Latest / Merryn Talks Money / Beware of the ‘Concentrated’ AI Chipmaker Bubble

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Beware of the ‘Concentrated’ AI Chipmaker Bubble · Merryn Talks Money

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
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Speaker 2: Hello, it's Maren's unsetweb here.
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Speaker 3: Just want to remind you before we begin that I
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Speaker 3: will be at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh once again
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Speaker 3: this year, hosting four days of riverting conversations in Adam
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Speaker 3: Smith's old home, Pan Meo House. I'll be there from
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Speaker 3: August's seventeenth to August twentieth. John will be there with
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Speaker 3: me on a couple of days. You don't want to
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Speaker 3: miss those days, and we're going to tell you which
0:30
Speaker 3: ones they are. Get your tickets by heading the main
0:32
Speaker 3: Fringe website and searching for Maren. And don't forget these
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Speaker 3: tickets do sell out quite fast, so move quickly. Now
0:40
Speaker 3: back to our regular programming today, my guest is going
0:42
Speaker 3: to be James Ferguson of macro Strategy Partnership, which he founded,
0:46
Speaker 3: but first as always senior reporter, author of the Money
0:49
Speaker 3: Distilled newsletter and technical analysis fan John Steppeck is with me.
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Speaker 1: John, I love that introduction.
0:58
Speaker 4: You are a fan of technical analysis. What was going
1:01
Speaker 4: on about your charts? Having to look at that chart
1:05
Speaker 4: this happens, you know, I mean, it's all so science.
1:09
Speaker 1: Support and resistance the only two fundamentals to.
1:13
Speaker 2: Know exactly the stuff works, right, Okay? Right? John?
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Speaker 3: Here we are John and I, by the way, are
1:20
Speaker 3: talking before the election results are out. So as we talk,
1:25
Speaker 3: as is the case of my conversation with Mark, we
1:27
Speaker 3: have absolutely no idea who will be Prime Minister of
1:31
Speaker 3: the UK at the end of the week, is there.
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Speaker 2: Right John?
1:33
Speaker 1: Not a Scooby?
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Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean it's on a nine edge.
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Speaker 1: No, no, no idea who could be who could be
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Speaker 1: in charge?
1:45
Speaker 3: Okay, but whoever it is, whoever it is, there's a
1:48
Speaker 3: consensus here that this is not an election to win.
1:51
Speaker 2: You win this election, you inherit.
1:53
Speaker 3: Are horrible economy of horrible stuff going on, very low
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Speaker 3: grade Brexit.
1:57
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, it's so awful.
1:59
Speaker 3: Low growth, loper capital growth, terrible living standard's nasty, inflation.
2:04
Speaker 2: I mean, it's very bad. Right.
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Speaker 3: You don't want to win this election, that is the consensus.
2:09
Speaker 3: But when you actually dig deeper into the numbers and
2:12
Speaker 3: take away the overlay of misery that BRIT's like to
2:16
Speaker 3: put on top of anything that happens anywhere, it's not
2:19
Speaker 3: so bad. This is not the poisoned chalice that Goldon
2:22
Speaker 3: Brown handed over back in twenty ten, it's something else altogether.
2:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely not. I mean, if you look back at
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Speaker 1: the elections or in the two thousands, basically certainly fall
2:31
Speaker 1: in the financial crisis. I don't think there is another
2:33
Speaker 1: election that you would with a street face, I wish
2:37
Speaker 1: I could win that one instead. Maybe twenty fifteen. We
2:40
Speaker 1: certainly not twenty seventeen or twenty nineteen or twenty ten.
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Speaker 3: Well, nineteen ninety seven, Tony Black got a pretty good deal.
2:48
Speaker 1: Oh no, But I mean in the two thousands, this
2:50
Speaker 1: is but I think, yeah, what I'm saying is this
2:52
Speaker 1: is the best election when for quite a long time
2:55
Speaker 1: we've had quite a few that have been a lot
2:57
Speaker 1: worse than this one. And should we talk about why
2:59
Speaker 1: we're saying that, given that everyone else is saying the
3:02
Speaker 1: you know, the economies in the state and it's terrible,
3:04
Speaker 1: and why are those people wrong? Go on, John tell us,
3:08
Speaker 1: So dead to GDP is very high. This is true,
3:10
Speaker 1: it's about one hundred percent. But everyone else in the
3:13
Speaker 1: G seven except for Germany, is worse. So that's the
3:17
Speaker 1: first thing that you have to remember when we're talking
3:19
Speaker 1: about debt. If it was just us that stood out,
3:22
Speaker 1: that would be bad. But it's not.
3:24
Speaker 2: Okay, just just be absolutely clear.
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Speaker 3: What you're saying is that it doesn't matter that we
3:30
Speaker 3: have debt at one hundred percent of GDP because other
3:35
Speaker 3: people have higher levels of debt relative to their GDP.
3:39
Speaker 3: John John, John John, Yes, we try really hard to
3:42
Speaker 3: be absolutely not relative on this podcast, and look, you
3:45
Speaker 3: just come up with the hugest bit of relativism I
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Speaker 3: think I've ever heard from you.
3:50
Speaker 1: Yes, but you do have to be relative on this.
3:53
Speaker 1: Whenever it comes to government debt, the state everyone else
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Speaker 1: actually does matter because all of this money is in
4:00
Speaker 1: government bonds needs to be somewhere, and if you don't
4:06
Speaker 1: look like the worst candidate, then something that's going to
4:10
Speaker 1: come your way. I mean, it's not an ideal situation
4:13
Speaker 1: to be in, but it's not an urgent situation, and
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Speaker 1: I think that's probably the more important point. It's one
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Speaker 1: of these things where you don't need to come in
4:21
Speaker 1: and go nuts. Whereas in twenty ten, there was a
4:24
Speaker 1: reasonable argument to say that the government of the day
4:27
Speaker 1: then did actually have reasons to be fearful. It's not
4:32
Speaker 1: to say that the policies that were adopted are necessarily
4:35
Speaker 1: the right ones, but there was a good reason to
4:37
Speaker 1: be coming in and seeing how we can get this
4:39
Speaker 1: debt down, because you know, actual sovereigns were going bust
4:44
Speaker 1: Ireland and Portugal and Iceland and things like that, Whereas
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Speaker 1: in the moment the situation is dire but is not acute,
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Speaker 1: I think, is the point, and I think that's getting
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Speaker 1: lost about it.
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Speaker 2: I'll accept that bit of relis.
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Speaker 3: Okay, So we're not gonna worry about debt for now.
5:03
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously we have to worry about at some point,
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Speaker 3: but it's not an immediate worry that can be dealt with.
5:08
Speaker 3: And then outside that things really don't look so bad
5:13
Speaker 3: do Their growth is kind of fine. We're not in
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Speaker 3: recession anymore. In fact, we're well out of recession. Growth
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Speaker 3: in the first quarter was pretty good. Households and businesses
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Speaker 3: are both apparently reasonably confident and crucially sitting on big
5:27
Speaker 3: pats of cash.
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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I think that's that's really important. I think
5:31
Speaker 1: that's something every time I bring this up. I don't
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Speaker 1: know about you, but if you'd say this you on Twitter,
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Speaker 1: are in public, then people don't believe that consumers are
5:40
Speaker 1: actually in a relatively good place. But the households has
5:46
Speaker 1: its household balance sheets are so much healthier than they
5:48
Speaker 1: we are again back in two thousand and eight, and
5:51
Speaker 1: people have actually been de leveraging since then. So you
5:55
Speaker 1: actually have a consumer who is prayed to go going
6:00
Speaker 1: major credit field spendings pre given the excuse, but the
6:03
Speaker 1: point is that you know there is capacity there, and
6:06
Speaker 1: that's one reason why device and interest rates hasn't knocked
6:10
Speaker 1: the blazes out of the economy because actually, corporations and
6:13
Speaker 1: households we're in a better position than anyone really gave
6:17
Speaker 1: them credit for. So I think that's actually that's much
6:21
Speaker 1: more important actually than the sovereign debt issue. We have
6:24
Speaker 1: the makings of a healthy economy, maybe even an economy
6:30
Speaker 1: that is the potential to boom in the right circumstances.
6:34
Speaker 1: And it really kind of is on whoever wins on
6:38
Speaker 1: Thursday to not screw that up, rather than marching in
6:43
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, everyone's terrible, we're going to have to
6:45
Speaker 1: do this, We're going to have to do that. But
6:47
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll see what happens.
6:50
Speaker 3: So we'd expect as interest rates begin to come down
6:54
Speaker 3: and as we say, a period of political stability with
6:57
Speaker 3: whoever wins, we would then expect consumers to come out
7:00
Speaker 3: and get spending and companies to start investing. I mean,
7:03
Speaker 3: companies have a big pile of catch and they haven't
7:05
Speaker 3: been investing much over the last couple of years. So
7:07
Speaker 3: we could see an investment boom and a consumer boom
7:11
Speaker 3: which could take us through the next couple of years.
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Speaker 2: Released.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. And I think the main thing
7:18
Speaker 1: is that whoever does get any power shouldn't do this
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Speaker 1: panicky thing about the first hundred days, which I don't
7:26
Speaker 1: know where that crept into the political discourse from, but
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Speaker 1: it's nonsense and it's what ruined trusts actually, I think.
7:33
Speaker 1: But you know, they need to not panic, they need
7:36
Speaker 1: to come in, they need to say, Okay, we're sitting
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Speaker 1: on a majority, quite feasibly a very big majority. So
7:42
Speaker 1: rather than using that to sledgehammer through a whole load
7:44
Speaker 1: of things in the first six months, it's just sort
7:47
Speaker 1: of sit back and say, right, how can we not
7:50
Speaker 1: ruin and derail what is actually a recovering economy, and
7:55
Speaker 1: how can we you know, try and note, how can
7:59
Speaker 1: we be in mind we've got five years ahead of
8:02
Speaker 1: its let's not run in like bulls in the China shop.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, I suppose one of the one of the problems
8:10
Speaker 5: with a government with a big majority coming in with
8:14
Speaker 5: lots of plans, coming into an economy that is much
8:17
Speaker 5: more stable and a much better shape than you expect,
8:21
Speaker 5: is that you may think it can bear more in
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Speaker 5: the way of cost.
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Speaker 2: And regulation than it really can.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's where the risk of messing it up
8:30
Speaker 3: comes in. Oh, look everything's fine, there is money, so
8:35
Speaker 3: we'll do this, this, this, this, and this, which of
8:38
Speaker 3: course we're reverse thing.
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Speaker 1: That's interesting of one of the biggest concerns with the
8:43
Speaker 1: Labor government is they don't even have an ideological stance
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Speaker 1: against red tape. The Tories in theory don't like it.
8:51
Speaker 1: In reality, I mean, why the reasons they love it
8:54
Speaker 1: probably going to give what to do it is because
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Speaker 1: they haven't actually stood behind that theoretical ideology. But at
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Speaker 1: least there's something there, whereas labor doesn't actually see it
9:04
Speaker 1: as our problem, or you could see more botons or
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Speaker 1: companies that already have lots of botons.
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Speaker 3: Well, this is not a political podcast, so John and
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Speaker 3: I know absolutely nothing about that kind of thing, but
9:16
Speaker 3: we do know quite.
9:17
Speaker 2: A lot about stock markets. Welcome to Maarren Talks.
9:21
Speaker 3: Money in the podcast in which people who know the
9:23
Speaker 3: markets explain the markets.
9:24
Speaker 2: I am larn sumset web onto.
9:26
Speaker 3: My conversation with James Ferguson of the Macro Strategy Partnership. James,
9:32
Speaker 3: one of the reasons I wanted to have you on,
9:34
Speaker 3: among many is a piece you wrote a couple of
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Speaker 3: months back called Union Jack in the Box about UK
9:39
Speaker 3: equities and as you know this podcast, we are very
9:42
Speaker 3: keen on UK equities and you talked about how it
9:46
Speaker 3: being absolutely no wonder the foot Sea had just broken
9:49
Speaker 3: out to a new six. You're yeah, Hi, you appeared
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Speaker 3: very positive, but actually you weren't quite as positive as
9:56
Speaker 3: some of the other UK bulls.
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Speaker 6: Right.
10:00
Speaker 3: Bit in here is there's the paradoxical sting in the tail.
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Speaker 6: So there's two things that make equities go up. It's
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Speaker 6: either the profits going up the EPs bit of the equation,
10:12
Speaker 6: or it's the pe bit going up, which we call
10:15
Speaker 6: a rerating. And obviously, you know, we're seeing a lot
10:18
Speaker 6: of re rating in the US. For example, at the moment,
10:21
Speaker 6: there's not a huge amount of profit growth going on
10:25
Speaker 6: in the US, but a very strong market is causing
10:28
Speaker 6: a rerating, which is putting the multiples up.
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Speaker 3: But that is an expectation of profits going up. I mean,
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Speaker 3: that's a point, right.
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Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, So if you can look at the UK,
10:37
Speaker 6: you've got very little expectation of profits going up much.
10:40
Speaker 6: And I still wouldn't wouldn't push that point too hard.
10:44
Speaker 6: But what you have got, and the reason that I
10:47
Speaker 6: was writing a UK check in the box in terms
10:49
Speaker 6: of the fact that we have this breakout to a
10:52
Speaker 6: new six year high and why that could go higher,
10:54
Speaker 6: is that the UK is very cheap, so the multiples
10:58
Speaker 6: are very low, so there is a potential possibly for
11:02
Speaker 6: a rerating. And what would cause a rerating usually would
11:06
Speaker 6: be the fact because if you think about the pe,
11:09
Speaker 6: that's actually the inverse of the earnings yield. So then
11:11
Speaker 6: we can compare equities fairly directly based on their earnings.
11:15
Speaker 6: Two bonds, So if interest rates are going to come down,
11:19
Speaker 6: if there's a lot of scope for interest rates to
11:20
Speaker 6: come down, then that means that bond yields are coming down,
11:25
Speaker 6: which means that earnings yields should be able to come down,
11:28
Speaker 6: which means that even if there's no increase in earnings,
11:30
Speaker 6: you could get a positive rerating. And that argument is
11:35
Speaker 6: predicated on where we are in the cycle. In the UK,
11:38
Speaker 6: I mean if the Bank of England was operating truly
11:41
Speaker 6: independently rather than being kind of a slave as indeed
11:46
Speaker 6: I think ECB is to what's happening in the US.
11:49
Speaker 6: They don't like to do anything different to the FED,
11:51
Speaker 6: and they don't like to do it at a different time,
11:54
Speaker 6: and then don't usually like to do it much in
11:56
Speaker 6: terms of a different scale. But the fact is that
11:59
Speaker 6: the US printed more money during COVID relative to the
12:03
Speaker 6: economy than either the Europeans or the UK establishment or
12:08
Speaker 6: central banks did, and as a consequence, their overhang of
12:11
Speaker 6: excess savings has lasted longer, so they are taking longer
12:15
Speaker 6: to quash inflation and longer before they start to realize
12:20
Speaker 6: that maybe the economy isn't nearly as strong as they
12:23
Speaker 6: think it is once they've used up all those excess
12:26
Speaker 6: savings that were printed during COVID. If you look at
12:28
Speaker 6: the UK on a standalone basis, I would argue that
12:33
Speaker 6: the Banklingion should have been cutting rates for months now,
12:36
Speaker 6: I mean, possibly starting as almost a year ago, and
12:40
Speaker 6: when they realize what they've done or what they haven't done,
12:44
Speaker 6: and they start to cut rates, there is a huge
12:46
Speaker 6: scope for rate cutting in the UK, and if they
12:50
Speaker 6: cut rates anything like as much as they could and should,
12:53
Speaker 6: then of course you're going to get at least short
12:56
Speaker 6: term bond yields coming down a lot. That should steepen
12:59
Speaker 6: the yield curves deep in the yeld curve is very
13:01
Speaker 6: good for earnings prospects. But also if you lower the
13:06
Speaker 6: yield the bond yield, then you should be able to
13:09
Speaker 6: lower the earnings yield, which is the same thing as
13:11
Speaker 6: saying re rating the pehih. And that is the springboard
13:15
Speaker 6: that I think is open to the UK potentially a
13:19
Speaker 6: lot of interest rate cuts which could potentially have a
13:21
Speaker 6: very big impact. I say potentially because it lost the
13:23
Speaker 6: still reliant on Andrew Bailey.
13:25
Speaker 3: Let's just go back a little bit so just bically,
13:27
Speaker 3: when you say the Bank of England is not behaving
13:30
Speaker 3: like an independent central bank, you don't mean that it's
13:33
Speaker 3: taking some kind of secret instruction from the government. You
13:38
Speaker 3: mean that it's acting as a sort of subsidiary of
13:41
Speaker 3: the FED.
13:42
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's more a subsidiary of the economic theories that
13:45
Speaker 6: are dominant in the FED. So you know, monitarist theories
13:50
Speaker 6: have been completely disallowed in all the central banks, but
13:54
Speaker 6: particularly in the FED. The FED has six hundred pH
13:57
Speaker 6: economics PhDs, and apparently not a single one of them
14:02
Speaker 6: knows anything much about economic history. But they all are
14:05
Speaker 6: heavily steeped in what we might call neo Kainsian theory.
14:09
Speaker 6: And according to the Neokanesian theory, everything is measured by
14:14
Speaker 6: and ruled by interest rates. They pay no attention to
14:17
Speaker 6: money supply. Now, obviously, as far as monetarists were concerned,
14:20
Speaker 6: interest rates are merely a means to an end. If
14:22
Speaker 6: you lower interest rates, the main idea to that was
14:25
Speaker 6: that that would lead to an increase in money supply,
14:27
Speaker 6: because it would make it more attractive with a steeper
14:29
Speaker 6: yield curve for banks to lend and therefore for borrowers
14:33
Speaker 6: to borrow. But because they didn't do that, they completely
14:37
Speaker 6: missed the impact of their money printing on inflation. So
14:41
Speaker 6: they completely missed inflation, which, if you remember, they called
14:45
Speaker 6: when it did appear transitory, and then when it stuck around,
14:49
Speaker 6: well they just started flapping about. And the problem therefore
14:52
Speaker 6: is that whilst this idea is still going on, you've
14:56
Speaker 6: got central bankers who are almost incapable of play, saying
15:00
Speaker 6: the ball that they're being balked, and particularly this side
15:04
Speaker 6: of the Atlantic, because the economic growth has slowed even
15:07
Speaker 6: sharper here and earlier here than in the US, and
15:10
Speaker 6: they should have been cutting rates, they should be realizing
15:13
Speaker 6: what will happen to inflation? But they've got no idea
15:14
Speaker 6: what will happen to inflation because it's not playing ball
15:18
Speaker 6: according to their discredited theory. So therefore, instead of cutting
15:24
Speaker 6: rates because the economy is slowing down and they can
15:26
Speaker 6: see what will happen to inflation, never get Inflations are
15:29
Speaker 6: always lagging by at least twelve months. In fact, the
15:31
Speaker 6: inflation lag based on what you do to money supply
15:34
Speaker 6: is more like two years. So they shouldn't know what's
15:37
Speaker 6: going to happen to inflation. They should have known it
15:40
Speaker 6: was going to go up, they didn't, and they should
15:41
Speaker 6: now know it's going to go down, and they still
15:43
Speaker 6: apparently don't.
15:44
Speaker 3: But Hi on James, it has gone down, is going down,
15:48
Speaker 3: so they do know that.
15:49
Speaker 6: Well, they only know what has happened, and they can
15:51
Speaker 6: only look backwards at what has happened, and they consistently
15:54
Speaker 6: talk about how it's sticky. I mean, you look at
15:56
Speaker 6: a chart of inflation in the UK, and the concept
16:00
Speaker 6: of it being sticky is a total head scrutture. I mean,
16:04
Speaker 6: it is just it's gone down pretty much in a
16:06
Speaker 6: straight line, in the same way that when it went
16:08
Speaker 6: up during the transitor period it went up in pretty
16:10
Speaker 6: much a straight line. They don't seem to have any
16:13
Speaker 6: concept or ability to get in front of the curve
16:16
Speaker 6: or understand what is driving inflation. Inflation is always measured
16:20
Speaker 6: on a twelve month basis, whereas GDP because of the
16:23
Speaker 6: US way of looking at it, or is always measured
16:25
Speaker 6: on an annualized quarter on quarter basis. If you measure
16:29
Speaker 6: inflation on an annualized quarter on quarter basis, you'd see
16:31
Speaker 6: that it's way lower than targeting, even in the US.
16:34
Speaker 6: So there's a real sort of problem that the people
16:37
Speaker 6: who are sort of in charge of these things don't
16:39
Speaker 6: really seem to understand what it is they're looking at,
16:42
Speaker 6: and therefore they are data driven or data dependent, and
16:46
Speaker 6: the data being lagging means that their policy responses are
16:49
Speaker 6: heavily lagging as well.
16:50
Speaker 3: Okay, so as far as you're concerned, interest rates in
16:53
Speaker 3: the UK should now be falling like a stone. And
16:55
Speaker 3: one of the things that John and I talk about
16:57
Speaker 3: a lot is the idea that when interest rate do
17:00
Speaker 3: start falling, they won't fall back to the levels that
17:03
Speaker 3: people have previously got used to, So we're not going
17:05
Speaker 3: to see rates falling back to one percent, two percent, etc.
17:09
Speaker 2: But it's dead.
17:09
Speaker 3: Central banks are going to attempt to kind of normalize
17:13
Speaker 3: the rate at more like four percent, But it sounds
17:16
Speaker 3: to me as though you're suggesting it should go further
17:18
Speaker 3: than that.
17:19
Speaker 6: We never get We're juggling a few different things here,
17:22
Speaker 6: most of which are being sort of corrupted by what
17:26
Speaker 6: the authorities are doing, either the central bank authorities or
17:30
Speaker 6: the political Treasury Department authorities. But if you look at
17:34
Speaker 6: it purely from a point of view of what we're
17:37
Speaker 6: getting in terms of GDP, etc. Then I think three
17:40
Speaker 6: percent is a more accurate target to have in mind
17:43
Speaker 6: for interest rates than four percent. But I agree with you,
17:47
Speaker 6: you can't go back to the old super low levels
17:49
Speaker 6: because they use all these governments to use the super
17:52
Speaker 6: low levels to massively crank up borrowing. And now we
17:55
Speaker 6: have a major problem that we have far too much
17:58
Speaker 6: government debt, which means you're really struggling to find out
18:00
Speaker 6: who is going to buy this debt, and the only
18:02
Speaker 6: way you can sell debt that you couldn't normally get
18:05
Speaker 6: buyers to buy it is by making the price lower,
18:08
Speaker 6: which means the yield higher. So I think you're actually
18:11
Speaker 6: right to assume that there's no way interest rates and
18:14
Speaker 6: yields are going back to the old lows. But at
18:16
Speaker 6: the same time, given the very tight environment we have
18:21
Speaker 6: in economies from the US all the way across the
18:24
Speaker 6: Atlantic through Europe as well, is that interest rates and
18:28
Speaker 6: real interest rates in particular, are far too high for
18:32
Speaker 6: the private sector to do anything other than retrench, and
18:35
Speaker 6: therefore they need to be cut, and cut quite aggressive.
18:38
Speaker 3: Okay, well, come back to debt, I think, but let's
18:40
Speaker 3: just stick with equities when interest rates come down. The
18:45
Speaker 3: assumption is that equities do well, as discussed, But is
18:48
Speaker 3: there any particular area and the equity market that people
18:51
Speaker 3: should be looking at. I mean, everyone says, well, you know,
18:53
Speaker 3: rates come down, and growth stocks do well, small caps
18:56
Speaker 3: do well, infrastructure does well, et cetera. Why would you
18:58
Speaker 3: lie well?
18:59
Speaker 6: One of the things, one of the things about a
19:01
Speaker 6: rerating is that you know pretty much everything should do well,
19:06
Speaker 6: in the sense that all earnings yields should come down,
19:09
Speaker 6: and therefore all prices should go up. Now, there will
19:13
Speaker 6: be some differences to be sure. I mean, we used
19:16
Speaker 6: to argue back in the old days that low interest
19:19
Speaker 6: rates are extremely good for growth because we're supposed to
19:22
Speaker 6: be looking at the lifetime earnings from a growth company,
19:26
Speaker 6: and if it's all dream, it's all far in the future,
19:30
Speaker 6: then the cost of waiting is much less when interest
19:33
Speaker 6: rates are low. Therefore, if you do a dividend discount
19:36
Speaker 6: model calculation, you can afford to pay more for a
19:39
Speaker 6: growth stock today long before it actually starts to deliver.
19:42
Speaker 6: But we've got this irony going on now that tech
19:45
Speaker 6: stocks are going up in the US even though interest
19:48
Speaker 6: rates are well real interest rates are now it's sort
19:51
Speaker 6: of depending on exactly which ones you look at, and
19:53
Speaker 6: I think it could be as much as forty year high.
19:56
Speaker 6: You know, these are interest rates that normally and indeed
19:59
Speaker 6: are arguably sort of would be crushing the private sector
20:04
Speaker 6: and many many measures the US private sector, the consumer,
20:09
Speaker 6: the equal weighted S and p pretty much almost anything
20:12
Speaker 6: that isn't sort of in the Nvidia AI sort of
20:17
Speaker 6: orbit is actually disappointing quite heavily, and you're you're getting
20:21
Speaker 6: some some really quite aggressive drops in share prices for
20:26
Speaker 6: a whole host of blue chip stocks and the US
20:30
Speaker 6: that are very slightly disappointing in terms of their quarterly announcements.
20:33
Speaker 3: We'll talk us through the text the tech stocks. Why
20:36
Speaker 3: have they been rising in a high interest rate environment?
20:39
Speaker 3: What's that all about? And you know, it's been surprising
20:41
Speaker 3: people now for months and months and months. Everything's too narrow.
20:45
Speaker 3: This isn't going to last. There are bubbles all over
20:47
Speaker 3: the place. You know, we've heard all the stories about
20:49
Speaker 3: the US TEX stocks. What's going on there?
20:51
Speaker 6: Well, perstly, I would, I would say, you're not getting
20:53
Speaker 6: bubbles all over the place. This is really very concentrated.
20:58
Speaker 6: You know, the bubble that we're seeing is concentrated in
21:02
Speaker 6: AI in general, chips and chip machine makers more specifically.
21:09
Speaker 6: And so what you're seeing is an ever tighter concentration.
21:13
Speaker 6: Now Historically tight concentration markets, particularly those that are relying
21:19
Speaker 6: on rerating either ps going up even faster than the earnings,
21:24
Speaker 6: These historically end badly. And so anyone who's sort of
21:28
Speaker 6: a bit long in the tooth and has seen this
21:30
Speaker 6: sort of thing before, you know, is tempted to believe
21:33
Speaker 6: it'll end badly. That said, we also all know that
21:36
Speaker 6: bubbles aren't over until they're over, So you know, many,
21:39
Speaker 6: many people who think it'll end badly also feel compelled
21:43
Speaker 6: to play. I mean, it's certainly you know what was
21:45
Speaker 6: happening in the dot com, for example, where you know
21:48
Speaker 6: almost anybody who wasn't a retail punter was looking at
21:52
Speaker 6: these things and saying it can't last. But having said that,
21:56
Speaker 6: if it lasts one more quarter and I'm not playing,
21:58
Speaker 6: I'll lose my job. So you find a lot of
22:01
Speaker 6: people get forced into the late stages of a highly concentrated,
22:05
Speaker 6: very expensive, parabolic market. And if you look at the
22:07
Speaker 6: earnings side of it, you know there are some companies,
22:10
Speaker 6: well pretty much only one in video that's making really
22:13
Speaker 6: big earnings gains, but it's making big earnings gains in
22:18
Speaker 6: ways that seem to non stock specialists in this area.
22:21
Speaker 6: And I would consider myself one of these non specialists.
22:24
Speaker 6: But they were very reminiscent of companies like Cisco back
22:29
Speaker 6: in the dot com. And what Cisco was doing the
22:30
Speaker 6: dot com was that it was selling to its own clients.
22:33
Speaker 6: It was basically forwarding the money to its own clients
22:37
Speaker 6: and funding their purchases. And Video has basically got these
22:43
Speaker 6: monstrous margins, very high price acceleration. That's all great, but
22:48
Speaker 6: there's one problem with tech that we all know, and
22:50
Speaker 6: that is that they're more cutting edge of the tech.
22:53
Speaker 6: The sooner obsolescence for your particular bit of tech kicks in.
22:58
Speaker 6: There's a great line in Sleepers in Seattle where their
23:01
Speaker 6: bookshops closing down. I think it's Sleepers in Seattle and
23:04
Speaker 6: their bookshops closing down, and they're all worrying what's going
23:06
Speaker 6: to happen? And they turned to the elderly lady who
23:08
Speaker 6: worked to the bookshop and says, what will you do?
23:10
Speaker 6: And she says, oh, don't worry about media. I bought
23:12
Speaker 6: Intel at six. Now you know that was not only
23:16
Speaker 6: meant to and was understood by the entire cinema audience
23:19
Speaker 6: as you know, a good a good entry price, and
23:21
Speaker 6: therefore she was fine. But the other thing I bring
23:25
Speaker 6: to your attention is Intel. Who are they?
23:28
Speaker 2: You know?
23:28
Speaker 6: Intel was was you know, Cisco and Intel were the
23:31
Speaker 6: leading stocks in the dot com and they are just
23:34
Speaker 6: not even also runs in this one, so you know,
23:37
Speaker 6: next time we have a big tech bubble, chances are
23:39
Speaker 6: and video isn't even an Also around Therefore, what multiple
23:43
Speaker 6: of sales is in video a good deal on if
23:47
Speaker 6: you think that it might only have no matter how
23:50
Speaker 6: stratuspheric the growth rate at the moment. If you think that,
23:53
Speaker 6: you know it's probably not going to be a player
23:55
Speaker 6: in a decade's time.
23:57
Speaker 3: Do we mind about very narrow bubbles? I mean, let's
24:00
Speaker 3: assume you and I and most of our listeners are
24:03
Speaker 3: probably not holding vast amounts in the video or any
24:05
Speaker 3: of the other few stocks caught up in this, as
24:07
Speaker 3: you say, increasingly narrow bubble. So when the end comes,
24:11
Speaker 3: it comes for these stocks that might affect the rest
24:15
Speaker 3: of the mug a little, but maybe not that much.
24:17
Speaker 3: I remember post dot com, not that many people in
24:20
Speaker 3: the end had been caught up in the dot combat,
24:22
Speaker 3: and everything kind of carried on with the benefit for
24:25
Speaker 3: the benefit of an awful lot of other people's capital
24:28
Speaker 3: being put into developing the infrastructure around the tech, which
24:32
Speaker 3: was not a bad thing either.
24:33
Speaker 6: Well, you know that was particularly it was a particularly
24:36
Speaker 6: beneficial side effect. Not that anyone would have noticed two
24:40
Speaker 6: years after the peak in the dot com that there
24:41
Speaker 6: were only beneficial side effects, but the fact that there
24:44
Speaker 6: was a huge amount of capacity put in particularly in
24:46
Speaker 6: terms of optical fiber and the like. You know, it
24:49
Speaker 6: was a tremendous benefit and everyone lived off that for
24:52
Speaker 6: the next decade or more. It's not entirely clear with
24:55
Speaker 6: AI that there is any capacity that we are going
24:59
Speaker 6: to benefit from, because AI still remains I would argue,
25:02
Speaker 6: completely unproven and you know, fake it till you make
25:06
Speaker 6: it may work in Silicon Valley, but for the rest
25:09
Speaker 6: of us. You know, I think once bitten twice shy
25:13
Speaker 6: it may be more appropriate for AI. You know, if
25:16
Speaker 6: AI cannot be trusted if you have to check, then
25:20
Speaker 6: AI is effectively, in my mind, useless, because if you
25:23
Speaker 6: have to check, then you have to do the work anyway,
25:26
Speaker 6: which case got right on AI. So if AI is
25:29
Speaker 6: going to have hallucinations, you know these eyes is where
25:33
Speaker 6: AI basically makes stuff up and it can't differentiate between
25:38
Speaker 6: truth and lies, and it even can't quote sources because
25:43
Speaker 6: it makes up the sources. Then you know, these are
25:46
Speaker 6: big problems. And there are other elements to the way
25:48
Speaker 6: AI thinks in the murders commerce that make it not intelligent. Now,
25:53
Speaker 6: it's a great search tool, clearly already, and there are
25:57
Speaker 6: some very limited narrow uses where a that's and it's
26:01
Speaker 6: probably not right to use the term AI on this,
26:04
Speaker 6: but there are some narrow areas where the enhanced computing
26:07
Speaker 6: power can be extremely useful. But the trouble within enhanced
26:10
Speaker 6: computing power is that if it's not generally useful, then
26:14
Speaker 6: people can't generally use it and deploy it. It'll just
26:17
Speaker 6: start annoying them because I'll say, well, that would be
26:19
Speaker 6: interesting if I thought it was true, but I had
26:21
Speaker 6: to check. And secondly, it's very very energy hungry.
26:24
Speaker 2: Yeah.
26:24
Speaker 3: I was going to ask you about that. The carbon
26:27
Speaker 3: emissions are huge, and there was an article act yeah,
26:29
Speaker 3: I think in the FD the other day pointing out
26:31
Speaker 3: that AI is in itself a threat to the goal
26:34
Speaker 3: of zero by twenty thirty.
26:35
Speaker 2: There are several other threats to go. Yeah.
26:37
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, the irony of the AI type
26:41
Speaker 6: ideas being thwarted by the net zero type campaigns is great,
26:47
Speaker 6: But to me, I look at it in a much
26:48
Speaker 6: more old fashioned way. You know, if AI is very
26:52
Speaker 6: energy hungry and energy costs money, then AI is getting
26:56
Speaker 6: more and more expensive. Forget Nvidia charging more and more
27:00
Speaker 6: more for its chips, you also have to pay more
27:02
Speaker 6: and more and more to run those chips in your servers,
27:05
Speaker 6: and therefore you end up with something that is very
27:07
Speaker 6: expensive and as yet to prove anywhere really outside of
27:11
Speaker 6: some narrow applications that it's paying for itself.
27:13
Speaker 3: We've talked about the narrowness of the bubble, and we've
27:16
Speaker 3: talked about interests, right, it's not coming down, etc. Do
27:19
Speaker 3: we avoid the US as a whole and just keep
27:21
Speaker 3: our money in in the UK and cash?
27:24
Speaker 2: But where do we go with the story on the US.
27:27
Speaker 6: The irony is that if you look at US small caps,
27:29
Speaker 6: they're actually very cheap because they know, because they are
27:33
Speaker 6: not AI in a not large cap, and they're not
27:35
Speaker 6: in Vidia, and they're not tech, they've actually been allowed
27:38
Speaker 6: to fall back, you know, not quite as far as
27:41
Speaker 6: the UK, but you know, in a similar way to
27:43
Speaker 6: the UK. So there's a lot of value to be
27:46
Speaker 6: found in the US. The trouble is that that value
27:49
Speaker 6: is to be found in good old fashioned ways of
27:52
Speaker 6: trawling through small caps and looking for businesses that are
27:55
Speaker 6: growing in a good old fashioned, steady way. So you
27:58
Speaker 6: could easily exp be to have the headline indices coming
28:03
Speaker 6: off way more than say the equal weighted S and
28:05
Speaker 6: P and that coming off way more than they you know,
28:08
Speaker 6: maybe some of the Russell small gap indices. But the
28:12
Speaker 6: first thing to bear in mind is that you know,
28:14
Speaker 6: year one of any sell off, headline sell off takes
28:17
Speaker 6: pretty much everything down with so then we go into recession.
28:20
Speaker 6: Normally does the recession calls the sell off or the
28:22
Speaker 6: self cause a recession that's often semantical, but often after
28:27
Speaker 6: the first year or so of that, the policy response
28:29
Speaker 6: has been to cut rates aggressively. The Fed usually cuts
28:33
Speaker 6: rates far faster than it hikes them during inflationary episodes.
28:37
Speaker 6: And as it cuts rates to try and steepen the
28:39
Speaker 6: yield curve, we get down to a level where you know,
28:42
Speaker 6: suddenly it pays to borrow and invest in good old
28:46
Speaker 6: fashioned type ideas again. And and what I was talking
28:50
Speaker 6: about in my note about the UK. The lower interest
28:53
Speaker 6: rates go then obviously you know earning zields can cauld
28:58
Speaker 6: afford together. Lower i P is going to would go up,
29:00
Speaker 6: and so you often get before earning's bottom out, you
29:03
Speaker 6: get the market already bouncing because people just start paying
29:06
Speaker 6: a higher pe for stocks even before the earnings have
29:11
Speaker 6: finished botoming out because they're going it's such a low
29:13
Speaker 6: interest rate environment that's a good thing to do. That
29:15
Speaker 6: does not apply to those areas which are massively overrated
29:21
Speaker 6: and still need to fall all the way down to
29:23
Speaker 6: finding a buy.
29:24
Speaker 3: Let's go back to debt. You mentioned earlier. There's incredibly
29:27
Speaker 3: a high level of public debt in the UK. Obviously
29:29
Speaker 3: that's a problem in the US now. John and I
29:31
Speaker 3: were talking earlier about this, and John was saying that
29:34
Speaker 3: he wasn't that worried about the UK debt to GDP
29:37
Speaker 3: ratio going in the next couple of years, because while
29:39
Speaker 3: it's horrible in the UK, it's a lot worth in
29:42
Speaker 3: other places when you're trying to get money out of
29:44
Speaker 3: bond investers. The stuff is all relative. But if we
29:47
Speaker 3: look at it from the other side, I suspect you
29:49
Speaker 3: would say, well, it does matter because very high levels
29:52
Speaker 3: of debt is such a drag on productivity and so on.
29:56
Speaker 3: Is that fair?
29:57
Speaker 6: Well, yes, I mean I think John's been too complacement.
30:00
Speaker 6: I mean, I don't see why there is a natural
30:03
Speaker 6: buyer for UK government debt when we were debt to
30:07
Speaker 6: GDP is one hundred percent. You know who's the natural
30:11
Speaker 6: buyer for our guilts unless we basically pay quite a
30:15
Speaker 6: decent term coupon. So therefore, you know, there is a
30:18
Speaker 6: constraint which will stop guilt yields coming down that far.
30:22
Speaker 6: This is why we were talking about earlier. You know,
30:25
Speaker 6: you know, is three percent for interest rate short term
30:28
Speaker 6: interest rates the right sort of realistic target, And if
30:32
Speaker 6: it is, there's no way, you know, the long guilt
30:35
Speaker 6: is getting down to that sort of yield. The long
30:37
Speaker 6: guilt's probably going to be lucky to get down to four,
30:40
Speaker 6: very lucky to get down before maybe four and a half.
30:42
Speaker 3: Okay, Jims, how do we get out of this debt problem?
30:46
Speaker 3: I mean that the long term conversation we've been having,
30:48
Speaker 3: you and me, various the other people in the market,
30:50
Speaker 3: John except who have been talking about how it is
30:52
Speaker 3: inflation that will gradually erode the debt and make everything okay,
30:57
Speaker 3: but without inflation and without the financial oppression inflation brings.
31:01
Speaker 3: How do we get out of the debt problem?
31:03
Speaker 6: First and foremost, inflation can only get you out of
31:05
Speaker 6: your debt problem if you're already basically trying to deal
31:08
Speaker 6: with your debt problem. Now, if you're dealing with to
31:10
Speaker 6: deal with your debt problem, the first thing you must do,
31:12
Speaker 6: the very first thing you must do it is no
31:15
Speaker 6: longer run a primary deficit. Even if you're no longer
31:18
Speaker 6: running a primary deficit, particular, if you've got inflation, you're
31:21
Speaker 6: still going to find that your interest payments will make
31:23
Speaker 6: you run an actual deficit. And as you keep running
31:26
Speaker 6: an actual deficit, then your debt by definition, is getting
31:30
Speaker 6: bigger and bigger compared to GDP. And if your debt's
31:32
Speaker 6: getting bigger and bigger compared to GDP, you're kind of
31:35
Speaker 6: caught in a mailstrom. And that's why I said, I
31:37
Speaker 6: think John is probably being too complacent about this. Once
31:40
Speaker 6: you have let debt get out of control, then it
31:43
Speaker 6: is incredibly hard to rein it back. And the only
31:46
Speaker 6: real way to run it back is to start taking
31:49
Speaker 6: some really tough decisions in terms of government expenditure. So
31:53
Speaker 6: the first thing you've got to do is have government
31:56
Speaker 6: expenditure down at a sensible level. Now, historically, sorry, I'm
32:01
Speaker 6: not even talking about very long histories. I mean, in
32:02
Speaker 6: the last twenty twenty five years or so, the UK
32:05
Speaker 6: hasn't been able to run even for a year or
32:07
Speaker 6: two a primary surplus unless government expenditure.
32:12
Speaker 2: So this is.
32:14
Speaker 6: You know, government spending as a proportion GDP is down
32:17
Speaker 6: at about thirty five percent. It's currently forecast to hit
32:21
Speaker 6: forty eight percent in the next year or so. This
32:24
Speaker 6: is a massive shift. So if if one third of
32:27
Speaker 6: your economy is government spending, then two thirds are private sector,
32:31
Speaker 6: and our private sector by definition, has to be productive
32:34
Speaker 6: otherwise any entity in the private sector is not productive
32:37
Speaker 6: goes bankrupt. So therefore you've got two thirds of the
32:40
Speaker 6: economy growing and one third of the economy as a
32:43
Speaker 6: tax almost literally on that which is government spending, which
32:46
Speaker 6: is unproductive, taxation of the productive part of the economy
32:50
Speaker 6: to pay for things which the politicians think by votes,
32:54
Speaker 6: be they you know, education, health, defense, welfare benefits, eight
33:01
Speaker 6: to single mothers, whatever they want to send money to
33:03
Speaker 6: to put people off thinking they have to work. But
33:06
Speaker 6: the thing is, once you get government debt and government
33:09
Speaker 6: spending up closer to forty or fifty percent of GDP,
33:14
Speaker 6: then what is happening is that the private sector is
33:17
Speaker 6: now equally matched. For every two percent growth annual growth
33:21
Speaker 6: that the private sector can deliver, for example, government can
33:24
Speaker 6: destroy two percent, so you end up with almost zero growth. Now,
33:28
Speaker 6: since the GFC a great financial crisis, this is going
33:32
Speaker 6: back sixteen years in the last sixteen years, the UK,
33:36
Speaker 6: which had per cafeter GDP growth from the Second World
33:40
Speaker 6: War until sixteen years ago, was growing at a steady
33:44
Speaker 6: consistent rate of about two and a half percent. Since
33:49
Speaker 6: that sixteen years ago time, when government spending started going
33:53
Speaker 6: through the roof, per catter GDP has grown at zero
33:57
Speaker 6: point three percent per annum. I mean, you know, we've
34:00
Speaker 6: an annihilated the private sector by crowding in the public sector.
34:04
Speaker 6: And yet if you read the newspapers and you listen
34:07
Speaker 6: to particularly labor politicians, but the Conservatives are responsible for this,
34:10
Speaker 6: so they're no better, you would believe that we in
34:14
Speaker 6: this country had experimented with cutting back on government and
34:18
Speaker 6: trying a low tax, low spend experiment. We did nothing
34:23
Speaker 6: of the sort. We've taken tax as a proportion of
34:27
Speaker 6: GDP up to a seventy year high, we've taken government
34:30
Speaker 6: spending to a peacetime record high, and we've squeezed the
34:34
Speaker 6: private sector almost out of it's exaggerated, it's out of existence,
34:38
Speaker 6: but it's now virtually no bigger than the public sector,
34:42
Speaker 6: and therefore whatever good it delivers in terms of productivity
34:46
Speaker 6: and growth is taken away and completely nullified by the
34:50
Speaker 6: public sector. And until we realize and I'm not just
34:53
Speaker 6: talking about US, I'm talking about Europe and I'm talking
34:55
Speaker 6: about even the US. Now, until all of these Western
34:58
Speaker 6: economists realize this is what what's going on, we are
35:01
Speaker 6: doomed and destined to continue to do the same. You know,
35:05
Speaker 6: Argentina now looks like one of the few Western countries
35:08
Speaker 6: where you could actually turn around and say with approval,
35:11
Speaker 6: that looks good. Maybe I shouldn't therest their mille is doing.
35:14
Speaker 6: You know, it's taken a hundred years of catastrophe before
35:17
Speaker 6: the Argentinas have finally turned around and gone, you know what,
35:20
Speaker 6: this government, this corruption of everything that you know, the
35:24
Speaker 6: private sector holds, freedom and growth, This has been destroying
35:27
Speaker 6: us and we're now heading down that road all of us.
35:30
Speaker 3: Okay, this doesn't sound good, James. It's going to take
35:33
Speaker 3: one hundred years for us to pull ourselves together and
35:35
Speaker 3: turn around.
35:35
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't see.
35:37
Speaker 3: Let's take what you're saying and see how it is fixable.
35:41
Speaker 3: I cannot see how you could take the way that
35:43
Speaker 3: government runs at the moment and make the kind of
35:46
Speaker 3: dramatic changes required to take government spending back to somewhere
35:51
Speaker 3: in the mid thirties of GDP, not without a massive
35:55
Speaker 3: growth bird that led to GDP expanding at extraordinary speed
35:59
Speaker 3: and therefore leaving the percentage of government spending behind. And
36:03
Speaker 3: that can only happen if we have this great leap
36:05
Speaker 3: in productivity that we've talked about before, great leap in
36:08
Speaker 3: productivity that everyone now believes will come from AI and digitalization.
36:11
Speaker 3: But from what you said a few minutes ago, I
36:14
Speaker 3: don't feel like using it's coming from digitalization.
36:17
Speaker 2: No.
36:18
Speaker 6: I mean, we know what causes productivity, because we had
36:22
Speaker 6: very good growth in productivity even in the UK up
36:25
Speaker 6: until about sixteen years ago since the Second WLD War,
36:29
Speaker 6: and what caused productivity growth, and you could also break
36:32
Speaker 6: it down into different periods, so we had much stronger
36:34
Speaker 6: productivity and perk capital GDP growth during periods when government
36:38
Speaker 6: debt was going down than we did over the periods
36:41
Speaker 6: when government debts going up. The great benefit of the
36:45
Speaker 6: huge debt that was built up in the Sagma War
36:47
Speaker 6: is that most of the period after the Sagma War
36:50
Speaker 6: was a period where government debt was going down. I
36:53
Speaker 6: governments were running services, even the UK upuntil the sixties
36:57
Speaker 6: and early seventies were running services was we had great
37:01
Speaker 6: productivity growth. If you crowd in the private sector. If
37:04
Speaker 6: you say in the private sector, what do you require
37:06
Speaker 6: so that you can grow, the private sector will resoundingly
37:09
Speaker 6: say the same thing. Less government, You guys do nothing
37:12
Speaker 6: to help the problem. Get out of the way. What
37:15
Speaker 6: are labor suggesting? Labor suggesting that they can create growth
37:20
Speaker 6: whilst also increasing equality. Those are that's a complete oxymoral.
37:25
Speaker 6: You cannot possibly have those two things together. You have
37:29
Speaker 6: to either have growth and freedom or you have to
37:32
Speaker 6: have equality and stagnation. And you have to decide, and
37:37
Speaker 6: you have to decide on what the balance should be. Historically,
37:41
Speaker 6: probably the best balance that gave us enough growth to
37:44
Speaker 6: allow the pie to get bigger whilst also allowing a
37:49
Speaker 6: big enough slice for the bits that we thought were
37:51
Speaker 6: vulnerable and needed protecting, occurs around about one third government
37:55
Speaker 6: two thirds private sector. Economists who studied this and see
37:59
Speaker 6: what the the most effective share is find it's more
38:03
Speaker 6: like twenty percent government and eighty percent private sector. You know,
38:06
Speaker 6: there are some basic elements of what government does which
38:08
Speaker 6: are very necessary and required, predominantly around the rule of
38:12
Speaker 6: law and property rights. Beyond that, almost everything government tries
38:16
Speaker 6: to do is a corruption of at least the freedom
38:20
Speaker 6: and growth elements. Some people may not want freedom and growth,
38:23
Speaker 6: you know, socialists as are all don't want freedom and growth.
38:26
Speaker 6: They think it leads to inequality. They're absolutely right, it does.
38:30
Speaker 6: You know, there's no doubt about it that if your
38:31
Speaker 6: economy grows, you will start to see those who are
38:35
Speaker 6: more productive pulling ahead further from those who are unproductive.
38:38
Speaker 6: And that means that even if the unproductive are better off,
38:42
Speaker 6: they're relatively worse off. And if we can't be mature
38:46
Speaker 6: enough to have that conversation, then until we're mature enough
38:48
Speaker 6: to have that conversation, things will only get worse.
38:52
Speaker 3: James, we are having this conversation before we know the
38:54
Speaker 3: election results, and I suspect that we was elected.
38:56
Speaker 6: I think we do.
39:00
Speaker 3: I think that we might have elected a government that
39:02
Speaker 3: won't really be hearing what you're saying. So I don't
39:04
Speaker 3: think we can expect any of the changes that you
39:07
Speaker 3: would like anytime soon, or indeed probably ever at this rate.
39:11
Speaker 3: So let's go back to what we can do about it.
39:13
Speaker 3: We've agreed that investing in the UK, at least in
39:16
Speaker 3: the short term, in pretty much anything, is a reasonable idea.
39:21
Speaker 3: We've agreed that US small caps are looking cheap, but
39:24
Speaker 3: that maybe now is not a good time, given that
39:26
Speaker 3: if the very narrow bubble collapses, it'll take everything down
39:29
Speaker 3: with it, at least temporarily. Is there anywhere else, whether
39:33
Speaker 3: the retail investor, the ordinary investor, the private investor should
39:37
Speaker 3: be looking and saying, well, this is a good place
39:40
Speaker 3: for my money, possibly even a safe place.
39:42
Speaker 6: Well, one of the things, which obviously I say obviously
39:45
Speaker 6: but by implication, is not going to be very safe.
39:47
Speaker 6: You know at the moment if you look at most
39:50
Speaker 6: of the West, but I'll concentrate in the UK, so
39:53
Speaker 6: that's where we're talking. You know, government spending has gone
39:58
Speaker 6: up to record postwar highs, but the tax rate, although
40:05
Speaker 6: the tax has also gone up to record postwar highs,
40:08
Speaker 6: but the gap between the two is still a big worry.
40:12
Speaker 6: So now there's only two ways you can deal with that.
40:14
Speaker 6: You can either cut back on spending, which we're kind
40:16
Speaker 6: of all agreed that they're not incentivized to do because
40:19
Speaker 6: the electro haven't yet told the politicians forceful enough that
40:24
Speaker 6: they don't trust their worldview. They're starting to This is
40:29
Speaker 6: why you're getting these these very disruptive political votes. These
40:35
Speaker 6: the press pyctical and populist votes, but they're not to
40:38
Speaker 6: my mind, they're protest votes. You know, in the UK,
40:41
Speaker 6: why would anyone vote for the Conservatives who've just acted
40:44
Speaker 6: exactly like a labor government would have acted in terms
40:47
Speaker 6: of taking government debt and government spending through the same.
40:49
Speaker 3: I've got to interrupt because I'm not feeling you getting
40:52
Speaker 3: any closer to offering me a positive investment as safe investment.
40:58
Speaker 3: I'm feeling you getting closer to negative stuff.
41:00
Speaker 6: If you want to, if you want to leave out
41:02
Speaker 6: all the all the whys and whereforce, they're going to
41:04
Speaker 6: have to raise taxes. So so what can you buy
41:07
Speaker 6: that they won't be able to raise taxes on. You know,
41:09
Speaker 6: they're going to raise taxes on on equities, They're going
41:12
Speaker 6: to raise taxes on second homes, They're going to raise
41:14
Speaker 6: taxes on probably on pensions. They're probably going to raise
41:17
Speaker 6: taxes on isis one of the few sorts of things
41:20
Speaker 6: that they can't raise taxes on because it's just too
41:23
Speaker 6: sort of difficult and inefficient. Might be things like wine.
41:26
Speaker 6: Aren't classic cars, So one of the things you might
41:29
Speaker 6: want to think about is putting your money into things
41:31
Speaker 6: that you're at least confident will hold their value, but
41:34
Speaker 6: which can't be taxed, or at least the gains on
41:36
Speaker 6: them can't be taxed. So that's that's one way of
41:39
Speaker 6: looking at it. One of the historic things you want
41:41
Speaker 6: to do is look at your old sixty forty portfolio.
41:45
Speaker 6: The problem is that even if bonds are going to
41:47
Speaker 6: do well, as the economy sort of looks a bit weaker.
41:51
Speaker 6: And this is certainly the states where consensus is very
41:54
Speaker 6: much that there will be no recession. But I would
41:57
Speaker 6: say since they've nearly used up, but according to Sandfrist
42:00
Speaker 6: scope FED they have used up all of the excess savings,
42:04
Speaker 6: they could be on for quite an abrupt shock there.
42:06
Speaker 6: That would suggest that, you know, they're going to get
42:09
Speaker 6: some better performance from bonds in the near term, but
42:13
Speaker 6: in the medium term a propos your point, you know,
42:16
Speaker 6: it's hard to see that bonds are going to be
42:20
Speaker 6: a great investment over the next decade or two because
42:24
Speaker 6: government debt's too high. And if government debt's too high,
42:26
Speaker 6: then they're going to have to offer quite high interest
42:29
Speaker 6: rates to get people to lend them. And if they're
42:32
Speaker 6: going to get that, then they're also going to find
42:35
Speaker 6: that their interest bill stays high, and if the interest
42:38
Speaker 6: bill stays high, the deficit stays high. It's a catch
42:40
Speaker 6: train too, is horrible catch training too.
42:42
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm not really feeling for coming out of the
42:45
Speaker 3: end here, James, with anything set for buy wine and
42:48
Speaker 3: drink it.
42:49
Speaker 6: Well, that's because we haven't really looked a little bit
42:52
Speaker 6: further afield. So I've already mentioned looking further afield within
42:56
Speaker 6: the US small caps, looking further afield with in other markets.
43:03
Speaker 6: Developed markets. You know, look at Spain, look at Italy,
43:07
Speaker 6: look at the UK. They're all very very cheap markets.
43:11
Speaker 6: And when everyone starts to think that the main game
43:13
Speaker 6: in town is no longer worth playing, then they're going
43:16
Speaker 6: to start being more attractive to things which are on
43:19
Speaker 6: extremely low peece or extremely high earning yields. Another area
43:22
Speaker 6: that looks very interesting in this point of view is
43:24
Speaker 6: emerging markets. You know, emerging markets have not done well
43:28
Speaker 6: at all in this environment, but that's because this has
43:31
Speaker 6: been a very sort of late cycle, highly US large
43:35
Speaker 6: cap dominant cycle. So in many respects, the great secret
43:39
Speaker 6: if you think of big changes coming is not necessarily
43:42
Speaker 6: what to buy, but what not to own. You know,
43:45
Speaker 6: when the banking crisis came along, the number one and
43:48
Speaker 6: possibly only decision you had to make was take your
43:51
Speaker 6: bank waiting to zero and stay that way. So if
43:55
Speaker 6: we're looking at at a big shift away from maybe
43:58
Speaker 6: US growth large cap growth stocks, maybe that is the
44:02
Speaker 6: single most important and only decision you need to make.
44:05
Speaker 6: Get a nice diversified exposure to all the stuff which
44:08
Speaker 6: on all old fashioned metrics is cheap.
44:10
Speaker 3: And just don't have the bubble stuff. Yeah, brilliant, perfect, Okay, right,
44:15
Speaker 3: last question, James, last questions. You're ready ten years. You've
44:19
Speaker 3: got to hold one of them. Gold or bitcoin.
44:22
Speaker 6: I'll tell you it's very difficult. Gold historically is supposed
44:25
Speaker 6: to you know, famously brought you a fine suit of
44:27
Speaker 6: clothes in Roman times, and ad buys you a fine
44:29
Speaker 6: suit of clothes today. Therefore, if we consider that gold,
44:33
Speaker 6: it should be measured against inflation. If you run gold
44:38
Speaker 6: compared to US CPI, you'll find that gold is almost
44:42
Speaker 6: bang on the highest point that it hits in any
44:46
Speaker 6: stage since the Second World War. In other words, gold
44:49
Speaker 6: has done its dash. Not very well, thank you very much,
44:52
Speaker 6: but it's done its dash.
44:54
Speaker 3: Okay, great, But still you have to choose.
44:58
Speaker 6: What wh is that?
45:01
Speaker 3: Because that is the way the podcast works, the way
45:06
Speaker 3: it works, that's the way we finished the podcast.
45:08
Speaker 6: Bitcoin well, well, well, because I've got a sort of
45:12
Speaker 6: a reasonable view to think that gold is probably fairly
45:15
Speaker 6: fully valued, and I've got no concept in my head
45:18
Speaker 6: at all about how bitcoin should be valued, I would
45:22
Speaker 6: probably say on that basis bitcoin.
45:24
Speaker 3: Okay, Bitcoin, it is James Ferguson, thank you very much, indeed,
45:28
Speaker 3: very good to have you on.
45:30
Speaker 7: Don't hold me to the bitcoin thing, please, thanks for listening,
45:36
Speaker 7: is which Marrendalg's Money will be back next week. In
45:38
Speaker 7: the meantime, you like I share, rate, review, and subscribe
45:40
Speaker 7: wherever you listen to podcasts, and keep sending your questions
45:43
Speaker 7: or comments to Merrin Money at Bloomberg dot net. This
45:46
Speaker 7: episode was hosted by me and Maren thumset What It
45:48
Speaker 7: was produced by Summersidy Productions, Important
45:50
Speaker 2: And sound designed by Moses and