 Okay, very good morning. It is Monday the 25th of January. Hope you're doing well. Hope you managed to brave the snow if you're based in the UK. Had a little sprinkling over the weekend but all good. Ready to give you the latest kind of fundamental briefing for the week ahead. Gonna capsulate some of the main things that happened in the press over the weekend that you need to be aware of and look at the fundamental factors that are in focus this week. Turns out the technical levels and trade setups intraday and for the week ahead. I'll let my teammates do that on the Amplify live channel. Again got the live stream going on throughout the entire day. Also got the masterclass, the FMC happening in the evenings that will be covered in real-time then. So remember to check out the link below for Amplify live if you've not done so already. If you're watching this on YouTube really appreciate it if you could like and subscribe to the channel. But look let's get straight into it and talk about what's going on. And a little bit of risk on appetite this morning. Albeit particularly moderate I would say. So stock index futures seen marginally higher than as that having moved up. Generally speaking through the recommencement of trade overnight just saw us technically break above an area of what was resistance that we had back at the end of last week on Friday that managed to hold price. So using that as a bit of a launchpad then to push higher through the early part of the Asia pack session. So then as that training up about 100 points at the moment DAX then following suit and sympathy up about 83 S&P up 16 and a quarter at the moment. As such then gold prices down about six and a half bucks. The 10-year pretty flat uninteresting overnight but down two and then consequently oil prices up about 27 cents and marginally higher training at 52.54 at the moment. As far as the currency markets are concerned I think too interesting to be quite frank slight softness in the dollar down about one tenth as Europe comes in and that means that Euro dollar and cable both slightly higher perhaps a little bit out performance in sterling training up 32 pips and above the 137 handle at the moment. But look let's get straight into it talk about some of the news flow then and what you need to be aware of for the week ahead. Starting off with this this is still arguably one of the main kind of narratives driving financial markets at the moment and that is now that we've had the present elect now being formally put into place. So Joe Biden now in the White House what is then the timings and the size and scope of the coronavirus relief program he wants to push forward. Now over the weekend few developments there to be aware of so officials in his administration tried to try to head off some concerns that have started to emerge amongst a select group of Republican senators about the size and the expense of his proposed 1.9 trillion dollar new program. This of course comes after they had only ratified and signed off that 900 billion just a few weeks ago. The push for coronavirus relief there's kind of two things here to be aware of and one is a little bit more practical the fact that the second impeachment of Donald Trump obviously takes place the trial begins on February 8th. Some Democrats have been quite upfront saying look let's try and get this bipartisan agreement through you've got our backing to try and get the stimulus in before then because there's a timing issue where then it's going to conflict and draw probably unnecessary attention away from what the greater necessity is which is to provide more relief for the people on on Main Street in that respect and then the second thing is that you know impeachment trials they only go as to further fuel the kind of deepening divisions that exist overall which ultimately then might have a knock on domino effect then for the likelihood the passage of certain elements of this this latest relief bill so couple things to look out for there it's still an important factor of course to be monitoring throughout the week no set kind of dates or times to be aware of but it's something that's going to be ongoing throughout the whole week in itself. Moving on then to COVID what's the latest there what's a couple things to update you on the UK's Health Minister Matt Hancock was speaking at the weekend he warned the coronavirus vaccines may be less effective against the new variants of disease such as those found in South Africa and Brazil and that stricter border controls are therefore justified so this is the latest kind of stats over the weekend on Sunday there's 77 cases found now in the UK of that South African variant even though they had stopped transportation coming in from that particular country so it's something to just keep an eye on perhaps in terms of how quickly that number starts ahead north and certainly perhaps catching a bit of attention given the fact that he said quite expressly that the the vaccines may be less effective against the new variant in itself. On the other side then there's a few other things to be aware of France is set to be or set to go into lockdown within days so mainland Europe amid concerns of a new wave of infections driven by the UK variant and citing people basically from where the matter they've said Macron could announce the country's third lockdown coming on Wednesday night so don't find that too surprising to be to be quite honest and hence the reason why it's not really impacting the market right now still at the moment the ongoing nature of lockdown seems to be somewhat bedded into expectations at least for the time being but we're expected confirmation of that midweek coming from France. The other thing then is about the kind of rollout of the vaccines this was something out of the FT at the weekend AstraZeneca has warned EU countries to expect significant shortfalls in terms of the early deliveries of its vaccine. The EU is expecting a hundred million doses of the jab by the first quarter of this year but people with knowledge of the discussions has said that the company is unlikely to meet even half of that figure. This has caused quite a lot of backlash between various different EU nations against AstraZeneca and of course comes in the context of a lot of people starting to scrutinize the relative slow vaccination rollout comparative to what we've seen in some of the other countries and to help give you a bit of context on that this is looking at a kind of list going in order of the number of doses administered per 100 people so you can see in Israel for example it's nearly half of the population at this point in time in terms of per hundred people whereas then scaling it down the UK is now at 10.21 US at 6.82 but you'll note then really in terms of the major European nations it's not until you get down to Spain that that's one of the highest and that's down at 2.51 again comparative to 10.2 in the UK so that's one of the I guess things to keep an eye on in combination with this it's interesting to note that in total the UK and the US have each spent about seven times more up front per capita on vaccine development procurement and production than that of the European bloc and although markets not showing too much sensitivity to this at the moment obviously the quicker they can get the control or at least get the virus under control get these these vaccines administered as quickly as possible that would then consequently lead to the inevitable reopening of the economy at some point in time so at the moment Europe is lagging a little bit which could be something to just monitor going forward as well otherwise sticking with the mainland we're looking at Italy did see a bit of a continued elevation in yields that broke BTPs Italian bombs out of there broke the bounce out of the range they've been training at the end of last week on Friday in fact from Italy we saw 10 year yields right go to 0.75% and spread against German buttons widened about eight basis points which is the widest that spreads being since that November of last year so the latest of the weekend basically is that Conte is resisting pressure to resign he's still trying to club together a formation of a new coalition if he fails to recruit enough senators ahead of a vote which is penciled in for Wednesday or Thursday this week to approve the annual report justice minister then then again this will cause the next step of the process to come to fold and take us one step closer to snap elections as much as most still see that as an unlikely prospect at this point in time so we're still tracking this in the background as well just very briefly on the oil front WCI crew not reacting too much to these headlines but I think it's something to be aware of Iraq plans to cut oil output in January February to make up for its breaching of OPEC plus quota last year this is per the demands that were placed upon them as part of the existing deal from some of the recent OPEC meetings that we've had the aim is to pump 3.6 million brows per day which would in fact as far as Iraq go be the lowest in about five five and a half years in fact and compares to around 3.85 million brows per day that they would have been producing only back in December separately as well worth knowing for Libya members of the Libyan parliamentary force responsible for safeguarding the oil ports ordered a whole to crude exports so guards have ordered stockages at Asaida Hariga and Ruslan of ports the three largest of course in Libya which is something to be aware of they have said the reason rationale for this is they're trying to press home salary demands at the moment so something has to be aware of moving on then let's have a look at the calendar what's on the agenda for the for the week ahead because there there is a quite a few things you need to to make note of as far as today is concerned you do have ECB's Christine Lagarde giving a keynote speech 845 he's also speaking on the panel of 415 now one place where of course she is speaking is here Davos for those who are new to financial markets this time of the year it's always the World Economic Forum where all their major heads of state central bankers influential people across the board they will meet in Davos however this is all happening of course because because of Covid virtually but we do have a number of key speakers so just to run you through Chinese president as you can see here Xi Jinping is going to be speaking today Macron will be speaking on Tuesday giving a keynote speech as will Angela Merkel the German Chancellor you've then got ECB's Christine Lagarde and Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey are both speaking today so quite front-loaded today just to repeat you've got Lagarde Bailey ECB Bank of England you've also got President Xi and then tomorrow Macron and Merkel so how much they normally say at these events well it is a I guess an event which which does draw quite a lot of the eyeballs let's say so it could have the propensity to move markets because it's a decent it has quite a lot of visibility I guess for market participants how often though in the past has it been used to kind of pivot a new strategy or policy kind of hint very rare but nonetheless when all of these kind of major influential people which markets are sensitive to our speaking it's always worth paying note to the actual agenda so I'll share of the Davos schedule in the Amphilive discord room every morning going forward otherwise for this morning you've got the German iPhone figure coming out a bit later and then you've got a couple of ECB speakers in the Chicago Fed National Activity Index later otherwise moving on to Tuesday and you do get the latest jobs data coming out the UK bearing in mind though that unemployment rates expected to remain steady at 5.1% so at the moment not counting things like the extension rollover or furlough what we had in the UK so still it's a little bit misleading to look at it just on its top level figure going forward but then for the rest of that session the US Conference Board of Consumer Confidence number Richmond Fed Manufacturing sat someone Tuesday Wednesday then the main event being and one of the main things for the week is the FMC what can we expect in the FMC well it's the first meeting since a couple of things we've of course seen now the Senate switch in Georgia and that meaning then we've got a blue wave so getting a bit of a temperature check for what does Pau and his colleagues see the impact of that being on their policy going forward if any we've also had quite a response in markets on the back of that in terms of yield movement so any commentary on that and we've also had a lot of back and forth about this idea and notion of tapering albeit after that first kind of came about about two weeks ago it's gone very quiet since they kind of put that to bed that it's probably too early to be talking about that for the time being they're kind of the key things to be looking out for no actual monetary policy change of course expected this time round I saw a good summary comment here from ING who I think really hit the nail on the head and it was that they suspect the Fed will retain a cautiously optimistic tone at the press conference while seeking to downplay the prospects of any meaningful change in Fed policy any time soon as I said I'm going to be covering I'll do a full preview I'll cover the full event live on Wednesday night on Amplify live if you want to join us so beyond that looking to Thursday you've got the German state CPIs and then the US Q4 advanced GDP figure up 130 on that day alongside the weekly jobless change numbers as well which we continue to track at this present point in time given their fairly elevated nature and in Friday it's all about then the GDP figures coming out of mainland Europe you've also got the core PCE numbers coming out of the the US as well the other thing that does definitely ramp up several gears this week is earnings there are 118 I believe corporate earnings coming out the S&P 500 this week alone that includes 13 of the 30 Dow components almost half of the Dow's reporting here are some of the highlights so just to give you a bit of a flavor really Tuesday it starts to heat up a little bit pre-market J&J GE3M the kind of larger market cap names then after the close Microsoft AMD pre-market Wednesday Boeing AT&T after market it's probably the biggest evening you've got Apple Tesla Facebook all coming on Wednesday and for Apple their expectations are for them that the successful iPhone 12 holiday sales are expected to drive their revenues over then a hundred billion dollars for the quarter for the first time in the company's corporate history then Thursday pre-market McDonald's after market lights a visa and then Friday Caterpillar Eli Lilly Chevron Honey Wells just to name a few so yeah things get a lot more busy here as I said I'll do my best to share kind of individual previews in a bit more detail for some of the bigger market cap weighted firms but that is it so otherwise feel free to drop me a comment if you've got any questions at all and then hopefully I'll see you online live in Amplify Live alright have a good week take care