In a late‑night market commentary, the speaker reports that AstraZeneca has placed its Phase 3 COVID‑19 vaccine trial on hold after an adverse reaction in a UK participant, marking the first such pause among the nine Phase 3 candidates. The news triggered a risk‑off wave: US equity indices opened lower, the S&P 500 fell over 1% and is testing its 50‑day moving average; crude oil prices slipped; Treasury notes rose; the US dollar index (DXY) rallied toward 93.5, while the euro and pound weakened, with GBP/USD (Cable) breaking below the 1.30 resistance level and eyeing 1.28 support. The speaker also outlines a sharp rise in UK COVID‑19 cases, especially among 17‑21‑year‑olds, prompting the UK government to tighten restrictions—limiting gatherings to six people and considering a national curfew after a local lockdown in Bolton. These developments coincide with looming Brexit deadline pressures and the imminent expiry of pandemic stimulus measures such as the furlough scheme, further feeding the flight to safety. The commentary includes technical chart observations for Cable and the S&P 500, and briefly situates AstraZeneca’s trial alongside other leading candidates (Moderna, BioNTech/Pfizer). The overall narrative links the vaccine trial pause, escalating UK infections, and policy reversals to the broader bearish sentiment in global markets.
Chapters
Okay, hey guys, I know it's super late, but we've just had some breaking news and the market is moving quite aggressively at the reopening of electronic trade. I'm filming this, it's just gone through 11 PM London time, so let me just quickly show you the charts. There's basically been some news about AstraZeneca. One of the leading pharmaceutical companies in stage 3 clinical trials in regards to their COVID-19 vaccine. And a study has been put on hold due to expected adverse reaction in a participant in the UK. And as you can see here, the reopening of trade, uh, US equity indices have gapped down, are coming under some pressure. The S&P is down already over 1% on the back of that information. Crude oil is coming back down, just continuing the, the momentum of some of the selling that we had in yesterday's session as continued COVID concerns are developing in mainland Europe. And I'm going to talk about UK as well. There's been some news, um, further to potential reversing of some of the reopening plans that have just come out from the UK government as well in the last half an hour. The risk-off sentiment, that's sparking a bid tone into general safe havens. Gold, not really buying it at the moment, but T-notes definitely elevated here on the back of this news, up 7 ticks now. And the DXY is rallying fairly aggressively. The dollar index now up through 93.50, a gain of nearly 1%. So both these major currencies now— EURUSD in top left and Cable, you know, really negative setup now fundamentally for Cable. The general kind of reverse course of general risk appetite the market had had of late You know, we've seen the reversal in US equities at the end of last week, the states coming back in after Labor Day holiday, seeing quite an aggressive selling day on Wall Street. The NASDAQ once again, the tech sector underperforming, and now you've got this negative news coming out of AstraZeneca. Just to run through a couple of the headlines here, this news only just broke a few, literally a few minutes ago. The nature of the adverse reaction and when it happened were also not immediately known, although the participant in question is said to be expected to be recovered, or to recover. The spokesman described the pause that they've now, as the company outlined, as a routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potential unexplained illness in one of their trials. Just to give you some numbers here, there are currently 9 vaccine candidates in Phase 3 trials. AstraZeneca is the first Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine trial known to be put on hold so far. If you're interested, on my Twitter account. I've taken a bit of a snapshot here of the known drugs at the moment which are currently in stage 3 or phase 3 of the development program. This includes then the Oxford University and AstraZeneca drug, which was seen as the outright front-runner here. So this is going to be some significant moves not only for the overnight Asia session but also for the reopening of UK European markets in a few hours' time. Here we've got also the current status of the likes of Moderna Therapeutics and BioNTech and Pfizer, probably the other two major competitors here for the Astra vaccine trial. The actual Astra one only began in late August, so it still is relatively early. Now, on a separate note, the other thing what we've seen just come out a short while ago is the Chief Medical Officer in the UK, Professor Chris Whitty, and the scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance have agreed that action is needed urgently after a number of positive cases rose steeply, uh, in the UK. Now, this is a chart of what that looks like. What we're looking at here is the number of infections per day in the UK, and from last weekend, we've seen quite an extreme increase, uh, in cases. Um, a lot of people have been talking about the young, generally lower age demographic around 17 to 21 that has seen that accelerate. Again, as the lockdown has gone on, people's adherence to these rules coming under somewhat question, and therefore we've seen a renewed kind of latest outbreak here emerging in the UK. And we've had similar things happening in the likes of France and other countries in mainland Europe as well. What this has resulted in is the UK have come out and made quite a big U-turn once again. Boris All of the other senior cabinet officials, you remember, at the weekend were calling upon people to go back to work. However, they're now saying that new lockdown rules that will go into force on Monday the 14th of September will now max social gatherings to 6 people. Uh, remember, a lot of these were up at around 30 people in the previous rules. Also applies to indoor and outdoors, private homes, applies to pubs and restaurants. One of the things here as well that's also just come out, out of The Telegraph, they've released this via Twitter, but it's going to be their front page story in a few hours' time when the papers hit the printers. And that is that ministers are considering imposing a national curfew, a national curfew, after hospitality venues in Bolton were ordered to close between 10 PM and 5 AM. And this comes after that news I've just said of slashing groups allowing us to associate from 30 to just 6 people. Now, the North generally, Bolton and that area specifically, has been one of the real hotspots of localized lockdown. But just the notion, an idea of a national curfew— if this gets worse, if we start to see these numbers materially move higher and we do start to see quite aggressive, more nationwide type activity rather than localized measures, this is probably the worst-case scenario that you you can imagine for the UK right now. Compounding that with all of those things I've been mentioning in our briefings of late, you've got the Brexit kind of soft deadline looming in just a couple of weeks, and we're still miles away in terms of negotiation as it stands at this point in time. You've got the expiration of a number of stimulus measures that were put in place when the initial pandemic hit in March, the biggest one being the furlough scheme. So lots of different things here. All coming at once, and the flight to quality helping the dollar, and the fundamental narrative here for sterling just getting hit once again. And now I was just having a look at the cable chart, and if I just finish on that, um, cable has come under considerable pressure, uh, in today's session, and once again in the overnight session it's looking heavy once more. We've broken 1.30 now in cable. So if we look at cable, where are we trading? We've broken that area quite a key area of resistance that was seen around 130.12 in the futures. We've just gapped down now to the low that was the support on the 30th and resistance on the 28th. Any break here, then the key area I'd be keeping an eye on— and I do fundamentally think that whether that happens in today's session when we reopen on Wednesday morning, could possibly be the case— the key I would look at here is 128. Uh, that starts to bring in then some of that key levels that we were looking at going back to the summer in June of this year. The other thing I'm looking at then is US equities. It's going to be incredibly interesting to see how this pans out once UK and Europe come back into the market. If it does remain heavy, you know, one of the things I was just looking at here from a technical perspective is that in S&P we've just flirting around the 50 DMA here, and you can see I've got an annotated chart of a couple of different things. So let me just move my, my camera for a moment so you can see everything. So this is looking at the S&P 500 on a daily continuation. You can see we've had this big rotation out of mega-cap tech, but a continuation from Thursday, Friday, and the recommencement following the US return from that long weekend. And here we are at the 50 DMA, so be quite key to see how we react here here around this level. Any further push to the downside, 328450 looks good, uh, as an area of potential support. That would be the high before renewed China tensions really started to take place towards the back end of July. So yeah, that's it guys, just wanted to jump on very quickly, talk about those breaking stories. Again, from a news point of view, the biggest one: AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine study has been put on hold. Due to its expected adverse reaction in participants in the UK. This is one of the front-running clinical trials that was ongoing in stage 3 of development. You know, is this then, uh, one of a— another catalyst to add to some of the bearish sentiment we've seen developing in global, particularly US indices of late? Remember, the speed and shape of the economic recovery really depends on how COVID performs and how the governments react. And we've seen this in the UK, which would be economically negative. And then also, how quickly does a vaccine come to market, which is the Astra news. So again, breaking news just out, um, thought I would share it. It's getting towards midnight now in the UK, so I'll let you guys get some rest, and I look forward to updating you in a few hours' time in the morning. Okay, have a good night.
