Bank of England Emergency Rate Cut

OK, very good morning. It is Wednesday the 11th of March, another memorable day already because as you can see from the headline here, the Bank of England have cut interest rates, first time in an emergency move since the global financial crisis of 2008. So they've cut rates by 50 basis points now to 0.25%. So complete reversal of that two-part kind of normalizing, if you can call it that, that they had after the initial historical low level post the e-referendum in 2016 has been taken back. We're now back to kind of ground zero again. Um, quick read about the statement first before I look at the pound on the chart to give you my two pence of what I think about this move. They said the reduction in the bank rate will help to support business and consumer confidence at a difficult time, to bolster the cash flows of businesses and households, and to reduce the cost and to improve the availability of finance. Temporary but significant disruptions to supply chains and weaker activity could challenge cash flows and increase demand for short-term credit from households, for working capital from companies. Almost feel a little bit like Mark Carney reading out statements like that. But again, it's the coronavirus, of course, which is causing not just the Bank of England but all of these central banks to take this preemptive action in order that they know that the implications in the economy are really still yet to be felt because the virus is still building at this point of time and quarantine areas and other areas is bound to happen at some point. As we're going to have a look at shortly. Cases in America now north of 1,000, Italy north of 10,000. So these numbers I don't think are surprising, but we're getting inevitably closer to that point where you're probably reading this morning lots of other major companies around the world continuing to tell people to work from home and so on. So, you know, the the kind of lockdown that Italy is being put on is probably going to happen in these other areas. And that's a key risk for markets. So Bank of England have taken that emergency step. Now, what has the pound done? Well, the pound initially blipped lower quite aggressively, as you would imagine. As you can see, this candlestick here— let me just put it on like a shorter time frame so you can see it. This was the move, completely reversed at the point of time of which I now speak to you. After we saw an initial blip of +100 pips. And I would say that that's completely to be expected in terms of that reversal. I definitely would not think that the pound would continue that move. I mean, a couple of things here. For one, from a fundamental perspective, it wasn't a matter of if but when the Bank of England were going to cut rates. Two, they were never going to cut 25. Market would be too disappointed with that. They'd have to go 50. So that's not a surprise. And then, you know, just in the kind of context of things, think about the price activity from yesterday. I was off the desk for large parts of the afternoon, but I understand the pound was down already significantly yesterday. And, you know, I'm not here to spin the conspiracy theories, but inevitably I'm sure perhaps some people positioning for the inevitability of a rate cut to come. So I don't think this is a surprise at all, is my take. It was going to happen. It was just about when it was going to happen, and they've executed it ahead of time. Given the fact that the Fed already have kind of shot their, their gun last week, ECB will do tomorrow as well. You've had the RBA and BOC. I think given the fact that the Bank of England, you would have had to have waited until the 26th of March So I guess there's some logic here behind that. So yeah, not, not a continuous move, not a sustained move, and quite frankly, I don't think— I think that's it, it's over. So I don't think there's too much to read into it, to be quite frank. The other thing a lot of people are talking about is the UK budget, of course, but there are a couple of things I want to point out with this. Now, before I get into the details of the budget and what are they going to say today and so on, one thing to be clear from a trading point of view, the budget is pretty much always a non-event. It's very much more a political staging post. We're talking about the kind of, look, the, the period of a government then balancing its books over the next kind of period of multiple years. And so that, in addition to the fact that as a political exercise, a lot of the information about the budget— if you just go on The Telegraph website this morning, for example, you can see the entire budget already. I mean, it's not like it's this hidden thing that they release and we're all shocked by it because it's brand new information. Think about the objective of the government. They want to drip feed in all this information because they've been promising it ever since they've won a general election. So we know what's gonna come. I can already tell you Boris Johnson, in terms of the phrases he's gonna use about, "This is a budget for the people not left behind," and all this type of talk, and that's not market-moving. So what are we expecting? They're gonna set the biggest stimulus in a decade to fund infrastructure. Again, this is one of those key pledges during, and what arguably led to this majority government that we now have. So Rishi Sunak, obviously been in the job for only a couple of weeks, about a month now, he's going to promise record spending on infrastructure across the country. The government then is set for a huge increase in their borrowing levels because, you know, you can't just spend for nothing, you've got to borrow more money. And we're going— that's an interesting point we're going to have a bit more detailed look at in a moment. So in terms of some of the breakdown, the finance minister or the chancellor will pledge £600 billion by the middle of 2025, according to people familiar with the matter. Again, this targeted on the delivery of those promises that led to their kind of romp home in the election that we had in December of last year. Interestingly, though, Sunak, then he did inherit somewhat more of a fiscally prudent Sajid Javid. So if you think about it, you know, part of the reasoning for putting the pressure on and, and, and really getting Sajid out was part of this playing ball with Number 10 and going down the strategy of really delivering on a much bigger, more aggressive than traditional for a Conservative Party fiscal spending. Now, definitely in Sunak they have a bit more of someone on board of that view and what he's going to deliver. But the current Conservative stance was, of course, under Sajid Javid, a commitment to balance the day-to-day spending and revenues by 2022 and '23. So again, what's going out and what's coming in being fiscally prudent or hawkish, whichever way you want to use the terminology. However, you can pretty much forget that. But what has and can be used as a, I guess, a get-out-of-jail-free card by the government is they can say, well, it's the virus, isn't it? It's the virus, it's the problem, so we've got to borrow more and we've got to spend, of course. And so, you know, politically, is this going to damage them by breaking a pledge on balancing books? Absolutely not. I don't think so. So they can get away with that and they can really start ramping up their gilt issuance sales. And that's the really one part I think that's, um, that in my mind has traditionally been, if there is a tradable part of this event, has been when the, uh, the Debt Management Office or the DMO, they typically at the end of the budget, the budget starts at half 12 Typically at the end, the DMO will release their gilt issuance, which I have seen move the gilt market before. Now I know not many of you are trading gilts at this point in time, but just so you're aware of that. And this is what we're looking at— gilt issuance is going to rise to its highest level in nearly a decade because again, they've got to fund this ambitious spending program that they're going to do. Um, so yeah, I mean, I'm not going to talk any more about the budget. They're going to talk, it's going to dominate the UK news, I'm sure, for a period. But if you think about it, trying to— you know, I do sympathise with the Chancellor a little bit because he's trying to make a budget for an economy which is going to be particularly impeded by the severity of something we don't yet know what the impact's going to be, which is the coronavirus. and so this budget which gets written now might well be completely redundant within 4 weeks' time. Let's say at the moment if we look at coronavirus— coronavirus in the UK is still very low, 382 confirmed cases, but let's say hypothetically speaking that number goes north of 10,000 in the next 2 weeks, then goes to 25,000, 30,000 prompting then not, let's say, contain— more containment, yes, of the outbreak, but then complete quarantine areas in places like London, for example, well then this budget probably needs reviewing at that point. So with that being said, and people mindful of this, yeah, I'm not really sure how the implications for the budget today on the pound, I think, are limited. We shall see, of course, later on midday. So yeah, they're the main things on, on that side. Trump, on the other hand, you remember yesterday markets were feeling quite confident after we had that, that kind of 2,000-point rout in the Dow to get the week underway. We bounced quite aggressively before just moving a bit lower at the end of the session. But a lot of this was talking about Trump looking to come forward with more fiscal firepower. And what's happened here is Trump basically had a couple of comments yesterday. He told Republican senators that he wants a payroll holiday through the November election so that taxes don't go back up before voters decide whether to return him to office, according to people familiar with the matter. The problem is, and I think the problem with a lot of these fiscal pledges, is that this is the— this is it. I mean, at the moment, Trump has, you know, he makes all the right noises at all the right times, but the problem is, is that in order to deliver this type of thorough economic package of measures to counteract then the coronavirus, takes a bit of time. And also it takes political kind of clearance in Congress for it to be approved, because it's not as if they're gonna sign off just any blank paycheck number. It has to go through. So it's timing. It's not that it's not going to happen, it's the period of approval and then to implementation that I think from a market's point of view, it's kind of— it can't come quick enough at this point because people are panicking a little bit. Because in North America, just to have a look, cases now of coronavirus are are north of 1,000. The director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDCP, said overnight that some parts of the country now have gone beyond any containment effort. And so, as we are anticipating, this number is going to go from 1,000 to 10,000 probably quite quickly at this point. So yeah, quite a few people, market commentators talking this morning, and perhaps a little bit of disappointment, the fact that Trump actually, when you read these articles beyond the kind of headlines that he's promising, when you actually get down to it, there is really, the administration doesn't have a particular detailed plan. And that's probably to be expected. I mean, how can they so quickly? But this is where You know, people want to see that detail now because without detail, well, the likelihood of anything getting passed is, is limited. And so therefore, can this actually be delivered? And, and that's going to dent market confidence in, in this type of very sensitive marketplace that we find ourselves in. All right, few other things. Um, oil prices falter after Saudis vow to boost production further. I did hear a couple of Russian comments earlier. Um, let me just see if I can see— Russia's energy minister called for a meeting with Russian oil firms on Wednesday to discuss future cooperation with OPEC, according to sources on Reuters. Saudi energy minister appeared to rebuff the suggestion. So still at the moment, a lot of kind of apprehension about this new outbreak into all kind of deterioration, I'd say, in the relationship between the Saudis and Russia. Can they patch that up? I mean, one of the things I was reading this morning is that the strategy from the Saudis is to really force the price low almost by flooding the market in order to then bring everyone back to the table because they're all going to have to take action if the price remains at a particularly low level, particularly around these low 30s, sub-30 point. Obviously an incredibly high-risk strategy for a country in its itself, where its kind of fiscal breakeven price, uh, is, is almost higher than everyone else, uh, that's involved, that being, uh, the US and Russia. So yeah, one, one to watch. I'm sure more comments and more sources to come. Um, and then the other thing was a very brief word because I think this is way down the order of play of significance for markets, but just so you're aware, uh, it was Mini Super Tuesday Yesterday, this comes after Super Tuesday, which was then when Biden won surprisingly 10 of the 14 kind of bigger states, including obviously California and Texas were in focus. He won the latter, but Mini Tuesday was last night and basically he swept that as well. Michigan was the big prize. I think that calculated about 125 delegates. And looking at the numbers now, Next week there's more primaries to come. Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Arizona, some of the bigger ones. Biden number now 817 delegates, Sanders is now 658, meaning that Sanders would need to pick up about 57% of the remaining delegate seats. But given the states still to come and their political general historic leaning, it's mathematically possible for Bernie Sanders to win. Incredibly unlikely. So it would be of no surprise now for Bernie to, to step aside, and perhaps we don't even see these other, these other delegates run. It's a done deal now for Biden, but we had already kind of come to this conclusion after the performance of last Tuesday. So yeah, nothing much changes. The bottom line is Biden's going to be going against Trump for, for the US presidency later this year. Calendar-wise, let's have a quick look at things. In half an hour's time though, following the emergency rate cut from the Bank of England, Mark Carney is going to be giving a press conference. That's going to come at 9 AM London time, so keep an eye out for that. But again, we've already kind of covered the, the main part of their, their press conf— or their press statement that they've released, and a lot of this is to get ahead and support business and consumer confidence on the difficult time emanating from the virus, to bolster cash flows for businesses and households. I think that's basically the summary at this point. And then I guess he's going to reiterate the fact that they'll continue to monitor conditions and act accordingly as they see fit. I would say is probably what you're going to hear. Is he going to move the market? I don't think so. And as you can see, the pound now is even higher than where it was. So yeah, I don't think that— I don't think the whole thing is too much to get too excited about, to be quite frank. Um, moving on, you do have UK GDP estimates for, for Jan coming out this morning. You get industrial manufacturing output figures, you get goods trade balance numbers, and you've got the UK budget as well, which, which typically starts to kick off at 12:30, but we've already discussed that. And then in the US Do not forget about the time differential if you're based in the UK. So the London and US time zone, 4 hours New York, 5 hours Chicago until the end of the month. So you're going to get US CPI that's going to come out at 12:30, the oil inventory data at 2:30, not 3:30. I'll go over the APIs from last night in a bit more detail closer toward that time. And that's pretty much it. You do have an auction coming out, a longer-dated Bund auction coming out from Germany. Well, both 10 years, Germany and the US, $24 billion in the latter from the US Treasury. One thing, could we see an ECB surprise today? I doubt it in terms of them having to do an emergency cut. Don't forget their rate meeting is tomorrow. I don't really see much in the way of benefit of them dropping that bombshell right now. However, one thing I will say is that I think it's probably quite likely that you will get an ECB source report, whether from Bloomberg, whether from Reuters, whichever accredited media agency this may be. I do think that the ECB might well drop in a little hint or two via some sources just to calm the market, let them know that, look, something is coming, um, we don't need to act right now. So a bit of a strategic play perhaps using the media in that way. All right, let's get Sam on, let's see what he's got to say, and then I'll catch you guys later. Thanks very much and have a good day.

Hi guys, yeah, thanks, Ant, bringing in the pound full reversal. How do you like that? 200 pips down yesterday, another 100 on the pop lower, and now we are up 32 for the day. Pretty incredible, but I guess someone knew what was going on yesterday. So how to look and to trade this? I think it's just one of those cases where you let the market tell you what's going on. Obviously the press conference will be key in the budget as well worth keeping an eye on. So whether you would want to have any sort of open positions going into those things or not, I'm not too sure. Um, obviously just worth— before anything's marking up some key points of interest. You can see when we accelerated the move lower yesterday, it came once we broke this 129.88, a level to be aware of. Just literally where we're trading, you've got some resistance. We found 129.50, the high of yesterday afternoon, and also this point point here as well, back on the 6th. So, you know, keep a watch on that. Also, to the downside, I think really, you know, you can see, uh, this low that we had overnight yesterday has acted as a bit of support and then actually ignited the move higher again. You can see we came back up, came back down, and pushed. So I would expect a bit of resistance here, but, you know, back down to this level or not, I'm not too sure. However, you can see it's obviously pretty key The euro, did they know something yesterday as well? Um, potentially, uh, the Fib 382, the level from— let's just get it up— what month was that? In and about the 25th of June, uh, has hold— held quite well. I think for this move to really continue lower, we've got to get back, back down below the 31st of December, which we did actually close below there yesterday. On the futures, but we'll see how we materialize today. Looking at this opportunity-wise, it sort of followed, uh, the, the pound initially lower, hasn't quite recovered yet. You can see perhaps, you know, if you're looking at lines in the sand, 1.1343 for me is as good as any. The pivot as well— support, support, support, breakthrough, then resistance before breaking up and coming back down. Yes, a bit chopped up, but I think, yeah, if you're short the pivot, it stops the other side, isn't it? So if it breaks through, then fine, we can perhaps continue to push higher and, and so on. Those lows you can see now marked up there, 1.13 handle, just a bit above. So quite a key point below there, be looking for 1.1250 to come into play. Some interesting resistance around, uh, the 5th there before getting to obviously that round number, uh, as well. Whether we can get complete reversal of this move higher or not, I think it's going to take a bit of time. But there is of course a lot of those previous highs to keep an eye on, uh, going forward. Moving over to oil, we had a bit of a pop lower this morning, uh, literally as soon as I woke up was seeing this trend line break. Then there was the headline that came through. Just get that trend line on there in the mix. You can see here, nice put through, came back and push lower to test that low of the day. Hence why you always take your targets before your support levels. And you can see we had a bit of a double bottom there, so worth keeping an eye on that. If we do push higher, trendline as well worth focusing on. And of course, we actually in early trade did spike above this resistance point we've had in the futures, up towards $36. However, we are now back below it. Keep an eye on that trend as a bit of a guide going forward. Forward. And of course, this pivot area is worth keeping watch on. Some support from yesterday here at 6 PM, double bottom there, and the pivot as well before, you know, these next moves coming down, which is, you know, 60 cents below, which is obviously a decent, decent-sized move here in oil. But all markets— S&P, uh, just catching a corner of my eye. Dow just having a bit of a, you know, a 5-minute mayhem, nothing new there. But keep an eye on this pivot here for the S&P. Let's bring in a little rectangle to mark all of that up. You can see here, test once, twice, three times in that 15-minute. If that's to pop through, then fine, we can, you know, look to, to push higher. Just how important, however, is going to be that double top that we had yesterday? Is that going to be the, the signal that we do look to, to come lower intraday? The pivot, I think, can be be a good guide, just considering how well it's been respected for now. Push lower, of course it can come, uh, be looking maybe for a bit more confirmation, some sort of trendline break or, you know, something like this. If we can get below there, then fine, it's, you know, go lower. But, uh, you know, decent pushes yesterday in both directions. It's an unpredictable market at the moment, and headlines are ultimately gonna, gonna drive this. So It's a tricky one. I haven't traded it too much yesterday, or this week I should say. So, you know, I'm not— I think like Anthony was saying yesterday, predicting an overall direction for this market right now is tricky. You know, I said higher yesterday and, you know, we pushed on in the morning, then we came down, went limit up, we came down, then we finished back on the highs of the day. But, you know, there's plenty of opportunities to go got in where they wouldn't have worked. And I think that's the key here out there, is to have your ideas, have your levels of interest, i.e., the pivot. And if the right setup comes, then trade it. If not, you know, having a bias on this market at the moment can be quite tricky. Gold, uh, yeah, messy yesterday. We dropped lower, I think it was, uh, yeah, late on. I think we're still in the office, it just started to go around sort of 6, 7 o'clock. We got that pop We initially took out the low that we had back on Friday, but that offered a level of support on that sort of false break. And we're now back into the mix where we were pretty much during the briefing yesterday. I would mark up it as a, as a resistance zone here for gold. It's not of that much interest, I think, you know, to me at the moment. It's very choppy. I mean, just look at these previous days here. It's, you know, not much going on. These support levels are just so wicky, you you can see price comes down, you think, all right, where are we going to go? And we spike back up. So even if we do come to this resistance level, just be aware, really wait for that confirmation for a long if that's the case. And if not, 15-minute close comes back below, well, it's a good opportunity to look for the short. And that's really how I'd, how I'd look to play this because you've got the range down 1642, then 1670 to the upside, and then really is a level beyond that, 1681. I think other than that, I would just really be patient. You know, I could argue 1655 as well. I'm gonna quickly go over there, DAX, just to wrap it up. What are we in now? 36 minutes into European trade, just trying to, uh, completely undo its push, uh, lower that we had, uh, in the first 15 minutes or the second 15 minutes. And we're now trying to extend beyond that. Keep an eye, of course, on this gap for the DAX. And for me, that's the next potential opportunity. Good level initially where we had opened 10,716. So a push beyond that, be aware of the pivot, and then obviously that gap fill at 10,842. Below where we're trading, a lot of support. You can see here going back to the 9th, uh, and then the 10th, and obviously today as well. So perhaps slightly more range-bound in looking. Uh, I don't necessarily think a, uh, a short up at these highs is actually a bad trade, to be honest. But first of all, we would have to feel that gap. So keep a watch on that. Let me just change that back to the pound. As usual, guys, any questions, please, uh, do let us know. We'll be on the chat throughout. Uh, equities at the moment just trying to push higher, but with resistance coming, uh, right now. Oil, the pivot for me is, is a pretty key level. Gold, I would wait for, for higher up or lower down. Euro, I'm still short in my trade, so my bias is to the downside. I'll just be a bit wary that we have ECB tomorrow, and after what the Bank of England have done, you know, is this now going to start to be priced in? We'll have to wait and see. As usual, guys, any questions, let me know, and hope you'll have a good trading day, and I'll catch you all tomorrow.