 Okay, very good morning. It is Monday the 23rd of August. Hope you had a fantastic weekend. Of course, this week is going to be bookended on Friday with this guy Jerome Powell is going to be given his much anticipated Jackson Hole Symposium speech and obviously that's going to be one of the main focal points for this week, this month as we look out for the details around the commencement of tapering at the Federal Reserve. But busy week overall in store we've got the flash PMI data is coming out in just a short while for the UK and the Eurozone in the US today for Monday to kick off the week. We've also got German iPhone Tuesday and then you've got the ESP minutes coming out later on in the week and from a US perspective you've got things like the home sales data on Tuesday, durable goods Wednesday, Q2, second reading of GDP on Thursday then of course POW with personal income spending data and a final University of Michigan reading on Friday as well. So plenty to go out in the week ahead but let's just have a quick look as we always do at the charts this morning and actually we've got a fairly positive open to kick off the new week. So quick look across these different charts and both Eurodollar and Cable in the top left-hand corner are up about 20 and 36 pips respectively. So a bit of a reversal if you like of sorts of what we have been seeing across most of these charts. The dollar index this morning is a little bit softer It's down about two tenths of 1%. We have seen equity index futures trade higher. The DAX up already around 132 US indices following the overnight positive tone that we've seen in the Asia-Pac region of where all bosses traded on a firmer footing. Very quiet in fact in terms of major weekend news flow. I've only got two kind of smaller points that I want to go over in a moment before I go into that actual week ahead calendar. So very much just more positive sentiment overall So we have had Treasury yields tick up a little bit and the dollar dipping for the first day in six And so that's also helped WTI crude just claw back what had been some pretty persistent losses So during the Asia Pacific session and really since the open of electronic trade where we open pretty much at where we finished at the close on Friday We've just continued to move back higher. So having traded at the 61 handle We're now trading back up at 63.43 up about $1.27 this morning Elsewhere Tino is down two and a half gold Respecting a relative range for the time being again a little bit of injection of pace with some of the dollar weakness seen overnight To bring it up to the top end of a short-term trading range here from the last couple of sessions For the time being up around $3 So couple of weekend news stories. I said I would get you up to speed on starting with Fed speak from Robert Kaplan who is a non-voting member But I thought quite interesting because Kaplan as you know sits at the much more hawkish end of the spectrum And in fact he came out and said on late on Friday that he's open to adjusting his view that the Fed should Start tapering its asset purchase program sooner rather than later if the Delta variant strain persists and that hurts economic progress So just quite interesting of course timing going into the Jackson Hole speech on Friday that Kaplan's kind of just eased off The hawkish pedal a touch here Then the other thing that was of interest over the weekend as I said overall It's pretty quiet though on that front in terms of actual meaningful news for the open this morning Was this that the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has told senior White House advisers that she supports Reappointing Jerome Powell as the Federal Reserve chair according to people familiar with the matter And the general interpretation of this is a couple of things for one her endorsement definitely Would increase the likelihood of him being reappointed obviously this is Quite different to the Trump era where obviously having the Treasury Secretary giving such a Stamp of approval is likely to be listened to Very much so by the president and so as far as markets take this It's not as if this is a short-term positive reaction that's created these moves this morning But indirectly the markets do like continuity Particularly around policy setting of something of such magnitude as monetary policy So generally speaking whenever you have a replacement there's a degree of uncertainty around that new person Are they going to be able to handle the kind of gravity of the situation are they going to change the direction of Fed policy? And all of that can have negative connotations as far as market price is concerned So overall markets tend to react more positively to continuity of which this would be the case So yeah, something just to be of note in terms of the timing of this So a Fed share essentially serves a four-year term and so Powell's four-year term comes up at the end of February and hence the reason why this discussion is happening right now Just before I move on don't forget. We've got 22 days left until the new amplify me Platform launches so for any students whether school, college, university or graduate This is going to be your kind of one-stop shop to take part in our latest free Simulation technology that we use all of the big banks and also our community where we'll have tons of exclusive content That the team will be putting out. 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Don't forget to like and subscribe Otherwise look at the calendar for the week ahead as I said Monday We really kick off in earnest with the flash Manufacturing service PMI so as ever definitely these are going to be potentially market moving for the respective currency markets so euro and Pound to be keeping an eye on today But overall the greater context of the week certainly is going to be more driven by the US dollar But short-term intraday keep an eye on those flash PMIs coming out this morning Then just quickly an overview of Europe first and then we'll talk about the US calendar on Wednesday you've got the German iPhone data coming out And that's going to be always quite interesting to watch and that comes out on Wednesday morning And then pretty much that is it as far as mainland Europe is concerned The only other thing of note is going to be the ECB minutes, which we're going to get on Thursday and as far as they are concerned It's going to be scrutinized for any clues over the ECB stimulus plans before a decision Within months on how economic support will evolve after the current end date of its pandemic purchase program The PEP comes to towards a conclusion at the end of Q1 of 2022 So much like what the Fed are doing with this kind of Front-running the communication of tapering Takes many months for this actually be implemented And so we start turning our attention to the ECB for similar signs given that predetermined end date of that Extraordinary stimulus program that they inaction during the pandemic crisis Otherwise for the US. Yeah, it's pretty busy as well. So this afternoon You get the relative flash PMI data as well coming out in the States today You've then got new home sales on Tuesday Durable goods Wednesday get the second reading of US Q2 GDP Expected to be unrevised at 6.6% on Thursday Alongside initial jobless claims expected to still be tracking down at around the 350 margin Jackson Hole does begin But remember power doesn't speak until Friday alongside the power speech You're gonna get personal income spending and core PC price index and the final University of Michigan reading as well So I'm not gonna really go into power too much at this point in time that obviously is the key event Analysts at ING have said and this is generally the market consensus that most are expecting the Fed to shed light on its tapering decision Which could be announced as earlier September and started in October That would be the much more aggressive on the hawkish side in terms of that timeline The other thing that's going to be in focus is the length of the tapering cycle as well So with a few FMC members recommending quicker fed tapering cycle Then was most recently seen back in 2014 the last time that this kind of sequence was was exercised by the Federal Reserve But as I said, I'll be going over this in way more detail when we get to the back end of the week The other thing as well is just keep an eye out for any other kind of Fed commentary any source commentary The tapering announcement and people's looking for for more details on that is a big event on Friday And so up into that point it wouldn't be surprising if we get some little more Details just kind of drip fed into various news agencies So something to be aware of and the final thing to mention was what's happening this week is that the House of Representatives in US politics returns from summer recess early to consider the US president spending plans including the multi trillion dollar budget What the FT was saying at the weekend is that Democratic congressional leaders in the White House trying to pass this huge budget And their one trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure package in tandem In order to satisfy them both the progressive and the moderate wings of the Democratic Party Yet the tactic has exposed those some sharp rifts among Democrats, i.e. trying to push through both bills at the same time And has raised the possibility that neither the budget nor the infrastructure bill will make it over the line So again, just something to be aware of and keep an eye on I'm sure you're going to get more commentary out the likes of Nancy Pelosi and others as we go through the week But that is it. I'll let you guys get on with the session Feel free to drop me a comment on the video if there's any questions at all and have yourself a great great day You know great week ahead. Thanks very much