Wednesday was a big day for John Lee. He stood up and gave us Hong Kong's first ever five-year plan, done the way Beijing does it, with building safety reform and a promise of shorter waits for public housing thrown in too. Thursday, the city followed the US Fed and raised rates. Developer shares dropped straight after, and the HKMA had to come out and warn everyone about it. One day you're unveiling the big vision, the next day the market reminds you who's actually driving.

Here's the bit that gets me. You can plan five years of policy on a stage in Admiralty. You cannot plan interest rates, because those come from Washington, not Tim Mei Avenue. So the timing is a bit brutal: the housing recovery everyone in Hong Kong is quietly hoping for just got more expensive to borrow into, one day after the government told us the plan for the next five years. The five-year plan didn't cause this. It just had the bad luck of sharing a news cycle with the thing that actually moves your mortgage.