Zanny Minton-Beddoes

Well, first of all, it's very nice to join you again.

That's a hard one to answer because, you know, what is remarkable is that in the face of a lot of shocks, some positive, many negative, the economy is doing remarkably well and the stock market is doing remarkably well.

And I think that the sort of

simple way to explain that is that on the one hand, we have a number of policy shocks.

And I would put the president's immigration policy right at the top and his tariff policy right at the top.

And we can talk about both of those.

But also generally, the uncertainty that

surrounds what President Trump does.

You know, he is very pro-business on one hand, but on the other hand, it's very, very hard to plan and predict.

But set against that, there is a frenzy, almost a euphoria in the United States right now around artificial intelligence.

And that frenzy is driving investment and it is really what is behind the stock market.

So you have this sort of tale of two economies, if you will.

The real economy right now in the here and now, I think being hit by particularly the tariffs.

And on the other hand,

This optimism in the markets that comes around the expectations for AI.

If you look at really the stocks that are doing extraordinarily well, it is the big tech companies.

The Magnificent Seven, as they're often called.

Meta, Tesla, Alphabet, formerly Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple.

It is the big tech companies that are driving this frenzy, and then other companies that investors think are going to benefit from it.

If you took those out, the performance of the stock market is much more lackluster.