Episode 261
Mr. Market Is Not Happy
Though operating at less than 100 percent capacity, Jacob and Rob gather to take stock of how markets are reacting to the changes of the last 6 weeks. They find themselves more optimistic about China, Germany, and Europe than others, and warn about signals that suggest President Trump’s honeymoon economy period is nearing its end.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) - Intro
(01:15) – Checking in on Mr. Market
(12:11) – International Market Over-performance
(13:11) – Germany and the Future
(22:03) - ...What about the European Union?
(23:03) - The EU and India
(26:21) - China and the Taiwan Question
35:14-end – China, Taiwan etc.
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Referenced in the Show:
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Jacob Shapiro Site: jacobshapiro.com
Jacob Twitter: x.com/JacobShap
CI Site: cognitive.investments
Subscribe to the Newsletter: bit.ly/weekly-sitrep
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The Jacob Shapiro Show is produced and edited by Audiographies LLC. More information at audiographies.com
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Jacob Shapiro is a speaker, consultant, author, and researcher covering global politics and affairs, economics, markets, technology, history, and culture. He speaks to audiences of all sizes around the world, helps global multinationals make strategic decisions about political risks and opportunities, and works directly with investors to grow and protect their assets in today’s volatile global environment. His insights help audiences across industries like finance, agriculture, and energy make sense of the world.
Cognitive Investments is an investment advisory firm, founded in 2019 that provides clients with a nuanced array of financial planning, investment advisory and wealth management services. We aim to grow both our clients’ material wealth (i.e. their existing financial assets) and their human wealth (i.e. their ability to make good strategic decisions for their business, family, and career).
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This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Transcript
Hello, listeners.
Speaker A:Welcome to another episode of the Jacob Shapiro Podcast.
Speaker A:Rob and I are back at it for our weekly chat.
Speaker A:I want to apologize in advance.
Speaker A:I've been on the road this week.
Speaker A:It's been a very, very busy quarter one of travel and we've got multiple kids sick in my house.
Speaker A:Hopefully I've earned enough generosity from the listeners that if I don't sound 100% that you'll still find some value for me operating at 70% capacity.
Speaker A:So I hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker A:We've had a lot of good content lately.
Speaker A:I just want to thank all the guests who have come on.
Speaker A:We've got some good stuff lined up for the future too, and thank you listeners for being here.
Speaker A:Our numbers continue to grow.
Speaker A:If you have not left a review for the podcast or a rating or forwarded to your friends, that's the simplest thing you can do to help me keep the podcast going and to keep the podcast free.
Speaker A:So that's about it.
Speaker A:Take care of the people you love.
Speaker A:Happy Mardi Gras to those of you who celebrate.
Speaker A:Cheers and see you out there.
Speaker B:One more note from producer Jacob Be on the lookout for a special emergency episode on Sunday addressing the White House's very tense meeting with Zelensky today.
Speaker B:We're going to try to get that recorded in the next 24 hours and have that to you in the next 48.
Speaker A:All right, Rob.
Speaker A:It has been, it's been almost a month since we last spoke about markets and geopolitics.
Speaker A:We had Naroth on the podcast and we talked about time and then we've had a couple other folks filling in.
Speaker A:But since we discussed the strategic ketchup reserve, you and I have not caught up and a lot has happened in the last few weeks.
Speaker A:Biggest news of the week, though, this week I've got two things that crossed my desk today that I thought were pretty incredible.
Speaker A:Number one, Sony's apparently thinking about remaking Starship Troopers, which I don't know how you make Starship Troopers any more perfect than it already was, but good luck to them in trying to remake that.
Speaker A:And also Microsoft is closing down Skype to focus on teams.
Speaker A:End of an era.
Speaker A:Like I like Skype was a huge part of my life and long distance relationships and when I set up my first company, it was like basically our slack.
Speaker A:Like I think a lot about, like I'm sort of sad that Skype is gone and the fact they're focusing on teams, which is terrible, is also just sad.
Speaker A:So I don't know, it's the World is changing.
Speaker A:How are you doing?
Speaker B: that we're reaching back for: Speaker A:Can't love it.
Speaker A:Why not?
Speaker A:That's interesting.
Speaker B:I don't know, it just never, it never does.
Speaker B:It just bangs you on the head with the satire a little too much.
Speaker A: an, it was unrealistic in the: Speaker A:But it's not so unrealistic now, is it?
Speaker A:Just imagine if Elon discovered a bug colony on Mars that he needed to wipe out before he could start up his colony there.
Speaker A:It'd be on.
Speaker A:We'd be getting Tesla cyber space tanks as quickly as possible on Mars, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:With commentary from the Washington Post, no doubt.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:All right, so there's a lot to cover.
Speaker A:We're not going to be able to cover everything.
Speaker A:As always.
Speaker A:I think a nice way to back into the sort of top down things that we talk about is to talk about what Mr.
Speaker A:Market is telling us in a little bit of a sober way.
Speaker A:So, you know, it's been a couple of weeks.
Speaker A:What is crossing your screen that you think is important for, you know, the, the layman who is not focusing on these things on a day by day basis to focus on over the past couple weeks?
Speaker B:Well, Mr.
Speaker B:Market is not happy.
Speaker B:I think that's the, that's the headline.
Speaker B:You know, we talked about the fragile underpinnings of risk assets.
Speaker B:And the market when we last spoke, that has sort of played out.
Speaker B:Risk assets are really looking shaky and getting sold pretty heavily.
Speaker B:You know, whether you look at small cap stocks or speculative tech companies or bitcoin, a lot of these indicators of risk taking behavior are all kind of getting whacked.
Speaker B:Notably despite the fact that if you were to look at like small cap, US stocks are down 7% in the last month.
Speaker B:Despite that 10 year treasury yields which tend to come down at the same time when you have these sell offs in part because growth expectations are Getting revised down 10 year treasury yields are down only like 30 basis points.
Speaker B:So we peaked at 4.55 and now today they're, they're in the four twenties.
Speaker B:So pretty mild reaction from bonds which I think just kind of supports this notion that the stagflation narrative that we talked about, sort of the worst case scenario is beginning to get priced in and that's what market participants seem to be worrying about, which sort of confirms a lot of what we've been saying.
Speaker B:But it also means not particularly good things for risk assets and bonds and all sorts of financial assets.
Speaker A:Yeah, I feel like we're sort of starting to exit the honeymoon period for the Trump administration and that some of the internal contradictions and policy contradictions of the administration are at least starting to make their way into the market.
Speaker A:Because you got that first hot CPI print and it wasn't that hot, but it was a noticeable uptick.
Speaker A:And you've got another 10% hike on tariffs on China today, threatening Canada and Mexico.
Speaker A:Again, I'm not sure that those are actually going to go through.
Speaker A:I have my doubts about that.
Speaker A:But threatening that again, you've got the break in US EU relations, all these things that are happening sort of in the background on trade policy.
Speaker A:And yet the market has been doing extremely well.
Speaker A:And I don't know, we were talking before we hit record that even if the market has done okay, like some of these indicators are starting to flash.
Speaker A:I don't know, is it orange on your screen or red on your screen?
Speaker A:And also it sounds like the bond market is, is also signaling something.
Speaker A:So what is, what is specifically the bond market telling you?
Speaker B:Well, I think the bond market is telling sort of what we've been talking about for the last 18 months, which is expectations that the Fed is going to be able to cut rates so that they're, they're eager to cut rates are probably misplaced.
Speaker B:And they've come out, you know, really getting back to this theme of inflation expectations which we've been harping on about.
Speaker B:Now this is starting to enter.
Speaker B:It's, it's, it's moving beyond our little wacko sphere of the Internet and going into the mainstream narrative because it's difficult to ignore inflation expectations.
Speaker B:Last month they reached a new high in terms of the median.
Speaker B:You know, University of Michigan consumer long term inflation expectations measure and on the average indicator, which as we talked about is really starting to diverge from the median because there's these extreme responses getting put into the, into the mix.
Speaker B:The average spiked up to 6.9%.
Speaker B:So the average person expects 6.9% inflation over the five to 10 year period, which is just absolutely bonkers relative to history.
Speaker B:So the Fed is starting to get questions about this and so far they've acted.
Speaker B:Remember what I said was the Fed is not going to acknowledge this until it is absolutely an emergency.
Speaker B:Because if they start to talk about this, everything gets unhinged.
Speaker B:This is like the, you know, the fire alarm of monetary policy if they start to acknowledge that inflation expectations are getting de anchored and it looks like they are.
Speaker B:So that's really the story in bond markets.
Speaker B:Looking at equity markets, you know, there's really two stories here.
Speaker B:The first is everything AI related has been in a frenzy which we've talked about.
Speaker B:You know, we put out a piece in, in July saying hey, this appears to be the peak.
Speaker B:That's right when Nvidia peaked.
Speaker B:And Nvidia, you know, the poster child of this whole story reported this week, as everyone knows, results were fine, but not as extraordinary as they needed to be to justify know what was in the price.
Speaker B:And so the stock got whacked.
Speaker B:So that's the continuation of a trend.
Speaker B:Deepseek.
Speaker B:We talked about the implications of that in terms of demand for our data centers and the more efficient use of hardware for these things.
Speaker B:There was more information coming out last week.
Speaker B:A Wall street firm did some channel checks and discovered that Microsoft had actually canceled some data center leases.
Speaker B:And it wasn't even a big amount, it wasn't a meaningful amount of cancellations.
Speaker B:And they're still growing and building and spending.
Speaker B:But we're in that part of the cycle where there's so much just hot air and gas and any sort of negative news just completely destroys asset prices because things are so extended.
Speaker B:So that's what we're observing now.
Speaker B:Everything that had been running related to the data center narrative and energy build out, you know, companies like Eaton which make the power components for data centers, getting absolutely crushed.
Speaker B:So that's a whole kind of the dominant narrative on the tech side.
Speaker B:And then if you look, you know, sort of just within the broader economy like industrials and consumer names, companies like Walmart, I think we talked about this, which had reached, you know, the Highest valuation in 30 years missed on earnings, got whacked.
Speaker B:Industrial companies starting to roll over.
Speaker B:So you just, it's similar to the late 90s when every sort of quality large cap company just got this extraordinary nosebleed valuation.
Speaker B:That's sort of what we've been seeing and now those are starting to, to correct and, and roll over.
Speaker B:So, so that's the background and, and a big part of that is because of what the bond market is telling us and those expectations changing.
Speaker A:Where does one hide in these uncertain times?
Speaker B:Well, there's plenty of places to hide in part because it is very similar to the 90s in the sense that the market leadership has Been extremely narrow.
Speaker B:So you can find lots of good investment opportunities outside of the large cap US indices.
Speaker B:You know we're at bespoke heavily overweight international as, as you know, we talk about all the time and that's been doing great.
Speaker B:So you're seeing this rotation away from large cap US which we've sort of been speculating about.
Speaker B:European stocks have been on fire, Chinese stocks which you know I've been talking about for six months and people gave you the hairy eyeball until you know, a week ago.
Speaker B:So, so Chinese equities are starting to really play out which was a very non consensus view that we were pitching, which has become much more consensus in the last month or so which is always what you like to see.
Speaker B:That's how you know you're right Ultimately you're trying to find things that no one agrees with you and then everyone agrees with you.
Speaker B:So we're starting to head into that territory a little bit.
Speaker B: e've been in most recently in: Speaker B: things that were elevated in: Speaker B:So opportunity abounds, but not if you're a passive index hugging investor.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:What are some of those international markets in particular that are doing well?
Speaker A:I know that I'm very.
Speaker A:So I mean it's funny that you say that we're right about China.
Speaker A:This is I think the third time in the time that you and I have been working together that I've been optimistic about China.
Speaker A:And I'm one for three it looks like because the other two times I was optimistic it wasn't the right time.
Speaker A:But I am particularly proud of the calls that we've made together on Germany.
Speaker A:And Germany is the one that I think I get the most, the most vociferous commentary on social media when I, when I, when I talked about how German de.
Speaker A:Industrialization was overwrought that you know, they were going to get through the, the natural gas crisis when Russia first invaded Ukraine.
Speaker A:Even as I've been talking about the potential for these elections to change thing in Germany I was getting people saying you don't understand.
Speaker A:Like this is not the Germany of old.
Speaker A:That's history, it's not new.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:It seems to me like things are massively changing in Germany and I know that's one of the markets you want to focus on, but.
Speaker A:Yeah, do you want to focus on Germany or do you want to talk about some of the markets in general that are showing us signs of life?
Speaker B:No, let's talk about Germany because I think it's a wonderful example and it also shows, you know, not to toot our own horn, but talk is cheap and anyone can come out with opinions about stuff.
Speaker B:All that matters is what are you doing.
Speaker B:And I think the discipline of having to actually make decisions makes things a lot clearer.
Speaker B:And you know, we've been making decisions and paying close attention to Mr.
Speaker B:Market and that's ultimately how you stay objective, I think, because there is so much sort of embedded sentiment around Germany and sort of this view, oh, the sclerotic, decaying industrial giant and Europe is dead and blah blah, blah.
Speaker B: med the S and p handily since: Speaker B:The bottom of the DAX, the 10 year bottom happened right when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Speaker B:That is, that was hammering out a bottom in DAX versus S and P.
Speaker B:So coincidence maybe, but I don't necessarily think so.
Speaker B:And it's not something that's particularly obvious if you just listen to the narratives.
Speaker B:Right now I'm looking at the screen and relative to the S and P, the DAX is hitting a five year high.
Speaker B:That's something that you cannot ignore.
Speaker B:That's a 10 year decade long trend line.
Speaker B:Just thinking in Mr.
Speaker B:Market terms, that has been broken and that means you have to sit up and pay attention to that sort of thing and try to understand what is the market trying to tell you.
Speaker B:And I think that's where we can go next in the conversation, into fundamentals and things like that, but without the root in that actual market action.
Speaker B:I think you're sort of, you're sparring with, with shadows.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's such a good example of what makes investing really hard.
Speaker A:Because to your point, that low came right, you know, after Russia invaded Ukraine and there were very real and fundamental reasons to be concerned about the German economy at that point.
Speaker A:But if you were going to buy the low is because you were going to think Germany is going to figure its way out of this and because the market is overreacting, it's not understanding that Germany has capacity or has flexibility or that it will be able to rise ab it.
Speaker A:And if you had been, as we were talking about buying German equities at the time, and I bought some in my personal portfolio even because I felt so good about it, besides the stuff that we were doing for clients at the time, that was the right time.
Speaker A:And it was the time when everybody would have looked at you and said that you were crazy.
Speaker A:I said this in a missive last week.
Speaker A: y the sick man of the euro in: Speaker A: wrote Another piece in August: Speaker A:I want.
Speaker A: de to recycle an article from: Speaker A:That said, and let's get into some of the fundamentals because I get the pessimism on Germany.
Speaker A:Germany in some ways is the least prepared great power for the things that are happening in the world.
Speaker A:It bet its future trade policy on China, it bet its future security policy on the United States, and it bet its future energy policy on Russia.
Speaker A:And as of last week, all three of these with the, with the U.S.
Speaker A:turn against Europe have blown up in their face.
Speaker A:So basically 20 years of German strategy and German policymaking, it's all out the window.
Speaker A:So they're going to have to pivot and they're going to have to pivot quickly.
Speaker A:I'm not sure that this election is going to be the pivot because it doesn't seem to me that cdu, CSU got enough of a mandate to push through the things that they're going to have to push through.
Speaker A:You see that they're talking about maybe keeping the current parliament in place so that they can maybe reopen nuclear reactors or some of these other things, but they're at least saying the right things.
Speaker A:They're saying, we can't depend on the United States.
Speaker A:We have to reopen nuclear, we have to build 50 natural gas plants and all these LNG floating terminals and we have to cut benefits and things like that.
Speaker A:We have to reform the debt break like they are saying all the right things.
Speaker A:Now it becomes a question of whether there's political will to do so.
Speaker A:And my initial like sense of the election results is maybe not quite yet, but just the fact that they're talking about it like that's a step in the right direction.
Speaker A:So I think you might even see more Choppiness.
Speaker A:Like, I wouldn't be surprised if you had another downswing in Germany just because I think the narrative is going to turn against them in the short term because the pain of dealing with, you know, fixing these policy errors or errors is going to be real.
Speaker A:But you know, those are opportunities.
Speaker A:Because if you're betting against Germany on a 10 year time horizon, I don't know, like since Otto von Bismarck, it's not been a good idea to bet against Germany on a ten year time horizon.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that's absolutely the way to think about it.
Speaker B:And you know, the story is in the chart because this is a real testament to how markets are forward looking and how often in investing it's darkest before the dawn.
Speaker B:And markets know that they know it's darkest before the dawn.
Speaker B:And oftentimes when bad news results in good market action, it's because the market is sort of beginning to see that.
Speaker B:So if you just look at the chart of the dax, for instance, you know, it bottomed, you know, as we said, right when the invasion happened, it rallied hard into 20, 22, 23 as all this was going on.
Speaker B:And then it's bled down since, since early 23.
Speaker B:So, and, and you know, since then after bottoming again, sort of retesting the bottom right at the end of last year when Trump was elected, now it's, now it's absolutely skyrocketing again.
Speaker B:So I know that's hard to visualize when you're hearing it verbally, but the point is 10 year trends, they don't just turn around on a dime.
Speaker B:And if you think about, if you want to use like a traditional technique like Elliot Wave or something, which is just a fancy way of saying sentiment changes over periods of time and in certain sort of repeating ways.
Speaker B:So if you were to use that framework, you'd say, okay, what they have is they have wave one, which is the first sort of rally after this long malaise or long bear market.
Speaker B:But then after wave one, there's wave two and wave two sucks.
Speaker B:Wave two is the big test.
Speaker B:It's like, you know, some fat guy who decides to get in shape and he spends the first two weeks and he's really working hard and then he has that first like binge night where he's just covered in potato chips and he's like, I'm never going to do it.
Speaker B:Like, that's wave two, right.
Speaker B:And then wave three is after you've passed that test.
Speaker B:And then you start, you know, running a little bit every day and you know, like you're not going to give up on your, on your new regime.
Speaker B:Like, that's how markets tend to work in these long cycles.
Speaker B:And if you were to look at Germany, you know, wave one was the original post war move, when you and I were here saying, hey, Europe's going to get it together, you know, and then kind of didn't happen, obviously.
Speaker B:And then you have Schultz with the eye patch and just, just like that is wave two, you know, disappointment.
Speaker B:But it never made new lows.
Speaker B:It just was digging in and digging in.
Speaker B:And now this is sort of a real jump coming out.
Speaker B:So by all means, there's going to be pullbacks, there's going to be skepticism.
Speaker B:That's the nature of a 10 year trend turning around.
Speaker B:It's going to take 10 years before people start to turn around and agree and say, oh my God, Germany, what a great place.
Speaker B:So, yeah, it's, it's a process.
Speaker B:But identifying when those processes are beginning to dig in is, is 80% of the battle.
Speaker B:And then you just ride it and try not to think too much.
Speaker A:And try not to think too much.
Speaker A:It's actually another part of the hardest part of this discipline is you have to know when something is wrong and when to get off it, but also when to stick to your guns and trust that the long term trajectory is good.
Speaker B:Well, that's just on that point.
Speaker B: e, the great traitor from the: Speaker B:So let that be sort of a lesson for Germany.
Speaker B:Bulls.
Speaker A:Well, it's funny though, because for the investor who's betting on Germany, on Europe, you're going to have to do a lot of sitting.
Speaker A:But for the bet to pay off, Europe's going to have to do a lot of doing.
Speaker A:And they haven't shown the capacity to do that.
Speaker A:I mean, they did some joint borrowing after Covid, they did some energy things after Russia invaded Ukraine, but we haven't seen the type of bureaucratic reform, the type of investment in supply chains or in military industrial production.
Speaker A:Like, we haven't seen it.
Speaker A:And even the initial response to Trump has been a little underwhelming from my perspective.
Speaker A:I was on Sean Haney's show just yesterday and he said, do you think Europe is overreacting to everything that's happened in the last two weeks?
Speaker A:And I said, no, it's underreacting.
Speaker A:They had an emergency meeting.
Speaker A:And really the only thing that I could tell that came out of the meeting was we should have another emergency meeting.
Speaker A:Like it's, it's time to get over the meetings, guys.
Speaker A:Like if you're not, if you're just going to have meetings, then this call is not going to work.
Speaker A:But two things that have happened just this week that I thought were interesting and maybe a signal that there's more to this than even just Germany and even just German domestic politics.
Speaker A:India and the EU are reportedly talking about a free trade deal to be concluded by the end of the year.
Speaker A:Now, this is something that the EU has been pursuing for over a decade and it's never happened, in part because the EU always wanted India to drop import tariffs on things like automobiles and dairy products and India wanted EU countries to grant more visas.
Speaker A:Like it was, there was always something wrong.
Speaker A:But I'll just quote Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi here, which he said this during a joint media appearance with Ursula von der Leyen this week.
Speaker A:This two decade long strategic partnership between the EU and India is natural and organic.
Speaker A:And he said that he had directed our teams to conclude a mutually beneficial bilateral free trade agreement by the end of this year.
Speaker A:That's a quote from Narendra Modi.
Speaker A:So maybe it's not going to happen.
Speaker A:Modi was also in the White House just a week or two ago and talking about buying oil from the United States.
Speaker A:And the US also wants a free trade deal with India.
Speaker A:But man, if the EU could get that going, it would be a really big deal for them.
Speaker A:If you're looking for more markets for German goods and China's closed off to you and you know, Russia's not working for obvious reasons.
Speaker A:If you can muscle your way into Germany, excuse me, if Germany can muscle its way into India and that billion plus people, that's kind of a big deal.
Speaker A:The other one, and this circles, another one of the things you and I have been optimistic about for so long.
Speaker A:I'll quote Turkish President Erdogan from this week.
Speaker A:It is Turkey and its full EU membership that can save the European Union from its deadlock.
Speaker A:Ranging from the economy to defense and from politics to international standing, Turkey could throw a lifeline to the EU's rapidly aging economy and workforce.
Speaker A:Erdogan also, you know, talked about supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity even as President Trump was, you know, pulling support for Ukraine.
Speaker A:So maybe this is the thing that actually gets the EU to say to not treat Turkey like a second class citizen, to actually make the compromises necessary, necessary to bring Turkey into the block, because Turkey does have manufacturing capacity and Turkey does have a highly advanced military industrial complex, and it does have young people who are hungry to work hard and all these other sorts of things.
Speaker A:Wouldn't it be ironic if Trump was the one who basically not only turned his back on Europe, but in so doing brought Turkey into alliance with Europe against Russia and turned the EU into now a real, not just European power, but a Mediterranean power, and one that can start projecting into the Middle east and into North Africa and things like that.
Speaker A:So, I mean, a lot of things have to happen between what I'm talking about and the EU as it is today, which is still a fundamentally broken bureaucracy that is not designed for the headwinds that it's facing.
Speaker A:But, man, if we're not seeing immediate fallout from the change in US Foreign policy towards Europe and a real awakening about they're going to have to try and do things differently.
Speaker B:Yeah, it would be quite ironic if, right as Europe is starting to move to the right on issues like immigration and, you know, national identity and.
Speaker B:And those sorts of things, that finally the door would be opening wider for Turkey to have a more direct relationship with them.
Speaker B:Because they've been talking about EU ascension, you know, since I think I was in high school, and obviously it never went anywhere for real, you know, but now, as you say, things are looking different.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:I wanted to ask you your thoughts on the EU and China, because there's been some talk.
Speaker B:I've.
Speaker B:I saw some comments made.
Speaker B:One of the.
Speaker B:I think the Prime Minister of Spain came out and said, you know, Europe needs to develop its own policy toward China and relations with China, independent of what the US Is doing.
Speaker B:And it seems like there's some disagreement internally about how much EU should embrace China.
Speaker B:How do you see these events sort of impacting that?
Speaker A:I mean, this is something that Yatsik talked about on the podcast a couple weeks ago before the US Turned against Europe, and he talked about how Europe might really look towards China or look to deal with China on a more pragmatic level if the United States pushed it too far.
Speaker A:And I think that's the reality that we're in.
Speaker A:And I think Europe is now thinking of China, honestly, on.
Speaker A:On sort of the same level as the United States, like a potential partner, a potential competitor in different areas.
Speaker A:But if you're Europe, like, China's not your big concern.
Speaker A:Europe is not a pacific power.
Speaker A:So the United States has reason to be focused on China as a geopolitical threat.
Speaker A:Europe really doesn't, especially because there's a big fat Russian buffer zone between you And China.
Speaker A:So it's not like China is going to be coming through, you know, Moscow or anything like that.
Speaker A:And if that did happen, probably China is a more reliable neighbor for you than Russia has been historically.
Speaker A:So I think Europe has gone along with the United States in part because, you know, China posed challenges to European companies and was blocking access to European companies and was going up the value chain and displacing European companies.
Speaker A:But if you no longer view China as the top geopolitical threat and you're trying to maintain Europe as a pole in a multipolar world, it doesn't make any sense to isolate China at all.
Speaker A:So I would expect more openness between Europe and China.
Speaker A:They have things that both sides need.
Speaker A:And in some ways, this would just be Europe following Vice President Vance's advice.
Speaker A:I mean, I know it was just a single speech at the Munich Security Conference, but he literally told the Europeans that European censorship was a bigger threat to Europe's future than China or Russia.
Speaker A:So, I mean, European officials sitting there listening to that speech could credibly say to themselves, oh, well, the vice President just said that, you know, China's not that much of a threat.
Speaker A:And he said that our censorship policies are more of a threat.
Speaker A:Our censorship policies are not that much of a threat.
Speaker A:So maybe China is not the threat that they're talking about.
Speaker A:Maybe we need to deal with China on a more pragmatic level.
Speaker A:So I expect that you'll see a lot more pragmatism from Europe in general.
Speaker A:The threat to Europe is Russia.
Speaker A:Like, Russia is the one that is militarily threatening Europe, that has used energy and food and all and, you know, political interference to try and affect European outcomes.
Speaker A:Like, that's not really China's deal, and China doesn't really have any interest in doing that.
Speaker A:If anything, China would probably prefer a European bloc that it could negotiate with directly rather than having to do things piecemeal with all these individual countries.
Speaker A:So that's my initial impression.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:It's a very.
Speaker A:It's, it's, it's.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:I mean, it's not that different of a world, Rob, but I mean, it's.
Speaker A:It's amazing how fast the narrative on some of these things has changed.
Speaker A:In general, you're asking about Europe, too.
Speaker A:I mean, I wonder if you might have seen that Taiwan is accusing China of manipulating underseas cables this week, too.
Speaker A:And I got a bunch of call, inbound calls from some clients about that this week, worrying about it.
Speaker A:And it goes to your question, because you know, I don't think Europe has any appetite for going and saving Taiwan.
Speaker A:Does the United States have any appetite for going and saving Taiwan?
Speaker A:And I'm not even convinced that Taiwan wasn't the one that was making a big deal out of this because it's trying to, you know, create this narrative that the Chinese are trying to, you know, militarily change the situation when I think that that's not exactly the case.
Speaker A:So, you know, you start looking around like you can already see the way that Europe is changing its posture here in general.
Speaker B:Well, Mr.
Speaker B:Market certainly likes it.
Speaker B:That's one thing we can definitely conclude.
Speaker A:For sure, he likes it to some extent.
Speaker A:But I guess for.
Speaker A:For.
Speaker A:For US Stocks doesn't like it so much.
Speaker A:I guess, though, you know, the US imposed another additional 10 tariffs today on China.
Speaker A:So I guess the market is taking that as a positive thing for China rather than taking away from the rally in China.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker B:I mean, Chinese stocks, and especially stocks in Hong Kong have just plowed through all of this news flow and, and all of these events, clearly looking through this as.
Speaker B:As a positive event.
Speaker B:And this isn't the national team coming in and buying either, because, you know, that doesn't really happen in Hong Kong, which is a very liquid market kind of driven by other factors.
Speaker B:So, yeah, that's.
Speaker B:That's been really positive.
Speaker B:The other thing to note, you know, we've talked about this, and we're positioned for this pretty aggressively in strategies that we manage for clients at Bespoke is this notion of sort of Chinese national champions.
Speaker B:They have been the outperformers of, you know, the outperforming group in the last few months.
Speaker B:You know, companies like smic, companies like Cattle, bgi, which is the Illumina of China, has been on fire in part because China came out and said, okay, well, we're gonna restrict Illumina's business in China.
Speaker B:So this notion that you're starting to see supply chains to some extent, begin to diverge and that as an investor, you want to be diversified across the different supply chains within that multipolar world that appears to be getting some validation from events and from market pricing.
Speaker B:So that is something to watch within that China narrative more broadly.
Speaker A:All right, I'm going to pause for a second and ask you, is there anything else you want to tackle or do you want to keep this a short and sweet episode?
Speaker A:I'm sorry.
Speaker A:My head is not screwed on completely great today.
Speaker B:As you can tell, I don't have anything like in particular.
Speaker B:I mean, that's, that's pretty much.
Speaker A:Okay, let me just look at one more thing.
Speaker A:Yeah, I don't think we need to push too hard here.
Speaker A:We'll just make it like a short 30 minute episode.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker A:Okay, let me just figure out how to end it.
Speaker A:All right, Rob.
Speaker A:Well, this is gonna be a shorter episode than normal for us because you've got stuff to do and I've got stuff to do.
Speaker A:But we'll be back as normal next week and it appears that the world is not gonna give us any shortage of things to talk about.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Anything else you want to say the listeners before we say goodbye?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:Keep safe out there.
Speaker A:Keep safe.
Speaker A:All right, we'll talk to you all soon.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for listening to the Jacob Shapiro Podcast.
Speaker A:The show is produced and edited by Jacob Smulian, and it's in, in many ways, the Jacob Show.
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Speaker A:If you're interested in learning more about hiring me to speak at your event, or if you want to learn more about the wealth management services that I offer through bespoke or cognitive investments, you can find more information@jacobshapiro.com you can also write to me directly@jacobacobshapiro.com I'm also on X for now with the handle Jacobshap.
Speaker A:That's Jacobshap.
Speaker A:No Dats, Dashas or anything else, but I'm not hard to find.
Speaker A:See you out there.
