Well despite the fact that we speculative trading should be curved up, well see how yum china is doing but a muted debut so far here in the city. We are expecting a Bank Decision highly expected to stay on hold here today. Also with the ecb as well. Watching the euro very closely. Did gain yesterday on the back of a report that some ecb officials having a little more confidence in the recovery from this pandemic ahead of its policy meeting. Theyre likely to hold. Well see what they say about the strength of the currency. 118 for the zero dollar. Pound still under pressure here. Things like the seems like the e. U. May be take manager Legal Proceedings or measures here to stop the withdrawal from this deal that Prime MinisterBoris Johnson has been play to play out here. Your indonesia rupia as well. Recovering a bit on concerns about the Central Banks independence. Government think ceying it was opposed to the plan of a monetary board being set up at b. Y. Well dig deep beer shah in a bit. Also checking yum china, see how those shares are doing here. We mentioned how things were lower here today an well get that in just a bit here as well. For our first word news, corina mitchell. The European Union is considering legal action against the u. K. Over plans to breach the agreement governing britains withdrawal from the e. U. They believe they may have a case to seek remedy even before the internal bill is passed by parliament. The Prime Minister defended the move. Nobody wants to see a barrier down the irish sea. What were doing which i think will be it would be injurious. Were bying a safety net beneath which you cannot go wrong to protect peace and protect the settlement in our kinetted kingdom. The European CentralBank Painting a slightly brighter picture with a new report showing polly policymakers sticking to the juneout look for inflation. The e. C. B. Is expected to hold rates steady thursday but further easing is possible before the end of the year. Jakarta is bringing back tough restrictions on offices and restaurants as coronavirus cases surge there. The city will shut Entertainment Venues an places of worship, limit public transport and order all nonessential staff to work from home. Global deaths have topped 900,000. India remains the latest epicenter with more than 1,000 people diing from covid each day for the past eight days. Here in the u. S. , large parts of california are being covered by an eerie orange glow as wildfires and a record het wave heat wave continue to spread dense smoke. Power is slowly being restored after being switched off for half a Million People to prevent fires in a windstorm. Fires have burned 2. 5 million acres this year, the most on record. Im corina mitchell, that the bloomberg. Yvonne, back to you. Yvonne thanks. Well check yum china stock right now. Its down about 4 here in its first day of listing in the city. Of course we were all asking these questions about just how sustainable this rally has been in hong kong. In particular. But despite the fact that theres still a lot of questions on whether youre willing to bet on the sector. We have seen the consumer come back. When it comes to eating out thats still a bit uncertain here right now. Of course today they are down 4 . 412 the i. P. O. Price. The c. E. O. Saying shes optimistic about the recovery in china, its at a good pace and yum china hoping to open 800 to 850 store this is year. Back to the marks now. Asian stocks tracking u. S. Gains after rebounding from the threeday rout. The technevey nasdaq 100 recouped some ground wednesday after falling 11 over three trading sessions. Joining us is jonathan curtis, Franklin Templeton portfolio manager, joining us from california. Do you think the tech wreck is over and where do we go from here . Jonathan good morning. Thank you for having me on. Yop if the tech wreck as you call it is over. Markets do this from time to time. We are biding our time looking for better opportunities to add to some of the names we really like. We think the big opportunity in the tech space is this idea of digital transformation, about using software and data, you have to understand your customers and business processes and using technology to radically transform those things. The past three days have seen, or past three or four trading days have seen a lot of volatility in the space. We feel very, very good about those themes. Valuations certainly have risen a bit in the sector since the covid crisis. Came on. But we dont think theyre excessive. So weve got some dry pouder to add to names as things continue under pressure here. And of course a lot of focus has been on the Options Market and the overhangs of that. Whether you believe that this rally was fueled by, you know, the nasdaq like soft bank or Retail Investors how do we gauge if weve come to the end of that . Onathan thats hard to say. We are fundamental analysts and are paying attention who to the what companies have been saying, whats been happening in their businesses. Many of them are seeing a strong acceleration in the fundamental trends weve been talking about around digital happening during the crisis. So its no wonder to us that investors have been coming to the sector to partake in not only that cyclical growth from the covid crisis but the structural acceleration in some of these themes. So you know we havent dug much into the options activity thats been talked about here of late. The fundamentals in the companies that were invested in look very strong. We feel very good about the acceleration weve seen in some of these multiyear themes. Yvonne you menged what youve been doing with the fund. Youre still outperforming most of your peers out there but still hold some of these big stocks like apple, amazon, microsoft. Have you had to adjust to some of this within the fund after this fell off . Coming into the crisis we owned all those names. During the crisis, certainly we added to names like that. But also a number of our smaller mid cap names. We havent made any big changes month to date in the strategy. We are olding a little more cash, that gives us some cash to add to things. Certainly quarter to date weve been more active in some of the semi names and chinese internet name bus havent been making big adjustments over the past week or. So yvonne all right, jonathan hold on a second. I want to mark some lines were seeing here in the market with indonesia in particular. The jakarta composite falling 4 . This is after we learn that jakarta, the capital, was bringing back some of these social distancing measures as the number of new corona cases there are rising. Theyre requiring nonessential industries to have employees work from home and limit the use of Public Transportation. Indonesia has been one of the biggest victims of this pandemic, especially in the Southeast Asia region. So we are seeing the marks take a hit if that here today. Well have more on that later with hsbc as well to look more closely at the Southeast Asia side of things. Jonathan lets bring it back to you and talk more about tech. You mentioned valuations. Im looking at the e. P. S. Forecast from some analysts right now youfl see Companies Like apple havent exactly seen those forecasts rise along with the stunning rally that weve seen the stock. Are investors still getting what theyre paying for . Jonathan we think theres some element of the fed sort of shoving investors into the equity markets. So in part we think that investors are going to places where there are really trong Business Models. Still growth. Dividend payers like a microsoft or apple. And so thats probably helped expand the valuations in the space in absolute terms. But relative to the broader market, given the good growth and quality we find in the secondor, we done find the valuation to be excessive at least in relative terms. We acknowledge theyve moved up in absolute terms. Thats why weve been keeping a little bit of powder dry so this this selloff continues thatll give us an opportunity to add to ames we really like. Yvonne is there anything in the tech space youre avoiding right now, jonathan . Jonathan there are some names in the space that have had sort of an impulsive demand, very covid inspired, that we dont think is going to sustain. But there are other names that have seen an acceleration in trend and we think those trends will continue to build. So were avoiding those names that had that sort of impulse in demand. As always we have a high quality bar. Companies weaker Balance Sheets, weaker cash flow profiles. Weaker Management Teams. We avoid those as a rule but were being particularly careful with names like that in this environment. The environment clearly is very dynamic and requires the strongest Management Teams, the best Balance Sheets to navigate it all. Yvonne jonathan, thanks for staying late for us. Jonathan curtis, Franklin Templeton, their portfolio manager. Coming up we talk to chief market strat gijs james asking him about whats happening in jakarta. They are bringing back social distance regular strixes. Up next the pandemic reaching a new milestone, global deaths top 900,000. Donald trump says he deliberately down played the virus to save a panic. This is bloomberg. Fact is, im a cheerleader for this country. I love our country. I dont want people to be frightened. I dont want to create panic, as you say. And certainly im not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy. We want to show confidence. We want to show strength. We want to show strength as a nation. And thats what ive done. Weve done very well. The president of the United States admitted on tape in february he knew about covid19, that it passed through the air. He knew how deadly it was. It was much more deadly than the flu. He knew and purposely played it down. Worse, he lied to the american people. He knowingly and willingly lied about the threat it posed to the country for months. E had the information. Yvonne youre hearing President Trump there telling Journalist Bob Woodward why he intentionally played down the threat of the pandemic and you heard joe bidens reaction there. Lets turn to our Senior International editor jody schneider. A big political issue. We heard it on tape. Its hard for trump to deny this statement. But how is he addressing the situation now and what he told bob woodward . Jody hes simply doubling down on what he said in terms of, hes not denying it. Its right there on the tape so it would be hard to deny. Hes saying he didnt want to instill panic. And still doesnt want to. And that he didnt want to scare anybody and also didnt want to hurt the economy. Those are that was going to be his tack with this. In the past with some of the past books that have come out including some recent one he said fake news, never said that with the atlantic article about some of his disparaging comments he made, allegedly made about the military he has brushed those off. He cant do that in this case because the tape is right there and so hes basically saying, i did it out of a good sense of patriotism. Im not sure how is that going to work . Well see. The election is just two months off. This is a critical time for a book like this to be coming out. Yvonne how big is this and does this in any way benefit joe biden . Jodi i think this will be a major issue. Were seeing that with voters. Joe biden is up in the polls, has been, and a lot of this is about the president s response to the virus. Were still seeing the death, seeing the u. S. Number come closer to 200,000. And theres still not a federal response, a unified federal response from the u. S. This is so its going to be a big issue. The president has tried to really detour from it, to have a law and order presidency coming off some of the recent protests and what he calls riots in the u. S. But this is going to stick it looks like. This book brings it to the forefront again. Joe biden is making a lot of this, saying the president knowingly misled the country. That he knowingly lied. And thats likely to be a good tack for him to take. We will see what happens. These things can have a short shelf life. And there probably will be other books coming out and other issues coming out but the virus issue is not a winner for the president right now. Yvonne lets talk about the vaccine race as well. We saw the setback with astrazeneca yesterday with this vaccine trial pulled. Whats the latest here . What questions are being raised now . Jodi astrazeneca, who is partnering with the university of oxford, is getting a lot of questions about what exactly caused the issue for this vaccine to be halted and whether the serious possible serious neurological problem in one patient could be related to the vaccine. Astrazeneca confirmed it stopped giving patients experimental shots after a person in the u. K. Who was participating got sick. We have heard from the u. S. National institutes of health finalor saying the its a problem. So lots of questions around this. And a question is will they be able to renew the trials . Astrazeneca has been one of the early, fastest out of the gate, in terms of trials and have been basically in some of the later stages of this so this is another sign that this is going to be a very complex process to get a vaccine, to get even one vaccine, to market and then to try to widely distribute it. So some of the claims that we could be having vaccines in coming weeks and months this does seem to underscore that that is very unlikely to happen. Its a much longer process to get a vaccine that could be idely distributed. Yvonne certainly a reality check. You have to wonner how its going to affect other vaccines that rely on the same kind of technology. Thank you, jodi schneider, our Senior International editor with the latest. We have plenty more ahead, this is bloomberg. Yvonne we have more on astrazenecas halted trial. Johns Hopkins University professor Lauren Sawers told bloomberg why caurgs is caution is a good thing an when we might see effective immunization. I think were going to see a success in vaccine sometime next year. I am not as optimistic as some of the people who are talking about a vaccine by the election or by the end of this year. I think were seeing some really good data out of these candidates, theres nine in phase three. But i think we do have some time where well have to wade through some of the data and better understand how well the vaccines are working and what the priority is for manufacturing. Yvonne are we going too fast trying to find this vaccine . There will be hiccups but it actually will be safe when its out . I think theres elements that are moving a little fast for my liking personally but i think the the news other the weekend of the vaccinemakers led by pfizer and moderna and astrazeneca to pledge safety over speed was a really important step. Its a little bit of a worrying step, i think, because the fact that they felt they needed to say that, where were prioritizing safety, means perhaps that they were being pushed to speed up the timeline. Everybody wants a vaccine, a vaccine is incredibly important tool in our tool kit. But we need to prioritize safety. So i think seeing that step by the vaccinemakers was really important. Yvonne lauren, what does it mean in terms of what theyre worried about . Is the worry that we have a vaccine thats not safe, or that we have a vack scene thats safe but no one wants to be injected with . I think its some combination of the two. I think the these phase one trials, they start with safety. We understand the safety profile before we even start to understand the efficacy of the vaccine. But here in the u. S. For example, we have a Vaccine Hesitancy problem. So its not just rolling out a vaccine thats safe based on clinical data. Its also its also really important to understand what will stop people from taking it . What will encourage people to take it in what are the safety and efficacy data that people, the public want to see in order to ensure that they will go an get that vaccine. Because if we create a perfect vaccine but no one wants to take it, it doesnt matter. Because of this unexplained illness that caused astrazeneca to suspend the trial, does that mean it will be harder to get healthy individuals to try out future vaccines for covid19 . Ic that people should actually be happy to see that this is happening. Normally i think that this wouldnt make national news. But because this is such a national and international priority, this is a standard process in both vaccine an therapeutic creation an production. We stop trials when we see something concerning or unexplainable, something that doesnt align with the data we saw in phase one and two. So this is astrazeneca doing their due diligence. Looking at this adverse event. Looking at what happened to this person who had an unexplained illness. Going back through day to see to see if they saw it elsewhere. That was johns Hopkins University assistant professor of emergency medicine lauren sauer. The school is supported by michael bloomberg, founder of bloomberg l. T. And bloomberg philanthropy. Yvonne j. P. Morgan is said to have found some of its employees pocketed covid relief money intended for legitimate u. S. Businesses hurt by the pandemic. Thisback discovered the actions after suspicious ams of money were deposited into employee Checking Accounts. J. P. Morgan has fired several plose over the incident. Taking a look at at the markets, were losing a bit of steam in the 10th hour here in hong kong. U. S. Futures heading lower. Nasdaq futures also reversed here. Were watching closely jakarta, the composite down about 4 . Jakarta had to bring back social distancing measures. Hospital capacity is running thin there. If it wasnt for these new measures as well. India futures flat right now. A pan looking slig