China Maps Out Plans to Bolster Consumption
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Whatever challenge comes next, let Microsoft help you keep pushing forward. For more details, visit Microsoft.com slash challengers. Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Welcome to the Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm Doug Krisner. So we're seeing a positive tone to risk assets in the Asia Pacific. This is on where the China will be taking steps to revive consumption by

By boosting people's incomes, the official Xinhua News Agency cites a statement from the State Council. And at the same time, authorities are reportedly set to unveil plans later today to stabilize both the Chinese stock and real estate markets. Let's take a closer look. And for that, I am joined now by Paul Dobson. He is Bloomberg's executive editor for Asia Markets. He joins us from our studios in Singapore.

Paul, it's always a pleasure. So the official announcement is going to be made at 3 p.m. local time. What is the chance for a little disappointment? Hi there, Doug. I think, yes, the chance for disappointment is reasonably high.

High, actually. And the reason that I say that is because the market has already built in quite lofty expectations given the price action that we saw on Friday where we had a big jump in the onshore markets and that followed through into the US market with the Golden Dragon Index jumping more than 2.5% as well. Saw some speculative trades going in in the ETFs with call options increasing.

out of the money, looking for further gains there as well. And I think that maybe the market got a little bit too excited about the idea that it was going to be the PBOC leading these announcements and that we were going to see some real exciting fireworks like the press conference that we saw in September where they pre-announced rate cuts.

and got into a lot more stimulative detail. This one seems much more that it's micro-focused, you know, kind of, here are all the ways that we're going to flesh out the promises that we already made at the MPC meeting earlier in the month. And that's why I think, you know, although that these are,

you know, put them together, there's quite a lot of useful stuff in there. Maybe there's a little bit of a ground that there will be some disappointment. The people that are leading the press conference this afternoon are not the heads of departments. So that tells you that maybe it's a little bit lower key.

And some of the details that we saw in that Xinhua report that you referred to, there are bits and bobs that are new. There's, you know, the efforts to push up maybe the minimum wage pension payments, ensure that unemployment benefits are paid out, could all be supportive. But I don't know whether there's that big...

round billion yuan number or exciting new announcements that's really going to sustain this market rally. So do you have a sense as to why the policy response is so restrained, even in the face of the severity of the deflationary trap that China seems to be in?

Yeah, I think that the authorities want to avoid blowing any bubbles and they want to carry on and finish the job of getting rid of the speculation in corners of the market, particularly property. And so from that respect, they don't want to do anything that is overly stimulative. You know, the GDP growth goal again for this year is 5%.

The CPI goal is 2%. And so they want to hit those targets, but it doesn't feel like they want to go a long way to meet them. And what we've seen for the past couple of years is they've been happy to let the economy run a relative smooth amount and then come back in in the second half of the year to give it a little bit of an extra push to get to those kinds of levels, but not creating any sort of...

speculative bubbles along the way. I think the other thing is they just don't know yet what the full impact or how far the US administration is going to go with the tariffs. So they want to leave some powder dry just in case things worsen a lot more as exports get hit with those levies following through. So right now we're at 20%. Is there the reasonable chance in the view of the market watchers that you're in touch with that we could see that tariff rate rise above 20%?

There's definitely concern, right? On the campaign trial, Trump was talking about 60%. So relative to that, we're actually in a pretty decent spot with what we've had so far. And you've seen that China's retaliation efforts have been relatively targeted, you know, focusing on the areas where they feel that they can cause some pain to Trump's biggest sort of allies.

electoral base, so with the farmers and that kind of thing. But yes, depending on what China can do, and look, it's sort of said, you know, we're doing plenty on the fentanyl trade now, we're really trying here. You know, they don't believe that these tariffs are justified. It's probably not going to be enough for the Trump administration. So there's definitely the possibility that things can ratchet up and we'll see. We get April the 2nd, the reciprocal tariffs, we'll see whether there's anything extra layered on for China there and what comes after that.

Paul, I think it's important to point out that overall high tech stocks in China still seem to be basking in the glory of that deep seek moment. And I noticed over the weekend that the Chinese search engine Baidu released two AI models. How much enthusiasm is there still for tech stocks in China right now?

Lots of enthusiasm and excitement. Yes, yes, yes. I think that's the other thing. Perhaps I should have mentioned it sooner. The other thing that's giving the authorities a little bit of reason to kind of push this, but not give the broader economy too much of a push because it feels that this can take

take growth and enthusiasm and the markets for that matter, a decent way further. The Chinese tech really seems to be thriving despite some of the limitations that were put on imports of technology during the Biden administration. And it's coinciding with a little bit of a curb in enthusiasm for the US market as well. So I think that there are some flows that are coming in

into Chinese tech and out of US tech at the moment, a bit of a rebalancing there. So that's certainly working. And each time, you know, there's been just this continuing flurry of announcements. And I think that's one of China's strengths is that competition, which is really driving the innovation. So although it's caused a lot of kind of price wars in various parts of the economy, it's also pushing people to be leaner, slicker, faster. And so the companies that do survive are

are going to be looking in very good nick and decent investment opportunities, which seems to be what the market is saying. Away from technology, what other areas of the Chinese equity market are getting investor attention? So right now with this stimulus, people are looking at the consumers sector and seeing whether there is going to be a broadening out to companies that are more focused on the domestic economy. I think that healthcare as well has been something of a bright spot

of late. And, you know, the banks are the ones that are most closely tied to the economy. If the PBOC and the authorities can do enough to help those banks

kind of push out again their net interest margins, then that can be supportive for those as well. I think, you know, in general, the other thing that we want to pay a bit more attention to is that a lot of the gains so far have been in the Hong Kong markets rather than the mainland markets. There's been huge flows from the mainland into Hong Kong. Maybe it's time to see a little bit of a rebalancing there. That's what we saw on Friday with the mainland gauge starting to catch up a little bit

on Hong Kong's market. So, we'll see whether that continues to push through. Is this primarily retail money or institutions becoming a little bit more aggressive as well? Hard to see, but probably both. I mean, I think that the retail consumer would like to have investments outside of the UN in case the currency depreciates significantly during the ratcheting up of tariffs with the US.

But at the same time, return investors have been burned continually. So they'll be the most flighty if things do start to turn south as well. So there needs to be a little bit of caution there. And, you know, there's still being all of that money that's flowed into bonds and bond-like products.

that has pushed yields exceptionally low. And that tells you that there's still the question of winning hearts and minds, winning that confidence if you want to continue to see this rally building on where we are at the moment. Paul, before I let you go, the currency seems to be holding up reasonably well in the face of a lot of the trade war rhetoric that has been kind of going back and forth between the US and China, principally from Washington going to other places around the world. How do you explain what the PBOC is doing in managing the currency?

It is keeping it very much in check and has needed to do at the start of the Trump administration. But what we're seeing now is a weakening of the dollar and while sort of more broadly and while that's going on, actually, the PBOC is still leaving the UN in the same place, more or less, versus the greenback. And so as a result, on a broader basis, the UN is just starting to weaken a little bit against its peers. And I think really,

It's all eyes on the exchange rate with the dollar because that's all important as we get into this tariff situation. And people will be watching to see whether we get strength again in the dollar and whether that starts to put the UN under pressure and whether the authorities start to ease their grip and allow it to weaken a little bit to cushion some of the blow from those tariffs over time. Paul, thank you so much. We'll leave it there. Paul Dobson is executive editor for Asia Markets, joining us from our studios in Singapore here on the Daybreak Asia podcast.

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Welcome back to the Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm Doug Krisner.

So we're gearing up for a new trading week in the States after a bout of turbulence over the last five trading days. At one point, the S&P 500 entered a correction relative to its February record high. And for all of last week, the S&P was down 2.3%. And then over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said he's not worried about a market downturn. And he said, corrections are healthy. They're normal. Let's talk about the outlook now with our guest.

Joy Young is with us. She is head of index product management and marketing at Market Vectors Indexes, joining from just outside here in New York City. Joy, thank you for being with us. Is this volatility all about U.S. tariff policy?

Well, the volatility is coming from every source and I think it's all about the headlines right now. But I think one thing investors must ultimately keep top of mind is to get some perspective among all this noise that's circulating. So, you know, one key point that we always highlight is that, you know, markets are volatile. We've just come off

of- two back to back years of twenty percent annualized return. And historically markets only return on average about thirteen percent. So you know it's not unusual to see drops of ten percent in any short periods as we've seen last week.

But it is unusual to see two back-to-back years of 20%. So I think we should expect that correction was happening and was coming. And the question is, is this a correction or are we entering a bear market? And that's kind of unclear, but having perspective on everything can help.

be a healthy way to start this week and to really think clearly about how to position your portfolio. So I mentioned that Besant was speaking over the weekend. One of the things that he refused to rule out was recession. We have heard a similar statement from President Trump. Is a recession kind of worst case in your mind?

a recession, it's deflation, but also the worst case is losing investors, losing confidence in the market because a lot of clearly, you know, in order to be invested or to stay invested, you really have to, you know, have confidence in your long term strategy. So I think that's ultimately the worst case, because once you lose confidence, you're going to overreact. You're going to maybe get out of the market. And we know historically,

staying invested and focusing on long-term is really the best strategy. We had data last Friday from the University of Michigan showing consumer sentiment now at the lowest level in more than two years.

And inflation expectations during the next five to 10 year time horizon rose to a level of 3.9%. That's the highest since February 1993. This has got to be a problematic situation for the Fed, no doubt about it.

Yes, it's a tough road for the Fed because they have to balance what the administration wants and the economy as well as their inflation target. But we also know that there has been this strong

focus on American exceptionalism. And I think people are starting to reevaluate what that really means. And we've seen from Deep Seek that it was a reminder that AI is an evolving story and that competition is

the AI industry is certainly robust and dynamic and innovation can emerge from everywhere and globally anywhere. And again, the trade tariffs also reminded us that

you know, protectionist policy and ban can drive competition and innovation abroad. And we also have to think about the second and third order impacts of trade terror. So, you know, just to try to forecast what we think will happen with terrorists, you need to forecast what we think will happen to the, you know, response to terrorists and also the, you know, complicated supply chains that

terrorists will have in the long term. So we have the Fed meeting this week. It's widely expected that policymakers are going to hold rates steady. If we hear anything from Powell as it relates to the risk in the economy right now, what do you think he will tease out? I think he's going to hold off and wait for the data. I think he's, you know, it would be really, you know, I think it would be

more cautious for him to really look and have the data as evidence and support rather than try to project what you know, you know what might happen, you know

without any of the support and data. Because, you know, we just, I don't think anybody knows what's going to happen with the tariff implementation at this point and, you know, what will happen next week or tomorrow. Well, you mentioned stagflation a moment ago, and I'm looking at what happened Friday in the bond market. We had yields rising just a bit. Is the bond market something that you're playing in right now? Are you feeling as though

maybe there's too much volatility, particularly at the long end of the curve.

To me, it seems like the bond participants have been a lot more cautious than the equity markets. But then again, I think we were seeing such an expensive U.S. equity that it was easy to take some off the top and really park it somewhere else. And, you know, really where we're seeing investors flow back into is gold and gold has

last week hit, you know, another all-time high. So that's an indication that people are taking a flight to safety approach. So in terms of the dollar, one of the things that has happened recently with a lot of the rhetoric around tough talk on tariffs has been dollar positive. Although the dollar gave back a little bit of ground in the Friday session, even though yields were up just a bit.

How do you go about thinking about currencies right now when you're looking at overall kind of market strategy, particularly where the dollar is concerned? I think definitely part of the dollar weakness has to do with the uncertainty around the tariffs. So you're seeing a lot of currency volatility. And again, that's, you know, pivoting people to.

to really look at gold as a dollar alternative. And we've seen that with central banks. We're now starting to see retail flow back into gold ETFs. So I think people are just kind of more cautious about

many of the safe assets that traditionally have been U.S. Treasury, U.S. dollars, but now are kind of waiting to see what's going to play out with the Trump administration. What is the most reliable signal that you can think of these days? It's a hard call, but I think gold has been pretty reliable because now you're seeing a mixed

of investors, you know, central banks, retail investors, investments, jewelry. You're seeing a very strong mix of diverse base. We also very much watch

our Bitcoin reference rate because it, you know, Bitcoin crypto assets, they trade real time. So it gives us an indication of investor sentiment, you know, during the weekend as well as during market, you know, market when markets are, when traditional markets are closed, we're seeing how investors are reacting in real time. When you look at fund flows these days, is there something that you're using as a guide right now in terms of tracking the flow of capital?

Yeah, so many of our indexes are linked to funds and ETFs. So we're watching those fund flows as well as just ETF fund flows. And then we watch a lot of the reports that come out from different ETF news sources.

Is there a risk of further downside? Do you think we stabilized last week? I think for all of last week, the S&P was up about 2.3% when some buying kind of entered into the picture after that pullback. Is there still the risk of more downside, do you think, for the equity market?

Of course, there's always that risk is always, you know, out there. Markets are volatile and we've seen pullbacks back in 2022 of almost 50 percent. So that, you know, we could potentially see that again this year. But I would say, you know, don't throw everything out at once. You know, there is risk.

you know, differentiated performance within the U.S. markets. Also, you know, people who overreact, this is a good opportunity to buy something cheap in the market. Joy, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. Joy Young, head of index product management and marketing at Market Vector Indexes, joining us here on the Daybreak Asia podcast.

Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Bloomberg Daybreak Asia Edition podcast. Each weekday, we look at the stories shaping markets, finance, and geopolitics in the Asia Pacific. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, the Bloomberg Podcast YouTube channel, or anywhere else you listen. Join us again tomorrow for insight on the market moves from Hong Kong to Singapore and Australia. I'm Doug Krisner, and this is Bloomberg.

How can you free your team from time-consuming office tasks? Amazon Business empowers leaders to not only streamline purchasing, but better support their teams. Smart business buying tools enable buyers to find and purchase items fast so they can focus on strategy and growth. It's time to free up your teams and focus on your future. Learn more about the technology, insights, and support available at amazonbusiness.com.

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Whatever challenge comes next, let Microsoft help you keep pushing forward. For more details, visit Microsoft.com slash challengers.