00:00Mark, good morning to you. Let's have three minutes on the markets there. And a lot of the negativity, easy to attribute to Oracle.
00:06NASDAQ futures are down more than E-minis, for example, and that's a focus for tech.
00:11But you think there's something more negative about the Fed that maybe that narrative ignores?
00:16Yeah, definitely. Oracle has been a driver of negativity today.
00:20Now, it was slightly delayed reaction in terms of Asia because after SoftBank also fell on the Oracle story that Asia got a little bit more negative about it.
00:28But I think the people are also a little bit more disappointed by the Fed.
00:32The narrative in real time, and I was kind of following the coverage in real time, was that this is, you know, definitely good for stocks into year end.
00:39It wasn't as hawkish as it could have been. And they're buying Treasury bills.
00:43And this is in the context that, you know, the Treasury is issuing Treasury bills to kind of juice the economy and the Fed's buying them.
00:50That's obviously quite good for financial assets. So this was seen as generally positive for the stock market.
00:54The price action today has been a bit more negative.
00:56Now, it could be just a little bit more of, you know, buy the rumour, sell the fact event.
01:01But I think also people are realising that, you know what, we just don't have any certainty on policy next year.
01:08And I think that's maybe kind of gone, hey, with no certainty, we're going to a lower liquidity time of year.
01:13It's been a great year. Maybe it's just time to take some money off the table.
01:16I think that explains some of the price action today.
01:18OK. Can I just come back to the QE question?
01:2340 billion. This sounds awfully like QE to me.
01:26And the market reaction, the market function, sort of reaction function over the last few years has been CQE equals liquidity by risk assets.
01:37Isn't that all you need to know coming out of yesterday?
01:39I think you're right, Guy, in terms of that's the most important takeaway from yesterday.
01:46And look, as we've talked about a lot in this show, I think that stock markets go a chunk higher again in 2026.
01:53And the backdrop is growth that's staying relatively resilient and exceptionally supportive central bank from the Fed.
01:59We're getting fiscal stimulus generally around the world.
02:02And, you know, we've got an administration that's trying to juice asset prices and the AI bubble is still in the inflation stage.
02:09So I think stock markets go a lot higher.
02:11I understand, though, why investors aren't playing that on the immediate basis.
02:15And I remain in the camp that even though I'm kind of structurally quite bullish into next year, I think it remains difficult this side of Christmas.
02:21I'm not bearish, but I just don't think this is the time to get on board the bullish trade just yet.
02:27The Fed is behind us.
02:29We've got these Oracle numbers still working our way through that, and that will have an impact on today's trade, Mark.
02:33But what of the events that still left this year do you think is going to be the biggest focus for markets or should be more of a focus for markets?
02:43I think that's the problem is actually there's a lot next week.
02:46I mean, normally kind of the Fed marks almost the end of the year, but it's a little bit earlier than normal.
02:51And then we've got ECB, Bank of England, Bank of Japan.
02:53These are all central banks that have something in play.
02:55As you know, I normally think ECB is boring, but it's not so boring as normal because of Schnabel's hawkish comments.
03:02Now, she is the most hawkish member of the board, but still, the rates, yields have really repriced there.
03:07Everyone's expecting a dovish cut from the Bank of England.
03:09Maybe it's a hawkish cut given how every other central bank's changing.
03:12We've got the Bank of Japan.
03:15They'll probably disappoint at the end of the week.
03:16And the Labour report out of US is even more important than normal, given what Powell said.
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