Merryn Talks Money

Hosts Merryn Somerset Webb and John Stepek react to the Spring Statement, plus Bloomberg's exclusive interview with Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

She sat down with Head of Economics and Government Stephanie Flanders on Tuesday, and discussed Britain's pending trade deal with the US, why it won't affect its view on the conflict with Iran, and the UK's economic future.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-03/reeves-says-uk-won-t-make-iran-decisions-based-on-us-trade-ties?srnd=homepage-uk
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Merryn Somerset Webb speaks with Simon Judes, chief investment officer of Winton, about how to properly understand quantitative investing. Judes attempts to demystify some of the strategies quantitative funds use to allocate capital across different portfolios. They also discuss the role artificial intelligence will play in quant fund research and capital deployment.
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From YOLO to HALO. In this week's markets wrap, hosts Merryn Somerset Webb and John Stepek discuss why markets are ditching high multiple AI and software stocks, for "HALO" companies - heavy assets, low obsolescence - and why higher interest rates and even higher infrastructure costs may be behind the moves.

To see the article Merryn references in the episode, please follow the link below.
Special thanks to Joachim Klement who has allowed us to share this piece from his Klement on Investing Substack.

https://klementoninvesting.substack.com/p/why-do-people-invest-in-expensive
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Many of the graduates whose university costs were funded with Plan 2 student loans are now in their 30s, wondering why they have no money at the end of the month, and why they still owe more student debt than they left uni with. The critical mass of graduates feeling the pinch might just have been reached - and now they're feeling angry and ripped off. On this week’s personal finance edition of Merryn Talks Money, Editor at Large for Bloomberg UK Wealth, Merryn Somerset Webb and author of the Money Distilled newsletter, John Stepek unpick how Plan 2 and the new - perhaps even worse - Plan 5 loans work, how and why graduate marginal tax rates can easily exceed 50% and what tweaks could be made to ease the burden.

They also ask the overarching question: is the problem the system? Or is it the fact that the UK seems to be incapable of creating enough high paying jobs?
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Fiona Yang, portfolio manager on the Invesco Asia Dragon Trust, joins Merryn Somerset Webb to discuss why global capital rotated from US equities into emerging Asia in 2025—and what she sees happening in 2026. She explains her valuation-driven, long-term, contrarian approach to stock selection across diverse Asian markets, and shares how she weighs risks like geopolitics, demographics, currency moves, and frothy AI-linked valuations.
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