I guess that the US presidential elections continue to remain the key talking point. This is the first time that Trump and Harris are meeting in person. What do you think it is that at least the investor community wants to hear when it comes to policies?
Richard Harris: Well, I am not sure we are going to get policies at all from either of the candidates. And it sort of follows what happened in the UK election. It is very dangerous to come up with a policy because what ends up is you end up being criticised on them in some way. I think Wall Street generally favours Trump because it is quite clear that Kamala Harris is going to bring in higher taxation for richer people and that, of course, is a bit of an anathema to the rich people, Wall Street and maybe Silicon Valley.
On the other hand, in the debate she has made a pretty good fight of it and had Trump on the back foot quite a bit.
And, of course, American elections are not won by the rich necessarily. They are run by the mass of the people. If the mass of the people move in her direction, we could see America move slightly more towards the left which would mean that, yes, we will see more taxes and it will be slightly negative for the market. But I think at the end of the day, the market has got other issues to think about.
I just like to draw your attention to a comment from Ms Harris, which is that if Democrats come back or if they stay in power, let me rephrase that, they could increase corporate taxes which the Republicans did when Mr Trump was the president. Could that be the biggest moving part in terms of where the tax would move and if taxes, they go higher for the US corporate sector, that automatically could have an impact on markets, earnings and everything?
Richard Harris: Yes, it is likely to have an impact on the margin, but I think the really key factor if you look at markets at the moment are interest rates and the direction of interest rates and your last speaker was just saying a moment ago, oil prices are coming down.
The market still has a lot of momentum in it, talking about the global markets and I think that if we see the interest rate factor come in, at least the bias on interest rates falling, then that is going to support markets and I think that markets always have different narratives.
You are talking a little bit about the corporate tax narrative. I think the interest rate narrative is the dominant one and that will almost certainly supersede any concerns that Wall Street may have about corporate taxation.
What to your mind could be the law of the land when I say Wall Street if Democrats, they hold back, if they voted back, or if Republicans they come back because historically we have seen that Republicans mean there is going to be more focused activity around sanctions against China. If Democrats, they come to power, there could be focused on clean energy, that is how markets have evolved in the past.
Richard Harris: I think that is a broad thought, but in reality I suspect that we are not going to see too much change from the Biden administration. I think that they are going to keep the kind of sanctions we have on China at the moment.
The problem with the Republicans is that Trump really is an unknown quantity. We do not really know what he is going to do. We do not know if he is going to put more sanctions on. We do not know if he is going to pull out of Ukraine.
In that sense, he is much more of a risk to the market because of the uncertainty factor that can come in and the more of unforeseen consequences that could come in by Trump making a completely random decision out of the blue.
So, the bottom line is I think that interest rates will hold sway. They will be the key factor. If the Democrats come in, it will likely be business as usual, maybe with some adjustments on taxation, but that will take a little while. If Trump comes in, we are for a very, very uncertain time. Markets are fragile. They are going to be supported by falling interest rates, but his uncertainties of policies are likely to make it more fragile.
