 and welcome to FIG's weekly economic and trading update. I'm Mark Bailey and this is John Sheridan. So Mark, last week was dominated by politics. What do you see in the economic data coming out this week? Yeah, so there's a bit of retail sales that came out in Australia and that was a bit weaker than expected and also the RBA had the cash meeting as well in terms of the holding and cash rate stable. In terms of the commentary, it was a bit more dovish than probably expected. They really focused on the weakness that they had seen in the employment market and the jobs data that split between part-time and full-time. Probably wasn't as strong as they had expected. In addition, as well, you had APRA and ASIC and the RBA all commenting in terms of trying to cool down the housing market on the eastern seaboard, Sydney and Melbourne especially and different regulations coming out around that. Yeah, so moving to America, the Fed's balance sheet was a big focus after the FRMC's minutes with a lot of participants talking about the potential for reducing that going into the year-end. So what that actually means is it's going to be de facto tightening, so maybe they'd actually have to raise the cash rate as much as expected. They're still pricing in around about two times in terms of the market, another 25 basis points times two. That probably implies that you're going to see a bit more yield curve steepening as well, so investors should probably think about moving some of the long-dated bonds into the shorter-dated bonds and that's on top of some of the dynamics that we're already seeing with regards to potential for the Trump reflation trade where you may be going to see higher inflation down the lines because of fiscal spend. So again, it's maybe positioning clients a bit more defensively both in terms of where they sit on the duration curve and also in terms of credit quality as well. We've seen a big rally in credit spreads and they're trading at pretty tight levels compared to a relative value in recent history as well. So I think that's an important thing for clients to focus on. So that's kind of the economic news and how has that translated into what your clients have been doing? Well, in keeping with your theme about potential steepening of the yield curve, we've just been re-examining client portfolios, making sure that their duration level is appropriate and also their credit exposure is appropriate. So as you know, we do a lot of work on credit analysis and that's one of the strengths of the business. So we're still comfortable with the credit exposures that we hold, but we're just taking a view really about the balance of investment grade and high-yield credit in client portfolios. What we've seen in terms of particular bonds this week is continuing on adding the inflation-linked annuities into client portfolios, typically very strong credits. Also, we've been looking at the investment grade floating rate notes, which add that investment grade exposure to portfolios as well as reducing the duration because they're floating and not fixed. And I think we're still looking at portfolio splits between fixed floating and inflation, a third, a third, a third, is that correct? That's right, yes. I mean, in the last couple of years obviously with interest rates falling, having an overweight to fixed rate has been a good play for investors. We're just looking at bringing that back now with, as you said, the curve steepening and the rate hike environment and increasing yields in the U.S., potentially driving our curve upwards as well. So just looking at bringing that fixed rate exposure back to, as you said, in line with the one third, one third, one third in portfolios. Yeah, I think that's very sensible in terms of moving those clients a bit more defensively and conservative position given where we are in the right cycle and in terms of the credit cycle as well. Absolutely, that's the right thing to do. So what are you focusing on this week coming up, Mark, in economic terms? It's actually all about jobs, whether you're in the States or in Australia. So this week, ahead in Australia, we've got the jobs data that's coming out and again we'll be looking in terms specifically about the part-time, full-time split. We're expected to create around about 20,000 jobs and the unemployment rates expected to be constant at 5.9%. Also, domestically, Australia, we've got a really, really important RBA financial stability review, which again will give us a bit more details in terms of the central bank's thinking on controlling the property sector and some of the limits that APRA put in in terms of the constraints on investor-only loans and also interest-only loans as well. So that's going to be a key looking towards the States. We've got the non-farm payroll figure out later today on Friday. The consensus there is for around about 180,000 jobs to be created. There was a really, really strong ADP employment data on Wednesday print as well. So that probably indicates that it's going to be a bit stronger than expected. Also next week as well, you've got the CPI in the States. Should course, you're coming around about 2.3%. Anything significantly higher than that, you could see some fairly major changes in terms of investors in the market's consensus around the yield curve and future interest rate tightening. Thanks, John. Thanks, Mark. And thanks for watching. Tin hats on. Enjoy. If you need any more information, go to the wire.