Alright, whenever you're ready sir. Alright. Go. Halfway done. Right? No. Alright, there's somewhere funny to do this one. Climb up on the top. Climb up on both of them?  This is the crazy climb. Yup. Pictures of me taking pictures. Up and over this? Do I have to mount it from the front? Oh no. That's why I can't push myself. I don't bounce.


Amen. Thank you, brothers for praying. Good to see everybody back. Welcome. I'm glad you're here this evening for our evening service. Hope you had a wonderful afternoon of fellowship. We had a great time of fellowship, being able to fellowship with Hannah's family from Wyoming, and although separated by many miles, one faith, one baptism, one Lord, it's a joy. It's a fellowship with God's people, wherever they may come from, and we're grateful for that this afternoon and hope you had a good afternoon of fellowship as well. It's good to see you back for our evening service. I want to keep encouraging you to come. I'm grateful that you're here, and we want to keep placing ourselves under the preaching of God's word. Right? God works through His word to grow us up in the faith, to mature us in the faith, and that's you can benefit from videos, you can benefit from a podcast, but there's nothing like being with God's people, praying with God's people, submitting themselves to the word of God with God's people in the corporate worship of God's people. God works through that in a special way to mature His people and grow His people, and we are grateful for it. So it's good to have you back. We are back in the book of Judges this evening. So Judges chapter 6 is our text, and we're again examining the call of Gideon, and this is part 2 in this brief section of text that runs from verse 11 through verse 24. So turn with me there in your Bibles to Judges chapter 6 verses 11 through 24, and let's consider again tonight in part 2 the call of Gideon. The Judges chapter 6 beginning in verse 11. Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terribent tree, which was in Ophra, which belonged to Joash the Abiyah's right, while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the wine press in order to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, the Lord is with you, you mighty man of valor. So Gideon said to him, verse 13, oh my Lord, if the Lord is with us, and why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his miracles, which our Father told us about saying, did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us, delivered us into the hand of the Midianites. Then the Lord turned to him and said, go in this might of yours and you shall save Israel from the hand of the Midianites. Have I not sent you? So he said to him in verse 15, oh my Lord, how can I save Israel? Indeed, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least in my Father's house. And the Lord said to him, surely I will be with you and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man. Then he said to him, if now I have found favor in your sight, then show me a sign that it is you who talk with me. Do not depart from here, I pray, until I come back to you and bring my offering and set it before you. And he said, I will wait until you come back. So Gideon went in and prepared a young goat and unleavened bread from an efo flower. The meat he put in a basket and he put the broth in a pot and he brought them out to him under the terribent tree and presented them. The angel of God said to him, take the meat and the unleavened bread and lay them on this rock and pour out the broth and he did so. Then the angel of the Lord put out the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat, the unleavened bread, and fire rose out of the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread and the angel of the Lord departed out of his sight. Now Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord and so Gideon said, Alas, O Lord God, for I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. Then the Lord said to him, peace be with you.  And so Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it, the Lord is peace. To this day it is still in OFRA of the Abiyah's rites. This is the word of God, amen. Amen, let's pray together. Father in heaven, Lord, we are grateful for your word. Grateful for the blessing of sitting under your word and learning at your feet. So grateful, Lord, for the lessons here that you've taught us. In the book of Judges, and in particular now as we consider the Midianite menace and the call of Gideon, we're very grateful for these lessons. We're grateful, Lord, that you give these examples to us for our admonition. They are examples to us. And we want to learn from the examples that you've given us. So help us, Lord, to understand. Help us to learn these lessons and apply them to our hearts and minds. And help us, Lord, to live for you according to them. And we're grateful, Lord, for this lesson of Gideon and what it is teaching us about genuine faith and what it means to trust in you. So Lord, be with us now as we consider this text. Be with us as we think through these things. Help us to understand, Lord, and then help us to worship, to praise you and to obey you as we should for your glory, God. We pray these things. Amen. Well, again, the title of our sermon this evening is The Call of Gideon. This is part 2, Judges chapter 6, verses 11 through 24. What we want to do tonight in Judges chapter 6, verses 11 through 24, part 2 here of this little series in Judges 6 is essentially put ourselves in the sandals of Gideon. We want to put ourselves in Gideon's shoes as he has this encounter with the angel of the Lord in Judges chapter 6. And this is in preparation for Gideon being called to deliver God's people out of the hand of their enemies, the Midianites. Now, when we last left Gideon in Judges chapter 6, Gideon was threshing wheat in the wine press, hiding out from the Midianite menace in verse 11. And that's when, in verse 11, a mysterious figure appears to him, unknown to Gideon at the time, but known to us from the text, we know him to be the angel of the Lord. This is a Christophany, as we discussed last Lord's Day, a pre-incarnate appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ. All things said, when Gideonite meets the angel of the Lord, he would probably prefer a do-over on this entire conversation. All things said, the conversation didn't go that well in the beginning. Gideon definitely got off on the wrong foot. Now, it appears as though, if we read sort of in the white spaces, if you will, between the lines of the text, Gideon had a bit of a tone to his response to the angel of the Lord as he enters into this conversation. Gideon seems a bit embittered about his circumstances, a bit embittered about where the children of Israel find themselves at this point in history. There's definitely a tone to Gideon's response in these opening verses. Now, he certainly isn't seeing his circumstances the way that he should. He's certainly not seeing the circumstances now for the children of Israel the way that he should. The Lord had sent a prophet to his people. He didn't immediately send a deliverer. He sends them a prophet. He sends them his word. That prophet would have been all over Israel preaching this message from chapter 6, verse 8. Thus says the Lord God of Israel. I brought you up from Egypt.  The Lord did that in his grace and in his mercy to his covenant people. He brought them out of the iron furnace of Egypt. And also he said, I said to you in verse 10, I am the Lord your God. In other words, we've entered into covenant together. I am the Lord your God. Do not fear the gods of the Amorites. In other words, don't bow down to those gods.  I am the Lord your God. But, verse 10, you have not obeyed my voice. That's the condition now that the children of Israel find themselves in. A disobedient people now under judgment. Now the message of the prophet was clear. The message clearly ties their current circumstances to the judgment of God on their disobedience. It's the very same message that the Lord delivered to them at Bochim, right? The place of weeping from Judges chapter 2. It's the very same message the Lord delivered to them at the giving of the law back in Leviticus chapter 26, back in Deuteronomy chapter 28. And now it's the very same message that He gave them when He established His covenant with them. And yet, despite that message, despite its repetition, it's been repeated over and over again now to Gideon, we find Gideon in a bit of an emotional outburst here in verse 13 saying, if the Lord is with us, then why then has all this happened to us? Gideon, have you not put two and two together yet?  Where are all His miracles, which our fathers told us about? The Lord has forsaken us and the Lord has delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. The last part is true. It was the Lord who delivered them into the hands of the Midianites. But the Lord hasn't forsaken them. What's the purpose behind God's judgment? What's the intention? When God delivers them into the hands of the Midianites, what does the Lord want to see? He wants to see their repentance. He wants to see them turn back to Him. And the Lord does this for their good. Now, Gideon says all this, right? He's making these statements. He's a bit embittered. He's a bit perplexed it would seem in the current condition. But all the while, all the while Gideon's family is back in OFRA, worshiping Baal. There's a Baal altar set up in town and an Asherapole set up next to it. Like we so often shamefully do, don't we? If we acknowledge, we think for a moment about our own circumstances as we so often shamefully do ourselves, Gideon here, to connect the dots. He doesn't see God's sovereign hand over all these circumstances. He's refusing to acknowledge His sin, right? He's refusing to acknowledge the sin of the covenant people of God now in this period of the judges. He's refusing to acknowledge God's righteous justice in their circumstances.  In how he responds to His circumstances.  You ever noticed that? Don't eat the cookies. Don't eat the cookies. Don't eat them.   Gideon's having a similar kind of a reaction here. He's angry. God has forsaken us. He's not shown up for us like he showed up for our fathers. Why has all this come upon us? Why has all this happened to us? And yet Gideon's got family back home worshiping Baal, right? The children of Israel are worshiping idols. Gideon's not connecting the dots here and he's having a bit of an emotional outburst. Now, like a mom or a dad would be with that child, very patient, very compassionate, the Lord explains that Gideon will be the one that he will use to deliver his people Israel from out of the hands, from out from under the hand of the Midianites. He reassures Gideon in verse 16, listen and the Lord said to him surely I will be with you and you shall defeat the Midianites as one man. Surely I will be with you. The Lord graciously repeats His promise. The Lord is with you verse 12. And surely I will be with you verse 16. You're going to save Israel from the Midianites verse 14. You shall defeat the Midianites as one man, verse 16. The Lord is calling Gideon into service. He graciously comes to Gideon even in his present condition which is not so good. And what does in this situation Gideon, what does Gideon have to do? What does Gideon have to do? Gideon has to respond in faith. Gideon is expected to respond in faith. Gideon is expected to walk by faith and not by sight. The difficulty here is that Gideon up to this point has been walking almost entirely by sight and not by faith. He's got his eyes down in his circumstances. He's looking at the way that things are on the ground so to speak and he's not considering that a sovereign God rules over the affairs of men and rules in particular over his circumstances even now. He's not trusting the Lord. Because his sight is glued to his circumstances his sight is obstructed. Gideon believes that he sees things as they are. Does Gideon see things as they are? He's blinded. His sight is obstructed. He hasn't connected the dots. The lack of faith, the lack of perspective is blinding him to the truth and that in large part because he's focused on his circumstances and he's not focused on the Lord. He's walking by sight. This is the way I see things. He's not walking by faith. Because of that now he's lost all true perspective and the younger judge rightly the way that things truly are and he says to himself, woe is me, doesn't he? How did I get here? How did we wind up this way? He's incapable of seeing things as they really are. He's incapable of seeing himself acknowledging his own sin. He doesn't see his own sinfulness against God. He's incapable of seeing God and God's perspective on things. The foolish mind of the faithless is darkened and without understanding. When we don't consider our circumstances from the perspective of God's Word or from the perspective of biblical faith then our understanding becomes darkened.  We must turn back to the Lord. We must turn back to his Word and walk by faith. If you ever find yourself in difficult circumstances in the same way, what do we do? We go to God's Word. We think about the Lord's intention the Lord's purposes for this trial that we find ourselves in and we think about Scripture we think about what the Lord would have us think about we look to his Word we look to him, we turn from sin God says I want you to be holy I want you to pray and the Lord promises I will never leave you nor forsake you. We just have to remember to think rightly. Oftentimes we need our minds and our hearts readjusted and often when we have a heart and mind readjustment it comes through pain the difficulty of our circumstances we often grow most in the soil of our sin or in the soil of our mistakes or in our circumstances. Now, Gideon here has every reason in the world to take the Lord at his Word and to go out in faith, doesn't he? Every reason to believe the Lord the Lord had delivered them so many times before he knew about all the miracles that his fathers told him about, didn't he? He knew about those miracles he knew that God had delivered them out of the hand of the Egyptians but Gideon needs remediation here he needs a remedial course in faith that we can do and you could read this text and maybe think to yourself I'm a little frustrated with Gideon or I'm a little aggravated, annoyed with Gideon right now at this point how he's not seeing things or how he responded to that circumstance but listen, that's you you respond that way and I respond that way too often too many times we'd rather not admit this is us here we need reminding often that we can't save nor is his ear heavy that it cannot hear but your iniquities have separated you from your God your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear we need to turn back to the Lord and the Lord will hear this is what our sin does our sin clouds our judgment it blinds us to the truth and we end up not being able to see straight we can't see things clearly as they are it still doesn't clearly understand at this point who he's speaking with he may think that he does but nevertheless Gideon decides to put him to the test right is this you Lord who is speaking with me so he says in verse 17 look at verse 17 with me he said to him if now I have found favor in your sight then show me a sign that it is you who talk with me do not depart from here I pray until I come to you without my offering and set it before you and he said can you imagine the Lord says I'll wait until you come back and the Lord waits on Gideon so this nagging weak faith that Gideon is sort of exhibiting here is going to follow Gideon around for a while he's going to end up putting God to the test again later in this chapter but here Gideon in testing the Lord has two primary concerns one he wants to confirm that he has God's favor do I really have your favor do I really have your favor two he wants to confirm that God is going to be with him in the work is it really you Lord who are saying this to me is it really you who are with me then he says to the Lord you wait here until I go and get things ready I'm going to put you to the test I'm going to develop and plan this test I'm going to go and put this test together you wait here until I get the test ready Gideon has lost his mind Gideon doesn't realize who he's speaking with if Gideon when Gideon realizes who he's speaking with we'll see a biblical response to that realization, okay here Gideon doesn't get it and he's acting a bit like a spoiled entitled child isn't he what we see on the part of the Lord here is great patience great patience the Lord says I'll wait until you come back but it's also isn't it compassion it's grace it's pity the depths to which we fall in our lack of faith and how patient and compassionate and good the Lord is toward us and if Gideon had the faith of a mustard seed there would be a wake of dead Midianites in his path already the Lord is great in patience in passion and grace and goodness and loving kindness toward us but here this is going to take some time so the angel of the Lord sits and waits look at verse 19 so Gideon went in there and prepared a young goat just think about what it takes to prepare a young goat to eat a meal it's going to take a long time you take a young goat and have to skin that goat and clean that goat and gut that goat and prepare that goat it's going to take a while Gideon went in and he prepared this young goat an unleavened bread from an ephah of flour an ephah I want to say if I'm correct it's about 22 liters this is no small amount of flour this is a huge amount of flour this is going to be a lot of bread that's being made here the meat verse 19 he put in a basket he put the broth in a pot and he brought them out to him Gideon said that he was going to bring his offering this is an offering to the Lord that's what Gideon intends for it to be so it's not just any goat it's a young goat particularly chosen it's not just a little bit of bread it's a huge amount of bread and remember the circumstances the Midianites have left them destitute they have very little left the Midianites have come in and have stolen everything this was quite an undertaking for Gideon he's already beginning to exhibit some faith here this would have been a costly endeavor so Gideon means business this is a costly sacrifice so Gideon brings the offering look at verse 20 the angel of God then said to him take the meat and the unleavened bread and lay them on this rock and pour out the broth so Gideon did so put out the end of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened bread and fire rose out of the rock consumed the meat and the unleavened bread and the angel of the Lord departed out of his sight when the offering that Gideon brings is consumed by fire that indicates that the offering is accepted the offering is accepted by the angel of the Lord but he has found favor in the Lord's sight that consuming of the offering has proven it to Gideon otherwise the fire would have consumed Gideon and not the offering you see Gideon has found favor in the sight of the Lord the Lord had clearly said that it was so the Lord is with you and now the Lord clearly shows that it is so that the Lord is with him in the sense in which this test is good and somewhat understandable Proverbs 14 verse 15 the simple believes every word but the prudent considers well his steps 1 John 4 verse 1 beloved do not believe every spirit but test the spirits whether they are of God because many false prophets have gone out into the world if many Charismatics would simply apply that one principle it would mean the virtual end of Charismania the things they attribute to the Spirit of God that are no way attributable to the Spirit of God that would all end study your Bible apply the word of God the Lord Jesus Christ the word the Logos the word first came through the prophets and then through the Lord himself so many professing Christians today refuse to heed his word they would say I feel led I feel led I've been praying and I feel what is that we can't make decisions like that I feel like God is telling me and then what do you do you put God to the test the sign that you want me to take that job is that they offer that job to me and I feel led to take the it hasn't crossed your mind that maybe God is testing you with a job offer that you shouldn't take but I feel led right or if you want me to take that job offer Lord it will be for exactly the right amount of money that I need and you don't consider God's word listen we don't need a sign we don't need a sign Peter says you have the prophetic word confirmed which what you do well to heed you do well to heed it it may be very likely that God is testing you by putting you in those circumstances that's not the case for Gideon here he's being told to take the job this isn't an offer this is the draft Gideon is being told this is what's going to happen but the Lord is very gracious the Lord is very patient with Gideon's weak faith he allows the test to go forward the Lord validates his word with a sign and then he consumes Gideon's offering with fire upon the rock not unlike if you remember the test that Elijah presented with the pagan bale worshippers Mount Carmel right the deranged prophets of bale fire devours the sacrifice in this case fire from beneath from the rock devours the sacrifice and the test is proven the Lord is building here Gideon's faith Lord's building Gideon's faith preparing Gideon for service Gideon's going to need to build up faith in order to do what the Lord is asking him to do look with me now at verse 22 now Gideon when he consumed the sacrifice Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord and so Gideon said alas O Lord God for I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face then the Lord said to him peace be with you let's talk about that a little bit last week when the fire consumes the offering on the rock it's as if Gideon's site is restored as if Gideon his eyes are opened and suddenly Gideon realizes who it is it's an encounter with God almighty and the truth of almighty God comes flooding in upon his soul and Gideon comes to an acknowledgement not only of who he is the one whom I've been speaking with but who Gideon is as well once he is like Isaiah in the temple of the Lord in Isaiah chapter 6 smoke filling that place the posts of the doors shaking at the voice of the Lord and Isaiah cries out woe is me my eyes have seen the Lord of hosts now what was it Isaiah chapter 6 that caused Isaiah's fear it was a sight of the holiness of God in light of a crushing reality or a crushing realization of his own sin those two truths and Isaiah is undone I'm a man of unclean lips I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips alas oh Lord God it's undone the experience here in verse 22-23 is the same for Gideon it's the same for Gideon fire comes out of the rock not only consumes the sacrifice but lights as it is the fires within Gideon's own dead heart it's an encounter with the Holy One of Israel Yahweh unlike anything that Gideon was prepared for what does Gideon do he cries out in fear alas oh Lord God the angel of the Lord face to face the people of Israel if you remember that account cried out to Moses in the wilderness God had led them out of Egypt he leads them to Sinai where he's going to give them his law he's going to enter into covenant with them there they're out there with Moses in the wilderness and they cry out to Moses after seeing lightning on the mountain thundering and flashes the face of God pounding in their ears and the people cry out you speak with us and we'll hear but let not God speak with us lest we die lest we die the prevailing cavalier attitude of many regarding the worship of God the irreverence that often associates the thoughts, speech and worship of people who profess to be Christians that cavalier attitude does not do their understanding but is due their ignorance you see a familiarity that breeds irreverence is not due to their understanding but due their ignorance it's not due their familiarity with them it's due to their lack of knowledge of Him know Him it's not due to their own holiness of life but it's due to their sin and rebellion against Him that they don't see things are right when Gideon thought that he knew Gideon acted a certain way didn't he he responded a certain way there's a certain tone in the way that he's interacting with the angel of the Lord he makes the angel of the Lord sit there and wait he interacts with him at that level being a little perturbed frankly at the fact that God hasn't shown up for them what has he done for me lately right? in this conversation with the angel of the Lord when God shows up Gideon receives his sight so to speak he sees things more rightly he gains a new perspective and what happens Gideon becomes crushed and gains a new perspective Gideon becomes crushed and God becomes holy and glorified, right?  I'm going to die alas oh Lord God I've seen the angel of the Lord face to face the reverence for God a lack of holiness a lack of awe a lack of wonder and who he is and what he's done is a fruit of blindness is a fruit of ignorance it's a fruit of arrogance it's the fruit of unbelief it's the fruit of not knowing his word it's the fruit of not knowing him and we get such irreverent worship as a result such irreverent familiarity such irreverent Christian quote-unquote Christian lives love and devotion and holiness of life a sober mind, self control are the fruits of our knowledge of him applied by the spirit of God you have an encounter with Almighty God who he is and what he's done we encounter him on the pages of his word we learn of him we understand of him to be illuminated and lightened with what the word of God reveals about him and as we have knowledge of the holy one shed abroad in our hearts we respond with conviction over sin respond with self deprecating humility, seeing ourselves as we are and seeing himself more as he is what does that produce what does that knowledge of him produce it produces love devotion why doesn't it produce fear slavish fear fleeing from him fear why does it produce fear that wants to cling to him that shows love for him that is devoted to him because he is our savior our deliverer he is forgiving, he is loving, he is kind we have the gospel, the Lord Jesus Christ is why a proper understanding is forged in a consideration of our own wretchedness and his righteousness an understanding of our own depravity and his own purity the Lord has said of the wicked that there is no fear of God before their eyes in Gideon's prior interaction with the angel of the Lord there's no fear before his eyes when he responds in the way that he does when fire consumes that sacrifice on the rock Gideon is struck with fear fear of the Lord fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom what does Gideon begin to get Gideon begins to get wisdom what is it that would keep someone with that understanding from crying out in response to the wilderness listen, you talk to us but we don't want to hear from God anymore I don't want to hear from God what would keep us from that response what would keep them from hiding themselves as Revelation says hiding themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains saying fall on us hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the land that's not God's people who are saying that that's the wicked who are saying that that's the wicked who are saying fall on us hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the lamb for the great day of his wrath has come and who is able to stand who is able to stand what's the difference in those two responses the difference is faith in the Savior faith in the Savior God is a deliverer God is a Savior he has sent his only begotten Son the Lord Jesus Christ into the world to seek and to save that which is lost we are sinners amen we need His mercy we need His grace the fact that He gave His only Son to save sinners we should cling to Him in faith amen throw your arms around the cross He has come to save sinners faith in God's only provision for our sin faith in who He is and what He has done listen to Hebrews chapter 10 verse 19 therefore brethren having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way which He consecrated for us through the veil that is His flesh having a high priest over the house of God let us then draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water if you will flee to Him He is forgiving you'll find forgiveness with Him if you'll flee to Him you'll find cleansing with Him if you flee to Him you'll find love and compassion and grace and mercy and kindness and steadfast covenant loving kindness toward His people right it won't be striving after the law that will cause us to draw near it won't be the preaching of the law that causes us to draw near it won't be the giving of the law that causes us to draw near why? because from the law comes the knowledge of sin the knowledge of sin crashing in upon our hearts in upon our minds should send us to the Savior cause us to flee to Christ the preaching of the law should drive us to despair of any merit of our own cause us to despair for our own sin and cause us to see our need for the gospel we cannot be holy in the flesh of our own efforts we need Jesus Christ Amen no amount of law keeping will bring peace with God we need peace with God and that only comes through the shed blood of His only begotten Son the Lord Jesus Christ seek peace with Him through the gospel of His only begotten Son how does the Lord respond here in Judges chapter 6 does He rebuke Gideon does He chastise Him for His weak faith Gideon, your faith is despicable get out of my sight is that what the Lord does does He press the law upon His conscience condemn Him for His disobedience no Gideon sits under the judgment of God under the Midianites it would not have been unjust it wouldn't be unjust the Lord doesn't do that how does the Lord respond with grace and mercy and compassion by preaching to Him peace look at verse 23 then the Lord said to Him peace be with you do not fear you shall not die and how gracious how kind how merciful how patient peace be with you Gideon do not fear we shall not die in the very midst of our weakness in the very midst of our failure in the midst of what is often our ignorance even our arrogance God often doesn't He comes to us with grace and mercy and love and compassion and pity and peace even now in the preaching of His Word we get that don't we we deserve it we deserve it we deserve it God is gracious make no mistake the furnace of God's wrath burns against the wicked and against the ungodly but there is grace and peace to be found in His forgiveness through Jesus Christ our Lord flee to Him for peace and mercy verse 24 so Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and He called it the Lord's peace to this day it is still in Ophrah of the Abiyah's rites brothers and sisters we need to build the same altar with the brick and mortar of our redeemed lives in our own hearts for the Lord right have a triumphant memorial set up there called the Lord is peace and we need to live our lives in light of that memorial to Him right trophies of His grace the Lord is peace all praise, honor and glory to the one who has granted such peace through His Son Amen let's pray Father in heaven Lord we are so grateful for your loving kindness toward us in Christ thank you for this picture of your patience and your compassion and your pity even this beautiful offer of peace to Gideon here in Judges chapter 6 that warms our heart and we see in you Lord such mercy and grace and loving kindness that far be it from us Lord to flee from you in slavish fear but to cling to you for your salvation the salvation that you freely offer in your Son and having freely offered Him up for us all how much more will you also freely give us all things we love you Lord we're grateful to you for your compassion on us your pity towards us we need your mercy your desperate need of grace and we're grateful to you Lord that we have it in Jesus Christ your word promises it to us it assures us of it we have your word and we trust in you put all our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ alone I pray Lord if there's anyone here who's not turned from their sin to do that show them the foolishness of their way the stubbornness of their own heart the rebellion they've displayed against you and break their heart over their own sin and turn them to the Savior for those of us here Lord who turned from our sin to trust in Christ build us up in our faith as you are doing for Gideon here Lord help us renew our love and devotion for you according to your word through the example here that you've given of Gideon and how we see ourselves and in his position often and how desperate we are for love and grace and mercy and forgiveness and patience and kindness and pity and peace and help us Lord we love you we're grateful to you Lord and thank you for this time together in the study of your word apply these things to our heart and mind for your everlasting praise and worship we pray in Jesus name Amen


I think we can get started now, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to this monthly webinar with me, Michael Huston and Colin Svazinski, who's our Canadian North American Analyst and, first and foremost, get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way for compliance purposes, but it's certainly been an interesting week, coming on the back of a fairly good, well, fairly good non-farm payrolls number, it was above 200,000, 214,000. I think market expectations were slightly elevated in terms of what we were expecting with respect to the number, numbers in excess of 250 and we are, we are in fact higher, certainly on the S&P 500, also on the Dow Jones, but I think what is actually quite interesting is the fact that the European markets have really struggled to follow, to really follow through on the gains that we're seeing in the S&P and the Dow. Yes, the FTSE is also up and that's been one of the main outliers. That's probably more closely tracked what the S&P and the Dow are doing, but the German DAX, the Katkaron, they're still struggling well below their 200-day moving averages and really we're going to have a look at those, those key, the key levels in the European industries for, you know, for evidence that we're going to see further gains there, because at the moment we do seem, we do appear to be capped, the gains that we're seeing are turning to be very, very hard one and yet US markets continue to go from strength to strength. I had a quick, quick chance to look at the internals of the jobs data that we saw on Friday and what struck me was that even though the headline number disappointed and the unemployment rate ticked up a little bit, there was a significant upward revision to the August number. Now the August number, you may recall, came in at 142,000 on the first print. That has since now been revised up to 203. So based on the fact that the internals of the ISMs last week, the manufacturing and the services showed strong employment components, I think there's a very good chance that this payrolls number that we saw for October could be revised up, you know, and I think that's something, when we come to the December payrolls number, we also need to keep a close eye on, because usually the previous two months also get revised up or down. So it's not just about the headline number, it's also about the revisions higher on the previous numbers. So anyway, I've digressed a little bit and droned on a little bit. We haven't had that much US data to really get our heads around this week. It's been more focused on company earnings and by and large, they've come in broadly in line or slightly above expectations, but I think the key data item to look at this week will be tomorrow's retail sales numbers for the US, because despite the gains that we're seeing in US equity markets, the US consumer over the course of the past few months has been one of the main laggards, you know, and that for me is one of the key concerns that I have about this particular recovery. That being said, we are where we are, and the S&P and the Dow are making new all-time highs, and we can certainly see that borne out in this chart here. So the key support for me, I don't know whether you agree with this Colin or not, and I know you're there Colin, so hello. Hello, how are you everybody? Yeah, I'm doing all the talking, aren't I? The key support here I think is in around this 2020 where it had broken out previously. What's, sorry, the September high there, and it's broken through that, so far been tested as new support, particularly when we look at these two bodies in early November here where you had one day was resistance, the next day was support, and you've continued to track up through there. The one thing I am keeping an eye on though is it does look like we're kind of leveling off. If we look back at the August rally, we see how it kind of really took off in the first two days, and then as we moved along, the candles got smaller and smaller. We moved into a series of doggies or near doggies, and it just kind of flanned, and it looks as though, even though we're getting new highs in the States, yes, and it looks as though we're starting to get into the same kind of thing here, smaller trading ranges, and even though we are, I know we're talking on the day when the Dow and the S&P have touched new highs, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of oomph behind these breakouts. They're not breaking out and just blasting through. They're just kind of breaking it by a few points, and then just kind of sitting there and managing to just barely close higher on the day. And if you look at the bottom, when we look at the stochastics, it tells us why, which is that we're getting pretty overextended on this rally, and we're probably due for a minimum to kind of start going sideways for a while, as we did through late August, early September on the S&P at a minimum, and we are still at risk of a correction at some point. Yeah, I think what we're seeing is incremental gains, but they're very, very slow and very, very gradual, and it's a similar sort of story, I think, on the Dow, the US 30. Probably not so much. That's a one minute chart. You don't want to see that. Let me just check. And there you go. I mean, again, you look at the oscillator there. You know, we're incredibly overbought, and yet we continue to go higher. The difference here is obviously that the move higher is a lot more extended, and I think that's simply because this is not what I would call a particularly well-weighted index. If you look at the Dow and the fact that Apple's not in it, really it begs the question is it really a representative index, and I would argue that it's not. So that being said, the key support on that lies all the way back at 17,300. But what is particularly interesting, I think, is the fact that despite the blue chip indexes continue to push higher, the small cap continues to lag behind, though we are now pushing against or beyond the September highs that we saw through here. If we look at this horizontal line that I've drawn through here, and you can see now how important and how far away, in fact, we are from the March and June, July highs that we saw earlier this year. So you can see from this, for most of this year, the small cap has led the Dow and the S&P. That's no longer happening. And that, for me, I think is a little bit of a concern. And I think you use a very good military analogy, Colin. So I'll let you tell it. Yes, basically, as I call it, the troops have stopped following the generals. The big cap stocks have continued to move higher, but the smaller cap stocks have been dragging behind. And that's suggesting that it's what I call in the market a case of really bad breath, because it's easy. One thing, as Michael noted about the Dow, there's only 30 stocks. It's not that representative anymore. Apple's not in there. And flatly, all you need to do is move about four or five stocks to move the Dow on any given day. And what that means is that you've got the gains of, again, another sign of exhaustion. The gains are getting concentrated into a smaller number of large cap stocks, whereas the broader number hasn't been following. And in fact, up until the last few days, it's actually been kind of going the other way. And when you do get these kind of divergences, it tells you that the advance is not that healthy. The advance is probably getting overextended because people are less willing to pay up for stocks at this point, and if anything, starting to take some profits off the table. So we are still vulnerable here on the indices, even though the Russell is trying to play catch up here. If it does get through 1190, then it probably will take a run at that previous high up near 1215. But if it doesn't, then you're looking at it would be another sign of weakness. And it, again, is like the others is getting really overbought here. Okay. So that's the US market. So the moment it's really case by the dips. I don't think, if you're trying to fight and try and pick the top, it generally tends to be a fairly dangerous thing to do. But when we look at European indices, it's a slightly different story. And that's no better borne out when we look at these particular charts here. And this is a chart that I covered in my weekly video on Tuesday. And we look at that. And this is a German 30, the DAX. And we've got the 200 day moving average, which generally I find quite useful. But look at this candle here. This candle here leads me to believe that for us to really push higher, first and foremost, that is a bearish engulfing candle and a key reversal day. So technically, that's quite negative. What we need to see now on this particular chart is for us to break below this Fibonacci retracement level here. That's 9120. Now that's the 50% level of the decline from the September to the October lows. Now, we're above that. And it's acted as a fairly good support and resistance and equal measure on the way up. And now what we're seeing here is I've circled this and it's an island. There's a bit of a gap there. The gap has now been filled. And that gap is now acting as a little bit of a support line over the course of the last few training sessions. If we look at the bottom of that candle, that's around about 9120, 9145. So 9145 there, anywhere between 9145 and 25 is going to be key support. We are starting to lose momentum as well. And again, I think that's very, very key. We're losing momentum. We've got a bearish engulfing day and a key reversal day from earlier this month. And we've also got lower highs and lower lows. So the momentum appears to be slightly with the bears on this particular chart. And on top of that, Michael, you've got a on today alone. You've got this rally backup to that 9302, which was also a Fibonacci level. You failed at that. You failed at the 50 day moving average. And you've got the stochastic crossing back under 80, which is also a signal. So it's even pre we're it looks like we're still holding that one support level, but it's it is breaking down on a whole bunch of other measures. Now, that in itself, obviously, is not conclusive enough for me in terms of the overall direction of European markets, what I'm looking for is confirmation. And that's what Dow theory is about. So let's have a look at the Euro 50 and the cat car on to see whether or not we've got similar. We've got a similar scenario unfolding. So let's look at the Euro 50. And again, it's surprisingly how similar that looks in the differences here. Obviously, we've got a lot more negative roll over. But again, look, same candle here. But again, we've got support line just around about the 50 day moving for the 50 percent retracement. We haven't closed below it. We've had a little flotation below it here and here. But thus far, we haven't closed below 3045 or 3040. We're about seven or eight points above that. Now we're still below the 200 day moving average, but more important than that. We're also below the 50 day moving average. So again, momentum here is currently favoring the bears. But once again, what we're seeing here is there's a fairly good degree of buying interest around about the lows of the last few days, right through here, around about 3028. So 3028 is basically been the intraday lows throughout November. So that's a key level for me going forward. But what we also want to see is a close below 3045. So that's the Euro 50. Let's also look at the CAC Carant. And again, we have got the market trading below. It's two key moving averages. And this time, I actually haven't put the Fibonacci retracement levels in. I'll do that. September highs, there. October lows, there. Okay. That's Fibonacci retracement 61.8. It's held very nicely. Let's just get rid of the smaller ones. We can do that fairly easily just by removing them there. That way we don't clutter up the chart with unnecessary lines that we don't really add that much in the way of value. So I've left the 50 and the 61.8 on there. And again, similar sort of story. We don't have a key reversal day there because we haven't had a higher high. We've got a lower high, but we do have an engulfing candle and that in itself is fairly negative. But again, it's a similar sort of story here. Support through the lows. And again, let's draw that in there. And that's around about 4150, which also happens to be today's lows. So what we're looking at here, ladies and gents, is we've got a sideways consolidation in terms of Europe. And what we need to see is a conclusive breakdown on all three at the same time at those various levels that I've described. At the moment, we're trading in a bit of a range between those monthly lows, currently around November lows, and the highs that we've seen this month. And what we want to see, and what I want to see, is either a significantly or a conclusive break higher or a conclusive break lower. And until such times as we get that, this divergence between US markets and European markets is likely to continue. Is there anything you want to add, Colin? I know at this point in time, the European markets are definitely have been rolling over as well. They're not looking as strong. And that's another divergence in and of itself, even for the American markets, is that the US markets have been going higher, but they're doing it increasingly in isolation. If we look at other markets around the world, the Europe has been rolling over. It's been going the other way. The Nikkei had exploded in recently, but it's gotten a little bit choppy. And the Australian market had a rally, but it's been starting to roll over the last couple of days as well. So the US indices are, even within, not only are we seeing the breadth within the United States decreasing, but the breadth of the rally over like a month ago, back mid October, we had a lot of indices around the world were oversold and they all kind of moved up together. Now we're starting to see them go in different directions again. The number of them are starting to roll over. The US is just barely eking out new highs on a day-by-day basis. So things just generally that big rally that started back on the 15th of October is looking really tired and things look like they're breaking down here. And of course, without realising, I actually put that low. I put that Fibonacci retracement on the wrong low. So we've actually traded slightly below 61.8 retracement. But again, I'm not overly concerned about that. I'm more concerned with the 50 and 200 day moving averages. So again, here, similar sort of stories we were saying earlier, it doesn't change the overall analysis. It just gives you a slightly different variation in terms of the retracement level. So what's going to cause European markets to either go higher or go low? Well, tomorrow we've got GDP numbers out of Italy. We've got GDP numbers out of France and we've got GDP numbers out of Germany. But also we've got final CPI figure for October. Now this morning CPI numbers are any guide. We saw France CPI coming slightly above expectation. We saw and Spanish CPI coming slightly above expectation. And we saw French. And sorry, and we saw Italian and German CPI pretty much coming as expected. So I think if anything, tomorrow's final CPI number is not going to encourage anyone to think that the ECB will do anything anytime soon or take any further measures. And I think if that's the case, then the I think the incentive for European markets to push higher on the basis of further ECB action is therefore diminished. I think it's unlikely the ECB will do more at this December meeting. A number of analysts are saying that we're going to get QE in December. I do not buy that in any way shape or form. I do not think we will get that simply because the existing measures that we've already they've already implemented, they haven't had a chance to see through to December TLTRO starts in the middle of December 17th, 18th to December. They haven't seen the effects of that as it is. Some of the M3 numbers are actually starting to tick up. So that should actually be fairly positive in terms of money growth. And I think that will keep the ECB on the sidelines. And as such, think help underpin Euro dollar, which leads me on to my next point. Could I have a look on to that, Michael? Yeah, cool. I had done a bit of work on the ECB balance sheet. And through October when they were when they've been talking about starting their bond buying and everything else even before they get to full on QE. In October the ECB balance sheet actually shrank by about 14 billion euros. So they've got enough to do just on what they've already announced. As Michael said, the next targeted LTRO is in December. The September one was only about 80 billion take up and then the street was expecting 150. So they've got a lot of work to do just on just on rolling out their existing programs. I would think that QE would be more of a last resort if nothing else works. But they haven't even really given a good go with what they've already been planning. Well, there is that as well. So let's look at this Euro dollar chart because for me, I think 125, 10, 20 is key. Let's look at this here. We've got what I would call a slightly bullish candle here. It's not quite an engulfing candle. It's what I call a piercing pattern. So we've had a lower low with marginal lower low and we've we've basically pushed more than 50 to 75 percent into the body of the preceding candle. Now, we haven't strongly rallied away or through 125, 10 yet, but that's not to say that we won't. Now, let's drill this down because this potentially could be a little bit of a triangle here if we drill it down into a two hour chart. So let's do that. So let's go and draw some trend lines here. And this is generally what I tend to do. I tend to do a top level and then a drill down. Now, look at this line here so we can see straight away through the lows. There's a nice little line. We've got this two hour chart over 26 days since the beginning of this month, pretty much. We've got a succession of higher lows. What we want to see now, let's draw a line through here and we're just testing the top of that right now. You know, the question is, do I really think that's a valid line or do I think that's a valid line? Irrespective, we've got a cluster of highs through 125. The oscillator is starting to look fairly positive and it's not even at 60 percent yet. So I think there's certainly potential for us to push through here, get to 125.10 and if we can punch through 125.10, then it really opens up the highs that we saw at the beginning of November at 125.70. Those weekly jobless claims that we saw this morning, slightly weaker than expected, 290,000. They were slightly higher than expected. We were expecting a region of around about 275.280. For US retail sales tomorrow, disappoint, then that will be dollar negative and that could actually help push Eurodollar higher. So the catalyst tomorrow for Eurodollar are going to be the CPI data in the morning and the GDP data, but also the retail sales data out of the US in the afternoon. So these are the levels that I'm looking at on Eurodollar. Through 125 and the trend lines to pull from these lows that we saw in November. Anything you want to add, Colin? Yes, I just wanted to mention in general on currencies that and particularly the US dollar the massive US dollar rally that we've had has been predicated on the Fed's going to be under a lot of pressure to move really quickly on interest rates and to move up their timetable on interest rate increases into the early part of 2015 from the previous broad expectation of mid-year. The Fed has a meeting in June and that's when a lot of people were expecting it either in June or in July, they would start raising interest rates. The US dollar took off on the feeling that maybe that gets moved up to I don't know February or March or something like that, ASA March and but that's increasingly looking like that may not be the case. I mean we've got falling commodity prices taking the pressure off inflation. The employment numbers are okay, they're great, they're solid, they're well supported but they're not screaming higher to the point where the Fed has to absolutely do something and so because of that what are we starting to see now? Well, we're actually seeing base building in Euro dollar and we're also seeing some rebounds in some of the other dollars as well so it does look as though the US dollar rally is getting tired and Michael is absolutely right. If you saw any weakness in the retail sales we could actually see the US dollar start to come back the other way and with the pressure coming off the Fed. So what appears that we're building up a little bit of a base in Euro dollar, I'm not going to say that is a definite given because things change very, very quickly, you just basically trade the price action and we could just as easily come down sharply break that trend line and retest the lows of earlier this month, that doesn't appear to be the case in the case of the pound, the pound continues to look weak and we are now testing the bottom of that wedge and we're also testing the 15720 level and why is 15720 important? Well, let's look at what I drew earlier. You may recall the lows, the double bottom or the double lows that we saw in 2013 are 14810. So 14810, we've got to rally all the way up to 17195 or 61.8% for financial retracement of that 15720. Where are we now? Just above that. So that's the weekly chart. So now let's drill down into this. Let's just get rid of that and we are right at the bottom of this and again, you know, I pointed this out in my weekly video on Tuesday. There was certainly potential for cable to drop to 15720 and the bottom of the wedge and the bottom and the 61.8% retracement level. So that's for me, I think it's fairly key, irrespective of what we do with this little line here, which I will now redraw because at the moment there's no guarantee that it won't need redrawing again. And at the moment it has broken lower, but there is potential divergence here. Let's not say that this won't continue to go down. So why are we going lower? Well, we're going lower basically on the back of yesterday's inflation report. Low inflation, low inflation, whatever you want to call it. Mark Carney basically said that he expected to have to write a letter to George Osborne within six months when CPI dropped below 1%. And some say that's a bad thing. And I would argue it's not necessarily a bad thing certainly not if you look at oil prices, not if you look at food prices, particularly when the UK consumer has had a wage squeeze for about the last five years. I think if average earnings are going up to one and a half or two percent and inflation is at one percent, I think that could actually be quite nice. Certainly give consumers an awful lot more disposable income. Obviously what we don't want to see with any degree of, we don't want to see outright deflation but I certainly think that commodity price deflation can actually act as a form of stimulus. And I certainly think there's a good chance that we could see that as we head into the Christmas period. So once again look at the UK consumer data, the retail sales data as we lead up to Christmas because actually I think that could well help underpin the UK growth story that at the moment does appear to be showing signs of slowing down and we saw that when the Bank of England revised its growth forecast lower and revised its inflation target lower. And if anything Mr Carney, it doesn't anticipate inflation to get back to three percent or three percent is it three percent or two percent? Yeah, two percent, two percent within the next three years. So that is obviously means that interest rates here in the UK are going to stay lower or longer. So 157.20, keep an eye on that. That could be quite important, could provoke a bit of a bounce back and if it does we could move back to 160. And the low states, go on. Oh, sorry, go ahead. I'll finish that and then I just want to mention something. No, I was going to move on to euro sterling and I was about to say the recent weakness in the euro is basically, sorry, the recent weakness in the pound is one of the reasons why we've seen euro sterling break higher. Yes, it's starting to move. And the important thing here with interest rates is of course with the UK now, similarly people have been wondering would the first interest rate increase be before or after the election. It's now looking like it's going to be well after the election. And finally it's looking as though the US and the UK may end up moving at about the same time on interest rates probably it's looking like sometime next summer at the earliest. What I would also say is that unless we get a rate hike in Q1, we're not likely to get one until after the election because the Bank of England will not want to be drawn into a political row about being biased in any way, shape or form. So if the rate hike doesn't happen by March, it won't happen until June simply because April will be too soon to the election and the election is May, the 7th and that is the Thursday which means the Bank of England will announce this decision after the election in May not before. So all of these sort of things you sort of have to take into account certainly when you're playing the politics of it but at the moment looking at the pound against the dollar, I think a large part of this is slightly overdone certainly in terms of the context of interest rate expectations but I do expect us to have a little crack at that 157.20 level over the course of the next few hours. So let's look at Euro sterling because we've broken above that 78.70 area and I think there's a very good chance I don't know what's happened to my trend lines they were on here they're not anymore but once we broke above 78.70 which was this resistance level through here we were trading in this little box range and had been 78.70, 78 a figure once we broke out of that my next resistance level was around about 79.40 so if we look at that there we can see straight away what a nice little range that was we broke out of it went up to 80.90 came back tested it now we've gone away so now where the key the key level to me is 79.40 so why is 79.40 important quite simply it coincides with these theories of highs through here so let's go and do that again you know and it's fairly straightforward this stuff it's not rocket science you know you look at this and you look at where the accumulation of highs and lows is and then basically you take your support and resistance levels off that and I say it's fairly straightforward so we look at the daily chart the oscillators starting to go positive on the daily but on the four-hour it does appear to be starting to roll over so I certainly think that if we don't break above 79.40 this will start to tear off and we'll come back and retest the figure yeah so the overall it does look like that's starting to bottom out if you looked at the the longer term chart you I mean here you've got kind of a small triple bottom if we go back to the daily chart you can see there's a double bottom and and I believe it was on the one minute chart you showed earlier you were actually getting close to a golden cross of the very short-term averages so things are starting to suggest signs of signs that this thing's getting pretty washed out here in general and the pound has had a pretty good run here against the Euro for what much of the last year on on feelings that the almost two years that the ECB is getting more and more dovish the Bank of England was getting more and more hawkish and well maybe the edges get trimmed off of that and we start to we start to see that there's a there's room here for a bit of a bit of a reversal I think Michael I still think though that the policy frameworks of the two banks are still moving in opposite directions if you know me the fact is the Bank of England is probably I think at the moment there's an expectation that maybe on the margins the next move in UK rates could be lower I've heard it means I've seen it on Twitter actually that some some economists are saying that actually that we could cut base rates personally I don't buy that I don't see there's any reason for us to do that because the last thing you want to do is weaken the pound further but having said that if you want to generate a bit of inflation why not but to my mind I think I've seen enough inflation over the last five years to last me a lifetime so I don't particularly want to see any more strong or weaker pound generally between 150 and 160 is about where the pounds been over the past 10 to 15 years on average and basically 135 and 175 up in the outer extremities so as long as you bear that in mind I generally think that the pound against the dollar the general consensus has really been around about 155 which is not far away from where we are at the moment right Colin let's talk about the yen because I know that people are looking at the Nikkei they're looking at dolly yen and they're thinking where do we go next so let's start with the dolly yen and when we look at this weekly chart we can see how absolutely nasty this move has been now let's put this move in perspective when the bank of Japan when the bank of Japan announced these new measures here okay well it was around 110 basically they announced an extra 10 to 15 billion dollars a month that's all and yet we've gone from 109 to 116 on the basis of 10 to 15 billion dollars a month anyone here think that's slightly excessive or is it or is it basically the feds tapered by 15 billion and the bank of Japan's added by 10 to 15 billion therefore you've got a 30 billion swing I'll leave that hanging right because I've been looking at this and when I first looked at this chart particularly last week it looked to me like it was a flag pattern forming where you had it that big spike it was going sideways for a couple of days and then it started to break out again it's continued to climb but I noticed the second phase has not been quite going up quite as fast as the first phase and we're getting overbought on the stochastic so initially I was looking at the measured move if you went 109, 114 and then measure that up again had measured you up to about 119 however as I've looked at this and the week has progressed I've been increasingly wondering if we're actually going to get there or if we're just going to kind of level off here in this 115, 116 area maybe 117 I mean you look at that low in November around about 113 80 that was just before we hit 116 now we've to hit 116 or try to hit 116 three days in a row let's drill that down that's not really tell me anything that's starting to struggle a little bit on the four hour chart yet a bearish candle there but it didn't really follow through on the downside we've gone a little bit higher so that was 115 50 through there this is 116 50 55 there divergence on the gas six you are getting that but again you know you're trying to pick the top and it's always a dangerous thing particularly in a market where the market really wants to ramp Dolly N higher and you know if you're looking at Dolly N you also have to look at the Nikkei because the two are directly correlated so if we go take that Dolly N off you know I'm still looking for 120 the big question for me is how we get there and at the moment I'm not confident enough either way to really go all in and say you've got to buy Dolly N here or you sell Dolly N for a move back down you see again here look as soon as Dolly N launched higher so did the Nikkei it launched higher as well weak again great for Japanese equities because basically their next borders therefore a weak again is going to be very very good and look at where the Nikkei is look at that daily chart that daily candle chart we're on the highs so is Dolly N Dolly N is on the highs and actually on this on this chart here we're seeing that actually we're above the previous highs in October therefore if you're trying to pick the top in Dolly N I wouldn't be doing it yet but not on the basis of this particular chart here because the Nikkei is on the highs of the day and yes I know the Nikkei is closed but this is on Nikkei future and we can see it's continuing to push higher so trying to pick the high in Dolly N when the Nikkei chart is doing this could end in tears so bear that in mind look at what the Nikkei is doing yeah then they would be like trying to stand in front of a free train not a good night not good at this not a good idea it'll be a very brave thing for someone to do so there is some talk that Shinto Arby could be calling a could call in an election always in the process of potentially calling an election and abolishing the sales tax hike well obviously if that's the case the new one then that will weaken the end if it weakens it'll be good for the Nikkei so at times of political uncertainty sometimes it's best to wait for a bit of a sell-off and looks try and pick it up the Nikkei or by Dolly N if we get a pull back towards this area down here so this area down here will be around about 1260 on Dolly N and around 16,350 on the Nikkei all right let's look at oil prices because I'm sure you're dying to know where they're going and if I may be civil I think they're going down I think they're going down big time first and foremost let's look at this monthly chart let's just hide the drawings now this is the worst run of monthly candles for crude oil since 2008 these are the these are the monthly chart in 2008 here one two three four five six obviously this is November November's not over yet so that could that could easily reverse but look one two three four five so five successive monthly declines what does that mean for currencies like the ruble the Canadian dollar and other oil produce norwegian krona it means that those currencies are likely to remain weak so can we see dollar ruble at 50 absolutely we can I don't think that there's any doubt about that you know at the moment you know Mr Putin seems to be intent on a policy he just doesn't seem to be that worried about the strength or otherwise of the ruble now the question is you know where can that's the level I'm looking for once we broke through 88 there we went quite a bit lower so where's the next level the 2010 lows at $67 a barrel on Brent crude at Saudi Arabia coming out saying they're not in any rush to hike production so what's the key date this month 27th of November that's the OPEC meeting could they announce production cuts big question they might but they might not but certainly I think it once we head towards that date and get close to it you could you could certainly see a bit of a short squeeze start to unwind on Brent crude in the lead-up to that on the basis that we might see a production cut because the big question is will we and at the moment is the big unknown so is there anything you want to add to that Colin in terms of the direction of travel certainly looks to me lower I wanted to look at the yeah a little bit of a shorter term trip could you change the get stochastics to the RSI please Michael sure what term what RSI do you want just the standard one is fine standard RSI yeah all right let me just get rid of that yeah we are getting oversold on the short term what I wanted to note if you started the beginning of September and you go let me get slightly shorter term chart so this is for our chart or is the daily fine because you want to show something on the specifically on the daily right okay let's do that and what I wanted to note here was just from the beginning of can you beginning of September you'll see it got overbought in September really overbought in October and it's gotten overbought again in November this actually is the head and shoulders bottom on the RSI but it's too early to call it I turn not when you when you've broken 80 and 80s become the new resistance at some point you'll probably see this thing start to bottom out and level off but I don't think we're quite there yet I don't we're probably getting close to the big wash out but but we're probably not there yet it's a little early to think about about going against the grain here but as we saw with Michael it's on in 2008 you had six straight months of declines then it kind of started to go sideways for a while before turning up the same thing here eventually you'll start to bottom out but they don't think we're quite there yet and I don't think we will be there until the RSI goes above 50 because at the moment since July we stayed massively below 50 on every single test higher so if you look at this RSI you can see where the resistance level is so yeah and it's a pretty clear one and it's a pretty clear one so that's Brent so let's look at WTI it's probably going to be a fairly similar story this is the cash contract so it's continuous and again now this is quite actually this is quite an interesting one you can look at the you can look at the oscillator but look at that line that I've drawn in along through the lows there that's the lows in 2011 so it's around about 74 dollars and 80 cents on this particular contract so again worth keeping an eye on in terms of the support levels but again the direction of travel is fairly clear yeah you've definitely got a shot at hitting those 2011 lows again even though you're oversold on the stochastics you could get a little bit or more oversold you'll probably level off at some point but it may be that that we see it still choppy and weak through to the the OPEC meeting or until you get some kind of a sign from some of the OPEC producers whether they're they're seriously thinking about cutting production or not I mean they may just decide they want to fight it out over market share who knows well Qatar have already announced a production cut but at the end of the day doesn't really matter what Qatar decides what Saudi Arabia decides so they're sort of shooting themselves in a foot a little bit so let's go and look at the rubble because someone asked me about that can we can we reach 50 well if the oil price continues to go low again then yes we can at the moment you can see no exactly I mean you can see how choppy it is you know 45 48 there and you know it's a very very volatile market can be seen from here I mean the spread on this is 4.3 so again you know it's quite it's quite a wide spread but having said that you know it's all about risk reward and not the moment that's just a little bit too rich for me so let's look at another commodity currency let's look at dollar Canada and that was the negative divergence that we were looking at I think last Friday Colin and obviously the payrolls number that we saw which was I'm slightly disappointing from the US point of view but very good from the Canadian point of view absolutely and so in the last week we've actually seen the Canadian dollar has strengthened a little bit it's done reasonably well considering that that oil has continued to decline even though clearly when we look at this it's still in a pretty broad uptrend just as as crude has been in a pretty broad downtrend but it is starting to show some signs that it perhaps it is starting to starting to peak here but it's got more work to do before it really signals a downtrend at this point you're you're you're having what looks to me like a regular correction within established uptrend at this point you really got a bust 113 at a minimum and really I'd want to see it taking out that that Fibonacci level there at is that 11235 yes it's 11235 yeah you've got to take that out before you can have any kind of a meaningful talk about a changing direction at this point is it's a it's a normal consolidation and you've also got a nice little trend line there as well yeah yeah then there's a trend line as well now one of the things that has surprised me is despite the strength of the US dollar the Aussie dollar and the weakness in commodity commodity prices I continue to hold up fairly well it's amazing to and the Kiwi dollar has been speaking to yeah I mean is this is just a good result of carry I mean you look at this one here it's a quite positive that's a bullish engulfing candle there I talked about that on Tuesday since Tuesday we have gone higher but look we need to now take out these two highs this series of highs through here ladies and gents look at that there whoops just redraw that so look at the Aussie dollar again look at the look at the aggregation of peaks there for now that's three months let me go to four hours and we can see right there 8760 8770 on Aussie dollar that looks like a significant resistance level as well as and there's a gap there and we haven't filled that gap yet and we need to there's a gap between 8760 and 88 yeah it had a good pretty good run here could you pull the Kiwi dollar as well Michael yeah sure I can do that so let's do the Kiwi so what I wanted to talk about with the Kiwi dollar here is it's gone into a what's going to be a pretty established trading channel between 77 and 80 so you go to the bottom of it it looks like you have pretty much may have completed a double bottom here you're having a nice run you've broken that nice downtrend line that Michael has been kind enough to draw in earlier so you're here at 79 so what you got to watch for with this is there's a little bit of resistance around 7920 stochastics is accelerating upward nicely you see it break through 50 and it would look a little better and but really what you got to watch for with Kiwi dollar is the 80 cent level and in fact you see that one little high where it tested the trend line Michael where their X is there that you had a little gravestone doji and and what you had there was that was the one time it the last time it peaked above 80 cents and when it did it got smashed right back down so what you got to watch for with Kiwi dollar is that a lot of these declines were driven by the RBNZ they've been actively intervening in the forex market and selling the dollar so if you peak above 80 you do run will be a key test because that's where you're going to be watching to see is the RBNZ going to come in again and smack it back down or have they had enough and they're done their intervention and prepared to to let it come back up a little bit that's the level that you really got to keep an eye on and it's quite startling how similar is the Aussie again we've got a bullish golfing candle there and a key reversal day but you've got a lower low and a higher high and an engulfing candle so again that's usually a precursor to a rally so we've seen we've seen that start to roll out and you know if you're basing your strategy on a stronger dollar and you've got the Kiwi dollar and the Australian dollar actually outperforming the US dollar then that does sort of beg the question as to whether or not we'll get a little bit of a pullback in the broader US dollar currency sphere as well i.e. Euro dollar dolly yen and cable that's what I'm thinking because these are these things they're leading something because these were the two particularly the Aussie and the Kiwi were the two guys that got absolutely crushed the most by far in the US dollar rally with the Aussie the Kiwi in the end were the three currencies that just just got totally steamrolled and flattened by the US dollar so if they're starting to show signs of life would suggest it's a sign of exhaustion on the flip side for the US dollar well yeah absolutely because Aussie dollar was peaked at 110 you know and now it's back down around about 86, 87 so that's quite a substantial decline automatically albeit 110 was in 2013 but that's by the buy so let's finish up with gold that old favorite and we can see from this long-term chart here that it is starting this is the this is a weekly chart by the way so you know don't read too much into that so this is the Fibonacci retracement from the lows in 2008 to the peaks in 2011 and we're currently below the 61.8 Fibonacci retracement level of that entire up move and that's around about 1155 now thus far on the weekly chart we haven't closed below that we've traded below it but look at that is that a hammer sure looks like one me looks like a weekly hammer so is it hammering out a base well judging by this candle here it still remains fairly weak we're still below 1180 and while we're below 1180 the risk is we can push lower but as long as we stay below on a weekly close 1155 and this series of support levels here then the bias remains for a bit of a short squeeze but you know it's a big but here if we do close below it then we're looking at 1044 which is the 2010 lows so this is basically the corridor here that I'm looking at in terms of the gold price if we get back above 1180 we can get a short squeeze higher if we close below 1155 then the next corridor is going to be 1045 1155 and interestingly when we had that weekly hammer candle you also was the same we could coincide with the stochastics rolling back above 20 which was a also a bullish signal so but it Michael's right it's a little too early it looks as though the bearish pressures are weakening but we're not seeing enough on the bullish side it's not got it hasn't got enough umphia to really break through and say yes this is a this is kicking off a recovery train we're not quite there yet okay so that's 45 we've run over by about 20 minutes but that's fine before we wrap up I've got time for probably one question from any of you guys is there any market that we haven't yet covered that you would like us to cover um you can basically ask us those questions by basically using the chat facility on your WebEx account or your WebEx link otherwise Colin and I will wrap this up and we will put it on YouTube for you to listen back to if you want to within the next 24 hours no no questions okay thank you all for joining us everyone yeah thank you very much for joining us we will have this one of these again on the 11th of December that will be the last one of 2014 obviously we've got non-farm payrolls webinar on Friday the 5th of December I will not be hosting this particular one my colleague Jasper will because I will be in Dublin but I'd like to thank you all for attending and speak to you all again absolutely talk to you soon thanks everyone thanks Michael cheers Colin thanks Nate


Why narcissists force themselves on to you? Why do they try to force a connection with you? Why do they rush? Why are they so impatient? Narcissists want their perfect source of supply Someone who is attractive wealthy and powerful Someone who can meet all of their wants needs and desires Someone who will go along with their narrative and comply with their demands Someone who will never question or confront them Or doubt what they're saying That would be the ideal source for a narcissist It is what they would prefer And if you are willing to do all of that You will be more desirable to them They will pursue you in a determined and forceful way They will try to do things for you They will take up a lot of your time They won't allow you to have much time without them They won't allow you to be involved in many activities that they can't be involved in They will watch you carefully to learn what you are doing It keeps you in close proximity to them So that you are accessible to them whenever they need you A narcissist has to have accessibility to their supply They need to be able to use it whenever they need to When you first meet the narcissist They can seem lively and high spirited They don't seem to take things too seriously They can be fun They compliment you They can be supportive They will go out of their way to prove to you that they're a good person And this is how they get in with you By acting as though they're this naive humanitarian Someone who does things that they think will help other people Or someone who has been victimised Someone who has been taken advantage of in their past Which then makes you more open to trusting them Because it makes you think that you have someone who is on your side Someone who will drop everything just to support you But it's just an act It's just to secure you as their source of supply And while they're doing this They are closely observing you They want to see how you react to it They want to see how you respond to this temporary character That they've created for you The narcissist has multiple personalities And they will be whatever they think you want them to be If they think that it's going to get what they want When you first meet them It's very intense It's so over the top It's like you can't do anything wrong Everything you say or do is funny or interesting It's amusing, it's entertaining Everything you do is amazing to them And this is how they seduce you By feeding your ego Until you are under their control Until they can then maintain influence and authority over you And ruin your life But before they do that They will milk you for whatever you have They will try to get as much out of you as possible They will always do that before they discard you They do it so fast They quickly force themselves onto you Because they have short attention spans They can't spend much time on anything without getting distracted They get distracted very easily They get bored very easily Every source has an expiry date with a narcissist Because they know it's only a matter of time Until they get bored Or until they destroy it with their own reckless behaviour They've seen the same thing happen again and again In their past relationships They already know what's going to happen So they just want to get whatever they can get as quickly as possible If it lasts longer than they initially expected They'll just stick it out They'll just see it as though you're that much under their control But they know that it's only a matter of time until you figure them out They know that it's only a matter of time until you realise That they're not who they said they were This is when you might question or confront them You won't see them in the way that you once did You might take a step back And not give them the same amount of fuel as you used to You might not be so willing to give them your trust anymore When you've experienced any danger or harm from the narcissist You may begin to enforce boundaries Because you realise that you're at risk And that is when the narcissist starts planning their escape That is when they will discard you Because you've figured them out You know that something is not right with them You stop doing the things that you used to You stop giving them so much You hold back on certain things Which only makes the narcissist angry Whenever something affects their flow of fuel That is when problems will arise with the narcissist They need a consistent flow of fuel from you Without that, they will lose interest in you You will notice that there is always something going on with the narcissist There is always something they need They always want this or that They are never contented or satisfied They have these insatiable desires They're just constantly trying to milk as much out of you as they can Always trying to get more You're always busy focusing on what they need next Doing things with them You never get any time for yourself And that is why it can seem like you've been with them for such a long time Even when you haven't It just seems that way Because you spend every waking moment around them It feels like you've been with them for an eternity For an endless amount of time Because rather than attending to yourself They've managed to keep you chasing them Until you lose track of reality You lose track of time It's only when they finally discard you That you then realize that you never had a break while you were with them You were always busy You were always focusing on them Always attending to them Always catering to their needs They would even start arguments just to get your attention Just to get a reaction out of you So that you're focusing on them again You never had any time to rest Narcissists are messed up And they know they're messed up Which is why They're doing everything they can to hide who they really are They know that they only have a short amount of time Before their true colors show Before you begin to see the red flags They know that it's only a matter of time Until they mess things up They already know how it's going to end And they have already made plans On how they are going to exit the situation So it's all about getting whatever they can get from you And then moving on to the next person They don't mind losing something good Because they don't care about the person They just care about the fuel They just want what they want When they want it Without ever giving you anything back in return Thank you for watching I hope this video wears out with you Please like, comment, share and subscribe Click the bell icon to receive notifications For my future videos Check out the new Narc survival website At www.narcsurvivor.uk Where you can read my blog posts, book coaching sessions And join a support forum If you would like to donate My paypal link is in the video description Coaching inquiries You can email me at coaching.narcsurvivor.uk Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon