Sir Paul Marshall: Why Markets Are Getting More Competitive, The Logic of Shorting, and Building TOPS

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/93450aa423b40e12

My worst investment ever was probably the first Iraq.
Whoa.
So it's a long goes back a long time. I remember'cause it was August
The date of the invasion was August the second, nineteen ninety. It was my birthday.
And then uh seven months later.
The Americans finally
Struck.
on Iraq. By that time I built a very significant long position in
oil services, oil stocks and so on and I had an absolute nightmare.
Absolute nightmare performance by
My worst performance, yeah, ever, by a long way.
Could've could have lost my job, really.
I'm Nicola Tanyen, the CO of the Norwegian So and Wealth Fund, and today
My guest is one of the most successful investors of our generation.
So Paul Marshall started Marshall Waste in nineteen ninety seven and today is one of the largest and most successful hedge funds in the world.
Martial waste?
Combines man and machine, and they built the world's first alpha capture application.
Which is like a system that collects trade ideas from thousands of brokers.
tracks who gets it right and puts money behind the best.
Now.
Paul.
has also written down what he knows about investing in his book Ten and a Half Lessons from Experience. Uh he's also huge on philanthropy.
So let's explore this and other things today, Paul.
Warm welcome. Thank you, Nikolai. Great to see you again. That's been far too long.
Absolutely. And I should say but by I mean
When you say I started martial ways Ian Ways and I started martial ways very much a partnership.
uh and it's remained a partnership and a broadening partnership all through its life.
When you studied Marshall Waze, who decided that uh Marshall was going to be before Waze?
Okay.
Alphabetical.

Now, uh today you uh run
uh around ninety billion dollars. What is it that Marshall Ways is best in the world at?
Um
Well, it's very presumptuous to say you're best in the world at anything.
Uh but I guess
what we could claim I I I probably claim two things.
We're probably best in the world at Alpha Capture because we created Alpha Capture. So that was our uh unique
Mm.
contribution.
Secondly, I would say we may be best of the world at combining discretionary with systematic investing.
So over the years
Uh original route.
In
discretionary fundamental investing is being combined with systematic.
And they are actually turn out to be highly synergistic. So uh our discretionary side has benefited hugely from
The systematic side.
And the systematic side has benefited it hugely from sitting
in an in an environment where people basically are very focused on fundamental and
And the on the market. So it's it's never ever been
remotely detached from market. If it's a very market orientated way of doing
systematic. And we'll come back to that. But why why have you been successful now uh roughly thirty years when so many other
Funds have kinda fallen by the way side.
What do you think is the key to I think the single most important thing is continuous innovation.
Uh so a l a lot of people in our industry
Perfectly legitimately.
Okay.
started as a very smart guy
Looking at balance sheets with a s with a Bloomberg terminal.
And that's all you needed and very and some very smart not not very many, but some but you maybe
I've heard some very smart guy guys who've
Continue to flourish primarily
Uh relying
Just on being very smart.
Um but we um have gone
Well beyond that and and if effectively embraced
Every type of innovation
To the point where we're almost now a tech firm rather than an investment management firm. So it's changed out of all
recognition because
We innovate.
Every day, basically.
Most fund management careers end in failure.
Yes.
Well that was a different point really. Uh and that was kind of reflected my
The observed
pattern of my previous firm, but also a lot of uh lot of management firms I think get into
Problem of hubris.
uh where they grow and grow. They they they don't have discipline around capital.
Uh and and they don't have discipline around
Or a sense of their own mortality.
Yeah. And so a lot of ums
Get too uh uh uh hubristic, uh too big.
And size matters, which is another thing in the book. Uh so they get too big in the market.
positions own them rather than them them owning the positions, and when they're wrong.
uh that can drag their business down and destroy their return patterns.
How are you how are you reminded uh daily about your mentality? Do you have somebody
Telling him.
I don't have anybody at my shoulder, but it y you basically, as you know, Nikli
The s if you look at the success ratios of managers, a really good manager
might have a fifty three, fifty four percent success ratio. So forty six percent of the time they're wrong.
So every day one day in two you go home feeling you're a schmuck.
And my wife can testify to that. I can come at my I feel I'm a schmuck.
I got something wrong.
So
you've got to be pretty head in the clouds not to understand that actually it's a very
fragile path and uh
And it's very difficult.
Hm. Well it's a humiliating uh job, but uh yet there are a lot of hedgehog managers who are not so humble, but that's another discussion.
Um but let's go back a bit. Uh
nineteen ninety seven you are head of European equities at Mercury, which was
you know, a a tremendously successful company, and then you suddenly decide to
Walk away. Start the phone.
with Ian Ways.

Why?
I I'd always wanted to have my own business.
Why uh um I don't know, that's something in me. It's just uh
I even
made the mistake of announcing it within six months of being at Mercury that my long term goal was to have my own
Business.
Um but Ian it was Ian who approached me.
Um and he was the head of sales, so he was doing sales. No, he was originally head of sales at Wahlbergs. He was the first person I ever spoke to.
in the market, we called me my first day at Mercury.
And they would be part of the same company.
Then he became head of propriety trading at Wahbergs and then he became head of uh propriety trading at Deutsche Bank.
So he moved away.
From sales.
Um, and so he wanted to hedge he he was ahead of the game really, he wanted to set up a hedge fund in Europe at the time when there were only
arguably two other uh equity long short hedge funds in Europe.
And he approached me and it was the timing was perfect from my point of view, so
You see, are you like the analytical kind of the deep thinking analytical machine and he's kind of the fast
Fast moving.
kind of thing, or how did it work?
Ian is also very
strong uh on technology, he's a great believer in the power of technology so and he created it uh Wahlberg's uh
trade training system which still exist within
I think it's UBS now that u ultimately owns it called Oasis. So he he he
He w he brought uh an interest in tech which to be honest I was less
I was not very focused on. And um so we were we are extreme as y I think you know in a little bit.
We're extremely complimentary.
Uh and uh understand each other's strengths and weaknesses.
And you said that you were fund number three in Europe, so there you had already two other firms. They were
Od and Edgeton, I think, were the two that uh
Edison uh
FYI. FYI is where I learnt my
My things. Uh
And uh by the way, John Armitage is coming up in a future episode, uh, so stay tuned. Cool um
Now how um

How much more difficult is it to start a hedge fund today than what was the case back in ninety seven? What does it take? I think the
The AUM you needed in nineteen ninety seven was fifty million. A U M as as a dummy management, right?
Uh now because of the regulations and the uh
My because of the regulations, basically.
It most people estimate it's three hundred to five hundred to to get started and cover your costs.
Mm-hmm.
Um and I think also
In those days
My uh my expectation of our business and of the industry was it would remain a cottage industry, highly fragmented, lots of
Small operations, as I said at the beginning, people with a
Looking at annual reports and
counting the numbers and making calls.
Um, and that's how I thought it would stay. And now, of course, it's become
highly concentrated, just like almost every industry, become concentrated.
it's become very the entry barriers have risen and risen and risen, much more dependent on technology.
Uh and um
uh operational capability, financial capability.
All of these things matter much more than they did originally. You got half your start capital from Soros. How did that come about?
Uh
Well is uh um
We basically just went to the knocked on the door with the in ne in New York and the meeting was actually with Stanley Druckermiller.
And there's a very funny story which is too long to tell on this podcast. Um but uh
Um
Somebody said uh
Be careful with Stanley. He's like a uh
uh a lizard he'll sit in the corner of the room won't say anything and then he'll pounce.
And um we we basically he didn't that's exactly what happened, didn't say a word.
In uh then at a certain point he said, Tell me, do you ever use any charts?
Technicals when you when you invest.
And Ian said
Quite frankly, I've never read a m met a rich chartist.
And Stanley said thanks very much.
Uh, and that was pretty much the end of the meeting. We went outside the room and the people who brought us there, which was Morgan Stanley, said By the way
You just met met the world's richest chartist.
Absolutely. Well we've we've had him on the podcast. He is very very successful and very good. Yeah. And did a good choice. And uh you know, evidenced as his investment in uh in you guys.
Yeah.
Um
Now um
You just after you started you had the Asian crisis, you just went straight into
These big things. So
I think Asian crisis was actually when we were marketing.
Uh, I can remember in New York being it might have been the day of the Saras meeting, the market was down seven percent on one day, but
No we
First after launch we had the nineteen ninety eight the LTCM crisis.
Which we were fine with. We didn't have
We want to
And the Russian crisis, but we didn't have much exposure in either way, so we weren't affected very much by that.
Have you ever been close to failing?
As a firm.
Uh yes. Um
uh well not maybe I mean to some degree in so in in two thousand and eight
We went from fourteen billion dollars
A UM
Before
Oh eight.
to three and a half billion. And the reason primarily we our my our performance wasn't
Any
Definitely wasn't worse than other people.
But our client base was weak in the sense that it was largely fund of funds because we'd never actually marketed. We never went out like some competitors.
to institutions and uh try to build
a s a firm client base, we relied on people knocking on our door. So it was only in
Two thousand and four five.
Which seven years in that we had any marketing people.
Mm-hmm. And fund of fund is a fund which takes money from retail investors.
And invest in in funds like yourself.
Yeah, and what happened was that they they lot of them got into difficulty.
And had liquidity problems.
A lot of our um
Competitors gated.
investments.
uh even though there was no real basis for gating because there was no liquidity issue, we did not have a liquidity issue, so we did not gate.
So he became the cash point.
Uh and assets under management went down from fourteen to three and a half.
What do you feel like?
Uh
To be honest, it never we we were
Angry with our competitors.
Um but I but I I never felt much angst for some reason. I actually enjoy crises.
So uh it was a moment of uh
It was I was actually more excited by what was happening and the and the b what was going on in the market than I was
stressed by the rest of the business.
How do you cope with stress? Do you have
feelings.
Do you get angst?
Um
Less and less.
I think uh um
One of the criteria we
We we now do uh personality tests uh for for all of our hires. And one of the things we
We use the five core personality trait tests.
Um and um
One of the f five traits is stress tolerance.
And um I have a extremely low extremely height.
Uh
Stress tolerance.
uh uh and uh kind of first or second percentile.
So I don't get
uh overly stressed. I actually enjoy crises. They're the best they're the best.
Yes.
Well she would do that.
But I don't I think she would, yeah.
When did you um
first understand that wow, we want to something big here. We're going to be really successful in kind of a high five in ways and you know, really happy about life.
Well it was um
There was obviously a successful period after after Alpha Cat we we created Alpha Capture in kind of in
kind of the two thousand and four to
Seven eight period.
But then the real and then obviously two thousand and nine, ten, we were building out of
uh the crisis, learning our lessons, doing things a bit differently, more strategically.
And I think it was probably
thirteen, fourteen, when we were starting to see really see the fruits of that.
uh in in terms of the growth of the business and the s solidity of the returns. You sold um a stake in your business to KKR. Well I think you've done it in in two stages, but
Why did you want to have uh a private equity firm as a part owner of your business?
They approached us and they actually approached us
uh twice before we were interested to have a conversation and
I would say that
A key element of the
whole discussion was that they they they w only wanted to be a minority investor, not
Majority investor.
That was critical to me and um
But the the the key at the time, two thousand fifteen, uh sixteen, was that we wanted
We were a partnership, we wanted to create some kind of way of m val putting a value on the shares in in in a in a real market.
related sense.
Uh and so and there was a
A secondary benefit obviously that
being endorsed by a firm like KKR was was a pretty good endorsement and uh
No doubt helps us uh with with institutional
Fundraising.
Would you have done it again?

Um
That's a very good question. Uh with hindsight we we feel that we would have succeeded
in it's pretty much the same way anyway, but uh they've been a fantastic
partner to us. They're they're a great firm, uh
They have a highly entrepreneurial culture at the top of the firm.
Yeah.
Uh and so there's never been a moment when we've not
Um
Yeah.
Thought that uh
then then we've really regretted it. I mean it's I think it's a it's v very unusual in the sense it's an investment that's work for both sides.
Let's move on to
to TOPS, which is your alpha capture system, and which is in a way what you're what you're famous for, right? As a firm.
Tell tell me about the start of it.
Yeah, so the Genesis story
is that in uh this was two thousand and two
Five years in.
In um
said, you know, there's got to be a better way
of measuring the street, the cell side.
Um because we
we were giving out commissions like some people still do today, I think, by a voting system or
Some kind of qualitative assessment of uh
Their research.
Uh it was a big budget and um
So he said, Well, you know, how can we
measure this more scientifically. And so we gave to a young intern called Antony Click
The job is saying how can you measure
uh the cell side and what he did it was the age of the internet.
uh and he said well let's let's create an intranet
Uh get all of the salespeople.
Uh on the
On the cell side, it was initially just Europe.
to contribute their ideas via a portfolio system. So we created a virtual each of them
Had to run a virtual portfolio.
Uh for us.
um in a transparent intraday
Basis.
And this was at the time was completely uh
r a radical change. It was almost like a reverse engineering of the relationship between the s the sell side and the buy side.
And um
uh but very quickly caught on. I was uh the big sceptic because I had the arrogance of the buy side. I said well surely the
Cells that doesn't generate very much value. And I was completely wrong.
And within a few months it was clear that
Sale side we're actually creating
a lot of value for us, which we could
We originally we weren't even turning to monetize it, which we could
We could monetize and turn that into real portfolios in
Uh
that we would manage. About two years after about two years we launched
Uh a real
uh monetised portfolio under the Marshall waste banner.
And you put what, ten percent of the capital or something into it?
Correct, yeah.
How does it work now then? How many
External contributors do you have to this platform?
Um
Well it's it's uh
hundreds. I I w we don't give the exact number, but it's all over it's obviously all over the world. And the first f f phase of the
Evolution was the
Take it from Europe.
To the US, which is in oh five, and then to Asia.
You know, six.
Um that was if you like the
Global roll out.
Then the next thing is that obviously this is how it's we got into the the subject of continuous inven innovation.
uh we started we had we knew we knew we had to develop optimization.
uh to extract the best data to identify how to combine
signals, uh, combine contributors, combine signals about contributors, look at patterns, so on and so forth.
Uh then the next thing was
To look at our trading.
Because essentially
Top straight.
traded and trades around twice a m turns over twice a month, so much more than our fundamental
uh the side of our business.
Um so that led us to going to algorithmic trading.
uh very early for a fundamental firm, obviously not so early for a systematic firm.
Um and then
It's
Post
Two thousand and ten we we dw we developed very active machine learning.
uh to to mine the signals properly and to to branch out into all other types of
Uh
Data
to bring into create signals. So Tops became much, much more than an alpha capture system. It's it's a
proper, very market orientated, systematic.
uh strategy.
So what are so so with A so with AI, what what are what's some of the mining you can do? What are the type of things you can look at now? Well AI uh we see
Um of the things that
People associate with AI.
Actually already happening with machine learning. Uh
Like
Uh.
senti scraping for sentiment.
Uh looking at broke scraping every broker's note for sentiment, scraping social media for sentiment.
uh looking at balance sheet data.
All kinds of fairly obvious things you could already do. What AI does is take it
to a whole new level, a whole new depth.
Uh and so
Whereas looking at sentiment data might be
looking at kind of fairly basic
uh signals and and word patterns.
AI allows you to do look at the whole context of a every single piece.
But what I would say, Nicola, is that
Today, although AI it we think is gonna be totally transformational of our
uh of our top top system.
Uh the biggest change to date is on being on our fundamental side, where it's been completely revolutionary.
Uh and this is again where the synergy comes in because of the infrastructure we have, we've been able to apply it immediately
to the way we do fundamental investing and everything to do with
distillation of information to start with and so
multiple way varied ways of and tools f to distill information for our managers so that we absorb
All information.
very rapidly overnight and they have it at their fingertips.
But then also we've we've moved
to the point where we already have a gentic
Portfolio managers.
developed for our by our fundamental teams by transforming their skills into
uh into
Uh
A portfolio system.
Um, and all of that is before we go to r recursive self improvement. So our head of tech thinks that we're gonna go from
Two hundred quants.
quant researchers to ten thousand quant researchers, by which he means we'll have ten thousand agents.
Uh and there'll be uh
recursively
analyzing all of the data, improving and developing new ways of
Uh


Implementing the signals.
into life or failures.
How many people are you how Paul, how many how many people are you in the firm now?
We're around seven fifty.
And how many people are in tech?
Two hundred, over two hundred.
It's interesting because in the
In the Norwegian Summon Wealth Fund we are seven hundred and we have roughly two hundred in tech.
Oh yeah.
So we're we're moving on a parallel path. Except you've got rather more assets than us.
Well um but hey, what what have you increased have you increased the numbers in tech since you came since you arrived.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Meaningfully. Yeah.
Yeah.
Um
And I and and uh on the AI side of course. But hey, th this is really interesting because it it it kind of leads it in into your book.
Ten and a half lessons from experience.
Yeah. And there you talk about
Uh you know, the fact that actually uh
People can
You say markets are inefficient, humans are irrational.
Investment skills is measurable and persistent. The thing is that
With people like you
Um

Markets just becoming more and more efficient. How can a human being beat these markets?
I think I think
It's
Although efficiency itself is a kind of convenient myth.
Uh it is also the case that markets are getting more efficient. I I would agree with that. That's and that's because information which
You we when you and I started we used to talk about information edge. It's very difficult now to have an information edge because the
the good firms that are receiving and processing
the data all the time.
In real time.
Um
But
uh analytical edge still remains and
What you've always got to look at is the ecology of a market.
So I think actually what's gonna happen with
AI
is that more retail investors will feel more and more empowered they'll think that they have just as much information as Nikolai Tang and or Paul Marshall.
And therefore and they w and they probably are g arguably do if they're well organised, therefore they're empowered to make investment decisions. So the share
of trading done by retail.
will go up and up. And and I would say that you can't necessarily rely on it retail to be
as skilled as
the best hedge funds. So I think it it is getting more competitive, but I'm
Not at all.
Clear.
uh whether it's gonna get more more efficient over the next uh
Yes.
It's the retail part of the market kind of the market uh
Where US professionals can make more money. I mean
Are retail investors there to be fleeced?
I think that's always been the theory, right? So so you look at the markets
With the highest retail share like China.
Uh Taiwan
Korea.
US is now growing
And they're likely to be more inefficient.
Um
because of the the the way the decisions are made.
Um, and that's that's definitely been the case in terms of way where where a lot of the alpha has been able you can get extract.
Uh so I I'm I'm saying that's likely to continue. Clearly the retail investor is gonna be more empower now than
He or she was in the past.
uh, but I still think they won't take decision they won't have the same risk management culture, they won't have the same
set of criteria is institutional.
It was hedge funds.
Specialists.
So seven hundred people, two hundred in tech, that's that's
That leaves five hundred.
People.
How in ten years' time, how many people do you need, do you think?
With all these machines.
Um
We at the moment think that
The head count. There's no reason why it's gonna move very much. We weren't from here.
It went up.
A lot in the last three years towards seven.
Seven fifty.
It's been stable for two years.
We think that AI um
is leading to huge boosts.
In
Uh
Productivity.
And um
The quality of decision making.
Uh but it's not leading
anybody to say at the moment, but there's one team where they cut back.
One fundamental team where they cut back the headcount.
That's one out of
Fifteen.
Um
not leading anybody to think that we'll need less people. We're just gonna we just we may be needing needing a different type of person.
That's a different question.
But we don't think we need less people. We think we're gonna get more out of the existing people.
Very interesting. It's exactly our philosophy here as well.
Yeah.
Uh
Trade more cheaply. Just what does it do?
On that side.
Um
I wouldn't say that yes, but that is not the primary focus. We're not we're not in the H
We're not directly competing with high frequency
traders we haven't made the decision yet to go
in that direction.
Uh, it just helps us to trade. I mean, o we've obviously been trading more cheaply for
Ever.
I mean we are our our our our trading
Cost numbers are
very low, I would suspect, compared to any
any other traditional hedge fund.
Other than uh systematic hedge funds.
But we're not.
not going down the route of uh HFT and uh
uh giant data centers just focused on that yet.
Why does man plus machine
beats a machine.
So that um

originally came from s allegedly from Gary Kasparov after he was defeated by Deep Blue.
And nineteen ninety seven. So when we just when we started martial ways.
Um
And the original part the first part of it was a machine beats a man.
Uh, but a man plus a machine beats a machine and
I guess
The reason
Uh
I'm confident of that is it it presupposes that there are skills that the AI can't do.
And all that will be less good at than a than a
The human.
Um and clearly the AI there will be some things that the AI can do better.
So we now have a term
uh now casting which we the whole business of
Assembling data.
Um
uh and getting every single possible input together in order to anticipate quarterly earnings.
And positioning and so on and house stock. That is
we think getting commoditized.
So it'll get that is getting a harder space.
Which never was never was the main space we operated in as a kind of podcast. Uh
Pod shop.
A podcast, but shop space.
Um
But
What
will remain, in my opinion, is the skill of judging the market.
Judging how
uh the market.
behaves in um in particular
circumstances. So if you ch if you just take the recent
The the recent uh sh uh fun and games in Korea and in and the kind of this momentum crash we've seen in
Um in the last
Four to six weeks.
Um
A

We see the particular example of Ken Griffin but taking out situational awareness. That's a man is a thing a machine wouldn't have done. But
Every
good hedge fund in that environment.
Would have looked at the at this
set of circumstances and look and and they're looking not just at the fundamentals, which is
of the stocks but also of the ecosystem of the market. What's going on here? What
What is happening in Korea?
What is happening to the uh who who are the buyers and sellers of the Korean market which has set this all off, supposedly?
uh what's happened to the leverage AT ETF market.
Oh
What's happened to
hedge fund.
holdings and foreign holdings of Korea, what's happened to the hedge fund behavior in the United States.
Then you get into understanding how
Looking at how
risk managers in traditional hedge funds would have been basically de risking
The funds.
because their vol was too high, so they're autumn they're systematically de risking it.
possibly at the r arguably, in our opinion, at the wrong time.
because of high vote rather than because of anything wrong with the fundamentals.
So what I'm saying is there's a whole there's a whole balance of things.
which include both the fundamentals and the technical situation and the eco.
The ecology of the market.
Which a very I don't think a t machine yet will be very good at. It's the it's the the human
Who brings it all together and sees the opportunity.
uh and and sends his blood in the
uh in the distress.
So you mentioned a lot of the factors which are impacting the market just now.
And you have the machines, and here we have the human uh Paul Marshall. How do you
Interpret
Today's market.
Where are we?
Today I think unlike the F T who said we were in a bubble two years ago, I think that we're not in a bubble yet, but that we will go into a bubble.
At some point in AI, but at the moment
The fundamentals for me for
Uh I wait is it's stepping back.
The A artificial intelligence is the most important thing that's happened in your and my lifetime, arguably
in in the history of capitalism I think it's it's uh
I try very hard to find um
uh superlatives to try and communicate internally and externally what's going on. The best one is the
kind of the idea of a Cambrian moment when there's a huge
Explosion in biological evolution.
uh five hundred million years ago.
It's that type of thing, or it's like the steam engine. It's it's the it's an intelligence explosion.
And it's huge, and um
We look
You've got the external data and you've also got our ex internal data and our own use of tokens ex is exploding.
At the same
Uh
rate as you see on open router or or as we see in anthropics data.
And so all through the year I've looked at the what's going on in the token in terms of the token explosion, and I think we're early days.
Particularly because in six to twelve months
We're probably gonna go into s recursive self improvement.
When this is gonna be happening twenty four seven overnight, we're gonna set our computers
to work overnight. Well they already do, but we're gonna they're gonna be self improving overnight.
What is the recursive self improvement going to do, you think? Well I think it's it's going it's going to
Be coming up with
Whereas at the moment the humans are coming up with the skills.
Which all the prompts and then the skills which we put in.
A test overnight.
Th the system is itself gonna be self correcting, of evaluating
Changing the skills, et cetera, and modifying the skills. So
It's going to
We're only at the the very, very beginning. And w
I think
Hedge for management's uh somewhat at the tip of the spear in terms of AI, so we actually have an early glimpse of the scale of the change.
Corporates are much slower to adopt it.
For all kinds of
historic and bureaucratic reasons that big companies find it difficult to approve things quickly.
So the the adoption numbers are gonna carry on exploding.
And uh so I think we're in a early days. So that coming back to the market, then you look at the
The market and as you know
you look at the valuations of z of the stocks m in the in the center of the
Story.
They're cheaper. The the the semi index in
in the US is uh
At a five or ten year low, depending on how you
The Korean market is uh
All time though.
evaluation. No.
You can there are arguments about the cyclicality of some of the
Some of the stocks, but essentially
The stocks have only moved up now in line with earnings.
If that.
And so that part of the market is going to carry on.
Powering ahead, in my opinion.
And it and we haven't really seen the the big effects yet in terms of the
Productivity benefits from adoption.
So the rest of the market will also benefit from that. So I I think we're
Going to go into a very

uh bubble components, uh and and it'll get overheated.
We already had one o bit overheating moment.
But I think that's what we've got to navigate is is a
market where there'll be a lot of excitement and and periodic overheating, but the underlying fundamentals are very strong.
When do you think we'll go into a bubble?
Um
I don't know, I can't predict when we'll go into a bubble, but it'll it it it
For the bubble to really
happen. It needs
One
I think rates to stay low and therefore to encourage speculation.
Two
uh valuations to get very extended.
Definitely hasn't happened.
Three.
Uh
increasing leverage, uh un un unsustainable leverage, which you
You I you had in the Korean ETF

Okay.
That was a uh that was a bubble.
But it's correct it's now corrected. So the numbers have basically gone from sixty billion dollars of
leverage ETF down to twenty in the last uh
uh five weeks.
Um
So
You'll get and you'll get those types of leverage.
Conditions.
And if i I guess the the NVIDIA did this the the NVIDIA five hundred million deal if they then
c try and turn those into CDOs of GPUs.
sell dubbed two times levered versions of those instruments. That could be you know, you th those are the types of phenomenon we got.
Two thousand and seven, eight. Um
But we're not there yet. I think I the the m my part my path would be absolutely we're gonna have a big bull market with a bubble top and you
You're gonna have to navigate all of that.
But I don't think we're there yet.
How much higher is
The end of the bull market from where we are now.
I wouldn't want to predict that.
Nikolai. It depends where the earnings.
Is uh is AI deflationary or inflationary?
Well I think what the the market wisdom when which I uh consensus which I share is that in the very sh in the short term it's
Slightly somewhat inflationary because of the
Uh
demands for chips and and and going through the supply chain for energy.
Um
That is inflationary.
And the inflation happens before you we're seeing the real disinflationary effects in terms of uh
Productivity growth.
But I I personally fully expect to see
Very big productivity growth.
And um
Yeah.
some weakness in the labour market, certainly for the new ent ne entry level labour market.
At some point, uh probably quite soon actually. Um you're seeing it UK university.
Yes, you you university data is not good.
So
That's gonna come and probably within
six to six to twenty four months. Uh uh that's in my person it's not there yet in the data, but I think it's gonna happen.
And that will be
I think.
Bullish for markets because it would take the pressure off interest rates. In the first instance that'll be bullish for markets.
What about the the wave of humanoids and robotics?
Uh
Well, that that that is almost like another wave, right? Uh I'm I I'm fully
Yeah.
I sign up pretty much to anything that Elon
says or does and uh
even you know if if he
If you haven't studied later then he says um
Uh I think there's every reason why physical AI w
Will be
A major factor.
Uh to you.
in terms of it's already we're seeing it in China, but it as a deployment and implementation roll out.
Two years, three years.
So that's that's gonna be another wave of the story, also will feed massive token.
Nobody quite knows how how big the token draw
Will be from physical AI, but it will be big.
I kinda think you'll reduce the number of divorces when you get these humanoids because they're going to
Take care of the stuff that people that make people divorce, i.e., who is going to take out the rubbish
Who's going to empty the dishwasher?
It may be, but my wife wouldn't agree. She would probably say that
The the healthy sharing of tasks is a good thing.
Uh and uh if you
If you uh
Subcontract it all to a machine. Th there wouldn't be any sense that you're comp
You're c in combination looking after the home.
It's uh becomes a vacated space.
So
Is the time you
sell the market when the token use
Deacelerates.
At Marshall Waze? Possibly, yes.
Go down or just decelerate?
I think that would
Depend yeah, that's a very good question. It depends on why it's decelerating and what the blend of uh between the different
uh tokens is and so on and so forth.
Yeah.
I I haven't thought enough enough about that question. It's a good question.
But a generally deceleration
I would say probably deceleration.
In fact, yeah, now that I think about it.
it will be this it doesn't need to go down. That that that would be far too late. It's deceleration.
Moving back to your original uh kind of job, the fundamental analysis
Uh what makes a g what makes a good investment? What do you look for?
Um
What makes a good investment is not quite the same as what makes a good company. So what makes in in the book
I talked about
The Ben Graham phrase, in the short term the market's a wearing machine, in the long term it's
Sorry, long way around a voting machine, a long way long term it's a weighing machine.
And I do believe in both of those things, right? So I I think that a good investment has to respect both ends of that spectrum.
And the wearing machine is obviously about wearing wearing cash flow and free cash flow and voting is about what is the market
What does the market think? How's the market position?
And so
You've got to be get both ends of the spectrum right, and that's why my
I was thinking about this, but my ti my personal time frame is probably three to twelve months.
So uh
I need to look at the long term
value of a business and and why it could be worth a lot more.
Or lot less if it's show.
But I also need to be very assured that there are enough catalysts in the next three to twelve months which are going to confirm
My hypothesis
Vis the market.
Mm.
Now uh nobody really knows that uh
You were one of the people I interviewed in connection with Master's uh thesis uh on asset management, which I did in social psychology.
some seven, eight years ago. And uh
The topic of that one was uh
The top
portfolio managers in Europe's use of analysis versus gut feel.
Where uh
Could you remind us where you are on that scale?
I
Are you analytical or are you a gut feel kind of guy?
Uh I well
I think anybody's gotta be both these days, right? So I I I spent the first
My apprenticeship.
being doing analysis, right? Like my time at Mercury.
was all about learning all the analytical tools.
And um
That is that is a necessary but not sufficient.
Condition
for doing for doing his job.
Um but what I believe I've come to believe more and more in the importance of heuristics.
Which is what your I think your thesis was about.
And and and got and gut feel.
And
Interestingly
Uh
I've come to the view more recently that that
By far the best
assurance of people doing well is is is their own
track record and their level of experience. So I I actually think the level of experience in market
in markets is getting more rather than less important.
Mm.
Because
'Cause of the need to be able to deal with volatility.
uh and and and an understanding of
patterns and how they've worked in the past. So I I
I I would say everybody needs to be both, but it but I think that the one
in less short supply is that
I I think gut feeling is not the right it's it's not gut feel in the sense of No it's pad pattern recognition.
Yeah, exactly. It's pattern recognition and it comes from a long long amount of experience. So I think experience is
heavily undervalued in the market.
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Although the problem with experienced people is that they become too stuck in their ways.
So you gotta be
What you've got to look for is ex the experience, but also the flexibility and the ability to evolve and change.
uh yourself.
uh as well as to innovate.
Yeah, which is a tough combination.
Why is shorting so difficult?
Um
Yeah.
So shorting is uh
This is you know, it was a is another chapter in the book, uh and some of these
Points of obvious to people in the business, but
Uh first of all the the shorting
Ecosystem of the market is set up for long for long investing.
Basically the the brokers the
The all the press, everybody is essentially interested in
success stories and they actually conflicted because they want to boost
They want to have business of the company, so they can't be seen to be negative. That's the first thing.
Uh the second thing is a risk management problem, which is that
When the stock goes up, you are short more of it.
If you're long a stock and it goes down
it it it you have less of it and you can add to it, and you average down.
It's a very good and healthy discipline and it and it and it actually
helps you to it to end exit with a with a good overall outcome.
If it goes up against you
It's very hard to add to the position.
And then the third thing is that uh shorts can be very expensive.
And essentially when you're borrowing the stock, you're competing against the smartest people in the market, because you're essentially only competing against hedge funds.
uh and they're s typically smart people.
And that being there for
The view of the stock is re reflected in the borrow rate.
So it becomes a very expensive
Um
Exercise.
So all of those reasons make it different from longs and um Do you find that people can be good at both?
Yes.
Are you good at it?
Hopefully, uh I think that my actually my
Certainly when we started Marshall Ways, I dis I absolutely loved shorting.
So I discovered that I enjoyed shorting more than longs, probably because it's
You're fighting more against the tape and more against consensus.
But are they just kinda pretty depressing people who you don't want to have a beer with?
Oh
But
Yeah, but it because it's a very, very diff I would never choose to be a short seller as a profession. It's a nightmare.
But for the reasons I gave.
And they are no they've got a lot to be depressed about because they can't re make the same kind of returns. If you have sure if you have a
small directional bias and you have shorting as part of the way you generate alpha and it's shorting is the way you fund
your longs as well to have you to have more long
gross in the market. Shorting is a
Is a great thing.
Let's move on to debrief and training and you you
write a lot about it. I know you spend a lot of time and are very, very thoughtful about how to learn from mistakes.
What is your uh what's your worst investment ever?
Um, my worst investment ever was probably the first
I wreck.
War.
So it's a long goes back a long time.
But it wasn't in a a stock level, this was a portfolio level.
And um I remember because it was August
The date of the invasion was August the second, nineteen ninety. It was my birthday.
And then uh seven months later.
The Americans finally
Struck.
On Iraq.
And um
in J in January. By that time I built a very significant long position in
oil services, oil stocks, and so on. And I had an absolute nightmare.
This is a long only.
Full sale.
Absolute nightmare performance by by
My worst performance. Yeah.
Ever by a long way.
Could have could have lost my job, really.
And it was just a major, major failure of uh risk management.
What kind of system do you have to learn from mistakes?
At Marshall Ways.
I know what we one of the things we we talked about before was uh
debriefing of trades. We don't debrief individual stock trades.
Because going back to what I said earlier about success rates,
Individual we don't have drawdown limits on individual stocks.
Because individual stocks are not the essence of producing great outcome for your clients.
Unless you're a highly there's a s small number of ver highly concentrated
Hedge funds.
uh where i the individual each individual stock does matter, but for for us it matters
Yes, what matters is the overall portfolio construction. So we debrief
very heavily and risk managed very heavily at the portfolio level.
We have draw down limits for portfolios.
We don't have drawdown limits for individual stocks.
Clearly.
But somebody's losing a lot of money in a stock.
uh we want to look at it, but we don't have any formal debrief process.
How do people learn them?
From the mistakes. If I'm a portfolio manager and I have a bad year.
What kind of information do you give me?
Just immense amount of information. So you so you you uh
Um
You you will have
your success ratio, uh, your win loss ratio, so understanding your slugging ratio, which I think is incredibly important for a fundamental manager.
For systematic trading the slugging ratio doesn't really come into it because there are highly diversified portfolios.
And in the world of the future.
for fundamental managers to do well, they have to have a high a very high slugging ratio. Explain slugging slugging ratio. Slugging is the proportion of your gains that are in a small number of stocks where you've chosen basically to
really level your
Conviction. Show your conviction.
Mm. So we look at the
Uh
Slugging ratio, alpha by sector.
By country, by longs, by shorts.
Th these are all the kind of top down metrics you'd look at to try and understand what a manager's doing well or badly.
Um and
Yes, clearly if there's one individual stock which is
hit f you for three percent of N A V or something, you d you would want to look very deeply
into why that happened. But people hate looking at their own mistakes. Do you actually get them to learn from them?
Absolutely, yeah.
Uh absolutely. I mean that's the cul the culture
The culture of the firm is
Who shot.
actually within try to instill is
one of one of of humility in front of the market. So we all fail every the whole point we made earlier. We all fail every day.
Um, and so it's quite natural to look at your mistakes and that's how you grow and and you learn.
Um and
I think one of the tenant the traits of people in martial waste is humility.
Uh we don't like people who are arrogant.
Uh we don't so we don't
We always like people, but we don't like people who we don't like arrogance.
And it typically w mean you don't get hard if you're arrogant.
So when do you when do you kiss people goodbye? I mean
Clearly there must be limits to how many mistakes you can make.
Yeah.
Um
But the the reality is
Um
We have a much higher
Right. Uh
level of stability than then
Tipical
Firms which have a lot of managers.
And that's I think because it's very difficult to get into martial waste.
uh to to get in as a portfolio manager.
You have to
already have d demon demonstratably strong track record.
Which goes back over
Quite a few years.
From another firm.
From another place, yeah. Do you train anybody from scratch?
Yeah, we have so we have a hundred and twenty people still on the fundamental side and and most of the analysts want to become fund managers.
And there's a process through which they go
where they gradually get more access to capital.
over time and with the ultimate goal and quite a lot of our managers are people who've grown up in martial ways.
But it's a long process where we
Where we we can we can plot
Monitor everything about everything they do.
Um, and uh just like we do with our tops contributors.
Um and
And they gradually we find out what they're good at, what they're not good at, and and they
And they have to prove
each step of the way. So it it takes
As it should do for their own actually for their for anybody's own protection, it should take time to be proven.
How long time. How long time?
Um
I wouldn't want to put a number on it because you obviously get occasional
Exceptions but uh
Typically I would say ten year if you're starting
out of college or out of business school.
ten years to be to be really provable is a
proven as a great fund manager and be given
The kind of money we give to our big managers.
And how do you train them? Is it only is it like apprenticeship, they work with a experienced person or or do they go through a now we now have an elevate program, uh which is a training program for
Star potential stars coming straight out of
uh business school or college.
Uh and that's kind of uh a whole bunch of different types of training and access to people across the firm and access to external
Training.
Um
We uh
And then there's um
Uh
From then on, they largely learn under their managers.
They they uh they can operate within uh an alpha and we have an internal TOPS program, if you like.
Which allows them to
Two
Just that stop picking.
Uh and before they run any money at all.
Uh and then when they would run money they would start initially just
advising on a sub book, then they would go to
Running a sub book?
uh a small size, then they would
ultimately go to running a full fully fledged portfolio. We also have an emerging managers programme.
Um
uh run by one of our senior managers. Um
Which is designed to
Take take people in who are
Go.
very special claims to run money, but haven't got necessarily got as much experience as we'd like to see.
So there's multiple routes in, if you like. Uh and uh but the great thing as you know, Nikolai, in this business is that
There is immense data.
uh to assess everybody and everything.
And so with that data you can make uh you can form judgments. Uh
If it's now you're uh I'm straight from uh
Some kind of uh fancy fancy university and uh you're interviewing me because I would love to become a portfolio manager.
at the great Marshall Ways Firm. Just what are you what kind of questions do you ask me?
Well can I put to back to back w a wave slide? Give a background to that question.
We've come to the view
uh we in the age of AI that that
What matters more than
uh skills today is traits. So
It is not sufficient anymore that people come from a great university and got first class degrees. I don't completely trust the university system anymore.
Uh in terms of
uh what it produces because the traits the traits you need to do well in university include
Memory.
Uh and memorializing
And copying and pasting
And
to disserving up what you know the examiner wants, uh rather than creativity.
And what the what the traits you need in the age of AI include
Agency. Well primarily it's agency.
So the ability to be self driven, self motivating to learn for yourself, curiosity.
Which don't necess is not necessarily proven by university.
Um and then um disagreeableness.
So we in the amongst the personality traits that we
Test four are
Openness, yes.
Stress tolerance, yes, but also disagreeableness, which doesn't mean what
traditionally people think it means it doesn't mean that you're not a nice person. It means that you
are willing to take on and challenge the consensus on any subject.
Like like like being like being an ass?
Being an ass.
Yeah.
No, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't mean being an S.
It means that you disagree.
You're will able to disagree.
It actually means you've got to ail to ail to
able to disagree in a civilized way.
And um so the ideal
traits of a hedge fund manager, which is a very unusual combination. They've got to be very open.
And very disagreeable.
Do you think society creates less disagreeable people?
These days.
I think society, unfortunately, we're in an age of of the clone.
uh and bureaucracy and expert class.
Uh and uh
And the traits you needed to succeed in that era.
I think is a ending.
Were um
is essentially um the the the age of the exam passing classes.
Uh so a a and they that the year is ending, hopefully.
And the will give the new era will give more
uh value to um
Agency
Entrepreneurialism.
Openness, curiosity.
I uh
Love your concept of uh high agency people'cause it's what we what we are looking for too. But how do you
What do you how do you find high agency people?
Uh it's difficult, right? So you've got to uh because the
The normal
system is producing
Well some of them are high agency, but it it it doesn't necessarily mean
University system doesn't necessarily
Reward high agency.
So you need to see evidence of
Uh created creativity.
uh outside what uh what's normally expected, you need to see
I
Entrepreneurialism is a sign of
high agency.
uh hobbies that are taken to
significant lengths of achievement, uh uh signs of our agency. And then the way you
The way you test people, uh and uh
both in the tech side and the fundamental side and
quant research we now have tried to adopt adapt the way we test to try and
Uh test for originality in thinking.
Paul, let's move on to uh philanthropy and here we should uh in a way start to call you Sir Paul because uh you've been liked for your
tremendous effort in the philanthropic space in the UK.
Uh what what um
What are your priorities?
within philanthropy.
Um
Well
For right from the start, education has been the big passion and um
with with we set up a a charity
called R A K with a
But
Twenty sixty years ago now.
Um
with other hedge fund managers in uh mainly in the UK.
And uh
Although he did stuff outside education, including a lot of work on HIV in Africa.
Um but you just a few more words on ARC. I mean you transform part of the UK education sector.
Yeah, we were very fortunate that there was a moment in British education when there was a really reforming reforming moment.
Starting with Tony Blair and then Michael Gove.
And um
there was an opportunity to to go into a s the sector and uh help turn around
Failing schools, that's how it started.
And obviously we knew nothing about education.
Uh, but we said we wanted to apply the types of
disciplines we apply in our day day to day business to this and we we spent time
Understanding the charter school movement, understanding how other people how the successful schools delivered in the inner city.
And uh and then a tr and then sought to apply it in the UK. And um
It's been uh very rewarding for Ian and I and for the other people.
We're there at the foundation.
Uh we now have about
Well, we have thirty nine schools. We've just mur taken over a uh a very interesting chain in Yorkshire, so we're going to around fifty schools.
uh in some of the
uh most uh disadvantaged parts of of the UK. And and we go in and and try and
do education, schooling in the way that leads to
great results uh and it has been transformational. We've had we
Outs outstanding results.
Has your has your Christian faith
influence the way you think about philanthropy, you think?
I think so, yeah. Um
And um
'Cause I really admire.
Those who do it without Christian faith. I I look at Ian who who doesn't have faith and he has
Just as much passion as I do.
Uh and uh
But for me, um
The the the idea that w that we are all basically equal in the sight of
Gods the God and all and
Um
Every s person is sacred.
Every soul is sacred. That that leads me to
to towards education.
Uh
Outcomes are not equal.
in our society, but but and I don't believe they should be, but
Uh
uh everybody should have a as much of as possible an equal start in life. And so that's led me in the way I think about politics and
I and
And philanthropy
to be very much focused on equality of opportunity and giving everybody as as as fair and good a start as they possibly
Can have.
Mm.
You also venture into the media industry and made some
uh what should we say controversial uh investments in particular uh specta spectator and you also in the running for the telegraph, right? So uh
Tell me about it.
Well I started uh
in getting into into the media as a frustrated customer.
Um, because I didn't I wasn't satisfied with what I was receiving in the media.
And that led me to set up something called unheard, which I hope you subscribe to.
um which is which is set up really to design to
Provide
To challenge people's thinking, so it's it's a heterox side.
uh with no political

designed to but to challenge one's thinking. So it's it's what I'd like to read every morning.
Um, then I was a co invest in something called G B News, which which is the one that's controversial actually.
Uh and then
The Spectator and the Telegraph came up for sale. I ended up
uh bidding for the spectator.
Um
Amongst many others.
And um
I think it's it's the it's the world's
The oldest
Political
Magazine. It was founded in eighteen twenty eight. It's
Highly influential.
Uh and an incredible brand.
Uh it had great editorial team, but a
it was pretty poor management on the technol technology side. So there's an opportunity to
turn around the technology and continue to build
Build a business.
I mean there's a long tradition in the UK of um
Well the people owning uh
media companies. But yet when you when you came in here, I'm in my there's been a lot of uh
What should we say? Uh different opinions about it.
Why um why do journalists uh hate wealthy people?
I don't think all all journalists do, and I don't necessarily think I'm sorry, I should rephrase it. Why do they why do they not like that wealthy people go into media?
Um
Well, I think all journalists are distrustful
Of any
Proprietor potentially because the proprietor.
Is perceived to have
The power.
Um
And a lot of journalists I think are very comfortable
Wh where they are.
Uh and journalism is a is actually a
a relatively comfortable profession.
Uh if I compare it to fund management.
Uh we
So there's a lot of similarities between fund management and journalism because we're both essentially need to be curious
Understand what's happening today, predict what's gonna happen in the future.
The difference is if a fund manager gets it wrong gets it wrong.
He or she is out of a job.
There are many journalists.
who who consistently get things wrong again and again and again, and they're still in the same job because journalism
is primarily or has become tribal.
And so actually you're not you're not seeking the truth.
You're seeking
uh to please a tribe.
That is profoundly unhealthy.
Uh so I I
want to ch challenge the tribal
Thinking.
Uh so I've gone into the uh the spec data doesn't really fall into that category, but
Unheard in GB News too.
go into the areas where
where I think things have become too tribal and and provide something alternative.
Are you buying political influence?
Uh uh
I hope not. I mean th I think that the
Um
Media
is perceived to have
A lot of a lot more influence than it
uh does in terms of the richer media. I think the T V media does have a lot of influence.
So uh I think G B News
Um
is more influential than I'd expected.
And that's why people are so upset about it.
because it's challenging the uh I essentially the T V
Um
landscape in the UK. Unl the writ the written journalism landscape in the UK is pretty balanced.
His right and his left.
The T V landscape
Pre prior to G B News was essentially progressive.
uh secular progressive.
uh BBC
Channel four.
IT V and Sky are all pretty much l the same
World view.
And G B News is coming and challenging that worldview.
So the fifty five percent of the population was unserved by the
Existing T V, news.
uh providers.
And that's why people are very upset about it.
So and that but that's also why it's been very successful.
Um
So so yes, and and it's and therefore that has been influential. Has it been successful in your eyes?
Well it's not successful financially.
But it's been very successful in terms of its market share because it's now overtaken
comfortably both B B New B B C News and Sky.
It's the number one news channel in the UK within five years.
Um, but it doesn't get the r advertising revenue because
uh of the campaigns against it and against the advertisers.
But that will that'll change in due course.
You were um
Akin uh
Brexit supporter.
And also help finance that campaign. What do you think about the decision in retrospect?
At the time of the decision, I was probably
Like a lot of people on both sides.
Fifty five, forty five. Didn't have a strong view.
But I I had I had a marginal view in one direction.
And my reservation
I so I b I believed in Brexit for sovereignty and I believe that the br British tradition
o of uh common law.
And
democracy and rule of law in one country as opposed to internationally.
was absolutely part of what Britain was.
Uh and therefore um
Uh
I was very supportive of that aspect.
I had reservations about the economic effect because of the im the the the friction impact of leaving
The single market.
I've now come to the view that I was completely right about the sovereignty issues.
Um and we haven't done enough on that. We haven't left the ECHR.
Um
uh and done the the complete complete Brexit.
Uh but I was wrong on the economics. Actually w we'd be much better off
If we'd made a proper break.
with the EU and embrace innovation because I think that in
And you c you can see the
the divergence between the US economy and the European economy.
Y your y your EU is a regulated
entity where the bureaucrats are in charge. There's no innovation.
Um and the US is is forging ahead.
And um
Britain
Sadly, because of the political dysfunction
failed on fail completely with the city to embrace blockchain and and become a world leader.
In that area.
Uh we we've
kind of halfway house on A. I we avoided the U U European uh AI Act, but we data protection act, but we
haven't really embraced the same freedom as the United States and um
We embrace net zero, which which basically
uh uh means we have the highest electricity prices in the world.
Uh and the only place where we didn't did
Take advantage of the freedom was uh in
Uh
B biotech and genetics where we we have a
separate regulate regulation on genetics and as a result we're now starting to produce genetic
Crops.
But if we'd embrace innovation
Essentially followed the American model uh on the areas where we have natural strength.
We would now be having some very interesting signs of of growth.
Uh and I think that's the that's the future for the UK.
Mm. I think the same goes for a lot of uh.
Many parts of Europe, so you're not alone there.
Yeah, well m and maybe
Well well probably you know, the ideal thing is Britain embraces innovation and then the EU sees somebody on their doorstep.
Embracing innovation.
And follow suit.
Uh so the pressure eventually causes a change within the EU.
uh which would be a good thing obviously. Nicolai, I'm sure like me
As an investor
Looking globally.
Europe is of a very little interest.
Uh it maybe it's twenty five percent of our gross commitments, but in terms of what's going on
M most of my day is understanding what's going on in the US and what's going on in Asia.
For sure in the technology landscape uh US is is leading uh that that's for sure. We do have many fine companies in here.
US and Asia.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Абсолютно
What do you want your legacy to be?
Um
To have made as much difference as I can, uh
to a lot of people's lives and at the moment to save Britain.
Not not that I can do that single handed, but I think Britain's going gone down some a very bad path.
In several ways, and I want to
Make a contribution to
Sorting that out.
How do you relax when you are not trying to say Britain?
Mm-hmm.
Um
I like to do gardening.
And planting trees.
But that's
Little less relaxing at the moment. About to go to France and uh
Discover how many of our plants and trees have died.
I like to watch football.
Uh, but that's also become less relaxing since the Glazers uh destroyed Manchester United. So I haven't been relaxed about that for twenty years.
Um
But gardening sport.
Music.
Reading.
What do you read?
At the moment
I'm slightly obsessed with the Holocaust.
Um, which doesn't it sounds a bit morbid, but uh I do think it was the most important
Historic and moral event of the twentieth century.
Um
Uh I've I just finished reading a book called Into Darkness by Gita Sarani about the
Commandant of uh Toblinka.
And how that evil happened and
Who he was?
I think the
The best
Book.
Everybody should read is uh night by
El Vizel.
Uh and um
So that that's um
Yeah, that's slightly my obsession at the moment.
Mm.
And if we finish off on a hopefully uh slightly more uplifting note, uh, what is your advice to young people?
Um
I think it
Uh
Linked back to a lot of the
earlier conversation. I first of all
Uh
Be a genic.
Second
Uh
Don't take anything anybody's word for anything.
The the motto of the
Roy Society is nullius in Verba.
Okay.
which is loosely translated as don't take anybody's word for it. And and
That's what real science is in terms of this n instead of this nonsense about follow the science we've which we've had in the last five or ten years.
So I I young people as they go to university need to
Interrogate everything they
Here.
read for themselves, certainly don't trust the university.
Consensus
Um
And that's so that's the second thing. And then the third thing I would say is uh be patient.
Because life is uh
Certainly much longer than I anticipated. We've got lots of time to do all the things that you want to do. And uh
There are great things to do. And uh and as we I mean

This is the most exciting time ever to invest, so
It's an incredibly exciting moment, uh, to enjoy and to
uh to make a difference.
Well that's something uh that's a a great place to uh to finish. A big thanks for taking the time, sharing all uh you know, sharing part of the secret source, all your thoughts, uh, you know, your your wisdom and uh
Wow, you've done so many things. Congratulations.
Thank you, Nika. It's great to talk to you.