Silver’s Surge, Oil’s Bounce, London Flat Prices and the Quiet Gilt Rally

Summary

Merryn Talks Money: Silver’s Surge, Oil’s Bounce, London Flat Prices and the Quiet Gilt Rally

Podcast by Bloomberg
Date: January 16, 2026
Host: John Stepek (standing in for Merryn Somerset Webb)
Guest: Marcus Ashworth (Bloomberg Opinion Columnist)

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Episode Theme Overview

This episode is a weekly markets roundup focused on the latest trends and news driving UK and global markets. John Stepek and guest Marcus Ashworth discuss key topics including the ongoing drop in London flat prices, the boom in precious metals (particularly silver), oil’s recent uptick, and a quiet but significant rally in the UK government bond (gilt) market. The tone is analytical but conversational, mixing expert insights with practical advice for investors.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. London Flat Prices: Correction or Opportunity?

[01:03 – 07:58]

• London Flats Have Fallen Sharply: Marcus describes seeing a one-bedroom Fulham flat listed for £370,000—“a bargain” at first glance, but it turned out to be part of a tricky auction setup. This serves as a starting point to discuss the underlying reasons for falling prices in the London flat market.
  • “London flats are cheap, cheap for a reason.” (Marcus Ashworth, 01:45)
• Scale of Decline: London flat prices are down over 20% since the mid-2010s, correcting from a period of extreme outperformance, driven at the time by international (notably Russian) capital inflows.
• Complexity for Buyers: New regulations (such as the Renters Rights Act), ongoing leasehold and cladding issues, high service charges, and lenders’ reluctance to offer mortgages on certain types of properties all make investing in London flats more perilous.
  • “One in seven people selling a flat in London at the moment are doing it at a loss.” (Marcus Ashworth, 04:32)
  • “Don’t touch leasehold with a ten-foot barge pole.” (John Stepek, 06:44)
• First-Time Buyers: While prices are more reasonable, the quality of value is highly variable. Flats in terraced houses with freehold-like structures are less risky, but caution and thorough research are crucial.
• Wider National Trend: Across the UK, detached houses are outperforming terraced homes, which in turn are outperforming flats. The post-pandemic "move to space" trend lingers.

Memorable moment:
John’s pithy rule—“Don’t touch leasehold with a ten-foot barge pole.” (06:44)

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2. Commodity Markets: Precious Metals & Oil

[07:58 – 13:26]

• Oil’s Rebound: Recent geopolitical risks (potential closure of Suez Canal, tensions with Iran) have sparked a rally. However, Marcus views it as a temporary “short squeeze” after a period during which everyone was betting prices would fall.
  • “When markets don’t go down and everyone’s expecting them to, what they’re going to do is reverse sharply and have a short squeeze.” (Marcus Ashworth, 08:14)
  • He doubts the rally will last unless a major geopolitical crisis erupts. His broader outlook: oil will likely “drift lower.”
• Silver’s Surge: Silver prices have jumped dramatically, even more than gold.
  • “We’ve obviously seen silver going through to the moon and beyond… Making gold look like a laggard.” (Marcus Ashworth, 09:35)
  • Cautionary perspective is supported by Cameron Crise’s research, showing that after such surges, silver historically falls sharply (often 50% within a year).
  • Marcus advises that both gold and silver are primarily speculative instruments, not fundamentally driven investments:
    • “This is a speculative tool... trading it for volatility. Please look at it in that context.” (10:57)
• Gold’s “Safe Asset” Status: Gold continues to attract buyers due to geopolitical uncertainty (e.g., Russian reserves seized by the US), prompting even central banks in “semi-bad” countries to stockpile it.
  • “The only real way you can guarantee [getting your money out] is gold.” (Marcus Ashworth, 12:20)

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3. Industrial Commodities and Inflation Risks

[13:26 – 16:36]

• Industrial Metals (Copper, Nickel): Demand is robust as the US and Asian economies (including China, Japan, and Korea) grow strongly. UK lags behind (“handbrake nailed to the floor”).
• Commodities & Inflation: Marcus isn’t convinced that rising commodity prices will significantly raise inflation. US inflation is robust, but the UK and Europe face notable disinflation thanks in part to cheap Chinese exports.
  • Food inflation in the UK is more about higher minimum wages and delivery costs than actual food prices.
• Central Banks: Post-pandemic policy responses still impact markets, but the general trend in Marcus’ view is for inflation to keep underperforming expectations in Europe and the UK. The US picture is less clear due to stronger economic momentum.

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4. The Quiet Gilt Rally: UK Bonds in the Spotlight

[16:36 – 23:34]

• Gilt Yields Have Dropped: UK government bond yields are at their lowest since 2024, representing a significant bull market in gilts. This is a sharp reversal from the turmoil following Liz Truss’s budget (“absolutely awful politics”).
  • “Gilts are at the lowest yield for over a year.” (Marcus Ashworth, 17:00)
• Treasury Strategy: The UK is issuing more short-term government IOUs (T-bills, at much lower yields) and fewer long-term or index-linked gilts, reducing the government’s cost of borrowing.
  • “This is a wheeze. The real reason... is to lower the cost of the £110 billion a year that we pay in debt interest.” (Marcus Ashworth, 19:43)
  • Potential upside for retail investors, as new rules will soon let them buy corporate bonds in smaller increments and maybe T-bills as well.
• Risks (“Rollover Risk”): Issuing shorter-term debt increases exposure to short-term interest rate moves, but the UK’s average debt maturity remains much longer than global peers (13 years vs. the US at 7, Germany at 8).
• Market Structure: The move should increase liquidity but must be balanced to avoid starving longer-dated markets (necessary for corporate bond issuance).
  • “We have to be careful that we're not doing too much of one thing and leaving ourselves exposed.” (22:31)

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Notable Quotes and Timestamps

On London Flats:

• “London flats are cheap, cheap for a reason.” (Marcus Ashworth, 01:45)
• “One in seven people selling a flat in London at the moment are doing it at a loss.” (Marcus Ashworth, 04:32)
• “Don’t touch leasehold with a ten-foot barge pole.” (John Stepek, 06:44)

On Commodities and Speculation:

• “Silver does have industrial uses more than gold has... but beyond that, [they] are speculative tools... please look at it in that context.” (Marcus Ashworth, 10:33)
• “The only real way you can guarantee [getting your money out] is gold.” (Marcus Ashworth, 12:20)

On Gilt Market Moves:

• “Gilts are at the lowest yield for over a year.” (Marcus Ashworth, 17:00)
• “This is a wheeze. The real reason... is to lower the cost of the £110 billion a year that we pay in debt interest.” (Marcus Ashworth, 19:43)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:03 – 07:58: London flat prices, leasing/ownership risks, national property trends
• 07:58 – 13:26: Silver and gold rally, oil's bounce, historical context, risk warnings
• 13:26 – 16:36: Wider commodity markets, inflation impacts, UK vs. US/Asia growth
• 16:36 – 23:34: The gilt (UK government bond) rally, Treasury strategy shift, retail access, risks
• Notable deep-dive - Gilt market structure and risks: 18:19 – 22:31

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Summary & Tone

The discussion is pragmatic, sceptical of hype (especially around short-term commodity rallies), and anchored in structural and policy changes that shape investment opportunities and risks. The tone is conversational, dotted with humor (“never be too cynical here at Merryn Talks Money”), and provides actionable insights for savers and investors considering UK property, commodities, or gilts.

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For more content like this, or past discussions about UK home buying, search for previous series in your podcast app of choice.
Gold, silver – treat as speculative bets; London property – bargains come with pitfalls; Gilts – bull run is policy-driven, watch for hidden risks.

Transcript

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[Marcus Ashworth]

Foreign.

[John Stepek]

Welcome to the Merlin Talks Money News Roundup where we talk about the biggest moves in the markets this week and what's driving them. I'm John Stebik, senior editor at Bloomberg and author of the award winning Money Distilled newsletter. And joining me this week while Merlin is visiting the mothership in New York is Marcus Ashworth. Marcus is a Bloomberg opinion columnist with deep expertise in European markets and bond markets and he's also a regular contributor to the show. Hi Marcus, my pleasure as ever for all that. I've just been talking about your expertise in European markets and gilts. I thought first we could start with the rather good piece that you wrote with Stuart this week, Stuart Trow on London and London house prices and what's been going on.

[Marcus Ashworth]

London flats are cheap, cheap for a reason. I actually started off this premise to write on a flat I'd seen In Fulham, a one bed flat, 100 year lease, looked in reasonable conditions, perfect sort of bolt hole, you know, pied a terre starter flat, what you want to call it. It was on for 370,000. I thought, wow, that is a bargain. In context of where Fulham normally is. It was a reasonable road. Know exactly where it was.

[John Stepek]

For all of our listeners outside the M25, Fulham is a nice bit of London.

[Marcus Ashworth]

It's near Chelsea, but it's not Chelsea. So all those people who on that main Chelsea show, they actually live in Fulham. Yeah. So it's got football club and it's got the Kings Road and then and the Fulham Road as well, which are the nice bits of Chelsea. But the other end of it nonetheless. It was first time I've seen, I would say an Apartment in London which in the nicest area of London which is I would say wow, that is a reasonable price. As it happens it's a bit misleading. It was up for this thing called a modern method of auction. Essentially you had a big deposit down which you may not get back to bid on it. So it's a little bit of a trap that one. So we decided not to lead on that. I digress. Anyways, as we went into the sort of look at is London actually cheaper because it's come down so much over 20% in the last few years really since 201415 when that sort of London grad Russian sort of influx turned and finally stopped pushing London prices up ridiculously post the global financial crisis which I can never really understand but then all of a sudden it hasn't really performed very well indeed and recently it's got a lot worse than non dom flight. A lot of other reasons why I think landlords have been selling because of where's we going in the article. Lots of pressures on that sort of side of the investment market. So is London cheap? Well there's a lot of other reasons behind it which you can read the article with regards to cladding and leasehold problems. Also the coming up Renters Rights act which is going to make it much harder again for landlords. But the basic point here is that London is much more affordable than it was but it's still relatively expensive to the rest of the country because if you go back to that 201415 period I mentioned, London was the most expensive ever anything in the UK market and it's outperformance. The rest of the UK had never been at such an extreme so it's just correcting back from where it got overpriced and I think it's probably a little bit more to go in London but if you've got a long term horizon I think you know there is potential. It's a buyer's market, you could probably pick up a relative bargain if you can one afford and not looking to make an instant gain and whatever. So yeah, in that sense there's, there's some promise there. But the reason why London is unperformed is there's as we go in quite some detail in the article. There are very good reasons, reasons why apartments, particularly in London and one stack really caught me from the Hampton survey is that one in seven people selling a flat in London at the moment are doing it at a loss.

[John Stepek]

Yeah. And that's a nominal loss, let alone.

[Marcus Ashworth]

You know, actually you actually look at Prices since the start of the century in inflation terms, you know, UK property hasn't really gone anywhere. It's not actually quite the success story. Everyone thinks putting money in property, you can't go wrong buying London a global city. The other thing which didn't make the edit was the UBS property bubble index they have for major cities around the world. London's now dropped 16th. The top is Miami, Tokyo, Zurich as being the most expensive potential bubblicious. But London is now in the low risk category down from what was previously in high and it's number 16th out of, you know, maybe 2025. Global cities should be so well, well suited cities. So it's in international terms it's looking good value. I just think on the ground buying in London at the moment this comes with a lot of problems and I think until you see the effect of the Renters Right act bill coming through in practice in May, that maybe one towards the end of the year then it might be worth considering. But definitely take your time.

[John Stepek]

Would your view differ ever so slightly if you're looking to be a first time buyer, as in a homeowner, a dweller rather than a landlord, there's obviously.

[Marcus Ashworth]

A landlord even more careful. It's a first time buyer. As I said, you really need to do all your research, particularly on anything which is in the tower block or in some form high rise building or may have cladding issues. But what we found increasingly is that a lot of valuers won't value it, a lot of insurers won't insure it and a lot of lenders won't lend against particularly leasehold properties. And also we found quite a considerable effect on very high and increasingly way above inflation service charges. So there are a lot of things. But having said that, in this particular flat I was talking about initially was in a terraced house. It was the ground floor sort of built that way of a terror otherwise terrorist terrestrialist house that has less issues. Those sorts of things maybe. Yeah, in the right places. But take your time. Definitely no rush, no need to worry about it. But mortgage rates coming your way as well. So I have a lookout.

[John Stepek]

But take your time and don't forget the Merton talks money golden rule. Don't touch leasehold with a ten foot barge bolt. You can find more about that one in our previous discussion on house prices. If you go to wherever you get your podcasts and look for a series on buying homes, you'll find lots to talk about there. I mean one thing I did want to ask you is Obviously, so London flats down about 20 odd percent. London houses kind of flattish the rest of the country.

[Marcus Ashworth]

This is a trend nationally in the sense that detached houses are doing better than terrace houses, terrace houses are doing better than flats. It's just the bigger you are, that's the post pandemic sort of rush the country type effect still sort of filtering through or have filtered through and London in particular has done very badly. Leaseholders again, we go to a lot of details why leaseholds have been problems in our grand rents onwards, you name. It's a whole raft of different issues but you know, that's, it's the effect which you can avoid. You don't have to buy an apartment in a tub like you can buy elsewhere. But the point is, is that, you know, no doubt about it at the moment, apartments, or should we say super urban dwellings have been underperforming and London is more exaggerated than anywhere else.

[John Stepek]

Yeah, no, it's an interesting subject. So yeah, look, look out because there may be at some point there may be opportunity. Turning back to this week's news, obviously the most exciting area has been commodities, precious metals and oil as well. Oil which is currently cheap or has been for a long time. So what do you think is driving all that?

[Marcus Ashworth]

Well, when oil's up, the risk of the closing of Suez Canal and the Straits of Hormuz and whether Iran fights back, blows up Iraqi oil infrastructure, let alone other areas around, blocking shipments from say Saudi and the UAE and, and Qatar, et cetera. So at the moment I don't think that's that likely. And I think oil's had a bit of a recovery because it's been so oversold and so everyone thinks it's going down, including myself. But I mean the point is when markets don't go down and everyone's expecting to go down the other way, they're going to do is reverse sharply and have a short squeeze. And I think that's what's happening in oil at the moment. So I don't think oil will go much higher than it is now unless there is a proper geopolitical event which is not solvable. But I think Trump at the moment looks like he's watching, waiting. If things were to change dramatically and it looked like lasting, then maybe oil can go higher, but I don't think it will last very long. And I think oil drifts lower. Most commodities I am more bullish on. We've obviously seen silver going through to the moon and beyond things lapped the moon several times, making gold look Like a laggard. I think that's reaching a blow off top probably around here. It's certainly not level to get in at whether or not one trims some profits. If you have them then fine, there will be time to get back into silver and gold. But I don't think that move has ended. It's just. It's probably a little bit too over.

[John Stepek]

At skis on this. Did you read our colleague Cameron Creases piece yesterday or Cameron, Christ, I can't remember pronounce his name but he's one of the terminal only kind of guys. He wrote a really good piece yesterday with Silver and he was essentially looking at what happens whenever the gold silver ratio changes this dramatically in such a short space of time. Basically pretty much across the board. A year from now silver's down about 50 odd percent. I thought that was quite interesting. He managed to put some numbers on what happens when you get this speed of change with silver relative to gold and it's generally not particularly pretty.

[Marcus Ashworth]

Yeah, I'm a bit skeptical on the oil gold ratio, silver gold ratio. I think they're one of these things a guy but no more than that and you put too much store in them you end up getting badly wrong if you're not careful. Silver does have industrial uses more than gold has and in the context of what future technologies and various things in increasing one and there's an obvious short supply and that's why it's been squeezed Nelson Bunker Hunt, come back all is forgiven type stuff. But beyond that, this is a speculative tool, as is gold. I don't think these are fundamental investment cases, they are just speculation. You can call it the dollar debasement trade. You could blame the Trump, you can Fed independence whatever excuse you want to do. I don't believe in any of them. But this is a speculative tool and people are trading it for volatility. Please look at it in that context. And if you want to dabble in small amount that's up to you at your own risk. But don't expect this to be fundamentally backed by anything on the ground.

[John Stepek]

You're basically arguing that gold is just physical bitcoin.

[Marcus Ashworth]

Well it has increasingly become that way. Obviously what's happened, if you want to put a particular instance, is when the OFAC, the Office for Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. treasury decided to seize Russia's external foreign exchange reserves and that has spooked China. Every sort of bad or semi bad or vaguely lukewarm international central bank or whatever it may be has decided that perhaps they Might have a little bit more gold and it's come self perpetuating and now we're seeing retail and funds coming in. They were actually net sellers for most of the last year or two. So whether China's still buying at the moment never really know the truth but for sure the only one thing you need to know about gold there's somewhere bad in the world and someone needs to make sure their money is safe and they need to get their money out of whichever country they're in. The only real way you can guarantee it is leaving aside bitcoin for the moment is gold. And that's why you know gold, silver, platinum, etc have the moment in the sun and this is it. How close to the sun, How Icarus like they are becoming is a little worrying.

[John Stepek]

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[John Stepek]

So what about the rest of the commodities space? Because obviously nickel and copper.

[Marcus Ashworth]

Well I mean again they're more fundamental reasons. I mean look at the US US economy is going to grow over 5% on an annualized basis in quarter four and looks momentum looks strong, not too bad a number out of the UK this week but compared to the US it's just like we're literally got the handbrake on and nailed to the floor and they're roaring away again. So in that context there is industrial demand. China is clearly picking up at long last and the rest of Asia is doing pretty well as well. So I mean look at the Japanese stock market, look at Korea, all these various areas. So industrial commodities and certainly industrial metals and the various other different parts of the even softs and various other parts of the commodity world are set fair I think not saying this is the right time to buy. I'm sure there'll be better opportunities but I think the trend is fairly firmly that's why Glencore Rio Tinto makes sense. When you start seeing M and A, you know that people are seeing a rosier future. So you know do you have any.

[John Stepek]

Thoughts on how the commodities rising prices of commodities may affect inflation because obviously one of the big risks this year is that Inflation is stickier or nastier or more surprising than anyone.

[Marcus Ashworth]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of that theory. I'm not as surprised as someone you start seeing material underperformance in inflation. I mean, you can cast aspersion on the US data, but I'm not so sure you can acquire as much as some people are trying to that I can't see any good coming out of it. But US inflation beat, UK inflation's clearly beating and will continue to beat Euro inflation, notably weaker. So I think there's enough disinflation and perhaps coming from China as well as it exports whatever it wants as quickly, as cheaply, as much as it can. I think some commodity inflation can be breathed in and not necessarily have a material effect. Overall, we will see. Obviously the one to watch, probably the easiest one is look at food inflation. You're seeing that through some of the food inflation, particularly in the uk has actually, actually been driven by minimum wage rises and national insurance and nothing to do with food at all, it's just the delivery of food. But nonetheless, all these things I think are mostly passing through. But you know, we are going to be much more vigilant on inflation, rightly so. The effects of that blindness from central banks post the pandemic and all the massive stimulus they put in which. And then of course the effect of Ukraine on energy costs are still with us. And that's the. It hasn't quite got out the system yet. But I think broadly the trend is, to my mind is down and I think will underperform inflation expectations, particularly in Europe and the uk. I'm less confident in the us as I said, the strength economy there and whatever the effects of something more interesting, things going on with the Fed, we shall see. I'm not as apocalyptic as some are about central bank independence and whatever that may be, that I think they dramatically underperformed their right to be independent should be sacrosanct, but they need to get a better performance to make it worthwhile and justify their existence and where they are. And mandates probably need to change, but that's another story.

[John Stepek]

Well, maybe we'll do that another day. But so going on from that, the question of UK debt.

[Marcus Ashworth]

Gilly Gilts.

[John Stepek]

Well, this is interesting because I think a lot of our listeners will be, if they do watch the gilt market, will be looking at it and saying, all right, well, why are interest rates going down or yields on government bonds going down? We spent a lot last year.

[Marcus Ashworth]

Not often we can say that, is it in fact gilts are at the lowest yield for over a year.

[John Stepek]

Yeah. Since 2024.

[Marcus Ashworth]

Yeah. I mean December 2024. I mean it's extraordinary. It's a bull market. No, I mean but we, given that.

[John Stepek]

We spent most of the last year there were a lot of headlines inherited from trust. Absolutely awful kind of politics. It's such a high debt.

[Marcus Ashworth]

Earlier this week about cunning wheeze. A cunning plan which he's done twice already and this is now the third iteration which is reducing the overall duration of the type of debt that the UK treasury sells. We call it weighted average is your duration, it's the time value of what's been done. So a 30 year bond as opposed to a 10 year bond has more sort of market impact and risk for the market to take it down. However, the latest plan is to start issuing many more T bills which are at the moment 1, 3 and 6 month IOUs which you buy them at say 98 and they mature at 100. You don't get a coupon like you might do on a gilt. There's a different tax treatment to them that's not as favorable as it can be on particularly very low coupon gilts which we have mentioned before. But nonetheless this is a bit of a backwater. It's controlled by certain big institutions who like basically said it's their cash flow. They buy them, hold them, when they mature, they buy the next one and it sort of never really sees the light of day.

[John Stepek]

But it's a constitutional petty cash 10.

[Marcus Ashworth]

Yeah and it's sort of a long standing feature of the market that it's never really been up to much and it's I guess I said a backwater. However it wouldn't be great to like the US treasury which issues a fifth of its debt in bill format out they go out to two years to be fair. So there's one year bills and two year bills etc. And get more liquidity in the front end which would be good for how the bank of England wants to run its whole balance sheet down. So they want to move out of long dated bonds into sort of short dated repo. There's a bill market there as well with liquidity. Won't that be good for everyone and make it a bit more like the us I guess. But more importantly it will reduce the cost of borrowing. So a T bill yields about say 3.8% whereas a longer dated gilt can yield at least 4.8 or even and whatever. So this is a wheeze. The real reason behind this and don't forget about issuance of stable coins for crypto and all this sort of, you know, nonsense about you know, helping out this, that the other it will have some beneficial effects. Clearly for retail investors who want to put money safely can't get better than government quality. You know, why wouldn't you be able to put these in your ISAs or put them in your pension or what have you or hold them out right. You know there will be some dividend income tax on that. So there is compelling. If they really sort out and make the corporate bond market also they're going to change on January 19th to make it much more open for investors to buy new issues of say Marks and Spencers or Tesco issuing a bond the moment the minimum they can buy a Corporate bond is 100,000 which basically excludes virtual retail investors. Now if Marks and Spencer wants to issue bond 1 pound increment towards or 1000 pound increment they can do. If you combine that with allowing retail investors access to take T bills as well, all of a sudden you have a much better environment, much more competition with the banks which is both a good and a bad thing. And for National Savings Investment, NS&I and premium bonds, all that sort of stuff. But there's enough liquidity out there, the banks would definitely buy these T bills on their own. Pension funds, petty cash, you name it. If you start using the repo markets, hedge funds and collateral into derivatives, margin blah, blah, blah, it's a good thing. The reason why it's being done is highly cynical. She just wants to lower the cost of the 110 billion a year that we pay in debt interest. She wants to get that down. Sometimes cynical ploys also have some benefits to it. I think this is one of them. The other reason which by giving.

[John Stepek]

Let me just interrupt for one second. So basically what she's doing is reducing the amount of long term debt that they're issuing, correct term which is low yielding. So basically there's a fat are fewer 10 and 30 year gilts and that means that. Well maybe not 10 but certainly 30 and that means that and index linked. Yeah, the supply and demand matter.

[Marcus Ashworth]

It's absolutely. She's already dramatically reduced the long end supply, particularly inflation linked bonds by more than 2/3 actually and indeed longer dated gilts. There's a lot less issuance coming through. It's going in. We call the belly of the curve the sort of 5 to 10 year part where a lot of international investors and foreign central banks buy gilts happily. So by adding more Liquidity in T bills. It just further extends this trade. She says you've done it twice already, this will be a third time. It's a consultation document, but it's clearly going to happen. So yeah, it's a card shuffle trick move. The average type of bond she sells to much shorter dated, therefore it's cheaper for her and in theory it takes pressure off the long end of the gilt yields. Gilt yields fall further. Huzzah.

[John Stepek]

What is the downside, if any, in terms of presumably, okay, so people would talk about rollover risk and that it means you're more exposed to short term moves than interest rates. But how much of an issue is that in practice, do you think?

[Marcus Ashworth]

Okay, the UK has a much longer weighted average maturity of its debt than almost any other country in the world because we had these huge demands, our ridiculous pension rules which require pension funds to buy very elongated gilts which we happily sold them ad nauseam and all working brilliantly well until yields jumped as inflation zoomed and it all fell apart and even the Oxford and Cambridge pension funds blew up. So we have an average of about say 13 years. It was above 15 not so long ago. We are already reducing it heavily. But say the US treasury has got say seven years, Germany's got eight, so we've got plenty of room to go before we are not much longer than anyone else. Still the risk here is as you say, if interest rates were to jump or we find it harder to fund in shorter dates, this would leave us vulnerable. But I. There is plenty of room to go still there. But we doesn't need to be too extreme on this. But I think she's pushing the envelope which we sell on whatever. So that is clearly a risk and we have to be careful that we're not doing too much of one thing and we're not leaving ourselves exposed whereby we haven't funded across the yield curve and kept liquidity importantly across all parts of the yield curve so everyone can fund. And bear in mind more liquidity in the longer end is better for corporates as well because they can issue off back of these guilt benchmarks and they can raise money in longer dates as well. So it's a bit balance. I think so far it's a sort of cautious positive welcome to this idea with a knowing eye of what the real reason is.

[John Stepek]

Great. Ah well, we can never be too cynical here at Merlin Talks Money. Excellent. Well, thanks again for joining us Marcus, as much appreciated and I'm sure we'll have you on plenty more times in the coming weeks and months, as far as I'm aware.

[Marcus Ashworth]

My pleasure.

[John Stepek]

Thanks for listening to this week's Merlin Talks Money Debrief. If you like our show, rate, review and subscribe. Wherever you listen to podcasts, keep sending questions or comments to marinmoneyloombird.net you can also follow me and Marcus on X. I'm on Stepeck and Marcus is arcusashworth. This episode was hosted by me, John Stepek and it was produced by Moses Andam and Samar Sahadi.