The synchronised mistake
The world's central banks turned hawkish in unison this spring, just as the shock that frightened them was already reversing. My mid-year report card, honestly marked, and where I think the second half goes.
Every investor faces the same few decisions. Neil Woodford, 35 years in the markets, works through them in the open – the analysis, the judgement, and a straight account of how it turned out. The signal on the things that matter, without the noise.
Every investor faces the same few decisions. Watch Neil Woodford – 35 years in the markets – work through them in the open, wins and losses alike.
Food prices have fallen this year and supermarket forecourts sell the cheapest fuel in the country. Blaming the supermarkets for the cost of the Iran war is political deflection, if not outright dishonesty.
The world's central banks turned hawkish in unison this spring, just as the shock that frightened them was already reversing. My mid-year report card, honestly marked, and where I think the second half goes.
Two central banks held, as expected. Two Korean memory makers earned $104bn between them in a single quarter and watched their shares fall anyway. And BP began the sale of its North Sea business.
The Bank held at 3.75%, as I expected. What I did not expect was three votes for a rise, justified by second-round effects the committee itself has conceded are not there.
A year after its £51bn black hole quietly evaporated, the NIESR is back with a £24bn sequel and an inflation forecast to match. I think it will be just as wrong – and just as damaging.
Missiles in the Red Sea, missed numbers from the Mag7 and a maxed-out credit card in Downing Street – yet the week's most telling data were a blowout UK retail sales number and a stock market busy buying itself.
A new Prime Minister, the same script. If Mr Burnham asked me how to get the UK growing again, here is what I would tell him – keeping everything simple.
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Neil's running argument that the UK — its economy and its public finances — is consistently misrepresented as a basket case by politicians, the OBR and the press, and that the declinist consensus is empirically wrong.
View this topic →Compute, power and the physical bottlenecks behind the boom — where the money actually has to go.
View this topic →Why the Fed, ECB and Bank of England consistently lag reality — moving too late, chasing inflation that has already turned — and why the rates consensus is predictably wrong.
View this topic →The case that UK equities trade at unjustified discounts to global peers, and that patient, contrarian investors are rewarded for owning what the market has written off.
View this topic →How Middle East conflict drives oil, inflation and central-bank decisions — and why the conventional 'oil shock = recession' narrative keeps being wrong.
View this topic →A year after its £51bn black hole quietly evaporated, the NIESR is back with a £24bn sequel and an inflation forecast to match. I think it will be just as wrong – and just as damaging.
Neil WoodfordLead voice · 35 years investingOne named, accountable investor – not an algorithm, not a newsroom. The source is a person whose judgement has been backed with real money over real time, who shows the reasoning and is straight about how it turned out. That is the one thing no competitor can copy.
Neil talks the week through the way the decisions actually get made – with the reasoning shown. Watch it, or take it as audio.
S2 Ep 5 · 11 MINThe week filtered — what dominated the noise, what’s underneath it, and what it means. One email, Fridays.
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