Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Retail Sales, Global Inflation and Biopharma Investing
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 moven 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.
- 0:21Speaker 3: We got some eco data today.
- 0:22Speaker 1: I've had a lot of economic data early over the
- 0:24Speaker 1: last week, week and a half, a lot for the
- 0:27Speaker 1: Federal Reserve to chew on as that thinks about its
- 0:29Speaker 1: net next rate decision springing. Ira Jersey covers all that
- 0:33Speaker 1: interest rate stuff for Bloomberg Intelligence. He's down in the
- 0:37Speaker 1: Princeton campus of Bloomberg Intelligence the Core HQ for bi Ira. Again,
- 0:44Speaker 1: we had some retail sales number today, some industrial production
- 0:47Speaker 1: numbers came in. I guess a little bit weaker than expected.
- 0:49Speaker 1: Anything here over the last several days changes your opinion
- 0:52Speaker 1: that this Federal Reserve is probably going to raise rates
- 0:55Speaker 1: here at the end of the month.
- 0:56Speaker 3: But and then after that, it's a I guess, still
- 0:59Speaker 3: a guessing.
- 1:01Speaker 4: Yeah, it is probably still a guessing game pall afterward,
- 1:05Speaker 4: especially since before the September meeting, we effectively get two
- 1:09Speaker 4: months worth of data, right, so it's not just a
- 1:11Speaker 4: single month like we kind of have now. In between
- 1:14Speaker 4: the June and July meetings, you know, the data has
- 1:17Speaker 4: been pretty mixed. Today's data is just proof of that.
- 1:21Speaker 4: We had pretty weak industrial production numbers that doesn't look good.
- 1:25Speaker 4: The good sector of manufacturing is not doing well in
- 1:28Speaker 4: the United States, and indeed globally there's a slowdown in manufacturing.
- 1:33Speaker 4: And then but on the other side, spending was really
- 1:36Speaker 4: good when you look at the control group. So this
- 1:38Speaker 4: is the GDP input from the retail sales numbers this morning,
- 1:41Speaker 4: and that was solid. So you have very mixed data
- 1:46Speaker 4: in terms of what's gone on business sector and maybe
- 1:48Speaker 4: setting up for a recession versus you know, actual spending
- 1:52Speaker 4: data which looks pretty good.
- 1:54Speaker 5: So IRA, in terms of what you anticipate the meetings
- 1:56Speaker 5: look the meeting minutes looking like coming out of this
- 1:59Speaker 5: next FED meeting next week, do you anticipate the majority
- 2:03Speaker 5: of the conversation being about what the FED is going
- 2:05Speaker 5: to do in the fall versus a justification for what
- 2:09Speaker 5: we expect to be a hike next week.
- 2:12Speaker 4: Yes, So I don't think the minutes of this meeting
- 2:14Speaker 4: will be particularly interesting because there's not a summary of
- 2:17Speaker 4: economic projections that are coming out, so they don't you know,
- 2:20Speaker 4: they always tweak, you know, in the inter meeting period
- 2:22Speaker 4: kind of here's what happened. But those big discussions about
- 2:27Speaker 4: more forward looking information will come more from the September
- 2:31Speaker 4: meeting when we do get a new dot plot summary
- 2:34Speaker 4: of economic projections, where do we think unemployment and GDP
- 2:37Speaker 4: and everything else is going to be? So I think
- 2:40Speaker 4: September will be much more telling in that regard. You know,
- 2:44Speaker 4: my feeling is is that the Fed this week is
- 2:47Speaker 4: going to say, Okay, we're hiking again. They basically promised
- 2:49Speaker 4: that they were going to and they'll say, but we're
- 2:52Speaker 4: going to reevaluate meeting by meeting, and they'll continue with
- 2:55Speaker 4: that type of discussion. You know, you go back to
- 2:58Speaker 4: this time last year, and the Fed was still saying,
- 3:02Speaker 4: we're continuing to increase interest rates, right, so they were
- 3:05Speaker 4: almost promising that they're going to keep going, not necessarily
- 3:07Speaker 4: at what pace, but that they were going to keep
- 3:09Speaker 4: hiking rates. And and now they're they're significantly more data
- 3:13Speaker 4: dependent than they were a year ago. For each in
- 3:16Speaker 4: between each individual meeting. So so so this is kind
- 3:20Speaker 4: of like a placeholder meeting, I think in a way
- 3:22Speaker 4: where September can be much more telling us to the
- 3:24Speaker 4: future of interest rates.
- 3:26Speaker 1: Is this fed a reserve ever going to come out
- 3:28Speaker 1: and say basically, hey, we did a good job. We
- 3:30Speaker 1: got inflation down, it's going in the right direction. You know,
- 3:33Speaker 1: we were aggressive, but it's working.
- 3:37Speaker 6: Well.
- 3:38Speaker 4: They've already started to say that that. You know, Jay
- 3:40Speaker 4: Powell during his press conference and in some of the
- 3:43Speaker 4: other conferences and and and and meetings that he's had
- 3:47Speaker 4: in between, whether it was before Congress or over in
- 3:50Speaker 4: Portugal at at at the ECB summit, he's basically said, look,
- 3:55Speaker 4: inflation is trending in a direction that we like, but
- 3:58Speaker 4: but the job's not done. So I think from his standpoint,
- 4:02Speaker 4: from their standpoint, that they can they'll they'll won't say
- 4:05Speaker 4: anything like that until it's very clear that say that
- 4:09Speaker 4: the PC deflator is below three percent. Once you get there,
- 4:12Speaker 4: I think they can say that like, we're approaching our target,
- 4:15Speaker 4: and and then they'll pat themselves in the back maybe
- 4:18Speaker 4: a little bit, and and basically say, you know, job's done,
- 4:21Speaker 4: but we're being cautious.
- 4:23Speaker 5: And what's your timeline these days, Ira for when we
- 4:26Speaker 5: can anticipate that celebration.
- 4:29Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think before the end of the year
- 4:31Speaker 4: that the FED is going to be able to say,
- 4:34Speaker 4: you know, we've gotten inflation back toward we're near our
- 4:39Speaker 4: our target level of two percent. So because of that,
- 4:42Speaker 4: we can remain on hold, and you know, they'll always
- 4:45Speaker 4: continue to use the buzzwords of we're continuing to watch
- 4:49Speaker 4: you know, economic activity and inflation and jobs and everything else.
- 4:53Speaker 4: I don't think that they're going to cut rates until
- 4:56Speaker 4: later next year, so a little bit beyond what's what's
- 4:59Speaker 4: being priced, it's still pricing for cuts in the first
- 5:02Speaker 4: quarter of next year, or the first cut in the
- 5:03Speaker 4: first quarter of next year. I think it's gonna they're
- 5:07Speaker 4: not going to ultimately cut until later next year. Once
- 5:10Speaker 4: they do, I think that the economy is going to
- 5:12Speaker 4: be weak enough that they'll have to cut much more aggressively,
- 5:15Speaker 4: maybe than what the market's pricing.
- 5:16Speaker 5: Well to Paul's point about when they can start to celebrate,
- 5:20Speaker 5: I wonder when we might have a FED that does
- 5:24Speaker 5: a little bit of a post mortem and looks at
- 5:26Speaker 5: the lag in raising interest rates and maybe is open
- 5:30Speaker 5: to discussing and an effort to build some credibility that
- 5:33Speaker 5: they maybe drop the ball a little bit too early on.
- 5:35Speaker 5: Do you anticipate anything like that happening.
- 5:39Speaker 4: Well, you know, I think everyone and the Federal Reserve
- 5:43Speaker 4: always does some self reflection, and certainly they can be
- 5:46Speaker 4: criticized for, you know, not even the rate hikes. Like
- 5:49Speaker 4: if I were to do a post mortem on what
- 5:53Speaker 4: the Federal Reserve did and the actions that it took,
- 5:56Speaker 4: I think the single biggest thing that they did was
- 5:58Speaker 4: a continued quantitative easing to long. You know, they could
- 6:01Speaker 4: have ended quantitative easing in the spring of twenty twenty
- 6:04Speaker 4: one and you know, started to hike in early twenty
- 6:09Speaker 4: twenty two, similar to what they did, but they didn't
- 6:11Speaker 4: take any hawkish actions until maybe it was a little
- 6:14Speaker 4: bit too late. Now once they got going, they obviously,
- 6:17Speaker 4: as we know, they really got going and you know,
- 6:21Speaker 4: kind of played catch up. So and it's not unusual
- 6:24Speaker 4: for central banks to do that because they don't want
- 6:26Speaker 4: to be seen as hiking and tightening monetary.
- 6:29Speaker 3: Policy too early.
- 6:31Speaker 4: But there's other actions now that they can take other
- 6:33Speaker 4: than the blunt instrument of actually hiking interest rates, you know,
- 6:37Speaker 4: especially when they have balance sheet policy that they can
- 6:39Speaker 4: play with IRA.
- 6:42Speaker 1: When you know, talk to institutional investors, what's the recession
- 6:46Speaker 1: talk these days? And people think it's kind of off
- 6:48Speaker 1: the table or at the very very least it can
- 6:50Speaker 1: be short and shallow.
- 6:53Speaker 4: Yeah, most of the people that I talked to think
- 6:54Speaker 4: that we're going to have some form of soft landing.
- 6:58Speaker 4: I you know, I don't know if it's a recession,
- 7:00Speaker 4: like you know, how you define a recession obviously matters
- 7:03Speaker 4: a lot. Whether whether we get a recession that the
- 7:06Speaker 4: NBER you know, classifies as one I think is still
- 7:10Speaker 4: very much up in the air, and a lot of
- 7:11Speaker 4: investors are kind of looking past that and saying, okay,
- 7:14Speaker 4: look when we look at the hard data, when we
- 7:16Speaker 4: look at the retail sales data, which is a hard
- 7:18Speaker 4: data point because it's actual sales in the economy, that
- 7:22Speaker 4: looks pretty good, and employment is hasn't yet completely rolled over.
- 7:26Speaker 4: Although we have slowing job growth, we don't have yet
- 7:29Speaker 4: have job losses, you know, we've it's pretty rare to
- 7:33Speaker 4: have a recession and no job losses. So so I
- 7:36Speaker 4: think a lot of people are very hopeful that we'll
- 7:38Speaker 4: have a soft landing. You know, I think rates investors
- 7:42Speaker 4: are a little more skeptical and a little more pessimistic
- 7:45Speaker 4: than say equity investors that I've spoken to. But there's
- 7:49Speaker 4: a lot of people who are confused because we do
- 7:52Speaker 4: have this variety of data. Like I said that that,
- 7:56Speaker 4: you know, you look at the ism surveys and they're
- 7:58Speaker 4: suggesting that we're going to have a significant slow down.
- 8:00Speaker 4: But at the same time, you get retail sales numbers
- 8:03Speaker 4: like we have this morning, and people are like, yeah,
- 8:04Speaker 4: you know, maybe the survey data is not going to
- 8:06Speaker 4: be right.
- 8:07Speaker 1: All right, We're going to be on alert for more data.
- 8:11Speaker 1: We obviously have at the FED next week with their announcement,
- 8:14Speaker 1: our Jersey chief UoS interest rates strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence
- 8:18Speaker 1: joining us there.
- 8:20Speaker 7: You're listening to the team Ken's are Live program Bloomberg
- 8:23Speaker 7: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot com,
- 8:26Speaker 7: the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
- 8:30Speaker 7: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
- 8:34Speaker 1: After a brutal twenty twenty two in equities and Fixing Income,
- 8:37Speaker 1: twenty twenty three is treating investors a lot better. Here
- 8:40Speaker 1: started the first half of the year, SMP up about
- 8:41Speaker 1: fifteen percent or so. We've added a little bit more
- 8:43Speaker 1: to that since here in July. The question for a
- 8:46Speaker 1: lot of folks is now, what do we do? So
- 8:48Speaker 1: let's check in with somebody who does this stuff for
- 8:50Speaker 1: a living. Karen Murphy, CIO of Kestra Investment Management. She
- 8:53Speaker 1: joins us live here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio,
- 8:56Speaker 1: no phoning, and in today. So Caraen, you know, a
- 9:00Speaker 1: good first half of the year for a lot of investors,
- 9:03Speaker 1: particularly those that on Apple and an Amazon and Meta
- 9:05Speaker 1: and things like that. What are you telling your clients
- 9:07Speaker 1: here as we kind of kick off the second half, Well, thanks.
- 9:10Speaker 6: So much for having me here. And we've called twenty
- 9:12Speaker 6: twenty three the revenge of the growth stocks. So there's
- 9:16Speaker 6: all those stocks that underperformed so much in twenty twenty
- 9:19Speaker 6: two came back with a vengeance and really turned on
- 9:21Speaker 6: a dime in the first half. But when you think
- 9:24Speaker 6: about you know, largest seven stocks in the SMP were
- 9:27Speaker 6: up about ninety percent year to date. Just mathematically speaking,
- 9:31Speaker 6: that can't continue forever. So we've started to see the
- 9:34Speaker 6: market broaden out a little bit. Russell two is coming
- 9:37Speaker 6: back a little bit, seeing some big caps do better,
- 9:40Speaker 6: so that's healthy for the market, so, you know, and
- 9:44Speaker 6: there's a fair amount of economic momentum as well. You know,
- 9:46Speaker 6: we're still cautious on kind of where we are in
- 9:48Speaker 6: the economic cycle, but consumers remain really strong. Balancees are
- 9:52Speaker 6: relatively hefty, so you know, in my mind, it's kind
- 9:54Speaker 6: of a back to basics where you want to be
- 9:56Speaker 6: able to have a diversified portfolio because nobody can call
- 9:58Speaker 6: those big turning points and you can't be stuck in
- 10:01Speaker 6: a handful of stocks that are suddenly going to turn
- 10:03Speaker 6: around the wrong way.
- 10:04Speaker 5: You mentioned the Russell two K and they broke out
- 10:07Speaker 5: of that key resistance level last week. I wonder to
- 10:10Speaker 5: what extent you look at that versus the Dow breaking
- 10:14Speaker 5: out of its key levels as well. What are you
- 10:16Speaker 5: thinking in terms of the comparison of the two endses.
- 10:19Speaker 6: Well, Frankly, as a practitioner, the Dow we don't pay
- 10:22Speaker 6: all that much attention to because it's a fairly concentrated
- 10:25Speaker 6: measure of what's happening in the market. The Russell two
- 10:27Speaker 6: is a pretty good representation of what's happening on the
- 10:29Speaker 6: smaller side of the market. S and P six is
- 10:32Speaker 6: also a very helpful indicator because you take out some
- 10:34Speaker 6: of those really small cap names in the Russell two
- 10:37Speaker 6: thousand that are not that meaningful. So all of those
- 10:40Speaker 6: again are starting to see a little bit more life.
- 10:42Speaker 6: But remember, like small caps have been beaten up for years,
- 10:45Speaker 6: we really have never had that long kind of streak
- 10:49Speaker 6: of small caps outperforming, at least not in recent history.
- 10:52Speaker 6: So this could be a sign of some more resiliency
- 10:55Speaker 6: in those smaller names.
- 10:56Speaker 1: On the fixing cob side, I mean, you know it
- 10:59Speaker 1: was brutal, there was nowhere to hide, and fixed income
- 11:02Speaker 1: this year I can just go sit in to your
- 11:04Speaker 1: treasury and get four point seven percent. That feels like,
- 11:06Speaker 1: you know, just paradise. What should I do in a
- 11:09Speaker 1: fixed income? Should I be taking a little bit more
- 11:11Speaker 1: risk than into your treasury?
- 11:12Speaker 6: Well, it's been so interesting to watch investor psychology with
- 11:15Speaker 6: As you said, twenty twenty two, fixed income was left
- 11:18Speaker 6: for dead. I mean, it was really an existential crisis,
- 11:20Speaker 6: and we had a lot of clients who were coming
- 11:22Speaker 6: to us saying, why do I own fixed income at all?
- 11:25Speaker 6: This year is a very different story where all of
- 11:27Speaker 6: a sudden people are very happy sitting in it too.
- 11:29Speaker 6: Your treasury or a money market earning attractive returns that
- 11:31Speaker 6: we haven't seen in decades. So the reality somewhere in between,
- 11:35Speaker 6: fixed income is still a really important asset class. You
- 11:38Speaker 6: can still build a really great, diverse side portfolio that
- 11:41Speaker 6: will do well over time, but it's hard to kind
- 11:44Speaker 6: of draw people out of that very safe place after
- 11:46Speaker 6: the volatility that we had last year. So eventually, as
- 11:49Speaker 6: we start to see the Yuell curve kind of revert
- 11:52Speaker 6: get to a more normal position, I think gradually investors
- 11:55Speaker 6: will be drawn out the curve and into some other
- 11:57Speaker 6: asset classes. But you're right, right now, they're pretty comfortab Yeah.
- 12:00Speaker 5: And in terms of that volatility, obviously the banking turmoil, crisis,
- 12:05Speaker 5: whatever term you want to use there comes to mind.
- 12:08Speaker 5: How are you thinking about the long term effects of that.
- 12:11Speaker 5: Do you think that it was overblown a little bit?
- 12:13Speaker 5: Or did we underprice the impact?
- 12:16Speaker 6: I think there was a moment there where we were
- 12:17Speaker 6: kind of looking across the financial abyss right, like we
- 12:20Speaker 6: had three very large financial institutions that failed very quickly.
- 12:25Speaker 6: The good news is that regulators already had a pretty
- 12:28Speaker 6: good playbook from the financial crisis. They moved in size
- 12:31Speaker 6: and force, and it was coordinated, so it worked out okay.
- 12:34Speaker 6: From a systemic perspective, it didn't have to be that way,
- 12:37Speaker 6: and I credit regulators with managing through that. But there
- 12:41Speaker 6: are lasting implications, and the big one is tighter lending standards,
- 12:45Speaker 6: and we're seeing that come through in force. Small businesses
- 12:47Speaker 6: can't get loans. Loan officers are really tightening up, and
- 12:51Speaker 6: that will be a drag on economic growth for the
- 12:53Speaker 6: foreseeable future.
- 12:54Speaker 1: How about outside of the US are you suggesting your
- 12:58Speaker 1: clients look at I don't know. For example, we've got
- 13:02Speaker 1: the dollar pulling back off of its recent strength.
- 13:05Speaker 3: How do you think about outside of the US?
- 13:07Speaker 6: Yeah, similar to fixed income, you know, a lot of
- 13:09Speaker 6: non US equity markets had kind of been left for
- 13:11Speaker 6: dead because the S and P five hundred was the
- 13:13Speaker 6: best performing asset class for a year after year. So
- 13:16Speaker 6: we've been encouraging people to remember that non US stocks
- 13:19Speaker 6: are still a really important part of a portfolio. In particular,
- 13:22Speaker 6: you mentioned the dollar, So the dollar has started to
- 13:25Speaker 6: retreat a little bit. If we have inflation licked here
- 13:29Speaker 6: and Europe is still battling it, that will also be
- 13:31Speaker 6: a drag on the dollar. So that is good for
- 13:34Speaker 6: non US investments. But then also when we look at
- 13:37Speaker 6: IFA valuations versus the US, US tends to trade at
- 13:40Speaker 6: a higher evaluation relative to EFA in general, but that
- 13:43Speaker 6: has gotten to like two and a half standard deviations
- 13:45Speaker 6: above the norm. So it definitely looks like the valuation differential.
- 13:49Speaker 6: You're being paid to take a little bit more risk
- 13:51Speaker 6: outside the US.
- 13:53Speaker 5: And then okay, if you're getting paid to take on
- 13:56Speaker 5: risk outside of the US, what is the allocation looking
- 14:00Speaker 5: like then for those emerging markets?
- 14:03Speaker 6: So emerging markets is a little trickier because those have
- 14:06Speaker 6: much larger kind of cycles. You know, there's been a
- 14:09Speaker 6: lot of talk about China just not coming back online
- 14:12Speaker 6: like it was expected. Some of those Asian emerging markets
- 14:16Speaker 6: that rely a lot on China have actually been more
- 14:18Speaker 6: resilient than expected. So emerging markets, I think is an
- 14:21Speaker 6: important allocation to be able to have in a portfolio,
- 14:23Speaker 6: but you want to size it appropriately. You know, if
- 14:25Speaker 6: you're a very conservative investor, you don't want a huge
- 14:27Speaker 6: amount of allocation there.
- 14:29Speaker 1: All right, we're just starting to really get into the
- 14:31Speaker 1: teeth of earnings here. What are you guys and your teams,
- 14:35Speaker 1: what are they kind of looking for this earning season?
- 14:37Speaker 1: What are you kind of listening for on Ernie's calls?
- 14:39Speaker 6: So certainly the banks are going to be really important.
- 14:41Speaker 6: We started to see some come out today. We talked
- 14:44Speaker 6: about lending standards. So how cautious are companies or banks
- 14:48Speaker 6: in particular being in terms of writing new credit? Also
- 14:51Speaker 6: what about the credit that's already on their balance sheets?
- 14:53Speaker 6: So consumers, you know, we're starting to see delinquencies tick
- 14:56Speaker 6: up a little bit, what kind of behavior are they seeing?
- 15:00Speaker 6: And then also commercial real estate office in particular, right
- 15:02Speaker 6: We've we've seen a lot of concern there and it
- 15:06Speaker 6: hogs up a lot of balance sheet on regional banks.
- 15:08Speaker 6: So that's going to be very important. And I think
- 15:11Speaker 6: more generally looking at consumer behavior, so are people starting
- 15:15Speaker 6: to trade down a little bit? We're certainly seeing it
- 15:17Speaker 6: outside the US, or people are trading too, you know,
- 15:20Speaker 6: more private label, cheaper goods, and so how are people reacting,
- 15:23Speaker 6: particularly in anticipation of things like student loan payments coming back?
- 15:27Speaker 3: Again?
- 15:28Speaker 5: When you think about trading down specifically, I feel like
- 15:31Speaker 5: in the last earning cycle, on the consumer discretionary side,
- 15:34Speaker 5: at least, it was kind of a mixed picture of
- 15:36Speaker 5: the consumer like Target, Bad, Walmart, obviously good. How do
- 15:40Speaker 5: you suss out the information that you're getting throughout and
- 15:43Speaker 5: earning cycle to come to one conclusion about the consumer?
- 15:47Speaker 6: Yeah, it's a challenge your job because, as you point out,
- 15:51Speaker 6: there wasn't a single tune right in the last earning season.
- 15:56Speaker 6: You heard some areas of caution, some areas like no,
- 15:58Speaker 6: we're good. Kind of have to put it all together,
- 16:01Speaker 6: you know, like studying for the CFA, you're talking about
- 16:03Speaker 6: mosaic theory. So that's really what it is. Taking all
- 16:05Speaker 6: these little pieces and then stepping back to see what
- 16:07Speaker 6: picture is forming. So I think we'll know a little
- 16:10Speaker 6: bit more in a couple of weeks.
- 16:12Speaker 3: You're based in Austin, right, I am how long have
- 16:14Speaker 3: you been there?
- 16:14Speaker 7: Cool?
- 16:15Speaker 6: Only a year?
- 16:16Speaker 3: Right, so you're one of those five I've been a Texas.
- 16:18Speaker 1: I'm just wondering where is Austin putting all these people
- 16:20Speaker 1: that are you.
- 16:20Speaker 3: Putting like trailers or something? I mean, can Austin handle
- 16:24Speaker 3: all these people coming down?
- 16:26Speaker 6: It has been a challenge. It is very difficult to
- 16:28Speaker 6: get a dinner reservation on a Friday night.
- 16:30Speaker 3: How about how about traffic?
- 16:31Speaker 1: Is what we've seen in some of these southern cities
- 16:33Speaker 1: even Atlanta hasn't been able to, you know, several decades
- 16:37Speaker 1: after it exploded and growth to deal with the traffic.
- 16:38Speaker 6: Well, I always laugh when I hear Austin Nights complaining
- 16:41Speaker 6: about the traffic. I mean, like, no offense, Austin Nights.
- 16:43Speaker 6: I love you guys, but you know nothing about traffic.
- 16:46Speaker 8: I do not know.
- 16:46Speaker 6: I spent most of my life in New York City. Yeah,
- 16:49Speaker 6: traffic in Austin is just fine.
- 16:51Speaker 1: And so is there. Now are people are they? What's
- 16:54Speaker 1: that back to office situation in Austin? What are people
- 16:56Speaker 1: generally doing?
- 16:57Speaker 6: So much more than what you would see here in
- 16:58Speaker 6: New York City. So we're back four days a week
- 17:00Speaker 6: and we haven't for a year, and so there's certainly
- 17:03Speaker 6: a fair amount of people still remote and will probably
- 17:05Speaker 6: remain that way, but simply because you know, commute times
- 17:08Speaker 6: are much less than what you find in a place
- 17:10Speaker 6: like New York. So a lot of people are back
- 17:12Speaker 6: in the office at least a few.
- 17:13Speaker 3: Days a week. Is Austin still weird?
- 17:15Speaker 6: Oh for sure?
- 17:16Speaker 3: For sure. Yeah, keep Austin.
- 17:18Speaker 1: I love it.
- 17:18Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of loves a funny tag line.
- 17:20Speaker 5: No, Austin, Austin is amazing.
- 17:22Speaker 8: It's like the best and.
- 17:23Speaker 3: They have a schooler. I think right there, you.
- 17:24Speaker 8: Know, think got a small one.
- 17:26Speaker 1: All right, Karen Murphy, thanks so much for joining us.
- 17:28Speaker 1: Kara Murphy's the CIO at Kestra Investment Management. She's based
- 17:31Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas, but we got her live here in
- 17:33Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio, so we just appreciate that.
- 17:36Speaker 1: Thank you very much for joining us.
- 17:37Speaker 7: Careen, you're listening to the tape cans Are Live program
- 17:41Speaker 7: Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio,
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- 17:54Speaker 7: Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 17:57Speaker 1: All right, I'm looking at the work function here. We
- 17:59Speaker 1: have the FED obviously next week Wednesday, I think ninety
- 18:03Speaker 1: three point six percent percentage likelihood of raising rates.
- 18:07Speaker 3: What do you do after that?
- 18:08Speaker 7: Though?
- 18:08Speaker 1: I mean, I think inflation is whipped here in the US,
- 18:11Speaker 1: but nobody asked me my opinion, certainly not at the FED.
- 18:14Speaker 1: I wonder how things are going around the world. Anakatrion
- 18:17Speaker 1: joins US. She's a chief economist international for Van Longshot
- 18:21Speaker 1: Kempen based in Amsterdam. So Anika give us a sense
- 18:25Speaker 1: of I think inflation's whipped here in the US, I
- 18:28Speaker 1: don't know. Talk to us about Europe. How are things?
- 18:31Speaker 1: How's the inflation story playing out there?
- 18:35Speaker 9: Well, inflation is not whipped yet in Europe, and it's
- 18:38Speaker 9: it's typical, you know, situation that Europe is behind the
- 18:40Speaker 9: caa versus the US. So we hope that Europe will
- 18:43Speaker 9: continue its pass But I guess the main issue is
- 18:46Speaker 9: that especially services inflation, especially core inflation, it's remaining stubbornly high.
- 18:54Speaker 9: And that's why Leguard, unlike Powell, actually has been very
- 18:58Speaker 9: very outspoken. We are not done yet. So we can
- 19:02Speaker 9: definitely expect more rate hikes from the ECB.
- 19:06Speaker 5: And when you look at what's going to happen here
- 19:08Speaker 5: in the States, the next FED meeting is a kind
- 19:12Speaker 5: of foregone conclusion of another hike. The real question is
- 19:15Speaker 5: what's going to happen in the fall. What are you
- 19:17Speaker 5: going to be looking at to suss out what the
- 19:20Speaker 5: Fed might be doing come September? Are you're going to
- 19:23Speaker 5: be looking at J Powell's commentary next week? Other FEDS speak.
- 19:27Speaker 5: What's your input there?
- 19:32Speaker 9: Yeah, Well, the minutes are always fascinating because in the
- 19:34Speaker 9: last set of minutes, I think there was a slip
- 19:36Speaker 9: of the tongue that we saw using between the language
- 19:38Speaker 9: of pause and skip, because initially it was paused, then
- 19:41Speaker 9: suddenly the word skip came out, and then oh gosh, no,
- 19:43Speaker 9: you know, pause again. So I think the minutes are
- 19:45Speaker 9: interesting also looking at what the consensus is, what are
- 19:48Speaker 9: the other officials saying? And that was interesting last time
- 19:50Speaker 9: because the majority we're talking about two hikes from here,
- 19:54Speaker 9: whereas a couple of months ago that absolutely wasn't the case.
- 19:57Speaker 9: So that incremental change in language.
- 20:00Speaker 8: Across the whole board is interesting.
- 20:02Speaker 9: But by far the most important thing is also in
- 20:04Speaker 9: the US, what is going to happen to core inflation?
- 20:08Speaker 9: And yes, you know, it looked less bad than expected
- 20:11Speaker 9: in the last print, but we're still nowhere near the
- 20:14Speaker 9: two percent targeted number, and maybe last point, if I may,
- 20:19Speaker 9: the two percent targeted number, I don't think you know
- 20:22Speaker 9: you're going to see that coming at this stage, but
- 20:23Speaker 9: you could argue is two percent even irrelevant target? Probably
- 20:28Speaker 9: too early for that discussion to come up.
- 20:31Speaker 1: ANAKA, are you concerned that here in the US to
- 20:34Speaker 1: FED either has gone or will go too far in
- 20:37Speaker 1: push this economy into recession either late this year into
- 20:40Speaker 1: next year.
- 20:40Speaker 3: That maybe could be avoided.
- 20:45Speaker 9: Yeah, I think I think the biggest concern is the following.
- 20:48Speaker 9: Let's let's zoom out again. We've spent almost ten years
- 20:51Speaker 9: massively under shooting the inflation target, and now you know,
- 20:54Speaker 9: the last period we're massively over and shooting the inflation targets.
- 20:57Speaker 9: So if you took a step back and said, well,
- 20:59Speaker 9: look to tolerate this overshoot period because you know, apparently
- 21:02Speaker 9: at ebbs and flows, fine, and then you know we
- 21:05Speaker 9: don't need to be so aggressive on monetary policy. We
- 21:07Speaker 9: don't need to keep aggressively hiking. Maybe we can avoid
- 21:09Speaker 9: this hard landing. That's what the data was telling us
- 21:12Speaker 9: last part, not the leading indicators, but the actual data.
- 21:15Speaker 9: And we shouldn't be too worried. However, if also part
- 21:19Speaker 9: of the credibility restoration that they're busy with, if they're
- 21:22Speaker 9: extremely adamant we said two percent, we have to get
- 21:25Speaker 9: to the two percent. If we don't get there, we
- 21:29Speaker 9: keep on hiking, then yes, that could be really painful
- 21:34Speaker 9: for the economy because the transition mechanism takes time.
- 21:38Speaker 5: Well, and it takes time, especially in a country like
- 21:43Speaker 5: the US where we have so much spending going on,
- 21:47Speaker 5: particularly from the government when we look at Bidenomics and
- 21:50Speaker 5: the infrastructure Bill. I kept making the joke this weekend
- 21:53Speaker 5: because I was on a road trip that I was
- 21:54Speaker 5: really seen biden armics in action, because the amount of
- 21:58Speaker 5: construction there was in on the highways was absolutely unhinged. So, Anaga,
- 22:03Speaker 5: when you think about the spending that's happening from the
- 22:08Speaker 5: US government pumping that money into the economy, how does
- 22:12Speaker 5: that square with the moves we're seen from the Federal
- 22:15Speaker 5: Reserve to try and fight inflation. Can the two come together?
- 22:22Speaker 9: Well, this is exactly the problem we're dealing with. And
- 22:25Speaker 9: I'm sure it wasn't a fun road for having all
- 22:27Speaker 9: that infrastructure work being put to play, but that's exactly
- 22:30Speaker 9: the problem. So why is it that we believe that
- 22:32Speaker 9: inflation is going to be high at structurally for longer.
- 22:35Speaker 9: Partly it's because of what you just mentioned. You know,
- 22:37Speaker 9: if you add up the Inflation Reduction Act, which ironically
- 22:40Speaker 9: is actually resulting in more inflation, if you add up
- 22:43Speaker 9: the infrastructure Bill, if you add up potential student forgiveness,
- 22:46Speaker 9: et cetera, et cetera. That's more than a trillion dollars.
- 22:49Speaker 9: That's just literally being pumped into an economy. We're at
- 22:53Speaker 9: the other side of the table. You've got the monetary
- 22:55Speaker 9: policy makers saying, gosh, we're trying to squeeze out the
- 22:58Speaker 9: oxygen from the market. We want to reduce our balance sheets,
- 23:01Speaker 9: we want to increase interest rates. And that's just a juxtaposition.
- 23:06Speaker 9: It's very messy. So that's why you know, there's a
- 23:08Speaker 9: fair chance inflation lasts for longer, and the two parties
- 23:11Speaker 9: on the same table should figure out, you know, which
- 23:13Speaker 9: direction are we going to let this thing going?
- 23:16Speaker 1: Hey, Anika, the China. I'm going to talk a little
- 23:19Speaker 1: bit about China the reopening. I think the expectations were
- 23:22Speaker 1: quite high what that would mean maybe for the global economy,
- 23:25Speaker 1: and we're seeing some weaker than expected data coming out
- 23:28Speaker 1: of China. And I think about the exposure obviously in
- 23:30Speaker 1: the US big trading partner, but also think about Europe
- 23:33Speaker 1: because I think about some of these big European industrial
- 23:35Speaker 1: companies and all the big equipment and stuff that they
- 23:38Speaker 1: make they sell into China. Talk to us about kind
- 23:41Speaker 1: of how you know European manufacturers in European industry are
- 23:46Speaker 1: thinking about China and the pace of the reopening there.
- 23:50Speaker 9: Yeah, and to your point, you know the pace of reopening.
- 23:52Speaker 9: We were very excited in the beginning, and that excitement
- 23:55Speaker 9: got abated because we see that things are really slowing down.
- 23:58Speaker 9: And to what extents will the cent bank they're put more,
- 24:01Speaker 9: as said, oxygen into the markets. We don't know, but
- 24:04Speaker 9: I think that the company's issue is twofold. So on
- 24:06Speaker 9: one fold, it's producing goods that are sold to China
- 24:08Speaker 9: and looking at the disposable income and is that demand
- 24:11Speaker 9: going to be robust enough to keep up those expoarded sales.
- 24:14Speaker 9: But I think the other side is maybe more interesting,
- 24:17Speaker 9: which is because of geopolitics, because of rewiring of supply chains,
- 24:21Speaker 9: et cetera. Companies also European companies that were relying on
- 24:25Speaker 9: part of their manufacturing footprint to be situated in China
- 24:29Speaker 9: that have now got to find other locations. That's structurally
- 24:33Speaker 9: inflationary in most cases. So you know, your cost of
- 24:36Speaker 9: good souls are shooting up, and are you able to
- 24:41Speaker 9: pass those you know, higher cost to your customers? Yes
- 24:43Speaker 9: or no? You've already passed on quite a bit. Are
- 24:45Speaker 9: consumers willing to pay those prices?
- 24:47Speaker 8: Et cetera?
- 24:48Speaker 9: That just exacerbates the issue.
- 24:50Speaker 5: Yeah, and aga final thirty seconds here soft landing, how
- 24:53Speaker 5: likely is that in your scenarios?
- 24:56Speaker 9: It's well, it all depends on I think it's thirty seconds.
- 25:00Speaker 9: Most important thing is how stubborn are central banks going
- 25:03Speaker 9: to be on this two percent inflation targets? If we're
- 25:05Speaker 9: willing to accept inflation being in the three four percent
- 25:09Speaker 9: for longer than expected, and they won't be too aggressive
- 25:12Speaker 9: the soft land who could very well happen if we
- 25:14Speaker 9: stick to it and have to keep pushing policy according
- 25:17Speaker 9: to the rule book. It could get more thankful.
- 25:21Speaker 1: Anaka, thanks so much for joining us. We always appreciate
- 25:23Speaker 1: getting your global view, your global perspective. Anika is the
- 25:26Speaker 1: chief ec Commerce International for von launchhot Kempen, joining us
- 25:30Speaker 1: via zoom from Amsterdam, giving us the global view.
- 25:35Speaker 7: You're listening to the team. Can's our live program Bloomberg
- 25:38Speaker 7: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot com,
- 25:41Speaker 7: the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
- 25:45Speaker 7: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
- 25:49Speaker 1: Let's talk big banks, right, smack in the middle of
- 25:51Speaker 1: earning season for the banks, the regional banks, the big
- 25:54Speaker 1: money centers, all reporting numbers here. So let's round table
- 25:58Speaker 1: this thing like we like to do. Alison Williams, She
- 26:01Speaker 1: joins u Via Zoom and Herman Chen. We got them
- 26:04Speaker 1: last owed here into our Bloomberg studio here in New York. Herman,
- 26:07Speaker 1: let's start with you, because you were the source of
- 26:09Speaker 1: all this problem several months ago, you in your regional banks,
- 26:12Speaker 1: big super regional bank reported today P and C it
- 26:16Speaker 1: stocks up.
- 26:17Speaker 3: Yeah, what are you see from P and C A
- 26:19Speaker 3: bit of a surprise.
- 26:20Speaker 10: I think it's just PNC is getting caught up with
- 26:23Speaker 10: some of the more positive tone from some of the
- 26:28Speaker 10: other banks that reported today. But for P and C itself,
- 26:31Speaker 10: the earnings missed estaments and the guidance was a bit
- 26:36Speaker 10: weak relative to both net interest income and some other areas.
- 26:42Speaker 10: So it's a bit of a challenge for regional banks.
- 26:45Speaker 10: I think this will be sort of reflective across the group.
- 26:48Speaker 10: Where the positive costser continue to rise, banks will continue
- 26:52Speaker 10: to offer weaker guidance with respect to net interest income.
- 26:55Speaker 10: Lonkre's going to be a bit of a challenge for
- 26:57Speaker 10: the regional. It's because they don't have a lot of
- 26:59Speaker 10: the areas that are growing, like credit cards, so it's
- 27:02Speaker 10: going to be a bit of a slog over the
- 27:03Speaker 10: next three quarters.
- 27:04Speaker 5: Well, it seems like wealth management is the thing that's
- 27:07Speaker 5: kind of keeping a lot of these banks from having
- 27:11Speaker 5: less than great earnings this season. Allison, to what extent
- 27:15Speaker 5: do you think that the wealth management side of these
- 27:18Speaker 5: firms is going to be able to keep them from
- 27:22Speaker 5: experiencing more of these headwinds from things like deposits and
- 27:27Speaker 5: money market funds.
- 27:28Speaker 11: Certainly for Morgan, Stanley was very strong of clows came
- 27:32Speaker 11: in better than expected, their fee base flows better, investment
- 27:36Speaker 11: management flows also better, and in fact revenue for them
- 27:41Speaker 11: also came in a bit better.
- 27:42Speaker 8: The net interest income side within.
- 27:45Speaker 11: Wealth tends to feel a little bit more pressure than
- 27:49Speaker 11: some of the core business, and that really is because
- 27:51Speaker 11: those customers are a little bit more presensitive, the boundsies
- 27:54Speaker 11: are higher, and the cost of deposits tends to rise
- 27:57Speaker 11: faster there. But I think what we're seeing across the banks,
- 28:02Speaker 11: if anything, is a little bit of a relief rally
- 28:04Speaker 11: in the sense that deposit posts are going up. We
- 28:08Speaker 11: are seeing that migration but it's not as bad as feared.
- 28:12Speaker 8: Bag America did.
- 28:15Speaker 11: Come in about in line, so that was not as
- 28:17Speaker 11: positive as what we saw JP Morgan and City, but
- 28:21Speaker 11: they did up their guidance for next quarter a little bit,
- 28:24Speaker 11: and so I think that's a key positive and is
- 28:26Speaker 11: helping the shares a little bit today.
- 28:28Speaker 1: Hey Hermer, what have you heard so far and what
- 28:31Speaker 1: do you expect to hear about? I know that you
- 28:33Speaker 1: mentioned and also mentioned the cost of deposits going up, obviously,
- 28:37Speaker 1: but how about just the deposits in general at these
- 28:40Speaker 1: regional banks are concerned that they would be that they'd
- 28:43Speaker 1: be losing deposits.
- 28:44Speaker 3: What are you hearing so for yees?
- 28:46Speaker 10: So deposits, actually, the overawhill balances have been pretty stable
- 28:49Speaker 10: if you look at the reporting. But what's interesting is
- 28:52Speaker 10: the remixing of those deposits, So the non interest sparing accounts,
- 28:56Speaker 10: those are continuing to fall, so they're down about six
- 28:59Speaker 10: seven percent across the group so far that have reported,
- 29:02Speaker 10: and that's just indicative of the repricing pressures as folks
- 29:08Speaker 10: that have checking accounts, they're moving their money to CDs
- 29:12Speaker 10: and so the banks have to pay up for those.
- 29:14Speaker 10: So that's another reason why we're seeing headwinds across the group.
- 29:17Speaker 5: But it doesn't necessarily feel to consumers like they're getting
- 29:22Speaker 5: a lot of bang for their buck when it comes
- 29:23Speaker 5: to these deposits. Do you think that we're going to
- 29:26Speaker 5: need to see a Bank of America offering better returns
- 29:29Speaker 5: for people to keep their money in their bank accounts.
- 29:32Speaker 10: Well, the banks are not going to give you the
- 29:34Speaker 10: money the higher interst right, you have to take your
- 29:37Speaker 10: money out of your deposit accounts open up a CD.
- 29:39Speaker 10: So it takes a bit of some wherewith off from
- 29:42Speaker 10: your consumer to do that. And the banks are just
- 29:45Speaker 10: banking on folks just keeping their money and they're checking accounts.
- 29:50Speaker 10: So that's that's really the dynamics that's playing out right now.
- 29:52Speaker 1: Hey, Allison, what are we going to see from a
- 29:55Speaker 1: gold and Sacks just tomorrow? What will you be looking for?
- 29:57Speaker 1: What do you think the market's looking for?
- 29:59Speaker 11: So we are going to see some charges at Goldman
- 30:02Speaker 11: Sachs that we saw some severance costs at Morgan Stanley today,
- 30:05Speaker 11: We're also going to see that at Goldman and we're
- 30:07Speaker 11: also going to see the higher impairment. So that's definitely
- 30:10Speaker 11: going to lead to some pressure on the reported numbers
- 30:14Speaker 11: on a core basis, trading fees are down and despite
- 30:18Speaker 11: things coming in a little bit better than expected, and
- 30:21Speaker 11: there's you know, talk of constructive view those that revenue
- 30:26Speaker 11: is going to be lower for Golden Sacks, they do
- 30:29Speaker 11: they are the revenue leader and EM and I and
- 30:32Speaker 11: that's a big headwind for the quarter. So for the bank,
- 30:36Speaker 11: we're really going to be looking to see how they
- 30:39Speaker 11: stacked up competitively on those revenue trends and then costs
- 30:42Speaker 11: beyond some of the items I talked about, what is
- 30:44Speaker 11: the core trend there?
- 30:46Speaker 8: Because they really are working to improve their efficiency.
- 30:49Speaker 1: Hellison, is there am I imagining this or is there
- 30:53Speaker 1: any pressure from shareholders or any other external stakeholders on
- 30:57Speaker 1: David Solomon right now? Given maybe what happened with the
- 31:00Speaker 1: Consumer Bank for example.
- 31:01Speaker 8: I mean, I think.
- 31:02Speaker 11: There's a lot of talk and headlines around the Consumer Bank,
- 31:05Speaker 11: but keep in mind that was not started under his review,
- 31:09Speaker 11: so it was something sort of that he inherited, and
- 31:12Speaker 11: it was you know, they took a shot.
- 31:14Speaker 8: It was something different for Goldman Sachs.
- 31:16Speaker 11: I would say that investors never really had a lot
- 31:20Speaker 11: of faith in that strategy. It's certainly not why people
- 31:24Speaker 11: bought the stock. It was more something that they tried
- 31:26Speaker 11: out and could help over time.
- 31:29Speaker 8: They are continuing with the.
- 31:31Speaker 11: Consumer deposits side of the business, so there is, you know,
- 31:34Speaker 11: something there, but certainly the lending strategy is something that
- 31:39Speaker 11: they've decided it is just not something they're going to
- 31:41Speaker 11: move forward with. They don't really have the competitive advantage there.
- 31:45Speaker 5: And when it comes to the consumer Hermann, I want
- 31:47Speaker 5: to bring you back in here because we talked a
- 31:50Speaker 5: lot about the impact of credit tightening on consumers small businesses.
- 31:55Speaker 5: So far with the PNC earnings, are we getting any
- 31:58Speaker 5: indication as to how tight the credit is getting for
- 32:02Speaker 5: those smaller consumers small businesses across the country.
- 32:06Speaker 10: Yeah. So we're seeing actually consumer growth still fairly strong
- 32:12Speaker 10: across the board, and where the demand has has fallen
- 32:16Speaker 10: a bit is on the business side of the commercial side,
- 32:19Speaker 10: and Allison Spanks have seen some strengthen credit card lending,
- 32:23Speaker 10: so that's something that is helping some of the money
- 32:27Speaker 10: center banks relative to the regionals, But the tighter underwriting
- 32:32Speaker 10: is probably going to happen more on the commercial side
- 32:34Speaker 10: of things, which really is a detriment to the regionals
- 32:37Speaker 10: because they are more focused on commercial lending.
- 32:39Speaker 1: Allison, are we seeing any share shifts in you know,
- 32:42Speaker 1: the I think about the classic fixed income trading businesses
- 32:46Speaker 1: is it. Are we seeing any big shifts there? There's
- 32:49Speaker 1: still kind of Goldman, Sachs, Morgans, Stanley, Bank of America
- 32:52Speaker 1: that the big players.
- 32:54Speaker 8: I mean, it still is the big players.
- 32:56Speaker 11: But what we have seen I mean over the last
- 32:59Speaker 11: decade or so is market share games from the largest
- 33:03Speaker 11: US competitors.
- 33:04Speaker 8: In this particular quarter.
- 33:06Speaker 11: Bank of America is really the standout showing more resilient
- 33:10Speaker 11: ten percent growth. However, I would also point out that
- 33:13Speaker 11: you know, Morgan Stanley and Globe and Sachs, who stills
- 33:17Speaker 11: you well in the commodities business, are up some really
- 33:20Speaker 11: against some really tough comparison. Morgan Stanley, you know, coming
- 33:24Speaker 11: in even worse than than than had been expected. But
- 33:28Speaker 11: if you looked, I think across the different verticals, the
- 33:32Speaker 11: big getting bigger, and Bank of America really I think
- 33:35Speaker 11: seeing the fruits of some of their investments in terms
- 33:38Speaker 11: of the rates trading business and equities trading business.
- 33:41Speaker 5: Alison really quickly here though, with Bank of America the
- 33:44Speaker 5: bond losses hitting one hundred and six billion dollars is
- 33:48Speaker 5: that going to weigh on the bank moving forward, heading
- 33:52Speaker 5: into the next quarter.
- 33:55Speaker 11: I think that the bank has sort of give keeps
- 33:59Speaker 11: giving a lot more granular information about its on portfolio.
- 34:03Speaker 11: Certainly that's just going to take time to manage that
- 34:07Speaker 11: over time. And I think that the fact, as we
- 34:12Speaker 11: learned with these banks, it's not just about the losses
- 34:15Speaker 11: that you carry, but it's sort of about the strength
- 34:17Speaker 11: of the deposits and the asset liability management that supports them.
- 34:22Speaker 11: And what we are seeing at Bank of America deposits
- 34:26Speaker 11: down with the industry, but certainly that broad based strength
- 34:30Speaker 11: and especially on the new account side.
- 34:34Speaker 1: All right, guys, what you just heard is some smart,
- 34:36Speaker 1: smart analysis from some of our leading voices at Bloomberg
- 34:39Speaker 1: Intelligence covering the banks. Alison Williams, she covers a big
- 34:42Speaker 1: global banks, the investment banks. Herman Chan covers the regional banks,
- 34:46Speaker 1: which have really come into focus really over the last
- 34:48Speaker 1: several months. And we love getting those two smart people
- 34:51Speaker 1: together help us kind of walk through what's happening out
- 34:53Speaker 1: there with the banking system. So Alon Williams and Herman Chan,
- 34:56Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us here.
- 34:58Speaker 7: You're listening to the tape cancer O live program Bloomberg
- 35:01Speaker 7: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 35:05Speaker 7: tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business App.
- 35:08Speaker 7: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 35:11Speaker 7: flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 35:17Speaker 1: I love biotech stocks because they are it seems like
- 35:20Speaker 1: it's a binary situation. You hit it and a boom,
- 35:24Speaker 1: or you don't and then it goes to zero. I mean,
- 35:26Speaker 1: I do not have the stomach to trade these things,
- 35:29Speaker 1: but a lot of folks do and they do it successfully.
- 35:31Speaker 1: But one of the bio tech companies, by a farmer companies,
- 35:35Speaker 1: is Recursion Pharmaceuticals.
- 35:37Speaker 3: And we have the CEO Chris Gibson. He joins us.
- 35:39Speaker 1: He's a CEO and co founder of Recursion Pharmaceuticals. Hey, Chris,
- 35:43Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us here. First of all,
- 35:46Speaker 1: tell us what you guys do. What's your focus ad Recursion?
- 35:50Speaker 12: Well, thanks, Paul high Madison. Yeah, our focus is to
- 35:53Speaker 12: eliminate that bimodal worry that you just talked about, Paul.
- 35:57Speaker 12: So we're bringing together the world of automation and computation
- 36:01Speaker 12: to try and turn this artisanal, bespoke process of discovering
- 36:05Speaker 12: medicines that takes ten to fifteen years and costs billions
- 36:08Speaker 12: of dollars for each new approved drug, and turn it
- 36:11Speaker 12: into something that looks more like an assembly line, that's
- 36:14Speaker 12: much more predictable, that has much lower failure rates. And
- 36:16Speaker 12: so we're using the latest in mL and AI that
- 36:19Speaker 12: we build here with our team, using a lot of
- 36:22Speaker 12: robots to do our experiments and exploring and mapping biology
- 36:26Speaker 12: to try and discover new medicines at scale and one
- 36:29Speaker 12: day bring down the price as well.
- 36:31Speaker 5: Okay, so you know what I have to ask you
- 36:33Speaker 5: about is the investment from Nvidia. I got a hit
- 36:36Speaker 5: it at the top here, fifty million dollar private investment,
- 36:40Speaker 5: and I had covered Recursion slightly previously, but I hadn't
- 36:44Speaker 5: looked into your company as much, to be honest, until
- 36:47Speaker 5: the news of that deal. To what extent do you
- 36:51Speaker 5: see that infusion of investment as a game changer for
- 36:55Speaker 5: what you're going to be able to do moving forward
- 36:57Speaker 5: with Recursion.
- 37:00Speaker 12: I think what's important for us about the investment and
- 37:02Speaker 12: partnership with Nvidia is that we've been working together with
- 37:06Speaker 12: them for the past three or four years. We run
- 37:08Speaker 12: one of the fastest supercomputers in the world. I think
- 37:11Speaker 12: it's number one thirty or something in the fastest computers
- 37:13Speaker 12: in the world right now, and it's built on the
- 37:15Speaker 12: Nvidia infrastructure. And what this thing, what I think this
- 37:18Speaker 12: does is more signals to the rest of the world
- 37:21Speaker 12: that in Vidia is excited about the biopharma market and
- 37:24Speaker 12: that they see us as as a leader and someone
- 37:27Speaker 12: to partner with. And so we're very excited to not
- 37:30Speaker 12: only continue discovering new medicines internally here at Recursion, to
- 37:33Speaker 12: continue our partnerships with Buyer and Roach Genentech in the
- 37:36Speaker 12: fields of fibrosis and neuroscience, but now with Nvidia, to
- 37:40Speaker 12: actually start to take some of the neural networks that
- 37:42Speaker 12: we're building here at Recursion that we apply to our
- 37:45Speaker 12: own data and to actually serve those on their marketplace Bioonemo,
- 37:50Speaker 12: where other pharma companies who aren't yet our close partners
- 37:53Speaker 12: can actually start to access those neural nets to advance
- 37:56Speaker 12: their own research. And so we're very excited about that
- 37:58Speaker 12: collaboration broadly.
- 38:00Speaker 5: I wonder if you think that AI and the mania
- 38:03Speaker 5: around AI is enough to help the biopharma industry kind
- 38:08Speaker 5: of recover from some of the FED rate hiking impacts
- 38:12Speaker 5: and headwinds that have impacted your industry over the past
- 38:14Speaker 5: couple of years.
- 38:16Speaker 12: Well, look, it's always hard in biopharma because our revenues
- 38:19Speaker 12: are so deferred, and as Paul mentioned at the beginning,
- 38:21Speaker 12: and really in the past, has been pretty bimodal, especially
- 38:24Speaker 12: for startups. But I think in this particular case, mL
- 38:27Speaker 12: andai is starting to give people an appreciation for how
- 38:31Speaker 12: that could change. And you know, three or four years ago,
- 38:34Speaker 12: even we in the biopharma industry hadn't fully accepted the
- 38:37Speaker 12: potential of mL and ai. But Recursion was founded almost
- 38:40Speaker 12: ten years ago specifically to bring these tools to bear.
- 38:44Speaker 12: And like many founding stories, this is a company I
- 38:47Speaker 12: founded out of graduate school. We were really going against
- 38:50Speaker 12: the current in the early days. I would say now
- 38:53Speaker 12: in every executive team in biopharma of the largest companies
- 38:56Speaker 12: in the boardroom, all of them are thinking about the
- 38:58Speaker 12: ways that mL and ai going to change this industry,
- 39:01Speaker 12: and they're looking to companies like us who've been doing
- 39:04Speaker 12: this for years to give them clues as to which
- 39:06Speaker 12: direction things are going. Will it pull us out of
- 39:08Speaker 12: the broader macrocycle? I have no idea. I learned a
- 39:11Speaker 12: lot from our board chair Martin Chavez, who said not
- 39:14Speaker 12: to make predictions about the future of the market, So
- 39:16Speaker 12: I won't do that, all right.
- 39:17Speaker 1: Recursion Pharmaceuticals is a publicly traded company. Our x r
- 39:21Speaker 1: X is a very cool ticker symbol. It's got a
- 39:24Speaker 1: market cap two point six billion stocks up seventy six
- 39:26Speaker 1: percent year to date, in large part on that investment
- 39:29Speaker 1: by Nvidia. Anything in Vidia touches seems to turn to
- 39:32Speaker 1: gold here. So just to understand your company, Chris, does
- 39:36Speaker 1: Recursion develop any drugs treatments on its own or do
- 39:40Speaker 1: you license your technology to other biotech companies?
- 39:44Speaker 12: All of the above, Paul. So, we've got five drugs
- 39:47Speaker 12: in clinical trials right now. Three of those are in
- 39:50Speaker 12: phase two or phase two to three trials. In fact,
- 39:52Speaker 12: we fully enrolled our first phase two trial just a
- 39:55Speaker 12: few weeks ago. We focus internally on rare genetic disease
- 40:00Speaker 12: and precision oncology, where a company of our size and
- 40:02Speaker 12: scale could run five, six, maybe one day ten twenty
- 40:06Speaker 12: clinical programs, and then we partner with large companies like
- 40:10Speaker 12: Bayer and Roch Genentech to go after huge intractable areas
- 40:13Speaker 12: of biology like neuroscience, where you really need the capital,
- 40:17Speaker 12: the resources, and the expertise of a large pharma company
- 40:20Speaker 12: to go after Alzheimer's parkins at some of these big neurodiseases.
- 40:24Speaker 12: And then I think what's exciting people recently about the
- 40:27Speaker 12: Nvidia news is there's now this third value driver beyond
- 40:31Speaker 12: our own pipeline, beyond our own partnerships to discover medicines.
- 40:34Speaker 12: We're now starting to leverage some of the tools we
- 40:36Speaker 12: built for mL and AI to look at a different
- 40:39Speaker 12: part of the demand curve and start to partner with
- 40:41Speaker 12: the rest of the biopharma industry to leverage our tools
- 40:44Speaker 12: on some of their own data. And there will be
- 40:46Speaker 12: more coming about this in the coming quarters, but certainly
- 40:49Speaker 12: that's the plan with our friends at Nvidia.
- 40:52Speaker 5: Talk to me about something that my mom would want
- 40:55Speaker 5: to know that AI could help with when it comes
- 40:58Speaker 5: to drug discovery.
- 41:01Speaker 12: So today scientists are trying to understand this incredibly complex
- 41:06Speaker 12: space of biology and chemistry using really, really old tools.
- 41:11Speaker 12: And what we're doing at Recursion is the equivalent of
- 41:14Speaker 12: building Google Maps, but for biology. So instead of focusing
- 41:18Speaker 12: on one disease at a time, we're looking at every
- 41:20Speaker 12: gene in the genome and millions of molecules in many
- 41:23Speaker 12: different human cell types, using robots and sophisticated computational tools
- 41:27Speaker 12: to literally give a map on a web interface for
- 41:31Speaker 12: biologists and chemists to use, and it will look very
- 41:34Speaker 12: much like Google Maps, but instead of looking at a
- 41:36Speaker 12: street in your neighborhood or looking at a street view
- 41:40Speaker 12: of a restaurant that you want to go to, this
- 41:42Speaker 12: map will give the equivalent of that to biologists and
- 41:45Speaker 12: chemists to understand things about biology and chemistry that until
- 41:48Speaker 12: now we haven't been able to see, to understand the
- 41:50Speaker 12: complexity of all around us. And we think by providing
- 41:53Speaker 12: that map, people will be able to blotter better plot
- 41:57Speaker 12: the course from disease to healthy, not just for one
- 42:00Speaker 12: disease at a time, but for many. And that's what
- 42:02Speaker 12: we'll be working on for the last ten years here
- 42:04Speaker 12: in Madison.
- 42:05Speaker 1: All right, Chris, fascinating stuff. And I guess I mean,
- 42:07Speaker 1: when you get your undergraduate degree in bioengineering and biomedical
- 42:10Speaker 1: engineering from Rice University, and if that's not enough, then
- 42:13Speaker 1: you go get a PhD in bioengineering from the University
- 42:16Speaker 1: of Utah, you better do something really important. I think
- 42:19Speaker 1: that's what these folks are doing here. Chris Gibson, CEO
- 42:22Speaker 1: and co founder of Recursion to Pharmaceuticals. The ticker is
- 42:26Speaker 1: a great ticker for a drug maker r x RX
- 42:30Speaker 1: and doing some interesting work there, really interesting work in
- 42:32Speaker 1: the biopharma space. We appreciate getting a few minutes of
- 42:35Speaker 1: Chris's time.
- 42:36Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcasts. You can
- 42:39Speaker 2: subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever
- 42:43Speaker 2: podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter
- 42:47Speaker 2: at Matt Miller nineteen seventy three.
- 42:49Speaker 1: And I'm fall Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney.
- 42:52Speaker 1: Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at
- 42:54Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio