Ep.134: US Stocks Soar In November & Elon Musk Tells Advertisers To 'Go F*** Yourselves'

Welcome back to the End of the Week podcast, and we've got 3 things on the agenda. Going to talk about the supreme month of November as far as the US equity market is concerned. So we'll look to deconstruct that. Why did it have such an amazing month? In fact, the best November since 1980. We'll do a little bit of a pop quiz on how the Magnificent Seven performed, and maybe a few others, and also what a couple of the big Wall Street year-end targets are looking like for the end of next year, because there's been a few more, and there's a little bit of divergence as well in terms of what they think for the, the year ahead. Then of course we're going to talk about Elon. I'm sure everyone has seen the clip by now, so I'm gonna refrain from swearing in the show opening here, and I'll save that for the segment for exactly what he said. But we'll talk about that, talk about Twitter discuss maybe a few ideas of, you know, why this is happening, why he's doing this, if we can, if there is any method to the madness, that is. And then we'll also talk about the Cybertruck as well, which came out this week. And then to finish, we're gonna have a look in the oil market and talk about the OPEC+ meeting, which of course was delayed because of the squabbling that was going on between all the different nations. So to kick things off, as I said, we had a really good finish. So we're recording this on the 1st of December. We finished up 8.9% for the month in November, the second best November since 1980. A few other stats here. The VIX volatility index, the fear gauge, is hovering around its lowest levels since before the pandemic now. Um, to give you an idea, I was looking at the heat map of the S&P 500, so I'm going to ask you for who was the worst and who was the best performer out of the Magnificent Seven.

Oh, in the— just in the month of November?

Yeah. What type of percentage are we looking at, do you think? I'll give you a clue. The— what— the worst performer was up 7%.

Was up 7%. Okay. Worst performer, Google.

Correct.

Okay.

Okay. If you're gonna play that game, give me the full sequence then.

Oh God. Well, Google, because they've just been having a worse time of it in this kind of OpenAI race or AI race, I should say. So I would say the best performer then, it might, maybe it's Tesla.

Correct. All right, what do you reckon they were up in the last 4 weeks?

It's probably double digits then, is it? Uh, 11%.

20%.

Bloody hell, really?

19.5%, to be precise.

Wow.

Okay, crazy, isn't it?

Decent. Then I'm gonna go Microsoft number 2.

Microsoft number 3, up 12%.

Okay, is it Amazon then? They've had decent—

Amazon number 5, up 9.8%.

I should have just stuck with my first 2 guesses. The wheels are coming off here. So who's number 2 then?

Nvidia. Okay, yeah, they're up 15%. Apple up 11%. Uh, Meta, second worst, only up 8.6%. Um, bank, bank stocks, check this one out. JP up 12%, Citi up 17%, BlackRock up 23%.

That's, uh, that's some punchy numbers. I mean, for those big tech firms— well, tech, right? You know, they're normally that, that kind of sector, the share prices are normally more volatile, so you expect bigger numbers. Banks are definitely less volatile. So they're huge figures for bank stocks.

What would explain BlackRock up 10% more than JPMorgan?

Well, I'd say that's just a direct function of the fact they're an asset manager. So they derive their revenue from charging a fee on the value of the assets under management. And so ultimately, if stocks go up, best month. What did you say?

For a long time, 1980.

Yeah, best November. Yeah, bonds, they've had their best month. Depends what you look at, but the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index has had its best month since 1985. That's just any month, not just a month of November, any month, best since 1985. Here's a question back at you. So if you think like the S&P went up, what did you say? 8.5%.

Yeah.

So what do you think the percentage rise was for the US Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index?

18%.

No, you've gone the wrong way. 4.3. So bonds are less volatile.

Well, at least I, I was thinking like bonds got absolutely crushed. Yeah, I was thinking, well, maybe they've just got, um, an exaggerated bounce.

There's, there's— yeah, it's a bit more— it's way broader, that US aggregate bond index, I would say, than the S&P is. Broader in so much as in there you've got everything from Treasuries, US government bonds, all the way through to high-yield US corporate junk bonds. So there's a huge— so I'm sure if you went down to that higher yield end of the spectrum, then you probably did get numbers well into the double digits because there's way more volatility down there.

So what I guess before we move on then, two things. What exactly, just in a shorthand statement, because this is something that I guess a lot of students would be asked in a potential interview situation. They're like, okay, great, we all know it all went up. Why did it go up? Yeah, what would be a neat way to package that up?

Well, everything went up apart from one thing, which is the US dollar that went in the exact opposite way, or all for the same single reason. But yeah, asset prices through the roof, US dollar value dropping. So this is all about the story we've been banging on about forever, which is right. It's, it's about future interest rate expectations. What's the Fed going to do with interest rates in the future? We know they're at the top of the hiking cycle, so it's just about when are they going to cut. And we've been talking about this for weeks. I mean, we were talking about how Goldman's were saying, right, they're going to start to cut, um, at the end of 2024, but Morgan Stanley are predicting that they were going to cut mid-2024. And so it's all about when are they going to cut. And what's happened in last week, there's been a very notable shift in the market consensus expectation as to when cuts are going to start. So pre this event, we were thinking end of 2020, you know, second half of 2024, probably in the autumn, right? That's just shifted now to the first half, and it's shifted to May. So now they're pricing in a 25 basis point rate cut by the Federal Reserve in the May 2024 meeting. Why? Why the sudden change? Because of this guy called Christopher Waller. So he's on the FOMC, so he's one of the rate setters at the Federal Reserve, and he made some comments at a conference, um, and they are what you call dovish comments. So he was— I'll explain in, in the details in a second, but the key thing here, why did markets sort of swing and react so much, is because normally Christopher Waller is one of the more hawkish members of the FOMC. He's normally the one going, "Right, we should be hiking rates," very much about tightening policy. For him to come out and say some dovish comments, dovish just meaning, "Right, we're going to cut rates or loosen policy," for him to say it is way more meaningful than if another member of the committee had said the same thing, but they're already normally dovish. It wouldn't have had much of an impact. But this guy's now shifted his stance, which is a measure and an indication that the whole Federal Reserve Committee on average has shifted to a more dovish place. Basically, what he was talking about was real interest rates. So what is— what are real— because we always talk about the interest rate. What's the Federal Reserve's interest rate? 5.75%. So what's the real interest rate? Well, then that's just taking into account inflation. So the real interest rate, which is ultimately thought to be, ultimately that's a more accurate, truer reflection of the cost of borrowing as well as the yield you get on savings. So the real interest rate is just the nominal interest rate, i.e., the interest rate set by the central bank minus inflation. So If the Fed want to keep interest rates unchanged, but you've got inflation falling, well then actually even if they keep rates unchanged, if inflation's falling, well then actually the real interest rate is going up. Because remember, it's nominal rates minus inflation. But if the minus inflation bit is getting smaller, the net outcome is higher, right? So he— his point was, look, if inflation continues to trend down, us doing nothing means rates are going up. So he's saying we may well look at cutting interest rates, not to boost economic growth, or we're worried about deflation, or we're worried about the economy slowing too fast— nothing to do with that. Purely, we will cut rates purely to maintain the real interest rate. So this was kind of quite a big curveball, and suddenly everyone's talking about real interest rates again. And, and that explanation has really altered people's predictions as to when the Fed might start to make a move.

So another word that I saw quite often this week was Goldilocks. People referring to this Goldilocks-type environment, which Perhaps you could explain a bit more about what that is in this kind of context.

Well, it's not too hot and it's not too cold. It's just right. Okay. So this is referring to, you know, like the economic conditions. Okay. Whereby they're not too hot. So too hot means the economy's growing too fast, upside inflation pressure, right? We've got to hike interest rates to try and curb that. Too cold is the opposite where you're, you know, you're getting the economy going the other way. Just right is where we get the sweet spot of the economy's growing. And actually, we had GDP figures for the— for quarter 3 announced earlier this week for the US, um, which got revised up So 5.2%, um, growth annualized, that is, in Q3, which is, I mean, just stellar, right? Huge growth figure. So the economy is doing really, really nicely. Inflation's coming back down. So we've got this scenario where economic conditions are really good and the Fed aren't going to be hiking anymore. And if Waller's to be believed, quite the opposite. So you might even have this phenomenal scenario where you got really good economic conditions and you're getting rate cuts. So for asset prices like stocks, I mean, that's like absolutely sweet spot. That's your Goldilocks. Um, so yeah, people are starting to get a little bit excited, I would say.

Okay, well, there's one, there's one bank on the street that's not getting excited.

Ah, Morgan Stanley.

No, do you know what, Your man Mike, uh, seems to have got out the right side of bed this time. Oh, he definitely sits on the bearish side. Yeah, he's not the biggest bear on the street. So Morgan Stanley is— well, Goldman's are forecasting 4,700 for the S&P year-end. Morgan Stanley and Barclays 4,500. JP Morgan are going for 4,200. Uh, as context, Bank of America are going 5,000, Deutsche are looking for 5,100.

Interesting.

So JP, their rationale. So let me, let me give you both ends of the scale here.

Yeah.

So with JP Morgan, most bearish on the street, they're saying global growth decelerates, household savings shrink, geopolitical risks remain high with national elections, including those in the US, which could add policy volatility.

Summary. Yeah.

Uh, Deutsche, corporate earnings to remain resilient even if the United States experiences a mild short recession.

Yeah, interesting. I mean, I— yeah, it's very bearish. I mean, to give context here, the S&P is trading at 4,568, so those saying 4,500, I mean They're basically saying it's not going to move, it'll be exactly where it is now in 12 months' time.

Um, saying that, saying that, if you've got the chart up, yeah, go look at the last 12 months.

Yep.

So where were we trading? What was the perspective low and high over that 12-month period to give us an idea of the variance of movement?

Okay, so 12 months ago uh, start of December 2022, trading at 4,000. Okay, dipped a bit into year-end, and actually the low of the whole year of 2023, the low— well, so far, I guess, you know, you never know— but, um, the low was at 3,800, and that was on January 5th. So right at the very start of the year, um, we've then rallied, and actually the high so far, and this could be broken, was on the 31st of July, which was at 4,588. So we're sat like just 20 points off the summer high. So if there were any more upside into year end, then we will be finishing on the high. We started on the low. So it'll work out to be a very tasty 12-month period for the index. So yeah, we're kind of right up at the top end of the year's range. 4,200 would take us kind of take us back to levels we dipped below that at the end of October. And the reason for why November's got these crazy figures in terms of the amount of upside, it's the timing of the, the, the kind of wave pattern of this market. The, the big nosedive low was on October the 27th, down at 4,100, and that was the absolute low of what was a really big sell-off. and then we just pinged higher right from day 1 of November through to, through the, through to the end.

Um, so, so it sounds quite straightforward until you go back in time 8 weeks and you are like higher for longer, sell everything, and then you go forward 4 weeks, no cut rates, buy everything. So what's to say that this can't flip again on its head?

Wow, well, absolutely. And it can, and it could do, you know, I, I think the most important thing between now and the end of the year is the inflation data for November that will get released about halfway through the month. And then we've got a Fed meeting on the 13th of December. So really, if that inflation figure comes in lower than last month— we had a big drop last month, which is why people have got excited again and why Waller's starting to say, hang on, we might need to cut rates. So if inflation goes down again, then I think that further evidence that actually rate cuts are going to happen sooner. But look, if that inflation number jumps back up, then right, we're going to massively seesaw maybe back to the panic mode of, oh no, rates are going to have to stay this high for, for much longer. And yeah, you'll get the seesaw swing back down to the, to the downside into year end. So yeah, it's a pretty, pretty important number that which will come halfway through the month. Cool.

All right. Well, look, let's move on and let's talk a little bit Elon Musk, who, yeah, made the headlines again this week.

What's the swear? Do we have a swearing policy on this podcast?

Well, yes, you can only swear if it's repeating verbatim of what someone else has said.

Okay.

You're not allowed to swear yourself. That's the rules.

Okay. As long as it's a direct quote.

Yeah.

Okay, perfect.

So do you have the quote? Do you want to take the honors?

Yeah, the quote. Well, the quote was, go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.

I actually think he said it twice, Piers, if you're going to be verbatim. But yeah, he said that. I think it was like a New York Times DealBook conference thing. And yeah, he's on a stage and it was a little bit out of left field. He obviously looked pretty disgruntled and he went on to talk about the fact that the advertising boycott was basically going to kill the company. And then he started saying, we'll let the people of planet Earth then decide it and we'll document it. It was all quite weird to watch, to be quite honest. Yeah. The context here was that There's a few parts, but essentially he endorsed an antisemitic post on Twitter, had a lot of backlash. The advertiser exodus began as well after a nonprofit Media Matters published a report that showed advertisements from major companies alongside neo-Nazi posts. So Apple, Disney, he had a little pop shot of, is it Bob Iger? Isn't it the CEO of Disney in particular? Yeah, a few of those other big kind of household brand names who have all left, uh, Twitter. I was gonna say Twitter, X. Yeah. So other than this kind of headline story and other than feeling like, wow, imagine if you're the CEO and Elon comes out with that, uh, how you must feel trying to manage that fallout the next day.

Well, on just quickly on that front, because like the companies that pulled out, like IBM, Apple, Walt Disney, Comcast, Warner Brothers, giant organizations with giant advertising budgets. And they were kind of pulling out anyway, not just because of that antisemitic post that Elon Musk did, but also since Elon Musk has taken over, basically the sort of, it's been relaxed in terms of of, you know, the policing of posts has been relaxed because Musk is all about free speech, right? And advertisers are then fearful of, you know, being, having their adverts next to a tweet that is, you know, controversial and against their sort of ethos and whatever. So they've kind of pulled out. So he hired a new CEO to come and charm them back. Okay. Her name's Linda Iaccarino. So he hired her specifically because of her connections within the media industry and to get these advertisers back. And then apparently she was in the crowd at this talk when he just launches this tirade and she must have just been going, oh my God. I mean, how's she supposed to operate? Do we know that kind of thing?

Do we know her salary?

I don't know.

What's it— what, what's in this for her?

Well, to, to be the CEO of one of the big social media platforms, most talked about companies, I guess. Yeah.

Okay, so just trying to think of— I mean, he obviously plays this, this political line.

Yeah.

Where Obviously he can kind of leverage down and say that this is all, you know, I'm not, I don't want to, I don't want to go into the political side. We kind of, we know that point, but I was trying to think, okay, so that aside, from a business perspective, what's his angle here? Because is he a crazy man or is he a genius?

Well, Yes, indeed. Um, so I think there's two— either he's crazy in that he's just, he just had an outburst, it wasn't planned, he just came out, shoot, I don't know, maybe he was drunk, I don't know, shooting from the hip, just being a bit of an idiot. Maybe that was the case. Oops. In, you know, the day after, he might have been going, oh shit, I shouldn't have done that. Or it's a very genius play. So here's that story because at the moment, right, we know what, what do we know? Because we don't, Twitter's not a publicly listed company anymore. He bought it, took it off the stock market, right? So he doesn't have to report earnings. So we don't know finer details about the financial position of the firm. What we do know is last July he said that we are still negative cash flow. And that were— revenue is 50% down from when he bought it, and that's because of advertisers pulling out, right? So 50% down, maybe. So that was in July. Maybe things have got worse, especially after this tirade, right? Maybe things have got worse to the point where he's thinking, well, hang on a minute, this isn't going in the right direction. And the problem they've got in terms of, um, financing the deal, you know, he bought Twitter for $43 billion. In terms of financing it, he borrowed $12.5 billion. So there's $12.5 billion of debt involved here, and that was a syndicated loan from the big banks. Who was it? Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, and Mitsubishi Bank. So they syndicated this loan for him, right? $13 billion. Let's just round it up. So that's really expensive. That's not helping that cash flow, the negative cash flow. Part of that story is these big interest payments that they've got to make on this debt, right? So maybe, maybe Musk is thinking, hang on, this is not— I can't pull it off, so let's bury it. Let's actually go ahead and bury this thing, the company, so that I can get this debt written off. Or, I mean, like there's an extreme case, right? The company goes bankrupt and okay, the liquidators come in and the debt holders, maybe they get a tiny fraction of their money back. I don't know, 5%, 10%. Okay. Or most, more likely, Trump, um, Musk will go to the banks and go, look, conditions are really bad. This is go heading towards bankruptcy. So you've got two choices, banks. Either let's let it go to bankruptcy, you're going to get 5% of your money back, or restructure the debt. Let's restructure the debt. Let's take a haircut, as we say, which means, right, we're going to say the debt, well, it's $12.5 billion. Let's call it $6.25 billion. So let's write off half of it. Okay. With the other half, let's restructure it with a better interest rate. Help me out here, guys, to make sure this company doesn't go bankrupt. And then, right, we'll get it back on its feet. So there's maybe, if he's being a genius here, then I think that's probably the play where he's trying to get some of this debt written off before then the company revives and he sails off into the sunset having saved himself $6.25 billion of debt repayments.

All while he's feeling pretty pleased with the 20% appreciation of Tesla. In, in one month.

Indeed.

Well, I guess the next 12 months then will be really interesting to see how that plays out. There's also, of course, a political year in the US with an election at the end. So it's definitely going to be a year of Elon Musk.

Yeah, for sure. That's true. And he said, he said publicly that he wants Trump back on the platform. He's basically given him a public invite to return. Of course, Trump has his own platform.

Is that still going?

I've got— apparently it is, but I've got no idea on what the figures are. I don't know if anyone— you— I don't know what the user figures are, but I guess it's just full of Trump's fans, right? So, um, yeah, I don't know.

So what, in that scenario that you described, um, I like it. I like that, this theory. So looking at it from the bank's Perspective, just bad deal then, or?

Well, yeah. I mean, look, Musk is a fairly backable individual. Let's be honest, his track record is pretty phenomenal. It's not just Tesla, of course, but SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink. He founded OpenAI just in his spare time. Everything he's touched has turned to gold. So he's a backable guy. So these banks came in and backed him. Yeah. It's just, I think in the end, for sure, Musk paid way over the odds for the asset. And I think probably he's still a little bit pissed off about that, which is maybe why he's engineering this scenario where he can get out of some of this debt that he used. So that'll lower the price, right? So if half of the debt got taken away, that's $6.25 million, right? So that'll take his actual purchase price down to $37 billion rather than $43. So maybe he'll feel a little bit more.

Does make me think that maybe take it one step genius further. That this was— he was kind of almost— because he was already trying to battle in court, wasn't he, over the fee to start with from the beginning. So he knew it was way too toppy.

Yeah, well, that's it. He messed up in the kind of legal contract he signed, you know, to, to do this deal. He kind of— he rushed it, I guess, and the legal clauses meant he was basically forced in the end to buy it at $43 billion when actually he didn't In the end, he didn't want to, but he was legally obligated to do so. So yeah, left a bit of a bad taste.

Okay. We'll see how this goes.

Yeah.

More to come, I am sure. More controversy always with Elon. All right. So let's take a little look about OPEC.

So let's— I just wanna touch— you mentioned Tesla, of course.

Oh, sorry.

Cybertruck. We can't, we can't not mention the good old Cybertruck here. which has finally been— is ready for delivery, um, like 2 years over schedule. Um, but it kind of got— it kind of— they had another kind of mini launch yesterday, um, even though it got launched back in 2019, um, in terms of the concept of it. So back in 2019, it was like, here we go, Cybertruck, we're going to change the truck world. And it's going to be delivered in 2021 and it's going to cost $40,000. That's what they said in 2019, right? Here we are, end of 2023, it's finally being delivered, except the cheapest price will be $60,990, but that one's not available yet. The only one you can actually buy with the 2024 delivery date is the all-wheel drive version, which is $80,000, or the Cyberbeast, which is the top end of the range, and that's $100,000. So that got kind of rolled out yesterday. The reason why it was a very infamous launch back in 2019, do you remember? Because there's loads of features of this truck which has caused a massive headache in production. Which is why it's late. Things like it's got an ultra-hard exoskeleton. Basically, they're making it out of cold-rolled stainless steel, which is bulletproof. I mean, only in America. So apparently it's bulletproof for up to a 9mm handgun. Why? Anyway, it's got this armored glass. Okay. And the launch in 2019, They were raving about all these features and yeah, check out the glass. It's an armored glass. And basically they threw a baseball at it. Or was it a baseball bat?

It was like a cannonball, like a mini cannonball thing.

It was, yeah. And it, the glass shattered and it was like, oh, oops, that wasn't supposed to shatter. It's supposed to be—

Ah, that was on purpose. Did that on purpose.

Yeah. Well, maybe, maybe so. Anyway, they did it again yesterday. They did it again yesterday.

Oh, okay.

And it works like the glass didn't shatter.

Surprise, surprise. I saw the build up to this launch. There's about maybe 3 or 4 weeks ago there was a viral post on, on X and it was a video of someone filming and they had the Cybertruck. You know, when you have like a road test vehicle and it's all in like this kind of weird, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

So you can't tell what it is, but you know what it is.

Yeah.

And then there was some, then, then it had bullet holes in the side and it went viral because someone's driving beside this Cybertruck filming it going, oh, look at the bullet holes, man. Obviously marketing buildup to, yeah, the launch. Oh, what, what, I mean, what a disgusting looking car. But I mean, who knows? I just, I'm not, I guess I'm not the target, target market.

Well, there's some crazy— this, this thing's ridiculous. Like, did you know it can do 0 to 60 faster than a Ferrari? 2.9 seconds, 0 to 60. I mean, it's crazy. Um, it's got some quite cool things, like it's going to have solar, solar charging as an optional extra. So you can have solar panels in and it'll charge to increase the range, which apparently is going to be up to 500 miles anyway. So it's a pretty phenomenal machine.

So he's seriously gonna sit there and mention the words Ferrari and tell me that the Cybertruck can go faster. Therefore, you're implying that somehow, you know, put it, putting your foot down and a car moving, like, even if it's faster, you and I know that there's a, there's a lot more Even just driving straight line speed.

Well, look, all I can say is there's 2 million people on the preorder book.

Yeah, but that, yeah, that again, mate, is part, part of the bigger, wider Musk, yep, Musk-esque ways where he uses his influence, his power Absolutely. Shape these public opinions to, yeah, everything he does is all orchestrated to fit an engineer that results in tangible things like a 2 million waiting list for an absolute heap of junk.

I'm not gonna, but there's real problems with production. So even though there's a 2 million waiting list, right? Next year, He only reckons they're gonna be able to build 250,000, like at best. And his track record on hitting production targets is not good. So it'll probably be less than 200,000, right? So they'll let, they'll make less than 10% of the pre-order book next year. So yeah, the waiting list for this thing is gonna be insane. Okay.

You, you, I'll tell you now, you'll be lucky to hit 10%.

Yeah.

The reason why is any factory line process, You can't just have a brand new vehicle with new materials and new design without fault. This car will be a disaster, just like every other Tesla is the worst manufactured vehicle you can buy for your money.

I mean, don't sit on the fence.

Anyhow, let's move on. Let's talk OPEC, OPEC+. So these, this would be the group of nations, oil-producing nations, namely Saudi, Russia, but a whole heap from the Middle East, Africa, but the wider plus being namely Russia, but does include a few other outside members, but they've essentially agreed to make additional voluntary cuts to oil production in 2024. To bolster the market. Now, the idea being here that it was quite well anticipated in the sense of the general economic climate. Did I have to do more? Oil hasn't really responded to cuts done thus far. Saudi, others, the kind of sweet spot is still higher than where oil is currently trading, not that far off, uh, the sweet spot being about 80 $80. Um, the idea being here, Saudi's the easiest example, that they have, uh, a budget to manage. And so they need money coming in as well as money going out. And for that book to balance, they need $80 a selling price. And at the moment we're trading just below there. So the kind of details of the deal, Saudi Arabia pledged to extend an existing voluntary cut of 1 million barrels a day until the end of the first quarter. Russia. So this is always the kind of contentious relationship here. There's no, there is no deal unless those two deal together, just given the magnitude of the kind of weighting of the overall OPEC+ production. It's very much tilted to those two. And Russia said they were going to deepen its existing voluntary export reduction to 500,000 barrels per day from 300. So they've gone another step further, essentially. So the group did agree was total production curves of 2.2 million barrels per day from 8 members. And that figure then is around 1.3 when you're talking about the Saudi, Saudi-Russian mix. So yeah, that was the, the latest. One, one interesting kind of summary I saw from one analyst, he said the Saudi lollipop The meaning of that being that it's a little kind of sweetener, has been successfully socialized into the OPEC+ lollipop.

Okay, you lost me at lollipop. So what is this voluntary word? Why is that in there? Voluntary cuts? Why aren't they just saying we are cutting by X amount?

Well, the, the, I guess the biggest problem you have here is that these countries, probably the easiest way to look at this is if you were to take Saudi and Iran, two countries which historically do not see eye to eye for religious reasons. And so therefore they do bat for the same team though, when they're in OPEC. That being that both of them are sensitive to the value of what oil is trading in terms of their income as a country. So the problem you have with volunt— or the problem you have in trying to enforce cuts is that, well, who is exactly going to monitor, check, and enforce these things? It needs to be done as a collective agreement in the greater interest of all parties. But therein lies the biggest problem because every one of these countries is quite unique, economically, culturally, as I said, religiously. So it's a tough gig trying to get everyone on board. You know, you think of Saudi and Russia being critical, obviously Saudi aligned with the US, and at the moment there's a war still going on in Ukraine and the West sanctioning Russia. So there's some delicate relationships for sure. This meeting in itself got delayed. The delay from the meeting from Sunday was partly motivated by talks with African members in particular. Angola, Nigeria pushed back against attempts to curb their output because they're looking to revive their oil output sectors after years of underinvestment, mismanagement, civil war. Uh, they're like, no, we need, we want to get cracking. We want to pump as much as we can get away with and sell it to make as much money as possible, which goes counter obviously to the objective that Saudi Arabia has, which is to try and at least, um, manipulate the supply handle to offset the falling demand, right? To try and manage price.

So, right. The point of OPEC or OPEC+, right, is that supply handle and them having an effect on price. I would argue that they failed on that attempt this time because they've cut production, buy more, so price should go up, right? But it didn't. Price went down. I mean, we had pretty big sell-off, um, couple of dollars more, more, $2 or $3, even $3 to the downside off the back of this announcement, which is the opposite way to what theory suggests it should go, right? So it's the least— because they didn't even have, um, a, the meeting was delayed, indicating, well, hang on, there's, there's disagreement. And then they made the announcement yesterday and they didn't even have a press conference, which is like, they always have a press conference. So that you can clearly tell that there's big disagreement. And this, these cuts, I mean, are they even going to happen? Right. You know, is it just, so here's a question. Is OPEC, are we seeing the beginning of the end of OPEC?

Well, I think we, we've said this before. I think the writing's been on the wall for some time.

Yeah.

Particularly given the emergence as well of, if you think more long-term and you do think about these African nations in particular. Countries like Nigeria will in time become more powerful within that mix. For Saudi Arabia, unfortunately, the only way is down here. And hence the reason why they're doing their quest to diversify. They know this, they have known this, that the others are on the rise here. And that in itself will fracture the relationship because there will need to be a shift in power. Of which will be unacceptable to all parties at some point. So yeah, yeah, it will certainly be an interesting time ahead. Uh, the geopolitical consequence though of that fracturing could get interesting. Yeah, indeed, for sure. All right, well look, we will wrap it up there. Um, thanks, Piers, as ever, for your time. And for everyone else, have a great weekend. We'll see you next week.

Yep, have a great weekend.