Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Debt Ceiling, DHL, TikTok, Commodities, and Ukraine (Podcast)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney, alongside
- 0:04Speaker 1: my co host Matt Miller.
- 0:05Speaker 2: Every business day, we bring you interviews from CEOs, market pros,
- 0:09Speaker 2: and Bloomberg experts, along with essential market moving news.
- 0:14Speaker 1: Find the Bloomberg Markets Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever
- 0:17Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts, and at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast.
- 0:20Speaker 1: All right, let's check in on this federal reserve. You know,
- 0:24Speaker 1: I mean I hate to talk to Arad Jersey because
- 0:26Speaker 1: then he just want to talk soccer, soccer, soccer. You
- 0:28Speaker 1: want to talk to Manchester United. You know, they just
- 0:30Speaker 1: won the Premiership, but we're going to try to focus
- 0:33Speaker 1: them back a little bit on rates here. So I
- 0:36Speaker 1: we're getting a lot of ego data this week. I
- 0:39Speaker 1: don't know how you're feeling about the debt ceiling. Let's
- 0:41Speaker 1: assume it kind of gets done with that backdrop, How
- 0:45Speaker 1: do you think your your feederal reserve is feeling these days?
- 0:47Speaker 3: Well, first, let's before you get a lot of angry
- 0:50Speaker 3: tweets and emails. If it's Manchester City.
- 0:52Speaker 1: The Manchester City, okay, thank you.
- 0:54Speaker 3: Manchester United is fighting for a Champions League place right now?
- 0:57Speaker 1: Okay, But you're not a fan of either Manchester.
- 1:00Speaker 3: Team, right, So my son is actually a very big
- 1:03Speaker 3: United supporter, but yeah, I'm not a fan of city
- 1:07Speaker 3: at all.
- 1:08Speaker 1: And what's your team?
- 1:09Speaker 3: By the way, aston Villa?
- 1:11Speaker 1: Why would it be aston Villa? Where'd you pick that
- 1:13Speaker 1: one up?
- 1:14Speaker 3: I I when I did a postgraduate degree at the
- 1:17Speaker 3: University of Birmingham, which is very close to aston Villa.
- 1:20Speaker 3: So a bunch of Villa matches.
- 1:21Speaker 1: All right, there you go. Everybody's got to see.
- 1:24Speaker 3: Yeah, so let's assume that the dead ceiling gets raised,
- 1:27Speaker 3: because they probably will raise it, and if they don't,
- 1:29Speaker 3: there's so many disaster scenarios that could potentially come around
- 1:33Speaker 3: that that, you know, we'd rather not kind of think
- 1:35Speaker 3: about it at the moment. It's we've spent way too
- 1:37Speaker 3: much gray matter on thinking about it. I think that
- 1:41Speaker 3: you know that the Federal Reserve is contending with kind
- 1:43Speaker 3: of two competing forces at the moment. So one is
- 1:46Speaker 3: inflation coming down as quickly as they want. You know,
- 1:48Speaker 3: some of the data that we've seen, the the jobs
- 1:52Speaker 3: data continues to deteriorate a little bit, but we're still
- 1:55Speaker 3: creating a lot of jobs and there's still very tight
- 1:57Speaker 3: labor markets. But then on the other side, you know
- 2:00Speaker 3: that I think the FED will be a little bit
- 2:02Speaker 3: reluctant to hike because they're worried about what might happen
- 2:04Speaker 3: to some of the banking sectors. Right, so we obviously
- 2:08Speaker 3: all know what happened back in March, and I don't
- 2:11Speaker 3: think that the FED Reserve wants to be the impetus
- 2:14Speaker 3: for additional bank failures and bank runs, especially since they've
- 2:17Speaker 3: already raised interest rates five hundred basis points. So our
- 2:20Speaker 3: base case remains that the Fed is going to be
- 2:22Speaker 3: on hold that they might job try to talk the
- 2:26Speaker 3: market out of pricing for interest rate cuts later this year.
- 2:31Speaker 3: But I think that that the bulk of the Committee
- 2:34Speaker 3: is not going to agree with James Bullard saying that
- 2:36Speaker 3: we're going to hike interest rates another twenty five or
- 2:38Speaker 3: fifty basis points. I think that most people on the
- 2:41Speaker 3: Committee want to take a little bit of a wait
- 2:43Speaker 3: and see attitude from now.
- 2:45Speaker 4: Hey, Ira, I'm looking at the four week Treasury bills
- 2:47Speaker 4: and how they're hovering around five point four percent, So
- 2:50Speaker 4: that would basically bring their rise since the beginning of
- 2:52Speaker 4: May to more than sixty basis points. I'm wondering what
- 2:55Speaker 4: kind of movement are you expecting to see Indy bond
- 2:58Speaker 4: market on which hopefully be a potential deal soon here.
- 3:03Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think that some of those bills that
- 3:05Speaker 3: are trading super cheap right now will we'll come back
- 3:08Speaker 3: into line with kind of the market expectation. So the
- 3:14Speaker 3: thing to look at for, you know, the real market
- 3:17Speaker 3: expectations for what the Fed is going to do in June,
- 3:19Speaker 3: would be looking at the overnight interest rate swap market.
- 3:21Speaker 3: So these are short term derivative instruments that are based
- 3:24Speaker 3: on the Federal Funds effective rate. So so that that
- 3:28Speaker 3: will be a much better gauge than looking at treasury bills,
- 3:31Speaker 3: because treasury bills right now, even the one month treasury bills,
- 3:34Speaker 3: are being very skewed by the debt ceiling ancs that
- 3:36Speaker 3: are that are going on. So we are pricing some
- 3:40Speaker 3: probability of an interest rate hike by the Fed at
- 3:43Speaker 3: the June meeting. And when we look at these overnight
- 3:45Speaker 3: index swaps for the next Fed meeting, what we wind
- 3:50Speaker 3: up seeing is that we are pricing for you know,
- 3:53Speaker 3: more or less a thirty thirty five percent chance that
- 3:56Speaker 3: the Federal Reserve does another twenty five basis point interest increase. Now,
- 4:00Speaker 3: I think as we get closer to that and as
- 4:02Speaker 3: we get more data. Uh So, we get the pc
- 4:05Speaker 3: data this week for the month of April, and that's
- 4:09Speaker 3: that's the measure that that the Federal Reserve really likes
- 4:12Speaker 3: and is their preferred gauge of inflation. You know, if
- 4:16Speaker 3: that comes out as expected, then I think that you
- 4:18Speaker 3: wind up probably with the with uh that price that
- 4:23Speaker 3: pike being priced out of the market at least at
- 4:26Speaker 3: least in the near term until we get the CPI report,
- 4:28Speaker 3: which we get very soon before the June meeting.
- 4:32Speaker 1: So again you mentioned on a Friday, get the PCE data,
- 4:36Speaker 1: and as you mentioned, the core deflator, which is kind
- 4:39Speaker 1: of the preferred metric for the Fed month on month
- 4:42Speaker 1: of consensus is zero point three percent. That's even with
- 4:45Speaker 1: last month. On an annualized basis, that's four point six percent,
- 4:49Speaker 1: even with with last month. Those numbers just that I
- 4:52Speaker 1: just quoted, they feel sticky to me, number one, and
- 4:57Speaker 1: but number two, I guess that four point six is
- 4:59Speaker 1: that the number they want to see Closer to two percent?
- 5:02Speaker 3: Yeah, it is, and it's not getting there very quickly,
- 5:05Speaker 3: which is the reason why I think that the the
- 5:08Speaker 3: you know, J. Powell mentioned this even in his little
- 5:12Speaker 3: round table discussion last week when he was on with
- 5:14Speaker 3: former chair Ben Bernanki that the Federal Reserve is not
- 5:19Speaker 3: going to be cutting interest rates anytime soon, and especially
- 5:24Speaker 3: when you continue to get kind of zero point three
- 5:26Speaker 3: percent core core deflator or headline deflator measures. So think
- 5:32Speaker 3: about what zero point three is, Paul, because if you
- 5:34Speaker 3: annualize that, then you're talking about three point nine percent inflation.
- 5:38Speaker 5: Right.
- 5:38Speaker 3: It's a pretty simple calculation, right, or three point six
- 5:41Speaker 3: Excuse me, I can't do math today. Three point six
- 5:43Speaker 3: percent inflation, and three point six percent is still well
- 5:46Speaker 3: above the Fed's two percent measure. You know, I think
- 5:50Speaker 3: the Feds kind of box themselves into a corner a
- 5:52Speaker 3: little bit because focusing in on two percent, we want
- 5:55Speaker 3: to get inflation back to two percent. Paul. You and
- 5:58Speaker 3: I grew up in this industry back and then in
- 6:00Speaker 3: the eighties and nineties when we had inflation that was
- 6:02Speaker 3: above three percent, but wages were growing above three percent,
- 6:05Speaker 3: and no one was you know, consumer confidence was reasonably good.
- 6:09Speaker 3: People weren't unhappy about their employment situation because jobs were
- 6:13Speaker 3: reasonably plentiful and people were getting four percent pay raises
- 6:16Speaker 3: every year when inflation was three percent, so that wasn't
- 6:20Speaker 3: the worst thing in the world. And I think if
- 6:22Speaker 3: we fall back into an environment like that, it's going
- 6:24Speaker 3: to be difficult at this point for the FED to
- 6:26Speaker 3: pivot back to saying, well, maybe three percents not so
- 6:30Speaker 3: bad for inflation, right. And I think that that's the
- 6:34Speaker 3: challenge with having these inflation targets, like a lot of
- 6:37Speaker 3: central banks have, is that moving away from them ends
- 6:40Speaker 3: up being disrupted to the markets and confusing from a
- 6:43Speaker 3: communications perspective.
- 6:44Speaker 4: And Ira, you're bringing up the CPI report, I was
- 6:47Speaker 4: looking at the schedule. It's actually coming out on June thirteenth,
- 6:49Speaker 4: so that would be day one of the fed's next meeting,
- 6:52Speaker 4: and the decision is on June fourteenth. I was curious
- 6:55Speaker 4: what we do hear from Obviously, as you know, tons
- 6:58Speaker 4: of Feds speak this week. We just heard from James
- 7:00Speaker 4: Bullard yesterday talking about trying to get in potentially two
- 7:03Speaker 4: more rate hikes because of the labor market being strong.
- 7:06Speaker 4: How much whenever we do have FED speak like that,
- 7:08Speaker 4: do you see those types of potential changes there in
- 7:10Speaker 4: the bond market or even just pricing in those expectations
- 7:13Speaker 4: for potentially another rate cut or rate rise rather at
- 7:16Speaker 4: the next meeting.
- 7:17Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 7:17Speaker 3: Well, I think that's one reason why you saw two
- 7:19Speaker 3: year yields move, and you certainly saw the overnight index
- 7:22Speaker 3: swop market and some of the derivatives market move a
- 7:24Speaker 3: little bit after after President Bullard spoke yesterday. You'll still
- 7:28Speaker 3: see volatility around that. And one people have focused very
- 7:33Speaker 3: much on James Bullard's cycle in particular because he was
- 7:36Speaker 3: pretty early in being one of the more hawkish members
- 7:39Speaker 3: that that basically, you know, was kind of the southsayer
- 7:43Speaker 3: for for the FED hiking and inflation remaining high and sticky.
- 7:49Speaker 3: You know, I'm not sure that his colleagues on the
- 7:52Speaker 3: FED agree with him. So, you know, as we hear
- 7:55Speaker 3: from other speakers, you know, maybe we you know, hear
- 7:58Speaker 3: from a couple of governors for example, this week, and
- 8:00Speaker 3: if they're they found a little bit more dubbish than Billard,
- 8:03Speaker 3: then maybe we'll, you know, that will be the impetus
- 8:05Speaker 3: for us to take some of those hikes out of
- 8:07Speaker 3: the market.
- 8:08Speaker 1: All right, Ira, thanks so much for joining us. As always,
- 8:10Speaker 1: Ira Jersey, chief US interest rate strategists for Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 8:14Speaker 1: He's also the resident Aston Villa uber fan, so we
- 8:18Speaker 1: appreciate getting some of his thoughts again fed front and
- 8:21Speaker 1: center as usual.
- 8:24Speaker 5: You're listening to the team Ken's are Live program Bloomberg
- 8:27Speaker 5: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
- 8:31Speaker 5: the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
- 8:34Speaker 5: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
- 8:38Speaker 1: Jess, we are so fortunate. I think here at Bloomberg
- 8:41Speaker 1: we've got, you know, seventeen hundred reporters and bi analysts
- 8:46Speaker 1: around the world that are experts at what they do,
- 8:49Speaker 1: and for the most part, they're very friendly. And if
- 8:52Speaker 1: you call them up and say, hey, can you help
- 8:53Speaker 1: us out on Bloomberg Radio, more times than not they
- 8:56Speaker 1: say yes. And that is just a treat for us
- 8:58Speaker 1: and for our audience. And boy, this round table takes
- 9:01Speaker 1: the cake because we want to talk about this debt ceiling.
- 9:03Speaker 1: I'm going to call a dilemma. I don't know what's
- 9:04Speaker 1: going on at there. I assume it's going to get them,
- 9:06Speaker 1: but what do I know. But a couple of our
- 9:08Speaker 1: guests are really smart and they can help us shine
- 9:10Speaker 1: some light on it. Liz McCormick, Chief correspondent for Global
- 9:13Speaker 1: Macro markets with Bloomberg News. She joins us as well
- 9:16Speaker 1: as Cameron Christ macro strategists with Bloomberg News as well.
- 9:19Speaker 1: So we get a couple smart minds here. They've got
- 9:21Speaker 1: some experience, they've got some perspective. Liz, let's start with
- 9:23Speaker 1: you. You know, I'm just an equity guy, and I don't
- 9:26Speaker 1: see I got my equity indexes up this year. It
- 9:29Speaker 1: doesn't seem like the equity market's too worried about it.
- 9:31Speaker 1: If I were to look deeply in the bond market
- 9:33Speaker 1: when I see some tension, some growing tension in the
- 9:36Speaker 1: bond market about a potential debt issue.
- 9:40Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. There's like two worlds going on. So it
- 9:44Speaker 6: seems right between stocks and the fixed income market. But yeah,
- 9:47Speaker 6: and that's kind of the fixed income market's job front
- 9:50Speaker 6: and center early on to do a read on this
- 9:52Speaker 6: debt ceiling issue, and you're seeing it. You're seeing treasury
- 9:55Speaker 6: bills that mature around now. Janet Yelling was out I
- 9:59Speaker 6: believe it was yesterday, just yesterday, with a new letter
- 10:02Speaker 6: to Congress saying she thinks there's a lot of risk
- 10:05Speaker 6: they could run out of capacity to pay all the
- 10:07Speaker 6: bills as early as June one, she's you know, that's
- 10:10Speaker 6: highly likely. So the treasury market, there's you know, kind
- 10:13Speaker 6: of a buffer range maybe through early June. Treasury investors
- 10:17Speaker 6: are kind of weary of buying treasury bills that mature
- 10:20Speaker 6: around that time. So you're seeing those bills with very
- 10:23Speaker 6: high rates, well over five percent, and those rates are
- 10:27Speaker 6: higher than those with longer maturities, which usually have a
- 10:30Speaker 6: higher rate. So people are avoiding that. You're seeing credit
- 10:33Speaker 6: to caul swamps, their costs go up as people buy
- 10:37Speaker 6: some insurance, and just a level of angst in the marketplace.
- 10:40Speaker 6: But yeah, I mean the stock market. There's a lot
- 10:42Speaker 6: of people say until the stock market really kind of
- 10:45Speaker 6: takes it hard, maybe politicians won't, you know, step off
- 10:48Speaker 6: the face of getting a deal. But that's another topic.
- 10:50Speaker 4: I guess, you know, Cameron, I wanted to bring you
- 10:53Speaker 4: to this conversation. Who we call Macroman at Bloomberg so
- 10:56Speaker 4: is so exciting. I know, you just put out a
- 10:58Speaker 4: column that the head line is where the yield curve
- 11:01Speaker 4: thinks the neutral rate may be. What do you find here?
- 11:07Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, unsurprisingly it's lower than where we are.
- 11:12Speaker 7: I mean, listen, taking a step back, the whole idea
- 11:15Speaker 7: of neutrality is like an economist dream because they get
- 11:19Speaker 7: to make very complicated models with lots of Greek letters.
- 11:26Speaker 7: But what we also find is that they tend to
- 11:30Speaker 7: be revised a lot, and they're not necessarily terribly accurate.
- 11:33Speaker 7: So my approach was just, well, let's just look at
- 11:36Speaker 7: what the old curve says, because we know that when
- 11:39Speaker 7: the yield curve is very steep, it's basically saying that
- 11:41Speaker 7: rates are easy, and when the yeld curve is very inverted,
- 11:44Speaker 7: it's saying that rates are restrictive, and obviously the curve
- 11:47Speaker 7: is very restrictive. The curve is very inverted at the moment,
- 11:50Speaker 7: saying that rates are restrictive, and the best I can
- 11:54Speaker 7: tease out, it's saying that in the US at least,
- 11:56Speaker 7: the neutral level of rates is about three point six
- 11:59Speaker 7: percent at the moment.
- 12:01Speaker 1: So Cameron, for your perspective, I don't know, are you
- 12:05Speaker 1: gaming out at all yet? Have you pre written a
- 12:07Speaker 1: column about we just defaulted on our debt? I mean,
- 12:10Speaker 1: how are you thinking about it?
- 12:12Speaker 6: No?
- 12:12Speaker 7: I haven't because I hope it doesn't come to that.
- 12:14Speaker 7: I mean, I mean honest with you, I feel like
- 12:17Speaker 7: I'm at the circus just watching a bunch of clowns.
- 12:20Speaker 7: I wish I had a bag of peanuts I could throw,
- 12:22Speaker 7: you know, I could throw at them. I think the
- 12:24Speaker 7: assumption is pretty prevalent in the market that when push
- 12:29Speaker 7: comes to shove, nobody wants their name on a default,
- 12:34Speaker 7: and that they at the very least they will come
- 12:37Speaker 7: to some agreement to kick the can down the road
- 12:40Speaker 7: a few months to allow for more robust negotiations. I
- 12:46Speaker 7: suspect that the Republicans would like the issue to become
- 12:49Speaker 7: front and center again early next year with the presidential campaign,
- 12:54Speaker 7: and I'm equally sure that the White House would prefer
- 12:58Speaker 7: that not to be the case. So there's still you know,
- 13:02Speaker 7: there's still some political considerations there. But you know, nobody
- 13:07Speaker 7: comes out with their reputation enhanced by a government default,
- 13:12Speaker 7: and I think we have to operate on the on
- 13:14Speaker 7: the notion, at the end of the day, the sole goal,
- 13:16Speaker 7: or the primary goal of every politician is to be
- 13:18Speaker 7: re elected.
- 13:19Speaker 4: Liz, I know you've been looking at how the US
- 13:21Speaker 4: Treasury thirty year yield hit four percent for the first
- 13:24Speaker 4: time since March. Whenever you're speaking with your sources, what
- 13:27Speaker 4: are they thinking as far as what we could see
- 13:30Speaker 4: happen in the bond market once there hopefully would be
- 13:34Speaker 4: a deal coming soon.
- 13:37Speaker 6: Well, I think if there's a deal, and I think
- 13:38Speaker 6: Cameron is right, there's a lot of us who are like,
- 13:41Speaker 6: can we turn this movie off? We've seen it before,
- 13:43Speaker 6: can we just get it, get the deal. We're tired
- 13:46Speaker 6: of it. Don't tell my boss that now. I'm just kidding,
- 13:49Speaker 6: but I think, yeah, I think if we get a deal,
- 13:54Speaker 6: the bond market reverts its focus, which hasn't forgotten, but
- 13:57Speaker 6: it's all about the economy and the and like you
- 14:01Speaker 6: guys were talking earlier with IRA, we did have some
- 14:04Speaker 6: hawker speakers yesterday that doesn't seem to jive with what
- 14:08Speaker 6: Chairman Palell said, who kind of seemed to lay the
- 14:11Speaker 6: case for a pause in June. So I think, you know,
- 14:14Speaker 6: whereas maybe the stocks, even though they haven't gotten beaten
- 14:17Speaker 6: up too much, there's folks that say they see immediate
- 14:19Speaker 6: relief rally if there's a dead ceiling deal, I think
- 14:22Speaker 6: bond yields can creep higher because there has been no
- 14:25Speaker 6: kind of indications. In fact, some of the easing that
- 14:28Speaker 6: was priced in the second half of the year from
- 14:30Speaker 6: the swats traders has kind of paired back a little.
- 14:33Speaker 6: So I think the market needs to see some you know,
- 14:35Speaker 6: strong information signaling a recession is really coming soon, or
- 14:39Speaker 6: that the Fed is not only ready to for sure pause,
- 14:43Speaker 6: but pivot, which they clearly have not indicated. There's a
- 14:46Speaker 6: lot of people who think there could be some move
- 14:48Speaker 6: higher in rates. So, like you said, Jess, we saw
- 14:51Speaker 6: the thirty year ago about four percent. The whole curve
- 14:54Speaker 6: is have greats higher today, with the short end even
- 14:57Speaker 6: higher than the long end. So I think, yeah, that's
- 15:00Speaker 6: kind of filtering back into the system. What happens next?
- 15:04Speaker 5: Right?
- 15:04Speaker 1: So, Lis you mentioned earlier credit default swaps, and I
- 15:06Speaker 1: think all of us, you know, learned a lot about
- 15:09Speaker 1: credit the fault swaps back in a great financial crisis
- 15:12Speaker 1: when we're looking at all these banks and all that.
- 15:15Speaker 1: So you're telling us there are credit default swaps on
- 15:17Speaker 1: the US government, and if so, what are they telling
- 15:19Speaker 1: us today?
- 15:21Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's kind of crazy, right, And let's just
- 15:24Speaker 6: say which I know Cameron would I would think agree
- 15:27Speaker 6: with me. It's a very thinly traded market. There's always
- 15:30Speaker 6: kind of a lot of people who are suspect. Let's
- 15:33Speaker 6: not read too much into this because you know, it's
- 15:35Speaker 6: not a huge market, but the cost to buy them
- 15:39Speaker 6: has gone up the very short maturities like a year,
- 15:42Speaker 6: which at least shows you some broad signal that there,
- 15:45Speaker 6: you know, people are a little bit worried or doing
- 15:47Speaker 6: some hedging that there could be a default. But by
- 15:51Speaker 6: all means that it's a more actively traded market and
- 15:53Speaker 6: emerging markets where unfortunately defaults have in some countries been commonplace.
- 15:59Speaker 6: But yeah, I mean it's definitely something we look at.
- 16:01Speaker 6: If you look at Alex Harrison nineteen, who does this
- 16:03Speaker 6: great little debt ceiling tracker, you know she has that
- 16:07Speaker 6: in there. It's just important to kind of keep on
- 16:09Speaker 6: your radar screen of what's going on.
- 16:11Speaker 4: Yeah, Cameron, I know you've been keeping a close eye
- 16:14Speaker 4: on real yields. What are they telling us right now, Well.
- 16:19Speaker 7: They're telling us that that if you are long gold,
- 16:25Speaker 7: or if you are long stocks, maybe you want to
- 16:27Speaker 7: be a little worried because they've been they've been taking
- 16:29Speaker 7: higher two. Your real yields are basically at their highs
- 16:32Speaker 7: of the entire cycles. So this sort of rebound in
- 16:36Speaker 7: interest rates that we've seen over the last couple of
- 16:41Speaker 7: weeks has not been the market pricing and more inflation
- 16:44Speaker 7: moving forward, essentially the market pricing and tighter policy settings
- 16:48Speaker 7: or tighter effective policy settings moving forward. And that is
- 16:52Speaker 7: not a particularly positive one for assets that are dependent
- 16:57Speaker 7: on kind of free money or the ample liquidity and
- 17:02Speaker 7: there we were thinking of gold, or we're thinking of
- 17:04Speaker 7: the sort of infinite maturity or infinite durationtech dot complex.
- 17:09Speaker 7: It has done so well this year.
- 17:11Speaker 1: Hey, Keim, just about thirty seconds here. Are you surprised
- 17:13Speaker 1: that the nasdak's up twenty one percent, the NASDAK one
- 17:16Speaker 1: hunters up twenty six percent, the SMP's up nine percent?
- 17:20Speaker 1: You're surprised that these moves in the equity.
- 17:22Speaker 7: Markets over the course of the year. Yeah, I mean, yes,
- 17:26Speaker 7: very much.
- 17:26Speaker 6: So.
- 17:27Speaker 7: I mean, to some extent, you can sort of post
- 17:30Speaker 7: hawk explain it via the move in interest rates, but
- 17:33Speaker 7: it looks to me a lot like equity investors trying
- 17:37Speaker 7: to convince themselves that they get all the benefit of
- 17:39Speaker 7: low rates without any of the pain that causes the
- 17:42Speaker 7: said to.
- 17:43Speaker 1: Cut All right, guys, really appreciate getting some time from
- 17:45Speaker 1: both of you. Cameron christ Macro Strategists, Bloomberg News End.
- 17:49Speaker 1: Liz McCormick, chief correspondent covering the global macro markets. Two
- 17:53Speaker 1: seasoned reporters and observers of these markets, and they are
- 17:57Speaker 1: both graduates. So two of my favorite institutes of higher learning.
- 18:01Speaker 1: Liz McCormick of the Rutgers University, the State University of
- 18:05Speaker 1: New Jersey, and Camera Christ, a little school down in Durmoruth,
- 18:08Speaker 1: Carolina known as Duke.
- 18:09Speaker 5: You're listening to the tape Kent's are live program Bloomberg
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- 18:28Speaker 1: All right, let's talk delivering stuff boxes. Now when you
- 18:31Speaker 1: get home tonight, just how many boxes are gonna be
- 18:33Speaker 1: in front of your door? Probably?
- 18:34Speaker 4: I mean, my birthday was last week, so I have
- 18:37Speaker 4: a lot.
- 18:37Speaker 8: Of people been sending me some things, so I hope
- 18:40Speaker 8: that there are more boxes waiting for me.
- 18:42Speaker 1: You get, It's just it's unbelievable how the world's changed here.
- 18:45Speaker 1: So let's break it all down with Mike Para. He's
- 18:47Speaker 1: the CEO for the Americas at DHL Express joining us
- 18:50Speaker 1: live here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. So, Mike,
- 18:53Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us here. Appreciate you coming.
- 18:55Speaker 1: And you got a whole bunch of notes with you,
- 18:57Speaker 1: but this is a note free studio. See, I got nothing.
- 18:59Speaker 1: I just kind of for four of it talk to
- 19:02Speaker 1: us about your business here. I'm gonna ask you to
- 19:05Speaker 1: go back and tell us, you know, a minute or
- 19:07Speaker 1: so what the pandemic was like for you guys, and
- 19:09Speaker 1: then we'll go to kind of where you are today.
- 19:11Speaker 9: Yeah, So, first of all, thank you for having me
- 19:13Speaker 9: and thank you for having us. You know, the pandemic
- 19:15Speaker 9: for us was a blessing and obviously it was a curse.
- 19:19Speaker 9: First of all, on the curse side, we lost forty
- 19:21Speaker 9: two employees here in the Americas, and that was the
- 19:24Speaker 9: curse side. That was the difficult side for us. The
- 19:27Speaker 9: blessing side of it was that workers absolutely.
- 19:30Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 19:31Speaker 9: The blessing side was that our business just blossomed and
- 19:35Speaker 9: blossomed in many different ways. Number one is we were
- 19:37Speaker 9: able to successfully deliver over two point one billion vaccines
- 19:43Speaker 9: across the world. Many of the countries that got their
- 19:46Speaker 9: vaccines were delivered via DHL, so that was a blessing.
- 19:50Speaker 9: And then we had a growth and explosion over a
- 19:53Speaker 9: two year period of time that we had never seen
- 19:55Speaker 9: in the you know the history of our organization. So
- 19:59Speaker 9: that's what I would say. The ability to help to
- 20:00Speaker 9: connect people and improve lives was the blessing. To lose
- 20:04Speaker 9: colleagues across the world was painful.
- 20:07Speaker 4: And when you're looking at the market at this point,
- 20:10Speaker 4: what is it telling you is through your business because
- 20:13Speaker 4: I would imagine this is a big key as far
- 20:15Speaker 4: as what things are looking, not just nationally, but globally
- 20:18Speaker 4: as well.
- 20:19Speaker 9: Yeah, oh look the market right now is interesting. Just
- 20:22Speaker 9: coming off an interview and discussing this, you know, what
- 20:25Speaker 9: I would say from a macro level is, you know,
- 20:28Speaker 9: we went through this whole fear of running out what
- 20:31Speaker 9: I call four to roho and now to you know,
- 20:34Speaker 9: to access inventory and where you have supply is greater
- 20:38Speaker 9: than the demand that is out there at the moment.
- 20:40Speaker 9: But we are starting to see some signs of life.
- 20:42Speaker 9: We're starting to see some tailwinds out of China and
- 20:45Speaker 9: out of Hong Kong, so we're starting to see those
- 20:47Speaker 9: numbers grow.
- 20:48Speaker 4: Now.
- 20:48Speaker 9: Remember the baseline of this also is coming off the
- 20:51Speaker 9: fact that last year they were in a lockdown from
- 20:54Speaker 9: that perspective. So we're starting to see some momentum. We're
- 20:57Speaker 9: starting to add some additional capacit out of China and
- 21:01Speaker 9: out of Hong Kong into the United States predominantly. So
- 21:06Speaker 9: what we do know is that we're a bit more
- 21:08Speaker 9: optimistic than what everybody is saying in regards to the
- 21:12Speaker 9: US consumer, and we think we're going to you know,
- 21:16Speaker 9: we're getting ready for what will be a good fourth quarter.
- 21:19Speaker 9: So some people are saying the bounce back will come
- 21:21Speaker 9: back in the third quarter. You know, my thoughts, it's
- 21:23Speaker 9: going to be much more in the fourth quarter. I
- 21:25Speaker 9: think we're going to see more experiences happen, people taking
- 21:28Speaker 9: more vacation. The airlines are ramping up for that for June, July,
- 21:32Speaker 9: and August, and as a result of that, that's why
- 21:35Speaker 9: I'm saying it's going to be much more fourth quarter related.
- 21:38Speaker 1: Talk to us about you know, one of the key
- 21:40Speaker 1: components of your cost structure your business is your people. Yea,
- 21:44Speaker 1: labor Do you have enough people, do you have them employed?
- 21:48Speaker 1: Is it hard to get them? Do you have to
- 21:50Speaker 1: pay them more? Talk to us about your labor force.
- 21:53Speaker 9: Thank you, Thank you for asking that question. In regards
- 21:55Speaker 9: do we have enough people, yes, do we need to
- 21:57Speaker 9: pay them more? We just put out the law. Our
- 22:00Speaker 9: just pay increase in the history of the company was
- 22:03Speaker 9: this year in twenty twenty three, and rightfully so, based
- 22:06Speaker 9: on inflation and cost of living in general that's going on.
- 22:09Speaker 9: And by the way, this was not just here in
- 22:10Speaker 9: the United States but also globally from that perspective, so
- 22:14Speaker 9: less concerned about that. In regards to recruitment and recruitment efforts.
- 22:18Speaker 9: We are replacing folks as we have either attrition or promotions.
- 22:24Speaker 9: We are replacing roles. But we are constantly looking at
- 22:28Speaker 9: our efficiencies and how we can optimize our network, not
- 22:31Speaker 9: only in the air but also on the ground.
- 22:34Speaker 4: What are your thoughts on geopolitics right now? And is
- 22:37Speaker 4: the debt sealing a concern for you?
- 22:38Speaker 9: You know, somebody asked me as well that question on
- 22:40Speaker 9: the debt ceiling. We're not spending a lot of time
- 22:44Speaker 9: because that's going to work its way out as it
- 22:46Speaker 9: has historically. Now some might say, well, Mike, everybody says that,
- 22:50Speaker 9: but in all reality, I think it's just much more
- 22:52Speaker 9: of a timetable of when it's going to get negotiated
- 22:55Speaker 9: and worked out. I think there's more fear associated with
- 22:58Speaker 9: the whole debt ceiling and are we going to out
- 23:00Speaker 9: of time? And are you know what's going to happen
- 23:02Speaker 9: to the US economy. But so we're not spending a
- 23:06Speaker 9: lot of time on it, and from a global perspective, people,
- 23:09Speaker 9: we're watching it, but from a perspective of it, you know,
- 23:13Speaker 9: I'm not going to bed at night, not sleeping.
- 23:14Speaker 4: I'm less concerned any of those fears affecting the business
- 23:17Speaker 4: at all through your models.
- 23:19Speaker 9: At the moment, I would say, no, you know, some
- 23:22Speaker 9: of the bigger challenges that we face, and we face
- 23:24Speaker 9: challenges every day, right. I mean we've got you know,
- 23:26Speaker 9: what's going on in Russia and Ukraine, that's always been
- 23:28Speaker 9: a concern. You've got the potential concern of China and Taiwan.
- 23:32Speaker 9: That's a concern. So we watch all those spaces closely.
- 23:36Speaker 9: What we are what we are seeing is as we
- 23:39Speaker 9: get through this inventory. And you were talking about luxury
- 23:42Speaker 9: goods before I came on board. By my way, my
- 23:44Speaker 9: wife is a huge LVBAH so you know, and I
- 23:48Speaker 9: purchase our bags as well. But what I would say
- 23:50Speaker 9: is we have seen as slow down in luxury goods,
- 23:53Speaker 9: and that slowed down in luxury goods. What we're hearing
- 23:55Speaker 9: from our customers is they're spending much more on experiences.
- 23:58Speaker 9: Having come out of two years in COVID and not
- 24:01Speaker 9: being able to travel, not being able to get out.
- 24:03Speaker 9: They're using the money that they do have and they're
- 24:06Speaker 9: using it on experiences. And that's why I think we'll
- 24:08Speaker 9: see that through the summer as well.
- 24:10Speaker 4: What do you think that tells us about the economy?
- 24:12Speaker 4: Then if you're seeing sort of a shift, there is
- 24:14Speaker 4: this more of an optimistic sign for the economy rather
- 24:17Speaker 4: than when everyone's focused on the health of the consumer.
- 24:19Speaker 9: Yeah, and that's why I said it was a bit
- 24:21Speaker 9: more optimistic about the US consumer going into Q four.
- 24:24Speaker 9: And I do think we're going to have a real
- 24:26Speaker 9: peak season this year, whereas last year we had the
- 24:30Speaker 9: eternal Black Friday, the eternal Cyber Monday, and the sales
- 24:33Speaker 9: that went on for a healthy period of time. I
- 24:36Speaker 9: think we're going to see a bounce back in retail
- 24:38Speaker 9: from that perspective as well, and we're starting to see
- 24:41Speaker 9: that in the number of activations that are happening with
- 24:44Speaker 9: our customers.
- 24:45Speaker 1: Talk to us about the competitive environment. I mean FedEx
- 24:48Speaker 1: ups the United States Postal Service. I guess I don't know,
- 24:52Speaker 1: but FedEx, I mean they had the integrated T and T.
- 24:55Speaker 1: So talk just about the competitive land landscape.
- 24:57Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, look, both our competitors, good companies, very
- 25:02Speaker 9: large domestic presence. Their focus is big time focus on domestic.
- 25:06Speaker 9: Our focus is predominantly one hundred percent internationally, more specifically
- 25:10Speaker 9: here in the United States. You know, you've got two
- 25:12Speaker 9: different things going on. You've got a transformation going on
- 25:15Speaker 9: on one side, which is an optimization of you know,
- 25:18Speaker 9: of an organization, uh as well as the future of
- 25:22Speaker 9: combining two different entities, which will be a first for
- 25:24Speaker 9: them on one side, and that that could potentially be
- 25:27Speaker 9: a distraction, is what I would say. The other or
- 25:31Speaker 9: the other side is an organization that is focusing on
- 25:34Speaker 9: yield and margin, which we focus on consistently from a
- 25:37Speaker 9: pricing perspective, an efficiency perspective, but also you know, a
- 25:41Speaker 9: labor potential challenge that they may be facing. So again
- 25:45Speaker 9: that's another distraction. Our focus right now is on making
- 25:49Speaker 9: sure that we're protecting the jobs that we do have,
- 25:52Speaker 9: protecting the customers that we do have, and growing our
- 25:55Speaker 9: business the right.
- 25:56Speaker 1: Way, Hey, Jess, I got to call out here, Mike's
- 25:59Speaker 1: worrying and a Miami Heat Cup links. Oh about the
- 26:04Speaker 1: Heat and Miami. How big a story is that in Miami.
- 26:07Speaker 9: Well, look, there's two big stories going on in Miami
- 26:10Speaker 9: right now. One is the Florida Panthers that are three
- 26:12Speaker 9: and oh right and in twenty seven years have never
- 26:16Speaker 9: reached the the NHL finals. And then we've got my
- 26:20Speaker 9: Miami Heat, God bless them, three and oh against Boston
- 26:24Speaker 9: eight seed, seven undrafted free agents that everybody keeps reminding
- 26:28Speaker 9: us about. And you've got an organization that really has
- 26:31Speaker 9: been there before but said they weren't going to beat
- 26:34Speaker 9: Milwaukee and they did. If you're a Knicks fan, I
- 26:37Speaker 9: apologize for everyone here said hey, you're going to have
- 26:40Speaker 9: a hard time against the Knicks, and we were able
- 26:43Speaker 9: to win there. And now we're up three to zero
- 26:45Speaker 9: against Boston and hoping to close it out tonight at home.
- 26:48Speaker 9: So excited. Excited for Jimmy Butler, excited for the Miami
- 26:53Speaker 9: Heat organization, but excited in general for sports sports because
- 26:58Speaker 9: you have an underdog team in both the We're the
- 27:00Speaker 9: Panthers eight seed in the NHL that are potentially going
- 27:04Speaker 9: to close it out and the eight seed Miami Heat
- 27:06Speaker 9: that can do it.
- 27:07Speaker 1: So good the story from them, that good story from im.
- 27:09Speaker 1: Now you get the baseball. The guess we all set.
- 27:11Speaker 1: Mike Paris, CEO of America, is for DHL Express, joining
- 27:15Speaker 1: us here in our studio. Appreciate geting the update on
- 27:17Speaker 1: the business and our friends at DHL.
- 27:20Speaker 4: As well as the thirtieth anniversary is coming up.
- 27:22Speaker 1: I know you've been at the companies and like out
- 27:25Speaker 1: very college.
- 27:26Speaker 9: Boom, it's my marriage, my wife.
- 27:30Speaker 1: Yeah, this is Bloomberg.
- 27:33Speaker 5: You're listening to the team. Ken's are live program Bloomberg
- 27:36Speaker 5: Markets weekdays at ten am eastering on Bloomberg dot com,
- 27:40Speaker 5: the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
- 27:43Speaker 5: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
- 27:47Speaker 1: Currently, right now in Katara, there is the Qatar Economic
- 27:50Speaker 1: Form and that's where Caroline Hyde, a host of Bloomberg Technology,
- 27:54Speaker 1: track down the CEO of Tiktoks. We want to check
- 27:57Speaker 1: in with Caroline. We also got Man Deep singing here,
- 28:00Speaker 1: senior technologyannels for Bloomberg Intelligence. He's in our studio here,
- 28:03Speaker 1: Meek and Pepper Caroline some questions too, Caroline thanks so
- 28:06Speaker 1: much for joining us. You know your interview with show
- 28:11Speaker 1: Cho the CEO, hope I got that somewhat correct. For TikTok,
- 28:14Speaker 1: What were the key items? What were the key takeaways
- 28:16Speaker 1: you had from your discussion with the CEO of TikTok.
- 28:21Speaker 10: I mean, ah, boy, wasn't it newsie, Because of course,
- 28:24Speaker 10: just less than twenty four hours before sitting down with him,
- 28:27Speaker 10: it became public that indeed TikTok was suing the State
- 28:31Speaker 10: of Montana.
- 28:32Speaker 11: After of course, the state.
- 28:33Speaker 10: Of Antana has said that they're going to be going
- 28:35Speaker 10: further than any state has ever gone before and banning
- 28:38Speaker 10: the app from the beginning of January twenty twenty four.
- 28:41Speaker 10: So here was the statement coming from the CEO that
- 28:45Speaker 10: they feel that this is unconstitutional. The key takeaway was
- 28:48Speaker 10: that the key takeaway was feeling also that it looks
- 28:50Speaker 10: pretty confident. Ultimately, he feels that they will prevail, they'll
- 28:55Speaker 10: be able to stay in the United States. And why
- 28:57Speaker 10: is that Because they have one hundred and fifty million users,
- 28:59Speaker 10: they have people consuming next content and actually more business
- 29:02Speaker 10: is depending on it. But he didn't offer anything new
- 29:05Speaker 10: really in terms of what they're doing the state and
- 29:09Speaker 10: protect the privacy of US users. That's why Montana's of
- 29:13Speaker 10: course taking the step wanting to bang the lord about
- 29:15Speaker 10: the Chinese government having access to US data and still
- 29:20Speaker 10: there standing by this Oracle plan that is Project Texas,
- 29:24Speaker 10: that would be able to secure your data in the US,
- 29:27Speaker 10: they say, and ultimately prevent back door. He said, no
- 29:31Speaker 10: company can do and prevent them a backdoor any risks
- 29:33Speaker 10: one hundred percent that will be underrepresent the risks without level.
- 29:37Speaker 4: And Carolin, to your point, especially with lawmakers in the
- 29:40Speaker 4: US in these sort of ongoing security fears when it
- 29:43Speaker 4: comes to TikTok. You mentioned Oracle on how their TikTok
- 29:46Speaker 4: is working with them to sort of allay these types
- 29:49Speaker 4: of fears. He laid out any sort of options as
- 29:52Speaker 4: far as what there could be to potentially end up
- 29:56Speaker 4: mitigating some of these fears that are out there.
- 30:01Speaker 10: Ultimately, no, I mean they feel that they've gone further
- 30:04Speaker 10: than any other company to make clear that they can
- 30:08Speaker 10: protect data. Now remember, I mean Mandy will be able
- 30:11Speaker 10: to discuss this in depth. But this is but a
- 30:14Speaker 10: day after we understand that the EU is also finding
- 30:17Speaker 10: a record fine more than a billion to Meta. So
- 30:20Speaker 10: the fact that look, it's doing exactly what they currently
- 30:23Speaker 10: the Montana is warting that Chinese will do europe is
- 30:26Speaker 10: claiming that the US in meta is access and could
- 30:30Speaker 10: potentially access Europeans user data of Facebook or Instagram users
- 30:36Speaker 10: or WhatsApp or the other products that meta users, and
- 30:39Speaker 10: so they're doing meta. They're finding meta in fact by
- 30:43Speaker 10: saying that you haven't done enough to protect the privacy
- 30:46Speaker 10: of the EU user from the US. So, ultimately, this
- 30:49Speaker 10: is actually a deeply global conversation. We're getting very divided,
- 30:53Speaker 10: and I have to say that's actually something so Chu
- 30:55Speaker 10: spoke very eloquently on saying we are sort of heading
- 30:58Speaker 10: towards vulcanism here, ultimately putting barriers between a global internet
- 31:05Speaker 10: with creating frictions. And this is the worry he says ultimately, like,
- 31:09Speaker 10: how are you going to do this without the quote
- 31:11Speaker 10: unquote breaking the internet?
- 31:13Speaker 12: With his great fear Here, Caroline, you had a great
- 31:17Speaker 12: point around you know, the user of chat GPT and
- 31:20Speaker 12: how TikTok could actually use that for you know, generating
- 31:24Speaker 12: video content. What was your sense in terms of how
- 31:28Speaker 12: TikTok plans to use that or are they going to
- 31:31Speaker 12: develop their own model?
- 31:34Speaker 10: Ah, that would have been a great answer to get
- 31:37Speaker 10: to get from him. And then you're always analysis is
- 31:40Speaker 10: so thoughtful and discussion points about all these things about
- 31:45Speaker 10: ultimately how AI is going to make it a lot easier,
- 31:48Speaker 10: a lot more perhaps exciting for users and for content creators.
- 31:52Speaker 10: He didn't go as far to say that they're developing
- 31:54Speaker 10: their own lunch language model. I did put that to him,
- 31:57Speaker 10: and he said, they're just analyzing how a in generator
- 32:00Speaker 10: AI could be interesting and utiful to his business. They're
- 32:04Speaker 10: still assessing the risks, is the way that he said it.
- 32:06Speaker 10: But ultimately, I think AI this is why TikTok is
- 32:10Speaker 10: so successful and to many fears so addictive. It's because
- 32:15Speaker 10: of official intelligence and machine learning has meant that we
- 32:17Speaker 10: are posted things that we all find deeply interesting. It
- 32:20Speaker 10: happens to spark our imagination. The worry I put to
- 32:23Speaker 10: him as well is what if AI am particularly from
- 32:26Speaker 10: the AI filter, What if they make it even more
- 32:29Speaker 10: addictive to the young, or give even more unrealistic assessments
- 32:33Speaker 10: of what reality is like. Just think of the AI
- 32:37Speaker 10: filter that currently makes people more beautiful. I think it's
- 32:40Speaker 10: called the golden AI effects. Well, we've already empherticizing that
- 32:43Speaker 10: that it gives an unfair idea of really what beauty
- 32:46Speaker 10: is for the younger teenage, particularly female user of TikTok.
- 32:49Speaker 1: Right now, Hey, Caroline, is there a scenario, reasonable scenario
- 32:55Speaker 1: at all, where maybe white Edance would divest its ownership
- 32:59Speaker 1: of TikTok? Is that something that's even on the table.
- 33:02Speaker 1: Do you think.
- 33:05Speaker 10: They won't go there? They've said time and time again
- 33:07Speaker 10: that that will not solve the national security issue that
- 33:10Speaker 10: play here. They won't really go into it as to why. Ultimately,
- 33:14Speaker 10: I think because bike Dance receives the overall valuation of
- 33:18Speaker 10: this company the most valuable set up out there, and
- 33:21Speaker 10: doesn't want to have to forcibly go there at a
- 33:24Speaker 10: price point that isn't at the top level IPO. Would
- 33:28Speaker 10: an IPO solve this? I mean, it's certainly something there
- 33:30Speaker 10: eventually will be on the agenda for the company, But
- 33:33Speaker 10: I think for now they're really taking any selling to
- 33:37Speaker 10: another US party off the agenda, off the table. They
- 33:41Speaker 10: don't feel that's going to secure the national security argument.
- 33:44Speaker 10: What will they say is the Project Texas, Project Clover's
- 33:48Speaker 10: ability to keep the US data safely in the US
- 33:51Speaker 10: and ensure there's no backdoors, But certainly any sort of
- 33:53Speaker 10: spinough doesn't seem to be something that they want to
- 33:55Speaker 10: negotiate on.
- 33:56Speaker 4: Something that struck me, Caroline, is that despite what's going
- 33:59Speaker 4: on with these political tensions, TikTok hasn't really eased its
- 34:03Speaker 4: push when it comes to monetization. Can you talk to
- 34:05Speaker 4: us more about some of these other ventures like live streaming,
- 34:08Speaker 4: commerce and in other places of the world that they're
- 34:11Speaker 4: still going into at this.
- 34:12Speaker 10: Point, Yeah, and actually really rolling it out much more
- 34:16Speaker 10: fast and furiously. In the United States, for example, it's
- 34:20Speaker 10: one much more it in say Singapore and in Asia
- 34:24Speaker 10: is ecommerce basically making it that much easier to be
- 34:27Speaker 10: able to purchase, to do your shopping, to bring more
- 34:29Speaker 10: than mediums to identerprises onto TikTok. Of course, the general
- 34:33Speaker 10: revenue model in the US thus far and in Europe
- 34:36Speaker 10: as you're a user, has been advertising, as is the
- 34:39Speaker 10: way with all social media products at the moment, and
- 34:42Speaker 10: that the highs and the lows. That that ends up
- 34:44Speaker 10: meaning in a way that we are sent various pushes
- 34:49Speaker 10: to make purchases, but they want intertwined commerce far more
- 34:53Speaker 10: into the business. So TikTok shop is something that's really
- 34:56Speaker 10: being rolled out at the moment and focused in particular
- 34:59Speaker 10: in the US and U. The XP had to piece
- 35:01Speaker 10: out how they're moving some of their talents tickly from
- 35:03Speaker 10: Brazil and other countries to the US and UK to
- 35:05Speaker 10: focus in on how I can ultimately, yeah, monetize our rivals.
- 35:09Speaker 10: The room of the health hard at.
- 35:10Speaker 1: The moment, Man Manty. From a technical perspective, this is
- 35:14Speaker 1: on showing of data this project Texas. As you know,
- 35:17Speaker 1: as Caroline was talking to the CEO, it kind of
- 35:19Speaker 1: made sense to me from a technical perspective, shouldn't that
- 35:23Speaker 1: be a good fix?
- 35:24Speaker 12: I mean, look at this week, you know Meta having
- 35:27Speaker 12: to pay fines because of data sovereignty issues. So clearly
- 35:30Speaker 12: this is something and Caroline touched on that during her
- 35:33Speaker 12: interview that you know, this is something that every company
- 35:37Speaker 12: has to do it. There is no choice, and the
- 35:39Speaker 12: sooner they do it, I think the better off. David,
- 35:42Speaker 12: it'll be from a regulatory standpoint, I do think, you know,
- 35:45Speaker 12: with the proliferation of machine generated data, it's going to
- 35:49Speaker 12: get harder and harder. You can control user generated data
- 35:52Speaker 12: in terms of where it's stored, but when it comes
- 35:55Speaker 12: to you know, a large language model, curating new types
- 35:58Speaker 12: of content, how do you control that? And so that
- 36:01Speaker 12: will be the hard problem to solve.
- 36:04Speaker 4: Mand But what do you think is coming next as
- 36:07Speaker 4: far as what you're watching as an analyst when it
- 36:09Speaker 4: comes to all of the sort of political in security
- 36:12Speaker 4: questions when it comes to TikTok.
- 36:14Speaker 12: Well, so I think again, it was a wide ranging
- 36:18Speaker 12: interview and he touched on a few things, but for me,
- 36:21Speaker 12: the key question was what happens to TikTok's independence if
- 36:25Speaker 12: you know they are forced to divest and and that
- 36:28Speaker 12: you know, Oracle seems to be the front runner when
- 36:31Speaker 12: it comes to you know, how they have engaged with
- 36:33Speaker 12: the company. Clearly, there are only a handful of social
- 36:37Speaker 12: media assets which have you know, over a billion monthly
- 36:41Speaker 12: active users, and TikTok is that kind of platform where
- 36:45Speaker 12: it can be very powerful, but it comes when it
- 36:47Speaker 12: comes to security. Clearly there are threats and I think
- 36:51Speaker 12: there are a lot of unanswered questions even uh, I
- 36:54Speaker 12: think Aroline covered a lot of ground in our interview,
- 36:57Speaker 12: but definitely something that I'm sure regulators will Pressdick dot
- 37:03Speaker 12: com all right.
- 37:04Speaker 1: And everybody you can check out. That is a great interview.
- 37:06Speaker 1: Caroline Hyde with the CEO of TikTok from the Cutter
- 37:09Speaker 1: Economic Form. You can catch that on Bloomberg dot Com.
- 37:11Speaker 1: It's Caroline Hyde, anchor for Bloomberg Technology, man Deep Seeing
- 37:15Speaker 1: senior techanomals for Bloomberg Intelligence. And again Caroline's interview this
- 37:18Speaker 1: morning from Qatar was really interesting. I'm not sure what
- 37:22Speaker 1: the solution there is because of this Chinese ownership, Jess.
- 37:25Speaker 1: You know, I just don't know where we go. Is
- 37:28Speaker 1: it an ipo? Is it a spin off this oracle
- 37:30Speaker 1: buy it?
- 37:31Speaker 6: Right?
- 37:31Speaker 1: But it's not going away. I mean it's too popular.
- 37:34Speaker 4: Right, and Bloomberg Intelligence recently had this evaluation on it
- 37:38Speaker 4: that was, I mean north of fifty billion dollars.
- 37:41Speaker 13: Wow.
- 37:41Speaker 1: Yeah, So again it's big, as many people saying, and
- 37:44Speaker 1: it's got size, it's got scale, So you just got
- 37:46Speaker 1: to figure out what the best ownership structure is.
- 37:48Speaker 5: You're listening to the tape. Catch our live program Bloomberg
- 37:52Speaker 5: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 37:55Speaker 5: tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business app.
- 37:59Speaker 5: You can also listen. I have on Amazon Alexa from
- 38:01Speaker 5: our flagship New York station, just say Alexa playing Bloomberg
- 38:05Speaker 5: eleven thirty.
- 38:06Speaker 1: That all right, Jess, commodities and stuff commodities here, the
- 38:10Speaker 1: Bloomber commodity index over the trailing twelve months is off
- 38:13Speaker 1: twenty six percent. I mean, what does that tell us.
- 38:17Speaker 1: I'm going to sign some blame here, folks. I'm going
- 38:20Speaker 1: to sign the blame to Mike mac bloane. He's a
- 38:22Speaker 1: senior macro strategist. He's our commodities. Go to the person
- 38:24Speaker 1: for Bloomberg Intelligence. Mike. When you see that kind of
- 38:27Speaker 1: move in the Bloomer commodity Nicks, what's that telling you?
- 38:30Speaker 14: Well? And thank you to take the blame. Happy to
- 38:32Speaker 14: take the blame. It is showing pretty severe deflation. The
- 38:35Speaker 14: last time it was down more than that on a
- 38:38Speaker 14: twelve oneth basis was that the depth of the financial crisis.
- 38:41Speaker 14: And the key difference is the FED was aggressively easing,
- 38:44Speaker 14: in fact, started easing in September two thousand and seven,
- 38:46Speaker 14: and commodities didn't really bottom until beginning to two thousand
- 38:49Speaker 14: and nine. And that's the difference. Now they're showing severe
- 38:52Speaker 14: deflationary forces. That's the fact. As you mentioned, yet the
- 38:55Speaker 14: FED is still tightening. And if you look at our
- 38:57Speaker 14: warp function, and the futures they're showing that we actually
- 39:01Speaker 14: might tighten at the June meeting.
- 39:05Speaker 4: So, Mike, what does that tell us about the trajectory
- 39:07Speaker 4: of the economy. Then, when we're looking at how quantity
- 39:10Speaker 4: prices are performing at this.
- 39:11Speaker 14: Point, lowis lose. I'm glad you mentioned it, Jessa. There
- 39:14Speaker 14: was a lot of optimism that we'd see decent demand
- 39:17Speaker 14: pull out at China and the reopening, and that's clearly
- 39:20Speaker 14: not happening. We're seeing very disappointing data. Now we somewhat
- 39:23Speaker 14: predicted that, and it's also showing up in copper copper
- 39:26Speaker 14: doctor copper, the metal known as the APH and D
- 39:29Speaker 14: in economics, it jumped up twelve percent of the year
- 39:31Speaker 14: and now it's back down in the year, and that
- 39:33Speaker 14: is very deflation neary implications also for risk acids. So
- 39:38Speaker 14: I like to let's just tilt it over to copper copper.
- 39:40Speaker 14: If you look at the dollar price of copper, it's
- 39:42Speaker 14: about two dollars and seventy five cents a pound. If
- 39:45Speaker 14: you overlay it with a stock market and just take
- 39:47Speaker 14: the s P five hundred divide by thousand, they've been
- 39:49Speaker 14: almost the same price since twenty fifteen. So it shows
- 39:52Speaker 14: we're not getting that demand pull. The FED is still
- 39:55Speaker 14: tightened based on kind of lagging measures of inflation. Yet
- 39:58Speaker 14: the forward looking markets are severe deflation just starting to
- 40:01Speaker 14: kick in. So I look at it as a train
- 40:03Speaker 14: wreck for deflation.
- 40:05Speaker 1: So, Mike, in your research, you've written that you believe
- 40:08Speaker 1: we are in the midst of the biggest economic reset
- 40:11Speaker 1: of our lifetimes. Now, I want you to explain that
- 40:13Speaker 1: to me as if I'm a fifty nine year old person.
- 40:17Speaker 14: Well, okay, how about a six year old person. That
- 40:20Speaker 14: might help for me. I think I peaked when IL six.
- 40:23Speaker 14: It's the Let's go back to Ben Bernaki's warning about
- 40:27Speaker 14: the when he wrote the Essays and the Great Depression.
- 40:30Speaker 14: He said, the number one reason we all kind of
- 40:32Speaker 14: knew what happened was because central banks, most know the
- 40:35Speaker 14: find of reserve, was pulling back on liquidity and money
- 40:39Speaker 14: markets and money supply at the time the economy started
- 40:44Speaker 14: a tilt lower. That's exactly what we're doing now. And also,
- 40:47Speaker 14: if you study the lessons of history, all booms and
- 40:49Speaker 14: busts come on the back of the booms start with
- 40:51Speaker 14: massive liquidity, and then they bust when that liquidity goes away.
- 40:55Speaker 14: We've had the biggest boom in liquidity ever and the
- 40:57Speaker 14: sharpest bust in liquidity ever. It's all happened now, and
- 41:00Speaker 14: I look at it as simple lessons of history, simple
- 41:03Speaker 14: lessons of markets that you should be very careful. And
- 41:05Speaker 14: I just look at the fact that the FED is
- 41:07Speaker 14: still tightening despite the producer price index dropping at the
- 41:11Speaker 14: fastest pace in history. Now, yes, we only go back
- 41:13Speaker 14: seventy five years. It peaked at eighteen percent last year.
- 41:16Speaker 14: Year of year, now it's two percent. It's very likely
- 41:18Speaker 14: to go negative in the next few months. Is just
- 41:20Speaker 14: classic cases of the FED venue a little bit too
- 41:23Speaker 14: far behind and actually, you know, responding to all that
- 41:27Speaker 14: massive pump and liquidity, and now they're fighting an inflation
- 41:30Speaker 14: game that's starting to tilt towards deflation and it's just
- 41:33Speaker 14: getting started. The long and variable lags are quite disconcerting.
- 41:36Speaker 11: Mike.
- 41:37Speaker 4: You brought up copper, obviously very critical when it comes
- 41:39Speaker 4: to a base metal, and what that means for the
- 41:41Speaker 4: global economy. What's sort of the make or break levels
- 41:44Speaker 4: that you're watching for copper to mean if it breaks
- 41:47Speaker 4: below a particular point, what that could mean for other
- 41:49Speaker 4: asset classes, especially say when we look at the US
- 41:52Speaker 4: stock market.
- 41:53Speaker 14: Well, I'm glad you mentioned that, Jess. It's actually right
- 41:55Speaker 14: now with three dollars and sixty six three hours of
- 41:59Speaker 14: sixty six of pump on, which implies the S and
- 42:01Speaker 14: P five hundred should be about three thousand, six hundred.
- 42:04Speaker 14: Right now it's four two hundred. That's just course, maybe
- 42:06Speaker 14: that has broken down. But when copper broke down below
- 42:09Speaker 14: four four dollars, that was to me the signal that, Okay,
- 42:12Speaker 14: everything's sot in a tilt lower now, because one thing
- 42:15Speaker 14: that led it was natural gas. Natural gas has dropped
- 42:17Speaker 14: eighty percent from last year's peak and it dropped to
- 42:19Speaker 14: the same level as nineteen ninety. First traded in nineteen ninety,
- 42:22Speaker 14: So it's severe deflation for a significant commodity. And to me,
- 42:26Speaker 14: all that is tilting lower, and it keeps the question
- 42:28Speaker 14: I like to ask myself, Jess, is what stops this
- 42:30Speaker 14: downward trajectory? Now natural gas is bottom of two, but
- 42:33Speaker 14: had to drop eighty percent to get there. Typically takes
- 42:36Speaker 14: prices to go very low, squash that to supply and
- 42:40Speaker 14: increase that demand, and we're just in that current trajectory.
- 42:43Speaker 14: And I asked myself, so what stops this downward trajectory.
- 42:46Speaker 14: Typically it takes lower prices or most notably a long
- 42:50Speaker 14: and variable lackt is significant federal reserve easing and we're
- 42:52Speaker 14: still priced are tightening next month.
- 42:55Speaker 1: So if we are in the midst of the biggest
- 42:57Speaker 1: economic reset of our lifetime, do I just go long
- 42:59Speaker 1: gold and short everything else?
- 43:01Speaker 14: Well, there's nothing wrong with good old government to your
- 43:04Speaker 14: notes that are given you right now four point three
- 43:06Speaker 14: nine percent. Remember they piked at five percent, that was
- 43:08Speaker 14: right before the crisis. I think that's what most rational
- 43:12Speaker 14: boomers in the planet are doing, saying thank you very much,
- 43:15Speaker 14: meaning in two years I'm going to get almost nine
- 43:17Speaker 14: percent back guaranteed. Of course, of defenderal the government, Well,
- 43:21Speaker 14: they might delay the payment in wood, but there won't
- 43:23Speaker 14: be the fault, so that sweeps what's happening. There was
- 43:25Speaker 14: some prominent analysts today coming out and recommending gold, and
- 43:28Speaker 14: I will point about gold. Gold is the best performing
- 43:32Speaker 14: major commodity on the year of a year basis. Despite
- 43:34Speaker 14: the Bloomer Commodity Index down twenty six six percent, Gold
- 43:37Speaker 14: is in that index, but it's up six percent. I
- 43:39Speaker 14: think gold's on the customs a pretty significant breakout, just
- 43:42Speaker 14: like it did in two thousand and seven and eight,
- 43:44Speaker 14: it was bumping up against eight hundred dollars and they
- 43:47Speaker 14: finally popped to around nineteen hundred. We got by the
- 43:49Speaker 14: time we got to twenty eleven, Paul I pulled up.
- 43:52Speaker 4: The copper to gold ratio here on the terminal. There
- 43:55Speaker 4: is such a thing.
- 43:56Speaker 1: Why do you know it?
- 43:57Speaker 8: I mean, what is that cover this on the for
- 44:01Speaker 8: US stocks? As Oh, okay, follow these things, all things macro,
- 44:05Speaker 8: not just equities. But I want to get your thoughts
- 44:08Speaker 8: on this because when you're looking at the copper to
- 44:11Speaker 8: gold ratio, and we saw it this year hit a
- 44:14Speaker 8: high in February, but now you're seeing that even below
- 44:19Speaker 8: where it had been last summer. I'm wondering, again, what
- 44:22Speaker 8: does this tell us when you're seeing that ratio, because
- 44:24Speaker 8: typically when the ratio is higher, that usually mean better
- 44:27Speaker 8: days ahead for the stock market.
- 44:29Speaker 14: Yes, I'm justin glad you bring that up. I watch
- 44:31Speaker 14: it a lot, and also some prominent infix and interest
- 44:36Speaker 14: rate people watch it. It's showing a tilt towards recession.
- 44:40Speaker 14: And one thing I'll point about copper goals. Oftentimes I
- 44:42Speaker 14: like to walk it with gold divided by copper because
- 44:44Speaker 14: that shows an the neurine upward trend. And it's keating
- 44:46Speaker 14: to remember about gold, it basically outperforms almost all commondies
- 44:50Speaker 14: over time, partly because it's money you can store cheaply,
- 44:53Speaker 14: and it's really no cost to store, and there's a
- 44:55Speaker 14: limited supply. Copper you can bring on rather not quickly,
- 44:59Speaker 14: but there's it's just much easier to produce and create
- 45:03Speaker 14: more of it than gold. But the key thing that
- 45:05Speaker 14: you mentioned is comparent declining versus gold is a clear recession.
- 45:08Speaker 14: You're introjectory. And I asked myself, okay, so what might
- 45:11Speaker 14: stop this? Typically I would say, okay, well we've been
- 45:13Speaker 14: a year or two and two FED easing and the
- 45:16Speaker 14: economy is starting to expand and recover. We're still here
- 45:19Speaker 14: and started at easing, we're still tightening. That's why I
- 45:21Speaker 14: really concerned that this is going to be one of
- 45:23Speaker 14: the biggest resets of our lifetime.
- 45:25Speaker 9: Now.
- 45:25Speaker 14: In the defense of the FED, they are tightening, they
- 45:28Speaker 14: have to, but the inflation measures they're looking at, like
- 45:30Speaker 14: personal consumption expenditures as on a wong Or Chief Economists
- 45:33Speaker 14: told us those are going to be very sticky, and
- 45:36Speaker 14: she pointed out the FED will not be easing like
- 45:38Speaker 14: they have in the past, although their models have pointed
- 45:40Speaker 14: to ease, but they can't because inflation is sticky. That
- 45:43Speaker 14: shows all the negativity that I see. And I don't
- 45:46Speaker 14: like to be mcloum, which has been my nickname. I
- 45:48Speaker 14: like to be more Mick facts.
- 45:50Speaker 5: These are the.
- 45:50Speaker 1: Facts, all right, Mike. Somehow you scam to move down
- 45:54Speaker 1: to South Florida and getting a little warm down there,
- 45:56Speaker 1: you still committed.
- 45:58Speaker 14: Oh yes it is. I'm getting older and it's it's
- 46:01Speaker 14: much better on the bones and muscles of that humidity.
- 46:04Speaker 1: All right, Mike, great stuff, Really appreciate it. Mike mcglohan,
- 46:06Speaker 1: Senior macro strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 46:09Speaker 5: You're listening to the tape Ken's are Live program Bloomberg
- 46:12Speaker 5: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 46:16Speaker 5: tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business App.
- 46:19Speaker 5: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 46:22Speaker 5: flagship New York station, just say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 46:28Speaker 1: All right, let's go to this Low's So we had
- 46:30Speaker 1: home deepot before. They were kind of cautious, and we
- 46:33Speaker 1: saw that reflected in the lower stock price, their guidance
- 46:36Speaker 1: was a little bit soft Low's. I'm looking at the stock,
- 46:40Speaker 1: it's up three percent even though they cut their view here.
- 46:42Speaker 1: So let's bring in somebody who does this stuff for
- 46:44Speaker 1: a living, Drew Redding. He's a research channels to Bloomberg Intelligence.
- 46:47Speaker 1: He covers all the housing and housing related industries.
- 46:50Speaker 6: Drew.
- 46:50Speaker 1: What's your takeaway from Low's particularly and maybe differentiate it
- 46:53Speaker 1: from what we saw from Home Depot.
- 46:56Speaker 11: Yeah, So, to be honest, we didn't hear anything that
- 46:58Speaker 11: was all that different compared to what we heard last
- 47:00Speaker 11: week from Home Depot, and that sales were impacted by
- 47:03Speaker 11: a late start spring. You had commodity deflation, particularly for lumber,
- 47:08Speaker 11: and a slowdown in discretionary spending. So we're finally starting
- 47:11Speaker 11: to see that moderation big ticket spending, which has been
- 47:14Speaker 11: a key driver for the industry in terms of the
- 47:17Speaker 11: stock reaction. There's probably a couple of factors of play
- 47:20Speaker 11: here for starters. We did see last week Home Deep
- 47:23Speaker 11: be lower the guide, and so I think it was
- 47:25Speaker 11: kind of increasingly understood that Lows would be under a
- 47:28Speaker 11: bit of pressure here from a fundamental perspective, and at
- 47:31Speaker 11: the same time, a lot of the weakness in the
- 47:32Speaker 11: quarter was attributable to weather commodity deflation, which aren't necessarily
- 47:37Speaker 11: representative of the underlying business, and I think that led
- 47:40Speaker 11: to a little bit of optimism around the guide. But
- 47:42Speaker 11: that's actually where we think that there could still be
- 47:44Speaker 11: some risk, particularly since they didn't cut it as much
- 47:47Speaker 11: as some depot. You know, from where we're sitting, it
- 47:50Speaker 11: seems like we're just getting started with this slowdown indiscretionary spending,
- 47:53Speaker 11: particularly for big ticket spending. So I think that's where
- 47:56Speaker 11: a lot of the debate will be going forward into
- 47:59Speaker 11: the next.
- 47:59Speaker 4: Couple of So, Drew, it sounds like you're saying their
- 48:02Speaker 4: outlook seems to be a bit too optimistic, even though
- 48:05Speaker 4: they already cut it.
- 48:08Speaker 11: Yeah, so they lowered their their same source sales view
- 48:10Speaker 11: to a decline of two to four percent from flat
- 48:13Speaker 11: to down two percent last time, and that assumes that
- 48:16Speaker 11: the broader home improvement industry is down about mid single digits.
- 48:21Speaker 11: You know, we think that there is risk that the
- 48:24Speaker 11: broader industry declines more in the high single digit range.
- 48:27Speaker 11: It's something we heard from Home Depot. We actually heard
- 48:29Speaker 11: it from a number of the building product manufacturers who
- 48:33Speaker 11: were tied into the repairing ram modeling market. So, like
- 48:35Speaker 11: I said, I think the debate will be did they
- 48:37Speaker 11: bring down guidance enough or are we just starting to
- 48:41Speaker 11: kind of see this downward revision because there's still some
- 48:44Speaker 11: strain on the consumer as we get through the end
- 48:46Speaker 11: of the year.
- 48:47Speaker 1: Drew Occasionally I do get lost and I find myself
- 48:49Speaker 1: in the middle of a home depot or lows and
- 48:52Speaker 1: what I noticed is there's a ton of stuff out
- 48:55Speaker 1: on the floor, like of tons of inventory. How are
- 48:58Speaker 1: these those companies and the home improvement bus is how
- 49:00Speaker 1: are their inventories? I know that was an issue for
- 49:02Speaker 1: a lot of retail. Was that also an issue for
- 49:04Speaker 1: these homer furnishing folks.
- 49:07Speaker 11: Yeah, not at this point. I mean, they did get
- 49:10Speaker 11: ahead of the game earlier in the pandemic, so they
- 49:12Speaker 11: were well stocked. They did have a couple of quarters
- 49:14Speaker 11: where they started to work down some of that inventory,
- 49:17Speaker 11: but now their inventory is in a good position, so
- 49:19Speaker 11: it's really not a concern in terms of having to discount.
- 49:22Speaker 11: You know, they implement a lot of technology into the
- 49:24Speaker 11: stuff they're doing, particularly you know, when the work on
- 49:27Speaker 11: their marchandise categories, they know what's moving they have a
- 49:30Speaker 11: pretty good read on demand, so from an inventory perspective,
- 49:34Speaker 11: they're looking pretty good.
- 49:35Speaker 4: So what do you think this tells us about the
- 49:38Speaker 4: state of the US consumer at this point?
- 49:42Speaker 11: So we do think that there's still some challenges out
- 49:45Speaker 11: there for the consumer, and it looks like, you know,
- 49:46Speaker 11: in the home improvement category, which has been one of
- 49:49Speaker 11: the retail bright spots recently, we think they're just starting
- 49:53Speaker 11: to show. You know, you've got inflation which is hurting
- 49:56Speaker 11: people's wallets, Real incomes are down, We've seen credit card
- 50:00Speaker 11: balances starting to balloon. So all of these things point
- 50:05Speaker 11: to more stress among the consumer. You know, at the
- 50:09Speaker 11: same time, interest rates have sneakily crept back up to
- 50:11Speaker 11: seven percent, so you know, to the extent that you
- 50:14Speaker 11: see more pressure on the existing home market, obviously that'll
- 50:19Speaker 11: trickle down into what we're seeing at the home improvement
- 50:21Speaker 11: retailers as well.
- 50:22Speaker 1: All Right, Drew, you also cover the broader housing market.
- 50:25Speaker 1: Talk to us about kind of where we are in
- 50:28Speaker 1: the housing market. What are you seeing, What are you
- 50:30Speaker 1: hearing from the Toll Brothers of the world, the d
- 50:32Speaker 1: H Wardens, What are they saying about their business? Given
- 50:34Speaker 1: that you know, as you mentioned, we have mortgage rates
- 50:36Speaker 1: around seven Pasl.
- 50:37Speaker 4: Brothers also reports after the bell today.
- 50:39Speaker 1: Oh very good, thank you.
- 50:40Speaker 11: Yep. It's a great question, because I think there's right
- 50:43Speaker 11: now we're seeing a bifurcation in the US housing market
- 50:45Speaker 11: between the existing home market and the new home market.
- 50:49Speaker 11: And it really has to do with a couple of factors. One,
- 50:51Speaker 11: there's not a whole heck of a lot of inventory
- 50:53Speaker 11: in the resale market. One of the reasons is because
- 50:55Speaker 11: a lot of current homeowners have rates below four below
- 50:58Speaker 11: three and a half percent, so there's a disincentive for
- 51:01Speaker 11: them to list their home and take on a rate
- 51:03Speaker 11: that's now, as you said, approaching seven percent. So that's
- 51:07Speaker 11: keeping inventory low. At the same time, nobody wants to
- 51:09Speaker 11: lower the prices. They made all this equity over the
- 51:12Speaker 11: last couple of years, and they want to sell their
- 51:14Speaker 11: house at last year's prices, and buyers are playing ball.
- 51:18Speaker 11: On the other hand, the business model the home builders
- 51:20Speaker 11: requires that they turn their inventory over. So what they've
- 51:24Speaker 11: done is they at the end of last year, they
- 51:26Speaker 11: got aggressive and cutting prices. They cut base prices, they're
- 51:29Speaker 11: offering more incentives. But most importantly, and what's worth the
- 51:32Speaker 11: best is that builders are able to offer the buyers
- 51:36Speaker 11: rate by downs. So whereas somebody looking in the existing
- 51:40Speaker 11: home market is looking at the interest rate of six
- 51:42Speaker 11: and a half to seven percent, builders are getting people
- 51:44Speaker 11: through the door at five to five and a half percent.
- 51:47Speaker 11: So the combination of lower prices and offering a lower
- 51:50Speaker 11: rates helped the math work better in the new home market,
- 51:53Speaker 11: and that's why we're seeing share gains there and we
- 51:55Speaker 11: think that continues in the coming quarters.
- 51:57Speaker 4: Also, and it comes to just the low amount of inventory.
- 52:00Speaker 4: Clearly that was a problem before the pandemic, but then
- 52:03Speaker 4: even exacerbated more So, how are home builders still benefiting
- 52:07Speaker 4: from that? Because when I'm talking to portfolio managers, a
- 52:09Speaker 4: lot of them are still adding exposure to homebuilder stocks
- 52:12Speaker 4: because they feel like there's just this mixed smash there
- 52:14Speaker 4: and that they'll ply continue to benefit from that low inventory.
- 52:18Speaker 11: Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, the lack of resale
- 52:20Speaker 11: supply continues to funnel buyers into the new home market.
- 52:25Speaker 11: And the interesting thing is that builders were putting all
- 52:28Speaker 11: this new supply into market and it's just kind of
- 52:31Speaker 11: this steady drip that you know, a couple months ago,
- 52:35Speaker 11: everybody was worried about there's going to be an oversupply
- 52:37Speaker 11: of new housing. But as builders have kind of made
- 52:40Speaker 11: the math work, we're seeing that home shoppers are increasingly
- 52:44Speaker 11: preferring this quick move in inventory that where a buyer
- 52:47Speaker 11: can go, they can lock in their rate and they
- 52:49Speaker 11: have some confidence that they know what their monthly payment's
- 52:52Speaker 11: going to be. So I think that builders who have
- 52:54Speaker 11: a spec focused model where the inventory is there a
- 52:57Speaker 11: buyer can move right in, are position in this environment
- 53:01Speaker 11: because buyers are looking for certainty given all the rate volatility.
- 53:05Speaker 1: How about the inexisting market, how how's that trending?
- 53:10Speaker 11: Yeah, so it's I mean from a transaction perspective, like
- 53:13Speaker 11: we said, sales are down sharply compared to the new
- 53:16Speaker 11: home market, and that's because there's not enough people willing
- 53:18Speaker 11: to sell their home. From a pricing perspective, prices have
- 53:22Speaker 11: held up relatively well, you know, from the peak. We're
- 53:25Speaker 11: only down low single digits.
- 53:28Speaker 1: One.
- 53:28Speaker 11: That's because people don't have to sell. There's no forced sellers.
- 53:31Speaker 11: People have a lot of equity right now. The job
- 53:34Speaker 11: market is still strong, so people aren't forced to put
- 53:36Speaker 11: their home on the market. They're comfortable with their low rate,
- 53:39Speaker 11: they're comfortable with their wage increases. Conversely, in the new
- 53:43Speaker 11: home market, prices are down much more because builders have
- 53:45Speaker 11: been aggressive and kind of cutting them. So in the
- 53:48Speaker 11: resale markets, transactions down prices supported by that low inventory.
- 53:54Speaker 4: That's interesting because if you don't want to move and
- 53:56Speaker 4: you've locked in this low rate, wouldn't that still help
- 53:59Speaker 4: home builders, especially if there's already that low inventory that
- 54:02Speaker 4: we were talking about.
- 54:04Speaker 11: Yeah, certainly, so I think that that dynamic favors homebuilders,
- 54:07Speaker 11: and it also favors renovating over moving, and I think
- 54:11Speaker 11: we saw a lot of that with the home depot
- 54:13Speaker 11: and lows and building product manufacturers, where you probably saw
- 54:16Speaker 11: a lot of demand pulled forward over the last couple
- 54:19Speaker 11: of years. Now, those same people that aren't moving have
- 54:22Speaker 11: massive amounts of home equity, so even if home prices
- 54:25Speaker 11: were to fall mid single digits, there's still a lot
- 54:29Speaker 11: of equity built in those properties. So with decreased mobility,
- 54:32Speaker 11: we would expect that remodeling, once we kind of get
- 54:35Speaker 11: through this air pocket of demand, starts to pick back up,
- 54:38Speaker 11: and that industry is looking really good over the longer term.
- 54:41Speaker 1: All right, Drew, thanks so much for joining us. Always
- 54:43Speaker 1: appreciate getting your perspective on the broader housing market and
- 54:46Speaker 1: also on some of these housing related retailers like Low's
- 54:49Speaker 1: and Home Depot reading. He's a research analyst covers all
- 54:52Speaker 1: the housing stuff for Bloomberg Intelligencies based down in our Princeton,
- 54:56Speaker 1: New Jersey campus.
- 54:58Speaker 5: You're listening to the date. That's our live program, Bloomberg
- 55:01Speaker 5: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 55:05Speaker 5: tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business App.
- 55:08Speaker 5: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 55:11Speaker 5: flagship New York station Just Say Alexa, playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 55:17Speaker 1: When reading kind of the background the resume of our
- 55:19Speaker 1: next guest, I noted the fact that he's a twenty
- 55:22Speaker 1: nine year Navy veteran. There's like I who does not
- 55:25Speaker 1: like change, but he served all over the globe. That
- 55:28Speaker 1: kind of got my attention, and we thank him for
- 55:30Speaker 1: his service. Of course, Jess looks at it and she sees, oh,
- 55:35Speaker 1: he went to Texas a and m.
- 55:36Speaker 8: As I did too, so too, Aggie.
- 55:38Speaker 4: Is how exciting to have it in one segment?
- 55:41Speaker 1: All right? Kevin Brand defense policy anols for Bloomberg Intelligence. Kevin,
- 55:44Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us here. I need you know,
- 55:47Speaker 1: I follow the military military history pretty closely over for
- 55:50Speaker 1: a long time. Here's a new one for me when
- 55:53Speaker 1: this war broke out in Ukraine. Hypersonic weapons. What is
- 55:57Speaker 1: a hypersonic hypersonic weapon? I've never heard of that before.
- 56:01Speaker 13: Yeah, great, thanks for having me.
- 56:02Speaker 6: So.
- 56:02Speaker 13: A hypersonic weapon is really the next generation of air
- 56:07Speaker 13: or ballistic missile threat that's facing friendly troops. If you
- 56:12Speaker 13: think about it from a speed perspective, hypersonic speeds are
- 56:15Speaker 13: really anything over the over about mock five, which is
- 56:18Speaker 13: five times a speed of sound. Think that highway speeds.
- 56:22Speaker 13: Your car moves about a mile, about a mile in
- 56:26Speaker 13: one minute. At mock five, you're talking about moving a
- 56:28Speaker 13: mile in one second. That's what a hypersonic weapon essentially is.
- 56:32Speaker 4: And I know that you wrote in a note that's
- 56:35Speaker 4: on the terminal about how it basically falls into two
- 56:39Speaker 4: broad categories. Can you kind of break down what two
- 56:41Speaker 4: categories are?
- 56:43Speaker 13: Sure? So, hypersonic weapons fall into one of two categories
- 56:47Speaker 13: as you as you mentioned, it's either a ballistic missile essentially,
- 56:50Speaker 13: think about a launcher with a big solid fuel rocket
- 56:54Speaker 13: on it that launches something into the atmosphere, whether it
- 56:56Speaker 13: be a space shuttle or something else, but it moves
- 56:59Speaker 13: into the atmosphere into outer space and essentially arcs in
- 57:03Speaker 13: a very ballistic sort of trajectory and then re enters
- 57:06Speaker 13: the atmosphere at incredible speeds. The space Shuttle or the
- 57:10Speaker 13: Apollo missions came back at almost mock twenty five if
- 57:13Speaker 13: you think about that. The second category of weapon is
- 57:16Speaker 13: really an air breathing jet powered engine, a type of
- 57:22Speaker 13: cruise missile. It uses what they call a scramjet, which
- 57:25Speaker 13: means you have to get this missile up to incredible
- 57:29Speaker 13: speeds like four mock five, and then it opens a
- 57:32Speaker 13: thrust an intake and then becomes hypersonic and accelerate up
- 57:38Speaker 13: to mock ten mock twenty five. If you watch the
- 57:40Speaker 13: Top Gun Maverick movie that Stump Works project, Maverick was
- 57:45Speaker 13: flying a hypersonic jet capable of movie at mock ten
- 57:48Speaker 13: or faster. So it hypersonic weapon falls into one of
- 57:51Speaker 13: those two categories, either something ballistic that leaves the atmosphere
- 57:54Speaker 13: and then comes back down or something that stays inside
- 57:57Speaker 13: the atmosphere and uses a scramjet power motor to really
- 58:02Speaker 13: move back.
- 58:02Speaker 1: All right, So if Russia is firing these things that
- 58:05Speaker 1: Ukraine can Ukraine shoot these things down?
- 58:09Speaker 13: Well, Ukraine apparently has shot down up to seven of
- 58:12Speaker 13: these early what I would call first generation hypersonic missiles.
- 58:16Speaker 13: And as we mentioned earlier, almost anything that can leave
- 58:20Speaker 13: the atmosphere travels at a hypersonic speed at a MOCK five.
- 58:23Speaker 13: And the Kinsol missile, which is what Russia has supposedly launched,
- 58:27Speaker 13: is capable of speed something between mock five and Mak ten.
- 58:31Speaker 13: And what we know is that those should be very
- 58:34Speaker 13: very hard to defend against with today's technology. But Ukraine
- 58:38Speaker 13: was successful in shooting that, we think up to about
- 58:40Speaker 13: seven of these in recent weeks.
- 58:42Speaker 4: So what does this Russian mag thirty one? So they're
- 58:45Speaker 4: basically carrying some of these missiles.
- 58:47Speaker 13: That's right. So Russia has a capability on it. Some
- 58:50Speaker 13: of its spider aircraft and some of its bombers to
- 58:53Speaker 13: carry air are essentially air to surface missiles, in this
- 58:57Speaker 13: case a cruise missile, and in this particular case, that Kinzal,
- 59:00Speaker 13: which we know is capable of achieving at least speeds
- 59:03Speaker 13: of mock five. And what we surmise at this point
- 59:06Speaker 13: in time is that Russia was targeting one of Ukraine's
- 59:10Speaker 13: Patriot air defense batteries, and so the missile was inbound
- 59:13Speaker 13: directly at that weapon system, and so it was a
- 59:16Speaker 13: nose to nose sort of a point defense weapon shot,
- 59:19Speaker 13: and the Patriot was successful in shooting this weapon down.
- 59:22Speaker 1: All right, Kevin, let's let's pull the focus out a
- 59:24Speaker 1: little bit and talk about you know, kind of arming Ukraine.
- 59:28Speaker 1: That's been you know, a long time for this war,
- 59:30Speaker 1: and there seems to be kind of a no end
- 59:32Speaker 1: to sit here. We seem to be the armory for Ukraine.
- 59:38Speaker 1: Can we still do that? Can we do that on
- 59:40Speaker 1: a long term basis? Can we continue to do that
- 59:42Speaker 1: and still meet our own defense needs?
- 59:47Speaker 11: I think so.
- 59:48Speaker 7: So.
- 59:48Speaker 13: We certainly still have a lot of inventory that's capable
- 59:51Speaker 13: of being moved from different theaters, whether it be the
- 59:54Speaker 13: European theater or the Asia Pacific theater to help Ukraine.
- 59:58Speaker 13: We can draw those down from US weapons style, or
- 1:00:00Speaker 13: we have the ability to potentially ramp up production of
- 1:00:03Speaker 13: the defense industrial base from the big defense companies. The
- 1:00:06Speaker 13: latter has been a concern as you know in recent months,
- 1:00:09Speaker 13: especially with Congress looking at the defense industrial base and
- 1:00:12Speaker 13: how do we maximize production Certainly, if we keep this
- 1:00:15Speaker 13: up for extended period of time, I think years will
- 1:00:19Speaker 13: draw down before we can replenish our inventories, and that
- 1:00:22Speaker 13: is a concern. But I think in the short term
- 1:00:25Speaker 13: to maybe eighteen months, that really won't be a very
- 1:00:28Speaker 13: acute problem for the Western militaries.
- 1:00:31Speaker 1: So, Kevin, the probably one of the big decisions that
- 1:00:33Speaker 1: the President made about Ukraine is sending over F Sixteen's
- 1:00:37Speaker 1: explain to us how that may play out in terms
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: of timing, how many aircraft they're pilots and what impact
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: you think that might have.
- 1:00:46Speaker 13: Yeah, great question. So I think there's two aspects of this.
- 1:00:48Speaker 13: One is whether the United States sends any of its
- 1:00:50Speaker 13: own F sixteens or from the Defense Industrial Base are
- 1:00:53Speaker 13: able to provide those to Ukraine. But the second thing
- 1:00:56Speaker 13: I think more importantly that the Biden administration recently did
- 1:00:59Speaker 13: is they sort of cleared the decks for action and
- 1:01:02Speaker 13: authorized our allies to provide S sixteens if they are
- 1:01:06Speaker 13: so inclined to Ukraine's defense. But before any of those
- 1:01:09Speaker 13: aircraft can really get there, the big thing that Ukraine
- 1:01:12Speaker 13: and the West has to do is start training Ukrainian
- 1:01:14Speaker 13: pilots on how to use those aircraft, and that could
- 1:01:17Speaker 13: take anywhere from several months for very proficient pilots just
- 1:01:22Speaker 13: kind of type model series training to convert them to
- 1:01:24Speaker 13: use Western equipment, to up to a year to eighteen
- 1:01:27Speaker 13: months to really get them proficient on how to use
- 1:01:29Speaker 13: those aircraft.
- 1:01:30Speaker 4: We only have about a minute left, but I was
- 1:01:32Speaker 4: curious about the supply chain threats that exist right now
- 1:01:35Speaker 4: when it comes to China and did coupling that's happening there.
- 1:01:39Speaker 13: Yeah, great question if you look at what's sort of happening,
- 1:01:42Speaker 13: whether you take the COVID pandemic and what we saw
- 1:01:45Speaker 13: in supply chains there, or how difficult it was from
- 1:01:48Speaker 13: Europe to kind of get off. Russian oil and natural
- 1:01:50Speaker 13: gas disruptions really have got the attention of the defense
- 1:01:55Speaker 13: industrial base, and what they're really looking to do is
- 1:01:58Speaker 13: how do you sort of do you risk your supply chains.
- 1:02:02Speaker 13: It's not a really good idea if you have a
- 1:02:06Speaker 13: potential foreign adversary or a foreign thread or somebody who's
- 1:02:09Speaker 13: geopolitically opposed your objectives to be over reliant upon them
- 1:02:13Speaker 13: for any source of supply, whether those be critical raw materials,
- 1:02:17Speaker 13: oil and natural gas. And so I think you're seeing
- 1:02:19Speaker 13: a very natural tendency right now for people to take
- 1:02:21Speaker 13: a look at where are they over concentrated and how
- 1:02:23Speaker 13: do I de risk that, How do I spread sort
- 1:02:26Speaker 13: of the wealth around so that I'm not beholding to
- 1:02:28Speaker 13: any one supplier in the future.
- 1:02:31Speaker 1: Kevin, thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate
- 1:02:33Speaker 1: getting the benefit of your expertise. Kevin Brand defense policy
- 1:02:37Speaker 1: analysts for Bloomberg Intelligence and a twenty nine year Navy veteran.
- 1:02:42Speaker 1: So we thank Kevin for his many years of service
- 1:02:45Speaker 1: and he really helps us kind of understand what's happening
- 1:02:48Speaker 1: on the ground and in the air in the war
- 1:02:51Speaker 1: in Ukraine.
- 1:02:54Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can
- 1:02:57Speaker 2: subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever
- 1:03:01Speaker 2: podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter
- 1:03:05Speaker 2: at Matt Miller nineteen seventy three.
- 1:03:07Speaker 1: And I'm fall Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney.
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