 Welcome to FIG's weekly economic and trading update. I'm Mark Bailey and this is Jessica Russett. Hi Mark. So last week we had CPI data release domestically and out of the US President Trump unveiled his tax plan. What were you seeing come through in economic terms? Yeah, I mean you've hit the two main ones on the head then, Jess, in terms of the Australian data. So pretty lightweight, apart from CPI. The core inflation figure came in at 0.5 underneath expectations of 0.6. And also the trims mean and weighted median, which is the RBA's both preferred measures of inflation were also pretty weak as well. Not that you would guess that by reading the press, they were all very much focused in terms of, you know, that the headline inflation figure was now at the bottom end of the RBA's 2% to 3% band at 2.1%. But generally speaking, there were pretty weak economic data points for the CPI. Moving to the states, we had a pretty heavy raft of negative economic data below consensus, but most of the economists and the markets were focused heavily on Trump's tax plan. The details of which were very light on corporate tax rates, hopefully going to be cut to 15%, but there was no indication in terms of how that was actually going to be paid. And they have to be tax neutral for the budget to actually get passed, otherwise they can only be implemented for a 10-year period and then they get repealed. So there's still a lot of detail to be resolved there. There wasn't a huge amount of implications in terms of what you saw in terms of the Treasury market moves, so the markets actually not believe that these tax plans are going to go through. Importantly, for those holders of high-yield bonds, there was no talk at all, no mention of any repealing of the interest deductibility on the tax side of things. So that was a positive for US high-yield bonds there. But apart from that, a slew of negative data was against the backdrop, which probably means that the Fed Reserve probably is going to sit on its hands for a while. So, Jess, with the CPI print that we saw out of Australia, kind of slightly weaker than expected, that's probably got an implication for investors in the inflation link space. Anything else of interest that happened in your week? Yes, so we had inflation released and that did come in weaker than expected, but it is at the lower end of the RBA range of 2-3%. And so with that has made inflation quite topical with clients that are looking to review and reallocate their portfolios. So the case with most inflation bonds is that they are quite high-rated bonds and they are also lower risk as well. So that works well with clients that are looking to reduce the risk exposure in their portfolio. These bonds are mainly for infrastructure projects that are at the lower or at the operational phase, that's the last phase for these projects. And the revenues actually derive from monthly payments that come from state governments, so they are lower risk investments. Yeah, and that kind of ties in with the thing that we've been talking about to clients for the last six or nine months about de-risking their portfolios. They're overnight Bank of America talking about US high yield market and US high yield bonds that maybe they're looking fairly overpriced and maybe due to have a bit of a pullback and a correction. So we've certainly been guiding clients into decreasing their risk in their portfolios, moving up the investment grade spectrum to better quality, higher rated corporate bonds. That ties in on that theme. Yeah, that's right. And also adding to that as well, we have seen ongoing demand for investment grade bonds and so we added three new bonds to the direct bonds list. That was GPT, OSNET and also high on die as well. So once again, they're not the highest yielding bonds, but they are very high rated and they are a more defensive allocation into a portfolio. Another big theme for clients at the moment is a reinvesting funds that they're receiving from a lot of buybacks that have been called at the moment, in particular in the US dollar spaces, BAM, MINCO and also Broad Spectrum. So another bond that FIG did add to the direct bond list was Talon, 2022 maturity, and that's in the US dollar as well. So clients have been switching from those other two called bonds and into this one. It's also of a similar maturity as well and also maintaining that US dollar exposure. But the other thing with this is that it's quite high yielding and it's of the similar credit quality as well as BAM, MINCO and Broad Spectrum. So there's a pickup in yield without having to take on too much additional risk for doing so. And then also domestically as well as rumours, I'm not sure whether it's been confirmed about next EC, looking to potentially buyback existing issues and then reissue as well, which again ties into that reinvestment theme quite nicely. Exactly. So we'll stay tuned as to what's to come out there, but yeah, there is a raising of $200 million for another bond in that case. So we'll see what comes there. The RBA meets next week. What do you expect to come out of that meeting? I don't think there's going to be too much of interest. I think they're going to hold rates at 1.5%. And I think the rest of the market believes that to be the case as well. It'd be interesting to see if there's a continued commentary regarding about the CPI, which we've just talked about, actually being a bit weaker than expected and that's not actually coming through. And then maybe also some commentary in terms of the house prices and whether some of the macro-predential rules that they've brought in are actually starting to control their house prices, especially in Sydney and also in Melbourne. Also offshore, the Fed does meet as well. Again, I think it's going to be a fairly boring statement. I don't think there's going to be a huge amount of change. Also on Friday, we get the GDP figure as well. And there's been a lot of revisions downwards to that forecast as well. So again, it's going to be a key economic data print for the Fed on top of their preferred inflation manager as well in terms of the core PCE. We do get that as well later on in the week. So quite a heavy data week in the States, but still the focus on central banks. Thanks, Jess. Thanks, Mark. And thanks for watching. Tin hats on. Enjoy. If you need any more information, please go to The Wire.