The rebound in the stock market from the pandemic-induced recession has been breathtaking, with the S&P 500 doubling from its low point in March 2020. Has the proverbial “easy money” all been made? Emily Roland, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management, discusses what to expect in the second year of the bull market. She also talks about the outlook for interest rates and inflation and a host of other current market topics.
Hello, and welcome to What Goes Up, a weekly markets podcast. My name is Mike Reagan. I'm a senior editor at Bloomberg and I'm gonna hir across acid reporter also at Bloomberg, and this week on the show, Well, this was a monumental week because it marked the point where the US stock market actually doubled from the pandemic lows of at least if you're looking at the main benchmark, the SMP five. What does that mean going forward? Have easy gains already been made? And are we do for a rough patch next year? We'll get into it with the co chief investment strategist at a major asset management firm and uh Vltana. I gotta tell you, I'm very excited this week. Um, I'm excited most weeks for the podcast. I gotta say I'm I'm very easily excitable, but I'm especially excited this week because we got a call a voicemail to the Bloomberg podcast hotline. Now, granted it was someone who works for Bloomberg, so the call literally was coming from inside the house, but it still counts and I'm very excited and that that's sort of a reminder to me that I have not been reminding people to call the hotline, so hopefully you're more organized than me and have the number handy. What is what is the hotline number of Bill Dona? This is a quiz, This is a test for you. I'm way more organized than you, and thankfully I have it on hand. So if anybody has the craziest thing that they saw internally from Bloomberg or fans outside of Bloomberg, you can give us a call at six four six three two four three four nine zero and we may even play the voicemail on the show. Great and you know what, I'm going to start with a crazy thing. It's not market related, but I've just been informed that our guest this week is up north of Boston where they're actually getting tornado warnings, which I did not think Boston was a very tornado prone place. But tell about that. Our guest this week, her name is Emily are Roland. She's the co chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management. Emily, are you on a bunker right now? Shelter? What what's going on? I'm worried about you. This podcast is far too important for me to be sheltering from this tornado. I'm willing to be blown over for Bloomberg. But yeah, we're we're in a tornado watch right now. It looks like the weather is starting to improve, so we should be in pretty good shape here. I have a swage that children's fears, and I think we everybody should be okay, alright, good, good to know if you so. If your screen suddenly goes dark, I'm gonna I don't know what. We'll send Voldonta up to dig you out. Is that all right with you? Voldona happy to help. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. It's crazier for weather that we had a bunch of tornadoes in New Jersey. I don't remember that before. I know you had one, your parents had one year Trenton. Very strange year for weather. But hopefully, uh, once the summer is over, we'll get back normal. But Emily, let's get to that market discussion. You know, someone pointed out to me this week. Um, it's kind of hard to believe, but the US stock market, at least looking at the sp has doubled since the pandemic lose, which you know, we all sat here on our screens watching it happened. So I don't know why it should be such a surpriser shock to me. But I think when you hit that milestone of a doubled market, it's it's a good time to reflect and just sort of get your take on you know, what did we learn? What did did you learn anything that you didn't know about the market in the past year. I'm not sure anyone really would have guessed we'd see the market double from the lows if if you took a time machine back to March of But what's your takeaway about just sort of this crazy rally we've seen in equities um and and are there any lessons that we should sort of stow away for the future from this? Yeah, I mean, I think the lesson learned is if you want to stimulate the stock market, spend about fIF of GDP on fiscal stimulus and have the Fed double the size of their balance sheet in pretty short order. So certainly those have been the two biggest tail winds for the market since the March low of last year. And I think one of the most interesting and notable things about this bull market that's been unfolding is that it's made of Teflon. There have not been any corrections really to speak up, or draw downs of more than five percent. The dip buyers have come out in full force now. Usually when we look at previous bull markets coming off of bear market lows, year two is a lot harder than year one. So in year one we see this meaningful asset appreciation. We see basically the rally and everything, any type of risk you want to take is rewarded. Typically in year two markets become a bit more choppy, and certainly we saw that after oh eight and oh nine where we saw a big correction and coming into year two of that of that bowl market, and this time we simply have not seen the volatility. So markets are looking past it. We've got easy central banks still in place, still, fiscal stimulus tail winds, and earnings growth is just going through the roof. So those have been really powerful factors I think driving markets higher. And then at the same time, I had a story earlier this week that said options tape for virus traders picked their poison, and I am hearing from a lot more people that there's just some worries swirling around. So I'm wondering how you guys are positioning. If you're positioning more defensively, maybe you can tell us a bit more about your strategy. Yeah. I think the spread of the delta Varrian has been exacerbating a backdrop that was already in place, which is that economic growth continues to be strong, and we've seen that this week with the leading indicators coming in at ten percent growth year every year. That's a great reading. But it's starting to moderate, and it's become clear to us that the peak and the economic data was probably back in April. Now it's not an extraordinarily bearished message. You can still be a powerful driver for risk assets as the economy continues to improve, but we are seeing that moderation and growth play out, and what that means to us from an investment positioning standpoint is that it's time to be more thoughtful about what you own. We talked before about kind of the risk everything rally. It didn't matter what you bought over the last twelve months or so. Now as we sort of head into the mid cycle environment, it becomes harder, and that's one of the reasons we've been really focused on things like the quality factor, so looking for companies and sectors and have great balance sheets, good return on equity, the ability to maintain margins regardless of the economic growth backdrop. To us, that's going to be increasingly important. I've been thinking about this analogy. Summer's winding down here in Boston. My my kids were on the swim team this year. Um, they weren't very good, but I noticed the other day they handed out all the ribbons, right or the medals that they want in all their swim team races, and I noticed they came home with a bunch of them. I thought, well, every kid really does get a ribbon. And then I started thinking, it's kind of like the market over the last fifteen months or so, everybody gets a ribbon. And I think as we transition into this mid cycle environment, it's going to be more like the Olympics, where it's just going to be the best who are really rewarded. So again that's the reason for the focus on fundamentals and the focus on that quality factor as we evaluate the investment opportunities. God bless you, Emily. I uh, thankfully none of my kids were swimmers, but I know that every swim meet is approximately thirty seven hours long. Somehow, somehow, so I'm sure it's been a long summer, and congratulations on the ribbons, said, I think that the reason for the many ribbons is there's also about eight hundred events that every swim meet, so there's plenty of plenty of chance to to Uh. I wanted so I was, I was reading one of your recent pieces of commentary, and I wanted to ask you about something in it. Um and you, as you put it out, you know this the fiscal stimulus that's in the rear view mirror, I mean, unprecedented, the five trailing as you point out the direct payments, you know what they used to call helicopter money basically, and um, yes, we've got some more coming from the infrastructure spending bills. We don't know exactly how much yet, but there's something in the pipeline. Um obviously not going to be as big of a a sort of injection of money into the economy as as we saw last year. But um um And you make a good point, you say, uh, you know this and your not this stimulus is unlikely to be matched talking about last year's um and if that's stimulus that we just did not create a higher tenure treasury yield it is n likely that a smaller package that is less direct in dissemination into the economy creates a meaningful higher yield than where we are. You know from sort of the supply of treasuries that that makes sense to me. But I do wonder about the other side of the ledger with you know, who's buying the treasuries. We we have the Fed buying eighty billion a month in treasuries forty billion in mortgage backed securities. The tapering, The time to talk about talking about tapering is over, and now I think it's the time to actually start tapering very soon. Um. If you listen to James Bullard of the Fed this week, uh he said, And I don't know if this is just sort of bravado talk, but he said he wants the tapering to be finished by the end of the first quarter of next year, which would imply a very aggressive uh pace of tapering, at least compared to the last time they tried to get out out from under QUEI and which you know famously caused the taper attention. UM, So I wonder, you know, I guess there's two ways that could play out. You know, you remove this huge buyer from the treasury market in the fed UM And my first instinct would be, well, obviously yields are gonna go higher. But then you know, on the second thought, it's like, well, is it going to create this risk off environment everyone's going to freak out about the tapering And is that actually gonna cause people to pile back into treasuries and yields to go lower? So how much is the tapering sort of play into your view and yields and which side you know it could? Could both of those sort of be true and that we see a spike and yields and then sort of a risk off environment. I don't know, how do you all see it playing out once we do push the button on tapering? Can I just say sorry? Can I just say, Mike, you get ribbons for the longest question in the industry of the world. That's nothing much longer. I'm about to say the same thing. And there were so many juicy nuggets and questions in there, and I think you've hit on something that is so crucial tomorrow gets right now, which is you know, what impact does tapering have? And if you look back at the last two examples when QWI ended so if you look at you know, QUE two QWE three UM. Actually what happened was that when the FED started to taper or started, you know, stopped increasing the size of its balance sheets sheet, the tenure treasury yield actually fell. And it's for the exact reason that you pointed out, which is that the Fed's basically removing the punch bowl, which is feeding risk assets and causing investors to want to take more risks. So when the FED starts to pull the punch bowl away, that creates this risk off environment where investors actually start to embrace treasuries again. So that's one reason we actually see ultimately the path of the ten year treasury moving lower for here from here, another thing to think about. Typically what happens in terms of the ten year treasury is the yield peaks right after a risk session, and we saw and that's true if you look back at the last four recessions in the US, and so what we saw in terms of a closing yield of one seventy four on March thirty one of this year, and our view, it's got to be on the table in the conversation that that was potentially the peak in the yield of the ten year treasury. Now we might see some further backup, maybe an infrastructure package. Personally, I don't think it's gonna be potent enough to really accelerate growth. It's going to be spread out over a number of years. Um. It's not going to be done via direct transfer payments or stimulus checks. I think it'll probably be less stimulative. UM. So I just don't see the catalyst to move the ten year treasury higher from here in a meaningful way. Emily, what about the stock market? Because I was wondering what you're playing book might be for FED tapering. Obviously this week we had the minutes and they showed that a lot of the officials see a taper potentially starting this year. So what what will be your playbook for this scenario? Yeah, I mean I think it would be a risk to the markets. I think the Fed has been so transparent. You know, Powell has been so resolute in his messaging and crystal clear to us that you know they're they're very much committed to this average inflation targeting framework. They're very much committed to making substantial progress on their economic goals, you know, letting the jobs market fully heal. We just had two great jobs reports. Is that enough to create this sort of quote unquote string of good economic data that the FED would like to see? And we're on our way there. So there has been a bit of a shift to a more you know, hawkish approach from the Fed, but it's been well telegraphed. So I think equity markets can handle it. Um. And you know, you've got to remember that as the said starts easing up here, that's not a necessarily a bad thing. It means the economy is continuing to heal, and it means growth is picking up. Um. So that's a good thing. Um. So I think equity markets could take it in stride. Um. I think you know, one of the bigger risk that's not being priced into the equity market right now is potential tax increases, particularly on the corporate tax side. Um. You know, markets tend we we look at some great research and Dan Clifton over its strategious research partner, just put Partners just put a note out uh this week that you know, basically suggests markets worry about higher corporate tax rates when it's time to worry about higher corporate tax rates, meaning that when they're actually kind of you know, it looks quite likely that they're going to be put in into into law, so that might be sometime this fall, and you might see equity markets get a little bit big jetty around that as it might knock uh you know, maybe five or even ten percent off that corporate earnings outlook. So something to think about there in terms of what might create the volatility in the stock market going forward. So is it the type of scenario that perhaps investors have already priced in to some degree the infrastructure stimulus, but not this notion that we're gonna have to go back and talk about paying for government spending again and not just run deficits to free fall? Is you know, sort of a two sided coin and the market is only looking at one at this point. I think that's right. And you know, markets were continuing to hit you know, new all time Hiyes, recently we've seen a little bit of choppiness UM as of late. But I think right now markets are not thinking about that, They're not anticipating that, um. They're they're focused on some of these these keytail winds that continue to exist around reopening, around that strong earnings back drop, and around continued supportive policy. I covered the Robin Hood earnings earlier this week, and essentially they said that retail mania is cooling. I think they warned about seasonal headwinds. So I'm wondering if you agree with that and what it means for markets. So we look at the activity in retail trading, particularly around the meme stocks, as our kind of gauge of sentiment, of market sentiment. And when you start to see these pockets of frothiness or these pockets of speculation building in the market, you know, that's a that's a notch against wanting to embrace equities. So when we start to see some of that sentiment cool, you know, we we also watch things like cryptocurrencies is another sort of sentiment indicator. When that starts to cool, to us, that's a sign that you know, potentially this equity market actually has more legs and sentiment is not moving against it. So we still want to own equities here. And I'm not totally upset about the fact that, you know, maybe some of that frenzy and retail spending is starting to cool. Hey, maybe people are just getting back to work. Um, you know, we know some of the some of the additional jobless benefits are starting to expire in many states, or maybe people are getting back to school. I can tell you that my eleven year old begged me if he could open up a robin Hood account so he could start trading using his hundred dollars from his first communion money. So now that he's getting back into the classroom, maybe his interest in a day trading is starting to uh subside. Here something to think about, Oh boy, eleven years old, and once though for the rabbit I had my seventh year senior old wanted open one and I thought that was young. But eleven boy, I'd love to know the stock picks of your eleven year old sometime though you can. I think you can guess you can have anything that's wildly risky. And by the way, his I realized this the other day. You know, his entire experience with investing, which started in the beginning of the lockdowns, involves every everything going up. So he hasn't had the experience that the rest of us had and have had in terms of thinking about risk tolerance and trying to figure out how much you can stomach in terms of losses. So I think it's going to be an interesting period for him to to learn and grow. But speaking of that as well, we were looking at some data that was showing cash is actually slowly starting to build up in portfolios and potentially, as you said, some of that euphoric buying from earlier in the year is potentially fading away. So what would that mean for for markets? But what do we make of the idea that potentially we don't have the buy the dip mentality anymore going forward? Yeah, we are seeing if you look at the fun flow data. I think it's a great point, Bill Donna, because you're seeing investors continue to have a more conservative mindset in terms of where they're investing. We saw money market balances UM hit something like six trillion dollars at the height of the pandemic. That they started to come back down again, which they typically do coming out of an election, coming out of a recession, but we've actually started to see the interest in money market funds go back up. The number one asset gathering category UM is tax free bonds, and as we know, that's a huge challenge right now in terms of finding a way to generate yield in an environment which yields are extraordinary look extraordinarily low, and in our view, they're probably going to stay that way. Um, you know, we don't see the Fed going anywhere. We think they're going to have a really hard time raising rates. Is the yield curve is actually flattening right now. The stead doesn't want to risk raising rates into potentially an inverting yield curve. So as we watch this investor behavior of looking to money market funds, looking to bond strategies, we've got to be really careful here about the approach to risk while still giving investors the ability to generate yield. So for us, the sweet spot really has been going into in some grade corporate bonds, looking at the higher rungs of the high yield bond market, the double bees that have the ability to be upgraded as this economic recovery continues to unfold. And then look, every little bit counts in terms of generating yield right now. So when we put a you know, a potential portfolio together, we're trying to get to something like two or three percent. I know it doesn't sound exciting. Fixed incomes not always exciting, um, but we're looking at that without going over our skis too much and taking risk within fixed income and not getting ourselves over exposed to just plain old equity market risk. So when you look at the lower rungs of the high yeld bond market, that's really what you're getting. So it's this combination of investment grade corporate bonds, high high yield bonds, and then still an allocation to higher quality bonds to protect during those periods where you know, equity market volatility wears its ugly head. I don't know if you can get it to two or three percent. That's pretty exciting these days, Emily, is if you can denominate that in Euros, I think you'll have a lot of people knocking on your door, especially to UH to get on that. But I wanted to ask you about you know, and uh Vlbonna and her colleagues recently wrote about this. Um. Katie grit Felt, one of our colleagues especially, I think, wrote about this dirty word that I I I gotta say. Earlier in the year, I was afraid to even say this word out loud. I was afraid I would get chased off of the zoom call or wherever I was speaking. But the notion of stag inflation, and I think you know, earlier in the year, it seemed like such a ridiculous sort of tail risk to worry about because the everyone assumed the GDP growth would just be off the charts as everyone got vaccinated and got back to the world. And I'm I'm winding up here. I'm like a supervillain here in a movie. I'm monologue a little bit here. But but bear with me. I'll get to the question eventually. But you know, you look now, and okay, everyone is still sort of confident that the FEDS right inflations transitory. I don't know if they're as confident as they were about that. Um. And at the same time, you know, this delta variant is unlikely to cause sort of these draconian lockdown measures that we saw last year. I don't think anyone in the country or in the world really has the stomach or sort of the political good will to be able to pull that off. That said, I know, you know, you wonder if people are just sort of self imposed going to start thinking twice about taking a trip, we're going out to eat, or just you know, doing anything in a crowd. Um. And at the same time, you look over in China and you see like part of a ports being shut down because of one case of COVID causing UH these bottlenecks that we had hoped would be alleviated by now to sort of be another risk to the supply chain. UM, if that sort of situation should be repeated. I know there's some some factories in in Asia that have closed down already, you know, some Samsung UH plants and stuff like that. So where do you put stagflation is sort of a market risk right now? Is it a very thin tail risk? Or you know, is it a is the terrorist that's getting fatter? What? What's your take? You know, a few months ago, I would have said it's it's highly unlikely. I think now it's it's on the table as a risk for a lot of the reasons that you've pointed out. We've now got supply chain disruptions, UM that are probably going to be extended or they're already extended. You look at the shortage and chips that continues to impact automakers. You look at the shutdown of these ports and the lines of of of cargo ships outside this Los Angeles shipping terminals. UM. You know all of this is certainly UM, you know, a big challenge to the narrative that inflation is transitory. You also see areas like Shelter, which is a third of of CPI, which is showing some stickiness in terms of rents moving higher. Certainly wage growth another complain on it. UM it's awfully hard for companies to learn in workers by offering higher wages and then lower them. Uh. You know that's not going to happen. And by the way, that's not totally bad news. It's clearly good for the consumer, particularly if if goods inflation starts to moderate, wage inflations elevated. Uh, that that contributes to a strengthening consumer, which we know is going to be critical to the the economic recovery. UM. We also see you know, consumers starting to in a way sort of protest higher prices. You know, you're seeing some dents in the housing market now is is housing becomes unaffordable. You're seeing investors put off purchases of areas that are seeing higher prices. UM. And then of course the delta variant. We're seeing that impact all this high frequency data that I never would have guessed a couple of years ago. I would be looking at things like T s a checkpoint numbers and open table reservations. They haven't rolled off, but they're starting to level out. So it's an indication that, you know, maybe this period of uncertainty is prolonged a bit and that couldn't ultimately translate into inflation. You know, no one's defined transitory yet, I don't know what it means. The FED really hasn't said, you know what it means. So potentially it lasts a little bit longer. But our base cases that you see in inflationary pressures wane as we head into two. And one of the key reasons for that um is that there's some powerful disinflationary forces that we think should reassert themselves, technology being the number one thing. The more improvements you make in efficiency using technology that pushes down inflationary pressures. And that's the reason that my entire career I've listened to investors start to position for higher inflation and guess what, it never pans out right, because technology is such a wildly disinflationary force. You also start to see the base effects, which were your best friend over the last number of quarders here become your worst enemy as you head into two. So the mass starts to work in the opposite direction um where the comps are actually much higher as we had into two, and it's likely to see we're likely to see lower readings next year because of that. So maybe lasts a little bit longer than anticipated, but we still believe that into two we should see these pressures start to mattery. Emily, if we think about all of these things that we just talked about, is it is that one of the reasons that it's been a bit more difficult to make judgment calls on a lot of things. I know there was a Bank of America note that said ten year yields could either be sliding below one percent by year end, or they could be surging as high as two percent, which is just a huge gap. And so what how difficult is it to to be making projections right now? It's incredibly difficult because we've never done this before. Like, think about it. We figured out how to generate inflation, right, you poor five trillion dollars in the economy, and the Fed just buys buys bis, right, we figured it out. We don't know yet how yet get out of it in a clean, soft, soft landing type way. So I think that that's the biggest challenge here. We can look at history, but we've never had an environment in which a global economy is completely shut down and come back. We've never had a recession that lasted a total of two months. So this market cycle is happening at warp speed, which is one of the reasons that I think that it becomes so challenging to navigate these markets. I think what's important to do is maintain that balanced approach, but look under the hood for where the opportunities are. So looking at areas like US MidCap equities, which we think are the right mix of offense in a portfol without going over your skis and taking risk, they have an overweight to areas like industrials, which we think should benefit from things like infrastructure spending as the economy reopens, CAPEX, productivity gains. You want to look at the US quality factor again for those strong fundamentals and great balance sheets. You want to have a little bit of value in there. But you know, I think that this sort of you know, easy gains happened uh starting in the fourth quarter of last year, So you want to be thoughtful about how you approach value. It's less about the highly cyclical, highest beta sectors, and more about looking at areas like healthcare UM that are trading cheap relative to the broad market and have those quality elements that we that we really are focused on right now. So it's really becoming more and more important to make those decisions within your equity bucket UM as we head forward. Well, Emily, as you said, it's a challenging time, a difficult time to make projections. It's also difficult to top fill Donna when it comes to the craziest things in markets in the past week. In our weekly tradition, here stand clear of the craziest things we saw in markets this week. I'll give you fair warning. Vildanna brings an a game to this. But before we before we hear hers, I want to hear that voicemail we got it. I gotta sneak peek of it. So uh, I'm curious if you have some thoughts on this. Listen up, it's a good one. Hey guys, it's Police Marints from Bloomberg Markets Live. The craziest thing I saw this week was talent here buying fifty million dollars worth of gold bars. When's the last time you saw a big tech company buying the lowest thing gold that there is. It seems like a really interesting way for them to invest their cash. Maybe there's something that the Peter Kiel backed company knows that the rest of US doesn't know, especially since they're one of the world's biggest data minors, you know, Emily, this this sounds like the flip side of the coin. So like micro Strategy or Tesla putting bitcoin on their balance sheets, someone actually putting gold. I don't think I've ever heard of this is like a cash management, uh solution. Have you ever heard of a company with just you know, keeping their cash in gold. It's it's bizarre, that's so funny. I was thinking the exact same thing when I heard that about about cryptocurrencies. Um, No, I haven't. And that you know, I think in terms of gold, you know, it's it's lost, it's it's luster here, you know, to us, and certainly as of late, you know what what gold typically needs in order to outperform or to perform well, here is a week or dollar in in higher inflation. So while it might be kind of a potential play on some of those macro forces here over the short term, um, I think there's much better options out there for for this company. For sure. It's a it's an unusual scenario we have now where we have a high inflation and a strong dollar. That's a that's a tricky one, not something not something you've see in the textbooks very often. But Vil donna Um, let's go with you, because I know you've got something good for us. What's the craziest thing you saw this week? I do if you remember, a couple of days ago, there was a huge hack of one of the cryptocurrency defied platforms. It was one of the biggest in the space, and so earlier this week one of our colleagues over care reported that the platform Polly Network, the one that got hacked, ended up offering a job to the hacker, and they are offering him chief security advisor. That would be his I'm assuming it's a heat that would be his his role. Which is which is so interesting because apparently this hacker has been returning some of the money he or she I should say, had hacked and and now also has a job offer from the company that a white hat hacker as they say, who uh, And I've read some interesting stuff about it. He I guess the goal is, you know, he wants to sort of solve these crypto problems so that the whole UH industry does not get get tired and feathered. Because I'm pretty pretty interesting. Stuff. That's pretty good, Emily. I don't know, do you have anything crazy for us this week? You know what, I kind of got a heads up that this might be a question, and I was thinking about it in a way too studious, in serious way. I think, so maybe if you had maybe if you have me back on, I'll try to think of something more fun. But I think one of the most notable dynamics that's played out this week is just the continued pressure that we've seen in Chinese equities, in particular some of the tech names. And I think it's so interesting and I guess weird because coming into this year, I think we can all agree that one of the biggest consensus calls among investors was to be overweight emerging market equities UM, and I think that kind of went hand in hand with, you know, a week or dollar higher commodity prices. You know, I'm naming like a handful of you know, pain trades that we've seen play out over the course of the year, and when we actually came into the third quarter, UM, we had we downgraded emerging market equities and this was before some of these regulatory challenges emerged. UM, just on slowing growth. UM. We noted that, you know, Chinese policymakers were starting to take the foot off the gas in terms of fiscal stimulus, so that sort of credit impulse had begun to roll over in China, and we started to see p m I s, while still elevated about fifty, you know, decelerating, so we decided to take some chips off the table in the margin market equities. Of course, now I wish we had gone more negative on them UM, but we did up our exposure to Europe with those UH proceeds based on a better economic growth trajectory and backdrop there. So I think a big challenge there for investors UM. And we're seeing some of those Chinese internet et s. The dip buying has has sees has been put on pause over the last few days, so no longer sort of seeing that bid there from investors. So tough, tough, tough times in that part of the market for sure, Yeah, you know, and it's it's interesting to see it because of sort of such a self inflicted type of situation, you know, China really causing all this on its own. But I guess you know, uh, someone pointed out to me, well, uh, Si Shing Ping has his sort of left flank of the political party that he has to deal with as well, so not too dissimilar to the US, and they've got a big, big political reshuffling coming up. I think it's either next year the following year, so um politics, Paul Ticks is always the wild card risk factor, I guess. But all right, I'm going to dip again, as I like to do, into the alternative st class. And I really mean it when I say alternative, this time collectible bathing suits. Who knew there was such a thing as collectible bathing suits? But a funny story from Britain's Telegraph about some of the mostly James Bond movies. Apparently the bathing suits in the James Bond movies are pretty hot, but some other movies too. So I'm gonna put you both on the spot here. I'm gonna tell you some of the famous bathing suits that have gone up for auction, and you tell me I want to hear both of you tell me which one you think sold for the most. One was the James Bond movie Doctor No. That's one of the early ones from the sixties. I guess. Uh. The actress Ursula Andress had a white bikini. Uh that went off and sold at auction at Christie's last year, So that's one of them. For the men's where category, we've got the infamous pair of navy and powder blue shorts sized charge and made in Italy by La Perla, worn by Daniel Craig in two thousand and six is Casino Casino Royal and they were actually a tribute to that actress from the Doctor No, so they went up for sale. Finally, we've got uh, Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia bikini Wren in Return of the Jedi, but not is rolling her eyes here? I don't know she obvious answer. I don't think she's seen any of these movies. So I've seen all of them. It's it's the Princess Lea want. So you're going, Princess Leia. You just had that much faith in the in the Star Wars faith for sure. And I love Baby Yoda to all the offshoots and everything alright, baby, Emily, you're agree You're going with Princess Leiah as the I will say that if I were in your shoes, I would have agreed with both of you guys. I would have thought that would have been the one. Those Star Star Wars nerds are something else. But well, tell me this, what do you guys think the highest price of all those three? What? What do you think Princess Lea is bikini? Fetched? Uh, crickets, because we have no idea, like a hundred thousand dollars. I would guess that too, but I'm gonna go with a hundred and one thousand dollars. Well, you're pretty good at banning suit valuations here, I don't know that. That was pretty close to all on the nose. Ninety six thousands, so we're sixty three thousand British pounds. That, however, was not the highest priced banning suit of this list. The Daniel Craig blue and white trunks they sold for forty four forty four thousand pounds roughly. However, the Doctor no Ursula Andress white bikini three hundred and sixty thousand pounds at auction last year. I I can't explain it. I would have gone with Princess Leah myself too good one. What would make that one more valuable? Did it say? I don't know. Maybe it's the oldest um possibly, but I you know, I don't know. I still would have gone with the Star the Star Wars, so it's more vintage as they would say, maybe it's more it's timeless. It's a white bikini. I mean, you know, it never goes out of style. I don't know. Emily really appreciate your time in Troida Discussion. Hopefully we can get you back again sometime in the future. Great, thanks for having me. Thanks what goes up. We'll be back next week and soil. Then you can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, website and app where wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple podcast so more listeners can find us. How do you can find us on Twitter? Follow me at Reaganonymous. Bildona Hirich is at Bildona Hirich. But you can also follow Bloomberg Podcasts at podcast. Thank you to Charlie pallad Up Bloomberg Radio and the Voice of the New York City subway system. What Goes Up is produced by Toe for Foreheads. The head of Bloomberg Podcast is Francesco Leavie. Thanks for listening, See you next time.