Facebook Down 4.9% On Whistleblower Report & Widespread Outages On Instagram & WhatsApp

Yep, there goes Twitter. And the reason why, of course, as you probably know if you've been trying to access your Instagram account or WhatsApp, widespread outages. And of course, those two social media platforms owned by Facebook. And how have Facebook shares performed today? Well, not well at all. We've just gone through the close on Wall Street and Facebook shares have actually had their biggest drop, as you can see here, 4.89% on the session. It's the biggest decline that they've actually had in an intraday session since November of 2020. And in fact, if we just look at this heat map, there is quite clear, distinct sector rotations happening here, which I wanted to talk about a little bit. Why am I doing this briefing now? Well, I'm actually going to be stuck in meetings all day tomorrow and Tuesday. So I thought, just given some really interesting moves in the equity space, sector rotations, we'll look at the tech, the NASDAQ 100 futures on the chart. Also want to take a look as well about Bitcoin and talk a little bit as well about the pharma stocks as well. There's been some interesting movement today as well as looking ahead to Tuesday session. But yeah, just sticking with this, this theme here, very similar to what the head of trading, Piers, was covering on the briefings last week, and that is Megacap tech getting a pounding again. Uh, technology stocks in general underperforming. The Nasdaq finished down about 2.2% comparative to losses of just shy of a percent for the Dow and around 1.3% in the case of the S&P 500. Now the underperformance in tech stocks coming as they're likely getting hit the hardest because of higher interest rates means higher discount rates for future earnings. And as summarized quite eloquently by the the chief strategist at Deutsche Bank, Jim Reid. Um, he said we have an energy crisis, we've got a supply chain crisis and issues, we've got higher inflation and signs of weaker growth with lots of talk of stagflation. And all of this is what's contributing to particular more magnified weakness, if you like, in the technology names. On the flip side though, it's not all you know, doom and gloom red on the board. You can see down here in the right-hand corner, energy killing it again, as is utilities at the moment. Really bright green spot here in Merck. Also Tesla after their weekend unveiling of those strong delivery results on a record level, also helping them buck the trend. But just taking a look here on the rationale why were energy stocks up again, you can see here Exxon Mobil finished up 1.3%, Chevron up 0.4%, ConocoPhillips up 2%, EOG up 3%. And all of this came after WTI crude saw a real breakout day to the upside. You can see here, this is looking on a 30-minute candlestick on front month futures breakout up through that high that we saw through Tuesday of last week. And we've printed— if we go on a weekly bar here, we're now trading the highest in 7 years for WTI crude. You can see here that peak that we had back in July of this year, also going back to the 1st of October 2018, and now we've busted through that today. We're now eyeing up levels, really next technical resistance not seen for another few dollars away from the current price at $77.60, up at $79.85. Why that level? Well, it starts to bring in some of the cluster of that inflection point from some of the price activity in October of 2014, but also as well starts to bring in some of those relative price points going further back in time. And above there, $83, $84, um, really the marker there for the next interesting levels of technical resistance. And then $91.24. And hence the reason why you've had a lot of bullish commentary coming out of a number of big banks. I mean, just quickly to tell you one, Bank of America, they came out last week and they were talking about $100 oil, and their bullish view was to do with one, gas to oil substitution of up to 2 million barrels per day due to high gas prices. So switching from gas to oil given the crisis that we're seeing at the moment. Point two, a rising crude demand of up to half a million barrels per day due to the cold winter yet to come. And 3, a jump in aviation consumption of up to 500,000 barrels per day for the first quarter of next year due to an air travel boom as the economy continues to reopen. And so at the moment, technical breaches meant that the move got a bit further momentum today, but the upside just continuing to look quite bullish here for, for crude. Um, Bank of America not the only one with very bullish forecasts at the moment. And the trigger point, of course, for oil today was, was this, was what happened with OPEC. So OPEC+ recommended producers maintain its schedule of monthly production increases of 400,000 barrels a day. And the reason why that was a bullish catalyst was because there was some speculation the group could have opted for a larger hike, and of course that did not materialize. Now, looking elsewhere here, one of the other really bright green spots. One of the day's best performers was Merck, MRK. They were up about 2.1%. And why were they up sharply? Well, they bucked the trend and rallied after their experimental pill for people sick with COVID-19 reduced hospitalizations and deaths by a half. And if cleared by regulators, it would be the first pill shown to treat COVID-19. Now, as you can imagine, Who's not going to react well to that news? Well, it's the other traditional vaccine producers. So the likes of Moderna today are actually down around 11%. Pfizer were down close to 2% on the back of the news. And this was all despite an EU advisory committee earlier today endorsing extra shots of Pfizer's vaccine for all adults, as well as extra doses of Moderna for those with severely weakened immune systems. The other big pharmaceutical company in the, in the COVID vaccine space, J&J, they're planning to ask US federal regulators this week to authorize a booster shot of its COVID-19 vaccine, according to the New York Times as well, just so you're aware. Um, interestingly though, with these sector rotations here, with everything that's happening, particularly with inflation and higher rate pricing at the moment really impeding technology firms Really interesting commentary out of Morgan Stanley. They note that defensive stocks should hold up better as earnings revisions start to come under pressure from decelerating growth and higher costs, while financials can benefit from higher interest rate environment. And we have seen that before today. Diversified banks down here in the bottom left, not really outperforming too much, but definitely nowhere near as weak. If anything, they finished positive compared to the tech space. And the other thing here, on the other side of the ledger then, are consumer discretionary stocks. And according to MS, they say they remain especially vulnerable to a payback in demand from last year's overconsumption. Um, actually, I think I read that Apple, having finished today down 2.5%, are now down 11% from their recent peak only a few weeks ago, which means that technically now they're in a correction. Um, if you're looking at the +10% move, and so the risk to earnings may also be higher than average for some tech stocks levered to the work-from-home dynamic, which of course is now fading. And similarly then, that's one of the third points that's really emphasizing the more bullish factor for further reopenings in the economy, which is also going to see a jump in aviation consumption which boosts oil and lifts oil and gas and energy names in particular. So some interesting take there to be aware of. One of the other things to just quickly mention was Bitcoin eyeing $50,000 for the first time since El Salvador rollout. Let me just quickly flick up the chart and give you a bit of a flavor what we're talking about here. And it's been a bit of a, bit of a comeback for the crypto space of late after really September was a pretty bad month overall. And that was really initiated by the checkered rollout of the cryptocurrency as legal tender that we had at the start of September. That's that big fat red candlestick you can see. But you can see here the last really 3 days of price action has really lifted the price. And then this is looking at Bitcoin futures on the daily. You can see here finding resistance right on the $50K mark. Any breach of that, of course, really opens up technically the potential for a quick run-up to that high that we printed on the 7th of Sep. That would be at $53,125, and anything beyond there starts to bring up the highest price levels that we would have seen since April-May time of this year. The bigger, broader target being up at around the $60K mark, which we were printing back on the 10th of May. So not talking it up too much at this point, but certainly technically speaking, a breach of $50K over the 24-hour period could well be quite interesting for Bitcoin and the Bitcoin bulls short term. Uh, quick look then to wrap things up, and looking at the overnight session, you do have the RBA interest rate decision, so do be aware of that. One thing is that mainland Chinese markets are still closed through Thursday because of Golden Week holidays. Um, as far as the RBA is concerned, uh, they're set to leave its main policy levers, as you can see here, unchanged, even as surging home prices drive calls, uh, for lending curbs. So not expecting too much there in the overnight from the RBA. Going through the morning, uh, these are all final service PMI numbers out of the eurozone, so not expecting too much movement on the back of those. So really it takes us through into the US afternoon where really the main Focal point is going to be ISM Services PMI for September. Now, the data should benefit from a decline that we've seen in COVID cases, with more people engaging in the service sector in the US. And of course, with nonfarm payrolls happening on Friday, people will be keeping a very close eye on that employment constituent as well, which previously came in at 53.7. Otherwise, API energy, infantry data coming out as usual later on that evening. Speaker-wise, do note that ECB President Lagarde is speaking at 5:15 London time, so late afternoon as well. And fixed income supply comes predominantly out of the UK's Debt Management Office with the 2025 and 2039 gilt auctions taking place in the morning. And so, yeah, sorry, this was the calendar here that I was just looking at. So RBA overnight, US ISM Services PMI tomorrow afternoon, Lagarde is speaking as well, just to be aware of, and some UK fixed income auctions as well happening. But yeah, hopefully that gets you up to speed. As I said, this will replace the briefing I'd normally do tomorrow morning just because I'm going to be traveling. So hopefully that's useful. Remember, you can always check out my Twitter account for full rundown of everything I've just covered, some of the commentary around the sector rotation play from MS as well if you're interested. Drop me a comment if I can help on anything. Don't forget to subscribe if you've not already done so on the channel. Have a good night and, uh, I'll speak to you soon. Take care.