Speaker 1: John.
Speaker 2: You know, we talk a lot about how cheap UK
Speaker 2: equities are, I mean endlessly right, And last week we
Speaker 2: had Rob are not telling us that there is trade
Speaker 2: of the decade, etc. And you and I both agree
Speaker 2: with that, we believe in this story. But we're always
Speaker 2: so busy talking about how cheap UK equities are. We
Speaker 2: very rarely talk about how incredibly expensive American equities are.
Speaker 2: We're always looking at one end of the thing and
Speaker 2: kind of ignoring the other. Because the key thing here
Speaker 2: is it's partly the UK equity is achieap, but also
Speaker 2: that US equities are still off the scale expensive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the main reason for that maybe because
Speaker 3: we're horribly embodised, But.
Speaker 1: Why are we embarrassed? I'm not embarrassed.
Speaker 3: The basically the problem with US equities is that the
Speaker 3: art expensive. But they've been expensive for an insanely long
Speaker 3: amount of tame compared to cane like Hasterday. So and
Speaker 3: I think this is best summed up and that kind
Speaker 3: of piece of research from US as the manager's GMO.
Speaker 3: And they've got a strategies there called James Monte who excellent, Yeah, excellent,
Speaker 3: kind of right, And I remember prior to two thousand
Speaker 3: and eight.
Speaker 4: He was really on.
Speaker 3: The ball about it coming up and then afterwards. One
Speaker 3: thing that really sticks in my mind is that he
Speaker 3: wrote about this basically portfolio bombed out stocks at a
Speaker 3: time when everyone else was like, don't touch the stock
Speaker 3: market at a temper passport. And if you just bought the
Speaker 3: ones that he'd looked at, then you made like multiples
Speaker 3: there money, like probably like a tenth Do.
Speaker 1: That we read that? Well, why didn't we do that?
Speaker 5: See?
Speaker 1: I like we still here.
Speaker 4: I like to blame compliance reasons.
Speaker 1: And was complaint.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. It's just it's the admin.
Speaker 3: It's the admin, isn't it.
Speaker 4: The bit of my life? If I was better admint,
Speaker 4: I would be rich.
Speaker 1: It's both of us. I mean, this is the problem,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the things that we do.
Speaker 2: I'm going off topic here, but one of the things
Speaker 2: that I always think about whenever we write anything but
Speaker 2: our reader and listeners. How big is the admin leap
Speaker 2: that they have to take to do anything? So hard?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And that's important.
Speaker 3: I mean, actually that's I mean that regardlessly of views
Speaker 3: on crypto currency, that is one of the big issues
Speaker 3: we betcoin and always was, and I see the period
Speaker 3: reason I don't want any so yes.
Speaker 1: No customer service when you get the admin wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my problem with crypt although to be fair
Speaker 3: that that expine extends to just about every kind of
Speaker 3: service these days any week, so.
Speaker 2: You might as well by bitcoin anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So back to James. Actually, so James, like in
Speaker 3: March twenty twelve, I think it was, wrote an article
Speaker 3: for GMO. The GMO have always been that's where Jeemy
Speaker 3: Grantham works, and they've always been on the value side, et.
Speaker 4: Cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: But he basically pointed out that US stocks were very expensive,
Speaker 3: but also US profit margins were very high. So say
Speaker 3: the long run average from about nineteen fifty was six percent,
Speaker 3: and they were running about nine percent. He came up
Speaker 3: with various reasons as to why that might be, but
Speaker 3: to be honest, they're not important just now because it's
Speaker 3: complicated istion, it's a bit a distraction. His point was
Speaker 3: that corporate margins should, in theory mean revert, so in
Speaker 3: other words, they should go back from nine percent to
Speaker 3: six percent, and therefore you would end this US out performance.
Speaker 3: And just in case anyone's wondering the reason that corporate
Speaker 3: profit margins should presumably kind of you know, mean revert
Speaker 3: is because capitalism, So you get a free market. One
Speaker 3: company starts making outside profit margins, the others come along,
Speaker 3: they all compete with each other, and the margins come down.
Speaker 3: And so obviously that didn't actually happen. Then US stocks
Speaker 3: continue to performed for the following decade, and even even
Speaker 3: now we've kind of gone back into this weird situation
Speaker 3: where we're kind of going back to growth outperforming value
Speaker 3: again despite the recent changes and interest rates, etc. And
Speaker 3: so James is a technolo look at this in a
Speaker 3: paper that you can download off the GMO website. He's
Speaker 3: basically sort of like saying, look, oh, where did I
Speaker 3: go wrong? And again, that's more about the economics side
Speaker 3: of it, and it's not actually that important to our discussion.
Speaker 3: His point low was that, Okay, I've been wrong for
Speaker 3: the past ten years. What happs if this on this one?
Speaker 5: Definite?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I recognize that ire wrong for the past ten years.
Speaker 3: What happens with profit margins just stay the same? And
Speaker 3: the point he was making was that, well, but the
Speaker 3: things valuations have increased so much that even if you
Speaker 3: think the corporate profit margins is going to stay at
Speaker 3: nine percent. US stocks are sitting on a shillerpe or
Speaker 3: a cape ratio of about thirty, which makes them as
Speaker 3: expensive as they were at the top of the tech
Speaker 3: bubble in two thousand and that that was the most
Speaker 3: expensive US stocks or stocked pretty much.
Speaker 2: Brave interruption, brave interruption. UK market is on a Shillippe
Speaker 2: more like fourteen till half the press just.
Speaker 3: Saying exactly, and then he was saying, his point is
Speaker 3: that's even if profit margins stay where they are, if
Speaker 3: profit margins do actually revert to the means to go
Speaker 3: back to the six percent overall, then if you adjust
Speaker 3: the cape for that, the cape is more like forty
Speaker 3: five fifty, and that's way higher than it was even
Speaker 3: at the dot com bubble. And again Bernmin dot com
Speaker 3: bubble was essentially the most expensive US stocks.
Speaker 4: I've ever been.
Speaker 3: And so his point was that, so even if you
Speaker 3: think everyone's going to go perfectly correct and it's going
Speaker 3: to be absolutely fine, then if margins stay high and
Speaker 3: valuations don't change, you're still looking at roughly a three
Speaker 3: percent real return based on real annual return based on
Speaker 3: GMO's views, which is slower than you would normally expect
Speaker 3: to get from equities. You know, it's not enough money
Speaker 3: to get paid for taking the risk of buying equities.
Speaker 2: And he's pointing positive, A positive real return of any
Speaker 2: kind feels kind of good.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, but we're talking over a decade.
Speaker 3: I mean, you would have hoped that something else would
Speaker 3: do better than that, or I mean you would have hoped, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, maybe maybe it won't put I mean I
Speaker 3: think then there's linked kind of like UK points and
Speaker 3: there often a real yield of one percent over thirty years,
Speaker 3: so you know, when you look at it, three percent
Speaker 3: is not that great. So very so that's that is
Speaker 3: the kind of I've probably butchered all the academic side
Speaker 3: of that paper. But long story short, even if things
Speaker 3: go perfectly for the next ten years, US stocks are
Speaker 3: rampantly over valued, and know.
Speaker 2: They won't go perfectly. We know they won't go perfectly.
Speaker 2: Did he give any sense of what it might be
Speaker 2: that would bring those corporate margins down? Is it the
Speaker 2: return of the power of labor? Is it big glaberalization?
Speaker 2: Is it all these things that we've been talking about.
Speaker 5: Thank you?
Speaker 3: He doesn't address that in this particular piece. Because he's
Speaker 3: looking I mean, his argument and it's all about accounting
Speaker 3: identities basically, but his argument that the thing that has
Speaker 3: enabled corporate profit margins to be so high is the
Speaker 3: US running a kind of massive deficit, and that was
Speaker 3: that's the big sort of change that's happened, that kind
Speaker 3: of permanent deficit, because his argument is basically that they
Speaker 3: must be coming from somewhere over this extra money essentially,
Speaker 3: and then there's all sorts of arguments about you know
Speaker 3: what intangible assets and kind of like, you know, the
Speaker 3: tech tech companies.
Speaker 1: He said earlier, earlier in this conversation, do you want to.
Speaker 2: Now now we're finding out John didn't want to touch
Speaker 2: the detail with a.
Speaker 3: Barge ball something called the Kalei equation in there, and
Speaker 3: I'm likeing that, let's let's not let's not.
Speaker 4: Getting the listeners.
Speaker 1: You're boring them.
Speaker 4: Switched off. Sorry, come back, Jim Mellon's on that.
Speaker 1: Everyone, Come back, Jim Mellon.
Speaker 6: Listen, We're going to talk to somebody now who doesn't
Speaker 6: make very many errors at all. Welcome to Meren Talks Money,
Speaker 6: the podcast in which people who do know the markets
Speaker 6: explain the markets. I'm Maren zumset web this week a
Speaker 6: conversation with Jim Mellon, chairman of Burnberry and well known
Speaker 6: invest in gurup.
Speaker 2: Jim, thank you so much for joining us. It is
Speaker 2: lovely to have you on today.
Speaker 5: Great to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Now listen. I did, and I'm sorry about this. In fact,
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry about this. But before I sat down
Speaker 2: to record, I asked on Twitter what questions any of
Speaker 2: my followers might have for you, And then I sat
Speaker 2: back to wait for lots of interesting conversations on you know,
Speaker 2: out of weather, inflationary times, and biotechnology and agronomics and
Speaker 2: all kinds of technology, etc.
Speaker 1: Instead of which.
Speaker 2: They all said, ask him how he thinks Brexit is going.
Speaker 2: So I'm sorry we have to start there.
Speaker 5: Well, it's a reasonable question.
Speaker 7: I mean, obviously it's neither going as well as the
Speaker 7: Brexiteers would have hoped, nor as badly as the remainers
Speaker 7: would have.
Speaker 5: Suggested.
Speaker 7: I'm not sure hoped, but I think hoped is fair.
Speaker 7: I can't say there's a lot of good stuff. I
Speaker 7: can't say a lot of good stuff about the government's
Speaker 7: handling of the situation. And as you know, if it
Speaker 7: had been me in charge or you in charge the
Speaker 7: day after Brexit, we would have applied for a Norwegian
Speaker 7: style trade agreement with the European Union, which would have
Speaker 7: been so much better than the current situation. I mean,
Speaker 7: I think that, you know, things are getting better rather
Speaker 7: than worse. And I don't believe all the predictions, which
Speaker 7: as you know, are generally wrong. About four percent of
Speaker 7: GNP is going to be lost over the next ten
Speaker 7: years or whatever as a result of Brexit, and I
Speaker 7: do see there are some signs of equilibrium, and particularly
Speaker 7: in services trade, where the UK is doing very well
Speaker 7: at the moment, funnily enough. But overall, you know, I've
Speaker 7: got my regrets. I mean, that's simple as that. And
Speaker 7: although I didn't have a vote in the referendum, I
Speaker 7: think I would have been neutral as opposed to have
Speaker 7: been so in favor of it. I mean, I think
Speaker 7: it's caused much more chaos than I would have expected.
Speaker 7: I'm not saying that we should now try and rejoin,
Speaker 7: because I think that that's probably not the best thing,
Speaker 7: but we should definitely try and do this Norway arrangement
Speaker 7: or EA arrangement that should have been done ab initio.
Speaker 7: It's been very badly handled by the Tories. I mean,
Speaker 7: I think you and I are both worried about a
Speaker 7: labor government, and so we should be. But the Tories
Speaker 7: have really not covered themselves in glory in any respect
Speaker 7: in the last five years or six years.
Speaker 2: No, it's interesting they've been empowered for a long time.
Speaker 1: It's hard to see the positives they.
Speaker 2: Leave behind them. And I agree with you on that
Speaker 2: that like a lot of sort of semi soft Brexiteers.
Speaker 2: I kind of assumed that after type arrangement would be
Speaker 2: come to very quickly, but I'm increasingly seeing evidence that
Speaker 2: we will come to pretty much that kind of deal.
Speaker 2: It's just taking quite a long time. So now when
Speaker 2: anyone asks me how I think Brexit's going, I'm falling
Speaker 2: back on too early to tell, which I think it
Speaker 2: probably probably is, Which it probably is, But there is
Speaker 2: I mean, there is a big positive to Brexit for investors,
Speaker 2: and it's a long term positive, which is that by
Speaker 2: discouraging international investors from coming into our market in the
Speaker 2: shorter term, we've had what been great Brexit discount and
Speaker 2: anything else discount on our equity market. And that's I think,
Speaker 2: and John and I both written about this endlessly, and
Speaker 2: I think we're beginning to see people beginning to agree
Speaker 2: with us. That's made the UK equity market phenomenally cheap
Speaker 2: and a phenomenally good long term opportunity for investors. And
Speaker 2: you and I've discussed this before, but are you're still
Speaker 2: on board with that view?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I am.
Speaker 7: And you know, we talked around a year ago about
Speaker 7: exactly this, and actually the UK market's not done so
Speaker 7: badly since then, and the pand has been relatively strong,
Speaker 7: and I think it will continue to be strong. That
Speaker 7: having been said, you know, if the British government wasn't
Speaker 7: intent on throwing molotov cocktails in the way of a
Speaker 7: relatively robust economy in the form of increased corporation tax,
Speaker 7: stealth taxes by raising by basically putting more people into
Speaker 7: the forty percent tax band, and all sorts of other taxes,
Speaker 7: as well as you know, not unpicking regulations that should
Speaker 7: have been unpicked ages ago.
Speaker 2: Well and adding more regulation on top relentless editions of regulation.
Speaker 2: So we suffer from this sort of huge heaviness of
Speaker 2: regulation before we even start on anything else. I was
Speaker 2: thinking about this the other day wheneveryone was complaining on
Speaker 2: the same day about too much regulation in the UK
Speaker 2: economy and more and more regulation coming in and at
Speaker 2: the same time time complaining about obesity in and the
Speaker 2: effect that that has on the NHS. And it's like
Speaker 2: it's the same kind of thing, you know, these big
Speaker 2: sort of burdens weighing down our NHS, of weighing down
Speaker 2: our economy on the other hand, and what do.
Speaker 1: We do about them?
Speaker 2: And are we taking the crab interrupted?
Speaker 1: You you carry on, you carry on.
Speaker 5: No, but I'm with you.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, why is the government so damned
Speaker 7: incompetent And you know, it's just it beggars belief really.
Speaker 7: You know, there are obviously some very good ministers out there.
Speaker 7: I don't think Richie's doing a bad job. He seems
Speaker 7: to have stabilized the ship and you know he internationally
Speaker 7: he's doing quite well. But there's just so much more
Speaker 7: that could be done. And they had an eighty seat majority.
Speaker 7: I mean, they could have done so much. He could
Speaker 7: have done anything they wanted, and it's just a wasted opportunity.
Speaker 5: They haven't been said.
Speaker 7: You know, I read and I don't mean to say
Speaker 7: I read it in any great detail or with great
Speaker 7: linguistic skill, but I read the French newspaper her every day,
Speaker 7: and I read built Sitong, which is Germany's equivalent to
Speaker 7: the Sun, every day. And you know, we think that
Speaker 7: we're in this sort of economic malaise that's specific to
Speaker 7: the UK, It's just not true. Every other country in
Speaker 7: Europe thinks it's in a dire situation as well. And
Speaker 7: there's a lot of inward looking stuff going on in
Speaker 7: Europe as well as in the United States. So while
Speaker 7: we hunters going on about how we're talking ourselves into,
Speaker 7: you know, going backwards economically, every other country that I
Speaker 7: can read their press of is doing exactly the same,
Speaker 7: and including where I spend a lot of time, which
Speaker 7: is in Spain.
Speaker 1: Okay, So is.
Speaker 2: There still value in the UK equity market with that
Speaker 2: in mind, and if everyone's talking themselves into a funk
Speaker 2: and UK equities which are certainly at the top end,
Speaker 2: very international anyway, trading at a thirty five forty percent
Speaker 2: discount to similar companies in the US, seems like a
Speaker 2: no brainer to buy those.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I completely agree, And you know, I'm sure that
Speaker 7: the the large sort of fossil fuel related companies like
Speaker 7: Shell and BP are good long term investments. I'm sure
Speaker 7: that our defense stocks are good long term investments. I'm
Speaker 7: sure that our financial services companies are good long term investments.
Speaker 7: We're not likely the US banking system, where basically the
Speaker 7: money market funds have completely upended the whole banking model
Speaker 7: for regional banks, and where there are far too many
Speaker 7: banks in the first place. I think the insurance companies
Speaker 7: are also attractive. Some of our investment trusts are attractive
Speaker 7: to buy. There's a whole plethora of stuff that you
Speaker 7: can buy in the UK with long term confidence, whereas
Speaker 7: you know, if you buy something in the US, you
Speaker 7: are paying a very distinct premium at a time when
Speaker 7: you know earnings are all time high as a percentage
Speaker 7: of GDP in the US and are probably going to
Speaker 7: start falling.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I'm with you.
Speaker 7: Let's buy the UK and carry on buying the UK.
Speaker 7: And you know, as for London losing its position as
Speaker 7: the largest market in Europe, well, I actually don't think
Speaker 7: it really matters. London is still the pre eminent, or
Speaker 7: at least equal pre eminent financial capital in the world.
Speaker 7: There's no sign that it's losing its pre eminence in
Speaker 7: the whole of Europe. Only a trickle of people have
Speaker 7: moved elsewhere, and as I said at the beginning, services
Speaker 7: exports are an all time high from the UK, which
Speaker 7: is our main strength. So although you know the government's
Speaker 7: doing everything it can to sort of put the reins
Speaker 7: on the economy, the economy is being remarkably resilient. And
Speaker 7: there's no doubt in my mind, and I said this
Speaker 7: from September last year onwards that rather than being the
Speaker 7: weakest economy in the G seven, this year will be somewhere.
Speaker 5: Near the top.
Speaker 7: The UK is remarkably resilient as an economy. And we
Speaker 7: also have the effect, whether you like it or not,
Speaker 7: and I actually don't mind it, of very very fast
Speaker 7: flowing inward immigration and that is going to add to
Speaker 7: our economy in coming years.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not as to our economy as to
Speaker 2: our economy in terms of GDP, but we're not sure
Speaker 2: that it adds in terms of GDP per head. Oh
Speaker 2: we which is the thing that really matters. We're not
Speaker 2: really interested in what the overall GDP of the UK is.
Speaker 2: We're interested in whether individuals are seeing their incomes rise
Speaker 2: and their living standards rise. We don't necessarily see that
Speaker 2: with large waves of immigration governments like it because it
Speaker 2: means they can say, oh, no, GDP is going up,
Speaker 2: But do individuals like it if it's not actually improving
Speaker 2: their personal standard of living?
Speaker 7: Well, that's a very good point, and I think in
Speaker 7: the short term, almost certainly, it's going to.
Speaker 5: Be diluted of GDP per capita.
Speaker 7: And you know, I think there's a couple of things
Speaker 7: that can be done about that, including allowing migrants to
Speaker 7: work much earlier or even I wouldn't forcing them, but
Speaker 7: making it attractive for them to work, and secondly training
Speaker 7: them in skill sets that the UK is lacking in.
Speaker 7: And I think also importantly that we need to target
Speaker 7: migrants who are of a younger demographic because you know,
Speaker 7: if XYZ comes in and then brings his whole elderly
Speaker 7: relative cohorts with him or her, that is definitely going
Speaker 7: to constitute a drain on the resources of the economy.
Speaker 7: But longer term, every single developed country, including the one
Speaker 7: I'm going to tomorrow, in particular Singapore, is facing a
Speaker 7: major demographic crisis. You've talked about this before, I've talked
Speaker 7: about it, but it's actually becoming It's one of those crises.
Speaker 5: That doesn't really hit you until it hits you.
Speaker 7: We're basically facing population collapse in many countries around the world,
Speaker 7: and far from discouraging migrants in ten or twenty years time,
Speaker 7: will be begging them to come to the UK, or
Speaker 7: to Germany or to wherever else is sure of people.
Speaker 7: And although we're not on hand, if this.
Speaker 2: Is a global dynamic, which it will become, there aren't
Speaker 2: that many countries left in the world where the population
Speaker 2: is growing very fast, and very few left, and mostly
Speaker 2: in Sub Saharan Africa, whether patiliarated through over four or five. Right, So,
Speaker 2: if we're suffering from the potential for populations to decline
Speaker 2: in western countries now and in pretty much every other
Speaker 2: country over the next few decades, should we be trying
Speaker 2: to deal with this problem by pushing other people's kids,
Speaker 2: or should we be trying to find a way to
Speaker 2: manage our economies in our societies such that we can
Speaker 2: cope with our aging populations that we're going to give you. Japan,
Speaker 2: for example, which is ahead of the game here and
Speaker 2: there's been beginning to figure out ways to make it work.
Speaker 2: Rather than thinking, jeez, we can't be doing without young people.
Speaker 2: Let's get someone else's in well.
Speaker 7: Japan's are very as you know much better than me,
Speaker 7: that Japan's a very particular country.
Speaker 5: And the sense of it, it really doesn't.
Speaker 7: It's quite xenophobic, and it definitely not multicultural by any
Speaker 7: stretch of the imagination. And Japan also has an older
Speaker 7: population that is quite happy. A lot of them are
Speaker 7: quite happy to go out and work and continued to
Speaker 7: be employed at lesser salaries than they got when they
Speaker 7: were at the peak of their careers. And admittedly a
Speaker 7: lot of it is non jobs, you know, just sort
Speaker 7: of like opening and shutting barriers and things like that.
Speaker 7: But flag waving a very very different society to ours.
Speaker 5: I'm sure you know this.
Speaker 7: But by two thousand and seventy, which is not that
Speaker 7: far off, more than half of the G seven's population
Speaker 7: will be over sixty five years old. And in some
Speaker 7: of those countries, not ours, but including out I don't know, well, yeah,
Speaker 7: we'll be over sixty five fifty Well, you know, we
Speaker 7: will all be over sixty five much sooner than that.
Speaker 7: But the thing is that in some of those countries,
Speaker 7: and you're going to see Japan obviously is one example
Speaker 7: of that, the population will be seventy five percent over
Speaker 7: sixty five years old.
Speaker 5: And so there are two things that need to be done.
Speaker 7: One is to prevent people from becoming frail and you know,
Speaker 7: build robustness and to older people, and that's something that
Speaker 7: you know, longevity science is trying to do. I don't
Speaker 7: think it's doing it fast enough to be quite honest.
Speaker 7: And then the second thing is to let you know,
Speaker 7: the population know that the good old days of being born, learning, earning,
Speaker 7: retiring and expiring are gone, that everything is changing, that
Speaker 7: life is a different trajectory now, and that they can
Speaker 7: expect to be working much longer. So you don't get
Speaker 7: the riots that you got in France over the sixty
Speaker 7: two to sixty four pension age, and you don't get
Speaker 7: the sort of mess resistance to later retirement because we
Speaker 7: are all going to have to retire, not that you
Speaker 7: and I, oh, I'm mad for it.
Speaker 2: I'm absolutely mad for it. I mean, when I have
Speaker 2: fand disease and dreams, I imagine that when I went
Speaker 2: into work, instead of going into the private sector and
Speaker 2: all that I'd gone into the public sectors, I don't know,
Speaker 2: a mid ranking civil servant or something, and now I
Speaker 2: was looking forward to retiring in a couple of years
Speaker 2: on an RPI linked to define benefit pension. I could
Speaker 2: join all those other fifty five year olds on cruises
Speaker 2: up and down the Danube. I dreamed it all the time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't believe it. Actually, I can't see you
Speaker 5: doing that, So you're.
Speaker 1: Not thinking hard enough. I don't know where to go now.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about Japan, and I want to
Speaker 2: talk about longevity science and where you're investing there.
Speaker 1: Let's start with Japan.
Speaker 2: Let's start with Japan and investing in Japan. You know,
Speaker 2: Warren Buffett has just come out of Japan and said,
Speaker 2: we're not done investing in Japan yet. You know those
Speaker 2: are those exact words, right, And you know that he's
Speaker 2: got big holdings in in some of the big Japanese conglomerates,
Speaker 2: in the trading companies, which he thinks are fantastic, and
Speaker 2: he started investing in them a while back. They pretty
Speaker 2: much doubled since he started. And now he's looking at
Speaker 2: Japan and he's saying, I'm buying more there. I'm staying in.
Speaker 2: Not to do all the becaus is Warren Buffett. This
Speaker 2: is not to do with him expecting a bull market
Speaker 2: in the next next month, two months, three months, so
Speaker 2: then he can sell. Obviously he's in for the very
Speaker 2: long term, and these are now pretty much is only
Speaker 2: big non US investments, So it's a it's a huge
Speaker 2: expression of faith in Japan that everyone is generally incredibly
Speaker 2: pessimistic about. Not me, John and I have been bills
Speaker 2: on Japan for so long it's kind of embarrassing now.
Speaker 2: But now we've got Warren Buffett walking by our side,
Speaker 2: I think we can feel a bit more confident. So
Speaker 2: I'm wondering, given that we've just talking about the value
Speaker 2: market that is the UK, are you also positive with
Speaker 2: me and Warren on the value market that is Japan.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So whereas Warren Buffett has billions of dollars invested in Japan,
Speaker 7: I've got a few million invested in Japan and I
Speaker 7: think that it'll do very well. And you know, when
Speaker 7: I started my career a long time ago, I was
Speaker 7: a kind of Japanese analyst. Possibly when you were younger
Speaker 7: as well, marrying all the you're of the age gap
Speaker 7: is significant between you and me, But when I was younger,
Speaker 7: I had to write out all the questions at night
Speaker 7: for the meeting the next day, and research the company
Speaker 7: and do all that sort of stuff. I honestly don't
Speaker 7: think any junior people and any companies do that anymore.
Speaker 7: There's a sort of sense of entitlement, entitlement or just like,
Speaker 7: you know, I don't need to spend my evenings doing
Speaker 7: this at homework on behalf of the boss. When I
Speaker 7: was doing that, you could throw a dart on any
Speaker 7: quick number on the Japanese stock market and it would
Speaker 7: be didn't really matter. It was going up. And John Greenwood,
Speaker 7: who worked at GT at that time, you know, a
Speaker 7: great monetarists, was you know, propounding the fact that money
Speaker 7: supply dictated stock markets, and it worked, and then it
Speaker 7: stopped working in about nineteen eighty nine because the Japanese
Speaker 7: market went ballistic and it was just ridiculously overpriced. And
Speaker 7: I think any market that's ridicularly as overpriced you walk
Speaker 7: away from. And Warren Buffett walks into markets when they're underpriced.
Speaker 7: So UK and Japan, Yes, the difference between the UK
Speaker 7: and Japan is that although there's a talk of activism
Speaker 7: and you know, foreigners stirring up trouble in Japan and
Speaker 7: trying to unravel the cross shoholdings in Japan, and the
Speaker 7: undervaluation of the book values and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 5: Very unlikely.
Speaker 7: There will be a lot of takeover activity in Japan
Speaker 7: for reasons that you're very familiar with, whereas I do
Speaker 7: think there we're going to see some mega deals coming
Speaker 7: to the UK PE companies. Anyone with dry powder is
Speaker 7: going to be coming and snapping up our possibly some
Speaker 7: of our biggest companies over the next year or two.
Speaker 7: And maybe that's why the pound's been relatively strong against
Speaker 7: the Japanese yen, because actually the yen is much more
Speaker 7: undervalue than really any major currency in the world, and
Speaker 7: it just I don't really understand why the yen hasn't
Speaker 7: mean going up. I don't know, do you have any
Speaker 7: view on that. I know that they're going to remove
Speaker 7: YCC at some point in the relatively near future, so
Speaker 7: I really don't understand.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 2: With that in mind that there are things that you
Speaker 2: don't understand, which is unusual. The money you do have
Speaker 2: in Japan, what kind of stocks is it in?
Speaker 7: I mean like you I buy the I buy trust,
Speaker 7: so the Nipon, the Nipon activist value funders one, even
Speaker 7: though it's not very active one.
Speaker 1: Active value just just a merger announced.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're taking over a small trust, aren't they.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, interesting, Okay, that's an actual value fund.
Speaker 2: I was looking today earlier today at some of the
Speaker 2: japan trusts, and very few of them have followed the
Speaker 2: Japanese market as a whole. I ei they've all underperformed,
Speaker 2: which is kind of interesting, and suggested to me that
Speaker 2: when they looked at Japan, they think to themselves, well,
Speaker 2: we should be in Japan was because of the Japanese trust,
Speaker 2: but we have very little faith in it as a
Speaker 2: wholy little faith in the economy and little faith in
Speaker 2: the stock market, so we'll invest in international and all
Speaker 2: growthy stuff. And so they've missed the more value end
Speaker 2: of the market, which is a bit where the air
Speaker 2: performance has been, which is kind of interesting. Whereas it
Speaker 2: live on active value, one hopes has been diving around
Speaker 2: in active value and not done the same.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I mean I brought into Zenna recently and I bought
Speaker 7: individual stocks. So I think Sonny is a real cracker
Speaker 7: of a stock actually, because if you look at it
Speaker 7: compared to the US media companies, and Sonny effectively is
Speaker 7: a media and gaming company, it looks very cheap and
Speaker 7: seems to be quite well managed, and you're you know,
Speaker 7: buying it about ten or eleven times earnings, and you know,
Speaker 7: as far as I'm concerned, that's that's a deal. So
Speaker 7: I've been buying Sonny, and I've got some of the
Speaker 7: car companies. I've got Toyota, which you know, when Tesla
Speaker 7: goes bus, which it will, you know, Toyota will will continue,
Speaker 7: and it's a very cheap company. Something to note, actually
Speaker 7: is that two things on electric vehicles. The one is
Speaker 7: that the Chinese are now producing electric vehicles of as
Speaker 7: high a standard or higher standard than the Americans and
Speaker 7: the Germans, and they will start exporting in very large quantities.
Speaker 7: And there are forty electric vehicle companies in China, so
Speaker 7: the price competition is going to be very intense. And secondly,
Speaker 7: the electric vehicles are not the great panacea that they seemed,
Speaker 7: because you know, you can't put them on ferries, you
Speaker 7: can't put them in certain car parks, you can't put
Speaker 7: them on bridges because the batteries are so heavy and
Speaker 7: when they catch fire they cause massive destruction.
Speaker 5: So I just think we have to be a little
Speaker 5: bit careful about evs.
Speaker 2: But hey, and I need to go back there. You
Speaker 2: can't put electric cars on ferries.
Speaker 7: They are banning electric cars from a lot of ferries now, So.
Speaker 2: If you want to drive your car to one of
Speaker 2: the Scottish islands, in fact they forget that because you'll
Speaker 2: never find a ferry to get on. That's not really
Speaker 2: an issue, is it? No ferries in Scotland, So you
Speaker 2: can't be down from taking an electric car and a
Speaker 2: ferry that doesn't exist. But let's say you wanted to
Speaker 2: take it on a cross channel ferry.
Speaker 1: Do they still exist?
Speaker 7: Cross channel theories do exist, and I don't know whether
Speaker 7: they're banning them or not, but I do know that
Speaker 7: there have been recent unextinguishable fires on ferries as a
Speaker 7: result of EV cars catching fire. And so either they
Speaker 7: find new batteries, which is probably what they're going to do,
Speaker 7: solid state batteries, or the other issue is the weight.
Speaker 7: I mean, electric vehicles are much much heavier than conventional cars.
Speaker 5: That's a problem as well.
Speaker 7: I don't want to make it stand that this is
Speaker 7: a very major issue. Maybe it's an issue that can
Speaker 7: be solved, but it's just another roadblock in the rollout
Speaker 7: of evs. And you know another thing, the British government
Speaker 7: is being stupid about is saying that we have to
Speaker 7: start producing regular cars by the year twenty and thirty,
Speaker 7: whereas the Europeans have kind of extend and pretend beyond
Speaker 7: two thousand and thirty five. It's just not feasible. It's
Speaker 7: going to destroy our car industry. We really you know,
Speaker 7: why are they shooting themselves and both feet at the
Speaker 7: same time.
Speaker 2: Well, interestingly, the car industry is one of the areas
Speaker 2: where UK productivity has fallen the fastest, and again that
Speaker 2: is blamed on the sort of slu of environmental regulation
Speaker 2: that has been put on top of our car manufacturers.
Speaker 2: But be that for good or bad, it's definitely affecting
Speaker 2: our productivity, which is the bad bit, right, Okay, So
Speaker 2: Tesla's going bust?
Speaker 1: Do you want to just leave that one there?
Speaker 7: Well, I mean, look when I say it's going bust,
Speaker 7: they haven't had a new car for a few years.
Speaker 7: There's no sign that they're going to introduce a new car.
Speaker 7: They're cutting their prices and various jurisdictions around the world,
Speaker 7: and that production rate is way higher on a quarterly
Speaker 7: basis than their sales rate.
Speaker 5: Of course, Elon must talks it up as.
Speaker 7: Being a problem about vehicles in transit being in the
Speaker 7: wrong place, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: But to my mind that's not a good sign.
Speaker 7: And yet their market cap can still buy the nearest
Speaker 7: seven largest car companies, which are catching up very rapidly
Speaker 7: in terms of quality and evs, and have decades maybe
Speaker 7: one hundred years more experienced in some cases, of producing cars,
Speaker 7: and are remarkably cheap on many multiples. I mean, I think,
Speaker 7: you know, you could do a good trade. You could
Speaker 7: go long Toyot to short Tesla, or you could go
Speaker 7: long General Motors and go short Tesla and over the
Speaker 7: next year or so you'll do well. And I've actually
Speaker 7: made money by shorting Tesla. It's you know, very volatile
Speaker 7: stop so every time it spikes up, you want to
Speaker 7: short it. And every time it goes it looks like
Speaker 7: it's an internal decline. Maybe buy it back, but ultimately
Speaker 7: it's going to end up with a very low value
Speaker 7: relative to its current market cap.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll get hate mail, you know that, right, you
Speaker 2: should address everybody.
Speaker 5: Well, you don't have my address, so that's good. I'm
Speaker 5: in Dubai, not mine, Dubai.
Speaker 1: On your way to sing, a boy, you're safe.
Speaker 2: Leave it all with me. Let's talk long longevity, the
Speaker 2: other the other topic or met what are the other
Speaker 2: many topics? I know, very incident.
Speaker 1: How long are we going to live?
Speaker 5: Jim, Well, we are living longer.
Speaker 2: I mean there's a problem here because we're not living longer. Actually,
Speaker 2: life expectancy is be going to fall, particularly in the
Speaker 2: US average life expectancy obviously, and in the UK as well.
Speaker 2: And we've got the very high level of excess deaths
Speaker 2: in it well and pretty much all Western countries presumably
Speaker 2: as a result of lack of healthcare during the.
Speaker 1: Pandemic, etc.
Speaker 2: So we're hitting a bit of a blip in the
Speaker 2: every one living longer story.
Speaker 4: Feels yeah.
Speaker 7: I mean I think that the UK, the rate of
Speaker 7: increase in life expectancy is very low at the moment,
Speaker 7: but it's not gone backwards.
Speaker 5: In the US. There are particular reasons.
Speaker 7: I mean, the US is lamentable, you know, by two
Speaker 7: thousand and forty and we're only talking what seventeen years away,
Speaker 7: thirty five percent of US GDP will be spent on healthcare.
Speaker 7: I mean that's outrageous, right, Yet the life expectancy is
Speaker 7: four and a half years shorter than our own life
Speaker 7: expectancy in the UK, which is not the highest in
Speaker 7: the world, as you know, Singapore, Japan, career and some
Speaker 7: European countries like Spain, life expectancy is considerably considerably higher.
Speaker 5: But generally the trajectory is slightly upwards.
Speaker 7: But the great gains coming from environmental factors in improvement
Speaker 7: and life expectancy have have been taken. So now we're
Speaker 7: waiting for gains from biological intervention. And there is no
Speaker 7: biological intervention yet that can keep you alive healthier for longer.
Speaker 7: But I do see that some things are beginning to
Speaker 7: show promise. It's taken longer than I expect it to,
Speaker 7: be quite honest, and there's some very interesting stuff happening,
Speaker 7: but it's like a duck paddling underwater. Most people don't
Speaker 7: see it, but you know, there are definitely signs of
Speaker 7: biological intervention in a poly drug form. So there's lots
Speaker 7: of different interventions could lead to us living most importantly
Speaker 7: healthier in later life and secondly potentially for longer, and
Speaker 7: that would be a great relief because if people just
Speaker 7: get older and get more decrepit and frailer, first of all,
Speaker 7: they can't work, someone's got to pay for them, someone's
Speaker 7: got to look after them. And then the healthcare costs
Speaker 7: in the last part of their lives become untenable for
Speaker 7: most healthcare systems around the world, and so we need
Speaker 7: to find some way of reducing that burden. So it's
Speaker 7: an imperative that something is done to improve the robustness
Speaker 7: of old people. And you know, money's coming into the sector.
Speaker 7: Jeff Bezos has invested three billion dollars in a UK company,
Speaker 7: Altos Labs, based outside of Cambridge. Google's invested two and
Speaker 7: a half billion dollars. There's money coming in to a
Speaker 7: variety of other companies and philanthropies and all that sort
Speaker 7: of stuff, and so relatively optimistic. And we just hired
Speaker 7: a very top dog from Astrazen to come and head
Speaker 7: up to in Essence and he's really very good at
Speaker 7: delivering drugs into the market. And I don't know if
Speaker 7: you know, Marin, that Estra is now the biggest drug
Speaker 7: company in the world. It's overtaking the Pizer. So most people,
Speaker 7: you know, something that the UK should be trumpeting. We
Speaker 7: have the world's biggest drug company on the London Stock
Speaker 7: Exchange and No one's saying that.
Speaker 2: I'm going to tweet that the second we've finished talking,
Speaker 2: and then everyone will come back and tell me it's
Speaker 2: not true. Possibly be true because it's British.
Speaker 5: It's true.
Speaker 2: How do how do ordinary people invest in this amazing trend?
Speaker 2: When I asked you about this a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: one of the things you said was just by Google,
Speaker 2: because they've got fingers in all the best pies.
Speaker 5: Well that was more than two years ago, but maybe
Speaker 5: more than two years ago.
Speaker 7: Oh, no, it was, And I think Google probably has gone,
Speaker 7: you know, is going ex growth like all these big
Speaker 7: fang stocks.
Speaker 5: But no, that's not the way to invest in this.
Speaker 7: And actually I don't really know what Google's done in
Speaker 7: longevity because there's very little information that's coming out of them.
Speaker 7: But what I would say is that I'll watch this
Speaker 7: space so you know. For instance, juven Essence has said
Speaker 7: that as sheets thank god it didn't go public because
Speaker 7: the biotech sector has been massacred. Essences said it expects
Speaker 7: to go public by the end of next year, and
Speaker 7: I think that's that's entirely possible, and it might even
Speaker 7: go public in the UK because the center of its
Speaker 7: operations is in the UK, even though most of its
Speaker 7: investments are in the US, and.
Speaker 5: So that might be one way of playing it.
Speaker 7: But there's nothing really that I could recommend for the
Speaker 7: average investor in longevity yet, but just keep a watching
Speaker 7: brief on it. I mean, that's that's the best that
Speaker 7: one can do. The big farmer companies have not yet
Speaker 7: dipped their toe into this area, and I'm sure that
Speaker 7: they will, but not yet, And so it's just it's
Speaker 7: something to keep a watching brief on.
Speaker 2: All right, we will watch and wait on that one.
Speaker 2: And as you will be watching.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and you've got a little and ten, you've got
Speaker 7: plenty of time to make your investments.
Speaker 2: Yeah, still got to make my at the right time.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the other technology area that you're very
Speaker 2: interested in, and also have a vehicle for agronomics, so
Speaker 2: the idea of agritech and changing environment around that. And
Speaker 2: then they're particularly interested in cultivated meat, which because if
Speaker 2: you I try very hard to think about it in
Speaker 2: a positive way, but still find mildly repellent. Let's talk
Speaker 2: about what you're doing there and what you're interested in that.
Speaker 7: Okay, so I'm here in Dubai and the UAE because
Speaker 7: they important ninety five percent of their food, they happen
Speaker 7: to have a fairly forward thinking, technocratic view of what
Speaker 7: they can do, and they also have lots of money,
Speaker 7: so I don't think it'll be very long before factories
Speaker 7: are built in the UAE to produce novel proteins. There
Speaker 7: are two elements to cellar agriculture. One is growing meat
Speaker 7: fish materials in laboratories using stem cells as the basis
Speaker 7: for the development of those products, and then the other
Speaker 7: is what's called precision fermentation, which is a kind of
Speaker 7: brewing process. Precision fermentation is further ahead because it's a
Speaker 7: long established biotech process now moving into foods and materials,
Speaker 7: and it's already approved in the United States to make
Speaker 7: dairy proteins are bioidentical to milk proteins or egg proteins
Speaker 7: that are bioidentical to albumen used in the industrial egg
Speaker 7: businesses like baking, confectionery, et cetera, et cetera. So we
Speaker 7: invest in both of those and actually since we started Agronomics,
Speaker 7: the nav of the company has gone up by nearly
Speaker 7: four times. The share price has been very volatile and
Speaker 7: now sells like most investment trusts. Of this nature at
Speaker 7: a discount as NAV. But I can tell you the
Speaker 7: NAV is genuine and the outlook is very positive. So
Speaker 7: because of our experience, my experience in biotech in the
Speaker 7: last twenty years, I know that if you start your
Speaker 7: own company and back scientists entrepreneurs to develop.
Speaker 5: It for you, you.
Speaker 7: End up with a much bigger share of the company
Speaker 7: and a much higher return on your money. So when
Speaker 7: we started Agronomics and Newer Grari, which is the other
Speaker 7: fund we have, we invested in other people's businesses and
Speaker 7: that's great, and those businesses are generally doing quite well.
Speaker 7: They all have products, some of them are being approved
Speaker 7: right now, some of them are on sale right now.
Speaker 7: But starting your own company gives you in a white
Speaker 7: space opportunity. It gives you a much bigger upside. So
Speaker 7: we started a company called Liberation Labs, and that is
Speaker 7: building fermenting capacity around the world for food companies to
Speaker 7: share to act as a contract manufacturer for those producers
Speaker 7: of dairy proteins or egg proteins. So our first factory
Speaker 7: will be up and running at the end of next
Speaker 7: year in the United States, and that's one hundred and
Speaker 7: fifteen million dollar factory with very very attractive returns, and
Speaker 7: we will be the first second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eight, nine,
Speaker 7: tenth factory in the world through Liberation Labs, because no
Speaker 7: one else is anywhere close to being able to build
Speaker 7: these factories in the same way as the two people
Speaker 7: that we hired who are the world experts in this field.
Speaker 7: So Agonomics ends up with a much bigger share of
Speaker 7: that company and also a very exciting industry. Our dog
Speaker 7: food which is being done in the UK are called
Speaker 7: Good dog Food.
Speaker 5: I hope that company will go public.
Speaker 7: Before the end of this year in the United Kingdom,
Speaker 7: and I'm pretty sure that its product will be on
Speaker 7: the market, and it's a sell ag chicken product that
Speaker 7: will be sold on the.
Speaker 5: UK market by the end of this year for dogs.
Speaker 7: And the dog food market is twenty five percent of
Speaker 7: the meat market in the UK and twenty five percent
Speaker 7: of the meat market in the United States and growing
Speaker 7: faster than the human meat market.
Speaker 5: And we got.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I just want to interrupt you briefly to be
Speaker 2: absolutely clear, because there may be people listening to this
Speaker 2: who do not understand the distinction between what we're talking
Speaker 2: about and the sort of pretend meat made out of
Speaker 2: vegetable growthing, you know, the impossible and beyond, etc. So
Speaker 2: I just want to be clear when anyone's listening, that
Speaker 2: is not.
Speaker 1: What we're talking about.
Speaker 2: We're talking about bioidentical meats made in labs.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so meats that I just wanted to get that clear.
Speaker 7: Right, Meats that don't have the same environmental impact as
Speaker 7: growing conventional foods, and meats that don't have you know,
Speaker 7: ten billion animals sorted every year and eighty billion held
Speaker 7: in captivity waiting to be slaughtered on an annual basis,
Speaker 7: which is the current situation, displacing the water supply around
Speaker 7: the world with lots of contaminants, lots of antibiotic use,
Speaker 7: lots of hormone use, none of that.
Speaker 5: So this is what I call clean meat.
Speaker 7: Some people might call it Frankenstein meat or you know,
Speaker 7: synthetic meat.
Speaker 5: It's not.
Speaker 7: It's real meat. It's grown in a lab. You can't
Speaker 7: catch cancer on it. It is identical to the best
Speaker 7: of farmed meat. And the same goes for fish, and
Speaker 7: the same goes for leather, and the same goes for
Speaker 7: other things as well, including cocoa, coffee, cotton. So that's
Speaker 7: completely different to the as that's plant based foods that
Speaker 7: we don't invest in. So that you and I could
Speaker 7: set up a plant based company tomorrowle at Merin and
Speaker 7: James Kitchen, and we'd face huge amounts of competition. We're
Speaker 7: producing highly processed foods. We'd be struggling to get space
Speaker 7: on the supermarket shelves, et cetera.
Speaker 5: So that's not and as we've.
Speaker 2: Seen from these companies, people don't really want to buy
Speaker 2: that stuff anyway.
Speaker 7: Well, there are there is a market. I hate Beyon
Speaker 7: Burger for lunch here in Dubai today. I have to say,
Speaker 7: you know, I've gone off them because they just don't
Speaker 7: They don't do it for me. But we don't eat
Speaker 7: meat at home, so obviously occasionally it's quite nice to
Speaker 7: have a sort of a SATs one. But very soon
Speaker 7: we'll be to have the real meat produced in the lab.
Speaker 7: And two companies have had their chicken products approved in
Speaker 7: the United States already. I wanted to say just about
Speaker 7: Good dog Food that pets at home, which everyone in
Speaker 7: the UK is familiar with. It's a multi billion pound company,
Speaker 7: a really really good company has invested in Good dog
Speaker 7: Food and it's going to be its exclusive distributor of
Speaker 7: the food for two or three years. So that's a
Speaker 7: really great endorsement from one of the leaders in the industry.
Speaker 2: So it seems like a brilliant way to get people
Speaker 2: used to the idea.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a.
Speaker 2: Great market entry point, doesn't it. People get used to
Speaker 2: the idea that they're feeding their dogs real meat, but
Speaker 2: not meat that is affecting animal lives and the planet, etc.
Speaker 2: And then it's not much of a leief to move
Speaker 2: into it themselves exactly.
Speaker 7: And I'm going to tell you a very quick anecdote
Speaker 7: about being in Dubai.
Speaker 5: I met a guy.
Speaker 7: Who's a senior sort of investment chap and during the pandemic,
Speaker 7: he and his family were stuck in Dubai and every
Speaker 7: day they would go to the same sushi restaurant because
Speaker 7: the chefs were tested there every day for COVID, and
Speaker 7: so he's eating the sushi every single day. And after
Speaker 7: the pandemic he goes and gets a medical check up,
Speaker 7: and his mercury levels were off the scale because tuna
Speaker 7: fish is full of mercury, so you should only eat
Speaker 7: it once a week, and also it's got microplastics in it.
Speaker 7: Next year, Blue Naliu, the US company that we're investors in,
Speaker 7: will have a tuna fish product on the market with
Speaker 7: no mercury and no microplastics and no desipolation of the ocean.
Speaker 7: So it's not just about meat, it's about all sorts
Speaker 7: of other stuff and.
Speaker 2: No suffering fish. No suffering fish also seems to like
Speaker 2: a good bit.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I eat fish, and I try and pretend that,
Speaker 7: you know, they don't stuffer, and they're all you mainly
Speaker 7: treated and so forth. But you know, this is not
Speaker 7: going to be displacing the farming industry, particularly good farming industry,
Speaker 7: such as is practiced in the United Kingdom for for
Speaker 7: a long long time. This is basically taking the margins
Speaker 7: where the Indians and the Chinese want extra protein, and
Speaker 7: quite rightly, but if they if they want the protein
Speaker 7: that they want to get, they're going to collapse the environment.
Speaker 7: So this is like the this is like the buffer
Speaker 7: really zone, and it will take many, many many years,
Speaker 7: particularly in building the infrastructure, for this to take a
Speaker 7: considerable chunk out of the meat or food market. But
Speaker 7: nonetheless it's a very large addressable market, and it's one
Speaker 7: that is super exciting, and ultimately you can produce food
Speaker 7: lower than the cost of conventionally farm food. But ultimately,
Speaker 7: you know, it could be thirty years away. So this
Speaker 7: is not something I'm suggesting it's going to eradicate farming
Speaker 7: anytime soon.
Speaker 2: Okay, that is very interesting and useful long term information. Now, Jim,
Speaker 2: I've had you for long enough, and they've got better
Speaker 2: things to do than continue to.
Speaker 5: Chat with me in order to do than to talk
Speaker 5: to you.
Speaker 7: But unfortunately, the Longevity Forum, which I'm a co host,
Speaker 7: is having its sort of once every two week meeting
Speaker 7: as we run into the next cycle for this coming November.
Speaker 5: And so okay, well.
Speaker 2: Let me just ask you one quick final question. Then
Speaker 2: it's a tough one.
Speaker 5: They're all tough.
Speaker 1: Now, this is the toughest Bitcoin.
Speaker 5: Or gold, oh one hundred gold.
Speaker 1: I was teasing about it being difficult.
Speaker 7: No, I mean, and I think you'd answer the same way.
Speaker 7: I mean, if you look at it, gold is very
Speaker 7: close to its all time high. It's retained value. I mean,
Speaker 7: you're the big gold bag, so it's retained value all
Speaker 7: the way through. And Bitcoin maybe at twenty six or
Speaker 7: twenty seven thousand dollars, but it was at sixty four thousand,
Speaker 7: so the volatility would kill you. And whereas gold, although
Speaker 7: it's volatile, it's nowhere near as volatile as bitcoin. And
Speaker 7: I much prefer to look at the shiny stuff in
Speaker 7: my safe than to think about someone trying to hack
Speaker 7: into my Internet safe and see my bitcoins from me.
Speaker 7: So I don't think bitcoin's got any real This is
Speaker 7: more hate mail, right, so not no real validity.
Speaker 5: I think that the.
Speaker 7: Americans are particularly going to crack down on the exchanges,
Speaker 7: and there's going to be a lot of announcements over
Speaker 7: the next year or so about that, and it's just
Speaker 7: going to be there'll be no contests. A gold, by
Speaker 7: the way, is going to go to three thousand dollars
Speaker 7: announces in the next eighteen months. And you've got to
Speaker 7: get on the bandwagon. You keep on saying this, Maren,
Speaker 7: You're so right. Everyone has to have an extension to gold.
Speaker 7: Everyone brilliant.
Speaker 2: That was the right answer, and you didn't make it
Speaker 2: complicated at all. Now, thank you. Now, there is one
Speaker 2: final thing that we must talk about before you go.
Speaker 2: We've talked about lots of the wonderful and exciting and
Speaker 2: interesting things that you do, but we haven't talked about
Speaker 2: an interesting turn you've taken in your career recently, which
Speaker 2: is writing a children's book.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you, Maren. Yeah, I wrote this book.
Speaker 7: All the process go to two charities, Compassion and World Farming,
Speaker 7: and not just the profits, all the proceeds and a
Speaker 7: dog shelter and Abtha that's very close to our hearts.
Speaker 7: We have seven dogs, as you know. So one of
Speaker 7: the story is centered around one of the dogs, Juno,
Speaker 7: and it's her adventure in rescuing not regularly fund but
Speaker 7: cruly fund animals and then coming across cell agg And
Speaker 7: it's aimed at eight to twelve year olds. Orthough it's
Speaker 7: a kind of wide band. So I really enjoy writing
Speaker 7: this and you know, hopefully some people will will buy
Speaker 7: it and read it, and the money all goes to
Speaker 7: those wonderful charities.
Speaker 1: Brilliant, Jim.
Speaker 5: Thank you so.
Speaker 1: Juno's Ark it's called I have a copy.
Speaker 2: My children are not too old to read it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Jim. Thanks Baron, thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to this week's Marin Talks Money. We'll be back next
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Speaker 2: me Maren Sunset, where it was produced by Someasadi A
Speaker 2: Mohammad Faruk, additional editing by Blake Maples. Special thanks of
Speaker 2: course to Jim Mellon, Thank you, Jim, and to John
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