Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. Welcome to the Merrin Talks Money weekly roundup. Do you brief on the bigger stories in markets and economics? No shortage this week as usual. I am Maren Zum's Up, web editor at large for Bloomberg UK Wealth.
I'm joined Step although the money distilled newsletters and senior Bloomberg reporter. Not really much talk.
About this week, is it, John.
Bit slow bit slow slow.
Now, of course it's not slow at all. It's very very busy lot going on, all very exciting. We have had the Bank of England out making yet another decision on interest rates, and John, this one is interesting, right, I mean it's never that interesting, but it's more interesting than usual this time because while they have done what everyone thought they would do, they haven't done it with folk consensus.
Yes, it's interesting and relative terms.
Yeah, take a we can get deally well yeah we got so we got five way split, so five way, three ways five would be great, So three way split. So five people voted to cut by a quarter point, two people voted to cut by half a point, and two people voted to hold. And the reason that was the surprise is because basically they thought everyone would vote for a quarter point cut except for Swatty Dingra who's very very dubbish, and they thought she would vote for
a half point cut. So as it turns out, having two people go on hold is actually quite hawkish, or you know, it makes it look as if the Bank of England, you know, it is kind of wanting to keep interest rates a bit higher for a bit longer than perhaps everyone had expected or maybe even hoped. I mean mollin in view like four point two five percent when inflations kicking around about three and Proyte about to go up to three and a half percent, seems you know,
about the right level for interest rates. But equally, you know the kind of bombs falling out the oil market, so hopefully that means energy and ppetual places all come doing crete fast, So that will probably give a bit of cover for the Bank England then the next nine months or so to Cardie or and just gently can actually cutting interest rates.
Yeah, and that's that's the general feel, isn't it that they'll be cut off to cutof for capital and the year three and a half percent or something like that. That is what everyone generally expects, and it's all based on the assumption that inflation will end up coming back to where it's supposed to be for reasons that noone knows, but nonetheless where it's supposed to be at around two
percent in the medium term ish. So that's the expectation, and of course there's a million risks of that because everyone keeps saying we live in an increasingly uncertain world, with geopolitical conflict all around us and the ongoing uncertainty of Trump's tariffs all over the place. So actually, as I'm sure we often say on this podcast, and everyone says all that podcast, at the moment, no one has the faintest idea what's going to happen next.
Yeah, I mean, to be fair, this is one it seems what I felt that the Bank England's actually it was an a bit of police and a more confident place today because it was talking about, well, actually, one of the reasons it's a three way splits is we don't know what's going to happen next, and I thought they were actually fairly straightforward about that. And I mean, actually it was the same with the FED. So the Federal Reserve was basically saying the same thing. We're not
cutting interest rates. We don't know where things are going. We're sort of justifying this by looking at backwards data that isn't even up to date yet, but we don't. We just don't know what's going to happen next because of the whole Tariff's thing. And I think, yeah, I mean, I think it's more honest than everyone usually as, which has to be an improvement on what we normally get.
I've just been reading one of Albert Edward's notes and he pointed me to was another note which is super interesting. I'm going to put it. I'm going to put the link in the show notes, but it's one of the few pieces that I've read so far which says that all of a sudden certainty is absolutely great. Thank goodness for it. It's about time that everyone accepted that the future is incredibly uncertain. And one of the difficult things
about previous bubbles has been the idea of certainty. So when we had the Greens Bamput, for example, and everyone constantly believes that things will happen in the same way and in a very clear and straightforward way, and that is what leads people to take intense levels of excess risk. So if people accept that the future is uncertain, the price of money will be more normal and people will
behave in a more normal, risk adjusted way. So this injection of uncertainty into markets and into the global economy could in that sense be seen as a good thing rather than a bad thing.
Yeah, I think it's a really good thing. And I think that's a really good point, because you're one of the reasons that capital gets mess allocated is because people's assumptions are too comfortable. And one reason that momentum investment has done so well is because if something's been going up, then it might it will keep going up, is the belief. So it's kind of good for you know, value investment by neglected assets type attitude as well. But yeah, and
it is good to recognize the uncertainty. Well, I mean suppose this is this is also the reason why it's so it's the fundamental problem we having central banks constantly setting interest rates in the way that they currently do as well. You know, I still think the idea of choose a number, make it you know, four percent, five five percent, four and a half percent, whatever, and just leave them there and then do what basically already happens.
You know that the markets kind of decide the interest rate around that, and then you don't have to have like nine people in the room decide what the interest rates should be. Instead, you've got the entire you know, global financial markets to say that interest rates should be given various kind of bits of information from all that are in the world. So that would be that would be much better.
Okay, John, So let's go back to markets. Markets. Let's go back and look at the US market, because we've talked about this a lot over the last few weeks about how extraordinary it is that after everything that's happened and all the extreme movements in the US markets over the last you know, in some weeks, you've seen record record movements up, record movements down, record numbers of days up, redctera, etcetera, all sorts of extraordinary things. But we end up roughly
where we started. And we can also see that retail investors in the US and in the UK have been buying and buying and buying into the US market by the dip, by the dip, by the dip, by the dip, all the way through, which suggests there's an awful lot of market purchasements who are not recognizing the uncertainty and not recognizing the new approach to risk that ongoing uncertainty should mean that they take right. Yeah, and an awful lot of people who think that the correction is over.
Much of it has been reversed and that's that. Whereas older hands like maybe you or me a mother, old people out there might say, but this is what bear markets do. This is what they do to you. They give you a sudden drop off, and then after a little while of everyone feeling a little pan panicky and some people telling it's selling too soon, they come back and you're like, oh, okay, I should never have sold
by the dip. And that can happen five, six, seven times on the way down, and it can get you every time.
And what is it like markets claim a wall or worry, but they go down a slope of hope. Yes, look at exactly. I mean, one thing would point is that obviously the dollar has dropped a lot in that time. So if you are out said the US, then actually you're still lost about ten percent in the last month. And I mean, that's one interesting comparison between this and between breaks is well, it's like most of the adjustment was felt in the currency rather than in any of
the asset prices as such in domestic currency terms. But I think the other thing is people when I say one of the sort of like one of the the mainstream financial journalists that we like elsewhere, Mike Bird was to comment on this and Twitter at some point can being kind of asking about why as kind of retail investors kind of light piling back in buying the dip.
And it's that thing where it's been so much the right thing to do the last fifteen years or so that it's no surprise that people have been trained into doing it. Is you know, BTFD has been absolutely the
correct strategy to kind of follow. And there is also I guess that there's also that slight element of financial nihilism where it's that people have talked about where it's kind of like a bit like bitcoin and kind of holding bitcoin, and I hope it's just going to keep going up the same with the S and P five hundred is the only game in town, and so you know, you might as well put all your money in that you only have one tape attitude.
Yeah, there's a new game in town. There's a new game in town.
Right.
There is one country out there, much derided by by investors across the world. No one is invested in this terrible market for a very very long time. But this country, this country has this week alone done two trade deals.
Yes, not one, but too fantastic. It's like it's as if all of her breaks benefits of landing it once, just like that.
Yes, yeah, and it is, of course the UK where you can buy shares on a massive discount to the US and quite a hefty discount to the globe as a whole. But suddenly with these trade deals, it's looking a little investable.
Right yeah. And I don't think because we don't have to have the details of the but but yeah, I think from the point of view of the UK's pr if you like at then the day we've got a time when people are finally wobbling about US exceptionalism and they're thinking about where else can I invest? And you know, well that includes basically the rest of the world. The
rest of the world has lacked the US. But one thing that you've got the UK does have going for it is that it's quite a familiar market and it has and it is cheap. So all we really need to do to nudge some of those global fund managers who don't actually pay that much attention to stuff is to get them thinking of the UK as actually that's kind of investable again. Although they've done a deal with the US, they've done a deal with India. You know,
they can't be completely useless. Let's just you know, stick
some money in there now. And I think that's that would really help because I don't know, if you saw the last numbers from Calisto and Financial, it's like again, I mean, I know there was a bit less money flowed out of the UK on a monthly basis, but that's like four years now of consecutive outflows except for late you know, I collect you but to do the capital gains tax changes, so it's something there can only be so much money left to come out.
I mean, it's Christopher mill Or, that doesn't it. John The people who would like to mandate pension funds in the UK to invest in the UK equities, and I see that today. Ross Oltman, one of the old pension minister's former pension ministers today has suggestion has been that every twenty five percent of every new contribution into a pension fund, be it into an orderinal monitor into a twenty five percent of every new contribution should be obligated to invest in the UK or to be invested in
the UK. And she sees that it's just perfectly reasonable on the basis that it goes in income tax free, and you can take out not quite twenty five percent anymore, but you know, twenty five percent tax free when you invest the fund, and of that, basically she sees this perpularly reasonable that twenty five percent of new contribution should
go directly into the UK market. That's slightly more than some other people think, but nonetheless, this is now a very accepted idea that we are so close, so close to mandated investment in the UK as a payback for tax relief, and I we're just not going to take that much of that to turn a market that has been this uninvested in for so long around.
Yeah, I agree. I think it's a shame that this has now become such a big talking point when if I'm one hundredercent honest, I think this would turn around naturally anyway, because the defined benefits selling that drove this in the first place is now basically done, and it's defined contribution pensions to or to enrollment pensions that are getting all the floors. And given that we're now moving out the USA performing everyone else, I think they're going
to see money coming in the UK anyway. So but you know, at the end of the day, at this point, if you are someone who's going to investing in the UK, all of the regulatory as well as the fundamental backdrop is kind of point in your way. So I'm not gonna nork it.
Yeah, yeah, okay, Well that's all good news.
Is right, shieldless, But it's actually.
Yeah, I mean I tried. I tried to bring you in there to end this whole thing on an optimistic note with you saying how marvelous was and hey, we're rushing out to stuff even more UK equities into into your step so that you could be the great beneficiary of the coming bull margin in the UK. But you fluffed it, John.
I want to beat them to it before they forced me to.
Okay, fair enough, fair enough, all right, Well, I think we will leave it there on a mildly optimistic note and we will come back to talk about the trade deal between the US and the UK in more detail next week. We haven't seen the details as we speak, so we're not going to bother you with our unformed views on it.
Quite at will do that next week.
Views next week. Thanks for listening to this week's Maren Talks Money Debrief. If you like our show, rate review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Also you showed follow me and John on x or Twitter at marinas w and John underscore Stepek. This episode was produced by Moses and Questions and comments on the show and all our shows are always welcome. Our show email is merin Money at Bloomberg dot net