Three Central Banks Made the Same Mistake in One Week
Oil hit $144 a barrel in April, the highest price ever paid for physical crude, and underlying inflation barely moved. This week, Neil Woodford explains why the oil price doesn't work the way most people think, and why three central banks tightened into a shock that was already reversing.
Jon and Neil mark Neil's December calls honestly (the wins and the misses), then get into the mechanics: why paper barrels set the price, not physical ones; the difference between headline and core inflation; and the base effects that mean the inflation number scaring central banks is about to fall on its own.
Then the mistake. The ECB raised rates the day before the peace process went public. The Bank of Japan gets Neil's sympathy as the one bank tightening into genuine wage inflation. And in Washington, new Fed chair Kevin Warsh has picked headline inflation as his fight; Neil takes the 4.2% apart and explains why the September hike never arrives, and why the Bank of England may cut before year-end.
Neil also names the one number that would prove the whole call wrong.
More episodes
UK Inflation Will Stay at 3% — Here’s Why the Market Is Wrong
UK inflation is falling while oil is up 35% and gilt yields are at an 18-year high. Neil Woodford explains why the 4-5% inflation forecasts are wrong again, what is actually in the CPI basket, and why the bond market may be pricing the wrong story.
Show notesBritain’s Productivity Crisis: A Great Deception?
Is the UK's productivity crisis actually real? The ONS has quietly admitted its Labour Force Survey overstated UK employment, and the HMRC tax data tells a completely different story about the UK economy, your taxes and interest rates. In this episode, Neil Woodford explains what the tax records really show about UK productivity, why the official survey invented half a million workers who don't exist, and how one wrong number fed both the OBR forecast that drove Rachel Reeves' tax rises and the Bank of England's view of how fast the economy can grow before rates must stay high. We also get into the collapse in graduate jobs and what it says about AI adoption in the UK, whether Britain's productivity has genuinely accelerated since 2024, and how the UK really compares with the G7. Stay to the end for what a correction means for the November Budget, mortgage rates, gilts and rate-sensitive UK stocks, and where Neil sees the opportunity. Read Neil's full written analysis Neil's first piece on this from 2024
Show notesThe 7 Decisions Every Investor Faces (Part 1)
Neil Woodford has been answering questions about investing for 35 years – and every one of them comes down to seven decisions. In part one of this three-part series, Neil and Jon Adair cover the funnel: the three decisions that take you from every company in the world down to a shortlist worth owning.
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