On September 17, 2026, with the yen near 160 and hike bets rising, Collective members joined Vincent Deluard and Louis-Vincent Gave for the last hours before the Bank of Japan’s decision, hosted by Robert Mullin. We scheduled it in the evening so Louis could join from Hong Kong, where it was already Friday morning. The next day the BoJ raised its policy rate to a 31-year high and the yen fell on the decision.
Vincent Deluard is director of global macro strategy at StoneX, where he is known for a quantitative, data-first read on markets and a widely followed weekly note. He recently came back from three weeks in Japan, which is part of why the timing was too good to pass up. Louis Gave co-founded Gavekal Research with his father Charles and Anatole Kaletsky, and runs it from Hong Kong; he reads markets through geopolitics and history as much as through price, writes at a pace few can match, and has been our go-to on Asia for over a decade.
Our resident commodities expert Robert Mullin, CIO & Founder of Marathon Resource Advisors, hosted the conversation. Robert has decades of experience investing across natural resources and real assets, and he is the guy in the room who always shows up with thoughtful questions.
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What They Discussed
A framework of three prices. Louis said most financial assets are driven by US bond yields, energy prices and the US dollar, and that getting the direction of those three right tells you where to be positioned. He noted that yields, energy and corporate spreads were all rising, conditions that would usually strengthen the dollar, and that the dollar had not strengthened.
The currency signal. Louis pointed to the yen, Korean won and renminbi rising even as US yields and energy rose, which he said usually pressures those currencies rather than lifting them. He read it as the market repricing the US, and noted how cheap those currencies had become.
The US fiscal picture. Louis said foreign capital is getting harder to attract, citing a proposal to send $5,000 checks weeks before an election and twin deficits near 10.5 to 11 percent of GDP. He called the US, in that context, an “unserious country,” and put the foreign funding the dollar needs at roughly three to three and a half trillion dollars a year.
The yen call. Vincent said Japan’s primary surplus and rising tax collections meant the Bank of Japan could raise rates without the crisis many expected, describing it as a normal day rather than a debt apocalypse. The Bank raised its rate to a 31-year high the following morning. Louis added that the larger catalyst, in his view, would be a possible upgrade of Japanese debt in 2027 even as US debt is downgraded.
The flows. Louis described roughly seven trillion US dollars sitting in Hong Kong and Chinese bank accounts, and Japanese assets abroad worth about 82 percent of Japan’s GDP. He asked who the marginal seller of the yen, renminbi or won would be if that capital began coming home, given how low foreign allocations to those markets are.
The “compute dollar.” Louis traced a US pitch to the Gulf, that the petrodollar would become a “compute dollar” as access to American AI required dollars, and said China’s move to give AI away undercut that idea. He tied it to a broader shift in the security-for-financing arrangement between the US, the Gulf and North Asia.
Positioning. Vincent said his energy, financials and healthcare allocation was, for the first time in five years, working all at once, which he did not read as a healthy sign, and flagged a “shadow VIX” masked by unusually low correlation over the summer. Asked what a deeper US slowdown would mean for the deficits, Louis said the numbers would be too large to fund except by the Fed, and that the dollar would fall in the next US recession.
Notable Quotes
“China has just put a bullet through the head of the idea of the compute dollar.”
— Louis Gave
“In the next US recession, the US dollar goes down. A lot.”
— Louis Gave
“My guess is that the Bank of Japan will raise rates, and it will not be the debt apocalypse the market has been pricing; It’ll just be a normal day and life will go on.”
— Vincent Deluard, on the BOJ hike
“Both McDonald’s and Home Depot are down by thirty percent and the S&P is at an all-time high. It’s never happened before.”
— Vincent Deluard
Takeaways
* Both read the recent strength in the yen, won and renminbi, against rising US yields and energy, as a signal about the dollar rather than about Asia.
* Vincent’s view that the Bank of Japan could raise rates without a crisis was borne out the next day; the structural case both make, a repatriation of Asian savings and a weaker dollar over time, is a longer story.
* Louis & Vincent’s positioning leaned the same way: energy and financials, caution on the US, and attention to who funds US deficits as foreign appetite shifts.
Resources & references
* Vincent Deluard’s Global Macro research at StoneX, including his Japan reports and the short-euro / long-yen note referenced on the call. LINK
* Louis Gave and Gavekal Research, including his note on US electoral risk. LINK
* Robert Mullin, Marathon Resource Advisors. LINK
The Full Roundtable Sessions, Vol. 2
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