What's it doing?

Let's start with copper then.

It's $6.36 per pound, and that's down 3% on the month.

I suspect that this may be partly to do with the winning of the recent election for the Democrats.

which largely seems to be people who don't like data centers, and data centers need a lot of copper.

So this might be something to do with that.

We won't know for a little while, but it could be.

What is causing this, Simon? Why is Britain going backwards?

Any change?

Yes, this is very interesting.

Soybeans, $12.36 per bushel, down 5% on the month.

Wheat, $6.14 per bushel, down 11% over the last month.

And corn...

This is the one up move.

It says that was good for the farmers.

What do they do during the day? Is there one task that they're embraced by so that they don't want to work?

and

that cheaper is better on this.

And I think it's probably high enough to be good enough for the farmers as well.

The metals.

Let's get to the metals.

The metals, gold, $4,141 per troy ounce, down 5% on the month.

Silver, $57 per troy ounce, down 14%.

So before we get to those generous benefits, how close did the rioting come to you, Simon?

Why? What does Paris have against the land of Cyprus? Good evening to you.

Good evening to you, John, and thank you for having me on the show again.

This is very interesting.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it's very oily, a lot of sap in there that will create bigger and worse fires.

And that's the thing we need least in this country is more fires, especially wildfires.

And that could be a part of the problem with it.

The one we've got, or we still have a bit of it, it's now a small hedge.

Simon, it sounds like vandalism, not theft.

Food complex

Uh, so what, what's really, what is really interesting here on the food, food side is that, uh, soy, soy is thirteen dollars per bushel, and that's unchanged.

Uh, wheat is down four percent at six dollars and ninety-seven cents per bushel, and corn is down one percent at five dollars per bushel.

So th-they're little moves down there which are important and, and maybe that's partly because of the strength of the US dollar, the increased strength of it over the last few weeks.

So that could just be part of that.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out over the winter, which may be a very cold winter, uh, according to some, uh, some people that I've talked to who know about that sort of things.

Then we've also got gold, silver, copper and iron ore, and every single one of those is down over the last month.

And what, what do you remember him for in your column, and what does The Wall Street Journal remember him for?

Are the leaves falling? Are they yellow and red the way they are here?

Not yet.

I'm not seeing yellow and red now.

What I'm seeing on the ground is sort of brown and really light brown because of all the scorching through the summer, but not off the trees yet.

And our...

Horse chestnut tree has been sending down a lot of what we call conkers in the UK.

They are horse chestnuts, and they come down.

And what's a change month over month, Simon?

Right.

The air conditioning has been basically, you know, and people aren't doing it anymore because it's now bearable.

And in fact, what you could bear before, uh, i- is, is now a bit higher than you would have done because, because of the heatwave.

We, we all got, uh, a bit used to it after a while.

So I think, uh, putting on the air conditioning is the last thing you want to do really at the moment given the bills that are coming in.

Um, and then we've, we've got the, the, the food situation is, is quite interesting here.

We've got soy, soybeans at, up eight percent at thirteen dollars a bushel, wheat at, uh, seven d-dollars a bushel, up four percent, and corn down seven percent at five dollars and thirty cents a bushel.

What happened since forty-five? In your lifetime, is there a sense of why the retreat, Simon?

What kinds of products and services are companies looking to create in space and on the moon?

The big ones are things like capturing the solar rays and the solar energy from the sun.

It doesn't get beaten down in the way that it does when it comes through our atmosphere.

That should be able to be caught, and that can be used for data centers on the moon or even floating around space.

around the Earth in the orbits.

There's also a lot of meteors out there that have minerals that are precious that we could go and get and capture and then send them down back to Earth.

So there's a lot of things that can be done.

What kinds of people and skill sets will companies be looking for over the next decade as they build out their lunar businesses? And How might these people be different from average job seekers on Earth? They're

Simon, who are the Broligarchs and why are we blaming them?

Well, some people I say you and me aren't really against this move to AI and data centers and all that sort of stuff.

But I think I think it's jealousy against rich people.

Basically, these are very rich people who have made massive amounts of wealth and are now trying to put up.

data centers to help with AI.

Now, I don't see anything wrong with that at the moment.

Noise might be a problem, but it's no more noisy than a lot of other things.

Please remind me.

So what are the colors looking like in your paradise? Good day to you.

Good to have you, John.

Thanks for having me on the show.

It's been fantastic.

Last night as I went to bed, I heard rain, rain through the window and I opened the shutters and everything and it was just delightful to listen to it.

And then this morning I looked out of the window when the sun was up.

And there it was.

What did he say?

And what is your sense of the English public? Are they being patient with him? Because there are some genuine problems he has to address, chiefly taxes and the budget.

It's very interesting.

He is very charismatic.

He is very likable.

But I'm not sure he's the right person to be a prime minister of a country that is a major economy in Europe and in many ways across the world.

What Ashcroft also sent was a list of things that what people had known about about Andy Burnham.

They're all very trivial things.

the oligarchs they mentioned the environment and simon your environmental questions on the quiz can be helpful here let's let's look at the way the campaigns are developing they pound water they pound electricity and they they pound very much the noise you asked about at least two of those maybe all three what are the facts simon thank you

Please explain, Simon.

Well, one of the things that we had to do here was to dig in and find out what people might think of things.

And so the questions we've got are hard, but you've got to think of it like you're reading a newspaper and you would expect to read something that you didn't know previously.

Otherwise, it isn't news.

And so the fact that they're hard is neither here nor there.

It's just a matter of getting to the end of it, and you will get the right answer at the end, and then you will know it and can go on.

But there's some of them really simple things.

It's

Any movement there?

Yes.

And it's not good in the movement.

Brent crude oil is now at $92 per barrel.

That's up 3% in the last month alone.

Now, people often complain about 3% inflation in a year.

So 3% a month is a lot more than that.

But does he have an international profile?

The movement of Brent crude, what's it doing now month over month?

Brent is now $89 a barrel, and that's up 6% over the last month.

So it's quite elevated.

That doesn't seem to be a very big, big, big move.

But it looks like that could go up even further based on what's going on in the Middle East.

We've got diesel at €2.17, which is about $8.68 a gallon in the U.S. is what it would be.

If anyone's wincing from that in the U.S., then I don't blame them because it's a lot and it's very, very expensive.

How do you hear that, Simon?

So what can you tell me about food, either corn or soy or wheat? Any change?

Well, soy is down 3 percent, but wheat is up 6 percent.

And we know that a lot of wheat comes from Ukraine.

So that and hence Odessa via Odessa down to the Mediterranean and then off to a lot of countries in North Africa.

So that's a big increase, especially for middle-income countries that are in North Africa.

We've got corn unchanged at $4.37 per bushel.

Wheat was $6.40 per bushel.

There doesn't seem to be any logic to what's happening to you.

How is it month over month? You see the numbers.

Well, it really is quite shocking here.

Brent crude, which is the global benchmark, is at $91 per barrel, and that's up 26% in the last month.

European Union gas, which is used to make electricity, is 59 euros per megawatt hour, and that over the same period was up 36%.

Diesel is $2 and – sorry, €2.16, which is equivalent to $8.64. cents per gallon so that's that's very expensive and it's going to really have a a bad influence on the economy so all of those up and just a few days ago you could get diesel at lower than two two euros per liter so you know not not very good for europe in in any way we got gold barely changed silver barely changed.

Copper up 4.7%.

That's a very good sign.

measure, Simon, is the resistance romantic, sentimental, based on some understanding of what a virtuous job looks like? or is it based on a detail that you – how much water, how much electricity, that sort of thing? How do they resist in your experience?

Can you ask Jim the seventh question and see how he does about it? Go ahead.

Of course, I was very happy to ask these questions.

Remember, I would have not got any of these right if I didn't actually write the whole thing.

Seven of 10.

Data centers need water to cool server components.

How many gallons a day of water does the typical data center use? Is it A, 10,000 gallons? Is it B, 150,000 gallons? C, 300,000 gallons? D, 450,000 gallons? And E, 500,000 gallons? Drumroll, Mr.

McTague.

5

Good day to you, Simon.

Good day to you, John.

It's been very, very hot.

So we haven't really had much of a break from the heat.

We had, I think, two days of coolness, which everybody in this area was very happy with because a little bit of coolness going when you pass.

Temperatures up between 93 and 100 Fahrenheit each day at the high.

Today, the high is 93 Fahrenheit, still pretty hot, and it's a bit sticky outside.

How is it month over month? You see the numbers.

Yes.

Yeah, it's a poll.

It's a poll thing.

And he's taken the data and then he adds basically a summary of it.

And I'll go through it very, very quickly.

It says one in four of those who started 2025 willing to give Starmer the benefit of the doubt was Keir Starmer, the former prime minister.

The benefit of the doubt.

Does it work in urban Britain?

Is that correct? How much was damaged?

It was probably about one-tenth of the entire forest.

It's a very large forest.

It was next to the Palace of Fontainebleau, and it's very near Paris, and that seemed to have been put to burn by basically some pyromaniacs who wanted to do that, and that's what the French government is saying, and they're also saying that this is not something that should be happening.

People shouldn't be burning down forests just because they think it's a fun thing to do.

They've not decided whether this is a terrorist act, although it does sound like one.

They have some very different ways of deciding whether something's a terrorist action.

What's the correct answer?

What, what do we have this morning on Brent crude, on, uh, natural gas, on electricity? Good day to you.

Good day to you.

It's, it's very mixed o- on the energy side of things.

So Brent crude is at eighty-five dollars per barrel, uh, and that's up seven percent over the last month, so that's quite a fast move for that.

We've got natural gas at-- that's US natural gas at two dollars and ninety-one cents per unit, and that's down seven point four percent, so that's something that I think Americans should be very happy with.

And then European Union gas, which is TTF, um, that's fifty-four point five euros per megawatt hour, and that's up thirty percent over the last month.

So that's an incredible move there, and that's not gonna be good for anyone in the European Union.

... suddenly I saw a nasty streak, Simon, a nasty streak.

Simon, introduce your quiz before you humiliate me and everybody else.

Okay.

It's a quiz that's going to be hard because they're always hard, these ones, because I'm given topics and told to write about it, and I do my best.

We all know that life is finite, but some people live far longer than others, and it isn't always clear why longevity varies from person to person.

Some point to genetics, others to wealth, and still others to where people live.

I think they're all important.

How much do you know? Well, I knew nothing.

Go ahead.

commodities and we'll begin with the tough stuff energy what what do we have this morning on brent crude on natural gas on electricity good day to you good day to you it's

very mixed on the energy side of things so brent crude is at 85 dollars per barrel and that's up seven percent over the last month so that's quite a fast move for that we've got natural gas That's U.S. natural gas at $2.91 per unit, and that's down 7.4%.

So that's something that I think Americans should be very happy with.

And then European Union gas, which is TTF, that's 54.5 euros per megawatt hour, and that's up 30% over the last decade.

So that's an incredible move there.

And that's not going to be good for anyone in the European Union.

So I'm going to be one of those people and hoping that the coolness comes soon to us.

Suddenly I saw a nasty streak, Simon, a nasty streak.

Simon, you knew when you were putting this together that we were all going to fail, correct?

Basically, yes.

When I started doing the research on these questions, because I had to do the research and I knew nothing.

And if I had taken this test, I would have got precisely zero things right.

Out of the 10 questions, I would have had none.

The fact that you got one in the first three is really remarkable.

This isn't about giving people a feel good answer.

Third

Has it moved Brent crude? Has it moved all of the commodities you're watching? Thank you.

Thank you, John.

I think the most important thing is the oil price, which has gone up about 5% to $77 per barrel of Brent crude.

Now, that is down 15% on the last month, but it's still gone up.

And the worry is that sending bombs to each other between the US and Iran is going to make it go up even more.

Bombing doesn't go well with investors who are buying this Brent crude.

Natural gas has gone up a bit.

What's happened, Simon?