how we've described how it's difficult to get your money out once it's in, but private equity rather than in funds, how advisable is it to go into that and how difficult is it to go into that?

Yeah, absolutely.

And so here's something where people will be able to amaze their friends at their next dinner party by understanding the difference between what you and I would think of as private equity and also what the gilet-wearing aficionados of private assets will think of as private equity.

So when I say private equity more generally, what I'm I mean is all private companies.

So that could be the corner shop to open AI.

But in reality, when the specialists talk about private equity, what they tend to mean is well-established mid-size or large businesses that are typically bought using quite a lot of debt and The risk is not that the business is a poor business.

The risk is that you load it up with too much debt.

What about private credit? Give us a picture of that

Mm

...

the expected returns have risen, and you can get, uh, much better returns from those thematic funds now than you could've done when they were very popular.

And I think there's a broader message there that sometimes the best time to access a theme is not when the fund is first issued, uh, because that's when, uh, there'll be a little, little hype around it, uh, but sometimes when that theme has had a chance to mature, uh, when some of the, the, the froth in valuations has come off, when price a little bit low and expected returns are higher, that's a really good time to look at themes.

So if you're, if you're digging around for unpopular themes at the moment, uh, there's plenty, uh, that you can find in the ESG space.

Uh, one of the areas that I've been looking at over the la- last little while is things like alternative energy, um, of course, which, uh, was very popular, then became very, very unpopular.

When I was running the ESG portfolios, one of the great holes in my portfolio, trying to find really good value alternative energy stocks, was very difficult.

Mm

Tell us what that means.

Yes, absolutely, Andrew.

So I'll start with the wrong question.

So the wrong question is to say whether this ceasefire will halt.

The right question is to say, what is the probability that this ceasefire will hold? And is that reflected in asset prices? And people listening to this will immediately think, well, hang on, that second question sounds much more complicated than the first one.

I'd rather think about the first one, please.

And that is the problem for us as investors, that cognitively, it's much more difficult to think about the second question.

Do we just have to accept volatility as part of the game, that you have to be able to withstand this stuff flying around and sometimes looking frightening in the short term? Otherwise, you maybe shouldn't be doing it at all.

Well, Dan, what do you think of the selling that we've seen this week? What do you think is behind it? Is it all about valuation or has there been another catalyst?

I'm not shedding too many tears either.

I mean, it's been a pretty good year.

It's been a very volatile year for investors we know.

A lot of people were really challenged by what went on in April.

We've had a little bit of selling, but it's been a really concentrated market.

And you've done pretty well in the U.S. market so far this year.

their calls wrong.

What's your take and what has filled the safe haven role this year?

Well, Ivana, that's an argument I don't buy.

And I'll explain why.

Because a diversifier is really something that acts a bit like a shock absorber when markets fall, when we have these volatile periods.

And what they're primarily designed to do is to help us avoid making the mistakes that are habitual when we're faced with a falling market.

And so by reducing the fall-off, setting the fall, then that helps us to think more long-term.

But crypto doesn't really act like that.

Can you explain what's going on and how patient investors can find opportunities?

How should investors think about this deal?

$100 billion, it's such a huge amount of money.

And in fact, as you say, it would be a record breaking deal for any investment in a venture capital backed business.

And OpenAI already hold that record because of a fundraising they did earlier this year that raised 40 billion.

So these are huge sums that are being invested in AI.

And the challenge for investors is that there's two very simple narratives we have to be aware of.

The first simple narrative is that there's far too much money being invested in this technology.

What are you tracking for next week's markets briefing?