The Markets Happy Hour Podcast has its roots in the virtual "water cooler" discussion about markets and implications held weekly at Moneta every Friday at 11 am. While we moved this to a "Tea with the CIO" and now a "Markets Happy Hour" we have rarely made it a live discussion with a live audience - until now!

Welcome to our first such discussion, live from a bustling Dublin City Centre and the Daly Room at Trinity College Dublin, Aoifinn's alma mater. Hot on the heels of an Investment Committee Meeting of the Trinity College Endowment, Aoifinn discusses:

The intense geopolitical developments of the past 5 days - including regime change in Syria, and what this means for the distribution of power in the region, and particularly the influence of Russia and Iran.

The triumph that France experienced amid its political chaos - as world leaders attended the reopening of Notre Dame after a devastating fire.

Whether this is evidence that perhaps a counter-narrative to the "Europe is past its prime" argument should emerge. Other evidence of this is the pending need to spend up to 500 bn Euro on defence, as well as the post-Covid recovery trajectory actually being quite a normal one for the region - it being the US recovery that was an outlier.