stay with us, simon french, chief economist, panmure gordon.huge day for the earnings season. ♪ ♪ shots of hong kong and the harbor. beautiful day in hong kong. , it has not had a dying day in 2018. 14 day winning streak. we have not seen the likes of august 30 1, 1960 four. i cannot even remember 1964. knocking it out of the park on the hang seng. new york exchange knocked it out of the park's. anna: i was going to mention the hang seng. we are seeing divergence when it comes to asian equities. msci asia index gaining. , closing at a fresh record yesterday. you see the diversions today. you're seeing china higher as well. australia flat. weakness coming through in the japanese markets, down 0.2%. we are seeing risk appetite in asian equities. also risk appetite in the euro. sell the euro gained yesterday after the accounts from the ecb. we could see a tighter policy faster. the ecb said they could tweak their policy. the euro could see resistance at its 2017 to 2018 peaks. the dollar is headed for a weekly loss. so weakness come through yester

joining us is david buik from panmure gordon. lovely to see you, david, how you?? happy new year, top form for an old bird. you are always on top form, i have never known you any other way! ijust want have never known you any other way! i just want to mention this, it have never known you any other way! ijust want to mention this, it is just come across the wires on reuters, they are saying they are quoting angela merkel as saying she says there is still big hurdles that needs to be cleared before a coalition can be formed. this of course in germany, she has been grappling with this... three months 110w. grappling with this... three months now. you must be exhausted. but it seems they are not making any headway, tell us what that means for markets. what it means for the markets, as you rightly pointed out, it doesn't done much to the dax, but people have realised there are serious problems with the right wing in german politics, getting quite a strong game because of the immigration factor, allowing a million people in, even though germany is desperately short of

i'm nowjoined by simon french from panmure gordon. what is the reason for this mixed picture? and there is a trend towards buying more food and fewer electrics and clothing which isa fewer electrics and clothing which is a changing preferences and you have the economic story with wages growing more slowly than prices and people are keeping wallets in their pockets longer. that is right, i was ata pockets longer. that is right, i was at a supermarket and there was a big sale, televisions, and people were not buying them. i asked one person and he said he did not have any money. going back to the online question, what is it that is holding up question, what is it that is holding up big retailers, the bricks and mortar retailers, from going big on this? they have longer leases and often freehold premises, so they own the bricks and mortar. they are also not actually set up to profit from agile, sort of promiscuous consumers andi agile, sort of promiscuous consumers and i mean by that that they shop around online, sometimes going into the store, so you have the people going in, bu