Disneyland Lockdown, tech crash, rich killing the planet, inflation levers, full employment and FOMC

Morning everybody. It's a Tuesday for a change. We're gonna roll the bananas on a Tuesday because I was busy yesterday, Peter. Mm-hmm. , you're still struggling with brain fog, courtesy of the disease that we don't talk about. Um, but what's been happening in the news? What's made it through the fog? What has pierced its way?

What's pierced its way through the fog? Well, last week mainly what pierced its way through the fog was. Tech stocks because if you had any tech stocks last week, it was not a good week. You didn't have a great week. No , No. We saw meta, we saw Amazon, we saw Google Alphabet. We saw Microsoft down, down, down, down.

The one which sort of came out of it relatively unscathed was Apple. Um, Apple went up $150 billion in the end. Yeah, that's unscathed. I'd like to be that unscathed. It is unscathed, but it's, I'm not sure that one has longevity, but uh, I think interestingly, we touched on it the week before. The thing that came out last week was cloud computing.

Yeah. Cloud computing, dropping not as many people interested, has been incredibly high margin. Business. Um, and, you know, billions have been, you know, wiped off. Yeah. The point is with cloud is people love it until they get the bill. Yeah. That's . The people that, uh, the experience that I've seen of it is, it's fantastic.

You don't need to do this, you don't need to do that. You don't need to buy servers. But here's the key to economics, um, which is something that, uh, my son's discovering somewhere along the line. Someone has to buy something. Yes. This cloud servers, they're not free apparently. Actually they make money lending them to you, which is what you do when you have a cloud server.

I kind of borrow it. Yeah. So yeah, that's seen a big drop off, I think. Um, I think they lost, Did they lose 477 billion in, in two sessions or something? That one he was sending out to me was like me, which is.  30% of his IPO or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And, and because of the way that Zuckerberg, um, Chief Lizard managed the whole preference share process, I mean, you basically, He can't go No, no, he can't go anywhere.

He can't leave? No, no, no, no, no. He's in deep trouble. Well, unless he chooses to leave the company. But no one can get him out. No activist, no Veo could come and push him out. No. And he's, you know, he's been saying now for two or three years, and if you. Analyst reports, it was always coming. We need to invest in this new platform for the future.

He's convinced that that meta platform will work. The Metaverse. The Metaverse, yeah. I'm not as convinced by, as I said last week, I'm totally unconvinced, but I, I don't even like existing in this world, let alone a 3D fictional world. Yeah. But if you don't like existing in this world, there may be a 3D fiction or would Yeah, actually, it's true.

Maybe in that world, I could be whoever I want to be. We were change just earlier on about. You know, going to Bali and sort of doing some remote work from there. You could go to Barley without leaving here you go to Bali without, literally, without leaving this podcast room. Yeah, I can go to Barley. It's not the same as, it's not the, You won't feel sand between your toes.

No, no, no, no, no. Look for me, the metaverse, I dunno. It may work for the kids who've never experienced anything else, and it may work when they stop people traveling or whatever. . No, it, it's not for me. I mean, but what, Listen, this is the other thing I wanted to say. We're on the subject of tech, Twitter.

Elon's coughed the money now. Mm-hmm. , he's coughed up his 44 billion. He's kind of got rid of, I mean, everyone on the board, everyone that can do anything, upsets him at all can go. He's given a, uh, allegedly, uh, given an uh, Incentive, shall we say to the programmers that they must have in place the mechanism for charging for blue ticks by this time next week?

Yeah. Or they all get fired. Yeah. I mean that's a, that's an incentive. Focus is the mind. Focus is the mind. Yeah. Actually, I don't think that's a particularly complex thing to build, if I'm really honest. Because isn't it just a link to, Yeah. My account link pay here, put your, put your strip payment in.

Thanks very much. Doesn't seem to be, to me, that doesn't seem like that's a particularly big ask, but maybe what astounded me about that story though is he goes in, he gives the two key guys the flick, the CEO and the cfo, which you sort of expect him to do. They get marched off the premises, which is always a bit, seems always a little bit unnecessary, but you know, and you start to feel sorry for them, $150 million they walked away with.

I don't feel in the slightest bit. Sorry for them. Even if they walked over $15 million, the contract, I mean, gave them, I mean this is where the world is mad, right? I've read something this morning and it was on the ft. The top 1% of the wealthy create more carbon emissions in one year than the lowest 10% doing a decade.

Yeah. But they have to, cuz they've got some places to. Well, if you haven't got any money, where can you go eat the rich? That's what I say, eat the rich. You can't go anywhere. Like if you are poor, you, you've got No, you don't even, you haven't, Some people haven't even got private jets. Peter, have they not got private jets?

No, not in the, Not in the percent Do they have CustomMade flamingo shirt, bespoke one-offs? Well, I mean the poor dude . Yeah. The poor made this when you recycled that the poor made this. Yeah. No, um, No, I dunno. The top 1% of the top 1% use more than the bottom 10% in one year than the bottom 10%, 10 years. I don't see bottom.

It sort makes sense. Cause the bottom percent of them probably aren't moving. What I mean? Yeah. And they're probably just burning or whatever down. Yeah. It's not, it's not stereotype that's not go down that road too far. It's it's pretty grim, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I, I'd never really thought of that. Right. I know that I've, I've watched a lot of podcasters and, um, vloggers and they all seem to rent private jets and it's not as expensive as you.

There's a chap on the other day and he wanted to go from, uh, Luton. Well, who doesn't wanna leave Luton, let's face it. But he wanted to go from Luton airport to niece, and it was, if it had booked instantly with Easy Jet, it was 400 pounds for 10 people. Each way says 8,000 a private jet was only 9,000 there and back for the day.

So actually, I, I know that the carbon emissions are different. Can see how they make sort of some, some element of economic sense. Yeah. Hmm. What else? Well, let's just go down that route there, because you talked about, um, social media and, and bloggers and stuff. Now Chinese regulators are putting tough curbs on celebrities endorsing products.

Really? Yeah. So they've had a couple of big haws. This is hot for the press. I've just got this one. This. The new rules released by the state administration for market regulation and six other groups on Monday afternoon will constrict the lucrative world of celebrity endorsements, which has been plagued by high profile scandals in recent years.

Hmm. My favorite bit coming up. This is encouraged. Celebrity celebrities should consciously practice socialist core values in their advertising endorsement activity. Wow. The, The rules state activities should conform to social morals and traditional virtues. Blow me. That sets you up nicely. Mm. I think that, ladies and gentlemen, but I think Peter's about to announce he's going to China to be an influencer.

Yeah. Core socialist values. That was definitely you . Um, and we know, you know, we know that you've had one or two, shall we say, minus set twos with Vlad. But core socialist values, core family values your inmate. You could be endorsing anything you wanted in China. Now the thing is, you can't endorse anything you want in China.

Oh, I thought you could, if you were a socialist with core. No. Oh, so you still got that? Well, the best endorsement I've ever seen, and it's like those of you that live in London is on the way to Highgate. There is a Chinese laundry. I kid you not on the right hand side as you go into Highgate and above it, it says, this is its slogan.

I love it. It's, it says splashy, splashy. Cleany Nicky Valley. Quickie . It tickles me every time I drive by it. It's um, I'm sure there's a Chinese laundry. There were Chinese laundry in London with my grandparents. Well, it says it's a Chinese laundry. Oh, money laundering. Oh, it's child. Yeah. Oh, it's Chinese money laundering.

Yeah, that's right. What? It's okay. Yeah, no, um, I, That's terrible that the Chinese are restricting. What restricts you? The right of celebrities to blatantly lie about product. Yeah, totally. That's a basic freak. I think a lot of it comes from, a lot of people lied about and still do crypto. Oh, blind me crypto to where they then went on to ban it.

A lot of people lost a lot of money. I think a lot of people couldn't, couldn't afford to buy the empty houses they need to buy. Yeah. The empty houses that need to buy to keep the, uh, did you know incidentally, the Chinese, uh, population is on? It keeps going. Its current level is due to. Astonishingly by 2050, not 1.2 billion, Not even 1,650 million.

Yeah, they're really struggling now with this. The one child policy has completely, Yeah, and apparently it's because of the one child. I got this rather astonishing figure also from the financial times of the one child, because of the Chinese desire to have a male child, cuz it can support. Over 68% of surviving one child are male.

Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that, that's really, that's very high. That's quite disturbing. But, um, they're all gonna be able to have second properties, which is a bonus because there's millions of demand for new homes in China. Fell 28%, 28% year on year. Yep. That, that's, And that's cataclysmic to my mind. I mean, yeah.

And the thing that's being echoed in other places as well. So we've seen the US notch, their biggest, um, drop in house prizes since 2011. We are just having a drop here as well. Oh yeah, Yeah. But the, but the Chinese economy has more things going on than that. I wrote a nice blog in it if you want to look at it, uh, last week.

But there's a lot going on there. And you know, some banks are coming out very strongly and saying, Hey, this is the time to buy. And some banks are saying, , this is a disaster. Don't go near. Um, are the banks that are saying this is the time to wait? Do they happen to hold a lot of housing stock? Probably. It happens to be quite invested in Hello mate.

How many, how many houses we got? Not that many. Right? Yeah. It's a great time to buy everybody and we can give you a really, really cheap loan because we've gotta do something with them. Yeah. It's hundreds of thousands of empty apartments. Yeah. Hundreds of thousands of empty apartments. Not only empty the, the, there are in those big cities where you see those tower blocks when people do go in and do sus social media and it does get out of the country's files.

It's only ever the flats on the ground floor that are done Often when you open the lift doors, there's just a shaft there. There's not even a lift. Nice. Really? Yeah. So it's like, Yeah, we've, yeah, we've done the ground floor. Yeah. Done. Come over and look around if you want. Yeah. What's the most expensive one that's penthouse at Oh, great.

When can I move in, eh? Yeah. Whenever you can get yourself a ladder. Well, so what, what else has been going on? Um, we've seen a lot more bad loan provision stuff coming through as well on the back of earnings, which you'd expect. But the consumers still seem relatively buoyant, but I feel personally we're getting to a bit of a tipping point now.

Yeah. Yeah. Some of the prices are a little bit mad. We saw McDonald's come out last week and say, Um, you know, we put up our prices and everyone was fine. Unilever had done the same. Um, p and g have done the same, but it's getting to the point now where I'm going old on this just doesn't feel sustainable.

No, it doesn't stack. It doesn't stack. I was having a conversation with my mother the weekend about bread. So the loaf of bread that I was buying in April for one pound 40, It's now two pounds. Wow, that must recent price increase 50%. A lot of that must have to do with cereals, commodity prices, Ukraine, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But people won't stand for, or won't be able to pay for these things continually increasing. Well, you can't, right? Because how are you gonna do it? And again, I, I, you know, you know me, I'm not, um, I'm not a lefty by any stretch of the imagination. It is very, very unfair on the people that just haven't got the money because, you know, they, they all say, Oh, don't carve this carves out.

Yeah. But the reality is for most people, bread is a staple. Mm-hmm. , it's something you have to buy. You don't have any choice. You may not like it, it may not be the best thing for your gym diet, as my son keeps telling me. Mm-hmm. But the reality is it's an absolute staple. Right? Yeah. And, and, Those sort of price prices.

Notice also the price of fuel here is rather cheekly crept up again to one pound 90. That's $2 20 for a liter. Yeah. So in dollar terms, that's nearly $10. Yeah, $10 a gallon. Which again, you know, it's snuck up there and it's all very well people saying, Well drive less. What are you gonna do if you've got to get to work?

You can't. And that's, I think as well now you're seeing a lot more people having to go back to work as well. Uh, my wife's and the, from the company saying you need to be in sort of three days a week from the next sort of month. And, and so you're seeing a lot of people who've been in this cozy sort of lockdown working from home who had no travel costs.

Yeah. Who had no eating out costs cuz they didn't have to go and buy their lunch or stuff like, And suddenly they're gonna get this massive, double, triple whammy. They're gonna have to start paying for transport, fuel or trains, all of which has gone up, paying for food, coffees out and about all of which has gone up.

Right. So, yeah. Yeah. You're gonna get to this point, and it was a really interesting interview on Bloomberg last week when a guy said that once inflation gets to 8%, and let's be honest, it's 8% everywhere. Nowaday, Yeah. Yeah. 10% in most. He said it's really hard to get it back down. Doesn't come back down quickly.

No, of course it doesn't because every, everybody starts saying, if I don't get a 10% pay increase yeah. I'll go somewhere else. Yeah. And and particularly in the UK and the US and Australia, from what I can see, we're so close to full employment. Yes. You've got like that transit, you've, you've got the Unemployables who.

maybe, let's say one and a half percent. Well, you know, there are solutions to them, but they're not popular. But once you get, I'm not espoused by people wearing shirts like that to, to be honest. No, no, no. Not gen generally a slightly darker shirt, but, um, So you got, you you've got those and you've got that sort of 1% of people that are in flex because they're moving between jobs.

Yeah. Move much beyond that in the. You can't do it. My friend who owns the um, uh, McDonald's franchise here, he literally can't get staff. He says his biggest competitor for staff is Her Majesty government. And I said, Well, whoa, well civil servants. And he said, No, the unemployment benefit. Mm-hmm. , because he said he increasingly, he interviews younger people and when he says, I'll pay you nine pounds, 60, now they get the phone out, do the maths, and say, Well, I don't really wanna work for 40 pounds a week because I can get the rest of it on the doll.

I mean, it's, It's absurd. It's absurd. It is absurd. Yeah. I think you could see inflation. I'm gonna put a steep mark in the ground here. So I think you'll see inflation in the UK P a 15% next year. Yeah, that's, And that'll be, that will be a shock to markets, right? And obviously, yeah, tele markets, we love, you know, really good trading conditions again as well Tomorrow.

F OMC meeting. So tomorrow interest rate rise, job state, obviously at the end of. Week as well. Everyone's expecting a 0.75%. Yeah. Um, increase, but shares were up in October. Shares were even up s and p indexes. These aesthetic index were. Last week when tech got absolutely hammered. So all the money's moved basically into, um, oil, which has gone bonkers.

That's a whole separate discussion and obviously energy because people think there's gonna be a hawkish pivot. I mean, and this is, this is the crazy world we're in, that, that, that so much rest on what they actually say. You know, It's like everyone's holding back this money. So that money is still there because if he says it's 0.75%, but he intimates that next time it won't be 0.75%.

People will go, That's it. It's over. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Let's pile everything back again. Well, I mean there's a huge structural difference, not so much in the us, but there is in the UK is the last time we had a recession, even in 2008. 80% of people had floating mortgage rates. Yeah. So if you put the interest rate up straight away, people would go, Oh, I've a hundred pound a month extra on my mortgage.

I've got a gut back now. 80% have got fixes. Yeah. Um, I mean, it's crazy. I, I've got the money to pay my house off, but I've still got a mortgage because they penalize you so heavily when you do pay off. I thought, Well, I'll keep it. That mortgage is now fixed at 0.5%. I'm getting 1.4% in the bank From Citibank.

Yeah. . So, and I've got another 12 months to go before that expires. And then I obviously I'll pay it off at that point, but if you think about it, they could put interest rates up another three or 4%. It doesn't make any difference to my immediate circumstances in terms of what I shell out. Yeah. So they've lost a bit of the.

that they used to have when? When everything was free floating, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because the lever is not as good as it was before. Yeah. No, definitely not. Yeah, you're right. And if you think about the. Uh, the sort of recession that we are sort of in or not in. If you look at some of the GDP figures from, uh, the US you've, you've got the sort of, obviously we've got the supply side issue and the demand side issue.

What we're doing now in terms of interest rates is trying to hammer the demand side, but we've still got the supply side issues as well. Yeah, yeah. Um, there's rumors that, you know, China might be looking at, um, it's zero covid policy, but just this weekend, zero covid. Wow. Um, uh, Foxcon staff apparently were escap.

Uh, because they were just about to lock down one of the Foxcon factories, which makes all the stuff from Apple. 95% of all Apple's production is in China. Yeah. Move some to India, but not much. Maybe 5%. Yeah. Yeah. Or a fraction of the 5%. Yeah. And, um, Disneyland was my favorite story. You've gone with your family this Disneyland, China.

Disneyland, China, Yeah. Uh, you've gone with your family. Yeah. There's a bit of a treat. You've taken 'em in. I bet the prices are still stupid. Yeah. And the food inside is rubbish and really expense. But you're in there. Can I just say there, if any Disney lawyers watching that does not represent the official position of rolling bananas, I think you look on Trip Advisor.

It's entirely key to things about that. I'm glad if you've got shares in Disney that are impacted. It's the same bloke every week. Vlad, it's just going for you, mate. Disney class though. Disney plus. Very, very strong fan of Disney plus the channel. Yeah, Very good. What's on there? Watching the old man Now you'd like that X C I A operative in Afghani.

Being hunted down in America. You'd like them cartoon? Not a cartoon. No. Oh, there's lots of films. I thought the whole point of Disney was It was cartoons. Exactly. And so my expectations were down here. But they have all the Star Wars franchise. Oh yeah. Okay. Marvel Never. Never a big fa, Never a big fan of Star Wars, to be honest with you.

I knew there was some reason we didn't go. No, never. Never a big fan. I always thought it was a bit, anyway, so I didn't, It was my Disney Land. Sorry story. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. It was rudely, rudely, way laid there. Uh, anyway, they locked Disneyland down. So you're in there, you're on a magic teacup or you're on Thunder Mountain or doing whatever you're doing.

Authorities say, We're shutting down a covid lockdown. That's madness. No one can come in if you're in a queue. You can't come in. If you're in, you can't come out the test. It's absolutely bonkers. Huh? They're testing the whole park. How many people do you think must be in one of those park? 20,000. 20, 30,000?

I mean the, Yeah, when I, cuz you know, I worked at Disney for a short while. There's nothing you've not done. Oh, actually I did work in, in Disney when I had the um, biofuels. We, we, um, yeah, we, we, uh, we've sold some bio, bio digesters actually to get rid of food waste to, uh, Disney and, uh, part of joining Disney.

Everybody's a, a cast member. You're not an employer, you're a cast member. You have to do bits of work for them. One of my jobs was to be the Q organizer for, um, Magic Mountain, Right? Mission to Mars. Right? Mission to Mars. And, uh, when it broke down, you had to go and tell people in the queue that there was a meet you right.

And for that reason, trips to Mars are suspended. And I remember saying to my boss, but it's a roller coaster, , and um, she was not a happy bunny that I wasn't taking part in it. So then I had to go out and stand in front of this queue and say, hello. Sorry buddy. Incredibly sorry. There's a heavy meteorite shower on the way to Mars.

So missions are currently suspended. And, um, knowing in the back of my mind that uh, you don't actually get a Mars on there. No. You've gotta be able to suspend that disbelief. I guess. It's very hard to do because you're on a roller coaster pretending that you're going to Mars. Did you get anything thrown at you like a shake or anything like that when you announced that?

No, actually I've got to say the general. The general outlook from the crowd, I've gotta say, was really special. But it was because, I think because they think they thought they were actually go to Mars. Well, yeah, , I think a fair number of them thought they were actually going there. God knows how they thought, bearing in mind the weight of lots of them, God knows how they thought it was ever gonna get out of Earth's gravity to go to Mars.

I mean, you know, there were people in those little. Fat trucks, whatever they're called with the thing on the front. . I mean, it was just completely bizarre, but a wonderful place to note to, uh, actually quite a wonderful place to work for a period of time. I mean, you know, every, everybody should wear, um, White nylon shirts and purple spandex trousers for part of their career.

Mm. , which was generate electricity. Yes, exactly. Times of, uh, there were days when it was, was so hot I thought I was gonna spontaneously combust. Yes. Just walking to my station at Disney. It was absolutely bizarre. And on that note, um, the thought of being locked in Disney is actually, that was. What do you do if you're locked in Disney?

You just spend all your time in the gift shop wondering, How do I get out of Disney? I wonder if they had to stop the rides. You don't know what sort of dictat would've come down. Dunno. You might have said it's locked and you've all gotta stand a meter and half apart. Find a bit of space. Yeah. Where is the, uh, where is it in, in, I don't know, Chi.

It was obviously in China. Yeah. But yeah, there we go. And on that note, uh, Disney, thank you so much for that. And thank you for the Yes lockdown news as ever, PT or fog, the fog of your brain is clearing. As Covid Covid leaves your system. Oh, I said it out loud as well as under my breath. Just would argue it's better foggy to be honest.

But hey, I'm not in a position to charge. Julia knows. Thank you for joining us. We'll be seeing you next week. Yes. Uh, we might do a mini special tomorrow depending on uh oh yeah. How the OMS. See meeting goes. But keep an eye on that. Keep an eye on jobs data this week. And, uh, yeah, just keep trading. I'm just trade, trade, trade cautiously.

Right? This is not a, in my opinion, not a time for investing. It's a time where trading really comes into its own. Just sneak those few points out the system every day. It's a really cool way of, of making money. Absolutely. And that's it, uh, that, that, I'm gonna say it's so goodbye from me. That's a goodbye from him.

Cheers. Bye-Bye.