What's Happening In Financial Markets Right Now (Fed, BoE & Geopolitics)

Hello and welcome back to the show. And we have 3 things we're going to talk about, and namely that is a central banking theme that connects the first 2. And of course, we've had the Fed, the US central bank, has held rates at 4.25% to 4.5% as expected, with officials continuing to pencil in 2 interest rate cuts in 2025. So was that the amount the market was expecting? How do we know it's 2? Did they explicitly say that? And what's this thing called the dot plot and how do you interpret it? We're going to dive into that. And then the Bank of England again also kept rates on hold at 4.25%, but a dovish vote split. So why mention split votes? We will also have a look at that. And then finally, there's obviously continued focus across global markets on the situation as it's evolving. Between Israel and Iran. Senior US officials are preparing for a possibility of a strike on Iran in the coming days, according to people familiar with the matter, citing Bloomberg article released on the 19th. So perhaps we could start, Piers, with the Fed.

Yeah. Wow.

So they held rates. I mean, that was, I mean, we're talking to the interns today. We actually watched the Bank of England live. Yeah, we didn't, we didn't. So last night with the Fed, but it's one of those, isn't it? Where if you're brand new to this, you're kind of all gearing up towards one headline kind of number or figure. But as I'm sure you're going on to explain, this is such a multifaceted news-driven event, right?

Yeah. And I was actually running a session for Nomura Markets interns in New York. Yesterday, like a kind of finished maybe a couple of hours before the Fed announcement and I was like amping it up and going, oh, that's amazing. Your first ever Fed meeting when you're on the trading floor, it's going to be fireworks, you know, and really trying to get them revved up and excited. And then it was the dullest market reaction I've seen for a long time to a Fed meeting. And actually, if you are Jerome Powell, You know, you chalk that up as a very large success, I would say. As you said, there's so many moving parts to all of this, and yet he can deliver, he, him and his committee and through the statement and his press conference can kind of navigate through that. And actually markets basically didn't move. So from the Fed's point of view, it's kind of job nicely done. And what does that mean? It means they're not changing rates and They are basically wheeling out almost exactly the same message as they have done for months, which is, look, it's too much uncertainty here. Uncertainty on the Trump tariff policy side. Yes, that, you know, I would say the big concern about tariffs ramping up, you know, super high. That's gone. And actually that probably explains pretty much the single change to their statement. So as I think most of you listening will know, how do the Fed communicate? Well, they have a meeting every 6 weeks, and then at the end of that meeting, they agree on a script which they call the statement. It's basically 2 sides of A4, and then that gets released, and then all the details are on that, that then the media pick up and report on. So obviously, are they changing rates or not? But it's they go into a lot more detail about their economic assessment and all the rest of it. And traders pore over every single sentence and like compare it to the meeting before and write what words or what word even has changed and trying to just read between the lines, literally, right? That one single word change, what might that mean for, is that the Fed telling us what is that code language for what they might do in the future? And it, It all goes a little bit too far, to be honest. But the change in the statement was, so the previous meeting 6 weeks back, they were saying uncertainty about the economic outlook has increased further. Okay. Now that was in that period of time, because 6 weeks ago we were in that little period of time. It was after Liberation Day. So that was April 2nd when Trump said, right, the world, here you go. How'd you like these tariffs? And he started this kind of to threaten everyone that tariffs are going to ramp up. And then there was a back and forth with China, tit for tat, and we got up to tariffs being threatened at 145%, which would be an economic disaster. And that's when the Fed had their last meeting. So obviously they were going, look, economic outlook, you know, uncertainties increased further, obviously. But since then, you know, the TACO trade, Trump always chickens out. So Meaning he backtracks and backtracks, and then let's get around the negotiating table, and that 145% threat becomes maybe something like 30%, which is more digestible. So the Fed have reflected that in their statement. So instead of saying the outlook has increased, the uncertainty to the outlook has increased further, they've said the uncertainty about the economic outlook has diminished but remains elevated. You know, that's what that means. But of course we know that. I mean, it's obviously, it's diminished. So this isn't news, but the reason why markets didn't react to really any of this was because, well, yeah, obviously that's the sort of analysis of the situation, you know, as it's transpired in the last 6 weeks.

So equally then they updated their every other meeting economic forecasts.

Yeah.

And though there was some change there, was the fact that the market wasn't that bothered because of what you've just mentioned. So data suggests that yes, because these aren't 6 weeks, this is 3 months of change to be compensated for. So all very much well known then and telegraphed by the market from looking at data points.

Yeah. So just to make that clear, so every 6 weeks they have a meeting, but every other meeting, so every 12 weeks, and it's actually the meeting that takes place in the last month of each quarter. Then they go further and they change their economic forecasts or economic projections as they call them. And then they change this thing called the dot plot, which we'll come onto in a second. But from an economic forecast point of view, you know, how have they changed up that? And this is for 2025 as a full year, right? So in March, which was the last time they updated these, They had GDP growth forecasted at 1.7%. Okay, that's in March. Now here we are in June, they've revised that down. They now think GDP's gonna be more like 1.4% this year. Okay, so obviously that's a negative revision. Unemployment, they said there, while they now reckon it's gonna be 4.5% by year end, back in March they thought it would be 4.4% by year end. So that's a negative revision as well. Obviously unemployment being higher is worse, right? So that's the economic situation. They're revising things down. Down. Why are they doing that? Well, obviously there's uncertainty around tariffs and all the rest of it, but then of course there's the, I would say since March, the deficit and the debt kind of situation in the US has kind of escalated. So that brings uncertainty, of course. And then obviously we've got this geopolitical flare-up as well, which adds uncertainty also. So they've revised the economic situation down. Problem is, The other part of their forecast is inflation. There they've revised it up, and this is like the worst-case scenario, worsening economic momentum with rising inflation. So there they've changed their PCE inflation forecast for year-end. They've changed it to 3%. Back in March, they had it at 2.7%. So that's the situation. That's all bad. Every single revision is bad. Well, why haven't markets reacted then? Well, because we kind of knew that was going to happen. So, and they're only small, tiny changes and it's so hard to predict because of that word uncertainty that, I mean, these are all going to get changed again in 3 months anyway, and then we'll find out what they actually are at the end of the year and they might be nothing like these. So I think the value And the gravity put onto these forecasts has reduced because of that uncertainty element going up.

So what's your friend Donald got to say about all of this?

Donald, he's not happy. He's not happy with Jerome. I mean, we've talked about him obviously slating Jerome in the past and yeah, just before the meeting yesterday, He called Jerome Powell stupid. He said the Fed chair's stupid.

And then he said, yeah, you said last week about a couple of replacements, right? But I think you're missing someone off your list.

Well, this is it. He's now put himself forward as a potential candidate to head up the central bank. So this is, yeah, Dictator Trump just trying to kind of set his kind of platform out for full ownership of the entire policy mix of the United States. But yeah, look, he's kind of, he's kind of joking, or is he? I don't know. But what do you think about that? Because what do you think Jerome thinks? Or is it just whatever Trump, I don't care? Or do you reckon this can have any impact? On what the Fed do?

Yeah. So, well, to answer that question, no, I don't think it has any impact as far as markets are concerned. In terms of politics, maybe there's a little bit of impact. He said as well, it'd be nice if the Fed cut rates by as much as 2.5 percentage points. I think last time you said it, it was, he wanted to go full 100. Now he's going 250. That's fact.

Yeah, it's going to be 10% next meeting, basically.

But yeah, I mean, to answer your question, I think he does. If you were to go back, and I remember doing lots of this in his first term when I was a bit more following markets in my previous life, but looking at his tweets, what he tweets and the types of things he's tweeting about every time, it's kind of, well, what's the economic and political situation, the context overlay at that point in time? And I think then this is just that kind of deflection tactics of whatever he's dealing with. It's just a reason to pin blame on someone else.

Right.

I would absolutely, as his strategist, advise him to do exactly what he's doing. Because to a large bulk of the electorate, I think there's enough there for people, you know, it's almost like that us and them. It's like he thinks he's super clever. He thinks he knows it all. This is all his fault. He's causing these debt payments to be out of control. Like, I think that's just that 101 out of the playbook, and I would expect no different, to be honest.

Yeah. Okay.

So if the economy does worsen, it's Powell's fault, and he will say, I told you.

Yeah.

And even though we know it's other, obviously lots of things that are putting into that, he will. Squarely put that on Powell and not himself, of course.

But of course, if the economy improves and if all of this concern about, oh, inflation's going to go back up, if it doesn't, and if the economic situation improves, obviously there he takes the win, right? And says, well, that's because of my fiscal policies, right?

So it's a hedge.

It's a win-win.

It's a Trump hedge, basically.

Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense.

Yep. All right.

Makes sense. But then, yeah, I just like just to kind of maybe, yeah, well, we need to talk about the dot plot perhaps just as a point of interest. Again, markets didn't move though, so it's a bit of a mute point, but you know, that's the other thing that they update on a quarterly basis. So it's not just those economic forecasts. They then update this thing called the dot plot, which is their way There's a thing called forward guidance, and that's where the central banks, certainly the kind of Western sort of mature economy central banks, like to be as transparent as they can be with regards to where interest rates might go in the future. Just to kind of let markets know, let businesses know, let people know, you know, what's the direction of travel for the cost of borrowing. They don't want to go too far and be too explicit. They don't want to give hard nailed on, you know, interest rates will be X by Y dates. Because of course, if we don't know what's gonna happen and economic ups and downs, and whilst they might think interest rates will be at 4% at the end of this year, they might not be. Just depends on what happens between now and then. But if they were to, what's their best guess now? Basically they'd say 4%, right? But that, so that forward guidance, they, the Fed are quite unique where they use a thing called the dot plot to really give us some real insight into what each individual member of the Fed is thinking. So this dot plot, basically there's 4 columns on the chart and there's a column for the end of 2025, the end of 2026, the end of 2027, and something called the longer run. Okay? So what each member of the Fed is asked to do is say what If you know what, where do you think rates will be at the end of each year? And then plot your dot. Okay. So '25, '26, '27, longer run is right. Where do you think rates will end up being? Where's the neutral rate for interest rates? Once the, if we are in a cutting cycle, which they're telling us we are, then where will the bottom of that be? Where it kind of naturally settles down and flattens off. Okay. So look, it's their forward guidance tool and every 3 months they update it. What was interesting here then about the changes to the dot plot, it wasn't much in that obviously each member plots their own dot and it can get a bit messy, but we're interested mainly in taking the average, you know, what's the median, sorry, what's the median dot? And then that becomes, if you like, the market forecast, or not the market, the Fed's forward guidance, that becomes their number. So at the moment, It didn't change for the end of 2025. So in the March meeting, and now in here in the June meeting as it's updated, that end of '25 numbers stayed the same in that it's 2 interest rate cuts, each of 25 basis points, probably currently in September and December's meeting, taking interest rates from 4.5 to 4.25 to 4. Okay, so year-end rates 4%. So that hasn't changed as in the median, but actually those dots, even though the median didn't change, those dots did maneuver perhaps a bit more than I was expecting, to be honest. And what it's shown is we've got an ever-increasing divide amongst the committee because what happened was you've now actually got 7 people on that committee out of the 17, right? 7 of them are saying no, rate cut at all in 2025. They're saying, you know what, rates are gonna stay exactly where they are now at 4.5%. So that the number of people saying no cuts has gone up. So you've got people shifting into that camp, but then you've got people again, slight shift into the other camp, which is 2 rate cuts. There you've got 10 people. Okay, so you've got 7 saying none and you've got 10 saying 2. And that, that, that the, you've got these two camps within the committee and though both camps have kind of added members, if you like, but net the average hasn't changed. So it's just an interesting one, I think, but this is all kind of splitting hairs to be honest, because ultimately they say themselves, they don't know, right? Those that are sitting on the we're going to cut twice camp. Well, they're saying, look, we need borrowing costs to drop here, otherwise it's going to have a negative impact on the economy. So let's cut rates. They're saying, look, growth momentum's slowing. We've just revised down our GDP forecast. Unemployment's getting worse. Look, we've just revised it up. Let's cut. But then the unchanged camp, they're like, well, inflation's more important and inflation's just ticked higher. And whilst it's one month, we don't want— and actually Powell, I think, said this— whilst we don't want one month uptick in inflation to turn into another inflation problem, meaning we're not cutting rates now because we don't want to let that inflation genie get back out of the bottle. So there, obviously, the no-cutters are more concerned about that inflation situation and just want to just be super sure inflation, the inflation crisis is behind us before getting that cutting machine out.

Okay. Well, let the Fed, is it 4 meetings now? Certainly since the beginning of the year, they just haven't taken any action. Whereas the Bank of England, let's move on to them. They kept rates at 4.25%, but they've kind of got this kind of strategy at the moment, it would seem, as this sort of step-down approach. Of a cut or one cut every other meeting.

Yeah.

And that remains, it seems to be remaining intact for the moment. And one of the things here was that, so I watched this live with the interns, as I said at the beginning, and pound initially dropped. So I think it's like a 30 pip straight line move because rates on hold, but the first thing was to vote split. Yeah. So maybe you could explain to me then the difference with the Bank of England, because not only do you get this vote split, but you also get the minutes at the same time as the statement, which is unique, of course, to the BoE.

Yeah. So all central banks do it their way, right? So there's always differences. Like the Bank of England don't have a dot plot matrix, for example. That's a kind of unique Fed thing, right? So what's unique about how the Bank of England do it? Well, and they've changed it up over the years. I mean, they have more, they have moved more in line with the Fed. I mean, the Bank of England used to meet once a month, like every 4 weeks, as did the ECB, of course. But actually, I don't know how long ago, was it even pre-COVID? Maybe they shifted more to that 6-week frequency like the Fed.

That was when you had long hair, Piers.

Okay. Was it? Oh, it's only a couple of months ago then. So then the Bank of England, what's interesting about them is I mean, look, at the core, it's interest rates and they're assessing the economic situation and they're making a decision on rates, right? That's obviously the same for all these banks and that's the most important thing. Okay. So then it's about getting into the weeds. And so for the Bank of England, they have this thing called the vote count. And look, they have different, again, central banks have different numbers of people who sit on the committee that make the decisions. So the Bank of England happens to have 9 people on the Monetary Policy Committee, the MPC. Okay. And so they convene every 6 weeks and then they make their decision. What they— what I think this is really interesting. I'd love it if all central banks did this. What they release, not only are we changing rates or not, and so obviously today it was no change, but then they say, right, of the 9 members, how did each person vote? Because this is a democratic situation at the end of their meeting, they all vote. Do you want to hike, unchanged, or cut? And if so, by how many, right? How many basis points? And so it's interesting to get that insight. So we get the vote split that can really— and obviously the vote split changes, right? And so that can, for the Bank of England, that's their forward guidance. That's like their equivalent of the dot plot, but just near return. Because if the vote split changes, then that shows the direction of travel of the committee, either closer towards cutting or further away from cutting and so on, right? So what was interesting about this meeting is normally you got two dovish members of that 9-person committee, um, Dingra and Taylor. And so they're always super dovish. They always vote for a cut. Okay. Like always. Um, What was interesting here was that the deputy governor Ramsden, he joined them. He swung onto the cutting side of the table.

Come on, Dave. Come on, Dave.

So that was the interesting thing here. You've now got 3 people in the cutting camp, right? It didn't matter because everyone else voted for no cut. So you had 6 no cuts and 3 cuts, right? And so, oh, actually, am I right in saying that? Did anybody vote for a hike? No, it was 6-3, wasn't it? Yeah, fine. So 6 no cuts and 3 cut, right? Majority rules. So the overall decision's no cut, but it was 3 in the cutting camp, which was more than the last time they were on hold for a meeting. So I'd say this just shows generally very subtly that committee has slightly tipped more dovish. And look, we're almost certainly going to get another cut. In 6 weeks' time to maintain their cut, one cut every other meeting frequency. So I think that's pretty much nailed on, especially with this vote split change.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. This is their version of a forward guidance tool. They do have forward guidance language, of which was left unchanged. What that sounds like is gradual and careful, which is basically inferring of the one every other meeting strategy in terms of overlaying the timing of the language shifts and what's been happening. The thing about the minutes then, 'cause the minutes is the other thing. So typically like with the Fed, you can have, for example, a Fed meeting and then all of a sudden a big episode of conflict emerges between Israel and Iran and the whole game can change pretty radically. And so a 2-week gap can be a lifetime in markets, but the Bank of England strategy is right, let's just get it all out there. Now, the minutes of this meeting showed the committee, quote, expected a significant slowing over the rest of the year in pay growth amid further loosening of conditions. So sounds dovish. They said that there were some greater signs of disinflationary pressures from the labor market. So just decode that. What disinflationary pressures from the labor market? Sounds like jargon. Like, what are they trying to tell us?

Well, that's the words describing that change to their wage growth forecast, right? Where, so if wage growth is going to dampen, meaning is the rate at which salaries are going to go up, is the rate of rise going to drop? That's bad news for people. Their pay rises will slow. So that is anti-inflationary or disinflationary as they've said, right? So that would be a negative kind of force on inflation, which is perfect because, well, hang on, it's perfect. Obviously it's not perfect that people's wages are going to go up slower.

Obviously that's not Jesus Scrooge.

Obviously that's not good for the economy and like demand and GDP growth. What it is good for, which is still the kind of thorn in our side, What it is good for is bringing inflation back down. And the thing about the UK, and all right, due to idiosyncrasies with the way that energy costs get handled, but we had a jump up in inflation in April. It jumped to 3.5%. In May, we had that data earlier this week, it came in at 3.4%. So obviously well above the 2% target. So, you know, slower wage growth is good news if you are just looking at that inflation situation. So that's disinflationary, just meaning, look, the Bank of England are on their trend and there is absolutely nothing right now that's going to take them off that trend, which is cutting every other meeting for the whole year. So that's what the forward guidance language is saying. I don't know why they don't just say that in one sentence rather than messing about with all these kind of Nuanced words and language.

Oh, you need your get out of jail free card because looking at the pound 3 hours after the announcement, because we're recording this literally just after, and it hasn't done anything. So that initial spike and blip that you had on the dovish vote split was taken back pretty rapid and it's absolutely going sideways.

Yeah, that's true. But it has, like the pound against the dollar has stepped down out of the range we've been in for the last couple of months. So like this morning we hit the lowest we've seen since the 21st of May. So there was a, the pound weakened into this meeting. You could say the dollar has strengthened, maybe geopolitical risk has risen. Maybe there's a bit of dollar safe haven bid that's helped with the sterling-dollar exchange rate coming down. But the point is that the exchange rate had dropped by a couple of Well, no, let's just call it 100 basis points, not basis points, 100 pips, sorry, ahead of the meeting. And that's about right. There's then nothing in this meeting that warrants necessarily an immediate further move lower. But look, I think in the coming weeks you've got the Fed who are saying categorically, we're staying where we are, we're not cutting. And you've got the Bank of England saying, We're going to carry on to cut slowly. So you've got this gradual divergence, monetary policy divergence. And so I would expect Cable's exchange rate to continue to move back down off what's been incredibly elevated levels because this thing's been charging to the upside for the whole of 2025. And you know, even though it's come off 100 pips into this meeting, we're still at 3, 3.5-year highs here for this exchange rate.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. There's kind of like no real reaction on the intraday. It has moved low against the dollar out of a 2-week kind of holding pattern just under 136. But actually cable's had a really great time since what, mid-May?

Yeah.

And the dollar's had a terrible time. So I guess that context allows for a bit of this recalibration, it seems, and the fundamentals line up. All right. Well, look, let's finish and talk a little bit about what's been happening on the geopolitics, because it's such a prominent feature in terms of what investors and traders are looking at. So the headline here is senior US officials are preparing for the possibility of a strike on Iran in the coming days, according to people familiar with the matter. That article on Bloomberg went on to suggest that some of them pointed to potential plans for a weekend strike. Now, kind of two points here that I think have changed since we last spoke on this topic. Literally a week ago. One, the president's openness to war is a reversal from his public remarks he made a week ago. So Trump back then was urging a lot of diplomacy to reach a nuclear disarmament deal with Iran. That seems to have flipped. There has been a lot of pressure on him from various different senior political figures. And then two, originally Israel was targeting these nuclear facilities, and now they're saying they could escalate attacks to Iranian strategic and governmental targets. So this goes beyond now, they're widening the remit here. So yeah, any thoughts on this?

Well, I mean, obviously there's no question it's escalated. And Trump was like yesterday, what did he say? He like asked in a press conference, you know, are the US, are they going to join this offensive and attack Iran as well? And Trump said, I might do, but I might not. Hmm. And it was like, you know, I get what he's doing there and that he wants to keep Iran guessing. Obviously Trump, I would say behind the scenes, and he said it in front of the camera as well, that he wants Iran to surrender. And I guess he's just trying to keep them guessing to keep the pressure on and hopefully they do right. And this conflict can kind of pause and stop, but it's escalating. Look, I don't know. All I do is look at markets. If you look at crude oil, like literally in, whilst we've been talking in the, literally in the last 10 minutes, we've just broken up, not aggressively, but we just moved up above the spike high that we had on Friday last week. That's when Iran, sorry, that's when Israel went in and bombed Iran for the first time, right? In this phase. So we had that big, you remember, 13% move higher. Well, WTI crude kind of pulled back off that spike on Friday and it spent the whole week sideways with the last couple of days just drifting back higher as this thing's escalated. And we just moved just above that last Friday high now. So oil, the oil price is telling you that things are escalating and that, yeah, looks like I mean, I don't know, it does look like the US are going to get more involved here. It then just becomes about, right, well, does this stay as a contained situation within Iran, which is the likely scenario. That's why all the other markets aren't really bothered, you know, stocks, bonds, they're not really flashing alarm bells here at all. But always the problem, I guess, from a geopolitical sense is that, you know, who are Iran's allies? And look, it's China and Russia, right? So they are very allied. And so obviously the big, big, big, you know, big, big, big geopolitical kind of elephant in the room is if those two big powers, and obviously China being much bigger than Russia, but if they come to the table in support of Iran, well then obviously that's taking us down a whole view path that markets would absolutely pay attention to. But yeah, is that going to happen?

Yeah. I mean, I agree that's a scenario, but I would put a very low probability, certainly of China doing such things. Russia may be slightly different. One of the things here is that the Iranian foreign minister is set to meet with foreign ministers of UK, France, Germany on Friday in Geneva. So is this an escalate on Trump's strategy to negotiate again? And I mean, I don't want to go as far as to say Trump's working in unity with Europe and the UK to try and forge a deal here. I mean, it's not his style to really work collaboratively like that, but.

So hang on, is Trump part of that meeting? So the G7 including Trump?

I understand he's not part of that meeting.

Okay. So it's the G6.

Yeah. He does his own thing. He has his own—

this is it, right? Obviously Trump left the Canadian G7 meeting summit early. I, look, this is good play from Iran because look, is there a bit of a divide between Trump and the US and the rest of those G7? Is there a bit of a split? Yes. Relationships are definitely soured. So is this Iran just trying to wedge an even bigger or drive a bigger wedge in there by, let's meet with all the others minus Trump just to set, and then Trump's like, well, hang on, what are you guys talking about over there? And so maybe there's some of that in it. But look, you know what the diplomatic, that Trump was gonna be meeting with Iran, well, and Israel, right? Literally the day after Israel bombed Iran, there was a meeting booked, a diplomacy meeting, but Israel for whatever reason, just said, sod that, we're not waiting for that, we're gonna just go for it. And so, yeah, there doesn't seem to be any appetite for diplomacy from Israel's side. So really it's just whether, where the US, it's basically where do the US fall? And that's it. Do they want to get involved and join Israel or do they want to kind of tell Israel to stop? And we don't know yet.

So from a, from a news perspective, um, again, just to share, cause I was, Asked about this by some of the interns this week. So timing-wise now, you've got the meeting on Friday, so it's key of what is said at that moment in time. There's the constant monitoring of the actual military engagement that they're having. And then three, the report saying that Israel could strike at the weekend. Now, to go one step further, if you're watching on Spotify or YouTube, I'm going to flash now a graphic, very detailed, of Iran's oil infrastructure. And this is a really incredible resource. So if you do work in commodities in the future, you'll probably use a platform called Platts.

Yeah.

So this is owned by S&P Global, which is a big data vendor, so to speak. They do lots of other things. You probably recognize them from rating agencies. It's just one part of their business. But they have really deep data and real-time tracking, maritime routes, power grids, all this good stuff. And there's a really detailed map of Iran's oil infrastructure. So what I would be doing today, days ahead of the potential strike at the weekend, what will be important to determine the size of potential price shock is what gets targeted and what within that infrastructure would carry a bigger supply shock in terms of crude. Yes, there's obviously how aggressive they are and how widespread it is and what other governmental targets, non-oil related, they might hit. Would escalate the political side of it. But from a factual supply of oil and gas, you can work this stuff out in advance of time, and you should, if you're trying to scenario build around, okay, is headline about Badr Abbas in the south-north of the Strait of Hormuz as important as the Masjid Sulaiman, which is the first oil discovery in the early 1900s? Like, what is important, what isn't. If you're not used to this, you're like, they're just names. But actually they're very different strategically. So yeah, that's the— I'd recommend that resource, S&P Global Platts. And if you go to their insights section, you can essentially look at everything, electricity, power, oil, gas, you name it. And there's free articles that you can get. The difference being they're just delayed for, you know, regular Joes unless you pay the the big subscription fees. Yeah.

Unless you really want to geek out. Sounds like you've been geeking out for a while here. Yeah.

I mean, look, it goes into every single thing, like down to very precise details. But look, this is what you would do from a career insight perspective. If you worked for Trafigura, for Glencore, these big oil majors, this is what they have specialists doing, essentially. That's their edge, so to speak. Alright, well look, I think we're pretty much done. So is there a way to kind of conclude then for students who might be thinking about interview season conversations they might be having? So central banks overall, is this a status quo, we're monitoring what's going on and we will make decisions accordingly type of thing?

Yes. But if you're going into an interview, just talk it like that's what everybody knows, because that's what the headlines are saying. But if you can get in there and talk about the dot plot, now let's dive in here in a bit more detail. Or if you want to talk about the vote split of the Banker, if you can talk about that good stuff in an interview, then they're going to be going, ah, all right, this person knows what they're talking about. So that's how you kind of stand out. So yeah, just getting a bit more detailed knowledge Even though, yeah, all these central banks are on the same kind of path and nothing's changed too much.

Right. So there doesn't need to be a dramatic move in order to have something of credible, tangible evidence to demonstrate your knowledge. Correct. To talk about.

Cool.

All right. That is it. I'll let you go and enjoy the rest of your day, everyone. Take care.

See you later. Thanks.

Thanks, Piers.