Need to Know Investment Podcast · Coutts

Need to Know - 10 January, Market Movers 2025

·41 min·3 clips

There is such a diminishing return on the quality of these models

The year opens lightly. Sarah Muir and David Broomfield are back after Christmas, with a quick callback to their 2024 art-market chat with Amelie Serrado from Christie's. No Birkin arrived. The joke lands, then the mood tightens a bit as David remembers the kind of US selloff investors would rather not relive. AI takes over from there. The issue is not whether people still want the trade. They clearly do. It is whether the trade has become crowded enough to make the plumbing matter. David keeps coming back to power grids, cooling systems, and the fact that not every country is moving through the AI buildout at the same pace. The clean-exposure problem is the rub. Utilities may look like an AI demand play, but they can still trade like rate exposure. Data center REITs bring the same headache. Infrastructure funds sound relevant until the actual exposure gets spread across too many other assets. David frames 2025 as the middle of the S curve, where scaling, model efficiency, and profitable use cases get harder to dodge. Mag Seven demand may hang around anyway. Nvidia stays central, especially as Sarah brings up AI startups and robotics. David sees Nvidia's pivot toward more varied revenue as a logical next move, given its track record of spotting shifts early. Physical AI gets the final nod. The close is cautious, not panicked: volatility is in the room, and the usual investment-advice caveat still applies.

As heard by us

A calm year-ahead market conversation that stays grounded.

Need to Know opens with an easy New Year check-in, then settles into a steady look at where 2025 market pressure could show up. The discussion moves through AI crowding, utilities, data center REITs, infrastructure funds, and the dollar, and it works best when it keeps those…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a calm read on where 2025 market pressure may show up.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Need to Know Investment Podcast