2025 Market Recap: Top Performers, AI Shocks & What’s Coming in 2026

In this final Market Maker markets episode of the year, Anthony and Piers deliver a global recap of 2025’s biggest winners, losers, and trends. From the AI-driven tech shake-up and Wall Street’s banking boom to the surprise surge in Spain’s stock market, they break down the key moves.

Looking ahead to 2026, will inflation, a Fed leadership transition, or even a ‘Great AI Energy Blackout’ derail the bull run? Listen in for clear insights, easy-to-follow strategy, and a few surprising predictions.

(00:00) Intro & 2025 in Review

(03:50) US Equity Sectors

(05:08) Hyperscalers Dominant

(14:41) AI Investment Ecosystem

(21:01) Data Integration vs SaaS Stocks

(22:45) Financials Stage a Comeback

(30:18) Value Rotation

(33:59) Healthcare Divisions

(42:52) Highlights in Fixed Income

(46:52) Gold Shines while Oil Slumps

(49:54) The End of the US Dollar?

(53:19) Outlooks for US Stocks in 2026

(59:22) Potential Risks

(1:02:38) Black Swan Event

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hello and welcome back to what is the last of the Markets
inspired Market Maker podcast episodes of 2025.
And at this time of year, what we normally do is we bring up
the heat map of the S&P 500 and we'll have a look at some of the
top performing sectors in the USequity market.

(00:20):
So namely, we're going to talk alittle bit today about
technology, we're going to talk about financials, defensives,
healthcare and some of the themes and rationale of why
they've had a decent year. And then also look at some of
the other asset classes. So not to mention fixed income,
forex, commodities we'll touch on.
And then importantly, how we setup for next year, What are the

(00:42):
core consensus views and what could derail those views and be
potential risks? Or in fact, a cheeky Black Swan
might appear at the end of the episode.
Piers, how are you? Yes, very good.
Looking forward to looking forward to a bit of time off
next week. The.

(01:05):
Crimbo Action. So, So I'll let the audience
guess. Where do we think Piers Karen is
going for Christmas? What do we reckon, Hawaii, Or
what are we thinking? I'll let, I'll let, I'll let the
listeners guess. It could be Tooting or it could
be Hawaii. I know he's a man of many

(01:26):
tastes. But I want to, I want to give a
quick shout out before we get stuck in Joshua Betts.
What I mentioned we did an episode, well, it's actually a
few weeks back now about Electronic Arts, the computer
game maker and how, you know, big, big kind of leveraged
buyout kind of PED Wow, biggest ever PE deal on record if it

(01:51):
lands. And that'll be perhaps a story
for the first part of 2026. But we were talking about that
as a deal. And then I was, I confessed that
part of my youth was wasted. Well was it wasted?
Well, was spent playing Tiger Woods Golf on the Xbox, which

(02:11):
was one of the EA Sports games. And yeah, then so Joshua bets he
then was, was moving house. I mean, look, he'd done some
amplified stuff. He'd done some Sims.
We'd helped him along his way, like trying to find his path in
asset management. And he's just flying now and
it's awesome to see. But he was kind of moving house
like you do and like you're clearing out your boxes in the

(02:33):
attic and he finds Tiger Woods golf the game like the physical.
We used to have physical games back then that you plugged into
a computer console, old school. Anyway, you posted it to me with
a nice little letter actually. If you want to read it, go on to
my LinkedIn and I did a post on it earlier this week where I

(02:55):
kind of show his letter. Anyway, yeah, such a such a nice
touch. And yeah, really made my year
actually that letter. Small gestures, hey, it goes a
long way. Yeah, I just need to find a
console now that can still your best.
Bet I reckon. What console do you need?

(03:16):
I think it's I think I need an Xbox like Xbox version one I've.
Got an Xbox version one in a loft.
Literally have it in the loft and I was going to take it to
the charity shop. Well, that's my Christmas
present. Right there.
OK, so here's a guy who has highdemand and I have what he needs.

(03:38):
So yeah, that Xbox 500 lbs. No deal.
I'll go on eBay. Thanks.
We'll sort that out. All right, well, let's dive into
this. And yeah, if anyone who's not
familiar with a heat map, it's quite a a good visual way of
looking at an equity market. I remember sitting on the desk

(04:02):
and when you do have access to aBloomberg Terminal, it's often
how you would look at the marketplace.
When you're looking at it from there, what we used to be, which
is kind of macro guys, if you like, when we're not single
stock equity traders, but you definitely get a vibe of market
conditions or when we were operating in the intraday

(04:23):
markets, definitely sentiment. You get signals off of
correlations from patterns across different asset classes,
but you also see that lay it down into how a different areas
or corners of the S&P 500 performing.
And so the heat map then lookingat on the year to date, there
are some definite clear areas ofgreen, let's say.

(04:47):
And the way a heat map generallyworks is that the bigger the
squares are or the larger the companies and obviously tech
stocks, these mega cap tech stocks really dominate the
space. So why don't we start there,
Piers, before we go into the rest?
So yeah, what what's the generaltheme then?
I think we people talk about, wehave indeed talked about this a

(05:07):
lot, but main takeaways from thetech space for this this year,
2025. Yeah.
I mean main takeaways are the big dominant giants, the kind of
the hyper scalers have had a phenomenal year and they're such
massive stocks like from a market cap point of view that

(05:29):
they have a very dominant outsized influence on how
indices perform. So like if you're looking at the
S&P 500 that we're what are we acouple of weeks off year end and
we are 15% up on the year. Yeah.
So obviously that mean, you know, you might immediately
think, OK, well, that means obviously most stocks in the
index have gone up and on average by 15%.

(05:49):
But I mean, yes, that is a general overview, but kind of
diving in, it's your big, big, big guns that have actually gone
up way more than, well, have they gone up more than 15%?
Actually, here's the question. So I mean, I think NVIDIA again,
is, is, is obviously, you know, what's happened in 2025, they
became the biggest company on the planet.

(06:13):
They broke the $4 trillion ceiling.
And so, you know, clearly, you know, you can't, you can't say
that they're not one of the, youknow, the stories of 2025 as
they were in 2024, as they were in 2023.
But I think if they're going to well, right now, as of today,
they're 27% up on the year, so beating that 15% index average.

(06:39):
But then if you look around, it's actually out of the big,
big, big guns, it's actually Google that have performed the
best. They're up 57% year to date, so
they're the outperformers. You then look at Microsoft,
which is rough near average, so they're up 13%.
Then you've got Meta up 11%, Apple up 8 and actually Amazon

(07:03):
rounding off the year about flat, pretty much zero 0.8%.
So you get you get quite a lot of divergent obviously in
amongst the mag seven. I think that's been a real
feature of this year 2025. The mag 7 are no longer it's no
longer a thing that was a 2424 story when those we.

(07:24):
Dropped mag 7 then next year, yeah, let's just drop.
It that's gone, that's the last time I'm ever going to say MAG
7. It's just not a thing anymore.
They've broken up. OK, can I take an option out
that that's not the case? OK, we'll see.
But they've they've broken up. It's like, you know, it's like I

(07:45):
was going to say take that, but that's a reference that, well,
you've got to be of a certain age to maybe One Direction is a
better a better analogy for the Super group breakup.
So yeah. And look, that's, that's, you
know, why has that happened? You know, I think the, the AI

(08:08):
revolution has rolled on anothernotch, right?
And I think this year has been different where it's not just,
Oh my God, this is amazing. No one quite understands it.
Let's just buy everything that has anything to do with it.
That was kind of 2023-2024. Now it's a bit more nuanced and,
and right, obviously there's huge kind of capital outlay

(08:28):
going on. And like, if you think about
companies like Apple, so they'veunderperformed 8 1/2%.
That's because they're just not in the race.
They are not in the AI race. Now, is that going to turn out
to be genius in a couple of years time?
Who knows. And this is one of the beauties
of this AI story that, you know,fine, there's a narrative that

(08:51):
it's going to be this is the secular shift, you know, of this
decades, 2 decades, right? It's a bit like the Internet
coming along back and, you know,at the turn of the century.
So, you know, they're just not in the race.
Now we'll see because the other big tech firms are and they're
spending like it's going out of fashion.

(09:13):
And actually, I've got some somestats here in terms of capital
expenditures from the what we call the hyper scalers.
So Alphabet, that's Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, I've
got Oracle in there as well, right?
As one of these players who's trying to compete in this race.
You notice Nvidia's not on that list.

(09:35):
That's because NVIDIA, they're the beneficiary of this race
because all these hyper scalers need data centers and they need
GPU's, and it's NVIDIA that are providing that infrastructure.
So Nvidia's the winner out of all of this.
The hyper scalers are trying to build out compute power so that

(09:55):
they can win ultimately the AI game or the AI race, which is
basically, you know, creating apps and software that can
leverage AI to help companies and individuals all around the
planet, you know, do things better.
It can kind of Dr. automated vehicles, you know, if you want

(10:18):
Elon Musk to kind of get his Optimus Primes out and get that
robotics revolution going, all this AI stuff is going to feed
that. But these hyper scalers, right,
in terms of their capital expenditure, I think right top
of the list at the moment is actually is Amazon in terms of
the dollars spent. So we're looking at 120 billion,

(10:41):
OK, for the year. And then you've got kind of
Alphabet and you've got Microsoft clocking in and around
about, for the year around aboutsort of 70 to 80 billion.
Meta are trying to keep up. They're around about 60 billion.
And then Oracle have joined the race a little late, but they're
around about, well, not just under 40 billion in terms of
money spent, right? And so this is the, this is the

(11:02):
race. But actually, if you just look
at it like dollars spent, it doesn't quite tell the story
because you've got to think, well, how big is the company?
What are their revenues? What are their cash flows?
Because they're not all the same.
And so actually when you kind ofsplit it out and have a look at
capital expenditures rolling 12 months then and think about the,

(11:22):
the amount of, you know, relative to what they were
spending before the AI revolution.
Then actually you've got the likes of Alphabet and Microsoft
who are looking pretty solid, even though their spend is
really ramping, their cash flowsare ramping.
So actually from a, from a free cash flow point of view, they're

(11:43):
about steady and flat even though they've just tripled.
So Alphabet have tripled their CapEx spend pre AI revolution to
now they've tripled it and yet their free cash flow is flat,
which just speaks to the phenomenal sort of cash spewing
machine that is their business of search, right.

(12:07):
So Microsoft and Alphabet are looking really nice.
Then you start to think you go down the list.
So meta they're they, they've again, they've kind of tripled
their spend as well, but they had less, got less cash flow and
their free cash flow is actuallystarting to trend down.
One story for 2026 maybe, you know, are players going to start

(12:29):
stumbling in this race and are you going to start to see this
big CapEx spend really show up meaningfully, you know, on their
balance sheet? Is it going to show up in their
kind of EBITDA figures negatively?
And so I think, you know, the slightly smaller guys like Meta
might stumble a little bit, but the real one to look out for is
Oracle. And it's already happened

(12:51):
because Oracle's share price hasbeen absolutely savaged in the
last few weeks. And that's because investors are
like, oh, whoa, hang on a minute, you want to play in this
game? They think.
So if you think about Alphabet tripling their CapEx, Oracle or
11X, they're spending eleven times more than they were pre a

(13:12):
pre ChatGPT, let's say. And this is now proper.
Their free cash flows are trending down.
They are eating into their cash reserves to try and keep up with
this race. The problem is it's not
sustainable. And that's ultimately the
unknown. You know, where's the where's
the gold at the end of this AI kind of rainbow?

(13:35):
We don't know if when it comes, that's the big unknown, when are
or when's all this investment can actually translate into
revenues to make it worth the spend.
The problem for Oracle, they don't have unlimited time.
Alphabet and Microsoft, well, yeah, I mean, unlimited is a
strong word, but their free cashflows are actually nice and

(13:57):
solid. So I think we'll probably see
that race evolve next year and it all cut.
And look, the whole of the wholeof this thing, the whole of 2026
rides on AI, it rides on that's it EV, it's all everyone's all
in. And I mean the whole planet
basically from a certainly from a kind of stock market
performance point of view. And so as long as that carries

(14:21):
on as a, you know, strong growthstory, then then fine, Oracle
might get away with it. But yeah, there's some, there's
some, there's some winners and losers in that race.
And we're we're starting to see the share prices of the players
diverge as people start to pay more attention to that.

(14:41):
Yeah. And within that kind of race,
there's, yeah, there are winnersand losers.
And actually thinking about the second or Third Order
connections to the hyperscalers,you know, one that was on one
was flashing green like, no, tomorrow's this year has been
Micron. They're up when I last checked.

(15:04):
I think they're up 170% on the year.
I mean, you're talking about Google's absolutely smashed it.
But these guys are up 100% more than that in terms of their
their price change and that thatmedium.
I mean, I don't follow these smaller stocks a great deal, but
I was kind of interested and it was this acronym HBMS.

(15:25):
And I was like, when I was reading that, I was like, OK,
I'm assuming that people are supposed to know what that is
outside of tech people. But what that is, is high
bandwidth memory. And the context here is that
traditional memory chips aren't fast enough for the new AI
supercomputers. So you need these HBMS.

(15:47):
And Micron has HBM 3E chips. And lo and behold, they're being
used by Nvidia's latest Blackwell AI GPU's.
So that was the kind of validation point, if you like,
that really triggered that that price move.
And what happened and what really lifted their share price
was that they apparently sold out of those for the entirety of

(16:12):
2024 and most of the early part of this year.
So just absolutely pure pricing power being demonstrated there.
And so yeah, really interested. But like you said though, so
much as being hang on the hat ofAI because Micron light Oracle
obviously pivoting aggressively to try and make hay while the

(16:35):
sun shines. So in their case, moving away
from those low margin consumer storage.
So you remember old school cameras?
I mean, people probably don't because they use their phones,
but in the day of the digital camera, you had an SD card in
your camera, right? But there's no point in being in
that business anymore because you want to make high margin

(16:57):
data centre infrastructure. And that's definitely within
that, within that kind of toolbox if you like.
So yeah, they've been a standout.
Another one that wanted to shout.
Before you move on, sorry, I've got a bit of an anecdote here
about Micron. Oh yeah.
Because I mean, I stand here at the end of the year and I'm
patting myself on the back because this is one of my, this

(17:19):
was one of my key trades this year, Micron.
OK. It's never as easy as Oh my God,
they're up. What did you say 100 and. 70.
70%, you know, you're like, oh damn, it missed that one.
If you did miss it, well, I camein on that trade at the start of
2025. OK, April, the start of April,

(17:45):
that stock dumped 30% down off the back of the Donald Trump.
You know what was the day calledagain?
I forget the name of it. Liberation.
Liberation Day. So because that stock was
trading around about $100 OK andit got they actually went down

(18:05):
it was more than 30% sorry, got down bottom, bottomed at $65.
That was a painful right. Now, normally I would cut these
trades, I'd have some kind of stop loss scenario, but I was
almost like so stubbornly convinced about my sort of
rationale for the trade and fine, this Donald Trump thing.

(18:28):
I mean, I always I'm, I'm generally on the side of the
fence that the Mead media tend to sensationalize everything to
do with Donald. And so I, I always believe that
there's going to be a market reaction that's probably
outsized compared to what the reality is.
Anyway, I stuck in the trade gotback to flat by kind of end of
May. So by the end of May, that's

(18:49):
that's five months of the year. This thing's done zero.
You're, you're 0 on the year having at one point been down
30% or more right then it came good.
And actually it really started to tear when we got into
September actually is when it really started to ramp.
So fine, you sit here at the endof the year, oh, it's up 170%.

(19:10):
What an amazing trade. But the best part of my trade
was staying in it actually, because I would say most people
probably got got scared out. That's why they call him the
Iceman. Yeah.
And the other, the other one actually that talking about that

(19:32):
timeline is quite interested because there was another stock
that was a bit of a dog for mostof the year.
And that was Intel, which was literally on on the cusp of
being no more. It felt like not so long ago.
But they've had an incredible turn around.
I mean, I was just looking on the chart.

(19:53):
Intel we're trading sub 20 bucksback in August and then earlier
this month they were trading 44.So they've had a monster
comeback, which was surprising. But a couple of things there was
about their basically they've created this new process and

(20:16):
Apple have been sniffing around about potential future entry
level chips for iPads and lower end Macbooks.
And that just sends it soaring. And then also, so from a
business strategy perspective, Intel sold a majority stake, 51%
in its programmable chip unit Altera.
That was one of those big deals that we saw earlier this year to

(20:39):
private equity Silver Lake for four and a half billion.
So nothing like a little lifeline, but cash injection and
then then almost the world's biggest client coming in with
potentially a whole stream of orders.
But the other final part with tech was the kind of, so we've
talked about the hardware and there's probably, you know,
that's obviously been the story on the software side.

(21:03):
What's been really interesting is this Divergent, the Divergent
being say Palantir up 150%, so heavily rewarding these kind of
AI data integration type names, losers, SAS.
Yeah, Salesforce Service now thebeasts in the SAS market,

(21:24):
they're down what, 25% apiece? Yeah, Yeah.
That's been quite interesting. Yeah, your big, your big, I want
to say all like pre AI SAS platforms, Salesforce being the
best example and those platformsyou know, not not evolving, you

(21:47):
know, along with the AI story. Yeah, they've been killed.
Yeah. What did you say?
So Salesforce down 24% this yearbecause yeah, ultimately their
cut their bit, their business model is obsolete in in a way.
But the the issue is, you know, a platform like that is so
integrated and embedded into a businesses functioning on a

(22:08):
day-to-day basis that it is sticky stuff.
It's hard to untangle yourself as a company from that type of,
you know, SASP type platform, but it's happening.
And, you know, companies, you know, are are finding AI kind of

(22:28):
solutions to to kind of, yeah, just do it better, quicker,
cheaper. And so Salesforce down 24
percent is a really good exampleof of the losers, the losers
side of the equation here in theAI game.
All right. Well, look, plenty to get
through. So let's move to financials.
And I know in financials, there's kind of probably 5

(22:51):
themes, all of which are quite macro orientated, which I know
is definitely in your wheelhouse.
So what's the story there? Well, let's start yield curve.
Yield curve steepener has been areal feature of the year.
Whenever you say that I can justimagine you going into a bar,

(23:12):
going up to a girl saying you'llcurve steepener and then her
walking. Off it's what I did for a
living. All right, well traded the
curve. Yeah, it doesn't work so well as
a chat up line, I'll give you that.
But look it's steepened. It's steepened like a like a
beast this year, right. And this is just about a on the

(23:33):
one hand, the Fed started cutting.
So you'll remember I mean, this feels like such an old story
now, but you'll remember at the end of 2024, the Fed cut.
Sorry. Yeah, the end of 2024, the Fed
cut rates a couple of times right.
And then they stopped and we kind of went into the Donald
Trump year. Donald Trump year, meaning he
entered into the White House andstarted his thing and then there

(23:55):
was a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and right.
Would tariffs be inflationary? Would tariffs impacts economic
activity? All this uncertainty.
And so the Fed was like, we got no visibility here.
Powell famously said, you know, when you're driving in the fog,
you hit the brake, which is whatthey did.
So they stopped cutting rates, OK, but now here we are back end

(24:17):
of the year and they started cutting again.
OK, Now what does that mean for the yield curve?
It means that the short end of the yield curve that's your,
let's just say A2 year duration.The yield came down as the Fed
was cutting rates and we're expecting more rates to come,
right? That's the short end, the long
end. Then that's more about the

(24:38):
inflationary situation and inflation has it stayed
stubbornly high. And you could say there's other
stuff going on on the on the long end of the curve with
regards to the US running a massive deficit.
And so, you know, lots of supplyof US bonds coming to the market

(24:59):
as the government issue more bonds and sell more bonds.
So this is driving keeping prices low because supplies
high. So the long end has seen the
yield yield stay high relativelyor tick a little bit higher.
So you've had this swing up. OK.
Why am I telling you all of thisrelated to financials?

(25:19):
The banks, a steep, a steepeningyield curve is perfect for their
kind of loan books because they typically borrow on the short
term. That's us consumers paying
deposits into our account. They pay us for that.
A super small percentage, right?But they're borrowing on the
short term and short term rates have dropped and then they're

(25:41):
lending on the long term, think mortgages.
And so the divergent between short term rates and long term
rates has widened, and that's your bank's profit margin if
they're in the business of lending money, which most of
these big banks are. So yeah, a steepening yield
curve because of interest rate cuts, but inflation staying high

(26:02):
has really fed nicely into more profits on their loan book.
And then, yeah, the, the what about the actual economy?
So this idea about a soft landing, So how does that
complement what you've described?
Yeah. So I would say that from an
economic point of view, again, mainly because of Trump, there

(26:25):
was a lot of uncertainty at the start of the year.
What's going to happen with all this aggressive tariff talk?
Are we going to have a recessionas a result?
Well, now we know the answer at the end of the year is no,
definitely not and actually never mind a recession, but the
economy is actually looking pretty solid.
OK, So when the economy is doingwell, we tend to have an

(26:47):
appetite to borrow money. So this is talking about loan
demand, right? It's all very well and good.
The banks having this profit margin because of the yield
curve when they're lending money, but does anyone want to
borrow? So that's, that's the demand
side of the loan back and that'sbeen really strong because the
economy hasn't crashed and has actually stayed solid.

(27:09):
So strong demand for loans, niceprofit margin on these loan
books because of the yield curves steepening.
So you've got like banks like good old fashioned Wells Fargo,
big U.S. bank that's kind of more on that sort of lending
book side of the the kind of banking sort of remit.
And they're up 32% this year predominantly because of that.

(27:35):
And in some of the pureplay investment banks, so you're GS
or MSJP so on, I saw GS. Morgan Stanley's.
Yeah. Yeah, well, they're benefiting
from two things. Number one, deal flow and you
know, deals are deals are back baby, you're, you know, the MNA
space certainly back end, back end of the year as interest

(27:58):
rates started to get cut, we're starting to see a real revival
in in M&A space and in the IPO space.
And these big banks, these thesebig investment banks, I should
say, you know, earn huge fees off these deals.
And so that's really come roaring back.
Combine that with market volatility.

(28:20):
So Trump again has spiced thingsup, you know, liberation day and
then the crazy recovery that we've seen from that since this
is this is trade volumes being high.
And these investment banks help hedge funds and the like
facilitate their trades and theyearn, they earn money from that
trade flow. And so trade flow high, you

(28:42):
know, trading floors, revenues, record levels combined with the
M and a deal flow picking up again, perfect sweet spot, both
sides of the investment bank really delivering.
Goldman's up 59% their share price this year.
Morgan Stanley up 43. Yeah, big winners.
Yeah. And and all of this in the kind

(29:03):
of shadow of the administration who obviously lots of hopes on
the deregulation side of things to unlock some of this capital,
less onerous on capital requirements to hold so they
can, you know, start to be more free to lend and so forth.
And conditions as you described seem to suit that.
So earning more on every loan margins, writing more loans

(29:25):
volume, collecting huge fees, M&AIBD.
And then we were talking about what the largest IPO is about to
hit the the ECM divisions are looking pretty, pretty tasty
going forward. And then, yeah, bit of little
bit of potential cockroach scenario with some private
credit, but otherwise fewer beefcredit quality strong for some

(29:48):
of the things that you mentionedor broadly speaking.
Well, and the, the wealth management arms of these banks
have also smashed it because generally that's about assets
under management and earning fees off the value of the assets
that you manage. And when generally global stock
markets go up, which they have, then we're, hey, our fees

(30:10):
increase. So the wealth management arms
have really delivered. It's, it's literally been every,
every part of the bank has smashed it.
Right. And you know, that kind of sums
up why then when you are all in tech and everyone's been talking
AI bubble and everyone's a little bit fearful of it getting
a bit maybe not the end game, but do do a pullback.

(30:34):
Well then is that, is that a value trade that's helped banks
as well from a rotation allocation?
Definitely, there's been a rotation out of that.
As I said that I'm going to. I said I was never going to say
it again, but I'm going to say it.
Out. I got paid out in 30 minutes.
Mag 7. That's my trade of 2025 right

(30:55):
there. The mag 7 trade of 2024 ended
where some of the elements of the mag seven kind of people
booked profits and came out of those trades.
Well, where are you going to putyour money?
Well, these other sectors were really under loved, right?
And the financials were definitely one of them.

(31:16):
We'll come on to health care in a second.
They were definitely another, right.
And so some of the money's got pumped into those more kind of
value plays and they've become really good.
And as just a very brief aside, because all we've talked is US
here, very brief aside is where has some of that money gone?
It's actually gone to other parts of the world.
So if you look at stock market performance in 2026, yes, S and

(31:40):
PS up 15%. But you know what, It's not that
good relative to some of the rest of the planet.
And I'm looking down the list here.
Well, here's a pop quiz for you.Like are the big economies that
say what's the best performing stock market this year?
It's quick and we can't Google that.

(32:01):
I'm pressing my mute button. Thank you very much.
OK. All right.
I saw some actions. Was the keyboard there.
Italy is obviously very strong 2912.
Let's round it 30% up. It's actually on my list.
Yeah, they're they're like in fourth place.

(32:23):
You're very close though, geographically.
OK, OK, so so. I'm going to put you out.
Geographically OK, Spain. Spain baby 47%, like the stock
index, is up 40. So funny, isn't it?
Like the media is so obsessive about U.S. stocks, There's

(32:47):
always U.S. stocks because and particularly that's compounded
because of the AI conversation and then behind the scenes, good
old fashioned Spain. Yeah.
Well, I'm going to rattle off the list here.
Spain, 47% up. Who's next?
You got Saudi Arabia, they're up36%.
You've got Brazil are up 31%, You've got Italy, as we said, up

(33:10):
30%. You've got Germany up 21%,
You've got Japan, they're up 23%.
And I mean, even the FTSE 100 isup more than the S&P, which has
got to be the first time this century.
Maybe you might have to Fact Check that.
Is this the first year this century that the FTSE 100 has
beaten the S&P? Because that's up 20%.

(33:32):
And the list goes on, right? I mean, so most of the rest of
the world has outperformed the US this year, which is
extraordinarily unusual. So that's been a real feat.
I wanted to just do a slight aside because that's been a
real, real key feature of 2025. But you want to stretch back to

(33:54):
US, see the next sector. Yeah.
Let's finish off these sectors and then talk some different
asset classes. So healthcare, there was 2
interesting things that I pulledout of that looking, you know,
in a bit of research. One was quite a good phrase
actually, that I saw someone, some analysts mention.
They were saying that people aregoing to the doctors again,
they're getting knee replacements and half hours and

(34:14):
surgeries. And it was.
So in a sense then that's good for device makers, hardware
revenue up, bad for insurers because they have to pay bills.
I guess that's one way of looking at it.
But what that meant was that Medtronic, Boston Scientific,
that's a name you might have heard of.

(34:35):
They saw some instant games whereas United Health and CVS
Humana or quite the opposite in that respect.
So yeah, I thought that was interesting.
And then the other theme was thekind of have and have nots.
And I know you and I have had a few M&A inspired conversations
and the healthcare scene which has been a big benefactor of

(34:57):
like consolidation within the ofthe sector.
But here you had a rising tide is not lifting all boats and
that's because the unique thing about farmer stocks is a lot of
this is about investors rewarding growth and pipelines.
So Eli Lilly's weight loss dominance, J&J's Med tech boom

(35:19):
and then punishing patent cliffsthey call it.
And This is why there is such demand for M&A because you have
Pfizer and a Mercs of the world where they only own these
patterns for a period of time. And then then what next?
And if they can't develop the next thing in house, well,
they've got to acquire somethingto then keep that momentum
going. And so that's been super

(35:41):
interesting as well in terms of how that's played out.
Eli Lilly up 36%, J&J up 44%, Pfizer, Merck flat.
I mean, that's just, that's a big divergent, yeah.
And that's it, this patent Cliffthing because look, it takes
years to develop these drugs right through the clinical

(36:02):
trials and all the rest of it and then getting regulatory sign
off. And it's such a, but then if you
manage it and it works and you get it to market, well then you
get a patent typically for 10 years, right?
So that just means you're legally you're the only one able
to sell it. It's just that when the patent
expires, that is free game. Any other company can come in

(36:24):
and replicate your drug and sellthat as well.
And so that's why you've always got to be working on the
pipeline to have new drugs coming through to make up for
the fact that the car cash cows that you're relying on today are
going to drop off the patent Cliff.
And so if your pipeline's not good like the Pfizer's and so

(36:47):
on, then you're going to get punished for that.
But then there's two ways to getthat pipeline rammed form of
potential. You either develop it in house,
as you said, or actually a real feature of this year has been
acquisitions within that healthcare space.
And you've got a lot of consolidation.
You've got a lot of some of these big guns buying up,
certainly in the kind of the weight loss space.

(37:08):
There's been a lot of kind of MNA action going on.
And so I think that's part of the reason why health care as a,
as a kind of sector has done really well generally is because
a was unloved. You know, it had a really bad
like 2023-2024. You know, that sector was
generally trending lower coming off the back of the COVID tidal

(37:30):
wave of demand for a lot of COVID drugs and stuff.
So they were down, down, down. Valuations were super low, so
when you're booking profit on your high valued tech mag 7
trade, you're going to switch out of something that's
overvalued in your mind and you're going to buy stuff that's
undervalued. And healthcare was like right
sweet spot on that list of undervalued.

(37:53):
And then yeah, a lot of consolidation players really
helped to kind of spice things up, but it's not a great year.
Healthcare generally apart from those, yeah.
Apart from those few that have not.
Yeah. When isn't?
This US insurance, but well, let's finish with the sectors
with industrials and specifically aerospace and
defence. And I think this is a, you know,

(38:13):
this is what I love about talking about these sectors is
the strategy part of it. I mean, I've never really been
at the the financial statement kind of person.
It's always been like, OK, and Iwas with a group of students
have have been throughout this week and it was a lot of them
are quite, quite new to all of this.
And I was like, OK, just think of a company and think of the

(38:34):
context of it and then think about all of the the things that
you know, so for example, we were talking about, I think it
was Walmart. And I was like, OK, Walmart's
had a breakout year. What is Walmart?
And they were sort of thinking, OK, yeah, brick and mortar and
these types of things. And then I was sort of saying,
OK, so why do you think they howthey could they have turned

(38:55):
their business around? And then the conversation, you
just get them thinking these arepeople like 1 was a psychology
student, the other's a history student.
And they're like, well, I guess,you know, people would, would
downsize the terms of they won'tgo to an expensive place, for
example, they'll go somewhere cheaper.
I was like, OK, so how then you're talking about consumer

(39:15):
behaviors, the stickiness Walmart.
I mean, you go into Marks and Spencer's food court these days
in certain more modern ones and it's amazing.
And then you look at them, then the foot flow traffic coming in
because now you're attracting certain people and now they're
going to go and look at the clothes.
Now the clothes range is changing and it's like, OK, so

(39:36):
now you're you're sticking customers now in that way with
these premium labels. So you're capturing your current
market and a new market is remaining within your sphere.
Then you've got the kind of e-commerce aspect of it, which
is a competitor and you think, and we were talking about, OK,
how many locations do you think Walmart has?

(39:57):
And it's like, OK, loads. And you're like, OK, what's the
average time of delivery do you think for a grocery shop?
And it's actually 1/3 of grocerydeliveries in e-commerce for
Walmart is, is is done in 3 hours to do, order to do, which
is insane. So it's like from a logistics

(40:19):
point of view. It's like utilizing that
infrastructure then obviously their pivot to digitize 1
strategy moving from the Nazi tothe NASDAQ for the optics and
perception company that is this big pivot to advertising and
advertising twofold your digitalfootprint and your manual

(40:40):
physical footprint in shop and then that's high margin
business. And so it was like you don't
need to know finance to have this kind of thought path.
And This is why I find it so interesting.
And talking about these aerospace and defence, obviously
we've had a super volatile year from geopolitics.
So as you would imagine, companies like Raytheon RTX have

(41:02):
been a big stand out. You know, they manufacture a lot
of the the weaponry, the armouryand things like that.
But more so I was looking at GE now really good example.
I think of a company who's reevaluated its business and
being pretty aggressive at just streamlining, IE spinning off

(41:25):
underperforming assets like energy and healthcare and just
thinking, right, let's just double down on aerospace and one
of the one of the I guess the one person's loss is another
person's gain because Boeing hashad a continuation of absolute
horrendous shockers. Meaning then do you want to buy

(41:47):
a whole new fleet of Boeing airplanes?
Probably your appetite has diminished because you might
fall out the plane next time you're on more.
So the point being there is thatOK, think about as a student,
think about then. Well, what would you do?
Let's say I own I own the Piers current airline and I have a
fleet of aircraft that need replacing.

(42:08):
I can't replace the plane, but they're getting old.
What would I do? I'd get the maintenance in, I'd
have the engines tuned up, I'd have them made, possibly
replaced. This is all G ES work.
And that's a big growing emerging part of their business.
And so, yeah, it's been that. That was quite interesting.
I thought just from the defensive side, there's been the

(42:30):
geopolitical kind of headwinds and the commercial side is
booming. People are flying all the
planes. They're in need of parts.
The defense side is booming. Governments are rearming at the
fastest pace since the Cold War.And, yeah, that's had its own
kind of tailwinds, I would say. So, yeah, that was the final
sector. But let's move, move over to

(42:52):
fixed income, which is, again, more your bag.
Yeah, in that way. So what were some of the key
themes there do you think as an overview?
Well, I think the key theme is it was just a pretty dull year
from a volatility point of view.Isn't that the nickname of fixed
income? Well, exactly.

(43:14):
So it's kind of reverted back toits proper place in the world,
in the world of kind of asset classes.
And again, you go back to Trump and the the start of the year.
And I guess that's the being thebig part of 2025, the mindsets
and the fears at the beginning compared to where we are now has

(43:36):
been a major, major shift. So all that panic at the start
has gone away. So from a, from a bond market
point of view, you know, volatility has dropped.
So people are thinking more about, well, the OK, the income
that you get from an asset like a bond, it's called this in the
fixed income asset class, right?So remember, bonds are just

(43:56):
loans, OK? So if you're an investor, you're
buying a bond, you're essentially lending the money to
the borrower. And so you're getting an
interest income off that, but because of the volatility of
bonds over the last few years, and that's because we've had
crazy stuff going on with inflation, crazy stuff going on
with massive rate hikes and ratecuts, and it's all been kicking

(44:18):
off. And so you've had price
volatility, you know, the Liz Truss episodes and all the rest
of it, right? And so bond markets have almost
been a bit more like, well, I'm going to trade these assets to
try and profit from the price movements.
That's not really what the assetclass is for.
It's for solid, you know, stableprice.

(44:40):
And right, I'll just take the income off that as I'm going
along with relatively very low risk from a sort of, you know,
capital point of view. So we've almost returned like
the second-half of the year, we've returned back to really
quite low volatility in from a price point of view, but yield
staying relatively high. And I think we're finishing the

(45:03):
year with the yields generally. I might talked about the yield
curve moving, but if you just think about yields generally,
they've stayed relatively high and that's because we've still
got that nagging concern about inflation.
Inflation's clocking at 3%, let's just say.
So it hasn't come down to two, but you've had the Fed cutting,

(45:24):
but they haven't cut anywhere near as many times as we thought
they were going to cut at the start of the year.
So, right. And the and the economy's solid,
right. So generally got yields staying
pretty high. And so there's low volatility,
but relatively high yields and people are going away.
I'm fine, great. I'll go back to the old school
way of trading this asset by just great lock in some low risk

(45:46):
income return. OK.
And then, then let's move to commodities and then Forex.
So commodities, I thought there was another good phrase as how
to put it, which was if you could drop it on your foot, it
went up. If you can burn it, it went
down. So yeah, the themes here is

(46:06):
gold, silver. I've had like huge years,
possibly one of the best performing assets in some
respect. And then you've got copper,
which is benefiting from this AIinfrastructure kind of build
out, IE, you know, say the AI revolution without the plumbing,

(46:26):
if you haven't got copper, you know, coppers and everything.
And then there's the energy slump, which is much more of an
oversupply, not being well, demand nowhere near matching in
that extent. And the world awash with too
much oil, which is pushed actually as we're recording.
This is pretty much a multi month low as as we speak.

(46:48):
So yeah, yeah, what's the what'swhat was I guess for
commodities. Let's just focus on this kind of
debasement insurance argument. What is what is that?
And why is gold being so stellarthis this year?
Yeah. So gold has gone to a record
high. It's up 65% on the year.
I mean, it's literally one of the best performing markets

(47:10):
across all assets, which is kindof crazy.
But look, there's been some themes behind the scenes that
have been driving this. So number one is kind of, I, I
would say broadly speaking, an ongoing scenario where foreign
governments are trying to wean themselves off the dependence of

(47:35):
the dollar. You know, the dollar has been
the global reserve currency for many decades.
And like I would say, maybe you could point to things like the
Russia Ukraine war that kicked off in 2022.
One of America's responses to that from a sanctions point of
view was to use the dollar. They basically weaponized the

(47:57):
dollar because everyone's so reliant on it.
And so I think that was one trigger point a few years back
for governments to go, OK, that's an interesting sort of
weapon that the US have against us.
Let's start to work on a multi year kind of strategy to kind of
wean ourselves off that kind of stuff.
And so where'd you go? You go to stuff like the gold,

(48:17):
right? So there's been a lot of gold
purchasing going on from governments and from from
actually central banks, foreign central banks.
So that's been one underlying kind of theme, I'd say doesn't
get often talked about much, butI'd say also crypto plays a role
here with the stable coins. So state some of the stable

(48:39):
coins have gold as they're kind of underlying kind of tangible
fixed asset. And so as the growth of stable
coins go up, then these stable coin businesses have to buy more
gold because they've got to havethat stable physical asset on
account to underpin it all. So that's been something else

(49:00):
that's driven it. So, yeah, I mean, and then you
could you could point to the, you know, the usual arguments
around gold going up, which is inflation.
And as I said, inflation has stayed relatively high.
So that's kind of helped. And also finally, the dollar has
weakened. And normally commodity prices

(49:20):
are correlated to the dollar, particularly gold.
So because the dollar's gone down, that's also fed into gold
upside. So it's kind of, again, all
those possible factors you can think about that might influence
gold. It's just one of those perfect
storms where all factors are allpointing positively.
And so that's generally why thisthing's ramped and really

(49:41):
surprised people, I would say, because I don't think many had
gold at the top of their list ofbest performing assets in 2025.
At the start of 2025, I don't know one was talking about that.
So maybe it's a good segue to finish down on this part talking
about the dollar, because I remember it was only a few
months ago people were talking about DE dollarization.

(50:02):
Devaluation is like the end of the dollar.
It was like there was a bit of atalk about that at one point
during this past 12 months. Yeah.
So can you stand with that? Well, I've got, I've got a very,
very specific stance on this that everyone's getting way over

(50:24):
the top, carried away with themselves in my opinion.
Yes, the dollar is down 10% thisyear.
Yes, that's really unusual because the dollar, when does
the dollar ever weaken, right? It's supposed to be the
strongest. But yes, it's dropped 10%.
But it's just given back the sort of post COVID strength.

(50:45):
So the dollar was the strongest currency post COVID and gained
in value. Where we are now, we're
basically back into the range that we're used to seeing for
the dollar and that we've seen for the last X number of
decades. So I would say it's just
reverting back to normal here this year.

(51:05):
But because everyone's time horizon's so blinkered, all they
can see is, Oh my God, it's down10%.
That's the end of the dollar. I just think it's a reversion
back to the long term mean. That's my view.
Yeah. And just to finish kind of tying
in this, this general theme throughout of AI, what's quite

(51:26):
interesting is the the countrieswho are very dependent exporting
nations of these types of products and there's definite
winners and losers there. We've talked just momentarily
about oil prices slumping on a wash of supply globally.
And one of the kind of players that that feels that pain is

(51:47):
Canada. As Canada pumps oil and oil
prices slumping, the loony has struggled to keep pace.
On the flip side, the Aussie, not only did it have Piers
Curran come and visit for one part of the year and you know,
juice the balance sheet, but Australia digs up a lot of
copper and lithium. And obviously we talk about data
center build outs, infrastructure at least to be

(52:09):
massive. You know that CapEx spend.
Where's it go? Well, goes into building and you
need these in core ingredients in order to do that.
So yeah, that's been a winner. Just say the loony.
Can I just qualify that? That's got to be one of the best
nicknames for a currency on the planet, hasn't it?
The loony. That's what we call the Canadian

(52:29):
dollar, and I'm quite sure why. Why is it called?
Isn't it? Isn't it like a Heron, like a
Canadian Heron or something likethat?
Someone will leave a comment andshoot me down.
I think it is, I think a loony because it's on a coin.
It's on a Canadian coin I think.I mean, you've sold that to me,
I believe. You, oh, there you go.
It's fact. Say it enough times.

(52:50):
That's right. Well, let's, so let's finish
then by having a quick look at some of the general consensus
views, because something that happens at the end of the year
generally is that a lot of people circulate bank outlooks
and things like that. So how about we save everyone a
lot of time and effort here? Let's talk about what are the
core market expectations and then also what could derail the

(53:14):
consensus view. So what are a couple of other
things that could be potential stumbling blocks?
All right, so we talk about the street.
So all the big banks issue their2026, you know, year ahead re
macro research reports and I guess the the best sort of
barometer is right. What's your year end S&P 500

(53:34):
target? And then that we basically use
that as a barometer, right? Who's bullish, who's bearish on
the street, right? And so you've actually got
Oppenheimer and Deutsche Bank are Super Bowls.
So Oppenheimer have got the, so this is the end of 2026 S&P 500
target. They've got that at 8100%

(53:57):
percent, sorry, 8100 points, I should say.
And and look, just bear in mind it's currently trading at 6768.
OK, so 81 Deutsche Bank are at 8000 and their, their thesis is,
it's just more, their thesis is more of the same AI CapEx super
cycle is nowhere near done is their view.

(54:19):
And they're talking about the comparing it to the roaring 20s.
That's the 1920s. Before then, by the way, we had
the kind. Of what happened at the end of
the roaring. 20 But they're basically saying this, this
thing is just going to keep on giving is what they're saying.

(54:40):
I mean, you've got the people inthe middle, which is a bit more
dull. But Morgan Stanley and Goldman
Sachs, I say in the middle, they're still talking about 1000
points of upside for the S&P. So you've got Morgan Stanley at
7800, you've got Goldman's at 7600.
They're saying that the this will be the year of broadening.
So I can't I can't believe I'm going to say it again, but the

(55:01):
mag 7 won't carry the whole market anymore and which we've
already discussed. And they're talking about
rotation into other stuff, industrials, financials, mid
caps, exactly what we've been talking about for most of this
episode. So that's kind of their view.
Then you've got the bears obviously So, and this is really
interesting, VER Bears, Bank of America are in that category,

(55:22):
but they're still calling for not bad rally. 7100 is their
year end target. Basically, no one, no one is
saying the S&P is going to go down, which to me hits the big
red alarm bell. I think.

(55:43):
Everyone's bullish, yeah. There's only one way one way to
go. Yeah, I'm a little bit nervous
about that because they've already bought.
So what what's, what's going to be the driver for more upside?
So that's all I'm yeah, that's all I'd I'd say.
So it kind of takes, you know what can go wrong in 20. 20 So

(56:04):
here, here you're saying then there's that it's sensible to
diversify within the sector mix and within geographies.
Yeah, in 2026. Yes, OK.
For sure. And that's been the story of the
back end of 2025 as well. It's not just right now do that

(56:25):
that that's been a real theme for the last three months.
So, you know, a continuation of that theme I think is the right,
it's the consensus call. I think that's probably going to
happen, right? And is there any like bullish
factor coming out of the midterms?
Like what's the of history from?Yeah, what tends to happen in

(56:47):
the second-half of a? So this is it.
You've obviously got the AI story continuing.
Fine, fine, fine. But it's the midterm elections
in the US next year, not until November, I should hasten to
add. So this kind of might be a story
more for the second-half of the year, but typically what happens
is you get go incumbent governments giving massive

(57:07):
fiscal giveaways, cutting taxes,you know, spending more to try
and, you know, make the people think they're great.
And so they do better in the elections.
I mean, it's this is the way of politics.
And so if, you know, the midterms in 2026 goes the same
way as every other midterms evergone, which it definitely will,

(57:30):
then you're going to get fiscal expansion.
So from a in the short term, from an economic point of view,
that can be bullish, but I wouldsay that could really snap and
be bearish as well, because we're already worried about the
big, big, big debt, monstrous debt pile and the widening
deficits. And if yields stay high, as

(57:51):
we've talked about. So I'm talking I'm, I'm sliding
into the risks here. Now, you know, if yields stay
high and look, if this AI boom continues or even accelerates,
it might feed into inflation, right?
And if inflation starts going upor forget about the Fed cutting
rates, I mean, dare I say the big outlier for 2026, the Fed

(58:15):
hikes rates. I mean, that will really be a
game changer, right? But so inflation going higher is
definitely a big risk. And if the if the government's
going to pump and juice it with more stimulus, that's just going
to play into that inflationary narrative.
OK. So I think for sure inflation's

(58:36):
one of my kind of things to definitely be monitoring next
year. The other one would.
Probably like inflation risk, Yeah, there's always an AI
bubble risk. So that's kind of a known risk.
What else? You got the Fed and not just
interest rates now and what theydo, you've got a big move at the

(58:57):
Fed because Powell's out, he's rotating off and who's coming in
is still the unknown question. And are you going to get someone
in Trump's back pocket at the steering wheel of the Fed?
And what does that mean a for interest rates, but also what
does it mean? I could think more importantly
for kind of Fed credibility and just central bank credibility

(59:19):
more generally. So that's.
A risk. I think what's quite interesting
actually what you're saying thenI'm just trying to think of the
calendar year and where these risks might emerge because I
don't see the AI bubble risk happening in Q1, let's say.
I think we still plenty of positivity to run at this point.
Inflation. You, you were kind of tying into

(59:41):
the potential then with the midterms and the fiscal
expansion. So that's at the end of the
year. Yeah, Fed transitions happening
right at the beginning of the year.
So it's almost like you've got abeginning and middle and end
here, the Fed transition followed by the AI bubble risk
probably midway through and in an inflation side at the end.
Would that be how you see it? Yeah, well, that with the Fed

(01:00:01):
transition, remember the the currently the timetable is that
we're expecting Trump to announce his choice at the start
of the year, but Powell doesn't rotate off until May.
You might get this weird sort oflimbo period where Powell's
still there and you never know. The relationship with Powell and
Trump, The relationship between Powell and Trump is not good.

(01:00:26):
So what's Powell's kind of does he have a parting shot of?
Like, I can't see that happeningthrough you, Donald.
He's too well mannered, too well-intentioned.
OK. It'd be it'd be very interesting
to see how he deals with that limbo period.
But but yeah, so that'll be morefront end of the year, but I
think more like stepping out of the USI think my my big thing to

(01:00:48):
look out for is with Japan and this whole carry trade unwind.
And does that begin to happen ina more meaningful way?
We talked about this on our previous episodes.
You can go back and dive into that to get the finer details.
But but essentially, do Japan accelerate their rate hiking
cycle? Does it start to unnerve the

(01:01:10):
carry trade and those leveraged positions in some of those
higher risk assets like crypto? You know, do you get, do you get
crypto? Do you get like Bitcoin?
I mean, that's not a shocking year.
It's down 11% on the year, right?
But does it break down towards levels we haven't seen for a for

(01:01:31):
a few years? Like it could break down to
60,000, which is where we were trading kind of 2024.
There's a really key area aroundbroadly around 60,000.
So does it step down to there, you know is and The thing is
about that carry trade thing, ifif it really does start to get
unwound, the momentum of that unwind can can accelerate

(01:01:54):
rapidly. If there's a real whiff of that
store that that trades done thatcan very, very, very quickly
escalate into something massive.So my kind of big outlier for
2026 is that is that carry trade, unwind and if it starts

(01:02:15):
to accelerate a little bit, it could then accelerate a lot.
Something to look out for. OK.
So summing up the base case for 2026, higher markets on AI
earning stimulus, but a lot of emphasis still on inflation,
staying quiet, the AI narrative holding together.
And then as you said, keep an eye on that unwinding of the

(01:02:35):
carry trade as a bit of a bananaskin.
I did ask AI, I won't say which one, but I was I was talking to
it going go on, throw me out some Black Swan events for 2026.
To be honest, they were pretty lame, but there was one I quite
liked. So here it is to finish.
What do you think of this one? So they're calling it the great

(01:03:00):
AI energy blackout the scenario.So this is it.
Get your script. Get your script writing hat on.
Let's get your Netflix guy on the phone.
Well, we have a. Nice.
Stranger Things is ending. We're going to need something
else for 2026. So 2026, a severe heat wave or a

(01:03:21):
cyber attack hits an overstressed power grid leading
to a multi week blackout in Northern Virginia, the world
data centre hub of course. So all clouds could literally go
dark. And we have the contagion effect
from that dependency, which we've had little blips of that,

(01:03:41):
right, Haven't we? What was the one the other day?
It was the cloud flare went down.
And it's like, oh, I can't use Zoom or I can't do that.
And you're like, oh, my God, Like so many things are
interconnected. But yeah.
What do you think of that one? OK.
Well, I think we're going to need to open an office in
Virginia because we need someoneon the ground to be monitoring
that in real time. So can we set that up ASAP?

(01:04:04):
Yeah, well, if anyone's bored over Christmas and you want to
watch a Netflix program, check out Leave the World Behind.
It's a Julia Roberts film on Netflix, and it's about an an
apocalypse psychological thriller that's basically
exactly what I've described. So if you actually look at the

(01:04:26):
way cinema works is a little fatfor you, is that it tends to
follow the cycle of whatever's been the biggest fear facing
society at that point in time. So if it was the Cold War, if it
was something else, if it was COVID, then you start to have
all those Brad Pitt type, you know, films come out.
And then this, this one happenedwhen AI, this film came out this

(01:04:49):
time last year and it came out 2023 when AI just came out,
right. And it was like the worst case
scenario. Interesting.
And so, yeah, it's very much tapping into the humans, human
fear and psyche. But yeah, leave the world
behind. Check that out.
This is not an advert, by the way.
Wish it was. I wish Julia through a few.

(01:05:10):
Of those dollars our way. But no, not quite.
Julia, she's a friend of the pub, so, you know, just sort of
helped. Her.
No, no. Well, no, she's not.
That's not true. Ethan Hawkins, though.
Oh, OK. Yeah, Ethan loves a bit of
paddle. All right, thank you so much,
everyone for listening. We do have, in fact, one more
episode coming out. Super interesting student I met

(01:05:33):
when he was 15. He's now 19 and he's from the
UK, but he's now studying in theUS and he's got an internship in
New York with Goldman's in 26. And he started a podcast during
his student days of which he hasinterviewed Justin Rose in the
golfing world. He's interviewed people off of

(01:05:56):
Stranger Things, He's interviewed people, he's
interviewed the CTO of Citadel. He's like, and he's just a
student. So pretty amazing story.
So check that out. That will come out the 29th of
the month. But from me and Piers, thank you
so much for listening to us. Join on for the last hour.
Number one. But no, honestly, the the whole

(01:06:18):
year we've had so many nice kindmessages at the end of the year
because I think a few people were kind of finding out about
job offers and things like that.So yeah, please do let us know
if that has been the case. It's really just so nice to see
and hear and exactly the missionthat we're on and the reason why
we do this. So yeah, thank you so much.

(01:06:39):
Enjoy your Christmas. All the best for the new year.
And yeah, we will see you with lots more new content and guests
to come in the year ahead. Look forward to it.
Thanks everyone.