What To Expect & Potential Reactions From The OPEC+ Meeting Today

OK, very good morning guys. It is Thursday, 3rd of December. Hope you're doing well. I just wanted to kick off the briefing with a slightly different point I just want to make because I know that these briefings I do every day go up delayed onto our YouTube channel for kind of public viewing after the early release on Amplify Live, but The point I just wanted to say was this week alone I've had 2 messages. I normally get about 1 a week about people messaging me saying they've been ripped off and that people using my face across various different Facebook, Instagram, Telegram accounts and basically fleecing people with money. It's absolutely despicable. I want to be absolutely 100% clear, none of these accounts have anything to do with me. So I just brought a few of the ones that people have sent me that have been brought to my attention this week. So Mark FX Williams, Bitcoin mining account manager, MD Hassan, Pro Trader Riley. I mean, quite honestly, the list just goes on and on and on. So Please, please, please do not give these people your money. They have nothing to do with me or Amplify Trading. It seemingly is very much based on targeting people in the Philippines, and it's very much Facebook and Instagram rather than anything else. My Twitter handle is here, and my email address is a.chung, so the spelling here, a.chung, and @amplifiedtrading.com. Unless I respond on that, this is nothing to do with me. So be careful, be sensible, and yeah, hopefully that Facebook can sort this out because it's utterly frustrating. But anyway, let's just get back to business and let's talk about markets. And not too much in the way of news flow, to be, to be honest with you, for me to get you up to speed on. We had a minor positive close on Wall Street. The NASDAQ was basically flat. The the other major indices, S&P, Dow, up around 0.2%. Getting a bit of a familiar pattern here is that equities seemingly just don't want to go down. So any pullback seemingly are just getting bought into. So good to identify early on some of these lower bound kind of technical levels in play to look where there's maybe a confluence of different technical signals all coming in at the same point, because fundamentally Although we might come back down again, I still don't see any reason for persistent and heavy selling, at least at this point. So why is equities remaining so buoyant? Well, there's a couple of different things. For one, I think a bit of a theme that we've seen emerge over the pattern of this week is this kind of idea of a reflation trade born out of vaccine approvals. We saw that with the UK yesterday, others to follow suit. There's more stimulus talk now, as we'll, we'll look at in a moment. And well, this is it really. This is the idea that Democrats have scaled back on stimulus and talks are now ongoing. And so the move is the first public retreat from stance on a larger relief plan. Remember, the Democrats were very much of the opinion they wanted multi-trillion And the fact that they've come down this much is the basis now for negotiations to get underway. So this, in combination with, uh, quite a stressed COVID situation still developing in America— I saw yesterday California became the first US state to report more than 20,000 coronavirus cases in just a single day. We did also see ADP private employment reading yesterday, Obviously, this is the precursor for payrolls. We've got jobless today, but ADP showing a slight deterioration in the jobs market. And so therefore, does this continue to put the pressure on them to sharpen the minds for these politicians to get a deal done, whether now and then whether some form of further coronavirus relief fund or money coming later on. So the market's kind of still playing on this idea, and that's helping support equities. It's also meaning then that yields are continuing to rise. One thing I was tweeting about last night, which you, you might have seen, I'll just quickly bring it up here on the, on my, my screen, uh, the 10-year breakeven rate. So this is when we look at just generally mapping forward-looking inflation expectations, and it hit 1.83% yesterday, um, well, on Tuesday I should say, um, higher than at any point since May of last year. And remember One of the things I was kind of stressing with this tweet was that you don't actually need real inflation to materialize, which ultimately is still very low in the US. But as soon as these inflation expectations start picking up, obviously people start getting a little bit more bullish about what a vaccine means for the general economic recovery being more secure despite the reality of the COVID situation at the moment. Well, this is why you're getting that yield move You're getting further then with that lesser risk of holding of a, of a safe haven currency like the dollar, but coupled then with the idea that the Fed are going to remain in a kind of ultra-expansive mode for monetary policy for the time being. So the dollar just continues to slide, um, that kind of reflation trade as well helping assist gold on the rebound. Session highs now as I speak, top right-hand corner here. Looking to reverse in the course of the heavy selling seen through November. And with that dollar weakness, of course, these major currency pairs continue to move on the upside. And one of the key things that we had yesterday, of course, was a lot of people were looking for Chief Economist Philip Lane to come out and somewhat talk the euro down. He basically made no word of the currency, and so therefore no upside resistance then for the euro to keep going up, mainly supported by the continued weakening of the dollar more than anything. But with the technical breach getting us above that symbolic September 1st high of 120 has just continued to see us higher. Now we're up at around 121.23 this morning. Now, um, cable still remains fairly elevated for the time being. Um, this is the kind of latest roundup then. So around the clock talks in London are said to be making progress, but genuine disagreement remains. Fisheries, level playing field, and people familiar with the discussion says it makes it impossible then to make a call whether or not they will in fact get a deal done as soon as this week, as some have said. France, as you can see here, is the resistance at the moment. They've reported to have told EU chief Brexit negotiator Barnier that a Brexit deal risks being vetoed if he gives in to UK demands. Um, so definitely the negotiations seemingly have intensified. There was a lot of talk earlier in the week about going into tunnel talks, which means then it's now on very much more focused points to get the deal over the line. Uh, seemingly that is the case, but, um, as you've seen over the last 2 days, there's been quite a bit of volatility, and I think a lot of this is gonna almost even get more intense in terms of how sterling price reaction might play out as we go in towards the end of this week. And the reason for that is I don't think we've ever been this close to so much growing expectation of the deal getting done. And given the fact that, generally speaking, sterling's still very high in the grand scheme of things in cable, uh, obviously supported by the notion of pricing in the deal, but also with the persistent dollar weakness I do feel like sterling is susceptible to kind of downside flashes, if you like, on the back of that. Actually, even though we've been here many times before, multiple consistent weeks of deal but then no deal, I think that this will probably play out in that fashion again this week. And so I definitely would be just mindful of how you manage those sterling positions going, going forward. The other thing, final thing really to really talk about is OPEC. They obviously delayed their initial ministerial meetings of OPEC+ by 2 days, so they reconvene today. My understanding with timing is at 1 o'clock the meeting is to begin. That does not mean that we might not see some sort of rumor or hearsay do the rounds that might move the market in the interim period. The reports yesterday suggested some degree of headway, and in combination then with the drawdown of some circa 700K in the headline crude DOE figure, we did see a pretty rampant recovery in oil. And really using that framework of the recent range in oil as a target, I know definitely some of the guys in the Amplify Live chat room got hold of that move all the way up. So, you know, fantastic trade. So the expectation still is that they're going to get a deal secured. There is a bit of variance, though, as to how, how they can push that through. I've just got some notes here from the chaps at News Corp, and they were saying there's basically 3 policy options on the table. Option 1, extend the current cuts by 3 months. That is the Saudi preference. And I would say that is the baseline expectation of markets. Option 2, raise output from January, but gradually and by less than the 2 million barrels per day under the current plan. That's Russia's preference. And then 3, raise output as planned from January, Kazakhstan's preference. So I'd say there's a tiering system of probabilities there, as I would see it. Most heaviest expectation toward they just roll over. Then there's the more slightly watered-down one of raising output in Jan, but not as much as then this 2 million barrel per day kind of sequence cut. They'll just do it more gradually over Q1. Or then there's the Kazakhstan, which I think is the least likely, which is they just continue as per the plan and they don't roll over at all for another 3 months, which is what the market expects. Obviously, in terms of probability, the Saudi one most likely. But that also means then that probably the reaction will be the least, I guess, responsive on price, given that that's largely priced in. And the most impactful would be Kazakhstan if they come out on top. If their viewpoint of just basically no rollover at all, I would see prices collapsing quite, quite sharply on the day. But the probability of that occurring, as I said, very low. So still quite a lot to play for. Just be aware that meeting, 1 o'clock, it's set to commence. But normally we'd get some, some headlines coming out before they even talk. But by the end of the day, we should know where we stand on that front. Um, all right, quick look at the calendar. What have we got coming out today? I'll let the guys go over the charts, um, in Amplify Live from a technical perspective. So just going to wrap things up here. We did have the Chinese Caixin service PMI overnight, just so you're aware. Obviously the manufacturing activity number saw its fastest acceleration in a decade earlier this week. The services reading had its second highest print in a decade, 57.8 against 56.5. So adding to that recent kind of solid PMI data we've seen out of China. So again, another reason to underpin some of the recent market kind of sentiment overall. These service PMI numbers coming out of the rest of the world, um, so Europe, UK, and so on, these market readings are final, so not expecting too much there. Eurozone retail sales is really a bit of a moot point, not really a market mover. So then we move into the US session. Weekly jobless claims expected to be relatively stable from the prior reading. We have seen two increases back to back now, and obviously as COVID has increased across nationwide in America and resulted in a number of newly implemented restrictions, that is going to impact the job scene. We've already seen that with a pretty significant drop-off in the employment constituent in ISM manufacturing earlier on in the week. We get that service ISM PMI number later on today. So armed with ADP now being slightly soft, the employment pullback in that constituent on the manufacturing side, once we see jobless— if that ticks higher and the service PMI also decreases, then people are going to have a pretty bearish view going into what the labor report will look like tomorrow in non-farm. So a couple of key things there from a data perspective: 1:30 jobless, 3 o'clock ISM, um, to look out for today. All right, I'm gonna leave it at that, let you guys, uh, get on with the day, and then I'll see you in the Amplify Live chat room. All right, take care, guys.