we'll give you a super easy refund. we'll even cover the return shipping. this is a limited time offer, so go to aerotrainer.com to get the body you want with aerotrainer. >> good morning and welcome to daybreak australia. i am paul allen in sydney and we are counting down to asia's major market open. shery: good evening from new york. paul: the top stories, asian equities may drift lower to start the week with inflation concerns resurfacing. india's ruling party trails in

the key state election as the virus crisis worsens. the australian government defends criminalizing citizens returning from the country. plus, warren buffett admits sure hathaway could have done things better after an ill-judged sale of apple stock. shery: we are seeing u.s. futures gaining .25% at the open after they dropped from record highs last week. they trimmed their biggest monthly advance since november. we did get broad beats with earnings results in for more than half of the s&p 500 companies. we are seeing u.s. futures gaining .3%, while wti futures really not doing much after posting again in april of more than 7%. take a look at some earnings coming up. it is a massive week. some pandemic names to watch. moderna, pfizer, uber and lyft also reporting. hilton hotels. names like wattana and

activision blizzard, not to mention gm and vw. we do have a very busy week ahead. paul: let's see how asian markets are shaping up new zealand, just a few points stronger. a few major markets closed today, japan and china along with thailand and vietnam. aussie futures looking mostly flat. first half beating expectations. the interim dividend, $.58. aussie tenure fairly stable ahead of tomorrow's rba decision. korean futures looking a little weaker. today is the day the ban on short selling in korea is partially lifted. going to be an interesting day of trade there. shery: india's elections underway right now despite the ongoing covid crisis in the country. prime minister modi's party

currently trailing a key state election which is seen as a test of his popularity and an indication of whether the backlash over his government's handling of the covid-19 emergency will hurt him at the about box. joining us now is ros krasny. give us the latest not only about the virus situation, but also about the election. ros: yes. it is so interesting. we have seen elections in the u.s. last fall where the perception was the incumbent, the coronavirus had a huge impact. i think that is what we are seeing in india. modi's party, the right wing, looks like it has lost this election as criticism mounts over his response to the virus. as you recall just in the past few weeks, shortly before the virus cases really took off, modi and some key deputies had

huge rallies in that area that has tagged as run a virus super-spreader events. it looks like it has really come back to haunt them. paul: doesn't look like there is any turnaround anytime soon there. single day cases heading records, and we are weeks into the crisis now. what are the likely next steps here? ros: exactly. as you say, something like 4000 deaths today and 400,000 new infections. there has been a lot of pressure and emphasis on having more or less a complete shutdown in india, something modi has been very resistant to. the indian economy sort of sprawling, very hard to enforce a complete shutdown. we did have anthony fauci, the top u.s. advisor, saying the

shutdown should go ahead. it is unclear if that will happen. meanwhile, many countries continue to stand -- send offers of help and medical clement. the u.s. helping out with vaccine raw ingredients and materials. it seems like over time that could turn things around. may not be at the point of plea turnaround yet. a shutdown would help but not sure it was going to happen. shery: there has been a lot of sympathy for india around the world. but when it comes to social media accounts coming from the chinese government, they do not seem that sympathetic. what is going on there? ros: it is really one particular account comedy central political and legal affairs commission in china, china's top law enforcement body. from every corner of the world

in recent years we have seen cautionary tales about social media accounts going rogue. it seems like maybe that is what happened here. the post juxtaposing the launch of a chinese module into space with very grim images of cremation piles in india with the caption, china lighting a fire versus india lighting a fire. even within china that caused a lot of shock and outrage, and the editor of the level times newspaper said china needs to hold high moral ground. so those post then soon disappeared. i think it was more or less a one-off. maybe an overenthusiastic social media manager. we actually did see president xi of china send a condolence to modi on friday. so i think there is still some sympathy to india from china. paul: right.

ros krasny, thank you very much. in australia, the morrison government has defended its india travel ban despite concerns from the human rights commission. australians attempting to fight -- to fly home could face up to five deals in jail or a hefty fine, starting from today. let's bring in ed johnson. these are pretty tough penalties. how is the government justifying them? ed: the health minister announced these stringent penalties over the weekend. it is a $66,000 fine, a jail term of five years or both. the government says it needs to act because of this concern the quarantine system could buckle under the pressure of infected travelers reg to country. us joya close to their bear -- their borders to nonresidents over a border now. anyone returning home has to isolate in a hotel for 14 days.

the system has been successful but it is not watertight. there have been multiple instances of security guards, even guests at the hotels becoming infected during their 14 day stay. then spreading the virus back into the community. so the government says it needs to ban these flights from india, where there are so many infections at the moment, to alleviate pressure on the quarantine system. shery: what has been the response to an outright ban? ed: leman opposition labour party has been really critical already. they say it would not be necessary if the vaccine rollout was proceeding more smoothly. it is saying the government got off to a really some -- really slow start. we have had about two one million doses administered so far. so it is running behind schedule. there are fears it could take into the first quarter of next year even for everyone in

australia to have their second dose. there are also demands for a better quarantine system. hotels just aren't fit for purpose and they are demanding that federal facilities such as a mining camp or remote army facilities be used instead. there are also questions as to whether the government has the constitutional powers to ban its own citizens from returning to the country, even under the emergency provisions. paul: so, are these the reasons the government is taking this approach? we also have new sedalia rollout of the vaccination programs are getting sped up. ed: yeah, the government is trying to turn the vaccination program around. but there's no doubt they are on the back foot. they have been hit by vaccine

nationalism. europe has delayed delivery of the astrazeneca vaccine, from 3 million/-- some 3 million shots have not been delivered. they have also had the blood clotting issue, which is caused other countries to advise against giving the vaccine to people aged under 50 in us joy's case -- in australia's case. all of these is compounding to prompt the government to take this action with the ban of flights out of india. shery: ed johnson there. let's now get over to annabelle for the first word headlines. annabelle: australia's budget deficit this fiscal year will reportedly be $23 billion narrower than the forecast.

that is due to a surgeon hiring and iron prices bolstering revenue. it also estimates the budget shortfall be cut almost in half again. australia's rebound has been in part due to the early virus containment and stimulus measures. brazil's economy minister apparently will not resign despite the nation's surging coronavirus pandemic. he made a comment, saying he believes the country will be 3% in 2022. he is also talking up reform measures, revealing a new program to pay those without a college degree or a job to agree to training. the u.k. foreign secretary says the country is close to turning the corner on covid-19 and easing restrictions following a drop in infections. he told sky news that a handful -- britains must keep up their guard.

prime minister boris johnson has resisted calls to speed up the easing of curbs. daily deaths fell to seven over the weekend. a u.s. official says there is no deal now as the u.s. and iran tried to revive a nuclear accord abandoned by the trump administration. the national security advisor made the comment in an interview with abc news after iran said there was an agreement on lifting some u.s. sanctions. the state department is denying iranian report that the u.s. has agreed to a prisoner swap and the release of $7 billion in frozen iranian funds. the biden administration also says it's policy towards north korea is not aimed at hostility, but rather at achieving complete denuclearization in the korean peninsula. earlier korea labeled biden -- the north warned the u.s. will get hurt if its provokes us.

global news 24 hours a day on air and on bloomberg quicktake, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm annabelle droulers. this is bloomberg. paul: still to come, gaming firm nexon is on a $100 million bitcoin buying spree. ceo owen mahoney will tell us where they will be shopping for even more later on. next, the market outlook from wells fargo's brian jacobsen. he tells us why and what you should be buying in may. this is bloomberg. ♪ is bloomberg. ♪

shery: we are starting the month of may on the back of an incredible global rally. let's see where stocks are headed with brian jacobsen, strategist for will -- for wells fargo. great to have you with us. do you buy into sell and may go

away? brian: the old adage of sell in may and go away, and something like you don't buyback until saint leger's day, something in september. maybe that worked when everyone took the summer off. you just didn't want to have to worry about what was happening with your portfolio while you were on vacation. i do not think that will necessarily work this year. it is not that reliable to begin with, but we do sometimes see some volatility around the economic data, and my team actually believes that we are still risk on, and we are monitoring things with data release by data release. our biggest concern right now is, what if we get a little bit of disappointment with some of the labor market indicators? we know that the fed wants to be on hold until we make substantial progress, whatever that means, towards closing that gap with the additional 8 million people who are still

unemployed that they would like to see find jobs. if we do see a slowdown in job creation, well, it's a good thing the fed might be on hold, would probably be a pretty poor harbinger of what the rebound is going to look like. shery: what about the other side of the coin? just last week we had u.s. personal incomes coming in at a record high. this chart showing how we advanced the most in monthly records back to 1946. so could you have some fed members getting proof perhaps because of potential inflation? brian: i think some of them already are. maybe they do not necessarily want to be too hopeful about it, but bloomberg i remember after the fed bank in dallas was talking about, we should be talking about tapering now. chairman powell says we should not even be talking about talking about tapering. but some of them want to have that conversation. it's a little premature to think

that inflation is going to start accelerating away from us. but you are going to have that divide. maybe that is something the market is going to need to wrestle with during the hot summer months, is that it is a divided fed. and that divide is likely to grow. the evidence is probably going to initially support the idea that inflation is picking up but really it is about, isn't going to continue to accelerate. just because you have this one increase in the price level, you have year on year increase in the price index that is inflationary, that does not mean the 2022 vs. 2021 numbers will reflect that same type of increase. that is what the debate is about and that is also what the conclusion -- confusion is likely to be about as well. paul: as you say, the fed showing no signs of even talking about talking about it. now the treasury secretary janet

yellen does not see inflation being a problem. if we can assume the fed will stay dovish for the foreseeable future, is there anywhere else to be but equities right now? brian: on my team we like to be fairly well-balanced with equities and with high-yield spirit the more classic kind of risk-on assets, the risky assets that are more geared towards growth, that is how we are biasing our portfolios. now that yields have moved up, not to say that 1.63% on a 10 year treasury is anything to write home about. it does still provide some diversification benefits. if you think about government bonds just classically, they have provided good income and they were a good diversifier. now they don't really provide all that great of income at all. but now that u.s. government bond yields have moved up a little bit, they will likely play a pretty good diversifying

role on the portfolio. we have moved towards balance, the cyclical risk-on, but increasing the government bond allocation as yields have moved higher. we do think we are likely to see yields ends the year closer to 2% than 1%. so the risk is you will see government bond prices fall. but for the next couple of months at least we think that we could encourage a little bit of turbulence. just adding some of that government bond exposure is a prudent way to add some diversification to a portfolio. paul: you mentioned you do like cyclicals. i know you like industrials as well what are your expectations around that sector? what is driving it? brian: if you think about industrials, it really is like a junk drawer of different exposures in there. you have companies that produce machinery, you have airlines, you have also us of different exposures in there, very

idiosyncratic. that is one of the things we liked about it, is industrials itself is fairly diversified when you look underneath the hood at the different stocks in there. and so that sector we do think can continue to do well just because of just how beaten-down some of those industries were, and it looks like as we are going through earnings season, that they are surprising to the upside. it was one of the few second errors where they were not these knock out the lights expectations for earnings growth. it was hard to come by just because a lot of people were expecting this big rebound from the 2021 lows, the year on year comparison creeping in. but the industrial sector does seem like there were fairly sober expectations and they have proven they have been able to beat on that, and that momentum can continue as it draws investors' attention. paul: brian jacobsen, thanks so

much for joining us today. still to come, the pandemic recovery accelerates. we are going to break down the numbers from australia's second-largest lender. this is bloomberg. ♪ this is bloomberg. ♪

paul: let's take a look at the day ahead for australia. australia's budget deficit will be 30 billion aussie dollar is narrower than the government's midyear forecast, amid the s urrge in hiring and iron ore prices. victoria is stepping up ambition even as canberra refuses to commit to a target. emissions are going to be halved by 2030. on the corporate front we have

westpac's first-half earnings in the past hour, the nation's second-largest lender seeing profit climb as loans fell. let's get more on this with our finance reporter. westpac posting massive growth and cash earnings. what was behind that? ? >> last year -- that was because everyone was expecting a prolonged period of economic depression, rise in unemployment, and fall in house prices. this year though some are no longer necessary. shery: other highlights? nabila: they've restored the dividend so shareholders will be happy about that. they also posted growth after a year of decline.

aussie mortgages grew. the ceo said house prices will continue to grow. but he did warn the rise in prices will slow down a little bit. paul: the ceo had some reasonably upbeat things to say about the outlook. nabila: he did. he was very bullish on the australian economy. he said unemployment is falling and there are more people employed now than precovid, so that is a good market. he said a strong liver market will continue to support growth in the economy. he said they are trying to get people back into offices and also investors are slowly returning to the housing market, and that is a good sign of growth as well. shery: so what does that mean for other banks reporting later this week? nabila: it should be pretty good for the national australia bank. again, just results underpinned by the australian economic recovery, as australia comes out

of covid far better than a lot of its counterparts. macquarrie on friday should also be very interesting. we are expecting they will be following in the footsteps oftr. they announced stellar results as well. shery: nabila ahmed with what to expect from banks this week. here is a quick check of the latest headlines. apple's high-stakes antitrust fight with epic games kicks off in front of a california federal judge later monday. the maker of fortnite is trying to show apple's app store is run like a monopoly, with the developers hit by as much as 30% in commission fees. apple insists they do not abuse their market power. -- due to delays. this according to a german trade magazine citing sources close to the automaker. next, warren buffett weighs in on everything from robinhood to

spacs in berkshire's annual meeting. the key takeaway, next. this is bloomberg. ♪ loomberg. ♪

shery: the oracle of omaha has spoken and he had a lot to say. warren buffett and his deputies spoke at berkshire hathaway is a virtual annual meeting over the weekend and touched on everything from what he is calling the casino-like markets to spac's and past missteps. let's bring in sally bakewell. mr. buffett seemed more cautious this time around. what were the takeaways? sally: the things shareholders want to hear from warren buffett, of course how berkshire's business is faring. some of the businesses berkshire

owns are deeply linked to the economy, so he is uniquely placed to talk about it. they also want to know about the session, who is taking over for him and went. and when and how he will deploy his massive cash pile, because he has been criticized for not doing deals. deciding instead to buy back his own stock. his views on the economy, he called it red hot. prices are rising, consumers are seeing prices rise, and there is more inflation then people would have expected six months ago. the economy was effectively resurrected, that was his word, by the stimulus measures by the government and the federal reserve. the pace of recovery has surpassed their expectations. they were craving to hear that kind of information. on his own businesses and investments, this was perhaps the most revealing. the billionaire faced questions over why they didn't seize upon the temporary market downturn to snap up more stocks, and instead

he used the first weeks of the u.s. shut down to dump some of his airlines stocks. those stocks went on to actually rally more than 45%. he said it was not a great moment in berkshire's history. also sold some apple stock when the company gained about 80%. he was quite revealing and how he has admitted some regrets and some errors there. on that cash pile, he said spac's ards -- are his achilles' heel. they are driven by a mandate to make splashy acquisitions in a hurry. outbid a bargain. paul: did warren buffett give any hints on how he might deploy that enormous cash pile? sally: he is a fan of buying back his own stock and has been for a while. him and his longtime business

partner see the value in doing that. in terms of secession we got one potential clue. at one point charlie mungo mentioned greg able, another one of the younger controls of the berkshire's businesses, would maintain the culture at berkshire. so i think investors, that probably peaked in their interest a lot. but no successor has been a lot -- has been announced. that was a comment that might be picked up by some investors. shery: what about little comments about succession? sally: exactly. he does not get a lot of way -- a lot away, but that was one tiny breadcrumb that people might see the pun and think he mentioned able would maintain the culture at berkshire. potentially is that an indication of what is to come? but it is very hard to say and be definitive on anything like that with warren buffett. paul: all right. finance editor sally bakewell there.

you can get a roundup of the stories you need today and today's addition of daybreak. go to dayb on your terminal. it is also available on mobile, and you can customize your settings so you are only getting news on the industries and assets you care about. let's check in on the first word news now with annabelle droulers. annabelle: daily kournikova deaths in india hit a record 3689 on, sunday while the number of daily cases dipped slightly. the deepening crisis may have caused prime minister number -- prime minister modi a key election. modi was widely criticized for holding mass rallies as infections soared. elon musk's spacex successfully returned four astronauts to earth, ending its first ever

crude mission to the iss. the dragon capsule splashed down in the gulf of mexico, ending a five-month mission. it cements spacex as nasa's only commercial partner snowfall -- so far capable of bringing humans into space. iran's supreme leader publicly rebuked the country's -- the ayatollah called the comments shocking. the interview was published by a-based dissident news channel. pfizer is to ship 4.5 million doses of its covid-19 vaccine to south africa by june. south african health officials say the first 320,000 shots were to arrive sunday night. they also expect johnson & johnson to release shots by the middle of may.

punctures of manchester united fans staged a dramatic process against the club's u.s. owners. dozens broke into the grounds to release flares and smoke grenades. they are angry at a failed attempt to form a breakaway league. the scheduled match was postponed. in a statement the premier league's of the protest has no justification. global news 24 hours a day on air and on bloomberg quicktake, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm annabelle droulers. this is bloomberg. shery: it is time now for morning calls. supply chain issues in the auto sector are eyewash for morgan stanley, expecting the imbalance to last well into next year. morgan stanley is still allowing investors to buy the dip. paul: i'm looking at a call from bloomberg intelligence says macau casino stocks could move at the open in hong kong. the city's monthly gaming

revenue has lacked for a third time. -- lagged for the third time. keen an eye on -- keep an eye on galaxy entertainment. shery: korea partially lifted its ban on shortselling started monday. they were put in place last year because of covid. our asia stocks reporter joins us to discuss. this was imposed in march of last year >> the longest since the pandemic anywhere in the world. can we expect more volatility in the markets? >> good morning. south korea has been shortselling since march of last year. what analysts said is there might be some short-term selling pressure because the kospi and another benchmark index has been rising so much and they have

been one of the best-performing stock market indexes around the world in key markets. given past cases they do not expect the markets would crash so much. even if they do they expect the market would probably recover to the pre-shortselling level in around a month. there is no good reason for their stocks to fall at the moment. they have been doing well thanks to strong exports and investment. the country's economy recover to precode levels. -- pre-covid levels. they have been reporting better-than-expected earnings lately. gains in local stock markets. even if shortselling resumes partially on some stocks starting today, they expect very few reasons to expect huge

volatility. paul: still, retail investors are a bit worried. what are their concerns about shortselling? youykung: that is right. retail investors have been very much, against shortselling. they have been asking to ban shortselling permanently in the country. some of them have been driving a bus in an anti-shortselling campaign, saying i hate shortselling, we should permanently end shortselling in the country. we should note that retail investors have been a very strong force in local equity markets since the pandemic. they have been accounting for about recorders of local daily -- about three quarters of local daily stock trading. even mom and pops, grandmothers, college students, a lot of them

have opened an account and engaged in stock investment since the pandemic, and they have dragon set -- they have driven such a strong performance since march. their concern is once shortselling begins, even though it is limited to about 350 local stocks, they are very worried that it may trigger some of the selloffs and trigger the kospi decline. analysts have been saying their concerns are overdone and they may not happen, but that hasn't been enough to ease their concerns. shery: remember a couple weeks ago goldman sachs kept it ove rwight when it came to -- overweight when it came to south korea. this is the first day of the lifting of the shortselling ban, right? so what will you be watching? youykung: yeah, so today is the

big day. this will be the first time in more than 14 months that we will see, that we could see investors shorting on some stocks. investors should probably be watching the companies with high shortselling volume before the ban was imposed in march 2020. they may also be watching some stocks that could be seen as overvalued compared to their peers. so, that would be like transportation. at this point, kospi has been at a record high, so there are very few specters that have fallen so far this year. most of the sectors in the local markets on kospi have been gaining. so we will be watching today and in the coming days for how -- what are the shortselling volume

increases that go down. especially watch the sectors that have been seen as having gained more than their potential value. shery: youykung lee there with insights into the listing of that shortselling ban and south korea. next, nexon joining tesla in betting on bitcoin after pushing through with a $100 million buying spree. ceo owen mahoney tells whether he will be shopping for even more, next. this is bloomberg. ♪ this is bloomberg. ♪

paul: videogame publisher nexon has joined other publicly listed companies such as tesla in holding bitcoin. the announced last week they have purchased some 1707 bitcoin for about $100 million, equivalent to less than 2% of cash equivalents on hand. to discuss why, we are joined by owen mahoney, nexon's president and ceo. thank you so much for joining us today. so i understand that you have bought bitcoin as kind of a strategy to protect shareholder value, but at the same time, bitcoin is a very volatile asset. how much of this is about protecting shareholder value, and how much is about good

old-fashioned the speculation? owen: it is entirely about protecting shareholder value. nexon is about a $30 billion market cap. we have about $5.5 billion in cash equivalents and we generate about $1 billion a year in after-tax cash. so we have a substantial cash position. so we care a lot about the power of that buying position, and we have to take our currencies very seriously. prior to this, u.s. dollars, korean yuan, japanese yen. we started to notice what was going on in central banks around the world, and we said that there is a scenario here where the buying power of our cash goes down substantially, or precipitously. so we want to protect against that. we looked around the world and looked at different types of cash, and came to the conclusion that bitcoin is the hardest currency that we know of right now. so we netted out on the idea

that should put about 2% of our cash position into bitcoin. paul: so how are you going to manage this position going forward? will it reach a price were you consider selling it, or are you going to buy more? owen: there is a lot of debate as to how you think about bitcoin. is it a kind of cash, is a digital gold? we just think of it as another currency. we would treat the answers that question the way we treat other cash positions. so we regularly look at this, myself, the management team, the financial team, we look at the balance of our different forms of cash on a regular basis. shery: when you look at your holdings of bitcoin, at what

level, is there a specific level where you would offload or get more? this gtv chart on the bloomberg just showing we may be starting to break down on this huge uptrend we have seen the past year. owen: we will see. we take a very long-term position on this. again, we're not speculators here, we are not in the position of speculating bitcoin. we are in the position of taking our shareholder's money very seriously. we like to have cash on the balance sheet so we can move very quickly should a great strategic opportunity, or a great opportunity for investment comes along. but we also need to consider seriously what the buying power of the cash is. the answer to your question is a long-term approach to this as well as the other currencies. shery: do you expect other firms to follow your lead? owen: i cannot speak for them. i think that reasonable people can disagree on this, but i think a lot of people are looking at the same types of crack's that we are. some of them will come to the same conclusion. that would be my conclusion but i don't know. shery: you have not really made a production of future answers -- future interest rates. given what you know of the macro environment, why is bitcoin so important to you? shery: we are not central -- owen: we are not central bankers and we do not know what their intention is to do. since january of 2020, just inthe u.s. there is 40% more money in the system.

and so we don't know what is going to happen. but we have to think very seriously about the buying power of the cash we have on hand. we are not predicting the future or making a speculative bet. we are just protecting ourselves in case what we are concerned about and's of happening. paul: -- ends up happening. paul: do you have any concerns about bitcoin? i'm thinking about global mining being done in china, curbs on consumption. it's also not exactly the greenest asset either. was there anything that gave you pause for thought? owen: there was. we looked at all this very closely. you just mentioned several different factors we took a very close look at. there are certainly risks in owning this form of currency, as there are in other forms of currency. we have been tracking it very closely since about 2015. we became comfortable with the software behind it. we're software people ourselves, so we are versed in the issues of software. so we felt that the benefits at this level outweighed the risks that are there. other people have written about those risks. as for green, we have not been able to lay our hands on a really rigorous analysis of holding bitcoin as a currency versus holding other currencies in the banking system. there are costs on that other side as well. we are very open to this idea but we live in the real world and we have to make decisions in the real world on a regular basis.

we have seen a lot of opinions but we have not seen a lot of rigorous analysis on the topic being mentioned. we will continue to look for that and we will adjust our strategy accordingly as these things develop, but we have looked at it pretty closely. 2% of our cash position felt like the right solution at this time. shery: i know you are in your quiet period so i will not delve into your earnings, but give us an outlook of the broader gaming market, given that we are reopening. a lot of people are getting out and about. are we going to continue to see the demand for gaming that you would just do when you are at home? owen: sure. look, we said this a year ago at the advent of covid, we think that much bigger than the near term impacts of being at home versus being outside, we think we are in a secular shift in the entertainment industry. the games business globally is a lot bigger than entertainment all in. it is growing at a substantially faster rate. if you look at the p&l's of

companies like us and activision and ea, we're very profitable. that was true long before covid. those trends were already in place. what we are seeing is a secular shift from off-line to online, and from linear entertainment to highly interactive entertainment. we're all prisoners of our own experience. i grew up going to disneyland and go to a lot of physical entertainment. i think if you look out two, five, 10 years in the future, you're going to see a lot more people spending a lot more time online and entertaining themselves in a very interactive way. so we think that secular shift is very real and over ways over the long-term anything in the near term. shery: owen mahoney, it was great having you on. president and ceo of nexon. apple an epic, we may per -- the maker of fortnite, are scheduled to meet monday in a high-stakes

antitrust fight over how much apple's app store charges develop meds. -- charges developers. >> apple and epic games are entering a trial that could impact the heart of our apple's app store. the fee they take from developers who charge for paid downloads and in app purchases. this manner kicked into high gear when epic replaced its payment system inside of its popular game fortnite with its own gaming system. that circumvented apple's in app purchase system which takes the fee. that led apple to remove fortnite from the app store. hours later, epic sued apple, and here we are today. you cover epic games. what is their argument, and how do you think they will fare? >> epic argues that apple has monopoly power in the ios app distribution market. it argues apple locks developers

into selling ios apps only through the app store, and forces developers to use their own payment auction audi. epic would like -- payment functionality. epic would like to change that. they are going to testify and say this is unfair, and epic will have economists who will say apple is just greedy and it's trying to take developer's money away from them. legal experts say epic has a fair shot at winning, but even if it loses, it will probably win mind share for developers and consumers. how do you see the apple side of the story? what are apple's arguments and what are their chances for winning? >> apple's perspective is essentially twofold. one, there is a contract in place. so no matter how anyone feels about the situation, epic for

all intents and purposes does have a contractual agreement with apple for that 15% to 30% cut apple takes from all developers. that alone i think gives apple a potential leg up in the lawsuit. secondary, apple says their cut is either lower than the industry average or is on par with the industry. of course that is arguable. there is a corner of people who say the industry is only at that tier because apple said that tier when they launched the app store 10 years ago. for apple, there are billions of dollars at stake. apple made an average of $120 billion per year between 2018 and 2020 on revenue from fortnite alone. is epic wins or makes a -- the floodgates could potentially open for other developers to sue apple and fight apple in other ways. apple made an estimated $20

billion in fiscal 2020 off commissions from the app store. that is a lot of money for the iphone maker. ♪

shery: checking on markets right now, we are seeing kiwi stocks under a little bit of pressure right now. do watch out for the jobless

rates out of new zealand on wednesday. sydney futures under pressure. we do have april housing prices out today. u.s. futures gaining ground but watch out for the kospi because we have that short spelling ban being lifted. more news just ahead. this is bloomberg. ♪ bloomberg. ♪

>> let's get you caught up on the first word headlines. data accorded covid deaths in india hit 3689 on sunday while the number of daily cases slightly -- dipped slightly. the crisis may have cost the prime minister a key election. his party conceding. he was criticized for holding mass rallies and the opposition-controlled state as infections of sword. the u.k. foreign secretary said the