00:00Mark, we have not mentioned perhaps as much as we should have done so far this hour.
00:04Oil prices up by 7 tenths of a percent right now on Brent, 71.22 as I speak to you.
00:09Every weekend, it seems, over the last month or so, we go into the weekend a little tense,
00:13a little nervous about what might happen in the Middle East.
00:16What's your thinking around oil and the Middle East outlook?
00:22Yeah, absolutely, Anna.
00:23That is the setup that every weekend we've got to be prepared.
00:26Now, it feels like for the last year we've had to be prepared for every weekend.
00:29If it wasn't Iran, there might be some other Trump action out there.
00:32That said, it seems like the expectation in the market for any serious escalation this weekend is very low.
00:39That means, obviously, if there is something that happens, it will have an outsized reaction when markets open on Monday.
00:45So we're all on alert but not expecting anything.
00:47That's what we're kind of prepared for for the weekend.
00:49I think at the moment, there's a lot of turmoil going on underneath the hood in markets,
00:54which we've talked about a lot, mainly driven by the kind of evolving AI trade.
00:58But from a macro lens, markets have been incredibly stable recently.
01:02I'm finding it very uninspiring this Friday.
01:04You've got rates markets have been kind of in a tight range for a long while.
01:07FX markets going nowhere again.
01:09You know, compared to the start of last year where we had really, really exciting macro markets again
01:13in terms of the FX and rate sides, you know, with the big dollar downtrend, it looked like at the
01:18start of the year,
01:18we're going to get another leg in that.
01:19We did get one more leg.
01:20We've kind of paused again.
01:21So I think we're waiting for the next big macro trigger.
01:24And I think everyone's wondering whether that coincides with a more extended equities sell-off
01:30or whether it's the next major leg higher in U.S. stocks.
01:35Mark, we've been reflecting that it's been a record February for Asian stocks,
01:39but the KOSPI selling off, is that all there is, at least for Korea?
01:45I mean, I think the KOSPI was down 1% today, which relative to, like, whatever it was,
01:51300% in the last year or something, and 50% so far a year to date is kind of
01:54irrelevant.
01:55That's the kind of move it makes in a few seconds at the moment nowadays.
01:58We did actually think that the Bloomberg terminal might be broken when we saw it was negative prices on KOSPI.
02:03It is such a rare event.
02:04You know, it's just you don't normally see that anymore.
02:06But, no, look, I think everyone knows why the KOSPI trade is doing well.
02:11The index, it's kind of important, is really dominated by two stocks, SK Hinex and Samsung.
02:16They are great companies that are going to, everyone expects to benefit from the AI boom.
02:20I'm in that camp as well.
02:21The stock market's not overly expensive.
02:23These stocks aren't overly expensive.
02:25It's a sustainable trade, but might have gone a little bit too carried away in the short term.
02:30So, you know, just over 50% already in the first two months of the year is just too much,
02:34too quickly.
02:35Even if longer term, it's probably quite a good region.
02:39Mark, what's the result going to be?
02:41Ireland-Wales.
02:45We've got another week.
02:46I'm so upset.
02:47This week, it would be much easier if I had the rugby to look forward to.
02:50Part of the reason I'm so disappointed this Friday is there's no Sixth Nation.
02:53But, of course, Ireland are going to win.
02:55It's not that this Ireland team are as good as they should be, despite the record victory against England at
02:59Twickenham last week.
03:01But, you know, fortunately, Wales are really quite useless at the moment.
03:05With apologies to all Welsh people out there, they really are terrible at rugby.
03:08I don't think we heard that.
03:09Did we hear that?
03:10Record victory against Twickenham?
03:12Against England at Twickenham?
03:13Yeah.
03:13We'll look past that, of course, that brutal result and well-earned, of course, by Ireland.
03:17Mark, thank you very much indeed.
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