Why Getting Rich Is EASIER Than Learning To Drive (Andrew Craig)

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In this episode we welcome economist and best-selling author Andrew Craig back to the show. 

Andrew reveals why Britain's economic collapse is accelerating, how the government's policies have destroyed ordinary people's wealth and what you can do about it to build your own wealth. 

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Andrew's Books https://plainenglishfinance.co.uk/books

Plain English Finance on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@PlainEnglishFinance

Plain English Finance https://plainenglishfinance.co.uk/

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✅ Why investing every month for 20+ years gives you less than 0.1% chance of losing money regardless of current events

✅ How to use the 100 minus your age rule to automatically manage risk as you approach retirement

✅ Why UK small companies could present a generational opportunity for contrarian investors

✅ How to reframe your savings psychology to dramatically improve success rates

✅ Why you should automate everything and ignore the news to become a more successful investor 

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DISCLAIMER:
This video is meant for educational purposes and should not be considered financial advice. When you invest your capital is at risk. Past performance is not a guarantee of future success.

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Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome back to the Money Gains podcast. Do you want to know what to do when the stock market crashes, or maybe does it even matter? Joining me is bestselling author Andrew Craig. Andrew, welcome back to the show.

Speaker 0:12

Lovely to be back. Thank you very much for having me.

Speaker 1 0:14

I think you're like fast becoming our favourite podcast guest.

Speaker 0:17

I don't believe that for a moment.

Speaker 1 0:18

Well, your episodes are number one and number two out of the most listened on the whole Money Games podcast history.

Speaker 0:25

I had genuinely had no idea. That's that's very cool.

Speaker 1 0:28

Followed up by third by Aaron Knightley, who I believe you know as well.

Speaker 0:31

Who I did a podcast with the other day. Yeah that's awesome. That's also really cool that Aaron's number three. Yeah. Because A, because that's really good that he's number three, and B, because I can call him and say that I'm number one and number two.

Speaker 1 0:41

He did ask why he wasn't number one, and when I explained it, he he pretended to be fuming and then went fair enough.

Speaker 0:47

Begrudgingly said, all right. Yeah. That's the menu. I genuinely, that's really cool. I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 0:51

Yeah, because I I I think just to give the listeners a flavour, if you haven't tuned into any of the other episodes with Andrew, like you have just this innate knowledge about the UK and equally the stock market, and I think it just comes across so well. Like people just gravitate to you. Obviously, the books that you've got come out as well. Right, mate.

Speaker 1:11

Also immensely angry about it all, and getting emotional always helps fewer numbers, doesn't it?

Speaker 1 1:15

Well, yeah. We'll get juicy today. There's some real good questions.

Speaker 1:20

There's a lot to be angry about. There's a lot, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:22

No, absolutely. But I think let's start with somewhere where we can kind of get a grasp, which will lead us nicely into this. And obviously, we've gone through quite a turbulent free few months, Mr. Orange Man doing his toys out the pram and doing what he needs to have done to Liberation Day.

Speaker 1:39

Exactly. Very well.

Speaker 1 1:40

Beautiful bill. But it's been a lot of noise and it's been amplified massively recently. And I think it can scare newer investors immensely when they're seeing these types of things and they're seeing these drops happen. Um, in your opinion, how do you get through the noise as an investor?

Speaker 1:58

Yeah, I mean that so you well know that one of my big things is to ignore the news. Like learning how to ignore the news is a really, really important skill in investment. But that also comes back to something I talk about a lot, which is the really critical difference between investing and trading. And so, what I'm all about, what my books are all about, what I try to get across in these sorts of podcasts is that investing is for everyone. And investing is something you do like every month, forever, for your whole life, for ideally at least 20 years. And the longer you do it for, the richer you're likely to be. It's quite easy. You know, there are some really formulaic things you can do. You can figure out how to how to do that quite easily. And I always say it's it's you know, as an example of that, it's no harder than learning how to drive a car, which I bore on about all the time. It's like everybody learns how to drive a car. You know, 42 million British adults have got a driving license. I reckon fewer than 400,000 British adults genuinely know how to drive their finances, and they probably take about the same amount of time to learn one or other of those things. And if you invest, not trade, and if you learn those really, really fundamental things around what the main asset classes are, how to use them, it's something you do every month from the minute you earn any money you can and you can scrape together any kind of spare cash. And if you do that as an as a sort of bolted on guilt edge to discipline in your life that you do no matter what, from when you're you know 20-something to ideally 60 something, truly all the noise around Trump and tariffs and what Rachel Reeves is doing, and you know, tragedies like this, you know, the we've just had a plane crash for the first time in a while, you know. Not that that would affect financial markets particularly, but you know, Iran Iran and Israel overnight, right? The the lesson of two centuries or more of history of capital markets is that you've got to ignore all of that stuff. Because the way you mitigate that is just by getting the mix of your investments right. So if you're investing every month into the right mix of investments, age appropriately and risk appropriately, which, as I say, learning how to do that is no harder than learning how to drive a car. Then when the orange man stands up and talks about, you know, big beautiful bills or whatever else, genuinely it's not a bad impression. Thanks, man. You can you can just stick your fingers in your ears. Yeah. Glad I said ears there. Um, and uh and just ignore all of that, um, genuinely, because it you know, this is what I always talk about. If you invest for the very long run, if you ignore the news, if you automate your investments and if you basically know what you're doing, and then the final piece of the drugs jigsaw puzzle that I know you know about is that kind of eight. So if you use this thing called a hundred minus your age, it basically means that when you're 30, 100 minus your age is how much you should have in riskier, aggressive, more aggressive, higher return stuff, which is basically the stock market or crypto, uh a little bit in crypto. Yeah, but but stuff that's riskier and higher return. So when you're 30, 100 minus your age means you should have 70% of what you're investing every month into something aggressive, and when you're 70, you should only have 30%, because obviously the older you get, the closer you are to retirement, the more you want to preserve any money that you've built. And that's really important to understand. But once you've understood those things, whatever's on in the news just shouldn't shouldn't affect how you invest. And and you know, the classic example again this year with Liberation Day. So I can't remember what was the the SP was down like eight or ten percent in a couple of trading sessions, whatever it whatever it sunk to, yeah, and it's basically back again. Now that's not to say it won't be, you know, I'm actually quite bearish US equities with my trading hat on. Um again, the fact that I'm bearish US equities, I think they're overvalued, I think there's probably downside on all the estimates about earnings, but that shouldn't change your investing, like thinking along those lines. Um, but if you're if you're making shorter term uh trades, you know, intra year or over a course of a few months, which you might be doing, then then you do need to think about those things. Yeah. That's a very long and rambly answer, as usual.

Speaker 1 5:48

That's really, really important. Because I think what a lot of people think is that this crash is different to the last. And so the world's gonna end but in a different way today.

Speaker 5:58

Well, it's like it is, and the other thing people get wrong, which which comes to all of this, is you see this meme a lot. I've seen it on LinkedIn like literally the last week or so, is so well, in nine after the 1929 crash, yeah, the US stock market didn't get back to the same level until I think it's 1957, but it's like, you know, a a whole uh a generation, right? It was it didn't get back to the same and the same Japan. Japan in 1987 when the the Emperor's Palace was theoretically valued at more than the whole state of California, was how crazy um the Japanese stock market and property market got in the late 80s. The Japanese stock market didn't get back above the 1987 level until a few years ago, right? But that totally that doesn't matter, that's irrelevant because that that doesn't matter to you if you're buying every month for the whole of your life, right? Because if if if the stock market crashed in if you had investments in 1929 and the stock market crashed, but you bought it every month from 1930, 1931, 1932, then the fact that it didn't get back to above the 1920 level, like uh 29 level until 1957 doesn't matter because you've made money all the way up from the bottom over 30 years. And that's what again, that's that's really basic stuff, but it's what people don't understand and they're constantly thinking about the aggregate levels of the stock market and and also you know about whether now is a good or bad time to invest. Well, you just shouldn't think like that at all for investing for trading is different, but you know, I I as I think you also know, I always talk about the fact that investing is appropriate for every single person who uh earns any money, like fact, and and it will be life-changing if people do it, and it will be country changing if tens of millions and more people do it here. Yeah, trading is probably only appropriate for like 0.1% of the population because it's hard. If that, yeah, well exactly. It's it's like and it's insane. Like I I reckon that being a really good trader is at least a degree's worth of knowledge, yeah, possibly even a PhD's worth to be really good, yeah, um and be able to do it in a few, you know, and all this stuff about you can do it in a few minutes a day. It's like, yeah, if you've been practicing for 20 years, you can do it in a few minutes a day, but if you're just starting off, you probably can't. And and there are all sorts of other things you could be doing with your life, either things that will make you happy, like hanging out with your kids or you know, your friends or whatever, or if you are an ambitious person, you care about you know being financially successful and stuff, the ROI, the return on investment of your time, which is your most valuable asset, of getting better at your job and getting a bonus, yeah. Particularly if you're all you know getting a pay rise or moving to a better job, whatever, will almost certainly be better than all of the time spent messing about looking at screens and trying to figure out how to trade crypto or foreign exchange. But I get on my high horse about this quite a lot.

Speaker 1 8:39

No, you do, and but rightly so, excuse me. Um and what I will say as well is like we had Rob Dixon. I know you're a big fan of he talks about the um the the the gentleman's name escapes me, but the the guy talks about the three buckets of wealth and the fact that we spend way too much time in the bottom buckets and middle buckets where we should be thinking about the ways to build the business, increase the income, so we can feed the buckets below a lot quicker.

Speaker 9:04

Because I just gave Rob a quote for that book for the seven myths of money. Yeah, I hope it's called the seven myths of money. It's not like the nine myths. No, that would be really embarrassing. I read your book and I gave it a great view, and I can't remember the name of the book. But no, and yeah, and I'm embarrassed because I uh can't remember who that was either.

Speaker 1 9:17

But his name's Ashvan Ashfan Ashwan or Ashfin or something, something like that.

Speaker 9:22

It might come back to our we should probably move swiftly on because anyway.

Speaker 1 9:25

I'll leave a link to it. The the paper's really interesting, it's a one-pager, but it nails it. And he was like, we spend far too much time obsessing about our savings accounts.

Speaker 9:34

Yeah, and how we invest.

Speaker 1 9:36

4.6% versus 4.5% interest rates. Whereas if we spend exactly that amount of time, how can I actively increase my income?

Speaker 9:44

Well, and an example of that I use it, um I've I can't remember which of my books but I talk about is like the sort of you know, you even see like um adverts for EDF or British Gas, whatever, like the standard like dad getting their kids to put jumpers on and turning the heating down. And one of the points I make is like all the time spent messing around to try and all the time spent online trying to save like 45 quid on your car insurance or whatever, which people some people spend hours, right? And hats off to what's his name, Martin Lewis and the price comparison websites and all that, that's all good because that's made a lot easier. But you know, when I was growing up, my dad's generation up. Yeah, yeah, to f exactly, and people would spend people who would spend untold hours trying to sh, you know, take coupons to Sainsbury's or whatever, and if they'd spent less time than that on just learning a bit about investment, 20 years later, the the the person worrying about saving a little bit of money here and the person who spent that time learning about how to invest will literally be there, will probably be a six-figure difference. So I think it's another thing we should you know sort of teach people is it's it's like the 80-20 rule, right? You know, you get 80% of your outcomes from 20% of your focus and focus on investment a lot more than on so you know it's important to budget and it's important to kind of be in control of how of your expenditure.

Speaker 2 10:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10:55

Um, and actually on on that, another thing I like to talk about a lot is this idea of reframing, which is like so one of the when when you sort of you know, the standard thing that people like you or I say to our communities is like you've got to save at least 10% of what you earn every month, and a lot of people are like, Well, how do I do that? Yeah, um, and you know, I it's it's definitely true that when you're young, it's much harder, you know, but as as you get older and hopefully you make more income, but but also it there's this there's this psychological trick which kind of sounds like nonsense, but it actually is academically and empirically proven to work, which is what psychologists call reframing, which is basically if you think I need to save 10% of my income, you're not putting any infrastructure on that. It's kind of an amorphous kind of number that you've plucked out of thin air, 10%, 15%. If you actually want to achieve that, the way you achieve it is by sitting down and going, I earn X, and I'm gonna work out how to spend 90% of X every month, and then that leaves the 10%. Yeah. And and although it sounds like glass half full, glass half empty, and kind of like nonsense, the the evidence is that it works because then you you actually do considered spending. You actually you like you actually you actually and also it's kind of a non- it's kind of a with an abundance mentality without wanting to sound too sort of Californian and cheesy, it's like I get to spend 90% of money on stuff I love, and then you actually think quite deeply about what I love and what I want to spend it on, and what how do I spend on rent or mortgage or whatever, and what it then spits out is this automated 10% rump that's left every month, and that that's I've sort of gone down a rabbit hole of things. But that's but I think that's a really important reframe that that actually works to get people that outcome.

Speaker 1 12:35

Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's uh equally as well as your income increases, the more that you can stick at that 90% from your original salary.

Speaker 12:44

Well, ideally, well, ideally, so so there's a great book, I'm sure you know it, the uh Richest Man in Babylon, which is written by George S. Klass. And it's kind of weird, it's like written in like archaic language. I think it was published in 1926. And his original thing was like, you know, from the Babylonian fables or whatever. The sort of how to, you know, the truths of money that have been true for like thousands of years, allegedly, right? According to this slightly weird, archaic book. Yeah. Um it's a very good book, yeah. It is a good book. But um, and it's basically the idea is a third, a third, a third, which is like a third is your the roof over your head, a third is kind of your must spend, you know, food, whatever, and a third is to save and invest. And you say that to people now, they're like, What? Like, are you kidding me? Well, they've had the 50, 30, 20s now, yeah, and fit and the and this I literally just wrote about this in my latest book, and it's like um the one that hasn't been published yet, which is for under 30s, so that's why I'm addressing all this stuff. It's coming out later this year. But like the reason that a third, a third, a third has become 50, 30, 20 is very simply because structurally property prices are much higher. Yeah, because interest rates are much lower. So even as recently as 20, 30, well, certainly 40 or 50 years ago, before America came off the gold standard, actually, which I know we were we had a chat about earlier. Um, when property prices are structurally lower, people you know, most people in Britain in the 50s, 60s, and historically for a long time before that, could realistically do a third or third or third. But now if you're in your 20s and you're in London, there's no way you can do a third or third or third. And and that's kind of that's okay. But to your point about as you get older and richer, you know, it one of the tragedies is people who do progress in their career and do really well spend all the marginal gain, which is which actually is you know, you're not making any proper forward progress. And the the the better thing to do is try and lift that 10% to 15% and then 20% if you can, if you're lucky enough to have the sort of career where you do get paid more over time. Yeah. Which, you know, a fair number of people do, right?

Speaker 1 14:36

No, 100%. I mean, that's exactly like how I've managed to build you know a decent pot in a short space of time.

Speaker 14:43

I just stayed at a level and just that's what I find really weird. It's like, so you know, I'm 50 or I'm nearly 50. I'm 50 on the 12th of July, if anybody wants to wish me happy birthday. Fair play. Um, yeah, and and it's like I genuinely, other than the fact that I've got two kids, most of my expenditure today is is it's no different to what it was when I was 25.

Speaker 1 15:05

Really? Yeah, I mean like maybe that's gonna be just the things you spend on us like.

Speaker 15:10

Well, I was gonna say maybe it's because I was quite highly paid and where some I should shut up and tell you something. But no, I mean, you know, without without wanting to sound like an arse, you know, I don't need to have anything particularly more luxurious now at 50 than I did, you know, when I was younger. So and I think if you can manage that, then that could be really helpful as 100%.

Speaker 1 15:29

100%. Um, you're a massive part of the global index crowd. You mean you have a book about it, um, which is one of my favourite books of all time, by the way. I'll happily say that. If you haven't read that book, How to Own the World, it is incredible. Um everyone, when I have you on the show, I get tons of messages being like, that's my favourite finance book. Amazing. Um so if you haven't read that, definitely go and read it.

Speaker 16:46

Well, you're so but the new so the new one that I literally just submitted to my publisher in February, it's coming out for Christmas, is How to Own the World Before You're 30. Nice, and the and so we actually it was originally going to be How to Own the World for Teenagers. It was gonna be called like How to Own the World for Smart Teenagers and Young Adults, and then in writing it, I realized that I'm actually not the best person to write a book for teenagers, sort of for struggling slightly to do that. Um, but also just we realised kind of actually younger people well, trying to teach teenagers is probably a bit too is premature because they really aren't that interested in it, but maybe something in that somebody in their early 20s or mid-20s, it's actually now that's at the point where you really need to get this stuff sorted and learn about it. So we've done that, and and what has ended up happening is although it's still called How to Own the World before you're 30, it's a it's basically an amalgamation of how to own the world, my second book, Live on Nest, Invest the Rest, and all the other stuff I've sort of figured out and written about in blog pieces or you know short videos about in the last few years, all kind of synthesized together and put in in the one book. So hopefully, you know, if you like that one, lots of people like this new one. And if you're 35, it's still really good, by the way.

Speaker 1 17:54

I'm sure there's a lot that crosses over, right? Because there's a lot of 35-year-olds that are probably still in their 20s and their heads or in their finances.

Speaker 18:00

As I said, I'm 50 and I'm definitely still in my 20s in my head. Me too, mate.

Speaker 1 18:04

So yeah, I'm definitely a big kid. But obviously, the crux of it is global index funds investing, right, in a in a in a nutshell. Um you posted the other day about it, and I I I found it really interesting. Um, it may have been a repost of someone's, but what they said in there was that um the MSEI world is now 73% US equities and growing. Um and yeah, I think the the uh the Vanguard VWRP is 66% now. That's a significant chunk of of this purchase that you're making with your £100 or your £500 or whatever that might well be. That's a large concentration in one particular country, but then equally a large part of that is the magnificence of seven.

Speaker 18:46

Exactly.

Speaker 1 18:46

Does it worry you in any way? And is there anything we should be keeping an eye on with that?

Speaker 18:51

So it goes it goes back to the 80-20 point again, right? What worries me far more for the average person is they don't invest.

Speaker 1 18:57

Right.

Speaker 18:58

So the first thing is you've got to be investing, right? And then the next thing is if you own a big stock market index and you buy every month for many years of your life, you've got a very good chance of getting a life-changing result. You know, if you do that, the outcome will be immeasurably better than if you don't do that. And it will actually probably be the difference between being quite well off and probably being very poor, because no government in the world is going to be able to fund, you know, anybody who's we've talked about this before, but if you're 30 today, by the time you're 60, there will not be a pen. Or the you know, the pension today is already effectively meaningless, and by then because of all sorts of structural reasons, which the you know, up net of the sort of futurologists' vision of um AI and machine learning and robots, and you know, that there is a small chance that we're going towards a sort of Buck Rogers Star Trek future where everybody's wealthy because technology's delivered that, right? But you don't want to risk the fact that that's not what happens. You need to make damn sure you're gonna be okay. And the only way to do that is to take ownership of this and invest. So and the point I wanted to make is so basically if you look at any big index, so we're we've we've thrown these numbers around before, but you know, the US equity's done north of 10% annualized for a century, right? And the reason for that is because a century ago there was no aviation industry. You know, it's it's real, it's human progress, it's real economic growth. The reason that capital markets go from bottom left to top right is because of actual tangible human progress, new inventions, bigger population, you know, or a richer population. Um money in the system as well. Yeah, and that and that's why is that gonna stop? The only thing that will stop that is nuclear armageddon, or in which case you might as well have invested anyway. Yeah. That's an asymmetric bet. Like not investing because Iran and Israel might nuke each other and we might all die next week. Is why would you live your life that way? That's just a stupid thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So you might as well invest anyway. And and so then I think if you overthinking, like if you've done that thing, if you've got okay, I'm gonna sort this out, I'm gonna invest every month in a big global equity index from my tw from whenever I can afford it in my 20s for the rest of my life as a guilt-edged life habit. Whether or not you there's concentration risk, and you know, it's like it's it's much less important than the fact that you've done it. But then the way you can mitigate that concentration risk as you get older and more successful, you know, more sophisticated with the with your money and hopefully a bit wealthier and you've built capital, and let you know, you can probably do that thing of just having a global index from 20 to 40 with it, and at least you know you've done a good job, right? But then if you're 40 and you've actually got quite a big pot of money, and to my point earlier about 100 miles, your age, you're starting to worry about the return of your money more than the return on your money, because it would be tragic to suffer from a massive stock market crash. It's at that age that you, and also you've got a bit more time on your hands, you're maybe a bit smarter, you've read a bit more, you understand this stuff a bit more. Um, you might at that point start thinking about those nuanced considerations like concentration risk and figuring out how to mitigate those risks, which is really easy because you could do something like have half of your money in an equal weight stock market index. So to explain what that is, let's use the FTSE 100. So there are 100 companies in the in the FTSE, and if you have a market cap weighted thing, that means you don't, you don't, if you put X amount of money, you don't get 1% in each of the 100 companies, you get 10% in the two or three biggest companies, and then 0.1% in the very smallest companies. That's market weighted. Yeah. And you can do that with the SP 500 as well. But if you buy an equal weight one, you take out that concentration risk because now you do have one five hundredth of your money in each of the 500 companies. And you know, probably by the time within a few years' time, all of these sorts of um financial products will have developed even more and they'll be even better, and there'll be there's already these things called smart beta risk factories, yes, where you can buy things that have high dividend yields, or and you know, that might sound like you know, gobbledygook to somebody who doesn't know what's he talking about, factory TFs, and and that's fine, which is to get to my point, like do something, yeah, don't worry about that stuff. But uh, you know, keep it simple for now and grow and grow, and then and then further down the road, you know, am I worried about concentration risk? To be honest, I think if you own like the Vanguard or sorry, the um FTSE All World, which that has 4,000 stocks in that index, and I think the ETF that tracks it, the Vanguard ETF's got 3,640 years of good skills, yeah. That's good. Um exactly, so it's not the whole thing because it doesn't have all the microcaps in it, but that's still you're gonna capture the growth wherever it comes from. Um and then and then actually just to so it talks about factory ETFs and equal weight ETFs, you know. I would say that anybody who's a British national and like my age or older should be investing in active UK smaller companies, for example, because they used to shoot you know, smaller companies can do 15-16% annualized returns for decades, which is hugely transformative. If you put a small amount of your money in that, but they're not for like a 25-year-old who doesn't, you know, unless they're very sophisticated and very high earner. But but older folk might think about that. So if you you know, if if you've done a sort of fastest route from A to B, 80-20 thing of just global indices for your 20s and 30s, then all of those concerns about can concentration risk or any other like you know, also just general rebalancing, having some gold, having some bonds, having some whatever. Um, because you know, to be clear, how to own the world is about more than just owning, you know, it's about understanding all asset classes as well as just global equities.

Speaker 1 24:22

By the way, you know that I know of course, yeah. I I didn't mean to squash it down into the the crux of it, but like it's the start, right? Exactly. You know that. And and and you know, obviously a large part of those assets are already owned by the companies within the globality.

Speaker 24:35

And actually, I'm glad you said that because that's w uh was going to remind me the other point is like, okay, um, if all you want is a proxy on human progress, as that's what you're trying to do with investment, right? Because of that human progress point, um, you want financial exposure to the fact that humans make progress scientifically and whatever else, then the use of a big global index gives you that proxy. And actually, does it matter if Apple or Microsoft are American companies given how many hundred million iPhones they've sold outside of America?

Speaker 1 25:08

Yeah, true.

Speaker 25:09

I mean, what percentage of Microsoft's revenues and profits come from X US, right? And Visa, MasterCard, JP Morgan, you know, all McDonald's companies, right? I mean, exactly. So the concentration risk at the top of the SP 500, or and more broadly, by virtue of the fact that how big they are in the others, is is you're still owning the world, right? Yeah. Because those companies are all global and they all make money in China and the rest of Asia.

Speaker 1 25:35

You could say the exact same thing about the FTSE, right? Like it's a gl the FTSE 100, and especially it's like most of those companies are global businesses.

Speaker 25:44

Yeah, and the only the and the the reason that FTSE's had structurally low returns for a long well, there are a number of reasons, but one of them is just because the makeup, you know, the industry has older economy business. Older economy businesses. Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, so Trump's tariffs, for example, slammed AstraZeneca and Glaxo disproportionately, you know, although maybe not in the first few days. But you know, it's it's concerns about drug pricing and um uh and also because of what I know we've ranted about in the past, which is just Britain's had such bad capital markets policy now for like 30 plus years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That um that has we've basically had one and a half uh half of our pension assets, which is about one and a half trillion quid, have basically gone out of British companies, which has been bad for the FTSE 100, but it's been way worse for all the 2,000 other-ish companies on the London stock market, which basically have gone. Yeah. Um, and that's also a big part, and we can come onto this, but you know, I've gone on about this a lot in in the last year or so because it blew my mind it wasn't an electoral issue, and it blow it continues to blow my mind that very few people are talking about it. But a big part of the reason this country is in the predicament it's in is because we've just destroyed our our stock market. And people think, well, the stock market is just for a bunch of can I swear on the city boys cac on a bunch of wankers in the city, but you know, and it's like it's only relevant to rich people, it's only relevant. No, it's totally wrong. Like, you know, the stock market is where so I you know, I always use this example, but we raised all the money for EasyJet to buy its 737s. You know, how cool is it? EasyJet when we did the IPO in 2001 or 2002 was a tiny little business, and Polish people couldn't fly back to Poland, you know, you think about how many hundreds of ven of um destinations they have now, same with Ryanair, like the stock market. Without the stock market, that never would have never would have happened.

Speaker 1 27:30

Yeah, you couldn't fly to like Dubrovnik on a Thursday night. Exactly.

Speaker 27:34

And so that all of that real tangible economic growth, which has given you know billions of people, or certainly hundreds of millions of people, the freedom to travel more and go and see their loved ones or just to have a stag do in wherever and have fun, you know, whatever. That was engendered by raising a couple hundred million dollars on the stock market. And I'm telling you, if if Stellios was trying to do that today in London, he could not do it because we've destroyed so that's so think about think about at the moment all the things that the British economy is not doing, like we Pizza Express, you know, what love em or hate them, you know, parents of small children love Pizza Express because it you can go there and they shut up and eat dopals. Yeah, exactly. Right. Um it's pretty a cliche, a middle class cliche, but it's true. Um, you know, similarly, I don't think you could build Pizza Express if you started today in the in the currency in the British capital markets, and on and on, software companies, restaurant companies, travel companies, you know, it and it's it's one of the biggest kind of elephants in the room about why this country's in frankly economically screwed. And until we overturn that, turn it around, it will continue to be.

Speaker 1 28:41

There's always been the outflows for some time, which has kind of stemmed over both left and right, or Tory or red or blue, whatever you want to call it. It's not just uh Rachel Belly.

Speaker 28:52

The slow motion car crash started under Blair and Brown because they changed the tax treatments of dividends for pension funds, and then subsequently, yeah, under Tories, it's not a party political thing, it's under both regimes. And basically they just made it they made the London stock market less attractive from a regulatory and they made it really hard for big pension funds to put risk on, for example. Um, so then and it's all the thing is, you know, capital markets are about momentum. So if if if big American hedge funds know that British pension funds are going to invest less in British stocks, then they're more likely to get out of British stocks and then eventually start shorting British stocks. Right. And so it sort of trickle turns into a flood. And this is the thing that none of the politicians understand. So there's a there's an eye-watering stat, which is that so Gordon Brown, the Iron Chancellor, like the you know, what like the most seriously, probably the single least, the single most incompetent Chancellor in Britain until we had Rachel Reeves of the last 30 years. Um in terms of damaging people's livelihoods, yeah. Like, truly, so so changing the tax treatment of dividends on British shares is estimated basically raised about five billion quid a year of tax for the for the exchequer, and by now has cost Britain 500 billion pounds. Jesus easily priced so you five billion X. Yeah, five billion a year to rob the country of half a trillion, and that's how stupid these politicians are. And the the the unintended consequences of not understanding capital markets now they actually work because it's not just it's not just the sort of small damage that you do now, it's what happens to the momentum, and it's what then happens further. It's it's like the old um chaos theory, you know, a butterfly flaps its wings and there's a massive Hawaiian wave tsunami, or whatever. Exactly. And that's because this all sounds a bit spurious, but it's it's true. And like and the tragedy is there's I wonder if there are more than a few hundred or like low thousands of people who really, really understand this stuff, genuinely, and certainly there aren't any in Westminster, or there might be two.

Speaker 1 32:04

Yeah, you you'd like Y you would literally think that if you're allowed to be the Chancellor of the Extequer of this country that you would at least have had served in capital markets for a period of time. Like that should just be mandatory, like in my opinion. Minimum of five years.

Speaker 32:19

Or if you need or if you're going to be a business secretary, you should have been in business. Yeah. But well as I say, we I don't think we you you gave me the stat last time. It's like off the cabinet, there's like, yeah, not a single person who's ever worked in a proper private sector job. Yeah.

Speaker 1 32:31

And and the thing is like making decisions on behalf of CEOs.

Speaker 32:34

And we don't we don't want to get I don't I really don't like getting into politics because I try I try to make it irrelevant in my life. It's harder and harder to do that as a UK national.

Speaker 1 32:42

But when they make the call.

Speaker 32:44

When they make a call, which is it is ruinous to tens of millions of people's life experience and the likelihood that they will be okay, you know. Yeah, well and that's why that's what I'm talking about. And I'd I just I'd just written the article for the telegraph. Yeah. That that and I and well, that wouldn't sound like a smug wanker. Everything I wrote in the article. It's true. It's come true. Yeah. It's like it's like it's obvious. Anybody who's vaguely economic literate knows.

Speaker 1 33:14

Well, one of the big things you said with capital gains tax receipts would decrease, and they have by 10%. Um, which is one of the most maddening stats because and by the way, it's just the beginning. Yeah.

Speaker 33:26

Because like think about companies make planning companies plan things and high net worth individuals and funds and stuff. Takes time to move and change and open a new facility and you know make investments in Amsterdam instead of London or whatever else you can do. So you you the tr you're only seeing the trickle now. The flood will be three or four years from now, and it will be uh far, far worse than the stuff right now. It's just the beginning. Truly. And it's like well, it's only had a couple of months to really and you're already seeing 10%.

Speaker 1 33:54

Yeah. Yeah. That makes it from an entrepreneur's perspective. Like, why would you build the business to sell in the UK? Yeah.

Speaker 34:02

And that's why you're seeing, you know, but and that and actually I'd like to get into just a thing on that, is because there's a lot of obviously there's a lot of sort of rich hating, you know, Gary Stevenson and all these sort of stuff. Like the rich should just pay, like, screw it, or if they're going good riddance, you know, which is just so stupid. Yeah. It's like you're killing the golden goose. And you want to pay for the NHS and pay for everything else, you need billions of pounds. And if billions of pounds go elsewhere, you don't have them anymore, and you there's nowhere else to get them from. And by the way, we can come back to I just was scripting a thing about the bond market this morning. You know, the you there's taxes and there's bond market, and the but the bond market still, you know, guilt levels are back to well north of the trust crisis, and you know, it's worse now, and it's more expensive. The government's paying over a hundred billion dollars.

Speaker 1 34:46

I was gonna that was one of my questions for you was like, what the hell does this even mean? And why does the average person need to like go? Oh, that's a problem.

Speaker 34:54

I literally just posted a video I made about bonds explaining what they are again this morning that I've shot in January. So there's two videos, one that sort of really explains how bonds work, what they are, why they're important.

Speaker 1 35:05

On Plain English Finance.

Speaker 35:06

Yeah, on the Plain English Finance YouTube channel. And the other one is um like which is why magic money trees don't work. And you know what, and actually, the more governments raise money on the bond market structurally, the more wealth inequality there is. Yeah. And which is why it's one of the big kind of sort of fallacy, it's it's this sort of conventional wisdom gets it so wrong, is that ironically, the people who vote for more government, bigger government, more spending, more NHS, more whatever, and soak the rich, screw the rich, get the rich out? What that does is creates more wealth inequality. It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and then they and then the poor want more of it electorally because nobody understands this stuff. You know, John Maynard Kane says not one man in a million understands inflation, which is a bit punchy, there's only 8,000 people in the world who understand inflation, it's probably a bit toppy, but it seriously, how many people have a nuanced understanding? And I'll tell you something, a nuanced understanding of the bond market, Angela Rayner definitely does not have a nuanced understanding. I you know, I would I would surmise if I was a betting man, right? And but so but if you don't understand the bond market, how can you possibly have a view on how government should spend money? Because it's where government gets all its money from, especially in the margins, and it's also what is going to impoverish a country, or you know, if you if you run up like we've got a potential bond crisis brewing in the UK and America, but just just to get back, I just wanted to finish the point I was going to make.

Speaker 1 36:28

Yeah, I've got a good follow-on point from this.

Speaker 36:29

So but just so I do it's like this idea that 11,000, you know, 15,000, 11,000 millionaires left last year and however many thousand the year before. And there's this whole like, oh, you know, they're just wankers who want to go abroad because they don't want to pay tax. And I know a fair number of them personally, right? Um, from my career and from whatever else. And very few of them are actually, that's the problem. The problem is they just can't raise the money to do what they want to do entrepreneurially. That is at least as big a factor. Because if you if you have a vision and a plan and you want to do, I know, I know you've got some pretty funky entrepreneurial ideas coming. So, you know, you're gonna be in a similar boat. And but but it's like if you literally can't find the capital to open the restaurants or run or the hotel chain or build the software or have a computer gaming, you know, thing in Dundee, or whatever, whatever it might be. If you physically cannot, or as I I feel this acutely because I worked with biotech companies for 10 years, if you physically cannot raise the money in Britain, you have to go. And I I I don't know, of the 11,000, I don't know how many of them are rich old people who are just like being greedy, and how many of them are people who just are so frustrated that they cannot do business in this country.

Speaker 1 37:38

I'm sure there's some, but largely the other way, right?

Speaker 37:41

But then this is the bit that the Gary Stevensons of this world don't understand.

Speaker 1 37:45

Well, we did the calculations of this on a video, and it's nuts. So it's if or if the predicted amount of millionaires leave, which is 500,000 by 2028, I believe. So just a loan on someone earning the average UK salary, there'd have to be 9.8 million people earning that to cover the loss of what it already is, and we already don't have enough money because we're borrowing more. Yeah, exactly. So, like, that's the impact.

Speaker 38:12

We we are there it's almost certain, unless something really radical happens, that Britain is gonna have a massive, like 1970 style fiscal crisis in in this electoral term. Like this, I mean, you know, I wrote that article on Telegraph, everything I said in that article has happened. What is unbelievable, and it's literally like living in an Orwell novel right now, like, you know, 1984.

Speaker 1 38:32

We were talking about this the other day. Yeah.

Speaker 38:35

If you if you read Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves' tweets and Ed Milibram's tweets, it's like I mean I I couldn't resist replying to one of them this morning. Keir Starmer's like, you are either clueless or a liar. Like by definition, it's it has to be one of the things you're either economically literate or fundamentally dishonest. Because like it, by definition, it's one of those two things. Because what they're you know, we've saved the economy and we've done it's like, what are you talking about? What numbers are you looking at? Like everything is getting going from bad to worse. Yeah, we've lost half of our stock market listed companies.

Speaker 1 39:05

We have, we have. And I mean, I'd like to touch on this um change in borrowing rules because I think that that's like a big factor in understanding this a touch because they've had to increase the obviously government borrowing levels changing the rules, etc. But the only way to actually pay that back is either either by inflation or GDP growth.

Speaker 39:27

Yeah, well, that that's so to your point about what you know, why do people need to understand the bond market? And I was talking about the two videos, you know, I was explaining about so one of the videos is something the title is something like why governments have less ability to uh control interest rates than people realise. Because actually, interest rates, interest rates are set by trillions of dollars sitting with tens of thousands of investors all over the world in the in the bond market. They call them the bond vigilantes, they're more powerful than any government on earth, right? Um, and that by the way, that's not like a black rock vanguard puppeting Rothschild family spurious nonsense that everybody talks about. Um that's just that's just how capital markets work for hundreds of years. Um, and the point the point is that basically if the way you raise money on the bond market is by selling bonds, you know, and in order to be able to sell the bonds, people need to be willing to buy the bonds.

Speaker 1 40:16

Yeah, and they need to think they're valuable, right? Yeah, correct.

Speaker 40:18

And that's how and that is how interest rates are set. Yeah. Right? Because basically you you you you the the higher the lower the price, the higher the interest rate. So so if if if you can't encourage bond investors to buy your bonds at price X, you have to drop the price until they will buy them, right? Which means interest rates go up. Lower bond prices are higher interest rates. So so the the only way a government, if if if global bond investors don't want to buy British bonds, which are called GILT, right? So if they want to they desperately need to raise another hundred billion quid from selling GILT to Japanese investors and Saudi Arabian investors and American investors and German investors, the only way it like they have to price them at a level where those people are willing to buy them, right? And for a long time now, lots of big global investors will not buy them at a palatable interest rate. Because obviously, if you drop your price low enough and that makes the interest rate high enough, then what happens to everybody's mortgages? What happens to everyone's credit card debt? So you're stuck between this well, basically it's the rock and the hard price of high interest rates, or the alternative, which is what they do, which is QE, of inventing money out of thin air to buy your own bonds, because then you can keep the interest rate lower, right? And it and it I appreciate I'm sort of crapping on and this is all a bit technical.

Speaker 1 41:33

QE is quantitative easing. Quantitative easing. And so basically it's when money floods the system to buy your own bonds.

Speaker 41:40

The Fed or the Bank of England creates billions and billions of pounds to buy their own bonds to keep interest rates artificially low. To pay for things, yeah, exactly. And the the reason that is not it basically is the Hobson's choice, so you're rocking a hard place of either you're gonna have higher interest rates, everyone's mortgage screwed, the economy slows down, you know, we all know what higher interest rates mean, we should do, or inflation. Because if you invent money out of thin air, I've said it before, if there's twice as much money and only the same amount of stuff, the price of the price of stuff doubles. And that's that is what has been happening, yeah. You know, for 40 years, and it's just and it's now accelerating and getting worse because of the these policies. It's like if you if you just spend money that you don't actually create economically with real economic growth, and then you want to somehow you know you know the only way you can then raise money to to pay for that is is by taxation or the bond market. And obviously, Rachel Reeves is walking a tightrope of that at the moment. But this is the bit that drives me most mental about it, and why you know I'd encourage people to watch my videos explaining this because I'm not explaining it very well right now on the video, it's all scripted and structured. But the the the the thing that drives me most mental about it is truly that behaviour that creates inflation, that but that overboring that you know, we're not our interest payments are now north of a hundred billion quid a year, right? It's nuts, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And the and what does that do? It it means the cost of it it engenders the cost of income. It means pasta is 100% more expensive today than it was three years ago. It means eggs are way more expensive. It's like people are upset that their standard of living is terrible. And I understand that, but the answer is the opposite of what most people think it is. The answer is much less government, much less borrowing, not not tons of QE, not loads of inflation, and then people have better, genuinely higher, better living standards. And it's just it's a crazy feature of the modern age that both on both sides of the Atlantic, people are clamoring for more government, the government should do more, the government should have more money, the government should spend more money, but that directly impoverishes poor people. And by the way, as an addendum to that, it makes richer people richer because it's called the canceling effect, is the closer you are to that spigot, that fountain of money, i.e., investment bankers, people who own property, people who own shares, people who own gold, and now people who own Bitcoin, which is another topic. But basically, in an inflationary world where there's too much government, the rich get richer because they're asset rich, right? So it's like it's this weird situation where so much of the electorate are voting for policies that they don't realise will make the rich richer and their life worse. And that and that that's why we need fair, like sound money and and a sound money gives you a fairer society based on merit, basically. We haven't had that for 30 plus years.

Speaker 1 44:25

So so where do we go from here? Like, what's a simple fix? I mean, I'm at stringing.

Speaker 44:31

We have to emigrate mate. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, I mean, like I won't do that.

Speaker 1 44:34

Yeah, I can't do that. We our whole business.

Speaker 44:38

My daughter would kill me. She but my daughter when my daughter's seven and she has all these enemies, which are scorpions, spiders, snakes, yeah, scary animals. And as far as she's concerned, outside of the UK, all other countries are full of scary animals. Yeah, no, slightly depressing, given that I want to go on holiday.

Speaker 1 44:55

Yeah, I would like to go to Australia, please. Yeah, basically, it's very nice there. Um, but I think there's no there's no there's no like quick answer to fix it, right? But obviously, some sort of change into like I saw something around pension funds like half- Oh, so that's a mansion house accord.

Speaker 45:14

Yeah, yeah, I was at a conference on Tuesday discussing that. Um that is a that is a pretty controversial thing. So, I mean this basically goes to the point that I was saying a minute ago. So uh a generation ago, 50% of our pension, British pension assets, your pension, my pension, your parents' pension, whatever, 50% of that money, which is around three trillion quid, was in British shares. So we had a thriving stock market, we had loads of IPOs, and that's just I know you were going to come back to this, but whilst it pops into my head, you know, well, I'll finish the point. So 50% of our pension money was in UK shares. Today that number's about 2%.

Speaker 1 45:52

Yeah.

Speaker 45:53

So that's basically comfortably north of one and a half trillion quid that's gone out of the London stock. Outflows out of the London stock market. And so there's this chicken and egg thing, which I get very agitated about at the moment because people who don't understand capital markets are, well, British companies are just shit. You know, British companies are structurally crap compared to other companies, but the British stock market has underperformed for years. Why would I invest in the British stock market? Yes. I should invest in the American market.

Speaker 1 46:15

You get that when we talk about this all the time.

Speaker 46:17

And it's chicken and egg. It was like, if because we've had such bad policy for 30 years, that is the reason, though it's one of the reasons that British company British shares have underperformed because one of the key drivers of share prices is fund flows, right?

Speaker 1 46:32

Yeah, and entrepreneurial endeavors, right?

Speaker 46:35

But but and then they're chicken and egg, because if you are a British company and it's structurally much harder to raise money, you know, you're a British oil company, the American oil companies can kick your ass. If you're a British pharmaceutical company, the American pharmaceutical just come in and buy us now. And at the moment, we're on for sale. Now that has almost entirely been caused by policy. And just just just quit just quick. So, you know, Australia's one and a half percent of global stock markets, and something like 43% of Australian pension assets are in Australian companies. Yeah. You know, we are the only developed world economy in the world that's like massively underweight its own domestic companies in its domestic pension industry. That's been driven by politics and regulation and legislation, and it's the biggest because it's like I was saying earlier, we've shot ourselves in the foot in the most savage way through abject stupidity. Nobody understands it, it's not an it's not even an electoral issue, and crucially, this affects real people's lives in the real economy. It's why our high streets are now just tumbleweed, like my local high street, nine Turkish barbers. And I'm not saying anything negative. Our local high street. Oh, exactly. Right, yeah, I forgot that. Yeah, yeah. We need to you need to come around for a bit. But yeah, it it's insane. Up and down the land, we all know about this. It's like so many shops boarded up, you know, the local shopping centre is like it's like a third world country, and it's like that is genuinely related to what I'm talking about. And because so people care about capital markets, oh the sort of the city's just this. It's like, no, it's like absolutely where entrepreneurs go to raise money to do real things in the real economy, and they can't anymore. And so you're quite you know, how do we turn it around? The mansion house compact is is because there's been a lot of noise, obviously, from people who know about these things, saying, Well, Jesus, what are we gonna do? You know, we because I mean London's basically just disintegrating, like the London stock is just disintegrating. I mean, and I know we were talking about this earlier, but to give an example of that. So last year, the Omani stock market and the Malaysian stock market raised more in IPOs than London did, and India, I think I'm right in saying, raised 20 times what London did.

Speaker 1 48:46

20. Oh my god.

Speaker 48:47

Can you imagine? Can you imagine getting saying some somebody in 1960s London? Last year, Malaysia and Oman raised more money than the London stock. They think you're completely insane. But 50 years later, that's that's what's just happened, right? And it's all self-inflicted, and it drives me nuts. But so the Manchin House Compact is basically trying to address that and saying, okay, we have a problem, we need we need British pension funds to invest more in like British companies. Yeah. But it's there's a huge kind of smoking gun, white elephant, elephant in the room. Like there's my view on it is that they've so what they've done is they've got, I think it's 17 of the country's biggest pension funds to sign this piece of paper. They basically says we are committed to investing X percent of our billion hundreds and hundreds of billions of pounds in British companies. But what they're doing is they're focusing on private companies, like uh very uh VC and private equity, right? And they're not focused on the elephant in the room, which is the fact the fact that the London Stock Exchange used to have 3,250 companies 30 years ago, and now there's fewer than 1700, and we lost 90 last year and we lost three last week, as you know, right? Um and we're just they're just dying, they're falling like flies. And it's like, well, you've got to worry a little bit about regulatory capture. So that is that Rachel Reeves at Al have gone around the city going, what should we do about this? and get and all the VC and PE fund managers have gone, well, why don't you why don't you give us and you know VC and PE, for people who don't really know that venture capital and private equity are opaque, you know, they're much less transparent. They pay the people who run the money a lot more than people who work in the pavement of the snot market. A few of my friends are right, they have huge tax benefits. Yeah, it's also currently massively over levered. There's there all this in the news about the fact that the existing PE funds are struggling. So this does look like yet again like politicians listening to the wrong to me, the wrong voices and folk and putting all that money paying the mates. Yeah, I wouldn't say paying their mates, I just think they've had the wool because I don't think Rachel Reese is particularly good friends with any PE people, you know, they come from very different worlds. But I just think that I think they've gone and asked.

Speaker 1 50:55

They've gone and asked We've got the solution. Well, it's like that oh you've got the solution, great. Correct.

Speaker 50:59

And it's like, and no, and nobody gets fired. It's the old nobody gets fired for buying IBM sort of thing.

Speaker 1 51:04

It's like you the so Rachel Reeves, rabbit in the headlights, yeah, he says, Oh, yeah, nobody gets fired for hiring McKinsey. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 51:13

Yeah, but uh who, by the way, um had loads to do with Enron and WorldCom, which gets talked about very little. There's a classic, so Harvard's um MBA program um is quite famously. This they used case studies, so all the students study like in great depth, like great businesses. And I think I'm right in saying in like the year before Enron, um, which for younger viewers might not know is like one of the biggest bankruptcies and the counting scandals of 20 years of all time. Yeah, um, but yeah, Harvard's MBA program, like the year before Enron did an Enron, Enron was like one of their case studies, like an example of like one of the best. So like everybody with a Harvard MBA is like I got a Harvard MBA, and it's like you've just studied Enron as like the best company in the world, it's now bankrupt. Great. I shouldn't slag off Harvard, I'd probably like to go there one day.

Speaker 1 52:01

No, yeah, I'd have a look round. I wouldn't take uh take anything as a piece of pin to sort really from there about now. But you've mentioned the closings of some big companies. I mean, in fintech alone, wise this week. Probably one of the biggest. I was really disappointed to see that. Yeah, well, and Revolute.

Speaker 52:18

They have no joy, and I think I said to you last time. So obviously, I've been focused on biotech for 10 years. That's what my last book was about. And of 14 British biotech companies to float on a stock exchange since 2018, 12 of them did it overseas. And so Britain, British intellectual property, British science is basically utterly foundational to the whole biotech industry, which last year was valued at five and a half trillion dollars. Yeah.

Speaker 1 52:45

If you add up all the actually that's because we have the best life sciences divisions in the entire world.

Speaker 52:50

So Cambridge University alone has won 27 Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine and another tons in Cambridge University.

Speaker 1 52:55

I'm sure loads of Americans will come for me about that, but it's true. Well, in my opinion.

Speaker 52:59

Per capita, Britain, uh Israel is ahead of Britain, but Britain's like per capita, and Oxford and Cambridge are insane out performers of all this stuff, right? And it's like, but our company formation and value creation lags the United States by trillions of dollars, not billions of dollars, trillions of dollars. And so it's like Wise is just, you know, wise is a tech company, Revolutes tech company, um, arm holdings tech company, you know.

Speaker 1 53:24

We can see it there, but in life sciences, we're the they're the they're the shiny ones, right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 53:29

Exactly. But people know about that a bit more than about like some esoteric company trying to cure pancreatic cancer coming out.

Speaker 1 53:36

Equally important, but not as yeah, newsworthy until they cure the but it is crazy that I mean, yeah, it just blows my mind we've got into this predicament.

Speaker 53:47

Like how how it is that because because like you know, with without wanting to sound too sort of you know, British bulldog, whatever, like we invented these things. You know, that basically the Dutch and the British invented the stock market. Yeah, and Johnson's coffee shop, and uh and without and and you know, this is the there's a lot of controversy about the empire and stuff, and obviously the empire was not perfect, and there are lots of things to say about that, but but but put it this way, it you know, the British Empire would not have been possible without the city of London and stock markets. And if you want to be slightly less controversial, just look more generally for sort of human flourishing and the development of us as a species. A point I make quite often is look at when capital markets were invented and look at what we have achieved as a species since then. I think that's another thing that's really poorly understood and why this stuff's so important.

Speaker 1 54:36

And yeah, because I I think a lot of people just see the stock price as a stock stock price, but actually what it is is the capital inflow into businesses to allow innovation.

Speaker 54:44

All it is, so it is a technology that enables human beings to to share risk.

Speaker 1 54:51

Yeah.

Speaker 54:51

To pool resources. So basically, any like the silicon chip, AI, smartphones, aeroplanes, like every and any bloody exciting, cool thing, football stadiums, you know, like what movies, like you couldn't have um Marvel 200 million dollar movies or tune or what exactly, and and it's and it's like it's just a technology that enables us to produce these pieces of paper called shares or bonds to share risk and enable human beings to do to concentrate enough capital and enough resource on delivering a product or a service or something that we otherwise would not be able to do because no single person could, you know, there's just a structure that facilitates that. And so without that technology, without the technology of money and the technology of capital markets, we would all still be farmers, we would all still have shit clothes, we would not have toilet paper or toothpaste or paracetamol or truly. And this is what really shits me about this whole people don't understand that element of this, they just think of this though, you know, because nobody really studies it and nobody really knows about it. Um, but that's how important it is. Yeah, it for few for human flourishing, and I and I think you know it's a it's a real shame that we've allowed our stock market to die.

Speaker 1 56:11

So we're at this point. Yeah, we've got here.

Speaker 56:13

This is a really depressing discussion.

Speaker 1 56:15

It's always it's always well I like can we see like uh well I to be honest with you, you know, I thought that in Brexit and then then we're here.

Speaker 56:24

But is there any light at the end of the tunnel?

Speaker 1 56:26

Yeah, because like you know, we've had the likes of Larry Fink. I know you posted about this actually, and other major like investors all around the world be like, the UK looks pretty pretty juicy.

Speaker 56:38

So that I'm really glad you asked that and brought it up and reminded me because that's right. So there so there are two sort of sources of hope. Um one is really fundamental, and that is I always go back to is that always throughout history, the thing that has sorted us out time and time again is technological development. And it's kind of like, you know, the this the cyclical thing of terrible economy, terrible politicians, terrible policy, everything's rubbish. You know, it was like that in the 70s, right? And then it got a lot better, and then it and now it's getting a lot worse again. That's that's that cycle, that's that big cycle, and you know, whether you want to talk about labor or Tories or whatever. Well, yeah, and and it's particularly bad. I think structurally it's particularly bad now because there's a point they're making about the stock market. I mean, that's it, it's it's really bad. But that cycle happens and there's kind of nothing we can do about it, but but but structurally, over time, like I was saying earlier, you know, a hundred years ago nobody could afford to fly. In the 1950s, a television cost a year's salary, you know. The idea of a smartphone in 1995 was worth so to bring together the component tree to make a smartphone in in the mid-90s was just about possible, like at DARPA or you know, the US government. A few hundred pounds. No, it's a hundred million. A hundred million one smartphone would have cost a hundred million quid to put together. That's the power of exponentials. And now we've seven billion people in the world have bought a smartphone or we've made seven billion of them. Wow. So that so it's that exponent, and I this is what I just wrote about in my most recent book, Our Future is Biotech, is that linear development of scientific progress could deliver tons of wealth, solve tons of human problems. I think biotech's gonna, you know, agricultural um revolution, much better productivity, rolling back environmental degradation, you know, curing disease. There's a whole load of really cool stuff that could happen. So that that will potentially come to save us. In terms of specifically in Britain at the moment, which so we were talking earlier, and I've written about this. There's a big difference. One of the rookie mistakes a lot people make is they think that Main Street and Wall Street are related. Oh, there's a recession, that means there'll be a stock market crash. Oh, there's COVID, that means there'll be a stock market crash. They aren't. It's like, and it's amazing how many talking heads and like professional investors and journalists forget this. Like, you know, and a really quick example of that COVID in in March 2000, when COVID was, you know, at its peak and people were dying on ventilators and it was on the news every day. If you'd said to the average person, do you think it's a good idea to invest in the stock market now, what would they have said? Like 99% of people said, Are you fucking kidding? Like, no, right? It was fantastic times to invest. Yeah. And so what tends to happen is because capital markets are as much about valuation as they are about what's happening in the economy, and those are very different things, and they can be very dislocated over many years. And capital markets tend to what's called discounts. So these basically big investors start buying a massively bombed-out market actually quite a few years before it recovers. Because when it recovers, it moves really far, really fast, and you make hundreds of percent, right? Yeah, yeah. Nobody can guarantee they get that right, but that's kind of how it works, and you see evidence that massive.

Speaker 1 59:35

You try and time it, you try and get in when it's like it could it could potentially go lower, but it's already low.

Speaker 59:40

Yeah, that's right. And they some people call that trying to catch a falling uh a falling knife, right? Because you can hurt yourself because it will go lower. Yeah, but that but as a data point on on the on UK capital markets, so um there's so Bank of America, it used to be Merrill Lynch, one of the big investment banks, does this survey of the world's biggest investors basically every month. They publish every month, and I think I'm right in saying is from Brexit until February of this year, every single month, I think I'm right in saying, it might not quite be, but it's certainly the broad gist of what I'm saying is right. The UK stock market was the most unloved stock market in the world by professional investors in Zurich and Singapore and Boston and LA and you know the world, right? And in February, it was still the most unloved stock market in the world. And in March, it's or it was either it was either March and April or February and March, it doesn't matter, but in the last three months, um, it swung from being the least loved to being the most loved. Yeah, and it's just happened. And actually, if you look at value, FTSE value has outperformed the SP for quite a while now, AIMS just bounced a long way, the the alternative investment management uh market, the smallest bit of the London Stock Exchange. So even though it's awful, and even though companies are dropping light for a lies, and then you've got this mansion house compact thing that's I said that I was sort of slanging it off earlier because I do think it's too focused on V C and P stuff, but a small amount of it is focused on aim stocks, um, and so that's still going to be quite a few billion quid. So there's a chance that UK shares will bounce and it will get better before the economy recovers because again, there's a little like behind it or always. Yeah, but whether that means that an entrepreneur with a great idea for a company like like we were using as officers, like a restaurant group, like you know, up and down the land, wouldn't it be nice if there were a few more cool restaurant groups where people have raised money in the stock market and rather than dying high streets with tumbleweed and barber shops, you know? Um and for that you need a thriving stock market where people can go and raise money to do stuff like that. Or for any other economic activity, whatever it might be, but hopefully there's a chance that because when the stock market bounces and valuations go up exactly as that trickle turns into a flood point in reverse, positively. Yeah, and it also just means that if value if if the stock market level goes up in aggregate. Valuations are higher, that means it's easier to raise money without diluting yourself as much, which is a bit of a technical point. But people entrepreneurs could raise more money at a better valuation, it's more compelling.

Speaker 1 1:02:15

One of the things I saw as well recently, it might have been you. Um basically go down LinkedIn rabbit holes and quite often. Sorry about that. Quite often it's something you've reshared and then on that person's page going through all their posts. Um the was say Rachel Rees putting a £3,000 when a child is born into UK.

Speaker 1:02:37

So that so uh somebody in our community, um so I've written in my books about how it's sort of cheesy example, but it's kind of like a Trump's thousand dollar thing, isn't it?

Speaker 1 1:02:50

Similar.

Speaker 1:02:51

Well, do you mean uh the checks in COVID?

Speaker 1 1:02:54

No, he he's he come out saying that he's gonna put a thousand dollars when a day a child's born in the US. Oh, I didn't know about that.

Speaker 1:03:02

He's obviously been reading my LinkedIn post, but but but basically for five thousand quid that I'd always use this example to sort of um explain the power of compounding and how insane it is we have a pensions crisis and people are poor, right? Because five thousand quid invested in an investment the day a child is born in a tax-free account like junior ice or whatever. Um after 55 years, at the same rate of return that the US stock market has factually delivered for a century, 10-ish percent, the kid would have 945 grand with no further investment, literally just just five grand day one. Year two, five thousand five hundred, year three, six thousand um and one hundred and twenty-five, whatever I've got that wrong, six thousand and fifty, or whatever it is anyway. I can't that's embarrassing. We'll come back, let's scratch that bit out of the two.

Speaker 1 1:03:47

We'll put it on screen.

Speaker 1:03:48

But but the point is if you do that for 55 years, they have 945 grand. Now that's a little bit disingenuous because you have to inflation adjust that, right? Because the 945 grand 55 years later is not going to be worth the same, but it's still probably a real return of 15x. Okay. So um having made that example, and I've talked about that example in lots of podcasts and in some of my books and pieces, somebody came to me and said, you know your five grand example. So there are 600,000 live births every year in the UK for three billion quid, which is a drop in the ocean compared to the hundred billion of interest we're paying or what we spend on the NHS or and and and right, for only three billion quid, the government could get every child in this country five grand the day they're born in a tax-sheltered account. Now, if you think about this as a policy, it's genius. Like I think it really is genius. And uh it's not my idea, it was suggested by one of the community and I've forgotten his name, forgive me. Um William Painter, perhaps. But anyway, brilliant idea. So if you then made that a tax-free account that is untouchable until the 55th birthday, so it's kind of sits there, but you can top it up, so that's the same as a pension. Like a junior set almost. Yeah, exactly. And then but that all of that money was earmarked for only UK smaller company equities, which have which for from 1955 to 2021 return 16% a year, more than 16% a year. Now let's assume you return 12% a year. Well, 10 years later you'll have 30 billion quid in those, which is a huge that's like half of the market cap of AIM right now. So, you know, but within a few, you're 3 billion, 6 billion, 9 billion plus performance, suddenly you've got tens of billions of pounds supporting UK smaller companies, supporting all this entrepreneurial stuff, and every single person has this 5,000 account, if they do return smaller company equity returns, on their 55th birthday, they get a million quid. So we take the trouble is no political party will ever do it because it will take 30 years, or certainly take you know, many tens of years for that to really deliver. Oh, well, in the shorter term, it will deliver to uh UK smaller companies scene for sure. And again, it's that thing. If you if if loads of global if people sitting in New York or Dubai controlling smaller company pots and money, go, Britain's got this new thing where they're gonna put three billion quid a year into smaller companies, they'll go, oh, there's some momentum in smaller companies, maybe we should put some put some money into it. Yeah, exactly. So for the there's a fantastic company in Oxford. I just think it's really like it's just such an easy win. The thing is, it will gift put politicians 20 years from now a massive win.

Speaker 2 1:06:30

Yeah.

Speaker 1:06:30

But you know, if you look at so Singapore basically has something like that, Australia has something like that, Norway has something like that, yeah. Which is they've had really enlightened pension systems for 30 years, which is why they all have amazing retirements, and they're all like like they call Australia the lucky country. Yeah, you know, I mean, people with normal blue-coloured jollers, blue blue-colour jollers, blue-collar jobs, crikey, um, it's embarrassing. Um, and I haven't been drinking, but you know, Australia, yeah, exactly. It's Friday. Um, but but can aspires have a real amazing retirement, you know, because they've had this really enlightened pension policy. And I think that I think that's a really good pol truly a really good policy idea.

Speaker 1 1:07:10

I think it's a good idea because it gets money into the businesses now, so there could be a stem of the tide flow, which is bad now, right? So you fix that on a short-term basis. And yes, there is probably a 15-20 year period in between there where no government in power really sees the benefits.

Speaker 1:07:26

Yeah, correct. But then no, and the people don't see the benefit either, because you're gonna lock it up.

Speaker 1 1:07:29

When you say it's not a political win now, there is a political win now because it fixes the bigger.

Speaker 1:07:33

Well, if you sell it, yeah, that's right. If you have bright, if you have the courage of convictions and you do a good enough PR job explaining why it's such a good policy, exactly. But to but so, because people think like, well, three billion quid's like peanuts, right? But think about it this way. That's 30 a year. Yeah, three billion quid a year, correct. But but you know, in the context, AstraZeneca's capitalized at 200 billion quid, like the biggest UK, can't put it with shells, whatever it is, right? So it sounds like peanuts, but the what people are fail to understand is EV small supports smaller companies. So actually, in the in the world of smaller companies, three billion quid's a hell of a lot of money. So think about it this way it's 30 IPOs that are 100 million quid each. Like that's that's like third that's like 30 tech companies or 30 software or 30.

Speaker 1 1:08:15

It's it's hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Speaker 1:08:18

Yeah, probably in the top of the yeah. It's hundreds of thousands of taxes. Tax revenues, exactly. And well, and that's it, and we're doing it like it all it's all it's not, I mean, it's it would be funny if it wasn't so.

Speaker 1 1:08:29

So almost almost they would put that investment back in, and large swathes of that £3 billion would be taken back in income tax and and the former. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:08:38

But that's how they call it, but that's what I was gonna say. It's like speaking to quite an old system.

Speaker 1 1:08:43

So technically, it's like a £1.2 billion investment, or £1.5 billion investment with all the tax they would make back off it on VAT and fuel G.

Speaker 1:08:53

It's it's it's yeah, but we're doing but what we're doing at the moment, generally, is 180 degrees the opposite of what we should be doing if we want this country to thrive and for people to have higher incomes, better retirements, better healthcare, better everything. Like genuinely. And I think I'm saying it's like I'm I'm really as I keep keep trying to say, I don't really want to get into political stuff, but it's just so obvious to anybody who's vaguely economically literate and it just is maddening.

Speaker 1 1:09:17

But I think what we do. I think I think you I think you've crossed that barrier now, Andrew.

Speaker 1:09:22

It's become so political.

Speaker 1 1:09:24

Well, but then but let me be clear, I don't I don't see any you're you're looking at this from a capital markets perspective, and their their policies re massively reflect that. So yeah you can't.

Speaker 1:09:34

But but uh but and I get but to the you know, capital markets are really important for people's lives. That's the bit that because we teach people so badly about this stuff, nobody in this country really understands that in any kind of powerful visceral way. They think it's just a bunch of blokes in the city running blokes and and ladies too running around in the city just shuffling the decks with you know money flying around, and it's it's that's it's about the real economy, and that's what frustrates me.

Speaker 1 1:09:59

Yeah, no, absolutely. Um just to kind of bring this last bit to a close, we there's another stabbed.

Speaker 1:10:08

Am I gonna be angry again? Sorry.

Speaker 1 1:10:10

Well no savings rate in the UK per household is currently 1.5% versus China, who, as we know, are a poorer country all around, let's face it. Well, they're at 30%.

Speaker 1:10:20

Rapidly not to get but they're going the right way and we're going the wrong way, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:10:24

Yeah. They were at 30. It's increased. Yeah. Um, we're below France, Japan, and Germany, and the Swiss on that list.

Speaker 1:10:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:10:31

Now, what's making those figures look slowly for the UK? For example, Greece is minus 11.

Speaker 1:10:38

Well, though Greece has done a really good job of sorting it, it's turning its economy around and its capital markets around compared to us. But um, yeah, I mean it's a it in Britain it's it's it's definitely a cultural thing. Like, you know, culturally, people in America talk about and think about the stock market way more than British people people do. I've often thought that's partly a legacy of the class system.

Speaker 1 1:10:56

You all like this one. So six percent of UK adults have a stocks and shares ISA. Yeah. That number has decreased by 180,000.

Speaker 1:11:05

So in what time frame?

Speaker 1 1:11:06

Um the recent figures that came out by UK Gov.

Speaker 1:11:10

Well that I mean that's that and he and actually the other I know a stat, which is there's some in insane percentage of those stocks and shares ISERs where the people who have them have like two tech stocks.

Speaker 1 1:11:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1:11:20

So that's so they so even the even the tiny minority of people who have a stocks and shares ISA.

Speaker 1 1:11:24

Own Apple and Tesla.

Speaker 1:11:26

Exactly, and don't know what a P ratio is. Yeah. So they're actually way riskier than they get.

Speaker 1 1:11:31

That doesn't mean share on sign up or whatever. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 1:11:35

Um, so but yeah, it's a I think you know, I I genuinely think Britain's got this really bad attitude about money and capital markets because of a legacy of the class system. Because it's like there's a big sway of the population. Well, that's just like the aristocracy, you know, that's that's for rich assholes. And whereas in America, it's like there's a struct there's a fundamental difference where a lot I can't remember, there's an amazing quote was like in America, people aren't jealous of millionaires because they all think they're going to be one one day, kind of thing, and it's kind of almost self-fulfilling. But obviously, there's plenty of poverty in the States, but in aggregate, it is much wealthier, and a big part of that is because people do invest and they do learn about the stock market and they do think about stuff.

Speaker 1 1:12:15

Growth minds, much more growth growth mindset, right?

Speaker 1:12:17

An abundance mindset, and sometimes it's a bit mental, but there are loads of people who are immensely untalented and have nothing to you know, uh haven't worked hard enough and just think they'll be the next Mr. Beast and make hundreds of millions of dollars out of YouTube, and they just obviously won't, you know, as we can actually.

Speaker 1 1:12:34

But the optimism is there, yeah.

Speaker 1:12:35

But the optimism's there, and and it as I say it is self-fulfilling, and it goes back to my point, you know. The single the thing that's most likely to engender you being comfortably off in your life is investing. No fact. We know we know that's a fact. We know there's like two centuries of evidence that that's true, and the mathematics bears it out, and the experience of history bears it out. And so many people in this country are really cynical about that.

Speaker 1 1:12:57

Yeah. Well, I hope they hear this bloody podcast.

Speaker 1:13:01

Well, yeah, yeah. England's in all Britain is a disaster in a basket case. But if you got five quid, stick it in your six and six. Yeah, exactly. But um, well, particularly I I mean, as I was saying earlier, I think anybody who's of a certain age and stage and of a certain level of wealth should absolutely be thinking about UK smaller company equities for the next because I think you know it's so funny. I've posted this on LinkedIn or whatever, whatever social channel, and I get all these people go, Why would I ever invest in British shares? British shares are rubbish, yeah, American shares are better, and it's like that's precisely why you should be investing. Exactly. Because 10 years from now, it's very, very likely that the opposite will be true. Totally. That's how stack lights were.

Speaker 1 1:13:36

I you know, I I I happily disclose what I do because you know that's part of who I who I am. I I've came I came out fully out of the SP 500, um, weighted back in a little bit globally, just uh MSCI or um I I'm VWRP um just to keep it simple, um just because it's what's available on my my uh my my platform that I use, but I'm now much more heavily weighted UK than I've ever been. Interesting. Um, and a few little trusts and things which I quite like the look of. And I just keep it like that because that's I do exactly this. And this is what um we had Rich McDonald on, and I do really agree with what he says is that you can see this stuff happening, you can watch it happening in front of your eyes, you can see the turnaround in X, Y, and Z business before the stock market reacts. You're seeing it on the ground with you know, Marks and Spencer's great example, like completely Rolls-Royce, massive turnaround in those types of businesses, right? But you before the stock market reacted, the stores were beginning excellent. So you can see that type of stuff happening. You can see that type of stuff happening with the UK where we've got to this low point.

Speaker 1:14:45

But the bit, but the bit but the crucial bit is okay, but there's the difference between what is happening commercially or across the whole economy and what the price of the shares is, the valuation. So that's your point. So if Mark Suspense is looking great and uh having a turnaround, and you can see that and feel that, if if the shares are also super cheap structurally and priced below you know food and fashion retailers overseas, then that gives you the signal to buy. And that's the bit that most people don't understand. Yeah. Like very, very few people understand that. And so very, very matching the two and and understanding how valuation metrics work. But you kind of don't have to, because the the bigger picture, you know, like if you sort of agree that the UK for the next 10, 12, 15, 20 years is probably a good bet because British equities are still at a 60% discount to US equities, you know, a British oil company should not trade on a massive discount to an American oil company. There's maybe there maybe an element of a discount, but not six, not a huge discount, right? No, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:15:41

They're never gonna be as attractive as the shiny tech stocks. But you're not gonna get the PE ratios up in the hundreds.

Speaker 1:15:48

Well, yeah, except for but I if I'm just comparing a British oil company to an American oil company, you know. I don't know what the current valuation discrepancy is between the two, but it won't be 60% because that's the whole market, but it will be something, I'd imagine.

Speaker 1 1:15:59

Yeah. And so But I would imagine that they're like Apple, if we came up with our own Apple, for example, and we had a own iPhone company.

Speaker 1:16:07

That's why Arm Holdings has moved to New York. That is why WISE is moving.

Speaker 1 1:16:10

That is why because they get more money.

Speaker 1:16:12

Well, but you have a fiduciary duty. As a management team, your fiduciary, your legal duty to your shareholders is to optimise. So if you're gonna get a re-rating and be valued much more highly and therefore be able to raise more money to acquire companies and invest in staff and invest in factories or whatever it is you do, you're obliged to leave London. That's the bit, that's the bit the government don't seem to understand. Like, I I genuinely wonder whether HSBC are gonna leave London, Shell is gonna leave London, AstraZeneca. Like, we're probably well, not probably, but we've got half a chance. We've lost Ashtad, you know, we've lost ARM, we've the three we lost last week. And why should HSBC be listed in London? I think there's a chance we will lose a lot of these multi-billion pound companies, but yeah, not said against that, it's a lot of that might be. I missed that point.

Speaker 1 1:17:08

So they moved their one class of shares over to the U New York, but they kept some on uh the London Stock Exchange, which was an interesting place.

Speaker 1:17:16

So yeah, they they the companies usually do that, they dual list and then the basically all the liquidity goes to New York.

Speaker 1 1:17:21

Right, that's a usual thing, is it?

Speaker 1:17:22

So yeah, and the part of the reason you do that is so if you've got if you've got a load of institutional investors, so like I don't know, I'm just plucking names out thing, Aviva or legal in general or someone, have bought your shares when you're listed in the UK because they're UK shares. Well, they they might have a mandate that says they're not allowed to own US equities. So if you fought if you go and just list in the States and leave the UK, then you're kind of screwing those shareholders because they then become forced sellers.

Speaker 1 1:17:46

Oh, interesting. I didn't know that's how it works.

Speaker 1:17:48

But that but that all just gets navigated over a period of time. So usually you have to be careful, you have to so you have legal duties to shareholders in different jurisdictions and stuff based on the documentation when you floated the company, and so you have to cater to all of that, but that just usually means there's some sort of time frame by what realistically happens is that after a certain amount of time, all the trading's on New York, and the and often like in that example, like the American Equities Fund at Legland General has taken the shares off the UK Equities Fund at Legland General and they've transferred them across and now they and then they switched over to the US line. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I've really conscious this conversation just to be like London London stock exchange.

Speaker 1 1:18:28

No, it's important. I think it is it it's gives you people need to understand the impact that capital markets are having on their lives. Yeah. And so that's why this conversation's is super important. But look, to bring this to a close, I'd love to send people somewhere. I know you've got the new book coming, but the the latest book was brilliant. I loved it. Thank you. But if someone wants to get started today, how to understand?

Speaker 1:18:50

So actually, the well, the place I really want people to go for the time being is our YouTube channel.

Speaker 1 1:18:54

Yeah, plain English Finance. Yeah, so it's brilliant.

Speaker 1:18:57

I think it's it's a bit clunky, it's like plain English finance and Andrew Craig. Sharp. Um, but it's but yeah, it's great, it's growing really nicely, and um, you know, ultimately people don't have to spend any money there. Like I'm delighted, if people want to buy my books, thank you very much. Andrew Craig, Amazon, how do I know the world, live and less invest the rest, and our future is biotech, they're all there. Um, and that's you know, people want to do that, it's great. But if you go to the YouTube channel, basically, you know, if twice a month at the moment, and I'm gonna up it to three times a month soon. We do a 12-ish minute video which tries to you know tackle something in plain English and people hit 10k followers and yeah, exactly. We've basically gone from naught to 10,000 in 18 months, which people tell me is quite good.

Speaker 1 1:19:36

Yeah, it's very good, yeah. Yeah, yeah, we're it's better than us. We're we're we're struggling way behind.

Speaker 1:19:41

But yeah, well, although it's funny because I mean I've seen some people go lit. I mean, it that's what's so cool about YouTube because it's not just so you know, if you have 10 videos and a thousand subscribers, then you have 10,000 subscribers and a hundred videos. It's not just 10x, it's like exponentially X because the stock of video people are watching all your old videos. But I've seen people go, you know, you can go like 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320. And we you know, we know Damien talks money, if you know it. Like blown. There's an amazing lady called Nisha, someone, I think she's just gone.

Speaker 1 1:20:11

Yeah, she's ex-investment banking. Yeah, she's gone like she's a multi-millions now.

Speaker 1:20:15

Yeah, uh exactly. She was like 200,000 three years ago, and she's at like two million or something.

Speaker 1 1:20:20

She's gone 24 months, gone to over a million.

Speaker 1:20:23

Yeah, exactly. She's really good. Yeah, I think if you just with with with YouTube and and other stuff, if you just keep persistently doing it and trying to deliver valuable stuff that people actually get value out of, you will you will grow eventually.

Speaker 1 1:20:35

Yeah, need to put some more value in our videos, think.

Speaker 1:20:37

Yeah, stop interviewing idiots like me. It's like banging on in a very depressing way about the state of the UK.

Speaker 1 1:20:43

No, no, no. The podcast channel is growing. It's it's it's uh podcasting in longer form is is a harder play, but even the rate of of growth on that is great.

Speaker 1:20:52

Um, so yeah, we really well and but also you get like somebody who watches a one and a half hour podcast, you've the algorithms given you one and a half hours, whereas somebody watches ten minutes. Like you it is even if you get fewer views, your aggregate watch time is a lot of different things.

Speaker 1 1:21:05

Yeah, and it's really interesting, like uh a large swath, twelve, twelve swathes. I can say that of our audience, thank you. Yeah, um, is watching on tech TV now. Um, so they're watching the podcast.

Speaker 1:21:15

With the YouTube app or with yeah, via tele.

Speaker 1 1:21:18

Um whereas our main YouTube channel um it's roughly five, six percent, isn't it? It's a really small amount, but like is up to like 30% watch the podcast on a tele.

Speaker 1:21:28

But on a on a television podcast platform or on YouTube on a TV. The only YouTube stuff that gets watched on my TV at home is hampering in a maze. Oh really? My son's my son will come home and just watch hamsters in a maze for like and that it's like, Oscar, please. Each their own, you know. It's really dependent.

Speaker 1 1:21:49

But mate, thank you so much, as always. And um we need to get that beer in.

Speaker 1:21:53

Yeah, well, I know you've got another podcast to do now. Yeah. Unlucky I'm going out in the sunshine. Thank you very much, though. It's been great again. Yeah, cheers, mate, thank you.