Three headlines landed on my screen in the last 24 hours, and every one of them sent me straight back into our archive. Paris under curfew. Oil at $109. And the AI companies chasing trillion-dollar valuations.
The crazy thing? We’ve already had the conversations that explain all three. Some of them years ago. Let me show you.
Paris is burning, and Robert Kiyosaki called it
France just had its worst rioting in years. What started as cost-of-living protests turned into a weekend of violence and looting. Paris now has a night-time curfew around République and Les Halles, with more in Lyon, Nice and Lille. The Prime Minister says some military forces will help keep order this weekend. And Macron? He’s touring the Gulf.
In March 2023 I sat down with Robert Kiyosaki while France was rioting over the pension age going from 62 to 64. I said people riot because they’ve been hooked on the illusion that the government will look after them, and they were never given a financial education. Robert went further: “the rioting in France today is America in two years.”
Look at the date on that. Then look at the news.
▶ Watch Robert and me on France from 37:38
This isn’t really about France. It’s about what happens anywhere when people outsource their financial future and the bill finally arrives. Prices go up, the safety net frays, and the anger has to go somewhere.
$109 oil, hot inflation and a Fed that may have to hike
The Strait of Hormuz is still effectively shut. Brent touched $110 last week after another round of tanker attacks, and it’s sitting around $109. US inflation came in hotter than expected at 3.7%, and traders are now betting the Fed raises rates in December. Gold, which everyone assumes goes up in a crisis, has actually been pushed back down to around $4,100 as yields climb.
Back in 2022, when everyone was saying inflation was “transitory”, Peter Schiff told me the opposite: inflation would get stronger as the economy got weaker. Then he said something I keep coming back to: “gold and silver are real money.” Whatever you think of Peter, he’s been saying the same thing for twenty years, and moments like this are why people listen.
▶ Watch Peter Schiff on inflation and gold from 48:26
And Jim Rickards explained why oil is never just about oil. Last year he walked me through how energy prices fund wars, set off sanctions and wreck trade talks, and he told me oil would go higher. It did.
▶ Watch Jim Rickards on oil and power from 25:55
The lesson from both of them is simple. When money is losing value, you want to own real things. Gold, yes. And property. It’s a big part of why so many London Realers have been looking at Dubai, and why we built the Luxury Property Investment Circle, where we look at real-asset opportunities there with people on the ground.
The $2 trillion AI bet
Now the one I find the most exciting. OpenAI is reportedly racing to raise $30 billion at a valuation above $1.4 trillion, trying to close before Anthropic goes public. Anthropic’s IPO could reportedly value it near $2 trillion. It has also reportedly committed more than $518 billion to computing power, most of it payable whether that capacity gets used or not.
Half a trillion dollars on chips, power and data centres. That’s not a fad. It’s the biggest build-out of our lifetimes.
But here’s what most people miss. By the time a company like this lists on the stock market, most of its growth has already happened, in private rounds the public never sees. The everyday investor gets to buy in at a trillion-dollar valuation. The early backers got in long before.
When Jim Rickards was on the show last year, he warned me about the hype in public markets: “There’s nothing easier to spot than a bubble.” I agree with him about chasing whatever is already priced to perfection. That’s exactly why I’d rather be early than late: meeting the founders, asking the hard questions, and backing real companies before they go parabolic.
▶ Watch Jim Rickards on bubbles from 59:10
That’s what we do every Monday in the London Real AI Investment Club. Founders pitch live, we ask them the tough questions, and members get to look at private rounds most people never see.
The thread that ties it all together
Riots in Paris. Oil at $109. The biggest AI build-out in history. Three different stories, one lesson: nobody is coming to save you. Not the government, not the central bank. You have to position yourself.
That’s what we’ve been saying on London Real for more than a decade. Get educated. Understand money. Own assets. Think for yourself. The guests who sat in that chair years ago saw a lot of this coming, and that’s exactly why I keep going back to the archive. It’s old, but it’s not dated.
So here are two ways to act on it. If you want to be early in AI, join us on a Monday in the AI Investment Club. If you want real assets, take a look at the Property Investment Circle.
Which of these three stories are you watching most closely? Tell me on X at @brianbrose. I read everything.
This is commentary, not financial advice. Do your own research.
