Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Best Technology Opportunities Lie Away From The Herd
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg pm L Podcast. I'm pim Fox.
- 0:08Speaker 1: Along with my co host Lisa Abramowitz. Each day we
- 0:11Speaker 1: bring you the most important, noteworthy, and useful interviews for
- 0:15Speaker 1: you and your money, whether you're at the grocery store
- 0:17Speaker 1: or the trading floor. Find the Bloomberg p m L
- 0:20Speaker 1: podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Bloomberg dot com. Focused
- 0:31Speaker 1: in the markets for the past few weeks has been
- 0:33Speaker 1: with her tech. Are we heading toward some sort of
- 0:37Speaker 1: peak in the valuation here, especially as we see chips
- 0:42Speaker 1: start to lose some luster and as we start to
- 0:44Speaker 1: have some questions about the likes that you got that
- 0:46Speaker 1: down grade. Yesterday my key Bank Capital they were talking
- 0:49Speaker 1: about Cyper Semiconductor n XP Semiconductor, both downgrading because they're
- 0:53Speaker 1: awarried about things like autonomous driving and automobile tariffs. Yeah, well,
- 0:58Speaker 1: I think Kevin Landis might be a little bit get
- 1:00Speaker 1: worried about autonomous driving. He's the CEO and Chief Investment
- 1:03Speaker 1: officer at Firsthand Capital Management, also the CEO Firsthand Technology
- 1:07Speaker 1: Value Fund, which trades on the NASDACS s vv c UH,
- 1:11Speaker 1: and he is based typically in San Jose, California. Thank
- 1:15Speaker 1: you so much. For being with us, Kevin, thanks good
- 1:17Speaker 1: to be here. So I want to get your view
- 1:19Speaker 1: on the autonomous driving because we really have seen some
- 1:23Speaker 1: choppy valuation there, with the likes of dime Ler investing
- 1:25Speaker 1: a lot in it not getting rewarded, and Tesla perhaps
- 1:28Speaker 1: arguably getting rewarded too much. Where are we with with
- 1:32Speaker 1: this area. Well, I think, like a lot of complex problems,
- 1:36Speaker 1: the way it's being tackled is to break it into
- 1:38Speaker 1: smaller problems. So, for example, Uh, we're all very familiar
- 1:42Speaker 1: with cruise control, that's no big deal. But in the
- 1:45Speaker 1: last few years, people have started noticing that their new
- 1:47Speaker 1: cars had adaptive cruise control, which would uh take into
- 1:51Speaker 1: account how close you are to the car you're following. Uh. Similarly,
- 1:54Speaker 1: we were now getting comfortable that our car can do
- 1:57Speaker 1: parallel parking, which is better than most of us can do. Uh.
- 2:01Speaker 1: So they're they're putting the pieces together. They haven't got
- 2:04Speaker 1: the whole thing quite yet, but they're getting really close. Kevin, Landish,
- 2:09Speaker 1: just to maybe offer people a little bit of your
- 2:12Speaker 1: background firsthand, was a pre I p O investor in Facebook,
- 2:16Speaker 1: in Twitter, in Solar City, in Yelp, in Roku. That's
- 2:20Speaker 1: a pretty good track record, any dud's in there that
- 2:22Speaker 1: we should just be aware of. Oh none, zero? Right, Yeah. Well,
- 2:27Speaker 1: the reason I ask us because sometimes you learn a
- 2:28Speaker 1: lot more from your mistakes than you do from your winners. Absolutely,
- 2:32Speaker 1: success is a poor teacher. And uh, for better or
- 2:36Speaker 1: for worse, we've had ample opportunity to learn along the way. Uh.
- 2:39Speaker 1: And you know, you you try to take a lesson
- 2:42Speaker 1: uh from every loss, and when you have a winner,
- 2:46Speaker 1: you try to remind yourself that there may be a
- 2:47Speaker 1: little bit of luck in there too. Alright, So in
- 2:50Speaker 1: that context, tell us a little bit about this world
- 2:52Speaker 1: of electric vehicles, alternative few vehicles, as well as autonomous driving.
- 2:58Speaker 1: Because I want to note that the Dinler's chief executive officer,
- 3:01Speaker 1: Dita zet Um, he's no longer going to be the CEO.
- 3:05Speaker 1: They're turning to Ola Collenneus, who is really the head
- 3:09Speaker 1: of research and development. That certainly points the way for
- 3:12Speaker 1: a dimeler. Well, so the way you relate to your
- 3:15Speaker 1: car as a human being has has changed, right, I mean,
- 3:18Speaker 1: in some sense a lot of us in the rest
- 3:20Speaker 1: of the country are turning into New Yorkers. We just
- 3:22Speaker 1: want to get into the backseat and uh, and and
- 3:25Speaker 1: read or listen to music while a car takes us
- 3:27Speaker 1: where we want to go. And and that's that's kind
- 3:30Speaker 1: of a natural thing. And uh, we're gonna be in
- 3:33Speaker 1: this heterogeneous environment here where you've got some people driving,
- 3:38Speaker 1: some people in self driving vehicles, some people who have
- 3:41Speaker 1: decided they're never even going to get their first driver's license.
- 3:44Speaker 1: And uh, and then they've got you'll have this underlying
- 3:47Speaker 1: technology that gets relentlessly better. But we're not. We we
- 3:52Speaker 1: can't and we won't wait for perfection before we put
- 3:54Speaker 1: it out there. So there's gonna be some bumps along
- 3:56Speaker 1: the way. I want to talk just about your investment
- 3:59Speaker 1: process us, especially right now, given how much money is
- 4:02Speaker 1: being funneled into the tech industry. Are you seeing any opportunities,
- 4:07Speaker 1: especially in the non public markets, given how much cash
- 4:10Speaker 1: is flowt in. Oh sure, I mean there's lots of
- 4:14Speaker 1: great new startup You could spend your entire day just
- 4:17Speaker 1: listening to new startup companies. Uh. And that's I think
- 4:21Speaker 1: that's been true just for my entire lifetime here in
- 4:23Speaker 1: the valley. Um. But what's interesting is the big bucks
- 4:29Speaker 1: flowing in tend to pile up in front of the
- 4:32Speaker 1: really popular ideas. So today everybody wants to invest in
- 4:36Speaker 1: AI some form of a are you everybody is putting
- 4:39Speaker 1: an AI slide in their pitch deck so that they
- 4:42Speaker 1: can say they're an AI company. Uh. And typically, as
- 4:45Speaker 1: you could imagine um, as with any investment, if you're
- 4:49Speaker 1: chasing after the same thing that everybody else is chasing after,
- 4:52Speaker 1: you're not getting a very good price and you're probably
- 4:54Speaker 1: not being compensated for all the risk that you're taking. Sorry, well,
- 4:59Speaker 1: I just wanted to follow up that, because then where
- 5:02Speaker 1: are you seeing money not flowing that it should be flowing. Well,
- 5:05Speaker 1: when's the last time you heard somebody say it's time
- 5:07Speaker 1: to invest in semi conductors um private semi conductor startups?
- 5:11Speaker 1: No one says that. And because no one saying that,
- 5:14Speaker 1: we're having to look there, because you know, we're not
- 5:18Speaker 1: having to go to an open auction every time we
- 5:20Speaker 1: want to fund a company. And you know, when you're
- 5:24Speaker 1: talking about the evolution of the car, one of the
- 5:26Speaker 1: things that's going to happen there is that the power
- 5:28Speaker 1: electronics within the car are going to get a lot
- 5:30Speaker 1: more challenging, and you're not going to be able to
- 5:31Speaker 1: do it in silicon and you have to dive deep
- 5:33Speaker 1: into the advanced materials of silicon carbide or gallium arsenite
- 5:38Speaker 1: or something or I'm sorry, gallium nitrite or something like this.
- 5:41Speaker 1: It's really deep, basic fundamental underlying tech. It's pretty interesting,
- 5:45Speaker 1: pretty exciting, and I run into basically zero other investors
- 5:48Speaker 1: when I go to visit these companies. Kevin, I'm going
- 5:51Speaker 1: to give you a choice to talk specifics. Pivotal Systems,
- 5:54Speaker 1: intra opt Medical Corps or Revessum. I don't know if
- 5:58Speaker 1: I'm pronouncing that correctly, but Reversum is a Australian company,
- 6:02Speaker 1: right and it is a company that makes what is
- 6:05Speaker 1: described as chemical mechanical planarization and grinding tools for the
- 6:11Speaker 1: semiconductor industry. What does it do well? So I get
- 6:13Speaker 1: to take myself off the hook on Vossum because they're
- 6:17Speaker 1: exploring an Australian listing right now, and uh so because
- 6:21Speaker 1: they're they're out on the road, but they haven't filed
- 6:23Speaker 1: their perspectus yet. I'll have to come back and tell
- 6:26Speaker 1: all right, fair enoughther details another day. But let me
- 6:28Speaker 1: tell you Pivotal Systems beat them to the punch. They
- 6:32Speaker 1: went public on the a s X on June that's
- 6:36Speaker 1: when they're their ip A was priced. And for us,
- 6:38Speaker 1: this is the first time we've ever invested in a
- 6:40Speaker 1: company that went public, but not here in the US.
- 6:43Speaker 1: They went down Under for it, and the reason was
- 6:47Speaker 1: that that they were less than fifty million in revenues
- 6:50Speaker 1: and really didn't have the size to make the big
- 6:55Speaker 1: enough splash to have a nice sexy NASAC listing. Um.
- 6:59Speaker 1: But for the Australian market is a good fit, okay.
- 7:02Speaker 1: But this is what a company that does controls for
- 7:04Speaker 1: the for the semiconductive manufacturing industry. Right. So, the manufacturing
- 7:09Speaker 1: process of of wafer semichnactter wafers involves in a lot
- 7:14Speaker 1: of times evacuating a chamber, putting a wafer in there,
- 7:17Speaker 1: and then pumping in a very specific type of gas
- 7:21Speaker 1: at a certain type of pressure, and then you know,
- 7:23Speaker 1: you're basically baking the wafer, that's how you process it, uh,
- 7:26Speaker 1: and you're baking different gases into it. They have dozens
- 7:29Speaker 1: of different types of gases and dozens of different process steps.
- 7:33Speaker 1: And so just the market for mass flow controllers, which
- 7:37Speaker 1: is what Pivotal does, it's about a five million dollar
- 7:40Speaker 1: market and Pivotal is a little company with the better
- 7:43Speaker 1: mouse trap taking market share there based in Fremont, California.
- 7:47Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, thank you very much. Kevin landis joining
- 7:52Speaker 1: us as the chief executive chief investment officer of Firsthand
- 7:55Speaker 1: Capital Management. And just to note that the Firsthands Technology
- 8:00Speaker 1: Value Fund trades under the symbol s v v C
- 8:05Speaker 1: and it is publicly listed and publicly traded, and the
- 8:09Speaker 1: shares of s VVC they're up more than eight year
- 8:14Speaker 1: to date. The topic right now though, the housing industry,
- 8:28Speaker 1: and we've got Brad Hunter, chief economist at Home Adviser,
- 8:31Speaker 1: to tell us about the housing industry and whether rising
- 8:34Speaker 1: interest rates are going to curtail the acceleration in housing sales.
- 8:40Speaker 1: We've got new home sales today, Brad. They were up
- 8:42Speaker 1: three and a half percent month over month, upcent year
- 8:47Speaker 1: over year. Also saw an increase in mortgage applications. They
- 8:50Speaker 1: were up nearly three percent. What's the role of housing
- 8:53Speaker 1: right now, sin, thanks for having me on. Yeah, demand
- 8:56Speaker 1: is strong. The problems for home builders are all on
- 8:59Speaker 1: the supply side. Demand might become an issue once mortgage
- 9:02Speaker 1: rates get above five percent, or if home prices go
- 9:05Speaker 1: up faster than I expect them to. But household formations
- 9:08Speaker 1: are are well over a million, really in their one
- 9:11Speaker 1: point three million range. Now you add on a replacement
- 9:15Speaker 1: of two hundred thousand or so units the year or more,
- 9:18Speaker 1: and demand is well above production, and most markets are
- 9:23Speaker 1: still affordable. But you know, pricing is is going to
- 9:26Speaker 1: become the next issue as interest rates go up. You know, Abroad,
- 9:30Speaker 1: I'm struck by some of the weakness and where we've
- 9:33Speaker 1: seen some of the weakness of late New York, New Jersey,
- 9:37Speaker 1: Westchester places that are affected by some of the tax changes.
- 9:41Speaker 1: I'm wondering how much has the tax cut and some
- 9:45Speaker 1: of the alterations with respect to the salt deductions affected
- 9:48Speaker 1: housing values in the northeastern particular. I don't think it's
- 9:52Speaker 1: had much of an effect at all, because most people
- 9:56Speaker 1: do not itemize, and so even fewer are going to
- 9:59Speaker 1: itemize the future given the standard deduction change. So I
- 10:03Speaker 1: don't see that as a big deal um in terms
- 10:05Speaker 1: of policy changes, I see the tariffs as more of
- 10:08Speaker 1: a concern. Really, do you think, well, yeah, when when
- 10:11Speaker 1: you think about the home builders and how much production
- 10:14Speaker 1: they can bring to bear in this undersupplied market. They're
- 10:17Speaker 1: facing what they call the three ls, land, labor and lumber,
- 10:22Speaker 1: and lumber is really shorthand for materials, so um, lumber,
- 10:27Speaker 1: steal aluminum. These are things that are being affected greatly
- 10:30Speaker 1: by tariffs, and it's gonna had a couple of thousand dollars.
- 10:33Speaker 1: These arteris are gonna had a couple of thousand dollars
- 10:35Speaker 1: to the production costs of the average home. And so
- 10:39Speaker 1: it's getting harder and harder for home builders to serve
- 10:42Speaker 1: the millennials and other people that are just trying to
- 10:44Speaker 1: get into homes for the first time. Well, Brad, in
- 10:48Speaker 1: that context of rising lumber prices, does that mean that
- 10:53Speaker 1: it is now time to buy home building stocks because
- 10:57Speaker 1: they've already sold off in response to that increase in price. Well,
- 11:02Speaker 1: I don't give advice or a commentary on what you
- 11:05Speaker 1: know whether to buy or sell stocks, but what I
- 11:08Speaker 1: can say is that the home builders are facing these constraints,
- 11:14Speaker 1: and one of the biggest constraints that they're facing is
- 11:16Speaker 1: actually the other l which is land um and the
- 11:21Speaker 1: land and lots supplies extremely tight. The prices of land
- 11:26Speaker 1: are really making it prohibitive for them to serve the
- 11:30Speaker 1: lower echelons of the market. I'll give you an example
- 11:32Speaker 1: in Dallas Texas, a new home demand is under two
- 11:37Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars, but the percentage of lots that
- 11:40Speaker 1: are available that are suited to that price range are
- 11:43Speaker 1: much lower. In Dallas, the percentage of developed lots, according
- 11:46Speaker 1: to Metro study, suited for homes five hundred thousand and
- 11:50Speaker 1: up has risen from ten percent ten years ago to
- 11:53Speaker 1: twenty three point one percent, and only twelve percent of
- 11:57Speaker 1: the lots are suited for homes under two demand, twelve
- 12:01Speaker 1: of the supply. Um. You know, so what that's forcing
- 12:05Speaker 1: the builders to do is to buy land and locations
- 12:07Speaker 1: that are more and more distant from the urban cores
- 12:10Speaker 1: and markets all around the country. And you know, occasionally
- 12:14Speaker 1: when they're lucky doing an infol project in a condemned
- 12:17Speaker 1: shopping center, closed air force base or golf course, but um,
- 12:22Speaker 1: they are having to build farther and farther out. Rod Hunter,
- 12:26Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us. It's sort of
- 12:28Speaker 1: ignites my imagination about what home ownership will look like
- 12:31Speaker 1: going forward, if it really will turn it into people
- 12:34Speaker 1: at the top can buy homes and people at the
- 12:36Speaker 1: bottom have to rent, or or how this is going
- 12:38Speaker 1: to get reconfigured. A conversation for another time. Brad Hunter,
- 12:40Speaker 1: chief economist at Home Adviser. It's time to turn to
- 12:52Speaker 1: car Whicka Donna, our chief US economist for Bloomberg Economics,
- 12:56Speaker 1: to give us some insight into the into today's federal
- 13:00Speaker 1: reserve rate decision. And Carl, just to give you a
- 13:03Speaker 1: little bit of oomph. Their new home sales coming out
- 13:06Speaker 1: just moments ago for the month of August six and
- 13:10Speaker 1: twenty nine thousand. The estimate was for six thirtyes, so
- 13:14Speaker 1: that was right seemingly right on target. But new home
- 13:18Speaker 1: sales month over month increase of three and a half percent.
- 13:22Speaker 1: Add that to a nearly three percent increase in mortgage application.
- 13:26Speaker 1: Seems as though the housing markets doing pretty well well. Pim,
- 13:30Speaker 1: first of all, a good morning, and thanks for having
- 13:32Speaker 1: me on the program. Housing markets doing okay. If we
- 13:35Speaker 1: look at the new home sales, they're up about in
- 13:39Speaker 1: your on your terms. That being said, we've had a
- 13:42Speaker 1: little bit of a cold streak over the last couple
- 13:44Speaker 1: of months, so uh, we we met expectations for today's forecast,
- 13:50Speaker 1: but the prior months were indeed the revised lower that
- 13:54Speaker 1: was troop for both July and June. Uh, and what
- 13:57Speaker 1: we're seeing is mortgage rates for ex ample, if we
- 14:00Speaker 1: look at the thirty year mortgage rates definitely creeping higher,
- 14:03Speaker 1: and this is starting to weigh on affordability about four
- 14:08Speaker 1: and a half percent. That that's higher than most homebuyers
- 14:12Speaker 1: are used to so historically, absolutely, that's still a very
- 14:15Speaker 1: low lending rate, but not for folks who are accustomed
- 14:19Speaker 1: to what they've seen in the market of the last
- 14:21Speaker 1: fifteen years or so. And if we look at what's
- 14:24Speaker 1: driving the economy right now, housing is definitely not part
- 14:27Speaker 1: of it. And so it looks like interessensitive spending is
- 14:31Speaker 1: indeed starting to be impacted by FED rate tightening. And
- 14:35Speaker 1: let's pick up on that. We're going to talk more
- 14:36Speaker 1: about the housing market later on in this hour, but
- 14:39Speaker 1: I want to get to this sort of rate hiking environment.
- 14:42Speaker 1: The fact of the FED is expected to raise rates
- 14:44Speaker 1: and the fact that we saw two year and five
- 14:46Speaker 1: year auctions this week that we're less than inspired. And
- 14:49Speaker 1: I have to wonder why are people so uncertain with
- 14:52Speaker 1: a lead up to this meeting, considering the fact that
- 14:54Speaker 1: it's pretty much a percent priced in that they're going
- 14:57Speaker 1: to raise rates. Well, that that hones in on a
- 14:59Speaker 1: very important point and That's not the issue of whether
- 15:02Speaker 1: they'll raise rates or not at this meeting, because I
- 15:04Speaker 1: think that's a fate to complete, but rather what the
- 15:06Speaker 1: future policy is going to look like. So those week
- 15:09Speaker 1: auctions again, they were you know, weak ish, not not
- 15:13Speaker 1: you know, jarringly disappointing. But this happens at the same
- 15:17Speaker 1: time that next week we'll see the FED ramping up
- 15:20Speaker 1: the pace of balance sheet unwind h the e c
- 15:23Speaker 1: B will be ramping down the pace of asset purchases.
- 15:27Speaker 1: And all of this has consequences for the financial markets.
- 15:30Speaker 1: And so why do you want to lock in rates
- 15:32Speaker 1: now when you know these artificial buyers and artificial holders
- 15:36Speaker 1: of assets are becoming less aggressive in terms of their holdings.
- 15:41Speaker 1: And I think that factors into, uh, the the appetite
- 15:44Speaker 1: at these auctions. On top of that, in terms of
- 15:47Speaker 1: the FED meeting, again, the rate increases are largely expected,
- 15:50Speaker 1: but the guidance for future actions is not entirely clear.
- 15:55Speaker 1: So the Feds leaning towards a December move today, they'll
- 15:59Speaker 1: have the opportunity to either cast it in stone or
- 16:02Speaker 1: retain some optionality ahead of the December meeting. I think
- 16:05Speaker 1: it'd be wise to keep that optionality in place and
- 16:08Speaker 1: not drive market expectations higher. And also this notion of
- 16:13Speaker 1: where rates are going to be going over the course
- 16:15Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen and as we close in on neutral
- 16:19Speaker 1: is going to be very key to how financial markets respond.
- 16:22Speaker 1: If I can just add one last footnote, the rhetoric
- 16:25Speaker 1: from the Fed has seemingly toughened as of late. Initially
- 16:30Speaker 1: there was some notion that the policy makers would move
- 16:33Speaker 1: cautiously as they get into neutral territory. That kind of
- 16:37Speaker 1: changed towards let's get to neutral and then reassess, And
- 16:40Speaker 1: even some policymakers like Governor Lyle Brainerd have this notion
- 16:44Speaker 1: that the short term neutral rate is higher than the
- 16:49Speaker 1: long run neutral rate, and therefore the Fed may have
- 16:51Speaker 1: to push rates further above neutral uh in the course
- 16:55Speaker 1: of the medium term. I'm just digesting that footnote, Carl,
- 16:59Speaker 1: that is a long footnote. Um, can you tell us
- 17:02Speaker 1: what role crude oil and crude oil prices at seventy
- 17:06Speaker 1: one dollars a barrel play in the federal reserves? Thinking
- 17:09Speaker 1: about interest rates, given that President Donald Trump spoke at
- 17:13Speaker 1: the United Nations yesterday saying that OPEK is ripping people off, well,
- 17:16Speaker 1: I think it plays in a very indirect fashion. And
- 17:20Speaker 1: and by that I mean the FED is not going
- 17:21Speaker 1: to respond to an increase in oil prices or a
- 17:25Speaker 1: transitory shock in the energy price in the energy space.
- 17:30Speaker 1: But this does factor into the performance of emerging markets,
- 17:34Speaker 1: for instance, which the FED. Uh, that's not you know,
- 17:37Speaker 1: on the top five list of priorities. But the FED
- 17:39Speaker 1: is cognizant that their actions have consequences across the globe
- 17:43Speaker 1: and they want to avoid any type of destabilizing action. Uh.
- 17:48Speaker 1: That's number one. And number two is through business investment.
- 17:51Speaker 1: In prior episodes where oil prices have been high, we
- 17:54Speaker 1: see a lot of domestic investment into fracking and those
- 17:58Speaker 1: types of industries, and that actually supports business investment in
- 18:01Speaker 1: the economy. All right, thank you so much, Carl Goddon,
- 18:04Speaker 1: in chief US economist for Bloomberg Economics. I know you're
- 18:07Speaker 1: gonna be covering this in detail throughout the day. Thanks
- 18:13Speaker 1: for listening to the Bloomberg P and L podcast. You
- 18:16Speaker 1: can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
- 18:19Speaker 1: or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm pim Fox. I'm
- 18:23Speaker 1: on Twitter at pim Fox. I'm on Twitter at Lisa Abramo.
- 18:27Speaker 1: It's one before the podcast. You can always catch us
- 18:30Speaker 1: worldwide on Bloomberg Radio