At least one Wall Street strategist disagrees:

"Markets are pricing in at least 100 basis points of interest rate cuts next year, starting in the second quarter. One strategist thinks those bets are "overdone."

"That is really aggressive," BlackRock Investment Institute global chief investment strategist Wei Li said at a media roundtable on Tuesday. "Something will have to go seriously wrong for that to come through. So we do think that the Fed will cut rates, probably in the second half of next year, but how many cuts they will deliver will be quite a bit less compared with the old economic cycles, old recessions."

As of Tuesday, markets have priced in a 68% chance of at least 100 basis points in cuts over the next year. A month ago, investors had priced in just a 37% chance, per the CME FedWatch tool".

finance.yahoo.com/news/market-bets-on-2024-fed-rate-cuts-overdone-blackrock-strategist-says-212708779.html


Regardless of which strategy you believe, it's clear that US rates will be down to 4% at most, by year end. And from other news, that Thai rates will be up to 2.75%.....the gap is closing so the likelihood of capital inflows, into THB, increase.

I have no idea, really. I do occasionally see end of month dressing up which reveals itself as a spike but only lasts for about a day, too short to be useful. GBP/THB had such a spike last month end but I've no idea why. It's likely there will be more Baht purchases made before the end of the year than usual, in anticipation of the new tax law that takes effect 1 January, expect THB to strengthen as a result and possibly fall back in January.

Short term  movements aren't meaningful any way, it's the longer term trend that counts. You'll worry yourself into an early grave if you start watching rates daily.

TAT will miss its targets this year by a substantial margin, whatever next, the number massager must be on holiday!

There were more domestic tourists this year than international but the latter spent more per trip. But even the amount spent was down over previous years, from 50k per trip to 42k per trip.

Next years strategy will be to focus on short haul regional tourism. Malaysia once again became the biggest source of internationals, 4.5 mill.

Short haul plane tickets, or so I'm told, are priced similar to pre-covid days whilst long hauls are up quite a bit. It appears everyone is looking for value and only regional travellers can find it. Plus, most regional economies are in better shape than those in the West. I'm also told that hotel prices here have soared, in usual Thai style, hoteliers are trying to recapture lost revenue and have gone OTT on pricing.

It looks like next year may be dominated by the budget regional traveller, which wont sit well with TAT and their drive for a better class of tourist. Consumer spending is likely to be down as a result. The Baht will need Customs exports to ride to its rescue.

This article is indeed an interesting one and might it affect Thailand and of course the baht and possibly other local currencies in the not to distant future?

Indeed a right fiscal mucking fuddle.

asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/China-debt-crunch/On-topic-Will-China-s-sprawling-debt-problem-worsen?utm

In other news Thailand apples to join OECD