aifference. and if i can save the planet and make some money, i mean, i think it's a win-win. good morning and welcome to "street sierns." these are your headlines there's a broad pullback in asian equities as equities ease in costs meanwhile bridgewater associates say they'll continue to grow as a dominant political currency. >> i think you're going to see a

strong currency, stable currency, more attractive returning currency, and also a more widely used currency, you know, in the years ahead. >> the crypto route continues amid reports that u.s. financial regulators are considering cracking down on digital coin trades and deutsche trades move lower as they find money laundering controls. well, good morning and to anyone watching from the uk, happy bank holiday happy watching cnbc. we're starting to watch some of the flashes out of the latest economic outlook just to bring you the top line summary, the name of the report is no ordinary recovery. they talk about the economic outlook brightening but in a

very uneven way. they've got 6% pencilled in for this year after a 3.5% contraction in 2020, around 6% it's actually 5.8% there's some lines here saying despite encouraging signs in both the health and the economic recovery, many headwinds still persist, namely, and i quote, not enough vaccines reaching e.m. and low risk countries. there's a new risk, the possibility of higher inflation. commodity prices have been rising fast. bottlenecks are creating price tensions thee should start to fade by the end of the year. one final line as well on public investments, they're saying it is essential that significant investment is made and that the funds are sufficiently spent

you can check for more information on individual country forecasts. for example, in the uk, they have 7.2% growth pencilled in for 2021 versus 5.51% previous estim estimate, so a substantial upward growth. for euro, 4.3% in 2021 versus 3.9% back in march better numbers for uk and europe we'll bring you an interview with laurence boone later on this morning. it's not a bank holiday in france, but thank you, anyway, for joining me on street signs i've heard you talking about s unequal recovery from what we can gather right now, so far the data is coming in pretty strong for the months

of april and may no surprise because one year ago everything was pretty much in a free fall. underneath the surface, though, there are a lot of warning signs still. so how does this complicate the challenge for policy makers to understand exactly what's going on at a micro level versus what we see at a macro level, which is huge blowout numbers for pmis, for example? >> it's interesting because you really have this recovery with high economic recovery in the u.s. low pressure economics in europe, and a year of normalization in china to go back to your point, yes, the problem is basic facts, but also the ability for them to see through the price revealed that's happening as we speak if you think about inflation numbers, a lot of the sub indices of the cpis that are showing double-digit growth

numbers are goods or services that didn't have a price a year ago just because the economy was on pause and so the idea is first to be able to see through this noise, but also to resist quite hard social pressure coming from very rapidly analyzed data dumps that gets a lot of attention. i'm thing about inflation, of course, pmis, the semi-conductors hitting the headlines. this happens every couple of years, but this time around, this becomes a bit of an issue and calls for intervention is what one policy maker will do. and is there anything central banks can do there is this urge to act when basically we need to more information to see who's key when the tide went down. >> especially if these policy makers are on twitter, which is a noisy place with a lot of people continually asking

essential banks to do things to come back to your initial point, how much longer is it going to take to get a clear picture of how economies are emerging out of the pandemic >> i guess, you know, we have a second type of effect, especially in europe because in the first quarter, we had a new wave of letdown that created a new recession. so we're going to need a couple of quarters to really understand what is the drawdown effect on italy and spain compared to germany and france that had different ways of lockdown i should say byfall we should see a lot of things. we should see how much of the pledged amount by president biden will actually come to fruition we see in europe what will happen with the german election and the tension building around the french election. so we'll see what type of new measures europe can take to make sure we have a very subsequent recovery we seal a little more what's happening on the greener side. a lot of people are calling for

action when the world is barely coming back to a form of normalization. so i would say by the fall, we could have a good understanding because it's going to be 18 months from the beginning of the pandemic, so we should start seeing the reality of prices we should start seeing what sticks in terms of price pressures. is it only supply and demand or are their bigger things, especially coming from the u.s is u.s. stake little bit with wage growth and inflation? all of that will come in the form of clarity by fall. by then, we should stay put. i think the biggest risk is to add uncertainty to uncertainty what i'm seeing is a lot of knee-jerk reaction, especially those policy makers connected on twitter. i think this is something we expect, right? it was kind of easy. no matter what it takes, whatever it costs, et cetera 2021 is a bit more sophisticated.

it's about seeing what happens with the type of support you put into the economy so a lot of policy experts are looking at that. >> for sure. what you were saying about things being trickier especially when you get these high inflation prints, no doubt a lot of them skewed by base effects, people are forgetting the fed have changed their mandates, their targets saying an average inflation rate of 2% in the feds' eyes, it's a welcome to have inflation above 2% after so many years of persistently low inflation why are people in such a rush to see the fed withdraw stimulus? >> you know, i think this is very interesting because as you said, the fed changed to be the forward guidance it's a bit of how we want to, you know, tweak the policy function the european central bank also

tweaked the policy function with the condition being a full factor to take on when you decide to, you know, update your policy what it means is that there is indeed this idea that central banks are buying a bit of time for fiscal policy makers to do their job. look at what janet yellen said to jay powell, let me handle it. so i think this is really something that's a bit nerve-racking because i think central banks want to overstay their welcome, i would say, just to ensure there's no financial instability issues at the same time, many finance mensters around the world said we can do the heavy lifting this time around. there's fiscal dominance that's at play and a vested interest. some want to see quite a controlled level of inflation,

especially the vigilantes out there. others don't want them to stop because this has been very lucrative. you have to see where people are coming from and why people can be so aggressive toward policy makers i think we're going to see policy -- fiscal and policy mix for quite some time, and the question is who would flip the bill for me, the question is who comes out first. who unplugs first. and what happened then, meaning what are the type of reactions that some of the policy makers will decide to take? i don't know if it's to compensate what they've been doing. think about monetary policy in europe all of that, that's why i said we have to look at what is the real cost of the policies. in the meantime, the music should not stop playing. this is what fiscal and monetary players are l try to do. >> fair enough thanks for joining us on the

show from munich, not paris let's turn to the european markets. uk bank holidays, so we're seeing slightly lighter activity in terms of volume and trading activity you can see it's pretty much a mixed picture after, broadly speaking, a good year for equity stocks six as a hold. in germany, they're almost leading the declines you have the spanish trading deutsche, we're watching the german index cac is up a tenth of a percentage point, coming on the heels of the report suggesting that as the european economy ends, the uk will do better. ftse up 0.2%

we had a mixed handover from ashorthand, of course, the very strong inflation numbers in terms of foreign exchange, this is the picture in the morning. we have the dollar yet again slightly trading weaker than the euro of 122 dollar/yen bucking the recent trend. if you look at the last couple of charts, it's been climbing, climbing, climbing we're very close to breaking through that mark and the yen has been trading weaker versus the u.s. dollar even though the u.s. dollar against almost every other currency fare has been trading weeker swiss franc, not a lot of movement. while oil has been in focus, last week we saw a big jump in energy complex you can see today brent is just

shy of 70 dollars, one percentage point firmer. there's a big week coming up we've got opec to watch out for. opec will be deciding what to do, how many more barrels they're going to bring back to the market but that combines with a more solid outlook for demand that's helping to put a real floor under the price of energy here we're watching that very, very closely. but the past couple of weeks have been quite good for the energy sector. now, the federal reserve has told deutsche bank it's fixing money laundering controls with regulators the bank could face a fine, according to "the wall street journal. deutsche bank offered no comment to cnbc, so deutsche bank is now trading quite substantially in negative territory, down 1.7 percentage points weighing on the german index dax of course, deutsche bank for a

while has been out of the news some of this comes as a bit of a surprise, a negative surprise to the stock this morning now also coming up on "street signs," a tale of two sectors. growth activity slows in may, but services are picking up, posting growth for the 15th month in a row we'll have more details after the break.

welcome back to the show chinese activity slowed. the country's official manufacturing purchases managers index, the pmi, slowed to 51.0, so 51 flat, in the month missing expectations and china's yuan will come closer than we expect. the bridgewater associates founder also weighed in on china's relationship with the

global cryptocurrency markets. >> i think it's important to distinguish you can digitalize a currency, okay, or you can create an alternative currency what china is doing is digitalizing its currency. so it will remain in control of that currency, and it will exist. it's a digital version of its currency, and it has a lot of advantages over the non-digital version. i won't rattle them off. but if you want me to, i will. versus a non--- an alternative currency so using blockchain technology and so on, that's a different thing than having an alternative kur encircle and bitcoin is an alternative currency versus the digitalizing but i think that you really have to consider how the remember nb

will work with bitcoin. >> but they completely take over the crypto market? >> no, nothing ever takes over anything, but i think that if there was an internationalization of a digital -- of the remember nb and that there was then with that the appropriate interest rates that go along with the pricing of the currency, that it would be a very viable alternative to a lot of people you're not going to have that much privacy but there's not that much privacy anyway i think we're going to enter into a world in which people will be thinking which currency. and the ones that have the best fundamentals will be the ones that will be most comprehensive, and that will be threatening to

countries. >> let's get more into that because if successful, it would put china at the forefront because it would be the first to issue its own currency we're seeing india exploring the idea of a digital rupee. would could we see a u.s.-backed digital dollar >> i think one day you will. the u.s. is behind on this, but it's being examined, and i think that you will see a digital dollar. >> how successful will they be compared to china's efforts in creating their own digital currency >> well, the u.s. dollar still is the dollar world currency over 60% of reserves and so on in dollars and by most measures, trade and so on. the u.s. dollar will undoubtedly be large, but that doesn't mean most competitive so i think if you were to digitalize it, it will certainly

be viable, but it wouldn't be, i think, as competitive in terms of its pricing and return and the storied wealth particularly given what we've talked about with the dead money integration. >> you can see more from christine's exclusive interview with ray dalio on june 15th at 8:00 to 11:00 on cte. cryptocurrencies have faced increasing scrutiny in the past few weeks with china cracking down on mining and trading the u.s. is also toughening its stance under president joe biden with financial authorities reporting that authorities are planning to take a more active role in regulating the crypto market i'm happy to say the crypto leader from pwc joins us down the line great to have you with us. lots to talk about, but i want to talk about a report you have written about crypto hedge fund

activities so could you just set the scene for us and talk about the appetite there is from the hedge fund community to get involved in the crypto space? >> absolutely. i think this is the third year we're doing this report in partnership with others. what's remarkable this year is in 2020, the total tripled from 2 million to 8 million these are traditional hedge funds that many of your viewers know are starting to get into crypto and what's been really interesting there is where we surveyed about $180 billion of the um of traditional hedge funds, the results show that 46% of them are already invested in crypto or they're looking at investing crypto in the next several months it's a way higher percentage than people expected. >> here's the thing.

i know people who worked in traditional finance who are getting involved in crypto, but not because they believe in the ideological value of cryptocurrency, but they see the opportunity to make money. they see a market that's pretty much unregulated they see inefficiencies in pricing and they come in and say from a marketmaker's perspective, this is a dream for us is it because they believe in the disruptive long staying power of cryptocurrencies, or is it just to make money? >> well, i think the hedge funds like many others, their main goal is to return to share shareholders and investors, and i would say for a lot of hedge funds coming in, it's a great opportunity to generate returns and actually there's a lot of opportunities. you mentioned on a trading perspective, being able to trade around some of the events or a

lot of these naples. that being said, there's a lot of road blocks to them as well for example, when we did the survey, we found out that 82% of traditional hedge funds are still reluctant or are still taking small steps because of uncertainty, and probably even more surprising was at 77% are worried about entering the crypto space because of how their existing clients are going to react i think that's very, very interesting. while a lot of them want to enter space because i see revenue opportunity, they're worried about how their traditional investor base is going to react i think that's an interesting result as well. >> especially with the most recent volatility. it's not an easy pill to swallow. i wanted to turn back to the regulation angle i heard differing views on this point. some people from the bitcoin community say actually regulation is welcome because the product can eventually become a lot more mainstream and

acceptable and be more appeappealin to investors they're going to start mining activity because of what we're seeing in china. they're going to start cracking down on some of the illicit illegal activity going on behind the scenes, the fact that cryptocurrency has been used for things like ransom ware and money extortion. so where does the regulatory picture leave the future of cryptocurrencies from here. >> great question. i think we need to separate regulation and policy. we have to a reasonable extent reasonable clarity when it comes to crypto. think about hong kong and singapore. the rules are not perfect but they're decent only 5% of regulators today do not have somebody working on crypto frchl that perspective, we have reasonable clarity that is one of the reasons that

is cattalizing the distribution of players. when it comes to policy when it comes to china as it tries to reach its paris climate accord goals, the bitcoin mining was a potential challenge, thus one of the reasons we saw some of the comments that were made last friday also when it comes to broader policy decision-making, i think a lot more education is needed you mentioned illicit activity according to the data we have today n 2020, only 0.34%, 0.34%. that was only $10 billion in absolute terms linked to illicit activities that's really a drop in the bucket if you look at the amount of illicit activity. so i think this kind of education is needed on the policy side. that's kind of the next step as bitcoin and cryptocurrencies

being more mainstream. >> let's turn to the now the price of bitcoin is about 45%, 40% lower than where we were a couple of months ago. how are people thinking about things right now how is sentiment >> absolutely. as you mentioned in the month of may, bit county went from 55,000 to 35,000 that it is today i think it depends on which investor segment you look at for example, on the retail side, there's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear. especially when you wake up, you don't know what elon musk is going to tweet from a bitcoin and currency perspective, and that's creating versatility. however, when it comes from the institutional side of the market, we're seeing larger playerses, financial institutions enter the space anecdotally i'm hearing from fund managers looking at this as an opportunity to come in and gaining on the months they may have missed from that perspective. let's not forget a lot of 2020

was a pretty interesting time for crypto hedge funds and a lot of institutional hedge funds as well just to put things in perspective, the median hedge fund returned last year was 128% obviously, whether you like it or not, it attracts a lot of institutional players coming in. when you look at people investing in crypto, you look at crypto hedge funds, 84% of those today are individuals and family offices. so we still have a long way to go as we start seeing foundations, endowment, sovereigns, pensions so, again, we're at the very, very beginning stages of institutional factors and factors like you mentioned playing a big role. >> people with money are drawn to assets that are going to make more money that's what's happening there. we're going to leave it there. thanks for joining us on street signs. the crypto leader from pwc. also coming up on "street signs," it could be the end of

an era with israel with benjamin netanyahu potentially being on the way out. we'll be right back.

welcome back to "street signs. these are your headlines eu markets search for direction following a broad pullback in asian equities as chinese growth eases. the oecd boosts its acceleration amid vaccine rollouts and spending with china leading the forecasts. the crypto route continues amid reports that u.n. financial regulators are considering cracking down on digital coin trades. and deutsche shares are moving slower after germany find s money laundering controls. israeli's far right leader expressed his report for unity government to unseat prime minister benjamin netanyahu.

it would allow la pid to form a coalition and end netanyahu's 12-year rule is this looking like the beginning of the end for netanyahu who's been on and off in power for a better part of the last three decades >> that's exactly right. a significant development in israel we still don't know if we're going to do be saying bye-bye baby this could have significant implications for israel's relationship with the united states, the iran nuclear deal, not to mention the treatment of palestinians on the grounds in israel so we're watching this closely what we've learned over the past 24 hours is that naphtali benoit is teaming up to form a unity coalition government essentially aimed at unseated prime minister benjamin netanyahu after his 12 years in power

he made that announcement earlier saying he'll do wait takes to work with partieses and leaders to get this done, saying he wants to avoid a fifth election in israel >> translator: all parties are invited to join to government. for the government to succeed, we need all partners in negotiation and after that to show restraint nobody will be requested to give up on the ideology, but all will need to play their part in fulfilling dreams. >> benjamin netanyahu spoke shortly after the announcement describing it as the fraud of the century. he's going to be working with other parties to try to get his own deal over the line but what his parties looks like remains to be seen at the same time they could be facing a number of hurdles in making its way into government the first is that this could be one of the most diverse coalitions in israel's history

that really underscores the fragility of this relationship as it stands, and analysts that we've spoken to today says it highlights the risk of a potential failing. at the same time, bennett will have to continue with his statements of the past it's something the arab parties are certainly going to have to contend with when it comes to their decision whether tore support him and his fellow running mate when it comes to taking over the helm of israeli politics and reaching the top of the pile there so still a number of decisions to be made we're going to have to see what happens in the next 24 to 48 hours to determine if this is indeed the end of benjamin netanyahu's reingn in israel still the deadline for forming this coalition lands on wednesday, so that's when we'll learn more up until then, the deal-making continues and the conversation

is ongoing. >> excellent thank you for bringing us the latest out of israeli politics >> may is mental health awareness month in the u.s to mark the occasion, we spoke with deepak chopra who teamed up with alicia keys to form a meditation program i'm curious to hear more about this meditation program. mental health is a big topic of discussion nowadays with so many more celebrities speaking out about their own journeys. >> that's right, joumanna. as you say, a lot of celebrities have been talking about mental health and deepak chopra is very concerned about the impact of the pandemic on people's mental health around the world. he's released a free '21 meditation with the singing superstar alicia keys, and he

feels very strongly that mental stress and mental health really should be at the forefront for everybody. this is what he had to say. >> the '21 experience with alicia keys is how do we all embrace the define architect in our own being. i'm being totally transparent about this what you're seeing is dysfunctional male energy. this dysfunctional predatory male energy, it has outlived its evolutionary purpose, and unless we are balanced in ourselves with both masculine and feminine energies, that imbalance is reflected in what we see in the world. >> this beautiful idea of the divine feminine is something i've been thinking about so much, and i've been blessed to do a 21-day meditation with my brother deepak chopra all about

the divine feminine because it's brought me so much clarity. >> i'm very graceful to alicia keys for helping to spirit the message and i want to reach a billion people with this energy, define feminist. >> as you can hear that from deepak chopra and alicia keys, how important they feel mental well being is. back to you. >> excellent i look forward to watching that full interview with deepak ch chopra. covid infection rates have hit a one-year low 50% of americans have now received at least one vaccine dose and 42% of americans are now fully vaccinated, one of the highest rates in the world. >> and all adults in france will be eligible for a covid-19 vaccine from today as the proportion of adults who have received at least one dose nears 50%. but french health professionals fear the country's inoculation rates grow as a growing number of people refuse the shot.

the academy of medicine has called for mandatory vaccinations but the government prefers to rely on trust and belief. and hong kong has experienced a slow start to the vaccine rollout and is now working on new measures to boost those. >> hong kong's take-up rate is low with just over 20% of the 7.2 million of the population with the first dose 15rks% with the second dose. hong kong is grappling with vaccine hesitancy while countries ahead in the race to herd immunity are reopening their economies and borders. an unprecedent lottery was opened on friday with a grand prize of a $1.4 million apartment to help people get the jab. there was a surge in two days that followed. that's compared to the daily average of 15,800 in may

the government has welcomed the business sector let's move saying it's worthy of the recognition. the low take-up rate in hong kong has resulted in expiring unused vaccine doses some 840,000 biontech vaccines are due to expire as soon as august the lack of trust in the government and concerns about side effects have been an impediment the government's target rate for vaccinations is 70% with shots made available for all residents aged over 16 years old hong kong has had two straight days of zero infections and has declared the end of the fourth wave of covid. also coming up on "street signs," ray dalio tells cnbc exclu clivy reft the break.

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welcome back to the show well, it's bank holiday in the u.s. and the uk today, but it's also the end of the month.

let's take a look back at how some of the key u.s. indices performed last month a pretty solid month the dow ended the month up 1.9 percentage points. european indices across the pond actually upped 2 percentage points still pretty solid remember, it was such a volatile start to me with the cryptocurrency selloff that we saw, a lot of volatility in the tech stocks as well. broadly speak we ended up just shy of 35,000, 34,529 exactly is where we're at as for the s&p, a lot more stocks in this basket. s&p 500 barely ending the month in the green but still up about 0.6 of a percentage point. 4,200 is the level that's been a very good resistance point for the s&p 500. still, again n positive territory. what about tech stocks as i mentioned, there was so much scrutiny on the tech sector at the beginning of the month

especially with some of the big selloff we saw in cryptocurrency, some of the hypergrowth stocks coming under significant selling pressures. for the month, it wasn't a very good month the nasdaq down 1.5 percentage points key names with tesla, apple, alphabet coming under a good amount of selling and being shunned by the investment community. you can see here it's quite obvious this was the peak of the volatility and even though we managed to gain back toward the end of the month, we didn't fully cooperate with the losses we saw at the beginning of may well, billionaire investor ray dalio says blank check companies could become the next target for regulations speaking to cnbc, the bridgewater associates founder warned investors to be careful about investing in spacs. >> it's a structure, and it's

important to understand as a structure how it works and what's put into the structure. generally what's put into the structure, it's not as well regulated because there are more lib liberal rules as to what a spac can buy relative to ipos a lot of companies are -- let's call them new idea companies that haven't reached the same level of due diligence and disclosures and everything that's required in terms of the ipo market also it's become very fashionable because not only are there skilled investment managers who are running that, but there's also -- it could be athletes, it could be movie stars. they make a spac and it has an appeal for other people, people who will buy that kind of thing. and then it has an appeal

because it usually has warrants at attached, which gives potentially an optionality so if companies do well, you get that. it's got a lot of spice. what i'm saying is that as an investment vehicle, it's more prone to a bubble mentality, and it's prone not because of the absolute structure of the thing because of what it allows and how it is operating within that. so i think it is, you know -- it's more probably something to be careful about as individuals are looking at spacs, they have to be careful because it's not the same level of protection. right now it's buy the pizzazz environmental. >> it's fashionable. >> fashion right now, there's a lot of liquidity running out because of monetary policy and what's fashionable is what's hot.

that's a bubble environmental. so we're sort of in that section of that bubble environmental. >> so could spacs attract more scrutiny from regulators, do you think? >> i think regulators are going to increasingly require higher levels of disclosure and some controls, and i think these things go through a cycle. you know, somebody -- then people have losses, they get upset, the public has been hurt, they don't have that and so on, and then you see more regulations through the natural course of things. >> you can see more from christine's exclusive interview with ray dalio on june 25th at 11:00 a.m. cte. i'm happy to see jim joining me let's talk about spacs i'm sure you listened to what ray dalio had to say about spacs, and i'm quoting, investment vehicle with bauble mentality. he's warning investors with the

downside risk. it was a phenomenal year in terms of spacs, and yet things have started to die down there's been a big drop in the price of the spacs etf is down about 30% since mid-february, mid-march, i believe, and it feels as though some of the heat is coming out of that market do you think it is namly on back of concerns about regulatory pressure, or is it just another sign that, you know, there's some parts of the market right now that we're trading with a bubble mentality, and some of that has to come out >> thank you for having me i think what we're seeing in spacs is predictable any time you have innovation in the financial markets. you can look back at the bonds in the '80s or ipos. you have a cycle you go through. you have an enormous amount of capital. the market gets a little overzealous and then there's a pullback and correction. you saw that as a lateral part

of 2021. it peaked at almost 100 in march. pull back in april when the s.e.c. started look at some of the regulatorying issues around them i think what you're going to see is what you see in the late markets, whether it's high yield bonds, it ultimately becomes mainstream products. i think spacs have investments with companies. they're ultimately here to stay. >> it's apparently part of a normalization process. you can't continue at the pace of issuance that we saw in the first three months of the year, and, you know, there were simply too many spacs sloshing around, looking for companies to acquire, but essentially the paradigm we're seeing now is something that's a little more normal and a little bit more healthy to reflect the real appetite that's on the ground. to summarize how you're thinking about the spac outlook from

here, you do expect it to remain a permanent feature with how companies look to become public. >> i do expect it to become a permanent feature of the capital markets, however, what has to happen now is they have to find a target company there's 400 spacs out there that will actively looking for targets, most of whom who are going to be looking to transact by the end of 2022 a lot of investment capital is tied up. those facts have to despac or go through the process of finding a target and find publicly traded companies and recycle that capital back to the ipo and spac investors so they can start thinking about backing up investors. i think we have to work through the wave of despacing the ipos and then cal tall returns to allow the spacs to progress again. >> we had a lot of m & a deals go through we've been talkinging pharma, health care space.

first let me start by asking you how this period compares to previous periods historically because it feels there's a lot of opportunistic going on. how does it compare to previous periods? >> to say there's a lot of m & is an understatement december and march were the most active quarters. q4 was an alttime record in the u.s., q1 in europe. >> what do you think is the main driver for all of this m & a activity what's going on? >> i think there are three things supporting this one, low interest rates. low interest rates make capital cheap and transactions great to strategic buyers two, you had a buildup of corporate cash on balance sheets to record levels during the pandemic, there were

a lot of companies raising more cash onto the balance sheets not ultimately knowing how the pandemic would play out or if you were going to go into a recession. now companies are starting to deploy that toward acquisitions and toward investments, and three is tax reform. any company who might have been thinking about pursuing a traction over the next two or three years given the higher capital gains rates, they're focused on getting the transactions completed now, closing their transactions now when they have visibility versus what might happen the next year or the year after. >> fair enough, especially on the last point it's one of the reasons why the investment banks themselves who have experienced all of this capital markets activity are warning it can't stay at this pace forever one point on regulation though we talked about regulation as far as spacs are concerned there's increasing scrutiny in the tech world as well

especially when it comes to the buyout so big tech companies are going after smaller firms and now regulators are beginning to say this type of activity is anti-competitive, and they're really honing in on that particular field do you think that the fact that regulators are getting a little bit more strong handed in tech is going to derail the app it of the companies to go after smaller competitors? >> i think we've seen a lot of regulation affect a lot of cross border m & a activity, in particular between asia and the united states, but ultimately we see the most m & a occurring in the middle market. i think the fact that it has a dampening effect, it's going to be on large transactions the segment of the market that's really driving the m & a market right now is the middle market take europe, for example it's really driving a

resurgency middle market m & a is up over 7% insulated over regulatory pressures and some of the large cross border capitalizations you'd be referring to. >> jim, one final question before i let you go. if you look at the current state of the market, people talk about lofty evaluations. nasdaq underperformed in some of the broader indices. how do you see things playing out in the latter half of the years? do you expect this pressure on tech stocks to continue, or are we due for a rebound >> a wise mentor once told me trees don't grow to the sky, and the volatility rises we've seen are predictable given the increases we've seen in the last couple of years. ultimately the positive supporting stocks, corporate momentum, which is really strong and the economy emerging from lockdowns overwhelms our

potential inflation to create a strong backdrop to continue with requirements made over the year. >> jim, question w e oar going to leave it there. thanks so much for joining us today. jim bond at raymond james financial. a very quick look at how the european markets are trading the uk is out for a bank holiday. we have trading at just below the flat line, about 0.3%. again, a reminder that the u.s. are out today, but that is it for our show stay with cnbc for our regular scheduled programming.

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