The £800,000 cost of a decent retirement

**Charlene Young** (0:09)
Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of Money & Markets. I'm Charlene Young, and this week, I'm very pleased to say I'm joined by a brand new co-host for the show, AJ Bell's Head of Personal Finance, Sarah Coles. Sarah, welcome to the team.

**Sarah Coles** (0:24)
Thank you.

**Charlene Young** (0:26)
Now, chances are, you've already seen Sarah or some of her analysis on TV or in print from her previous role, and of course, in our own AJ Bell Weekly Insights Newsletter. Plus, she popped up on our Money Matters podcast lately, but if you haven't yet, then you're in for a treat today.

**Sarah Coles** (0:43)
I feel like I've been massively oversold here, but coming up in this week's episode, we've got geopolitics continues to dominate markets and the oil price. The question is, are investors stuck in a bit of a Groundhog Day moment?

**Charlene Young** (0:54)
We'll also be digging into the latest surge in AI excitement with an IPO announcement from Anthropic and Alphabet embarking on a huge new equity raise.
Is this the next phase of the AI boom? Are things starting to look a little overheated?

**Sarah Coles** (1:09)
In company news, we've got Takeover Talk, which is swirling around EasyJet and Drax. We'll ask whether some sectors are looking more vulnerable than others right now.

**Charlene Young** (1:18)
On the personal finance side, we'll be unpacking the latest retirement living standards and what they mean for how much you actually need to retire comfortably.

**Sarah Coles** (1:27)
We'll also run through the latest Bank of England money and credit data, which sounds fascinating. It's covering cash, OYSES and lending. We're going to take a look at what's actually happening in the housing market.

**Charlene Young** (1:36)
We bring you all the good stuff. Our interview this week keeps with that AI theme as we talk to Richard Jeffery, Executive Chair of Reading based software company ActiveOps. But first up though, let's talk markets and I'm very pleased to say we've got Tom Sieber joining us for this segment of the show.
Hi, Tom.

**Tom Sieber** (1:54)
Hello.

**Charlene Young** (1:55)
So Tom, the ongoing conflict, as Sarah mentioned, has now entered its fourth month and markets seem to be stuck in a slightly uneasy holding pattern. As Sarah asked, is this starting to feel like a bit of a Groundhog Day or are we seeing anything shift beneath the surface?

**Tom Sieber** (2:12)
Yeah, I think it does feel a bit like Groundhog Day. It's a lot less entertaining than the film, unfortunately.
It feels like the market is having to endure a fairly endless cycle of what are quite conflicting noises about hopes for a long-term peace agreement and a reopening of the straight-up news. That in turn is driving quite a familiar pattern for the market. When it looks like the prospects for an agreement are picking up, we see stocks like house builders, aviation-related stocks, retailers all go up. Government bond yields tend to go down to reflect a shift in inflation and interest rate expectations, and energy companies and defensive names go backwards as oil prices pull back. But when things look less positive, then we see the reverse of that. Oil prices surge, government bond yields go up, and we see energy companies and more defensive companies to the fall. Now, with the usual important caveat that we're recording this on a Wednesday afternoon, the global oil benchmark Brent is creeping back towards $100 a barrel. So we're kind of more into that territory of the market being less hopeful about a peace deal. We've seen some sort of exchange of strikes between the US and Iran.
That's kind of a contrast with the end of last week, where we saw oil dip below $90 a barrel because there was a period where there was a bit more hope about a peace deal. So yeah, it does unfortunately seem like we're stuck in this loop for the time being. And until there is genuine progress in talks between Tehran and Washington, or we know something definitive, it feels like this is going to be the pattern for markets.

**Charlene Young** (4:05)
Thanks Tom. And to move on to AI, as we teased in that intro, it's setting up to be another huge week. We've heard from Anthropic that it's announced its plans for an IPO, while Alphabet is reportedly raising around $80 billion, is that right, to fund AI infrastructure?

**Tom Sieber** (4:22)
Yeah.

**Charlene Young** (4:23)
Yeah, some big dollar numbers there involved. What's driving that decision to IPO for Anthropic and perhaps now? And how significant is this equity raise for Alphabet, which also has a big share in Anthropic?