 Hello and welcome to episode 28 of The Market Watch. It's Friday, the 30th of July and it's been a super busy week in markets. So I'm actually quite glad to have half an hour out to just have a chat with Piers away from the cold face for a moment. But Piers, you're away last week. How was that? Yeah, kid. Bit of sunshine, staycation down in Cornwall. Beautiful part of the That's something that's come out of COVID for me. I've discovered my own country. I haven't never been to Cornwall. Basically, I think I've been there, I don't know, like three or four times now in the last five months and I love it. But I listened in on last week's part where you got Tim on. I thought it was fantastic, really interesting. So anybody who hasn't listened to that, go back and check it out if you're interested in crypto. One thing I was quite upset about, I'm not sure I've recovered from it yet, but right at the start of that podcast, you said, we've got Tim on this week. We've upgraded and implying that Tim's an upgrade from me. That was like an arrow through my heart. I thought we were tight, but obviously you've moved on. I thought we were Batman and Robin, but we split ways. My goal here as the host is to make my guest speaker feel great, so they deliver a great podcast. So Piers, of course you're the man. Okay, good. I feel good, man. Okay, with that, let's go. So before we begin, just to give a front run to the content we're going to cover, it's going to be two main sections. Going to talk about the tech, mega cap tech earnings. You've had all of them this week, and right on cue, Amazon has come in last night, and they're down 7.5% in aftermarket trade, but we'll talk about that. And then the other big thing is what's happening in China. That's a real seesaw price movement. Really got hammered at the beginning of the week. I think I read at 1.10 cent, one of the largest technology names. It's down about almost 25% in the month alone, but they have rallied back a good 7-10% I think in the last 48 hours after the government has come out and looked to intervene to some respect, but there are two topics we're going to go into. So I'm going to kick it off with the tech earnings, and I'll give you a bit of an overview to set the scene, because I'm conscious of not everyone's looking at these numbers maybe as closely as we do. So let's talk about Facebook. Facebook actually dropped about 4% after their earnings. They're daily and monthly active users with below expectations. They said they expect increased ad targeting headwinds in 2021 from regulatory and platform changes. Notably, I think we talked about this in a previous podcast episode about Apple's iOS updates and how that could have an impact on the firm. So Facebook generally were down. I'm talking about the immediate reactions here and the main headlines. Apple guided Q4 revenue growth of double digits, but below the Q3 growth of 36%, and they expect supply constraints in Q4 actually to be greater than Q3, which will primarily impact their kryptonite product, which is so important for them, their iPhone and iPads, although they've done a pretty decent job about diversifying out some of their other revenue streams in recent years. Then Alphabet was actually the real winner. They came out and moved up about 4% after their earnings early in the week. Their advertising business rebounded, buoyed by marketers spending more on search to convince consumers to travel, shop in stores again. So it's all hell for leather. People with businesses trying to get back into gear again. And then three more, Microsoft. Microsoft actually was a negative response after they came out. Investor optimism tempered by concerns about slowing growth in their Azure cloud computing division. Steep competition, of course, their AWS, they're the big boy in town. They dominate that space. And then also Google, another key competitor, I think they're way back in third spot, but they're really pumping and investing a lot of money into that division, which is obviously making a few people a bit apprehensive on Microsoft having another key competitor in that space. And then Tesla, another one, first time in history, profitable with the exclusion of regulatory credits for the firm. So that was Tesla and then Amazon last night. So Amazon smashed EPS revenues, though missed. And what was so interesting, we're talking about revenue in a quarter of plus $100 billion and the shares sink. So they actually had a revenue figure of 113.1 billion. The street was hungry for more. They were looking for 115. And then the big point here was their outlook. And this really leads us into our discussion and good to get your take on their outlook for Q3 was for a range of 106 to 112 billion previously, or the street was looking for 119. So that outlook is bad. The CFO said Cesar stepped down in revenue growth continuing for the next quarters with an S. So not singular for the next quarter due to lapping growth and pandemic and additional mobility among customers returning, meaning that they're just out doing other stuff instead of just looking at Amazon and buying everything under the sun through that one app. So I guess, yeah, quite a mixed bag overall. One thing for context from a price reaction point of view before we all panic about Amazon. Amazon have actually only retraced the last pretty much five weeks of gains that they've had. So in retrospect, on a higher time frame, they're still way up there. Seven and a half percent. It's a big figure, but they've rallied a lot recently. So what's your take? And they obviously, a lot of these companies you've just mentioned, they all benefited Amazon in particular hugely during the pandemic. But where do we go from here as economy starts to reopen and behavioral patterns start to somewhat normalize? Yeah, I think it's interesting when all these tech giants report their earnings. And I don't know if the listeners have really delved into it. I think it's always a good measure. Well, firstly, just to see how big these things are, but actually also to remember that they're different businesses in many respects, although they are competing in certain elements like that, AWS versus Azure kind of thing. But they are very different businesses at heart. And so therefore, you're definitely going to have some of them doing well and geared towards let's say COVID like Amazon and actually some not like Google, perhaps may well have been hurt initially from COVID as advertising sort of budgets got slashed, you know, as companies got massively hit by that initial kind of wave and the first lockdowns. But it's quite interesting. I think just looking at revenues before we discuss the details, Amazon over 100 billion in one quarter is just quite extraordinary. I mean, that is, I know it was wasn't expected, but 113 billion in three months, that actually puts it easily the biggest revenue generator out of these tech giants, Apple 81.4 billion. Then actually when you step down, Google is then 61.8 billion and actually little old Microsoft only clocking only clocking in at 46 bill. I mean, what have they been doing? So, you know, Amazon, it's not far off three times that kind of revenue. Of course, that's just looking at top line sales. Obviously, when you drill down into the bottom line profits, I mean, Amazon, whilst they've got the biggest revenue, certainly have the smallest margins, smallest profit margin. So all of that big cash coming in doesn't necessarily translate through to the same profits that some of these other big texts are producing. But but yeah, it was a mixed bag when you're looking through. I mean, I think if we take Amazon then, you know, I think there was a, as you say, these earnings is funny. And actually, I got asked yesterday, I think it was always at the day before by some of the students on our summer analyst program. And they were asking, hang on a minute, a lot of this was before Amazon result. Okay, so looking at all the others and they were like, hang on a minute, or everyone's beaten their revenue expectations, everyone's beaten their earnings per share revenues. And yet the share prices went down. The stat is actually 90% of the S&P 500 has exceeded on EPS and revenues. 90%. Wow. Okay. Yeah, that's much higher than what's the average. The average is pretty high looking back over quarterly earnings, mid 70s, mid 70s. Okay. So 90s. Yeah, that's sure. It's a great earnings season from the point of view of beating expectations. Obviously, Amazon has bucked that trend here. We'll talk about that in a sec. But yeah, that whole point around, how does the share price go down in response to top line and bottom line numbers, revenue and profit numbers beating expectation? And the point here is two things. Firstly, investors are buying into these stocks in advance of the earnings announcements. And I mean, days, weeks, obviously, sometimes also months beforehand. And so we often say, buy the rumor, sell the facts. This is about buying the stock because you think their earnings will beat expectations. And so you see the share prices rally ahead of the actual earnings announcement. So actually, the rally on good news has already happened. And then the announcement comes out. And yeah, it's good news. But I bought on that basis a few days ago. So now I'm selling and booking profit. So it's profit taking off the good news event. And so this is why you get that sort of counterintuitive response where share prices drop even though their numbers beat. That's the first point. But actually, the second point is perhaps more important. And that is when that earnings report is hitting the newswires, we're not, you know, yes, that historical data is definitely important and interesting. That historical data being how much money did you make in the quarter that's now ended? But it's actually the future that we're more interested in when it comes to right, where's the share price going to go now? Where's it going to go over the next few months? And this is where we're looking at then their guidance. So these companies will release their guidance. So not only are they giving us quarter two data, they're then updating their forecast for what they think their quarter three numbers are going to look like. So they're updating their revenue and their profit forecast for quarter three and let's say full year 2021 as well. And often the share price reaction of these earnings results will be more based on what those forecasts look like. And that I think was particularly notable for Amazon last night where their forecasts were particularly bad, bad relative to what was expected. So I think on their revenue side, we were expecting basically $119 billion for quarter three. But actually Amazon's forecast updated was they think they're going to deliver between $106 billion and $112 billion. So they've basically revised down their Q3 forecast. So this is kind of what's hit their kind of share price. And that's why there's been some profit taking off what's been a huge rally. And look, it kind of makes sense, doesn't it, for Amazon that they, whilst they benefited going into COVID will obviously naturally then they're not going to benefit when economies unlock. And so, you know, clearly it makes sense right now. And actually when it comes to Amazon particularly, if you're kind of trading Amazon or interested in investing in Amazon, you're every single person listening to this, I imagine has an Amazon account, you are a customer, you individually have data that you can analyze to make decisions on how you think Amazon are going to perform as a company. Where's that data? It's on your Amazon account. Go and have a look at your order book. Go and have a look at your last orders. Go and see. For me, and I'm sure it's the case for you, I've ordered up, there's a downward trend on stuff I've been ordering on Amazon over the last few months, compared to 2020. And so if that's the case for you, well, most likely that's going to be the case for everyone else as well. So you've actually got data that you can access here to kind of make decisions on Amazon. I think Amazon perhaps are the only one out of these big guns that you can kind of do that. I mean, I think if you think about Facebook or Google, well, obviously their revenues are coming from businesses paying to advertise. So unless you run a business and you have an advertising budget, then of course, as a consumer, you're not going to have that access to some actual meaningful data on that front. So what's interesting then is, I absolutely agree, there is a downward trend. I know, certainly speaking for myself, that is the case, but the inversion of that graphic would be the total amount of employees at Amazon, which is now clocking in at near 1.4 million. It literally jumped. They've employed really since the onset of the pandemic, probably an extra, just looking at the graphics now, half a million people and they're operating margins and free cashflowers looking at in some of the graphics this morning or charts. What should what should take on that? Is that just a matter of they had to make these changes? I remember we were sat here a year ago having a conversation and people were worrying about the amount that they were spending to realize the potential of the opportunity that the pandemic brought. And so isn't this just expected when you look at some of these charts about squeezed on margins and things like that? Yeah, I think that's an amazing stat that Amazon employ nearly 1.4 million people. That's crazy. And as you say, it's gone from about 800,000 before the pandemic. So obviously their cost base has massively increased in order, as you say, to take advantage of the COVID situation that saw their sales go through the roof and obviously all these purchases required delivering and the logistics that goes behind that. For you clicking a button and then the doorbell rings, that's great convenience. And that's why it's such an amazing life changing business and products. But obviously the logistics behind that are huge. And so the logistical costs for Amazon have gone up massively. And I'd say that they're building their platform. It's always been Amazon's model to have a low margin. They've purposely been a very low margin business because it's always been about plowing it back, plowing the money back in to make that service to your consumer even better. And that's things like speed of delivery, getting warehouse facilities close to the high population areas, where real estate is expensive, but they've invested in this infrastructure, which makes them so powerful. And look, we'll talk about it in a minute when we get onto China. We won't talk about it now, but this whole story around tech domination and these a small number of tech giant tech firms now becoming all powerful. That is on the hand, on one hand, that's a real negative and we're going to talk about it. But actually, there are counter arguments to reining in these giant tech firms. And that is just on that point, they employ 1.4 million people. If you start reining them in and chopping them up, well, then how many of those 1.4 million people are going to lose their job? Well, probably quite a lot. And actually, for all that's bad about giant tech and market domination, and for all that's bad, it brings massive benefit. And also as well, the decision makers on Capitol Hill, there's also the implication the value of the data, surely, that these companies possess for national security, for example. And so breaking them up and making them a lesser effective does have other knock-on subsequent effects, I feel, as well. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, I mean, yeah, sorry. You go first. And I've got a good summary here from the CEO of Microsoft, who I think summed it up quite nicely. Okay. Yeah, I mean, just in general, and these tech earnings, I mean, I think, obviously, tech has been, through COVID, has been one of the absolute outperforming sectors, of course. And that's not going to change. I mean, whilst you're getting short-term some volatility, yeah, Amazon's share price down 7%, but it's doubled since COVID started. So it's like, it's just a small little blip. And obviously, Amazon are here to stay and they'll continue, I'm sure, in the long term, they'll continue their growth trajectory, for sure, until the regulators come in and break them up whenever that might be. But until that moment, these guys are super safe in terms of investments, and you're going to see their revenue growths continue, I'd say. Well, actually, and maybe a quick word on this point, I'm pretty sure I saw Apple come to market straight away this week, offering a whole new batch of bonds to the marketplace. Right. Exactly what Amazon did last quarter as well. Yeah. Signed at the time. Well, it's free money, isn't it? It's free money. And then whilst this is the irony, Apple have $200 billion cash, and yet they raise capital through the bond markets. And a lot of that is because a lot of that cash is offshore. And if they bring it back, they're going to get taxed on it. So it's actually cheaper for them to raise capital via the bond markets rather than to borrow money, even though they've got a load of cash sat over there. So it's a very strange world that we find ourselves in. Well, look, this is what the Microsoft chief exec said. So Satyan Adela predicted this week that the growth in consumer demand for technology after getting a one-off lift would normalize. Makes sense. But he also claimed that the massive dislocation from the pandemic has made all companies realize that they need to overhaul their operations to make them more resilient in the future. And if that is right, then the tech boom has got a lot further to run. And that personally, I think he's right on the money with that latter statement. If anything, it's almost like, what do we learn in all walks of markets, but in general as a society, it takes a crisis to readjust and learn and be better for the future, right? And as much as I'm not belittling the situation, it's obviously a horrendous humanitarian crisis we've had. But in terms of the ways of which are hopefully businesses set up is to be more robust because there's always the threat of this reoccurring in the future, isn't there? Yeah. And it's a crisis, a crisis forces change, doesn't it? It forces you to change. And then once you've changed, you're like, ah, okay, why didn't we do this before? And the benefits are so then amazing. You're like, okay, great. Well, obviously, let's maintain this change. And yeah, of course, the tech, the kind of long-term secular technology boom has definitely not, is definitely not coming to an end, obviously. And there's years left in that story. Yeah. So these lot will be fine, you know, even though of Microsoft, only 46 billion. Yeah, they'll be all right. Cool. Well, look, let's move on and let's talk about China because I know talking offline, you've got some interesting and interesting take about the longer term implications that have been happening. So short term, what we've seen is, to summarize it, China are not happy about how big some of these firms are getting. And particularly because a lot of them are technology oriented and then is evolving around data and the accumulation of data. And data is, as we know, is the commodity of kind of power in many respects. And so China don't want that going to private companies. And so they've been doing this big crackdown in technology. And this week, the introduction of education and also the property sector was under pressure midweek. Until then, obviously it destabilizes markets to the point where they then come out. And it's almost what we refer to in markets as slang terms, as the plunge protection team get the green light to come out in force. And really China do not mess about when they wanted to really turn the tide on a market move. The state run media comes out and starts basically publishing a series of articles talking about the route is overdone, you know, the government will do what is necessary. Some analysts also speculated that there was government linked funds who actually were physically intervening in the market to prop it up as well. So just your take really on this. And I know there's a short term and long term way to look at this. So good to get your take. Yeah. The plunge protection team, that's got to be the best name for a team. I want to be in that team. We only get called upon every now and again, though, with the hit squad. I think this is, yeah, I guess it's there's so many elements to this story, you know, the general story of China, the Chinese Communist Party, beginning to kind of slap down tech. And as you said, now education, there's so many different angles to it. But I think maybe to start with, it's, it's interesting to compare the situation of China and the US in one way, because in one respect, both have the same problem. And that is that there's a handful of tech giants in each company, sorry, country, different tech giants, I mean, as you got your US ones, and then your China checked out giants, but they've both got like four or five tech giants that have become monsters. They're so huge. And they've become so huge. And they've got so much power and they've got so much data that, you know, governments are sitting up and going, hang on a minute. This is unhealthy long term. We're going to need to start thinking about dealing with this problem. Okay. So they both got the same problem. It's just really interesting to see how a communist regime versus a democratic economy and society and government, it's really fascinating to see how they approach it differently. And I think in the short term, China's got the advantage, because they can just do whatever they want, whenever they want. And that means they can address the problem way faster compared to the US, right? But actually, I think in the long term, it's actually really negative for China. But so really, this is China, basically saying, no more like devolution of power, right? We're the Communist Party. We are in control. We need to be in control of our economy, of our country, of our, you know, you know, the distribution of content and controlling the media and people's data, we're in control. And hang on a minute, you lot, you tech lot, you're getting too big. You now have too much control, get back into line. And they're just, you know, waving their stick and beginning to address this issue where they now think they've lot, they don't have the control that they need to do what they want. So it's basically taking operational control back of data, of, you know, these big sectors. And basically, they're saying that we, as in the Communist Party, we will control how money is made. And we will control who makes that money. We are in control of wealth creation. And it's going to happen, you know, under the terms that we define. Okay, so this is their message. And, you know, that that's happened. And you've seen that I don't think it's necessarily a surprise on one hand, because that risk has always been there. We know that they're a Communist Party. And they've done other stuff where they can just do what they want when they want. And that's how it works. And so we know that risk has always been there for investors. It's just that people have, I think, had forgotten about it, or just put it under the carpet and ignored it. Well, now it's here and now it's back. And so it is a massive wake-up call for international investors. When you start investing in Chinese companies, it's a huge wake-up call to say there is a very big risk that you can't control that can happen at any moment. Yeah, because it kind of felt like over recent years, at least, perhaps somewhat destabilized through the Trump era. But China had been really making a conscious effort to improve their global kind of PR. I remember seeing, I think it might have been Davos several years ago. And President Xi was headlining about environmental change. And in France, didn't attend. I was like, what is going on? Have I woken up in a parallel universe? Or something? And obviously, China has, as people know, this kind of longer-term ambition with being this global dominant economic force. And with that being the de facto lead trade partner in the world to, you know, long-term see the transition of power from America to China. But I mean, how do you navigate them trying to fulfill the objectives of the Communist Party, but at the same time, have that ability, have foreign investors feel confident to invest and to trade with this nation? Yeah. I mean, I think one long-term, yeah, okay, the Communist Party long-term, fine. Obviously, they want to become the biggest and most powerful, you know, country in the world. And I think that over the, I think 10 years ago, people's opinion on that was, yeah, that's going to happen. It's inevitable. 10 years ago. I actually think now, the chances of that happening have reduced. And I think this is all due to the demographics of that country and the demographics crisis. And this is their one child policy from back in the 70s that has now meant that they've got an aging population with a really low retirement age, by the way, which is in the 50s, which is a big problem, plus a birth rate that's 1.3. So that means each female is on average giving birth to 1.3 babies on average, obviously. But of course, you need a male to have a baby with a female. So that means for every couple, for every two people, you're getting 1.3 produced. So that production rate means that the population has peaked. And it's interesting because they issued their census data. They do a census once a decade. And so the census data for between 2010 and 2020, right? So in 2020, they measured the population and it came in at 1.41 billion. It's the official figures. And that compares to 1.34 billion in 2010. So the population has grown. There's definitely speculation that they've massaged these numbers and they're not right. But let's just leave that for a second. So that's a 5.38% population growth rate in that decade, which is the slowest growth rate that we've seen ever since we've been measuring the size of the Chinese economy. So it's slowing. And I would say it's going, the size of their population will peak this decade. It might already have peaked. Now, the problem is that they're not, even though they've scrapped the one child policy now, they scrapped that a few years ago. They scrapped it way too late. But anyway, at least they scrapped it. But the problem is, even though they've scrapped it, that people aren't having children. And that's because it's super expensive. And this ties in, by the way, to what's happened this week on education. I'll come to that. It's so expensive to have children. And actually, it's quadrupled, they reckon, on average, the cost of having a child has quadrupled in the last 10 years for Chinese couples. Also, women and the way the Chinese, you know, the way the labor market works, and the way the way the workforce works and the kind of hierarchical system of the workforce in a Chinese company, women are really scared of having children too young, because it will have a devastating impact on their career potential. So there's a real problem here, because, fine, scrapped the one child policy, it hasn't worked in terms of getting that birth rate, they need the birth rate back above two, and it's at 1.3, which is as bad as Japan, by the way, which has the worst demographics on the planet. So they've got a real problem here. And what, and if it carries on, I mean, here's a great stat, right? So they got 1.4 billion people, if the demographics don't improve in terms of birth rates and so on, by the end of this century, their population would have dropped to 700 million. Wow. Okay, so that's crazy. Yeah. So this now, this is, this is a big problem for the Communist Party in their objective of trying to become the biggest and best, because they've got an aging population. And how are they going to afford to maintain this aging population? And I think what's happened in the last few months and what's happening in this week with China slapping down big tech, now it's on to education. On the one hand, I think it's the very beginning of what will be a, you know, a long-term project, which will essentially be to renationalize their economy, take back control, because they're going to need all of the profits that these amazing businesses that have been built, these profits they're generating, they need it to actually afford to finance this, this economy that's evolving. Secondly, with that child, with the fertility rate problem, why do you think they've, yeah, tech has, that's the number one, right? They've taken down tech or taking down tech. Education is number two. Well, why do you think? Because education is so expensive. It's so competitive. Everyone in China is spending loads of money for private tutoring for their children in school, because basically it's your end of school results that determine what university you get to. What university you get to definitely then determines what type of job you can get. There's, you know, we have a similar but much more diluted problem in the West. You know, if you went to Cambridge, great, you might have better opportunities to get jobs at Goldman Sachs. But actually, Goldman Sachs are now employing people from, you know, no disrespect, but Banger University, right? Which isn't as good as Cambridge. But actually, you can still, you can still make it, right? But in China, you can't. So they're spending so much money on tutoring their kids. This is what's led to the cost of having a child being so astronomical, which is preventing people or deterring people from having children. So it's kind of all tied in. Well, you know, being half Chinese, I can only produce quarter Chinese children. So I'm going to have to knock out eight of these. Is that what you're telling me? To just help the national national team out? Absolutely. Plunge, plunge protection. Okay. After this podcast, then I'll tell my wife, we need to have another seven children, by the way, just because to do our part. But I'd like to see that her reaction to that. But I think that I think there's a short term and a long term thing here from an investor's point of view, short term, just highlights the massive risk that China, the Chinese government can do whatever they want, whenever they want. And if it happens to be involving the companies or the sector that you're invested in, you know, you mentioned 10 cent, I mean, dropped whatever, what was it, 100 billion in market cap or something? 150. 150 billion. Well, there's a company called Gao two, which is one of the education giants. Their share price went from $142 to $3. Ouch. If you think the 10 cent share price drop is big. Well, that's just nothing, right? But then this is all short term stuff, right? I mean, I think long term, this is about renationalization. You know, it's about, I guess, again, comparing it to like the US, you know, the US are going through this process of, you know, reshoring, right? So we used to have offshoring where companies would like Apple would go, well, hang on, why are we messing about manufacturing our products here in the US paying US salaries? Let's, let's manufacture in China, where we can pay Chinese salaries that are a fraction of the cost, right? Offshoring. Well, now it's reversing and reshoring is the thing. And if you like here, China are doing the same thing. They're reshoring with all these this clamp down on tech firms IPOing on the New York Stock Exchange. I mean, they don't want that, you know, now their tech sectors become, you know, you know, they see it more as a kind of source of, it's a security risk problem. It's a source of kind of social problems. So they're like reshoring their, their IPO process, right? And they want companies in China to IPO in China. It's almost like it's a decoupling, if you like, it's the start of a decoupling between these two financial systems, not that they coupled particularly well, but, you know, in the last couple of decades, it's all have been about China opening up, Chinese markets opening up. And I think now we've seen the end of that and we'll see them march it back. And I think in the long term, this is really bad for China, because if everything goes nationalized, well, you're going to, you know, you're going to kill innovation. You know, what's, what's the point in being an entrepreneur in China, if, you know, in the end, you're not going to benefit from it. And I think it will suppress innovation in the long term. And I think actually ironically, then this will mean they're less likely to achieve their goal of having the best and biggest economy, right? Because if you re-nationalize it, you're going to, you get a stifle innovation. And in the end, that's, that's, that'll come back to haunt them. But they're forced into it because of the demographic crisis. Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating to think of how multi-layered this, this is. And I guess bringing it back to the six months ahead, because this incorporates some of the questions that we've had in our community, which is, you know, people, for a lot of people, this has just come out of nowhere, because there's a lot of new market participants, they're like, wow, what's happening in China? And they see these dramatic falls. But is there any risk of implication of, of Fed normalizing over the period of the next six to 12 months, I guess the initiation of tapering and timing around that? Or is this just a, you know, it's just a very short-term episode that we look back on that was the first of this process you're describing and actually know this isn't really going to be a global issue to confront in the short term. Yeah, I don't think it's a global issue to confront in the short term. I don't think this will have any impact on the Fed's taper timing. What's way more important for the Fed will be, well, the fact the GDP figure that got announced yesterday was quite a bit lower than expected, you know, they're hoping inflation's transitory and it's going to start to come back down. And, you know, that's why I think markets in a way, well, you know, you still got the S&P made a new all-time high yesterday. And that's because, you know, there's the, we're starting to now see beyond the, that initial sharp post-COVID rebound when I was seeing beyond that transitory inflation spike. And what we can see is that actually growth rates are going to slow here. Growth rates have 100% peaked. Now they're going to slow. So actually the Fed may well have to just keep going a little bit longer. And so they, you know, if anything tapering will be delayed because of those economic factors in the U.S. I don't think at this point anything the Chinese government are doing will have any impact on the timing of the Fed. Yep. And on that point then, I think that's a good way to conclude with that matter of fact statement. That's what we like from the head of trading. But let's wrap it up there. I hope you enjoyed that episode. I don't normally ask this, but if you're listening and you made it through to the end, thanks for sticking with us. But it would be really great if you could leave us a rating, if you're listening on Apple, a review, if it's Spotify, then just hit the follow or subscribe button. It's slightly different on each platform, depending on where you listen. But, you know, we'd really love and appreciate if you could do that and get the channel out. So as many people as possible, our aim is to help you guys. And so feel free to get in contact, you know, we're on Twitter or other social media. If you have any requests of content, things like that, we're absolutely happy to tackle stuff you guys want to hear. So with that, Piers, thank you as ever, and have a good weekend, everyone. Yep. Thanks, guys. Bye.