What does this mean for the Fed? What does it mean for investors?

So equity markets, correlation with the bond market, macro data trends have totally decoupled in my mind.

And we've been talking about this for a few years now about this trend, but it seems like it's getting worse.

We have all the concerns of the geopolitical risks, you know, the oil prices, you know, You know, the globalization, but equity market, especially the U.S., is, you know, just continue to squeeze up on the point of the job numbers.

I'm I'm now into well into the idea that we must throw away all these macro modeling that we've done in the past.

right out the window because that in itself will help you understand the world a little bit better.

I think the data that I've seen around the world and Korea is on the point about the participation of employment.

What are your thoughts, first of all, on what has happened so far? And also whether or not we're near the end of maybe some of these false liquidations that we've been seeing on highly leveraged ETFs?

From your perspective, what's driving this price action? Is this performance bad? based on a structural re-rating of Korean equities, or do you see this more as traders chasing that momentum AI trade?

It's actually both and neither.

I've had a lot of comments about how at least the price section and just the retail fervor is reminiscent of the TMT bubble of the late 90s.

I remind them there are a couple of very, very key differences that should make us feel a little better.

First is that this AI fervor is earnings-backed.

It's real money that are being earned by companies, which is reflective of Korean stock market, despite the spectacular rally, trading on par with historical average on PE basis.

I think that is a fundamental anchor that we can hold on to.

Do you see that gap there? And how long until the macro economic realities maybe catch up and start reflecting in the next performance?

So let's hear a few minutes from that conversation.

There is an interesting emergence of long-shot managers who are just starting to scale up to be now on the radar for global asset allocators.

And one of the strategies that the global asset allocators are focusing on is engagement, activism, obviously, with the market reform, corporate governance reform.

shareholder rights, which the government has made a lot of changes on.

So that's sort of one.

Obviously, looking for talent, Korea has a lot of talented managers, but they don't have a platform for them to really sit on.

There's no millennium type of platform in Korea.

Naturally, you've laid out some of what's driving that, but is there anything else that we should know as we think about how the international interest in Korea is growing from an investor point of view?

And it's not clear who would step up if he's gone.

I was in Tokyo a few weeks ago.

Now, I haven't thought this whole thing through, but I have... little theory that something very interesting happening over there.

And that is that in my career, I've never seen Japanese investors being so eager to take on risk.

Never in my career.

That's 30 plus years.

And I think what's happening is that setting aside all the macro concerns of the currency and the rising rates and demographics, all of that, just the fact that this country has basically put all of their wealth into negative yielding fixed income products.

Is there any sign at all that this stellar rise, stratospheric rise is going to come to an end? Are people getting concerned at all about, in particular, what you call the two twin towers, Samson and SK Hynix, going to the moon and dominating the Cosby Index?

And the next question is, can this continue?

So if you had asked me, given my pretty bullish thesis back then, that if I ever thought that it'll get to seven thousand, I would've said probably five years.

So we got there less than twelve, so, um, I cannot say that I saw this coming.

But since our last conversation, given we had a little more time to really stitch together a lot of elements that's causing this rally, I think I can be a little more constructive.

The whole of the Korean bull market was started by market reform since the new government came in back in June last year from a very, very low base.

So back then I would've said I was bullish on market reform plans with the new government, low base of expectations, and that would probably maybe account for fifty percent upside from there.

So that'll get us to maybe three thousand five hundred level.

[laughs]