 Okay, very good morning. It's Friday the 7th of January and a happy new year to everyone. Pierce, how's your Christmas and new year? Well, happy new year. Yeah, good. Well, yeah, COVID impacted. Oh, yeah. You missed your holiday, right? Yeah. I mean, I live in, well, the epicenter of global Omicron, I think, in the south-west London, I live in south-west London, so I live in like Bal and Wandsworth and these boroughs or the Wandsworth borough, I think was actually, yes, the number one in the country in terms of Omicron cases. So, yeah, we got, we got knobbled. We were going to go on holiday, but my son got COVID five days before we were leaving. So, you know, but these things happen. So, the question on that, though, your son got it. Did the rest of the family get it? Well, this is the weird thing. I mean, he, so, you know, he was isolating, you know, our house, you know, roughly, but I would say he probably almost certainly had it 24 hours before we knew he had it. And in those 24 hours, we were together and mingling and, and yeah, none of none of us got it other than him. I mean, we did PCR tests. I did a PCR test. I did a cup three actually all negative, but I don't know. I mean, obviously, well, not obviously, I got boosted. Must have been, must have been a month before, right? Or a few weeks before at least. And I don't know whether I got it. But it was just so mild that I had no symptoms and tests didn't pick it up or whether I just didn't get it at all. I don't know. But anyway, he definitely got it. And that meant we were, yeah, no traveling for us, which was highly annoying. But you know, there was a friend of mine said he bought his brother the meta new Oculus headset. Oh, yeah, all sharing it around. And then his two brothers had COVID. It just so happened then they proposed to the day after, but he didn't he didn't catch it either, even though they were sharing the VR headset. Yeah. So go figure. But I don't think I actually don't think my son had Omicron. I think, I think he, well, I don't know what I presumed he had Delta. But what happens is, if you go for PCR tests, and you have to wait then, if it's positive, you wait then another day and they they they contact you if it is Omicron. And then there are more, well, they used to be more strict quarantining, sorry, isolation rules for close contacts, if it's Omicron versus Delta or whatever, we didn't get recontacted. So I presume he had Delta, which maybe is of course less transmissible. But yeah, okay, well, look, I mean, you missing your holiday aside. I hope everyone obviously is safe and sound and managed to at least spend some time. But they're nearest and dearest and yeah, I mean, look, onwards and upwards 2022 now. So this week in markets has been pretty interesting, actually. Normally, it takes a little bit of time for it to warm up, as most people returning to work, I think the first week in jam. But let me give you, well, how are we going to do this podcast is I'm going to go over and run through some of the highlights of the week, part one. And peers feel free to interject and add some flavor, if you feel necessary on any of these subjects. And then the second part, perhaps the more meaty part of the conversation, we're going to talk about US yields. You've probably read about that a lot. Certainly if you've been following financial news, but why is that important? What's triggering that move? And what's the repercussions for things like tech stocks, growth stocks, all of which been seeing some pretty sizable price movement this week. So kicking things off then, starting with the beginning of the week, we actually saw before we actually move lower towards the end of the week, Apple, they briefly rose above $3 trillion. Market cap at that point, index waiting peers in the S&P. What do you reckon? What percentage of the S&P is accounted for by Apple? It's got to be, that's a good question, 5%. 7%. Now, 7%. Yeah, why? Just unreal. I mean, it's not as unreal as Tesla's share price. It went up 15% at the open first day of trade this year. And then it fell 17%. Pretty much the subsequent days after. And now, do you know where it is from where we closed at the end of 2021% of change? It's probably up. Zero. It hasn't moved. Right. It's just had a 20% either way, up, down. I mean, it's just crazy. But I mean, I love it. That big pop higher was based off its 2021 unit deliveries, wasn't it, which got up to, it wasn't even a million, was it? 900,000. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And I will put that into context again. I've done it many times on this podcast. People who listen to this regularly will know my views on kind of Tesla. But yeah, so up 15% based off the fact they produced 900,000, which was higher than what analysts were forecasting. And hence why that little pop. But that's still less than one tenth of the unit production, the big car giants like the Volkswagen's of this world produce. So yeah, I just find it quite funny that people go, oh my God, 950,000 cars. Wow. That's amazing when actually it's still nothing in the grand scheme of things. Yeah. And that EV race is heating up quickly. I think as GM CEOs come out, they've got the whole range basically coming out electrified with their new four by four, which is the rival for the Ford F-150, which is like the, it's just a pickup truck you always see in the States, but that's not their big seller. And they've got the smaller hatchback version of one of their models. So the price ranging from like 30,000 for a pretty decent car, fully electric. And that definitely is going to be hard to compete with because I guess their manufacturing is just so much matured, as you said, distribution models so much more efficient. Well, this is why the Rivians of this world, which is an electric truck, this is why now their share price, I think you were telling me earlier, it's down below their IPO price now, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's a Rivian interesting one. So they were down about 20% yesterday. They dropped below their IPO price. They're trading below that now. And so Amazon, who obviously have backed Rivian, I can't remember their holdings like 20% or something like that. And they had that jumbo order, didn't they? That's right. The amount of vans. So basically Amazon, I think I've got impatient. She doesn't say a lot about Rivian. And Amazon have announced a deal with Stellantis, which is basically the fear cries a Persia hookup for an electric van. I mean, it looks terrible, but I mean, you're delivering parcels, so it doesn't really matter. But basically, Amazon have gone, do you know what, we're just going to get our vans from there. And they haven't really said what that means to Rivian. And Rivian obviously have got hit on that. Well, here's the thing. I mean, this is the thing about the Rivians of this world. They can't mass produce cars. But fear cries the can and Persia can. Exactly. So that's their big risk for these newcomers to this market. The big risk is the big giants, you know, all move to electric, which obviously they are. And they've already got all the infrastructure and they got the track record and the experience in mass production. And all right, find that that one, you know, it might not look very good, but it's much easier to change the design of a vehicle than it is to figure out how to build it. So, so yeah, well, then the other thing at the beginning of the week was, I think it was the first trading day where you were seeing these record high cases of the Omicron spread, the dominant strain now, record numbers, UK, France, Italy, I mean, the French numbers have been super high US as well, topped a million on a day. Yeah. And budget airline stocks, London listed were loving life. I mean, they were up double digit percentage. So they saw some pretty decent gains at the beginning of the week. So not to go into it on this particular one, we've talked about it before about the more kind of mild symptoms associated with Omicron, not requiring them the same kind of stringent lockdown. So therefore air travel can maintain and so on. So moving away from that then into Boris Johnson's announcement, kind of fits within the same was he said the UK could weather a record wave of COVID-19. We are seeing that record wave right now without tighter restrictions. So I know you and I talked about this briefly the other day. Boris played this well in the end or just got lucky. I mean, he is a lucky politician, some would say. Well, look, I mean, this is the classic, isn't it, with politicians? Obviously, people have very polarized opinions about any single politician. And I think that this is a really good example where if you like take away all political bias entirely, which I know is not really possible, but let's try and pretend then in December, Boris had a shocking December. If you remember with all the scandal around the the partying that was going on at Downing Street in the kind of first lockdown back in 2020 and so on, but on the Christmas parties and whatever. But he then, he had a clear strategy based on the idea that Omicron was not going to be as severe a disease as like previous strains and let he got it right. Let's not kind of beat around the bush. He definitely got it spot on and this does carry quite, you know, very meaningful, you know, positive outcomes for the economy, you know, not implementing more stricter restrictions, definitely has a positive return on economic activity. And now, all right, you could say got lucky, but the early data was always that it looks like this is going to be a milder strain. I know it was always based on early data. So everyone's caveatting that with, but it's early days yet. So we need to wait and see. But, you know, I think he's always said we'll make decisions based on the data. And even though it was early data, that was the data. So you make a decision based on that. And he's got it right. I just kind of find it quite amusing that no one's not many people in this country are willing to say the words that Boris got it right, or well done Boris, or, you know, obviously the media are certainly not going to come out and celebrate his decision. You know, they're looking for the next negative thing that they can kind of print about him. But that's obviously the nature of being a leader. You know, everyone's trying to kind of pull you down a peg or two. But look, I think he got it spot on. And obviously this is what's going on out in markets. And I think even though you're getting a million, a million cases in the US, it's such a just unbelievable figure. But it doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter because the UK is the case study, proper case study. I know this strain came out of South Africa, but the UK is the proper case study for is, on Rukron, a serious risk or not. And as the weeks tick by, it's more and more and more clear that it's not a serious risk. And then people are really going beyond that and saying, well, actually, is this the beginning of the end of this pandemic? Is it a cycle? And this is what the scientists were saying way back in 2020, but no one really knew what the hell they were talking about because it was so new pandemics and we weren't used to them, certainly not in the West. And it was that idea that you're going to get new strains, you're going to get multiple waves. And actually, as these new strains, you know, evolve, but they may become more transmissible, but they tend to become weaker in terms of their severity. And it looks like this on the chron actually in the end is a good signal that that cycle is playing out. And therefore maybe, you know, we're in that final phase of lockdowns, you know, globally, and that maybe by the time we go through next winter, you know, perhaps we won't have any economic impacts at all, or marginal impacts. And that view, I guess, is going to play an apart for our discussion in a moment about yield movement and the Fed to a certain extent. So we'll discuss that in a moment. And just going through the other list of other hot topics that have emerged this week, Bitcoin, it's in the crypto space has been suffering with this yield movement. In fact, it's been really since that has been initiated and the Fed have got hawkish, Bitcoin's been suffering. I think we're off about 40%. Yeah, or zero from the November highs. All the other spaces falling, Ethereum, I think fell more than Bitcoin points during this week. And that's obviously been the one that's been talked about a lot with kind of the technology and adoption going forward with the whole metaverse conversation and so forth. And another one to throw in the mix is Happy Anniversary GameStop. And so the shares up 30% last night. And it wasn't just because it's their anniversary. I mean, you've got to love the... Is it the anniversary, like bang on the day? I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure it was at the beginning of the year. It's close to. But yeah, you've got to love their strategy to just really live the moment and they've come out. And basically, I think they've employed, it's like a tiny team, but it's caused a 30% reaction. I think their team that are creating this NFT marketplace for GameStop is 20 people. And the shares are going up 30%. It's just insane. And they're looking at establishing cryptocurrency partnerships and things like that. But yeah, the crypto space having a bit of a rough ride. And it's been quite interesting. There was Goldman's out at the beginning of the week banging the 100K drum. They were talking about the five-year picture and about the store of value and taking more market share from gold in that play, which okay, but yeah, five years, 100K Bitcoin. Yeah, I don't fancy that myself. Yeah, that's not a big call to make. I don't think... Yeah, I'm underwhelmed by that call from the guy's name, Pandal, who's the Goldman's kind of crypto analyst. I don't know how many crypto analysts Goldman's have these days, but actually it's a good indication of generally what's been an increased adoption of crypto by institutional investors through 2021, let's say. And I think that's actually kind of what's playing out. Now, I think you're seeing a stronger correlation now between, let's just say Bitcoin and things like the S&P 500. There's a stronger correlation, I think, because there's more institutional players in Bitcoin now. And so you're seeing, when you're getting a rotation of assets, and that's what creates these correlations, is when big institutional players who've got a big capital are moving money from one asset to another, then you're getting that inverse correlation because they've got such power, they're moving markets. And I think, certainly Bitcoin and obviously generally the crypto space, Bitcoin lower maybe because of that institutional side. And then that, of course, is bringing all other cryptos down with it kind of scenario. So I think you are seeing better correlations now with Bitcoin and the Tradfi assets. But yeah, as to whether Bitcoin is going to be the new gold, I mean, you know, I think there's some rationale that makes sense around that idea. I think it will be a very slow transition. But I think that Goldman's guy, his assumption was based on, he says, yeah, Bitcoin is going to get $100,000 if Bitcoin's share of the store of value market. So what he means there is that gold is a store of value, which is one of the reasons people own it. So that market, where do you put your money? If it's safe and I want to protect it against inflation, so it's an inflation hedge, then, you know, he's saying people are going to move more into Bitcoin rather than gold. And if 50% of the market becomes Bitcoin, then he reckons it'll get to $100,000. I don't, I mean, if Bitcoin managed to get 50% of the store of value market, I mean, it's going to be way higher than $100,000, I would suggest. So I'm a bit confused by this guy, Pandal, at Goldman's and, yeah, underwhelmed by his piece that you put out, to be quite honest. Yeah, I mean, just looking at Bitcoin now, it's technically quite an interesting level at around $41,000, which was the set low before the big push up that we saw through October. And that was also the June-July peak as well. And I guess this afternoon, we're recording this prior to payrolls coming out. But let's say hypothetically, payroll headlines are expected at $400,000, I think the unemployment rate 4.1. What if we get a $1 million employment figure and a $3.9 unemployment rate? Bitcoin, Bitcoin, what's next, $36,000, I guess, which is that July-June top that we saw late June and July point of support, but $30,000. Yeah. I mean, the big, right, exactly. That's what I was going to say. I mean, the big, the big kind of technical support, if this big sell-off continues, there's definitely 30, around the 30K mark, which was basically the 2021 double bottom, let's call it, from February and then again in kind of mid, well, around the July area. But I mean, that would be more than a 50% sell-off then, if you get down to $30,000. I know that sounds like a lot, but look, Bitcoin's been through plenty of 50% plus sell-offs in the past. And so there's, you know, I would expect $30,000 is my opinion. I mean, I think we'll talk about inflation a bit more in detail, but I think, you know, if this inflation concern carries on, which it probably will in the near term, then yeah, pushing these cryptos down further, I think, is probably to be expected. So, yeah, if you get down to $30,000, then that's really interesting to see if that support holds. And it may well do, but that's a massive level. And you know how sensitive crypto is to technical levels. It's still very influenced by the kind of technical side of things. And, you know, a break of $30,000, I mean, you're going to get some serious freefall. I mean, you might, wow, I don't want to speculate too far on the downside at this point. But yeah, I'm still looking lower for cryptos, my personal opinion as this inflation. I know you'll be sniffing around when it's down at $30,000. Sizing in at $30,000, a little bit more at $25,000, and then you're fully in at $20,000. I'll be certainly interested when we get down to those levels. But to be honest, would I be interested in Bitcoin? Probably not. I think Bitcoin is now the sort of, you know, when you start talking about it being the new gold, then it starts to get a bit dull. I mean, is there really, I think the other crypto, the more infantile crypto is would carry greater upside potential. But there's more risk as you're obviously, you know, the more infantile you go, the more risk there is as to whether or not that's a genuine coin that's going to actually make it, you know, in the kind of medium term. But yeah, anyone listening who's trading these cryptos, remember diversification. Oh, yes. Absolutely. And never, ever invest more money than you can afford to lose. Yeah. All right. Pick advice. Yeah, on that point of advice. Let's move on. Some of the other things then from the week, oil prices, pretty decent move actually in WTI front month futures, we're trading back above 80. So the Omicron dip, take it back. We're right back where we were, probably and some at this point. And why is that happening at the moment? Well, this week we had the OPEC meeting. No real surprises. It certainly wasn't as interesting as the month prior. So they're sticking to their plan, increasing output 400,000 rounds a day in February. So they always have a meeting to plan for the output for the month ahead. They've continued adding now supply every month since August. And some of the rationale, particularly that's played in, it wasn't so much OPEC meeting this week. That was very much as expected. It's more about just what's going on. So we talked a little bit about the general comfortable nature markets have now with the Omicron spread. So that's helping a little bit on the demand side on supply side. There's been quite a few independent things, one being weather. So whenever you're trading or monitoring an energy product, whether it's integral component of price dynamics, if you like. And what we've had there is a deep freeze in Canada and Northern US disrupting oil flows. I'm not sure if you saw. I don't actually know if payrolls is coming out in the regular fashion. You remember over the years, when payrolls actually is a manual type release rather than automated, because staff can't get in at the Bureau of Labor Statistics because the snow is that deep. I wouldn't be surprised that happens again. That was always a disaster for me to report. So to give a bit of context, so I'd be there, right? There's people like peers times a couple of thousands of them waiting for me to say this figure when it comes out. But normally it's as easy as just reading a terminal and the number pops up. But when it's weather disrupted, basically they update the BLS website and say every man and his dog is hitting F5 refresh as fast as they can. And obviously it crashes the server. Then the website goes down. And then people like peers shout at me going analyst, analyst. And I'm like, F5, F5, F5. Oh, those are the days. Yep. So yeah, good job. I'm not covering those anymore. But yeah, so we've got pretty bad weather in North America, parts of pockets of North America, but then Libya's production is still down 30% amid militia unrest. And then OPEC plus member Kazakhstan's giant 10 gas oil filled temporarily adjusted amid unrest we're seeing. You've probably read about that to a certain degree this week. So that's the oil thing. And then moving on the final one that I thought to mention is back in the EV kind of space one Sony. So there's like in a, I think it's electric electronic consumer conferences they have every year. And there's lots of cool stuff that gets announced. This isn't a must stress. This isn't to go into production tomorrow. You can't rock into your game stop shop where you buy your PlayStation say, I'll take an electronic vehicle as well please while you're at it. But Sony have launched Sony mobility, which is a dedicated new company that will focus on electric vehicles. Have you seen the pictures of them? What do you reckon? Looks much better than a Tesla looks. I was going to say the same. Looks way more plush than a Tesla. Yeah, looks a bit more upmarket. It's a much more, I mean, I think it was the SUV one because actually I think it was a V2 model that we're talking about this time around. But yes, it looks good. It could be quite interesting. It's so funny how I think it I always think it's old dinosaurs like us where we're quite anchored to certain auto manufacturers. And it's interesting how I think as a young person that you can throw out like the idea to me of driving a Sony car, it's like, you're just ridiculous. That is your initial motive reaction. But for a young person, it's like, well, why not? I mean, I spend all my time using this product. Yeah, actually, I live in this product or I soon will do. As far as the next 10 years concern is interesting talking to someone about VR the other day. And we were kind of talking about when is the metaverse truly going to take off because there's a lot of barriers through infrastructure and technology for one. But that aside, just the behavioural adoption of it into the broader space. And actually it's the kids who are in the roblox at the moment who are like 10. When they're 21, when they're 30, they've got real consumer purchase power and they're buying high value goods. But we're talking 10, 15 years down the track, 20 years down the track. But yeah, it will be it will be interesting nonetheless. But this kind of this Sony thing, I mean, look, brand, brand awareness or brand loyalty, or, you know, comfort and familiarity with a brand can only get you so far in the EV game, because the very, very harsh reality of trying to build EVs on scale will just smash you in the face at some point. Now, there are like there's plenty of companies, we did an EV section of pre Christmas, but like there's Dyson is another alright, perhaps not quite as sexy brand as Sony amongst the youth. You'd be you'd be a Dyson car buyer, wouldn't you Pierce? You'd be down all day. Dyson are a fantastic company, right? Incredibly innovative, phenomenal success, right? And they attempted an EV, they went down the EV route and quickly reversed and said, right, let's stop that, that's not economically viable. I think Sony, if they actually, because they've been a bit vague about it, if they actually come out and say, we are properly going for this, we are going to manufacture our own EV, if they come out and say that, I think that'll be very negative for their share price. I know that their share price bounced four and a half percent off the back of this news, but was it that news? I mean, they're on this kind of Spider-Man wave at the moment with the huge success of the Spider-Man movie over the festive period, but firstly, well, I think this is the Sony strategy, and don't forget they've launched they launched a kind of an EV prototype two years ago. So this isn't brand new come out left field out of the blue, by the way, even though a lot of people think it is. They really launched it two years ago and it hasn't really gone anywhere. And that's because they actually supply or want to and have ambitions of supplying a huge amount of devices and batteries and sensors for electric vehicles, not necessarily for their own vehicle, but for other manufacturers vehicles. So certainly like think about entertainment devices that can be plugged in to improve that immersive kind of vehicle experience. Right. So that's what Sony are all about. That's what they should stick to. That's where they've got the edge. That's where they can manufacture this stuff. And I hope this is a ploy where they're going, look, we're going to launch an EV, which is actually just a big PR marketing strategy to show that they got some seriously cool stuff that can go into EVs that then makes other manufacturers more aware of that. And I hope that they go down that path or at the most they kind of outsource the manufacturing to someone who knows what they're doing. So maybe some kind of strategic partnership. I hope they go there and then that could be interesting. I think if they go right, we're going to build this ourselves. I just think it's going to be a waste of a lot of time and money. Well, one thing I was writing about earlier this week, and it might be, it might actually be something you're aware of, but not many of our listeners are aware of. And it ties us back into your favorite company, Tesla again. And that is Friendster, the social networking site. Did you ever use Friendster? Well, obviously that's got something to do with friends, the TV show, I assume. Friendster, I've never ever heard of it. Okay. So Friendster in the early noughties was the hottest social networking ticket in town. Wasn't it like, was that like MySpace? It was a year before MySpace. Oh, right. Okay. Let alone Facebook. I mean, this thing was ahead of its time. Free Facebook. Yeah. Right. So I was talking about this in context of EVs in a newsletter I wrote. So Friendster, right? First to market massive adoption originally. I think they did three million users in the first month or something, and it was like the talk of the town. Do you know what their biggest reason for failure ended up being? Go on. Reliability. Right. And the consumer report that came out for all auto manufacturers at the end of 2021. Do you know where Tesla ranked out of 28 auto manufacturers? What in terms of reliability? Yeah. Bottom half? 27. So you don't actually know who was worse. I mean, I don't actually know who was bottom. Wow. Can you get worse? Reliability? I don't even know. That's incredible. I mean, it's just, it's interesting because now that I've been tracking this GM models that have been coming out and Volvo have got their new one coming out. It's Polestar, Polestar that's coming out. And it's like, these are serious outfits who've been doing this for decades, hundreds of years. If not centuries. Yeah. Talking about other large ones like Toyota and people like that. So yeah, it's going to be interesting for sure. I mean, I'm not talking now Tesla short term. Can they go higher? Sure. They can go higher. Yeah. I finished the piece saying, look, Tesla might win the race. Yeah. But they might not necessarily win the championship. Right. Like it. We'll see how it ends. But look, the final piece of car news that I have for you is BMW's new color changing paint technology. And if you haven't seen that, go to my Twitter handle, shameless self plug at awmchung. And I put like a GIF where you can see it and the car just kind of mirages into black and white. It looks, that's pretty cool. But essentially, what this is, is they've got surface coating on the car that contains millions of micro capsules. They're about the kind of width of your hair. So super small and each of these micro capsules contains negatively charged white pigments, positively charged black pigments. So you can set then a stimulation of electrical pulses through the car and it can go from black to white. Now, as gimmicky as that sounds, that the rationale of the technology is that actually there's a degree of car heating efficiency, depending on white reflective nature of the color or black absorption and so forth. So yeah, I just thought that was pretty cool. So basically you got so it's white, black or 50 shades of gray in between. Is that the idea? Well, for guys like you maybe, yeah. Yeah, I think that's pretty cool. I like it. Yeah, it's just interesting how like, there seems to be quite a bit going on now. But let's talk about the main story of the week. And perhaps I thought you could deconstruct this a little bit for me and for the audience, which is US yields. And I guess starting that, because that's been the main focal point for market participants. But why US yields? Why are they important? Why are they such a cornerstone for all assets outside of fixed income? Yeah, I mean US yields. So this is basically the return you get on owning US bonds. Okay, and now we often talk about this thing called, well, it's not quite risk-free return. But what's the closest you can get to risk-free return? It's owning an asset where the risk associated with that asset is as close to zero as you can get. So really safe assets like US government bonds. US government bonds are considered to be safe because the risk of the US defaulting, many would say, is incredibly fantastically small chance of that. You could argue that the chance of that has gone up as a result of COVID along with the chance of most governments defaulting going up just because of the debt load that they've taken on to fight this crisis. But put that to a side. So US debt is incredibly low risk. So investors like, it's about risk versus return. Everyone's heard of that kind of trade-off. And if you can take a smaller amount of risk and generate a higher amount of return, that's actually like your ultimate thing to find. But of course, it's not possible that you can't get low risk and high return. So US yields have been fantastically low, record-ever lows for years and years and years now. So that means that the return you get for owning US bonds is super low. And so low, it's actually negative. It's a negative return in terms of real yields. So we talk about real yield, which is the difference between inflation and the yield on the bond. So if you put $100, if you buy $100 worth of US bonds and they're yielding at 1.5%, and let's just say inflation is at 3%, I mean, it's higher than that at the moment, but let's just go with 3%, right? Then you've got a negative real yield. Because even though your bond is paying you 1.5% interest, the value of your money is dropping by 3% per year because of inflation. So actually net net, you're losing 1.5% per year on the value of your money. So not only if we had yield super low, we've also had high inflation now for a period. And so you're getting negative yields. So people are forced to move their money into other assets, more risky assets. This is what we call the hunt for yield. One key reason as to why the S&P 500 and some of these big giant tech stocks, one of the key reasons why they've been super strong is because that's where investors are putting their money. They're taking more risk by buying stocks, but they're big guns. So you might think that the risk associated with Apple is super low, right? Because it's such a mature company. So people are forced into buying, let's say stocks or buying other bonds who have a higher risk. So they might buy emerging market bonds, where there's a much higher risk of default. But with that, you get a higher return. So that's kind of how it's all played out in recent years. But what's gone on in the last few weeks, and I put more on that in the last few months in terms of US bond yields, certainly we kind of bottomed out at the start of December. US bond yields were about 1.35%. Now they're 1.7%. So actually all of a sudden, you've had a sharp increase in US bond yields. So actually, this now makes that lower risk asset more interesting from a return point of view. The return you get for owning US bonds has gone up. So this is where people are going, well, okay, hang on. Why should I own really high risk assets to generate my return when actually now I can get a decent return again from this safer stuff? So you're seeing people sell some of that higher risk stuff in favor of maybe returning back to a safe place of US bonds. And so what, the more evident then and would explain why the Nasdaq growth tech stocks have suffered more so this week than say other sectors. What's happened this week in stocks is really interesting because fine, if you're looking at stock indices, you're going, okay, well, they've come down. But actually, if you kind of delve below that, you've seen a really interesting sector rotation, and certain sectors have done really well. And I would say what's happening is you're getting people moving their money out of what my friend, Hanny Redder, referred to as spec tech. So he was quoted in the FT this week talking about spec tech, which is speculative technology, which is basically tech stocks that aren't profitable yet. So like the Rivians of this world, right, where basically all of their current value, that's the share price today, all of that current value is based on future potential earnings. Okay, but all of a sudden now those future potential earnings are getting devalued in today's money. This is to do with inflation. We'll hook this to the Fed in a minute, but when inflation is really high, the value of money drops. So basically the value of those future earnings in today's money is dropping because of inflation staying higher for longer. So even though you got on the one hand, hang on, Omicron's not going to impact the recovery. We're going to get a cyclical economic recovery. People are selling these spec tech stocks because of inflation and they're rotating their money into more into cyclicals. So still on the higher risk end of the equity spectrum into cyclicals, but cyclicals that aren't sensitive to inflation and higher interest rates, such as banks, for example, banks have done pretty well so far in the first few days of the year and things like industrials have done well. Okay, so these are companies that benefit from an economic upturn, but aren't hurt as much by higher interest rates or higher inflation. And in fact, banks, that's a good thing for banks actually. So you've seen this interesting rotation. So really banks, industrials and energy have done well and that's a function of course, the oil price. So that's why yields are important. That's how then it starts to impact stock sectors and asset class movement. But what's the catalyst? So we've had a couple of things this week, particularly around the Fed and the Fed minutes, which actually were a big surprise, which is unusual. So if you're not used to the format, basically the Federal Reserve released minutes, like two weeks after their initial discussions that they have to set policy. And normally, two weeks in the world of financial markets is like a lifetime. And so minutes are left redundant. And very, not very often they yield any type of surprise, but these ones did. And the reason why is because they were hawkish and the Federal Reserve officials said strengthening economy and higher inflation could lead to earlier and faster interest rate increases than previously expected. Some policymakers are also favouring starting to shrink the balance sheet soon after. So there's two parts of this then. There's the timing of rate lift off and number of hikes. And then there's the shrinkage of the balance sheet that probably needs a little bit of explanation on what are these and what's the sequence and why is it then that those two factors are influencing this yield move? Yeah. Well, look, in terms of a tightening cycle, so that's when the whole period where the central bank is tightening. If we look back often, not often, pretty much all the time, investors, we look back, what happened in the past? And let's assume a similar kind of, let's assume the pattern repeats. This is human behaviour. And then the way we act, if we assume it's going to repeat our actions in terms of buying and selling assets really kind of in some ways makes it repeat. But look, what happened last time in terms of the Fed's tightening cycle? I mean, firstly, they wind down quantitative easing, which is what they're doing now, right? But they're just winding it down way faster than they have done before. So normally, they wind down quantitative easing, then they wait. They might wait three months, they might wait six months just to see once you've stopped QE, that's it. There's no more stimulus, right? So just how does the economy and how do markets deal with that? And if it's fine and settled, okay, now let's start raising interest rates. Okay, then they might start raising interest rates and raising rates. And if you go back to like 2016, 2017, 2018, they were raising rates, raising rates, raising rates. And I think there are raising rates for it was probably, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, maybe two years before then, they started to what's called, they started what we call quantitative tightening, which is actually then reversing the increase in the money supply. Okay, so that's, so normally that's the sequence. It's stead very slow and very steady and making sure markets are okay with it before they move on to the next phase. But I think what's happened this week and really what's happened over the last two months is that all of a sudden, the Fed have just decided to go on hyperspeed with regards to this tightening cycle. So they've sped up the reduction of QE when our pricing in rates starting to go up in March. So just as the QE, just as QE ends, it's hike rates straight away. And now we're talking about quantitative tightening starting next year as well. I mean, it's literally like, yeah, it's literally like a tightening cycle on hyperspeed. And then, so what are we to take from all of that? Well, we're to take that. I mean, there's only one way to take it. And that's the Fed are panicking. They're panicking about inflation. And they're panicking that it's actually way higher than they thought. And more than that, they're worried it's out of control. I mean, why else would they be just suddenly smashing the accelerator in a way I've never seen? So this is why markets are then panicking a bit in terms of stocks, let's say, for example, that are sensitive to inflation, like those spectics, right? So that's what's going on right now. And the other thing that's quite interesting is obviously it's a new year and that means a new set of members on the Federal Open Market Committee. And actually, I was looking at this this morning, and Bullard is now a voter. And he's like the outlying hawk, and he was speaking last night fueling the flyer on this this topic. Waller, who's the second most hawkish, he's now a voter. George, Esther George, who's formerly was the most hawkish, is a voter, harker voter. So actually, of the five most hawkish possible members of all of the FMC vote or non vote, out of the five for now have voting rights, right? Yeah, this year of the regional presidents. Yeah, interesting. But you still get to balance that off that you'd still do have Powell, who's very dovish and brain art. So the chair and the vice chair. Yeah, the super twist there on. Yeah. How much do you think we keep we kept seeing this in 2021 where normally, it's coronavirus related. There's something that happened. The market would over. Yeah. And get super aggressive in its pricing only to wheel it back in. Is it is this week? I mean, how, how do you see this week's reaction? It's a big move that's happened. Massive move. I mean, I want to say it's an overreaction. I want to say that we're not, you know, I think 2021 for a large part of that year, we had underplayed our inflation expectations. I think we're now overplaying them. But we have to talk about China, at least briefly, because that is one of the critical sort of uncertainties around everything. And that's particularly on the inflation side, but also on the supply chain side, which plays into inflation, also on the kind of global economic sort of momentum, because China's still operating on this zero tolerance, COVID policy. And if Omicron kind of squeezes and gets out there, and we see a lot more kind of big city lockdowns, then we've got a problem on the one hand, because then you might think, right, global supply chains are going to get squeezed again. And actually, that's really inflationary. And so that's maybe one thing the Fed are worried about. So really, so on the one hand, it's what's China's policy going to be towards COVID. And it's quite interesting to look at their calendar this year. It's an incredibly important year. But early on in the year, we've obviously got things like the Lunar New Year coming start, but you've got the Winter Olympics in Beijing. And this is a global event. And you know, we know how China play this, if they've got the world's media and the eyes of the world on them, because there's some kind of global event happening there, then they want to make sure that it's what the picture that they are painting of their nation is, is the best it can possibly be. So there's certainly going to be zero tolerance, COVID, until at least after the Winter Olympics, right? But just after the Winter Olympics in March, you then get the National People's Congress, which is their annual political meeting. And so some are saying, maybe during that meeting, they'll go, right, let's now we've got past the Olympics, let's now just kind of relax a little bit. But there's one big outlier, which is the big uncertainty. In November, it's the, it's the National Party Congress, which is the once in every five years Congress. And this is massive, because this is the moment where Xi Jinping may well be expected to be given a third and precedented third term. So for Xi Jinping, that November conferences, it's, you could argue the biggest moment in his life, maybe, you know, hugely influential on the way that China gets run, you know, for decades of years to come, right? So it might, some people are saying, well, given the importance of that November meeting, it may be that China operate with zero tolerance throughout the whole year until after that meeting, in which case we may well see these global supply chain issues getting disrupted again, which is I think one of the reasons the Fed are just preferring to be a bit more hawkish here whilst that, you know, uncertainty plays out. But there is a, there is quite an interesting counter argument to all of this. I mean, one side is, well, companies are better prepared now because they've realised the risk with global, let's call it the global supply chain risk. If you're a US company, you've seen firsthand the damage that can be done by being reliant on a global supply chain where you're sourcing products from, let's say, Southeast Asia. You've just been, you've had your hands, fingers burnt over COVID, right? Because you haven't been able to get these products. So, and actually, people have forgotten all about the US-China trade war that was pre-COVID. And actually, so that risk really materialised then 2018, 2019. So you've had a few years now where companies have been trying to start to move their supply chain risk. And on that point with the party congress, you mentioned plus US midterms, that friction is going to get worse, right? Right? Absolutely. So look, companies are looking to move. And that's not an easy thing to move. You know, your supply chain, but they're looking at, you know, other, there's a few options, right? They could go to other Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam or Malaysia, for example, or maybe India, right? But there, the infrastructure is nowhere near as good as China. So you've got infrastructure risk coming in. You could stay in China, but move more internally into the country where labour costs are cheaper. And you've still got good infrastructure, but of course, then all your eggs are still in the China basket. So, you know, you're not really reducing your supply chain risk, particularly there. So others are looking then to move away from Asia. And you might think countries like Turkey or Morocco might be interesting or Eastern Europe might be interesting for European countries. But the big winner out of all of this is Mexico, where you're seeing a lot of US firms, how are they dealing with this global Southeast Asia supply chain risk? Well, that's just shifted all to Mexico. But as I say, it takes years to get all this, you know, your factories built and your, you know, all this infrastructure in place. So it's happening. So, but look, the point is it's too early yet. Definitely companies are still, you know, very reliant on China production. But there's one other thing, right? If China still have zero tolerance, then what happens is the trade surplus stays very high. So this is where they're exporting a lot of stuff, because the world's coming out of COVID and buying stuff, but internally internal consumption is damaged because of lockdowns, right? So the surplus stays really high. Now, the problem with that is China want to maintain their peg, the reninbi peg to the dollar, okay? If the dollar's strengthening because of the super hawkish fed, then really the reninbi, if they want to maintain the peg, they're going to have to be buying dollars or dollar denominated assets, right? So if the surplus stays wide, they're buying dollar denominated assets, which is US government bonds. So if they're having to buy US government bonds in huge quantities because of their zero COVID lockdown and their big surplus, then this actually means bond prices go up and yields come down. So ironically, it could be that this economic risk in China and zero COVID tolerance actually leads to bond yields staying depressed, which then in turn is really good for your spec tech and your kind of cyclical stocks. So even though China's a really big risk, if you go one kind of derivative on that risk actually can be spun in a positive way for things like US tech stocks. So yeah, China's a big risk. That's the big outline for me in 2022. What happens in China? Cool. Well, some really fascinating points there, and I think really eloquently deconstructed as ever by the master himself. So any questions at all that you ever have for us, by the way, on anything that we discuss, just shoot us an email. You can email me directly, a.chung, c-h-e-u-n-g at amplifytrading.com. Happy to also get your feedback on the pods and anything you want to hear about in the future as well. Again, just to conclude things then, if you're new to listening, really appreciate it. If you could follow or subscribe, depending on your platform, for an Apple drop us a rating and review really helps get it out to as many people as possible. I hope you found this episode interesting. And yeah, thank you, Piers, as ever, and I'll see everyone next week. Yep. Have a good weekend.