FOMC Minutes: 19th August 2020 - Live Reaction

Okay, hey chaps, how's it going?

Yeah, good, thank you, yourself?

Yeah, yeah, good. I got a bit caught in the rain, but I can live with that. I'm not made of sugar, as you would say. But let me just get my YouTube channel up. But yeah, whilst I do that and the other guys Get Up to Speed. Yeah, welcome everyone. I'm— hey guys, got Alex here, you got Sam. So I got the two main guys that are involved with obviously the trading and mentoring on the Amplified Trading side of the business every single day to accompany me for the FOMC minutes coverage. All in all, the kind of plan here now is I'm— well, let me just bring up my live stream so I can see your comments as we're going. Yes, coverage. Okay, so Jimmy, Ian, Powitz, how's it going? Nice to see you always. Philip. Yeah, just a little intro then. I always like to know where you guys are tuning in from. Courtney, I know you're stateside. Hope everything is well with you. Marcus, where are you based? Steve? Good to get a good feel of the audience. Gordon, always a pleasure.

Gordon.

Always a pleasure, Gordon, absolutely. Hope you're enjoying your golf and your beers. Living the dream out in Spain.

Yeah, Mo, good to, good to have you online with us again. I know, Mo, you did the program, trying to think now, what, must have been maybe 2 months ago. So I hope you've been well since. But look, let's, let's get straight into it then, because I want to give these guys ample time to, to go over things. And, and quite simply, what I want this to be an exercise for, if anyone is new to the channel or new to Amplify, I think one of the things that makes us a little bit unique is our, our way of trading. And we are global macro multi-asset discretionary traders. So that in short, meaning that we put quite a high value in our macro interpretation, the fundamentals of what's driving markets, and then exercise that through technical strategies in, um, executed intraday. So what we've got here then is, um, I know Alex has put together some excellent slides. He's got some good points, I think, to, to prep you up of what exactly are we expecting. So I know I would normally do this, but you know, he's put the hard yards in, uh, preparing for this. So absolutely, he should come on and talk about it himself. And then Sam will come on after and look at it a little bit more from a technical point of view across the different assets and charts and, and how under different scenarios he would go about strategizing ahead of time should there be a relevant market move. So I'll man the chat. Alex, if you want to take it away, and then, um, we'll leave it to you guys.

Thanks, Dan. Um, just very quickly, and how do I make the PowerPoint do the whole, whole size of the screen?

Mike, Mike, you just need to click on, um, at the very top there should be View, and I think it's a Preview View you can do, and it will put it into like a box. So if you go View and there's one called Reading View, it's probably the best one, and then you can just—

Excellent. Yeah, I've got it, I've got it. Apologies. Hey guys, yeah, so these are the slides I've got ready. So this first slide, it's quite a lot here, so I'm just going to blast through it. Um, this is a slide from our previous, from our previous one, uh, to do with these sort of ultra loose monetary policy correlations theme that all of my sort of trades at the moment are sort of based around. Um, so the reason I've got this slide up is because this, this slide shows that the Fed have not even really they're not even close to where they could go with their emergency lending facilities, right? So the Fed will be a backstop, but if equity is full, will the Fed stand ready to increase the size and scope of their asset purchases? So there's still so much room here. The Fed hasn't used any of their arsenal yet. Powell reiterated that the Fed was happy with its current policy stance in the last statement, though reiterated the Fed was prepared to adjust its approach if necessary and the Fed would be committed to using its tools for as long as it takes to ensure a strong economic recovery. And so that basically means that those ultra-loose monetary policy correlation themes are still in play, you know, for me. Um, I do think there could be a little bit of a retracement. We'll talk about that in a moment. One of the things that Powell mentioned in the previous statement was he was worried that the recovery was stalling, and because of the coronavirus, some of those high-frequency data points were suggesting that economy was slowing down. But those— the recovery was slowing down. But those high-frequency data points can be quite unreliable due to the high frequency of them. And Powell said that the recovery depends largely on the course of the virus. Now, as we can see here, since late July actually the virus has sort of peaked and is starting to retrace. Uh, hopefully it's not a buy the dip, and if it's not, then that should be good for the recovery and inflation expectations. And I know that I'm going to bring up this next chart here to do with inflation expectations. This is not the swap, this is the forward. Uh, inflation expectations are beginning to recover. The reason this is such a large— I wanted to bring 2009 Quarter 1 in here after the fall in 2008, where inflation expectations actually by 2010 rose to above 2.5% on the forward. And, and here we are rising here despite— and this is in the face of those, um, high-frequency data points which have been slowing down, right? Well, inflation expectations have continued to rise, and this is like what we was talking about in that video on gold the other day, which I'll bring up those charts as well. Um, and also Democrats have softened their stance on the next round of stimulus, and if stimulus agreement is reached, you know, this again would be another positive factor for inflation. And as long as inflation keeps rising, well, that's good for the Fed. But I also want to bring into this, because I think this is going to be the highlight of the minutes if there is going to be any market movement, I think it's going to be around this. And this is where does the Fed go in terms of its forward— in terms of its future tools, right? Because interest rates are at zero or near zero, the effective lower bound, which means they can't go any lower. And they've ruled out negative rates. So what can they do? Well, the current regime is that inflate is that over the last decade, they've expected— they want— their target is 2% inflation, and no matter what, that disregards previous times of being below 2%, including recessionary periods. But actually, they've fallen short of that. The average over the past decade has been 1.5%. Now, this is dangerous. This is dangerous because deflation or low inflation presents problems for the economy, much like Japan. And it's the Fed's mandate to have this stable inflation and low unemployment. And so in order to get this average inflation up, they may change the regime, and that will then become average inflation targeting. Now, this means that Look what happened. So when inflation was approaching 2% last time, what did the Fed do? Well, they started raising rates. Yeah. And that obviously puts a brake on inflation, as you can see, and inflation starts to roll off. Now, what they're thinking about doing this time is when inflation gets to the 2% target, they're going to leave it. Right. So they're going to, they're going to allow inflation to run over 2% to make up the periods when it was below 2%. And then average will be 2%, right? So they could let inflation run up to 2.5%, maybe more. We don't know that yet. They've not given the guidance on that. So if I was to draw on this chart, which I actually can do, can't I, on Zoom? If I was to draw on this chart, actually, when inflation starts to reach 2% here, this Fed funds rate is going to remain at the effective lower bound. And what that does, it kind of acts like forward guidance. Forward guidance, what they're trying to do is they're trying to keep rates, they're communicating that we're not going to move rates and rates are going to remain low. And by saying that they're going to allow inflation to rally up a little bit higher, overshoot 2% for a period of time, which could be years— the calculation suggests they could run at 2.5% for 5 years to make up for this deflation below target— then this ultra-loose monetary policy correlations is here to stay. Right. It's another bullish factor there for gold and for the equity market. I mean, that's a massive, massive bullish factor there for the equity market. So the Fed's currently doing a policy review. They're talking about stuff like this. The first thing being the forward guidance, the second thing being AIT, this average inflation targeting, and the final being yield curve targets. And this stuff's under review. It's not been agreed. And so this is what tonight's meeting is going to be about for me. In the previous meeting, there was no mention of forward guidance. There was no mention of this inflation targeting. And there was no mention of yield curve targets. Now, the market's going to start expecting that next step. They're going to want— the market's going to start wanting to know what the Fed are thinking for the September meeting, which is coming up mid-September. And so I'm going to move on to that in the conclusion. But if they— the market could react disappointed if they are not reaching consensus. Remember, they've all got a vote on this stuff. Let me just move to the next slide. So I think the most— one of the most important charts for me is going to be this. This is the Treasury yield on the 10-year. You see that after the coronavirus apocalypse, Treasury yields completely collapsed down here to down towards 0.5%. Actually, in the last, last week, we saw Treasury yields pop off of this 0.5%, and actually we saw gold come off. We were doing a lot of coverage about the time, and since then, actually, Treasuries have started to fall again, and that has supported gold as well. Now, what's going to be interesting here is the direction of the Treasuries. This is going to be the window into how the market thinks about this is that if, if the market's disappointed that the Fed have not reached any closer consensus about whether they're going to do this inflation targeting or any of that stuff, I think yields will rally. If yields rally, gold will come lower, dollar will strengthen, and I'm not sure about the equity market. I'll leave that to Sam. Um, if they do, if there is major progress towards this consensus and it looks like they could pull the trigger in September, I think yields will come lower and then gold's gonna rally higher. Be the opposite, gold rally higher, dollar will weaken. It'll be that dovish reaction, uh, back down towards that 0.5% on the yields. Uh, if they— I think I was reading a report that then what they might do is they might just sort, um, they might highlight progress that they've made, but it won't be major progress, but it will be a little bit of progress. In that situation, I don't think there'll be much reaction at all. So this is the Treasury futures. This is a chart that Ant was sharing on the YouTube and on the Twitter and with our in-house traders, was that this is where the Treasuries came off here. We broke down through this huge area of support, this trend line here. We found a little bit of support here near the 139 handle, and we have since bounced. Now, this is, this is the area in the sand for me, uh, which is if, if yields go higher on a hawkish reaction, you'll see Treasuries move back down towards this area, potentially even this area, and that'll be bearish for gold. And if we've managed to break up through this area then that's your dovish reaction there. So I'm keeping an eye on Treasuries as I think they're the sort of driving force at the moment. I'm just going to revisit this chart. You're probably sick of this chart by now, but this is the TIPS versus the gold. The TIPS is inverted, and it just shows that— and it's actually not just gold, it's all markets— it's the real yields. And, uh, you know, back in 2013, just heading into the taper tantrum, so the beginning of 2013, all the way up till May and afterwards, it was actually— gold was rallying. Had a really nice chart actually earlier of gold put over QE and the Fed's balance sheet. And when the Fed expanded their balance sheet, gold rallies higher. Well, if real yields start to strengthen, gold's going to pull back. And that's actually what we've been seeing in markets today. We've seen gold come off a bit. We've seen the dollar strengthen a touch. So I just thought I'd bring that up as well. Um, so just to summarize, as a trader crib sheet here, I've got another one to talk about market positioning as well. Um, but expect no change in interest rates, they're going to remain at zero. Expect Powell to deliver reassuring— well, not press conference, this was from the last, um, meeting— but ready to use the full range of tools, uh, you know, to support the economy, which supports our ultra loose monetary policy correlations theme. If an emerging consensus building around forward guidance or this inflation target, and the more progress, the more dovish it is, I actually think that that's unlikely. But hopefully, analysts think that— analysts are hoping that by September, they will have finished this review, which began in January. And they'll be ready to take action, at least on forward guidance, that September meeting. If they don't do that, I reckon yields are going to pop sharply higher, and that's going to be that more hawkish sort of reaction. If there's no consensus, we could see a hawkish reaction, especially with current positioning. And so the summary is it might not be market moving today, but we may offer guidelines for weeks ahead any distinct bias either way will be the biggest market impact. Just wanted to quickly sort of finish off with market positioning. It's always important, the USD positioning. You know, if we look at the dollar index, I just wanted to quickly bring the dollar index into shot. Market positioning, you know, dollar index is down so heavily, and if you look at the positioning on the, um, on the COP data, the futures reports, the position is massively stretched, right? Which makes the dollar vulnerable to a correction higher. Actually, this giant support area here, um, and if I actually zoom out to a weekly— oh, we are on a weekly— you can see this, uh, this giant support area around this 92 handle being rejected, rejected, rejected. Now we're getting a bit of a hammer there. So if there's no progress made maybe the dollar just pops again a little bit higher. But I think that, um, any rally in the dollar should be short-lived. Nice resistance around this 94 area. I actually do hope the dollar does pop here, and, um, but I expect sellers to re-emerge maybe around 94 or so. That obviously won't be today, so it could be a non-event. But if most of the factors are left unchanged and there's a slight improvement in the consensus on future policy tools, the biggest reactions will probably come if zero progress is made or if there's a strong consensus. Does this change my medium-term view? No, it doesn't. But the USD does look vulnerable to a pop on the upside. The only thing that will prevent that is if there's a strong consensus in which the dollar would weaken. If so, I expect that to be short-lived and the bears to regain control. And ultra-loose monetary policy theme, looks extended. If there was a correction, it would set up a nice opportunity to reload. And I will, uh, not leave it there. Cool.

Well, yeah, excellent rundown, Alex. Um, couldn't have done better myself. Um, but I, I love the summary at the end. I think you're absolutely right, and it's great. That's the way we try to encourage people to think, is that, look, you're looking at these definable outcomes And therefore, even though the baseline expectation here is this is almost like the prelude to September where the action will happen, but then there is a possibility— say nothing, or then we've not got closer to that inevitability in September, so it could be hawkish. Or say too much, well, hang about, then we might get a further follow-through of some of the general trends we've been seeing. And so on. But market positioning key, as he said, absolutely. But look, let's get Sam on. I'm interested to see then how does that convert from what we've heard from Alex into actual, uh, the currency pairs, the equity indices, gold, and so on.

Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you, and thank you very much, Alex. Um, very concise, I think. And you've got to be, got to be worried now after seeing that. Um, but yeah, very good, and good to see the usual names in, in the, in the chat over on YouTube. It's always good to, to have you guys, uh, with us. But yeah, we'll have a look over the charts. I think one thing that Alex said at the end there about, you know, any pullback, uh, in particular markets or any sort of dollar strength we might see to come perhaps will be short-lived. And I'll go with that. I would, I would say, um, so well, here we'll start off with the equity market. Um, one second, let me just bring that in here. So yeah, equities are pretty much on, well, all-time highs. We're a couple of points away at the highest we got today to, to reach in that mark that you can see we got back on the, the 20th of Feb. I think a pullback would be welcome. I mean, today, uh, you want to see how the land lies. Do we get a final push above the high, close above it, and then, you know, maybe it's a bit more bullish? Or do we, you know, pop up and then actually reject it and start seeing a bit of a drift lower? As we always say, you trade what you see, not what you necessarily think. Um, so with this, I, I do like the idea of perhaps seeing some sort of pullback if we can get it towards— and I do like this, it's more of a zone for me really, from where we, we sort of had that gap, if you remember, that Friday to Monday, 21st, 24th of Fed. Those sort of highs and then the low that we had back on the 10th of that, that whole area stretching across and then down to towards the high that we had on the 23rd of July. I would love price to come back towards there. So what we would need to see yet is, yeah, a bit of dollar strength, which then is going to bring gold down lower, uh, and the dollar pairs as well, which we saw. I think the euro is at a 2-year high, the pound is, uh, up near well, or was just above the 9th of March high, not far away from the election high as well. So, you know, these markets are overextended and, you know, it's not unusual to see price stalling around a high, uh, an all-time high like this in the S&P. So yeah, a bit of a recovery, uh, I mean, you know, a strong recovery, but a bit of a pullback wouldn't be the most surprising thing in the world. I think today's close will be interesting. You can see that high just a tiny bit above. It's this price here. We're almost there, you know, we've just been grinding and grinding higher. What would make me want to pull the trigger to go short? Personally, nothing, um, as I think it would be short-lived. But if I was, uh, bearish on, on this market, there's a couple of interesting trend lines that are starting to develop. You see this one here starting on the, the the 4th of the month, uh, and then the 11th. We hit it again yesterday, which is also the low of the week. So that's a key level that people in the market are looking at. But if we were to finish the day on a hawkish surprise and see, uh, price below this trend line, it wouldn't surprise me to see a bit of an unwind. The last 3 Fed meetings have been led by, uh, have been followed by bearish price action for at least a couple of days. So Fed minutes. We've been pushing higher since the meeting, off those 2 days lower. I, you know, I'd be surprised if it was a bullish reaction today, so I'm expecting a bit of a pullback. If I were to de-risk a longer-term position, now is a great time to do that. Wait and see, do we get above the high, can I add to it, or do we drift lower? And actually, 3,300 is a level of interest that people might look at. Currency-wise, and we can only— got 7 minutes, plenty of time. This would be, you know, for me, if I wanted to see a bit of dollar strength and we finish like we do now, this is, this is what you'd want, in my opinion. You've got this double top from— let's just bring in the pivots to give ourselves a bit more direction here, uh, the 31st of July and yet— and the 6th. We broke through yesterday, found support, and, and pushed on to that 2-year high. However, we're now back below there. So on the daily chart now, it's looking a bit like a false breakout. We're coming back as well to a very key area of support. Admittedly, we found, uh, support on the first test, but if we push lower, uh, and even finish, you know, sort of just a bit below the low of the day, I think this market over the coming days is going to strengthen. And it wouldn't actually surprise me to see, yeah, price come back down towards that 117 handle on the futures, where people would then reassess, and it could be another good opportunity to reload and get in the euro-dollar longs or the dollar shorts. It could also coincide with the S&P coming back down towards 3,300 for that next, next, uh, leg to the upside. Um, so that would be something I'm looking at. However, on maybe a dovish surprise and stocks push higher and the dollar weakens, the sort of false break at this level could also be an opportunity. So keep a watch. That double top, previous double top, is very key. People have clearly looking at that in the market. You can see how the, uh, the price extended lower once we've broken that. So I'm still going to have that on my chart as well. The, the pound was faring slightly better, um, while the euro initially started going, but that you can see as well is below its— that sort of double top from those same days. So that's another key one, uh, putting this on the daily chart. Um, but weekly, it's, it's going to be so key. Again, let's just bring this in. The 2018 high, you can see, matched up pretty much bang on the 9th of December that week. And then a couple of times, 1, 2, 3. We're currently above there, so we finished the week above. Then I would expect a bit more of a push higher. You can see this is going back to that sort of election week, the 12th of December 13th, December overnight, uh, their high. But yeah, if we can stay above this trend line, I'd expect you get some, some buyers in next week. A false break of that, and then yeah, well, with that dollar strength on a, you know, hawkish reaction to this, and then into the close of the week, and then into the close of the month, made some dollar strength, it wouldn't be all too surprising to see 128 come in, which would be ultimately, in my opinion, a great place to get long. So From my personal point of view, I like the long on the pound around sort of 128. I like the long on the euro back down to 117. I like the S&P long if we can get to 3,300 to add to a position that I'm already in. Quick look over at gold, uh, which— I mean, this market has to be said, beautiful, beautiful over the last few days. You had this breakdown that we had last Tuesday, big move lower. You know, Alex and covered it superbly. I'm sure you've all seen the video. What happens when a support breaks in that first test? We know it's going to be the strongest. And look at that, pretty much bang on. If I drag this zone all the way across my screen, you can see there, beautiful. There's people taking profit, bit of an unwind, uh, and then yeah, another sort of leg lower, a bit of a trendline break this morning, although as usual in the morning it's messy. Um, but yeah, you can see where now I would sort of argue just knocking on where I would also have a bit of a line in the sand. The, the sellers, uh, the bears have got a bit of a zone here to defend, you know. Again, hawkish reaction and gold, yeah, like Alex was saying, you're likely to see that push lower. And where it could be a great place to get in, well, just having a look at the the daily chart, would it be surprising to see price come back towards sort of the $1,900 handle? You know, maybe over the coming weeks it wouldn't be, uh, the most strange thing in the world. But again, longer term, I think it's still perfect conditions for gold overall. So I think, uh, could be a good opportunity to, to get in longs lower down. If that doesn't come in and we do get a bearish reaction, I'm a buyer above $2,000 20. So you can see the importance of this as a support. Support, okay, bye-bye. Sellers take over, they take over again twice above that level. They're not interested in my opinion. So therefore this is also that sort of continuation, uh, to go along if we can get back above there. Don't see that happening this week, but we'll, uh, we'll obviously find out shortly. Uh, I'll stop there as we've got a couple of minutes. Um, and, uh, yeah, Alex and Anthony, you want to add before we get those minutes?

Yeah, just gonna say maybe the cat is out the bag of what we're about to see. And I say that because I was just looking here to— for anyone, as a reminder, you did have a Fed speaker come out about 1 hour ago, Fed's Bullard. He's a non-voting member but did say basically that, um, let me just quickly basically Bullard is a non-voting member but a leaning dove, quite outright. And he said, sees low rates for a long time and no need to offer further guidance yet. Says there is a growing realization that 2% inflation target has not been adequate to keep expectations at that level. So typically, think about it, Bullard doesn't just come out a few minutes before the minutes. He knows obviously the minutes are coming out. Is that a little insight as to them just drip feeding in ahead of time basically what they're about— you're about to see? Or is it just a little bit of just putting it out there to stabilize what otherwise might be fairly dated? I mean, these minutes are inherently dated to a certain degree. Don't forget the COVID situation has changed over 2 weeks as well in the US. So I'm going to put my squawk on. Should be coming out any moment now. So I'm gonna— you'll hear the audio come out. I'm just going to give it a quick restart if I can get it quick. Looks like it's okay, should be good now. Sam, have you got your scorecard? Mine's— nothing's coming out so far.

Nothing seen as yet.

Okay, yeah, no, nothing seen as yet. So it looks like slight delay. When it's delayed like this, just hold fire. Don't, you know, don't be silly and jump in the market. You don't know what's happened yet. So just patience, hold and wait. No need to panic. I'm going to check the Federal Reserve website, see if I can get it direct from there. Okay, yeah, the minutes. Okay, I've got the minutes. Now, but it's the full text of the entire minutes. So I'm gonna have a quick skim. If the squawk break it, I'll let you know. But I can see the minutes, I've got them off the Fed website, but it's, uh, you know, decent 3,000 words. So let me just quickly have a quick skim for some keywords.

Yeah, good, good luck with that.

And but you can see just from, uh, having a look at Ant's screens there, uh, we've got the multi-asset chart showing not much reaction at all. Uh, great trend line there on the S&P, the middle on the furthest to the right. You can see that's a great sort of chart to have there, coincides with the all-time high as well.

So as no participants continue their discussions relating to the ongoing review of the Fed's monetary policy strategy, tools, and communication practices at this meeting, they discussed potential changes to the committee's statement on longer-run goals and monetary policy strategy, where participants agreed that in light of fundamental changes in the economy over the past decade, including generally lower levels of interest rates and persistent disinflationary pressures in the United States and abroad, and given what has been learned during the monetary framework review, finding the statement could be helpful in increasing the transparency and accountability of policy. Not too much information on this initial paragraph on potential changes to that long-run statement.

Yeah, I mean, I'm looking at it at the moment. This is a really kind of fractured release, which would make it very difficult to trade. Because it's going to come out information really piecemeal now because I'm looking at the minutes and it's, it's a, it's not exactly the easiest thing to read because it's very lengthy and it's a very technical document in the language. So in this type of event, I'll just say now, normally the best thing to do is just stay out. Um, why it's come out in this fashion, I don't know.

Normally, just want to make it clear from this release, newswires don't seem to be running comments. We are manually going through the release looking out for anything to highlight. We'll post a link to that on the board as well for anyone who's looking for that link.

Yeah, I'm going to quickly show you what the statement looks like just so you get a feel for it. So just looking towards the back end of it here, um, policy committee action. Um, again, this is— don't forget, it's referencing a period that this meeting was obviously at the end of July. Members agreed coronavirus outbreak was causing tremendous human economic hardship. Fine. Employment had picked up somewhat in recent months but remained well below the levels of beginning of the year. I mean, these are all decisions obviously to what they had. The main focal point though, I'll continue to look through, is on the review and any commentary pertaining to that. There's nothing immediately though here that I'd say, having had a quick skim, that jumps out. How I normally would do this in this situation is I'd do Ctrl+F and I'd say type review, and then it'll punch out, look, 1 in 7 words. I don't know if you can see that on my screen. I think my camera is quite just hiding it, but then it highlights. You can see review. And so here, review of monetary policy strategy tools. Participants continue their discussion related to the ongoing review of the Fed was monetary policy tools communication 'At this meeting, they discussed potential changes to the committee's longer-run goals and monetary policy strategy. They agreed that in light of fundamental changes in the economy over the past decade—' Look, further, further, further. 'Given what they've learned during the framework review and state a— refining the statement could be helpful, increasing the transparency and accountability in monetary policy. Such refinements could also facilitate well-informed decision-making,' so on. So for here, for me, just very quickly, my interpretation of this is there's no new information. There's no yield curve control. There's no average inflation targeting. This is exactly, I'd say, as what you probably would have thought as a base case scenario. They're discussing it. They're paying heed of the merit of actually updating their current process, setting us up— minutes— it doesn't know— setting us up for basically a September potential change. What I would be expecting now practically from the Fed is that between now— there's a really important meeting if you're not used to markets happening in 2 weeks' time. They're having a virtual Jackson Hole Symposium, which is normally one of the major platforms outside of the Fed meetings where the Fed can communicate substantial forward guidance if they need to. That will then set the scene. I feel, for what will be then the September change, more definitively outlining some of these key tools. So for me so far, I can see there's a little touch of movement now, but I would say fairly benign in the sense that yes, there's changes afoot, they see the benefit of doing so, but it's all very loosely worded with no actual definitive detail would be my assessment.

Yeah, and I, I think the market sort of is showing that as well, isn't it? I think those that are looking to get into a trade, be careful because you're not likely to see too much in the way of movement. Yeah, I'm sure you've got your levels marked up, and as we, we say, and it says in the chat, doesn't it, you know, trade what you see, not necessarily what you, what you think. And the market has to move, I think, for there to be an opportunity. And if it doesn't move, no opportunity, uh, really. Um, in, in that. So yeah, relatively quiet, but I guess expected bigger things to come. The only interesting thing I would say is, you know, you've seen some dollar strength today across the pairs, and you wonder, you know, does that now have to be a bit unwound as there is no hawkish side to it potentially?

So maybe tomorrow you might get a bit of an unwind in this.

But again, you've got the level in gold, you've got the level in euro and the pound, those sort of double tops. If we get above there, you know, in the volume's nice, nice hour close above, I'd be interested in long euro, long pound. But, you know, unless it gets above there, I'm, I'm, I'm a fence sitter, I'd say.

Yeah, just wanted to add as well, it's like, it's exactly that situation, you know, we were talking about at the start where no change means dollar strength. And I mean, you've got to see whether there's any follow-through or not. Because this could reverse, right? I'm personally— I don't trade this sort of events, but no change means dollar strength. You're getting that hawkish reaction where stocks are coming down, the dollar strengthening, yields unchanged. Yields is it for me. If yields start strengthening here, gold's going to come off. Gold on the— is testing at 1960 level in the futures, 1950 in the cash market. And like Sam says, the dollar was already strengthening into this. A question I wanted to ask Anthony, but we didn't— we ran out of time before the release— was that, was there a reaction to Bullard's comments?

Um, no, there wasn't, not really. Um, I guess for one, Bullard's a non-voting member. Two, Bullard flip-flops between being hawkish and dovish like the change of wind, so he's kind of lost a little bit of credibility, I'd say. And then a comment that close to the event I'd say it kind of numbs the market a little bit with people a little bit uncommitted so close. I think you absolutely have hit the— hit it on the head though, Alex. I mean, it's like the, the lack of anything given the market positioning is de facto perceived reaction-wise as hawkish. Hawkish is the wrong word to use because that's not what it is. It's just the omission of saying anything of real substance. Has that effect on a market that's hungry for dovishness at the moment, and, uh, that obviously hasn't materialized. So yeah, downside pressure in the major currency pairs. You can see in the top left here, uh, be interested, Sam, is any areas to the downside you could look for potential support to come in there? Gold just retesting now that the, the intraday low that came in not that long ago this afternoon around the European kind of cash equity close. So just coming within sight of that now. Little extension there in gold just as we've popped beneath it. That could then— you've seen the way gold moves for sure over the last couple of weeks. Now if we do see definitive technical breaks, gold can trade quite heavy very quickly. But that level just holding for the moment. But new session lows. Gold down about $50 now. $50 feels like an average day now. Current context is pretty extreme. But all of these moves, obviously, from a multi-asset point of view— dollar strength, gold weakness, so firmer dollar, high yields. And there's that T-note move as well, a little bit slower to the party, not as heavy as some of the other assets. Again, that kind of longer-dated chart on the daily, we're still— that 50 DMA is quite a key one on the, on the daily chart for the 10-year.

Yeah, and just on the euro, it's, uh, it's just now below that sort of line that Sam and I have. I think you've got it, 1.1872. Yeah, you've got it marked up there, 1.1872. It's, it's key for me. So, you know, it's early days really before, you know, the, the close is still, you know, a fair bit of time. So I'll be interested to see where, where that finishes. Do we finish below 1.1872, or do we, you know, somehow, you know, get a bit of support off that exact line that you draw— drew up there, reverse round, and it's that false break, and then we unwind the dollar strength. So I could understand why people would get short— breaks the low of the day, breaks a very key level of previous resistance, um, but you're coming into a nice support area now. And if the euro has told us anything about the last few weeks going back to that trendline low is don't try and sell the low, not the euro. But, uh, yeah, we'll have to see. The S&P, you know, didn't— it didn't bite today. It didn't bite today to the dollar strength. It didn't bite to gold coming lower. And there was a feeling, I guess, in the markets that it was almost waiting for the minutes to maybe confirm something. Um, so yeah, I mean, if you bring the S&P just a slightly bit bigger, um, I guess you, you, you've got that sort of previous— it's such a key resistance around sort of— well, I guess the pivot really is what I'm looking at, where we had those sort of 5-session highs in a row where it just couldn't get above.

Now, from a market psychology point of view, and it would have to bear in mind, you know, it's got to come another sort of 10 points from where it is now which could do, of course. Um, but if we finish below there, that's when you're going to start to see a bit of an unwind. You know, we don't quite get the all-time high. We're now below a level that the buyers would have been happy with. But on this, yeah, I mean, look at the bigger picture here. Really, it's, it's a pullback, uh, which would be very much welcome. Um, so yeah, daily close will be, will be key. I don't think it's a case of getting a get ahead of ourselves here. But the euro close will be interesting. Uh, gold, it sort of popped up towards that, that zone that we talked about just a bit before, and that offered an opportunity for people to get short. That's now testing the low of the day, but there's no guarantee that it closes there. But you can see just a little rejection of that now. Key level, key level.

Well, yeah, one thing I guess just to kind of wrap this up is that I think the major point here to express is, um, what Alex said at the end of his kind of presentation was market positioning dictating then how to interpret the information when it came out. Now ultimately, are the Fed gonna do more, and will the dollar continue medium term to weaken? I would say probably yes. But as far as a reaction is concerned for the here and now, it's the opposite effect as the reaction to market positioning. Um, okay, Alex, unless you want to add any final points, I just want to say from my side, great to see some familiar names in the chat. It's absolutely always a pleasure to reconnect in this way, and hopefully your trading journeys beyond having had interaction with Amplifiers continue to improve and you continue to prosper in the market. Obviously our doors are always open for anyone who requires any help or anything like that. Um, otherwise, yeah, don't forget to subscribe to the channel. There's new videos coming literally every day of the week, Monday through Sunday these days. And there's a new video from Milandeep, who you might have seen is new to the channel. He's from our technology team and he's going to be doing a new video on Saturday about algorithmic versus discretionary trading, which you guys might enjoy, um, as well. But, uh, yeah, so, um, Alex, if there's any closing pearls of wisdom you'd like to pass on, then, uh, please do, and then we'll wrap it up.

Not sure about wisdom. No, no, thanks for joining. Yeah, it's really good to, um, see everyone again. And, uh, yeah, wait for this. Downside to pass in major effects and buy the dip, I reckon.

Second that.

Cool, thanks guys. Take care, guys. Cheers. Bye.