okay mark lets talk about these markets these greener than previously seen markets on this monday morning and things do look positive dont they strong session over in asia 13 high on msci asia pacific youve mentioned the yield story and how yields are going higher why have we seen that yields going higher has not derailed stocks why are we in that kind of operating environment now we are in that environment and its going to maintain why are we in that environment because the data is clearly showing that we dont yet have restrictive enough policy in the us or at least if we are weve only just got there obviously policy operates with a lag but the policy that we had six nine months ago was nowhere near tight and we kind of knew that its been below inflation for up until very very recently so were only just getting to the territory where the fed is sliding to slightly restrictive and thats going to take time to impact so that means that overall weve had very supportive monetary policy up until very recently and its not even typically restrictive now which means that by theres a tailwind for equities and i think thats the case thats going to maintain for another couple of months at some point those policy lags will kick in itll hit the economy but were still many months away from that so the overall backdrop for the next few months will be the same as it has been since probably midapril an idea of higher yields generally and a better environment for stocks now obviously therell be a bit of to and fro as those yields occasionally scare stocks but generally i think a month or two from now well see higher front line yields and higher stock markets yeah its interesting isnt the way that were seeing the markets respond in the way you describe mark given that equities arent supposed to be this sort of discounting mechanism and look ahead let me talk about something that we do know about though and thats the confidence levels on the japanese business i know youll talk more about the japanese economy later but we have got the tank survey out from japan showing a big increase in business confidence and what seems interesting to me here and its a bit of a global takeaway is the way that supply chains normalization of supply chains is still a thing its still a story and it can bring confidence yeah its funny like i thought supply chains is a temporary issue with the crisis but in fact nowadays its an ongoing kind of tailwind we keep on noting the general improvement on a macro theme but because it hasnt been so quick or straight line its rather its a bit more jagged that improvement it means it tends to stay with us a story but overall from the take a this is a good news story japan stocks have been one of the amazing stories of 2023 so far and not backdrops probably going to continue for a bit further because bhp is not set to concede on policy and change any time soon which means were going to extraordinary easy policy with an economy thats holding up okay and an economy thats experiencing a pleasant amount of inflation for the first time in 30 years pleasant amounts of inflation right now regular viewers will know that mark has been pretty positive on that on chinese stocks and todays story of choice is around janet yellen treasury secretary going to china why are you convinced that the visit this week that mark makes some sort of difference to geopolitics counts here im not sure just this visit is the visit on the back of bidens recent comments on the back of blinkens visit on the fact that theres just seems to be an ongoing message of the last month or two of of trying to repair relationships and thats from a change from i dont know six years eight years of going the other direction of where you know ten years ago us and china there was this theory that theyre going to have to kind of work together in some way for the global economy and that changed i guess about seven or eight years ago maybe under donald trump and weve continued to kind of diverge suddenly now from rock bottom levels in terms of the relationship we are seeing us and china start to work together better start to communicate better now i want to emphasize its very very marginal gains its not a kind of sweeping change but at the same way that we took years to realize how bad the relationship was getting it might be one of those stories where it takes us years to realize the kind of slow improvement and i think necessity is driving this from the china side and i think its also interested that the biden administration is going to this ameliorating relationship as they go into an election year next year overall i think this is a tailwind for china stocks over the next year