hi, my name is Sean. I'm a founder and CEO of Business 101 Publishing. Thanks for joining our first interview. Today's interview is brought to you by Business 101 Publishing. I'm with Joseph Wang, the author of Central Banking 101, and Kim, the reporter for Korea Economic Daily Global division. We're excited to have Central Banking 101 Korean Edition published this month. This book takes a deep dive into how Central Banks and the Federal Reserve work, and I'm sure it'll be a helpful read for Korean investors. Can you introduce yourself for Korean readers? What made you decide to write Central Banking 101? Well, first of all, thank you very much for inviting me. I'm very excited to have a Korean version of Central Banking 101. So first, I'll talk a little bit about why I wrote Central Banking 101. So I have always been very interested in financial markets. I see the markets go up and down every day, and I want to know what drives that. So I began my career in 2008.

that was a time when financial markets were very turbulent. Every day, it seemed like the world uh was going to uh implode, and the next day you could see the stock market sore. I was very curious as to what drove that, and it also seemed like there was a lot of money to be made uh in understanding this. But what I realized when I was researching, you know, just what was happening, it seemed like a lot of what was driving what happened in the stock market was what the Federal Reserve was doing. And when you actually read, uh, what people were talking about back then in 2008, you would come away with very different perspectives as to what the Fed was actually doing. Some people, for example, at that time, that was the beginning of quantitative easing, would say, you know, you would print all this money, you're going to have hyperinflation, it would be very bad. And other people were like, were say that, you know, that's not how this works. So I realized that it was very difficult to actually understand how the financial

system worked, and how the Federal Reserve operated because there were so many different types of information. Now, ultimately, I ended up working at the open markets desk, which is the Fed's trading desk, in New York City. And from there, I had the opportunity to basically sit at the center of the financial system, the Fed's trading desk, and be able to really understand just how the FED operates and how the markets work behind the scenes. Because when you are at the Federal Reserve's trading desk, you have access to a lot of confidential data, and you were able to talk to Market participants throughout the world. So we would talk regularly with foreign central banks, with other large investment funds, with commercial banks, with everyone. And when you spend time on the open markets task, you are able to get a glimpse behind the curtain that other people don't. And I really, I really developed a much broader perspective and just how the FED operates and how the markets work. And I wanted to share that with the audience because this is really the

book that I wish that I was able to read uh back in 2008 when I was beginning my journey in studying the markets. Thank you um so um can you explain what Federal Reserve is uh what are the roles of the FED for the over economy. Yeah the the Federal Reserve is the Central Bank of the United States of America. Um what I've noticed just looking at markets is that the most what drives markets the most is the actions of central banks and among central banks the Federal Reserve is the most influential. For example uh recently we've seen markets rally a lot and a lot of that has to do with the perceived rate cutting cycle that the Federal Reserve may be embarking on. So being able to understand the FED is really important in uh trying to have a view as to whether the stock market will go up or down. Now the Central Bank of the US of course its responsibility is not the stock market. It has two mandates the first one is price stability and the second one is full

employment. What that means is that the FED will try to make sure that inflation rises at about 2% a year, not more, not less. That's what they think of as price stability. The second thing is full to full employment. It wants to make sure that everyone who wants a job can get a job. Now, this is a target that would change over time because sometimes, for example, as the population ages, maybe fewer people want to work. So, it's always a difficult thing to figure out just what is full employment for the US. Now, these two mandates sometimes are in conflict. For example, if inflation is very high, the Federal Reserve will try to raise interest rates to slow the economy down. That would make inflation move lower, but it would also increase the unemployment rate. So, for the FED, there's always some tension between these two mandates and um, it's a judgment question. Right now, for example, we have inflation that is a little bit too high, but we have unemployment that is really low, so the FED feels

comfortable in keeping interest rates elevated. Trying to balance its two mandates. Now, the way that the FED tries to carry out its, uh, tries to meet its mandates is through its tools. Its primary tool is controlling overnight interest rates and its balance sheet. So, when you, when you're hearing the FED raising or cutting rates, what they're doing is they're adjusting the overnight interest rate. Now, the FED thinks that when you adjust the overnight interest rate higher, that slows the economy down. Uh, for example, maybe you are a business and you were trying to borrow money to make an investment, but because interest rate expenses are higher, maybe you will do less investing. Or if you are a consumer and maybe you wanted to buy a TV, but you saw interest rates were much higher, maybe you would, uh, delay your purchase a bit. So, the FED thinks that toggling the overnight interest rate affects economic activity. Now, the other tool it has is its balance sheet. The balance sheet is basically when the FED creates money and goes out and buys longer-dated treasury

Securities or other assets. The FED does this also in an attempt to influence interest rates. In this case, when they go and buy, for example, longer-dated interest rates like the 10-year treasury, they're hoping to put downward pressure on interest rates. So the FED is always thinking about impacting economic activity through the lens of interest rates, and it employs either the overnight rate or its balance sheet to try to adjust. Can you also explain about the repo Market? Why is a repo Market important for investors? Yeah, the repo Market is the largest and most important Market that you have never heard about. So let me actually give you some idea as to the size of the repo Market. The repo Market is basically when you borrow money and you put treasury Securities down as collateral. For example, let's say I have $1,000 in treasury Securities, but what I really want is cash. So then I can take my $1,000 in treasury Securities and then go and put it down as collateral and borrow cash against it. So in a sense, it makes the treasury

market very liquid. So let me give you a sense of the absolute size of the repo market, so the cash treasury market. So everyone thinks about the US Treasury Market as the deepest and most liquid in the world. On average, every day, the cash treasury market volumes are about $700 billion a day. The overnight treasury repo Market is about 1.5 trillion a day, 1.4 to 1.5 trillion a day. So it's much larger than the underlying cash treasury market. Now, this repo Market is very important because it makes treasury Securities money-like. It makes it very cash-like. So you can think of it as, for example, if I have let's say a billion dollars or 1010 billion dollars of Treasury Securities, and I can always take that and I can either sell it in the cash Market or either borrow against it in the people Market. This gives me makes it easy for me to raise liquidity, and it also makes treasury Securities a lot more attractive as an investment in a sense.

it enables the US government to spend tremendous amounts of money uh through deficit spending and have a lot of people willing to hold treasury Securities because they're so liquid. It can also be used as a market for leverage. For example, if I wanted to speculate on the direction of Treasury Securities, I could also buy treasury security and fund it in repo and so in that sense, it's like taking on a margin loan and trying to bet on Treasury security price appreciation. So overall, I think of the repo Market as both a market for leverage in case you wanted to have a levered up exposure to treasury Securities or if you already own the treasury Securities as a way for liquidity so you can basically easily convert treasury Securities to cash uh increasing your willingness to hold it. But before the question, I want to say thanks to Joseph for writing this book because as you said it was the book that I wished I had before starting my career in global economic Department.

bet Korean readers will find this book really helpful. I want to start the question about the current economic situation. When do you think the FED will start cutting rate and how many rate cuts do you expect this year? That's a very important question. So I think I'll first describe why the FED is going to be cutting rates, and then what the FED say and what's been in the market. So, on the one hand, just thinking back the past two years, we had inflation very high at one point. Year-over-year inflation in the US measured by CPI was about 9%. Now, 9% is far above the Fed's target, and so the FED increased interest rates aggressively. So now, though, over the past year, we've seen inflation steadily come down and gradually approach the 2% inflation target. We're not there yet, but we're getting very close. Now, the FED looks at the world through the lens of real interest rates. Real interest rates are nominal interest rates minus

expected inflation so as as nominal interest rates have gone up to about 5 a half percent inflation has gradually trended lower. That means that real interest rates are gradually Rising. So the FED if real interest rates are gradually Rising even as inflation comes back to Target now that doesn't make sense because what you would be doing is you would be making monetary policy even more restrictive even as you get closer to your target. Now the FED doesn't want to do that because it's afraid that it would eventually overtighten and push the economy into recession threatening its other mandate full employment. So the FED is looking at inflation coming down towards Target and it wants to cut nominal rates to make sure that the real interest rate doesn't actually increase. So in a sense from the fed's perspective cutting interest rates going forward is not to ease monetary policy but to make sure that it's constant to make sure that real interest rates uh continue to remain about where they are so in December the past year the

Federal Reserve had a Dot Plot where it suggested to the market that in 2024 it would cut rates about three times. Now since then, now that's what the FED is telling you, but the market of course has its own viewpoint. And over the past few weeks, we've seen the market, uh, be very volatile in what it's pricing in for the FED. At one point, it was pricing in seven rate cuts in 2024. Today, it's pricing about four to five rate cuts for this year. The reason being that economic activity has come in stronger than expected, and inflation data has been pretty hot the past month. So that suggests that maybe inflation is not going to go smoothly to 2% as expected. And so the market is being a bit more hesitant, thinking that maybe the FED is actually not going to cut as much as, uh, seven cut times this year. Now my base case is that the FED cuts three to four times this year, uh, because even though inflation seems to be rising a little bit, in January we've still done

lot of progress towards 2%. The path towards lower inflation is still well established. Now, we may not get there. There are a lot of things that are making the economy have structurally higher inflation that we can talk about. But even if inflation remains between, say, 3 to 4%, going forward, the FED would still cut rates just to make sure that the real interest rate doesn't rise too much, so that they won't overtighten. So, my big case is about three to four cuts this year, and I think that's in line with what the FED has communicated in December. So you mentioned three to four times this year, and that's a more conservative perspective than the market before. So, what is the reason behind it? I think the market is very optimistic as to how quickly inflation can come down to 2%. Now, if inflation really does quickly come down to 2%, then I think the market would be correct. We would have to cut not just four times, maybe five, six, or more times. But there are big

structural factors that are driving inflation higher, such that I think that it's going to stay higher than the market expects. Now, the biggest factor that I think is keeping inflation high is the fiscal spending. So, right now, the United States is spending about 6% of GDP in deficit spending. The Congressional Budget Office recently published a forecast and suggests that the fiscal deficit in the US will remain above 5% of GDP for the foreseeable future. Now, this is a very, very big change that's happening. If you go to the US 20 years ago, you will see that the US government, there were many people who were worried about the fiscal deficit and there's a lot of political discussion to try to make it smaller. In fact, in the 1990s, the US actually had a fiscal surplus, that means that it received more in taxes than it spent. But those times are gone now. Now, and what we have is what we've never ever had before, a structural fiscal deficit that just goes bigger and bigger.

as far as the IE can see now, one of the things that I talk about in my book is how Treasury Securities are basically a form of money. If I give you, for example, $1,000 in treasuries, it's very much like giving you $1,000 in purchasing power. You can't use it to buy food at a restaurant, but you can sell it and get cash, or you could borrow against it. Then it very much increases your purchasing power. It's a type of asset. So, the fiscal deficit that goes larger and larger into the future is basically a form of money printing. Now, when you have money printing to the extent, say, about $2 trillion do a year, it's going to be very difficult to get inflation back down to 2%. So, if inflation is stuck between 3 to 4%, as I expect, then I think it's very difficult for the Fed to cut rates. You know, more than four times this year. So you mean the structural government

deficit is one of the reasons why that inflation is going higher than L. It's going to be stuck, I think, between 3 and 4% going forward. When I look at the future, I think that the future will be very different from the past because of there is the structural changes. One of them, of course, is the fiscal deficit. So that's not something that has happened before, and we've already seen in 2020, 2021 what large fiscal deficits can do to inflation. But I think the market does not understand is there's this big structural change that will continue to have an inflationary impact on the economy. I think that's really interesting perspective because everybody think that US economy is holding really well compared to the other continents, but you saying that's because of the government deficit, not the sustainability or economy. So is that one of your answer about the Why US economy is holding up very well, or is that a different answer? It is definitely one of the reasons why the US economy is doing well.

if you have the government spending so much money um I think it's it's very supportive of the economy, and it's difficult to see how the economy could fall into recession, but it's not the only thing that's happening, uh as we looking across the world globally. For example, in Europe, you obviously had some geopolitical concerns, particularly with energy, uh that that's putting a downward pressure on their growth. If you look to Asia, a lot of it is related to China, and we know that China has some issues in its property market, so there are some country-specific things that are happening in other countries that are impacting their economy that we don't have in the US, uh but one of the posi things that we do have in the US that's being very supportive of economic growth is amount of, uh, fiscal spending, and that looks like it's going to continue. So I I don't expect the US economy to fall into recession. It's it's um honestly, I think significant amounts of fiscal spending is going to be very very

positive for the US economy going forward. Now, it's going to put upward pressure on inflation, but it's going to be good for economic growth. And if you look at the GDP numbers over the past year, you'll see that the US economy continues to grow above trend and surprise a wide range of market observers. Recently, of course, we grew above 3% in the fourth quarter, and I think that's above trend. And I think a large part of it is in part due to fiscal spending. That's really insightful, and I want to ask more about that perspective. So, what do you think about the driving force behind the structural change? What is making the government spend more? I'll give you an overview of how the US deficit is structured, and I'll tell you why that it kind of has to go up. So, in the US budget, there are three types of spending. One of them is what's called mandatory spending, and that is things like Social Security, which is retirement benefits, and medical benefits for senior citizens.

second point is called discretionary spending, and in discretionary spending, about half of that is military, and the other half is everything else that ranges from education, uh, to, um, government salaries. Now, the last part of the spending is interest payments. So, if you look at the mandatory section, so the section that is benefits to senior citizens, it, it, it, it can go only go up because the US, like many countries, uh, throughout the world, is having an aging population, and as more and more people age, uh, you're going to have more people looking for retirement benefits, you're going to need more Medical Care, and Medical Care is also getting more expensive. So, that mandatory section of the fiscal, uh, budget, it only goes up. Second part I'll talk about is interest expense. As we know, the US government is issuing a lot of debt, and interest rates have gone higher. It looks like we're not going above zero, so, in interest expense, is only going to go up too, right? Larger stock of debt, higher interest rates. So, those two things are structural, and they're only going to go

up and there's really nothing you can do about it. Uh, in the US, the senior citizens are politically very powerful, and if you tell them, I'm going to cut your benefits, you will not get elected. So those two things are only going to go up. Now, the third thing is called discretionary, and that's military, and that's everything from government salaries to education. It is possible for discretionary to go lower, but when I look at what's the politics, I don't think it will happen. When I look across the world, for example, we have more military conflicts in, um, in Eastern Europe. Uh, there's talk of the Middle East, and of course, there's concern about things that are happening geopolitically in East Asia between, say, China and Taiwan. So it looks like there's more interest in military spending because there's going to be more military risk. Now, military spending, if you look at a timeline, goes up and down with geopolitical conflicts. It was very high during the Cold War, then it came down.

was high during the Iraqi War in 2000, and then it came down. Now, if we're heading into a world with more geopolitical instability, the military spending has to go up as well. This part I'm speculating on. The interest expense and the mandatory spending that can't change, that is the discretionary part that can be changed, but I don't think will be changed. Now, the other part that I would note is that in the US, it's becoming more and more popular to talk about spending for climate change. Now, this is very popular in Europe and other parts of the world, a little less in the US, but becoming more popular more recently. Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which was essentially a huge subsidy to try to support climate change initiatives. So, if climate change becomes more popular, and it looks like it will, then people are going to spend a lot more money to try to make a green transition. So, that's more spending as well. So, I think going forward

the fiscal spending is just going to continue and get even larger if I sum up your argument that aging population and geopolitical situation and climate change or works as a inflationary pressure right and and higher interest rates of course. The higher interest rates means the government is going to have to spend more to pay interest is there no any other negative outcome of that uh too much government deficit. Government deficit in the modern minor system is basically money printing because if I give you $1,000 in treasury Securities I'm giving you a financial asset I'm giving you purchasing power so if you continue to print a lot of money yes it is not positive but it is also not the only thing that matters now for example if if a smaller country maybe Brazil or maybe Mexico maybe Argentina would conduct tremendous fiscal deficits their currency would depreciate and you would see a lot of inflation come quickly uh but those are smaller medium-sized countries. The United States is very lucky in that it is large and it has the reserve currency so it has a lot

more room to do this, but the room is not infinite. Uh, so I think what is happening going forward in the coming years is that more and more investors will see that the US is not being well managed, and that would have implications on both the value of the dollar and with um inflation as well. I I don't think the market fully sees that yet, but the US is not on a sustainable path, and it's on a path away from Prosperity. Uh, what about the possibility of recession? I think you mentioned a little bit about that, but can you illustrate more? Yeah, so many people have been surprised as we discussed the resilience of the US economy. I think the thinking was, and this includes what Cher paw was thinking, we were going to hike rates really high, we're going to cause a recession, and inflation will go back down, and they did hike rates very high, and there was no recession, and unemployment remained very low. So the question is why now? I talked about one of the factors that it has to

do with significant fiscal spending. I think the other factor is that there are structural changes in the US economy that make it more resilient to interest rates. So, interest rates. High interest rates don't have a big impact on the US economy for a couple of reasons. One is that in the US, unlike anywhere else in the world, the vast majority of households have debt that is 30-year fixed for their mortgages. So, the largest debt for US households is your mortgage, and it's 30-year fixed, and almost everyone started borrowing to refinance their home in 2021. So, on average, the typical interest rate is below 4%, and honestly, it's probably close to three. So, even as the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates, that 30-year fixed rate interest doesn't change, so households are not affected by it. They're insulated from it. Now, the second thing when you look at the corporates. Well, in 2021, 2020, the corporations were feeling that there was an existential crisis, and so they termed out their debt and they borrowed a lot.

of money, a lot of money. So they haven't really needed to refinance their debt, so they haven't really been subject to high interest rates. So even though the FED raise raise a lot, it hasn't had a very strong impact on the economy. So that's, I think that's another reason in addition to fiscal spending why the US hasn't fallen into recession. And as fiscal spending continues, I think it's unlikely that it would fall into recession this year. I think it is a nice timing to bring up the question about the commercial real statement. What do you think about the influence of the real estate commercial real estate in the economy? So commercial real estate has been in the headlines a lot, but I am not worried about it. And I'll tell you why. So commercial real estate, we have to know that it's a very broad category of assets. So commercial real estate includes multifamily, includes hospitals, includes industrial, includes data centers, it includes many things. And each of those subsectors have their own fundamentals.

now, broadly speaking, commercial real estate is doing fine, except for office, office, and except for retail that's in major um Office Centers. Now, because of work from home, so in the US, it's very popular, uh, for companies now to allow employees to work from home. But if the employees are not going to the office, then, you know, the company doesn't want to pay as much rent. And so the office sector is not doing well. We've heard in the news that there are some banks that have exposure to office sectors, and those banks are being punished now. What how this would work is that if you are a Commercial Bank, sometimes you give a loan, uh, that loan is secured by office property, and it's possible that because the office property depreciated so much in value, that the bank is subject to potential losses on the loan. And so that's been a source of concern. So this is a problem that is going to affect some smaller Banks, but it's not going to be a very big problem for the banking sector, the Federal

Reserve did a study on this, and they found out that in the US, so in the US, we have about 4,000 Banks. The biggest banks that everyone has heard of, these are called gips. They include JP Morgan or City Bank or Bank of America, have very very small exposure to this um office space. Now, if you go one level lower to the major regional Banks, they also have small exposure to the office sector. But when you go one level lower to the smallest of banks, thousands of banks that no one has ever heard of, uh, there is some more exposure to that, and so there are going to be some small banks that are not going to do well. But it's not going to be a systemic issue. It's going to be some few small banks that no one has ever heard of, maybe getting merged into larger Banks, but I don't think it's going to have an impact on the banking sector as a whole or the US economy as a whole. Now, I would also note that many many banks have had over a

year to be able to work through these problems. And if it's a problem that everyone sees and they can prepare for, it's unlikely for it to be a serious problem. So um just want to comment on the commercial reesing sector because uh construction companies and reate developers in South Korea, they cannot feed the projects because they're not able to extend the existing loans. And that's what's happening now um and eventually most of them are underwater and the banks have a problems too. So I guess that really depends on the reasons because South Korea is such a small country uh compared to United States but you don't think it'll have an impact on the broader Market this year when you look at real estate, very broad category. You have residential, you have commercial, and within commercial many different types. The office space in in downtown centers, let's say San Francisco, is going to have very big problems because of work from home. But looking beyond that, broadly speaking, I think real estate looks good now. I we look for example at uh residential real

estate in the US. Single-family real estate. If you look at the stock of the home building companies in the US, you can say Toll Brothers, DR Horton, PTI. They're going to the Moon, they're going around all-time highs. Even interest rates have gone up because people are still, the US consumer has jobs, wages are growing higher, and they have a lot of wealth, and they want to buy homes. So it's really going to depend on your sector, the office space sector, and real estate commercial real estate in City centers is not doing well, but everything else seems fine from my perspective. Commercial real estate problem is not a systemic issue in the United States banking system because it's a very limited to SM Banks. Let me give you an example. So, recently we had New York Community Bank have a lot of trouble. Its stock price basically halved in a day because of commercial real estate. But when you look at what the problem though, it's very specific to New York Commercial Bank. It had a lot of loans backed by multif

Family real estate in New York City, and there was a recent law change in New York City that makes it more difficult for owners of that real estate to charge market rents. And so, that legal change made the buildings a lot less valuable, and so that made New York Community Bank have a lot more credit risk. New York Community Bank also has a lot of loans backed by office space in Manhattan, which of course is not doing well. So, it seems very much that you have this bank that has a lot of exposure to sensitive sectors of real estate, and it seems very isolated to banks like that rather than something that is systemic. I want to bring one more question regarding that might be related to the commercial real estate problem. At January FMC statement, FMC stated that the United States banking system is sound and resilient because, and the market assumed that was that has something to do with the Silicon Valley problem, and that paragraph and phrase was removed from the statement. Do you have any reason for that? I think that they are very very

mad that New York Community Bank had to announce earnings on the same day as that statement. So that statement was put in um, of course, in response to the turmoil we had in March last March in the regional banking sector. But then also note for the past several months, you know, we had heard nothing in Regional Banks, everything seemed okay. So it looks like the FED felt comfortable enough to take that line out of the statement and just kind of put the regional banking turmoil behind them. Know they were thinking that this is all over now, we don't have to put that in the statement anymore. And just as they did that, we had some problems with New York Community Bank. So it looks like a very unfortunate coincidence. I think what the FED did is take that statement out to try to show that this is not something worth thinking about anymore, that the crisis is behind us. After all, they are also winding down the special btfp facility that was intended to help the regional Banks. So even as they are moving away

moving beyond uh this it seems like it flar up just a little bit thank you um. I want to move on on to the questions about the stock market and the stock market last year recorded high and it went beyond 5,000 so what is your expect expectation about the stock market this year. I think the year would be very very positive for the stock market at a high level when you're having significant amounts of deficit spending in a sense you are depreciating your currency so as you appreciate your currency you would expect um. Financial assets to appreciate and I think that's what's happening now. I don't think this is going to be a straight line and there will be times of volatility but I think as long as the deficit spending persists I think the stock market is going to go much higher for this year. I think we can easily go up another 20% so we get close to 6,000 on the S&P 500. Many things can impact this but we we have a good economy we

have the FED that is going to cut interest rates, and we have fiscal spending that is expected to be very large going forward. All these things are very positive for the stock market. In my personal research work, I told my readers in December of last year that we were going to have a very positive stock market, and it looks like it has gone straight up since. I think it's too hot right now, but I think this is going to be a good year for it. I was um the US elections about the policy decisions and stock prices this year. You name so many other factors driving the St. Market higher, but do you think also US election has to do with the St. Market? I think it can so I'll so we think of the Federal Reserve as an independent part of the government, but historically speaking, the Federal Reserve is always related to politics to different degrees. Now if you go back a few decades, we had President Nixon who had his fed share Arthur Burns

he would tell him that you know I hope that you come to your decision independently, but I hope that you independently decide that my conclusion is the right one. So you know the amount of political influence that is on the FED changes over time. The past couple decades, the FED has been relatively independent, but I think we're moving into a world where the FED is going to be less independent. Now let me point to an op-ed written by former New York Fed President Bill Dudley in Bloomberg in 2019. Now President Dudley said that you know I think that Mr. Trump is very dangerous, so I think the Federal Reserve should conduct policy to influence the election. So I'm getting the sense that even though the FED would like to be independent, there are many people in the government who would like to influence the election because they really don't like one of the candidates. So it's possible that the Federal Reserve may try to have some impact on the election.

but I I don't think it would be very large. So to that extent, I would think that it would bias them towards a little bit more rate cuts than usual because historically speaking, uh, if the stock market is doing well, if the economy is doing well, uh, it's good for the current president. But I would also note that so the people who make decisions on the FOMC, they are appointed by the president of the United States. Uh, this past two years, President Biden has made, uh, a lot of employments on on the Board of Governors at the Fed. And so I think that's made the Fed a little bit more dovish than usual. And by that, I mean that they value uh, having low employment more than having low inflation. And so I think that also maybe makes the Fed, uh, more interested in rate cuts. Um, at the market, there are people saying that, uh, it is a good time to, uh, lock into the high bond yield and it is a nice timing to buy bonds. So if you compare the bond

and stock. Which one would go better this year? I think bonds are going to do terrible this year, and I think they're going to do terrible for the next several years. Now, if you have a government that continues to issue, uh, let's say $2 trillion doll in bonds a year, uh, there's no way that that is going to do well. You now, as Supply goes up, you're going to need to have lower prices to attract the next buyer. So, that means yields are going to go higher. Over the past 30 years, we've had a very big Bond bull market. Bond prices continue to go up, interest rates continue to Trend down. I think that's over. That's over because we are heading into a world where there's higher structural fiscal spending, and that's both inflationary and it increases the supply of bonds. So, I think stocks would do much better than bonds this year and for the foreseeable future. So, um, there's a growing number of, um, investors in South Korea investing, uh, US equities using Korean one.

Benchmark interest rate um set by Bank of Korea uh which is a Central Banking in South Korea is uh 3.5%, so you know 5.5% is a current federal funds rate, and let's just make assumptions that you know you're Korean investors, and you're thinking about investing in the US equities with the Korean one. What stance would you take given the current rate great environment and a stronger dollar against the KRW? Yeah, that's a good question especially from from so from the perspective of a foreign investor. When you go and invest in US assets, it's not just about whether or not the say the stock market will go up or not, but there's always also a currency dimension. For example, maybe you are a Korean investor, you buy the S&P 500. S&P 500 goes up 5%, but if the currency if if the uh if the currency the dollar depreciates 5%, well then you don't you don't really do that well right so

there's a couple ways around this. One of them is to try to hedge your currency risk using an FX swap. Now, the downside to that is that it costs money because interest rates in the US are higher than they are in, say, Korea. And so, in order to have that currency hedge, you're going to have to pay some money. But of course, by paying that money, you get to hedge your currency risk. However, another way that it seems like it's becoming more popular for foreign investors is to just buy US assets unhedged. Now, unhedged exposes you to currency losses, but it also exposes you to currency gains. So, when I look at the chart, it looks like the dollar is appreciating against the Korean won over the past few months. Now, in that case, let's say you were a Korean investor and you bought the S&P 500. The S&P 500 went up and the dollar appreciated, so you're winning on two sides of the trade. It's like a

double play it is more risky, but it seems to be it has been a winning trade now because I think that the US uh economy will remain stronger compared to many other economies, and so interest rates will remain relatively higher than other countries. I feel comfortable that the dollar will U if not continue to strengthen, at least not weaken. So one way to think about this is that you can invest in US assets, but either uh just not fully hedged so that you can benefit a little bit from that potential dollar strength. Great answer, thank you. Um, so we GNA wrap this up today. Um, thanks for the time, Joseph. Yeah, thank you. [Music]

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