Merryn Somerset Webb

But if markets are supposed to look to the long term, maybe markets are right about kind of ignoring it all if we are on an elongated long offer up.

No, John, I'm trying to make this podcast more upbeat.

This is very different to how I think we've thought of markets in the past.

We thought of markets as being a predictive machine to a degree.

You know, not everything is priced in always.

Of course it isn't.

That would be a ridiculous idea.

But quite often you'd say, well, you know, market participants are pretty clever and they're pricing a lot of stuff in advance.

And now you're suggesting there's this different environment.

The market is not pricing things in.

It's waiting till things actually happen.

It's not predictive.

It's reactive to reality.

And then I wanted to talk very briefly about the UK and that we've been very positive on the UK stock market, but very negative on the UK economy.

And I remain pretty negative on the UK economy, in fact, very negative on the UK economy.

But there have been some very slightly positive things happening, right?

Mildly stronger than expected GDP growth in February, although we only half care about that because that was February before the war.

slight fall in UK unemployment that, again, wasn't 100% expected, although you could argue that that's simply to do with people just going, well, I give up.

I give up.

I'm never going to get a job, so I give up.