US Stocks Erase All Losses For The Year

Okay, very good morning to you. Anthony Cheung here, the head of market analysis at Amplify Trading. Just going to give you an update on some of the major news headlines in play this morning and generally the outlook and what to expect for the day ahead from a fundamental perspective. Don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel if you're watching this on YouTube. And also, just as a notice, as you can see here on my screen, we're going to be covering, the team and I, the FOMC this Wednesday evening, uh, live via an exclusive and private webinar, the link of which I shall be distributing today and also put in the description of this video. So all people are welcome to join, but preferably those then who are interested in learning how we kind of prepare and then analyze and trade in real time a news-driven event like the Fed. So feel free to register. It's going to be limited to 500 places only, and it will be given to first-come, first-served basis. So we'll kick off at 6:30 London time on Wednesday evening. But just having a look at the charts this morning, and it's kind of the, the morning after the day before, and it's kind of that with equity markets having recovered the entire pandemic sell-off essentially when it comes to US equities. The Nasdaq hit a record high yesterday and the dust has just kind of settled since then and not a great deal so far has occurred. And so it's pretty quiet. If you remember when we were looking on that calendar in the macro menu yesterday and we were kind of— and this is a thing I encourage the guys to do on a kind of Sunday night is to visualize almost the week ahead to try and identify then where the potential catalysts could come where there's a scheduled major news-driven event that could then shift sentiment or act as a, as a catalyst to spark then a potential move in whatever asset or product that you're looking at. And the week in itself is, is very much kind of peak midweek. The first half of the week is relatively quiet, so today not too dissimilar to yesterday in that respect. And then Wednesday is when we are, of course, as I just mentioned, we're looking out for the Fed. But you've also got US CPI, you've got Chinese inflation data coming overnight as well. And then as we get into the latter half of the week, we start to see Eurogroup and ECOFIN meetings as well coming from Europe, the preliminary Michigan number coming out of the US, which could be quite interesting, as well as a slew of UK economic data as well. So yeah, quite a few things coming, which means all the more reason markets are relatively calm at the moment in fairly benign ranges, if I can call it that. In terms of the actual sentiment for this morning, given some of the movement at the close yesterday, equity markets have kind of just gone sideways during the Asia-Pacific session, I guess just waiting the next kind of cue for, for direction. And we'll look at the calendar in a second whether or not we'll have anything too much. As I said, there's not anything really major happening today, so perhaps then attention turns back to things like the tracking of the coronavirus, the trade war potential headline risk, and things of that nature. T-notes have bounced up a little bit during the overnight Asia-Pacific session. Technically, we just got a break of the prior day's highs, which looks like it just kind of helped it to continue that trend in the overnight session. And what otherwise was relatively lackluster, I believe Japan saw a tiny bit of underperformance. There's a bit of tension brewing between North and South Korea, I think too major to report at this point in time, but maybe worth just keeping an eye on the peninsula for the time being from a news perspective. In the gold market, futures sitting at the kind of psychologically and technically relevant 1700 handle. That was an area of resistance during the bulk of yesterday's session, really both the European and US mornings, before it eventually broke through after really Europe had left for the day. And now that resistance has now turned support, and we're kind of sitting right on that 1700 handle for the moment, down $5. In the currency market, in terms of the DXY, it's up a touch, about 0.1%. Major pairs broadly are flat, uh, just a very moderate dollar strength, meaning that both the major pairs are down about 13 pips or so for the time being. And then oil, not too much of a surprise to see what happened yesterday. This is really what we were talking about through much of yesterday's morning briefing, which was the idea that we'd seen this run-up, we'd got through 40, we pretty much had that gap fill from the the March drop that we had post that OPEC meeting. And so a little bit of profit taking at around those levels, uh, was— I don't think that's surprising. And so although we're up 42 cents this morning, we're trading a $38 handle rather than north of $40 for the moment. And then in the equity market, let's just have a closer look. I mean, in the S&P in the near term, the, the Friday and reopening of electronic trade on Sunday, double top eventually being broken despite it acting as some pretty decent resistance initially at the opening of Wall Street trade and just before Europe left for the day. And that's now going to be probably an interesting area of, of technical support just given the proximity of the daily pivot to that previous level of significance at 3211.5. So before that though, um, in the near term you've got the, uh, kind of high and low that we saw, which was around that 3217 level. So some decent levels of downside support to keep an eye on at the moment in the major, uh, US indices. If you're looking at things like the, the NASDAQ here, uh, and the Dow, we are trading respectively above our pivot levels for the time being. So the DAX consequently up about 27.5 points this morning. Um, having a look then, let's just have a look at the phenomenal recovery we've had. I mean, the, the bottom really defined here as per the annotated chart by the depths of which the Fed has unleashed full firepower to support the economy. Again, I think it was 11, I counted at the weekend, extraordinary kind of liquidity funding programs that they've done in various different means. And compositions to help support the economy beyond that of just committing to unlimited bond buying, to cutting rates to zero. And so the market just continues to recover. And of course, so far the reopening of economies continues. We're going to be looking— we'll touch upon that in a second. But all of these things have continued to remain somewhat positive. And the NASDAQ Composite, of course, moving over and above then the all-time record high. And for the S&P, it has now pretty much eradicated all of the losses that it has seen year to date, and certainly the bulk of when the initial coronavirus outbreak started to be beginning in mainland China in around the Lunar New Year holiday. So yeah, quite, quite incredible. And underlying this then are a few stats to be aware of. I mean, the S&P now being green for the for the year is a rally of almost 45% overall from those March lows. Um, it's extended gains after 3 straight weeks of rising more than 3%, and that's a feat that's only happened one other time in the post-war era. Since March 23rd, so the low, not a single stock in the gauge, the S&P, is lower. And a lot of people will see that as a sign of broadening participation Looking here, most of the S&P 500 members, in fact 98%, trade now above their 50-day moving average, which is the most on record in any data going back to 1990. In the currency market, of course, the, the translation this is having from across asset class mix is whenever this has generally been occurring and there's risk appetite in the market we tend to see the risk premium in the dollar get, get unwound, which is kind of the reverse of what we saw during the episode of market volatility in March in the pricing of the pandemic. So the dollar headed for its 9th day of declines. That is the longest slide in more than a decade as well for the Dixie. So an inverse relationship almost at the moment between US equities and the dollar. And one thing that starts to get me a little bit nervous is when I start seeing Statistics like this, I just thought I would share. At $176 billion, Tesla now has a higher market cap than General Motors, Ford Motor, Daimler, and Ferrari combined. It's quite incredible. I mean, in terms of the revenues over the past year, um, the Tesla revenue is around $26 billion. The big 3 combined, so GM, um, and the likes, their revenue is $406 billion compared to $26 billion at Tesla, and still that company is way larger. And of course, these types of stocks like Tesla, they tend to outperform, uh, in these periods of when people are happy to invest in risk in that sense. And so the, the kind of, again, the, the underlying economic reality of, say, the company's balance sheet is just not relevant really in this type of environment. And people are just chasing these moves higher for the time being. And, and, and who's to say then that when we look back at the S&P here, we can't also go to all-time record highs? I think the important thing here is to try to trade what you see and not overthink things too much. I think we're at a point now where the, the economic realities to the movement of financial markets is becoming so disconnected that it's quite tempting to be forcing this kind of negative view on markets at these elevated levels. But inherently then, like what we've seen A couple of hedge fund managers which said that they were wrong to be so cautious. You remember there was a kind of whole chorus of hedge fund managers— I remember delivering it in a briefing about 2.5, 3 weeks ago possibly— who are all kind of saying that the market was overdone and how badly wrong that they got that. So I think at this point in time, unless something else materializes, I still don't see as I was kind of inferring yesterday's briefing, too much to disrupt this continuation of— although the equity market might have its pullbacks and consolidations, that the move will continue for the time being. Um, some of the main things here that I am monitoring are of course to do with the coronavirus, although that remains relatively quiet at this point. There's a few things to update you on. From a more positive side of things, there was an interesting comment out of the World Health Organization last night. They said that while there appears to be evidence that transmission is possible from a person who displays no symptoms of coronavirus, that is very rare. And obviously that was a bit of a concern for many people, was the idea that, you know, you can actually contract the virus but not actually show any visible symptoms. And so perhaps they're not showing the same protocol as someone who would self-contain for 14 days to isolate in that respect, and therefore helping to transmit the virus further. But actually, the World Health Organization now saying that that is actually particularly rare in those asymptomatic kind of episodes. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he's going to be meeting with his cabinet today. You've probably read a few things about this this morning. This morning. It comes after the lowest number of daily deaths since restrictions were imposed in the UK. And if you remember back a few weeks ago, we've had the first phase of kind of new loosening on the 1st of June. The next phase is to come on the reopening of non-essential retailers on the 15th of June. And this was all contingent on those death numbers continuing to go down, of which they are at this point in time. There's a couple of rumors doing the rounds that some of his cabinet members are looking at reducing the 2-meter social distancing rule, but that would go against, uh, SAGE advice in regard to keeping that in place at the moment. And given the political pressure that Boris Johnson's government's been under, I think he'll find that incredibly difficult to do, just given the fact that his popularity has diminished almost solely not on his dealing with Brexit but on the dealing with the, with the implementation of the lockdown, which has ultimately led to perhaps a worse performance than perhaps the government were expecting, and also comparative to other nations and the actions in which they took. Other countries to keep an eye on is Germany. Although things have been relatively positive in the UK, Germany has recorded an increase in new coronavirus cases as the infection rate has climbed further above that key R number of 1. It's currently 1.1 in Germany. If you remember, they're kind of a few weeks further down the line than we are in terms of their phasing of reopening. And so again, we look at these things in order to try and get a feel for, um, the possibility or the significance of any potential pickup in a second wave. And obviously when it goes above 1, that being meaning then that there's a chance that the virus spread could pick up exponentially at that point. And so hence the reason why that figure is so key. So yeah, that's the kind of the overall assessment on things. Another thing that happened late yesterday, which probably has helped some of that equity kind of grind up to these new highs, has been this. So just a bit of an overview. Basically, the Federal Reserve has expanded what's called their Main Street lending program. This is a particularly important one because it's talking not about financial institutions but helping companies on the ground. And these, we know, are intrinsically very important for the employment situation in America, where most people are in fact employed by small, medium-sized businesses, not these large corporations. So what the Fed have done for this Main Street lending program, they've cut the minimum loan size in half. In order to be able to qualify for this program. So they've cut it in half to $250,000, lengthening the terms as well of their lending by a year to encourage more businesses and banks to participate. So the repayment period now has been pushed back out to 5 years from 4. So if you think about it as a normal consumer, you're basically saying that, look, to qualify for this loan, you now don't need to be— to have have so much fund or so much capital, and also you can repay us over a longer time period than before to ease the pressure on that, on servicing that debt. Uh, the Fed is also further minimizing downside risk for banks and credit unions by purchasing 95% of all loans issued through the program. They previously had said that they, that would range from 85 to 95%. So again, just another, another mechanism to help this overall economic recovery. At this point in time. Otherwise, we're looking at the, the calendar for today. We've already had the German trade balance come out, and that did come in at 3.2 billion surplus. Expectations were for a, for a 10 billion reading. The export number, potentially a little bit interesting, came in at -24%. Expectations were for a -15.6% reading. So a little bit negative there. I don't think that's a shocking surprise, but just goes to show the depths of which Germany has suffered. Uh, it was already, um, teetering on recession even before the pandemic hit, if you'll remember, through multiple different things— ongoing trade war with the US, the Brexit uncertainty, um, the political situation and difficulties being felt by the ruling party in Germany domestically. So Yeah, Germany is coming from a very low base at this point, which obviously is concerning from the eurozone. And this is why we've had this coordinated European Recovery Fund agreement. We've had the ECB over the last week. We've had the German government overdeliver with the secondary stimulus. But, you know, I guess it's kind of reality here for Germany. And, you know, if you're looking at the euro this morning, we've just broken, in fact, a as I've been speaking, the overnight kind of range low here in the top left-hand corner. And that was a level you can see here as far as the EURUSD currency is concerned, that was a fairly significant level for the currency here. And so now if we continue to move lower, you've got a nice support area around, you can see that S1 level, so 1.1275, looking at the euro future here, and that would coincide with those lows that we saw around midday yesterday. So just breaking that overnight Asia-Pacific range, which was also the late Wall Street range, and exiting out that dip at midday was also an area of support. So just helping that price movement moving a little lower here in the euro currency this morning. Other than that though, going further in toward the morning, what else is there? Not a great deal. Uh, the Q1 GDP coming out of Europe is not going to be a real market mover. You know, Q1 seems a seems quite a distant memory now when we're looking at it in terms of the fact that we're in June now of this year. And then going into the US session, equally there's not too really much to shift sentiment, I would say, from a scheduled point of view. From a speaker's perspective, also equally quite quiet. You've got Bank of England's Cunliffe, typically a dove, speaking later at 3:30 this afternoon, perhaps worth keeping an eye on. and then some fixed income supply coming out of Germany, and at $29 billion in the 10-year note auction at the US Treasury as well later. So, um, I would say, um, take your time, uh, marking up the charts from a technical perspective, uh, for the time being. Um, maybe equities warrant just a bit of consolidation. That could entail a little bit of a pullback, but as I showed you in the S&P earlier, some good levels of downside support that potentially might hold firm. And then yeah, keep an eye out still on things like any trade war headlines coming out of Mr. Trump. Of course, I'll keep you posted of his, his movements as and when I get the full schedule available for him. Cool. All right, any questions, just let me— just drop a comment. I would be happy to respond throughout the day. Otherwise, don't forget to register if you'd like to join us on Wednesday evening for the FOMC live, and I look forward to seeing you guys tomorrow morning. Thanks very much.