Hello, listeners.
Speaker AWelcome to another episode of the Jacob Shapiro Podcast.
Speaker ARob and I are back at it for our weekly chat.
Speaker AI want to apologize in advance.
Speaker AI've been on the road this week.
Speaker AIt's been a very, very busy quarter one of travel and we've got multiple kids sick in my house.
Speaker AHopefully 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 ASo I hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker AWe've had a lot of good content lately.
Speaker AI just want to thank all the guests who have come on.
Speaker AWe've got some good stuff lined up for the future too, and thank you listeners for being here.
Speaker AOur numbers continue to grow.
Speaker AIf 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 ASo that's about it.
Speaker ATake care of the people you love.
Speaker AHappy Mardi Gras to those of you who celebrate.
Speaker ACheers and see you out there.
Speaker BOne 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 BWe're going to try to get that recorded in the next 24 hours and have that to you in the next 48.
Speaker AAll right, Rob.
Speaker AIt has been, it's been almost a month since we last spoke about markets and geopolitics.
Speaker AWe had Naroth on the podcast and we talked about time and then we've had a couple other folks filling in.
Speaker ABut 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 ABiggest news of the week, though, this week I've got two things that crossed my desk today that I thought were pretty incredible.
Speaker ANumber 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 AAnd also Microsoft is closing down Skype to focus on teams.
Speaker AEnd of an era.
Speaker ALike 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 ALike 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 ASo I don't know, it's the World is changing.
Speaker AHow are you doing?
Speaker BI think it's a sign of the state of the world that we're reaching back for 1990s flavored news like Starship Troopers, which honestly I never, I've watched multiple times and I get that it's a satire and everything, but just can't, I can't love it.
Speaker ACan't love it.
Speaker AWhy not?
Speaker AThat's interesting.
Speaker BI don't know, it just never, it never does.
Speaker BIt just bangs you on the head with the satire a little too much.
Speaker AI mean, it was unrealistic in the 1990s to think of that as a world that was possible.
Speaker ABut it's not so unrealistic now, is it?
Speaker AJust imagine if Elon discovered a bug colony on Mars that he needed to wipe out before he could start up his colony there.
Speaker AIt'd be on.
Speaker AWe'd be getting Tesla cyber space tanks as quickly as possible on Mars, you know.
Speaker BYeah.
Speaker BWith commentary from the Washington Post, no doubt.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker AAll right, so there's a lot to cover.
Speaker AWe're not going to be able to cover everything.
Speaker AAs always.
Speaker AI think a nice way to back into the sort of top down things that we talk about is to talk about what Mr.
Speaker AMarket is telling us in a little bit of a sober way.
Speaker ASo, you know, it's been a couple of weeks.
Speaker AWhat 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 BWell, Mr.
Speaker BMarket is not happy.
Speaker BI think that's the, that's the headline.
Speaker BYou know, we talked about the fragile underpinnings of risk assets.
Speaker BAnd the market when we last spoke, that has sort of played out.
Speaker BRisk assets are really looking shaky and getting sold pretty heavily.
Speaker BYou 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 BNotably despite the fact that if you were to look at like small cap, US stocks are down 7% in the last month.
Speaker BDespite 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 BSo we peaked at 4.55 and now today they're, they're in the four twenties.
Speaker BSo 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 BBut it also means not particularly good things for risk assets and bonds and all sorts of financial assets.
Speaker AYeah, 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 ABecause you got that first hot CPI print and it wasn't that hot, but it was a noticeable uptick.
Speaker AAnd you've got another 10% hike on tariffs on China today, threatening Canada and Mexico.
Speaker AAgain, I'm not sure that those are actually going to go through.
Speaker AI have my doubts about that.
Speaker ABut 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 AAnd yet the market has been doing extremely well.
Speaker AAnd 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 AI don't know, is it orange on your screen or red on your screen?
Speaker AAnd also it sounds like the bond market is, is also signaling something.
Speaker ASo what is, what is specifically the bond market telling you?
Speaker BWell, 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 BAnd they've come out, you know, really getting back to this theme of inflation expectations which we've been harping on about.
Speaker BNow this is starting to enter.
Speaker BIt'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 BLast month they reached a new high in terms of the median.
Speaker BYou 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 BThe average spiked up to 6.9%.
Speaker BSo the average person expects 6.9% inflation over the five to 10 year period, which is just absolutely bonkers relative to history.
Speaker BSo the Fed is starting to get questions about this and so far they've acted.
Speaker BRemember what I said was the Fed is not going to acknowledge this until it is absolutely an emergency.
Speaker BBecause if they start to talk about this, everything gets unhinged.
Speaker BThis 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 BSo that's really the story in bond markets.
Speaker BLooking at equity markets, you know, there's really two stories here.
Speaker BThe first is everything AI related has been in a frenzy which we've talked about.
Speaker BYou know, we put out a piece in, in July saying hey, this appears to be the peak.
Speaker BThat's right when Nvidia peaked.
Speaker BAnd 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 BAnd so the stock got whacked.
Speaker BSo that's the continuation of a trend.
Speaker BDeepseek.
Speaker BWe 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 BThere was more information coming out last week.
Speaker BA Wall street firm did some channel checks and discovered that Microsoft had actually canceled some data center leases.
Speaker BAnd it wasn't even a big amount, it wasn't a meaningful amount of cancellations.
Speaker BAnd they're still growing and building and spending.
Speaker BBut 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 BSo that's what we're observing now.
Speaker BEverything 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 BSo that's a whole kind of the dominant narrative on the tech side.
Speaker BAnd 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 BIndustrial companies starting to roll over.
Speaker BSo you just, it's similar to the late 90s when every sort of quality large cap company just got this extraordinary nosebleed valuation.
Speaker BThat's sort of what we've been seeing and now those are starting to, to correct and, and roll over.
Speaker BSo, 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 AWhere does one hide in these uncertain times?
Speaker BWell, 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 BSo you can find lots of good investment opportunities outside of the large cap US indices.
Speaker BYou 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 BSo you're seeing this rotation away from large cap US which we've sort of been speculating about.
Speaker BEuropean 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 BSo, 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 BThat'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 BSo we're starting to head into that territory a little bit.
Speaker BBut in short, I mean there's massive opportunities because for the most part we're not in the kind of bubble like we've been in most recently in 2021 where everything is elevated.
Speaker BMost things that were elevated in 2021 are down substantially from those levels still just not the, not the indices that are led by the sort of mega cap, magnificent seven kind of stuff.
Speaker BSo opportunity abounds, but not if you're a passive index hugging investor.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker AWhat are some of those international markets in particular that are doing well?
Speaker AI know that I'm very.
Speaker ASo I mean it's funny that you say that we're right about China.
Speaker AThis 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 AAnd I'm one for three it looks like because the other two times I was optimistic it wasn't the right time.
Speaker ABut I am particularly proud of the calls that we've made together on Germany.
Speaker AAnd 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 AIndustrialization was overwrought that you know, they were going to get through the, the natural gas crisis when Russia first invaded Ukraine.
Speaker AEven 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 ALike this is not the Germany of old.
Speaker AThat's history, it's not new.
Speaker AI don't know.
Speaker AIt 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 AYeah, 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 BNo, 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 BAll that matters is what are you doing.
Speaker BAnd I think the discipline of having to actually make decisions makes things a lot clearer.
Speaker BAnd you know, we've been making decisions and paying close attention to Mr.
Speaker BMarket 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 BThe fact of the matter is the, the numbers on the screen are that Germany, the DAX index relative to the S and P, which has been the on fire US, you know, leader like we just talked about, the only thing in the US that's been really doing well, the DAX has outperformed the S and p handily since 2022.
Speaker BThe bottom of the DAX, the 10 year bottom happened right when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Speaker BThat is, that was hammering out a bottom in DAX versus S and P.
Speaker BSo coincidence maybe, but I don't necessarily think so.
Speaker BAnd it's not something that's particularly obvious if you just listen to the narratives.
Speaker BRight now I'm looking at the screen and relative to the S and P, the DAX is hitting a five year high.
Speaker BThat's something that you cannot ignore.
Speaker BThat's a 10 year decade long trend line.
Speaker BJust thinking in Mr.
Speaker BMarket 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 BAnd 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 BI think you're sort of, you're sparring with, with shadows.
Speaker AYeah, it's such a good example of what makes investing really hard.
Speaker ABecause 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 ABut 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 AAnd 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 AAnd it was the time when everybody would have looked at you and said that you were crazy.
Speaker AI said this in a missive last week.
Speaker AThe Economist famously declared Germany the sick man of the euro in 1999.
Speaker AI was looking back and did you know that the Economist wrote Another piece in August 2023 entitled is Germany Once again the Sick man of Europe?
Speaker AI want.
Speaker AI wanted the subtitle of the article to be did the Economists just once again Get Germany Completely wrong and decide to recycle an article from 1999 and not see anything about it?
Speaker AThat said, and let's get into some of the fundamentals because I get the pessimism on Germany.
Speaker AGermany in some ways is the least prepared great power for the things that are happening in the world.
Speaker AIt 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 AAnd as of last week, all three of these with the, with the U.S.
Speaker Aturn against Europe have blown up in their face.
Speaker ASo basically 20 years of German strategy and German policymaking, it's all out the window.
Speaker ASo they're going to have to pivot and they're going to have to pivot quickly.
Speaker AI'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 AYou 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 AThey're saying, we can't depend on the United States.
Speaker AWe 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 AWe have to reform the debt break like they are saying all the right things.
Speaker ANow it becomes a question of whether there's political will to do so.
Speaker AAnd 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 ASo I think you might even see more Choppiness.
Speaker ALike, 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 ABut you know, those are opportunities.
Speaker ABecause 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 BYeah, I think that's absolutely the way to think about it.
Speaker BAnd 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 BAnd markets know that they know it's darkest before the dawn.
Speaker BAnd oftentimes when bad news results in good market action, it's because the market is sort of beginning to see that.
Speaker BSo 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 BAnd then it's bled down since, since early 23.
Speaker BSo, 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 BSo 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 BAnd 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 BSo 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 BBut then after wave one, there's wave two and wave two sucks.
Speaker BWave two is the big test.
Speaker BIt'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 BLike, that's wave two, right.
Speaker BAnd then wave three is after you've passed that test.
Speaker BAnd 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 BLike, that's how markets tend to work in these long cycles.
Speaker BAnd 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 BAnd then you have Schultz with the eye patch and just, just like that is wave two, you know, disappointment.
Speaker BBut it never made new lows.
Speaker BIt just was digging in and digging in.
Speaker BAnd now this is sort of a real jump coming out.
Speaker BSo by all means, there's going to be pullbacks, there's going to be skepticism.
Speaker BThat's the nature of a 10 year trend turning around.
Speaker BIt'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 BSo, yeah, it's, it's a process.
Speaker BBut identifying when those processes are beginning to dig in is, is 80% of the battle.
Speaker BAnd then you just ride it and try not to think too much.
Speaker AAnd try not to think too much.
Speaker AIt'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 BWell, that's just on that point.
Speaker BJesse Livermore, the great traitor from the 1910s and 20s, he once said that the big money I always made by my sitting, never my doing my sitting still and not doing anything.
Speaker BSo let that be sort of a lesson for Germany.
Speaker BBulls.
Speaker AWell, 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 ABut for the bet to pay off, Europe's going to have to do a lot of doing.
Speaker AAnd they haven't shown the capacity to do that.
Speaker AI 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 ALike, we haven't seen it.
Speaker AAnd even the initial response to Trump has been a little underwhelming from my perspective.
Speaker AI 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 AAnd I said, no, it's underreacting.
Speaker AThey had an emergency meeting.
Speaker AAnd really the only thing that I could tell that came out of the meeting was we should have another emergency meeting.
Speaker ALike it's, it's time to get over the meetings, guys.
Speaker ALike if you're not, if you're just going to have meetings, then this call is not going to work.
Speaker ABut 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 AIndia and the EU are reportedly talking about a free trade deal to be concluded by the end of the year.
Speaker ANow, 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 ALike it was, there was always something wrong.
Speaker ABut 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 AThis two decade long strategic partnership between the EU and India is natural and organic.
Speaker AAnd he said that he had directed our teams to conclude a mutually beneficial bilateral free trade agreement by the end of this year.
Speaker AThat's a quote from Narendra Modi.
Speaker ASo maybe it's not going to happen.
Speaker AModi was also in the White House just a week or two ago and talking about buying oil from the United States.
Speaker AAnd the US also wants a free trade deal with India.
Speaker ABut man, if the EU could get that going, it would be a really big deal for them.
Speaker AIf 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 AIf 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 AThe other one, and this circles, another one of the things you and I have been optimistic about for so long.
Speaker AI'll quote Turkish President Erdogan from this week.
Speaker AIt is Turkey and its full EU membership that can save the European Union from its deadlock.
Speaker ARanging 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 AErdogan also, you know, talked about supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity even as President Trump was, you know, pulling support for Ukraine.
Speaker ASo 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 AWouldn'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 ASo, 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 ABut, 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 BYeah, 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 BAnd those sorts of things, that finally the door would be opening wider for Turkey to have a more direct relationship with them.
Speaker BBecause 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 BI.
Speaker BI wanted to ask you your thoughts on the EU and China, because there's been some talk.
Speaker BI've.
Speaker BI saw some comments made.
Speaker BOne of the.
Speaker BI 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 BAnd it seems like there's some disagreement internally about how much EU should embrace China.
Speaker BHow do you see these events sort of impacting that?
Speaker AI 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 AAnd I think that's the reality that we're in.
Speaker AAnd I think Europe is now thinking of China, honestly, on.
Speaker AOn sort of the same level as the United States, like a potential partner, a potential competitor in different areas.
Speaker ABut if you're Europe, like, China's not your big concern.
Speaker AEurope is not a pacific power.
Speaker ASo the United States has reason to be focused on China as a geopolitical threat.
Speaker AEurope really doesn't, especially because there's a big fat Russian buffer zone between you And China.
Speaker ASo it's not like China is going to be coming through, you know, Moscow or anything like that.
Speaker AAnd if that did happen, probably China is a more reliable neighbor for you than Russia has been historically.
Speaker ASo 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 ABut 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 ASo I would expect more openness between Europe and China.
Speaker AThey have things that both sides need.
Speaker AAnd in some ways, this would just be Europe following Vice President Vance's advice.
Speaker AI 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 ASo, 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 AAnd he said that our censorship policies are more of a threat.
Speaker AOur censorship policies are not that much of a threat.
Speaker ASo maybe China is not the threat that they're talking about.
Speaker AMaybe we need to deal with China on a more pragmatic level.
Speaker ASo I expect that you'll see a lot more pragmatism from Europe in general.
Speaker AThe threat to Europe is Russia.
Speaker ALike, 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 ALike, that's not really China's deal, and China doesn't really have any interest in doing that.
Speaker AIf 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 ASo that's my initial impression.
Speaker AIt's.
Speaker AIt's a very.
Speaker AIt's, it's, it's.
Speaker AIt's.
Speaker AI mean, it's not that different of a world, Rob, but I mean, it's.
Speaker AIt's amazing how fast the narrative on some of these things has changed.
Speaker AIn general, you're asking about Europe, too.
Speaker AI mean, I wonder if you might have seen that Taiwan is accusing China of manipulating underseas cables this week, too.
Speaker AAnd I got a bunch of call, inbound calls from some clients about that this week, worrying about it.
Speaker AAnd it goes to your question, because you know, I don't think Europe has any appetite for going and saving Taiwan.
Speaker ADoes the United States have any appetite for going and saving Taiwan?
Speaker AAnd 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 ASo, you know, you start looking around like you can already see the way that Europe is changing its posture here in general.
Speaker BWell, Mr.
Speaker BMarket certainly likes it.
Speaker BThat's one thing we can definitely conclude.
Speaker AFor sure, he likes it to some extent.
Speaker ABut I guess for.
Speaker AFor.
Speaker AFor US Stocks doesn't like it so much.
Speaker AI guess, though, you know, the US imposed another additional 10 tariffs today on China.
Speaker ASo I guess the market is taking that as a positive thing for China rather than taking away from the rally in China.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker BYeah, I think that's right.
Speaker BI 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 BAs a positive event.
Speaker BAnd 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 BSo, yeah, that's.
Speaker BThat's been really positive.
Speaker BThe 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 BThey have been the outperformers of, you know, the outperforming group in the last few months.
Speaker BYou 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 BSo 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 BSo that is something to watch within that China narrative more broadly.
Speaker AAll 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 AI'm sorry.
Speaker AMy head is not screwed on completely great today.
Speaker BAs you can tell, I don't have anything like in particular.
Speaker BI mean, that's, that's pretty much.
Speaker AOkay, let me just look at one more thing.
Speaker AYeah, I don't think we need to push too hard here.
Speaker AWe'll just make it like a short 30 minute episode.
Speaker AYeah, that's cool.
Speaker AOkay, let me just figure out how to end it.
Speaker AAll right, Rob.
Speaker AWell, 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 ABut 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 ASo.
Speaker AYeah.
Speaker AAnything else you want to say the listeners before we say goodbye?
Speaker BNo.
Speaker BKeep safe out there.
Speaker AKeep safe.
Speaker AAll right, we'll talk to you all soon.
Speaker AThank you so much for listening to the Jacob Shapiro Podcast.
Speaker AThe show is produced and edited by Jacob Smulian, and it's in, in many ways, the Jacob Show.
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Speaker AIf 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 AThat's Jacobshap.
Speaker ANo Dats, Dashas or anything else, but I'm not hard to find.
Speaker ASee you out there.