In this week’s episode, Charlene Young and Danni Hewson look at what’s happened since the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee cut the base rate to 4.5% last Thursday. Expectations for a cut were high so has the reaction from markets and mortgage lenders been unsurprising too? [01:30]

Danni gives the low down on the latest results from McDonald’s and BP. Does activist investor Eliott taking a stake in BP mean there is a reset on the horizon for the struggling energy giant? [11:57]

Elon Musk is back in the news again. Donald Trump’s right-hand man and head of DOGE has led a bid for OpenAI, the company he co-founded with current CEO Sam Altmann before their big fall out over the future of the ‘mission’. [17:46]

Charlene gives us a preview of an exciting new AJ Bell Money & Markets project.

Tom Sieber from Shares Magazine joins us to talk about defensive stocks. He explains what a defensive stock is, examines the traditional defensive sectors and reveals which metrics identify ‘defensiveness’. [23:17]

Dan Coatsworth interviews Guy Gittens, CEO of estate agent Foxtons to get his thoughts on where the property market could go next, the issues facing people who rent, and whether flaws in the Lifetime ISA are causing issues for prospective buyers in London. [28:46]

Welcome to the latest episode of the AJ Bell Monet & Markets podcast.

Tariffs have been on everyone’s minds this week and they’ve caused some big movements on the markets and dominated the discussion for many companies. Danni Hewson runs through the key points and how they relate to investments. [04:06]

Tom Sieber and Ian Conway from Shares magazine explain why tariff issues have cast a cloud over Diageo and the key takeaways from its latest results. [13:04]

A government consultation on Lifetime ISAs closed this week so Dan Coatsworth explores the pros and cons of the account and the changes AJ Bell hopes to see in the near future. [26:06]

Rachel Vahey talks about new figures on changes to the UK population and how this links to pensions. [29:05]

Danni and Dan take a look at the latest numbers from Alphabet, Disney, Estee Lauder, GSK and Mattel. [37:17]

Dan also chats about how certain activist investors are getting what they want, with major changes announced at Smiths Group and YouGov. [49:35]

Investment trusts have been all over the news as activist investor Saba targets seven companies with the hope of gaining control and becoming the investment manager. Herald (HRI) shareholders have already voted Saba down and we’re about to find out the fate of the other six investment trusts. Laith Khalaf brings us up to speed on the key events. [01:32]

Dan Coatsworth talks to James Carthew from research group QuotedData about what he thinks could happen next with Saba, and about the role of activist investors in general. [11:03]

Ian Conway and Steve Frazer conduct a deep dive into Law Debenture (LWDB) investment trust [26:40] and Dan talks to Nicholas Weindling, fund manager of JPMorgan Japanese (JFJ) about what’s going on in that part of Asia. [37:30]