It has been great to be back in Hong Kong and to stay in one city for 7 days.  This means that some of the "sport that I have been meaning to do" has had a chance to take place.  I woke up early on Sunday to walk up to the Peak, which is about 400 metres above sea level.  I had a small head start from my apartment, but at the top, 45 minutes later, it felt as though I had completed a mini marathon - all before 8:30am!  The views were special though (see below).

Pictured: from the Peak tower, (L) looking out towards Central and Kowloon, and (R) the South side of Hong Kong Island.  

Performance - a good week for growth stocks, USVIP, and our sterling based investors

It was an uphill struggle for bond funds and income strategies, because of rising US Treasury bond yields.  As we have touched on in the last two notes, there is a competition for capital going on in US bond markets, between the US government and the large hyper-scalers who are borrowing big to fund their data centre plans.  And the hyperscalers are winning.

The situation is somewhat exacerbated because there is a lot of leveraged hedge fund money fighting against the US government and the Federal Reserve.  If there is one thing we should all have learnt by now, it is that you don't fight the Fed.  The Fed has tools those hedge funds have not even thought of, and although it is temporarily uncomfortable to watch the prices of your bond portfolio fall, right now the US government is paying you almost 5.2% p.a. to borrow money for the next 10 years, with zero chance of default.  You have not been able to lock in these yields for pretty much the last 30 years (see chart below) - for most people that is an entire retirement!

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