season the dude start to drop off a little bit And we've had a really solid second quarter earning season start to kind of wind down now So that's out of the way We're now awaiting essentially to Jackson holes and posing which is going to happen at the end of the month Of course and all eyes will be on drone power So yeah There's a lot of people just wait and see for the moment and thus resulting in lower volumes and generally lower volatility as well So the Vicks fell more than three points yesterday. We're now down to 15.5 significantly below It's running its long-running average of 20 well below the 80 plus peak that we hit at the The height of the COVID-19 crisis going back to March of 2020 So as you can see here, the Vicks has been lower towards the back end of June But we're pretty much at the lowest it has been since the pandemic essentially One thing to quickly check out here. If you're not already done. So is this handle I am now using this handle. So if you just search for amplify me the handle is 80 underscore amplify me if you follow that one I'm basically sharing stories and throughout the day. So I probably tweet from here. Maybe I'd say anything from eight to ten times a day. So if you want the latest kind of key stories in focus Do check that out and follow that handle going forward. If that's going to be helpful otherwise a quick look ahead and Some other things that are going on for one a quick talk about Asia Asian equities generally were Flat to maybe slightly negative so didn't quite carry on the positive baton from Wall Street where the S&P Obviously finished up three tenths than as that four tenths that was pretty flat overall So technology last night the states did play a bit of catch-up having generally under performed throughout the week W2I crude though, you can see here is a touch negative this morning Just fading from some of that price recovery that we had midweek So we've done about 64 cents for the time being but I think really too fundamental there to be aware of That's that's dramatic But generally speaking the overall kind of slightly sour note in Asian trade overnight is on the persistency of generally the COVID situation Still a lot of restrictions in place Still trying to tackle rising cases generally in the region given the fact that Vaccination rates are quite a bit lower in some spots than what we have here in the UK or in the US and so on The focus in China obviously remains on Beijing's push to exert more control over a range of different industries overnight Infocussed was real estate the nation suspending private equity funds from raising money to invest in residential property development And also separately a partial shutdown of a major Chinese port due to virus outbreaks has Stoped some concerns about a repeat of last week's or last year's use me pandemic shipping Situations, so it's something to just keep in mind But you know my coverage of the news this morning Generally is going to be quite brief. There really is not too much going on And so just getting up to speed on what there is to be aware of there was a Royce's pole that came out Overnight and obviously it's good to get a kind of sense check of where the general Liar that lay of the land in regard to the timing around tapering giving that that's the really next Significant piece of information in which we're waiting in a few weeks time and according to Reuters The Fed will announce a plan to taper at its asset purchases in September According to a solid majority of economists polled by Reuters Who said the US jobless rate will remain above its pre-pandemic level for at least a year so the economists looking for the SEP? plan on tapering is 28 out of 43 are looking for that eight outcome So the majority nearly 60% of respondents 26 or 43 said they expected to Fed then to start the actual Reductions of its asset purchases in the first quarter of next year Nearly all of the rest said it would happen in the fourth quarter of 2021 So the general consensus here still is as it generally has been Despite then a lot of these hawkish comments the Jackson Hole get a few more details into the month gets formalized in September They start in Q1 and then an outside chance. They start a little bit earlier towards the end of the year in December One other thing I did read just to cover off from yesterday. I was talking about Biden's kind of push Bit of pressure on OPEC to to increase supply US Bank Goldman Sachs have come out and they said they believe the White House call for OPEC plus to boost output is unlikely to materialize Given the Delta variant threat adding an additional hike in OPEC plus quotas appears increasingly likely given the recent global supply disappointment GS maintaining their $80 a barrel year-end target for crude oil a quick look at some corporate earnings And just because pretty recognizable names and sizable movement that was seen aftermarket last night This is Disney as you can see their shares skyrocketing aftermarket up around 6% their EPS Came in at 80 cents above the expected 55 revenues be expectations Disney plus subscribers exceeded expectations. They actually had a hundred and sixteen million for the quarter and parks Experiences products revenues also beat expectations Obviously as they start to see some restrictions lifted and people get back to theme parks and so on they signed up about 12 million subscribers to their flagship streaming service in the most recent quarter and Doubling its customer base from a year ago and outpacing obviously some of its main rivals in particular that of Netflix the other one was Airbnb which obviously highly sensitive to restrictions over the COVID period and Their shares you can see initially blipped up But then down finishing an aftermarket trade about four and a half percent They forecasted a decline in quarterly bookings compared with pre pandemic levels citing the spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19 So continue to struggle in the current context of that situation globally As far as candor is concerned for today It's pretty quiet nothing really major coming out in the morning in the afternoon We get us import export prices and University of Michigan sentiment Preliminary figure for August coming in at three o'clock this afternoon the headline expected unchanged few people though will be keeping an eye on the lights of the One-year inflation five year inflation Expectations just given the emphasis on that area at the moment and to see how inflationary pressures are in affecting or impacting consumer psyche at this present point in time But look I'm gonna leave it there really there's nothing much more else for me to say other than I wish you a fantastic weekend Stay safe and don't forget to check out the podcast the latest episode will be out later today. All right guys. Take care