伊朗协议未成油价续涨，美国就业疲软美联储或按兵不动

[music] Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio news. [music] Welcome to the Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm Dan Schwarzman. Doug Krer has a day off. Oil is extending gains. That is after Iran says an agreement with Oman establishing a shipping route through the straight of Hormuz was quote very close but remain short of a final deal. However, Iran has ruled out direct talks with the US for now, citing US violations of a short-lived interim peace agreement.

Meanwhile, in the States on Friday, employers unexpectedly cut jobs in July and hirings in the prior two months was revised lower. This suggests the labor market is weaker than previously thought. The report may prompt the Federal Reserve to delay interest rate increases as officials weigh inflation against risks to employment. For more on the Fed rate outlook, Bloomberg's Heidi Shroud Watts spoke to Jasmine Duan, senior investment strategist at RBC Wealth Management Asia.

What's sort of top of mind for you at the moment? There is quite a bit of conversation as to whether these Fed expectations have really shifted going into the end of the year. Well, we think right now uh what's causing the rates uh the yields volatility is really the Fed's communication strategy. In the past, the Fed communicate to the market very clearly, but now under the new Fed chair, he warned the market to figure out things themselves.

And um in in this this past uh Fed meeting, investors expected the Fed to act, but they didn't act. So that kind of caused some confusions to the market as well and this talk tough but without action approach will only act in the short term and we think central banks needs credibility and credibility comes from backing words with actions. So we think Walsh will take the opportunity of Jackson Ho to clarify his approach and until we hear from him, we expect use to remain elevated and volatility to persist and we think the Fed is likely to have the rates on hold until end of next year.

But bigger risk comes from inflation uh if it picks up again in the fall or oil price goes up again and that will push the Fed into action. In the meantime, you remain overweight US equities. Has a recent volatility when it comes to questions over AI spend change that at all? What are you focusing on?

Well, for us, we remain constructive on the AI story, on the tax sector, as long as the earnings can deliver and we think if earnings can continue to hold, there is a room for the market to continue to go higher. But we do acknowledge that the AI narrative is getting more complex right now. So first of all um the we the AI is powering the whole data center build out and broader economic growth. But most of the company are still saying they see potential for earnings to grow using AI but there is no actual improvement of their productivity or their earnings uh profitability improvement.

So we see this gap between the hype and result widen widening and also uh we see an inflection point for the hyperscalus capex. For this year the growth is expected to be 70% yearonear and for next year the growth will be 30%. It is still a very big number but the growth rate is slowing down. And for equity investors, they look at the growth rate instead of the absolute absolute level. And therefore, we think we are reaching a inflection point.

And now with the cheap AI models coming to the market that could also extend the ROI timeline for the hyperscalers. So we are constructive on the tech tax tech sector, but we are aware the narrative is getting more more and more complex.

Well, part of the challenge of course well the real challenge is coming from China. So do you have any interest in any of the AI names or uh even the picks and shovels names from the Chinese market? We do see that it's very interesting. We are hearing this latest news for the cheap AI models coming into the market and um getting more more and more competitive to their US peers and that could provide some opportunities because the AI peers uh the China peers uh did look uh more attractive in terms of valuation and their growth outlook is looking also attractive and therefore we think at this moment of time the AI uh China AI space do present some opportunity but what's more important to watch is the upcoming second quarter earnings season.

So for some of the big tech companies their revenue may continue to grow or remain stable but for their bottom line because of the increased investment in AI their profitability may be affected. So it really depends on how the company management is going to explain this and how investors will look at this um uh in increased investment in AI. So maybe they are happy that uh there is in increasing investment, there are future profitability growth, but some investors may also be concerned about the short-term earnings uh being affected.

So it it's really important for us to look at the upcoming second quarter earning season. With no resolution in sight at the moment between the US and Iran, do you see opportunities in the energy sector?

Yes, we do. So right now for the US and Iran situation uh for us we remain skeptical that real peace or stable oil market will come back anytime soon and we think for both US and Iran they are just pausing not piecing and if we look at the nuclear standoff that started the war five months ago it hasn't been resolved and we think both side will have incentive to fight again and also for the shipping market with the ongoing uh threats of toes and drones and missiles.

A large portion of the ship market will remain on the sidelines and now the US patrol uh strategic strategic petroleum reserve is at its lowest lowest level since 1983. is just slightly about 300 million barrel and that means the buffer is really thin and the wood is hard to sustain another supply shock and therefore [clears throat] we think for investors um it's really good to have some energy stocks in your portfolio to diversify the risk as we expect this supply constraint to remain.

That was Jasmine Duan, senior investment strategist at RBC Wealth Management Asia, speaking to Bloomberg TV host Heidi Straoud Watts. And we're bringing their conversation to you here on the Daybreak Asia podcast. [music] Welcome back to the Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm Dan Schwarzman. Doug Krer has a day off. Asian stocks rose on Monday after soft US jobs data sent Wall Street gauges higher on Friday with the S&P 500 index closing at a record high.

Meanwhile, in the week ahead, traders will be looking at upcoming reports on consumer prices that are likely to decide the Fed's course of action. For more, we had the chance to speak to Jane, international economist at Westpak. She spoke to Bloomberg's Heidi Shroud Watts.

What were your takes away? Because clearly that has caused a rethink when it comes to where the Fed can go from here. Yeah, certainly. Look, the jobs numbers really confirmed what we had been talking about for quite some time that the headline numbers were really masking a weak economy under the surface. So, we saw a decline in non-farm payrolls, but I think the one thing to focus on is the unemployment rate and the participation rate.

We've seen the participation rate fall for the most part since 2023. And that's meant that even that's really flattered the unemployment rate to be lower. But if we hold the participation rate at where where it was roughly around 2023, which again is lower than where it was prior to the pandemic, we would have an unemployment rate closer to 5%. And that certainly speaks to a a labor market, an economy that has a bit of slack in it.

So overall, we do think we took that read to be a confirmation of what we think that the underlying labor market is actually quite weak. Um and we do expect that the Fed will remain on hold for the foreseeable future um due to that. So it makes this week's inflation read ever more interesting. Are you surprised that we haven't perhaps seen as much pass through

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