Turtle Ship Bull Market

Why I like Japan & Korea

May 30, 2025

∙ Paid

This letter reads WAY better in your browser than in your email - so do yourself a favor and click on the title above to read it that way.

Gives you an idea of just how far we have to go to make US vs ROW make sense some day.

Kobukson (Turtle Ship). War Memorial of Korea. | HistoryNet

That is a 16th century Korean Turtle Ship (geobuskeaon) I had the pleasure of checking out (bottom one) in Korea. These helped Korea in their fight against Japan back then as they used them to take out command ships. They would ram the smaller ships into command ships and then shoot out their cannonballs. Highly effective and as you can see they had an enclosed armored deck with iron spikes on top to keep people off. These usually had 12 cannons on each side and they were powered by both oars and sails which made them faster than Japan’s larger ships and able to operate independent of wind

. These bad boys played a role in Japan’s failure to conquer Korea. I was trying to decide if I should write about Japan or Korea today and instead I figured why not both which reminded me of the turtle ships and the unique history it shares with Korea and Japan. Much more on both countries for paid subscribers below.

The Dollar

The Dollar Index is just above the big 99.41 line and is flat over the last 6 weeks.

The Scoreboard

The US just had the best month in 2 years and the best May in 35 years. Despite that - 17 countries had a better May and 40 are still having a better year.

Interesting Data

Poland - EPOL 0.00%↑

Best mode retail sales in Poland.

France - EWQ 0.00%↑

No inflation in France.

New Zealand - ENZL 0.00%↑

RBNZ cut again - now below the 2015 peak. The Bank of Korea also cut 25bps down to 2.5% and the SARB (South Africa) cut from 7.5% to 7.25%. Inflation in South Korea is 2.1% and it is 2.8% in South Africa. It was Korea’s fourth cut and it was a fairly dovish cut with the signal for more to come.