Markets Weekly September 20, 2025

Hello my friends, today is September 20th and this is markets weekly. So this past week was an absolutely evident week in markets. We had all time highs in all the major indexes and honestly it seems like it's going almost parabolic. I think I believe and I think most people do that this is obviously a bubble that being said doesn't mean you can't go higher. If you're bullish, you can say that, you know, we're in the early innings of the bubble, maybe you can still double or triple and if you're bearish, you'll say that we are in the later stages of the bubble so things could unravel.

你好，我的朋友们，今天是9月20日，这是“市场一周”的更新。在过去的一周里，市场表现得十分明显。所有主要指数都创下了历史新高，坦率地说，这种趋势几乎显示出快速增长的态势。我认为，多数人也会这样认为，这显然是一个泡沫。尽管如此，这并不意味着市场不会继续上涨。如果你看好市场，你可能会认为我们正处于泡沫的早期阶段，市场可能还会翻倍或三倍增长；而如果你看空市场，你可能会觉得我们已处于泡沫的后期阶段，因此市场可能会出现波动。

Now it seems like the proximate cause of the Abulin asset prices has to do with the Fed. Fed is cutting, telling you that it's probably going to cut it two more times this year. And you know, maybe you can say that the economy is going to re-accelerate, things are going well, got to buy stocks. However though, if you look at the market pricing after the Fed meeting, you'll notice that interest rates along the curve are higher, right? Got the 10 year at 4.1%, even the two year higher by several basis points. That's telling you that the market actually wasn't double. It was hawkish.

现在看来，Abulin资产价格的直接原因与美联储有关。美联储在降息，并告诉大家今年可能还会再降息两次。你可能会觉得经济会重新加速，一切进展顺利，该买入股票了。然而，如果你在美联储会议后查看市场定价，会注意到整条收益率曲线上的利率都更高了。十年期国债的利率是4.1%，甚至两年期的利率也上涨了几个基点。这表明市场实际上并不温和，而是偏强硬。

It's been did telegraphed through a cutting, but they're cutting less than the market is projecting. So interest rates rose throughout the curve and in line with that, the dollar also strengthened notably all things that you would see in a hawkish Fed meeting. And if you look at the meeting that day, you'll notice that stocks did sell off almost 1% and then I think those people who are maybe probably old school macro guys then got totally run over by the apes and we've been going up ever since.

尽管已经通过一个简讯传达过了，他们的削减力度却不及市场预期。因此，整个收益率曲线上的利率上升，与此同时，美元也显著走强，这些都是你在美联储鹰派会议上会看到的现象。如果你回顾那天的会议，会注意到股票几乎下跌了1%。我认为，那些可能比较传统的宏观经济专家们随后被新一代投资者打了个措手不及，从此股市持续上涨。

And how far we go, I guess we'll find out in the coming weeks. One of the things to note of course is that last week was a quarterly options expiry, probably the largest ever. And at the end of the month, we also have the big JP Morgan trade that everyone talks about. So there is the off market will have some meaningful impact on prices this past week and this coming week as well. So we'll see how that affects things. So again, a lot of things happening underneath the surface.

我们要走多远，我想在接下来的几周里我们会知道。其中需要注意的一点是，上周是季度期权到期日，可能是有史以来最大的一个。此外，本月底，我们还有大家都在讨论的摩根大通大型交易。因此，非市场因素在过去一周和接下来一周将对价格产生一定的影响。所以我们将看看这会对事态的发展产生什么影响。可以说，表面之下正在发生很多事情。

Today let's talk about two things. First off, let's talk about the pretty interesting shifts by the Bank of Japan and that it's unwinding its equity. It's equity purchases and secondly, let's talk about the president's brand new immigration policy or he's charging a hefty fee for H1Bs, but basically in line with what he's been doing throughout his 10 years, his second 10 years as president. All right, starting with the Bank of Japan. So just the level set a little bit, although throughout most of the developed world, banks central banks have been cutting rates in the US and Canada and the UK and Europe and so forth because inflation has come down, economy has been slowing.

今天我们来谈两个话题。首先，我们讨论一下日本央行最近的一些有趣变化，他们正在逐步撤出股市投资，减少股权购买。其次，我们聊一下总统最新的移民政策，他对H1B签证收取高额费用，但这基本上与他在执政的第二个十年里一直采取的做法一致。好，我们先从日本央行开始。简单来讲，虽然在大多数发达国家，包括美国、加拿大、英国和欧洲，央行都因为通货膨胀的下降和经济放缓而在降低利率，但日本却在做出不同的选择。

In Japan, actually, the Bank of Japan is still in hiking mode. Notice because inflation is still a big problem in Japan. Inflation has been above the Bank of Japan's targets for some time and as Governor Weta mentioned at his speech at Jackson Hall, he thinks that an aging population is inflationary. So this higher inflation is going to be a secular problem that Japan is going to face. At the Bank of Japan beating the past week, there was no rate hike, but he did get a couple of descents. So the market is widely expecting the Bank of Japan to hike very soon and you can see that in the price as well.

在日本，实际上，日本央行仍在加息阶段。注意，这是因为通货膨胀仍然是日本的一个大问题。通货膨胀率一直高于日本央行的目标已有一段时间。正如行长Weta在杰克逊霍尔会议上的演讲中提到的，他认为人口老龄化会导致通货膨胀。因此，日本将面临长期的通胀问题。在日本央行过去的会议上，虽然没有加息，但确实出现了一些反对意见。因此，市场普遍预计日本央行很快会加息，这一点在价格中也得到了体现。

One other thing that they did was very interesting is that they began to unwind their purchase of stocks. So as we all know, Japan suffered from disinflation and deflation for many decades and so the Bank of Japan began, many aggressive experiments to try to boost inflation. They bought a whole bunch of GGBs. Even it rolled out yield control. Interestingly, it was not to keep yields lower. It was because the yields were too low and they had to roll out yield control to keep yields higher.

他们做的另一件非常有趣的事情是开始逐步减少对股票的购买。众所周知，日本经历了多年的通货紧缩和通货膨胀率过低，因此日本央行进行了许多积极的尝试来刺激通货膨胀。他们购买了大量的日本国债，还推出了收益率控制。值得注意的是，这并不是为了让收益率更低，而是因为当时的收益率太低了，所以他们不得不推出收益率控制措施，以维持较高的收益率。

So they did all this interesting stuff, didn't seem to work and so they ended up buying stocks, trying to have maybe a wealth effect. They started about a decade ago and in the beginning it was actually quite aggressive. And so when the Bank of Japan began to buy stocks, the stock market there roared, but it didn't last. The way they did this is they bought ETFs so they didn't want to be seen as fairbrew one company or another so they just bought ETFs, basket of stocks to try to be more equitable.

所以他们做了所有这些有趣的事情，但似乎没有效果，于是最终选择购买股票，希望能产生财富效应。他们大约在十年前开始这样做，起初这种做法非常激进。因此，当日本央行开始购买股票时，股市一度飙升，但并没有持续太久。他们通过购买ETF（交易所交易基金）来实现这一操作，因为这样就不会看起来偏袒某一家公司。通过购买包含多只股票的ETF，他们希望这种方式能更公平一些。

Now if you look at their holdings of stocks right now, it's almost half a trillion US dollars so they hold a ton of the Japanese stock market. At their meeting, they telegraphed that they were going to start unwinding their purchases. Let's see, how much? Looks like it's, oh, get off the chart here. About 600 billion yen, a Japanese yen a year. Sounds like a lot but when you convert to dollars, it's about 6 billion a year when it comes to ETFs and 5.5 billion a year in retail, it's a trivial amount. So if you own, let's say half a trillion dollars worth of stocks and you're only selling off, let's say, 6 billion a year, it's going to take you almost 100 years for you to unwind all your stock purchases.

现在，如果你查看他们目前持有的股票，总额几乎达到半万亿美元，所以他们在日本股市中持有相当大的一部分。在他们的会议上，他们暗示将开始减少这些持股。让我们看看，多少呢？看起来是，哦，看看图表这里。大约每年6000亿日元。听起来很多，但如果换算成美元，大约每年是6亿美元的ETF和5.5亿美元的零售股票，这只是个微不足道的数额。所以，如果你持有约半万亿美元的股票，但每年只卖出6亿美元，那么要花将近100年的时间才能卖完你所有的股票。

So this is at the end of the day a very trivial amount that they're unwinding. However, if you look at their stock market though, it was impacted by this stock market and like this, and it would down on the news. This is just again to show you that stock prices in the stock market largely psychological, even though the whole of the make of Japan is only trivially unwinding their purchases. This is impacting investor psychology. But what's more interesting though is if you look at the 10 year JGB yield, now the prospect of further hikes is sending the 10 year JGB yield to multi-decade highs. As we know, the bond market is internationally connected. So if yields in Japan continue to rise, that's going to exert upward pressure on yields globally.

所以，归根结底，他们解除的资产量其实非常小。然而，如果你看看他们的股市，受到了这种情况的影响，新闻出来后市场下跌。这再次说明，股市价格主要是受心理因素影响，即便日本整体上只是在小幅度地减持资产，这也会影响投资者的心理。但更有趣的是，如果你关注10年期日本国债的收益率，未来加息的预期将其推到了数十年来的高点。众所周知，债券市场是国际联动的，所以如果日本的收益率继续上升，也会对全球收益率造成上行压力。

Another thing to note is that Japanese investors are huge, huge global investors. They don't want a whole bunch of dollar assets, a whole bunch of euro assets and so forth. So there's a line of thinking that if yields in Japan become more attractive, maybe they don't have to go so far into the world to get attractive investments. Maybe they can sell some of their dollar investments, some of their euro investments, repatriate them and just get a good yield from JGBs. Now to be clear, that doesn't seem to be happening so far, but eventually that could happen. After all, the make of Japan is on a hiking cycle and with their demographics, maybe they will continue to hike. So that could lead to a repatriation stricken in the end, which could be at the expense of foreign assets. But this is a slow process.

需要注意的是，日本投资者是全球范围内非常重要的投资者。他们并不希望持有大量的美元资产或欧元资产等。因此，有一种观点认为，如果日本的收益率变得更具吸引力，可能他们就不需要在全球范围内寻找有吸引力的投资机会了。或许他们会卖掉一些美元和欧元资产，将资金汇回本国，直接从日本国债中获得不错的收益。目前来看，这种情况还没有发生，但将来有可能会出现。毕竟，日本央行正在加息，而且考虑到日本的人口结构，他们可能会继续加息。这可能最终导致资金回流日本，对外国资产造成一定影响。不过，这个过程相对缓慢。

We'll see how that unfolds going forward. Now the second thing I want to talk about is the very interesting immigration policy that President unveiled on Friday. So in the US, if you are a company, you want a higher foreign worker, you give them what's called an H1B visa. And H1B visas are pretty common. There are several hundred thousand of them. To get an H1B visa, there's a lottery process, but in terms of fees, it's not super expensive. There's a few thousand when it comes to government fees and a lot of fees. A president announced that it wants to erase the government fee to 100,000, which is of course a huge, huge increase.

我们将看看未来这一情况如何发展。现在，我想谈谈第二件事，那就是总统在星期五公布的非常有趣的移民政策。在美国，如果一家公司想雇用外籍员工，他们会为其申请一种叫做H1B签证的东西。H1B签证相当常见，每年有好几万个。获得H1B签证是通过抽签的方式，虽然在费用方面相对不算太贵，政府费用大概只有几千美元。然而，现在总统宣布要将政府费用提高到十万美元，这当然是一个巨大的增长。

But this is in line with what the president has been doing his entire year, right? So the president says that he wants you to buy products made in America, stimulate American production. So he puts a big carif on imports. Now that tariff again, not necessarily borne by the foreign exporter, but at the end of the day is going to make domestic products more attractive relative to foreign products. In that sense, he is supporting domestic production. That's his goal, right? Make America great again. Now this H1B visa problem process is the exact same thing, but on labor. So he's basically putting attacks on foreign labor to make it more attractive to higher American workers.

这与总统一整年来所做的事情是一致的，对吧？总统一直强调，希望大家购买美国制造的产品，以促进美国的生产。所以他对进口产品征收高额关税。这个关税最后可能并不是由外国出口商承担，而是让国内产品相较于外国产品更有吸引力。从这个角度看，他是在支持本土生产。这就是他的目标，对吧？让“美国再次伟大”。现在，H1B签证问题的处理方式与此如出一辙，只不过这是针对劳动力的。他实际上是在对外国劳动力加税，使雇佣美国工人更具吸引力。

Now if you look at who is getting all these H1B visas, you'll see that they're largely tech companies. An interesting stat that I read was that 75% of H1B visa holders are born in India. So it's largely a program to import Indians into the US to work in IT roles. Now whether or not this is good or bad, it really depends on who you ask. So people like Elon and many other tech CEOs who say that H1Bs are really important. They help the US stay in front of the technological competition. And you know we're having all these smart people to work with us. That's really good.

现在，如果你看看哪些人在获取H1B签证，你会发现主要是科技公司。而我读到的一个有趣统计数据是，75%的H1B签证持有人出生在印度。所以，这个项目主要是为了让印度人到美国从事IT工作。至于这是否是好事，这实际上取决于你问的是谁。像Elon以及许多其他科技公司CEO认为H1B非常重要，他们帮助美国在技术竞争中保持领先。而且我们有这么多聪明的人和我们一起工作，这真的很棒。

If you ask American workers and you can get a lot of feedback from this from in the forums and so forth, they'll tell you that H1Bs are just a way for tech companies to import cheap foreign labor so they don't have to pay higher wages to American workers. Now what technically happens is that if you are an H1B employee in the US, you're kind of beholden to your employer because you can't really lead easily. And so that gives your employer a lot of power. Whereas if you're an American worker, you don't look, don't like what's happening, you can go to another company.

如果你询问美国工人这个问题，并从论坛等渠道收集大量反馈，他们会告诉你，H1B签证只是科技公司引进廉价外国劳动力的一种方式，这样他们就不必支付更高的工资给美国工人。从技术上讲，如果你是一个在美国的H1B员工，你会有点被雇主控制，因为你不能轻易离职，这样就给了雇主很大的权力。而如果你是美国工人，不满意当前工作状况，可以选择去其他公司。

And so the thinking is that what the American workers would say is that oftentimes the H1B is just a way to keep wages low for the tech companies. So I think what the president is doing here is he's trying to strike a balance where if you raise the fee to 100,000, then the only way that we have H1Bs is if the tech companies are paying for people who are truly, truly exceptional, people who are geniuses, growing people who are going to come and just generate a lot of benefits. For them, of course tech companies are flushed with cash. 100,000 dollars fee is nothing. So very best people will continue to come to the United States through the H1B program.

意思是，美国工人通常认为，H1B签证常常被用作一种方式，让科技公司压低工资。所以我认为总统在这里的做法，是试图找到一个平衡点。如果将签证费提高到10万美元，那么科技公司只有在聘请那些真正非常优秀、具有天赋并能带来巨大收益的人才时，才会使用H1B签证。当然，对于资金充裕的科技公司来说，10万美元的费用不算什么。因此，最优秀的人才将继续通过H1B项目来到美国。

However though, if you are just a general entry level tech employee, they're not going to be doing that anymore. And those jobs instead will go to American employees. And if you look at the employment stats for newly graduated computer science people in the US, you'll note that the unemployment rate has gone up. And so many people, American computer science graduates are having trouble finding new jobs. So this in a sense would incentivize tech and up in the higher and more of them. So I think this is actually something that is pretty smart. It's basically monetizing problem like he's done, let's say for Nvidia, for example.

不过，如果你只是普通的入门级技术员工，他们不会再这样做了。这些工作将转给美国雇员。而且如果你看看美国新毕业的计算机专业学生的就业统计数据，会发现失业率上升了。很多美国计算机科学毕业生都很难找到新工作。因此，从某种意义上说，这会激励科技公司雇佣更多更优秀的人才。我认为这实际上是一个相当聪明的策略，类似于他为Nvidia所做的事情，通过解决问题来实现盈利。

Nvidia wants to sell chips to the U to China. President not sure about this, but hey, why not you just split some revenue to us so that at least the public gets some benefit. So again, I think this will have some impacts, basically attacks on people who import a lot of foreign labor. So not too good for the big tech companies, but definitely good for American employees, which I think was in president's entire platform. Now, in addition to this, there's also a very interesting new golden visa program. And this was initially floated out at a price point of about five million. I'm guessing five million was just too rich for most people.

英伟达希望向中国销售芯片。总统对此犹豫不决，但为何不让我们分得一些收入，这样至少公众能从中获益。所以，我认为这将带来一些影响，主要是对进口大量外国劳动力的人施加压力。因此，这对大科技公司来说不太好，但对美国员工肯定是有利的，这正是总统的竞选平台内容之一。除此之外，还有一个非常有趣的新黄金签证计划。最初提出的价格大约是五百万，我猜想对大多数人来说五百万的价格过于昂贵了。

And now it's at one million. So basically if you pay one million dollars, you can come and have a green card in the United States. So I actually think this is something that is a pretty good idea. So throughout the world globally, golden visa programs are pretty common. Some very successful ones are I would say in Portugal and previously in Malta, where if you just pay some money, say go buy house, maybe buy some stocks in Portugal or some other places, you can have EU citizenship very attractive for many expats, especially I'd say both the Americans would like to have access or be able to live in the EU.

现在这个金额已经达到了一百万。所以基本上如果你支付一百万美元，你就可以来美国获得绿卡。我实际上认为这是一个相当不错的主意。在全球范围内，黄金签证计划相当普遍。一些非常成功的例子，我会说葡萄牙和之前的马耳他就是其中之一。在这些地方，你只需花点钱，比如买房子或者买一些葡萄牙或其他地方的股票，就可以获得欧盟公民身份。这对许多外籍人士尤其有吸引力。我认为，包括很多美国人在内的许多人都希望能够进入或生活在欧盟。

Now global, of course, a lot of rich people everywhere in the world, say in China, in the Middle East and so forth. And they're looking for other residences, maybe just a plan B, maybe they just want to live in another country for them. Money is not a problem. And so that they're happy to pay a little bit of money. Now usually though, to be clear, golden visa countries are countries that are not doing well financially and they just want to have an extra, some extra revenue. So it's very uncommon for a wealthy country like the United States to have something like this.

当然，现在全球各地都有很多富人，比如在中国、中东等地。他们在寻找其他住所，可能是为了以备不时之需，或者只是想在其他国家生活。对他们而言，钱不是问题，所以他们愿意支付一笔费用。通常来说，值得说明的是，提供“黄金签证”的国家往往是那些经济状况不佳、希望获得额外收入的国家。因此，像美国这样富裕的国家提供类似政策是不常见的。

But just one million dollars to have access to be able to live in the United States, that access to the markets, so that I think that's something that many rich people will gladly pay honestly. It's not that much money. One thing that's not good about this though is that for many other golden visa programs, it's investment. So you get some return or at least your money back after some years. Here it seems to be just a donation. So you're actually paying a million dollar fee or two million if you're a company sponsoring someone to have a to have residency in the United States.

但仅仅通过支付一百万美元，就能获得在美国居住的机会以及进入市场的机会，我认为很多富人都会心甘情愿地支付这个费用。说实话，这不算很多钱。不过，这个方案有一个不太好的地方，就是对于许多其他国家的黄金签证项目来说，这笔钱通常是用于投资的，因此你可以获得一定的回报，或者至少在几年后能够收回成本。然而在这个项目中，这笔钱似乎只是作为捐赠。因此，你实际上是在支付一百万美元的费用，或者如果是公司赞助某人申请居留的话则需要两百万美元。

So it is a hefty fee. However, there's a lot of rich people in the world, I think, especially people who, you know, maybe they made their money and illegitimate means and they want to be able to at least let their family live in a country safe from from investigation. I think that it's quite attractive. So I'm pretty sure this will generate some revenue. All right. So that's super interesting. Let's see how this continues to evolve. Also not talking about it this time, but the present also suggests some new industrial policy. They're taking that $550 billion investment fund, which appears to be real that Japan is putting up trying to invest in more factories or maybe some kind of support for American manufacturing.

所以这确实是一笔高昂的费用。然而，我认为，世界上有很多富人，特别是那些可能通过不正当手段获得财富的人，他们希望至少能让他们的家人生活在一个不受调查的安全国家。我认为这对他们来说是非常有吸引力的。因此，我很确定这会带来一些收入。这非常有趣，让我们看看这个情况如何继续发展。还有一点这次没提到的是，目前还有一些新工业政策的建议。他们正在利用那5500亿美元的投资基金，这似乎是日本实际提出来用于投资更多工厂，或者可能是对美国制造业的某种支持。

So there's definitely some new developments in industrial policy that will hear more of going forward. All right. So that's all I've prepared. I'm Ian. Talk to you guys next week.

工业政策方面确实有一些新的进展，我们未来会更多地听到这些消息。好啦，这就是我准备的全部内容。我是伊恩，下周再和大家聊。