00:00I think if you were to sort of tie two themes together, you've got the US economy, the Chinese economy, both did better than expected.
00:09How does that set us up then for equity market trading activity into next year?
00:14Yeah, and particularly in China, I guess Chinese stocks were cheap at the start of last year, weren't they?
00:19They're no longer cheap.
00:20And everyone is, if you look at all the outlooks for 2026, everyone is pretty much the same way focused.
00:27That it's going to be OK growth, not stellar, not recession, OK growth.
00:31It's going to be interest rates around neutral.
00:34Government bond yields have come down.
00:36So it's a benign, I guess, benign positive outlook.
00:39But frankly, that's what's priced in into markets again, isn't it?
00:42But what I would say, which is really fascinating, is that everyone is so closely around that benign outlook.
00:48It's so concentrated.
00:50So if we do get a risk either way, I think the market reaction is going to be quite exaggerated.
00:55That's the thing that we're trying to think about.
00:56Well, let's go to the U.S. right now.
00:57What is your outlook for the beginning part of the year, where some people are saying that the specter of inflation will rear its ugly head on the back of the tariffs that were introduced this year?
01:06And again, you're going to get a change at the top of the Fed as well.
01:09So you have a cut here by Jay Powell last week.
01:13Yeah.
01:13Then or this week.
01:15Then what?
01:15That's probably going to be a pause, isn't it?
01:17But I think that's what everyone thinks.
01:18It's going to be a pause and the rest of the year will be fine as well.
01:22So maybe there could be a bit of a wobble at the beginning of the year just because we don't know what's going to happen.
01:26But everyone is hopeful that there's still going to be a good rest of the year.
01:30From our perspective, we cut a little bit of our equity exposure into the end of the year just because we're worried a bit about the AI wobble.
01:37We're worried about the uncertainty around the Fed.
01:39But our more neutral position going into next year would be to add a little bit of risk and just hold that neutral over the course of the year.
01:45We're a little bit more worried about credit markets than equities.
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