Kopi Time E143 - Markets and Policy Path Dependence with Mustafa Chowdhury

and Macro analyst. During a three decade career. He has held senior positions in Freddie Mac Bear Stearns Deutsche Bank where I had the pleasure of interacting with him, Bluecrest Voya and most recently Macro hive, we had him on copy time, mid last year when

we discussed at length the US, fiscal and monetary policy outlook. Today, we will discuss the US, but then we will widen the discussion because Mustafa has very interesting insights on international macro, especially pockets of value in em assets, not just with short term but also medium term perspective. Mua choi. Welcome back to K Kobe Time.

So now we're sitting at the end of 2024. Do you still maintain that view?

But this last few years in the US was a striking reminder that if uh the inflation that the consumers feel was quite different from what the data was showing and we saw uh the Michigan survey one year ahead, inflation persistent at a fairly high level. And while we saw the CP I pieces of the core P ce although stayed fairly elevated, uh uh uh uh would come down quite hard. So that sort of effect, you can tell that affecting the political outcome in the US in all of the survey results,

people still feel inflation. And so it, I know that it's very hard uh for economists to have a clear concrete, they need a uh we, as economists need a concrete measurement of uh of inflation. So we do have to go through this very public approach, but we, we have to still figure out if there's few other estimates that reflect how

people feel inflation. For example, the month before the election in uh in September, when the CP I came out just the everything was the inflation numbers, the headline numbers are good co uh co CP I was good. But if you just separated out the egg price inflation, it was 20% increase in egg prices. So anyone who are walking into a grocery store sees much higher inflation than um than the data that CP I data subsequently that came up. And so that disconnect we need to address as um as uh market,

market players and as well as economists. Uh I think that's happening everywhere else as well that uh the, and the, and the this may be becoming even bigger as the uh the income and wealth disparity in around the world is going up. The consumption baskets of the overall aggregate consumption basket could be quite diff the one that's used in the measurement quite to be quite different from where the different percentile uh populations consumption basket is and it's going to be

more and more different. And therefore the measurement has to address that consumption basket difference by different segments of the population. So I think it's important it needs to be addressed uh to be at least making the policy, right, also the communication right to uh to the um from the government to the people.

And if you really want to take a little bit of the noise out, maybe uh the number that I look at is the annually three month, last three months average. I almost never look at the year over year. Only reason I look at the year over year is because I want to know what Feds putting as an input because it's too stale the previous nine months. And so that needs to be also uh uh somehow addressed because uh year over year is a basically a state

piece of information in, in my opinion. But it seems like because Fed puts that as an input to their models market then has to be aware of that and discuss that. And I, I find myself at a loss. Why do I need to know how far inflation has moved since the middle of last year or whatever, November last year, I need to know what happened in the last two or three months. And so yes, that is um that

is from a pure information content point of view. Uh that needs to be also something uh revised and looked at more recent data. But there are most you can look at you can reduce noise without having to bring in so much stale data. If, if the objective is to reduce noise in the inflation and all data, you know, it just looks like a lot of noise, a lot of stale data in the process. So yes, I'm totally on that account.

But I think what I was alluding to kind of hit me during my trip to the US the week before the US elections that when I talked to taxi drivers or grocery store clerks, they were talking about ultra long memory. They were saying that my grocery bill is up 40 percent over the last four years. You and I would say, you know, they have gotten wage increases since then. So they're really suffering from some degree of illusion or they're getting a systemic error in their way

of looking at the world. But it seems to me that long memory in this election played a role because the Feds or the treasuries or the Biden administration's communication to the public was, inflation was high in 2022 and it's come been coming down steadily uh to your point that some items have been volatile and they've gone up a lot. But generally speaking, you know, the goods inflation problem we had in 22

and it's gone. Commodity prices are well under control, but people didn't seem to believe that narrative at all because they kept on demonstrating like a super long memory that prices are up a lot since 2020. Do you have any sympathy with that perspective?

the GGFC is that level matters as well. Level matters. If you have marginal changes, month, over month, year, over year, which economists tends to think of, then change is enough or percentage change is enough. But if you have a large shift or like a banking crisis or a COVID um pandemic, then you have large shift we had during the pandemic, we had large shifts in uh participation rate, for example of um actually massive shifts in the uh labor force participation rate in the United States.

So when you have large shifts like that, then level starts to matter more and uh you can't just have changes. And so you the the models, there are some approaches to that uh uh the whole concept. Uh I won't go into technicalities of this. The whole concept of co integration, et cetera has been developed to incorporate both

levels and changes into um into this. But there are times after big shifts after GFC level started to matter a lot and and then start to, then it start to matter less eventually. Uh Now after the COVID, we have big shifts in certain numbers now level will matter for a while, like brand rents kind of starting to flatten out. But when I think of rent, I think of the it's 30 to 35% higher than pre COVID level. And so that's the only

thing that matters to me. So after five years, then the month to month changes or three month to month change will be matter, will matter. So as policymakers, as well as investors, we need to take that into account after large shifts, take level into account. Now, fed had prior to COVID had a project to figure out what the whether they should do, do, do price level targeting or, or whether

they should interest uh target interstate targeting. And in fact, Williams, uh when he was at the San Francisco Fed, he had a paper on that very detailed paper on that. Uh and there was some, some uh movement in that direction towards this alternative uh targeting, but that would also be wrong because not all the time that price level matters and and sometimes price level matters, sometimes the rate uh

the rate of change matters. The important thing for the policymakers and investors is to know and know when to shift from one to the other. This and I'm going back to technical term again, this term, this whole concept of integrated process and co integration actually addresses some of this problem of incorporating level and change in the same model. And maybe that's where that's the direction it should go to catch a ball.

argument I remember Ken Roo talking about it. So then if you have a transitory shock and you have higher than 2% inflation, you should not intervene because the price level is beginning to catch up, not necessarily go over the 2% line. I think that sort of consideration played into the transitory camp to not the most useful and helpful outcome. Because if you was, you know, if I look at on a 10 year I undershot now I should overshoot lo

a little bit. And I think that that was a big problem in 2021 2022.

similarly? I think that I just to, uh, connect what's, what's going on now, same thing with the fed now, in the other direction, um, with rates, um, in the, in the whole, um, high easing cycle. So, the hiking is kind of over, there's too slow to hike. And that made us take big, take a long time to get the um inflation back, not even to 2% even. Right now, we're still running 3% in core inflation, whether it's in the core P CS annually, three months average annually is running at 3.3 right now

in the most recent data. So we still have way about f uh uh feds desired level for that. So it's been how long it's two years and eight months that uh since we first started hiking and we haven't still got an inflation anywhere close to the desired level. Uh And so there is this, uh I think that this uh the, the, the clearly there was an error in beginning of the hiking. And now once you make an error, then there is more errors in the other direction in the beginning of the easing.

And, and that's, yeah, go ahead.

from 2008, late 2008 to 2015. And it a little bit of higher interest rate than zero again. And that the the that zero interest period for a long time cause some structural changes in the system. So you cannot dial down, dial up rate and then dial downgrade. Clearly, dialing up didn't work very well. In terms of bringing inflation down back to desired level, dialing down is also going to not work because it's change the structure of the economy. I'll tell you a

few examples on the structure of the economy. Uh obvious one that manufacture, if you look at the manufacturing data US looks quite slow, slowing. If you look at ISM manufacturing for below 50 if you look services, it looks like perfect, there is nothing going on. There's no sign of recession statistically robust for month after month. So there's clearly the two sectors have clear dichotomy between the two subparts of the economy and manufacturing is a significantly smaller part than services.

But we still our brain, we're programmed to look at manufacturing and think that this is going to um this is it, the economy is slowing down but it is not. So that one more simple problem that I think Fed understands that it's not clear how do you look at the aggregate uh because you wouldn't cut if you just looked at the services sector of the US economy. But the most difficult part is this bunch of path to dependencies that

has been created. It's not the level of the interest rates or it's the path that the interest rate has taken. And we people, the people in the bond world that also spend a lot of time on options market and options market understand how important part is important. The, the part and the part of zero for this loan that may create some major structural changes in the economy. First. Um The, the the rates that people pay the mortgage rates.

There are people, most homeowners are paying like 3 to 3.5% maximum 4% mortgage rate in the US. So all these rate hikes by zero from 0 to 45 and a quarter did not have any effect of majority of the more, uh, homeowners in the United States, only people that were affected were the newcomers, the, the new home buyers. And so their mortgage rate is a little high. So that, that part, I think Fed doesn't know how to incorporate that. The biggest credit market is untouched by rate hikes.

So it doesn't slow down anything. And second, um, and there are some generational issue that the, all the young people are paying higher mortgage rate than a little older ones. So there is a th those are social issues that eventually will have to be addressed, but then corporations as well, corporations turned out to longer maturity funding. So they are not affected much. They didn't

get affected by the rate hikes as well. Um So the biggest credit component of credit in the United States fairly untouched by this whole rate hiking cycle. Uh The uh then there is another interesting couple of more interesting things happened

with this zero rate policy. One is that the mostly from QE that we supplied all these reserves to the banks and the banks took those reserves and when we look at econ 10 macro economics 101, you increase reserves and the bank's balance sheet goes up and you decrease reserves. Balance sheet should shrink. In reality, it doesn't because banks as they take the reserve, they deploy it in their risk assets on the balance sheet and they bought treasuries, mortgages, whatever it is and they got the

deposits higher. So when you start to do QK, it can't reduce its balance sheet to reflect the QT as the reserves are going away. And so Feds just cannot continue QT. So that's why they slowed down QT now and eventually they'll have to stop QT fairly soon. So that's another thing that the bank assets, bank balance sheets, all of that had a ratchet effect that the hike didn't affect it that much. In fact, if you look at the net interest margins of the banking system, it

is now higher than the beginning of the hiking cycle. So, and the stock prices are the actually bank index. If you look at the KBW, the bank index uh that doubled since the beginning of the fed hiking cycle. So you got another ratchet effect and the third one is homeowners balance sheets are like historic uh historic best situation.

They the last time if you like the debt, uh the debt to uh the mortgage debt to the ho uh the value of homes, real estate ratio, it's now as low as it was at this low before 1960. So American households, most of them that put own homes are like untouchable by monetary policy, feels very rich. The and then their cash flows are still affected by

mortgage rates. Same with the corporations huge wealth effect. That's why no matter you raise interest rate by five and a quarter percent, you the demand remains fairly robust service sector, working out quite well, employment in solid shape. So I think that change was not uh fully understood

this part dependency. And I had myself personally had conversations with FED economists that actually made these kinds of analysis most of them because traditional economics doesn't cover this part dependency part, traditional macroeconomics doesn't cover it's more of a finance option pricing kind

of story. I think R Ra Rajan has a good paper on this recently on the bank part of the aspect of the park dependency and then few and we I'm starting to see few fed working papers on the mortgage lock in effect as well. But this is kind of late already. Decision window is behind the banks have this uh at the peak they have minus 800 billion losses on their book when the, the, when the uh the Silicon Valley Bank was uh going down.

And uh so you would expect after all these guarantees and everything that the banks would unwind some of that book of business and reduce that. But if you look at the bank balance sheet today, banks have done miniscule amount of reduction of the securities book on the balance sheet. And the reason that the a miniscule amount of unwind of the balance sheet is

because the Federal Reserve has this multiple guarantee programs. And the big one was the uh the, the bank funding, uh the program uh that you can uh get loan from the Federal Reserve uh at bar when you put a underwater mortgage or treasury. Um and it's uh as a collateral, it's the, it's somewhere tap somewhere between 200 billion to 300 billion lately because some banks do have need funding, but

it's not a stress for the overall banking system. But what it does is that it provides an optionality for a regional bank out there or a major bank out there with this treasury books. Then what if we get into trouble, then we can always go to the fed and put this as collateral. So if we can do that, then duration is not really duration. Uh, so they hang on to it. And so if you look at the bank balance sheet, now, nothing changed. They still have that, uh, that exposure.

So what would happen going forward? Clearly? They're betting that five and a quarter is really high and eventually interest rates will decline and low and behold fed, started cutting cutting rates that will be out of the woods anyway. But the reality is I wouldn't, uh, I, I know market enough that I, if I were a bank treasurer or bank board, I would not make that bet because

you don't know which direction interest they goes. I have seen 15% mortgage rates in the eighties and, uh, that happens and that can happen again. Uh, so, uh, that's a mistake. That's a part dependency that plus the government guarantee all of that combined and created uh a banking system that keeps getting from the government keeps getting bigger but could have a much bigger systemic risk in the long run.

But that may be a very long run. But that's kind of the distortion for the US economy because banks just can take unlimited interest rate risk without any and any worries and very different from what's happened in the Euro because you're right, you, you have to do a stress test.

So that that must be all the bad behavior premium that government is handing out

So let's entertain a couple of scenarios. Mustafa number one, let's say the fed wants to keep Trump happy and they keep cutting even though you and I know it's not necessary. What will be the outcome from the bond vigilante side or from the curve side?

the mistake here in cutting too much. Probably it was a mistake already. To, uh, start, um, the 50 with the 50 point cut in September and replied by just interest rates going higher, we had like 6070 base point increase in the 10 year rate with the mortgage rate up like 70 basis points after the cut on in September as a reply to the fed, like, hey, we don't agree with you. And so, uh, that's the on I I what as, as the rates were going up, especially mortgage rates were

going up. I was looking at it as a, reminds me of those days that the, the long end just completely gives a different message and refuses to accept the Fed's policy. Uh I think uh we are back in that Fed got, I think misguided a little bit but because it believed in historical relationships, two historical relationships don't that don't apply.

One is the so called sound rule, uh which I think is completely, um you know, anything that happened in the past doesn't necessarily mean it's gonna a relationship that happened in the first place. There is not as many observations to call it a rule. Uh and then uh start to believing it. And then, so that was uh that was a mistake using some rule or talking about or believing it. Um And the second one is uh even worse, the curve was inverted for

a while. And historically, the U curve is inverted for so long, then uh it's preceded by a then uh the economy goes into a recession 12 month forward. And if you look at geometric analysis, yes, indeed, in the past that happened. So if you, the U curve was extremely inverted in like a hockey stick for two years and still was inverted until a few weeks ago. And so the common belief would be uh in the past it recession happened

after that. So recession is coming so that those things, historical relationships kind of misguided the fed because we had inverted curve for 2.5 years and we still have a robust economy so that inversion may be not a reflection of the economy, but more of a reflection of the technicals in the um in the uh marketplace. And I, I won't go into that technical. There is a whole technical story that uh cause the Yoker to be such hockey stick inverted during this cycle than in any other cycle. Uh But

that's a mistake that they did. But this one vigilante is gonna be big, big this time. And just thinking that, oh to first term he did um he did all these tax cuts and uh it wasn't that crazy inflationary. We, of course, uh COVID helped out um he could do uh extend this tax cut again and do all these uh the commitments that he made on his uh campaign uh stocks and he delivers all of that. There's a lot of dollars that we're talking about in terms of uh deficit.

Uh If Trump goes through all of those commitments, but he doesn't have the same fiscal capacity in this term as he had in his first term. So if he thinks that he can repeat the, the saying this term is gonna be making a major mistake, uh They take the tax uh the extension of the 2017 tax cut. Uh Another extension for another 10 years, its cost is the estimate is a $5 trillion additional uh budgetary cost.

Uh with all the uh fiscal capacity that was already expanded by the Biden administration with the Chips Act and uh all the other uh expenditures, the there's not a lot of uh capacity to just even to the extend the tax cut to 10 years. They might do a trick like do it only four years because Trump is going to be here for four more years and then let it uh hand it over to the next administration. So then still we're talking about $2

trillion just that. Then all the little things add up a lot, the tips going to be tax free or um corporate tax exemption for companies that um the uh that bring manufacturing back to the US. Like that's lots of tons of stuff add up to a lot, a big number this time. Uh The moment they start doing some of those, we have a bigger reaction in the Yoker just because um the um the the the there's no, there's not as much capacity as uh as the um that they had of the

first term. So I think that uh plus the inflation is not out of the radar, the housing in the US is really, really uh unknown factor. In my opinion, if I look at the vacancy rate for apartments still extremely low. So it's like a little change in the number of people looking for apartments could shoot the apartment rentals up

back up again. But I have a feeling that we're not out of the Ws on some of the key parts of the inflation, um components of inflation that especially I'm worried about housing a lot, the housing affordability still at historic low. So all of those are are going to be um bring back the on vigilante. So we'll get Stener very fast in this time. Uh If the fed eases more. So they do. I my own bet is that they won't ease in December even if it's

priced 5050 right now. Uh But the vibe from um Powell in his last conversation, it didn't feel like there is a uh some are saying that Gosbee and a few others are saying, oh yeah, you know, December is a play, but I don't think December is at play,

flatter and probably start to pick up some slope. And if you look at the nature of the slope movement for the last two years, it's basically between three months and two year and the 2 to 10 is been kind of flat and moved parallel with uh with little bit of variation around it. But uh we did most recently after the cut, we got the uh slope of the 2 to 10 slope come back uh positive, somewhat positive. Uh But most of the volatility will be in the two year sector, I think uh between one

year forward, one year is the sweet spot. Uh sweet spot volatility is sweet spot short uh in my uh in my opinion, and um I like that. Uh, I like that myself. That, that's where it's going to be mortgage rate is, would be fascinating to watch. It's now back at where it was, uh, the fed started a fed, everyone expecting Fed to cut and mortgage rate came down and every, uh the feds congratulating itself that the 1% decline in mortgage rate now

it's back up to where it was. So, uh mortgage rate is going to be uh something to watch because that's the most important interest rates in the US.

The government itself, the Greenspan. Uh I remember actually encourage people to take in a testimony in pancreas, take uh take arms. Uh And, but most importantly, the, those are the products that were secu through, mostly through the private sector, uh private sector channels. Um And uh was the especially with the lower credit like all day, et cetera. Uh And so though those are the ones that were invest,

the investors were not the traditional M BS investors. And so they overpaid and eventually triggered all of these subprime prices because there's overproduction uh on the private channel of securitization. And so one after the GFC, that private channel was pretty much destroyed from the market making point of view uh as well as from the um the investor point of view, all these foreign European little uh I I, the pension fund in Iceland or, you know, places like that, they don't uh they are

all gone in terms of buying those products. So now most of the mortgage production and origination is through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, mostly fully guaranteed. And third year is where the production is and that sector has died down. And unless the private sector securitization comes back up, you won't see that coming back up.

We can spend a lot more time. But I promised our listeners today that we will not just talk about the US and we will tap into your perspective on em. There is a lot of pressure from the US fiscal side, monetary side and we just talked about financial dominance as well in the swirl of all these things coming out of the US. Where do emerging market economies like China and India Stand?

last one year to just see on my own. These apartment big apartment complexes sitting there empty just to have a good feel for uh how they um how the market eventually clears. Uh So it's a kind of a one story from emerging markets, China and I'll come back to the housing one. The other story is non China. And that's the big vulnerability. There is um uncertainty of us monetary policy.

It's clear monetary and fiscal policy. It's clear to me that the US monetary and fiscal policy has become more uncertain and more, um having a bigger swings in, in those positive 5.5% increase

in interest rates. And I don't know myself whether there's going to be another five coming up and in terms of the dollar, uh the volt of dollar, do you know we have seen the dollar appreciate like crazy, but I there's no guarantee that it won't appreciate another, you know, yen goes to, I don't know, 1 71 80 that kind of level uh or it can go the other way around the prob the thing is that the emerging markets are becoming more vulnerable to these shifting policy changes in the US.

And I kind of worry that I see some celebration in the sense that hey, we got a few countries in trouble in the last cycle in the dollar. In Greece, a few African countries, you know, Sri Lanka and not too many because ASEAN countries have been very protected against this dollar fluctuations because of their experience from 20 from 1997.

And so they have protected themselves somewhat better in the ASEAN, but we saw the vulnerability and then what happens now if we get a situation where bond vigilantes uh really get aggressive and Trump keeps spending and tax cut and we get another big increase in the dollar, then who will, who is protected for that? Which is, if you about, if you looked at it about a year or two years ago, today's dollar is a tail scenario. And so another move 10 15% 20% in dollar could

be a bigger t scenario. And who is, who is, has reserved enough built against that a dollar shift or a big fiscal shift in the US? I'm not sure. Um And the US runs at risk that most people are not thinking about is you, the reason US can spend like this uh is because they, and when borrow like this is because the uh the in interest rates have real interest rates, the growth rate hasn't been too far below the real interest rates.

But if the real interest rates and the growth rate gap becomes bigger and bigger, then the, the whole the cycle of dollar change and um the interest rate change becomes faster. There are big increases in interest rate, big changes in dollar and have, if countries in the emerging markets that are not prepared for that big changes, uh could be affected whether they have enough reserve buffer, uh because it seems like your

economy can do perfectly. But you, if you don't have enough reserve buffer, then you are in trouble or enough other protections like swap lines and et cetera that countries have been working on IMF as um also promoted some of the swap lines, the regional swap lines in Asia, for example, they have worked on the countries need to start protecting themselves because their scenario in dollar can easily happen

going. So that's the, the, the the tail risk is very high from the next moves in the US policy into emerging markets. On the positive side, the some of the wars like Ukraine war may stop and that would bring some stability in the system could be positive as well. But in China, I am perplexed because it's I have been so deeply involved in the subprime prices in the US. I've seen all these park dependencies created as a price to pay to stabilize the housing market, stabilize the economy.

But it had some very long term negative effects uh in terms of income, distribution, wealth, distribution age disparity, that's um probably not correctable in decades. So it's not for China, it's not just like hey fund the banks and they would uh they would just uh uh pump a lot of money into the homebuilder industry and and clear that market very fast through some

sort of subprime option or something like that. As has happened, private equity bought up all the homes in the US, cleared that the prime market the that 5 million and massive number of homes, private equity bought during a post subprime prices to clear the supply demand imbalance in that market, the supply demand imbalance very large in China could be solved by something like that. But they are hesitant on

doing that, doing small changes here and there. But letting those sectors just take time and resolve and there's a huge price to pay in terms of effect on the rest of the economy. And sometimes I feel that uh all this balance sheet recession is going to be much more costly for them. Um So they may as well solve this very quickly. Other side of me says that the solution that I have seen and they have only one data point for a major housing crisis and solution wasn't actually that great from

a long term point of view. So that's gotta look for a new solution. And so, so I'm kind of torn and I feel that they may be looking for a new solution, you see some package that throw to stabilize the markets and then it doesn't go far enough and maybe they're looking for a new solution that's different from our solution in the US. So you have to be seen in China, but I'm fascinated by um by what's happening there. So

balance sheet recession going on in the US. But the stock market was doing well because of QE and so on is probably not also something that the Chinese want to emulate. I mean, the PB OC is at pains when I meet with them that they are doing some QE that they're underwriting certain amount of bonds for regional governments, property, but very

on the side. I'm kind of amazed that for a country that is sort of communist, they still seem to be very fixated on certain private sector principles like moral hazard and they definitely don't want that to come back the way it has come back in the US. So who knows? Maybe they are coming up with a middle point, not as stifling as Japan and completely stuck, not overly proactive like the US, but I like you are a patient. I think that they should get a handle on it a little faster.

OK. And, and India, which is the darling of global em investor community. Uh Any view on that.

the US. But I would still stick to the US because I'm seeing more of these policies, um uh more of this uh expansionary policies ahead of us and government guarantees. So it's hard to be out of the US. But if you are in a very long term, China is not a bad place to be invested. Given the valuation is at unbelievably low. Uh But uh India

is the most unknown to me. This expectation from the market is very high 7 8% growth to be sustained for decades to come in reality, whether they can pull it off or not is um is uh I don't, I'm not a big buyer into the India story because some of the key fundamentals are not there in India that requires that is required for really

a persistent takeoff. Uh For example, education uh level literacy level is nowhere close to where China was at this level mortality, infant mortality, child stunt and every one of these human uh uh quality of life index, it's way behind. And how do you sustain a persistent 8% growth if your human resources are not ready for it? So, so I feel that there is a little bit of over investment in China just over investment in India just because of the enthusiasm to

shift out. There's no other place to go out if you are getting out of China. Uh So India is the place, the few investments in Japan and Korea. But India was, but you, there is structural problems in India that uh in my opinion, it's not sustainable to attract that, that much investment.

So we're seeing that's coming back down, whether it's a permanently, I believe it's a revaluation or, or a temporary reaction to um to, I don't know all the, I don't know what it is said if it is going down a little bit, but it's somewhat like 10% down the sun, not anywhere close to where it can go. So I'm fairly bearish on India. I think that China is great valuation but

I don't. And then US is the US is like, it's outrageous valuation is just 230% of GDP the stock market valuation, but it's still going up, you know, every day it's going up,

than, than what the reported numbers are. But generally the vibrancy, the um the investments like this, all the semiconductor industry moving into Malaysia, Vietnam, I was in Da Nang uh and Hoi an a couple of months ago and the number of resorts that are being built along the South China Sea, the you just boggled my mind like. So these are I uh why are the stock markets there not going higher? I am. What's the biggest puzzle

puzzle of my life? I would be anytime. Uh and I will, I will be in, I, I'm actually invested in some of these ASEAN uh part of the market in the equity market. But uh why it doesn't go up more? And this puzzles me,

we are very optimistic. And when we began the report, Malaysia was not like at the top of our consideration, but as we wrote the report, looking at the tech investment flows, looking at domestic travel tourism industry, we've become quite constructive on the Malaysia outlook. But you know, I think we need to put ASEAN conversation aside for another day. You've shared such stuff with the US and, and some of the large GM maybe we'll end it right there.

Uh Most of our Children, I can't thank you enough for your time and insights.

by Googling DS Research Library. Have a great day.