Latest / She’s Smart / Christine Short: Money, Markets, and the Confidence Gap

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Christine Short: Money, Markets, and the Confidence Gap · She’s Smart

0:02
Hey, everybody. Welcome to She's Smart. I'm your host, Maria Robotham.
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Each week, we sit down with incredible women to talk about life,
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work, and everything in between.
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Today's guest is someone who lives at the intersection of data,
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storytelling, and the markets.
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Christine Short is the head of research at TMX Group, where she decodes corporate
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earnings and what she calls the body language of companies, those subtle signals
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that tell you what's really happening behind the numbers.
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With over 15 years in financial markets, her insights have been featured everywhere
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from the Wall Street Journal to CNBC and Bloomberg.
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What I loved about this conversation is how human she makes it all feel.
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We talk about how she accidentally fell into finance, what it's like being a
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woman in a male-dominated industry, and how reading earnings calls is really
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just storytelling with data.
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We also get into something every one of us should care about,
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money, investing, and why women might actually be better at it than men.
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So whether you're deep in finance or still keeping your money in a savings account.
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This episode is going to open your eyes.
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A quick heads up, we did record this back in late November, so some of the market
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talk is from that moment, but honestly, the takeaways are still so relevant,
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and a lot of what we talked about, especially around AI, is still playing out today.
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So get cozy as we connect, learn, and laugh together on She's Smart with today's
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guest, Christine Short.
2:00
Hi, Christine. It's nice to meet you. I know. It's very nice to meet you, too.
2:04
Thanks so much for having me on. And Cece said just such wonderful things about you.
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And really just the Wesson community in general.
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She'll just continually tell me about the women that she meets.
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And both through travel sports and school.
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And we're both kind of nerdy like that. We, I think, get inspiration.
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We're like, and this mom at my kid's school.
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You know, it'll be someone that you've known for months. and they're just so,
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and then they drop like, oh yeah, I do this at the UN.
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Like something kind of insane. You're like, oh wow. And it's so subtle.
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And you're like, what am I doing with my life? But I'm always like, no, Cece, you kill it.
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Like we're just constantly like fangirling on each other. So.
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We need that. We all need to fangirl on each other.
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And this is so fun. There's so many crazy, incredible women who people know.
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And like Sade is like, I love She will tell me about people all the time.
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She's like, you have to talk to Christine and you've got to talk to this woman.
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And it's wonderful because I'm always getting new names to talk to and cool,
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interesting women to chat with.
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I think people love the fact that it's women just getting to talk about themselves
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because we don't do that.
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We talk about what we do and accomplish. And I think we all need to hear more
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of the incredible things women are actually doing, you know.
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The irony is I was just I work for a Canadian company. So TMX Group is the parent
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company of Toronto Stock Exchange and Montreal Exchange.
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And they're still very I know I feel like I have to say that down here because
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no one knows TMX Group south of the border, but everyone knows Toronto Stock Exchange.
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In any case, they are still, I feel like in Canada, very strong.
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They call it ED&I, so Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
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They had quite a big session yesterday, and it was about promoting women.
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It was about everything, but it was how do we recruit more women?
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Still, we see when we go to college campuses, it's mostly men applying,
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and how do we recruit more women?
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I kind of appreciate that about working for a Canadian company.
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They're still focused on getting more women.
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They realize that it's not quite equal, and it was like, this made me feel good.
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And then an email went out today about a bunch of promotions in this one division.
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And my colleague, who's like an early 30s woman, is hysterical after that meeting
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yesterday because every promotion was a man. Oh, wow.
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So we were like, okay, we're like still living in the real world.
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But obviously, there's been so much progress made.
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And I can even see it from my almost 20-year career.
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And like you said, we don't talk about it as much, which always surprises me
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when I'm walking with a mom to school and they drop like what they do.
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And it's like incredible, you know?
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Yeah, they're like, I'm going to go work on a brain today. Like,
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what? Yeah, right. That's amazing.
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Yeah, no. You've been in the finance industry for 20 years, and you're a female in this industry.
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And my husband happens to be a financial analyst and has been for 20 years.
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And I see what he does, but it was all men.
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One of his bosses was a female and she was outstanding, his mentor,
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like she's a rock star, but it was all men. How did you come into finance in general?
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Like what drove you to it? And then what has been your road and your path being
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this woman amongst all these men and kind of traversing all of that?
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Yeah, so I guess it's not such an inspirational story.
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It's not like this was my passion and I pursued it. It was more of a kind of
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right place, right time.
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I was actually an English and international relations major in college.
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So I kind of wanted to go the journalism path, work for a nonprofit,
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the Council on Foreign Relations, like something like that was what I was looking
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for. But I graduated in 2006.
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We were in a bull market. It was like everyone was looking to hire.
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And so that's what I mean, right place, because this is not happening for college
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graduates today. It's getting quite hard to find a job.
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I just remember posting a resume on monster.com. I put it up there and people just started calling.
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Like I didn't even pursue, but that's what 2006 was. We were like a year and
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a half out from the financial crisis.
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And there was always this real run up into a financial crisis.
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Like things were hot. right?
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And so people were like, calling, please interview with us.
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And one of the companies was Thompson Financial, which then became Thompson
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Reuters, which is now owned by the London Stock Exchange. So it was financial services.
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And I remember being like, oh, but I didn't do finance or econ.
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And they were like, no, we want to like recruit from a broad base.
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We think anyone can kind of learn this.
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And the real draw for me was it was like an analyst class.
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So there were 30 college graduates in the first tranche. And then the second
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tranche, like a little later in the summer was 20 college graduates.
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And I was like, great, built in friends, right?
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So I thought of it in more in that sense, like socially, I was like,
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okay, great, I can learn finance stuff. And.
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It wasn't so much to be an analyst as it was to be sales, like financial data
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sales, which I learned very quickly was like not my gig.
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They'd give you like a list of banks to call and I would like pray,
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please don't pick up, you know, like, let me get to a voicemail so I can like read the spiel.
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I wasn't like a shark in that nature. Like, I'm not going to try to sell you something, you know.
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But it was a great learning experience
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because I had this like six week financial boot camp that summer.
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And I was like, all right, yeah, I can kind of like learn these things where
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things sort of turned was there was an opportunity in the equity research group for an editor.
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And because I had that English background, I was like, okay,
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now I'm getting back into a little more of what I like, sort of storytelling
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and like finessing a story.
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And then I found just through that editor's position
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I had previously thought like oh I don't know
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I don't know math I'm not good at finance I'm not good with numbers
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which I feel like so many of our us are just sort of conditioned to
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think right like it's this sort of challenging thing and we don't have the skills
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right I'm better at English and writing and like you know soft skills but what
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I found from being in that research group I was like oh okay this is just like
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storytelling, you know, like with data.
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And so I moved into an analyst role pretty quickly where I covered the retail sector. Oh, stop.
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Are you serious? Yeah. That's something my husband does that.
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Oh, is he? Oh, my God. We'd have so much to talk about.
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It's Retail Earnings Week. So he's probably very busy.
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Oh, I'm sure TJX companies just killed it this morning. And I could tell you
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that because I'm a consumer, we're all consumers.
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Yeah. But that's why I found that sector accessible because instead of some
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other sectors where I'm like, whoa, this is way over my head,
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like parts of tech or metals and mining or even energy.
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Like I'm not, I don't live in Texas. I'm not close to like an oil industry, but I am a consumer and,
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And I would go shopping and call it market research.
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I'm like, I'm just here doing my research. I specifically covered earnings calls.
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Probably what your husband is doing right now is you listen into the call.
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You have your takeaways.
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Then I'd use the data to kind of tell the story of what segments of retail are doing well versus not.
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And right now the story is there's a very bifurcated consumer.
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Lower income is struggling as prices have continued to increase.
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High income is out there still spending. So you tried to find that story.
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And that was kind of close to my heart because I was a storyteller.
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But now I'm just doing it with data.
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Because there was that real world angle, like I'd go to a gap and then I'd listen
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to their earnings call and they'd miss expectations like, oh,
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yeah, I was kind of empty when I was there.
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And the new product line is not great. Like, I felt like I knew something about
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it. So yeah, that's kind of how I got into this whole industry.
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Again, it wasn't this strong drive, but then I found that I could love it because
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it was a little bit problem solving too.
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And I enjoy that aspect of it. What's going on with the markets today?
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Why are they like, let's figure out the reason.
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It's really fascinating to watch.
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But one of our first fights was over JCPenney.
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Oh, yeah. You're giving him intel. You're like, no one's there.
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The stores are very messy.
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It's not doing well. No, this was when we first met. It was like 2005.
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So JCPenney was still around. And I went to the Fashion Institute in San Francisco.
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I was in merchandising. I was a designer. I've done all these things.
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And then I had my own opinions of what things were like. And so we had this
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argument about JCPenney and how I was like, look, it's not going to happen.
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And he was like, I don't know. They're pretty good.
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He was right. And I was right.
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The timing of it. And this is the thing I found to be very interesting with
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what you do. The timing is so important.
10:53
Right. So can you tell us a little bit about the timing when you're looking
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at something and you're like, OK, so TJ Maxx.
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TGX is doing really well right now, and we're going to say it's going to do
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great for the next little bit of time.
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We're going to wait and see what happens in the next quarter.
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That timing is really important. So how do you gauge that when you're looking at these companies?
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Fortunately, if you are at the mercy of what the company says,
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the company is incentivized to be sort of transparent because it's going to
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shake out in the stock one way or the other.
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So, yeah, we'll use the TGX example. They own Marshalls, they own HomeGoods, like all the hits.
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And they're actually one of the winners so far this earnings season.
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And it's not based on what they reported from last season. That's backwards looking.
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You want to hear the forward looking guidance.
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Okay. And there's also some body language or language to use.
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You know, how have they been positioning themselves in the market?
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Are they at all the conferences?
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Do they sound confident? Are they giving more or less information than they
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usually do? And some CEOs are great at managing this, right?
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Others, there's more of a tell.
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But I take a look at the guidance and then I look at what the sell side analyst.
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So I'm not giving estimates. I'm not giving recommendations like what your husband
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was doing for the public on the sell side.
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But I look at the aggregated sell side consensus.
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And they often listen to what the company is saying. So you'll see those estimates
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kind of move around a little bit. And then we have an idea of like,
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what's the apples to apples comparison from last year?
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Are they showing growth? And then you've got to add in the overlay of what's
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the economic landscape right like right now.
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We know there's been a lot of layoffs. People are getting a little fatigued
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with the inflation, especially at the lower ends of the income scale.
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It's getting harder and harder to keep up with the cost of things, right?
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And so you have to add in that overlay. We also look at certain surveys,
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which aren't always, you know, it's people reporting how they feel.
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So sometimes you say you feel one way and you act a different way.
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One big survey is the University of Michigan does this consumer sentiment survey and the.
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Was the lowest in the 80 years that they've been doing this survey.
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So consumers are feeling the worst that they felt, yet the spending isn't there,
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it hasn't caught up. And then you look at some other surveys.
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There's something called the National Retail Federation that does a survey for holiday shopping.
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And it's like people still say they're going to spend not quite as much as they
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did last year, a little bit less.
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Families with children are actually expected to spend $30 more than they did last year.
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Some of that will have to do with inflation because prices maybe are a little
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higher in some categories.
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But overall, we got to see at the end of Black Friday and Cyber Monday,
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the shopping season, how people acted between like there was a government shutdown.
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There's been all these layups. You hear the news. Sometimes you're reacting
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to that. So we have to see if it shakes out in the numbers. But yeah, it's a hard puzzle.
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I don't envy the analysts because they have to put all these puzzle pieces together.
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They're kind of building their mosaic of like, all right, what's the story?
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And as we know, things are constantly changing.
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So you've got to be incorporating news really quickly.
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But yeah, so I really lean heavily on the corporations. How are they guiding?
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What are sell-side analysts saying? And do I think that kind of levels with
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what we're seeing out there in other economic data? Yeah.
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Talk to us about this body language. So this is so funny. My husband has said
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this before, that when he walks
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into a room, part of his job is figuring out if they're lying or not.
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And he can sit in a room because he goes to all of the conferences and he'll
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meet with the CEO and the CFO and all those people for years and years now.
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And he'll sit in a room and he'll like notice how the CEO is sitting or where
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he's moving or what's going on.
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Tell us what you notice as you're going through this about different companies
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and what you feel when you're talking to them.
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So the body language I look at, because I'm not in the room,
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I'm either listening to a call and it's very subject, you know,
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like subjective what I hear.
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It's hard to compare to last. So I'm not always sure.
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And these are prepared remarks from CEOs and they kind of, they know how to do this.
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The body language we look at, or we call it corporate body language,
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is the timing of their earnings dates, because we've tracked it historically for 20 years.
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And there has been a ton of academic research, specifically this one paper out of MIT.
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When a company moves their earnings date early, it means they have good news to share.
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When they move it later than they historically have reported,
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they have bad news to share.
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And it makes sense, right? When you have good news, you're like running home.
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You're like, I got to tell everybody this news.
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When you have bad news, you're kind of thinking about, okay,
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how do I deliver this message?
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You can tell the IR team's hard at work trying to figure out the messaging.
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It's not always true. Sometimes you have a new CFO and that they've moved the date.
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It could be management changes. It could be M&A. That's another clue,
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though, like, oh, something might be going on.
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And so we track all of this data and we track when companies have an outlier
15:59
earnings date, whether it's early or late.
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And when it's early, we're like, oh, good, that could be good news.
16:04
When it's late, we're like, something might be happening here.
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And a lot of times it's already a company that's under stress.
16:10
So you're like, oh, there was already like some stuff going on here.
16:13
So that's our corporate body language because it's, it's data and it's not just kind of us guessing.
16:19
I'd say it's accurate like two thirds of the time when we flag something as
16:24
like a significant outlier, it falls in one of those like good news, bad news buckets.
16:29
But yeah, there's all these tells when you've been in the industry for like
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20 years, you're like, oh, that's not good.
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I will say, though, it's getting harder to tell because we have these massive
16:40
swings in the markets and you sometimes don't know what investors are reacting.
16:44
Sometimes bad news is good news because when we've gotten, you know,
16:49
very poor economic data, the markets or investors are reacting to the fact,
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well, oh, that was like jobs numbers were down.
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That means we're going to get an interest rate cut from the Fed. And that's a good thing.
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So you're always kind of trying, like I said, there's this problem solving aspect
17:04
where you can't always tell how the market is going to react.
17:09
And so then you're trying to backtrack all right what piece of
17:12
this earnings report they liked this they didn't
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like that you know so it is it's a little bit of a
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puzzle when i talked about conferences we used
17:20
to track pretty closely like who was speaking at what conferences and if like
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all of the peers in an industry were speaking but this one company wasn't we're
17:30
like why or if they change speakers from like a high level c-suite to someone
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else we're like oh what's you know why would that happen?
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Why would they put like a lower level person or why are they not speaking at the conference now?
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They've like retracted. So yeah, it's a bit of a game.
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It's not exactly a science all the time, but we're all looking for like a little edge, right?
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So like, what can we call from the data, from this, from that,
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like what I have access to? So it can be fun though.
18:00
I always find it fascinating. When did you get involved with being on television
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and reporting on CNBC or being a guest on CNBC.
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You've been in the Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg.
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When did all of that start happening?
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Yeah, so that's like another right place, right time. I've somehow found opportunity in adversity.
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So as I said, graduate in 2006, a year and a half later, we find ourselves,
18:27
it's like Bear Stearns has collapsed.
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Here's the financial crisis, the subprime loan crisis.
18:33
And it really changed my world because all of a sudden I had like a research
18:37
team of 20 something. And it was like.
18:40
Three of us in the end. Right. And most of the folks that were kept on board,
18:44
I was like in the sweet spot of not being so new that they hadn't invested enough
18:49
in me and like, let's just dismiss her to I haven't been here 10 years and I'm making too much.
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So I'd been there like about a year and a half.
18:58
They had invested enough in me that I could take on a bunch of roles as they had to cut. Right.
19:04
And it was an interesting time to be new in finance and also not have a background
19:08
in finance because as scary as it was, there was also this energy.
19:12
We have TVs on all around. We have CNBC. We have Bloomberg.
19:15
And you're like, oh, my God, this bank.
19:17
So because I liked the news angle and because I had intended to go into journalism,
19:22
I was like, okay, I'm at the forefront. I'm working in financial services close
19:27
to Wall Street, and I'm hearing the feedback.
19:30
And so I'm kind of living this right now.
19:32
What happened next was because most of our team got cut, I manned something
19:37
called the earnings hotline at Thompson Reuters, where journalists would call
19:42
and they'd say, OK, TGX reported 50 cents a share, but that's not lining up.
19:47
We had our own methodology for like charges that we'd take out.
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So I'd have to walk through like what was in that number, why we took out this
19:54
one time pension charge, whatever.
19:56
So I was getting all of those media calls. And one day a call comes in from
20:01
BNN, which is the business news network up in Toronto.
20:04
Though it's like the CNBC of Toronto they're now actually owned by Bloomberg
20:07
and they're like hey we're looking for John that was my boss who he actually
20:12
didn't get low he left during the financial crisis he got another job opportunity
20:16
they're like we're looking for him to come do this segment on earnings season
20:19
I'm like yeah he's you know doesn't work here anymore.
20:22
And so sweet and Canadian of them they're like well do you want to come on and I was like,
20:26
You know, I had media training just to learn how to answer the phone and talk to journalists.
20:31
And there was a little bit of a video component in my early days at Thompson.
20:35
And I just had really the leftover colleagues were so sweet.
20:39
The guy next to me is like, like he could tell what the phone call was.
20:43
And I'm like, well, I really haven't done TV before. And he's like over my cubicle, like, just say yes.
20:48
And I'm like, oh, OK, OK.
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He's like we'll figure it out so I say yes and
20:54
one of my teammates she had been doing a lot of she was
20:57
kind of like my retail analyst mentor she had been doing a lot
20:59
of tv and so we did like a little prep and that's
21:02
really what happened there was like no one else there so so I just like prepped
21:07
and that first interview was so bad like I knew all the answers because they
21:11
did a prep with me okay but you can tell during the interview it's live but
21:16
I'm not in Toronto I'm at the NASDAQ in New York taping in a little closet with just a camera.
21:22
And I'm like, okay, like, where do I just look straight? Okay, cool.
21:26
And every time they asked me a question, I'd go, yep. Like, I was so glad I knew the answer.
21:31
You know, I was like, oh, yes, I know this one. And so my colleagues were like,
21:35
great job. Just like, don't say yep after every question.
21:38
I was like, okay, so I finessed it a little bit. And yeah, that's how it started.
21:43
I started getting on TV that way. And then what happened was a lot of the team
21:48
I worked with had left and moved to Standard & Poor's.
21:51
They saw me on TV and they came back and got me. They're like,
21:55
hey, we've been seeing you've been doing really well.
21:57
We want to have you over. And I'll say one thing that always fascinates me about
22:02
this industry and just, I think, being in New York and just,
22:05
you kind of, it becomes very small.
22:07
You start to know a lot of people, is I have never applied for a job since the
22:12
first job that I got off monster.com.
22:15
I've never applied to a job.
22:17
I've lost jobs, there's been layoffs, but there's always been somebody I know looking for something.
22:23
So it really is, you know, there's pluses and minuses of living in the greater New York city area.
22:29
One of the pluses is the number of people and acquaintances you meet and someone's
22:35
always been looking for something.
22:36
And so I've always had like a warm lead into new things. But yeah,
22:40
the TV really has helped me build that kind a network, like knowing a lot of the media players and.
22:47
Typically, when you're looking at new jobs, they love that you go on TV,
22:50
you're like evangelizing the data, or you're kind of the spokesperson.
22:54
Yeah, it wasn't by design, just kind of fell into my lap. And I think there
22:59
was also, yes, finance being male dominated.
23:02
A lot of the media outlets really try to find female voices,
23:07
which I've always appreciated.
23:08
They try to elevate, because a lot of these programs, they are all men,
23:12
you know, there's a lot of men on.
23:13
So they've tried to balance where they can. And so I felt like I've actually
23:17
been a bit of a beneficiary of that.
23:19
But yeah, it's continued. And I've kind of stayed in the game throughout motherhood
23:23
and, you know, a few months off here for this and maternity leave.
23:27
Like, I'm still trying to, like, stay in there because the turnover in media is pretty high.
23:32
So you have to like, OK, this producer left and went here and this journalist is over here.
23:37
And so it's there's a lot to keep up with there. Well, it's interesting you
23:40
said that because I just did another interview with someone and she was saying
23:44
that once she got to a certain level, she never applied for a job.
23:49
Like, yeah, it's incredible. Like, are you looking great?
23:53
Let's take you. And I have another friend who got laid off the same day her
23:59
old boss called without knowing that they were closing and was like,
24:04
hey, I'm starting up again. I want you. And she was like, did you know?
24:09
Nope. Perfect timing. And now she's at this new company.
24:12
Like, it's it's pretty incredible when you get to that place that people just
24:16
automatically reach out to you. So that's like a giant accomplishment, I think.
24:21
Think of you or you just know of somebody or you happen to mention to somebody.
24:26
Yeah, it's unbelievable. I mean, a lot of it is luck. A lot of it is just staying
24:30
out there and networking. But you're right.
24:32
It's history, too. Like once you've been out there long enough.
24:35
And we have all the social, you know, like on LinkedIn, you know,
24:39
you're kind of like still in people's memories because they're seeing you.
24:44
They're not seeing you, but they're seeing you on there. Or in my case,
24:47
maybe they'll see me on TV or they'll see a quote or something.
24:49
And they're like, hey, I saw you.
24:51
But yeah, it's been, I know, because I know in some other industries,
24:54
it is not like that. You're fighting like tooth and nail to get positions.
24:59
So I've been lucky in that regard, knock on wood.
25:03
Let's talk about markets real fast. What are you paying really close attention
25:07
to in the markets right now?
25:09
Yeah, so it's so boring now because we've all been like talking about AI so
25:14
much, but that really is what's driving.
25:17
I'm going on TV later to talk about NVIDIA because their earnings are out today.
25:22
And that is sort of the AI darling, right? This is where this all started.
25:25
Incredible run up to the point where people, is this a bubble? Like, how could this be?
25:31
So I think we're at the point of like the beginning of AI where investors are
25:35
starting to question, is there monetization?
25:38
What's the adoption rate? It's been buzzy for a couple of years.
25:41
I was actually on Fox News, Business News the other day, where they talked about
25:44
the increase in AI mentions in quarterly earnings reports.
25:48
And it's like, if you weren't mentioning it, you almost got penalized because
25:52
it was like you needed an AI strategy.
25:54
Like everyone, even outside of tech, everyone needs an AI strategy, right?
25:58
But now it's not enough to just talk about it. And this is kind of the year
26:02
that we've started to see investors kind of peel back into the layers and say,
26:07
okay, you've invested billions of dollars.
26:10
Like, what's the return on those investments?
26:13
Are you monetizing these AI tools? What's the adoption rate like?
26:18
There are people that know so much more about that than myself.
26:21
I don't analyze AI. I do listen to these earnings calls.
26:24
But, like, from my purview as an individual, like, yes, I'm using Gemini.
26:28
I'm using ChatGP. a lot of us are using these free tools.
26:31
So investors want to see like our customers using premium AI tools.
26:36
Are they paying up for these other things? Like what's the trajectory?
26:40
So I think that's where we are. We're at the test phase of, I mean,
26:46
there's no doubt this is the next great frontier, right?
26:49
This is Dan Ives at Wedbush would say this is the next industrial revolution.
26:54
I don't think any of us are denying, but it's not a straight path,
26:58
right? So we're trying to figure out where we are,
27:01
So we're very early and it's like, okay, what path does it go now?
27:05
Is the spending sustainable?
27:08
These billions and trillions of dollars for data centers is what has people
27:12
kind of like, wow, how can this continue?
27:15
So we have a long road, but I do think it's, some of it's exciting.
27:19
Some of it's scary. The World Economic Forum had their annual cybersecurity
27:23
conference the other week.
27:24
And it's like AI can both be very good for cybersecurity or bad in that cyber
27:30
criminals are getting more sophisticated because they have access to AI tools
27:33
to carry out these very sophisticated phishing attacks.
27:37
So it's really interesting to be covering markets and tech at this time.
27:42
But it is what's carrying the markets. Like if you look at the market cap of
27:45
what we call the Magnificent Seven, so Google or Alphabet, Amazon,
27:50
Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA,
27:52
Apple, they are like a third of the value of the S&P 500 right now.
27:57
It's really concentrated.
27:59
That's like another fear, folks. It's broadening out a little more now,
28:02
but most of the concentration is still in those like mega tech names.
28:06
I'm always very curious how they make money. I want to call him like a market
28:10
historian, Nick Cololos.
28:12
He writes a newsletter called Data Track Research. And he's been,
28:16
he was a sell side analyst under Stevie Cohen, SAC Cup. So he's had a long trajectory.
28:21
And he, you know, we were probably like in high school during dot com era.
28:27
So it was like, I wasn't really tuned in. And I didn't look back, but he was there.
28:31
And he'll say, this is not that because there was no revenue.
28:35
And so the money wasn't there. And then it took us a while to get through that.
28:39
The difference now is there is real money. I think if you look at like an Alphabet
28:45
or Amazon, the cloud providers, so Google Cloud, AWS, those cloud providers,
28:52
because every company is needs.
28:54
And so that is a real world use of it.
28:56
And both those names saw their revenues grow like 30, 40 percent last quarter.
29:01
So they're showing growth. I think one of the names that kind of got penalized is Meta.
29:06
They're kind of up there as one of the early AI leaders, but the revenue was fine.
29:11
It's just they announced that the spending is so much more or it's getting to
29:15
the point where investors are like, wow, this is not what you said spending was going to be.
29:19
And maybe your numbers don't quite align with that. And so we're going to want to see more from you.
29:24
So there are some winners and losers, as there always are.
29:27
I think with NVIDIA later today, the CEO, Jensen Huang, has said they have $500
29:32
billion in orders from the hyperscalers, so Amazon.
29:36
Meta, Google, and so half a trillion in revenue for these chips that they make
29:43
to build the data centers, which everything relies on. So I think the difference is they're...
29:50
Definitely money happening. Money is being made. It's not 2000, 2001.
29:55
But it's just how sustainable is the spending and you can't grow the way that they've been growing.
30:02
So there's going to be bumps, there's going to be slowdowns,
30:04
there's going to be wrong turns taken.
30:07
So everyone's just trying right now to figure out what is the trajectory of AI.
30:11
I think we all agree like this is pretty big. This is the next big tech frontier.
30:16
But we don't quite know how it's used or what's going to be kind of the next chapter of the story.
30:22
And so we're all kind of waiting to find out. But I mean, again,
30:26
it will be in videos remarks will really impact the markets and where they think
30:31
the AI trade is going next.
30:33
So also, I listened to a lot of other conferences. So there's a lot of investor
30:37
or industry wide conferences where you hear unscripted commentary about where things are going,
30:43
which can be more fun than an earnings call, because it's a little off the cuff,
30:47
like you might get a little nugget of information.
30:50
So yeah, we just have to stay tuned. There's going to be winners and losers.
30:54
And I think the ones that can figure it out are already making a lot of money.
30:58
That's the other thing. These companies, unlike the early 2000s, they have so much cash.
31:03
So it's like they have the money to burn in a way that we didn't 25 years ago.
31:10
And so it's going to be interesting now.
31:12
Someone was saying, I think it was on Squawk Box because that's what's on every
31:15
morning in my house. Oh, yeah. Right?
31:20
Tech company brings out the t it is
31:23
in the trillions in the trillions trillions which
31:26
is which is just an unheard of it's just
31:30
i remember when like was it apple for whoever first
31:33
crossed the one trillion market was such like a down on the floor of the exchange
31:37
it was like woo such a big moment but now you have four trillion for apple you
31:41
know nvidia is over over five trillion i mean it's just incredible it's like
31:45
not even that exciting anymore it's like the norm it's the norm.
31:50
What are you noticing for women and investing?
31:55
Do you notice that more women are investing that they don't know and we haven't
31:59
been educated enough about it? Because it's not something that I don't know.
32:02
My dad wasn't in banking and neither was my mom.
32:06
So it wasn't something that we ever like gravitated towards.
32:09
Everything I've learned is because I lived in the city. I worked at a hedge fund for seven years.
32:13
But what do what can women where can women start to learn more about investing
32:18
and really take advantage of it.
32:21
Yeah, you're right. I think we're at a turning point here because traditionally,
32:25
you're right, I tried to look up numbers of like how many women invest in the stock market.
32:29
It's so hard to figure out because every brokerage is kind of doing their own survey.
32:33
But I think we can all agree it's probably less than the number of them that
32:37
are investing. And there's really a few reasons for this.
32:39
One, just at the baseline, women tend to have less disposable income, right?
32:44
There is a gender pay gap. We make less for comparable jobs.
32:47
We take more time off from our careers, whether it be,
32:51
you know, we're more likely to take care of like a sick family member,
32:54
an elderly family member, a
32:55
child, of course, and that kind of impacts our overall lifetime earnings.
33:01
You know, other things like unpaid labor, we do more maybe in the home that
33:05
detracts from career development. So there's all these reasons we live longer.
33:09
So we have to have more money longer.
33:11
So there's all these reasons we just start out with less. And then I think both
33:16
socially, we are, well, first of all, like there is a confidence factor.
33:21
They've done a bunch of research on men and women and their confidence and their
33:25
financial knowledge. And when they kind of gave questions to each about financially
33:31
related questions, men and women kind of answer the same questions.
33:34
But women still feel like they know less. And I think on one of these studies,
33:39
it was like when they removed the option for a multiple choice that said,
33:43
I don't know, women actually did better.
33:45
Women defaulted to like, I don't know, because we're just like conditioned to think we don't know.
33:50
And we're also more risk averse because we're a little more balanced.
33:54
We're always focused on securing the money and making sure it's stable and not spending.
34:00
We make money by saving. We make money by not buying.
34:04
Don't buy that, save it, put it away.
34:08
The paradox of it all is that that actually makes us better investors in the long run.
34:12
When they've done studies on portfolios run by men and women,
34:17
the women's portfolios outperform men's because we are more risk averse,
34:21
which means we diversify more.
34:23
This is a funny one, but we're less emotional about it. We're not as impulsive.
34:27
So we don't make rash decisions.
34:30
We're more in it for the long term. We're going to see how this kind of pans out.
34:35
Because we feel we don't know a lot, we research more. So we study up more, right?
34:40
A man will apply for a job where he has like 20% of the qualifications and a
34:44
woman, unless she has all of the skills, she like won't apply,
34:48
right? So it's some of its nature, maybe some of it is societal conditioning.
34:53
And to your point, like growing up in my house, there wasn't a strong focus on investing.
34:59
I come from a pretty middle, lower middle class family where it was like you
35:04
had to save your money. Like we're not going to risk.
35:07
That's for like rich people, you know, like that's something that you do because
35:11
if you lose it, you know, then what are we going to do?
35:14
So I was never really taught about it. And then I think also from an early age,
35:19
and my mom says she regrets this now, but she'd be like, oh, I'm not good at math.
35:23
So I always thought I couldn't be good at these things. Girls aren't good at math.
35:28
Girls are better at English and boys are good at math. And everything they've
35:33
shown about young kids is that they're on par.
35:36
Girls are as good at math at a young age. But then something happens to like our psyche, right?
35:41
Whether it's our moms telling us that or I don't know, the culture,
35:46
it's unclear. But like something's happening where we think this is not for us.
35:50
And historically, it hasn't been right. Like when did women get access to bank
35:54
accounts? Yeah, not till the 70s, 80s.
35:56
So it's like historically, we haven't, we've been told like,
36:00
oh, no, you can't manage your own money or like your husband has to do that
36:03
for you. But I think a lot of that is undoing itself now.
36:06
I mean, more women are obtaining higher education.
36:09
We are closing the gender pay gap. More women are getting promotions and more
36:15
of a higher percentage of women are reported as breadwinners in their households.
36:19
And I think the big thing that is going to change women's financial position
36:24
is the great wealth transfer, which is in the next 20 years,
36:29
20 to 25 years, you have this aging baby boomer population.
36:34
That is in possession of over half of the country's wealth.
36:39
Over $100 trillion are in the
36:41
hands of baby boomers. They are between the ages of like 60 and 80 now.
36:46
So as they pass, they will leave their money, most likely to a spouse.
36:51
In 95% of cases, that will be a woman.
36:54
And then I think I read spouses will get about $55 trillion of that.
37:00
And then like another 40 will get passed on to children.
37:03
Half of that a little more than half of that will likely
37:06
be women and so that puts us in the position to
37:09
really impact economic growth and all
37:12
the studies on how women use money nothing's bad
37:16
when women have more money right we invest in our communities we
37:19
invest in our families we invest in our children and so it just really has the
37:23
potential to change the playing field a little bit and bring women more on par
37:28
both with the fact that their wages are increasing and now we have this great
37:33
wealth transfer set to occur in the next couple of decades.
37:36
It's, I mean, it's going to be big. So women are going to need financial advisors
37:40
more than ever. They're going to need to learn what to do with that money.
37:43
I'm sure the financial advisor market, they're like beaming with.
37:47
Opportunity because as it is, even though we don't often make,
37:51
you know, we're not the breadwinners of our families for the most part,
37:54
we spend the most, you know,
37:56
we're buying the kids stuff, for grocery shopping like we
37:59
make most of the consumer related decisions in
38:02
the household which is why you see so much of corporate marketing is targeted
38:06
towards women because they know we're making those decisions and now we're going
38:10
to have the money to do so so yeah it's going to be interesting to see what
38:13
happens over the next couple decades i want an all-female financial services company.
38:20
There is one. It's called Ellevest. Really? Yeah.
38:24
So they had a robo-advisor component that they sold off to Betterment.
38:28
But the wealth advisory business, it's targeted towards women.
38:33
And all the financial advisors are women.
38:35
Because our set of needs are very different.
38:39
Because we maybe don't have as much disposable income. We live long.
38:43
Chances are we're going to live longer. We need that money to last longer.
38:46
That requires a different investment strategy.
38:49
And a lot of investment strategies have been tailored towards men.
38:52
And so yes, Ellevest is providing that service.
38:56
And I think it's, look, everyone's risk appetite and portfolios are going to be different.
39:00
Their goals are going to be different. But I think to speak with someone who
39:05
specifically has training and like this,
39:08
on average, this woman's going to live this long and she's going to need these
39:11
things and she's going to need a career break when she has kids and just preparing
39:14
for all the differences that we have throughout our lives versus our male counterparts.
39:20
So yes. And I think there's some others out there, but Ella Vesta is one of
39:23
them. That's fantastic. I'm going to look that one up.
39:26
It's been so fun. It's been such an easy chat. You make it easy and it's all
39:30
like fun and topical. Oh, good. Oh, I'm so good.
39:33
Thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.
39:38
Thank you so much for joining me today on She's Smart. New episodes drop every other Thursday.
39:44
Don't forget to subscribe, like, and share. Stay cozy.