Oil Bounces Back Despite Wall Street Sell-Off

Okay, very good morning to everyone. Hope you're doing well. It is Thursday the 2nd of April. I'm gonna kick things off for the briefing with this headline here you can see to the side of me. This is talking about the close on Wall Street last night. So I'm not sure if you saw it, but all 3 major stock indices opening the quarter down below 4%. So here, the Dow, S&P 500, that does mark the worst start to a quarter in history. So, uh, definitely as we were talking about earlier in the week, that kind of roadmap for the week and the fact that month and quarter end was coming and we were looking at this coronavirus, the potential acceleration particularly in North America, that we felt we were turning quite bearish on that midweek was going to be the pivot. Just given that kind of calendar timing as well for portfolio managers and their positioning. And certainly from an equity point of view, just looking straight at the S&P 500, we've come all the way back down to now test where we were at the initial reopening of trade at the Globex open. You can see here on the Sunday reopening, we have bounced from that point at the moment. I'm going to talk about oil quite a lot in this briefing because oil has been running again this morning. But as you can see here, quite a sharp drop of course since Tuesday retest of last week's high. It's come all the way down to that level before settling now and hugging the pivot level, uh, this morning. So a bit of, as you, you'd normally see, a natural bounce from quite an aggressive day's selling. And of course, the catalyst behind that was Trump kind of now coming back to a little bit of reality of it's going to be a very, very painful few weeks for, for the American public, and kind of preparing them for the worst-case scenario. Quite a change, if you like, in tone from his general optimism and playing down of the virus before that. So that was really yesterday. But of course, looking at the charts this morning, currency markets, not too much movement for the moment. Both major pairs are trading in positive territory in EURUSD and Cable. Gold, although it's been relatively sideways, is sitting pretty much in the futures around $1,600. It is up about $11 at the moment. And T-notes up marginally but just dipping below pivot and the Asian low at the moment as I'm speaking. As you can see here in the bottom right, as equities on a firmer footing this morning, WTI crude is probably the standout. You can see here as Europe has come into the market, we've seen an acceleration in prices, and I'm going to talk about this more when I go through the headlines now. So with that being said, let's get stuck into the fundamentals and what's happening this morning. Before I do though, just a reminder, tomorrow it is non-farm payrolls, of course. And so whether you're a trader or a student watching these briefings, then you're absolutely welcome to join me. I'm going to have Will, Piers, Sam, a few other guys as well are going to be all hosting this event so we could all add our own kind of specialism, if you like. But certainly for me, preparing you guys for, for the routine and then the real-time analysis, if you like, of what happens to cross-asset market movement on the back of this, you're more than welcome to to join. So I'm going to drop this link for the registration. It is a webinar being done by a Zoom video, so it is kind of a private one, and we're going to limit it to the first kind of 500 people that register. So all you need to do is pop your name and your email in, and then you'll get an alert as soon as we go live with all the details and the live link. Let's get stuck into it then. What are we looking at for today? And of course, still The coronavirus is, is the topic that everyone's still monitoring at the moment. You can see total confirmed cases now, uh, it's somewhat inevitably getting ever closer to that 1 million milestone. Um, but a few things to be aware of here. Now, first of all, we're going to talk about Europe, and Europeans see a glimmer of hope in Italy's virus stabilization. So what are they talking about here? Well, let's have a look. This is, this is the, the death toll in Italy in a bar chart form of the number of deaths per day. Now I know it's a bit small, so just to make things a little bit clearer, on the left-hand side you've got 500, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, goes up the top of this chart. If you can't quite make it out, 7,000. So as you can see here, when we got to the 21st, this is when there were quite a lot of people talking about, oh, we already hit the peak, but has typically sort of seen these phases where we peak, people get quite optimistic, only for then a secondary kind of another push-up. But the one thing is now is that the push back up, if you look here, although it comes back up for a momentary period of time, the new high or number of deaths is getting lower each time. It's kind of like when you, when you're doing a natural technical analysis on a chart, if you like, for prices. And of course, I'm not trying to belittle that what this data actually underlines, but from a price pattern recognition, you can see here that the kind of the numbers now are getting more shallow, uh, as per the day on an average basis is what you're saying. So this is what they're referring to here, and it's talking about obviously Italy was, was— if you think about that curve about the initiation, the acceleration, the peaking, then the lockdown nationwide and so on, Italy was kind of the first— it was kind of the second phase after the mainland China, one of the first global areas to get affected outside of the borders of China, but because of that, it kind of front-runs, if you like, some of the other regions. And so quite a few people looking at that this morning. There's a Bloomberg article here, and if I scroll down, it starts looking at other— you know, if you look at that same pattern with Italy, you can kind of see something similar in Spain, Germany, France still fairly elevated, but Germany certainly has come off the last 2 days or so. Switzerland stabilizing. And the UK still probably a little bit more concerning at this point. Now let's move over to, to something else. Let's look at North America. So that's the kind of more positive developments that we have seen. Some of the more negative ones, of course, are— I mean, you can see here the map of the United States. I know we're fairly zoomed out here on this COVID-19 monitor, but you can see just how densely now the red is populating the, the geographic kind of map of the United States. And US now at 216,000 confirmed cases. But this is the one, uh, that probably looks a little bit more telling. If you remember that kind of, again, that, that kind of hump shape or the distribution, normal distribution kind of shape that we typically have been seeing where we plotted countries. Let's say China's on the furthest right coming down the slope America's still right in the, in the acceleration phase at the moment. And so hence the reason why the market got so spooked. The kind of catalyst, if you like, was the Trump comments, of course. But the underlying that is this chart, which is, you know, kind of exponential growth at the moment of people catching this virus in America. Now, if we go up to here and let's have a look at the United States— let me just zoom this out a little bit so it's a little bit more easier to see. So this of course is something we've looked at a few times, but again, this graphically I guess makes it a little bit more clear. You can see Italy, Spain, although the numbers of deaths in Spain are literally level with Italy, so particularly worrying given the, the more steep trajectory of how quickly they got there comparative to Italy. Again, quite slow in terms of quarantining and locking down the nation, but remember the US hasn't even done that yet. And so if you look at the actual, the US and the UK in particular, numbers are still accelerating fairly rapidly at the moment. So I probably would say that these two numbers, particularly the former, the US, is going to way exceed probably what we've seen in these other areas here as Spain, Italy, France start to level off a little bit. So definitely still tracking this day to day. The emphasis of course remains the United States. What's Trump been saying? Well, I thought I'd quickly cover this. This is in Bloomberg this morning: report submitted to White House on China's undercounting. The US has publicly reported now more, of course, than twice the number of cases than what China has reported. China concealed extent of the virus outbreak according to US intelligence. So, you know, this is completely political. If you think about it, I'm not kind of defending China. Everyone knows China has undercounted their figures. That's the same with economic data they've released over recent years. It's not a surprise. But if you think about it, if you're Donald Trump here, there still is an election to manage here in only, what, 6 months or so's time. So for Trump now, this is about trying again. Like, if you think about it, if the economy starts falling, whose fault is it? It's Jerome Powell's fault for not cutting rates aggressively enough. If the economy starts falling, whose fault is it? It's China because of the trade war. They're taking advantage of our great companies in America. So now Trump knows that all things remaining equal and what the market or the public is aware of in terms of the the current number of Chinese cases, America is going to massively supersede that, and that's going to look really bad for him. So he knows that. So what is he doing? He's taking preemptive action. He's going to start criticizing China, coming out with these types of reports. This is completely political. Does this move markets? Well, perhaps it has a slight knock-on effect in terms of the relations between these two countries. Of course, it's particularly important— there is still a trade war in the background of all of this initial coronavirus issue that the market's confronting at the moment. But I wouldn't get— you know, I don't find this particularly surprising. I think this is just a political ploy to detract, if you like, away the public perception that Trump has handled this situation badly. The other thing then is oil prices, and we did look at the chart, and as I said, let's just have a quick look back. Oil prices have really rocketed higher this morning since Europe has come in. And so after we were trading, uh, even yesterday afternoon we were trading around $20, we've had a really nice pickup going into the US close. Asia, it kind of faded initially and then it's powered higher late in the session as Europe's come in. They've taken it up into the $22, $20 kind of levels where it's trading at the moment. Had a quick retest on R2, but Typically, in the momentum-driven move, this is what you do tend to see. The market kind of drives up and you get some of that momentum, the speculators just chasing the price higher. And where do they look to exit? Well, here you can see there's not much technical relevance on, on this particular turn in price that we've printed at 2194, other than the fact that it's R2. And sometimes in those fast money, quick moves, that's how some short-term traders will look to book profit, just finding a clearly identifiable level. And given those daily pivots are quite well used in the broader community community when it comes to technical analysis. You can see that extension, the pop high, and we've had already a kind of 25-cent pullback on that initial move. But definitely oil quite important. And of course, I've kind of summed this up, I just tweeted this before I came online here, and there's 3 things really you need to be aware of. Number 1 is Trump is set to meet executives at the nation's largest oil companies on Friday. So this is talking about Exxon, Chevron, so on. Now, why is that particularly important? Well, I'm going to talk about one of the oil and gas independent kind of groups that's filed for bankruptcy, so I'm going to talk about that in a second. But Trump meeting these executives, that's number one. Number two, China is moving forward plans to buy up oil for its emergency reserves given the scope of the price fall we've seen over recent weeks. If you think about it, someone like China, if you did have let's say, large foreign reserves and you have the financial ability to do so, well, now's a great time with oil trading down in the low 20s to just start loading up on your stockpiling as a strategic reserve, let's say, for the future. It's kind of, uh, again, if you've got the capital, it's a great time to, to replenish your resources so that if there is any further fallout in trade relations with the US, for example, well, that's not going to detract from the point that you've already accumulated a large amount of oil, so your economy can still continue to perform when inevitably, once the coronavirus passes, the economy starts to return to some degree of normality again. So it's a great kind of lock-in at a low price at that point, but obviously they're buying crude, so that's a net positive. And then thirdly, and this is one of the key ones, a Gulf source has said Saudi Arabia supports cooperation between all producers, and that would be completely different from how generally markets have been priced. Remember, at this point in time, the official line— and this is quite important, the way number 3 is worded— the official line is, is that the US and Russia are not talking at this point, even despite prices being at depressed levels and it's hurting all players involved. But this source that's come out overnight is suggesting that actually, according to those familiar with the matter, Saudi Arabia is coming to the idea about supporting cooperation between these producers. So that would be quite a meaningful— sorry, so really it's a 3-step reason why prices have seen this little pop this morning on the back of these things. But why is Trump meeting with these executives? Well, this was a headline I just wanted to briefly cover. Now, I think there's a really important differentiation here to make because I do know that there are Given the broader Amplify Trading, we have a technology division and there's quite a lot of students who go through our financial market simulations and so on. I just wanted to stress there's a real big difference between companies going bankrupt— that's not a negative for price because if you think about it, it's almost like a lagging effect, if you like, of the price being so depressed. Intraday markets, when it comes to trading for us, it's about trading then what the future expectation is. So when these bankruptcies come in, yes, that does have an underlying macroeconomic kind of impact in terms of potentially unemployment and so on. And people might look at then a knock-on chain effect that other oil and gas independent firms might follow. But it's very different between, you know, why have they gone under? We'll talk about this for a second. But from a trader's point of view, this is much more important. It's about what is happening right now that's going to move price in the short term. So I just wanted to make that, that clear difference. So what has happened here? Well, this is one of the big first casualties really in America, and what's prompting then this action from Trump to try and alleviate any concerns in the industry. And Whiting Petroleum has filed for bankruptcy protection, Chapter 11, becoming the first big independent shale producer to succumb to the turmoil To give you an idea in terms of context, this output was around 120,000 barrels of oil and gas equivalent a day. Uh, the Denver-based company had been due yesterday to repay $262 million left outstanding on a convertible bond. But to give you a bit of idea here, the convertible note due on Wednesday had a fixed stock price in which it could be converted to equity at $156 per share. That was agreed 5 years ago, but shares traded at roughly $140 5 years ago. What are they trading at the moment? Well, they were trading at 67 cents at the end of the quarter, so they've gone from $140 to 67 cents. So yeah, I mean, that was just kind of inevitable in a way. And, and Whiting's bankruptcy has sent the default rate for these high-yield energy companies over the past 12 months, up about 11%. So if you are interested in this sort of thing, underlying the reasons of why this is happening and what the kind of mechanics is behind the way of which these companies are financed, particularly these high-yield energy companies, then just go on the YouTube channel. There's a great video my colleague Eddie did where he goes into this a bit more, a bit more detail. It's talking about equity sectors in a coronavirus environment. Environments. Do check that out. Um, other explorers then, as a knock-on effect, and this does have broader implications of what you've probably read, have desperately tried to cut their capital expenditures and their dividend payments. That's something which we saw for banks, of course. We've seen in the UK, so like HSBC, Standard Chartered. We've seen that at the weekend in the FT where the ECB's been putting pressure on firms to suspend their dividends and things like that. So I don't think that that's surprising, to be honest. I think it's a natural mechanism in order to just preserve capital for the current situation and challenges that companies are facing. Okay, wrapping things up, um, this is the calendar for today. So not too much has been going on thus far, uh, although you've got things like construction PMI this morning. Fine, we'll keep an eye on that. But actually, it's into this afternoon when we get the US data that's going to be key. And of course, it's Thursday, So it's weekly jobless claims again. And you will remember this chart, of course. This was last week, the record-breaking 3.28 million initial jobless claims that we had. So this was kind of the first insight that we've had in terms of empirical evidence of a reflection of the mass layoffs taken preemptively by corporations in America in order then to just control their kind of cost base, if you like, going into what would be financially a very challenging period for them with coronavirus and generally the inability to be able to conduct their business for, for a lot of different industries. So this number, 3.28, and you'll remember last week I was talking about jobless claims and everyone was making a big deal out of it. But if you remember, the number came out, it was, um, really high number, higher than expected, and yet the market rallied because actually in terms of the the breadth of expectations on the street. It wasn't as bad as some had feared. And actually, apart from it being very symbolic, obviously this chart is crazy. I mean, look at it going back to the '70s. It barely gets above 500,000. I'd say the average is probably 250,000. And we're talking about 3.28 million. I mean, let's not belittle this statistic, but again, markets move on expectations, not on the data alone. You shouldn't look at it in isolation. You've got to think about it in context. And so what is important for me, as I was saying last week, is I think today's number is almost more important because now we've seen this 3.28 million. For me, it's where do we go from here? What is the situation as we've seen this week? And what is it next week and the week after? How severe is the layoffs that we're seeing in America and translating into this pop in initial jobless claims? How sustainable is it at these record-breaking levels now? Expectations are it's going to be an even worse number. It's going to be 3.5 million is the Bloomberg median consensus, and we've got a range of 1 to 5.25 million. Massive range again. But just remember, the most pessimistic bank on the street is looking at 5.25 million. So for it to be worse, it's going to be bad, worse than that. But I did see, I think it was an economist from Grant Thornton saying— and this isn't obviously a traditional place where you'd look at someone talking about their expectation of markets— but I have heard some murmuring about a potential 10 million number. Obviously, 10 million, that's huge. Um, if that was going to materialize, obviously that would be the furthest removed from expectations, and you'd be probably looking for a much more larger knee-jerk reaction if that was going to be the case. I would say in that situation equities would probably come under pressure, would be my interpretation of it. The other thing is look out for any revisions to the previous 3.28. Now what I was reading last night was that there was such a massive demand put on the computer systems to log basically the jobless rate last week that their systems crashed at certain points in certain States. Uh, and so there could be a meaningful upward revision to the 3.28 million. So remember, if we get a market forecast beating, range-breaking figure, let's say north of 5.25 million, and an upward revision of 3.28 to say 4 million, then it just adds to that negativity and probably more than of a reaction in markets. So yeah, definitely look out for that, of course, coming out 1:30 London time. Uh, you also get the trade balance coming out of the US, and you've got ISM New York Index or business conditions. You've also got factory orders as well coming out. So quite a few things this afternoon, much more kind of US-centric rather than anything particularly key happening so far in mainland Europe this morning. All right, that is it. I'm gonna let you get on with things and wish you a good day. Um, remember, if you don't already, subscribe to the channel, register for the non-farm webinar that we're going to do, and I wish you a good day ahead. All right, thanks guys.