 Hello and welcome back to the trading floor episode of the market maker podcast where I'm joined by our co-founder, Piers Curran, and we've got three topics for discussion this week. I'm going to talk about the housing market. If you're based in the UK, you've probably been littered with headlines such as UK housing prices fall at their fastest rates is 2009. Lots of concern here on the street in the UK, but this is more than just the UK. This is a global topic. So we're going to discuss a little bit about the divergence in prices actually between the UK and the US. And also, could Denmark have the solution for Britain's broken housing market? Definitely interested to see why they have a potential solution for us here in the UK. So Piers, I know you're going to shed some light on that. And then UBS, they posted their biggest ever quarterly profit. So we'll dive into those numbers. They're one of the last European banks to report this season. And then thirdly, is the US labor market starting to show some cracks after the US job openings this week dropped to the lowest level in nearly two and a half years in the month of July. So to kick things off, why don't we talk a little bit then Piers about the housing market? Where do you want to go first, the UK or the US? Well, let's go domestic. Let's go UK, shall we? There's nothing like the media lover a kind of doom and gloom housing market headline. So yeah, as you said, they've definitely served bad up this month. Each month you get high price index data being released and when these numbers drop, which give you the kind of latest monthly update, then the financial press tend to be all over that and they love a headline. So yeah, the headline 5.3%. That's the annualized drop in house prices in the month of August. So house prices on average across the whole of the UK. What's the price on average August 2023 compared to August 2022? It's down 5.3%. And in July, I mean, look, house prices have been declining. Well, actually pretty much all year. It's just if you like the paces increasing because in July, the annualized house price dropped. Actually, I did have that data. Now I've lost it. Oh, hang on. I've got a different stat first. You can maybe give us the figure from last month. My different stat was and the reason why it's kind of sensationalized is that the yeah, this is the sharpest fall annualized fall since July 2009. So the speed of declines picking up basically here. I've got it now. July, the decline was 3.8% year on year. Now it's 5.3% year on year. What's it going to be next month? Probably even a greater drop. As we come off the top, you really need to see, I guess, a house price chart to get it into context. So whilst we are declining, we're declining off those 2022 highs, all time highs. So we've been pegged back to now prices that we last saw at the start of 2022. But look, the trend is in place. Prices are dropping and it's not a surprise. I think that's one of the main things. I heard a comment from nationwide who's this data you're referring to, their chief economist, chap called Robert Gardner, and he said that the softening is not surprising given the extent of the rising borrowing costs. And he said he thinks a relatively soft landing for the property market is pinched a bit of language here from the other economists on the economy front. He said a soft landing looks likely for the property market is still achievable because of the unemployment rate, which is expected to remain low and the high proportion of borrowers on fixed rates. Yeah. It depends on obviously interest rates, surging is the key catalyst behind this and obviously inflation and the cost of living. You've then got less money to spend on your mortgage payments each month and we'll kind of get into the meat of it. But ultimately, this is an important economic barometer historically and present day and in the future. And it's just very simply like in an economy where it's largely geared around consumption. It's all about the ability for the consumer to spend. And so what's their disposable income each month is obviously a key part of that consumption story. And if their disposable income, if more and more and more of it is actually being taken away because their interest payments on their mortgage is going up, well then of course that means less disposable income. That means that damages that consumption story. And ultimately that's that's where how the economy grows by people consuming more. So this is a key economic barometer. I do hesitate to talk about house prices too much only because if you own a house, well, it's one of the most important things in your life. Of course, if you don't own a house, well then because if there's people listening to this going, well, I don't own a house. So who cares? Well, it is important from a macro point of view. But ironically, they'll be feeling the pain in a different way. If you own a house, you're feeling the pain, the value of your assets declining and your monthly interest payments might go up. We'll talk about that in a sec. If you don't own a house, you're feeling the pain because actually a byproduct of a weak housing market is actually a strong rental market because people aren't buying houses because they can't afford it or the mortgage rates are too high. So they can't afford those payments. So they're not buying. So they're renting, of course. So rental demands spiked, which means of course price rent prices have gone up. So rent prices are record highs. Yeah. So it's quite an interesting kind of dynamic that we have here in the housing market at the moment. Yeah. I think if you are an owner, one of the things is, yeah, do look at a chart though, you mentioned and rightly so, the stat that the fall, the data we've had out today, it's the fastest pace since July of 2009. This will see it's like the heat of the financial crisis. But if you look at the house price appreciation from the next month, all the way through basically for a 12 month period, house prices went up, just by eye looking at this chart, about 25 to 30% in 12 months. Immediately after hit that pace of the bottom of the financial crisis, obviously the response that we saw by authorities in various forms at the time really juiced the market. And actually even over the COVID period, that two year period between kind of 2020 to 2022, on an average, we're clocking in around 89% appreciation. It's been a great trait. It's just come off the top a little bit. Yeah. Well, actually, and this is what the press focus on. It doesn't know me a little bit. That's that sensationist headline. Oh my God, prices are collapsing. But actually that's not the story. The way more important story, which okay, they are covering as well, is mortgage rates and your monthly outgoings as a homeowner. And how is that going to change? And this then, let's talk a bit about mortgages and what's available. And it depends on the country as to the typical trends and patterns of how people go about borrowing to buy a house. Now, in the UK, typically, we have short term mortgages. Well, so when you buy a house, if you've never done it before, then you need to borrow money clearly. And you're looking at normally like a 30 year time frame over which you're going to pay off this loan. So historically, you start your career, you start earning a salary and then write now that I'm a salary earner, a bank will view me as safe enough to lend me money. As long as I can prove that I'm in a stable job full time employment. And normally they ask for like three months worth of pay slips to prove that you're in that job and that your monthly income is what you say it is. And then right, they tend to lend against that. And they'll say, right, you can borrow four times your annual salary. That's the kind of rough ballpark maths, right? In fact, you borrow the money. But over what time frame? And typically the banks give these deals where right, you can have a two year fixed rate mortgage or a five year fixed rate mortgage. And typically what happens is let's just take a two year example, you'll get a sweetener where you'll get a two year fixed rate, which is discounted. Because the bank wants to get you in and get you on the books. And then after those two years elapsed, your mortgage rate will then revert to a floating rate, which is linked to the central bank's interest rate. Okay, so it'll be the central bank's rate plus 1%. Okay, let's just say. But of course, what people do in the UK, they do their two year fix. Great, they get this cheap deal. And then in two years time, they don't just let that loan roll on to that base rate plus one variable thing, they then just rearrange and go and get a new mortgage deal with a different bank. And then they enter into another new fixed two year deal, right? And typically if interest rates are low, this is a great way of going about it. You know, you have flexibility, you can shop around, you can change your mortgage up every couple of years. Okay, but what's happened now is this has turned into an absolute nightmare. Because you've been, you've fixed your mortgage, let's say you fixed it in 2021 for two years at a rate of, I don't know, let's just say roughly one and a half percent interest rate that you could have got on a two year mortgage in 2021, maybe even lower. Right, but let's just say one and a half percent. Okay, great, you fixed that in perfect, super cheap. My monthly interest payments aren't that massive, perfect. Now you're facing a nightmare because two years on either the mortgage you have is going to roll on to this base rate plus one, or you've got to rearrange and fix with someone else. But of course, the fixed rates are now north of five percent. So you're going to move from an interest rate of one and a half to an interest rate of five. Now what does that mean in terms of actual pounds in your pocket or pounds going out of your bank account? It obviously depends on the size of your mortgage and how much you're borrowing, but the averages are roughly speaking, you're going to get about, I think it's two million homeowners are going to see their annual mortgage payments increase by more than 3,000 pounds in the next 12 months. So go back to my original point. Disposable income and how much can I get out there and spend? Well, if I'm now minus 3,000 pounds, that's not a small amount of money. And so it's expected that, A, that's going to have a very negative drag on consumption and therefore the you would care economy broadly. But then also B, it's going to mean bad news for the housing market from a demand point of view, because people aren't going to be buying, they're not going to be up sizing and getting a bigger mortgage. They're not on the market, they're not going to buy because rates are too expensive. So demand has collapsed. So of course prices are coming down. Yeah. I mean, on that point, one article that jumps to mind was something I saw that was talking about investment bank MDs. So at an MD level, this is where your compensation is typically very high. And this was specifically talking about the investment bank divisions, so bankers. And as we've discussed many times, the deal flow has dramatically slowed over the past 18 months or so. So bonus sizes have been slammed. And one of the problems here is a lot of these MDs have very nice houses and very expensive places in London. And so, you know, they themselves, I mean, even though they get paid astronomical sums of money, they don't have five million in the bank to put down for a Georgian townhouse in the West End. So they've got very big mortgages, essentially. And I was reading this one person who was kind of used as a case study, I think his mortgage rate, it went up to something like he was paying 25,000 a month. It jumped up to having reset on like two years. And so basically, there's MDs who are basically having to fire sell everything because they can't afford to keep that their lifestyle, even though they're at the upper echelon of their so called profession. Or they're forced to sell the house, right? Yeah. And so, and this adds to the declining price trend and momentum because they're forced to sell there's not much demand. So like in any market, how do you price it? Well, it's obviously supply and demand, isn't it? And when, when there's not much demand, you got to just go lower on price. And so what's happening is you're getting, you know, asking prices, that's one thing, that's what the seller would like to sell for. But these days, it's a buyer's market, meaning they, they've got the power and they'll come in with a bid well below the asking price. And the sellers, either if they can stay in the house and just ride it out over the next X years, or they might be forced to sell in which case they have to take that low ball bid. And of course, that then marks that mark to market lower. And that's the price decline momentum in, you know, building. So before we talk about the US and how they're different, one thing is, is where are UK interest rates heading now? And I say that because there was an interesting comment from the chief economist of all people from the Bank of England yesterday. And firstly, very interesting comment that was yesterday was that Hugh Pill is the guy's name. And he said, he pushed back or essentially he pushed back against market expectations. And he was indicating that he would vote to keep rates at five and a quarter percent for a longer period. However, he's come out today, looks like he's had his hand slapped by his powers that be. And to clarify, he's now saying the Bank of England needs to be particularly wary about letting inflation persistence dynamics set in. So he's kind of like reverting back a little bit to perhaps we do need to hike. And then he said, we have not yet seen a downturn in core inflation, which would reassure us. So yeah, bit of a flip flopping commentary there from the chief economist, but where are we at the moment in that right debate? Really, I think it's really difficult to call for the UK. So 5.25%, that's where we're at at the moment. What is it, 14 meetings in a row of hikes? Or maybe it's 15, I lose count now. And it's about like when we talk about the US, we're pretty confident they're at the top, no more hikes. And fine, they might hang around at the top for a bit. Let's see. And who knows, maybe you might get some cuts, I don't know, back half of next year kind of thing. I think there's more visibility in the US. I think in the UK, the inflation situation isn't tamed yet, like it seems to have been in the US. And so what we're seeing is like stats like wage growth is remaining at I think record highs or if not record, it's certainly super high levels, right? And this feeds into sustained inflation. And the labor market's still pretty tight. And so employers are still having to pay higher wages to get workers in. And so, yeah, we're a bit worried that the inflation thing's hanging around for longer here in the UK. So what are the bank of England do about that? Do they either think 5.25% is now high enough? And that's going to deliver pain that over the months ahead, let's say the six months ahead, that pain will then naturally see consumption start to get eroded and find that inflation story starts to turn. Or are they more worried? And they think 5.25% as a peak rate isn't going to do the job, we need to go higher. And, you know, and I think that your huge pills soft landing, I know, sorry, that was the Robert Gardner, sorry, Robert Gardner, that his soft landing in the housing market, I think will be very dependent on what happens with interest rates and do the Bank of England go more, then you've got a much more, you've got a hard landing risk increasing there. If they go more, well, of course, all this mortgage pain just increases and then naturally the speed of that house price decline picks up. And it starts to turn into a much more rapid collapse rather than what is at the moment a steady decline. Yeah, one interesting item linked to this this week was that price rises in British shops had slowed to the lowest rates since October. So when we're trying to like piece together where inflation is heading, however, I thought the interesting part of that was, okay, fine, prices are slowing. This is a good sign if you're tying it to inflation. However, there are three major supply risks that were also highlighted, which could disrupt the pattern specifically of food inflation, which we already know is tracking way higher than the rest of the inflation metrics. So here they were talking about grain exports when Ukraine are in jeopardy again. And this is tied to the fact that Russia pulled out of something called the Black Sea Grain Initiative. So this was an agreement about the passage of grain coming out of Ukraine, which is almost one third of global grain exports. Then there was this idea about poor harvests across Europe and beyond. I know it's hard to believe there's been a summer if you're based in the UK, but in Europe, it's almost the other way around, I think. And then three, India, their decision, they've placed export restrictions on rice. I think their rice prices are up like 30% or something. Well, did you see that the Philippines in response have introduced the government's introduced a rice price cap? So like here we've had gas price, energy price caps. Well, in the Philippines, it's rice price cap. So for sure, those supply risks are still there in the system. So yes, as you say, it's hard for the visibility for the UK. So how about going back to the housing market, the US then? So you talked about this idea of the kind of short-term nature of how we access mortgages here in the UK. Is the US the same or different? So it's different. Well, when I tell you that the house price situation in the US, well, prices are still going up. And actually, their record highs. But hang on, their interest rates have sharply gone up on a super high. And mortgage rates, if you're trying to get a new mortgage now, are even higher than in the UK. You're looking at north as 7%. So it's like, hang on a minute. Why does that then not have the same negative impacts that we're seeing in the UK? How are prices still going up? So this is all about the difference in the mortgage, the structuring of these loans for homes. Now in the US, it's completely different. Almost all, I think it's almost all homeowners. When you buy a house, you enter into a 30-year fixed rate loan agreement that's done and set up front. There's none of this two-year fix, five-year fix in a roll-on to a new deal, rearrange, none of that. You buy a house, you get a loan, one loan for the lifetime of the house, or well, sorry, for 30 years at a fixed rate. Now that rate right now, if you're buying a house now, 7.2%. And that's the highest since 2001. I'll use my same example. If in the US, you bought a house in 2021, you would have secured, or you did secure, a 30-year fixed rate of 2.7%. That's locked in. That's an amazing rate. Now it's 7.2, right? So if you own a house and you bought it pre this interest rate spike, you are happy days. You've got a relatively super low interest rate on a mortgage for the lifetime of the loan in 30 years. The problem in the US is if you sell your house, well then you lose that mortgage deal. So here in the UK, you can what's called port your mortgage. So if you sell a house and buy a different one, you can basically take your existing mortgage with you and it just rotates onto this different property. You can't do that in the US. Sell your house, you lose your deal. So of course, no one's selling their house because they don't want to switch from a 2.7% interest rate to a 7.2% interest rate. So existing home sales have collapsed. The supply has collapsed. Now demand is also weakened for the same macro forces, right? Interest rates are really high. People can't afford to buy. Demand has dropped. It's just in the US because of this difference in the mortgage system, the supply of available existing homes has collapsed even further. So you go back to just the simple supply and demand dynamics and because supply has collapsed by even more than demand, then actually prices are still rising. So actually a kind of bit of a kind of second dimension impact on that is then home builders in the UK, they are literally going out of business, worse conditions for decades. In the US, home builders are having a heyday because it's where's the supply. If you do want to buy a house and get on the market, there are no existing homes for sale because people don't want to sell. So you've got to buy new homes. So actually new home sales has gone through the roof and I think it's making up like 30%. One third of active listings right now in the US, one third of all listings are new homes. Normally the average over the last couple of decades like pre-COVID and intro strength, the average is about 13% of listings on new homes. Now that's risen to more than doubled or almost tripled. So yeah, you've got this really quite unique set of circumstances in the US housing market that's led to a collapse of existing home sales, prices therefore still rising and yet affordability for new buyers being at the worst conditions for years and years. Okay, so we've had both ends of the spectrum. We mentioned at the top of the episode Denmark. So what's the situation with Denmark? Well, the good old Danes. So again, the 30 year fixed rate deal is very popular in Denmark, similar to the US. You buy a house, you enter into this deal, it's 30 years and it's fixed. Okay, more than half of homeowners in Denmark are on a 30 year fixed rate deal. Okay. But where they've got a better system than the US is if you sell your house, of course remember that's the problem in the US, no one's selling because you lose that low rate. In Denmark, two options that the US don't have. If you sell your house, you can either buy out your mortgage, but if interest rates have gone up, the value of your mortgage essentially gets marked to mark it down. So you benefit from essentially having a discounted amount that you can buy your mortgage off at. Okay, that's one way that's a bit more complex that there's a more simpler option, which is easier to get your head around. When you sell your house in Denmark, if you've got a 30 year fixed deal, the buyer can take over that deal. So essentially the loan belongs to the property more than the owner of the property. And so this frees up the market and enables people to sell and buy. If you've got an existing home, right, I'm going to sell it. I'm not going to, my buyer is going to get the low rate deal I got, I secured back in 2021. So they're happy, and I can then go and buy another house and I'll get the low rate deal that the previous owner of that house used to have. So it just frees up the market and it means that supply hasn't collapsed. So I wonder how the affordability angle works there. So if I was a first time buyer as a 25 year old compared to a 55 year old, my earnings and my existing capital, can I take it over? Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, that's a top level. That all sounds hunky dory and makes sense. But yeah, for sure, when you get into the weeds of it, different credit ratings, if your new buyer coming in has got a lower credit rating, well, then yeah, how does the bank feel about that? So I don't quite know how that works, to be honest. To the final question, tying it back to the actual people who offer these mortgages. So what's the pro and con as a financial institution, a lender, offering the UK model or the US model? Well, the US model again is a bit unique and it's essentially government backed because you've got Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. So essentially your mortgage deals with the government. Then Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac package these mortgages and sell them to banks and investors. Right. In the UK, it's not how it works. It's the banks. You're borrowing directly from the publicly owned banks. And so I guess for those banks, it's here in the UK, it's a more nimble market. But then you've got this headache of getting a lot of churn because every two years customers are rolling off. And then so you've always got to be trying to win these customers back. And so there's that huge sales and marketing effort around, it's a fierce marketplace. So that's a real headache. But then you're not stuck as a bank, imagine. If most of your customers are on a 2.7%, 30 year fixed rate loan arrangement for a bank, that's a nightmare. Given rates are now where they are, right? So it's funny. I remember sitting on the desk in 2008 and used to have Bloomberg with lots of different screens and one of them, a lot of them were like price monitors. So you'd have different asset classes or products. And we'd had this ladder of different equity in sectors. So you could just identify visually what's out and underperforming. And I remember seeing Fannie and Freddie and they would down like 25, 30%. This was even before the bank started to get hit. So it was like the very first domino was like all the signal was when those started to get absolutely drilled. And then there was actually a bit of time there. I mean, I say time we're talking days before then it kind of like became like, wow, this is a serious problem at the time. Yeah. I mean, that's just that extreme moment where you get a sharp collapse in house prices. Because that then means, of course, you get the value of the asset declines below the level of the loan that's secured on that asset. So you're now underwater. And at the same time, the economy is collapsing. So people are losing their jobs and they can't afford to pay their mortgage payments anymore. So there's foreclosures and there's defaults. But the banks are wearing the pain because ultimately, if they then sell the asset, what is that we claim the same amount of money as their loan liability. And so they end up losing money. And then the housing money is like a vicious cycle, right? Because then if there's a lot of force selling, well, then of course, the prices collapse even further. And that was that kind of, well, I'll call it once in a lifetime moment, maybe. Careful. Careful. You're going to live to 100, Pierce. So all right, well, look, we've, we wanted to talk about the housing market the most. I feel like we've done that now. So let's just briefly touch on the other two subjects. So firstly, UBS, again, the media kind of juicing the headline, the biggest ever quarterly profit. And they were referring to the $29 billion gain that that being a result of the accounting difference between the $3.8 billion price UBS paid for credit Swiss and the value of the acquired lender's balance sheet, essentially. But the other things I thought quite interesting was just how big and dominant now UBS is and is going to become, because the combination now puts their global franchise as they referred to it. So all parts of the business, essentially close to five trillion incline assets. And, you know, looking at their share price, I saw a chart of UBS against European and US peers in the investment bank space. And everyone's kind of like quite erratic, but generally not going anywhere up marginally. But UBS has gone through the roof. And actually, they were already up 30% for the year. And then they opened up about 7% yesterday. I don't think they finished quite as high, but we're talking about a 30 plus percent gain on the year. Their market value now is gone over BNP Paribas. They're now ranked as the second biggest in Europe after HSBC. They've trumped that of US lender city group as well. Right. Well, I mean, on the face of it, you think, hang on a minute. They've done, they've had an, they've got an absolute steal here, because they basically bought credit Swiss. And here's the account, it's entirely an accounting thing, right? There's 29 billion. If you took out the credit Swiss deal, their profit for the quarter is actually 1.1 billion. But it's reported at 29, as you said, it's the biggest bank profit ever. Do you know what, do you know what the previous record was? So JP Morgan set the previous record in 2021. They had a profit of 14.3 billion, which is a straight-up genuine profit. This, this is 29 billion, but it's an accounting trick. And you think, you think, hang on a minute, because they bought, remember, they bought credit Swiss for 3.4 billion. And now hang on, they've made 29 billion out of that. You're like, wow, that's like the best trade, the best deal in the history of mankind. But I guess it's easy to think that now, but you go back to that banking crisis, you know, back in, in the spring. And it's not that there was zero risk here. I mean, they did step in and take a big risk. Yes, they were in a position where they could force an amazing deal, but it wasn't risk-free. All right, fine. It's all settled down and it's all turned around and happy days. What people haven't maybe don't quite appreciate, this 29 billion profit was actually lower than expected. Analysts had actually forecasted a 33 billion profit. And so that's just because actually the outflow of deposits from Credit Swiss during the crisis was actually a bit higher than they thought. The outflow was 10.6 billion dollars. But basically, yeah, UBS bought the asset book of Credit Swiss at an incredibly discounted level, because there was uncertainty as to how much deposit outflow there would end up being. Anyway, it's all worked out incredibly well, obviously now. What I thought was quite controversial, because you know, obviously they're right, they're now going ahead with the merger. It's going to take years and fine. There's lots of cost efficiencies that UBS think they can find within that Credit Swiss entity. Inevitably, there'll be a lot of job losses, of course. But one thing that they announced in this earnings that they announced that they're going to merge the domestic businesses and essentially phase out the whole Credit Swiss brand entirely. That's a 167-year-old brand. And the only reason I mentioned this is because this is getting political. Because actually, there was a poll done back when the kind of rescue took place. And 75% of Swiss nationals do not agree with UBS phasing out the Credit Swiss brand. And there's an election coming up. And this is all getting quite political now around, right. All these political candidates are getting asked, what's your position on the UBS Credit Swiss deal? And so it's kind of entered into that political arena a little bit. Well, all I know is Roger Federer was Credit Swiss, not UBS, if I'm not wrong. So when it comes to Swiss identity, at a global level. Can I just finish on the share price? You mentioned it. So it's actually just broken 23 Swiss francs, quite a key. And it just jumped this week, as you said. What's key about that? It's actually broken above the 2015 high. So that's actually the highest now since 2008 for the UBS share price I'm talking about now. But it's at 23 Swiss francs, right? And you mentioned, oh, it's more valuable than Citigroup now or well, in terms of assets under management, let's say. But it's share price, UBS is share price 2007, pre-financial crisis. So remember it's at 23 Swiss francs now. It's had a great year, 30% up, multi-year high, 23 Swiss francs. It was 71 Swiss francs. In 2007. So whilst it's had an amazing year, I'm going back even further. UBS's share price was at 23 Swiss francs in 1993. So you could argue in 30 years, it's gone nowhere. I hope there's no UBS stockholders who've been holding since 93 listening, just for their own sanity. Hang in there. All right, well, let's go on to the final one, which was just quickly to talk about the US for a very top level. We are recording this on the 1st of September. So Non-Farm Parals is yet to come. But even before that, there's been some interesting data in something called jolts. So perhaps you could give us a bit of color about what that is and what's been happening. Yeah, so there's the thing called the jolts job open rate. So it's economic data released every month. And it's one of the many, many measures on the labor market. And this one's looking at job openings. So as the name suggests, in total across the entire economy, how many jobs are being advertised for right now, for positions that are genuinely available, where companies want these workers to start as soon as possible. And this is like a salaried role. Okay. And the thing here is, it's a measure of how tight the labor market is. And point being, if the higher the job open rate, well, that's a measure to say that there's a lack of supply of workers, because companies can't fill these positions. And so we had this peak back in December 2022, where it got above 11 million, okay, 11 million job openings and start, you know, companies just couldn't find staff. The problem is, this is inflationary. Because what happens if you can't find someone to fill your job opening, where you got to offer more money. Right. And then this means wages go up, which then of course incomes go up and then consumption goes up and it all feeds into that inflation story, right. So over 11 million in December 2022, it's now been declining ever since then. And it's one of those key measures that the Fed look at, as to right, what are the labor market conditions and they feed this into their decision making around their inflation forecasting and therefore, are they going to continue to raise interest rates or not. And the key reading this week came out and it's for the month of July. So it's a little old, but the point is that it dropped below 9 million now. So it's actually at 8.83 million job openings. That was a lot lower than expected. The forecasted figure I think was 9.4 million actually. So it came in a lot lower than expected. It was expected to go back up. Not only did it not go up, it declined and it went below the key psychological 9 million level. So it's further evidence in summation. It's further evidence that the tight conditions in the labor market in the US are easing and this feeds into the whole narrative. The Fed are done. There's no more rate hikes. And if you go and have a look at the stock market this week, they've had a great week. You know, S&P and the NASDAQ have been nicely and strongly up on the week as people get more confident again that the Fed aren't going to hike any further. I love that. I love that it's like Main Street suffers, yep Wall Street up. Yep. It's the perverse nature of how markets work. And yeah, just to kind of supplement what you said. Economists, they are expecting the increase in non-farms to come out momentarily to have moderated further in August, having already posted in July the second smallest gain since December 2020. So kind of all marrying up if you like in that way. The other thing is JOLTS. So J-O-L-T-S. So the J-O is job openings. The L-T-S is labor turnover survey. And on that side of things, the Labor Department said that I also showed the number of people quitting their jobs, dropped to levels last seen in early 2021. Basically Americans becoming less confident about the labor market. So yeah, everything all coming to that same point you said. Cool. Well look, let's wrap it up there and finish things off. Thank you very much as ever, Piers. Thank you everyone for listening. Have a fantastic weekend and we will see you same time next week. Yeah, have an awesome weekend. Bye-bye.