EP. 208 - Investing Expert: The Only 2 Investments You Need To Build Wealth In 2026 ft. Andrew Craig

Hmm. "Sus?" "Sat?" "And so creamy." "Hey, we can then pop a creamy sign."

"Notella." "Wore from Mama, and for Papa, believed." "Nono, Nutella." "It's Nutella." "What do you think most investors are misunderstanding about the current world order?"

The inflation numbers that have sort of trotted out in the press are pretty irrelevant to people's real-world experience of what their life costs. It also doesn't take a kind of asset price inflation, right?

And what's the most important cost for anyone who is housing?

When you think about building wealth, you basically have to run faster than that in order to build real wealth. The pound and the dollar today are both worth 90% less than they were in the early 70s. Money isn't wealth, stuff is wealth, stuff being crops, metal, timber, stuff, real stuff, ignore the news.

There's almost no relationship between the news, whether that's geopolitics, or news about their economy, and the performance of the stock market. Two of the best years for the US stock market in the last century were 2020 in 2021, when COVID was "what is far more important than any of these considered what's the right thing to do?"

“Lastly, more important than any of that is that you should get invested.”

What would you say at a two-four asset bucket, they should think about that will matter for the most for wealth building in 2020. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast, I'm your host, Ato. We have a special guest. I think you've been on four times now, why don't we?

It's four times. Well, three times by myself. Four times this has been a time, we can spirit it. That was a great episode, but I would be able to enjoy it. It was like 40 degrees centigrade in here.

It was, and it's a lot cooler than I was that day. So we have Andrew, who's an investor, or if I'm one of UK's most respected voices on long-term wealth building, he's best known for his book, How To Own a World, which has helped thousands of people understand how to build wealth through only assets from them, relying solely on income.

He's also the author of Our Future's Biotech, which explores how innovation, particularly in healthcare, biotech, has shaped an ex-generation of wealth creation. Andrew, how are you doing today? Really good to make. It's lovely to be back.

Lovely to see you again, and catch up with you again on the podcast. We have a lot to talk about. Yeah. I'm glad you click record. It's a shame we've just burned through half an hour of really controversial nonsense.

We can't have all the controversial stuff on that. We'll try our best to at least inform the audiences much as possible.

“As we just got the budget announcement, I think at this point a few weeks ago, two weeks”

ago, about two weeks ago. It'll be great to hear your thoughts on that. If this is the first time that low chance, but it's the first time anyone's discovering you, how will you describe what you actually do today and what you spend most of your time thinking about?

That's a great question, because everybody always says that I introduce yourself and then

I talk nonsense about what I've been doing for 30 years, but to say what do you do today is probably a better sort of filter. I run a business called Plain English Finance, PlainEnglishFiance.com. We have a cheesy company motto, which is that our company mission is to improve the financial affairs of as many people as possible.

We're really serious about that and the main way I do that is through doing interviews like this, and we have a YouTube channel and all that good stuff, but that's that's that to there. If I make one, it is my fourth book. I've now written four books, all of which are really aimed at trying to sort of demystify

finance and make things that a lot of people think are really complicated. Hopefully, you've seen a lot less complicated and have people get that tangible outcome of improving their finances. Hopefully, that's a better shorter answer than my usual not rambling nonsense, I used to be a stockbreaker.

If people want to know about that, they could go ahead and say, "I'm going to push them to go and watch our previous episodes, because those are great and those are timeless episodes and people still watch that to this day." I want to also know about you.

I don't know if I asked you this in our first conversation, what was the first rule

“money lesson that stayed with you and shaped how you think about well today?”

So I was really lucky because I'm of a certain age. I, in the 80s, in the mid-80s, I was doing a paper round. And I got paid £15 a week for my paper round, which by the way, was seven days a week and Sunday was brutal because the Sunday Times and the telegraph were really big, so it was like this huge heavy bag.

But I got paid £15 a week in the mid-80s, which was a lot of money for a 12-year-old, right? The money lesson that I got, which, as I say, was really lucky, was interest rates back then were like 10-11%. And so, in my Northern Irish dad, who's very kind of Presbyterian and, you know, you

don't display your wealth and you save money and all that good stuff, I hope he doesn't watch this. I don't know, embarrassed him, but anyway, those are the sort of values, was like, don't spend your 15 in quite a week on Star Wars, I think I was a bit old for Star Wars figures by then, but like, I don't know, Citadel miniatures, games, workshops, stuff, or remote

your boy might have bought, you know, save it, and I put it in the post office, used to have these savings accounts, where I got 10-11-12%, right, and in my, in that, around this, the same sort of few years, I also used this for my sins, I used to sing, I used to sing in a choir like classical music, right, my school, and I also used to then get page to sing, like, weddings and funerals, so I go and sing a song, you know, but that's

someone's funeral or somebody's wedding, and I got paid 50 quid a time for that, and so the combination of my earnings from paper and singing, I didn't get that very often, but I don't know, a few times a year, meant that when I went to uni, because of that money had been in that account for several years, many of those years, it was earning, like I say, 10-11%, because that's where interest rates were in the '80s, I had quite a few

grand, so I went to uni age 19, yeah, because I got, as they like to say, and I went off to university, and when I arrived at university, I had a few grand, because I basically from doing a paper round, and the odd, you know, singing a song at a wedding, so that,

and so I get, sorry, my tip, I'm always apologizing for my very long ridiculous nonsense,

but the broad point being is that I learned very early what the impact of a 10-ish percent return is on money, and so that's a big part of what informs, you know, I always talk about the power of compounding, and just how strong compounding is, how can you earn a few quid, like, 15 quid a week as a 12-year-old, and go to uni with, I think I went with, like, six or seven grand, so as a, you form literally 15 quid a week for a couple of years,

“and a few bits and pieces, yeah. Wow, do you feel like that's what got you into, like,”

fine, that's the way you got it, or not? No, I think, because then I went to do economics at uni, right, and, you know, that's something I think we spoke about before, and I was making this point the other day, like, I think very few people who don't know what's in an economics degree realise how it has nothing to do, like most economics degrees, have almost nothing to do with actual, with, yeah, with the actual economy, and particularly

because it's all about company economics and capital markets, like bomb markets and equity markets and commodities markets, and most, you know, academic, if you like, degrees around economics, or, like, certainly in my day, and I don't think it's changed much, and much more, kind of, esoteric, theoretical stuff, rather than real-world stuff. So, but that I'm notwithstanding, like, having, doing an economics degree, you know, set me

on a part, kept me on a path of caring about finance and capital markets, and, and as

“I said, we were talking before you couldn't click record, you know, genuinely, I believe”

in a sort of 17th century British political, philosophical, Jeremy Bentham, I'm a Bentham I, yeah, and, basically, Bentham's idea slightly pretentiously, you know, his key axiom is that basically, whenever we try and think about policy or economics or politics

or sociology or, you know, anything, we should always be trying to engender the greatest

good for the biggest percentage of the population, and I've certainly been very interested in that, having studied economics and politics, and how do economic systems best deliver that? And I guess that's all tied up in why then wanted to start talking to people about financial markets, because a huge part of what delivers good for people is wealth, okay, self-evidently. Exactly, yeah, and we're going to talk about your thoughts around it, especially around the

budget, because I think that's going to be interesting. So, if we zoom out, we're in 2021, and we zoom out, what do you think the most, what do you think most investors are missing understanding about the current world order? So, there are a couple of things, so I think one of the things I often refer to this quote, John Maynard Keynes, was the most famous economist of the of the last century, right? And he famously said that not one man in a million understands inflation

and I always sort of make this throw away common, and with the apologies to people who told me

say this many times before, but like, okay, so one in a million would be 8,000 people in a population of 8 billion in the world, right? So that's probably, there's probably more than 8,000 people in the world who understand the inflation, right? But not by much, and particularly currency debasement and real inflation, because it's sort of the, you know, I've written about this length, but the inflation numbers that have sort of trotted out in the press are pretty irrelevant to people's

real-world experience of what their life costs, because if pasta goes up 100%, doesn't, you know, the way the inflation numbers are calculated is it's not really captured properly in my opinion, I've written about this, it also doesn't take a kind of asset price inflation, right? And what's the most important cost for anyone is, is housing, right? So if house prices are going up loads, we know that's a huge existential problem, particularly for young people in this country,

you know, that obviously impacts rents as well as people who own their property on both sides

“of that equation. So that's why housing so much, you know, disproportionally expensive today”

as against what it was 30, 40, 50 years ago in our parents or grandparents generation, I think that's one of the single most important themes of our age. And I do think that very, very few people

bow that home in currency debasement. And so when you think about building wealth and sort of, you basically have to run faster than that in order to build real wealth. And so in all that you do,

“you have to be thinking about that. And yeah, I just think relatively few people do. And that's”

not necessarily a 206 thing. That's been true for 30 plus years. I do think though that the policies, you know, I mean, basically Trump's just put through that big beautiful bill, which is going to increase US government borrowing by five trillion or whatever whatever the numbers are, Rachel Reeves at the moment, you know, British debt is just going completely ballistic and our

interest bills, like 120 billion quid next year, right? Up from, I don't, I want to say maybe 20 billion,

seven or eight years ago. It's that mad. That might not be completely accurate, but it's that kind of order of magnitude. And so, you know, and these are things that create real inflation, notwithstanding what a load of, there's this, there's a thing, there are a lot of economists and I do that, advisedly, who are professors of economics at British universities, who believe anything called MMT modern monetary theory, which basically argues that governments can just create

“money because they have control of their currency. I think it's the most incorrect dangerous and”

pernicious idea in the world at the moment because demonstrably the reason that everything's got particularly rubbish in the last 30 or 40 years is precisely because governments have printed loads of money and no economy functions in a vacuum. So, if you argue, the British government create as many pounds as they want because we control our own currency, that totally fails to understand how all markets function in the real world, the capital markets and the markets for

real stuff, you know, whether that's iron or oil or cars or whatever. And so, if a government behaves in a way with a rest of the world, who are smart, right? So trade is all over the world, if Britain wants to buy things like oil or cars or wheat or copper or whatever, we have to go out on the world and buy it from the rest of the world. So, if they have a view on your currency where they think the pound should be worth less than it is because the government's just inventing money

out of the air, that will impact your currency which will make you less powerful or brought

to buy things, like real wealth, right? And so, yeah, again, sorry, what's the most important

thing for next year? Debasement and don't believe the MMT people, they're described as believing

“in magic money trees and I think that's right. And I think they're incredibly damaging to the”

prospects of people in this country. What does the base and currency mean for the people that don't know about that? So, I think I'm always slightly leary of doing the same thing again and I think I might have done this in two of our previous interviews, but not just okay. And by the way, any MMT person who watches this will think I'm wrong and well one of the things I'm going to do in the next year or two, which might end up being my fifth book, is really go down the rabbit hole

and try to explain and explain which one is just how wrong MMT is because I genuinely think it's it's one of the key causes of wealth inequality problems in the world. The reason people can't afford to get in the housing ladder and the answer being more of that is just madness, like it's literally madness, but so what the reason I say that before I say the next thing I want to say to answer your question is just because what I'm about to say they'd an MMT expert professor of economics

would disagree with but okay and they're wrong by the way based on 200 sorry based on 2000 years of evidence they're wrong okay but what I was going to say is if you have let's say there's a hundred units of money in the economy right and let's say there's a hundred value of stuff and again forgive me I've said it before but stuff being crops, metal, timber, building material, you know stuff, real stuff right which is wealth by the way money isn't wealth, stuff is wealth, money is money,

money is just to me to exchange and store a value and something we use to exchange the stuff right as a technology. So if you've got a hundred money and a hundred stuff and then overnight just a thought explained imagine overnight as the MMT performance advocate for we go oh well there's no restriction on government just making more money because we can travel a pound so now we've got

200 money let's just double the money supply let's give everyone 10 million quid tomorrow why not

let's just if money is wealth just give everyone in the country 10 million good why wouldn't we do that right so if you double the money supply now you've got 200 money but you've still only got a hundred stuff right particularly if you're talking about overnight all quickly right and the reason for that is because no farmers have been incentivized to plant or grow any more crops no more land has been brought into use to to make more crops you know no more oil companies have dug found more oil

no more metals have been dug out the ground and then and then and then right if you double the amount of money but the supply of stuff is actually relatively fixed because it is because that's how

real wealth or a metal or crops or whatever so if you double the supply of money and the

“stuff it's fixed what happens to the price of the stuff it doubles and this is what drives me nuts”

because that's just true like based on common sense and 2000 years of evidence across every economy that's tried to just invent money out of thin air without increasing real wealth has failed with

disastrous consequences but you know it's basically the cause of the French Revolution the cause

of the American Revolution you know look at Zimbabwe look at I mean everywhere that this has been tried to has failed so it blows my mind the anyone can think that it will ever work because they're ignoring 2000 years of actual history and to my mind common sense right and so that's currency debasement currency debasement is just it creating money and we've been doing that in every major economy for years and it's like a race to the bottom which is why you know like another example

the pound and the dollar today are both worth 90% less than they were worth in the early 70s

“around when I was born right 90% not 10% 90% that's why houses used to cost a grant and a pint of”

beer was thropping so you know I mean it's like it's it's really but I'm just if I may actually on this topic talking about MMT and I don't want to go down the MMT but you know an MMT proponent published a piece the other day from this like I guess left leaning think tank arguing that monetary debasement I inventing money doesn't create inflation and the methodology they employed and I need to look at it in more detail but I just gave it I didn't have time to probably read the

whole report but I the headline was they define inflation as when when the inflation numbers produced by the government were north of five percent okay so if a country was less than five percent that didn't count as inflation right so that's like that so we've printed shit loads of money but if it's not triggering more than five percent of inflation but from the government inflation numbers which by the way are largely nonsense which I've written about great detail and we

will let's not come back to that because everybody will die of boredom though but okay so here's their methodology if it's not more than five percent and five percent inflation given by the government right now is probably more like eight or nine percent inflation in people's real life experience of war friggin eggs and pasta cost right but the methodology was if it's not north of five percent it doesn't count as inflation and their argument was because so only five percent kind of

thing right but anybody who's basically conversing in how maths works so if you're 4.9 percent

for five years then your money is now worth 22 percent less from a hundred to 77 point whatever right for 10 years your money is worth 40 percent less so there oh keep this is how dishonest I find so much discourses these days and people haven't got the sort of skills to look under the hood so the headline is monetary debatement money printing doesn't create inflation that's the headline here's of the clever economists who's produced a piece that says that right

anybody smart enough to you know with that one it's caught myself smart enough anybody who actually bothers to look at the detail says hang on they're suggesting the inflation is only like triggered

and becomes inflation at five percent but at 4.9 percent for 10 years you'd have lost 40 percent

of your real wealth in real terms and by the way the real numbers probably more like seven or eight percent right as I just said yeah so they've just produced a piece that argues that the printing money doesn't create inflation the absolutely show is that printing money halves the value of people's wealth it's insane it's like it's the most you know George or well like like or wellian dishonest double-speak but anyway I'm sure I'll get pilloried for saying this but I am gonna get

right into that piece and confirm hundred because as I say I just gave it a cursory glance and I was just whole I was like that is that's just so dishonest we need to have a debate definitely review and I'll call them

“important I think it is important for us to understand it actually on that note you you mentioned”

real wealth you talk about assets we've talked about assets right so if if somebody's thinking in 2026 right what would you say the two four asset buckets they should they should think about that will matter most for wealth build in 2026 was in talking about you know the bit currency debate yeah I mean so you know because we've had this conversation before so in everything I try to do I like to go back to kind of first principles and basically what was worth you know what are

capital markets like at a really fundamental not something femoral like oh I buy this share today or I get some crypto it's like what are capital markets what roles are they playing for humanity

ever above all else is human progress right so the reason that most stock markets have gone from

“bottom left to top right in the last 200 years you know with volatility they don't always”

they don't go in a straight line from bottom left to top right but they do over if you zoom out

they basically do and the reason for that is because of a whole raft of new technologies you know

that you're holding a smartphone your hand that thing would have cost a hundred million dollars in 1995 yeah you could just about a made one technologically you know DARPA or NASRA or wherever could have cobbled together one but it would have cost around a million dollars the fact that seven billion of them have been manufactured and people in the developing world have them have smart phones today it's a function of real wealth like technological progress real wealth and obviously

population growth too and so in all of that I think if you if you believe that and you take a step back and you understand the basic kind of building locks off capital markets that under pin all of that the answer in 2026 isn't really that dissimilar to the answer in 1976 or

1926 right and the answer is basically you need to have global equities and you know maybe

one thing we can come back to him is I am I I genuinely am worried about like the disproportionate impact of the rise of passive investing the fact that the top seven companies in the world are 37 percent of the S&P 500 and American equities are like 70 percent of global equities these are all things that are that is potentially a huge bubble you know just like we've had we had the subprime crisis you know but but that won't that's navigable and that won't change the

fundamental underlying driver of human progress so if you have so if you have a big equity

“exposure I think you should probably have a big equity exposure today that is the whole world”

rather than just America okay that would be because you still get a load of America so you can kind of have your cake and eat it but as you well know what I also talk about is different assets

react to different stages of the economy in different ways and also one of the most important

considerations for anyone how they invest is their age because it will 30 and you're investing you've got 30 plus years before retirement so you're going to fall to take more risk and hopefully make higher returns and if you do that over 30 years you build a much bigger number over those years but if you're 60 and you want to retire and you've spent years and years and years to do that and now you have quite a lot of money and you cock it up by being too risk on and there's a crash

navel lost half your money you know it's a very painful thing that happens to millions of people in 2008 and 1987 and one of ours that's a different problem and as you may know you know I covered this in my second book there's a very elegant way of thinking about how you allocate to high risk high return stuff and low risk low return stuff based roughly on your age so so next year and in every other year of people's lives it's basically what are the high risk return

high risk high return assets shares and obviously crypto and certain types of shares like tech or biotech or smaller companies or whatever all of which any vaguely intelligent person can learn about all right it's not that complicated and then what are the defensive things that gold you know maybe a multi asset fund that and that various other things can be defensive and once you understand those things and you invest in an age appropriate way it

is it's almost like a kind of panacea one-size-fits-all formula that to be clear achieves like 80% of the outcome you need okay you know the Pareto principles like yeah you could do better if you're really smart and you know when to buy crypto and when to short silver and where but 99.9% of people like they're just out of the time to develop those skills and all the time to spend required to do a great job at that and so the easiest thing is

just these how as I say these home trees that have worked in financial markets for like two centuries is basically how old are you how long have you got to retirement how much can you save an invest what is appropriate to put in high risk high returns stuff and low risk low return

“stuff and you should be good okay so I do mean I've got a listener that's never invested before”

let's assume that 25 yep actually no let's assume that 30 let's talk about your old right so you're 100 minus 100 minus your age is the idea that yeah which is basically so if you're 30 100 minus your age is 30 is 70 so that tells you that basically and just to be clear this is for the for the gill edge locked on saving an investing habit that you should build from the moment you start earning money until the moment you have enough money to start working

right which comes a lot sooner than people realize it's possible if they do this well right so not for money that you want to save to use next year for holiday these are separate pots right and that's what I'm very focused on the building to a six or seven thing off yeah correct yeah

earn any money yeah if you then need money for a car or a wedding or a holiday or whatever or

“house deposit you will hopefully get to those numbers faster than if you don't do this yeah”

but self evidently right but there's a certain amount of nuance to think about that because obviously getting the balance right there between saving and cash which is 100% safe and what we're talking about now which is 100 minus your age so 100 minus your age if you're 30 it's 70

so 70% of whatever you save the long term savings each month goes into the stock market basically

right and 30% kept in something defensive and that could just be cash or maybe cash and gold and I've been recommending gold as a defensive bit for years and it's actually outperform shares for 30 years yeah so it's been as it yeah okay as over a week or two ago which isn't sane right because it's like I've been quite lucky because I mean I have this aggressive high return stuff global equities and have this defensive stuff gold and the outcome is both

of them have performed really well yeah which you know may not be true in the future past

“performances no guide right but I think there are a lot of reasons I mean the reason the”

the equities bit the stock market bit will carry on being fine with volatility is because a human progress yeah and the reason that I think the gold bit will still carry on being fine is because of money printing and inflation right okay so you think that those two because okay yeah that's right because gold is a finer asset right yeah exactly go gold to gold supply exactly well particularly now so most of the major gold mines in the world are

like dug to a depth of three or four kilometers and it's insane you know how hot it is down there as well but they and they you know it's like I think it's like 200 tons of rock required to produce

one wedding ring it seems kind of wait for it's actually an amazing there's a guy called Dominic

Fritz B he's a like I think I'm a fairly good writer and I've written four books and then I read Dominic's work on well I've got a long way to go he's like properly good and he just wrote a book called The Secret History of Gold and I'm about 50 or 60 pages into it it's amazing like the the whole history of gold and why it's so important in the financial system so I'd recommend it's also quite it's almost like a detective story like loads of stuff about Jason and the

Argonauts and Greek mythology had all these that you know Roman mythology have all these legends and references to gold that are kind of loosely based on historical fact which is which is super interesting but yeah I feel like we've got sidetracked and I failed to finish a point but you're probably so starting off with there he's so 70 yeah I take what you remind me what I wanted to say though so an important thing so that 100 monetary age I did is really important

“and I'm slightly concerned that we talked about this all before but I guess yeah I think”

it's important to reiterate yeah well there's very pretentious Latin phrase I come up with a fair bit which is a repetitio martish to deorum est which means repetition is the mother of learning so that's a probably a good thing to do and I think 100 monetary age is a fantastic idea because it's like a you know it's a heuristic it's a rule of thumb that allows people to get kind of get most of the the result that they need with financial stuff without much complexity but the only

I did just want to put a little bit of additional complex things not what's standing there which is 100 minus your age so so in the olden days 100 monetary age gave you the 100 monetary age was equities and the rest was bonds that was the original sort of version in the United States in the 40s or 50s right when people first came up with these ideas and so and that was basically because back in those days you know a stock broker in New York or Boston or whatever

would just like nowadays we have incredible financial services and really powerful policy you can

invest in anything that might occur to you on your mobile phone yeah but in 1960 if you you needed to have a stock broker and call him and or her and say you know I want to own American entities and I want to own bonds and pretty much the only products that were available like the Dow Jones and then a few years later the S&P or US treasuries and it was all paper you know it wasn't like a beautiful app that's dead easy and inexpensive and tax-efficient and all that good

stuff and the point I wanted to make so in the old model of bonds versus equity so 100 minus your age you're 50 years old half and half right here now when interest rates used to be six, seven, eight or even half more percent if 50% of your money is in shares and the defensive bit is earned is in bonds that's which is based interest rates if you're owning six or seven percent on the 50% that's in bonds because you're 50 that's much better than if you're earning one percent

yeah which has been the case we've had something called ZERP zero interest rate policy for the last many years which is all part of the monetary debasement that's all related and so

structurally much lower yeah so perhaps you don't want to have as much in bonds okay be life

expectancy's 40 years more today than it was a century ago right okay and actually even in the 60's most Americans were lucky to live until they're late 60's early 70's right so this comes from a time when most people were dying at 6.8 69 70's right so now you're people are going to live to like 90 let's say or younger people might live even longer than that and the final thing is whilst an increasing number of people working the knowledge economy so they're not having to go

down a mind or yeah do break breaking work on a building site or whatever if you work in the knowledge economy that you're a journalist or your scientist or your what up you know university lecturer a lot of people are actually quite happy to work quite a lot older like you know I've

got a board director who's in his very late 70's you know I know lots of people in city roles directors

the companies are still working in their 80's Warren Buffett work you know these still work yeah it's exactly right so so if you put those three things together structurally low bond weights people working longer and people living longer what I a lot of smart financial advisors suggest is that you don't do a hundred minus your age anymore you might do a hundred and ten or a hundred and twenty

“minus your age right okay I get it because you need to have yeah you you're working longer so you”

can be a you can afford to have more exposure to the high risk cry returns to the longer right okay so if you're 70 now 120 minus 70 you'd actually still be 50% shares 50% defensive instead of much high percentage depends yeah because you can work your work in improbably can you have a bit more time probably if you think you know if you're still if you're lucky enough to be like a top journalist who's still some milling articles to the wall street journal at the age of 75 or you know like

John Grishon what like how many people who write books are still pumping out books Dame Barbara Cartland or you know in their 70's and they're making good money you don't need to be defensive because he's still got a big income yeah coming in so so that's a you know that's probably a bit of a maybe slightly inaccessible example but I do think it's important for people who it's important for people understand this idea of a hundred minus your age because it's a super

yeah it's a really it's a really good idea and it really helps people to become more aggressive as you you know become more comfortable with it so okay so 70 put that into the stock market and the other for that 30 year old and in the other 30 your you say cash gold what about what where does crypto is so crypto would be no crypto okay absolutely being aggressive but okay because it's a volatile yeah okay so yeah let's say we've so you just said 70% is aggressive right

so if you love crypto maybe a big chunk of that should be in a big global actually next I would suggest and some of it might be in crypto and some of it might be in a uranium mining business and some of it might be you know if you really want to get into this stuff but you know I would say just be very careful and the other thing I talk about a lot as you know is keeping it simple one of the biggest kind of rookie mistakes people make with investment is just making

it super complicated and then they're parallel like well my mate on with this and this and I've read about that and it's like seriously I mean if you really want to put that book the basic

“conclusion the last chapter to that and it's aimed at under 30s right I think I used the”

the expression I think my wife's really embarrassed but you know the expression Netflix and chill yeah and at the end of it I like what you might only need to do is like buy a big global index fund and chill which I thought was funny but my wife thought was really low but anyway um you know if you if you only want two things like if you only like 80% plus of a really good result for your finances you do a hundred minus your age or a hundred and twenty minus your age or depending on how

risk averse you are and then you put the risky bit in a big global equity index every month for the next 20 years or 30 years or ideally 40 years having different 25 to 65 and you put the

rest in gold does it are two yes I mean I mean I mean you know what this is I guess my first book

was published like 12 years ago now whatever and I made that case right and particularly the whole golden silver and everybody's oh you know and it's in the rest talking about gold you know it's not producing all those sort of war and buffer I'm gonna talk about gold which I've written about as well like the reason Warren Buffett doesn't like gold by the way is because his mentor was Ben Graham and he learned at the feet of the great Ben Graham he wrote this very famous

book and was a really famous investor in the States and private ownership of gold was illegal

“for the whole of Ben Graham's career so he didn't have it in his models so that's why Buffett's”

like that's way Buffett's and also a context key correct and the other point is if you're

percent in stock market investments but you're a billionaire let's say this stock market crashes

you just say worth one billion dollars stock markets down forty percent you still worth six hundred

million dollars yeah it's not really you're not gonna be able to stuggling to pay for milk or bread or whatever right so you don't need gold but for normal people like even a fairly wealth even somebody with a million quid like if they're hundred percent in stock market harves now they got half a million quid yeah that's really bad news right even for a lawyer or you know somebody with a million quid pension pots very successful and done really well so but the mega wealthy don't

have to worry about gold that's why you know Buffett's kind of negative gold but like I wrote a you know I basically suggested this is the kind of simplest way to succeed with finance 12 13 years ago and you know through luck as much as judgment is it's as good to be lucky as smart right but all the reasons that I suggested gold was a good idea and global actually you know global actually

“because human progress is the most important thing it always will be right and the only thing”

that will stop that will be nuclear war or a pandemic that actually kills lots of you know kills all of us instead of seven million of us all of a COVID did and the reason gold goes up is whilst governments contains print money it it will go up in terms of that money because that money is going down in value notwithstanding whatever the MMT mad people tell you run our business is tough

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as well do you think physical assets you mentioned gold you know outperforming do you think physical assets like gold commodities and energy will continue to happen well that's the problem the problem with everything I just said is that you're right everything's at an all time high yeah property markets gold silver bitcoin I mean well bitcoins obviously down from down a bit from the highest but it's still that compared to five years ago that was still pretty

high right um which again I would contend as much to do with currency debasement and real inflation um for all the reasons that you know if you if you double the money supply but the supply of gold is fixed the supply of the best companies in the world and the S&P 500 is fixed the supply of everything is fixed then everything will go up in price by the way that benefits rich people and is really really bad for poor people yeah which is why it's mad that anybody would

argue for more of that right which is a point I keep making um but so given that then the next consideration it goes back to my 80/20 what's the easiest thing because I fully conceited it's like

“kind of you have to hold your nose you're like oh you know I want to get into investment I'm going”

to start buying a MSC I world index every month I'm going to start buying some gold every month they're both all time highs yeah there are a number of things to say about that firstly they've both been all time highs month in month out every month for the last many many years so you could have said that 10 years ago you could have said that eight years ago right and what's happened they've carried on making new all-time highs the reason for that is a lot to do with monetary debasement

and human progress but the other thing I'd say so I was at some event not that long ago where somebody made the point that the the the us stock market had the great crash of 1929 yeah and they were saying like it didn't get by finger rights saying that it got back to the 1929 level in 1957 wow it's either 57 or 61 it's like basically the late 50s early 60s so think about that like if you'd put a load of money in in 1929 if you want to sort of make the case that the stock market

is really risky then you would have been pretty gutted that it then took 30 years yeah like it's a long time right except that that doesn't matter if you're investing every month

point comparison of two fairly random points in time and nobody in the real world puts like oh I've got 100,000 quid I'm going to put it I put it in the day before the crash in 1929 and then that was really bad because it was then not worth as much till 30 years later let's not hammer invest in

“work that's had nobody invest like that right and this is a bit like today is that I look I think”

there's gonna be a big crash in the S&P 500 I think there's a great piece I posted the other day about how by a really really good tech analyst like a very talented smart person get really getting to the weeds of the circular relationship between like Oracle and OpenAI

and Microsoft and I'm sure you've seen this basically saying it's like a $610 billion fraud right

yeah but but this such this was such a good piece and the people follow me on social they can find it's actually on on our YouTube channel in the post spit it's like four or five posts down you can find it but the point the the he basically said this is exactly what world calm loosen technologies and enron look like that it's the same it's the same really similar thing now I'm not again keeping things as easy as possible I'm not saying rush out and short the S&P because it could go up another

“30% right even if this guy's right he's probably been right you know that it's all about”

Nvidia's revenue recognition and how they're depreciating capital you know basically they're saying that the usable life of an AI chip of really expensive AI chip is like several years longer than conventional accounting would say it's worth which is called the depreciation policy and that's flattering their numbers okay which means that Nvidia should be worth way less than it's worth which given it's a five trillion dollar company is pretty bad for the rest of the stock and

everyone's accounts but the reason that you can navigate all of that is okay if you follow my suggestions which get the mix right based on your age and invest every month for like at least 20 years when that happens let's say the S&P is at roughly 7000 and it has you know horrendous crash and goes back to 3500 if you do this firstly hopefully your goal and your defensive things will protect you and secondly you'll buy at 3500 and 3600 and 3700 and 3800 so that

what in all that I try and do because most people just want to enjoy their lives yeah they don't want to spend hours studying financial markets what's paternal capital employed what's a net to EV but dot you know EV but dot what's what's EV but dot most people don't want to know all this jargon and they don't want to learn this stuff so what they want is a sort of relatively certain forget thing that works and and and I you know I've shot a series of videos on my

YouTube channel which is called How to Invest so that crashes don't matter and that's basically

like invest every month without fail get the mix of assets right ignore the news like do not react to the news like the more you like rookie mistake because the other thing is there's almost no relationship between the news whether that's geopolitics or news about the economy and the performance of the stock market very few people understand that including a lot of finance professionals right British shares in the moment are doing incredibly well the British

“economies in the toilet right is it night the last time so there's all this I think it's entirely”

possible that the international monetary fund the IMS can have to bail out the UK economy again because we're going to have a bond crisis and the Sterling quite it's all very lightly tapping that last happened in 1976 under a similar government with similar philosophical approach to the economy and the footsy so the economy was in real trouble in the mid 70s it was disaster like people were on strike you know rubbish was piling up which has just happened again in Birmingham

as we all know and so the economy is completely rubbish and the footsy was up a hundred percent in 1975 the UK was then bailed out by the IMF which is basically like the most embarrassing that should only happen to like proper basket case countries not Britain right but it happened

and then the stock market was up another 40 percent in 1977 so and I you know I think I made this

point to you before another example that is in two of the best years for the US stock market in the last century were 2020 in 2021 okay when COVID was you know if you got out if you got out at the average person in March 2020 and said would you put loads of money in the stock market right now they go are you kidding and it would have been the right thing so there's another thing people understand it's like all there's going to be recession which means the stock market will

be rose no doesn't at all it's not related because it's about valuation yeah the reason British company British shares are actually out for British value so big component of footsy have actually

do incredibly well because they're so cheap that's crazy but on again on a 10 12 15 20 of you

yeah and whatever equity thing you decide to invest and even think about it that much as long as you do every month for a long time you will trend towards market returns yeah market returns are at eight nine ten percent which is enough to make a new person wealthy or comfortably off but the average investor returns two percent why because they follow the news they react to the news they go they buy high they sell low right and but even worse than that that's the average investor

85 percent of British adults don't invest yeah so there returns of guaranteed to be nothing not exactly yeah i was going to say actually because you're saying that people shouldn't worry

although like we said it's probably it never I mean it's always inevitable that stock market

crash rapid yeah correct every 10 years also yeah it's inevitable but you did mention something and i did have a question around this especially the global index funds about this concentration

“actually had a conversation that is an out yet and um i don't remember the stats they pulled out the stats”

about and you kind of said the same thing 37 percent is the top seven companies yeah it's it's is gone up right 60 percent is the top 50 companies in the end so the top 10 percent of companies is global global global global is very concentrated american out correct because the american is so big so so any video is bigger than the entire London stock market that's crazy and that's not far and Microsoft's not far and uh kind of one AI company that produces chips is bigger

and like something like the top two or three of them are bigger than the whole european stock market what yeah right and so that's quite terrifying but i don't know there's another great one i've put my most recent youtube video um do you know i got called jloren so it does the ambitious minds podcast so he's a he's he does this podcast and he's also um he's an award winning fan manager at the firm rathbones and really smart guy and he just did a post on linked in the

other day which i thought was great and i don't know whether it was his original work or whether he got it from a colleague or from a blog somewhere i would have ever said so if apples ear pods business

“just the iPods no ear pods yeah iPods that's how old i am i i said loads of iPods”

uh but if their ear pods business was a standalone business based on like its profitability and as a of market multiple profitability it would be bigger than any of the British companies no it would be bigger than AstraZeneca bigger than shell correct and it's by the way it seems so inflated when you think about it from that correct and then i'm just i'm doing a video series about that right now which is the rise of passive so passive investing is a great invest in invention

like it just enables people to get access to hundreds of companies i think it's a great thing it's allowed hundreds of millions of people to you know improve their affairs financially it's that's great it has a dark side which is that basically it's destroyed the IPO market and it's destroyed new company formation it's made it and particularly in place like Britain so like um we still have hundreds of companies floating on the stock market every year raising billions of pounds

so far this year we've had very few and they've raised 200 million quid that's like peanuts and

that's it that by the way um as part of this series this hopefully this will raise your eyebrows so that in my opinion based on the analysis i'm doing at the moment and i'm sharing that so the fact that we've destroyed our stock market that doesn't stop market mainly because all the money's going into Apple or Tesla or whatever all of our money British money it's all going into America or bonds so the fact that we've destroyed our stock market in the last 30 years has

probably cost Britain 20 trillion pounds which is 460,000 pounds per working age adult that's crazy and it is crazy and it's and it's by the way almost entirely self-inflicted by terrible policy under Labour and the Tories which i've talked about a lot before so just to unpack that though that is why the average Australian and the average American have a much higher income than we do so GDP per capita in Australia is like $6570,000 a year in Britain it's 45 in America it's 85

so so when i just said that oh we've robbed ourselves of 20 trillion pounds 460,000 pounds per working age adult in the last 20 years 30 years people alike that can't how can that be possible

“and that it is possible and the illustration that as i say is that's why our GDP per capita is”

hasn't moved in 30 years and other countries are twice what ours is and that's also why the average British person hits retirement with a fraction of what the average American or Australian does and the numbers depends on which data you look at but bull park the average British person has got

$400,000 and it's all self-inflicted by policy and a big part of why is not so much because passive is bad it's because of the way Britain has conducted itself with respect to how passive works is bad and i appreciate this all if people want to understand this stuff and more detail and realize that there's a huge amount of evidence behind what i'm saying check please check out my YouTube channel because i'm conscious this does get quite technical but to come back to your point

“yes i i think concentration risk is always a problem when you know this is happening the past”

happening the sixties but to try and bring this all back to a more kind of approachable less technical discussion none of it will change the fundamental underlying thing of human progress it will inject volatility even video is didling it to counts and all of that stuff comes home to roost and it's some big scandal and the stock halbs or falls 80% or whatever that will be annoying for people who invest in sp 500 ETF right now but again if they carry

on doing it every month for years it will well from the vantage point of twenty years from now yeah even if there's a massive crash because all the tech companies are buying stuff off each other and it's all a bit dishonest which is the argument made and that post i mentioned it will still from the vantage point of twenty years from now look like a blip it was just like look at nine if you look now you know anybody who's let's say 60 years old now who's investing all through

the 80s and the 90s and the nordies and whatever this is again this is actually I think a really important insight about stock market investment is if you look at if you live to through 1987 you were like a 25 year old and you had a few quid near investing right it would have felt like the end of the world yeah i i was on the trading desk at Swiss bank in ninety ninety nine two thousand in the dot com crash i was on the trading desk at a big French investment bank in oh seven oh

eight oh nine which is the global financial crisis you know the subprime crash and when you live through it and you're in it it feels like the end of the world yeah it's like oh my god you know the world like every and you know all the millennium bug I don't know if you remember what the millennium mean the millennium bug ever they thought airplanes are going to fall out of the sky banks are

can close they basically there was this the millennium bug ninety nine two thousand people all

over the world the world spent hundreds of billions of dollars on IT consultants to try and make sure this didn't happen but they figured out that all the computers were just going to go

“haywire because of a problem with how dates had been entered into remember that yeah and it was”

station mistocked yeah yeah yeah yeah well there you were right about PlayStation 60 year old boring people in Washington DC worried about nuclear meltdown I could say literally like our nuclear power stations are going to melt down yeah that was the you know some of our nuclear arsenal are going to go fire off or whatever and at the time in like anyway stock market crashes things like the millennium bug when you live through them it feels really dramatic and you got a big really

guard against that because if you react to that drama it penalizes you massively in your life in terms of your ability become wealthy which is why I was talking about ignoring the news because everything I've just said if you look at a chart the S&P for the last 50 years you struggle to even see those things yeah you're like wet 87 alright it's a tiny and that that I think is one

of the most important insights when it comes to stock market investment because as long as you

invest regularly those those hugely dramatic things that feel really dramatic at the time from the vantage point of 30 years from now you can't even see them yeah but if you react to them at the time and like a lot of British people after the oh 708 crash it's really well documented and a fair lot a number of American people but British people have far more risk of us than Americans like as a national personality but I'm only ever doing cash and property I'm never investing

in stock market Britain's 20 trillion pounds poorer by virtue of that's part of why we're trying to 20 trillion pounds poorer than we could have been yeah and this is the thing so are you although I hear what you're saying and I'm glad that you're saying I repeat myself a lot I'm very sorry

“I'm glad you said what you're saying in terms of like you know that you should ignore the news”

which is true are you worried about like especially like the global index fund the fact that it's like six percent US and then even the US is like mostly is those seven companies that have been addicted I am but it's the point again this is why you ignore the news and you don't time like it because I've been I've felt like that way for like five or six years right okay fine okay so you because therefore yeah okay but what you so what you got to do is you feel that way

you might be right but you invest anyway okay because you'll never ever get it you'll never

about a successful stock investing is a bit like it's called I think it's called the Cains Busy Parade the basic idea is not only must you think the girl is pretty without when it sounds sexist right I mean it comes from the 50s or whatever but when you're so if you think of a company as a girl in a beauty pageant the key in size no only must you think the girl is pretty but you everyone else needs to think the girl's pretty so that's so of stocks the fact that a stock

is a really good business fundamentally doesn't matter if nobody else agrees with you right and similarly if the stocks lying and misrepresenting its numbers and fraudulent but everyone thinks it's

amazing it will still carry on going up so so that so I guess my point is with a slightly

rubbish analogy that I just used and I'll remember not to use that one again is you know there's the often in investment there's there are no prizes for being right right you can be right well the John Maynard Cains gone quoting him far too much but he said the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent and so there's a huge element of if you can't beat

“him join him I really think that I think there's going to be a really big problem with all the AI”

capex right all this investment in AI there's loads of research being there's this big management consultancy group in the States just at a huge piece that's been on social media in recent weeks basically saying that you know there's no way that the revenues from AI could possibly justify the valuations of all these companies and all the money that's being spent and it looks exactly like the intellect looked in 98 99 right to me and we've been there when that happened but that

doesn't mean I can call the day that it's going to crash and it will probably go up another 20 percent or 30 you know there's some people really get a 758 thousand before and crucially to my point about zooming out is when the crash comes it could be really bad for six months or nine months or whenever like but as long as you're smart and you're investing every month it won't matter yeah it won't matter to your the thing I care about which is the tangible outcome

that somebody gets to there 60th birthday with 700 grand or 900 grand or 1.3 million quid which is entirely possible for most people which we talked about the first time so what is there

“a way that people I think you did kind of mention it and just to tie this loop again let's”

say if somebody is worried about it because that's natural yeah is there something is there anything that they can invest in and you have mentioned it but I just want it to be clear for people in case it's not that they it should be you can make me repeat myself again I'm not going to make you make you think yourself but to basically have a better balance especially with you know we us know in these concentrations they're better balance but also to reduce the risk you did to kind

of say it did say gold as a what so gold is the defensive yeah a defensive option yeah but actually

yeah so so I would always say and I would have said this anyway even before the great success

the S&P and saying this would have limited people's performance to like 11% of years that are 14% any year for the last few years so I would have been wrong right and that is that I would always prefer to own so that so there's the S&P 500 is the 500 biggest American shares there's the MSCI world yeah that is 1600 shares which includes European shares and Japanese shares and whatever right developed world shares and then there's something called the footsy all world which is actually

the index is about 4,000 shares and it includes all the emerging markets so you know basically every country in the world within reason that's got a relatively liquid stock market it's companies are in that yeah thing within reasons and that's not quite true but but and the the passive fund the ETF that tracks the footsy all world has about 3,000 companies in it because you can't have all these like random tiny little ones just in an ETF for technical reasons it's too hard to do

so think about that that's like you can put 25 quit a month into 3,000 companies right so that

so I would always say kind of regardless of what's going on in the news that the sleep at night

“investment is the full world okay well the MSCI world if you want to have just developed world stuff”

and then you don't have to worry so much about the S&P 500 concentration you just have to worry a bit about it because it's such a big percentage of those both of those other indexes because both of those indexes a huge percentage of those indexes of that you know of those 1600 in the MSCI world 500 and then the S&P 500 right and then the other thing to say and again there's no right

equal weight ETF okay so if you take the S&P 500 well let's use the footsy because it's easier

mathematically so there are 100 companies in the footsy 100 when you put well let's get the math easy even though very people put 100,000 but it makes it really easy if you could put 100,000 quit into the footsy 100 and this is a big part of this passive problem that I've been talking about right the right the dot side of the rise of passive but it because when somebody puts 100,000 pounds into the footsy 100 a lot of people think that means that 1,000 pounds goes into each of the

100 companies that's not what happens 10,000 quit goes into AstraZeneca 10,000 quit goes into Shell 8,000 quit goes into BP because it's what's called market cap weighted so the percentage that the company is of the index cause of the size of the company is the percentage that your

“of your money will go into it right and so that's why if hundreds of billions of dollars are”

going into the S&P 500 and it's market cap weighted and the biggest companies are well the top 50

companies are 60% so 100 billion goes into the S&P 500, 60 billion of that goes into only 50

companies and 40 billion of it goes into 10 companies like the mag 7 plus like I think visa, the mags to card JPMorgan, pop share the way whatever right so an equal way in the footsy example would be your 100,000 quit goes instead of 10,000 into HSBC or 10,000 into the AstraZeneca the big ones it would be a thousand a thousand a thousand a thousand into each of the 100 companies and you can now buy an S&P 500 equal weight ETF so at one 500 of your money would go

equal into each of the companies the only problem with that is if you've done that for the last 20 years you would have underperform the person who buys the market cap weighted and there's no right answer cause if if there's a big pendulum swing back and all those mag 7 massive trillion three trillion dollar five trillion dollar companies get smaller then the equal weight will outperform the market cap weighted but nobody can call it and that's the difficult you just

like you say just keep it simple and then you don't need to do anything too complicated. And one thing I really want to say I want to try and remember to say this is what is far more important than any of these considered what's the right thing to do like should I do equal

“weight should I do MSC I world should I vastly more important than any of that is that you should”

get invested yeah the biggest problem we have is not whether somebody is in an S&P 500 or no no MSC I world or maybe in UK expertise or franchise or whatever the biggest problem we have is that the vast majority of adults simply are not doing this yeah and that's my mission as to change that exactly and hope that we've managed to convince for you you give it now on the audience you have you know what we're less in the people of think I'm full of nonsense but a few who

might actually think that what I'm saying is evidence based and actually works you know and I look for what it's worth I've had I want us I've certainly had several hundred people email possibly more than a thousand across social media and email and stuff in the last you know ten plus years since I published my book who said I did this and it worked yeah thank you very much

“like so you book that's how I got into like investing in global England yeah but how you're”

going so far doing good well just doing well be very careful in the next few years as discussed in join this conversation drop a comment with your favorite moment give this video a like and hit subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Fence will be in part of the journey we've got plenty more valuable conversations coming your way so it does feel like and I did say this that I talked about the budget of you know my friend Benadictor she's a calten mock-ass

and talking about it and for my perspective it does feel like building one of the UK's getting harder yeah tax raises with more tax taken high costs in people feeling stuck do you think that's a fair take hundred percent yeah well I mean here's an insight that isn't very popular at the moment as a statement of fact the tax burden on on Britain at the moment on private individuals and companies is the highest it's ever been pretty much I believe I'm not saying in their burden is

actually higher than it was in the war in the second world war I might be wrong but it's that

old of magnitude right and the state as a percentage of the British economy is the pretty much the highest ever been the government the size of the government as a percentage of the overall British economy is the highest ever been and everything's rubbish is that fair like right unemployment is rubbish inflation is rubbish cost of living is rubbish housing affordability is rubbish graduate recruitment is gone right unemployment is up like all the keycapia out I said to you before we could

grow leon's just gone bust you know the the healthy leon's gone bust cancer research

in the home counties there is you know pretty affluent and my local high street is a ghost town of boarded up businesses going bust somebody I know is from a growing originally said they just went back to Croydon and they just you know the shopping center Croydon's destroyed up that get a glass go go like we all know this is true we're looking around at this country going like you know all of these things are about as bad as they've ever been certainly in living memory right

so is the answer more government and more tax and I argue consistently and I you know I believe I argue this in a very evidence-based way based on centuries of evidence in dozens of countries that those two things are related the bigger government is the bigger

“the tax burden is the worse society is the harder life is for poor people particularly because”

I mean again we were talking about this but like inflation for example basically big government

and loads of government borrowing causes inflation monetary debasement regardless of what the MMT mad people incorrectly argued it's just true based on evidence right inflation affects poor people way worse than affects rich people in fact a lot of rich people benefit from inflation it's an asset price so so for a poor person who's close to the breadline and really struggling to make ends meet has their salary gone up no particularly given that all the companies now have

to pay higher NIC and loads of other costs they can't afford to put salaries up right so their salary is fixed and the thing that the thing that we're really inflating is food prices and energy and housing so somebody on a relatively fixed low salary or income is confronting I mean not past us up like 100% all of all is up 100% yeah eggs are up I mean eggs are insanely expensive right all this stuff that's the basics right and we all know electricity's up you know energy is up

uh and properties up because housing affordability's terrible right so that makes the least fortunate society's lives really bad rich people own gold and Bitcoin and London property and all the stuff that's going up because of monetary inflation right so I mean I I know it's a bit of a harsh opening but I I describe this as Turkey's voting for Christmas because the irony is to draw main acclaims point about not one man in a million understands this stuff and I think that's not far

of it's not obviously more people understand that but it's not a lot of people that understand

this stuff if you think the answer is bigger government and more tax and the government should do more

“your life is going to get worse I you are a Turkey voting for Christmas that's my that's my belief”

based on being a student of economics for 35 years and a market practitioner in capital markets raising money for businesses which provide employment and pay tax revenues because there's a great there's a guy called Arthur Laffer who came on the side of the Laffer curve the famous economist which is the basic idea that as you put up tax rates yeah the curve because it's you start taking more tax as a government right but you reach a tipping point where you start taking

the more you put it up the less tax you take yeah right it's called the Laffer curve so Arthur Laffer says basically at all times through our history the more you've put up things like wealth taxes the worst the economy's been the harder life is being for poor people and the less tax that governments have actually been able to take from wealthy people yeah and that's

“exactly what we're seeing in Britain at the moment yeah so how do people navigate this given”

that obviously with the budget you know news of you know they're happening and potentially obviously I can't speak for the government I don't know what their plans are the trend is looking

like they you know more changes might happen in the next few years how can people never get

we've talked about investing is there other things that people can do well yeah that I mean it is it this is why so I've said this a lot in recent months I never wanted to get party political like everything I do is about the nuts and bolts of financial markets for two centuries I mean economic historian I'm not a party political person but you're asking how do people never get it and I'm saying to my stated mission for more than ten years now it's been to improve the

financial affairs of a many people as possible the way I can do that by educating people that all the stuff we've talked about financial markets get invested learn about this stuff there's nothing I can do about youth unemployment there's nothing I can do about the fact that 80% of it pubs are now unprofitable and pubs are hemorrhaging jobs and hotels and restaurants you know there's nothing I can do about the fact that graduate recruitment this year is the worst it's ever been since

they started keeping records right so the reason that I'm getting somewhat party political nowadays is because I believe based on as I say being a student of this stuff for 35 years and working

have to change if people are going to be able to navigate stuff and not lose their job but you know 250 years that whatever it's certainly more than 200,000 people on the way to 250,000 people have lost their jobs since the budget last year so just over a year I mean it's like you know you know as I say the British society of in keepers of there was this brilliant thing I thought this is an example of a really good kind of contemporary action I saw a piece in the press the other

day about how there's this trend at the moment of pubs refusing to serve labour politicians really yes because 80% of pubs are now structurally unprofitable so like no matter how many points of bear they sell they can't make a profit because the tax and all the other the business rates and the tax and you know start looking to stuff up like the difference between VAT on booze and the

“home and VAT on pubs and all this stuff that's what all the leading you know publicans and people”

own pub groups and it's true you know as a similar problem in hotels and in restaurant trains and

across and throughout and in the north sea oil you know the north sea oil industries basically falling

apart thousands of jobs are going every month I mean it's just and the thing that drives me most crazy about it is it's like it's our choice that is happening like we could have 100 need degrees opposite policies and have a much better wealthier society with way more employment and people with highest salaries and trillions of pounds more of wealth for the for the country I just I cannot understand why on earth people behave like that but to get away from being

party political so some of you is lucky enough to have a good job still and you know is able to navigate this stuff um yeah you just have to you know make sure you do a good job with investment yeah it's a no investment yeah what I have this I don't know there's so many things that are converging that worry me like so AI is happening I don't know what the future of this what the the future of UK is so I've got this kind of fear slash anxiety where I'm thinking

I need to say what I need to invest yeah I mean this is weird like it's not weird of course

“you should be doing that but it's like I'm trying to even do it even more aggressively than I was”

doing before because I just it's just on set but it can't hurt right but it's uncertain but there's weird just so you shouldn't rely on this this is a bit like um the what I'm about to say is analogy for this is like you know I'm a bit bad like this I probably drink too much wine my wife would say that I drink too much wine and I really annoy because I've just spent 10 years looking at the biotech sex I'm like listen the biotech's getting so good yeah that I'm just gonna 3D print

myself a new liver in a few years time all like people who smoke like they just you know they'll have a really effective cure for cancer right within a few years and by the way I actually

do believe that the probably that's probably true like with the technology is amazing I've

just spent 3 years riding a book about it but you probably shouldn't live your life based on the possibility that in the future like they'll cure oh I could just smoke as many cigarettes so I won't because they have this like pill for lung cancer and it'll be good and it'll be fine

“you shouldn't have and similarly because what the analogy I was gonna draw is I think there's actually”

a reasonably good chance that technology AI robotics biotech quantum computer asteroid mining these convergent in incredibly advanced technologies I think there's a chance that we're entering an era of super abundance there's actually a book and we're gonna go through it's a bit like in so in 1800 90% of people worked on the land like it back breaking grinding and basically you were lucky to have me once a week you know if that and you lived on a turnip

yeah and people were grindingly poor like all over the world right and if you'd said to people then you know but 90% of people worked on the land and if you'd said to people then in 200 years time not 0.5% of people work on the land intellectually they would have gone straight to you well that's a disaster like that's a cataclysm like how on earth a human being is gonna live and sustain themselves and put food on the table if you know today 90% of people

working the land in 200 years time only half percent of people working the land they couldn't conceive of the fact that actually they'd be 89 and a half percent of the population have much better jobs and much better lives right and actually I think it's worth at the moment proactively AI is going to but I'm sorry along the way there were the Luddites and there were you know people breaking up spinning jennies in the cotton mills of Lancashire right because

there will always be disruption for quite a few years and actually if you really want to get

depressed about it you could argue that you know the first and the second more war were part of that disruption from the you know the industrial revolution and then the technological revolution

time before you get back to the good times and we kind of navigate to calm horses like well now we've got AI and robotics none of us need to work how does that model work I don't know but like I guess what I'm saying is in the same way that I'm not gonna smoke cigarettes believing that there'll be a cure for smoking and I don't have to worry about that because that's just stupid I am also gonna save an invest and behave on you know conduct myself and on the assumption

that we're not gonna answer a world of super-invandance but I do think we should all be a little bit less scared and I do think we could all be a little and by the way go and read the book super abundance you know go and read what mark and reason and people like him are writing about so he's the guy you found a net scape and juice and horror wits but you know listen support cast like Chris Rilliamson interviewing some of the leading tech folks and they are if I all

lex freedman or whatever and try to proactively curate the positive arguments okay because they they you have at least as much chance of being correct as the negative ones right

“yeah and actually somewhere in the middle it could well that's why I always think happens but”

in the meantime rather than making yourself miserable my kids not gonna have a job and you know that might happen but what's the point in the dwelling in it it's like it's like you know there might be nuclear on the get-in next week right and but by the way yeah yeah well that's the most important thing everything is to see the other side but you know you could I think too many people at the moment are living their life but don't be wrong I think the current

by the way that the stories were nearly as bad but labor or way worse at the moment but the stories were terrible my point is I think in Britain at the moment we have a huge relative disadvantage because everything we're doing is retarding it making the people's lives harder destroying the economy limiting wealth and by virtue of that if if this super but you know if basically what Ed Miller bands doing with power right now energy it's doing nothing for the environment

yeah it's absolutely insane what is so relevant what we do right that all that nonsense but what it is doing is being Britain's got no chance of having a proper role to play in quantum computing AI or biotech because they're all incredibly power hungry technologies and all the self-serving

nonsense and PR press release they well Britain's just invested 10 billion it's like it's a

drop in the ocean we're going to be nowhere compared to China and America and a few other places right which by the way is really stupid because the technologies that are actually going to solve environmental problems and create clean proper clean power of those technologies so we need to use

“that's what China so everyone's like China's doing so well with like clean power and solar and”

wind and yeah they are by burning shit though to fossil fuels and having because they understand that you need to use the last basic generation of technologies to produce or the energy required to build the next generation which will be clean tech and that's what they're doing which is why they're creating almost all of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world and Britain is a rounding area of total relevance so China are doing that and we're doing the we have literally

the stupidest policies of industrial energy prices are the highest in the world and that's another reason why we're trying to trillion and quit poor and we might otherwise be because if you can't anything industrial doesn't work in the UK because our power is so expensive so yeah anyway but

but I guess but it's not always standing how rubbish everything is in Britain at the moment

“I do think you should at least get in touch with and get conversant with the sort of utopian future”

arguments around AI and robotics because there's half a chance I mean look at this you know a population collapse is a real thing at the moment right country to what the human population is going to peak probably in the middle of this century which is like decades earlier than originally forecast because of what's happening all over the world is saying in a fallback and I've said this I think I put it in my biotech book but there's half a chance that are grandchildren rather than

living in a world with no ice caps and you know whatever we're actually living in a world where

there are two billion human beings and they're all millionaires like in in terms of their access

to food shelter travel you know playing sport like all the wonderful things that we have as of species okay and that you know a lot of people say they're guys full of shit but let's well I'll give it off finish with this thought on that that is what has happened in the

time machine so come with me to 2025 they would get out of the time machine and go everyone's so rich look at their clothes what's this thing called a iPhone aeroplanes what

“like that's what's happened and we are crazy as a species of going that everything's going to be”

shit and finally you know one of the I started it one of my books with a quote by what's

by what scheme or something do we see nothing but a progress behind us and expect nothing but deterioration in front of us yeah okay I get it I get it and it's like the record of the last three centuries is we've massively improved the now the environment is an issue but it's precisely those technologies which are about my body but it's going to sort that out yeah anyway hopefully that's a stop ranting about rubbish something is everything could be really good but it's better to believe

it's better to believe it's better to believe it for your own state of mind right as well correct okay cool and talk about investing your book how to in the world to you've telling me offline you've not rewritten it but you've updated it for people who are young and not just it's not just for people that young of it yeah correct outside of the UK to help them can talk a little bit about it so basically

to our point compounding is the most important thing for building wealth

time and patience right and compounding and so the most important people to get grips with the stuff are people in their 20s because if you leave it to your 40s it's so much harder to become wealthy if you get this daughter new 20s it's so much easier become wealthy right and so for a while now I've had and I basically not long after the first version of how to run the world was published loads of teachers and university lecturers and uncles and aunts and grandparents were like

I'd love to give a book I'd love to give a book like this to my 16 year old so originally I was going to try and write a book for teens but we kind of first the I can't write a book for teens because I'm 50 and I'm not very down with the kids that I was trying but wasn't really working and so my publisher and I came up with this idea that like not only can I'm struggling to write a book for teens but also even the most diligent intelligent teenager who gets really into it and goes oh this

puts great I love it now I know what the stock market is they're not earning any money yet or very few of them are right or they're not earning enough money to invest yet so we just thought it was

“actually if you want to get the tangible outcome of people actually changing their lives and making”

a really positive difference hitting the under 30s market was a much better idea than hitting the teenage market so that's why I've done it but there's a fair bit in there that comes from how to write in the world yeah there's also all the hundred up minus your age stuff that comes from my second book live on us and vests there so if you like it's the it's a distillation of the best of how to write in the world and live on us and vests in one book which I've kind of been

meaning to do yeah a hundred percent and there's a bit in there from our future as biotech which is a lot of what we just been talking about besides the worlds actually not as bad as everyone thinks it isn't be positive and being wealthy is really good because you can do more for people and so it's kind of a defense of wealth and money and capitalists old nice so it's like a combination of all three okay it's my greatest hits mate yeah love that and it's got and it's had

really because it was only published last week wait fourth of December yeah was that last week oh yeah last week yeah and yeah we can a day ago last Thursday but um and I whenever you publish a book you get the fear because like you just expect like loads of one star of eating I really like this first with this one's terrible you know shit and you really get the fear even if you work really hard on it and actually I've had I've had a load there's no comment

that one of the three there's three five star of these on Amazon already and one of them says this is his best book yet wow yeah which is like oh thank god you know but people like yeah people seem to like it and um I'm really proud of it thank you so much Andrew like I've really enjoyed this conversation it's it's been great to like catch up on all things and I think there's central messages it's for people to not worry keeping best then do your best right? Do your best

“as well I think that's so so important where can people find you if they want to connect to you”

and do you have that final words as well? Well so the easiest thing which I like to say now is our YouTube channel because I'm really proud of it I've put loads of work into it and that is this nappily named plain English finance and Andrew Craig okay so it's not so if you look about it yeah correct yeah it says I mean you can find it but it's not exactly particularly sharp

and then from there you can find I mean I always say to people connect with me on LinkedIn,

Facebook, X they're the what I don't do instead I don't do TikTok I do the longer form platforms so any of that our website is plain Englishfinance.co.uk/finance.com but they're a YouTube channel

interviews I know that I can be more might you know but I believe what I say in terms of you know

I really do want the best possible economic and life outcome for people and I and all the

“arguments I make around how the economy works and how wealth works I believe a pretty”

founded and evidence and fact right and I do think we need to you know for people that have

better lives more people need to understand this stuff amazing thank you so much Alan like I said

“it's always on the having you on a podcast and definitely when I have another conversation with you”

in 2022 so you don't think when I whenever see it thanks a lot thank you for tuning into this week so see you next week so if you enjoyed this episode share favorite part in the comments

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just a few things to find talent for all jobs. you can't always talk about others and I and

on the one hand. you can't get on the one hand if it's on the other hand and if you can't, you can't get on the one hand that you are for the most because credit is just like that. or you now have your credit on the one hand if you can't get on the one hand if you can't get on the one hand.