Investing for a new cold war? Grab some gold

China and America’s changing relationship could derail economic growth. Merryn Somerset Webb asks global strategist Russell Napier how to protect your wealth.

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A great deal hinges on this relationship
(Image credit: 2017 Getty Images)

There is no better place in the UK to interview a global strategist (particularly one of a contrarian bent) than Edinburgh's Library of Mistakes (LOM) two small rooms in the Georgian New Town jammed with books and papers on the many, many financial disasters of the past. Russell Napier is also the keeper of the LOM making it even more perfect. We start with China and the US the link between their currencies is "the cornerstone of the global monetary system". Give me "any asset price in the world for the last 25 years, and I can relate it to the link between China and America", says Napier. Change the nature of that link, and you change the way the world works.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.