Progressive's Gareth Evans and Jeremy McKeown discuss the highlights of the last week in financial markets.

Gold (and other precious metals) move to all-time highs, representing a foot on the brake. What are they worried about? Well, there are emerging risks around credit conditions in private markets and increasing concerns that the AI capex cycle is turning into a fully fledged bubble, one that Jeff Bezos, no less, called a good bubble. Jeremy mentioned the under-reported British Bicycle Bubble of the 1890s. See link for details: https://www.historyhit.com/the-great-british-bicycle-bubble-of-1896/

Trump, the peacemaker, is making progress in the Middle East, but not in time to win this year's Nobel Peace Prize. However, the consequences for any deal could involve much lower oil prices and maybe a disruption to the ascent of precious metals prices.   

Gareth discusses the UK car loan mis-selling update from the FCA, its impact on Vertu Motors and Secure Trust, and this week's results from Beeks Financial Cloud.

Looking forward, the macro news includes trade and inflation data from China, as well as employment and GDP data from the UK.

With the US government shut down, there are question marks over what to expect from the US market or whether the inflation data on October 15th will even be released.

Brought to you by Progressive Equity.