Mark LaMonica: Welcome to another edition of Market Minute, Bianca. We’ve got a lot of AI headlines this week. So what are a couple that you’re looking for in those potential and the potential implications for investors?

Bianca Rose: Yeah. Thanks, Mark. So I guess one of the exciting developments was that meta came out with its personal AI agent muse, which was seen as, you know, a really positive development by the markets in that, you know, we’re probably going to, you know, have more developments of using AI, more in our consumer lives and everyday lives and encourage productivity.

So that was seen as a real positive for AI related stocks early in the week. But on the other side of that, with, AI kind of being used more in our everyday lives, there were kind of some kind of concerns being raised on fronts in terms of security. And we did see that, you know, Prime Minister, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese came out and announced that, you know, OpenAI had breached Medicare.

So it does show that there are some, I guess, risks and security concerns with us using AI more on our lives.

Mark: Okay, let’s switch topics. Let’s go to interest rates. So it seems like every day the bond market, which is normally fairly boring, is now in the news. So what is happening with yields? You know we’re hearing different terms. The bond market route and lots of different things. What’s going on.

Bianca: Yeah. So pretty much I think sticky inflation and growth is remaining quite strong. You know whether that be in the US or in Australia. And we did see you know Michelle Bullock come out last week and talk about, you know, unemployment maybe needing to be higher than that is currently sitting at a little bit above four and a half or six.

You said maybe up to 5%. Now obviously that is nothing that everyone no one wants to hear that really that unemployment has to increase. But that’s kind of one of her kind of, you know, announcements that she said maybe has to happen for inflation to kind of come down. Whether that’s true or not is another question. Obviously, politicians and unions are arguing that’s not the case.

Similarly, in the US we’re seeing very strong growth and again, sticky inflation. And we are seeing US bond yields on the rise. So pretty much from three year above you know to ten year. We’re seeing it rise above 5%. So we did jump from being a little bit below that 5% yield bond yield level to rising above that.

And so I think that’s kind of like really key. But for us as multi-asset investors that’s kind of always good to have bonds offering some more interest rate kind of yield levels for us.

Mark: And then geopolitics. So I mean obviously add to volatility in the market. Two big things in the last week. Do you want to go through both. Both around the US. You want to go through those. And what investors.

Bianca: So I think I think you know two things. Obviously US is kind of having chats with Iran continuing probably, you know fair to say like previous weeks no definitive announcements. Lots of noise around that. You know, both want kind of certain concessions from the other. But really, I don’t think there’s been anything definitive other than talks are continuing.

And the other big one was obviously the US hosted China. And I think again, lots of talking, but nothing really definitive other than just saying in terms of those trade kind of talks where there’s been kind of like, I guess a delay or a truce until November that’s been pushed back to January.

Mark: So it sounds like if we look at all three of these, I guess, distinct topics, all potentially lead and have led to volatility, how should investors react to this environment?

Bianca: Yeah. So I think that’s pretty normal for markets. You know I think we’re kind of just seeing that you know that continues because like AI will continue to be a feature for markets for quite some time. There’s going to be some stops and starts, some positive news flows, some negative new flows. And that’s what we saw last week.

Likewise with interest rates. You know, I think you’re going to have some positive kind of developments and some negative developments. Generally though, we are in a kind of higher interest rate environment than we were, you know, a few years ago. But I think for investors that kind of leads to higher returns on offer. So I think that’s kind of like the cake.

And I think geopolitical environment will continue to be a feature. And that just frees up opportunities for us to kind of navigate around.