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Chinese authorities taking steps trying to boost that struggling economy. You saw investors rush in, Martin, would you, were you one of those investors, Martin, would you be urging clients, yes, buy Chinese equities?

Well, there's been a lot of false dawns, Josh, the last several years, and so you have to be careful. Uh, but at the same time, um, you know, some of these Chinese stocks are very, very cheap. Uh, these are obviously the, um, if you will, the the mag sevens of China, the 10 cents, um, and companies like that that we're invested in, but the end of the day, China still has a lot of issues to overcome. Uh, the property market is still in the doldrums. Um, you have yet to see some of this fiscal pump priming that we believe is necessary to get the economy on better footing. Now, the the first steps have been taken here recently, and this is something we've been waiting for for quite some time. So on the margin, we've been adding to China over the course of the last three to four months, uh, but not in large scale. Um, and we'll see, you know, this could be again a head fake, but the longer-term policy prescriptions that may come out of China will determine, um, what we expect to see in the market going forward. And our expectation is that, uh, we see stabilization, and we do see further upside potential for some of these companies, uh, listed in China.

One of the other markets that has gotten a lot of attention has been, of course, Japan. Japan has a new, um, Prime Minister, incoming Prime Minister Shigeru Shiba, and he apparently is in favor of the Bank of Japan's plan that it's been on to start to raise interest rates more. Is Japan an area that still has some upside?

Yeah, so we use a top-down country allocation approach in some of our international groups within Federated Hermes. And what that means is we're basically picking and choosing different regions of markets to overweight and underweight, and Japan has been one of those markets where we have been overweight. Um, and that's primarily because the yen has been obviously an accelerator to some degree, but to your point, now we are seeing a reversal, uh, and and at least as it relates to, um, the Bank of Japan's focus on raising rates. They've already kind of telegraphed that October will not see a rise, um, but we do expect them to continue to normalize, um, their monetary policy in such a way that we do expect Japan to be one of the out performers over the course of next few years. And they've got some great companies, um, involved in everything, obviously, from technology, uh, as well as in, um, some of the more even local banks, which are going to be big, big beneficiaries of not just the TSC, the Tokyo Tokyo Stock Exchange reforms, but also of obviously rising interest rates, rising inflation, something that Japan has literally not seen in over a generation. So while it's going to be a bumpy road, we do expect Japan to be one of those markets that will outperform near and long term, and our top-down country allocation approach right now continues to like Japan for that for those exact same reasons.

Martin, so we touched on a number of different countries, regions, US, China, Japan. You also flagged Brazil. Walk us through some of the movements you're seeing there by those policy makers.

Well, what's interesting is Brazil, unlike the Fed, uh, where they're trying to catch up, right? Um, Brazil was actually the forefront of more conventional monetary policy. They basically started to raise rates early in the cycle when they saw the first, if you will, inflationary pressures. And now as as we've seen, they're actually raising rates. Um, and you know, it's interesting to see within the, um, central banking community, some of the changes out there. You've got Russia and Brazil that are raising, um, and then you've got obviously Japan also potentially in a raising mode. But then you have the rest of the world, the Fed, China, the ECB, the Bank of England, although they kept steady here recently. Um, we do expect them, uh, to start to continue to cut, but in the case of Brazil, here's a market that we believe has a lot of potential. It's got a little bit of a political, um, headwinds right now. Elections are over and done with, but, uh, we still think that there are some headwinds on the legislative front. Uh, we do believe that Brazil and companies like Newbank or Mercado Libra, which has a very large presence in in in Brazil, are very big beneficiaries of a longer-term consumption and obviously growth-oriented, uh, progress that Brazil has been making.

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