Okay, very good morning to you. Hope you're doing well. It's Thursday 23rd of April Just gonna quickly start off by saying if you haven't done so before and if you're new to the channel Then obviously thanks for joining us. Please do subscribe for more daily content But here's the Amphi trading website So I know we do have a bit of a mixture between people who who are generally traders who tune in to listen to the briefing But we also have quite a few students as well looking to just generally improve their their kind of knowledge and Awareness of what's going on in markets. So when you're on our homepage, there's a couple of different options But specifically the red and blue ones here for if you are a trader or if you're a student This is predominantly aimed here at those who are either brand new to trading or those who have been retail trading But are looking for more Kind of answers in a sense to us being I guess on the professional side of the prop world How do we kind of construct our strategies? How do we manage our psychology? How do I apply macro fundamentals to trading and so on so everything here if you click on that button It will give you a bit more detail. This is the kind of trader section of our of our website Do check it out when you get a moment Here's the guys to kind of senior team which we've all been involved with our new one week intensive program Which we've been running since the beginning of the week. I know a couple of the guys are listening now So very good morning to you But yeah, it's been great because with that you know one of the I guess silver linings of Having to work from home in the lockdown being apparent for everyone globally It's meant that we've basically taken everything virtual We were already had that capability But it's the first time we've really kind of we've not been able to obviously be on the physical trading floor in the city And so we've done everything online and and so far hopefully so good And the beauty has been we've had guys tuning in You know working with us from Morocco from Northern Ireland and from you know lots of different places So, you know, it's been great to have that kind of ability Rather than just teaching someone you know kind of face to face in that sense So check that out the link will be in the video to have a look at but you know, let's talk markets Let's just have a look at what's going on and actually it's a fairly fairly tame open. I would say You know, it's a strange thing and and I was kind of inferring this in yesterday's briefing about that idea that now We've had that massive shock event with oil I did have a feeling that you know the market would become Somewhat desensitized to the second time round I think the other thing we were talking about yesterday was the idea that the June futures contract could be targeted And certainly it was and now there's has been as we're going to discuss some movements that's happened to counteract that Happening again. So, you know, we were talking about the fact that you know What happened to the May WTI contract was probably going to happen to June and everyone came to that same idea and kind of front-run Front ran that and liquidated a lot of those positions. That has caused some degree of variance But we have settled now a little bit in oil and you know as I was kind of saying before and we're going to look at a note In a moment from JP Morgan, I kind of agree with them It's kind of look I don't really think that oil moves really is a systemic risk to be quite quite honest I mean if it were you would have seen a much bigger kind of correlated fallout in other assets Ie say equities for example and that really hasn't happened when we have a little bit of downside But as you can see here, we had a positive close on Wall Street. The down was up to shy of 500 points We've reversed pretty much half of that sell-off that we saw during this kind of This super contango situation that we've had in the oil market and so all things back to it's kind of normal in a way Don't get me wrong though The oil situation is far from solved but the important point I think from a broader market perspective It hasn't and now that it it's kind of gone over its worst and people are now more aware of this type of thing Outside of say specifically the oil market. I think I think the ability for that story to really rock things Has diminished quite considerably at this point going forward Otherwise the other asset classes mean oil in itself this bottom chart here The futures is up about a dollar and a half rub just over 15 bucks. We're going to talk about Trump He's made some fairly interesting tweets I get a little bit suspect with the timing given how low oil has been for him to Try and bump prices back up again, but as I said, we'll look at that in a moment Gold pretty flat Technically up and around the peak of the overnight Asia Pacific high worth keeping an eye on that came in around 1745 we're up marginally about three bucks The Dixie off just a touch one-tenth So both major pairs you're a dollar and cable just coming up a little bit as European participants have come in and T-notes are pretty flat slight underperformance in the bund There's been a couple of comments out in regards to the the ECB in the FT last night that I was tweeting about So if you don't just follow my handle on Twitter, I tend to you know, never stop looking at the news basically so can be quite useful sometimes I put out things that some Weird times of day just because I tend to be quite glued to my screens at the moment Might be quite useful for you But look, let's let's go through the news because that's what hopefully I can help on I'll leave the time of technicals to to you guys and Starting off with quick update on coronavirus I know we've kind of been sidetracked almost it feels like in the last couple of days So so focused on oil, but you know, there's still is this COVID-19 situation, of course So a quick run through of some of the top-level headlines and this is being one of the first ones So the UK chief medical advisor yesterday spoke and said the chance of having a vaccine in the next calendar year is Incredibly small and until then we need to rely on disruptive social distancing now This is one of the things that we were saying if you remember last week in the briefings I was very bearish when that gillie sciences headline came out I thought the market was over exaggerating given the kind of emotiveness of the subject matter about finding Let's say cure vaccine I was always of the opinion that medically getting that into the point of passing These kind of trial stages and then getting to the point of manufactured and distributed was going to be a very long timeline. So For me, this is exactly what I feel we've been saying in terms of our our desk's view About the timeline. I've always thought governments have had to balance this kind of this double-edged sword of trying to politically appear to be in control of the situation But pretty much every government pledge across every single country has been broken in terms of the deadlines that they had set whether that be testing Whether that be lockdowns and all these other things. So to me, this is completely unexpected, but unfortunately the reality is that if you know if you were hoping that let's say the The lockdown being unwound was going to be a fairly smooth quick orderly process and that meant that you could go about your normal working And I guess personal lifestyles. Unfortunately, that's going to be not the case Social distancing as we said a few weeks ago. It's probably going to be a staggered fashion But over several months given this nature of the secondary waves that could come apparent and then until a vaccine might become available Later on so yeah, it's kind of reality hitting home a little bit and certainly when people talk about the shape of the recovery This is going to be much more kind of graduated than in terms of how quickly that might happen But to be quite honest when we look at charts and markets this morning Nothing's really moving on the back of this because I don't really think it's that unexpected to be quite honest and The the point being now, I think, you know, I get this question a lot, you know, is the current is coronavirus priced in well Yes, I would say it is priced in for all things remaining equal as we are at the moment I guess the testing time will come when we do actually start to relax the lockdowns in graduated phases At what point and how severe then is the pickup which is going to happen in renewed cases That's for me is going to determine whether or not the governments can strike the right balance and therefore comes to test that they face You know the longer it remains locked down the more economically damaging it is But obviously the cost is immense the cost is loss of human life So here elsewhere New York deaths were at their lowest rates since early April Spain's Parliament backed the PM's request in order for a further extension of a state emergency aid until the 9th of May The Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin has been out yesterday and anticipates most of the economy will restart by the end of August again This is this is crazy talk for me Stephen Mnuchin saying the economy is going to be pretty much completely reopened by August Remember Trump said it was going to be completely opened by Easter Again, I wouldn't really get too tied into the emotional your political view to be honest He says these things because he has to say them Whether that comes from Trump's order or not He's just trying to convey a message to the public. You know, it's not going to be completely reopened by by August I can tell you that now But again, it doesn't really impact markets. That's the important point Remember politics and what gets said and market impact can be a little bit disconnected at times Well, let's move on Let's talk about oil then I'm just going to do a very quick recap and certainly things have steadied I would say a little bit. We're definitely out of that period of It's kind of euphoric movement that we were seeing and you know, I was watching the ladder when it did go negative at the time It was it was pretty insane watching the movement But we're looking here on my my screen is the the kind of active WTI futures contract So this would be like if you were using a trading platform the continuation chart So kind of mapping the the front month contract. So it all it kind of shapes in the the May and June movement And obviously we went negative near $40, but we've now steadied and we're trading 15 this morning, which is above So we have settled as to be expected and has been a couple of different things that have happened in order to address Some of the main problems and one of the main things that that was happening was this US oil ETF And Bloomberg talking about this this morning So basically what the key summary here is this The USO has moved further out the oil futures curve for a second day Now we've done some previous videos on the channel So do check them out where we've talked about The curve and what that should look like in normal times in terms of contango versus backwardation and extreme contango that we have now so Check those out when you when you get a moment But let me just kind of run you through a few different things here. So why why is this important? Well, the USO is the biggest oil traded exchange traded fund in In the world basically and it's reshuffled a mix of futures that it owns to track crude prices extending the average Exploration date now one of the problems that led to what we saw It was it typically would be heavily geared and it would roll from month to month the front month contract But as you saw then when we have a this storage issue that we face now I think the US and somewhat now globally it can lead to these massive runs on People just needed to get out even a loss Let's say of those those contracts and so in order to avert this type of thing They the fund which are the single single largest owner of WTI crude futures at any one point in time They've moved It's money into contracts expiring in August and September While reducing exposure in June and July So basically they've spread out the proportionate futures contracts further out down the curve in order then to Eradicate this need to see such a big move like we had two days ago So it's an appropriate move and again. It's attempting to control The extreme volatility that we we had seen because it was the near-term Contracts that were boring the brunt of the losses that we we were seeing One other thing on the oil front Couldn't be better timing, of course Donald Trump tweeting a few hours ago saying that he's instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and Destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea So yeah timing is obviously Interesting just given what's happening to press prices this type of rhetoric Traditionally would obviously support prices because it would be indicative of rising tensions in the Persian Gulf and the idea of a supply shock In more normal times would would lift prices It comes after last week the US military vessels were conducting joint integration operations in international waters in the Persian Gulf And apparently they were being harassed at the time by Iranian ships of the revolutionary guard so There is some reasoning behind why he's tweeting it But obviously he's tweeting it he's keeping it behind and now he's unleashing it at a perfect time to give markets again A little bit of a flaw to stop the you know kind of forced selling in that in in that case So this is a little bit different to the kind of I guess a more function way of which futures markets in the USO work This is a little bit more in the geopolitical space, which has gone pretty quiet of course since it was all Flaring at the beginning of the year How much do I think this would move oil? I don't think a great deal to be honest It's a very short lived in nature type headline So yeah, it's worth noting. I don't think it's really really that much of a big deal One thing though that I did think was quite interesting was and something that I know my colleague Eddie's been talking about is You know when we're we're trying to look more specifically to equity markets. So an interesting headline Citing some energy law firms this morning and in the financial times and they were saying approximately half of the 60 Independent US oil producers more likely need to review options for securing more liquidity and doesn't come as much as surprise But again, it just goes to show The reasoning why Trump now really has to literally do like a whatever it take situation in order to control this We talked about that in yesterday's video. There's the various different options He has and specifically things like utilizing yet this the strategic petroleum reserve the SPR and so on That JP Morgan report that I was talking about earlier and the thing it kind of fits in In step with what we've been saying they said oil price collapse not a systemic risk to markets And you know that the underlying point they're making here is that they're technically speaking There is a reduced weight that the energy sector has in the S&P 500 if you think about oil oil has been coming down Quite dramatically for a period of weeks months And so what that's meant then is the associated values of some of the energy-related companies has decreased and therefore the Proportional Representation of the S&P from a sector basis has got smaller So therefore that normal correlation, which is can be quite tight between energy movement up or down and that then Influencing potentially then a larger component of a stock index like the S&P to track it Hasn't it's broken down a little bit as I said, we've had these massive moving oil and yeah It hasn't really sold off a great deal. I mean Sure hundred points in the the S&P, but we've already recovered a hundred points from the low in the space of 24 hours in that respect So yeah, I mean that's it's what JP is saying You know to kind of reduced exposure of the energy sector to the spools asset purchase Programs basically in large scale across many different central banks in the developed world also taking place And then the physical little production adjustments that are happening through OPEC plus and the G20 energy producers as well Which is going to kick in don't forget when we get into the months of May is the expectation All right The other story that people are looking at and this is something definitely to be aware of today Let me just check the calendar if they've got time for when this stuff's happening No time is yet, but definitely we'll be keeping an ear out on the squawk box For when this starts happening. So there's an EU teleconference called basically happening Later on today and the talk of the town at the moment is the European Commission floating an idea of a two trillion euro plan for To support the economic recovery Given how dire the situation has become In the eurozone under the draft plan the EU would integrate a 300 billion euro recovery fund into the 2021 27 budget and borrow around 320 billion euros on the capital markets They haven't really specified about the other remaining portions at this point They're Italy and Spain are demanding joint debt issuance as you can imagine Who are opposing this the Germans and and Netherlands have rejected this over fears that be kind of stuck with the Picking up the tab, you know So it kind of harps back to the days of the sovereign crisis similar kind of Friction in terms of the contributing factors then that Germany basically gets lumped with France they've proposed a temporary fund financed by joint issuance, and this is quite the hot topic people are looking at And they're saying it would only be operated for a few years to kickstart the economy They're very much down the route that you know these countries are going to need funds not loans I'll obviously quite different in just issuing money rather than Having to have these countries were paid because countries like Greece Portugal those that have really suffered over the last decade are going to find it incredibly difficult to survive otherwise Germany and and the Netherlands want to offer low interest loans Which would still obviously leave in debted countries as I just said highly Kind of saddled with even larger liabilities Which is not going to be a healthy situation for them or the eurozone long-term and obviously there's lots of Euro skeptics, I know they've been leaving comments on the videos over the last few days So this is definitely something to watch and this call that they're having is happening later today Markets were a little bit sensitive when they passed a previous package of around half a trillion more recently in the last week or so What would be particularly sensitive is probably Italian paper So keep an eye on BTP futures today and also the euro I would imagine these talks and headlines will probably start coming out this afternoon But any rumors around that any lack of progression more confrontation about the best foot forward all the time that's delayed All the all the longer it's going to be until they can implement some kind of fit of Stimulus program to help the economic recovery and why is that important? Well, you're going to see some economic data coming out shortly, which is the flash PMI numbers for for the eurozone Now these are going to be very important because it basically gives us then insight as to how bad the situation is becoming now Are the PMIs going to move the market? Not so sure to be honest probably not so much as you might imagine Why because last month's PMIs were already dropping quite spectacularly So the fact that they're going to be even more depressed this time round I'm not sure how much of a surprise that is to be quite honest, but it does Absolutely make real the idea that Europe really need to deliver something and something quite quickly at this point The other thing here is An article in the FT. I'm not sure if you saw it. I did also tweet this when it came out last night But in summary the ECB have changed its rules to accept what we call fallen angel bonds now What that means is that bonds that lose their investment? Grade credit rating can maintain access to ultra cheap liquidity from the central bank So about two hundred seventy five billion dollars worth of non-financial corporate bonds could become fallen angels by being Downgraded below triple B So when you know for anyone who's new to markets Basically when you think about the major credit rating agencies like Stalin and Paul's Fitch and moody's you have a different hierarchy in Quartals so you have investment grade with an investment grade will set triple a double a a is the normal standard triple B double B and so on but then you get down to the point of Being downgraded below the triple B level and that then that level is the minimum required for an investment grade status That can have huge implications then for what fund managers need to hold in terms of their quality of the assets They have from the ECB's collateral point of view to access liquidity You need to exchange then a certain quality of Goods let's say in a simple sense. So here the ECB are loosening that so they're basically saying that actually they'll accept lower quality Or at least those who've dropped below that threshold And that's a move because they know that this is going to happen and they want to reassure Markets that look that's going to be okay. That's not going to cause a liquidity crisis And so on and so forth Any questions on that just leave me a comment One of our team members you might have seen his videos on our YouTube channel Eddie Donmez He used to work at standard and pause so he's great at this stuff And I'm sure he'd be happy to answer any questions if you aren't sure Final thing then looking at the calendar other than the flash PMIs I've already talked about you've got the weekly initial jobless claims Of course coming out of the States Again similar fashion to what we've been saying more broadly about some of the other things that have been going on How important is initial jobless claims? Well from a from an economic point of view is very important, right? Because it's going to be potentially another 4.2 million People in initial jobless claims and that's going to take the overall five-week average above 25 million And obviously that means that payrolls come April is going to be pretty horrific Into the kind of mid 20 millions potentially which is Pretty amazing to think of when looking at historical standards But to be fair now that number generally is not so scary anymore Certainly not as scary as it was a few weeks ago from a market function point of view in terms of reaction So jobless definitely worth watching and we will be the range at the low is about three to a high of five and a half expected for 4.2 But I wouldn't be really expecting too much unless we get an outlier shock If let's say jobless Dropped to something like one million One million is very high But one million way lower than where we have been and what's expected and a breach of that lower in the range Perhaps that could be taken as positive in a short term the jobless not quite as bad after an initial peak So we'll talk about that more With the guys as we get closer to the release Earnings wise what have we got I'm just going to give you a summary some of the biggest pre-market names for the biggest company to Look out for is Eli Lilly and then Going into the aftermarket space you've got Intel which is the biggest company reporting So they're probably the two big names if you're more of a looking at the index as a whole Eli Lilly pre and Intel post market All right, that is it. I'm not going to go any further than that. I'm going to wish you guys a good day Any questions? Let me know And I'll catch you guys tomorrow. Thanks very much


In this video today, which has brought you by Squarespace, thank you very much for supporting the channel. I'm gonna provide my long-term review on the magnificent rim brake, Factor 02 Vam, a bike you can still purchase moving into 2022 in rim and a bike that, as mentioned previously, has been out of all the bikes that I have used and owned in 2021 and there's been quite a few. This one has been the quietest and least irritating of them all. Now, I purchased this bike with my own money. Full transparency, I did get a little bit of a discount but I still paid many thousands just for the frame set alone and this happened in January this year. Then, the Factor was built up at Taylor Cycles in April this year and then I provided my first impressions on the Factor 02 Vam in July this year and now in December 2021, I'm gonna provide my long-term review and this is gonna be an interesting review for me to deliver because to be honest with you, I've had quite the standoffish relationship with this bike, kinda similar to the relationship I have with the Cannondale System 6 but for different reasons. Now, I've already provided quite a lot of information on this bike in previous videos, particularly the first impressions, which I'll link to below but to reset the foundations for this review. Let's quickly for about a minute revisit the numbers, including weight and price. So this Factor 02 Vam frame set with black ink bar stem combo, seat post, bottom bracket and some other minor bits and pieces comes in at $7,800 AUD. I know that is a significant amount of coin and for my build, you can add in some super lightweight, decadence or cadence, 35 millimeter carbon tubular wheels at $2,000 AUD, SRAM red mechanical 22 which came in at $2,750 AUD, tires cages, smaller bits and pieces, totaled $750 AUD, totaling this bike at $13,300 AUD. So this is actually the most expensive bike I have ever owned in my 11, 12 year riding or cycling history, is it the best? We'll have to wait and see. In terms of weight, and this is where Factor destroy the field, the frame at a 54 centimeter level came in at 715 grams and the uncut fork, 266 grams totaling 981 grams combined. The complete build without pedals, cages and mount was 5.6 kilograms and the bike fully loaded. The Factor 02 Vam came in at just over six kilograms which is borderline ridiculous. So if you want more information on say geometry design check out the first impressions video below but for the rest of this piece I'm gonna focus on my riding experiences and who I think this bike is best suited for. Now, keep in mind while I've had the opportunity to test ride and review a number of bikes my experiences that I'm gonna share with you today are mostly anecdotal and clearly should not be taken as gospel, I'd also like you to keep in mind that I am roughly 80 kilograms in weight or 176 pounds and I am 179 centimeters in height and rider medium. For those of you who are going to ask that question below but it's the body weight that I'd like you to keep front of mind as we go through this review today because I feel if I was maybe five to 10 plus kilograms lighter, my experiences here this story could be a little different. Now, before we get into the meat of this video these projects are quite the investment so I did wanna thank today's video sponsor. Being Squarespace, if we actually have a look at my wife's website here which was built just recently it's on a Squarespace platform and you can see how clean, simple yet intuitive it is. And my wife who's a non-techie personally loves how easy it is to go into the backend, altered text, layouts, color schemes, et cetera without needing any development skills. If you're keen to get a website off the ground go to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com backslashcamnickles to save 10%. See all the relevant details below in the video description area. So, my standoff relationship with this bike it can be broken into two parts. It all started with the Cayden or Decadence 38 millimeter tubular wheels. Now, I selected these wheels for their weight being roughly 1000 grams for the pair for this featherweight build or with all the bits and pieces. That's a light wheel with the tyre on it. That's the front. 11 plus 750 that's 1850 with tyres and the cassette and quick releases. And from a riding experience these wheels have certainly delivered in terms of their responsiveness and aerodynamics which I wasn't really expecting given the rim profile but it's certainly there. Yes, there is some flex at times when you're really pushing it out of the saddle but I've had zero brake rub and I've also tested this bike with some heavier alloy wheels and as stiffness to weight ratio goes I've been highly impressed with these Decadence wheels but they are tubular and while I've heard you're a lot less likely to get a flat with a tubular setup and I am yet to get a flat with these tyres if you get stuck down the road say 50 K's down the road with a massive gash in your tyre that say a can of hope won't resolve what's a man supposed to do? So after a month or so of this initial standoff relationship with the factor O2 I invested into a spare tubular tyre which is now jammed into this bag. You can see it there. And after that I had the confidence to go long. If I got a really bad gash in the tyre you can literally just pull a tyre off and put a new one on and get yourself home and that's because the tubular tape that was provided by Cayden which is a special type of tubular tape which was installed by Jay at Taylor Cycles I'll link to that video below. And that tape that you just saw should still have enough stickiness on it for you to be able to bolt on a new tyre while you're out on the road and get yourself home without doing anything silly of course. So once this issue was resolved I started to ride the factor a lot more. To date I've ridden the factor O2 Vam in the local bunches here. I rode it in the famous Nusa Classic 100 mile or 160 kilometer Fondo event and I raced it in the local club race here at the Glass House Mountains recently. I did also intend on taking this bike down to some local criteria races which I've just started to get back into but to be honest it's not the type of bike that I will ever take to a crit race even though that was originally part of the plan and I'll explain why for you shortly. So to date after all these experiences the factor tends to sit in my office gathering dust. It's not a bike I'm choosing to take out. So why is that? Well I'm gonna lead with the two big advantages that this bike provides which makes me wanna lean into it and then the one big disadvantage which makes me stand away. Now the weight of this bike is clearly a massive advantage. For two reasons, obviously climbing with a bike that's one to two kilograms lighter than the other bikes is going to ensure you climb faster. But for me perhaps the biggest advantage was when I raced this bike in a local club road race. As you can see from this iPhone footage you can see some riders in blue kits. They're a continental team in my local area and they don't turn up to these races to race as a team. They turn up to race against each other. And that my friends turns these friendly local club races into not so friendly leg tearing affairs. And I think it was lap three or four of six 12 kilometer laps in this road race on a false flap section where there was three leg tearing attacks in a row and I just managed to hang on. I had saliva all over me, it wasn't a good look but it was the responsiveness of the Factor O2VM, the ability to get it up to speed really quick and to jump onto a wheel that I felt was a real advantage. In fact, so much so that I reckon if I was riding another bike that was one to two kilograms heavier I probably would have got dropped in that section. So in addition to the weight, the Factor is very comfortable. Probably the most comfortable road bike I've ridden even more so than my beloved BMC team machine. Although that would be a close call the day. I rode in the 100 mile Fondo event. I also rode to the start line and home. So I did roughly 200 kilometers on that day and when I finished that ride I definitely noted less fatigue in the upper body neck and lower back. So the factor was really absorbing the harsh country roads we have here on the Sunshine Coast well. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that it's a soft ride and there is quite a considerable amount of flex that comes through the frame which is where the big disadvantage for me comes into play. Now when I talk about flex, please know that I'm not talking about anything that would suggest a loss of power. Say a flex coming through the bottom bracket area. It's something that I notice in particular through the top tube and the seat tube area.  They're comfortable but with quite a noticeable amount of flex, I particularly noticed that when I did that road race I just discussed and while flex does get a bad rep at times. Let's flip the coin. It obviously can create a very good comfort effect and clearly has enabled Factor to create this lightweight machine with less carbon construction. For me though personally at 80 kilograms in weight, 176 pounds is somebody who likes to push it. This type of frame flex isn't so much suited to the types of rides that I like to do nor my riding style. So I guess you could almost call my review and riding experiences a paradox because yes, I have used this bike on climbs and there are a lot of lumps in my area but I'm not really using it for its intended use being a climbing bike. And perhaps if I was and perhaps if I was also five to 10 kilograms lighter, then this review would have been a little different but I think at the end of the day, many people will buy a bike like this and use it as their general riding bike. So I think you need to stand back and have a think about okay, what type of riding do I enjoy doing? What's my body weight? What's my riding style? How is this going to play into a bike like this? I think if you live in hilly terrain and you love the climbs and you're not intending to ride this bike where stiffness becomes a critical advantage, then there is a lot of compelling reasons to own this factor O2VAM, including the fact you can still get it in rim. I'll catch you in the next video.