Key Takeaways

Mitchell argues "lazy" index exposure is now one concentrated AI bet. An 80% allocation to the MSCI global index, he says, "is making one big bet on this AI outcome," and even the MSCI Emerging Markets index is now "50% a bet on semiconductors" once Samsung, SK Hynix and TSMC are counted, which he calls "not your mother's emerging market portfolio."

He thinks the Fed will deliver fewer cuts than markets expect. "I don't think Kevin Warsh has as many hikes in his armory as the short-term interest rate markets expect," he says, and is similarly skeptical that three or more cuts materialize over the next 12 to 18 months.

Most pockets of US equities look expensive to him. Over half the S&P 500 by market cap trades above 10 times sales, he notes, "a tough starting point" for decent returns over a three-to-ten-year horizon, leading him to favor the equal-weighted index over concentrated tech exposure.

He sees gold's recent weakness as temporary, not structural. The sellers have mostly been forced sellers needing cash, not conviction investors capitulating, and he expects "people will work out that they can turn gold into energy and sovereign resilience commodities probably easier than they can sell a treasury."

He is building a portfolio explicitly designed to survive 20 years. Working through ten competing scenarios for the world in 2046, quality screens and valuation discipline, he has so far completed financials and resources, deliberately waiting on the outcome of a major AI lab's IPO before tackling technology.

Your Portfolio Is One Big AI Bet: Rupert Mitchell on Hidden Index Concentration

Most investors who think they have diversified by holding a global index fund may actually be making one single bet. "The lazy index exposure has never been more focused on a single bet than it has done right now," says Rupert Mitchell, a global macro investor who spent decades in investment banking across Asia and emerging markets, in a conversation with Wealthion. His point, in short: whether you hold US stocks or what you think is a diversified emerging-markets sleeve, your portfolio is one big AI bet. From there his case extends into the Federal Reserve, gold, energy and a from-scratch attempt to build a portfolio meant to survive the next 20 years. These are his attributed, independent views, not investment advice.

Is my portfolio secretly one big AI bet?

Mitchell's answer is yes, and he means it literally, not just about US tech. "Let's say you think you've diversified and you've got an 80% allocation to the MSCI global ACWI," he says, "you're making one big bet on this AI outcome right now." Even an investor who believes they have hedged that exposure through emerging markets is not escaping it: "the MSCI emerging markets is 50% a bet on semiconductors right now," once Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, TSMC and others are counted, which he summarizes bluntly as "that is not your mother's emerging market portfolio." The practical implication, in his view, is that what looks like diversification on paper is, in practice, a single concentrated wager on one outcome playing out. For a related look at index composition, see Wealthion's piece on why the index is not what it used to be.

Are international stocks a good investment right now?

Partly as a consequence of that concentration problem, Mitchell also argues there is more value outside US equities specifically. "I think there's much more value outside of US equities right now," he says, a view he has held "for the best part of the last two years." His reasoning goes beyond valuation: he expects continued financial repression globally and a slow reallocation of capital that has concentrated in US tech, which he calls a "pig in a python moment" once it starts, benefiting markets in places like Japan, the Gulf states and continental Europe. He also points out that government spending, not just earnings, drives equity performance, and that many non-US governments have far more fiscal room left than the US does.

Will the Fed deliver as many cuts as markets expect?

Mitchell is skeptical. He argues markets are pricing an overly hawkish path and that "I don't think Kevin Warsh has as many hikes in his armory as the short-term interest rate markets expect," adding that he would be "very surprised" if the three-plus cuts priced into futures markets over the next 12 to 18 months actually materialize. His underlying argument is that large parts of the economy outside AI-related spending cannot support current front-end rates, and that the strong nominal GDP narrative rests heavily on hyperscaler capital spending whose true returns, in his view, have not yet been proven out. For the Fed backdrop, see Wealthion's coverage of the Fed's rate decision and how experts are positioning.

Is gold's pullback temporary or structural?

Temporary, according to Mitchell, though he is careful to separate the near-term technical picture from his long-term view. He still holds a core allocation to gold and expects it meaningfully higher over the rest of the decade, but says the recent weakness reflects forced selling, not a change of heart: the sellers have largely been people needing cash for bills, not value investors throwing in the towel, which he connects to pressure some sovereign and retail holders have faced since a bout of geopolitical uncertainty began in late February. He also raises a provocative idea tied to the "weaponization" of Treasuries after the Russia-Ukraine war: if a government can no longer reliably convert Treasuries into energy, he argues, "people will work out that they can turn gold into energy and sovereign resilience commodities probably easier than they can sell a treasury." He is careful to add that the US dollar will remain a dominant reserve asset for decades, and that this is a story about hedging at the margin, not de-dollarization. For more on this debate, see Wealthion's explainer on what would actually have to happen for the dollar to lose reserve status and why gold corrected from its record.

Why does he favor energy equities?

Because of what he calls the "China collar" on oil prices. Mitchell argues that China, despite producing almost none of its own crude, has become unusually important to the marginal pricing of oil by building large stockpiles and voluntarily stepping back from the market at times, effectively creating a floor and a cap on the price. With both tail risks reduced, he argues energy exploration and production spending becomes easier to underwrite, which is why he considers energy equities, only about 3.5% of the S&P 500 today, likely to carry a much larger index weight over time. He discloses that over half of the limited US equity exposure in his own portfolio is in energy or energy-related names. Related reading: what an oil shock does to inflation and the Fed.

How is he building a portfolio to last 20 years?

As an explicit thought experiment that is gradually becoming a real allocation. Mitchell says he deliberately avoided looking at stock charts and instead mapped out ten competing, sometimes overlapping scenarios for the world in 2046, from an "intelligence abundance" scenario to one where "these AI economics don't math out," layered against his own base case that economic deglobalization (reshoring and nearshoring, which he considers inflationary) is more likely than a return to broad globalization. He then screens individual businesses for quality, specifically consistent returns on invested capital, capital-allocation discipline and durable competitive moats, before applying a valuation discipline comparing current multiples with their own historical trading ranges. So far he has only completed the financials and resources sectors; he is deliberately waiting for a major AI lab's initial public offering before tackling technology, since he considers that event a key signpost for whether the current AI infrastructure spending can be underwritten by real, demanding public-market capital rather than private marks. (Disclosure: within resources, he names a specific personal holding, a major diversified mining and commodity-trading company, as his largest individual position, explicitly stating "not financial advice"; this is presented here as his disclosed personal holding and example, not a Wealthion recommendation.) As always on Wealthion, these are Mitchell's attributed, independent views, not advice.

What Investors Should Watch

• Index composition, not just index diversification: how concentrated a "diversified" fund actually is in AI and semiconductors.
• The Fed's actual rate path versus futures-market pricing: the gap Mitchell expects to show up over the next 12 to 18 months.
• Gold's buyer-versus-seller dynamics: whether current weakness is forced selling or a genuine change in conviction.
• Energy's weight in major indexes: currently around 3.5% of the S&P 500, which he expects to grow.
• Capital-market signposts for AI spending: a major AI lab's IPO, which he treats as a key test of whether infrastructure spending is genuinely investable.

FAQ

Is my portfolio secretly one big AI bet? Rupert Mitchell argues it likely is, whether you hold US stocks or what you think is a diversified emerging-markets allocation. An 80% global-index allocation is "making one big bet on this AI outcome," and even the MSCI Emerging Markets index is roughly 50% semiconductor exposure once Samsung, SK Hynix and TSMC are counted, "not your mother's emerging market portfolio."

Are international stocks a good investment right now? Mitchell thinks so, arguing there is "much more value outside of US equities right now," a view tied to global financial repression, slow capital reallocation away from concentrated US tech exposure, and more fiscal room in several non-US economies.

Will the Fed cut rates as much as markets expect? Mitchell doubts it, arguing the bond market's hawkish pricing underestimates how many parts of the economy outside AI spending cannot support current rates, and that three or more cuts over the next 12 to 18 months look unlikely to him.

Is gold's recent weakness temporary? Mitchell believes it is. He attributes the selling mainly to forced sellers needing cash rather than a genuine loss of conviction, and still holds a core long-term gold allocation.

Which expert and interview does this article reference? This article draws on Wealthion's interview with global macro investor Rupert Mitchell.

If you want a professional read on how concentrated your own portfolio really is, and how global diversification might fit alongside it, you can request a free portfolio review from an advisor who understands real assets at wealthion.com/advisors.

Full Transcript

Speakers: Maggie Lake (Wealthion host) and Rupert Mitchell (global macro investor). ASR errors corrected (names, terms, company names) and filler removed; meaning preserved. A mid-interview Wealthion membership message has been noted rather than reproduced. References to a major AI lab's IPO and leadership are kept factual and attributed, consistent with Wealthion's even-handed treatment of all companies discussed, including Anthropic.

Rupert Mitchell (cold open): Most pockets of the US equity markets feel very expensive for me. What if all of these AI economics don't math out? The lazy index exposure has never been more focused on a single bet than it has done right now. I think there's much more value outside of US equities right now.

Maggie Lake: Hi Rupert, welcome to Wealthion.

Rupert Mitchell: Hi Maggie, how are you?

Maggie Lake: I'm doing well. I'm happy to catch up with you. You're usually in Australia, but the time change is in our favor because you're in the UK right now. So I'm really anxious to get your thoughts on these markets.

Rupert Mitchell: The lazy index exposure has never been more focused on a single bet than it has done right now. Let's say you think you've diversified and you've got an 80% allocation to the MSCI global ACWI, you're making one big bet on this AI outcome right now. Even if you think, well, I've got a sleeve in emerging markets, the MSCI emerging markets is 50% a bet on semiconductors right now, once you take into account Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and TSMC plus a bunch of others, that is not your mother's emerging market portfolio.

Maggie Lake: You are trying to build a portfolio to withstand the next 20 years, which I think really speaks to our audience who are so concerned about so much of what's going on. We're going to talk a little bit about your process, but first give me your sense of what's happening in markets. What do you make of the action we've seen, particularly when it comes to global bonds? They seem to be sending off some signals.

Rupert Mitchell: Listen, I'll be very honest. I am not a great lover of OECD fixed income as an asset class and haven't been for more than five years. In terms of constructing my own portfolios, I've really been seeking out bond replacements over the years. But in the last couple of weeks, for the first time in a long while, I have started to add some exposure in shorter-duration Treasuries, two-year notes specifically. My personal view is that, notwithstanding how short-term interest rate futures markets are pricing the next year or so, I don't think Kevin Warsh has as many hikes in his armory as the short-term interest rate markets expect. I think there are so many parts of the economy that can't support higher front-end rates, and I think they'll make themselves heard quite soon. Yes, we've got this strong nominal GDP narrative, largely thanks to the phenomenal spending spree that hyperscalers and others have been on with AI data centers, but even they fund a lot of this capex at the front of the curve, and I think the runway is pretty narrow. We just saw today that another dove has been appointed as advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, David Zervos, the Jefferies strategist, is leaving Jefferies to do that. I think there is an overly hawkish outlook priced into the bond market right now.

Maggie Lake: Are we underestimating the government's role in all this? If the US government ultimately wants bond yields down, is that what they're going to get?

Rupert Mitchell: Listen, I think ultimately bond yields will come down. It's just, what does the landscape look like within that outcome? Do bond yields come down because there's an accident in the economy? Do they come down through some form of financial repression? What does that look like, and where does gold go there? I don't think you can answer that question without answering a bunch of others.

Maggie Lake: So, it's interesting. I've just come back from a wonderful weekend hanging out with some great macro thinkers around the world.

Rupert Mitchell: I know a lot of them, they're self-described misfits. But there is a narrative within consensus, grown-up fixed-income circles, that growth is great and nominal GDP is fantastic, but it's so concentrated around a specific area of the economy that the rest, to my mind, is incapable of supporting these kinds of rates. And the assumption behind the GDP growth is that hyperscaler capex continues indefinitely; I don't believe the true returns on invested capital from that spending have been proven out. I'd be very surprised if the three or more cuts priced into futures markets over the next 12 to 18 months actually play out.

Maggie Lake: What does that mean for US equities? You always come at things with a very global view, having spent decades in investment banking across Asia and emerging markets. Is there a big repricing in front of us, or do lower yields help?

Rupert Mitchell: Most pockets of the US equity markets feel very expensive for me, especially in a higher-rate environment. Over half the S&P 500 by market cap trades above 10 times sales; historically, that's a tough starting point for decent returns over a three-to-ten-year horizon. So I don't find a great deal of value in US equities overall. But I also recognize it's been such a great party for domestic assets that we'd need several years of underperformance versus the rest of the world before a lot of that capital leaves. My favorite expression right now is to be long the equal weight, the RSP, versus the Triple Qs. I started that position back in June; it did well initially, then round-tripped most of those gains in the last couple of weeks as a wave of AI-agent enthusiasm chased up names like Meta, and Apple, at 40 times earnings, started acting like a safe port in the storm. September has been a very tough market to trade, with a lot of crosscurrents and geopolitics layered on top, momentum hockey sticks and mini blowups rather than a clean, familiar cycle. Gold, the port in the storm everyone expected, has instead been hammered by higher yields.

Maggie Lake: I think the problem with gold is that it's everybody's piggy bank for a rainy day, and there's been a lot of rainy-day action this year.

Rupert Mitchell: If you look at ex-China sovereign holders and ex-China and India retail, the marginal large-scale owner of gold has been a seller, due to geopolitical uncertainty that began in late February. I still hold a core allocation to gold and expect it much higher over the balance of the decade and beyond, but tactically it's a case of more sellers than buyers right now, and those sellers haven't been value investors throwing in the towel, they're people who need to sell something to pay bills.

Maggie Lake: You sell your winners, which is the risk, especially with so much leverage in the system; I don't think we've seen the tip of the iceberg on margin calls yet.

Rupert Mitchell: Or are they selling gold because they've been asked not to sell Treasuries? That echoes the foreign-exchange intervention we saw, and a lot of people reading into how concerned the US Treasury Secretary was about Japan selling Treasuries to intervene in its own currency market. If you can no longer reliably convert Treasuries into energy, the old petrodollar pact, that changes how people think going forward. Ultimately I think the dip in gold is temporary, because people will work out that they can turn gold into energy and sovereign-resilience commodities probably easier than they can sell a Treasury.

Maggie Lake: That's a huge statement, a big change.

Rupert Mitchell: Well, it all started with the weaponization of Treasuries around the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022.

Maggie Lake: I want to stay on this, because people have camps on it. Some say that was ideologically a turning point, but argue the reality of leaving the dollar and Treasury system is much harder given the liquidity involved. Do you not buy that it's hard to replace?

Rupert Mitchell: I completely buy that the US dollar will remain a significant reserve asset for decades to come. But markets are made at the margin, and at the margin there's a growing propensity to hedge bets among sovereigns worldwide. I'm nowhere near saying the renminbi becomes an alternative reserve asset, I'm just saying global players are starting to hedge.

Maggie Lake: It was a strange news cycle around the Xi-Trump summit, partly because of tension with the press and attention on the Iran conflict at the UN General Assembly. Is it a good sign for markets that we didn't hear much out of that summit? Do investors care?

Rupert Mitchell: I'm not surprised there weren't fireworks; China has real leverage here. Through building large storage and sheer force of will, China has become significantly important to the marginal pricing of crude oil, despite producing almost none domestically, which is remarkable. A big reason we're not seeing worse outcomes globally is that China voluntarily stepped back from buying crude when this conflict began. I call this the "China collar": a put and call forming around the spot price of Brent. Removing both tail risks makes energy equities far easier to underwrite for the long term, since exploration capex can be justified with an effective floor in the high 70s to low 80s on oil. A credible cap also prices out the kind of capital misallocation we saw in the shale boom, when pipeline operators overbuilt capacity. Energy is only about 3.5% of the S&P 500 today; I think that weight goes a lot higher. I don't own much US equity exposure right now, but over half of what I do own is energy-related, and that China collar is why.

[Wealthion membership message noted.]

Maggie Lake: That's interesting, because the idea that you can forecast a price range and remove the boom-bust element matters a lot for capital allocation, in energy and mining alike. That leads into this 20-year portfolio project. How did you set that framework up for yourself?

Rupert Mitchell: The first thing to say is this is a thought exercise that will become an actual portfolio sleeve, but underwriting a mosaic of outcomes out to 2046 is an ambitious task.

Maggie Lake: That's an understatement, Rupert.

Rupert Mitchell: The exercise matters to me because so much of the noise in equity markets is driven by very short time horizons, a lot of the marginal capital moved by pod shops is trading this quarter, or at a stretch a couple of quarters out, which creates noise for long-term allocators. I'm a fundamentals guy at heart, I care about the price I pay, but I also use technical analysis to time entries. One deliberate choice with this "20 stocks for 20 years" project was not to look at a chart at all, since I don't think enough investors look at stocks on a two-decade horizon to meaningfully shape the chart's own signal.

So I started by imagining ten scenarios, sometimes overlapping or competing, for what the world might look like in 20 years. One: a world of intelligence abundance where digital cognition is cheap, and in that world, who owns distribution, trust, data and the right to act? On the flip side: what if these AI economics simply don't math out? Another: my own base case is that we're on an accelerating path of economic deglobalization, which I think of as reshoring and nearshoring, and which I consider genuinely inflationary, versus the alternative where Francis Fukuyama's "end of history" turns out right after all and the world re-globalizes. I'm about 70 to 80% in the deglobalization camp, though I have to model the alternative too; I entered the job market in 1994, very much a child of that Fukuyama-era optimism, and my friends and I used to laugh at our fathers poring over junior gold-mining reports warning that monetary irresponsibility would end badly. With 30 years of hindsight, I probably should have listened more closely, though we had a good run.

From there I underwrite individual stocks against the scenarios where they wouldn't get wiped out, then run them through a quality screen, since only good businesses survive 20 years, looking at returns on invested capital, whether they could sustain something like a 10% nominal return through the cycle, and finally valuation against their own historical trading ranges. A good example: under most 2046 scenarios, copper exposure looks like a no-brainer, but finding a copper stock that isn't already expensive is harder. I did find one. I'll name it, a major diversified mining and trading company, it's my largest personal position, not financial advice, but it works well in a fragmented geopolitical world: a strong copper story backed by a seaborne coal business that effectively comes for free, plus a trading arm that acts as an arbitrageur across that fragmented world, while still doing fine if Fukuyama turns out to be right after all.

That's how I approached resources. Financials turned out differently: my original pitch went stale over a single weekend once a major tech platform launched an AI agent app, which got me thinking about a world where AI personal-finance bots hunt for the best deposit rate or mortgage with zero friction. Right now, roughly $23 trillion sits in bank deposits earning 0% in a 4.5% cash-rate world, worth about $170 billion in net interest income to commercial banks globally. The core value of a bank is its cheap deposit franchise, and that funding supports credit creation and growth. If AI agents start shopping deposits around for a few extra basis points, that's a real threat to bank margins and a reason to be bearish on them long term. But banks are also important to governments funding deficits, so I expect real regulatory effort to protect deposit franchises precisely so banks can keep absorbing government debt issuance. More broadly, in a world where AI makes cash itself highly mobile, the safest long-term bets in financials look like the toll booths that remain regardless, exchanges, regulated data providers, assuming prediction markets don't meaningfully erode their captive flow, something I think is less likely than people fear.

Maggie Lake: I want to stay on process for a second, because this really matters. We live in a narrative-driven world, and it's easy to grab one compelling thread, like the AI story, without stress-testing the scenarios that might not play out. We had Tom Lee on recently, and his view was that most people are simply bad growth investors, which is part of why there's so much negativity.

Rupert Mitchell: I think that's partly right, but there's more to it. You have to know your own weaknesses, I consider myself a poor momentum investor, so I outsource about 15% of my broader portfolio to trend-following strategies, since I think those systematic approaches are better at that than I am. It's funny, 2006 still feels recent to both of us, I remember exactly where I was. If I ran the same 20-stocks exercise from 2006, would I have gotten it right? Absolutely not, I'd likely have bought mobile-phone stocks without foreseeing the margin shift to software, over-allocated to resources on the assumption that China's fixed-asset boom would run forever (which would have worked until 2008, then endured a brutal 15-year drawdown), and probably loaded up on financials like Citigroup and AIG, which felt fine in 2006 and terrible two years later.

Maggie Lake: People genuinely did that, for good reasons at the time, and then the world changed. That's exactly why we talk so much about resilience now, because the old lessons from the financial crisis showed how narratives that felt certain could still blindside everyone.

Rupert Mitchell: Exactly, and the whole point of mapping this mosaic 20 years out is trying to see a little further around that corner. I'm deliberately taking my time, I've only finished financials and resources so far. I'm waiting on the outcome of a major AI lab's IPO process before attempting technology, because I think that will be a real signpost for whether the AI infrastructure build can be underwritten by genuine public-market capital rather than private marks. Private valuations in the trillions are one thing, a convertible-preference term sheet can flatter any number, but an IPO means real cash paying a real multiple in size on a single day, which requires broad buy-in, especially given how much spending the AI labs are underwriting across the semiconductor and memory complex. Until there's more visibility there, I think it would be imprudent to make big technology bets ahead of that signpost.

Maggie Lake: It's notable that, as we speak, one AI lab's CEO is meeting President Trump at the White House, other AI leaders are headed there too, and Bill Gates has added his voice to concerns about an unregulated buildout. We're living in an era where headlines about existential AI risk appear almost daily. Given how central government has become to financials in your framework, is government also a swing factor for AI, as risk or as support?

Rupert Mitchell: It's critical, and the reason it matters so much to politicians is that AI spending is currently underwriting a large share of nominal GDP growth. Do I think we end up with one or two dominant "Skynet"-style models controlling global AI outcomes? I think that's spectacularly unlikely, the idea that the rest of the world would accept one or two closed, dominant models controlling economic outcomes for a century doesn't hold up, and politicians, who think in two-or-three-quarter election cycles, don't want this to slow down on their watch. My sense is that large corporations and governments will increasingly want to own their own data rather than repeat the SaaS and cloud era, where many companies effectively became hostages to a handful of platforms, this time with even higher stakes since the software itself now has agency. I'm even looking at running my own open-source model for my own small business. If I'm thinking that way, large law firms, accounting firms and Fortune 500 companies almost certainly are too. So the idea of a lasting oligopoly among a small number of major AI labs holding a stranglehold on intelligence seems unlikely to me.

Maggie Lake: So politicians, like short-term traders, prioritize the near term, while the longer-term economic logic actually favors more diversification across AI providers rather than less.

Rupert Mitchell: Right. Politics drives short-term thinking in general, and right now, oddly, polling suggests people would rather have a nuclear plant in their backyard than an AI data center, which I find somewhat absurd, not because I think nuclear is unsafe, I'm a strong believer in nuclear and in more energy capacity generally, but because it shows how reflexively a "box of servers" has become a political bogeyman, on a genuinely bipartisan basis.

Maggie Lake: That's one of the few things everyone agrees on. When you talk about "good businesses" in this exercise, do you simply mean well-managed companies?

Rupert Mitchell: You can't really underwrite a specific management team over 20 years, but you can look at a consistent track record on returns on invested capital, how disciplined capital allocation has been, whether buybacks happen at sensible multiples rather than just to offset stock-based compensation, and the durability of a company's actual economic moat, is it constantly fighting to defend market share, or genuinely structurally protected. In resources specifically, jurisdiction matters enormously, a royalty-style mining business can look attractive on the numbers but carry far more jurisdictional risk than a well-chosen miner operating in Canada, say.

Maggie Lake: Does building a 20-year portfolio require genuine global diversification, beyond the "there is no alternative to the US" framing we've debated?

Rupert Mitchell: I think there's much more value outside US equities right now, and I've felt that way for roughly two years. It isn't purely a valuation call, it's about where global savings get redirected over time. I expect meaningful financial repression in various forms over the coming years, and if capital that's been parked in the Nasdaq for 15 years starts rotating toward places like the Netherlands, Japan or the Gulf states, that's a genuine "pig in the python" flow event. Geopolitics also affects the rest of the world more than it affects the US. And here's the part people underplay: equity markets tend to rise where governments are spending, and on a relative basis the rest of the world has been far more fiscally disciplined than the US, which has gone through a period of fiscal abundance and is arguably now pushing on a string, whereas renewed government spending in places like Germany, Italy or South Korea could move those local equity markets meaningfully.

Maggie Lake: Before I let you go, I want to ask about Europe specifically, since fiscal expansion there could really show up in GDP. Early this year, cheaper valuations had people cautiously positive on Europe, but there's renewed concern given political strain from both the populist left and right, stressed bond markets, and demographics. Some people doubt Europe holds together through this. Are you more constructive, or do you share that concern?

Rupert Mitchell: I have no doubt Europe faces multiple political crises over the next decade or more, but I also think it remains a deeply significant economic bloc whose own self-preservation instincts tend to produce the right outcome when it's truly needed, like most political systems historically have. Populism across the continent is, in practice, pushing toward more fiscal spending, and provided there's enough buying power to keep long-end yields anchored, I'd expect that spending to show up in stronger regional equity markets over time, with bumps along the way. Europe's fiscal capacity is simply larger than America's right now, deficits there are already at extreme levels, while the rest of the world has been comparatively restrained, and that fiscal expansion elsewhere is still ahead of us, not behind us.

Maggie Lake: Fantastic conversation, Rupert. I really enjoy your Substack and how you think about markets. This kind of framework matters so much right now, when everyone is looking for resilience and trying to preserve real wealth in a turbulent environment. We can't wait to see what you come up with on technology.

Rupert Mitchell: That's a tough nut to crack for this squirrel, but why not, I love a challenge.

Maggie Lake: Come back and give us an update.

Rupert Mitchell: Please. Thank you so much.

Maggie Lake: Thanks, Rupert.

This article is educational and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. It does not recommend any security. Advisory services are provided by Greylock Peak Investments, LLC, a subsidiary of Wealthion. Wealthion is compensated for advisor introductions; see the Solicitor's Disclosure Document, ADV Part 2A and Form CRS. That arrangement does not influence editorial coverage.