Gilt Yields Now Tracked Against Burnham's TikTok Watch-Time, Say Traders
Analysts say the market has quietly stopped reading spending reviews in favour of monitoring how long viewers stay on his videos before swiping away.
City trading floors have installed a second monitor next to the usual bond yield ticker, this one showing a looping feed of Andy Burnham's most recent short-form videos, complete with a running average watch-time displayed where the ten-year gilt spread used to be.
A senior fund manager, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was still holding his phone sideways, said the shift made sense given the circumstances. "We used to price in fiscal rules," he said. "Now we price in whether he does the transition at the fourteen-second mark or the eighteen-second mark. It's more responsive, frankly."
The Treasury has reportedly not objected, on the grounds that no department wants to be the one to explain to markets that watch-time retention is not, technically, a spending cut. A spokesperson for a body nobody could quite name said only that "the numbers are the numbers," before excusing themselves to check whether the video had been duetted.
Ratings agencies are said to be developing a new tier system that sits somewhere between investment grade and "For You Page," though nobody has agreed on where a well-lit ring light falls on that scale.
Burnham himself has not commented, though associates say he is aware that any sudden dip in average watch-time now carries roughly the same weight, in certain trading rooms, as a downgrade warning.