 Okay, hope you're doing well and had a fantastic weekend. It's Sunday the 19th of December and gonna go up to speed on The news that's of note from the weekend and what you need to be aware of for the calendar for this week ahead as you can Imagine going into the final run into Christmas and after the deluge of central bank decisions We had last week the week ahead is actually pretty quiet in terms of the docket the major real day comes on Thursday when we get US core PCE and durable goods coming up But otherwise Monday and Friday super quiet So straight into the headlines. I'm going to focus on the news rather than the charts because I know you guys are all Perfectly well capable technicians yourself so I'll get up to speed on on the news that matters and starting off with the UK talking about COVID and More importantly for markets about the potential then for further restrictions to come in most likely after Christmas that could then have Impact on the economy and subsequently then valuation of the pound and and the economic performance of the country going forward And then we'll talk a little bit about politics because you've had the Brexit minister frost also resign over the weekend Which is very important for those negotiations. So starting off then health secretary Health secretary Sadji Javid was asked whether he would guarantee The whether he could guarantee a so-called circuit breaker lock down would not be imposed within days And he basically refused to say no what he did say was that there's no guarantees at this point in time in the pandemic He said we keep everything under review And obviously a lot of this coming after as I'm sure you've seen if you're based in the UK a number of UK papers fill Speculation about tighter rules being brought in straight after Christmas and the reason for that is Sage who feeds in their scientific research into the government cabinet advisors They came out at the end of last week and they basically said that restrictions on indoor social contact and indoor Hospitality were likely to be needed before the New Year's to prevent a peak in daily Hospital admissions similar to last January January When nearly 4,000 COVID patients were hospitalized every single day at that point in time So the numbers today Sunday UK reported eighty two thousand eight hundred and eighty six Coronavirus cases 45 deaths the case number actually down from the prior days figure on Saturday Which was just over 90,000 but Just be aware of the fact that context to figures that generally tend to be a little bit lower of the weekend So it'd be much more telling come then the beginning of the week of what these numbers look like in terms of the trajectory of the case rates at this point in time the other thing then is Talking about Brexit and here you can see this chap Lord David Frost has quit government citing concerns over the quote Direction of travel in the latest blow to Boris Johnson. We've talked about all the different things that have been going on Against him at the moment following that big rebelling that we had on the COVID measures Voted in Parliament last week. It's understood that Johnson is no longer seeking the immediate axing of the European Court of Justice. We talked about this in I think Thursday or Friday's briefing and Not getting rid of that oversight from the ECJ over the enforcement of final rules for over the Northern Ireland protocol It's something which is kind of one of Frost is Frost's red lines and he's been a vocal vocal critic of the ECJ And he also has apparently voiced a lot of criticism about the new restrictions being adopted at this point in time In the UK, so he's now out According to the press reports this weekend, no prominent Tories at least that spoke into the financial times at the time of recording Said a leadership challenge was not imminent However, Frost is a popular figure in the party and his concerns reflects growing discontent, of course, which we've been seeing Growing from Tory backbenchers as a point of note. I've just seen the latest tweets come out and Boris Johnson's appointed Liz trust the foreign secretary to oversee now Brexit negotiations going forward So that will be the person that you can identify for for those proceedings Otherwise a quick look elsewhere on the COVID side of things in the US Anthony Fauci the top medical advisor feeding into the Biden administration has said that lockdowns in the US will likely not be necessary even as COVID-19 cases increase Even so though he did say many hospitals may be strained as the Omicron variant spreads particularly in regions with lower levels of Vaccinations and again state by state. There's some quite big differences on that particular point So Fauci saying that I'd say this is a fluid situation He says this now really it's data dependent. Can he changes mine further down the line? Of course he can So I don't really read too much into these comments at this point But I guess it's they're not near nearing a point of new restrictions being announced But you would expect that because the Omicron development is much more matured here Than what we're seeing over in the states at this point in time at least but no doubt They will soon start to see that emerge more aggressively and then in Europe, Italy Their government is considering new measures to avoid a surge in infections during the holiday period according to Italian press over the weekend and separately in the Netherlands they'll return to a strict lockdown as of today Closing schools non-essential shops and limiting the number of visitors allowed in households Remember they were already seeing quite an aggressive pick-up in cases even before Omicron came in hence their kind of heavy-handed Approach to going back into pretty much full-on lockdown like we would have had here in the UK kind of this time last year and Then for US politics update on the US stimulus bill We continue to go back and forth. I have seen some slight contradictory tweets Come in literally in the last minute or two since I wrote my notes But US senator Joe Manchin the moderate Democrat Who's very much key in the 50-50 split that we have in the Senate for the Democrats to pass any type of bill? And of course the one up on the table at the moment for discussion is that 1.75 Trillion domestic investment bill the bill about better one Manchin has said today that he's not willing to support that so it's kind of thrown the whole Thing into jeopardy at this point in time a few other things that I've read that are quite interesting here Particularly because we're coming to the end of the year and next year of course is a mid-term year Now that doesn't come until the back end of that year, but nonetheless the campaigning will be happening throughout the year So Manchin is causing a bit of an issue at the moment over this domestic investment bill. However Manchin's decision leaves in limbo many other items. So here are a couple you should be aware of for next year So including a push by Democrats in high tax states like New York, New Jersey to restore state and local tax deductions So again, he's resistance to that Other items that have little to no chance of passing without Manchin and climbing back on board include Medicare Negotiating some drug prices a paid family leave benefit tax credits for electric vehicles Transition to cleaner energy. So you can see how Challenging this is going to be for Biden going forward and he's already Seen a lot of his popularity diminish over time You know that his Approval rating is one of the lowest for many US president in their first term in history at this point in time So they're continued struggles there. Does this mean much for the market open this morning? No, not really I don't think many people were expecting a silver bullet deal to be done this weekend specifically But nonetheless, this is an ongoing situation As far as the week is concerned as I already mentioned You'll see Monday's not even included on this calendar because really there is nothing happening at all from a docket point of view Tuesday Very quiet again US current account. Nothing really too exciting Wednesday You get GDP numbers Q3, but these are final readings. So think about it We're heading into January now what Q3 performance looked like and that's even well before we've had the Omicron variant Start to become more prevalent. So that data is really of no consequence at this point in time So that's Wednesday and then Thursday is this slight bit of interest You get the core PC numbers get US weekly jobless claims University of Michigan's to final number And you got new home sales coming out of the States as well Analysts have noted that if the PC report follows a similar suit to the November CPI report It may not be something too much to worry about given CPI is more or less in line Or be it very high at the time of its release. So they're all in all I'd say It could well be a case that volumes will be a bit lighter this week Owning to the fact that last week was so intense with all the major last kind of big events of those central bank decisions happening That things start to go into a bit of a long down into that final home run into Into Christmas into the break, but nonetheless Continue to keep you informed. I'll have my briefings going out as per usual all the way up through till Wednesday of this week until I then break for Christmas So otherwise, yeah, I'll catch you tomorrow. All right. Take care