Compute, power and the physical bottlenecks behind the boom — where the money actually has to go.
Our standing view on the subject. The pieces below are the worked examples; this is the argument they serve.
The revolution is industrial before it is intelligent.
Every cycle has a layer that gets paid first. For AI it isn't the model or the LLM makers — it's the electricity to run them, the grid to move it, and the companies making the “picks and shovels”: the memory manufacturers and semiconductor designers. That spending is already contracted; the constraints behind it are physical, capital-heavy and slow to clear.
So we are wary of the AI trade as the market means it — a dozen crowded names carrying the whole story. The work here sits one layer down, where the capex actually lands, the demand is contracted years out, and the returns are easier to understand than the hype.
Iran’s seven-day offer, Xi at the White House and China leaning on Tehran: the diplomacy moved further this week than at any point since the summer. Plus five new AI models in two days and what their prices say, a Chancellor running out of headroom, and some Scottish data that horrified me.
The Fed raised rates for the first time since 2023, the MPC held, and the gilt market rallied on both. Plus an oil spike that is already unwinding, what the Bank’s minutes concede about second-round effects, and the AI chiefs who want to slow down.
Will AI take your job? Anthropic's economic scenarios model says AI could make the US economy 30% bigger by 2030 and put 1 in 5 knowledge workers out of work. Neil Woodford runs the model live and shows who gets the money when AI does the work.
Brent is through $100 for the first time since July and European gas is back where it ended 2022. The ECB’s response was to raise rates, which will do nothing about either. Plus how much oil is really leaving the Gulf, Chinese trade data that embarrasses the deglobalisers, and the best news of the week.
Chinese models now run more than half the traffic through one developer platform. That is a fact about price, not about customers, and the two are being confused. This is a note that explains what the money in this market says, and where the real risk to the American labs actually sits.
A quiet week with two things in it that matter: more oil is getting out of the Gulf than the blockade models allowed for, and Nvidia’s numbers say the AI build-out is still accelerating.
A friend asked me why markets are so buoyant when everything seems so bad. It was a good question, and the answer is sitting in the UK investment data almost nobody reported this week.
A Hormuz deal that keeps almost arriving, Brent back at $80, and a UK lending dataset saying something very different from the forecasts built on top of it.
The UK has announced $59 billion of data centre investment since 2023, and the National Grid cannot power it. 140 data centres are sitting in the connection queue asking for 50GW; the UK's peak demand this year was 45GW. In this episode of Noise Cancelling, Jon explains how the grid connection queue actually works, and Neil Woodford explains why he believes this is an energy policy failure decades in the making.
Missiles over the Gulf, the AI darlings of 2026 in sharp reverse, a $5.5bn bid nobody noticed – and a tax burden heading somewhere Britain has never been in peacetime
Missiles flew over the Gulf and frontier AI models multiplied, yet oil slipped and markets barely flinched
Anthropic has found a structure inside its own AI that it did not design and cannot fully explain. The headline went to consciousness. The part worth your attention is what it says about who is watching these systems, and whether they can keep up.
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.
Inflation falls, the ECB looks worse, and chip stocks lose their minds
Before the software wins, someone has to build the infrastructure. Understanding where the money actually flows in an AI boom, and why compute, power and physical infrastructure come first, is the prerequisite for reading the investment theses that follow.
From a signed Iran-US peace deal and a tumbling oil price to a $3trn debut for SpaceX, Neil argues the consensus has misread almost all of it, and sets out where he thinks oil, rates, and the AI trade go from here.
A $300bn wave of AI-related IPOs, a cautious read on a rally that has run hard since April, and a contrarian case for why UK interest rates will stay on hold into 2027.
SpaceX has filed for IPO. OpenAI and Anthropic are next. The biggest AI listings in history are about to hit US markets — together worth more than the entire FTSE 100. Most of the coverage frames this as confirmation that the AI boom keeps running. Neil Woodford's view is different: the trade may already be more concentrated than investors realise, and where the money flows from here is the question almost nobody is asking.
Neil Woodford argues the media's 30-year gilt yield panic doesn't stand up to scrutiny, and that Labour's leadership turmoil will matter little to the UK economy.
The Epstein saga rumbles on, AI is quietly reshaping the US labour market, and British Gas says your electricity bill in 2030 will be worse than during the Ukraine crisis. Another week of noise — here's what actually matters.
$1 trillion wiped from software stocks in weeks. If you own a global tracker, S&P 500, or pension fund, you're probably exposed—here's what you need to know about the AI selloff and what to do next.
Ray Dalio warns the monetary order is breaking down. Gold hits all-time highs. ASML & SK Hynix post record earnings. This week on Noise Cancelling, Neil Woodford breaks down what it means for your strategy.
The year may have changed, but the forces shaping markets haven’t. Geopolitics, the AI industrial revolution and intensifying disinflationary pressures continue to define the outlook for 2026 — despite a consensus that remains too gloomy.
Neil walks through his big calls for 2026: the AI industrial revolution, whether China is really “uninvestable”, why he thinks the EU is still a story of missed opportunities, the hidden fragilities in the US, and why he believes the consensus on the UK remains far too gloomy.
Rates are falling, China’s imbalances are growing louder, and Washington is quietly shifting towards an industrial strategy shaped by the AI race with China. Meanwhile the OBR produces yet another forecast that simply doesn’t add up — and UK “AI superpower” rhetoric looks thin next to global chip spending.
A calm political week, but not a quiet one for markets: UK house prices stabilising, US profit margins at sixty-year highs, AI already adding a full percentage point to US growth, and global equities — led quietly by the much-maligned FTSE 100 — pushing back towards all-time highs.
Is AI really a bubble? Is the UK economy broken with a huge “black hole” that forces Rachel Reeves to raise taxes? Is Bitcoin finally dead after the latest crash? In this episode of Noise Cancelling, Neil Woodford takes on the doom-mongers and explains what’s actually going on – and what it means for investors.
Are AI valuations out of control? Are investors blindly following the Mag7? In this episode of Noise Cancelling, Neil Woodford breaks down the real risks in the AI boom, why the S&P 500 is more concentrated than most people realise, and why he believes the consensus has completely misunderstood this moment in markets.
Nvidia just became the world’s first $5 trillion company, but can that kind of dominance really last? In this week’s conversation, Neil Woodford explains why he believes valuation is the financial law of gravity—and why even the strongest markets eventually have to obey it.
Another turbulent week in global politics and markets — from France’s deepening crisis and the US government shutdown to the ONS’s latest data mishap and the ongoing debate around AI market excesses.
Join Neil Woodford and Jon Adair as they discuss the week’s major market developments. In this episode, is an AI bubble forming? Neil unpacks the hype and reality of AI’s economic impact as well as how he's positioned the W4.0 strategies to benefit from the AI industrial revolution without having to accept ludicrous valuations. We also discuss the likelihood that the UK will need an IMF bailout.
Join Neil Woodford and Jon Adair as they discuss the week’s major market developments. In this episode, Neil shares his perspective on Donald Trump’s surprise shift on Ukraine and what it signals for geopolitics and markets. We cover the growing clash over drug pricing in the UK and why major pharma companies are pulling back investment. Neil also explains why he agrees with PIMCO that UK inflation and interest rates could fall faster than consensus expects, and what the $4 trillion wave of AI investment means for future returns — and for investors tempted to trust ChatGPT with their stock picks.
Pimco joins me in forecasting lower UK inflation and rates, while Bailey signals easing ahead. Company updates highlighted Fluence, Kingfisher, Eli Lilly, Alibaba and Micron — from energy resilience and UK retail to drug pricing, AI and semiconductors.
Join Jon Adair and Neil Woodford for this week’s W4.0 Weekly Roundup, where they unpack the surge in UK 30-year gilt yields, debunk the so-called “UK hysteria,” explore France’s political and debt crisis, and analyse Nvidia’s latest earnings and what it means for the AI boom.
Debunking the UK’s £51 billion ‘black hole’ myth, plus France’s budget crisis, gilt yields surge and Nvidia’s latest results.
This week on W4.0, Neil Woodford breaks down the biggest market stories shaping his investment strategies.
This week’s update spans a lot of ground — from Trump’s latest tariff salvo against India and the ongoing debate about their inflationary impact, to a pivotal UK Supreme Court ruling that lifted a cloud over the banking sector. We also look at rate cuts on both sides of the Atlantic, a bidding war for Spectris, a string of strong corporate results, and the extraordinary scale of hyperscaler AI capex plans. As ever, some sectors are buoyant, others are still in recovery — but in both cases, opportunities remain for those willing to look past the headlines.
In this week’s update: Trump’s tariff moves on the EU and China, Powell under pressure, and a brewing energy crisis in Germany. Plus: encouraging signs from China’s economy, data centre mega-investments in the US, UK inflation and regulation, and reactions to company updates from BMW, Barratt, ASML, and Ashmore and others.
AI demand is soaring. Inventories are clearing. Pricing power is returning. And that’s showing up in the numbers — not just in Nvidia, but in less obvious names like STMicro and TSMC.
Nvidia’s CEO just told the UK, to its face, what many of us already knew: we lead the world in research but have failed to build the infrastructure — financial or physical — to turn it into economic success.
US markets are holding up better than expected post-tariffs, but pockets like semiconductors, renewables, and biotech remain deeply undervalued.
Despite the media’s panic, I expect the US economy to hold up well. Early results from semiconductor giants like TSMC and SK Hynix show strength, not collapse — and I think the tariff fears are overdone.
Today, there is more news in the semiconductor sector that will impact several high-profile stocks in the US and Europe.
