 Hello and welcome to CMC Markets on Friday the 20th of October and this quick look at the week ahead beginning the 23rd of October. Once again we've come off the back of a week of record highs with the Dow, DAX, S&P 500 or making new records on virtually a daily basis. FTSE 250 has also hit a new record high while FTSE 100 has made a new record close. Yeah, I think when we look at the gains that we've been seeing over the course of the past few days it's hard to skate I think the feeling that we're well overdue a correction even the Nikkei 225 has gotten on the act I think it's highest levels since 1996 but I think there are some early signs that may be momentum maybe starting to take a turn and that's in the form of commodity prices we've seen copper prices hit three-year highs we've hit palladium prices hit multi-year highs but there is I think some early signs that maybe it could be seeing the first signs of a possible correction certainly in the context of palladium prices I did an article earlier in the week with respect to that and a potential key reversal day on the daily chart for palladium we can see that born out with this particular pattern here made a new multi-year high in October but we closed quite significantly aggressively lower so this could be the beginnings of a potential double-top on palladium what we don't want to see is a move back above those highs that we saw in September and October which means in as long as we stay below that then ultimately I think we could see a drift back down towards around about the $900 level so certainly keep an eye on the performance of palladium also keep an eye on the performance of copper as well as iron ore because I think there is some evidence that we could be starting to see a little bit of a short-term top starting to form on all of those three commodities over the course of the next few days we've also seen some disappointing earnings announcements and while we have seen some downward corrections throughout the week they they have been fairly well brought into but are they are they an indicator of certainly an underlying slowdown in the global economy we've seen disappointments from Unilever from Nestle from Reketben Kaiser all consumer retail companies and we saw some very weak retail sales numbers out of the UK so you need to keep an eye out there and I think that's also tempering expectations with respect to a UK rate hike in November events in Spain also taking a turn for the worse as I record this video the Spanish government could well be laying the groundwork for triggering article 155 and seizing direct control of the Catalan Parliament so there could be a little bit of geopolitical risk there now the key events for this week going to be keeping a particular close eye on the European Central Bank rate meeting I think that's very very key because there's been an awful lot of speculation overall about what the ECB will do with respect to its tapering program a lot of speculation that the ECB my start might may start to temper or temper back or flesh out if you like market expectations of what's going to change as we head into 2018 at the moment the asset purchase program is 60 billion euros there has been an awful lot of speculation as to whether or not they'll take that back to 40 over a shorter period of time or 20 billion euros per month over a longer period of time ultimately what Mr. Draghi will want to do is try and temper rate expectations as much as possible he does not want to see the euro significantly gain over the course of the next few months certainly it's gaining quite significantly against the pound obviously an awful lot of that is down to sterling weakness and we'll get some indication of that later this week with the first iteration of first quarter UK the third quarter the first iteration of third quarter GDP from the UK economy and that could well be disappointing given the very weak retail sales numbers that we saw in September but certainly in the context of what we're talking about now European central bank rate meeting is going to be a I think a key risk event we've also got the Bank of Canada rate decision as well not expecting to see any change there we've already seen two rate rises this year I think it's quite a tall order to argue that we'll see a third one given the uncertainty surrounding the NAFTA talks between the US and Mexico so I think with respect to Canada I think unchange is probably the likely outcome there with respect to the ECB listen to the press conference and listen for details as to what measures the ECB will coalesce around with respect to tapering their asset purchase program key resistances on euro dollar at the moment around about when I at 118 40 and 118 and 19 we've got this downtrend line here so need to keep an eye out on that also got a third quarter US GDP coming out later this week will there be a significant hurricane effect and will that take the edge off the very strong numbers that we saw in Q2 which came in at 3.1 keep an eye out on that obviously there's going to be an evolving speculation about the new Fed head the new Fed chief Trump's already had meetings with Janet Yellen he's met your own pal Kevin Walsh and John Taylor at the moment the front row does appear to be Jerome Powell if Janet Yellen doesn't get the job and ultimately I think he's probably going to be the more dovish outcome of any new Fed chief so expect that debate to hot up as we head towards the end of the month also good idea to keep an eye out on UK bank earnings in the wake of US bank earnings we get updates from Lloyds Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland while on the tech side we also get updates from Alphabet and Amazon so that's it for this week thanks very much for listening Michael Houston talking to you from CMC Markets