Month: October 2025

Would you book a factory tour for your next vacation? For a growing number of tourists, the answer is a very enthusiastic yes.

In a world where selfie spots range from natural wonders to theme parks, it’s China’s EV factories, humanoid robot plants, and chip-making floors that are drawing crowds. What seems quirky at first glance is telling us something deeper: China’s industrial confidence is becoming visible, emotional, and contagious.

China’s Machines Go Public

The rise of industrial tourism in China might seem like a novel travel trend, but it’s more than that — it’s cultural signaling.

Xiaomi’s EV factory has opened its doors to influencers and visitors alike, drawing waves of attention. But the excursion proved incredibly popular, and Xiaomi quickly began scheduling significantly more slots. In July, the company said it will offer one tour every weekday and six tours most weekends, accommodating more than 1,100 visitors in total. When July registration opened, however, over 27,000 applications flooded in overnight, according to the Xiaomi app, so the chances of snagging a ticket remain slim.

Tourists in a car manufacturing factory. Source: Asia News

It’s not just Xiaomi. Nio, another leading EV maker in China, has been publicly showcasing one of its highly automated factories since late 2023. In 2024 alone, over 130,000 people visited the facility, where certain production lines like the body shop have achieved 100 percent automation.

What we’re seeing is the factory no longer being a black box — it’s a stage. And the audience is growing.

As we explored in Asia’s Factory Is Naming Its Price, manufacturing used to be about cost. Now it’s about control — over narrative and over price.

Xiaomi’s Strategy – Not Just PR, But Performance

All this industrial theater would ring hollow if it weren’t backed by real capability. But in Xiaomi’s case, it is.

With the launch of its SU7 electric sedan, Xiaomi is attempting to do to EVs what it did to smartphones: create high-spec, beautifully designed products at disruptive price points. The move wasn’t a pivot but a long game with years of ecosystem building, from user interfaces to IoT integration, which paved the way.

While Western automakers struggle with fragmented digital platforms, Xiaomi enters the EV market with native fluency in software, supply chain discipline, and a user base conditioned to expect more for less.

This evolution also signals a deeper truth: while the West often underestimates China’s capacity for reinvention, companies like Xiaomi are proving that innovation isn’t confined to Silicon Valley. The complacency of incumbents is being met with ambition, integration, and execution.

Just as sleek as a Porsche, but at a third of the price!

There was a time when brands like Porsche could command higher prices because they were much better cars — better engineered, faster, more reliable. The price premium was justified by superior performance.

That equation has flipped. Today, it is Chinese cars like Xiaomi’s SU7 Ultra that are not only better than Porsche on critical measures — range, technology, connectivity, integration — but also much less expensive. The performance gap has closed, and in some dimensions, reversed.

And this price difference is seen blatantly in phones too!

The most striking symbol of this shift: in July 2025, Ferrari, one of the most prestigious car manufacturers in the world, bought a Xiaomi SU7 Ultra to study and reverse engineer. What was once unthinkable is now reality: the icon of European automotive excellence looking to a Chinese upstart for lessons in how to build the future.

Xiaomi SU7 Ultra spotted at the Ferrari factory in Maranello, Italy

We called this shift in The Great Deflation Reversal: the return of pricing power—especially from Asia. Xiaomi’s EV play isn’t a detour. It’s the roadmap.

Policy as Engine – Strategic Scarcity

China’s rise in industrial confidence and competitiveness isn’t purely market-led — it’s policy-aligned.

The government’s “Made in China 2025” program has targeted strategic sectors such as semiconductors, green energy, and AI infrastructure, with an eye on capturing chokepoints and pushing domestic champions. This deliberate intervention has fostered vertically integrated giants capable of not just manufacturing, but shaping prices and standards.

In practical terms, this means engineered scarcity, whether through export controls on rare earths or encouraging homegrown substitution in critical tech. Lower-tier manufacturing may spill over into Southeast Asia, but the value-added layers — design, R&D, component monopolies — are staying onshore.

China is close to surpassing the U.S. in R&D spending and dominates in manufacturing production

This reshoring of strategic control flips the script. Rather than competing solely on price, Chinese firms now compete on indispensability.

We unpacked this in What’s the Price of Sovereignty?: in a world of fragmentation and friendshoring, the country that owns the blueprint, the supply chain, and the customer wins.

Closing Thoughts: Selfies Are Signals

Tourists don’t line up to see just any factory. They line up to see what they believe is the future.

What we’re witnessing is more than a PR stunt. It’s a shift in confidence and soft power. By making industrial capacity visible, emotionally resonant, and nationally celebrated, China is rewriting the rules of manufacturing prestige.

In a world of inflation, fragmentation, and geopolitical noise, this matters. The next economic era may not be led by who makes the loudest policy speech, but by who turns their production lines into aspirational experiences.

 

Tara Mulia

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First it was Indonesia. Then Singapore. Now Japan.

Gold is disappearing from shelves across Asia — and not in a metaphysical, “store of value” kind of way. We mean literally. Sold out. Bars gone. Retailers suspending sales. ETFs trading at massive premiums. Even banks issuing crowd control notices for gold counters.

It feels less like a market trend, and more like a regional treasure hunt.

So what’s going on? And why does this moment feel both absurd and deeply logical?

Let’s dig in.

Japan Joins the Gold Shortage Club

Just this past week, Japan’s top gold retailer, Tanaka, paused sales of small bullion bars, citing overwhelming demand. Bars under 50 grams? Gone. Websites? Out of stock. Ginza? Lined up.

Meanwhile, the Japan Physical Gold ETF has been trading at a wild premium — as high as 16% above its net asset value. That’s the kind of divergence you don’t normally see unless there’s a serious supply-demand mismatch. Or in this case, when investors are literally willing to pay more for paper gold just to secure the option of turning it into physical.

Source: Bloomberg

Mitsubishi, the fund’s backer, is scrambling to source bullion both domestically and abroad, but can’t keep up. And it’s not just retail buying: the yen’s continued depreciation has made dollar-based gold look even more attractive for Japanese investors.

Gold Rush Déjà Vu – Indonesia Did It First?

Let the record show: Indonesia was early.

Back in June 2025, Pegadaian’s Galeri 24 (one of the biggest gold retailers in Indonesia) temporarily suspended all sales of ANTAM gold bars across all denominations. Supply constraints, operational issues, and unrelenting demand collided. And like in Japan, the smaller bars disappeared first.

   

Notice of the temporary suspension in Bareksa (Indonesian financial marketplace) back in June alongside physical notice in one of UOB’s Singapore branch on the ground

Even UOB’s Singapore branch had to post notices about long queues, early closure of issuance numbers, and bar designs running out of stock. It was gold fever — with air conditioning.

In Jakarta, gold is everywhere, even underground. This ad for Pegadaian’s Tring! app was spotted in the Bundaran HI MRT station, featuring a queen-like figure on a golden throne, smartphone in hand, and a bar of gold in the other.

   

Pegadaian’s newest digital gold app ads all over the Jakarta’s MRT busiest station

It’s an intriguing development this digitization of gold. In Indonesia, platforms like these are gamifying and simplifying gold investing. Want to buy 0.1 grams on your lunch break? There’s an app for that.

It’s part of a wider fintech movement that blends tradition with tech. Young Indonesians may never buy physical newspapers, but they’ll happily stack digital gold grams in an app, especially when headlines scream “stagflation” and “rate cuts delayed.”

And while Japan’s retail boom is currently showing in ETFs and queues at brick-and-mortar stores, we wouldn’t be surprised to see digital gold apps take off there too, especially as younger investors look for easier ways to escape yen depreciation.

If that doesn’t scream “gold is mainstream,” we don’t know what does.

Everyone Wants Real Assets Now

What we’re witnessing isn’t just a consumer fad. It’s the continuation of a deeper, structural trend we’ve written about in “The Return of Real Money”:

In an age of debt saturation, geopolitical shocks, and currency debasement, gold isn’t an asset. It’s insurance.

Unlike tech stocks or AI tokens, you can hold it. Store it. Gift it. Hide it in your grandma’s rice cooker if necessary. And perhaps most importantly, it doesn’t rely on someone else’s cash flow or promises.

As central banks (especially in the Global South) continue to accumulate gold, retail investors are following suit. The difference? Central banks hoard by the tonne. Retail investors hoard by the gram. But the psychology is the same.

What About the Correction?

Let’s address the elephant in the vault: gold recently tumbled nearly 6% in a single trading day after hitting record highs — the largest one‑day percentage drop in over a decade.

But rather than spooking the market, demand barely flinched. In fact, good luck getting your hands on physical gold right now. Even after the dip:

• On the official ANTAM website, gold remains sold out across all denominations.

Completely sold out online

• When one of our team members tried to call a secondary market dealer, the quote was an eye-watering Rp3,000,000/gram — nearly 30% above ANTAM’s own retail price and a premium of 37% above global gold spot price.
• This isn’t new. Back in May, during another gold frenzy, we published “We Are All Prospectors” and shared this photo of Indonesians lining up at dawn to buy gold in malls.

So yes, this correction might be technical — but structurally? The gold rush never really ended.

Just take a look at this chart:

For the first time since 1996, foreign central banks are holding more gold than US Treasuries as a percentage of their reserves. That’s not a fluke — it’s a statement.

And if you’re wondering why, the chart below offers some answers:

Since 1999, major currencies have lost nearly 90% of their value against gold. And as history shows, no global reserve currency lasts forever.

Now, after all the retail queues, the stockouts, the ETF premiums, it might be tempting to think gold has become too obvious. That we’re at the top.

But here’s the contrarian reality:

Almost 75% of financial advisors still allocate less than 1% to gold in client portfolios.

Let that sink in.

Even with central banks accumulating more gold than Treasuries for the first time since 1996… even with physical retail demand breaking supply chains… gold still remains a rounding error in most formal portfolios.

That’s underexposure.

Which raises the question: if this much buying is happening with barely any institutional participation, what happens if that starts to shift?

Final Thoughts: The Wisdom of Crowds in Gold

It’s easy to dismiss long queues and app downloads as retail noise. But as Barton Biggs observed in his book ‘Wealth, War & Wisdom’, markets are ultimately voting machines — messy, emotional, but often clairvoyant.

He wrote that the collective intuition of investors has an uncanny ability to sense regime shifts before the experts do. “We should be very respectful,” he warned, “of the collective wisdom of stock markets.”

We’d go one step further: Don’t underestimate the public.

When thousands of people from Tokyo to Jakarta line up, buy out inventory, or pay 30% premiums for a gram of gold, they may be voting with something deeper than just greed.

They might be sensing what the data now confirms: central banks shifting reserves, currencies debasing in plain sight, and trust migrating from promises to physicality

No, gold didn’t glitter slowly. But maybe it wasn’t supposed to.

Because when belief is this widespread, persistent, and still under-allocated — we may be watching the first inklings of a regime shift, not the last breath of a rally.

 

Tara Mulia
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In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr, the World Serpen, is so vast that he encircles the Earth, biting his own tail. He is a living embodiment of the Ouroboros, an ancient symbol of infinite, self-reinforcing cycles.

Legend says that when Jörmungandr releases his tail, Ragnarök—the end of the world begins.

The Ouroboros has long stood for cosmic balance, but in markets, it often points to something more fragile: circular, self-fueling systems that can turn on themselves.

And that brings us to today’s AI boom which is an ecosystem that much like the Ouroboros, seems to be feeding on itself. Let’s hope it doesn’t let go.

An illustration of Yggdrasil, the Norse World Tree that connects all realms, with Jörmungandr, the world serpent, encircling Midgard at its base.

Trillions In, Productivity TBD

2025 has been a great year to be bullish on AI. But is it getting too great?

Once again, a single theme did the heavy lifting for U.S. equities: artificial intelligence. AI-linked companies accounted for 80% of all U.S. stock market gains year-to-date. And it’s not just stocks. AI investment has driven an estimated 40% of U.S. GDP growth in 2025.

It sounds like a miracle.

But scratch beneath the surface and the picture gets… weird.

Everything looks to be one big giant interlocking circle

Source: Bloomberg

The rally isn’t broad-based. It’s the opposite. Outside of the Big AI names, the U.S. economy is showing cracks: a softening labor market, sluggish consumption, and record-high debt. In short, this isn’t a rising tide lifting all boats. It’s a hydrofoil dragging a bunch of broken paddleboards.

So what’s keeping it all aloft?

A lot of capital. And a lot of circularity.

Everyone Buys Everyone Else’s Chips

Let’s talk about the AI money machine. According to Bloomberg, here’s what the current capital flow looks like:

• Nvidia agrees to invest up to $100B in OpenAI
• OpenAI uses that money to buy Nvidia chips
• Oracle inks a $300B cloud deal with OpenAI
• Oracle spends billions on Nvidia chips
• CoreWeave gets Nvidia investment → sells compute to OpenAI → gives OpenAI equity
• xAI (Elon Musk) raises $20B to rent Nvidia chips
• OpenAI gets AMD chips → receives 10% equity stake in AMD via warrants

If that sounds a little too tidy, you’re not alone.

Veteran short seller Jim Chanos called it out bluntly: “If demand for compute is infinite, why do the sellers keep subsidizing the buyers?”

All major firms are tied to OpenAI one way or another

Source: Financial Times

What we’re witnessing is a $1 trillion capex circularity, where everyone is simultaneously the customer, supplier, and investor.

The Return of Vendor Financing (With Trillions Attached)

This circularity isn’t new. We saw something similar during the dot-com boom, when companies booked revenue by buying each other’s ads and services. Back then, it was banners and buzzwords. Now, it’s multi-billion-dollar chip orders and GPU rentals.

The Mag 7 vs Dot com Leaders – the stakes this time are dramatically higher.

Source: Goldman Sachs, March 2025

According to JPMorgan, over $1.2 trillion in investment-grade debt is now tied to companies linked to AI making it the largest segment in the high-grade bond market, surpassing even U.S. banks.

That figure has surged from just 11.5% of the market in 2020 to 14% today, encompassing 75 companies across tech, utilities, and capital goods, including Oracle, Apple, and even Duke Energy. Many of these firms are cash-rich, low-leverage, and considered high-quality issuers, which helps explain why their bonds trade tighter than the broader market.

But it also means one thing: AI is now a credit story.

Oracle’s recent $18 billion bond sale, the second-largest of the year, drew a staggering $88 billion in demand. Investors and underwriters are piling into the space, viewing AI data center expansion as the next secular credit theme. Even Bank of America says AI buildouts could meaningfully boost corporate debt issuance volumes.

And here’s the vendor-financing twist: much of this debt is being used to fund infrastructure that then services the same AI companies issuing the debt or receiving equity investments from those infrastructure providers.

The logic is tight. The flows are tighter.

But that also means risk is tightly concentrated. If AI fails to deliver, the unwind wouldn’t just hit equity. It could ripple through credit markets too.

JPMorgan notes that while fundamentals remain sound for now, the tight spread levels leave little margin for error. If companies use cash from bond proceeds for aggressive capex or acquisitions without generating returns before redemption, the risks compound.

It’s not fake. But it is increasingly leveraged belief.

Belief > Balance Sheets

So far, the justification for all this capex is that AI will supercharge productivity.

But here’s the catch: it hasn’t yet.

In our blog The AI Curveball, we warned that AI is front-loading costs, not savings. Power demand, chip inflation, cooling infrastructure — all up. But labor productivity? Still flat.

And now, there’s more data to back it up.

A recent MIT study of over 300 publicly disclosed AI initiatives found that 95% of enterprise GenAI pilots have failed to deliver any measurable financial return despite $30–40 billion invested into GenAI initiatives. While tools like ChatGPT and Copilot are widely adopted (with 40% of organizations reporting deployment), they’ve mostly enhanced individual productivity — not corporate P&Ls.

Enterprise-scale solutions? That’s where the failures stack up. Of those evaluated:

• Only 20% made it to pilot stage
• Only 5% reached full production

Why? It’s not the models, or the regulation, or even the infrastructure. It’s the lack of contextual learning and integration. Most AI systems don’t adapt, don’t retain feedback, and don’t align with actual business workflows.

The more complex the task, the less willing people are going to use AI

Source: MIT

MIT calls it the GenAI Divide — a split between the 5% of companies extracting millions in value, and the 95% still stuck in pilot purgatory.

This is starting to feel less like a tech boom and more like a faith-based economy. The narrative has become:

Yes, debt is rising. Yes, consumption is fragile. But it’s okay, because AI will save us.

Let’s contrast this with another asset class we like: gold.

As we explored in The Price of Intelligence and The Return of Real Money, gold is also powered by belief — but it’s belief backed by restraint.

Gold supply is tight. Production growth is capped. Central banks continue to buy.

In short, it’s a real asset that doesn’t rely on everyone renting each other’s GPUs to keep the story going.

So What? A Market Built on Echoes

America has become one big bet on AI. And that bet is now funding:

• GDP growth
• Consumer wealth effects
• Investor inflows
• Even foreign demand for U.S. equities

But like any leverage cycle, it needs to work.

Because if AI doesn’t deliver the promised productivity gains soon, all those circular deals might look less like “strategic partnerships” and more like a trillion-dollar trust fall.

Final Thought: What Happens If Faith Gets Marked to Market?

We’re not anti-AI. But we are pro-questioning.

When a single theme drives 80% of the market and 40% of GDP, it becomes less a theme and more a theology. And theology, as investors know, doesn’t always translate into free cash flow.

So here’s the question: Is this still investing — or is it just narrative compounding?

If belief becomes the product, who’s left holding the faith?

 

Tara Mulia

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From stock market whiplash to gold’s glittering comeback, Art Jakarta 2025 somehow captured it all.

We came for the art and we left questioning our asset allocation.

A packed-filled exhibition hall with art lovers

We didn’t expect to find investing lessons hanging next to oil paintings. But here we are, because Art Jakarta 2025 offered something different this year. It was less “gallery wall” and more “mirror to the markets”, which was a surprisingly vivid meditation on investing, wealth, and what it really means to preserve value in a world full of volatility.

Across bright halls and even brighter installations, three moments stood out: a portrait series that captured the rollercoaster of stock trading, a pop-up gold rest area that felt more like a warm macro hedge than a lounge, and the story of an autistic artist whose sold-out show quietly reminded us of the biggest asset class of all: human potential.

Let’s unpack.

1. The Many Faces of the Market (Literally)

Agus Suwage’s latest series, “Portrait of Possibilities,” was the kind of artwork that stops you in your tracks. Sixty self-portraits, each with a surreal, often absurd twist: a papaya for a head, smoke billowing out of where a head should be, a parrot where a face should be.

We’ve all felt like this– ranging from manic euphoria to existential dread
Credit: Agus Suwage

This art series by Suwage felt like an eerily accurate representation of investing psychology. Want to know how it feels like to trade equities in 2025? You’d probably find one of Suwage’s faces showcase at least one emotion felt by the financial masses.

Some portraits showed anguish. Others, joy. Some looked like they’d just YOLO’d into an AI stock right before a 40% drawdown. And that’s the point: as Suwage puts it, “From each role we play, there are many possibilities. Good or bad.” There’s something oddly comforting about seeing the emotional chaos of investing laid bare on canvas.

It reminds us that volatility isn’t just about price. It’s about people.

2. Treasury’s Rest Area: Where Capital Meets Care

While the rest of the exhibition offered espresso and aircon, Treasury, a digital gold platform, built an entire multisensory rest area. The centerpiece? An interactive table installation titled “Reserve of Care” by artists Azizi Al Majid and Nuri Fatimah.

       

Treasury’s multi-media installation and the gold products they were showcasing for every life milestone
Credit: Treasury, Aziz Al Mahjid, and Nuri Fatimah

Each of the table’s four legs represented a foundational value: Shelter, Wealth, Care, and Love. Together, they grounded the experience in something we often forget in markets: that money, too, is emotional.

Gold, in this context, wasn’t just a shiny commodity — it was symbolic of all the things we seek to protect.

Source: Bloomberg, normalized with factor 100

And protect, it does.

• Gold is up 53% YTD, outperforming most asset classes.

• Central banks are still buying, adding 166 tonnes in Q2 alone.

• Indonesia launched bullion banks this year to keep more gold in-country.

• Supply? It’s still tight. Mine output is barely growing (only around 1%), and recycling’s flat.

In short: gold isn’t just having a moment. It’s having a regime shift.

This isn’t the first time Treasury has collaborated with artists to showcase Gold’s strength. Here is one by artist Naufal Abshar in his “Gold is King” artpiece for Treasury x Art Jakarta Gardens in 2024.

Which is why at Heyokha, we’ve long held conviction in gold. It’s not just a hedge against inflation. It’s a hedge against institutional fragility, geopolitical shocks, and even shrinkflation in chocolate bars (Read more about what we mean in our shrinkflation blog).

Want the receipts? We’ve got two special reports where we deep dived on these topics:

• Gold: The Return of Real Money

• De-dollarization: The Fall of the American Empire?

Gold may not change, but the world around it does. And in uncertain times, that constancy becomes priceless.

3. Oliver Wihardja and the Limitless Value of Potential

In a hall bursting with visuals, it was the story behind Oliver Wihardja’s work that left the deepest mark.

A 23-year-old artist with autism, Oliver (or Ollie, as he’s fondly known) began painting at six as part of his therapy. Fast forward to 2025, and his latest solo exhibition, “From Chinatown with Love,” was a complete sell-out.

Wiharja artistically captures the colorful atmosphere and warmth of Jakarta’s Chinatown
Credit: Oliver Wihardja

His works, rich in cultural memory and everyday scenes, carry a clarity of detail and color that speaks volumes. But it’s his journey that does the heavy lifting.

From art as healing to art as legacy. And isn’t that the essence of investing?

Not in the stock sense. In the human one.

Oliver’s story is a case study in what happens when belief meets time. When care is compounded. When possibility is nurtured.

We often talk about investing in companies, in commodities, in capital cycles, but this was a visceral reminder that some of the best returns come from investing in people.

And just like gold, that kind of potential never truly loses value.

Final Thought: Let the Market Be Your Museum

Art Jakarta 2025 didn’t offer financial advice. But it offered something better: perspective.

A series of surreal portraits showed us what it feels like to hold conviction in volatile times.

A gold platform showed us that care is as important as capital.

And a young artist reminded us that value isn’t always on a balance sheet.

Investing, like art, is about imagination. About what could be, not just what is.

So whether you’re holding cash, gold, or just trying to hold it together — know this:

The market, like a great painting, is open to interpretation.

And sometimes, that’s where the real return lies.

 

Tara Mulia
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Admin heyokha

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