What's Happening In Financial Markets Right Now (Stocks, Bonds, FX, Commodities)

End of the week and another busy one indeed. So this is actually hitting your inboxes or your earbuds on Saturday, just to give us time because we're recording this pretty late on the Friday. But yeah, couple things to unpack. We're going to talk about the NASDAQ 100 has hit a fresh record high this week and indeed all US stocks higher. So despite everything you're probably reading in mainstream media, And on Twitter, or X I should say, things are actually looking super positive. But why is that? And we'll have a look at the speed of the recovery that we've had and why. And then we have had Donald Trump again shooting his shots at our dear friend Jerome Powell, and this time it actually did move markets.

Yeah.

So we were talking just the other week about how It's almost like traders seem to look through the noise when it comes to Trump a lot of the time. So why is it that these comments and this idea of a shadow chair, what is that? Who could that be? What does that mean for markets and why did they react? We're going to explain or attempt to. And then finally, I thought just interesting at the very beginning of the week, you probably would've thought what was an escalation because late, I think on Monday, UK time, Iran started firing missiles at a US base in Qatar. And you would've thought, right, I'm long oil. And in fact, you would've been on the wrong side of the biggest one-day fall in nearly 3 years. So go figure. But yeah, there's definitely a rationale as to why traders saw it that way. And some good lessons or takeaways as how to interpret news and analysis in that respect. But Piers, Perhaps let's start with the equity markets. And there's, I know there's been a couple things happening with US Commerce Secretary saying stuff and deals with China and data. So what's been fueling this latest push up?

Yeah, so we are new all-time highs, baby. Nasdaq. And I would imagine, well, the S&P 500's going to open in 5 minutes, less than 5 minutes time as I'm talking. And I would imagine it's going to open at an all-time high. So back stocks back to the top. I mean, European stocks had already made new all-time highs a few weeks back. So really this is the US trying to play a bit of catch up here. But yeah, I mean, firstly it's, well, why did they sell off? Obviously back in April was because of tariff risk and that tariff risk has gone away and that's because Trump's in deal mode and apparently I mean, he says the China deal's signed. I mean, that's it. Zero detail other than that. But he says, yeah, it's signed. I mean, I think the deadline to get it done was, is net in a couple of weeks' time. So I don't know what, I don't understand that if they've signed it, well then it's finalized and why aren't we hearing the detail?

So, so, well, yeah, I think this is connecting the dots. I think what's happened is They've confirmed what they had previously confirmed, which was the first phase, the light touch on specific parts, not on overall trade deals. So they finalized the understanding ahead of the July 9th deadline when the reciprocal tariffs took effect. Yeah.

So I mean, look, I don't think anything's particularly changed in that, you know, we've, I think markets have been in a pretty positive mood for weeks and that's off the basis that a deal's going to get done, right? And so, fine. It's kind of more moving in that direction, which is obviously good.

And then it's also Europe, don't forget though. Yeah. I think this week the Treasury Department in the US announcing a deal with G7 allies to exclude US companies from some taxes imposed by other countries. Yeah. In exchange for removing the revenge tax proposal from Trump's tax bill.

Yeah. So look, that again, that indicates movement. And so, you know, this is all positive continuation of the positive sort of idea that this tariff thing isn't going to be much of a thing. And so what are you left with then? Well, you're left with an underlying pretty resilient economy in the US. You are left with, you know, Europe looking to kind of boost fiscal spending around defense, which is a little bit of a sort of fiscal stimulus in a way. So that's a positive. Obviously you got the geopolitical stuff that's flaring up periodically, but the latest flare-up, we'll talk about it in a minute, but you know, that's kind of flared back down, right? So that's kind of gone away as well. And so, you know, you're left with the idea that the Fed are going to cut rates at least twice. And then now finally, We'll talk in detail, but you know, this Trump shadow cabinet thing, does that mean a more accelerated rate cutting agenda? All of these things are positive for stocks, which is what's helping them along their way.

Yeah, and there were a few economic data points probably supporting that narrative as we'll talk about the shadow council potentially leading towards a more dovish perspective of markets on future rates, but Couple here, three this week. Consumer spending grew in the first quarter, weakest pace since the onset of the pandemic. GDP slid at a downwardly revised 0.5% annualized rate. And then thirdly, recurring applications for unemployment benefits rose to their highest since 2021.

Yeah.

So couple things there, but one thing it was the, of course you had Lots of Fed officials talking as well. They seem to be making quite clear that, look, as per Powell, like there's still a lot up in the air here. We don't know if inflation's going to go up in any way persistently. So yeah, the Fed are sticking to their guns, but the market's decided to shift.

That's right. And you know, I think that some of that data then, right? So let's dive in there. So that initial jobless claims thing. Worst since 2021, right? And so that's a bit of a lead indicator, I would say. So that gets reported and measured every week. So potential kind of lead indicator that you're getting more softening in the labor market, which suggests a slight loss of momentum from a growth perspective backed up by that downwardly revised GDP figure, right? So all this stuff is kind of indicating a potential slight loss in momentum. Which means great, more cuts. So you kind of, from a stock market point of view, again, it's like the gold that we talk about, this Goldilocks scenario where the economy's just coming off the boil a little bit, but not too much that we freak out and panic about a sharp downturn recession, right? It's just kind of a mild slowdown. And then you get the rate cuts coming in, in a more accelerated agenda, possibly, in which case you get your stock markets boosting higher. And look, we're going to get, it's the end of the quarter here, right? This is the final trading day. Oh no, sorry, Monday the 30th of June will be the final day of the quarter. So then we're into earnings season and ultimately for a stock market, in the end earnings season is what it's all about. And look, when you look at the big boys, the S&P 500s and the NASDAQs, then their earnings are looking pretty strong and we're expecting, like we're looking at their Q, like, so in Q1 revenues were up 9.6%. We're expecting, or sorry, earnings profits were up 9.6% in Q1. We're expecting the same again in Q2, meaning that profit growth is really solid. And so, you know, if you're getting solid profit growth at a corporate level, if you're getting a more accelerated rate cut agenda from the Fed, And the economy just losing a touch of momentum, but not too bad, then that's the recipe for a nicely climbing stock market.

And within that, one of the ones I saw was Nvidia shares. Yeah. They've thumped Microsoft off once more. It's almost like the tortoise and the hare, isn't it? It's like Nvidia tends to come and go. Microsoft's always there, just plodding along to final destination. But yeah, I saw that one thing you mentioned there that I read as well was Nvidia trades at 31.5 times expected 12-month earnings.

Yeah.

For context, below its 10-year average.

Yeah.

And actually that's not that far from the NASDAQ's multiple of 27. Yeah. And in combination with big tech seemingly hasn't dramatically pulled back on AI infrastructure, China tensions seemingly don't seem to be impacting that company as to the extent perhaps that we might have first thought.

Yeah.

And this week we had the shareholder meeting at Nvidia, and of course Jensen Huang, who's the best at doing this, was talking about how demand remains really strong. So yeah, I think underneath there, yeah, it's a pretty impressive chart I'm looking at here in Nvidia shares. It's extraordinary. Yeah. That rally there, I mean, that is Sharp.

And I was trying, I was, well, I was actually at Nomura this morning. I was running their summer intern program for their markets interns, and someone was trying to put forward the case that big tech in the US, it's a bubble and it's going to burst. Right. And I was firstly saying, well, that's a brave opinion, but then I was kind of floating exactly what you're saying. And they were saying, oh look, it's like the tech bubble back in 2000. It's not from a valuation point of view, you know, Nvidia's valuation, it's not like, it's not that, it's, it's, I mean, relatively normal for a fast-growing tech firm, right? It's not outlandish in any way. And that's off the back of a 50% rally, right? And still their multiples aren't outlandish. So That rally we see, 'cause look back in off the back of the, obviously the Liberation Day stuff sell-off in April, Nvidia traded down to $94. It's now $156, like bang, straight line, 2 months. Just, and what did you say? You were telling me the, or what was that in market cap dollar terms that it was at? Like $1.5 trillion. It's added to its market cap in the space of like 4 weeks.

Something crazy.

Yeah. To become, yeah.

Panicking, topping up my SIP and they were trading at 100. Oh, and I was thinking, oh, I should have got in at 97.

You can never pick the bottom. That's a hell of a trade if you load it up at 100. Yeah. You are.

Well, look, this isn't investment advice, but the one thing here that just to summarize this segment is that I had looked at some analysis, interestingly, that Bloomberg put out because as you said, we're coming to the end of the calendar quarter. So you tend to sort of get a lot of these pieces where they look at the performance over a period and look at that as in context to the history. And over the past 100 years, so 100 years.

Yeah.

The S&P 500 has dropped 10% and rebounded. So you mentioned the tariffs dropped 10% and rebounded to gain with the same calendar quarter. So it's gotta do it in that same calendar quarter period.

Yeah.

It's only done that 3 times in the last 100 years, what we've just lived through. So I think it's because it's almost like, kind of feels like we've acclimatized now to this extreme bouts of volatility. Yeah. But this is one, only the 3rd time in 100 years. This is one of those. This quarter is quite exceptional then. So the S&P 500 has erased its losses and now is shooting toward the 2nd biggest percentage point recovery in history. The only one that's beaten that, the 1929 Great Depression. It's madness, isn't it?

It is madness. I mean, look, part, part of that, part of that is the fact that Liberation Day was 2 days into the quarter.

So just from a, just from a calendar, just from a calendar point of view. Don't give me that. Don't give me that.

It's been, It has been the mother of all buy the dips. And actually when that dip was happening, I mean, even I was definitely thinking this feels like the most dangerous buy the dip situation I've seen for a long time. How wrong was that opinion? Because it's just been, yeah, off the springboard and back through the stratosphere. So yeah. The buy the dip mode is still here.

Okay. Well, look, let's talk about the US dollar. We've talked about this a lot in recent weeks, but one thing I saw was the Bloomberg Dollar Index fell to a 3-year low. And that move, obviously it's not just happening on one headline, but it did come amid President Trump saying may replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell as soon as September. His term doesn't officially finish till May 2026. There's a bit of nuance behind what this actually means, but yeah, maybe we could just talk about this one and the market's moved here. The dollar weakened, treasury yields dropped, people were accelerating their rate cut bets in the short end of the market. So why this time?

I think it's quite a bit. Because of this shadow cabinet idea. That's why the setup for Trump hasn't changed. He's got a trillion dollars of debt that he needs to roll over and refinance in the next 12 months. Interest rates are at 4.5%. It's very high. It's going to be very expensive, and he really desperately wants to roll over this debt at lower rates. So he needs rate cuts. Powell's not having any of it. And the problem is he can't sack Powell. So the Supreme Court has ruled on that. He can't get rid of Powell before the end of his term. The end of his term's not until May 2026, but he can't afford to wait until May 2026 'cause he's gotta roll over this debt between now and then. So this is kind of his late— look, he's tried the verbal tactic of abuse. And let's definitely use that word because that's what it is. He's been abusing Powell, calling him numbskull. And I mean, all the words you could think of, right? Calling for, I think he was saying he wanted 100 basis point cuts, then it was 200 basis points. I think he's, I think Trump's at 250 basis points of cuts that he wants now. So So what does he do? Well, he's this, this kind of shadow cabinet idea. And by the way, this isn't just suddenly brand new thing, an idea that's come out this week. The shadow cabinet thing has been an idea that's been in the background for, for a while. It's never ha— well, correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know, actually. I certainly never happened in my time. I've never seen it, or I've never seen a shadow cabinet. Scenario ever before. Is that true?

Yeah, there is a, there's a Times Shadow MPC that exists, Times newspaper in the UK. And what that is, is former members, influential people, economists at banks, and they have a meeting a few days, a week before the actual official one. And that's supposed to give you a bit, it used to back in the day give you some signals. What I think here is this is kind of an unofficial term, right, that we are using with the shadow idea, I think it's genius.

Yeah.

For what Trump is doing.

I agree.

The rules are saying he can't replace him and he's accepting that. And whilst the stock market we've just described is at record highs, remember before there's obvious, there's the taco trade. Now what's a key component of the taco trade? Well, stocks need to tank, of which there were before. You remember then the yields moved and tweaked. Getting more expensive on that debt pile. And then he flipped it and we had the taco trade, right? I.e., you know, Trump chickened out and the market reversed. Markets are, you know, are up now. So that gives him confidence to, to, you know, pull out the numbskull, right? But then, you know, you get to deflect some of this economic slowdown. Those data points we've had this week were quite negative. I'd just be like, well, that's obviously Powell's fault because he's not taking action here. Stock market's going up, so I can be pretty heavy with that. And then, yeah, it just, it allows you to undermine the credibility, the influence of Powell, because as a market participant, I have to now start pricing in earlier the new replacement.

Exactly.

And the new replacement, even though he is not in the job for several months or her, Powell becomes a bit of a moot point then. It doesn't matter what he says. Yeah. So who are these other people then?

Well, so hang on then. So let me go through the shortlist. There's 4 that the media, it's the media's shortlist. It's not Trump's shortlist, right? But I, we're kind of assuming it's a pretty decent list. But look, I think that's right. It's kind of that transition of a new Fed chair. It's an uncertainty for the market. Right? Because, right, who is this person? What's their background? Are they dovish? Are they hawkish? You know, what do we, do we expect the interest rate trajectory to change with a new Fed chair? And normally you've gotta wait until they start the job and right then you kind of see, okay, or they've been at the Fed before, like Powell was at the Fed before becoming Fed chair. So it was a bit of a known quantity there, but But I think this is great in that it gives you that kind of on-ramp. It's a bit weird. They're operating in parallel to the actual Fed. So let's be clear, the shadow Fed cannot change interest rates, but markets can start pricing. They're pricing in the shadow Fed's rate trajectory rather than the real Fed's rate trajectory, because Powell's going to rotate off. So I actually think it's really clever. But he needs, Trump now needs the shadow Fed to be really dovish. So who's he going to appoint?

Right. Just to be clear, it's not a shadow council, it's a shadow chairman.

Yeah, sorry. That's right. Yeah. So it's just one individual. So that's an important point, right? Because that FOMC committee that sets interest rates is, that's a democratic situation. You can't have a new Fed come in and just they do whatever they want. So that's to be factored in. But right, who, so who, who does Trump want? And so there's the, the shortlist are Scott Bessant, current Treasury Secretary. You've got Kevin Walsh, who was, well, I'll go through in a bit more detail on each in a second. You've got Kevin Walsh, you've then got another Kevin, Kevin Hassett, and then you've got a guy called Christopher Waller. These are your lineup now. Bessant then, so obviously we know about him, he's the Treasury Secretary. What you might not know about him, he was a hedge fund manager before he became Treasury Secretary. He used to work for the Soros, George Soros Fund. Very successful there at the Soros Fund to the point where he then span out and set up his own fund, which was called, or is called Key Square Capital. Okay, so that's his fund. Now, what has his track record been like since he kind of went solo? And actually not particularly good to start with. He launched it in 2015 and through till COVID kind of underperformed, but post-COVID he really came to life. And actually in 2022 he had a 29% return. Why? Because he correctly bet that inflation would overshoot. So he's kind of got this, he seems to be he seems to have a really insightful sort of way of predicting inflation. You would say better than the Fed because the Fed cocked that up entirely back in 2022. They just, well, they were talking about it was going to be transitory. They waited way too long to start hiking. So Bessant called it. And so maybe seems to have a better handle on inflation, which I think's interesting. But actually his fund has, it hasn't done that well because of that track record pre-COVID where they underperformed. He had, he had $5 billion under management in 2017, kind of post-launch, $5 billion. By the end of 2023, it was down to $600 million. Not from losses, but from people pulling their money out. So yeah, he's had a good year in 2022. He had a great career at Soros Fund, but it's kind of been petering out. So I think that's kind of, it was good timing for him to kind of take on that role of Treasury Secretary. In Trump's administration. So it could be an interesting one. Obviously, Trump would have to find a new Treasury Secretary if Bessant goes that way. So that would be a headache. These others then, well, Kevin Walsh, the media are putting forward. I don't think this is going to happen. So he served as Fed Governor 2006 to 2011, okay? During the financial crisis as well, he was one of the Fed Governors, but he's typically quite hawkish. So for me, I mean, Trump is not going to appoint a generally hawkish person. So I think you can eliminate Kevin Walsh purely on that. Kevin Hassett then, he's more in the— so a past chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Really hardcore economist, right? So economic theory is his thing. He's currently the National Economic Council Director. He spent some time with the Fed as an economist, so an economic advisor to the Fed Board. And he's quite tight with Trump, quite tight with the inner circle. So could be a potential pick. And then Christopher Waller, a monetary economist, former St. Louis Fed research chief, known to be— well, he's been dovish in the past, but actually was hawkish when the inflation crisis began in 2022. Seemed to call that inflation spike early, but he's typically dovish. So he could be an interesting one as well. So yeah, I'd say it's probably Hassett, Waller, or Besson in my mind.

Yeah. If you're watching the video version of this, I'll put a chart on the screen and you can see here basically scores that are based on natural language processing. So NLP to evaluate members' public comments on a scale of dovishness to hawkishness. And the headline frequency. And you can see this one person sticks out on the far left.

Waller.

In isolation, absolutely no friends at all, is Waller. Super dovish. Quite distinctly dovish. And this is the context of the here and now. So like you said, may have been a bit of shifting in the past, but presently sat. And yeah, it's such an interesting intersection of politics and economics because if I was Waller, think what you may of Trump, but this is my, I could, this could be a little side door here where I can jump in and fulfill my ambitions of becoming the Fed chair. So what's the cost of that? Well, it's the cost of like Elon paid the cost.

Yep.

But it's, it's there for the ambitious.

I think you're right. I think Waller, now that you've said that, I actually think he's probably the best pick for Trump in terms of Trump getting what he wants. So installing that shadow Fed chair, Waller, who then carries on being really dovish, but his comments become much more market impactful because he's incoming Fed chair. And then yeah, the idea being as soon as he gets in and heading up that FOMC, then he really tries to set forth a much more accelerated rate cutting agenda. So, and look, that's why the dollar's weakening. It has moved markets. This, that's why stocks are new highs, right? It is because markets are really starting to wake up to the idea that this Trump could actually pull this off in terms of getting yields down in order to refinance at lower interest rates.

Cool. Okay, well let, let's move on to the last one. And I think last episode, in fact, we were talking about, you know, kind of all of the, the satellite images and things we could track from Iranian infrastructure. Because at the time, if you remember, it was pending that they were going to attack. So, one thing in retrospect that's a good takeaway from that is when you have sources familiar with the matter reported by the FT or Bloomberg, it's as good as gold. Like, that's gonna happen. So that preparation needs to take place at that point. You can never pin the exact time of the strike because you don't have that level of intelligence, but you can definitely start to synopsize of what could happen and build out your scenarios and so on. One of the things here then was that it looked like, I mean, I remember I got alerts on my watch and it was like, Iran bombs US base is all it said. And I was like, oof. And I was like, quickly, like, jump on my phone. What is going on here? So I'll walk you through the headlines as they came out with the timestamps. So 5:30 PM Monday, Iran started firing missiles at a US base in Qatar. 7 minutes later, oil traders then took it upon themselves. So within a matter of minutes, Essentially is the takeaway. Started selling.

Yeah.

Now in your head you'd be like, right, surely they've, Iran's committed the ultimate sin here. This is going to be, all hell's going to break loose. Now they've attacked a US base and actually crude drops over 7%. Yeah. And that was one of the biggest one-day falls in nearly 3 years. So I had a lot of questions from people. Asking me at the time, like, why and things like that, because they're not following this stuff so intently. But perhaps we could sort of unpack a little bit of what was going on.

I mean, firstly, this is highly unusual. I can't actually really ever remember a scenario like this where, you know, essentially you get then the next, the retaliatory action that leads to a sharp collapse in oil prices. And I think, so you gotta go deeper, right? It does completely make sense when you piece it together because this was one of the most telegraphed, one of the weakest possible retaliations that could have possibly happened. It was so weak and so telegraphed, as in they warned the US well in advance. That then they sent 14 rockets. Obviously the rockets are gonna get shot down and it's gonna cause zero damage. So the point is it was Iran just kind of ticking that box of, we need to retaliate, you know, we've been hit, we need to retaliate back. But it was basically them saying, you know, we're gonna do the least we possibly can to obviously therefore avoid this thing escalating, because look, if they'd have gone much bigger and if bombs had hit the airbase and actually damage done, and dare I say, kind of US military personnel casualties, well then, right, oil would've gone the other way. Right. But none of that happened. And so it was just a token gesture, meaning that we could start to be more confident that this was the end to the matter. And that it's not going to escalate. And actually the opposite, this whole thing's going to start to de-escalate and the deal's going to get done. So that's what happened.

Yeah. And this is like a key difference that I always try to explain to people about the difference between traders who are on the sharp end of access to information via technology often, and access through monetary means to access big data sets. Advanced satellite imagery as compared to your retail punter at home. Yeah. Who's trying to trade this thing with secondhand information. 'Cause yeah, I was looking at one of these graphics of satellite images that were shot of one of the main airbase in Qatar. And actually I used to see these all the time when I used to work on my old desk and it'd be, you're literally looking at planes parked on the runway. Yeah. And if you, are they there? Are they not? And you can track that stuff in pretty real time if you have access to the right services. And you could see that basically all of the entire place had been evacuated. And so, yeah, there's these little hints that you get. And I think I was, I guess, standing back and looking objectively and simplifying massively, critical infrastructure was avoided. In a strategic retaliatory response, is the Strait of Hormuz damaged or blocked or impeded? No.

Yeah.

And so that's the worst thing has not materialized, or the most obvious thing that you would've thought. And so anything other than that is not as serious in terms of the level of escalation to take it over and above. So yeah.

One thing I think that— On the Straits of Hormuz, sorry, just to jump in there. It's the, the reason why oil went up in the first place was pricing in a risk that there would be some disruption in the Straits of Hormuz, which is where a huge amount of that, you know, Kuwaiti, Iranian, Iraqi, Saudi Arabian oil kind of gets shipped through, right? That, that was the risk. That's why oil went up, pricing in a higher likelihood that happens. Basically this episode, Iran could have chosen to retaliate by disrupting the Straits of Hormuz. They chose not to. They chose this tiny little, almost token gesture thing, meaning we could properly price out the risk of a disruption event in the Straits of Formosa. So prices came back down because we don't think that's going to happen now.

Yeah. The Straits is interesting because it also compromises their relationship with one of their key allies, which is China, who are also dependent on trade outside of just commodities. So one thing then, so a few, I kind of summarized in a piece I did earlier in the week, and maybe I could just go through that to conclude. So a few takeaway lessons here. One is think with your financial markets hat on, not with your normal consumer head on when you are reading, watching the news, because it looked terrible what was unfolding and oil was going complete, having the complete different interpretation of the situation. The other things are where does information come from? Because I think a lot of people naively think, yeah, I just look at my Bloomberg terminal. Bloomberg's the master of all universe of information flow. And data analytics. But I can tell you this for sure, Bloomberg is not even worth switching on for this type of information. It's just not built for it. It's not really their domain, their niche, if you like. This is where you go to, like we said last week, S&P Platts, and you have very sophisticated real-time information metrics, visual cues, satellite imagery. This is where you can track that. That stuff. And social media is surprisingly good. I was talking to some other trader friends, they were all looking at social media as well to get signals and signs of things. 'Cause you get a lot of on-the-ground coverage that's unedited, not gone through an editorial process. So it's much faster from speed perspective. So that's one. Two, markets are forward-looking. So yeah, the missile strike. Wasn't priced on emotion, it's priced on what traders believe is going to happen next at the critical point. So risk is falling as you described. The next one is about if the Straits of Hormuz is deemed safe, then traders looking to pivot back to the actual underlying fundamentals of oil at the moment. OPEC are increasing supply. There's an oversupply, there's weak demand. We just said the US economy, if anything, is slowing. Yeah. So oil should be lower. This is almost like an artificially stimulated price that's, that fundamentally should be lower. So once risk premium is off, fundamentals are on, so to speak. Yeah. And you get this reversion back to the mean.

And then don't, don't forget the oil's, yeah, as you said, it's been trending down for 2 years. This is like a little 1-month sideshow. As this Iranian thing happens, not even a month, sorry, what am I talking about? A week where it's kind of blipped higher and then it's back. Basically we're back now, as you said, as you were, you know, and that was a downtrend. So, oof.

I thought this was going to turn into the Oasis warmup for the August tour in the UK. But yeah, then my final point was disentangling noise from consequence. And what I mean from this was Yeah, cutting through that, those headlines, has the strait been blocked or damaged? And understanding the greater thing that's going on here, Iran's relationship with China I mentioned, but also think diplomatically for Israel. If they're to start to be a catalyst to cause such a consequence, if the Strait of Hormuz gets blocked, that's a major problem globally, economically. It's right up there and that throws every part of our conversation about future interest rates out the window then.

100%.

So they're not going to, you know, you would think the probability of them getting to that point of causing that type of level of retaliation is lower in terms of its prospects. So yeah, main thing is, I guess to conclude, I'd say on my side, curiosity over certainty and insight Insight over instinct.

Nice. Like it. Insight over instinct. Yeah, I'm going to use that.

As you were, Chris.

Did you come up with that? You've lifted that off ChatGPT, haven't you? Yes.

Hey, I'm just using the tools available at my disposal. You can't blame me for that.

Uh, all right.

All right.

On that note.

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