July 2, 2025 • 47 mins
Markets staged a stunning rebound in the first half of 2025 - after a brutal start that saw the S&P 500 plunge into bear market territory. Anthony and Piers rewind the chaos: Trump’s tariff shock on “Liberation Day,” the inflation scare that followed, and how a market left for dead came roaring back to record highs.
They unpack the Fed’s evolving rate path, the quiet rise of a “shadow chair” ahead of Powell’s potential exit, and why Nvidia’s earnings may have rescued the AI hype cycle. Plus, Netflix and Uber emerge as surprise stars of H1, while Italy’s bond market revival puts it on the economic leader board.
From VIX lows to fiscal turnarounds, this episode cuts through the noise and spotlights what really mattered and what’s coming next.
(00:00) Intro & Themes in Focus
(02:18) Market Overview: A Roller Coaster Year
(08:43) What to Watch Going Forward
(13:20) Trumps Escalate to Negotiate Strategy
(14:48) AI Stocks Remain a Key Driver
(16:49) VIX: The Fear Gauge
(19:56) Sector Performance and Key Players
(23:39) Banks Strong Performance in 1H25
(25:50) Netflix Successful Turnaround
(31:13) Uber's Turnaround and Future Prospects
(36:07) Italy's Economic Recovery and Political Stability
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello and welcome back to the show.
It is the 1st of July. So what we're going to do in
this conversation is look back over the past six months and it
has been a pretty sensational year.
So quick, quick teaser here. On April 8th, the S&P 500 was
off to one of its worst starts to a year in history, down 15%
(00:26):
on the year. This was only in April.
It's had one of it's greatest ever comebacks, literally it's
now up around 6% year to date, which is above actually the
average year at this or that place for this time of the year.
And So what I wanted to do is unpack a little bit
retrospectively why what has happened has happened.
(00:49):
So I've got Piers, our Co founder, former trader to talk
us through some charts, some heat maps, going to get a lot of
visuals here coming at you. And we're going to talk about
some of the reasons of rationale.
We'll also talk about at the endhis view on a couple of things
to look out for in the second-half.
Super important. And then also three star
(01:09):
performers, 2 of them I could almost guarantee you're a user
of and two companies that are upover 50% so far year to date.
So can you think of anything that you're using?
And they're up over 50% year to date.
So we'll, we'll unpack those twostar performers and also within
(01:30):
that trio of, of standouts, 1 country.
And it's based in Europe. And for all the doom and gloom,
this country is absolutely smashing it at the moment in a
really positive way. So that's what we're going to
talk about over the course of next half an hour or so.
Before we begin though, can I ask just one simple favour, if
(01:53):
you do enjoy the conversation, if you stick with us, can I just
ask if you just give us a like and subscribe to the channel,
it's absolutely free. What we do here, we love talking
about markets, we love unpackingit in a really educational way.
The only thing I can ask for youis just like it.
And then that really helps the algorithm to push out to more
people than ever appears. How are you and where do you
(02:15):
want to start with the last six months?
Well, yeah, what an extraordinary year or half year,
I should say. So H1 has been put to bed at the
market closed last night, 30th of June, of course.
So we are, we are H1 done and we're into the second-half of
the year. So it's always a really good
(02:36):
time just to kind of like just pause and like reflect, you
know, where are we at, what has happened in the year.
And you know, when I say we, youknow, it's an important time
for, you know, performance measurement, let's just say in
markets based seats and like let's say if you're running, if
you're a portfolio manager or whatever, you know, you're
running investments, then you know that half year point is
(02:59):
really important. That's what you're reporting to
your clients. For example, you know, stuff
like your remuneration packages might be based on, you know,
this kind of sort of quarterly or half year and obviously full
year kind of performance. So you know, a really important
moment and yeah, when you look at the S&P, it's up 6.2% on the
(03:19):
year, which as you said, well, if you take the sample of data
from 1990 through to 2025, it's bang on average.
It's literally ticked above the average line just by a whisker.
So it's basically just an average year.
It's just that we've had the mother of all sell offs and the
(03:40):
the kind of one of those you said one of the biggest rebounds
we've ever, ever, ever seen. So, yeah, look, very, very
interesting. I'd say that, you know, the
roller coaster ride, I mean, as a recap and that if you don't
know this stuff, then, well, you're not, you're obviously not
listening to the to the podcast often enough because we've been
talking about it. But obviously that downside
(04:04):
triggering off, Well, you would say actually the high of the
year was, I mean, Q1 was at the end of March and then we kind of
moved into April. And obviously it's mostly been
about Trump 2025. And look, you know, his style
breeds uncertainty because just not quite sure what he's going
to do. It's kind of his, his forward
(04:24):
guidance is kind of, well, thereisn't any.
And that's just his style. He does that on purpose, but it
just means for markets, it's harder to really judge and
predict what's going to happen. And obviously that's the game.
That's the name of the game whenyou're investing, you're kind of
you're trying to predict where we're going next.
So it can be tricky with Trump. But look, obviously his tariff
policy has been front and centreof, you know, certainly U.S.
(04:48):
markets and you take global markets this year and the big
sell off was because of that andliberation day on 2nd of April
when he threatened to kind of basically kill everyone with
massive tariffs, sent markets into freefall.
And it wasn't just the economic implications of what tariffs
might bring, obviously, you know, making, you know, global
(05:10):
trade, putting at risk a lot of global trade, right?
Very protectionist policy. Some of the numbers, you know,
threatening China with 145% tariffs.
I mean, you know, that's insane,right?
So we went into a bit of a free fall, but the kind of secondary
impact of tariffs that we were worried about fed into then
inflation expectations rising because, right, tariffs.
So that means prices going up. That's inflation.
(05:33):
But hang on, we want the Fed to cut rates, but the Fed aren't
going to be able to cut rates ifinflation is going to be
climbing. So you kind of had that that
kind of interwoven story triggered by the tariff
uncertainty feeding into monetary policy expectations.
You know, just fueling our anxiety and concern that what
had been a resilient economic situation in the US was at an
(05:56):
end. US exceptionalism was over
massive rotation out of the US and into other territories,
Europe, Japan, so on. And so this kind of just
triggered this big downside and that we, we fell 21% from the
February 19 high down to the April 7th low 21%, right.
That is a, it's not just a correction, that's a bear
(06:19):
market. So terminology there.
If a market drops 10% from its recent peak, that's a
correction. If it drops 20% plus, that's a
bear market. So we did officially hit a bear
market, which is quite extraordinary.
It just then went and rallied 28% in everyone's face to make a
new all time high, including thefinal day of the quarter
yesterday. New all time highs, baby.
(06:42):
And so, yeah, the reversal's been because of an unwind of all
of that, you know, the Taco trade and Trump has all those
threats have not materialized. And, you know, negotiations are
happening in the press today. You know, India, I think Japan,
you know, trying to accelerate negotiations to get things done.
And so, you know, tariffs, tariff risk has gone away.
(07:03):
So in the meantime, low inflation.
We've had a couple of soft inflation reports out of US and
Europe, in fact. So that's encouraging people
towards, well, hang on, maybe the Fed can cut twice or more
even this year. You got power.
Sorry, you got Trump messing about with the kind of shadow
Fed chair again. Extended actually.
We're now officially pricing in three cuts in 2025.
(07:26):
So that's a change in the last couple of weeks.
Really positive for markets, of course, and that the economy is
nice and strong. You know, the labor market's
holding up. And so, you know, if we can get,
if we can get trade deals negotiated, then you've got
quite an interesting situation because we go into the
second-half of the year with actually, because what normally
(07:47):
happens when markets have a really big rally like this, what
normally happens, they carry on moving up.
So yeah, I'd say I started H1. I don't think I've been as
bearish for many, many, many, many years.
Maybe even a decade plus. At the start of this year I
thought I was the most bearish I've been in many years.
(08:09):
Your bearishness was turning me on as you'll know by our our
year end calls we were making atthe end of last year.
Yeah, I would go back and re listen to that.
I mean, I was, I was like Armageddon.
Which is a rare thing, yeah. And I look, I like to think I
was at least partially justifiedgiven that monster sell off we
had. But now here we are with the
rebound, I start H2 and actuallyI'm thinking pretty positive
(08:33):
here, pretty bullish. And you know, I think this
upside we've seen in the last couple of weeks, 28% through the
roof. I mean, I think that's the
direction of travel. Also as well, just thinking then
of what's to come the next six months.
Yeah, there's further updates ontrade tariff, the geopolitical
situation in the Middle East, U.S. debt, refinancing, powers
(08:57):
replacement, global interest rates and maybe AI developments.
There are a few other fringe things, corporate earnings
margins, China's economy, these sorts of things.
Point I'm going to make is a lotof that is known like a lot of
the worst has been washed, come out in the wash already and yet
here we are. And so when I try and think
(09:20):
about potential speed bumps coming, I mean obviously the
refinancing thing is a big one, but that doesn't, it seems like
a lot of the news has kind of come out and also run quite a
far course at this point in. Time you've got to be a bit
careful because we've had such an unusual year where the
(09:41):
uncertainties and the risks on the horizon I mean there were
too many to count it was really difficult to kind of see through
any of them and and that's why sentiment really caved and we
had the big sell off right. I think now that we're in a bit,
well, I think we're back to a bit more normal.
So you know, what are the risks on the horizon?
(10:01):
Well, there are some, but I think it's more of a normal
situation. I think that last half year has
been absolutely insane. So again, to talk a more bullish
picture, you by default saying this is normal and we're at
record levels, but this is normal.
Yeah, I'll that sound of that, Yeah.
(10:22):
I mean, does. That means this is normal.
Well then, yes, there's risk to the downside, but there's also
room for further, further upside.
But if the Fed cut three times as markets are pricing and look,
I think that's looking pretty tasty if you get the shadow Fed
chair coming in, whoever, whoever Trump picks, right?
If he picks Weller, who's bearish, I'm sorry, dovish, I
(10:44):
should say, Well, then currentlywe're pricing 2 cuts in 2026,
right? That might increase depending on
what happens with that Fed chairsituation, which is that's a bit
of an unknown and an uncertainty.
We've never really had that before, right?
So that's going to play out. I don't know if these
negotiations can finish and and we get good deals on trade, then
(11:05):
you know, there's no reason to think that economies can't kick
on. I mean, obviously, there's
always risks. Obviously everyone's stop
talking about NVIDIA and hang on.
That's the litmus test for this AI revolution and how and look,
that was one of the catalysts for the rebound in quarter two.
It was actually Nvidia's earnings showed that revenue
(11:25):
growth was still really strong, showing that, you know, this AI
revolution despite the kind of little banana skins along the
way like DeepSeek and so on. I mean, who remembers DeepSeek?
It's kind of like a distant memory, right?
But so look, we've got to monitor the stuff like NVIDIA
earnings and, and, and this kindof stuff.
(11:46):
So obviously corporate earnings are key.
But then look, if if these dealsget done, I mean, dare I say
Trump could have played a, an absolute blinder here.
I'm just looking at the tax aside tariff receipts from for
the US government, tariff receipts from US imports on a
(12:08):
month by month basis. And basically in May they took
in $22.2 billion in tariffs on imports, right?
That's four times the amount they took in in May 2024.
So we're looking like a, let's just call it a $15 billion plus
kind of bonus on a month to month basis.
(12:32):
And it look, if, if Trump can land this where deals get done,
because don't forget underlying there's a 10% tariff on the
whole planet. Everyone's forgotten about that.
Their tariff income is 4X, right?
Everyone's forgotten. So if he lands it with a few
(12:53):
deals here and there, you know, China gets done, EU gets done,
India gets done, Japan gets done, then he's going to pull it
off Where the finishing point isa place where people would have
freaked out and panicked about at the start of the year.
It's just that that finish pointis nowhere near as bad as what
(13:14):
those big threats were on Liberation Day.
So. Again, it all goes back to he
He's literally written the template in a book.
Yeah. And yet we go through this every
week, you know, we're scratchingour heads, we're
overcomplicating it. It's it's an interesting.
Thing is, a book is a book, right?
(13:36):
But when you're on the joystick of the world's biggest economy
and you're controlling it and you're rolling out your playbook
that you've written in black andwhite text, you know, I think
it's a whole different ball game, right?
I mean, yes, it's there. But the problem is, you know, I
guess ultimately, did you trust that Trump could pull off the
(14:00):
playbook? Could he actually execute?
It's execution uncertainty, isn't it?
We might have known what he was going to plan to do, but
actually, can he put it pull it off?
And politics is so polarized in in the US particularly that I
was actually really one stat. I think they did a survey
yesterday in the US about, right, who thinks the stock
(14:20):
market's going to go up in the second-half of the year.
And I think amongst Republicans,I think 57% of them thought the
markets would go up in the second-half of the year, bearing
in mind we've just had one of the biggest rallies of all time,
57% think more upside. Then they polled the Democrats.
Just 17% of Democrats think thatthe market's going to go up.
(14:43):
That's so so it's so interesting, but.
Final question then just on thisSegment 1 is you made a good
point there about AI and deep sea because I remember that
DeepSeek sell off that day, one of the biggest sells you've had
in in memory. Really one of the things we had
this week was I saw news that Zuckerberg is basically doubling
(15:04):
down on AI or the position of the company AI space and they're
in advance talks with a group ofleading private credit
investors. These are all the big guns
who've had a really tricky year and I guess they're looking to
find creative means to utilize their cash.
Apollo, KKR, Brookfield, Carlisle, these are like your
(15:27):
household private equity firms. So it's super interesting that.
So give it a number. Meta are looking to raise up to
29 billion in financing for it'sUS based AI data centre program.
So there was that big question mark as well, wasn't there?
With the shake out of is it going to slow these guys down?
Evidently, what we've seen with NVIDIA, we talked about last
week, Meta is their key client of OX, other big, big tech
(15:52):
firms, and they're still spending.
But my question then to wrap this part on the review side was
I was looking at a chart of the VIX.
I just wanted to get your interpretation of when you look
at something like the VIX, because the VIX is sat.
And if you can see the video version of this conversation,
I'll flash it on the screen because the VIX is at this level
(16:13):
of 16, so the lowest, closest February, mid February of this
year after that big spike that we had before.
So just wanted to get a sense ofhow do you as investors, as a
former trader, how do you interpret that?
And is it one of those where yougo, the VIX can?
(16:34):
It's almost like a behavioural part where if it stays too low
and too consistently low for so long, it's kind of ripe for an
episode of volatility because almost us as humans look to
create this sort of movement ourselves.
Yeah, I mean the VIX, they obviously they, they nickname it
the fear gauge. So just for those who don't
(16:54):
know, it's kind of and I'm goingto simplify here, but basically
it's tracking the the Vol trade volumes for S&P 500 call options
versus S&P 500 put options. And when you're buying puts
that's protection against the downside rather put option pays
out and is profitable if the market falls.
So if you're running U.S. stock portfolio and you're worried
(17:19):
stocks are going to drop, well, instead of selling all your
stocks, which can carry tax implications, you can just buy
put options, right? Which then if stocks do fall or
fine, your portfolio, stocks will lose value, but your put
option position will make money offsetting that loss in the
portfolio, right? So if you're buying puts, it's a
(17:40):
signal that, well, you're worried about downside.
So the calls are up. The opposite call options are
profiting from market upside, right?
So when you're looking at the ratio of the two, it's just
quite an interesting gauge for, right, what's the feeling out
there? What's the sentiment?
And when there's more puts beingbought than calls, well then
that just means there's more people worried about the
(18:01):
downside than are positive and bullish about the upside, right?
And the more extreme that gets well then the more extreme that
kind of negative sentiment. And so when the VIX goes up,
that's like fear, that's like, hang on, more puts getting
bought, more people are panicking, more people are
buying protection. So, yeah, we had a monster spike
hit 60 start of April, you know,as the S and PS, you know, going
(18:25):
into bear market territory and, you know, very inverse
correlation, right, between the VIX and the S&P by definition
almost. So look, it's now come back
down. And yeah, as you said, back to
Lowe's since Feb, S and PS back to the highs since Feb, right.
So it's a perfectly inversely correlated, but it's a good one
to monitor. I'd, I'd be careful because like
(18:47):
when it gets back to 16, it's generally a pretty decent sort
of Technical Support level if you want.
But you can spend weeks and weeks and weeks and even months
just flatlining at 16, right? The thing about if you want to,
if you want to trade the VIX, you can just use it as an
(19:08):
indicator, right? But if you actually want to
trade it, I mean, that thing's lethal.
You, you, there's, there's not out of every, any market that
I've ever traded, the timing of your entry is the most important
in the VIX than anything else. Just because when it moves, it
moves like at the speed of light.
(19:31):
And then if it spikes higher, right, it doesn't stay there for
very long and bang, you're, you're savagely backed down.
So it's in and out, super short term timings, everything.
And so, yeah, it's a really difficult one to trade.
But other than trading it, it's just that if you never heard of
it, look, it's just a good thingthat people talk about.
Nicknamed the fair gauge, and yet inversely correlated to
(19:52):
that. S&P And just measuring
sentiment, really. OK.
So we've talked about the top level macro.
Let's go down a layer and now let's look at a heat map which
expresses the performance year today.
From a visual perspective of howthe different individual
companies, but categorizing their sectors has performed.
(20:13):
So translating what you've described and on the top level
economic conditions, how does this translate then when you
look at it on a equity sector perspective?
Yeah, well, when you're looking at a heat map like this, then
the size of the boxes indicate the size of the company, right.
So obviously that really big andthe big tech, you know, the, the
mag 7, let's say, stand out justvisually as the, the, the ones
(20:37):
your eyes immediately goes towards just because they're the
biggest boxes, they're the biggest companies.
So, and you look at Apple, it's kind of the big outlier where,
you know, we've just been talking S&P new all time highs,
right, NASDAQ new all time highs.
And yet actually year to date, Apple's down 16.7%.
So, you know, and so there you've got to think about really
two things. Firstly, tariffs.
(21:01):
Now I know I've said hang on, that tariff has gone away.
But you know, Apple are particularly vulnerable from
their kind of supply chain perspective to let's just say a
not particularly great trade deal with China, for example,
OK. And and they're so massively
reliant on that Chinese supply chain.
That's not a thing you can fix like in any short space of time,
(21:26):
right? So that's that's been a really
big drag on Apple shares. The other one we talked about
NVIDIA, the AI thing, the the kind of just Apple of just just
not been they're just not in therace.
They haven't even they haven't even bothered to try and join
it, it seems. And that that I don't know, the
(21:48):
longer it goes on, it's kind of,well, maybe that's just a very
conscious, you know, strategy, aboard level where look, let's
let the others mess about and try and figure out how to play
and win this game. And I don't know, maybe they've
got, I don't know, an acquisition strategy at some
point. We haven't seen it, but maybe
they've got an acquisition strategy to kind of just
(22:11):
leapfrog, let's say the first couple of years of this, this
revolution and just kind of enter the market at a later
stage with a big statement purchase.
I don't know, Or they're just a big cash cow now.
They're no longer a tech company.
They're not an innovative company anymore.
It's just that it's a company that just spews out cash, pays
(22:33):
big dividends, buys back 50 to $100 billion worth of shares
every year. And maybe it's just that now and
it's and it's so I think Apple particularly stands out to me.
Then Tesla is one of the worst performers of the year, down
25%. So that's political and a
function of the massive rally that Tesla had into the end of
(22:57):
last year. And so from a timing point of
view and again, all because of the Trump Musk kind of love
affair and that peaked in December.
And then of course, Musk has been distracted firstly by
running Doge. So he kind of stepped away from
his other businesses to the detriment of those businesses.
Obviously they love affair. The bromance has has been
(23:20):
busted. And so now Trump's threatening,
oh, we're going to remove certain kind of, you know,
concessions that Tesla get. So, you know, obviously Tesla's
an unusual case. But look, outside of that, then
you've got a lot of green on this screen.
But yeah, some sectors a lot more than others.
Of course, tech financials have done incredibly well.
(23:41):
That what that's one that standsout to me.
Like JP Morgan's up 20% this year, which is which is pretty
tasty. So a lot of the financial sector
have done particularly well. Just to jump in there, Why?
Why financials have done well. Yeah.
Well, it's kind of, I guess a function of really two things.
I hadn't thought about it in anydetail, but the immediate things
(24:04):
that jump to mind would be that,well, in the US at least, the
economy has been really strong. So if spending is still pretty
rampant, right? So you know, that's good for
banks, but then you know, lots of people, you know, maxing out
their credit cards and paying interest on that.
And then it's the interest side,right?
(24:25):
Interest rates have not come down 0 cuts in 2025.
I know we're planning for three ahead, but there's been zero so
far, right? So that then that loan book sort
of situation benefits from higher rates, as long as that's
a difficult one, right? It really benefits from higher
rates if the economy doesn't collapse, obviously, if the
(24:47):
economy collapse, well then all right, that's going to be back.
So it's perfect for banks at themoment, high rates, resilient
economy. So that's and, and, and you're
just now at the end of quarter 2and it will be interesting to
hear from their earnings reports.
You're really starting to get deal flow coming through, right.
There's been some by PO action. So finally that that deal flow
(25:09):
that we were thinking was going to be a 2025 story and wasn't
actually that's now really starting to show signs of some
green shoots as it were. So I think that's that's really
helping on the bank side as well.
And that V shape in equity volatility is obviously seen
record-breaking revenues on their trading division, right?
(25:30):
Absolutely. Exactly.
Very good. Point these currencies equities
100% says so yeah, MO that outperformance perhaps a
reflection of the fact of the breadth of their business and as
you said firing on on many fronts.
So let let's talk about a coupleof these green spots.
I mentioned there was three starperformance of the past six
months. We're going to talk about two
(25:51):
stocks, one country. The first one is Netflix.
So Netflix you can see here are up around 45%.
In fact, if you look at a chart and I'll bring one up at
Netflix's shares, they closed yesterday from when we were
recording at around 45 bucks. They hit a low of sub 15 when
(26:14):
they had the the COVID kind of correction.
But I guess this this is a COVIDplay.
This is one of those like steamycheck everyone at home and
Netflix went through the roof and we're actually we hit around
just shy of 55 peak COVID went down sub 15 and here we are.
(26:35):
We've actually kind of broken out in the last few weeks out of
like like bit of a trading resistance level around 42 area
and we're now trading back to 45.
And I just wanted to have a lookat this that Netflix is the 4th
best performing stock in the NASDAQ 100 because you just
think outright tech a lot of thetime.
(26:55):
And I guess there's different ways to look at someone like
Netflix, but they're now boast amarket value of 570 billion.
That is bigger than Exxon Mobil.Yeah.
Netflix bigger than MasterCard. So, yeah, this is a pretty
phenomenal comeback. So what?
Yeah. What's under the bonnet here?
What's fueling the appetite? It's a really interesting one,
(27:17):
Netflix, because they've kind ofit's kind of against a little
bit like snuck under the radar this, this thing.
And maybe that's because it's not particularly, well, it's not
really in the AI race particularly.
So it's not really been talked about in that conversation.
There's no tariff exposure, which is actually one of the
good reasons you know that. So it hasn't been in the tariff
(27:40):
conversation at all. And I actually think it's just
well executed, I would say medium term strategy that is now
really starting to show up in their kind of numbers.
And this is strategy that's beendeployed now over the last wow,
(28:00):
12 to to 24 months, right? And it's really starting to come
through. So stuff like we've been talking
about this down the years on this podcast, you know, stuff
like cracking down on password sharing, for example, or
they've, you know, steadily beenincreasing their subscription
rates. OK, that's the thing, right?
(28:23):
It's such AI mean well, it's such a cheap service, you know,
for what you get, it's quite extraordinarily cheap.
So if you load up subscribers, load them up, load them up, load
them up cheap, then you just tweak that little price point.
You used to give it a little tweak from really low to still
(28:46):
almost, still really low, but not quite, you know, people
don't even blink. You don't know, people don't
really look at this. And so I'll pay an extra 5 bucks
a month. But when you got, you know, I
don't know what's their subscription numbers now, a
couple 100 million or something.You know, when you when you got
505 bucks a month times by a couple 100 million, then
actually, wow, that's starting to really translate into some
(29:07):
big dollars, right? So that helps.
Then they've, you know, really started to diversify with
advertising and live events. I'd say the kind of two kind of
new pieces to the jigsaw puzzle that look, again, this is that
long term strategy. We've been talking about this
for 2-3 years, but now they've executed it and they've executed
(29:27):
it well. So live events, especially in
the sport side of things, NFL games, boxing, all the rest of
it. But then, you know, they've had
some big blockbuster series, youknow, Quid, Squid Game, Stranger
Things, you know, those those bankers from, you know, previous
seasons, you know, coming through with a new season,
obviously with a banker like that also is a really positive
(29:50):
thing, clearly. So, you know, all of these
things have been kind of happening.
But yes, it's all been a bit under the radar.
And here we are kind of H1, you're just reviewing back and
you look down the list of outperformers and and there they
are. And you're like, wow, OK, missed
that one. Squid Game, I know that.
(30:11):
I've seen the adverts now. Squid Game three.
I didn't even finish Squid Game two.
I just watched the first baby two or three.
I did watch 2. Did you get into it?
I did watch 2. Did you finish it?
I did, but I know what you mean,it's not amazing.
A lot totally lost momentum I probably.
Won't watch 3. Actually now we're talking about
this. You know, I said, you know,
(30:33):
where did that come from? Missed that one.
I think I'm right in saying in our year end episode six months
ago, pretty sure I had Netflix on my list as ones to watch for
2025. I'm going to have to re.
You're making that episode doesn't exist.
I can edit. Stuff.
Can we have listeners go back, go back and listen to that end
(30:56):
of December show and comment in the notes?
Did I pick Netflix or am I just dreaming?
I think the heat if you're living in London, it's it's very
hot at the moment. It's gone to his head.
Anyway, let's move on and let's talk about the other company.
And as I mentioned, you're probably a Netflix subscriber,
(31:16):
but you might also of at least once or the app certainly sits
on your phone, whether used or not is Uber and Uber shares are
up over 50%. They're actually outperforming
Netflix if you like. And I just thought this was an
interesting one because everything I remember reading in
the media maybe 12-18 months agowas super negative on Uber.
(31:41):
And it seems to have been prettynegative from the onset, to be
quite honest, after that initiallaunching when they were listed.
So what's happened at Uber has allowed them to really turn the
ship around and actually now become quite a firm favorite on
the street. Well, I think one key thing
then. Well, why were people worried
about Uber? And it was really the, I guess
(32:02):
you could call it the Elon Musk risk the the kind of robo taxi.
You know, who needs Ubers when you got Tesla robo taxis
knocking about everywhere, right?
So that was kind of a risk. I think two things have happened
there. A Tesla have not had a very good
year. Musk his eyes off the ball
(32:23):
perhaps, but then also Uber justbit quietly and steadily been
entering that game. And, and I think, you know, the
AV, the autonomous vehicle sort of situation, they're bang in
it, but they're actually doing it slightly differently where
they're partnering up with otherbig, well established, you know,
global automotive firms like Volkswagen, for example, But
(32:44):
they've actually got 18 different partnerships and they
call them AV partners, right? Autonomous vehicle partners.
And this is a lot to do with those big kind of incumbent
automotives basically buying Uber's data in a way, right?
It's, it's their kind of all that data that they've been
(33:06):
harvesting from them, whatever millions of rides there are per
day, you know, that's, that's, that's great data.
That's a great data set to kind of train models.
Feels good Feels is quite reminiscent of Reddit and how
they're monetizing the Reddit model by just being this
unorganised, massive treasure trove of information that that
(33:28):
you could just plug in then these tech firms to utilise the
data sets. And it also almost feels like
another worry then for Tesla in a sense of closing that
competitive edge that they've always had with their data set.
Yeah, it does. I mean, yeah for sure.
Although I read 1 stat, which kind of blew my mind here, which
(33:49):
is an amazing thing if you're long Uber and you want more
bullish upside sort of ideas. You want to stay in this stock,
but also then for competitors and rivals.
So the stat was that Uber, this is about the.
So just 5% of the adult population in its operating
(34:12):
regions is on the Uber platform,just 5%, which means, wow,
they've got huge growth potential within those operating
regions, they themselves, but also just indicates, well,
there's still a monster market out there that hasn't been
captured yet. And so, you know, in the
(34:33):
automotive, oh sorry, autonomousvehicle game, then I think
that's, that's probably just going to be room for a few
players rather than just one coming in and landing the entire
market. Yeah, I know.
I always think as well when you have a really precious data set
like that they have with the deep data on in an autonomous
(34:53):
vehicle wise, OK, the movement traffic and data from the car
itself from a user's habits perspective, you know, cross
referencing geographic location,where are they going?
Who are they visiting, how often, how frequently.
It's almost like the ability to monetize inbound to advertise on
the platform from a consumers perspective and an outbound
(35:15):
pushing it out to big tech. So you've got money coming in on
both ends of the data spectrum. That's their Moat.
It's a huge one. Yeah.
They're the kings of that. And look, the final piece is
advertising. Yeah, a bit like Netflix, right?
Once you've got a platform and you've been successful in terms
of attracting like hundreds of millions of people to it, well
(35:37):
then you can just monetize it inlots of different ways.
And so actually they're advertising revenue just from
off the off the kind of app. It's actually really starting to
show up in a, in a meaningful way in their numbers.
So that's that's, that's obviously part of the story as
well. OK, cool.
Well, look, to conclude, let's talk about our final stand out
(35:58):
and it's a European countries, have you guessed it yet it is
Bom Bom Italy. So, Italy, Why are we talking
about Italy this week? We're talking about Italy this
week specifically because their bond yields, they're just going
(36:20):
down big time. And we look, you've got to be of
a certain age maybe to understand the significance of
this. If you were around and, and kind
of conscious of financial markets back in, well,
specifically 2010, 2011, 2012, If you were around then, well,
(36:41):
you'll know that Italy literallynearly went bankrupt, literally
nearly like full on default, literally the exit literally
nearly crashed the entire Eurozone project.
That was measured by a few different things, but the, the
(37:05):
absolute kind of litmus was the 10 year bond yield, right?
So we look at the 10 year bond yield as a right, it's a credit,
it's many things, but it's a credit worthiness measure, OK.
And as that bond yield rises, well, that's, that's people
selling those bonds means the yields rise.
And when you're in panic mode, Oh my God, they're going to
(37:25):
default, Get Me Out of this, then bond yields just spike.
And actually their yield I thinkspike to about 35%, OK, back in
like 20 start 2012, 35%. So that's default.
Yeah, that's like the market saying game over.
(37:46):
Now we look at. So that's one thing you just
look at their their yield individually.
Yeah, go on. Sorry, you need to take yourself
off meat first. Was that Greece?
Sorry. Why was?
That Greece, or was that Italy? Sorry, you're right.
I'm my colour blindness is letting me down here.
That was. Green colour blind.
(38:08):
Yeah, absolutely. There's always an excuse.
But actually the chart we're looking at, I was going to say
you can look at the just the outright bond yield, but what's
more insightful perhaps is looking at what's called the
spread, the spread between 1 bond yield and another.
And when you start looking at the spread between a, a bond
yield from a country where there's default risk versus a
(38:31):
bond yield from a country that'ssuper safe and stable, then
that's your ultimate measure, right?
So we look at Italy versus Germany, all right, or Greece
versus Germany or whoever it is Germany being that that kind of,
you know, ultimate barometer. And just to put this into some
further perspective, when we talk about the PIGS, so the pigs
(38:51):
being those in focus potentiallybailout nations back in a few
years ago, actually even those themselves are in almost two
sides. There's the the major kind of
financial power centres or economic engines of Europe.
So Italy, Spain against Germany,France.
(39:12):
And then there's the periphery, which they're often termed as,
which would be the Greece to Portugal.
And so the reason why Italy was so, yeah.
And Ireland, the reason. So it's almost like Greece,
Ireland, Portugal, they're yoursare way higher.
Whereas Italy was like the sore spot of the more core ones if
you like, wasn't it? But PIGS wasn't that.
(39:32):
It was double I wasn't it? Portugal, Italy, Ireland,
Greece, Spain was the acronym. But look, that was back then,
you know, eurozone debt crisis, OK, these, these lot literally
nearly kind of vanished and sankinto the Mediterranean.
Quick shout out to Ireland by the way.
(39:53):
I mean, look at that chart Ireland.
What a thing of beauty. It's extraordinary and and all
of them now because you go far right at that chart and look,
they've all converged back what looks like on this scale at
least they've all converged backto the same right.
We kind of almost need another child which kind of zooms in on
the right here because there is some differential.
But the key thing, one notable thing that's happened is the
Italy, Germany. 10 year spread has dropped below 1%.
(40:16):
That's the kind of that that's the headline news and it's
dropped below 1%, you know, for the first time since pre
eurozone debt crisis. And it's because Italy have just
been they've been really well managed and stuff's going in the
right direction. Well, managed by Georgie
(40:39):
Maloney, right? And she has come in as the Prime
Minister sort of post COVID camein on her or she came in in
2022, didn't she on a bit of a sort of anti establishment
platform. It's just actually the way she's
gone about business has been really pragmatic and and
actually just no nonsense and actually no sort of no extremist
(41:04):
policies getting implemented either.
It's just solid to business. Let's go.
And it's all been very market friendly.
So the concerns around Italy's deficit and obviously post
COVID, all deficits widened because government stepped in
with huge fiscal stimulus programs, right?
And so actually, when you look at the Italian deficit, it
(41:24):
drops. It got to about not over 9% debt
to GDP ratio, OK. Then Maloney came in in 2022.
It was still over 8% at that point.
And people were worried, hang on, some of her policies going
to cut tax, she's going to raisespending, The deficit's going to
balloon. There'll be ill discipline and
this thing's going to get worse and worse, right?
(41:44):
The opposites happened. You know what their deficit is.
Now it's back to 3 1/2 percent. It was over 8 when she came into
office. And this has been a stellar
performance. So that just means just from a
straight out fiscal sustainability point of view, if
you want debt, default risk has has dropped dramatically.
(42:05):
And finally, it feels like, you know, Italy, such a fractious
country when it comes to politics, but she's just shut
them all down. And like, I would put her like
top five best performing politicians of the last few
years. She's she's right in there.
So and then and then you're getting quietly stuff just start
(42:26):
to happen from a strategy execution point of view, like,
you know, trying to tighten up on tax evasion, which has been a
particular problem for Italy andactually peripheral Europe
generally for many generations. And of course, that's bad news
for tax receipts, right? So cracking down on tax evasion.
Also the economy's been doing well.
It's, you know, all this kind ofstuff attracts in foreign
(42:49):
investors. There's more risk appetite
towards Italy because people areless concerned about that fiscal
trajectory, right? So more, more investment comes
in that benefits the economy. They've had things like VAT,
VAT, sales tax receipts have been way higher than people were
forecasting when she came into office, right?
And so this has all helped to feed into that deficit
(43:10):
reduction. The S&P ratings agency have
upgraded their debt rating, right?
So once we talk about countries like the US and we're really
concerned about debt sustainability, Italy are the
opposite right now. And look, you got rate cuts in
in from the ECB just helping in in the mix, right?
(43:31):
And actually the final point here, the finance ministry this
week announced they've got so much excess cash from tax
receipts. They're buying back €5 billion
of debt. They're actively going out and
reducing their debt by 5 billionbecause they can.
(43:52):
They got more cash than they thought they had.
So interesting. And do you think as well there's
a degree of benefiting from, I always feel like in Europe, the
nature you quit the Eurozone project of daylight almost past
this political hot potato amongst them.
And it seems like there's never at one point, I guess the
(44:12):
sovereign crisis being one of those.
But generally speaking, outside of that, there's normally one of
them in political disarray. And it felt like a few months
ago that was France and Macron, and actually Italy's kind of
just gone away. And then Trump has gone US
against them. And that's almost unified
Europe. I definitely.
(44:33):
Think helped. Yeah, I think it's an unintended
consequence of Trump's sort of, you know, you know, just getting
in amongst it all and and yeah, he's just brought Europe
together, particularly around stuff like defence spending.
OK. So, yeah, they're more unified.
And so you you've got this situation that's just a bit more
(44:55):
political stability. And actually I'm looking down
the stock market's returns on the year to date from the first
half. And it's not just Italy.
Italy are up like 18% year to date.
But actually, you know, Spain that their stock market, at
least their stock market's up 28%.
Even Germany, I mean, they're up30%.
(45:17):
Wow, See that one? So that's year over year.
Sorry. So the 19%, I should say year to
date for Germany. So actually Spain, a 20%,
apologies. Year to date 2020%, Spain,
Italy, 15%. So look, all these economies are
actually really showing up and it's been part of that rotation
out of the US. This kind of fueled a lot of
(45:38):
that upside, which has led to some of that dollar weakness
just because you got that asset rotation going on.
But yeah, Europe, Europe is in abetter place and particularly
the likes of Italy, though the old, the old pigs, you know,
they're the ones that are on fire.
And also, just to give one more hat tip to Maloney in Italy is
(46:02):
that she's also played Trump. Really.
Well, I agree. Given her what she campaigned
on, like you said, obviously ourlines somewhat with him.
But here's what he he they met in April, I think for the first
time. And I had just had it
highlighted here. He described her as the chosen
(46:23):
1. He described her as a real live
wire and someone he could work with to straighten out the world
a little bit. So she's literally got this all
figured out, it would seem, Yeah.
Take note, she's the in fact, I'm going to upgrade her.
I said she's in the top five. I'm going to put her as
(46:44):
politician of the year so far. So far, we're only halfway
through. Let's revisit that table come
year end. Yeah.
And no political views intended here.
This is just on the performance.Absolutely our analysis.
Yeah, looking at the economy andmarkets, yeah, yes, she's
(47:05):
smashed it. All right, on that note, thank
you very much everyone for listening.
Please do drop us a comment. Let us know what you think about
Uber, about Netflix. Is this it more to go or not?
Or if you've got a view about equities or the VIX or Italy,
drop us a comment, let us know. Love to get your thoughts Piers,
see you next week. See you later.
Hello and welcome back to the show.
It is the 1st of July. So what we're going to do in
this conversation is look back over the past six months and it
has been a pretty sensational year.
So quick, quick teaser here. On April 8th, the S&P 500 was
off to one of its worst starts to a year in history, down 15%
(00:26):
on the year. This was only in April.
It's had one of it's greatest ever comebacks, literally it's
now up around 6% year to date, which is above actually the
average year at this or that place for this time of the year.
And So what I wanted to do is unpack a little bit
retrospectively why what has happened has happened.
(00:49):
So I've got Piers, our Co founder, former trader to talk
us through some charts, some heat maps, going to get a lot of
visuals here coming at you. And we're going to talk about
some of the reasons of rationale.
We'll also talk about at the endhis view on a couple of things
to look out for in the second-half.
Super important. And then also three star
(01:09):
performers, 2 of them I could almost guarantee you're a user
of and two companies that are upover 50% so far year to date.
So can you think of anything that you're using?
And they're up over 50% year to date.
So we'll, we'll unpack those twostar performers and also within
(01:30):
that trio of, of standouts, 1 country.
And it's based in Europe. And for all the doom and gloom,
this country is absolutely smashing it at the moment in a
really positive way. So that's what we're going to
talk about over the course of next half an hour or so.
Before we begin though, can I ask just one simple favour, if
(01:53):
you do enjoy the conversation, if you stick with us, can I just
ask if you just give us a like and subscribe to the channel,
it's absolutely free. What we do here, we love talking
about markets, we love unpackingit in a really educational way.
The only thing I can ask for youis just like it.
And then that really helps the algorithm to push out to more
people than ever appears. How are you and where do you
(02:15):
want to start with the last six months?
Well, yeah, what an extraordinary year or half year,
I should say. So H1 has been put to bed at the
market closed last night, 30th of June, of course.
So we are, we are H1 done and we're into the second-half of
the year. So it's always a really good
(02:36):
time just to kind of like just pause and like reflect, you
know, where are we at, what has happened in the year.
And you know, when I say we, youknow, it's an important time
for, you know, performance measurement, let's just say in
markets based seats and like let's say if you're running, if
you're a portfolio manager or whatever, you know, you're
running investments, then you know that half year point is
(02:59):
really important. That's what you're reporting to
your clients. For example, you know, stuff
like your remuneration packages might be based on, you know,
this kind of sort of quarterly or half year and obviously full
year kind of performance. So you know, a really important
moment and yeah, when you look at the S&P, it's up 6.2% on the
(03:19):
year, which as you said, well, if you take the sample of data
from 1990 through to 2025, it's bang on average.
It's literally ticked above the average line just by a whisker.
So it's basically just an average year.
It's just that we've had the mother of all sell offs and the
(03:40):
the kind of one of those you said one of the biggest rebounds
we've ever, ever, ever seen. So, yeah, look, very, very
interesting. I'd say that, you know, the
roller coaster ride, I mean, as a recap and that if you don't
know this stuff, then, well, you're not, you're obviously not
listening to the to the podcast often enough because we've been
talking about it. But obviously that downside
(04:04):
triggering off, Well, you would say actually the high of the
year was, I mean, Q1 was at the end of March and then we kind of
moved into April. And obviously it's mostly been
about Trump 2025. And look, you know, his style
breeds uncertainty because just not quite sure what he's going
to do. It's kind of his, his forward
(04:24):
guidance is kind of, well, thereisn't any.
And that's just his style. He does that on purpose, but it
just means for markets, it's harder to really judge and
predict what's going to happen. And obviously that's the game.
That's the name of the game whenyou're investing, you're kind of
you're trying to predict where we're going next.
So it can be tricky with Trump. But look, obviously his tariff
policy has been front and centreof, you know, certainly U.S.
(04:48):
markets and you take global markets this year and the big
sell off was because of that andliberation day on 2nd of April
when he threatened to kind of basically kill everyone with
massive tariffs, sent markets into freefall.
And it wasn't just the economic implications of what tariffs
might bring, obviously, you know, making, you know, global
(05:10):
trade, putting at risk a lot of global trade, right?
Very protectionist policy. Some of the numbers, you know,
threatening China with 145% tariffs.
I mean, you know, that's insane,right?
So we went into a bit of a free fall, but the kind of secondary
impact of tariffs that we were worried about fed into then
inflation expectations rising because, right, tariffs.
So that means prices going up. That's inflation.
(05:33):
But hang on, we want the Fed to cut rates, but the Fed aren't
going to be able to cut rates ifinflation is going to be
climbing. So you kind of had that that
kind of interwoven story triggered by the tariff
uncertainty feeding into monetary policy expectations.
You know, just fueling our anxiety and concern that what
had been a resilient economic situation in the US was at an
(05:56):
end. US exceptionalism was over
massive rotation out of the US and into other territories,
Europe, Japan, so on. And so this kind of just
triggered this big downside and that we, we fell 21% from the
February 19 high down to the April 7th low 21%, right.
That is a, it's not just a correction, that's a bear
(06:19):
market. So terminology there.
If a market drops 10% from its recent peak, that's a
correction. If it drops 20% plus, that's a
bear market. So we did officially hit a bear
market, which is quite extraordinary.
It just then went and rallied 28% in everyone's face to make a
new all time high, including thefinal day of the quarter
yesterday. New all time highs, baby.
(06:42):
And so, yeah, the reversal's been because of an unwind of all
of that, you know, the Taco trade and Trump has all those
threats have not materialized. And, you know, negotiations are
happening in the press today. You know, India, I think Japan,
you know, trying to accelerate negotiations to get things done.
And so, you know, tariffs, tariff risk has gone away.
(07:03):
So in the meantime, low inflation.
We've had a couple of soft inflation reports out of US and
Europe, in fact. So that's encouraging people
towards, well, hang on, maybe the Fed can cut twice or more
even this year. You got power.
Sorry, you got Trump messing about with the kind of shadow
Fed chair again. Extended actually.
We're now officially pricing in three cuts in 2025.
(07:26):
So that's a change in the last couple of weeks.
Really positive for markets, of course, and that the economy is
nice and strong. You know, the labor market's
holding up. And so, you know, if we can get,
if we can get trade deals negotiated, then you've got
quite an interesting situation because we go into the
second-half of the year with actually, because what normally
(07:47):
happens when markets have a really big rally like this, what
normally happens, they carry on moving up.
So yeah, I'd say I started H1. I don't think I've been as
bearish for many, many, many, many years.
Maybe even a decade plus. At the start of this year I
thought I was the most bearish I've been in many years.
(08:09):
Your bearishness was turning me on as you'll know by our our
year end calls we were making atthe end of last year.
Yeah, I would go back and re listen to that.
I mean, I was, I was like Armageddon.
Which is a rare thing, yeah. And I look, I like to think I
was at least partially justifiedgiven that monster sell off we
had. But now here we are with the
rebound, I start H2 and actuallyI'm thinking pretty positive
(08:33):
here, pretty bullish. And you know, I think this
upside we've seen in the last couple of weeks, 28% through the
roof. I mean, I think that's the
direction of travel. Also as well, just thinking then
of what's to come the next six months.
Yeah, there's further updates ontrade tariff, the geopolitical
situation in the Middle East, U.S. debt, refinancing, powers
(08:57):
replacement, global interest rates and maybe AI developments.
There are a few other fringe things, corporate earnings
margins, China's economy, these sorts of things.
Point I'm going to make is a lotof that is known like a lot of
the worst has been washed, come out in the wash already and yet
here we are. And so when I try and think
(09:20):
about potential speed bumps coming, I mean obviously the
refinancing thing is a big one, but that doesn't, it seems like
a lot of the news has kind of come out and also run quite a
far course at this point in. Time you've got to be a bit
careful because we've had such an unusual year where the
(09:41):
uncertainties and the risks on the horizon I mean there were
too many to count it was really difficult to kind of see through
any of them and and that's why sentiment really caved and we
had the big sell off right. I think now that we're in a bit,
well, I think we're back to a bit more normal.
So you know, what are the risks on the horizon?
(10:01):
Well, there are some, but I think it's more of a normal
situation. I think that last half year has
been absolutely insane. So again, to talk a more bullish
picture, you by default saying this is normal and we're at
record levels, but this is normal.
Yeah, I'll that sound of that, Yeah.
(10:22):
I mean, does. That means this is normal.
Well then, yes, there's risk to the downside, but there's also
room for further, further upside.
But if the Fed cut three times as markets are pricing and look,
I think that's looking pretty tasty if you get the shadow Fed
chair coming in, whoever, whoever Trump picks, right?
If he picks Weller, who's bearish, I'm sorry, dovish, I
(10:44):
should say, Well, then currentlywe're pricing 2 cuts in 2026,
right? That might increase depending on
what happens with that Fed chairsituation, which is that's a bit
of an unknown and an uncertainty.
We've never really had that before, right?
So that's going to play out. I don't know if these
negotiations can finish and and we get good deals on trade, then
(11:05):
you know, there's no reason to think that economies can't kick
on. I mean, obviously, there's
always risks. Obviously everyone's stop
talking about NVIDIA and hang on.
That's the litmus test for this AI revolution and how and look,
that was one of the catalysts for the rebound in quarter two.
It was actually Nvidia's earnings showed that revenue
(11:25):
growth was still really strong, showing that, you know, this AI
revolution despite the kind of little banana skins along the
way like DeepSeek and so on. I mean, who remembers DeepSeek?
It's kind of like a distant memory, right?
But so look, we've got to monitor the stuff like NVIDIA
earnings and, and, and this kindof stuff.
(11:46):
So obviously corporate earnings are key.
But then look, if if these dealsget done, I mean, dare I say
Trump could have played a, an absolute blinder here.
I'm just looking at the tax aside tariff receipts from for
the US government, tariff receipts from US imports on a
(12:08):
month by month basis. And basically in May they took
in $22.2 billion in tariffs on imports, right?
That's four times the amount they took in in May 2024.
So we're looking like a, let's just call it a $15 billion plus
kind of bonus on a month to month basis.
(12:32):
And it look, if, if Trump can land this where deals get done,
because don't forget underlying there's a 10% tariff on the
whole planet. Everyone's forgotten about that.
Their tariff income is 4X, right?
Everyone's forgotten. So if he lands it with a few
(12:53):
deals here and there, you know, China gets done, EU gets done,
India gets done, Japan gets done, then he's going to pull it
off Where the finishing point isa place where people would have
freaked out and panicked about at the start of the year.
It's just that that finish pointis nowhere near as bad as what
(13:14):
those big threats were on Liberation Day.
So. Again, it all goes back to he
He's literally written the template in a book.
Yeah. And yet we go through this every
week, you know, we're scratchingour heads, we're
overcomplicating it. It's it's an interesting.
Thing is, a book is a book, right?
(13:36):
But when you're on the joystick of the world's biggest economy
and you're controlling it and you're rolling out your playbook
that you've written in black andwhite text, you know, I think
it's a whole different ball game, right?
I mean, yes, it's there. But the problem is, you know, I
guess ultimately, did you trust that Trump could pull off the
(14:00):
playbook? Could he actually execute?
It's execution uncertainty, isn't it?
We might have known what he was going to plan to do, but
actually, can he put it pull it off?
And politics is so polarized in in the US particularly that I
was actually really one stat. I think they did a survey
yesterday in the US about, right, who thinks the stock
(14:20):
market's going to go up in the second-half of the year.
And I think amongst Republicans,I think 57% of them thought the
markets would go up in the second-half of the year, bearing
in mind we've just had one of the biggest rallies of all time,
57% think more upside. Then they polled the Democrats.
Just 17% of Democrats think thatthe market's going to go up.
(14:43):
That's so so it's so interesting, but.
Final question then just on thisSegment 1 is you made a good
point there about AI and deep sea because I remember that
DeepSeek sell off that day, one of the biggest sells you've had
in in memory. Really one of the things we had
this week was I saw news that Zuckerberg is basically doubling
(15:04):
down on AI or the position of the company AI space and they're
in advance talks with a group ofleading private credit
investors. These are all the big guns
who've had a really tricky year and I guess they're looking to
find creative means to utilize their cash.
Apollo, KKR, Brookfield, Carlisle, these are like your
(15:27):
household private equity firms. So it's super interesting that.
So give it a number. Meta are looking to raise up to
29 billion in financing for it'sUS based AI data centre program.
So there was that big question mark as well, wasn't there?
With the shake out of is it going to slow these guys down?
Evidently, what we've seen with NVIDIA, we talked about last
week, Meta is their key client of OX, other big, big tech
(15:52):
firms, and they're still spending.
But my question then to wrap this part on the review side was
I was looking at a chart of the VIX.
I just wanted to get your interpretation of when you look
at something like the VIX, because the VIX is sat.
And if you can see the video version of this conversation,
I'll flash it on the screen because the VIX is at this level
(16:13):
of 16, so the lowest, closest February, mid February of this
year after that big spike that we had before.
So just wanted to get a sense ofhow do you as investors, as a
former trader, how do you interpret that?
And is it one of those where yougo, the VIX can?
(16:34):
It's almost like a behavioural part where if it stays too low
and too consistently low for so long, it's kind of ripe for an
episode of volatility because almost us as humans look to
create this sort of movement ourselves.
Yeah, I mean the VIX, they obviously they, they nickname it
the fear gauge. So just for those who don't
(16:54):
know, it's kind of and I'm goingto simplify here, but basically
it's tracking the the Vol trade volumes for S&P 500 call options
versus S&P 500 put options. And when you're buying puts
that's protection against the downside rather put option pays
out and is profitable if the market falls.
So if you're running U.S. stock portfolio and you're worried
(17:19):
stocks are going to drop, well, instead of selling all your
stocks, which can carry tax implications, you can just buy
put options, right? Which then if stocks do fall or
fine, your portfolio, stocks will lose value, but your put
option position will make money offsetting that loss in the
portfolio, right? So if you're buying puts, it's a
(17:40):
signal that, well, you're worried about downside.
So the calls are up. The opposite call options are
profiting from market upside, right?
So when you're looking at the ratio of the two, it's just
quite an interesting gauge for, right, what's the feeling out
there? What's the sentiment?
And when there's more puts beingbought than calls, well then
that just means there's more people worried about the
(18:01):
downside than are positive and bullish about the upside, right?
And the more extreme that gets well then the more extreme that
kind of negative sentiment. And so when the VIX goes up,
that's like fear, that's like, hang on, more puts getting
bought, more people are panicking, more people are
buying protection. So, yeah, we had a monster spike
hit 60 start of April, you know,as the S and PS, you know, going
(18:25):
into bear market territory and, you know, very inverse
correlation, right, between the VIX and the S&P by definition
almost. So look, it's now come back
down. And yeah, as you said, back to
Lowe's since Feb, S and PS back to the highs since Feb, right.
So it's a perfectly inversely correlated, but it's a good one
to monitor. I'd, I'd be careful because like
(18:47):
when it gets back to 16, it's generally a pretty decent sort
of Technical Support level if you want.
But you can spend weeks and weeks and weeks and even months
just flatlining at 16, right? The thing about if you want to,
if you want to trade the VIX, you can just use it as an
(19:08):
indicator, right? But if you actually want to
trade it, I mean, that thing's lethal.
You, you, there's, there's not out of every, any market that
I've ever traded, the timing of your entry is the most important
in the VIX than anything else. Just because when it moves, it
moves like at the speed of light.
(19:31):
And then if it spikes higher, right, it doesn't stay there for
very long and bang, you're, you're savagely backed down.
So it's in and out, super short term timings, everything.
And so, yeah, it's a really difficult one to trade.
But other than trading it, it's just that if you never heard of
it, look, it's just a good thingthat people talk about.
Nicknamed the fair gauge, and yet inversely correlated to
(19:52):
that. S&P And just measuring
sentiment, really. OK.
So we've talked about the top level macro.
Let's go down a layer and now let's look at a heat map which
expresses the performance year today.
From a visual perspective of howthe different individual
companies, but categorizing their sectors has performed.
(20:13):
So translating what you've described and on the top level
economic conditions, how does this translate then when you
look at it on a equity sector perspective?
Yeah, well, when you're looking at a heat map like this, then
the size of the boxes indicate the size of the company, right.
So obviously that really big andthe big tech, you know, the, the
mag 7, let's say, stand out justvisually as the, the, the ones
(20:37):
your eyes immediately goes towards just because they're the
biggest boxes, they're the biggest companies.
So, and you look at Apple, it's kind of the big outlier where,
you know, we've just been talking S&P new all time highs,
right, NASDAQ new all time highs.
And yet actually year to date, Apple's down 16.7%.
So, you know, and so there you've got to think about really
two things. Firstly, tariffs.
(21:01):
Now I know I've said hang on, that tariff has gone away.
But you know, Apple are particularly vulnerable from
their kind of supply chain perspective to let's just say a
not particularly great trade deal with China, for example,
OK. And and they're so massively
reliant on that Chinese supply chain.
That's not a thing you can fix like in any short space of time,
(21:26):
right? So that's that's been a really
big drag on Apple shares. The other one we talked about
NVIDIA, the AI thing, the the kind of just Apple of just just
not been they're just not in therace.
They haven't even they haven't even bothered to try and join
it, it seems. And that that I don't know, the
(21:48):
longer it goes on, it's kind of,well, maybe that's just a very
conscious, you know, strategy, aboard level where look, let's
let the others mess about and try and figure out how to play
and win this game. And I don't know, maybe they've
got, I don't know, an acquisition strategy at some
point. We haven't seen it, but maybe
they've got an acquisition strategy to kind of just
(22:11):
leapfrog, let's say the first couple of years of this, this
revolution and just kind of enter the market at a later
stage with a big statement purchase.
I don't know, Or they're just a big cash cow now.
They're no longer a tech company.
They're not an innovative company anymore.
It's just that it's a company that just spews out cash, pays
(22:33):
big dividends, buys back 50 to $100 billion worth of shares
every year. And maybe it's just that now and
it's and it's so I think Apple particularly stands out to me.
Then Tesla is one of the worst performers of the year, down
25%. So that's political and a
function of the massive rally that Tesla had into the end of
(22:57):
last year. And so from a timing point of
view and again, all because of the Trump Musk kind of love
affair and that peaked in December.
And then of course, Musk has been distracted firstly by
running Doge. So he kind of stepped away from
his other businesses to the detriment of those businesses.
Obviously they love affair. The bromance has has been
(23:20):
busted. And so now Trump's threatening,
oh, we're going to remove certain kind of, you know,
concessions that Tesla get. So, you know, obviously Tesla's
an unusual case. But look, outside of that, then
you've got a lot of green on this screen.
But yeah, some sectors a lot more than others.
Of course, tech financials have done incredibly well.
(23:41):
That what that's one that standsout to me.
Like JP Morgan's up 20% this year, which is which is pretty
tasty. So a lot of the financial sector
have done particularly well. Just to jump in there, Why?
Why financials have done well. Yeah.
Well, it's kind of, I guess a function of really two things.
I hadn't thought about it in anydetail, but the immediate things
(24:04):
that jump to mind would be that,well, in the US at least, the
economy has been really strong. So if spending is still pretty
rampant, right? So you know, that's good for
banks, but then you know, lots of people, you know, maxing out
their credit cards and paying interest on that.
And then it's the interest side,right?
(24:25):
Interest rates have not come down 0 cuts in 2025.
I know we're planning for three ahead, but there's been zero so
far, right? So that then that loan book sort
of situation benefits from higher rates, as long as that's
a difficult one, right? It really benefits from higher
rates if the economy doesn't collapse, obviously, if the
(24:47):
economy collapse, well then all right, that's going to be back.
So it's perfect for banks at themoment, high rates, resilient
economy. So that's and, and, and you're
just now at the end of quarter 2and it will be interesting to
hear from their earnings reports.
You're really starting to get deal flow coming through, right.
There's been some by PO action. So finally that that deal flow
(25:09):
that we were thinking was going to be a 2025 story and wasn't
actually that's now really starting to show signs of some
green shoots as it were. So I think that's that's really
helping on the bank side as well.
And that V shape in equity volatility is obviously seen
record-breaking revenues on their trading division, right?
(25:30):
Absolutely. Exactly.
Very good. Point these currencies equities
100% says so yeah, MO that outperformance perhaps a
reflection of the fact of the breadth of their business and as
you said firing on on many fronts.
So let let's talk about a coupleof these green spots.
I mentioned there was three starperformance of the past six
months. We're going to talk about two
(25:51):
stocks, one country. The first one is Netflix.
So Netflix you can see here are up around 45%.
In fact, if you look at a chart and I'll bring one up at
Netflix's shares, they closed yesterday from when we were
recording at around 45 bucks. They hit a low of sub 15 when
(26:14):
they had the the COVID kind of correction.
But I guess this this is a COVIDplay.
This is one of those like steamycheck everyone at home and
Netflix went through the roof and we're actually we hit around
just shy of 55 peak COVID went down sub 15 and here we are.
(26:35):
We've actually kind of broken out in the last few weeks out of
like like bit of a trading resistance level around 42 area
and we're now trading back to 45.
And I just wanted to have a lookat this that Netflix is the 4th
best performing stock in the NASDAQ 100 because you just
think outright tech a lot of thetime.
(26:55):
And I guess there's different ways to look at someone like
Netflix, but they're now boast amarket value of 570 billion.
That is bigger than Exxon Mobil.Yeah.
Netflix bigger than MasterCard. So, yeah, this is a pretty
phenomenal comeback. So what?
Yeah. What's under the bonnet here?
What's fueling the appetite? It's a really interesting one,
(27:17):
Netflix, because they've kind ofit's kind of against a little
bit like snuck under the radar this, this thing.
And maybe that's because it's not particularly, well, it's not
really in the AI race particularly.
So it's not really been talked about in that conversation.
There's no tariff exposure, which is actually one of the
good reasons you know that. So it hasn't been in the tariff
(27:40):
conversation at all. And I actually think it's just
well executed, I would say medium term strategy that is now
really starting to show up in their kind of numbers.
And this is strategy that's beendeployed now over the last wow,
(28:00):
12 to to 24 months, right? And it's really starting to come
through. So stuff like we've been talking
about this down the years on this podcast, you know, stuff
like cracking down on password sharing, for example, or
they've, you know, steadily beenincreasing their subscription
rates. OK, that's the thing, right?
(28:23):
It's such AI mean well, it's such a cheap service, you know,
for what you get, it's quite extraordinarily cheap.
So if you load up subscribers, load them up, load them up, load
them up cheap, then you just tweak that little price point.
You used to give it a little tweak from really low to still
(28:46):
almost, still really low, but not quite, you know, people
don't even blink. You don't know, people don't
really look at this. And so I'll pay an extra 5 bucks
a month. But when you got, you know, I
don't know what's their subscription numbers now, a
couple 100 million or something.You know, when you when you got
505 bucks a month times by a couple 100 million, then
actually, wow, that's starting to really translate into some
(29:07):
big dollars, right? So that helps.
Then they've, you know, really started to diversify with
advertising and live events. I'd say the kind of two kind of
new pieces to the jigsaw puzzle that look, again, this is that
long term strategy. We've been talking about this
for 2-3 years, but now they've executed it and they've executed
(29:27):
it well. So live events, especially in
the sport side of things, NFL games, boxing, all the rest of
it. But then, you know, they've had
some big blockbuster series, youknow, Quid, Squid Game, Stranger
Things, you know, those those bankers from, you know, previous
seasons, you know, coming through with a new season,
obviously with a banker like that also is a really positive
(29:50):
thing, clearly. So, you know, all of these
things have been kind of happening.
But yes, it's all been a bit under the radar.
And here we are kind of H1, you're just reviewing back and
you look down the list of outperformers and and there they
are. And you're like, wow, OK, missed
that one. Squid Game, I know that.
(30:11):
I've seen the adverts now. Squid Game three.
I didn't even finish Squid Game two.
I just watched the first baby two or three.
I did watch 2. Did you get into it?
I did watch 2. Did you finish it?
I did, but I know what you mean,it's not amazing.
A lot totally lost momentum I probably.
Won't watch 3. Actually now we're talking about
this. You know, I said, you know,
(30:33):
where did that come from? Missed that one.
I think I'm right in saying in our year end episode six months
ago, pretty sure I had Netflix on my list as ones to watch for
2025. I'm going to have to re.
You're making that episode doesn't exist.
I can edit. Stuff.
Can we have listeners go back, go back and listen to that end
(30:56):
of December show and comment in the notes?
Did I pick Netflix or am I just dreaming?
I think the heat if you're living in London, it's it's very
hot at the moment. It's gone to his head.
Anyway, let's move on and let's talk about the other company.
And as I mentioned, you're probably a Netflix subscriber,
(31:16):
but you might also of at least once or the app certainly sits
on your phone, whether used or not is Uber and Uber shares are
up over 50%. They're actually outperforming
Netflix if you like. And I just thought this was an
interesting one because everything I remember reading in
the media maybe 12-18 months agowas super negative on Uber.
(31:41):
And it seems to have been prettynegative from the onset, to be
quite honest, after that initiallaunching when they were listed.
So what's happened at Uber has allowed them to really turn the
ship around and actually now become quite a firm favorite on
the street. Well, I think one key thing
then. Well, why were people worried
about Uber? And it was really the, I guess
(32:02):
you could call it the Elon Musk risk the the kind of robo taxi.
You know, who needs Ubers when you got Tesla robo taxis
knocking about everywhere, right?
So that was kind of a risk. I think two things have happened
there. A Tesla have not had a very good
year. Musk his eyes off the ball
(32:23):
perhaps, but then also Uber justbit quietly and steadily been
entering that game. And, and I think, you know, the
AV, the autonomous vehicle sort of situation, they're bang in
it, but they're actually doing it slightly differently where
they're partnering up with otherbig, well established, you know,
global automotive firms like Volkswagen, for example, But
(32:44):
they've actually got 18 different partnerships and they
call them AV partners, right? Autonomous vehicle partners.
And this is a lot to do with those big kind of incumbent
automotives basically buying Uber's data in a way, right?
It's, it's their kind of all that data that they've been
(33:06):
harvesting from them, whatever millions of rides there are per
day, you know, that's, that's, that's great data.
That's a great data set to kind of train models.
Feels good Feels is quite reminiscent of Reddit and how
they're monetizing the Reddit model by just being this
unorganised, massive treasure trove of information that that
(33:28):
you could just plug in then these tech firms to utilise the
data sets. And it also almost feels like
another worry then for Tesla in a sense of closing that
competitive edge that they've always had with their data set.
Yeah, it does. I mean, yeah for sure.
Although I read 1 stat, which kind of blew my mind here, which
(33:49):
is an amazing thing if you're long Uber and you want more
bullish upside sort of ideas. You want to stay in this stock,
but also then for competitors and rivals.
So the stat was that Uber, this is about the.
So just 5% of the adult population in its operating
(34:12):
regions is on the Uber platform,just 5%, which means, wow,
they've got huge growth potential within those operating
regions, they themselves, but also just indicates, well,
there's still a monster market out there that hasn't been
captured yet. And so, you know, in the
(34:33):
automotive, oh sorry, autonomousvehicle game, then I think
that's, that's probably just going to be room for a few
players rather than just one coming in and landing the entire
market. Yeah, I know.
I always think as well when you have a really precious data set
like that they have with the deep data on in an autonomous
(34:53):
vehicle wise, OK, the movement traffic and data from the car
itself from a user's habits perspective, you know, cross
referencing geographic location,where are they going?
Who are they visiting, how often, how frequently.
It's almost like the ability to monetize inbound to advertise on
the platform from a consumers perspective and an outbound
(35:15):
pushing it out to big tech. So you've got money coming in on
both ends of the data spectrum. That's their Moat.
It's a huge one. Yeah.
They're the kings of that. And look, the final piece is
advertising. Yeah, a bit like Netflix, right?
Once you've got a platform and you've been successful in terms
of attracting like hundreds of millions of people to it, well
(35:37):
then you can just monetize it inlots of different ways.
And so actually they're advertising revenue just from
off the off the kind of app. It's actually really starting to
show up in a, in a meaningful way in their numbers.
So that's that's, that's obviously part of the story as
well. OK, cool.
Well, look, to conclude, let's talk about our final stand out
(35:58):
and it's a European countries, have you guessed it yet it is
Bom Bom Italy. So, Italy, Why are we talking
about Italy this week? We're talking about Italy this
week specifically because their bond yields, they're just going
(36:20):
down big time. And we look, you've got to be of
a certain age maybe to understand the significance of
this. If you were around and, and kind
of conscious of financial markets back in, well,
specifically 2010, 2011, 2012, If you were around then, well,
(36:41):
you'll know that Italy literallynearly went bankrupt, literally
nearly like full on default, literally the exit literally
nearly crashed the entire Eurozone project.
That was measured by a few different things, but the, the
(37:05):
absolute kind of litmus was the 10 year bond yield, right?
So we look at the 10 year bond yield as a right, it's a credit,
it's many things, but it's a credit worthiness measure, OK.
And as that bond yield rises, well, that's, that's people
selling those bonds means the yields rise.
And when you're in panic mode, Oh my God, they're going to
(37:25):
default, Get Me Out of this, then bond yields just spike.
And actually their yield I thinkspike to about 35%, OK, back in
like 20 start 2012, 35%. So that's default.
Yeah, that's like the market saying game over.
(37:46):
Now we look at. So that's one thing you just
look at their their yield individually.
Yeah, go on. Sorry, you need to take yourself
off meat first. Was that Greece?
Sorry. Why was?
That Greece, or was that Italy? Sorry, you're right.
I'm my colour blindness is letting me down here.
That was. Green colour blind.
(38:08):
Yeah, absolutely. There's always an excuse.
But actually the chart we're looking at, I was going to say
you can look at the just the outright bond yield, but what's
more insightful perhaps is looking at what's called the
spread, the spread between 1 bond yield and another.
And when you start looking at the spread between a, a bond
yield from a country where there's default risk versus a
(38:31):
bond yield from a country that'ssuper safe and stable, then
that's your ultimate measure, right?
So we look at Italy versus Germany, all right, or Greece
versus Germany or whoever it is Germany being that that kind of,
you know, ultimate barometer. And just to put this into some
further perspective, when we talk about the PIGS, so the pigs
(38:51):
being those in focus potentiallybailout nations back in a few
years ago, actually even those themselves are in almost two
sides. There's the the major kind of
financial power centres or economic engines of Europe.
So Italy, Spain against Germany,France.
(39:12):
And then there's the periphery, which they're often termed as,
which would be the Greece to Portugal.
And so the reason why Italy was so, yeah.
And Ireland, the reason. So it's almost like Greece,
Ireland, Portugal, they're yoursare way higher.
Whereas Italy was like the sore spot of the more core ones if
you like, wasn't it? But PIGS wasn't that.
(39:32):
It was double I wasn't it? Portugal, Italy, Ireland,
Greece, Spain was the acronym. But look, that was back then,
you know, eurozone debt crisis, OK, these, these lot literally
nearly kind of vanished and sankinto the Mediterranean.
Quick shout out to Ireland by the way.
(39:53):
I mean, look at that chart Ireland.
What a thing of beauty. It's extraordinary and and all
of them now because you go far right at that chart and look,
they've all converged back what looks like on this scale at
least they've all converged backto the same right.
We kind of almost need another child which kind of zooms in on
the right here because there is some differential.
But the key thing, one notable thing that's happened is the
Italy, Germany. 10 year spread has dropped below 1%.
(40:16):
That's the kind of that that's the headline news and it's
dropped below 1%, you know, for the first time since pre
eurozone debt crisis. And it's because Italy have just
been they've been really well managed and stuff's going in the
right direction. Well, managed by Georgie
(40:39):
Maloney, right? And she has come in as the Prime
Minister sort of post COVID camein on her or she came in in
2022, didn't she on a bit of a sort of anti establishment
platform. It's just actually the way she's
gone about business has been really pragmatic and and
actually just no nonsense and actually no sort of no extremist
(41:04):
policies getting implemented either.
It's just solid to business. Let's go.
And it's all been very market friendly.
So the concerns around Italy's deficit and obviously post
COVID, all deficits widened because government stepped in
with huge fiscal stimulus programs, right?
And so actually, when you look at the Italian deficit, it
(41:24):
drops. It got to about not over 9% debt
to GDP ratio, OK. Then Maloney came in in 2022.
It was still over 8% at that point.
And people were worried, hang on, some of her policies going
to cut tax, she's going to raisespending, The deficit's going to
balloon. There'll be ill discipline and
this thing's going to get worse and worse, right?
(41:44):
The opposites happened. You know what their deficit is.
Now it's back to 3 1/2 percent. It was over 8 when she came into
office. And this has been a stellar
performance. So that just means just from a
straight out fiscal sustainability point of view, if
you want debt, default risk has has dropped dramatically.
(42:05):
And finally, it feels like, you know, Italy, such a fractious
country when it comes to politics, but she's just shut
them all down. And like, I would put her like
top five best performing politicians of the last few
years. She's she's right in there.
So and then and then you're getting quietly stuff just start
(42:26):
to happen from a strategy execution point of view, like,
you know, trying to tighten up on tax evasion, which has been a
particular problem for Italy andactually peripheral Europe
generally for many generations. And of course, that's bad news
for tax receipts, right? So cracking down on tax evasion.
Also the economy's been doing well.
It's, you know, all this kind ofstuff attracts in foreign
(42:49):
investors. There's more risk appetite
towards Italy because people areless concerned about that fiscal
trajectory, right? So more, more investment comes
in that benefits the economy. They've had things like VAT,
VAT, sales tax receipts have been way higher than people were
forecasting when she came into office, right?
And so this has all helped to feed into that deficit
(43:10):
reduction. The S&P ratings agency have
upgraded their debt rating, right?
So once we talk about countries like the US and we're really
concerned about debt sustainability, Italy are the
opposite right now. And look, you got rate cuts in
in from the ECB just helping in in the mix, right?
(43:31):
And actually the final point here, the finance ministry this
week announced they've got so much excess cash from tax
receipts. They're buying back €5 billion
of debt. They're actively going out and
reducing their debt by 5 billionbecause they can.
(43:52):
They got more cash than they thought they had.
So interesting. And do you think as well there's
a degree of benefiting from, I always feel like in Europe, the
nature you quit the Eurozone project of daylight almost past
this political hot potato amongst them.
And it seems like there's never at one point, I guess the
(44:12):
sovereign crisis being one of those.
But generally speaking, outside of that, there's normally one of
them in political disarray. And it felt like a few months
ago that was France and Macron, and actually Italy's kind of
just gone away. And then Trump has gone US
against them. And that's almost unified
Europe. I definitely.
(44:33):
Think helped. Yeah, I think it's an unintended
consequence of Trump's sort of, you know, you know, just getting
in amongst it all and and yeah, he's just brought Europe
together, particularly around stuff like defence spending.
OK. So, yeah, they're more unified.
And so you you've got this situation that's just a bit more
(44:55):
political stability. And actually I'm looking down
the stock market's returns on the year to date from the first
half. And it's not just Italy.
Italy are up like 18% year to date.
But actually, you know, Spain that their stock market, at
least their stock market's up 28%.
Even Germany, I mean, they're up30%.
(45:17):
Wow, See that one? So that's year over year.
Sorry. So the 19%, I should say year to
date for Germany. So actually Spain, a 20%,
apologies. Year to date 2020%, Spain,
Italy, 15%. So look, all these economies are
actually really showing up and it's been part of that rotation
out of the US. This kind of fueled a lot of
(45:38):
that upside, which has led to some of that dollar weakness
just because you got that asset rotation going on.
But yeah, Europe, Europe is in abetter place and particularly
the likes of Italy, though the old, the old pigs, you know,
they're the ones that are on fire.
And also, just to give one more hat tip to Maloney in Italy is
(46:02):
that she's also played Trump. Really.
Well, I agree. Given her what she campaigned
on, like you said, obviously ourlines somewhat with him.
But here's what he he they met in April, I think for the first
time. And I had just had it
highlighted here. He described her as the chosen
(46:23):
1. He described her as a real live
wire and someone he could work with to straighten out the world
a little bit. So she's literally got this all
figured out, it would seem, Yeah.
Take note, she's the in fact, I'm going to upgrade her.
I said she's in the top five. I'm going to put her as
(46:44):
politician of the year so far. So far, we're only halfway
through. Let's revisit that table come
year end. Yeah.
And no political views intended here.
This is just on the performance.Absolutely our analysis.
Yeah, looking at the economy andmarkets, yeah, yes, she's
(47:05):
smashed it. All right, on that note, thank
you very much everyone for listening.
Please do drop us a comment. Let us know what you think about
Uber, about Netflix. Is this it more to go or not?
Or if you've got a view about equities or the VIX or Italy,
drop us a comment, let us know. Love to get your thoughts Piers,
see you next week. See you later.
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