Why Trump won't engage with Iran

Okay, very good morning to everyone. Happy Friday, 21st of June. I thought I'd put on my, my '90s Nike tennis top because Andy Murray is back, won triumphant in doubles with Feliciano Lopez at Queen's, and he's going to be entering Wimbledon. He's confirmed, but not singles, doubles, and mixed doubles. So Andy, I know you watch the briefing every morning. Hope you're not feeling too sore with the hip, and good to have you back on board. But let's crack on. What are we discussing in the briefing this morning? A few different things. Predominantly going to focus on this story to the side of me at the moment because this has been slowly kind of grinding away throughout the week and, you know, quite kind of behind the kind of cloud of the Fed and the trade war, these tensions in the Middle East certainly warrant monitoring closely going forward. And I'm going to talk you through a few different things in a moment about what my thoughts are and how the US might respond and, and what the likelihood is of engagement and how that could influence prices or not going forward. So we'll get on to that in a second. But just having a look at the broader asset classes at the moment, Again, just to refresh your memory, I've got EURUSD top left, cable, gold top right. Gold, just a quick word. Well, you know, gold has had a pretty phenomenal run actually. I mean, the biggest move, of course, coming in the wake of— well, actually, when you actually look at the Fed move, what was quite interesting, and, you know, certainly this is when fundamental forces often act as catalysts and then exacerbated by combination of timing and liquidity at certain parts of the day, which would be this bigger spike because that actually came overnight in the Asia-Pacific session, not in the immediate aftermath of the actual FOMC decision on Wednesday night. And also obviously technical breaches of long-term levels. Now that we're up at these levels in gold, having gone through $1,400 overnight, that was the actual FOMC move. This was the move that came overnight. Kind of grind it up and then pop. You can see there the psychological level of 1400 and what that means for prices. You get that extra pop. Not that there was any fresh news, purely a kind of technical breach. And you know the reason for that, you know, if you start looking at the daily continuation here, I mean, last time we were up at these levels, you've got to go quite a way back here. So gold obviously elevated. I mean, if I just flip over the stories here, a lot of the press talking about this, obviously this this morning, 1400, buoyed by dovish central banks. Remember, you know, kind of Bank of England slightly aside because a little bit more balanced on the inflation risks that are present. But everyone else, you know, remember we started the beginning of the week, Mario Draghi incredibly dovish, that weakened the euro and saw Bund shoot higher. You've had the Fed say committing to easing, 100% now priced in for a cut in a few weeks' time at the end of July. Bank of Japan kind of holding pat, willing to do more as well. And then also you've got the trade tensions, but now the US-Iran tensions, uh, to boot, also kind of helping elevate prices and the protection of kind of these traditional safe havens. So yeah, definitely waking up, um, to a strong degree. But otherwise, other asset classes, I didn't think it was surprising to see the S&P. Again, it's quite, quite behavioral in that sense. You know, we rallied so aggressively over the course of last couple of weeks. Obviously got a catalyst, fresh catalyst with the Fed helping bump things up as well with some of the Trump tweets that we had at the beginning of the week when he was talking up the prospect of lengthy talks with China at the G20. And, you know, obvious target then for, for the short-term kind of speculators is you know, retesting of the all-time high, which we did yesterday, and hit that objective. Given the, the kind of scope of the move now that we've had, I think probably about right, unless there's a fresh reason or piece of news that comes out to kind of hit that logical area of resistance and book some profits on those trades. So to see the S&P come off a little yesterday, uh, you can see as soon as it did hit it at the open of Wall Street, it was quite a, quite a decent pullback at the time. But you can again see how technical this market is. It hits that kind of all-time high level, comes back down. Where does it come back down to? Well, comes back down to the technical point of what was resistance in the prior day's session of the week. Then where does it move back up to? Well, has a retest at the high, and now we're kind of consolidating within that range. So, you know, quite a nice response here to, uh, the technical levels, the psychological markers, the all-time high, the pullback level. And now this kind of range trade. So I mean, for me, I know Sam will look at this in more detail. If— unless the S&P really pushes up to that upper bound or reverse down to the lower, then I'm not really that interested now going forward into the S&P, quite frankly. But yeah, obviously interesting to see what Sam's take is. Otherwise, T-notes down a touch but pretty flat. Oil unchanged, but obviously a big week for oil just given the, the US-Iran tensions that have been flaring up. Of course, sterling-wise, we'll have a little update on the Tory front, but again, that's not really a market-moving factor as yet. And I'll go through some of the timelines to look out for. So that's kind of the broader overview, but let's get down into some of the headlines that have been coming out and they're in focus. So this was the thing yesterday, so let me get you up to speed of what's happened. So obviously it was back in November of last year that the US imparted fresh sanctions on Iran. However, that came with several exemptions or waivers on specific countries, particularly those that were the biggest buyers of Iranian crude. So, all in all, a strong political message from Trump domestically, but a fairly watered-down approach in terms of its actual impact on Iran. And that meant that Iran was okay with that happening. However, What we saw then was after that 6-month waiver elapsed and that didn't get renewed— this was towards the end of April— well, then the sanctions really start to bite because that really starts to impact Iran. And that was really the beginning of seeing these tensions flare up. So what's happened? Well, we've had the, the frequency of attacks— not that it's new, but it's become more regular— and the kind of proxy war against Saudi Arabia via the Houthi rebels in the left part of where Yemen is situated, in the southern tip of Saudi Arabia, if you like, in that geographic region. So they've become much more frequent in terms of those attacks, and as a response then, military personnel has increased within the area from the allied Western forces, particularly America. And then Iran sees that as quite hostile action. You've then had the the two vessels attacked last week, which of course has seen this flare up further. And now this latest development this week where a drone got shot down, a US drone apparently, by Iranian forces. So that's kind of where we are at the moment. Now, a couple of different things I just wanted to look at. One is, well, this is the, the region here. I think if I'm right, I wasn't actually in the office at the time last week when the, the vessel attacks were happening, but I believe it was similar. The Gulf of Oman going into strategically what is the world's most important choke point of the seaborne traffic of oil, accounting for 30% of the entire movement of oil on the planet at any one point in time. So hence the reason why oil prices are so sensitive to this particular region, the Strait of Hormuz, the northern tip of Oman, and here southern area of Iran. Now these latest reports is what we had, and this is where it becomes a slightly gray area, is that obviously Iran are saying they shot it down because the US drone was flying within Iranian airspace. Now obviously the history of these two countries goes back a very long way. I mean, the last time there was actually military confrontation between Iran and the US, you you've got to go all the way back to 1988. Um, the US, I think the campaign at the time, Praying Mantis, was what happened when they targeted various different— I think at the time it was, uh, Iranian warships. But then what happened at that point was on the other side, which is again has this historical significance of the tension between these two nations, is that the US accidentally shot down an Iranian civil aircraft which had 300 civilians on board and said it was a case of mistaken identity. So, you know, it's a very messy past, and hence the reason why this can flare up and this confrontation can rise pretty rapidly. A couple things though to be aware of. I mean, I was just looking at the particular aircraft that got shot down. And talking to some of the guys here yesterday, this isn't exactly the drone that you would visualize in your head that gets flown around Hyde Park in London at the weekend. This is a whole nother level. I was looking at the value. I think the actual value of this aircraft, I looked at it this morning, was $175-ish million per aircraft. It's about the same size as a Boeing 737 in terms of its wingspan and size. So Yeah, not, not a small piece of kit at all, but obviously built for doing high surveillance work from an American perspective of what Iranian activity is when you're sanctioning them about their nuclear ambitions. Now the point being here is that Trump initially said— he actually tweeted something along the lines of Iran, you know, you better watch out type of phrase. Now, you definitely have to understand here the kind of balance of consequence and the objective that Donald Trump has here and what he needs to manage. Now, who is it that responds and reports and follows his Twitter account? Well, you know, it's the mainstream media that will obviously jump on this and push the envelope and be pumping what he's saying. And so Trump knows this, so he talks a pretty tough, aggressive game on Twitter. And apparently he was in the stages of planning a military intervention. However, he then said, "Oh, actually, it was probably just a loose and stupid individual, and probably it was unintentional." So actually, what he's trying to do here is— he's got two real things he needs to manage. One is he needs to appease the voting electorate who most likely would— it would resonate with taking quite aggressive action in the Middle East. So he needs to stand firm on that in a public perception. However, he knows that any type of military engagement with Iran could cause oil prices to spike aggressively higher, which would be the absolute opposite of what he would need going into what's going to be, uh, now what's underway, a formal presidential campaign period for his second term. So he can't afford to have a military confrontation from a political point of view in respect to potential implications for the costs of an artificial tax, if you like, on higher prices for the middle class in America. The other thing, of course, is— well, a few other things. One is who are closely aligned with Iran as a country Well, that's when you start talking about the indirect relationships of the people like China, and US of course are in the middle of a trade war with China, and then you also talk about Russia. So if you start flaring up tensions with Iran, yes, that is the first person in front of you, but you are indirectly also engaging with the likes of China and Russia. So it does get very complicated and escalates very quickly. Not only that though, It costs money if you want to start, you know, going into this level, and also it kind of detracts from what Trump wants to push, which is this idea about China and the trade war and US competitiveness and also immigration, you know. So he's probably going to be very reticent to start going down this other route and spending money where ideally he wants to be using that capital and getting signed off in Congress to spend on fiscal measures and domestically. With all this being said, the reason why I've gone over it in quite detail is I do not think Trump will engage militarily at any type of sizable level with Iran because of all these reasons. It's not in his best interest, and you saw that, I think, play out yesterday. You know, he sounds aggressive, but at the end of the day, he's not going to do anything because he can't afford to do anything. I think there's too much at stake here beyond just the obvious, which is Iran. So yeah, more military personnel in the region, sure, but seeing an actual, you know, bombing of an area, I think that's not gonna happen. Let's not forget that when it comes to the 3 major countries which Trump has had to face within his short term as president, North Korea, and Iran are very different to Syria. When it comes to Syria, for one, Syria doesn't have any real natural resource that has any type of implication, like on the price of oil, which is the main reason why he'd be reticent to have any confrontation with Iran. And then North Korea— you have a problem militarily with North Korea, you've got a big problem with China. And you have a big problem with China, That's not just a big problem, that's, that's gonna be something, you know, you wouldn't ever want to go into. So if anything, he kind of ratcheted up the North Korea, hit the barrier. I think he's doing the same here, and he will hit the same with Iran. You know, this isn't Syria. He can, he can command aerial airstrikes on Syria, but he wouldn't contemplate doing that, in my opinion, with Iran for the reasons mentioned. So from a trading point of view. To summarize, um, I think that there's still definitely more upside potential for oil because I do think that markets will become almost hypersensitive to these types of developments at the moment. And quite interesting, oil, yeah, you know, when we were looking at it breaking down in the price action, when the price was falling, you know, you can kind of see it quite clearly when the price was was, was moving lower, how prices tend to respond. So on the move back up like yesterday, we get up to these areas of resistance of where we've previously also come up to when we were rallying at the beginning of the year. And, you know, this is when you, you've got to be aware that, you know, a day of moving $3, $4, possibly $5 in oil is definitely not off the table when this type of news flow is you know, is flying around. For me, I think, I think overall, just given the, the news items at play, and I think the G20 does hold some importance for the price of oil because whether or not they can continue to progress with these, um, the conversations between US and China and help the demand side of the equation, I do think $60 is quite a sweet spot. I think that would be a good area of resistance if we did punch higher. I don't think that's an unreasonable kind of target in medium term. Beyond that point, if we get above $60, I think that's when you start seeing Trump start opening up the verbal intervention, trying to look to force the Saudis, if you like, to pump more oil and so on and so forth, to try and move the price back down. I do think Trump's threshold for higher oil prices is going to get ever lower as we get closer into the run-in to the 2020 2020, uh, kind of presidential election. Anyhow, enough on oil. A couple other things I wanted to mention. We have got the flash service and manufacturing PMIs coming out this morning. These are important for the euro. With that being said, just putting the euro on a 1-minute chart, you've probably, if you're trading as I'm speaking, seen the euro explode higher. That's because manufacturing PMI in France just came in at 52, above the expected 50.7. The services figure, 53.1, above the expected 51.5. That's pretty decent beats there for France, which has been struggling particularly on the service side at the beginning of the year, kind of end of Q1, after those Yellow Jacket protests that were impacting the service sector. Manufacturing as well seeing a healthy rebound. So decent little pop there in the euro. On the back of that, just getting above, uh, the overnight Asia-Pacific high. So yesterday's high, worth keeping an eye on as I'm talking, 1394 on the upside. German data will be coming out shortly at half past, so we'll try and wrap up the briefing for that release. Quick run through then of other headlines, and then I'll get Sam on, on the technicals. But You probably already saw the news. Michael Gove, lots of talk about a word that I've never used, probably because I didn't go to Eton, but skullduggery was going on apparently in Westminster. And they were talking about the fact that it was manipulated in order that Boris didn't go against Gove, given the historical nature of their relationship when they had a bit of a backstabbing issue when they originally ran in 2017, and so on and so forth. So it's going to be Johnson-Hunt going through. So what I wanted to do is have a quick cycle through some infographics just to make sure you're up to speed. Um, so you're gonna have, I think it's 16, um, hustings. And if you, if you're not familiar with what that is, basically it's debates and The two of them are going to be debating off on various different issues about how they're going to lead the country, but obviously Brexit, the big one. And this is so that basically over the coming weeks that the grassroots Tory members, which comprises of 160,000 people nationally, can vote then in time for— by the 22nd of July, a new leader gets announced. So there's postal ballots that need to take place. So you're going to hear lots of of what I can do and things like how I'm going to change Britain and all these types of things. I wouldn't really— I would only see this as impacting the pound basically if, again, as I've said, a week, if Boris Johnson— it's Boris Johnson's to lose essentially. And what I mean by that is this is what the bookies are pricing for who's going to be the next prime minister. The bookies have Boris Johnson to become the next leader at about 92%. That's how big the gap is at the moment. So, you know, it's, it's Boris's to lose. Now, if this was anyone else, I would say they've pretty much got it sealed here. It's done. But we're talking about Boris Johnson. And so the only thing here is if he makes a mistake over the coming weeks in these debates, he says something in the press. Remember, the press will be poking him every day because because they want to get a response. Um, that— if that, um, if those two lines, the red and blue, start to converge, I would say the more they converge, the more pound positive that is. The closer it gets that Hunt potentially has an opportunity that he could actually seriously win. I think that would be a slight removal then of this idea that you're going to get the more stronger no-deal candidate in Number 10 is how I'd kind of interpret that. Yeah, these were just the numbers. This was an interesting survey that was done on Thursday, and this was, this was a survey of a sample size of about 1,200 Conservative Party members. And as you can see here, you know, significant gap where majority are backing Boris Johnson, hence the reason the bookies are so favorable on his side. Okay. PMIs are very important this morning, so I am going to come off the mic, uh, the German one in particular. Otherwise, quick overview, you've got US, the equal measurements coming out, manufacturing service flash PMIs this afternoon at 2:45, existing home sales at 3. You've got a cluster of speakers coming out as well throughout the morning. Fed's Rosengren shortly Fed's daily and non-voter at 11:30. You've got Bank of England speaker as well, Tenreyro, coming out at 1:30. Mester at 5 o'clock. So do be aware of the speakers as well. And one thing I haven't mentioned, but just to finish on, I believe it is quadruple witching today. Now what I'll do is when I— when we finish this briefing, I'll come back on the mic and I— for any of the new traders, I'll explain what quadruple witching is. But in summary, it means you're probably likely to see extra volatility around specific points upon expiration of these contracts in the futures and options, stock and single stocks, for example. I'd explain more later, but it just means that these various points in the day— so if you were trading the Euro Stoxx at 11 AM, the DAX at midday, the CAC I think is 3, the US indices at the open— they could be particularly volatile around those points in time, but I'll give you some more info later. All right, let me hand you over to Sam then. I wish you a good day and a pleasant weekend. PMI German number coming out will be important, so keep your heads up.

Hi guys, hope everyone has had a good week so far. And in keeping with the tennis theme of clothing wear, I've got my Lacoste Polo one after Andy Roddick. The— oh yeah, Djokovic is actually the most recent Wimbledon winner, but more so for Roddick, the best player of my generation despite Federer. Having a look over the currencies, we'll start with the pound here, which you can see, yes, there was quite undecided about where to go, and there's a certain level— I'll just remove all the studies on here that I want to keep an eye on as we go into the back end of the week. On the futures coming in around 127.20. But of course it will look similar on all different charts where you can see these lows going back from the beginning of the month, 4th, 10th, and the 13th, before we had a bit, a bit of a breakdown there. Again, on the, the Fed, we found good resistance, came back to what was the previous high of the day, broke through and found support again there, uh, well, yesterday afternoon. So keeping an eye on that for where we close. Can we, uh, get back below there and drift lower, or is this now the start of a shorter-term, medium-term push on to the upside? Obviously keeping an eye on the highs of the, the day and just a bit above that. Didn't quite make it, but the, the breakdown point that we had on the 12th, uh, 127.82, would be somewhere to, to keep a close eye on, uh, is as well. Also, just looking at, uh, the pound with this trend line from those highs, there's a potential point of interest should we get above there as well. Would be the third test, but also coming in around 128 by the time it would, uh, would mark up and, and some of the highs back on the afternoon of the 12th as well. To the downside, having a quick look at the trend line from the 17th is the high. We found a bit of support there despite a false break, uh, coming through as well. So keeping a close eye on these levels, just perhaps getting squeezed in a touch from both directions. You've got obviously 5 minutes for the German figures, so we'll have a quick look over Euro, just how we're trading now. Um, again, it's similar to the pound. They're just having a look at those trend lines from the high. We'll be looking to come in around R1. You've got some important levels there. 114, just before, uh, you've got another— again, this is similar to the pound in that the lows of the 12 before, we did push lower. That would be looking to, to come in, uh, there as well around the pivot. Another area that I'd be, be focusing on, you can see from— if I just put this on a 15-minute time period, the, the low that we had in the Asian session yesterday marked up to the lows of yesterday and then today as well, around that pivot. So that's a key level to be keeping an eye on as a line in the sand. And if we can get a push through there, then we might see a further breakdown. Those highs of yesterday, quite important. And again, where we close the week will be key. If we can really push on above 114, you might get a further push higher. And again, Talking of further push highs, the Aussie dollar is certainly one to keep an eye on. That, uh, test of the yearly low, really strong reaction. For us to get excited, I would say we need to get above 69.60, 69.61, basically what was the low. Again, it's the same day here of the 12th before we had that breakdown. So really keeping a close eye on that. To the downside, if we were to get a push below the pivot, I think I think then we might see, uh, well, dollar strength across the board. But more importantly for this market, uh, the sign that we have maybe just had a top failure to push on from yesterday's high. However, we are still pretty much flat for the day. So pivot just above and below our 1 would be an area I'd be keeping a close monitor on for where this market goes. The yen doing its own thing. This morning and pushing lower, uh, against the, the dollar. The dollar pretty much, uh, flat, if anything, under, under a bit of pressure. But key level here to keep an eye on, just below where we're trading, yesterday's high. And you can see just looking at this chart, if we go back to yesterday, the lowest point of the European session was the previous day's high as well. So keeping a, a close eye on what happens around here. Uh, we know on the longer term chart just how good these retests of, of levels have been. So keeping a monitor on what happens there. And you can see the low of the, the beginning of the week was of course the previous high that we had back on the 13th of May. So being technical as of late, so be keeping, um, a close watch on proceedings as we go through. The S&P, I think it's just a case you've got to be looking for areas to go long at the moment. I know cash open was, you know, an opportunity perhaps to get short, but that low of the day, previous high of yesterday— so we're looking at this market reacting quite technically. Early this morning we had a break of the, the trend, if you like, from the, the high of the day. That broke through very well respected, decent push just after 7 o'clock, and we're now, uh, you know, just pushing up to near where we we started the day, uh, 2956 trading opportunity later, maybe a break of the, the two recent highs, 2960, that would come in and look for that continuation higher. If we are to drift down, obviously S1 and that previous level, although being tested already yesterday, worth keeping, uh, an eye on as well. But for me, just, I think, preferring the, uh, the, the long is the way to, to go here. I'm going to look quick, look at gold. I'll try finish in the next 30 seconds if I, if I can. Uh, 1390, pretty key previous highs, haven't been retested. The pivot also key where this trend line would look to, to come in. Um, as well, we'll get on the mic throughout the, the day, but with that level being hit, I think the bulls will stay in control if we can stay above above the pivot, which with how things are trading, you would expect that. Got 20 seconds until the, the data comes out. Um, but I hope you all have a great trading day and an even better weekend.