Vaccine Fast-Tracking Lifts Sentiment As Markets Await Powell At Jackson Hole

Hey, very good morning to you. Hope you're doing well. First of all, before I begin, I just wanted to quickly show you the Amplify YouTube channel. If you don't already subscribe, please do, and then hit the bell icon to be notified for any new videos that go up every single day— briefings from me, but other videos from the rest of the Amplify team as well. And just to give you a heads up in terms of what I'm going to cover in this video is use my area of expertise, which is the market fundamentals. Fundamentals. I'm going to run over some of the major news flow from what's come out over the weekend and some of my expectations for the main catalyst perhaps for the week ahead. In terms of the actual charts from a technical perspective though, if you go on the Amplify Trading YouTube channel and you scroll down, you can see there's different playlists. And one here, the second one, you can see one of our senior traders and mentors, Sam North, has put out his technical analysis and weekly trade setup video, which you can access here, the first one. On the left-hand side. Also as well, Milan Deep from our tech team, who has been putting out a regular series about algorithmic trading, he also issued a new video as well at the weekend where he went into algorithmic versus discretionary trading, the pros and cons, and that's definitely worth checking out as well. So have a look in your own time, but let's have a look straight at the charts this morning and see what we are talking about and what the market is moving on. And as you can see in the center charts here. Just to refresh your memory, you've got DAX on the left, NASDAQ center, S&P 500 futures on the right. And you can see the S&P 500 already pushing up on its R1. Equity index futures positive following the, um, the performance overnight in the Asia-Pacific region where equities have moved higher. I'll get into the details of why in a moment, but first of all, just having a look here, gap up in these US indices at the recommencement of trade electronically overnight. And we've— on the daily continuation— pushed up to all-time highs once again. So as you can see here now where the S&P is, we're managing to get above the high that was printed on the 19th in the futures. We've also gone through the 3,400 level, and that would put us then above where we were pre the pandemic levels back in February of this year. So the rally continues for the time being. Um, elsewhere then, just given some of these relative moves and how it's correlating with the other asset classes, gold is down fractionally. I say fractionally these days, $5 is a small move as far as gold is concerned. You can see we're just hugging the pivot at the moment, uh, we're trading at $1,942. And elsewhere, the US 10-year is pretty flat overall, just up around 2 ticks. In the currency markets, the DXY down 0.1%, so relatively flat in the major currency pairs for the moment. EUR/USD up 13, CAD/USD up 7. And in the crude market, we are flat. We did initially gap up, you can see here overnight trade. There are some storms developing that will make landfall in the Gulf of Mexico, is anticipated later on today, which has caused a degree of shut-in in that region, which we know is particularly sensitive for crude oil prices in the Gulf of Mexico. Prices did drift off slightly in Asian session. We have found a bit of a floor and support around that futures low point that we had toward the US close on Friday and the pivot level, so which was around $42.22. We've had a bit of a bounce since Europe have come in. So that's the overall charts and, and sentiment, I would say, moderately positive to get the week underway. A lot of focus has been on the these types of articles. Really, it's twofold. Uh, there were the two articles that came out last night, one from the, the FT, which is this, which is talking about the Trump administration is considering bypassing normal US regulatory standards to fast-track an experimental coronavirus vaccine from the UK for use in America ahead of the presidential election, according to people briefed on the plan. So again, a lot of this I would say is a little bit posturing almost. Trump putting a lot of pressure, being highly critical of the FDA at the end of last week. And on that note, Trump has said now that the FDA has in fact kind of been pushed over by the pressure from the president and expanded access to COVID treatment. And what this is suggesting is that Trump has said coronavirus treatment that involves blood plasma donated by people who've already recovered from COVID-19 will be expanded to more sick Americans, widening access on a promising therapy even before researchers have fully understood all of the implications and how it works. So yeah, this fast tracking— I mean, one thing I'll quickly show you, if you go on my, my Twitter account, if you ever get time, there was a really great article that came out from Zero Hedge over the weekend, and it was looking at some analysis from Deutsche Bank and Bank of America. I've put the link here on one of my latest tweets, but basically it looks at what would be a normal standard process of going through clinical research and trials to then final kind of production and quality control and regulatory approval, and looking at exactly what's been happening so far. And, you know, this was the— a normal vaccine can take essentially up to to 10 years, but we're fast-tracking through this COVID-19 situation, uh, to around 12 months, which is absolutely incredible when you look at it in regard to this discovery research, preclinical safety, immune and disease protection status. The whole point in this article though, and one of the things I want to make clear here, is that, um, I think it's in Trump's, um, agenda in order to make these types of comments, i.e. Remember, when he talks about the virus, he blames it on China. If he talks about anything else, he tries to discount then any type of accountability for himself. And I think by passing the buck onto the FDA, he can pass blame that it's them withholding, despite whatever the research is. So it's not actually his fault, and he's been quite persevering in order to get something as soon as possible. The point being here is that Bank of America made a couple of good points. There are considerable vaccine process development and manufacturing risks when you actually start thinking about it. You know, it's a highly complicated process developing this type of new vaccine, and it could compromise sufficient and timely vaccine supply, including then potential setbacks in process validation scale-up, technology transfer, raw material shortages. If you think about glass vials, for example, and etc. So the actual distribution as well of a vaccine is going to come well after the, the US election, which is obviously taking place in early November. So for Trump, for me, this is all about, you know, the virus is key to, to this election. This is what Biden's going after, the mismanagement of Trump. And this is what Trump now needs to convince America that he's done everything he possibly can in order to get a vaccine available as soon as possible. Now, the vaccine, there's no way it's going to actually get implemented. If you think about it, even if you were to deliver and people were able to get hold of at least 1 million every day in the US injections, let's say, of a new vaccine, it's going to take you a year anyway, if you think about the population in America, if you were gonna vaccinate the entire population. So the idea of, um, what we're— what he's trying to achieve here, I think, is that whole kind of public response to how they're viewing the handling of this situation, which is obviously going to be key for the election outcome. At the moment in the polls, obviously we recently had the Democratic convention Biden opened up a slightly wider margin. It was as narrow in the RCP average polls around 6.4, it's gone back up to 7.6. However, this week is the Republican National Convention. It's going to start today, it's going to run all the way through till Thursday, and the New York Times was reporting at the weekend that Donald Trump is going to be speaking at the end of every single day. I wouldn't really expect anything other from Trump. Usually it's kind of kept right back for the end of the conference, the kind of keynote big speech, but Trump obviously wants to be out there trying to confront some of these major issues. You know, one of the things obviously that a lot of people are looking at is the fact that, you know, he is very used to being up there on the main stage trying to really be up there and confronting these major issues head-on. And so, yeah, you can expect lots of comments about China, about the virus, and so on and so forth as we go through the rest of this week. So yeah, much to play for on this US election front. And if you are interested, I pinned a tweet at the top of my Twitter account of a really excellent must-read about what you need to know for the upcoming US election. Fantastic article by the team at ING Economics, and it's really great because it's a 12-minute read, so it's pretty short, but it covers all the bases, all the scenarios, everything you really need to know. Really short, concise, and really well written in a really digestible format. So I highly encourage you to take a read of that. It'll get you up to speed in no time on the major things you're looking out for for the US election. Overnight in Asia though, as I did say, we did have some positive movements. Hong Kong shares were up over 1%. Tencent shares did jump in overnight trades the most in about 2 weeks. They're up in excess of 4%, but bear in mind they were down around 10% even in one session about 2 or so weeks ago when the US were targeting things like TikTok and WeChat. But their shares have recovered. White House officials then have come out and basically said they've reassured American businesses, including Apple, which is important, that a ban on its WeChat app won't be as broad as feared. Separately to that, in the overnight session as well, China's banking regulator pledged that it's backing for Hong Kong as a finance hub and reiterated a commitment to opening up the Chinese financial sector amid this ongoing standoff with the trade war with the US. So some fairly conciliatory tone overnight from China on the Hong Kong front, but then also as well Tencent getting a bit of a boost on the back of the fact that US firms may still be able to do business as WeChat in China. So if you think about this trade war, obviously as we discussed in the recent week or two, China have started to reaccelerate then their purchases of various different products importing from the US as part of that Phase 1 deal. So despite the fact that they didn't meet 2 weekends ago, things are progressing relatively on track at the moment. So again, it will be interesting politically. I'm sure China is going to be the recipient of some fairly aggressive comments coming out of Trump, given the fact he is speaking at a Republican convention. But underlying that, and what I think is really supporting prices and why the market's not getting spooked about what he's going to say negatively about China is the fact that at the moment this just would show that all things beneath his comments are actually functioning as a working relationship between the US and China for the time being. One of the other things in the oil market, oil did gap up, it's kind of drifted south in the Asia session and that's picked up as Europe have come in. A little bit of focus on the weather developments in the Gulf of Mexico If I just show you a map here, you've got two storms, one right now in a much more strategically, I guess, sensitive area, which is the Gulf of Mexico. But we've also got Storm— Tropical Storm Laura, which is also moving in a similar direction. So if you go on to the National Hurricane Center, you can actually click and get information, and there's a multi-hour update that comes out where they're tracking in real time the direction, the wind speed, the rainfall, the calculated kind of where the land mass will hit in regards to when the tropical storm will make landfall and also if it accelerates into hurricane status. So as you can see here, I know it's a bit small, but this chart showing that it should be around later on this evening US time the tropical storm Marco makes landfall. And then as far as Laura is concerned, it's going to be a little bit later, more like midweek, and also hitting and more disruptive towards further left in the Gulf of Mexico rather than where we're hitting a little bit more center for Marco. As a point of reference, almost 60% of US crude output in the Gulf was closed as of midday on Sunday in preparation with the expectation that these will increase and intensify over the course of the next 24 hours or so. Also in oil markets, something to just be aware of was that Libya's National Oil Company said on Friday that they welcome the country's new ceasefire agreement and the nation should be able to resume exports when all of its facilities are freed from military occupation. Now, I'm not sure how long exactly that will take. One would imagine a number of weeks most likely, but Libya does fluctuate largely with their production. Can be as low as less than 100,000, can be up towards a million when they are in full operation. So maybe something to just keep an eye on as we go further forward in the weeks ahead. Obviously we've got this ongoing OPEC deal and compliance, uh, and compensatory cuts by the likes of those countries like Iraq and Nigeria, um, that we saw materialize from that JMMC meeting from last week. It will be quite interesting to see how Libya also comes back online, more supply coming into what is strategically a cutting situation that OPEC+ and its allies are trying to implement at the moment. But at the moment, oil relatively steady. Obviously, the rest of the markets, reflection of a degree of mild optimism, at least for the open so far this morning. There's a fairly, I guess, conciliatory tone happening with US-China trade war front. And these are all positive dynamics for then, uh, the general COVID situation. Now COVID in itself, numbers, the US still looking more favorable in terms of decreasing numbers, but in Europe we still need to monitor that with a little bit of vigilance, these areas such as France, Germany, and the UK in particular. Um, okay, um, looking ahead at the calendar in terms of summary of what the week has to offer, Monday is pretty quiet. And so Chicago Fed National Activity Index is the only thing really coming out later on this afternoon. So the market might well still continue to digest some of this information about what the Trump administration is trying to do in fast-tracking a lot of these vaccine treatments. And then Tuesday, we start to get— then GDP is a real kind of mainstay of the week from all around the world. German figure we get on Tuesday. We get the US second reading of Q2 GDP on Thursday. Remember, that's after we had that advanced reading of around -32.9%. Analysts looking for just very minor revisions on those numbers. Tuesday then, going through chronological order, you've got German IFO, always a particularly interesting figure given that these are the real tangible companies on the ground in Germany about what do they think about current economic conditions and forward-looking expectations over the next months. Housing data as well in the US. Wednesday, and one thing to note, Wednesday and Friday. So Wednesday, got a chief economist of the Bank of England, Haldane, is speaking. And then Friday, just to jump ahead, you've got Bank of England Governor Bailey who's speaking at the Jackson Hole Symposium. Now before I talk about Jackson Hole, the Bank of England then could be quite interesting. And if you think about the Jackson Hole Symposium, although everyone is talking talking about Jerome Powell, because expected that he's going to give an update because it's the first time since the end of July meeting where people are looking for further, further insight and hints towards what their policy review has come up with. And the biggest one is about the Fed communication suggesting a new framework that may incorporate average inflation targeting to replace current inflation targeting approach. And kind of the next evolution, if you like, of, of how and why the— what has been underpinning markets in this general stability and calm is that the Federal Reserve is willing to continue to offer tweaks that would be supportive of keeping a lower interest rate environment going forward in a more accommodative monetary policy stance. So that's just what we're expecting from Powell. But from the Bank of England, I think people are still a little bit unsure about what the Bank of England are looking to do going forward. The Bank of England Governor Bailey did say last month that negative rates were part of the toolbox that the Bank of England was actually considering, but they had no immediate plan to use them. So even so, markets continue to price in a significant chance of sub-zero rates in the UK next year. So it'd be interesting to see. I'd say most analysts, myself included, I would expect then— we've already seen the Bank of England top up their QE program by £100 billion, what, 2 months ago. I would foresee further increases in that as a tool, and perhaps cutting, um, their rate on the other tools that they have, the term facility, rather than cutting negative actual interest rates. That would be further down the sequence in possible policy tools to utilize should the economic conditions in the UK deteriorate further than where they are at the moment. Now, timing on that could be quite telling come October. You've got Brexit, meaningful kind of deadlines if they want to get the deal done by the end of the transition period at the end of the year. You've also got the end and sensitive management of the furlough scheme in the UK. So I think there's potential for disruption in the UK economy further in October. So I'd expect then the Bank of England governor and Haldane to, to kind of keep negative rates as an idea on the table for discussion but make it kind of as clear as possible without pre-committing that it's a relatively low level at this point and wouldn't be something they'll look to adopt until much further down the line should conditions warrant. So Bank of England speakers I think could be quite interesting this week. So Haldane on Wednesday, Bailey on Friday. Remember that Jackson Hole Symposium will be held virtually, will be taking place on Thursday and Friday this week. Powell is speaking on Thursday, which will be around the afternoon, 2 PM London time. Also then, at Jackson Hole, you get to hear from all of the other major heads of central bank. And from the ECB's perspective, most analysts think the ECB will increase their €1.35 trillion emergency bond buying program at some point, but most are anticipating the timing of that to come towards the end of the year. So again, in terms of the subtle nuances of central bank language, it's probably going to be soft, uh, kind of commentary around that the— there's still availability should it so be necessary. They'll continue to monitor incoming developments economically and so on, basically just not giving away too much at this point. So the ECB probably less interesting in that, in that sense. Otherwise, um, yeah, Wednesday pretty quiet overall durable goods coming out the US. Then we go into Thursday, we start to see then that US GDP data and Powell, definitely one of the headline events of this week. And then Friday you get the US PCE deflator, core PCE, and personal spending. So really, if you think about the overall week, it's worth keeping in mind the composition where it's, it's kind of more back-ended where there's a lot of emphasis on that virtual Jackson Hole meeting, and particularly Jerome Powell, and he's not speaking until Thursday afternoon. So if you're visualizing the week ahead, maybe worth keeping that in mind. The more bigger, real distinct catalyst for the week that may then initiate much more sizable direction might not come until the tail end of the week overall, which could then mean a strategic, more conservative approach perhaps for the beginning of the week, barring anything unexpected. All right, that is it from me. Remember, you can go on to the YouTube channel if you want to see more technical setups from Sam. That will kind of supplement what it is that I've covered on the fundamental side. But otherwise, leave a comment if there's anything I can help with, any questions at all. Otherwise, I'll see you back here same time tomorrow. Thanks very much.