 Hello and welcome to episode 54 of the market maker podcast and a couple of things to start off with first of all hope everyone stays safe and sound we've got a pretty monstrous storm hitting the UK shores. I think we've already seen you saw some images this morning right Eddie of trampolines and dustbins 100 foot in the air in Cardiff I think or somewhere in Wales is that right. Yeah, some random objects like 300 foot in the air. So keep your head down today. You don't want anything smacking you in the face. Yeah, but honestly, I hope everyone is safe during the during the next 24 hours or so as it passes through but otherwise massive thank you to not just the internal team amplified for the new crypto tech sim that they've put out this week they launched. But for everyone who took part we had a overwhelming response we had I think 650 odd people take it on Wednesday afternoon which was fantastic so yeah thanks very much for everyone attend who attended that if you haven't done the new one yet I mean other than those people they're the first to go through it so. So get involved, all you need to do is just go to amplify me.com find the finance accelerator and sign up we've got another one happening on Wednesday, next week. So love to see you there. And then thirdly, you probably just heard that the voice is not peers current. It's Eddie don mess and so again pierce is while we're here fending off defending the shores from a storm the biggest in 30 years pierce is sending himself somewhere in southern Europe I believe. He's always somewhere. It's either the Bahamas, you know, say shouts Mauritius or in Tuscany so he's get back and do some work if you ask me, I'll step in and take the reins. All right, cool. Well look, as per usual then a quick summary of some of the the topical headlines and then I know there's some some definite stuff that we can look at with your expertise as well, Eddie's but this week certainly dominated still by what's going on with Russian Ukraine and I've seen Biden the US president continue to sound very assertive over the situation, saying that it does remain possible that Russia will invade Ukraine, and that they're in a threatening position despite all the things that Russia is saying. So we'll delve into that in a moment and a bit more detail. Otherwise, is some of the other major asset classes gold futures and briefly tops 1900 third weekly gains that we're seeing there. A lot of sparking of safe haven demand given that that geopolitical risk increasing. I saw city overnight, they upgraded their near term goal forecast looking for 1950, citing geopolitical tensions from 1825. What you mentioned on LinkedIn, Eddie was Elon Musk. He made his second or he has made the second largest ever charitable donation what what was going on there then how much has he given away of his wealth. I think that what my point was on LinkedIn was, he gets so much stick, mainly from you and peers, but mainly the Democrats I would say it's particularly Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders for just for just being a billionaire. So I thought I'd give him a bit of positive propaganda and point and point out that he did actually donate $6 billion worth of Tesla shares. I think filings were from last year. That's when he did it. So yeah, he gets so much stick for not paying his taxes and this comes off the back of, I don't know if you saw last, I think it was last year or very recently. He was talking about the UN World Food Programme and saying about where $6 billion went and he said if I had $6 billion, I would solve world hunger I would sell my Tesla stock right now. So, you know, don't know if that charity money went there, but at least he's doing something with that money. You know, of course there's going to be people saying yeah it's a tax write off, but it's still. $6 billion is $6 billion right for a good for a good cause so yeah I mean I'm a hater, I hate Elon Musk so I mean he is writing off his tax but that money is going to a good place so yeah I mean I agree so all good there but he's he's landed himself a little bit of hot water. I think it came out where he's tweeted. I think he was tweeting in a thread about crypto and it included then some sort of satirical comparison between the Canadian PM Trudeau and Adolf Hitler. So and then he's pulled the tweet, I think the guy Elon Musk gone too far as he really as he realized he's gone too far for the first time in history. Well I mean look we're here talking about him so I mean, here we are. But yeah I mean other than other than Elon, a couple of other things that have been going on UK inflation. It's not, I don't think it's a big surprise when you see these numbers. I know you pick up a normal, you know if you're just a man in the street picking up the paper and you're like inflation is 30 year high you're like oh my goodness I'm feeling the pinch. There's an individual basket breakdown there's some products in your normal, you know your normal weekly shop, like margarine prices are like 40% or something and you're like, okay that doesn't, that doesn't feel like a lot when you're paying like I don't know 20 pence 30 pence, but when you do a whole shop for a week. So actually there's a meaningful difference where there's a 10 pound difference or something that's a lot of money for a lot of people. And so the problem here of course is the direction of travel because the number came in at 5.5% in the UK, touch high and expected. It's a 30 year high, but the Bank of England have already said it's going to go to around seven and a quarter percent in April we got a massive leap that's going to happen in energy bills. So the prices are going to go up. So, yeah, this is I guess this is a lot of the issue, many central banks are facing which is the threat now to what action follows that you're going to do in response to then what that might do to the implications for the economic performance thereafter. And certainly I know with the Fed, well with the Fed 50 basis points I mean here we are a week later from that red hot inflation reading I think we saw 95% priced in for 50. I checked this morning that's now down to 29% now. Let's just say AC nailed it. What did you say though there's 30 days to go, hold your horses. I just think that every time we do this podcast and we kind of go back and we look at the week and it's like, whether it's inflation, whether it's a single stock, whether it's a crypto, the market always over reaches in the first instance, nearly always. Now I'm not saying 50 basis points I'm not writing it off because just like it's gone from 95 to 29 it can go up to 95 again. The point I was making was like, don't just make the assumption that 30 days out it's a shoe in because 30 days in financial markets is a lifetime. I mean, if Russia goes to war with Ukraine, well then, you know, kiss your 50 basis points goodbye then at that point. Absolutely, I think it's you've been in the market a long time and you can see the psychology of markets always overshoots and then pulls back and it's kind of the same as what you're seeing with. I'm not going to say tech, but high performing tech. So your Shopify's and those companies, of course, they're going to come back but you see your PayPal's your Shopify's there are 46% year to date over the last year, they've been cutting half literally 50 60% down. Do I think they're going to pull back and even your Facebook. Yeah, I know we've given a lot of, you know, negative catalysts on that side in the commentary around that but are they going to, you know, pull out the bag in the next kind of let's say medium term. Of course I believe that they will show there's some low profitability tech the high growth more speculative names that some of these are just not going to make it and they've been punished correctly, in my opinion, down 7080 90% talking about the kind of disruptive names just that's really like a venture capital style investment right you're trying to pick one winner out of a basket of 100 and that's going to drive your returns but some of those have been kind of punished correctly, but with your Shopify is in your it's particularly Shopify, the fact that the markets gone so far, you know, down is speaking to exactly what you were talking about. That sounds like you're you're you got a little by the dip there on the Shopify holding. Well, people have, you know, they've been banging the drum about Facebook is it time is it time but I think a Shopify that's got such a great tech story but is also then linked to the global economy, in terms of, you know, arming the rebels giving everyone an ability to have a shop front and things like that plays into the secular trend of e commerce is not going away, obviously, but the fear is, and why the stocks were punished is because the economy is now decelerating in terms of the economic growth that I know we're going to talk about a lot from Well, taking that e commerce type of element and taking a slightly taking that on a slight tangent but JP Morgan this week they came out with a report at the first bank into the metaverse opening a lounge in the blockchain based decentralized and I saw, I just saw this like tiger roaming around this really bad looking lounge with a with a picture Jamie Diamond on the wall so what what are they saying I know they did issue a report and actually, if you want to read the full extensive JP piece on the metaverse which I highly recommend you do. It's really great analysis. So let's jump on Eddie's LinkedIn account, Eddie Donmez and he's just go to his post you can access the full report but Eddie has any highlights out of that report that you saw. Yeah. Crypto and the metaverse is of course gaining traction and is gaining more mainstream attention. And of course like we joked about Jamie Diamond was of course criticizing Bitcoin and you know trashing it. He's long to the eyeballs crypto and the metaverse but yeah that's another story but yeah it's really just there was a great report published and it's talking about the $1 trillion metaverse opportunity. And I really liked the fact it was really just calling out height versus reality what's realistic what's not because as of course a lot of hot air in terms of what it could be. And then the reality of it is, is going to be of course very very different as we kind of move five to 10 years what that's going to look like but there was some really good stats and analysis I'll let you read it on in the show notes and all link that post but $54 billion is spent on virtual goods. Every year, double the amounts spent to buy music so again, with these kind of game gaming M&A and roblox is that of course got punished a little bit after earnings. There is a huge amount of, you know, demand to spend time virtually playing games, you know, transacting virtual economies and things like that and what they term it as is metanomics metanomic models, which is basically metaverse economic metanomic. And 60 billion messages are sent daily on roblox. That's just insane. That's insane. I was watching. So I went on. This is what my life is like now every weekend. So I was on a play date. And then, so my daughter's friend has got a slightly older brother and he was he was there on this tablet playing roblox and he was just chatting away. And it's just carnage. I don't know if you've actually seen me saying it. It's just a whole bunch of these little leg of me going mad, just shouting out people just talking nonsense. But the message, the message rate was insane. It was just like pop up pop up pop up. And I mean, and he was jumping out of these different like, I guess like zones or rooms and it was I know I sound super old now when I say completely wrong terminology but yeah, it was incredible and just watching him navigate around as well because even my daughter who's like three and I watching her just utilize now she could work my my PC, my laptop, my phone, all three at once. She's basically yeah. And with with roblox I haven't seen the latest earning report I have to admit I remember last earning report. It was really one of their key metrics of course is time spent on platform. Right how, how many hours of people using in terms of growth volume, but of course you can get to a per user kind of time spent on platform by dividing it by the number of active users. It's just some insane stat it was something like, on average, each roblox user spend something like three hours a day on the platform. And it's just in terms of like my brain when I think that I think there's so much opportunity then if someone's spending hours of their life, regardless of how old they are on their interacting socially, virtual goods because of course you want to show off if you're a kid, you know buying the like armor and swords or things like that, and then advertising potential as well. If you imagine there where you say that you mentioned with the JP Morgan metaverse the frame picture of Jamie Diamond imagine, you know, advertising and stuff like that on the walls. There's a there's a huge opportunity obviously there. Yeah. And the interesting thing was you mentioned hype versus reality. And I've got a friend of mine that I knew back university he works in one of the world's largest advertising agencies. He was talking about this whole metaverse thing. And I was getting all excited about it all caught up in the hype side. And he went, I was like what what are you seeing what are you hearing and he was like and just calm down. He was like, people still watch X Factor and still want like a prime time advert on like the Super Bowl, like no one cares about the metaverse in terms of the mass population, that adoption to hit that, that, you know, because I'm the same as you just watching this, this little virtual avatar walking around this land I was like, you could just plaster posters on the wall you're basically you can create an unlimited universe. But then the reality of that is so many hurdles to cross till we get to that point and it's just so interesting he was like, no one's talking about it, because it's just, it's with so far away from that right now and it's I guess there's different. He's at the much more, I guess transactional part of it whereas JP Morgan is trying to position itself with its 12 billion they're spending this year on technology alone. I mean I saw the stat that they employ 50,000 technologists at JP which is more than the entire of Credit Suisse's workforce as a whole organization which is just insane. But it shows the seriousness in the fit and text space beyond just metaverse where a lot of these big banks are undoubtedly going to have to head towards right. Yeah, I think to your point, it's purely demographics right like my mom is not going to be on roadblocks right but there's plenty of you know Gen Z and you know even after that entering that that stage that are going to spend that time and you know like what we're doing at Amplify right we build simulations and experiences, you know in quantitative trading and asset management and sales and trading. You know, eventually we will get to a space where we will have a metaverse right in a room where you know I'm sharing all our business plans here. We will have a room where people come virtually to interact and do simulations and augmented and virtual reality, right, where it's such an immersive experience that basically emulates what it is to be on a trading floor or things like that so there's definitely the way the world's going but it's definitely a massive demographic divide. I tell you what, following that through it'd be really interesting given the pivot that we saw when it went through floor based to screen based trading in the late 90s. When we go from web two to web three based let's say trading it'd be interesting to see whether you get a revert back to type of characteristics that let's say you do a simulator trading floor in an old style, where it's but it's physical in an avatar form. I wonder then like how that would play out to be interested to see the full circle effect of that but the other headline just before we get, we get more serious on a slightly lighter note. I saw your boy Kanye as coming out and he's boycotting as he always does he's always controversial of course Kanye West is boycotting YouTube Spotify, Apple and Amazon with his new album. And he's basically going to have it exclusively only on his own, of course platform called the stem player have you seen the stem player. I haven't seen it but you know who it reminds me of who else is creating their own social media platform. Yeah. They're going to team up he's going to he's going to have the yeah he's going to have the Twitter replica and then from his from the man Donald and then he's going to roll out the stem player. I checked out the stem player quite tempted to make a cheeky purchase. It's like this little disk about the size of a CD, but it's about an inch thick, it's kind of like a rubber shape with a with a with a cross on it. And basically, so when I, when I was at university I used to I used to mix, and we used to have decks, and we used to have what we call a cork pad, so anyone who plays piano or anything like that. It's like a cork screen that you roll your finger over as a synthesizer to make different sounds. So he's created this disk player that's gotten that you can basically roll your thumb over, and it isolates single channels of the of the music that you're listening to, so you can live mix your own, his music basically. So it's a, it's a Walkman player with a with a screen. It's got an ability to what it's got ability to add your stamp on someone's music because you yourself can integrate your own flavor onto it and then I sound like a salesman. I'll take five. Yeah, you can basically control vocals, drums, bass isolate parts of the track and stuff like that. So if you're into DJing, it's like a live VJ kind of thing like visual thing but you're just doing the audio it's quite cool. 200 bucks. It's a, it's a steal anyone who signs up I'll give you 50 bucks. All right, so look, let's, let's start then with a bit of an update of where we're at year to date. You know, we're kind of several weeks in now and we've seen the most volatile January in a long time. And it still continues to be pretty volatile given the Russian situation as well so what's that looking like in US equities and on a sector basis as well at the minute. Yeah, I mean, so I'm looking at a heat map, essentially for the for the viewers or the listeners on Spotify or Apple Music. So, of course we're seeing a lot of volatility because of this whole inflation picture, and then the Fed, you know, just come out of really nowhere with the markets pricing at a potential six to seven hikes for this year. And as you would imagine, as we've just discussed those really speculative tech names have taken a battering. You know, with the with the higher discount rates and things like that and real a rotation into valley, really in what I'm talking about there is your defenses industrials energies and things like that and that's really painted the picture of the heat map of what I'm looking at is really the real stark divergence, looking at the large cap names now so Tesla down 17%, of course that's its own, you know roller coaster in itself but then you've got the contrast of energy, which is the brightest green on my screen right now. And the X on up 28% and it had a really good end of the year as well Chevron at 14% Conoco Phillips up 26% and what was I think even more surprising I would say for me is that Google down nearly 9% year today after definitely the best earnings report out of all the big tech stocks, you know if I was to pick one much like like pierce says Google is the most resilient, I think, in terms of those big cap tech but and they had the best report, but down 9% you know actually Apple's only down 5% this year so you can see how the market is so moving forward to this current situation which we'll get on to is higher inflation, higher rates and then now this whole Russia, Ukraine conflict that I know we'll talk about later is just put the market a little bit on edge and you can see this reflected in the the volatility index the fear gauge which is up 24% here today so the VIX and volatility does remain elevated as assume portfolio managers are buying protection, you know, not, you know, let's say the Fed then pulls back on those rate hikes and it's maybe three which is right I would say my base case big tech cap tech that is profitable that does power the market, you know you don't want to rotate completely out of those because that's really the best, you know, I for the next in the short term and near term are going to be the best performers but you want to buy some protection, you will also want to buy some value stocks and there was an interesting graphic coming out of the I think it was the Bank of America fund manager survey, the investors have never been as bullish as they are right now on value versus growth, so that really speaks to where we are in the market in terms of really favouring those kind of defensive names and what was interesting to me from a sector rotation sector performance perspective is any sorry healthcare, which is generally seen as more of a defensive name is down I think 9% year today. So really, it's kind of March 2020 vibes where there was nowhere to hide with the old spiking and you know we will remember those nightmare days but yeah even some of the defensives, you know, not not not performing too well. And you've got the fear of this kind of recession, you know really being elevated at the moment in the second half of the year that then really takes the steam out of those cyclical names that of course benefit when growth and economic growth is is high or accelerating. It's funny just listening to you talking about the healthcare being down even though the defensive, then talking about really high inflation, both of those you in the conversations what two years ago you'd be going also how high is Bitcoin. How well is crypto doing right now because before it was always that's the flight to quality that's the inflation hedge and here we are Bitcoin still sat at that 40k for the moment. Yeah, so for me, Bitcoin has never been an inflation hedge right it's a risk on asset period liquid when liquidity is flowing financial conditions are loose money will flow there. Right. Yes, it's a hedge against basically money printing. Essentially, so when the when the Fed and you know there's more debt there's money being printed. It's a hedge against that monetary basically currency debasement, in my opinion, but right now it's very clear that we're in a risk of face right there's fear in the market there's volatility and of course you're going to pivot out of you know those high beta names, bitcoins or your high, let's say, destructive names like our so it's never been, in my opinion, an inflation hedge. How is Kathy was when was the last time you spoke to her. Well, we had a zoom call in January, it wasn't looking too good for her but no no I think she was on CNBC yesterday and she just had another clanger, basically. So she was on CNBC getting interviewed and obviously our whole zoom as a as a stock. Right, and something that popped up on a screen was your time is running running out, which means that she was on the free version. Yeah, it was just like he happened, actually happened the come came up. And it said you're running out of time. And so it shows that, well, of course on the computer she was on whatever that is, he wasn't actually paying for the same, which was just another one in that kind of just she's having a terrible time, let's just put it put it that way. If you're investing in her ETF, I mean surely that is a long term speculative proportional minority makeup of any of your holdings because of the nature of what it is in an innovation fund. Well, it should be basically in your what so what why I don't get why people are so like upset or so like frantic about it it's like, well that's just the nature of what you're investing in and so it went up a huge amount initially, and now it's come down a lot Yeah, that type of type of investment. I think in terms of where retail were positioned of course over the last five years she's had amazing performance so let's give her massive credit in terms of her inception the arc funds have done incredibly well. And so that's where retail have been making a lot of money when financial conditions are loose, the after the COVID crash, the fifth, the stimuli checks, low monetary policy low interest rates, you know times were good. So everyone's been positioned in those kind of funds, Bitcoin bucket into that, the high beta names making a ton of money and of course, if you're generally if you're investing in those you've never seen them go down, or you've seen them go down very little in the new regime if you like of higher inflation and potentially higher interest rates then of course there's going to be volatility. Yeah, just two other stock stories that I saw Amazon have reached a worldwide deal with visa, accepting payments and their credit cards through its stores, and that was going on for months and months. And then the other one was about Walmart earnings. I saw exceeded expectations. Any thoughts on that just give what you're saying about the sector movements that we're seeing at the moment. Yeah, not too much I think visa in terms of you know they got they got pulled by Amazon. Isn't that right. In the UK it was as a kind of trial and everyone was calling for the worst saying they're going to pull visa kind of payment processing all over the world. It could be a massive hit to someone like visa but they're up for 4% year to date so they're slightly more resilient as transactions are going on but then again, if you're looking forward into the second half of the year recession risk kind of increasing in likelihood and not so soft landing from the Fed, then you're going to think actually, you know you're not to not too keen on that in terms of Walmart as well it's those consumer staples that, of course as prices go up in terms of supermarkets people are not going to not get margarine or they're not going to not buy any fruit and avocados and things like that they're going to keep purchasing them so those defensive names definitely outperforming those kind of more high beta names. Okay, cool. Let's let's delve into the Russia Ukraine side of things and I guess I can kick it off with recording this on Friday, the 18th. So, depending on when you listen to this I'm sure the situation may have evolved but as it stands at the end of this week, the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov is going to be with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Europe next week. It's coming. Russia told the US and its official response to security proposals of Washington and it has no plans to attack. They've, they've kind of stuck to that all week. Regardless Biden is going to speak to transatlantic leaders today about the Russian troop build up the Russian Defense Minister is going to be speaking with US counterpart as well today so one thing this does mean is it's going to be a heck of a lot of headlines flying around. I think that's definitely one thing. If you are not used to watching short term markets so intraday, you could easily get caught the wrong side of this. So a couple of kind of ground rules for anyone who does look at short term markets is always think about the source of where that information is coming from. Because having seen this initial conflict in 2014 and other conflicts over the years, definitely dependent on the origination of that piece of news, the same event can be reported completely differently. In this case, you know, I effects or Russian news agency or if it's a Ukrainian or if it's American or Western European, you've just got to be conscious of the fact of not over committing and jumping on one piece of information without then seeing it line up with other credible sources. So, trying to trade the intraday noise in a situation like this I'd say, unless you have access to the fastest news aggregation software or individuals who will service that job for you, which is only really for professional investors, as a retail trader trying to trade some of these headlines. I think forget it, because you're going to get smoked in the wrong direction. Taking a positional play thinking, you know, this is going to get worse. My belief is because of XYZ. Therefore, like you said, I want to pick up some exposed kind of hedging of that risk by the VIX or via some other play. Well, that makes some sense, but trying to trade outright to catch these moves. Forget it. The other thing is, people are people often have this myth this can this preconceived conception that or perception that news just comes from Bloomberg. And I can see why that is because all, you know, institutions will have Bloomberg terminals but I can tell you now when it comes to this type of information, Bloomberg are horrendous. The reason it's so far behind the curve is unreal. That's because they report financial news. They do not report on the scene in some small village in Ukraine, because that's not what they do. And so, what I would do and would have done in the past is I would find that journalist who works for the BBC or for a UK newspaper or Ukrainian newspaper, and I'd follow them on Twitter for example, on the scene firing this stuff out in real time, of which Bloomberg typically would be minutes later. And so although you need eyeballs to move the market, if you can get a time arbitrage, that's when then you can trade these headlines. But if you're not doing that, forget it. So in terms of, so that's obviously on the short term basis in terms of like actual scenario happening and the incentives behind it. How much did you value in your time, listening to like, RT, Russian news or, you know, basically, foreign news agency because if you listen to Al Jazeera, you get a different story. If you listen into RT news, you're getting a different story. If you listen in CNBC, you're obviously getting the American view. How much in your career did you value in terms of the actual, from the Russian side? What is the incentive system? What are they actually going to do? What do they really want? How much did you value that? Yeah, I think a great deal. I know it sounds like it would be exhausting to follow all those kind of channels of information, but a big part of I think what my skill has become is to be able to determine the strategy and how then governments like Russia or China or Russia use propaganda to flex on their optics to service what it is, is their end objective. And so, in order for me to determine how serious or not I believe, say Russia is, I have to see what Russian media is reporting because that's coming from the And so that gives me a degree of how they're lining up and whether or not they're going to make a strategic move in this instance. Then I kind of play that off and I think about, well, why is Biden being like he is? I mean, all week, Biden has been banging the drum. I mean, the last shot I saw yesterday was a classic Trump Trump shop. He's taken one out the playbook. This is when they have to chopper in the background and the chopper's going really loud. And they go, President, President, what do you think about Ukraine, Russia? And he goes, I think that and there's like his hair is blowing, the chopper's going, it's a classic. Like he's being flown in from online. But that is curated. Like that's not like a impromptu shot that is done on purpose. And even though that has nothing to do with him having military expertise or anything like that, this is all part of how this works. And so, look, to give you an idea, the reports that we've had this morning is that Russia is they're going to they're going to conduct strategic drills on Saturday. Putin, according to Russian press. So again, this is optics. He's going to oversee it personally. I mean, in your head now visually, you've just got this picture of him sat there, you know, with the shirt off. I was seeing these in the snow on a bear. But the point is, is that if you think about what has been happening, and I've got a few points that to cover on this about my overall thoughts and what might happen here. But you think about North Korea, it's the same. We see intensification of these provocative kind of steps firing ballistic missiles, these tests at the weekend, you know, the Western press in Europe in the UK and the US, they really latch on to the idea that it's going to be ballistic missiles that they really hype it up, because that helps their own domestic agenda to then garner support for them being more forceful in the actions that they take. And it ticks the box for Biden on his ability to reinsert control on the foreign fares where he's totally blew it with. And distract away from inflation. And that's a massive thing right so you're absolutely right for me, the biggest pivot he needs to make as far as the electorate is concerned is they are going to feel some serious pain now. I think people are people in markets are fairly focused on the fact that US growth US jobs they've all surprised to the upside. And it's been like, oh, okay, so that means that the economy underlying all of this is strong I'm across over, it can survive these rate hikes that are pending. But actually, I delivered a session at UCL University in London this week, and I was talking to the lead professor of that program, and he was talking about the February preliminary University of Michigan sentiment report. So that's basically a report where they telephone thousands of different consumers and they asked them about how do they feel about economic conditions at the moment and the future. And the impact of our inflation on personal finances was spontaneously cited by one third of all consumers with nearly a half of all consumers in the US expecting declines in their inflation adjusted incomes during the year ahead which will become a reality we're seeing that in the UK saving rates are getting slammed at the moment. So, as you were kind of alluding to you're talking about is this, and we can get to this in a second is this threat of then the risk of recession increasing over the course of action the Fed might take with hikes. The consumer at the moment, if they lose that confidence to spend. Or is this what the end of Fed actually wants to engineer to cool demand to control inflation, well, we can discuss that in a moment but these were all these are all reasons I think you're absolutely right why Biden has to make a big deal of Russia, because at home there's some really bad things happening with inflation. And so, it's Russian now, if you think about for six weeks ago, do you remember it was Saudi Arabia. They were having pop shots left right and center saying oil prices are moving higher is Saudi Middle Eastern fault. There's no word on Saudi now, and all the prices are higher than where they were, because now the rush is the bigger ticket in town to talk about in that in that The final kind of word I'd say on on the situation is not so much about the economic side is more about the geopolitical side. I saw a really great report from a professor University of Melbourne in Australia, and she outlined three points of why she said that all out war, Russia Ukraine won't happen so I'm just going to extract out some of those three major points. Number one, the massing of troops, both as defensive maneuver that fortifies Russia's Southwest border, and as a signal to the west of its seriousness with Russia views the position of Western forces on its doorstep so an invasion of Ukraine would force Western countries to increase their own military preparedness for war with Russia, if not mobilized to act to defend Ukraine. And that's tantamount to further reduction of Moscow security. So it's counter intuitive for them to actually do this, or go too many steps too far beyond trying to posture and leverage in negotiation, because it's going to mean there's even a greater threat of military presence against Russia. Number two was Russia's geopolitical strategy and then you go back through history since the fall of the Soviet Union. They've always. Well, in terms of the military movement that they haven't tended to involve involve over aggression rhetoric. Yes, actually military personnel movement. No. There's a pattern recognition here of the type of behavior that we're seeing and this gets seen in other areas of conflict like with career and China and so on sounds aggressive. It very rarely tantamounts to something of military action. So that's another thing. I mean, foreign interventions have been based on pragmatic consideration of proportion of force, which is necessary to meet its interests. That's very important because it gets. I guess pigeonholed by Western media is in the, you know, they're very out of control. It's on a knife edge, it can happen any moment. And this is we're talking of war here. These things don't happen too much like that these days, however, we will talk about as obvious risks to that. That's not right. And then thirdly, if the seizure of Ukrainian territory was a significant Russia interest. Think about it. That opportunity was in 2014. It's not now because now it's harder. And now there's more repercussion because there's more involvement globally in this matter. If they were going to do it, they would have done it. And now's not the time. And so with all of this, of course, there's been other reports about okay sanctions. Putin can survive those sanctions because he's making more money than ever because the price of oil at the moment so great the summary I would say of this is. It uses its presence similar to that of say in Iran uses its nuclear program. If you think about it as a means of extraction of concessions from the Western world. I see it exactly like that in this instance so it threatens but it will never fully act because to do so would mean an exchange of leverage for punishment. And they don't want to do that it's self inflicting. And so this is just a very serious game of poker is going on is what I'm saying, but welcome to the world of geopolitics. This is what it's all about. So I think I think in summary, Biden's full of BS when it comes to this I think he's got, I think he's absolutely got an agenda. As we've just discussed, I think he's wants to manage his foreign policy and how people view him on that front after Afghanistan and others situations and I think inflation is his biggest headache. And I just think I think the winner here is Vladimir Putin. Right. I agree with all of that I think. If you listen to the Western media, Putin as a thug, you know he's a madman. He's not. He's a very intelligent calculated leader, much in the same vein as Xi Jinping, they're thinking in like, they're playing 3D chess, while the rest of the world, you know, responding to this he's thinking three years out five years out. I think it's in his interest. I don't think he really wants war very much posturing. We do need to think about and for the just for the listeners in terms of when you posture so much, especially like we've seen with in 2017 with North Korea and things like that. There's always an increased chance and this is what I worry about of an accident. A misinterpretation or a misinterpretation or, you know, a loose cannon, much like there was with the capital rights only takes, of course, you're going to attract over a million people, one or two that take these extreme views too far. So when you think about Ukraine, you've much like the other kind of Eastern European states like Romania and Moldova is you have Russian Ukrainians, and you have more European Ukrainians those that you know don't want kind of Russian interference, and what you have to at least calculate or take seriously as a risk is one of these people already in Ukraine, even if there's not an invasion, taking things too far, or take, you know, firing a shot, or taking some provocative action that then accidentally triggers military action from both sides. I think, yes, my base case is this doesn't happen. It's not in anyone's interest in my opinion. And if I was Vladimir Putin I'd be doing exactly the same thing. Do I want NATO in my in my backyard, getting closer and closer to my territory would, I always like to say, would America allow Russia to take Canada, right, or to have an increased military presence in Canada, or Cuba. Of course they wouldn't. Right, they would be, you know, in the exact same defensive position. So, yes, my base case is this doesn't spill over but accidents can happen. But I think what I talked about in terms of even myself, you know, listening to all these headlines fire out, you know they're invading they're not invading. The one thing that made me laugh was like, yes, an invasion is expected on February the 16th. In what world would a military invasion be, be well known, right, the whole point is this meant to be a surprise or it's meant to be a, you know, a big, big move to catch the opposition, you know, off guard. It wouldn't be broadcasted to the whole world so they know exactly when. James Bond is not actually, didn't actually die. Yeah, he's in Russia right now. He got the date out. But yeah, I mean that that type of thing I mean the amount of comments that have come out of the US where they've made claims, and then had no supporting evidence to back up then these claims which is what makes it so transparent to me of what they're trying to do. But look, I mean, I won't say any more on that matter but I know just to finish at it you wanted to touch upon just generally I guess what we've talked about with equities the risks the 50 basis points. I mean, lots of yield movement that we've been talking about in recent podcasts but this idea then about Fed strategy and managing 2022, I guess. So what are your thoughts on the yield curve inversion and risks of recession, good bad. How can they engineer controlling inflation through a rate hiking kind of sequence. It's a real tough spot to put it lightly. They've got one big problem at the moment, a nice inflation, and traditionally there's kind of two ways that they can kind of slow inflation by hiking short term rates, or by forcing long term interest rates higher. Historically the Fed really have used rate hikes to engineer recessions, right, but actually soft recessions in the sense of just to take some kind of heat off the economy. It's termed opportunistic disinflation, right, so it's to keep generate that slack in the economy to keep inflation in check whilst basically managing their their dual mandate essentially. But the point is, every fed tight tightening cycle has ended in a crisis and the probability now of a fed mistake or a policy error, I believe is highly elevated. Just in terms of where the markets price, you even you see this now in mortgage rates for example the markets moving, and the Fed hasn't even moved yet. So, I believe that they're highly behind the curve they should have gone. And you a text I don't know if you remember in the last policy meeting with some exclusive language about how saying he should have gone, basically, in kind of q for now they're behind the curve, the markets moving, right and pricing in six seven they're going ahead of itself mortgage rates are kind of the through 4% now if you're looking at the 30 year mortgage rate in in the US, you've got high inflation now coming again from, if this Russia situation does, you know, evolve, you've then got more oil price inflation you've got, and just remember all those Eastern European countries, they produce a lot of fertilizer as well. So it with everything else you've still got supply chain issues that are slowing in terms of their severity, and they are improving I saw a really interesting chart showing that but they're still very very elevated. If you throw higher fertilizer costs into that palladium and all the kind of inputs or exports from Russia inputs for all of the Western worlds, you've got then higher food prices into economies and households that have less less be clear, have been in a very strong state after the steamy checks, the work from home people still getting paid and things like that. However, the purse strings are tightening oil prices, the price to fill up your car increasing the food in price at prices increasing, you've got a lack of supply in labor. So this is where the wage pressure is coming from which again is not a great sign for the Federal Reserve. So they've got a lot of things that are going against them right now. And they don't know what to do. I believe that they don't know what to do at mark in March. Do they go 50. Do they go 25. Do they go 50 and wait. They don't think they actually know what they're going to do in March and that's probably where the market pricing that was 100% priced for March 50 is now gone down to a 30 40% probability because the markets now going actually, we don't know what the Fed are going to do. They don't because they don't know what they're going to do. But they're not in a, you know, a positive scenario. One interesting thing I did see from Pozar, who is a credit Swiss strategist very well known has the area of the Fed is basically that the Fed may actually want to move down the power put and allow a bit of volatility and he actually termed it as the the Volcker but vol standing for volatility and letting equities and Bitcoin and all this speculative excess come out of the market because it may actually force some more people into the labor labor force to actually ease those wage inflation that we've seen. So, has the power put move down a little bit maybe to 3800 or, you know, a little bit lower, you know, we'll see but they're not in a great situation at the moment. That's my take on it. Well, it was in Goldman Sachs few days back, they're starting to get a little bit more cautious in their outlook. Yeah, some other US banks and MS is always. They cut their SMP target from 5100 to 4900 based on lower valuations and and higher inflation. They've actually, again, projected out a recession downside case all the way at 3600. And of course, the big problem comes when you have a central bank tightening into a slowing economy, pair this with high inflation, lower consumer confidence consumer confidence is an 11 year low right now. This could materially hit earnings and this is when companies will suffer from lower demand from the economy slowing, plus an inability to raise prices from that lower consumer confidence. And that's the kind of picture at the moment so valuations coming down. The real risk at the moment is SMP 500 earnings and EPS growth is is still strong is remain strong, but it's decelerating. At the E, for example in those P ratios also coming down. Then you've got a real problem because then you've got companies not generating earnings valuations if you hold the if you pull the E down the ratio gets more expensive even if the price doesn't move. Okay, so then you need prices to come down to fit that kind of multiple of a 15 or 20 times earnings. So the thing to watch going forward really is of course the Federal Reserve, but it's then the resilience of earnings, and if that falls out of bed, then look out below. I kind of like the idea at the moment of if there's so much yet to be answered over the coming weeks going into that March meeting I kind of like the feeling of keeping my powder dry, and actually seeing how this plays out. This case scenario materializes, and you do get that 3600 type move being in a position then to then that I'd say you're going to get a forceful reversal if we then go down that low. And then the market will readjust for the second half of the year. It's almost like this, this big dramatic shift we've had to have to go to ultra hawkish mode is being painful. I'd rather let that pain shake out first. I think if I was thinking about it more strategically as a year long view to invest but cool well we'll wrap it up there. And thanks Eddie for for taking the time out to jump on always a pleasure. And yeah, thanks everyone for listening. As I said, I'll drop in the show notes the link to the metaverse report for JP. I'll also drop the link for our market maker daily newsletter and also the crypto tech new simulation if you haven't done it get involved. It's free to do of course as per always our mission to get out there to as many people as possible. So if you're interested in sales trading market making asset management, then check it out in the show notes. All right, take care everyone. See you next week.