00:00Mark, good morning to you. So let's start with the yen and actually put it in a wider context
00:05because obviously the other side of that yen strengthening is dollar weakness and the dollar
00:10seems to be weakening for all kinds of reasons. Geopolitics in the Middle East, also perhaps the
00:13hangover from the Fed last week and what we heard or didn't hear from the new Fed chairman. What
00:19does that add up to in terms of the dollar from here? Yeah, I think it was potentially pivotal
00:27week for the dollar in terms of that even before the intervention, as you outlined there, Anna,
00:32the Fed really kind of did not have a meeting that it kind of implied much credibility and that
00:38undermines the dollar long term. Then when you follow that up with the U.S. supporting intervention
00:43by Japan and we all said intervention in Korea and Taiwan. So, you know, multilateral intervention
00:49essentially against the dollar at a time when its own central bank is undermining it.
00:53That means it could be a big turning point. Now, I'm a little bit nervous despite being someone
00:58who's kind of structurally kind of long term bearish the dollar. I'm not quite sure it's
01:02ready to turn yet. And I do note that the price action in dollar yen, if you're the Bank of
01:07Japan,
01:08must be very disappointing so far. I mean, dollar yen again bounced a percent from this morning's lows.
01:13And I really think that officials need to probably get it below 155 tonight. Otherwise,
01:19I think the price action for those who are bearish dollar yen is quite worrying at the moment,
01:25given it keeps on bouncing back so rapidly.
01:29Mark, when we look at the stocks picture, you've got you've had a negative session in Asia compared
01:33to the rosy outlook for futures on both sides of the Atlantic this morning, the oil story feeding
01:40into the positive sentiment. But in Asia, a lot of it seems to be about concern on Chinese AI
01:46competition. How seriously should we be worried about that as a threat to other kind of tech
01:52stocks in the in the Asian continent?
01:57I think the the new Chinese models, while there may be only another incremental development in
02:03this story, is probably one of the most momentous things to happen in the last few days in markets.
02:07And that's despite the fact that we've had yen intervention. We've obviously got the US Iran
02:11twists and turns. But I think you know, this is really changing the AI trade. Now, it's going to
02:16take some time to kind of work out. But I think it again threatens the the whole hyperscaler kind of
02:22business model in terms of how they're spending. I think probably one of the I mean, the people are
02:27really sophisticated on this AI trade will kind of nail exactly which stocks will will win and lose
02:32out of this. But I think at a bigger picture level, it again, probably suggests the rest of the
02:36world outperforms US stocks over the long term. That's a theme we've seen over the last 18 months,
02:40but US stocks have been making a comeback up until two weeks ago, they'll now underperform again,
02:45because their price to get a disproportionate amount of the gains from the AI theme. When in fact,
02:50I think Chinese models are saying that they're going to democratize the returns, everyone's going to
02:55benefit now exactly which stock markets in Asia may be harder to take. But I think that's the bigger theme
03:00is that, you know, the rest of the world, EM, other countries that haven't got these hyperscalers
03:05can still benefit from the AI boom, they can still benefit from the productivity boom. I think
03:10it might be less positive for Korea that's based purely on the on those kind of two big memory
03:16chip stocks. But it's good for other outcomes. And Europe's benefiting from lower oil prices as well.
03:21So I think the bigger takeaway is rest the world to continue outperforming US stocks as has been the
03:26female last 18 months.
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