FOMC LIVE - 31st July 2019

Okay, testing, testing, one, two. Guys, if you can hear me, please give it a 'why' in the chat. I've just now redone the audio feed and the video feed, so let me know if I'm coming through okay, please. Just put Y in the chat. So, testing, one, two. Hi guys, just testing out. Apologies for slight interruption, just some— just had to redo the live stream, so just going to give it about another 1 or 2 minutes. And then we're gonna let— we're gonna get up and running. There's obviously plenty for us to talk about in preparation for the event coming up. I've obviously only got a limited amount of time, so I'll try to keep it as brief as possible. Got a couple of slides as well that I can run you through. So just double-checking that everyone can hear. If you let me know, I can see you guys in the chat. So Jim, Sheng, Andre, Andrew, very good evening to you. Just let us know whether or not you can hear us and see us okay. We're going to get everything up and running. We'll start the session in about 60 seconds' time. So again, I'll leave my mic on for the moment, just making sure that everyone is switching over to the right link. Can you hear me? If so, we're all good. We're going to be ready to go shortly. Jim, up or down? Well, we're going to find out in a minute. I'm going to go through some slides, so let's crack on while most of you are still logging on. I'll leave the team around me. So again, very good evening. A quick introduction of myself. My name is Anthony Cheung. As you can see from here, I'm the head of market analysis here at Amplify. I've been doing— I've been with Amplify for about 4 years. Prior to working at Amplify, I was with a firm called Realtime Analysis and News for 10 years. So my role being that I look at in real time markets to relay real-time analysis to traders, hedge funds, investment banks, and so on about analyzing short-term intraday news-driven events. So my specialism, if you like, is an event such as what we're about to undertake here with the Federal Reserve. So without further ado, let's get straight into it. I'm going to run you through a sequence of slides to explain what it is that we're looking at this evening, which is the latest US central bank rate decision, otherwise known as the FOMC. So what have we got? Order of play. Well, coming up in just around 20 minutes' time, We have the interest rate announcement from the Federal Open Market Committee. This is the US central bank. As we're going to discuss, the market is very much so expecting a rate cut. In fact, the market in the fixed income, in the short end of the curve, federal funds rate futures is 100% priced for that probability. The question mark on everyone's lips is, are they going to cut by 25 or 50 basis points, but then also looking out for the accompanying statement. Then part 2, 7:30 PM, uh, again, these are London times, so depending where you are geographically, it'll be slightly different. But half an hour after the first release, we get a press conference, opening statement, and then a Q&A. And we're going to walk through what we're expecting from these different components of this event. Firstly, setting the scene. So what is it we're looking out for today from the Fed? Well, as I said, markets are very much so expecting the Fed to cut rates. Now, where has this idea come from? Well, this is from the central banking point of view, the concept of forward guidance. Remember, at the heart of central banking strategy is an ability to move policy in reaction to economic conditions but do it in as orderly and controlled fashion as possible. So what we've been doing is the Fed have been communicating to us for some time. It started off with the minutes from last month's Fed meeting, which indicated that Fed officials saw a stronger case for, quote, somewhat more accommodative policy, i.e., for looser policy conditions than what currently exists today. That's led the markets to believe a more cautious move is warranted going forward. And Powell, who's the Fed chair, recently mentioned the, quote, interconnectedness of the US economy with the rest of the world. And obviously, if we think about the global economic environment at the moment, it has been one of fragility. Global growth expectations have been decreasing, personified by the fact that not only central banks but bodies like the IMF, for example, have been downgrading their global growth expectations. So not just a domestic situation, an overall global one, is that of a slowing world economy. Hence the reason why the Fed will need to take action to mitigate any impending downturn. Now, what have the Fed been saying? I know this is a bit small for you to see, but this is a list of chronological order of all of the Fed speakers that we've had up until the blackout period. Remember, the Fed are not allowed to speak 7 days before a rate decision. This is known as that blackout period to try and stop any type of rumor or leaks coming out to the market. Now importantly, a couple of the interesting ones that we've had is Eric Rosengren, who's a neutral stance in terms of his policy thinking, i.e., the spectrum being dovish to hawkish. And interestingly, Rosengren said that do not want to ease if the economy is doing well without— or do not want to ease if economy is doing well. And the point of that being then that recent economic data, as we'll look at in a second, has actually been improving. So we've had a couple of months of domestic data in the US slowing, and we saw that in US GDP just a week ago. Yes, slightly above expectations, but a decent downgrade of what we've had of, say, the prior quarter at the beginning of the year. More interestingly, though, is the second chap here, James Bullard, who is a voting member and is by far seen as the most dovish member of the Federal Reserve. And importantly, James Bullard said, would like to cut by 25 basis points at the upcoming meeting. And him explicitly saying 25 is very key, and we'll look at a reason why in a second. What is the market in terms of probabilities behind whether or not the Fed are going to cut 50 or 25? Well, by looking at the implied, uh, probabilities derived from the federal funds rate futures, it would indicate a percentage probability of a 25 basis point rate cut from the current level at 76%. 50 basis points is priced at 24%. So the baseline expectation for the immediate part of the release is cut 25, not cut 50. However, there's a reasonable chance that the latter could materialize, but I'll give you an understanding of why that might not be the case. Question mark miscommunication. We recently, in the last week and a half, had commentary out of Fed Vice Chair— so important given the seniority within the Fed— who is a voter and a leaning dove, Clarida, and Fed's Williams, also a voter and leaning dove. They stoked expectations of a 50 basis point cut in recent weeks by talking down the US economy, heightening the prospect then the Fed were going to go big and go for a 50 cut. However, Williams' comments were corrected quite shortly after by the New York Fed to state that it was ex— um, that it was not explicitly about the July meeting. It was about a broader assessment of global economic conditions. Also, sources in the Wall Street Journal a few days later stated that Fed officials were not prepared to cut 50 basis points as recent economic developments were yet to signal an imminent downturn. So these explicit nature of these comments by by the New York Fed reversing what those two guys, Cloeide and Williams, originally said, plus the Wall Street Journal source report, which we know is the indirect channel for the central bank to communicate unofficially, would deem then that 50 is off the table. This was when 50 basis point cut and 25 was literally a 50-50 toss-up, but following these events, that's now gone to 75-25. As I've just put here, the probability has fallen then about a more aggressive push. As you can see here, this is a visual graphic that really shows that story. Obviously, we've gone through a very interesting period over the last— well, through 2019, and certainly the last few weeks have seen quite a dramatic shift from current Fed dot plot projections indicating just a from a small rate cut towards unchanged type territory to the market now heavily discounting the fact that we will see multiple rate cuts by the end of the year. Importantly though, the market very much positioned for 25. Um, what is the case for cutting 25, not 50? Well, this graphic here, again, I know it's quite small, but the important point I want to point out here is the far right-hand side. Now this graphic encapsulates the last 5 years, and it's the CitiFX Economic Surprise Index, something which is quite often followed in markets, which basically, looking at it in the most simple sense, it looks at the actual economic data against its median expectation and derives then an index calculation figure as to is more often or not US data surprising to the upside better than expected, or to the downside. And what we've seen over recent weeks is an improving situation, big deterioration in Q1, which has led to the market believing of more rate cuts, um, or the beginning of rate cuts to come in the US. However, we've hit that bottom and are recovering. So if data is improving, then why would there be a need to go so big with a 50 cut? So that's kind of what I've suggested there with that first bullet point. The second bullet point, and a very important thing, is historical precedence. The Fed have never cut 50 ever without there being a financial crisis of some sort. Now whether that's the global financial crisis, whether that's the dot-com bubble, whether you go back to the late '80s, there is normally a catalyst or where the economy is in some kind of episode of complete stress, which warrants more aggressive, immediate action to get ahead, to try and address those concerns immediately. We are not in that state right now. As much as there's inversion of yield curves and some question marks about the fragility of the current economic situation with risks like trade war, we're not yet at that point, hence the reason why the markets not priced for 50 as a baseline scenario. This is another interesting topic. This looks at US interest rates over the last 45, 50 years. Now interestingly, I wanted to highlight a few things. One, the dot-com bubble. The dot-com bubble happened here, which is this area. This is when the interest rate in the US was north of 6%, up towards 7%. And then the first rate cut initiated a fall down to about sub-2% level. We then had the global financial crisis, the subprime crisis. Now here is this area here, which would be indicative then of rates being on a neutral level around 5%, so lower than where we were in the dot-com bubble, which was lower where we were in the late '80s when interest rates started moving south. The point I'm trying to make here is that if you look at this over time, the rate of which the Fed are starting the cutting cycle is getting more and more shallow, which brings us to the present day, which is right here. Rates at 2.5%. So the common belief is that, would the Fed want to cut so dramatically with such limited room for maneuver going forward? Hawkish descent— this is something definitely to look out for in today's meeting. And who could these people be? Now, two people you need to watch out for in the details towards the vote composition here with those that were voting on policy for the Fed tonight. One is Rosengren. This is a comment that Rosengren made just a few days ago, said, as long as the economy continues to do well, accommodation is not needed. That would suggest that Rosengren, who is a voter probably isn't even voting for a rate cut. So in, in a sense, is looking for rates to remain exactly where they are. George has seen nothing in the data to change outlook, and that threshold has not been met, i.e., there's no need to change rates, the threshold hasn't been hit yet. So if you get these dissenters, these are the guys you're looking for, and this could mitigate any initial dovish-type reaction, because it's showing that there's some real disagreement at a board level on the best course of action and two people going against the grain. This compares to last month when there was only one dissenter who was Bullard, but with Bullard it was the opposite, complete opposite situation. Bullard wanted an immediate cut last month, but importantly he has since noted that 50 basis points would be excessive. So So with the economic improvements that we've had, with the limited ammunition and room for maneuver, and with the most dovish member saying that 50 basis points would be excessive, I can't see how the Fed can deliver 50. Personally, just wanted to show you this. This is what markets are priced, and this is the important part about the release coming up in 10 minutes. It's not about so much this rate cut. Yes, the initial immediate impact will be 50 or 25. However, the ensuing move that develops thereafter, and probably the most important one for the directional trade for the evening into the close on Wall Street and the accompanying days, is about what are the signals behind where rates will be by the end of the year. Now, what this chart shows you is that rates obviously are at 2.25% to 2.5%. But you can see the market here, if I identify these two particular bars, the market is priced pretty much for around 75 to 100 basis points of cuts from the present-day value. So once today's cut has been delivered, the market is actually expecting anything from 2 to 3 more cuts in the period— well, until the end of the year. Which is very excessively dovishly priced. So therefore, if the Fed do a one-and-done, cut 25 and just say, well, actually, that's it for the moment type of hint, that's going to be initially— could be conceived as being dovish. But then you'd probably see a big hawkish reaction come through. Equities under pressure, the dollar and yields will start rallying and so on. Questions to expect, part 2, the press conference. The guidance then is key. The guidance is actually more interesting for this event. It's not so much the aftermath of the cut because that's going to be very rapid. I would say that's more in the realm of the algorithmic machine-led trade systems. What we're looking at is cutting through the language to identify what are they going to do next. Details on the balance sheet I'm going discuss in a second. The impact of the ongoing trade war— we just heard then that the US officials who were in Shanghai yesterday, they left China earlier than anticipated. An abrupt finish then to those talks given the fact that they couldn't progress any further. We are under— we're understood now that they're not going to meet again until September. The trade war, very key of course for the repercussion on the global economy. Anthony, further assessments on recent economic, economic activity, external headwinds. If there's any questions, what about Boris Johnson's credible risk of a no deal growing in probability? If that does happen and we have a disorderly non-transitional Brexit, the most economically destabilizing— this is not just an issue for Britain, it's an issue for the eurozone, the single market, and it's an issue for the global economy. And then of course there's Mr. Trump, you know, what Trump is doing, his current rhetoric obviously getting a little bit more sharp as he tries to then build up this political rapport into his campaigning for the second term and so on. How much of a risk is that? His policy changes, his criticism of the Fed that they should be cutting rates, so on and so forth. I would probably expect him to be questioned on that. Key other points to look out for in the— in what's coming out, and that's the balance sheet. So other than the rate, other than the language, keep an eye on what they describe on— in regard to the balance sheet here. This is the process of quantitative easing being reversed. So QT, quantitative tightening, not reinvesting the principal payments of those bonds that expire, i.e., subtracting the QE out the system. Now, do the Fed announce a sooner than anticipated end to its balance sheet normalization plan? If they do, then that would be conceived as incredibly dovish. Yields would fall, T-notes would rise, equities would probably rise on the back of that. But this would need to be in combination with the forward guidance on hints towards multiple cuts, if any, going forward. So balance sheet is currently due to run off in September, but do they announce that earlier? That could be a dovish signal. This is something I'll quickly run over because it's unlikely to be mentioned, but another point to be aware of. This is something called the Standing Repo Rate Facility, which is something that could be used to address any short-term liquidity concerns in the US. And so therefore, could they help enhance liquidity to mitigate any of those issues by introducing a new system of a standing repo rate facility? But most people think that if they were going to go down that route, that would take a long time of planning, and so unlikely to materialize at this meeting. What do the big banks think? I actually think JP Morgan have hit this right on the head. Several media outlets have indicated where the Fed is leaning, so definitely it's going to be a cut. Some, Rosengren, remain unconvinced for easing at all, so potential for descents. 50 basis points, um, has never happened unless there's been a financial crisis, hence why JP is going for 25, and recent data has been better than expected. Goldman's looking at 25 cut, virtually all signals from committee would point that way. Morgan Stanley, a little bit more aggressive, their call is for 50, but again, the Street consensus is more 25. Checklist then of what we're looking out for, just to summarize this very brief preview in chronological order. Part 1, 7 PM, decision on rates, likely to be a big immediate spike in price movement, US-denominated assets but also across the board. This is such an important release. It's not just the dollar, it will be implications then for equity markets, fixed income markets, FX markets, and as an indirect way also commodity markets. Gold moving on the back of the dollar movement, uh, yield movement and so on. We're also looking for any subsequent changes in the language. On that note, I did quickly wanted to show you this. I know it's a bit small, so again let me explain. This is Goldman Sachs and their predicted change to the statement which is coming out. So they're looking for some slight, um, changes here on inflation. Measures of inflation compensation, they're saying, have moved up but remain low instead of saying have declined. They said uncertainties continue to weigh on economic outlook. So that's a bit of an upgrade to supplement the reason why there's easing. But overall, very small amount of changes here. Goldman's actually suggesting that Bullard, it looks like, and George could be the changes on the composition. Bullard falling in line with everyone else and probably George being the sole dissenter in that sense. I mentioned that Goldman's one because they've got it, they've got it absolutely spot on the last two Fed meetings. The more interesting part, of course, is part 2. Hawkish or dovishness largely depends on the decision to do 25 basis points or 50. What I mean by this is the following: if they do 25, I'd probably be looking for a more dovish type follow-up in the press conference from Jerome Powell. Because markets are priced for heavy discount of rates over the course of 2019, and he needs to manage that appropriately. And I actually think, if anything, on the balance, the market could perceive this as a hawkish, uh, nature, given the fact that I think you'll want to not commit and keep all options available rather than go outright dovish assault. The other options, if it's a one-and-done 25 basis points, that would be interpreted as hawkish— higher yields, firmer dollar, lower stocks. If there's 25 basis points and hints towards subsequent— that's a typo there, it should be cuts, of course— thereafter, then a more neutral reaction given market pricing. If 50 basis points, one and done, I think you would get an initial shot in equities, would spike gold, would spike T-notes, would spike only then for it to get reversed quite rapidly if they're just going to do 50 and that's it. If they do 50 basis points plus more to come, that's the outlying, low probability, maximum impact, risk-on trade. T-notes bid, stocks bid, gold bid, uh, with dollar would get slammed on the back of that. But I'd see that as very unlikely. And then any mention on the balance sheet, um, ending immediately would be another dovish signal. All right, I'm going to leave it at that. I'm going to flip on the squawk, which will break the news live. I will leave my audio live stream running so you can hear that, and then we'll analyze this in real time. So good luck to any of you trading. Okay, I'll come off the mic. Countdown now, 45 seconds to the release.

Yep.

10 seconds. That's a cut by 25, cut by 25. Fed says it as it comes to play its future path of the rate. It will continue monitoring incoming information and will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion. Fed cuts 25, contemplates future rate path. It will continue to monitor incoming information and will act as appropriate. Dissenters George and Rosengren, as forecast, they prefer to maintain target between 2.25 and 2.5. So that's a cut of 25. It looks like there's caveating there, a move with some sort of monitoring of incoming information, but they do keep that language that they will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion. We have two dissenters here. Going for the rest of the policy statement here, it will conclude reduction of aggregate security holdings in August, 2 months earlier than previously indicated. So Fed will conclude reduction of aggregate security holdings in August, 2 months earlier than forecast. Treasury securities and reinvestment all principal payments from agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities each month. It will roll over at auction all principal payments from its holdings. So it does look like that balance sheet reinvestment or balance sheet normalization has been concluded early, right? So very quick, where it says rate cut supports committee's view that sustained economic expansion, strong labor market.

Just very quickly on initial headlines, obviously cut 25, so the market needs to unwind that that 25% pricing of 50. Also, um, as well, you've had two dissenters, as we were discussing, Rosengren, uh, and George. However, they have brought forward the end date of the winding down of the balance sheet, concluding a month earlier than before. But overall, initial interpretation has been a hawkish one. So again, there was a, a meaningful amount of the market looking for the big, um, 50 basis point move. That's not materialized. But importantly, one thing to just quickly point out, the balance sheet drawdown is now August 1st. It was previously September. So why there probably hasn't been any, a big reaction thus far is probably because that last point is a dovish one that mitigates the more hawkish factor of going 25, not 50, and also the fact that you had two dissenters. So the vote split, if you like, was 8-2 with the voting members.

Balance sheet reinvestment.

Yeah, so just having a look at a couple of levels then in reaction to this news. Gold has initially popped lower, of course, with this initial hawkish reaction, and so just targeted on the daily pivots S2 level. I've got the guys here on hand and they'll be putting in any technical levels that they see. Obviously dollar strength on the back of this, so both cable and EURUSD coming under pressure.

110 handle, so 111 has been breached.

So just looking in the futures here at the EURUSD currency, we've obviously got through that low point that we had. There was heavy stops under this Yeah, so probably the spot market is what the squawk is talking about. That in combination with the breach of the low on the 25th, probably just helping exacerbate some of that downward movement on that trigger point in the futures, uh, through that level at 1145.5. So a bit of further follow-through. The dollar index now about 0.4%. Anything in the equity market, Sam? S&P, any levels you're looking at? So just looking at the S&P, obviously the 30.02 level would match up pretty nicely on the S1, on the pivots, to really a couple different points here in the near-term price action. Got those kind of highs and lows that we've had that really defines the price action over the course of recent trading sessions. So probably an area here of of some support potentially. I'll get Sam on in a second and he can have a look through the charts more technically. But yeah, look at the T-note now on the bounce. So the US 10-year has come all the way back up after that initial drop. So again, the idea here is that yes, there was some initial hawkish interpretation, but importantly, more for fixed income markets, their balance sheet runoff has been brought forward, which counteracts then the initial fact that they didn't go 50. Yes, you've got a hawkish initial reaction unwound then by the fact that really they're doing— they're supporting the market by ending that quicker rather than the original date of September. So keeping more QE in the system.

Reasons why the market might be behaving in a cautious manner here.

Okay, I'm gonna have my colleague Sam come on. Those of you who don't know Sam, he's a trader here at Amplify, and he's more than qualified to talk about the technicals at this point. So I'll let him come on and say a few things.

Hi guys, good to see some regular faces in the chat. Best to start the S&P here, is it not? Far away from— you can see that level that Ant has marked up, and just above today's S1 you've got an interesting trend line. And this, you know, definitely somewhere I'd be looking to have on. You can see you've already got those pre-tests going back from from the 24th, the 25th, and then yesterday as well. Let me just move that out of the way of the camera. And that's coming in on the futures anyway at 3003. So we haven't quite reached there yet, but definitely somewhere I would have marked up a break of that, and you, you probably get a move down to, to 3000 pretty quickly. Uh, the first real push down today, you can see almost in there, one, a point or so away, a decent bounce back. So that's somewhere I would would have really marked up there. That breaks the downside. I'd be looking to us to get down to sort of 29.96 on the futures anyway. The stop run on the euro, you can see if we spike back, we're nearly actually back to the low, previous low of the day. And again, that's one of those levels where you do have quite a bit of previous support coming in and trendline breaks around there as well. So certainly looking back at that as a as a level of resistance, resistance now to come in, and just almost reaching that a couple of moments ago. The pound less interested, obviously other things going on. We have just broken through what was a really key level support today. However, we are back towards there. I think for the pound you're better off looking at this tomorrow, what with Brexit, no deal, etc., really driving things. Quick look over at T-notes, which with that hawkish reaction, you've got a spike back down to, to the low. And really, the key point of support, you could argue, is literally where we spiked to, was the low back on, on Tuesday. A bit of support yesterday and then, and again today, uh, and relatively contained for now. The, the press conference here will be key. And having a look at gold, and not that we're, uh, just made it through, or back up to, I should say We've got a bit of a level almost coming in now along with the previous low of the day, trendline break, retest of that. So 1434, also really the low of yesterday, I'll be keeping an eye as a resistance point. If that was to, to hold, then I could see a move back down to the lows. However, 20-odd minutes, 20-odd minutes until the, uh, the, the press conference. Uh, DOLLAR YEN up to uh, R1. So we're keeping an eye back on any sort of retests of previous highs, and you know, that could obviously act as a bit of support as we are just seeing a bit of profit taking come in, uh, as well. Let's have a quick look over the overall picture here. NASDAQ already reversed and looking like a doji. S&P Just, uh, worth noting on the S&P, just in case we were to see a hawkish reaction to the press conference, just for you guys to be aware of, uh, not too far away from where trading— you've got now, this is the daily chart, uh, going back here to 2018 to the high that we had, uh, all-time high back in September. And then again, you could see if that was to come in on the futures, that would be around 30, 34 35s somewhere, just to have marked up just in case we are to see a strong reversal in equities on the press conference. But at the moment, hawkish reaction. You've got 20 minutes until Jerome is up.

Yeah, just while Sam was buying me some time to come off the desk there, just had a quick read of the Fed statement. So this is the, the new Fed statement, and there's a, there's a particular part of this which to me, uh, is, is quite, quite clear, and it's really this section. And let me just read it for you because otherwise it's quite difficult to see. The action supports the committee's view that sustained expansion of economic activity, strong labor market conditions, and inflation near the committee's symmetric 2% objective are the most likely outcomes, but uncertainties about this outlook remain as the committee contemplates the future path of the target range for Fed funds rate. It will continue to monitor the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook and will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion. So again, that language to me, I mean, they could have gone a lot more dovish in the way that they've just described economic conditions, their future courses of action. And so, um, that's likely supporting the reasoning why the market had its initial kind of moves. But if you think about it, I actually think, you know, if you do watch our Amplify briefings in the morning, um, both Sam and I have been pretty adamant that the market is overextended. It's belief that the Fed are just going to hand out monetary stimulus, uh, easily for the reasons we discussed in the, in the briefing. I really think this is actually— if you X out the short-term volatility, this is a fairly measured response in markets. I would expect Powell to come out in the press conference and basically play a pretty straight hand where he's keeping optionality as the statement describes, he's talking about doing what's appropriate to sustain the expansion. And so optionality there to keep rates on hold, to cut rates further beyond this cut. So all in all, I think it's a pretty, pretty even-handed, neutral response as far as against our expectations. The initial, initial reaction was very much derived from the fact that 50 had to get wiped out. Didn't happen. So obviously you had an initial kind of hawkish reaction in addition to the dual dissenters that you had. But then reversal more explicitly on the back of the bringing forward of the, uh, the winding down the runoff of the balance sheet in combination with, I think, now the volatility has passed and rationale returns. I mean, what else were you expecting from the Fed in that respect? From a fundamental point of view, I think this is pretty, pretty standard from a Fed approach to these types of things. Again, particularly the idea then that they wouldn't want to give too much away too soon. So got the press conference that's going to start in approximately 14 minutes. I would suggest that it's probably worth staying tuned in because stranger things have happened. And definitely, even though I'm kind of underplaying what's happened here, I think Jerome Powell still needs to provide us with some reassurance, with some additional clarity as to this— the future path of rates for the rest of this year. Let's not forget that that the market, as I've said before, was heavily priced for, for rate cuts in, in the future. So how does he address that? What he says will be very important. So yeah, I'll turn my mic off for a second, um, so you might hear some silence, but I'll be back on in the next couple of minutes to talk about the charts and the press conference preview in full in a moment. Yeah, I'm just having a look in the top right-hand corner of my screen. Pretty strong reversal now on, uh, on the way. Pivot's just been broken here. You can see in gold prices, this is the gold future. So after that initial blip lower that we had, full reversal and some. So we just threatening now, uh, back towards, you know, decent $12, $13 swing here. Upside targets obviously for gold, if you just start to bring in some of the recent price activity of late, uh, probably looking at more areas of resistance up towards north of $45, that encapsulating some of the high on the 25th, and then those 3 failed breaks and tests at around a similar level. That were in the last 24 hours or so. Again, to get up there, probably you're gonna have to wait now for the press conference with Powell to begin. If Powell does start to lean on the idea that there's more cuts to come, then certainly those upside levels could be, could be challenged for sure. So perhaps this is quite common in the format of how markets respond, always very volatile on the initial release we start to see then people in the speculative market, in the futures space, closing out positions before then looking for the press conference for the, the next second phase of opportunity, uh, in that respect.

We've got 37.6 basis points priced now. Just remember, ahead of this decision, we were around about the 67, 68 basis points mark. Elsewhere, just looking through to the end of next year, looks like pricing not too much changed to it, around about 72.6 basis points priced for the end of next year. And that is in line with the 100 basis points that we were seeing priced before that Fed decision today. Remember, we had to have that 25 just now. So market pricing for the end of 2020, very little change.

Okay, just while we're waiting for the press conference, is any— if anyone's got any questions at at all, please feel free to pop them in the chat. I know the guys Sam and Charlie and Tommaso have been replying, but I can also talk about a few things. We've got a bit of time until the presser begins. So Dipu, Anton, Drew. Yeah, just had a question from Drew about silver. So just looking at the silver future here, very much a mirror image of gold. Remember, these assets, this isn't a direct supply and demand type issue. This is definitely a dollar reaction to what the Fed are saying. So if I was looking at silver, I'd be looking at it in the same light of what I'm looking at gold. The technical setup may be a little different. So if you actually look at silver, if I was looking at near-term price movement, you can see you've had these previous areas in recent price activity where the market's responded quite well. So we're finding a bit of resistance here. Any break above there, you've got got the pivot and the early European entrance high, so targeting here and then probably the previous high if we were to continue this direction of silver appreciating. Yeah, but silver very much just mimicking what we're seeing in, in the gold market. Yeah, with gold, very much initially a hawkish reaction to So all fitting. So, um, Jasminder, just to reply to your question, so initially again hawkish interpretation, they didn't cut 50, the dollar rally spikes quickly, gold and then moves lower. However, we've had reversal on the further digestion of the other subsequent information that, that came out. Now it's about what Powell says as to where gold goes from here. If you actually look at the, the way of which this candlestick is forming. This is obviously a half an hour candlestick, 30 minutes. And so the pricing force of where the, where the body is at the moment is indicative of that. Basically, gold is exactly about within a dollar range of where it started, exiting out the $13 volatility seen on the release. In that respect, Nai Yin Would dollar be weakened after today? Initial reaction, um, I can only answer that once I've heard what Powell has to say in the press conference. What we're looking for definitely is some kind of more clarity in the language that's used to be indicative of, is this just one cut and they are entirely dependent on the incoming data to reanalyze the situation and take take action, that would be slightly more hawkish in its interpretation. Or is it a little bit more emphasis on certain parts of the economy which are weakening, heightening that up? If he's questioned about the trade war, which he undoubtedly will be, the more of a consideration risk surrounding trade war is in his answer, the more dovish that would be construed. So there's a couple of different things here we, we need to look out for. Similarly with the likes of the slowdown globally, global growth concerns, Brexit risk. These could all be areas of which, if he wanted to be more dovish, to signal towards more hikes, he could talk up the prospects of these external risks. Yeah, to answer, um, M Brown's question, uh, definitely, uh, Algos are very prevalent in these types of events. But I must stress that I get this question all the time: how can you and intraday discretionary traders compete with machines? Well, machines are built very much for purpose, which is predominantly speed of execution. And so when it comes to that 50/25, that more binary scenario, yes, the high-frequency type system can outperform perform the human, no doubt. But when it comes to the nuances and interpretation of Powell when he's answering a question in the Q&A, that's definitely the realm of the human trader being able to think on their feet quite laterally and adapt to the intonation, the tone, the subtleties, and language. So there's definitely points where I think as a human trader you should invert, and points where you can definitely maximize your opportunities, if that makes sense. Yeah, so Dipu, to answer your question— if I just ask Charlie to grab me a drink, if he gets a second, just losing my voice slightly— but for Dipu, what I would say is if you're new to trading, these types of high volatility events are incredibly incredibly difficult to trade given the tightened timeframes of execution that are needed, given the volatility and then importance of your risk management, given your ability to interpret very complex event like monetary policy. Actually, I— what I would recommend is that you watch only, or if anything, trade on a sim rather than live. Live funds for multiple Fed releases until you would ever consider trading these types of event with any type of size. In that respect, trading news-driven events can only be done if you are absolutely au fait with the subject matter at hand. So if you're trading the pound, and at this point in time, from a fundamental perspective, if you're not fully versed about Brexit, the current political narratives, the legal legislation in Parliament, you are pretty disarmed, quite frankly, to be able to make the best fundamental decisions as possible. Hence the reason why a lot of retail traders will put an emphasis on technical analysis. But as you're like— as you're seeing in 2019, the market is more and more being influenced by these top-level macro things themes like Brexit, like trade wars, and so on. The name of the indicators that we— I've got my charts, well, pretty, pretty standard from a technical point of view. Daily pivot levels, support, resistance, trend channels, trend lines. That's about the maximum of where I would go with it personally. Technical analysis is very discretionary to the individual. I know some people that have loads of different studies. I know some people have none and they're purely looking at order flow to trade. So definitely I'd say for us simplicity is key and less is more in terms of giving you clarity of the framework to execute around the fundamental macro bias. Question from Robert: Would algos have acted on the second last paragraph of the press release? I guess the one I was looking at, or the one where the QE conclusion is mentioned. No, I would say, because of the unknown quantity of how the language is used to describe the winding down or the runoff of the balance sheet. Technically, you could pre-program that into a series of different word structures or sentences to then allocate a hierarchy of what would be more hawkish or dovish by reaction. But I would say there's too much scope for the machine to make quite a substantial error. And so hence, in those situations, in my experience, the algo's turned off and the human and is piloting in that, that situation. Okay, just under 5 minutes or 4 minutes now to the press conference, by the way. Yeah, just to quickly address another question: is the Fed already pricing in the Trump effect for 2020? Well, one thing that we didn't have in this press conference was something called the dot plot matrix, which is their future interest rate expectations over time. And this only gets released in 4 of the 8 Fed meetings per year, so this is not one of those meetings. The last dot plot projections that came out did show a slight drop for rates at the end of 2019 for followed then by a rate hiking cycle, which would be highly unusual. This was something that was released in the last Fed meeting. Now, some could speculate that as Trump tries to push the narrative for political popularity by putting big stress and risks in the market, like a mismanagement of the trade war, could things materially be more risk and therefore stress requiring lower rates, only for them— him to come through with a deal, because we know that politically he has definitely pinned the validation of his policies by the strength of the stock market and the level of unemployment in America. And so ultimately then, if you eradicate one of the biggest macro risks to markets, which is the trade war, then ultimately markets recover, economic growth resumes, and if anything Brexit at that point, well, who knows where that will be. But the point being then is there's less global risks. Rates can then start to revert back to the, the trajectory that we were on, which is normalization of rates going higher at that point. Why don't we cover other central bank events like this? We might do in the future. The benefit, I think, for this particular one is that because it's in the evening, it's just easily accessible for most people, particularly if you're in the UK and you're at work. And we want it to be educational as much as the guys here, like Charlie and Sam to the side of me, they're both trading this at the moment, um, you know if we were doing this during the day, I think again we wouldn't be able to share as much. Remember, we've got the Bank of England rate decision tomorrow. If you do want a preview for that, it's happening at midday tomorrow, then just make sure you go on our YouTube channel, subscribe to the channel, and then every morning I deliver a live briefing to our traders on the floor, and that gets published on our YouTube channel at 9 AM London time in the morning. So if you subscribe to the channel Amplify and put on the notification bell. You'll be alerted for all the posts that we do. All right, the press conference should be about to start momentarily, so I will come off the mic. And at this point, I will just reiterate any important points of which he says. Importantly for the press conference, from a market-moving point of view, um, it's the first few questions which are normally the most important, that the market is most sensitive to. The longer the press conference goes on, the lesser usually market impact that it, that it can have, essentially. All right, I'll let you know as soon as he begins. So you can see on my screen at the moment, there's the live shot. Now one thing actually, as a trader or as a market analyst, you get very— you know, this is, this is kind of when you look at markets on every day, you actually quite quickly know who all these individuals are, which publication they represent. Here he comes, here comes Jay Powell. So commentary is about to begin.

economy and to promote a faster return of inflation to our symmetric 2% objective. All of these objectives will support achievement of our overarching goal— to sustain the expansion with a strong job market and inflation close to our objective for the benefit of the American people. We also decided to conclude the runoff of our securities portfolio in August rather than in September, as previously planned. And I'll discuss the thinking behind today's interest rate reduction and then turn to the path forward. As the year began, both the economy and monetary policy were in a good place. The unemployment rate was below 4%, and inflation had been running near our 2% objective for 9 months. Our interest rate target was at the low end of estimates of neutral. Over the first half of the year, the economy grew at a healthy pace, and job gains pushed unemployment to near a half-century low. Wages have been rising, particularly for lower-paying jobs. People who live and work in in low- and middle-income communities tell us that many who have struggled to find work are now getting opportunities to add new and better chapters to their lives. This underscores for us the importance of sustaining the expansion so that the strong job market reaches more of those left behind. Through the course of the year, weak global growth, trade policy uncertainty, and muted inflation have prompted the FOMC to adjust its assessment of the appropriate —path of interest rates. The Committee moved from expecting rate increases this year to a patient stance about any changes and then to today's action. The median Committee participant's assessments of the neutral rate of interest and the longer-run normal rate of unemployment have also declined this year, reinforcing the case for a somewhat lower path for our policy rate. These changes in the anticipated path of interest rates rates have eased financial conditions and have supported the economy. At our June meeting, many Committee participants saw that the case for lowering the federal funds rate had strengthened, but the Committee wanted to get a better sense of the overall direction of events. Since then, we've seen both positive and negative developments. Job growth was strong in June, and looking through month-to-month fluctuations, the data point to continued strength. Strength. We expect job growth to be slower than last year but above what we believe is required to hold the unemployment rate steady. GDP growth in the second quarter came in close to expectations. Consumption, supported by rising incomes and high household confidence, is the main engine driving the economy forward. But manufacturing output has declined for two consecutive quarters and business fixed investment fell in the second quarter. Foreign growth has disappointed, particularly in manufacturing and notably in the euro area and China. In response to this weakness, many central banks around the world are increasing policy accommodation or contemplating doing so. After simmering early in the year, trade policy— policy tensions nearly boiled over in May and June but now appear to have returned to a simmer. Looking through this variability, our business contacts tell us that the ongoing uncertainty is making some companies more cautious about their capital spending. The domestic inflation shortfall has continued. Core inflation, uh, which excludes, uh, food and energy prices and is a better gauge of future developments than is total inflation, has run at 1.6% over the past 12 months. We continue to expect that inflation will return return over time to 2%. But domestic inflation pressures remain muted, and global disinflationary pressures persist. Wages are rising, but not at a pace that would put much upward pressure on inflation. We're mindful that inflation's return to 2% may be further delayed and then continue.

Yeah, so just, just quickly, while Powell is initially reading this, this address and this statement. There hasn't really been a great deal here that I'd say is an immediate actionable trade thus far from a fundamental perspective, so I won't add in too much more at this point. But yeah, we'll wait till he finishes, then I'll do a quick debrief. But nothing, nothing massively out of line, I'd say, from what I've heard so far.

Today we judge that those factors warrant warrant the policy adjustment I described. As the Committee contemplates the future path of the target range of the federal funds rate, it will continue to monitor the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook and will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion with a strong labor market and inflation near its symmetric 2% objective. Thank you. I'm happy to take your questions.

Okay, we're into the Q&A now. Hi, Chair Powell. Jeanna Smialek with The New York Times. Per your statement here, I guess the question is, is there any reason to believe that a 25 basis point cut is going to be sufficient to expediently return inflation to your 2% target? And if not, what are you going to be looking at to convince you that you need to cut rates again?

What is the hurdle rate there? So I think you have to look I think you have to look at not just the 25 basis point cut, but look at the committee's actions over the course of the year. As I noted in my opening statement, we started off expecting some rate increases, we moved to a patient setting for a few months, and now we've moved here. And I think what you've seen over the course of the year is, as we've moved to a more accommodative policy, the economy has actually performed just about as expected with that gradually increasing support. And I think— I wouldn't take credit for all of that, but I do think that increasing policy support has kept the economy on track and kept the outlook favorable. In terms of the rest of your question, the Committee is really thinking of this as a way of adjusting policy to a somewhat more accommodative stance to further the 3 objectives that I mentioned: to ensure against downside risks, to provide support to the economy, that those factors are—

Yeah, just a little bit, little bit of a kind of hawkish move there across assets. I mean, he has been talking about the trade policy nearly boiled over but now appears to have returned to a simmer. So that would be a more hawkish situation for that to unfold. And so a little bit of dollar strength. Perhaps just putting a little bit more downside pressure. Uh, perhaps him talking about this being an insurance cut, not so much that there's going to be more cuts to follow, potentially could be the way of which this is being perceived at the moment. So yeah, keep an eye on EURUSD, equities fresh lows again. So nothing really too much being said from Powell to indicate more commitment to subsequent hikes. So just keeping an eye here. So bit more pressure, equities now back under pressure. This is a really a second phase to the initial move that we had on the first release at 7:00. So again, just to be clear, Powell said rate cut was a mid-cycle adjustment. Does that imply that it's a one and done? If that is, well then market pricing needs to be unwound for such aggressive rate cuts for the end of the year. So higher yields, firmer dollar, pressure on equities would be the play. We're seeing a little bit of that at the moment. So gold back to retest the S2 pivot in cable.

Against those very same risks. I really think it doesn't. I think the evidence of my eyes tells me that our policy does support It supports confidence, it supports economic activity, household and business confidence, and through channels that we understand. So it will lower borrowing costs, it will— and it will work. And I think you see it since, you know, since we noted our vigilance about the situation in June, you saw financial conditions move up and you saw— I won't take credit for the whole recovery, but you saw—

Just looking at the NASDAQ here, obviously under a little bit of pressure with this this full equity move lower and a retest of that 25th low on that trend line that we were looking at a few days ago. So just finding a first little point of support here. Any break of that certainly could open up some further downside. So again, maybe the perception here is that really what he's conveying at the moment isn't dovish enough against markets' quite aggressive dovish pricing. And so as a result, hence you're getting this more hawkish type of response in markets. Cable, um, not good news for cable obviously with the fundamental narrative of a weaker sterling under the risk of no deal and the, the current Boris-led Conservative mantra of, um, do or die for no deal. I'd be keeping an eye on the, the kind of lower end of the range of price activity activity which really was in play for most of yesterday. About 10 pips above there now in the futures. And then any breach of the prior low that we had, uh, which really was what, coming into markets yesterday morning, to keep an eye on there. Full reversal obviously in T-notes. So 3-way move now. Initially blip lower, recovered, and now back down to those initial lows, uh, as he continues to take these questions. The NASDAQ responding to that support level for the moment, at least on that 25th low. And so at the moment that's holding. Let's get Sam back on, see what Sam's got to add. Give me one second.

Oh guys, yeah, so, and mentioned that NASDAQ level, uh, similar one in the S&P of importance. We had that break that we were talking about just after the announcement, that trendline break that pushed down through to what was the, the target we were talking about at the low of the, uh, the 24th. Understandable bounce from there. Another key level to keep an eye on in gold, and this was probably pointed out by, by Charlie. If we go from this high from the, the 18th, just coming through then to the, the high that we had on the 25th, the low of the day exactly on that point. Also some key lows from the 18th and the 29th in the mix there as well. But such a big level, such a big level to, to keep an eye on. Would take a lot to us to get through there today and continue down. But if you are short, you know, that's a really big barrier. For us to focus on. The pound, I mean, whether this is going to be the main move of the dollar-related products or not, I'll be keeping an eye and see if we can actually get a proper break and close below, uh, this trend line. If that was to happen, I think you get the low of the year pretty quick. Look at the dollar, euro dollar, really extended through that low now. We actually did get a test back, didn't we, of the previous low. That's had a relatively big stop to get that one in, but you have seen some continued dollar strength across the board here. So some important levels coming up on the S&P again. So the Dow Jones actually just printing a new session low here. S&P going through that as as well. So looking quite bearish here now on stocks. You have got quite a bit of support coming through. The next sort of level coming in around 29.90, which was the low of the afternoon of the 23rd. So I'll be keeping a close eye on that. Trendline-wise, you can see getting breaks. So that 29.96, very important on the— that breakthrough. Now we're under there. Market looks like it can just spread its legs a bit. So S&P down, Dow Jones down, and the NASDAQ through that level. So understandably had the, the area of support, little bounce through, but that breakdown coming, coming through again. Keep an eye, as mentioned, on that trend line on gold, which comes in at the low of the day as well.

Okay, so just, just another look here as I've just swapped with Sam. So the NASDAQ, you can see that support level, brief, brief momentary pause, but when that level broke, the immediate target— you often see this in fast money moves, obviously the speculative traders just looking for the break and the breakout trade on that previous low hitting market, but looking for the first point of exit. And that's a good, you know, 20-point run to the downside to get to that level. You can see that level not really of too much technical significance over the course of the last month, but just gives a nice obvious target for those speculators to hit on that downward movement. Movements below there, if we to continue to remain somewhat heavy in price movement, probably be looking around Yeah, these types of levels, that previous high, a couple of points where that previous level at 78.75 played out as well, some, um, with some relevancy as a support point now. So yeah, a bit more equity pressure, further follow-through on the same points for what we were discussing earlier. Okay, let's switch, uh, Powell back on.

Growth is picking up, whether it's bottoming out. We'll see that picture. We'll also see on trade. We're going to be seeing— I think we've learned a lot on trade in this cycle. I think we'll continue to learn more. And on inflation, we will. So in addition, the U.S. economy itself is— the performance of the U.S. economy will enter into that. So I would love to be more precise, but with trade, it is a factor that we have to assess in kind of a new way. Those are the things that we'll be looking at. you know, in making our decisions going forward.

Edward Lawrence with Fox Business Network. So a rate hike last December was seen by some economists and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard as a step too far. Now the Fed's waited about 7 months for a rate cut. You said today you were concerned about downside risks. So could some of the weakness on the business side with that fixed investment and the sluggish side on the business side be because the Fed waited so long? I want to get your thoughts on that and talk about why you feel that this nudge is the right level.

Yeah, so we don't hear that from businesses. They don't come in and say we're not investing because, you know, the federal funds rate is too high. I haven't heard that from a business. What you hear is that demand is weak weak for their products. You see manufacturing being weak all over the world. Investment— business investment is weak. And I wouldn't lay all of that at the door of trade talks. I think there's a global business cycle happening with manufacturing and investment. And that's been— —definitely a bigger factor than certainly we expected late last year. Global growth started to slow down in the middle of last year, but that has gone on to a greater extent. And by the way, trade policy uncertainty has also been, I think, more elevated than we anticipated. In terms of— we believe this is the right move for today.

Just having a look at EUR/USD, technically here, this is a daily continuation chart. So we're looking back here for multiple years in price action, and the euro has just gone through a really important level here, and that is— if I just mark it up— those previous lows that we were testing back in really May time of 2019. You can see was the support area as well back in June of '17. We've just broken below there now with these new session lows in the euro. So downside here, technically this is quite important for the more medium-term picture There's one guy who's definitely not gonna like this development, and that is your president, Chief and Commander Trump. He definitely will be criticizing that Powell is not doing what he wants, that we're helping Europe, that Europe's gonna be manipulating their currency to weaken it to help. That's making the US less competitive. I hate Jerome Powell. He's He's a moron. I would definitely be expecting this from Trump now because this weaker euro obviously plays into the hands of the export-led European nations, i.e., Germany, of which makes them more competitive against the Americans in that sense. So yeah, euro now really coming under a bit of pressure, but that does make sense from a technical point of view. We've now got through a very important long standing long-term area of technical significance. That in itself will accentuate the dollar strength byproduct of the euro, um, now weakening in that sense. And that makes up a large portion of the dollar basket. And so a bit of further carry-through now in cable. Cable's through that range low, so we're targeting now in table down at those levels that were the low on Monday. And obviously that we're not that far away from critical levels as well for the Great British Pound, of course, just given what's been going on with Boris Johnson and the no-deal rhetoric. That in itself is coming down to a critical area we're testing right now in the futures. And then the bigger bottom, double bottom that we we had post-EU referendum, which was around this area of 120. So really key areas here to have a look at. I'm just going to bring the Dow into, into play. This is the Dow future, and that's now down over 300 on the session. So quite heavy selling pressure in equities as Powell in this conference— if you thought, if you were of the mindset that by delivering 25 maybe he could have delivered then a slightly more dovish press conference to manage market expectations. He really hasn't done that. And so just looking at the areas now technically of where we're testing, quite an interesting, quite clear area of support here for, for the S&P. Really two points of interest: one where we are right now, that brings into play the lows on the 18th and on the 22nd, as well as some of these previous areas where the market has responded. And then you've got now through there the second target down at 69, which is that 22nd low. Anything below there, if we continue to push down on the 9th, we'll be looking at that area as well. So quite heavy now in the equity market. So this is the longer-term picture, quite big support areas here and resistance coming in. So I'd say that that's a really big level of support here in the spoos that I think will hold up. 63 and 3/4, you can see here, this is over the course of the last 6 weeks, it's been a key level. Yeah, NASDAQ's down to pressure, T-notes under pressure, so Powell basically suggesting a rate cut is not the beginning of a long easing cycle. The key comment here was that one about mid-cycle. It was the comment where he said, uh, if I just get it up again, I'm sure one of the guys has already posted it as well. It was about a mid-cycle amendment or tweak rather than and the commencement of a long easing cycle, which, which has caught the market by hawkish surprise. Dow now down— was 300, now down another 100 points quickly on the back of this latest development. So just looking on the Dow, Sam, any long-term levels coming up here on the pullback? So obviously I've got the team around me here at the moment, definitely helps when the markets are moving quite quickly like this. Oh, here you go, here you go, here you go. So yeah, just looking— yeah, big level for the Dow long term here. Sam just, uh, bringing it to my attention. So let me just highlight it. You got these areas of very strong resistance that were seen towards the beginning of Q2, an area of support. We retested that back in July and the market really responded positively here. So big test coming up here. Also just having a look below there, I'd probably be looking around that level, but again, when the market's moving quickly like this, participants will look for the first areas to book profit on these shorts. And that's, that's quite a wicked bounce there of close to 100 points here on the back of that down, the test of that, that long-term level of significance. And just so you're aware, guys, I've just seen in the chat room our head of trading, Piers, is in the chat room right now. So the main man himself. Named after the famous Piers Courage. Piers Curran is in the chat room, so if you do have any questions for him, um, do put them in the chat room and he can address them. Will is there as well, I've seen, who's our managing director here at Amplify. So everyone's on board because this is now shaping up to be quite a nice move in the market. Okay, just, just a couple of points here with some of the comments in the chat. Um, Piers is making the point about US is not mid-cycle. I mean, if you're looking at the, the long-term business cycle, we're definitely late phase by classic definition. So therefore, is the Fed right? Is this a bit uncommitted in what they're suggesting at the moment? And then Will's making a good point: does this force Trump to be more conservative with China? Now, Trump's aggressiveness in his negotiation with China definitely goes hand in glove with the strength of the stock market. He almost put pushes the negotiation stance as far and hard as possible when the market is being supported. When the market is backing off, he knows that then by easing off the gas with China, by talking more favorable about trade developments, then what it means then is that the market will respond in kind and things will lift. Because Trump, it's been quite clearly evident that, and as they should, the central bank acts independently and is not being influenced by the president. So does the president need to take matters in his own hand? Does he tweet tomorrow, criticize the Fed, say it's their fault, look at what the Fed have done to markets, talk up the China game again, and the equity market responds in kind? We shall see. Yeah, quite a really big bounce now in equities after that push but that's quite common sometimes. This is when I think the technical breaches of key levels are really important. Adds to, as we saw with that Dow support level, I mean, the Dow's bounced almost 180 points off that low. So great call from Sam, uh, on the back of that level. But when the market— you can see if you're looking at the order flow, you can see some big orders coming in, hitting market. When it's chasing down, which inadvertently over-exaggerates or accentuates the move, which means you get these quite wicked pullbacks. If you can catch that on a technical level, then obviously it's almost a counterintuitive trade of high risk, but if you get your timing right, can, you know, heap some quite substantial rewards on the back of it. Yeah, emerging market currencies definitely going to hit hard on the back of that, given the fact that the Fed aren't easing as much as possible, that the dollar's gonna— strengthening. That's to the disbenefit of the emerging markets in that respect. Also, with the breakdown in the trade situation can help certain EMs like Vietnam. There's been a big pickup on the back of, um, the moving of geographic manufacturing out of that country, China, into Vietnam. Uh, but certainly from a currency perspective, strengthening dollar will put further pressure on a lot of these EMs, definitely. Okay, it's coming up to 8 PM London time. When it does get to 8 PM, I'm going to conclude my analysis of this event, but there's a couple of— I'm going to spend about 5 minutes just wrapping things up. So do stick with us if you're still tuned in. A few things I just want to mention and go over, and then I'll let you guys go off and enjoy your evening or continue trading, whatever the case might be. So got about another minute, I'll jump back on and we'll, we'll wrap things up. Okay, so it's 8 o'clock. So for those of you who are experienced traders, if you're still trading, see you guys. So look, some of our, some of our summer interns just leaving. You know, that's what I like to see. In in the morning, 7:30, leaving the office, gone 8 PM. PM. That in my book is how you, you earn your stripes and you get better at understanding these events. So good to see our summer interns sticking around, some of them for the, for this evening. Definitely then that leads us on to a couple of discussion points while the market is still moving. By all means, feel free to continue trading, but for me to conclude this situation and with some of the guys here who have been trading the event at Amplify, there's a few things to point out. For one, uh, who is Amplify? You might have seen us on YouTube, you might have seen some of my briefings that I do with my colleague Sam in the mornings, but just to quickly give you an overview of our business, basically, as you can see here, there are two sides of our business. This really forms one part but two different, um, really people we deal with. So one part is Amplify Trading started in 2009, so a decade ago, by the two chaps in the chat room, Will and Piers, who used to trade for a big US proprietary trading firm for many years before then starting Amplify Trading. Amplify Trading, we are a small proprietary trading firm. What does proprietary trading mean? It means the guys here are discretionary traders. Trading a macro— global macro-led strategy across asset class. So very much then utilizing our fundamental understanding of markets like this Fed event, but utilizing technical analysis as the framework to execute our trades across different asset classes. So how do we identify talent for our trading, our traders? Well, we run what's called a career trading program, which is 9 weeks of intensive training where we basically go through all of the key competencies of trading, all the way up to then they trade live funded account, very small micro futures, but it allows them then to feel for the first time the psychological pressures associated with training or trading, which allows us then to identify potential talent which which we then offer to back to continue their development in future. So that's AmplifyTrading. This then, if you click on this button, would lead you to this page. So this is a couple of shots of the guys in the office just doing their thing. That's me, a bit weird looking at myself like that, but moving down. So we have different start dates for our career program. There's one happening on the 16th of September. Which is almost fully booked. So that's for the 9-week program. We've then got another one on the 21st of October, and then that's it for 2019. So we like to keep our groups fairly small so it could be quite an intimate trading training process. We also have a 1-week program you can see happening in September, October as well. This is a 1-week, 5-day intensive program from Monday to Friday, delivered predominantly by myself. So again, I've been in the market now for 14-odd years. Sam is involved, our head of trading, Piers, who's been trading for 16, 17 years, is involved. So we try to use our expertise, our specialisms, to give you a full-rounded view of markets. So you can get more details there. Um, another thing I just quickly wanted to show you was if we go on here is our summer internship program. So there is technology that Amplify has developed, which is proprietary software to our own in-house product, which is now being used by the graduate programs at most of the tier 1 investment banks globally. Does include a very close partnership that we have with the US bank Morgan Stanley, where we use simulation technology methodology to identify, identify potential performance metrics on both a technical and a soft basis, which allows us then to recruit the best potential candidates for big institutions to pick people based on performance, not just their academic kind of prowess. So if you wanted that, click on that button. That will lead you to a totally different section of our website. These are a couple of the guys going through a 4-week holistic internship training program that we run every summer. We're currently running it at this present point in time. Um, it's a great atmosphere. We have people from all over the world come to do that program. So if you're interested in that, do check that out. There's a few more start dates coming up for that. Otherwise, a few other final things. Um, you are on YouTube, so if you haven't already done so, please do subscribe to our channel. It would be very much appreciated. Um, you know, I love what I do, and being part of looking at the fundamentals, I feel, is something which is massively underserved in what's available online for a lot of you guys who are trading by yourselves or in a non-institutional environment. But it's the bread and butter really of what I've always done since 2006. So I'd love if you could join us on the channel every morning in this morning briefing section. Basically, me and Sam deliver a 20 to 30 minute briefing of the overnight assessment of what's happened to close on Wall Street overnight in Asia, what our views are and our insights for the day ahead. I'll talk about the market fundamentally, Sam talks about it from a technical point and a trade setup point of view, so it's your kind of one-stop stop shop, if you like, for all things you need to know to develop those skills, but also see what we're looking at and how we're interpreting the news. So do subscribe to that channel. The morning briefings go up every, every single day, every weekday. Um, both myself and Sam are quite active on Twitter. So this is what I look like without my glasses on and a bit of makeup, I must admit. But this is the, uh, Twitter. So I will be sharing just generally insights throughout the day, things that I'm seeing that I think are quite interesting. Sam is also on Twitter. So as you can see here, Sam talks and looks at the market much more from a technical point of view than, say, I would. And so again, if you wanted more insights, feel free to follow us. My handle, if I go back is basically just search my name, Anthony Cheung, or AWM Cheung, for Sam, Sam North, North, and his handle, snorth19. The reason he's 19, Sam used to be a professional footballer and that is his number. No lie, he used to play for Fulham as a youth player, and so hence he's got the number 19 there on his handle. Uh, finally, the Amplify account. So every morning at about 6:30 AM London time in the morning, I'll be sharing a couple of the key stories in play for that day, usually about 3 or 4. So rather than trawling through Bloomberg, the FT, and so on, all you need to do is follow Amplify on Twitter and you'll get all of those, those stories available to you very early in the morning. All right, other than that, that is it. I hope you enjoyed the session. Thank you very much for giving up your evening. Um, any comments that you have, feel free to leave a comment on this video. It's going to be up there. We will respond to comments when we come back in tomorrow morning, me and the team will be here bright and early, first thing. So thank you very much, guys. Hope you enjoyed that session. Hope it was insightful. Hope it was useful. And we'd love to have you as part of the Amplify community. So remember to subscribe to the channel and like. And then hopefully we can do more of these sessions going forward. So thank you, José. Thank you, Chris. Very kind, thank you for those comments. Carol, thank you for joining us, Carol. Zion, is that Zion Williams, NBA number 1 draft? Thank you, Zion. Uh, Nai Yin, thank you very much. Are you back in Singapore now? Uh, Nai Yin in the chat came all the way from Singapore to come to London to train with us at Amplify for the week. So amazing to meet these types of people, of course. Jason, thank you. AJ, Kenneth, thank you very much. Joanna, hope you're well. Always lovely to see you. Do stop by. Mamoon, you're the man. Need I say more? Do stop by as well when you come back into London. Jason, thank you. All right, that's it. Thanks so much, guys. Feed is coming off. See you next time.