00:00So, Mark, the yen seems to be weakening, yields going higher.
00:04Some of that is what you would expect from a rate hike, but not all of it.
00:07What stands out to you from the BOJ?
00:11I'm really surprised that the yen has continued to weaken here.
00:14And I say that in context that, as you know well, and I'm a structural yen bearer,
00:18I always think the yen is going to depreciate forever more.
00:21But I actually thought that this press conference,
00:23in context that Governor Ueda is always a very cautious individual,
00:27I didn't know what people were expecting.
00:29He was never going to be more hawkish than this.
00:31Sure, he wasn't particularly hawkish, but I thought he was about as hawkish as he was ever going to be.
00:36So, I kind of thought that after the original dollar-yen spike, the market wanted to sell yen.
00:40So, the initial dollar-yen spike did not surprise me at all.
00:43But I thought we'd probably drift lower into the afternoon.
00:45Instead, we seem to be breaking higher out of the range.
00:48Now, there's a bit of a weird dynamic here that we're going to lower liquidity.
00:52As this starts going kind of higher, you actually get a binary situation
00:56where it's unlikely to stay around these levels.
00:58We would start triggering some stop losses if we could drift much higher from here.
01:02So, at the moment, the price action is confusing me.
01:04I expect the dollar-yen to drift lower into the afternoon.
01:07But there's a risk of some funny moves later on, given what's happened.
01:12Mark, did the market overreact to that U.S. CPI print yesterday?
01:15A lot of skepticism from economists.
01:17Some calling it the Swiss cheese report.
01:20It was so holy.
01:21How much do you trust this drop in inflation?
01:24Yeah, I mean, what's interesting is how quickly markets did this kind of dismiss it.
01:32So, markets, the yields did not react much.
01:35I mean, you've seen this exceptionally soft print,
01:38and you'd expect people to price in more rate cuts.
01:41But, in fact, the market barely moved in the yield side.
01:44Now, equities rebounded.
01:45They kind of, they liked that.
01:47But they did, of course, pair that later on in the session.
01:50But, you know, stocks traders are always a bit more optimistic bunch, always more inclined to buy.
01:55This wasn't a bad news data print.
01:58Even if it wasn't, you know, should be dismissed and not taken as a positive,
02:01you couldn't suddenly say, this is a bad news, a reason to sell.
02:04And if you've got no reason to sell in stocks, then you buy.
02:06That's the default action.
02:07But, certainly, bonds traders ignored it entirely.
02:09Okay, I'm going to ask you a really dangerous question now, Mark.
02:13Are we done with 2025?
02:15Can we all take some time off and come back for 2026?
02:21No.
02:22I think, unfortunately, and I say this embarrassingly because I'm heading off on December 24th,
02:28so I'm leaving the problem to my team.
02:30But, look, I think this is a market where the price action suggests that, you know,
02:34the technicals are a little bit fragile.
02:37The market is very bullishly positioned.
02:39And I think, you know, structurally, as we've discussed a lot,
02:42I expect stock markets to make fresh record highs in 2026 easily.
02:46I think it'll be a good first half of the year because of the structural tailwinds.
02:50But I think there are some problems there in terms of risk conversion side that have not played out.
02:54And, again, I still draw attention to the fact that the digital asset treasury companies continue to trade weaker and weaker.
03:00That spreads into the crypto sector.
03:02That spreads into retail sentiment at a time they're getting squeezed by Christmas.
03:05And that kind of weighs on the favorite AI names, the meme names.
03:09And that's why I think it's going to be problematic for another couple of weeks.
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