Noise Cancelling with Neil Woodford

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.

In this week's Noise Cancelling, Neil Woodford and Jon Adair break down what's actually inside your S&P 500 tracker, why your MSCI World fund holds the same AI trade, why the KOSPI has quietly become a Samsung and SK Hynix index, and how the cap-weighted index flywheel runs in both directions. They cover the S&P 500 inclusion rules that will keep OpenAI and SpaceX locked out of the index for years, the source-of-funds problem facing the $300 billion of new equity supply, and why Nvidia's record-beating earnings still couldn't lift the share price after hours.

Plus: how this is different from the dotcom bubble, what would change Neil's view, and where he thinks investor attention shifts next — beyond the AI providers, into the companies that deploy AI to transform their own margins.

This week the press is unanimous: Britain is uniquely badly positioned, the IMF says so, and the 30-year gilt yield at 5.8% is proof. The Times, the Telegraph and the FT have all run the same story.

Neil Woodford disagrees.

In this episode, Jon Adair and Neil walk through why the 30-year gilt is the wrong number to look at, why the 10-year — which has been moving in lockstep with US treasuries since 2020 — is what actually matters for UK funding costs, and what the bond market is positioning for when the Iran war ends.

What we cover:
- Why the DMO has cut long-dated gilt issuance by 80% in a single year
- The 10-year UK / US treasury correlation and what's actually changed
- What today's UK Q1 GDP data tells us about IMF projections
- Why fiscal constraints bind every prime minister, regardless of who's in office
- Where rates go when the Iran war ends
- Why the markets are still at all-time highs

Forget China. The biggest economic imbalance in the world right now is between America and Europe. In 2008, the EU was the same size as the US. Today it is 41% smaller.

This week, Neil Woodford and Jon Adair go through the €220bn surplus the financial press isn't covering, the European savings paradox Brussels can't explain, and why a Labour push to rejoin the EU would be one of the worst economic decisions Britain has made in 50 years.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a recent IIF audience that China's $1 trillion trade surplus is the central global imbalance. The maths says he is looking in the wrong place. Europe's surplus with the US is the harder one to explain (a continent with the most generous safety net in the world saving like it has none) and the only one with a realistic chance of being addressed.

Mario Draghi published 383 recommendations to fix the European economy in September 2024. Two years later, only 11% have been implemented. Neil walks through what this means for Europe, for the UK, and for anyone thinking about the UK rejoining the EU.

🔗 Links & Resources
- Earlier episode on Europe's energy vulnerability: https://youtu.be/-LypKyR2B8A?si=qSvcLXoCQdnNWXad 
- Neil's blog on Brexit (November 2025): https://www.woodfordviews.com/post/brexit-a-convenient-and-popular-scapegoat 
- Mario Draghi report (September 2024): https://commission.europa.eu/topics/competitiveness/draghi-report_en

Brent jumped 7% yesterday to over $120. The consensus says oil is heading higher and the UK is heading into stagflation. We think the consensus is wrong about oil — and wrong in two directions at once.

Underneath this week's headlines, two mechanisms are working against the prevailing narrative. The blockade of Iran is doing exactly what it was designed to do — Iranian storage is filling, wells will have to shut, and the regime is losing $400 million a day in revenue. At the same time, OPEC is fragmenting in public. The UAE has walked out. Russia's finance minister has gone on the record telling his own budget to brace for lower prices. And the question of whether Saudi Arabia eventually follows the UAE is now genuinely on the table.

In this episode of The Noise Cancelling Podcast, Neil Woodford and Jon Adair walk through how the war actually ends, why losing the UAE breaks OPEC's pricing power, what happens when the blockade and the cartel collide, and why the Bank of England's decision today maps onto exactly the view we've been arguing for weeks. Neil's medium-term view: the structural pull is downward. Brent could trade well below $50 a barrel.

About The Noise Cancelling Podcast

A weekly investment show that cuts through the noise of financial markets. Neil Woodford and Jon Adair on what the headlines miss and what it means for your money.

Every major UK forecaster — the IMF, Capital Economics, EY Item Club, KPMG — has downgraded Britain's growth for 2026 and blamed the energy shock. Neil Woodford thinks every one of them is wrong. Not about the numbers. About the diagnosis.

In this week's Noise Cancelling, Jon and Neil break down why the consensus is panicking about the wrong thing. The energy shock everyone is worried about? Absorbable. The £192 billion household savings buffer nobody's modelling? Real. And the actual drag on the UK economy — the one every forecaster is ignoring — has nothing to do with oil, gas or the price cap.

We cover the petrol arithmetic (every 5p at the pump costs the UK consumer £1bn a year), why cancelled overseas holidays might actually boost British GDP (the £54bn travel deficit nobody talks about), and the fiscal story that changes everything — UK tax receipts at 40.1% of GDP versus 35.5% under the last Labour government, a £140bn annual increase that's bigger than the entire budget deficit.

Neil's conclusion: the Bank of England needs to cut rates, and they need to cut them now. The Chancellor's "iron rules" are a fiscal illusion built on tax rises, not spending discipline. And the next three weeks — the MPC's May decision and Ofgem's Q3 cap announcement on 27 May — will set the direction of the UK economy for the rest of the year.

🎧 ABOUT THE NOISE CANCELLING PODCAST
Weekly UK macro and investment analysis with Neil Woodford — over 35 years of UK fund management experience — and Jon Adair. We cut through the consensus noise to explain what's actually happening in the global economy, and what it means for you.

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⚠️ This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this episode constitutes financial advice. Always do your own research or consult a qualified financial adviser before making investment decisions.

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