 Okay, hello and welcome to episode 91 of the market maker podcast. And before I begin, I was doing some checks on the stats for the pod. And I saw that on Apple 90% of the people who listen are followers, which is obviously great. Yeah, but only 10% are not followers. So what I'm going to ask for, you know what's coming is if you're part of the 90% and pass this on to a friend or a colleague or someone you think that that might appreciate just being a bit more informed about the economy and what's going on, particularly, I think given that what's happening right now economically impacts people are all levels in all job sectors. So not just for students who are applying for these roles in finance, however, it's also good for them because I've also got a message pending in my inbox from a student saying he's got an interview tomorrow. Can we fast track the episode and get it out. I'm glad it helps. Yeah, please do please do share it. It would be much appreciated for the for the both of us in the team, I'm sure but on the agenda for this week then couple things want to talk about 13 f filings in the US. What are they what do they mean and in particular the reason why because I want to talk about Warren Buffett, because he's come out with a bit detail for us to see about what he's been buying and selling over the last quarter and obviously someone like him with his legendary figure was watching what he does. Can we get any clues over what we should be doing as as the mere mortal common man. So we'll talk a little bit about that. We're then going to talk we just had the UK budget we are recording this on Thursday so literally Jeremy Hunt's just come out and outline the autumn budget so couple of highlights there and we'll talk about UK inflation that figure earlier this week, quite a bit higher than expected in fact the highest is 1981 printing headline year and year reading at 11.1%. So what was underpinning that rise and what does it mean going forward. And then Trump, he's announced he is going to run. So we just want to cover really what's the process from here on out. Not going to touch the politics, because they want to don't want to cause any issues. I'm touching the politics. I'll run you through the process so you know what to look out for in the period ahead but needless to say you're going to get a lot more Donald Trump and if he's back on Twitter. At some point, that's even going to ramp up further and then finally, I've got some inside info for the World Cup. I'm going to share. It's a world exclusive. I've got a tip off. And it's not from Sam North if you're listening it's not from because your tips are not very good. But yeah, we'll go through that. I'm going to tell you who's going to win the World Cup. So stay tuned. I think so. Warren Buffett and 13 F filing so I guess to start with peers perhaps you could give us just a very quick summary of what is in a 13 F filing. Well, you'll have heard of the SEC. The Securities and Exchange Commission, basically the police force for all things kind of US sort of markets and finance if you like a regulator. So they have this requirement. If you're an investor, if you're an institutional investor, I should say so an institutional investor investment manager, and if you've got at least 100 million bucks under management. Then you have to disclose your equity holdings on a quarterly basis, and you got to air your washing and tell everyone exactly what you've done. What have you bought? What have you sold? What are your current holdings? So yeah, all the big boys every quarter get forced to basically flash their portfolio or their trading book and everyone gets to see what they've been up to. So when you do your own one then, how long does it take you typically? I go under, well, you know, some people do call me the Sage of Ballum. I've been known, but at least one person has called me that in my life. Okay. Taking the piss. Well, let's talk about Warren Buffett because he is one that generates a lot of headlines because the type of companies they invest in, he's investing style, so maybe we can touch on a few of these things. The biggest headline came because he's put on a new position in a company called TSMC where he purchased just over four billion US dollars in the Taiwanese chip maker. Other foreign investors, just to give it a perspective, do include US asset managers like BlackRock, Vanguard, the Singapore Solid and Well Fund. So who is this company then? Why are all these big movers and shakers got a vested interest in that firm? Well, yeah, there are Taiwanese based chip maker. And I mean, more than that, they're the largest chip manufacturer on the planet. So this isn't like a kind of shot in the dark kind of, you know, trying to pick up a sort of small company that no one's heard about yet. This is the biggest player on the whole planet. It's an interesting one. Basically, Buffett is notoriously anti-tech, just because I think, well, clearly he's been wrong in that position for the last two decades, but it's really a function of probably age, you would say. I mean, this guy, how old is Buffett now? I know how old he is. So what do you reckon? I believe he's about 148, isn't he? He's close. He's like, he's got, is he in his 90s yet? I think he is, no? He is indeed, yeah. Go on, how old? 92. Wow. That's just crazy. So he started investing, yeah, like literally, you know, aftermath of the Second World War, he basically began his career. So of course, tech didn't really exist, you know, really. And so, you know, he's kind of old school, traditional. He's a value investor. He's not a trader per se. He believes in the ultra long term. So he will buy and hold. My Lord, can he hold one of his famous, probably, maybe his most famous, although it's perhaps Apple's taking this mantle. These days, but one of his most famous investments is Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola ranks fourth in his portfolio. He owns just a casual 400 million shares of Coke, but he's been an investor in Coke, like literally for decades and decades and decades. And, you know, so it's buy and hold. It's picking solid companies. He really wants to find really solid management teams, because if he's holding for the long term, it's critical that the management team in place is good enough to execute on that kind of long term growth strategy. Right. Yeah, he's typically quite conservative. And so the tech thing, yeah, I think he'll admit probably himself that he didn't quite get the tech era right. But he did, you know, aggressively move into Apple. But only recently, I think it was 2018, wasn't it that he started hoovering up. Bad timing, was it? No, true. Good point. I mean, but, you know, he should have picked that horse in the noughties, right? Not by 20. I mean, I think he would admit he should have been in that straight after the GFC would have been a sensible time. But you might be old enough. I'll be careful with how I work this. When IBM was seen as like the tech company to take things to a whole new level, he was invested in IBM for a long time. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think that probably was an experience that burnt him. And yeah, probably then that impacted his decision. I mean, this is like classic psychology, trading psychology, right? You're getting sort of, you probably say, overly negatively impacted by a specific experience and you then carry that with you when you make future decisions. And yeah, I think that IBM trade that went wrong, yeah, probably meant it delayed his move into tech. So his portfolio is very much, it's very, you know, non-tech, right? Until Apple, I mean, is Apple a tech company? I mean, of course it is, but anyway, Apple's now as big as holding, but I think with this, this Taiwanese semiconductor trade, perhaps it is why I think there's, I think two things about it. Number one, maybe he's just now looking to add to his kind of tech, the tech portion of his portfolio just to very gradually pivot, continue that pivot that started with the Apple trade to evolve, update, modernize the look of his portfolio that's looking pretty old, right? I think that's one thing. But then what I will say on the other side, I don't know if he's taking too much risk here because who is TSMC's biggest client? Who's their biggest customer? Apple. So who's Warren Buffett's biggest holding in? Apple, and Apple, that's Apple's biggest supplier, full stop. Apple's biggest supplier is this Taiwanese chip company. So now Buffett's weighted in there as well. So either he's like doubling down on his Apple trade, or maybe this is a strategic play. Maybe Tim Cook has had a little whisper in his ear. Maybe after a board meet, an Apple board meeting, they frotted off for a few glasses of red wine, and Tim Cook just kind of persuaded him to strategically move into a position of authority on the TSMC board just to cement that supplier and to kind of strengthen ties, if you like, in a world where of course semiconductors, they're hard to come by these days, right? Obviously, that was front and center of the supply chain issues. Maybe there's something in it around that angle. I don't know. What do you think? Surely, though, the regulators have got to have a problem with that from a competition perspective in regards to fair play for other chip makers if he's in bed with both. Yeah. But which regulator? Because this is obviously a, well, Buffett's just an investor, right, he would say. He doesn't own a controlling stake in any of these companies. So it's not illegal for an investor to buy shares into companies that are connected from a sort of business perspective. That's not illegal. So I don't know how you would have the regulators prove Tim Cook's too big for any US regulator. Indeed. So big tech runs Washington, no? Yeah. So what was that regulator? What was that? Pipe down. Pipe down over there. I'm in charge. Yeah. On that point, one talking of regulators. Remember when Elon Musk, he's been doing his deposition about his pay or something, isn't it? At the moment about his salary and he's been doing like pre-trial work because he's going to the same Delaware court where he lost a ruling with Twitter. Right. One of the things that came up was he apologized. He said, oh, when I said, you know, about, oh, SEC is an acronym and the middle word is Elon's. He said, oh, no, no, no. I didn't mean suck Elon's cock. What I meant was save Elon's company stood there in a court of law and said straight faced. No, you've misconstrued my tweet. It meant save Elon's company. I mean, this guy is just. That's funny. There is another angle. So I was just looking here. Obviously, we have the situation with the US and China in terms of what is it escalating tensions. Some journalists might write and you know where that goes and obviously China and their position around Taiwan and Xi Jinping looking to eye up a move there or not. But Apple were talking to other chip maker suppliers like during COVID it was like there's no chips anywhere, you know, where else can we get some from and apparently Apple were talking to Yanxi memory technologies, which is a mainland China based chip maker. Because of the escalating tensions. Apple decided to fear away from them and go a bit more mean TSMC we're already the biggest supplier but I think they've gone even bigger. They put even more eggs in one basket which isn't a great strategy from a supply chain diversity perspective but maybe maybe Buffett is is just maybe it is just an investment. I think he's made where he feels that TSMC might benefit somehow from this if the China US sort of tensions do escalate. So that's another angle for you. I was just trying to have a quick look while you were talking of who else does TSMC supply to be interested to see what that client base looks like and whether there's any connection in that way amongst those firms. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, Samsung would be the immediate one I would want to know about it. If there are if there are major supplier for Samsung, Apple's arch rivals or not I don't know the answer to that. Okay, well, Buffett's well hang on Buffett's look at his other. So I'm just looking. Well check out like people listening to check out Anthony Chung's LinkedIn. I saw a really good post on this couple of days ago where you can get a full listing. That's the 13 F filing I mean which is basically just a spreadsheet of Buffett's holdings. How many shares. What's the value of those shares and then how that's changed over the last quarter. So it's interesting like the top five holdings and Apple number one. He's the biggest. He's the biggest single shareholder right of Apple. I believe it's a hundred and six and a half billion. Decent size. Bank of America's is second biggest holding then it but that's that's down to 30 billion. Apple really is like by far and away easily is biggest, biggest trade at the moment but yeah Bank of America at 30 billion you got Chevron then at 23 billion Coca Cola, 22 and a half billion. So those top four there that's good diversity right Apple is tech Bank of America's obviously finance you got Chevron oil company and then got Coca Cola which is, you know, a consumer sort of discretionary product you might say. So it's top four there's good diversity then he's got annex or his fifth. Then Occidental petroleum which is another oil company you got Kraft Heinz Moody's. He took a chunk out of his Activision Blizzard trade so booking a bit of profit on that. Then US Bank Corp and look there's there's those others he's got what about 50 odd holdings in his portfolio. Yeah, the Taiwanese semiconductor addition, grab the headlines but yeah Apple still the Uber trade that he's still playing. So many looking a portfolio composition like this. Yeah, there any like geographic risk with all of those names you were talking through. I don't have time to go through this definitely the flavor of this is big time American, which a makes sense he's an American investor be makes sense because well America's the biggest economy. C makes sense because American companies you know just from their globalization have probably benefited more than most in terms of value creation and value ads. Of course there's a massive US theme running all the way through I'm just trying to pick out some other international holdings other than that Taiwanese semiconductor. Something here I haven't heard of to be fair, like Liberty media. I'm not familiar with them. But mostly they're really big companies I mean he took took some of his general motors trade off, for example he. You know young things like visa, which I don't think the thing is I think the stuff like visa and amix is a really big holding of his that's been hurting. I wonder whether that he's probably been invested in visa for like 40 years or something. And I just think that kind of thing is a bit, that's probably a bit of an obsolete dinosaur. FinTech FinTech payments aggressive competition in that kind of payment space that visa seem to be way off the pace on so I think he stubbornly holding out I guess for him. You have like the book value of a position and then it's current value so the book values what you bought it at. The current value is obviously the current value and I guess for him if you bought it like 40 years ago the book values basically zero. So it still looks like an amazing trade, even though, yeah visa haven't been doing well over the last few years but the yes overwhelmingly American. So really, in terms of global or international risk you've got to start to delve into each individual, you know, big American multinational and start to think about right where does that individual company have international exposure. And look, Apple top of that list I mean Apple are very exposed to China right in terms of iPhone sales. China's a very very key market for them so. China risk is certainly very present in his portfolio. Yeah and just to kind of surmise Berkshire's long only equity portfolio from a total number declined from 300 to 296 billion. Yeah in quarter three. Yeah. Yeah, that's good going. Yeah. I mean, so that I lost about 10 last 10% right. Sorry, that's one percent we're talking about one percent. Yeah to be one percent down in quarter three. You definitely take that. Yep. Because the indexes got crunched. I don't know what the quarter three like S&P performance was to be honest but it's definitely a bigger loss than 1% that's for sure. Yeah. That's a secret to Buffett's long life. And doesn't he, doesn't he eat at that. Like budget American diner just down the road from his house once a week or something still does. I think that's the week. Every day was every day. I think he gets like, you know, like the $4 meal, the breakfast wrap. I'm just looking. I can't see McDonald's. You're talking about McDonald's here. Yeah, he gets in McDonald's. He's in McDonald's surely. I'm just looking. I can't. I'm just bouncing down the list. I cannot see any Mackey D's in this portfolio. He's spending all that those $3 for the last 500 years. He must have had at some point, right? Maybe he exited that a while back, but yeah, it's not in there now on first glance. Okay. I'm just having a quick look. The Buffett's Berkshire 3 I own just over 30 million shares in McDonald's. There was a stock split. I'm assuming this was a few years ago though. Yeah, he was in it. Maybe he's up now. He's going Burger King these days. All right, well, let's move to show on and talk about the UK economics because you just had the budget. Very different to the last one. Yeah, just a bit. Yeah, a couple of things then. Feel free to jump in at any point. So I'll just run through or rattle off. There's a lot to it. Try to just pick out some of the main ones that are more, I guess, relevant on the finance side. So the economy, the OBR predict the economy will shrink by 1.4% next year. The Chancellor did acknowledge we're in a recession. Things are going to get worse before they improve. I think from the optics, they've definitely taken the angle him and Rishi of trying to make this sound like the worst economic times ever to manage to appropriately lower the bar of people's expectations, which I think is probably a sensible approach. Yeah, rather than just going gun hoe, let's just go rapid growth, which was the previous strategy. Other things all workers face paying more in tax as a freeze on the personal allowance, basic and higher thresholds, it's been extended to 2028. That's when they were the papers you'll read about it call that the stealth tax by pushing that out. The point at which the highest earners start paying top rate of tax has been lowered to 125 K from 150. Chancellor, Han also confirms that energy industry will be hit with an expanded windfall tax. So that's going up to 35 and 25%. Very much broadcasted though, about a week ago that figure in fact so nothing new there. Port for energy bills is expected to remain in place but become less generous from April. We already knew that stat as well. The 12,300 tax free allowance for capital gains tax is going to get halved to 6K and then your EV is not going to be exempt vehicle excise duty as of April 25. Not happy about that. And then there's not going to be any change to the remit of the Bank of England, of which in any other day I'd say, why do I need to know that. But you need to know that because our friends trust and curtain were actually talking about a bit of a shake up of the Bank of England and their oversight capability but the Chancellor was quite quick today Jeremy Hunter come out and squash that so from a market's perspective intraday that hasn't hasn't been one in terms of a reaction, but it's very normal for that to happen if we're trading side of things. But yeah, any, any thoughts on what's been announced today. Well, the pound is coming up a little bit but actually, it's a bit more dollar strength than anything the dollar strengthening against most currency pairs today so the pound that's sterling versus the dollars down 1%. But then the Aussie dollar against us dollars down 1.3 kiwi against the dollars down 1.1 so you know there is dollar strength theme today. So if all you did was looked at the pound versus the dollar and you go I got it's coming down you and don't look at anything else you might draw the conclusion that the pound is devaluing because of this budget. If anything the pound is is is losing less value against the dollar than other currencies so maybe there's a little bit of sterling positivity in there there's just more dollar positivity overall but look this statement and I think there's much. You know it's been well telegraphed obviously we've been waiting for this statement for the last few weeks and. Yeah, I mean, I think more broadly obviously they had to come in and rescue the carnage. The disaster of the trust quasi show and so they've pivoted and gone right to the other end of the spectrum and look from a fiscal, you know from a UK government debt perspective. This will puts us on a better kind of trajectory to be able to, you know, sort out our fiscal situation where we obviously have to borrow a lot of money to fund all of the emergency stuff in covert you know the furloughing and all the rest of it and it's the biggest fiscal sort of bailout in the history of mankind right so you've got to start to pay for it at some point it's just that these guys are several let's just start paying for it now and let's just. And look, whilst interest rates are high. This makes sense. I think if you had this plan pre covered. Definitely wouldn't have made sense. You know it makes sense when interest rates are low to go fiscally expensive. You know let's invest and borrow it to invest because borrowings cheap. But when borrowing is expensive you know you've got to pivot and change the direction. And so they've definitely done that aggressively here. Yeah one thing like just thinking from our markets of trading or investment point of view. Then he has gone a little bit like some of the surprises in here like capital gains tax. He's gone at that. I think harder than I was expecting. So this is important for investors, because investors here in the UK, you have to pay capital gains tax on any profits from shares right so if you, you know if you buy shares and then sell them for a profit, you get taxed on that. And there was a annual tax free allowance. So it was the case that you used to be able to the first 12,300 pens worth of profits is tax free. Only after that you start to get capital gains taxed on that capital gains tax is like just shy of 30% so it's, you know, a decent whack to your profit. That's why a lot of these investment companies have a huge amount of sort of tax as a huge tax strategy element to the investment process to try and protect their clients from not protect them but try and be tax savvy when it comes to, you know, managing and exiting trades and so on. So, so that capital gains free tax allowance 12,300 is being halved or more than halved to 6000. That's in April 23 then in April 2024 is getting halved again so it'll just be 3000 pounds worth of capital gains tax allowance by April 2024 so that's definitely important for investors. And then also dividend tax. So, you know, if you run a sort of limited company then some of the directors remuneration packages will include dividends, and here what hunt has done is, again made that less tax efficient. So it's halved the free dividend tax allowance used to be just 2000 pounds he's halved it to 1000 so a couple of things in there for the sort of investors point of view that kind of stood out to me, but, but yeah, I don't other than that, we knew what was coming right. I think that cut to the, the threshold for the higher rate. I didn't read anything about that prior to today maybe I missed it but that's where he's like yeah you got to pay 45% tax now on anything above 125,000 it used to be anything above 150. What's quite notable about that is of course the quasi had the master plan of removing that tax threshold entirely don't actually have to pay 45% just pay 40. How does that happen. Like I'm not saying one person is right or wrong. We all know who was right or wrong, but how can you be that off key. I just don't get it like how did that happen and like. Well, it's because trust and quasi quarten were in their little bubble. They were in a parallel universe together on their own, you know concocting their master plan. Didn't consult anyone didn't tell anyone because they thought I in my opinion I mean I've never met these guys so I'm spiting opinions here without without ever having met them but it looks to me like it's arrogant. But they thought, like I don't know what you want to call it academic or, you know, academic arrogance where they think that I know better than everyone else, so I do not need to consult them. We have the master plan. Da da. Here you go guys. And then the whole thing collapses and then they go Oh, we thought that was going to work. Ah, okay. So really hunt and Rishi. I mean don't forget Rishi, who's the prime minister. Don't forget him in all of this. So he was running against trust very much on a mandate that was much more fiscally prudent. So trust is fiscal expansionary mandate got shot down so we're back to Rishi's fiscal prudent mandate with hunt coming in and they've just gone even more prudent, because they've decided, having seen the evidence from trusses example that that's definitely the wrong direction let's pivot and go more aggressively the other way, because that's what people and markets are like. I guess that's their play. And you were talking about interest rates and how that can play into an influence the fiscal strategy. So one thing was Morgan Stanley, they issued their latest call for UK rates. So they basically say that the Bank of England will cut interest rates by 150 basis points in 2024 stopping their tightening cycle which they see UK rates will hit 4% in March. So I disagree with that second part. I disagree. I mean, I would like the Bank of England to stop raising rates right now. And I know that's hard to do we'll talk about inflation in a minute. It's hard to do when inflation yet again makes another 40 year high. But this, this budget is deflationary. So we're in a recession, demand destruction is happening right now. I do not need to hike rates anymore. I've done enough, in my view, so I wouldn't be hiking from 3% where we are now won't be hiking another 1% by March which is what Morgan Stanley thing I think that would be an error. But we'll see I'm happy to go head to head with Morgan Stanley. See he's right. I'll see if I can get what's his name Mike. Mike Wilson, you can battle it out for your year. Let's do it 2023 S&P call. But let's talk about inflation then you mentioned it there UK did hit a new high it was higher than expected. I think it was expected at 10.7 came in 11.1 up from 10.9%. So, yeah, big figure higher since 1981 the core reading though was unchanged. So worth mentioning that that was at 6.5%. So yeah, how do you how do you see that. Well, I was at yesterday I was at, I was out on the road I've been out on the road last few days, just out there on the front line, running some of our simulations. And I was actually at Loughborough University. And I was there yesterday morning and I brought the FT up. I was looking at it with them just trying to show them how I would read the FT right and I think that's sometimes hopefully he's quite insightful for students just because the FT such a monster publication it's hard to really know. It was the best angle of attack but I flashed it up and obviously the big headline 11.1%. You know, highest for 41 years. And I said, and then I took the, I took the FT off. And I asked them what do you think's happened to the FT 100 today. This morning, with all this data and these headlines and they said I definitely gone down. But she's definitely gone down. So I got the chart up. FT was up 0.2%. Yeah. And I was trying to make two points. Number one, be super careful about sensationalist media clickbait headlines. Don't just react to the headline and then make all your assumptions and decisions. Click in and actually read the body of the article where then it goes into more detail about, yes, inflation is at 11.1%. Yes, it is a 40 year high. But when you take out food and energy, the core inflation number was unchanged from September at 6.5%. And I 6.5% is really, really, really high. But the fact that it didn't rise from the month before on the core level, I think is really important. And is the more important point. Okay. And that's why the FT100 wasn't selling off in the face of this sensationalist headline. Basically do your own due diligence on it before, you know, just having that trigger happy reaction to media headlines. Yeah, so to add to that, what happens on a monthly basis is that Bloomberg will conduct their own polls. And so Bloomberg being the benchmark terminal system of all these institutional players, they'll survey economists and I'll say what do you think about where UK inflation will be by at this time, or in this case, they put one out midweek saying, where do you think UK house prices, what's going to happen. And the headline the Bloomberg have been pumping this week is UK house prices risk a drop of up to 20%. And so obviously you see UK house prices, 20%, and you think, Jesus, that's, that's a big downward move, but then they actually read it. And that's not what they're predicting. That's worst case scenario. Right. Exactly as you were saying. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely definitely. Yeah, need to have breadth, I think in your aggregation of information, and then the ability to be curious, minded to then investigate. Yeah, that's the way to do it. Right, absolutely. But I've got. So really it was all on the food and energy side right this continued upside inflation so number one on the energy side or the price caps in now. Right, the UK government has just capped two and a half thousand pound cap right so that's now in as of this month, meaning the energy portion of the inflation basket will not go up for six months. So if you're thinking about inflation in the future, should the Bank of England raise rates or not. Well, the one of the big contributors energy that's just hit a ceiling and can't go any higher. Anyway, they can't do anything about energy costs doesn't matter what you do with interest rates it's a supply side issue right. So that's one thing. The other thing on the food side. Now some of the food stuff just when gangbusters. I've got some I've got got a little quiz to play with you. I've got some food. Do you realize I'm a vegan. That's fine. I've got some if I got any vegan products in my list. So, like when you're walking the aisles in your where you're what you waitrose M&S food probably right. Little right yeah. That's a good point right where you buying your produce from well there's a big difference. Yes, but I've got stats here in terms of on average how much of the price of certain goods gone up. So, and I'll give you a hint. Overall, the food component of the basket was up 16.7% year on year. Okay, so obviously that's the other I feel that every week. That's the average. You, you're a you're a semi skimmed milk man. No, no, no fat. No, no, no. How much has milk gone up in the last 12 months. 12 months. Yeah. So again, 45% close 47.9% milk is up. What about your butter. What do you think. Oh, that's probably even more because that every time I buy a tub of that. I just think what if I bought detergent or something like that like why is that so expensive but yeah, well butters up 42.1. Pastor and cuscus. Well, I'm just going to reel these off. Just all your essentials here isn't it. Pastor and cuscus up 34%. Do you like your like sources and your condiments. Of course, they've they've shot up 33% oil, like olive oils and fats and stuff up 33 flowers up 21% eggs up 22. Does anything top milk or is milk. My milk is the milk's the big list. Yeah. So these are crazy numbers right on an annualized basis. And yeah so this is one this is like the key driver at the moment of that inflation basket, along with energy but as I said that energy components not going to be driving higher from this point on. So, yeah, and look, we got demand destruction. We got we're in a recession. And I know these are all sort of everyday items that I'm listing here. It's difficult with stuff like milk, I guess, and like milk and eggs and flour I mean, I guess that's the definitely consumer staples right you're not. You're not going to not buy those but maybe you'll be a bit more conscious of how much milk you're putting on your cereal. Serials are up 14.4% by the way. So yeah that breakfast portion might just get reduced a little bit. I think like inflation is at 11%. Is that not actually a reflection for the majority of people where they pull back on a lot of these other more surplus type spending activities. So their core consumption, which is those staples. It isn't 11%. Yeah, if you average out main typical like I go let's say I do my weekly shop I buy 10 items let's say it's all the ones you just said, right, that's not 11%. That's more like for the month. Right. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. All right, well look let's. I was going to say let's take this in a more positive direction but we're going to talk about Donald Trump, the JT. Yeah, he has announced he's going to run for the presidency 2024 he said America's comeback starts right now. That's right right now. So, yeah, he had hopes so the context here he had hoped that the parties expected gains. I say expected gains, we're going to act as a bit of a springboard for his party's nomination. He was backing a whole host of candidates going into these midterm elections last week and obviously that has not panned out at all in the right way for him. He criticized quite, quite heavily for that. But let's just get a few things straight because just because he says he wants to run for presidency that doesn't mean it's now him Biden little face off and off we go again. He has to win the Republican Party's nomination. Just trying to think of the stat I did see it. If a president was to go and then come back. Again, I don't think that's happened for it's over a century. I was reading a long time. So, so this process then what comes next, because obviously we're talking about 2024 here. Yeah, November 24. Yeah. Right. So, it typically starts at least one year before voters go to the polls. So, yeah, you, it's going to start ramping up basically really from now certainly in terms of the noises that he's likely to be making each party candidate is chosen through a series of state contests or primaries. Each candidate is assigned a number of delegates proportional to the number of votes that they won in the state. And then those delegates go on to vote for them at the party's presidential nominating convention that's that's normally like a big star studied event and big convention. Along the way, candidates get to compete in these kind of grueling debates that get highly publicized against each other members within their own party which I always find that a bit weird. It's like because the American political kind of play is just so much more aggressive. It's not like the Hugh Grant British style and we all there. Stumbling through it's, they go at it like so. So currently a major rival is it is a chap called Ron DeSantis. He's Florida's governor who swept a reelection. And so, whilst everyone else was struggling. He just smashed it. And straight away, Trump came out gave him a tongue lashing. You know what Trump calls him. He calls him Ron de sanctimonious. That's loyalty, Trump said. Yeah, and he's an average governor, not not who you need. So yeah, that I mean that's the general process I mean, where are we with Trump and Musk. And I asked that that's a really important piece of the puzzle for Trump's success is can he get himself back on there, because the two of them kind of a buds and then they fell out. Because Elon was an advisor to the administration when he was in power right yeah for slightly dubious reasons. But that aside, they've kind of fallen out more recently but with his necessity to get on because his own company, his own social truth social is just not going to cut it. Yeah, I mean, I haven't heard anything. I don't think Musk has made any comments yet about right will Trump be reinstated or not I think in his general idea. That's Musk's general idea is that people should not be permanently canceled from Twitter. There shouldn't be temporary bands for transgressions or whatever but you know they shouldn't be permanent bands so obviously that implies Trump is going to come back but when who knows right but I don't know I just feel a bit depressed about Trump and the fact he's coming back. This is how I see it. What about the US electorate. There's two very divided. I'm not necessarily talking about Republican and Democrats anymore. I think it's basically you've got the Trump, you know, supporter, who's die hard. And they will do anything, anything and they'll storm the Capitol for Donald right they will they will never vote for anyone else if Trump's running. They're all in. Okay, he then got everyone else who's not a Trump supporter. And I think it's so divisive that they're not quite as passionately negative as Trump supporters are positive but they're pretty damn negative about Trump. And so they'll never vote for Trump. Okay, now the problem Trump has is those hardcore passionate. There's a lot of them, but they make up a minority. So I actually don't think Trump can win, because he's those that were middle ground, like in the last election. In the middle ground the election before sorry when he won those that were middle ground, you know did lean and shifted towards Trump but I think he's now alienated the middle ground I mean you saw what happened in the midterms. A couple of the prominent guys that Trump had endorsed so Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and then someone called Carrie Lake in Arizona. So when Trump had backed them, but then they failed and they massively underperformed. So Trump's endorsement actually ended up proving to be a bit of a negative and a tainting their campaign there's obviously been a big female vote swing against those kind of, you know far right Republican anti abortion type candidates, the female votes really swung aggressively against them so I think that whole middle ground has gone for Trump. So therefore I actually don't think he can win what the Republicans need to do I think is, they need to put Trump away, they need to look forwards, and actually a lot of the supporters I mean here's a. So Blackstone, the founder of Blackstone is a guy called Steven Schwarzman. He was a massive Trump fan, even after the storming of the Capitol when Trump was saying the boats been rigged. This guy was still supporting Trump saying Trump's right so he was a bit of a die hard right obviously an incredibly wealthy man, one of Trump's financial donors during the 2020 campaign. Even he's turned now his quote was America does better when its leaders are rooted in today and tomorrow, rather than today and yesterday. So like Trump is yesterday's man, they need to modernize move forwards to Santos, he's your man. If they want to win the next election. They need to Santos to be up there I think they'll lose it with Trump, whether whoever the Republicans pick, it is then important to say well who's going to be the Democratic Party candidate, and it might not be Biden. But although after the midterms. Yeah, that would play into Ron's hands okay against Biden right. Perfect polarization of candidates. That's right at the Republicans, they would love it if to Santos was up against Biden, and Biden would get eaten alive. I think the problem the Democrats have is because they did better than expected in the midterms. Biden now as feeling a bit more positive about himself and is maybe going to announce that he is going to run for a second term but Well one thing I was just looking at was the last fed economic projections, because where is the economy anticipated to be by 2024 is also going to be quite crucial, particularly where we're at now, which has been the height if you like of the fear of recession, we're going to get that economic kind of follow through in the short period ahead, but where will we be in 2024 and if you look at the change in real GDP growth. For the end of this year the Fed are expecting growth of 0.2% by 2024 back up to 1.7%. From 0.2 to 1.2 next year to 1.7 so ever increasing GDP growth unemployment they see peaking next year to 4.4% and then staying at that level through 24 and then call PCE inflation. Let's go PCE inflation they see 5.4% the end of this year. And that's a peak, because then they see a dramatic decline to 2.8% in 2023 and then down to 2.3% by the times really the mid the election is in the end of 2024. Yeah, does that help because yeah, it's a better way better situation than the beginning of next year is going to look like. It helps the Democrats yeah I think based on economic cycles and generations of recessions and all the rest of it it's likely pretty damn likely that in the run into the election so let's say through the summer of 2024. We're probably going to get the economy rebounding. And that that recovery phase after a recession is often like the fastest growth phase and you know this is why like equity prices go up the fastest and so if the Democrats are lucky. Based on previous cycles, most likely they'll be going into that election the last part of the election race really buoyed by a rebounding economy. Yeah, which could play into their favor. Yeah. Cool. All right, well look to wrap things up. Last thing I did promise at the beginning I tell you who's going to win the World Cup. And so I have it on very good authority. We're going to make the final. So close, but they're going to come up short again, losing to your favorite. David, David Beckham little kick out David Beckham in Argentina, Argentina. Yeah, I should rather I haven't read this guys. Yeah, where this has come from there's this analyst called Joachim Clement, who works for Libram, I think that's how you say the firm he works for but essentially you'll you'll see a lot of this in the press, kicking off probably in the next coming days, because Goldman's has one more than Stanley will put out one which is when they have this kind of engagement piece where they get some of their analysts to run the models like they would do for a financial market to punch out then different variables to calculate any anticipated pathways for different countries in the World Cup performance. And this guy is his model, which uses economic and climactic variables, apparently, such as GDP per capita population sizes these sorts of things to predict team successes. He called the correct winners at the last few major last major tournaments 2014, 2018, with Germany and France. He has said that the three lions will breeze past Senegal, Mexico and Portugal in the knockout phase, but lose to Argentina in the final. In these guys, GDP per capita is one of his key variables in his model. Is he aware that the greatest World Cup side of all time the country that's won the most. Well, do you know the answer to that. There's one the most. Who's won the most World Cups. Brazil. Their GDP per capita is very low, well relatively low, right. And yet they're the greatest side of all time so not quite sure there's room for GDP per capita in a World Cup prediction model myself. What's the population of Brazil. It's about 180 million isn't it. 150 is it. 214. That's gone up. Yeah. Okay. It's quite punchy. Yeah. But I don't get the correlation GDP per capita to chances of winning the World Cup or not. Yeah. I didn't make the model pairs. I don't know what offsets he's using to like. I do agree that the arson times do look pretty tasty. I think that that's that's who I think I'll win. I don't have a model. That's called a hunch. All right, and on that hunch. We'll wrap it up so thanks as ever peers and thanks everyone for listening. Again, if you have made it to the end you're probably one of our regular listeners. So thank you. I think as I said, share this get out to as many people as possible. You know, it's all aimed at trying to just help demystify really finance and investing for students and for, and for others as well who just, you know, given as I said at the beginning the context of how the economy is at the moment I think it's important that people have education on these matters so. All right, take care and we will see you next week. See you then.