Episode 74
Why Gold Is Soaring and the US Dollar Is Losing Its Grip: Decoding Today’s Financial Growth Trends
Gold is reclaiming its spotlight. Prices have leapt sharply, and demand is spilling beyond financial instruments into tangible bullion. Global politics, currency swings, and market volatility are colliding in a mix that feels both chaotic and strangely familiar. Amid the relentless news cycle, distinct patterns are emerging: a revived fascination with gold, growing doubts over the US dollar’s dominance, and a long‑anticipated revival in non‑US markets.
In this episode of Expat Wealth, Richard Taylor – dual UK/US citizen, Chartered Financial Planner, and experienced International Wealth Advisor – is joined by Brian Dunhill – founder of Dunhill Financial – to discuss the new phase in the global economy: the American dollar’s dominance being gently eroded, non‑US markets are finally having their moment, AI is changing workflows more than it’s destroying jobs (so far), and for expats and cross‑border families, thoughtful Cross-Border Financial Planning is more important than ever.
In this episode, Richard and Brian take a detailed look at:
Why gold and silver have surged, and why they should be seen as trades rather than long‑term investments.
The political devaluation of the US dollar, what a weaker dollar means, and how expats should think about currency risk.
The gradual decoupling from the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and how China and others are positioning themselves.
The outperformance of International Wealth and emerging markets vs the US, and why Brian thinks this is part of a bigger structural shift, not a flash in the pan.
The AI investment boom, the “magnificent seven,” and whether large language models are truly transformative or just efficiency tools.
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Expat Wealth is supported by Plan First Wealth. Plan First Wealth is a Registered Investment Advisor serving fellow expatriates and immigrants living across the US on matters such as retirement planning, investment management, tax planning and non-US asset management.
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Expat Wealth is affiliated with Plan First Wealth LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Plan First Wealth.
Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial adviser and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Plan First Wealth does not provide any tax and/or legal advice and strongly recommends that listeners seek their own advice in these areas.
ABOUT RICHARD:
Richard Taylor is a British expat, dual citizen (UK & US). Originally from Bolton, he now lives in Greenwich, CT, where Plan First Wealth has its head office.
As the firm’s leader, Richard launched Taylor & Taylor, now Plan First Wealth, and continues to fuel the firm’s growth. Richard is a Chartered Financial Planner (UK – CII) in addition to holding the IMC (CFA UK) and Series 65 (US – FINRA).
Connect with Richard on LinkedIn
Brian Dunhill:
[00:00:00 – 00:00:27]
We never talked about devaluing a currency in such a political way before. It was kings, I think it was. Henry VIII used to shave off a piece of the sterling. So basically the coins just got smaller and smaller and that’s how they devalued currencies. But this was a concerted effort to get the voters to do so. Right now we’re more on the dollar standard. We don’t have a gold standard. The rimimi is not ready to be the global currency.
Richard Taylor:
[00:00:27 – 00:00:28]
No.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:00:28 – 00:00:35]
They would want to wait some time before they go ahead and devalue their reserves by selling off.
Richard Taylor:
[00:00:35 – 00:00:40]
Do you think they’re positioning themselves, though, to be the global currency for a subset of countries?
Brian Dunhill:
[00:00:40 – 00:01:11]
They state that it had nothing to do with Greenland. It just happened to be that they see no economic value in it. And then the news item for the last couple of weeks has been, if every European country and every European corporation and every European individual dumps their US treasuries, that’s 12% of US treasuries. 12%. Trump retaliated by saying, I will put on tariffs on all your countries if you dump our Treasuries. So he wants to devalue the dollar, but he doesn’t want to devalue it that much.
Richard Taylor:
[00:01:15 – 00:02:23]
Welcome to Expat Wealth, a Plan first wealth podcast dedicated to helping ambitious expatriates in America and Americans overseas thrive. I’m your host, Richard Taylor, and Plan first wealth is the business I founded and run today and we work with successful expatriates, immigrants and internationally minded Americans to make the most of opportunity and avoid the expat landmines. First, a quick disclaimer. While Plan First Wealth LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor, the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the the views and positions of Plan First Wealth. Information presented is for educational purposes only. Now, if you aren’t already receiving our emails, please go to our website, planfirstwealth.com and sign up there. It’s free and you’ll be notified every time we drop a new episode and so much more. Okay, let’s get back to this week’s show. Welcome back to macroaggressions. This is a show where myself and my friend Brian Dunhill get together and try to make sense of what’s going in the world from an economic and investment perspective, but through a cross border. Len. Hi, Brian. Welcome back.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:02:23 – 00:02:27]
Great to see you, Richard. We’re going to make sense of this. I thought we were going to make Fun of this.
Richard Taylor:
[00:02:27 – 00:02:38]
Well, you’re going to make fun of it. I’m going to try and make sense of it for everyone. That’s a dynamic. Right. Let’s get into it. Lots to talk about. Lots going on in the world. As ever, we live in. We live in crazy times. Right.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:02:39 – 00:02:51]
It’s going to be a crazy year. It’s going to be a crazy couple of years. And we’ve had absolutely nothing but news every single day. I mean, it’s like they’re trying to distract us from something in the background.
Richard Taylor:
[00:02:52 – 00:03:02]
What could that be? That’s not going away. And it is, it is a. Oh, it’s tawdry, it’s awful and it just keeps getting worse.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:03:03 – 00:03:19]
It is one of those aspects that it is going to tear down some major political and business fronts. The question is which ones are going to go down and which ones are going to manage to get through this. But they’re doing a good job of distracting us from it as well.
Richard Taylor:
[00:03:19 – 00:03:27]
Well, it’s taken down some big names already. And what’s. I think what’s. What’s spinning everyone out is it. It looks like it could take up down a prime minister who’s not even in the files.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:03:27 – 00:03:34]
Exactly. And yet we have to sit there and kind of shrug our shoulders and say, are they just looking for something to tear him down?
Richard Taylor:
[00:03:34 – 00:03:35]
Yeah, yeah.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:03:35 – 00:03:39]
I think the only reason he stands a chance is because nobody wants to stand up in place of him.
Richard Taylor:
[00:03:39 – 00:04:06]
I heard a crazy stat on the podcast the other day. The last time a prime minister won a general election and then went on to contest the next general election was 2001. Tony Blair question is, are we as in the UK turning into, you know, Europe where it’s just a constant stream of like, government falls new prime minister, government falls new prime minister. 2001, that’s a sobering start.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:04:06 – 00:04:18]
I think Japan’s even worse than most of the European countries. They’ve had constant turnover. I know we’ve discussed demographics many a times Europe and the UK Are kind of following in Japan’s demographics, but what if we’re following in their politics too?
Richard Taylor:
[00:04:19 – 00:04:46]
You know, the more I learn about the U. S System is so different and the, the four year term, each president gets the stability on the one hand, the certainty of that is I think, a benefit. But obviously the flexibility that you get from a European style, British style system also has benefits. Like, you know, just, I guess the old, the older I get, the more I realize just how kind of imperfect all these man made systems are. And there is no Perfect.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:04:46 – 00:06:17]
There is no perfect. But I think the best example that I ever got of the contra contrast between the slow and efficient exact style of the Europeans versus the fast break things mentality of American politics was in Lincoln’s biography. Lincoln was obsessed with trains. Then he became obsessed with building a train from New York to San Francisco. And at the same time the first international train was being built in Europe from a little town in Belgium called Liege up to Cologne, which is no distance at all. It took them the same amount of time to build that short distance as it did for the Americans to build a train from New York to San Francisco. The main reason why was the train from New York to San Francisco. They had two public companies. Whichever company built the railroad would get 50 miles to either the north or the south of the railroad. So naturally it was build it fast. As long as you can get the actual goods across, you can rebuild it later. So just go as fast as you can to get your 50 miles. In Belgium, Germany, it was all about building the perfect rail until you got there. And it took him the same amount of time to build those two pieces. And it’s not to say one’s right and one’s wrong. It explains some of the craziness in politics and, and in companies of how they do business, move fast, break things in America and the very exact ways over here in Europe.
Richard Taylor:
[00:06:18 – 00:06:23]
And yet now you look at the amount of high speed railway America has compared to just France.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:06:23 – 00:06:29]
If we would have had Biden for a little bit longer, I bet you he would have advocated for a lot more rails because he loved his trains.
Richard Taylor:
[00:06:30 – 00:06:34]
Well, one thing’s for sure, they’re not getting built now unless. Unless they run on coal.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:06:36 – 00:06:45]
Yeah, what did we have a nice passage of another environmental build getting destroyed? Yeah, yeah. A little more coal trains, that might be interesting.
Richard Taylor:
[00:06:45 – 00:06:56]
How much can we rep the world in the next three years? All right, let’s moving swiftly on, what have you got for us? So at first on the docker we’re talking about gold, because of course we are. Who isn’t?
Brian Dunhill:
[00:06:56 – 00:08:55]
Essentially this was really broken down back in the 1890s about an old election between McKinley and Brian about this argument for monetary policy. It was the argument for the first time to devalue the US dollar. And that was going off the gold standard and going potentially onto a silver standard. So the Democrats, the populace, Brian, wanted to go onto silver to devalue the gold standard of the US dollar. McKinley, who basically won the election at the time, wanted to stay on the gold standard. We’d never talked about devaluing a currency in such a political way before. It was kings, I think it was. Henry VII used to shave off a piece of the sterling. So basically the coins just got smaller and smaller and that’s how they devalued currencies. But this was a concerted effort to get the voters to do so. Right now we’re more on a dollar standard. We don’t have a gold standard. But yet why we’ve seen a huge push up in the gold and in silver is because so many emerging countries and so many individuals are flocking to the old standards since before Nixon of owning gold, owning silver, we’ve essentially had a concerted effort for countries not to own US dollars, especially emerging markets. And that’s a scary faction when it kind of breaks down to how much debt the US has and what we’ve built as a financial centerpiece. And I don’t know if I. If I like gold at these prices. I think there’s a lot of speculation in there. It costs 10% more to buy actual gold bars than it would be to buy a gold etf. And that’s, that’s all the China trade. That’s all the individuals that want to have it basically sitting under their bed. In that, speculation starts to get disjointed.
Richard Taylor:
[00:08:55 – 00:08:58]
Is that speculation or is that fear?
Brian Dunhill:
[00:08:58 – 00:09:44]
I tend to think most of the people that are talking about gold are fearful that the dollar shouldn’t have as much value as it currently has, which I agree upon, but I don’t agree upon the amount that the gold that gold has increased versus the amount that the dollar has decreased. Therefore, for it to be substantially worth more than it currently is becomes the speculative part. And I don’t speculate on money. I like things that create a return that kick out a nice dividend or have the ability to bring in more revenue instead of just speculating on a value. And that’s where it becomes a true speculation. How much can we really pull out of the ground? How much can we really actually value that as?
Richard Taylor:
[00:09:44 – 00:10:00]
That’s my problem with gold as well, Brian. I’ve always. We invest, right? We invest for 10, 20, 30 years, longer sometimes. And gold always strikes me as a trade. And I know the arguments against that, but this is. I can’t get over that. It’s a tra. It’s a tool for trading rather than a tool for investing is how I see it.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:10:00 – 00:11:15]
Absolutely. And it’s the same argument nowadays for Bitcoin or any of the other cryptocurrencies it’s not to say that it will go up or will go down. It’s how do you value these types of things? And there’s only two ways that you can really value them, which would be if you equate out a logarithmic scale and you basically say if each person attracts 16 people, the whole world’s population will use this as a currency within x amount of time and therefore it can get to a certain valuation. Otherwise it’s how do you get all the dirty money into it? So if you get all the cryptocurrencies or all the gold, et cetera, et cetera, these become great ways for money laundering. I’m not advocating this for any of the compliance, it’s just the reality of the cause. So if you take those two metrics, if you take the only two ways to value all the cryptocurrency in the world being those two metrics, it should be worth 2 trillion to 3 trillion, which worth well over $3 trillion when it comes to all the cryptocurrencies. So I can’t find a good way to substantiate that this should have more value and gold and silver falls into those same buckets. But naturally markets can be irrational longer than we can say solvent. So therefore I’m not going to bet against it.
Richard Taylor:
[00:11:15 – 00:11:22]
It has been fascinating to see gold do what gold’s done in the last year or so versus what bitcoin’s done.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:11:22 – 00:11:23]
Absolutely.
Richard Taylor:
[00:11:24 – 00:11:26]
That’s not playing to the narrative we’ve been solved for the last few years.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:11:26 – 00:11:31]
How many times has the narrative changed over the last 15 years when it comes to bitcoin?
Richard Taylor:
[00:11:31 – 00:11:34]
Very true. Yeah, very true.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:11:34 – 00:11:40]
So essentially they’re fitting the narrative based on wanting to increase the price.
Richard Taylor:
[00:11:41 – 00:11:47]
And it’s worked for them for a while. Some people have done very, very, very well out of that indeed.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:11:47 – 00:12:00]
But what’s it going to be worth in 20 years? I would see either a ton or nothing. And that to me is not an investment. We could have bet on the super bowl this last weekend. That wouldn’t have been an investment, but we could have made a ton of money.
Richard Taylor:
[00:12:00 – 00:12:19]
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, that’s how. Exactly. That’s exactly how we see it as well. So I guess this gold thing ties into our second point as well, which is dollar weakness. Right. Or not even just necessarily dollar weakness, just the rest of the world looking askew at the US and thinking we need to decouple somehow.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:12:19 – 00:13:01]
Absolutely. I mean, what do we have, 70 something countries that pegged themselves to the US dollar we have the world’s reserve currency in the US dollar and Trump has basically said I want to devalue the US dollar. So what is everybody doing? They’re basically saying, wait a second, we don’t have to listen to Trump on a lot of things, right? Certain things, there’s the taco trade, but when it comes to devaluing the dollar, it’s very easy to lose faith in it. And with this whole Greenland thing, the first big news item a couple weeks ago was the Danish pension fund Academicr. Is that how you pronounce it? Do you think I got that close?
Richard Taylor:
[00:13:01 – 00:13:02]
Works for me.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:13:02 – 00:13:38]
But basically the Danish pension came out and said we don’t want to invest in U.S. treasuries and they state that it had nothing to do with Greenland, it just happened to be that they see no economic value in it. And then the news item for the last couple of weeks has been if every European country and every European corporation and every European individual dumps their US treasuries, that’s 12% of US treasuries. 12%. Trump retaliated by saying, I will put on tariffs on all your countries if you dump our Treasuries. So he wants to devalue the dollar but he doesn’t want to devalue it that much.
Richard Taylor:
[00:13:38 – 00:13:52]
Yeah, well he’s got. That’s a tightrope, isn’t it? I mean also the idea of a coordinated dumping, I mean in theory, yes, it’s, it would be horrendous. But how realistic is that? I mean it’s. A lot of this is held by private companies and it’s not going to.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:13:52 – 00:14:25]
Be across the board, but what we’re seeing is more and more countries, I mean China this week has basically stated that they want all their banks dump their U S Treasuries. The Chinese government owns just short of a trillion dollars worth of U S Treasuries. So if they wanted a coordinated effort, they don’t have to coordinate it again amongst their companies, their banks, etc, all they have to do is just dump the ones that they hold in their basket, switch those over to euros, pounds, whatever else it might be, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot to do so. But the fact that they’re coming out publicly and stating these is significant.
Richard Taylor:
[00:14:26 – 00:14:43]
That’s one of the strengths of China though. China as a, as a political system have the power and have shown plenty of willing to shoot themselves in the foot for short term pain for long term gain. That is one of the strengths of that system. It’s Also utterly brutal at many times, but it can be very effective.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:14:43 – 00:14:46]
But the Rimimi is not ready to be the global currency.
Richard Taylor:
[00:14:46 – 00:14:46]
No.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:14:46 – 00:14:57]
So I think they’re going to want to wait some time before they go ahead and devalue their reserves by selling off all of their reserves. That’s the speculation right there.
Richard Taylor:
[00:14:57 – 00:15:06]
Do you think they’re positioning themselves, though, to be the global currency for a subset of countries? That’s like 100. Yeah.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:15:06 – 00:15:13]
The silk Road. The Silk Road initiative. Their, their initiatives in Africa. Every time America pulls out, they’re jumping in.
Richard Taylor:
[00:15:13 – 00:15:13]
Yes.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:15:14 – 00:16:27]
And it’s brilliant. I mean, they’re basically, they’re getting to go through a Marshall Fund like America did after World War II, without having to go through the pain of the war. All they’re having to do is watch what we’re doing and jump in and say, we’ll help, we’ll do our part. We need leadership in the world. In times that basically the developed world is not helping there, at least they’re all banding together, they’re doing their parts. I mean, we’ve seen it with Canada putting together their trade deals, with China trying to put that together. These are effectively being forced by these initiatives that are out there and it’s keeping trade going, we’re keeping the economy moving. But the main issue there is I don’t think we should have a panic that, oh my God, the dollar is going to fall apart. But I think we need to know when the President of the United States wants to decrease the value of the dollar, we should be listening. We should be shifting out of US Dollars in most instances. And if we’re going to be retiring back in the uk, we should have a lot of pounds inside of our portfolio. Our fixed income should be in pounds because that removes that currency risk.
Richard Taylor:
[00:16:27 – 00:16:49]
I mean, I get the impression from you, you think it’s not, you think that this is kind of like an acceleration of an inevitable trend anyway. Right. Which is currencies moving 15 year cycles. The dollar’s been on a 15 year strengthening cycle. It’s, at some point it’s going to turn and be on a 15 year weakening cycle. And this Trump administration might just be kind of facilitating that almost, or accelerating it.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:16:49 – 00:17:37]
Absolutely. I mean, they, they were the beginning of, of this initiative last year that they really wanted to turn, turn that around and they have done quickly. And every news item that’s coming out is only exasperating that, that movement. When we look at the nominee for the Fed, all of a sudden we’re probably looking at lower rates in the United States. Lower rates in the United States is a detractor towards an elevated dollar. So everything that we’re really looking at is playing towards that narrative and that’s where we have to be cognizant of it and we don’t want to be the last ones out the door. That’s why we’ve made a giant shift and more than 50% of our fixed income is international at this point in time.
Richard Taylor:
[00:17:38 – 00:19:06]
I’m excited to announce that Expat wealth has its first sponsor, the Global Financial Planning Institute. The GFPI exists to provide education, community tools, resources and ongoing research for financial planners and other advanced financial professionals working with international and cross border clients in the US And Americans abroad. I’m a GFP Institute fellow and I’ve put all our employees through their GFPI programs when they join us. I’ve met some great people, I’ve learned a ton. It’s a genuine community of internationally minded folk doing their best to serve their clients properly and critically sharing what they know in the oftentimes challenging and ambiguous US cross border environment. And as anyone in this sector will tell you, you’re always learning. So if you work with international clients and or Americans abroad we, or if this is an area you’re looking to get into, check out the gfpi@www.gfp.in stute you will be glad you did and I hope to see you there soon. Well, here’s a question for you. This is a real life example. We’ve got a client, Brit, who returning to the UK after a long time in the US and they’ve got hundreds of thousands, millions in IRAs. And they’ve asked us how do I, how do we currency hedge for this? And we were just like, we were debating options. You know, you could, you could, you could go to the FX providers and do forward contracts but that’s only hedging out a year in advance. What would your suggestion be?
Brian Dunhill:
[00:19:06 – 00:20:11]
The first place you really have to be looking at is, is on the bond side of things. And you can buy international bonds inside of a US IRA on Schwab. Yeah, yeah. You keep it in the United States and you still buy UK bonds inside of the ira. So, so we have that for plenty of our clients. Some clients don’t have a large enough IRA to be able to build a full bond ladder inside of it. And that’s to where then you can use instruments. For instance, when you look at picb, the etf, I’m not promoting this so please compliance don’t Call me and say I’m pushing this. There you have a full instrument that’s X US dollars. So it’s not just pounds but at least you’re getting X US dollars. And that means there’s going to be some correl. There you’re only getting 15% inside of the UK, 60% inside of Europe, but there you have some correlation for those smaller IRAs that you can’t build a full mix of that bond ladder. But the fixed income is the first place that we really concentrate on that’s a US etf.
Richard Taylor:
[00:20:11 – 00:20:15]
You’re going to buy that in US dollars. But essentially everything under the hood is non us.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:20:16 – 00:21:18]
Exactly, exactly. And we’re, we’re now starting to see more ETF carriers actually going live with international instruments. We’ve, we’ve been talking with Poland Capital who has a wonderful use it that has international high yield and they’re going to convert that into a US ETF. Oh they are so 100% European high yield fixed income in a US based ETF. They’ve had the strategy for a long period of time, same management, et cetera, et cetera, but now it’s going to be on the US markets. For every US carrier to, to be out there. There’s pieces from First Trust. First Trust have issued several foreign currency elements that have helped us in building the portfolios with fixed income in international carriers. And as the dollar continues to go down, I guarantee you the demand is going to be going up and I’m knocking on the doors of every single one of the ETF carriers to basically say we need more items to be able to buy for these American expats.
Richard Taylor:
[00:21:18 – 00:21:30]
Very good. Okay, so let’s move on to the final piece which is the, the divergence between the US and the rest of the world. A long time coming, one might suggest. One might argue.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:21:31 – 00:21:40]
I know we’ve been talking for years and years. I mean what did we have? We had a 20 year period where emerging markets averaged about the same as US Treasuries.
Richard Taylor:
[00:21:40 – 00:21:41]
Nothing, right? Yeah.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:21:41 – 00:23:33]
Then you’d have to go country specific and you’d find something that was doing great, but it went down as a roller coaster. Didn’t matter if it was China, Russia, everything beyond. We basically have gone from a period of time where emerging markets have been hurtful in our portfolios to being the best performers inside of our portfolio. We’ve gone from a period of time where Europe and the UK was lackluster to where they’re outperforming, pretty much doubling the returns of the US Market even better. Even with the great performance that we’ve seen of this last year, the valuations are still strong in those regions. So we keep talking in past issues that America is expensive. The average PE over the long haul for The S&P 500 has averaged around 17. We’re sitting on a Ford PE basis around 22. That’s not saying it has to fall, it’s just saying if it falls, it has further to potentially fall. Right. So we’ve constantly been trying to marry positions around the S&P 500 of lower PE basis so that we get to a better relative level. And when I look at emerging markets overall, we’re sitting about 14. We just started positioning a lot of pieces over in Southeast Asia, especially Korea. And I’ve, I’ve loved Korea because they have a high basis of AI presence that’s not got the geopolitical risk of China, but that’s at a much lower valuation than what we’re paying in the United States. So we get the sectors we like in emerging markets where currencies typically do good when the dollar goes down. But we’re not having to dive into China. And that’s me saying I love China, but I can’t figure out how to make money in China.
Richard Taylor:
[00:23:33 – 00:23:34]
Right.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:23:34 – 00:23:42]
And now we’re averaging down our average price to earnings ratio. It’s still cheap on those, those basis.
Richard Taylor:
[00:23:42 – 00:23:56]
You don’t think this is a flash in the pan? I mean, the concern was at the end of last year that great, you know, emerging markets, developed markets, Europe, finally, I’ve had a day in the sun. Is it a flash in the pan or, or is this part of something bigger? And it sounds like you think it’s part something bigger.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:23:57 – 00:25:00]
It’s. It’s gotta be something bigger because first of all, we have a reshoring basis. You have a lot of countries that are becoming proud of actually buying local instead of just buying cheap. Secondly, you have government spending to actually realize those. When we look at two of the best markets in Europe, Spain and Poland this last year, the main reason is because they don’t have the tariff risk back from the United States. Most of their business is insular. So all of a sudden you have these opportunities to grow in those pockets throughout those regions. And they’re spending money on defense spending and all the likes. Technology spending is most definitely one. I was amazed. One of the big Internet setup companies is a unicorn over in Belgium and they got to a $7 billion valuation at this point. It’s called Odoo. It’s A global player. But I would have never guessed that the next Silicon Valley unicorn would be in Belgium.
Richard Taylor:
[00:25:00 – 00:25:32]
Right. That a devaluing dollar could boost U.S. stock market returns. Right. Because a lot of the income from these companies in the US is non US income. That will mean that that income, when converted into dollars, is more, which should boost returns. Furthermore, if our non US element is doing well and the dollar is weakening, that will also translate. That’s a DACA double hit in a good way, isn’t it? Because it’s. The stock markets are performing well themselves and you’re benefiting from. When you convert that back into dollars, it goes up as well. So that’s like win, win.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:25:34 – 00:25:48]
Absolutely. I think to me, the big fear that I have for the United States is not, oh, my goodness, the Mag 7, 60% of their revenue comes from abroad. So perfect, right? But we’re buying something that’s expensive already.
Richard Taylor:
[00:25:48 – 00:25:50]
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:25:50 – 00:26:06]
And when we look at the Mag 7, all of them are investing gangbusters into their AI infrastructure. If it works, there’ll be gold mines. If it doesn’t work, oh, my goodness, they’ve just spent all of their revenue.
Richard Taylor:
[00:26:06 – 00:26:07]
Yeah.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:26:07 – 00:26:17]
$650 billion worth of spending amongst the top few companies in the United States. We’ve never seen that kind of spending, even during the telecom booms of the.
Richard Taylor:
[00:26:17 – 00:26:29]
90S in the US right now we’re seeing the big stocks that have driven the market for the past 10, 15, but definitely 10 years. That narrative is shifting finally.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:26:29 – 00:27:27]
It kind of has to, because we’re getting the conglomerate effect. You know, we remember Back in the 2000, Citigroup accumulated every single company out there, and then all of a sudden there was a devaluation of the company because you couldn’t see under the hood. Then you got the same thing when it came to ge, right? They got into every single business over here in Europe. It was Philips. Now I really think that we’re starting to see it amongst the tech players. And the best example I can give is a couple of weeks ago, Google finally seeked an investment for Waymo. And we were always joking that we’d look through the 60 or 70 companies in Google’s arsenal, Alphabets arsenal of companies. But nobody really cared about anything Beyond Google, AdWords, YouTube and the likes, right? What was it? YouTube’s the third biggest company over at Alphabet, and yet they have more revenue than Netflix.
Richard Taylor:
[00:27:28 – 00:27:29]
That’s just insane.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:27:29 – 00:27:52]
But it’s a secondary function. So Waymo was this tiny company in there that nobody was factoring, and now they seeked outside investment and it’s got a valuation of $145 billion. Now, do you think that Alphabet needed the money in there or did they need the valuation so that people stop concentrating on the fact that AI could go ahead and kill their cash cow?
Richard Taylor:
[00:27:52 – 00:28:05]
Yeah, well, yes, but then we look this, first of all, like Alphabet, what a business. You know the YouTube acquisition. Have you taken away Mo? They are. It’s incredible.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:28:05 – 00:28:10]
I’ve seen. I’ve seen one pulled over by a cop and they’re. They’re being introduced here in London.
Richard Taylor:
[00:28:12 – 00:28:34]
You know, it’s just one of those things that you’ll. It’s just staggering how far we’ve come as a species. But you remember when Chat GPT came out and Alphabet just sank like a stone because everyone thought that’s the end of search. And yet here we are and they’ve bounced back and more. It’s not the end of search. I just don’t know if you can write off. I just don’t know if you can write those guys off.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:28:34 – 00:29:18]
Oh, abso. Absolutely not. And I mean, I think. I think one of the key arguments that people are making is which is better, ChatGPT or Gemini? And in different factions. All these different places are wonderful. But now the element is. Is a large language model actually artificial intelligence, or is that basically just replication? So is that really the future or is that just an energy user to make things more efficient? Is this just kind of. Yes, it’s an enhancer of efficiency. But does it really change the world? We’ll really have to see. It’s made our days much better. But I’m not less busy than I was 4 years ago when.
Richard Taylor:
[00:29:18 – 00:29:35]
Before ChatGPT helps me write emails, I’ll tell you that much. It really does. I put most of my emails through. I actually use Claude now and I much prefer it, but I find it a huge help helping me craft better email communication. But that’s not changing the world. My emails are not changing the world.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:29:36 – 00:30:01]
It just makes us more efficient, you know, no different than getting rid of the typewriter and being able to send an email instead of having to mail everything. Yeah, these efficiencies move things faster. But will it change every single business out there? We just got the unemployment numbers. 130,000 new jobs, 4.3% unemployment. That doesn’t sound to me like everybody’s losing their job because AIs come in and stole them.
Richard Taylor:
[00:30:01 – 00:30:13]
No, but the makeup of the job market is definitely changing, isn’t it? And it’s going to be incredibly Disruptive. It’s just. But is how that plays out. It’s going to be very interesting to.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:30:13 – 00:31:11]
See self driving trucks evolved faster than self driving cars. And the argument was we needed them because the majority of truck drivers were getting close to retirement age and it’s hard to actually recruit 20 year olds to want to drive trucks. Right. 30 year olds to want to drive trucks for the rest of their life. So all of a sudden we had to fix that. Not because there weren’t people that didn’t have jobs and would take those jobs. It’s just convincing them to take those jobs was too hard. It was easier to program a robot during COVID It was easier to go ahead and program self pain facilities. There were plenty of waiters and such that lost their jobs. So it’s, it’s the technology is there, it’s the need to change over at those times. In our vantage point. Could a lot of people use ChatGPT to research a lot of things that we talk about? Yes, but most of our clients would rather talk to a human being than a chatbot.
Richard Taylor:
[00:31:11 – 00:31:27]
We had our first instant recently where a client turned up with a chat GPT analysis their portfolio and we talked through it and had to explain why we did certain things we should, you know, which is what we do anyway. It was just, it was the first time someone turned or the first time we knew about someone turning up with a, with a ChatGPT analysis.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:31:27 – 00:31:29]
It won’t be the last time.
Richard Taylor:
[00:31:29 – 00:31:30]
Absolutely not.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:31:30 – 00:31:35]
But I tend to think that that’s, it’s a good thing because it means we’re able to talk on a more personal level.
Richard Taylor:
[00:31:35 – 00:31:58]
Yeah. Having done that research and read that stuff, they come to the meeting with a much higher baseline of knowledge and understanding than they would have normally. So you. Allows you to skip through kind of the 101 on portfolio building and get straight to the right. This is why that’s there. This is what we’re doing with this. Honestly, it came down to that. This is why you can’t just pick last year’s best performing fund, ETF sector, whatever. That does not work.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:31:58 – 00:32:03]
And this is why are you advocating the dogs of the Dow? Let’s just go ahead and switch out from the best to the worst.
Richard Taylor:
[00:32:04 – 00:32:05]
Exactly.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:32:05 – 00:32:05]
Yes. Right.
Richard Taylor:
[00:32:05 – 00:32:13]
Yeah. That’s, that’s, that is the perfect way of putting it. Yeah. So it was interesting in times. We live in interesting times, my friend, on many levels.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:32:13 – 00:32:34]
Oh absolutely. I, I tend to think that most of our clients we get to present the financial aspect. We get to present the raw numbers. And then we ask them the questions, how will you deal with the emotional vantage point? And those are the harder decisions to make, and those are the ones that we get to coach people through.
Richard Taylor:
[00:32:35 – 00:32:45]
And the answers that people give in that moment, not under emotional and psychological stress, are not necessarily the reality of when it comes to pass.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:32:45 – 00:32:47]
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Richard Taylor:
[00:32:47 – 00:32:55]
Yeah. Right. Okay. Well, Brian, thank you for taking us on that journey again. Just remind people where they can find you.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:32:55 – 00:33:03]
Dunhillfinancial.com you can always drop me an email@brianunhillfinancial.com or come visit us down in Wimbledon over here in the uk.
Richard Taylor:
[00:33:03 – 00:33:04]
He’ll take you for a pint.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:33:04 – 00:33:05]
Absolutely.
Richard Taylor:
[00:33:05 – 00:33:07]
I look forward to that.
Brian Dunhill:
[00:33:07 – 00:33:09]
Wonderful to see you, Richard. Thank you so much.
Richard Taylor:
[00:33:09 – 00:34:11]
I’ll see you soon. All right, folks, that’s another episode of Expat wealth under Our Belts. Thank you for listening. I appreciate it. And I appreciate you. If you’re enjoying the show and would like to support the mission, which is to help ambitious expats thrive in America and ask you to subscribe to the POD wherever you listen and also consider leaving a rating and review, this stuff really does matter. Please help us get this information to the people who, who need it, that is to your fellow expats. Just a quick reminder that this show is brought to you by Plan First Wealth. We are a US based financial planner and wealth manager and we help successful American and international families living across the US to make the most of their opportunity and ultimately to retire happier. If you’d like to know more about how we might be able to help you, you can find us on our website, planfirstwealth.com or you can look me up on LinkedIn in do get in touch. We’d love to hear from you. As always, thank you to the podcast guys for their help producing this episode and the entire show. See you next week.
Production