Markets Happy Hour Podcast - Salon - Live in London - April 16, 2026: Paying it Forwards

For today's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we gathered our first Salon together in London with six opinionated guests - for a fantastic discussion from AI to geopolitics to the UK real estate market. We had bulls and bears present, and cycled through our usual topics of inflation, interest rates, equity markets geopolitics and other asset classes. With the title "Paying it Forwards" we discussed consumers bringing forward expenditure as expectations of inflation rise, discuss the allure of equities amid the "debasement" trade and whether the current geopolitics are a real concern for markets - do they render them "different this time" or will it pass. We look then at the productivity revolution and ask where in the market cap spectrum the most productivity gains are likely to be felt. Turning to the concept of "resilience" we discuss a different kind of resilience this time - not simply market resilience, although a streak of 10 days positive market performance suggests that markets really are simply looking through the war. This resilience is the one that KKR describes as the "Resilience of Everything". We ask if this is a new trend or if markets and operators have always cared about resilience and security, particularly when it comes to energy, cybersecurity and security of supply chains. We end by discussing the real estate market in London and the dynamics that are prevailing around residential as well as office, and ask whether real estate will likely form a solid component of a portfolio diversification going forward.