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- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney, alongside
- 0:04Speaker 1: my co host Matt Miller.
- 0:05Speaker 2: Every business day, we bring you interviews from CEOs, market pros,
- 0:09Speaker 2: and Bloomberg experts, along with essential market moving news.
- 0:14Speaker 1: Find the Bloomberg Markets Podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever
- 0:17Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts, and at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast.
- 0:20Speaker 1: All right, let's switch gears to real estate, and we
- 0:24Speaker 1: can do that because I've got a lot of questions
- 0:26Speaker 1: about real estate, particularly because half of midtown Manhattan nobody's
- 0:29Speaker 1: in their office buildings, So we want to get to
- 0:32Speaker 1: the bottom of that. Lisa Nie, she is managing partner
- 0:35Speaker 1: of real estate at Eisner Amper. I'm taking that as
- 0:38Speaker 1: a promotion, dude, managing partner anywhere you go, managing partner
- 0:41Speaker 1: is big. But she helps us kind of think about
- 0:43Speaker 1: what's going on in the real estate sector. She's at
- 0:45Speaker 1: Eisner Amper, So Lisa talk to us about kind of
- 0:49Speaker 1: where we are with the real estate market today. We
- 0:52Speaker 1: are on the other side of the pandemic that's in
- 0:54Speaker 1: the rear view. The world's back to normal on so
- 0:58Speaker 1: many metrics. Where are we in real estate? Yeah?
- 1:00Speaker 3: Thank you?
- 1:00Speaker 1: For having me.
- 1:01Speaker 4: But that's that's a great point and a great question.
- 1:03Speaker 4: But let's put a little bit of landscape on that.
- 1:05Speaker 4: So everyone's worried about where we are in office space,
- 1:08Speaker 4: but when we look back, it's a supply and demand problem.
- 1:11Speaker 1: And you go back.
- 1:12Speaker 4: Even to the nineteen nineties. I don't know if you remember,
- 1:14Speaker 4: but there was the sea through office problem, so the
- 1:17Speaker 4: offices were empty. People weren't in those office buildings in
- 1:20Speaker 4: nineteen ninety. We had too much supply at that point,
- 1:24Speaker 4: and then as we've sort of grown over the last
- 1:26Speaker 4: couple of years, the pandemic is one of many problems
- 1:29Speaker 4: that office has had. First we started with it was
- 1:32Speaker 4: three hundred square foot of person, and then it went
- 1:33Speaker 4: down to one hundred square feed. Then we started doing hotel,
- 1:37Speaker 4: so now we needed less people in the space. Then
- 1:39Speaker 4: when you start looking at office open space concept, exactly
- 1:43Speaker 4: what we have at Bloomberg, exactly what we.
- 1:45Speaker 1: Might get that in nineteen eighty two, by the way,
- 1:47Speaker 1: before like Zuckerberg was even born, before there was an Internet,
- 1:51Speaker 1: I was doing.
- 1:52Speaker 4: Fully space, so that's also less space. And then we looked,
- 1:55Speaker 4: you know, I'm in a service profession. We had libraries,
- 1:59Speaker 4: we had file rooms, file cabinets. You don't have any
- 2:02Speaker 4: of that. So that was four problems that were happening
- 2:05Speaker 4: with office before we even got to the pandemic, which
- 2:08Speaker 4: is now a behavioral issue of where are we at
- 2:11Speaker 4: when where we need that hybrid office space? So what's
- 2:13Speaker 4: the nail on the coffin and where's that equilibrium of
- 2:16Speaker 4: what really people need for space to do their jobs.
- 2:19Speaker 4: And I think that's that realignment right now is what
- 2:22Speaker 4: the pain we're having, and no one's able to figure
- 2:25Speaker 4: out where we're going to solve that. And so that's
- 2:27Speaker 4: why you hear about Crepsy's watch list and the delinquency
- 2:30Speaker 4: rate for the mortgages is going up. People are giving
- 2:33Speaker 4: back office buildings here in New York. And it's not
- 2:36Speaker 4: because they don't believe or that they don't have the
- 2:39Speaker 4: capital to invest. They just don't think that that is
- 2:41Speaker 4: a good investment right now of their capital. And so
- 2:44Speaker 4: I think that's where we're sitting with office, well the core.
- 2:47Speaker 5: Of any kind of investment. Paul will agree to this
- 2:50Speaker 5: as timing right, it's kind of forecasting exactly how long
- 2:54Speaker 5: that trend is going to last. And it feels like
- 2:56Speaker 5: when we talk about commercial real estate. This idea of
- 2:58Speaker 5: hybrid work or hybrid lie or whatever it is something
- 3:01Speaker 5: still kind of registers as temporary when you are valuing
- 3:05Speaker 5: commercial real estate or looking at it. Is this something
- 3:09Speaker 5: that we're going to be still talking about in ten
- 3:11Speaker 5: years time or is this something that's going to kind
- 3:13Speaker 5: of maybe dissipate once this recession hits.
- 3:15Speaker 4: So real estate's cyclical, so we can talk about retail,
- 3:17Speaker 4: we can talk about multi family, single family, and it's
- 3:20Speaker 4: all pretty cyclical, and we don't really know the value
- 3:23Speaker 4: of real estate because there's not a lot of transactions
- 3:25Speaker 4: happening right now. So to your point, we don't know
- 3:28Speaker 4: where things are going to end up with office or
- 3:30Speaker 4: with any of the sectors of real estate. And that's
- 3:33Speaker 4: what people are waiting for, is when is the trading
- 3:35Speaker 4: going to happen so I know the value And it's
- 3:37Speaker 4: a behavioral issue of when are people going to come back?
- 3:41Speaker 4: It's more of remember, really, when you think about an
- 3:43Speaker 4: office building, you are leasing it for seven days of
- 3:47Speaker 4: a week, but you were only ever using it for
- 3:48Speaker 4: five and now you're at two or three. So it
- 3:51Speaker 4: was a unique rental or a unique acquisition to begin with.
- 3:55Speaker 4: So where's that behavioral and where does the pencil mark
- 3:57Speaker 4: out what am I going to pay for that office
- 4:00Speaker 4: lease if I'm only using it two to three days
- 4:01Speaker 4: a week. To your point, it's valuation exactly.
- 4:04Speaker 1: And do we have any evidence yet? I don't know
- 4:06Speaker 1: when if there's a big waterfall of leases expiring and
- 4:10Speaker 1: renewing in New York or San Francisco or Chicago, is
- 4:14Speaker 1: there a year or a time when we're going to
- 4:17Speaker 1: get a really good market sense of where the market is,
- 4:20Speaker 1: Like you can tell me like five jillion square feet
- 4:22Speaker 1: are going to come up for renewal next year in
- 4:23Speaker 1: New York. And the question is is it down twenty percent?
- 4:26Speaker 1: Is down thirty percent? Do we have any sense of
- 4:29Speaker 1: when we're going to get that or is it just
- 4:30Speaker 1: kind of over time.
- 4:31Speaker 4: So that's a great question because the realignment is two things.
- 4:34Speaker 4: It's the expiration of your mortgages and it's the expiration
- 4:36Speaker 4: of leases. Mortgages we can tell because we know when
- 4:39Speaker 4: when the debt cycle is going to come up, and
- 4:41Speaker 4: we know when it is the lease is that's going
- 4:43Speaker 4: to be a slow bleed because we don't know when
- 4:44Speaker 4: people are going to start giving back or what their
- 4:46Speaker 4: needs are, and so that's where the uncertainty is that
- 4:50Speaker 4: credit worthy tenant that people were so excited to have
- 4:52Speaker 4: into their space. We don't know how much space they're
- 4:55Speaker 4: going to take back and when those leases are going
- 4:57Speaker 4: to start to expire within the building. And so that's
- 5:00Speaker 4: your point is exact onto that's the uncertainty.
- 5:04Speaker 5: What about kind of all the talk we hear about
- 5:07Speaker 5: that this banking turmoil that we've talked about in the community
- 5:09Speaker 5: banks is ultimately going to have this big ripple effect
- 5:14Speaker 5: in commercial real estate. One has that kicked off, are
- 5:17Speaker 5: we seeing that? Are we going to see that? How
- 5:19Speaker 5: are you viewing it as someone who's part of this industry?
- 5:23Speaker 4: So that that is going to have a huge impact,
- 5:26Speaker 4: and it's part of what the regulators within the banking
- 5:28Speaker 4: community are going to allow the banks to have on
- 5:30Speaker 4: their balance sheets and where underwriting is. And so they're
- 5:33Speaker 4: all very skittish, they're skittish to invest back in there.
- 5:37Speaker 4: And so as the mortgagees come back up, somebody's going
- 5:40Speaker 4: to have to put capital back in and infuse capital
- 5:42Speaker 4: back into those buildings, because if you had a hedge,
- 5:46Speaker 4: or if they're for the interest rate environment, somebody has
- 5:49Speaker 4: to come up with that capital, and the banks most
- 5:51Speaker 4: likely are going to keep a very low loan to
- 5:53Speaker 4: value ratio. They don't want to take the properties back,
- 5:55Speaker 4: they don't want to put them on the balance sheet,
- 5:57Speaker 4: and they absolutely don't want to write down their balance
- 5:59Speaker 4: sheets for those discounts. And so there is going to
- 6:02Speaker 4: be a point where the banks, and this the banking
- 6:05Speaker 4: industry is going to have a huge role as to
- 6:08Speaker 4: when they go out there. Are they going to sell
- 6:09Speaker 4: portfolios of loans that's very expensive. Are they going to
- 6:13Speaker 4: give back the buildings one at a time? The banks
- 6:15Speaker 4: don't want to run those buildings, and so the regulators
- 6:17Speaker 4: are going to keep really really strict lending restrictions going forward,
- 6:22Speaker 4: and certainly they're going to be looking at what's on
- 6:24Speaker 4: the balance sheets of those banks right now and be
- 6:27Speaker 4: very concerned about.
- 6:28Speaker 1: Uh boy, is how they do that. I just feel
- 6:31Speaker 1: like this is can get worse before it gets better.
- 6:32Speaker 1: Lisa Nie, thanks so much for joining us. Lisa Nie
- 6:35Speaker 1: is the managing partner of real estate at Eisner Amper,
- 6:38Speaker 1: joining us live in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Talking
- 6:41Speaker 1: about that the commercial real estate is some tough times
- 6:43Speaker 1: and some tough times ahead.
- 6:46Speaker 6: You're listening to the Team Ken's live program Bloomberg Markets
- 6:50Speaker 6: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the
- 6:53Speaker 6: iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on
- 6:57Speaker 6: demand wherever you get your podcasts.
- 7:01Speaker 1: Pretty you know, on the Mount rushmore of work from Home.
- 7:04Speaker 1: The two of the founding members, Yeah, to be our
- 7:07Speaker 1: next guest.
- 7:08Speaker 5: I used to sit between both of them.
- 7:10Speaker 1: Really, yeah.
- 7:11Speaker 5: My desk was nestled right in between.
- 7:13Speaker 1: I have such huge respect for these guys and how
- 7:15Speaker 1: they're doing their business these days. Cameron Christ and Vince Cignirella.
- 7:19Speaker 1: They cover their macro strategists. They write some really good
- 7:22Speaker 1: smart stuff on these markets. They talk to a lot
- 7:25Speaker 1: of smart people and we get a few minutes of
- 7:27Speaker 1: their time every once in a while.
- 7:28Speaker 5: And went together every once in a while they're even right,
- 7:31Speaker 5: and every once.
- 7:31Speaker 1: In a while they're even right. But to get them
- 7:33Speaker 1: together at one spot is big, camer I want to
- 7:36Speaker 1: start with you here. Matt Miller just walked in. You know,
- 7:38Speaker 1: he starts his day a little bit. Lady gets in
- 7:40Speaker 1: here around ten thirty. But he walked in here with
- 7:42Speaker 1: his brand new leather jacket, and he says he doesn't
- 7:45Speaker 1: believe he thinks the FED is not going to raise
- 7:47Speaker 1: rates this June meeting. Do I should I listen to
- 7:50Speaker 1: Matt Miller?
- 7:52Speaker 7: Well, I mean they've basically told you they're not. Philip
- 7:55Speaker 7: Jefferson is the mooted new vice Erman basically came out
- 8:01Speaker 7: last week and uh said that they should pause and
- 8:06Speaker 7: have a look around, not necessarily saying they're gonna it's
- 8:10Speaker 7: a definitive end, but that they they should they should pause.
- 8:14Speaker 7: And you know, it's kind of they're like Ef Hutton
- 8:17Speaker 7: when they talked, you're supposed to you're supposed to listen.
- 8:19Speaker 7: Pretty pretty won't get that joke, but I know you will, Paula,
- 8:23Speaker 7: I know Vince will as well.
- 8:25Speaker 1: See what I had to deal with every day.
- 8:28Speaker 7: If you guys give us a stick for where we work,
- 8:30Speaker 7: you know, we can give you, uh you know, let
- 8:33Speaker 7: it let our experience come to bear. Yeah. So, I
- 8:36Speaker 7: mean they basically provided some some jawboning over the last
- 8:40Speaker 7: week or so that June is probably off the table.
- 8:43Speaker 7: So that's adjusted market pricing, and we're kind of going
- 8:46Speaker 7: to be left parsing the signals for the second half
- 8:50Speaker 7: of the year. Right now. Market still thinks there's a
- 8:53Speaker 7: decent chance that they'll have to go again. But obviously
- 8:57Speaker 7: things can change, and and today's service services eyes ISM
- 9:01Speaker 7: provides a less robust or less upbeat signal than we
- 9:06Speaker 7: had from say, the labor market data last Friday.
- 9:10Speaker 5: Well, Vin's hop on in here because one of the
- 9:13Speaker 5: key stark memories of the start of this monetary tightening regime,
- 9:19Speaker 5: Chairman Powell said over and over and over again, we
- 9:21Speaker 5: don't want to make the mistake of the seventies. We
- 9:23Speaker 5: don't want to stop too prematurely, and therefore we're going
- 9:25Speaker 5: to kind of put our full force behind tightening. And
- 9:29Speaker 5: yet here we are with a super super hot payrolls
- 9:32Speaker 5: report on Friday, one trading session later, not even we
- 9:37Speaker 5: have this ISM data. How does the Federal Reserve in
- 9:40Speaker 5: that context avoid some sort of vulgar repeat by potentially
- 9:45Speaker 5: skipping this month.
- 9:47Speaker 3: Well, you know, I think any comparison to the seventies,
- 9:50Speaker 3: having sat on guess lines waiting for the ODDI even
- 9:53Speaker 3: number license plate situation, this is nowhere near the seventies.
- 9:57Speaker 3: And I think what Powell is speaking about and worrying
- 10:01Speaker 3: about credibility, it's not credibility that they're going to make
- 10:04Speaker 3: the mistake of the nineteen seventies, I think realistically, and
- 10:07Speaker 3: he's not emitting it. They don't want to make the
- 10:09Speaker 3: mistake they made with calling inflation transient. They're trying to
- 10:13Speaker 3: catch up for a major mistake they made through the pandemic,
- 10:15Speaker 3: and not to be fair to them, wasn't so much
- 10:18Speaker 3: of their mistake as much as it was the fiscal
- 10:20Speaker 3: policy of overstimulating the economy at that time. Now, all
- 10:24Speaker 3: well and good, it was necessary, but then when the
- 10:27Speaker 3: economy started a turn, there was no movement interest rates
- 10:30Speaker 3: and there was no appetite on a federal level to
- 10:32Speaker 3: take money out of the economy. So now he's faced
- 10:35Speaker 3: with this dilemma of trying to maintain the Fed's credibility
- 10:40Speaker 3: that they've actually lost the financial markets and not thinking
- 10:44Speaker 3: they're very credible at the moment, and trying to walk
- 10:48Speaker 3: this tightrope between not seeing inflation come down fast enough
- 10:53Speaker 3: for them and overtightening and perhaps pushing the economy into
- 10:57Speaker 3: a recession. I will make a note there was a
- 11:00Speaker 3: you know this headline that's going not at all really
- 11:03Speaker 3: spoken about the idea of raising capital reserves on banks
- 11:08Speaker 3: is going to be a very very big draw on
- 11:12Speaker 3: growth and no one's talking about it and no one's
- 11:14Speaker 3: seeing it. But when you raise capital reserves on banks,
- 11:18Speaker 3: that's lending they can't make, and that's not even being discussed.
- 11:22Speaker 3: So depending upon how high they raise those additional capital
- 11:27Speaker 3: requirements could be enough tightening that the FED doesn't have
- 11:31Speaker 3: to do anything else.
- 11:32Speaker 1: Interesting all right, Cameron, I was on a holiday on Friday,
- 11:36Speaker 1: so I missed this whole non farm payroll thing. But
- 11:38Speaker 1: it seems like people want a job. They can get
- 11:41Speaker 1: a job. You can't have a recession in that kind
- 11:43Speaker 1: of scenario.
- 11:44Speaker 7: Can you?
- 11:46Speaker 8: No?
- 11:46Speaker 7: You and the thoughts so, but two provisos. One is
- 11:51Speaker 7: that you often find that the labor data is misleading
- 11:55Speaker 7: at turns, because it's not like the payroll numbers comprised
- 12:01Speaker 7: of the BLS calling every business in America and saying
- 12:05Speaker 7: how many people you I'm going to feel you out
- 12:06Speaker 7: working for you?
- 12:08Speaker 8: Right?
- 12:08Speaker 7: So, there's a lot of statistical techniques that are used
- 12:11Speaker 7: to estimate a broader conclusion from a relatively limited sample,
- 12:17Speaker 7: and that works very well in normal circumstances, but at
- 12:20Speaker 7: turning points you find that these modeling techniques don't work.
- 12:25Speaker 7: So there is a that's one thing to consider and
- 12:27Speaker 7: the other is that this economic cycle is likely to
- 12:30Speaker 7: be very nonlinear. Things will look great and then you'll
- 12:33Speaker 7: have a wily coyote moment and things will suddenly look
- 12:37Speaker 7: not very great at all. Now, we thought that there
- 12:40Speaker 7: was a reasonable probability that that would be the outcome
- 12:44Speaker 7: of the March banking sector turmoil. The evidence thus far
- 12:48Speaker 7: is that that hasn't actually been the case. And I'll
- 12:51Speaker 7: admit had in the air that I thought we would
- 12:54Speaker 7: have a more immediate and more substantial impact than we've
- 12:58Speaker 7: seen in the data thus far. That han't been said.
- 13:01Speaker 7: And this is adding on to sort of Vince's point
- 13:03Speaker 7: about the transmission of credit, is that we're now at
- 13:06Speaker 7: the point, now that the dead ceiling nonsense has been resolved,
- 13:09Speaker 7: where the Treasury is going to be sucking a lot
- 13:12Speaker 7: of money out of the financial system by issuing a
- 13:15Speaker 7: veritable everest of Treasury bills, and that is going to
- 13:22Speaker 7: have an impact. Traditionally, when bank reserves at the FED
- 13:26Speaker 7: decline substantially, you tend to see lending go down, and
- 13:30Speaker 7: you tend to see financial markets, certainly the equity market
- 13:34Speaker 7: go down. At this point, it's indeterminate whether the demand
- 13:38Speaker 7: for treasury bills will come from bank deposits or from
- 13:42Speaker 7: money funds, who would then try, you know, essentially take
- 13:46Speaker 7: money out of the reverse repot facility at the FED
- 13:49Speaker 7: and use it to buy treasury bills. But it's a
- 13:51Speaker 7: significant risk that we have to consider moving forwards.
- 13:55Speaker 5: You know, the irony of Fens and Cam talking to
- 13:58Speaker 5: me about issue and treasury auctions and stuff like that.
- 14:02Speaker 5: They actually taught me how to how to interpret them
- 14:03Speaker 5: back in the day, all that funny jargon stops and
- 14:06Speaker 5: tails and all that jazz.
- 14:08Speaker 1: Yeah too, I just wait to read the first two paragraphs.
- 14:10Speaker 5: Yeah, well, they're usually the ones writing it well. Cam
- 14:13Speaker 5: following up on that point when it comes to kind
- 14:15Speaker 5: of issuance and lending, haven't both lending and liquidity kind
- 14:19Speaker 5: of been on I don't want to say like the drop,
- 14:22Speaker 5: but like they've been declining significantly in the last couple
- 14:25Speaker 5: of months because of the banking turmoil. I get your
- 14:27Speaker 5: point about liquidity, but to marry it with the point
- 14:30Speaker 5: that Ben's just made about the capital requirements. If lending
- 14:33Speaker 5: is already dropping, how big of a difference can that
- 14:36Speaker 5: capital requirement increase really make If there is an appetite
- 14:41Speaker 5: to lend anyway, Well.
- 14:44Speaker 7: Again, I think it's it's not the sort of thing
- 14:47Speaker 7: you're gonna wake up one day and lending will have
- 14:51Speaker 7: dropped by half a trillion dollars. It will be gradual
- 14:57Speaker 7: until it's not gradual. And from a financial markets perspective,
- 15:04Speaker 7: I think it's reserves that are going to be the
- 15:07Speaker 7: more timely issue to consider, because even though sort of
- 15:11Speaker 7: bank deposits have dropped over obviously substantially so far this year,
- 15:17Speaker 7: bank reserves and FED have actually increased as the Treasury
- 15:21Speaker 7: has drawn down its general account, sort of spending every
- 15:25Speaker 7: last penny that it had hidden under the FED sofa cushions.
- 15:29Speaker 7: As that treasury account is built back up through the
- 15:33Speaker 7: issues of Treasury bills, now there's going to be a
- 15:35Speaker 7: disproportioned impact on other FED liabilities, the two main components
- 15:40Speaker 7: of which are these bank reserves and the money fund
- 15:43Speaker 7: usage of the reverse repot facility, and how which one
- 15:46Speaker 7: bears the brunt of treasury. Treasury is real rebuilding a
- 15:51Speaker 7: general account, I think is going to have a significant
- 15:53Speaker 7: impact on financial markets more broadly and liquidic conditions.
- 15:59Speaker 5: All right, So thirty seconds, Vince, I'm putting you on
- 16:01Speaker 5: the spot in the context of what Cam just said,
- 16:04Speaker 5: Vince is like, bring it on. Is there a sense
- 16:09Speaker 5: then of even more risk taking to get that yield,
- 16:11Speaker 5: to get that carry? What are you seeing in that
- 16:14Speaker 5: thirty seconds?
- 16:15Speaker 3: Real quick? I will tell you this, Like you looked
- 16:18Speaker 3: that was up seven hundred on Friday. Yeah, everybody knew
- 16:21Speaker 3: on Friday this treasury issuance is coming. And this is
- 16:24Speaker 3: the third lie that media and analysts are pushing. First
- 16:29Speaker 3: Europe was going to freeze to death, and the death
- 16:31Speaker 3: ceiling was going to crush us. And now treasury issuance
- 16:34Speaker 3: is going to blow the lid off interest rates. If
- 16:37Speaker 3: they go up high enough, there'll be a lot of buyers.
- 16:39Speaker 3: It's just I think another story.
- 16:42Speaker 1: All right, guys, thanks very much for joining us. Both
- 16:44Speaker 1: of you, Cameron Christ and Vince Cignarello, the macro strategists
- 16:47Speaker 1: with Bloomberg News. They're the work from home kings. They've
- 16:51Speaker 1: mastered it, and nobody does it better than we appreciate
- 16:54Speaker 1: getting their time and getting their time together.
- 16:57Speaker 6: You're listening to the tape Cancer Live program bloom Markets
- 17:00Speaker 6: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the tune
- 17:04Speaker 6: in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business app.
- 17:07Speaker 6: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 17:10Speaker 6: flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 17:15Speaker 1: All right, here's one of the biggest trends I've noticed
- 17:17Speaker 1: over the last five or ten years, which is just
- 17:19Speaker 1: this whole thing of exchange traded funds. The kids call
- 17:22Speaker 1: them ETFs. Man, what an exploding business. And our next
- 17:25Speaker 1: guest was smart enough, you know, twenty some odd years
- 17:28Speaker 1: ago to kind of get in on this game, Ben Slaven,
- 17:30Speaker 1: Global head of ETFs at B and Y Mellon asset Servi.
- 17:34Speaker 1: And that's a pretty good gig. Ben, Thanks so much
- 17:36Speaker 1: for joining us here in our studio. Here again, I've
- 17:40Speaker 1: just been awed by the amount of capital going to
- 17:44Speaker 1: the ETF space just over the last five to ten years.
- 17:47Speaker 1: It seems like where are we today. Just give us
- 17:50Speaker 1: an overview of kind of the ETF space in general.
- 17:53Speaker 9: Well, first of all, thanks for having me back. Look,
- 17:56Speaker 9: this trend has not abated and actually continue to accelerate.
- 18:01Speaker 9: So we've seen a huge divergence between investor's appetite to
- 18:05Speaker 9: put capital into ETFs versus traditionally mutual funds and other
- 18:10Speaker 9: structures and what we saw really in the last couple
- 18:13Speaker 9: of years was a significant pickup. So last year was
- 18:15Speaker 9: the widest gap ever between inflows into ETFs and outflows
- 18:21Speaker 9: from mutual funds, and that gap was around one point
- 18:24Speaker 9: five trillion dollars, which is kind of hard to get
- 18:27Speaker 9: your head wrapped around. But what we're also seeing is
- 18:29Speaker 9: a little bit you know different under the hood. So
- 18:33Speaker 9: this equity trade or this equity difference in terms of
- 18:37Speaker 9: investor preference has you know, been in place for a while,
- 18:40Speaker 9: and last year we saw a much larger pickup in
- 18:43Speaker 9: investor adoption of fixed income ETFs and it picked up
- 18:47Speaker 9: about three percent of market share against mutual funds. And
- 18:50Speaker 9: that's a huge leap and a shift now showing investors
- 18:54Speaker 9: widening out their preference for the ETF structure.
- 18:58Speaker 5: When it comes to ETFs. I mean, the reason for
- 19:01Speaker 5: a lot of the retail investor based to hop into
- 19:04Speaker 5: them is liquidity. At the end of the day, access
- 19:06Speaker 5: things like the bond market or the commodities market, which
- 19:08Speaker 5: is harder to get to. Are you seeing that kind
- 19:11Speaker 5: of sustained momentum from that class of investor.
- 19:15Speaker 9: It's a mix, So retail is absolutely part of it.
- 19:19Speaker 9: And actually we saw a pretty large uptick, especially in
- 19:25Speaker 9: the pandemic and kind of the rise of the retail
- 19:28Speaker 9: trader really adopting thematic ETFs. We saw some of the
- 19:33Speaker 9: leverage and short ETFs as well catch a lot of
- 19:36Speaker 9: attention from investors. But also what's changed in the last
- 19:39Speaker 9: couple of years is certainly the institutional investors are really
- 19:43Speaker 9: getting involved in ETFs in a big way. So for example,
- 19:46Speaker 9: that stat I just quoted on fixed income ETFs, Yes,
- 19:50Speaker 9: it's some retail, but a big piece of that is
- 19:53Speaker 9: also the institutions jumping in to use ETFs exactly as
- 19:57Speaker 9: you were just saying as a liquidity vehicle priced discuss
- 20:01Speaker 9: and in a way to get access to some of
- 20:03Speaker 9: these harder to reach asset types.
- 20:06Speaker 1: What type of institutional use is there for ETFs? Is
- 20:09Speaker 1: it hedge funds? Who uses that? From an introdutional perspective?
- 20:15Speaker 9: So the short answer is yes to all of it. Okay,
- 20:19Speaker 9: you know, just a couple quick examples. You know, we're
- 20:22Speaker 9: seeing the traditional institutional investors like pension funds for example,
- 20:26Speaker 9: who again are using ETFs for a variety of different
- 20:30Speaker 9: ways to equitize cash to you know, use them as
- 20:36Speaker 9: again a source of liquidity. But we're also seeing the
- 20:39Speaker 9: hedge funds get increasingly involved in different using more sophisticated
- 20:44Speaker 9: strategies of course, But most interesting is mutual funds themselves
- 20:49Speaker 9: have become a bigger buyer of ETFs, using ETFs to
- 20:53Speaker 9: do either asset allocation. So think about a fund of
- 20:56Speaker 9: ETFs or just using again ETFs in that same way
- 21:00Speaker 9: to get exposure to a targeted asset class or a
- 21:03Speaker 9: liquidity sleeve inside their portfolio. So we're starting to see
- 21:07Speaker 9: this convergence happen, and again that's another trend that's accelerating.
- 21:11Speaker 5: Well, let's talk about trends in the marketplace then in
- 21:14Speaker 5: terms of kind of any favorites that are seeing excess
- 21:18Speaker 5: flows or no flows at all or outflows.
- 21:20Speaker 10: What are you seeing?
- 21:22Speaker 9: Well, look, in May, we've started to see a pickup
- 21:26Speaker 9: in flow into etf so we saw about thirty five
- 21:28Speaker 9: billion come into the industry, which is muted considering we
- 21:32Speaker 9: had the last two years of record inflows. Now granted
- 21:35Speaker 9: that has everything to do with markets getting a lot
- 21:38Speaker 9: of competition from money market mutual funds, so the data
- 21:41Speaker 9: is skewed. So there's really an anomaly here with all
- 21:44Speaker 9: the investor interest in chasing those high money market yields.
- 21:48Speaker 9: But we've started to see some money come back in
- 21:51Speaker 9: What's interesting is under the hood again in May, we've
- 21:55Speaker 9: started to see an increase in appetite for equity ETFs
- 21:58Speaker 9: fixed income much more so early in the year. But
- 22:01Speaker 9: looking under the hood again, what is another little trend
- 22:05Speaker 9: that we're picking up on is with that inflow, we've
- 22:07Speaker 9: seen money come out of value ETF specifically products like
- 22:12Speaker 9: dividend themed ETFs, which again had caught quite a bit
- 22:15Speaker 9: of institutional and retail attention in the last you know,
- 22:19Speaker 9: nine to twelve months for sure.
- 22:21Speaker 1: Talk to us about this. The structure of the ETF
- 22:24Speaker 1: market in general, is it who are the big players?
- 22:29Speaker 1: Is it diversified? Just give us a sense of like
- 22:32Speaker 1: who really runs this business in terms of assets?
- 22:35Speaker 9: That's a great, great question. Look, one another interesting element
- 22:41Speaker 9: here is the amount of firms, both everything from startups
- 22:45Speaker 9: to large brand name acid managers seem to be jumping
- 22:49Speaker 9: into the space. So in the last couple of years,
- 22:52Speaker 9: we've seen record amount of product issuance. Actually a stat
- 22:57Speaker 9: I like to quote it B and Y Mellon. We've
- 22:59Speaker 9: been launching approximately one ETF a day on average somewhere
- 23:04Speaker 9: in the world the last couple of years, just to
- 23:06Speaker 9: give you a sense of how quickly these products are
- 23:09Speaker 9: coming to market. At the same time, it's driven by
- 23:13Speaker 9: some of the existing players like Blackrock, Vanguard, Invesco and others,
- 23:19Speaker 9: but also startups and brand name asset managers who have
- 23:23Speaker 9: just said enough mutual funds can't just cut it anymore.
- 23:27Speaker 9: I'm looking to launch an ETF as a way to
- 23:31Speaker 9: again attract invest your interest and certainly recognize it for
- 23:34Speaker 9: the benefits and potentially the better structure in many cases
- 23:37Speaker 9: for investors.
- 23:39Speaker 5: And what does that then mean in terms of kind
- 23:41Speaker 5: of your competitive ability now that I'm thinking about it.
- 23:44Speaker 5: When you mentioned your Vanguards and your black Rocks about
- 23:46Speaker 5: thirty seconds here, I mean, if you're putting out one
- 23:49Speaker 5: ETF a day for years, are you able to see
- 23:53Speaker 5: kind of demand catch up to that or is that
- 23:55Speaker 5: just purely offerings?
- 23:57Speaker 9: It's great question. Different is obviously key. A lot of
- 24:03Speaker 9: those bigger names and those assets are in passively managed ETFs,
- 24:07Speaker 9: but a lot of the action and the majority of
- 24:09Speaker 9: products coming to market are actively managed. So it's these
- 24:12Speaker 9: are firms that are trying to differentiate and that is
- 24:16Speaker 9: going to be absolutely critical. But I would say one
- 24:18Speaker 9: of the reasons why I guess to bring it full
- 24:20Speaker 9: circle I got into ETFs all those years ago was
- 24:23Speaker 9: the innovation. And I always make the joke that it's
- 24:26Speaker 9: the most fun in the industry by far, because this
- 24:28Speaker 9: is where the actions that is, and that is where
- 24:31Speaker 9: the competitive game is being played.
- 24:33Speaker 1: All right, Ben, thanks so much for joining us. Ben Slavan,
- 24:35Speaker 1: Global head of ETFs for b n Y Melon Asset Servicing,
- 24:39Speaker 1: joining us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio.
- 24:43Speaker 6: You're listening to the team Ken's are Live program Bloomberg
- 24:46Speaker 6: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
- 24:50Speaker 6: the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen
- 24:53Speaker 6: on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
- 24:58Speaker 1: Kind of the news today, you can make it the
- 24:59Speaker 1: lo How does Maddie was in the commodity space and
- 25:03Speaker 1: crude oil Saudi Arabia? I think a surprise to me,
- 25:06Speaker 1: at least cutting production outside of the OPEC plus group,
- 25:10Speaker 1: but just cutting production on its own by a million
- 25:13Speaker 1: barrels a day. That seems material. I don't see that
- 25:16Speaker 1: every day. So I figured, let's get this commodities guy
- 25:19Speaker 1: in the studio. Maybe he can help us out there,
- 25:21Speaker 1: Mike mcgloone. He covers all the commodities from port bellies
- 25:24Speaker 1: to corn, to oil to crypto. He's our guy, and
- 25:27Speaker 1: he's actually in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. And that's
- 25:30Speaker 1: just because it's getting down towards summer. John in Miami
- 25:34Speaker 1: it's too hot, so now he has to summer up
- 25:36Speaker 1: there in Midtown Manhattan. I told him it was going
- 25:39Speaker 1: to happen. Mike, thanks so much for joining us here.
- 25:42Speaker 1: I don't recall seeing an OPEC member kind of on
- 25:45Speaker 1: its own, much less Saudi Arabia kind of stepping out
- 25:48Speaker 1: and changing production. What do you make it?
- 25:50Speaker 10: Today's it is rare for them to kind of front
- 25:53Speaker 10: run the market like this. What's typical is for them
- 25:55Speaker 10: to cut during bear markets. Okay, And that's my signal
- 25:59Speaker 10: that this is a bear market. And I think they
- 26:00Speaker 10: know you've seen it with price action today. We bounced
- 26:02Speaker 10: about two bucks overnight, three two fifty for a while now,
- 26:06Speaker 10: or maybe up a buck seventy two dollars a barrel.
- 26:08Speaker 10: And it's what's happening now is markets are kind of
- 26:11Speaker 10: waiting for this the Saudi minister warned us, you know
- 26:15Speaker 10: that they might be hurting, and so people who've been
- 26:17Speaker 10: waiting to resell at higher levels have been waiting for this,
- 26:19Speaker 10: and I think that's what's happening because.
- 26:21Speaker 8: It's a bear market.
- 26:21Speaker 10: Remember crewell peaked around one thirty last year, it's seventy
- 26:24Speaker 10: two now, and it's the macro that's overwhelming. So I
- 26:27Speaker 10: wrote about it again today. I still looking for the
- 26:29Speaker 10: head towards fifty dollars a barrel.
- 26:30Speaker 1: Now, okay, fifty dollars per barrel is your call. And
- 26:33Speaker 1: you've been there for a long time. Fifty before one fifty.
- 26:36Speaker 1: I forget how you phrased it, but yeah, you're still
- 26:39Speaker 1: sticking out with.
- 26:40Speaker 10: That, sticking with it and adding to it because to me,
- 26:42Speaker 10: now it's getting worse. We're in a situation now. First
- 26:45Speaker 10: of all, it's the macro's overwhelming. We talk about China demand.
- 26:48Speaker 10: We're all seeing that is becoming less. You know, it's disappointing.
- 26:52Speaker 10: Now that's what we expected because remember China kind of
- 26:54Speaker 10: made enemies with its best customers US and Europe. Okay,
- 26:58Speaker 10: so that's tilting that way, that's my And then it
- 27:00Speaker 10: is the massive paradigm shift of US production. So if
- 27:03Speaker 10: you add Canada to our US production liquid fuels, it's
- 27:07Speaker 10: about twenty six million barrels a day. The significance of
- 27:09Speaker 10: that is as well above consumption, maybe four million bills
- 27:13Speaker 10: above consumption. That's what's changed versus maybe the great financial crisis.
- 27:16Speaker 10: That's overwhelming force and the ruling commodities. As you're always
- 27:20Speaker 10: going towards the marginal cost of production. Now natural guests
- 27:22Speaker 10: already did that. It spike to ten, back down to two,
- 27:24Speaker 10: and it's stuck at two. Crude else is following that path,
- 27:27Speaker 10: and the US the largest producer, the average cost of
- 27:30Speaker 10: production based on data and the terminals around fifty dollars
- 27:33Speaker 10: a barrel.
- 27:34Speaker 11: Is it concerning at all? Or what's the thinking on
- 27:36Speaker 11: Saudi being the main driver, the only opet.
- 27:40Speaker 10: Plus memory Exactly, they're just trying to catch up being
- 27:43Speaker 10: the main driver.
- 27:44Speaker 1: Well, that's more.
- 27:47Speaker 10: What they're wise and what they're really doing that why.
- 27:50Speaker 10: But the matters for me is what's it going to
- 27:51Speaker 10: do for the market. It actually helps the US in
- 27:55Speaker 10: a way. We're net energy exporter in terms of massively
- 27:58Speaker 10: if he terms natural gas. This is what's change. And
- 28:01Speaker 10: yes there's some oil that's still important to us, so Saudi,
- 28:03Speaker 10: but it really hurts their customers more. I mean they're
- 28:06Speaker 10: raising price, isn't cutting production? And what's the number one
- 28:08Speaker 10: customer China? So I look at it. It's just a
- 28:11Speaker 10: part of the tree in the forest of that diminishing
- 28:14Speaker 10: significance of this cartael.
- 28:15Speaker 1: That was a big part of our lives.
- 28:17Speaker 10: I mean, I grew up in the seventies and you
- 28:19Speaker 10: remember those crisses those days. It's amazing how we've completely
- 28:22Speaker 10: shifted the other way. And now it's also part of
- 28:25Speaker 10: this significant paradigm shift. First of all, if you add
- 28:27Speaker 10: in FED tightening that's very rare, commodits collapsing, and then
- 28:30Speaker 10: towards evs. I mean almost ten percent of total Automo
- 28:33Speaker 10: sales and are evs. That's stuff that we dreamed of
- 28:35Speaker 10: ten years ago.
- 28:37Speaker 1: The United States is not part of OPEK, right Is
- 28:40Speaker 1: there any reason they should be? Now that we're kind
- 28:42Speaker 1: of a big player now, I mean, aren't we Like?
- 28:45Speaker 1: How can we not be involved in.
- 28:46Speaker 10: Free market capitalism? Natural gas is a good exactly, mean,
- 28:49Speaker 10: it's just good old free market capitalism on a global
- 28:51Speaker 10: basis is what energy has become. It's because of OPEC's
- 28:54Speaker 10: really boosting that price up above one hundred dollars a barrel,
- 28:58Speaker 10: you know, up till twenty fourteen. That really accelerated the
- 29:01Speaker 10: USL revolution. And that's part by piece of prices collapse.
- 29:04Speaker 10: Now people keep talking about, oh, Shelle production is going
- 29:06Speaker 10: to decline. They've been hearing that for a decade. And
- 29:09Speaker 10: I read this book called the Domino Effect, and it
- 29:12Speaker 10: just points out, Okay, that might peak a little, but
- 29:14Speaker 10: then there's the next technology, in the next technology. That's
- 29:16Speaker 10: what's happening so fast. And I like to point out
- 29:20Speaker 10: crude oil from a supplying demand standpoint, we're creating more
- 29:23Speaker 10: of it with technology, replacing it with technology more than
- 29:26Speaker 10: any other commodity. So if you're gonna be bush of commodity,
- 29:28Speaker 10: you start with gold and maybe triple trickle down the copper.
- 29:32Speaker 10: But crude oil is the one that's just being replaced.
- 29:34Speaker 10: I mean, I ride my electric bike too in Florida
- 29:36Speaker 10: every day and I don't need a car anyone.
- 29:37Speaker 1: Yes, you do. Look at him now, is it a
- 29:41Speaker 1: pedal assisted bike? Of course I did that, big old sissy, okay,
- 29:45Speaker 1: but but it's battered assist as opposed to these guys
- 29:49Speaker 1: who deliver the food here on sixth Avenue or Election
- 29:52Speaker 1: to Avenue. They're just you don't have to pedal, you
- 29:54Speaker 1: just fly down the show. I'm glad you mentioned that, Paul.
- 29:56Speaker 10: That was the paradigm shift for me.
- 29:57Speaker 1: About five years ago.
- 29:58Speaker 10: I remember seeing all these guys you I always here.
- 30:00Speaker 10: Here are the motorbikes right now. They're all silent, they
- 30:03Speaker 10: hardly ever pedal. But I looked at those bikes. They're
- 30:05Speaker 10: not pretty, they're ugly, but they go fast. They don't
- 30:07Speaker 10: have to pedal, Like, that's what I want. And so
- 30:10Speaker 10: I came back a couple, you know, a couple of
- 30:11Speaker 10: weeks ago, and you see.
- 30:12Speaker 1: All of you don't hear motorbikes anymore.
- 30:14Speaker 10: It's just that it's the technology is moving so fast.
- 30:17Speaker 10: And the key question I asked, so TESTA is the
- 30:18Speaker 10: same thing. It's just set power unit providing that electricity.
- 30:21Speaker 10: Where's that power unit going from? It's only getting cheaper,
- 30:24Speaker 10: faster and more powerful from batteries to made me feel sales,
- 30:27Speaker 10: it's just what's all right?
- 30:28Speaker 1: All right, so you're zipping around South Beach on your bike.
- 30:32Speaker 1: I get the visual, all right, Let's switch gears to
- 30:34Speaker 1: crypto for just a second, not a good day for
- 30:36Speaker 1: crypto space Finance Holdings, and as chief executive officer jo
- 30:41Speaker 1: workus of breaking US rules according to a federal court
- 30:43Speaker 1: following by the Securities Exchange Commission. What's it mean to
- 30:47Speaker 1: you is somebody who looks at this crypto space parish.
- 30:50Speaker 10: I hate to say, because the crypto people do not
- 30:52Speaker 10: like you when you say things they do now want
- 30:54Speaker 10: to hear, which is particularly why I have to use
- 30:56Speaker 10: my independent voice to say, I think you people are
- 30:59Speaker 10: too overwhelming, the optim optimist, optimistic that the worst is
- 31:05Speaker 10: not over. And I got that sense a lot in
- 31:07Speaker 10: the bitcoin Miami. I see it a lot. Everybodybody says
- 31:09Speaker 10: the worst is over. I hear it in the stock
- 31:11Speaker 10: market too. And that's what's happening late with crypto bloom Bloomberg, Galaxy,
- 31:16Speaker 10: Crypto in NIXT the bitcoins down on the quarter about
- 31:19Speaker 10: six percent, yet the stock market's up. That's not supposed
- 31:22Speaker 10: to happen. So I think what's happened is you're seeing
- 31:24Speaker 10: more and more. There's just massive speculation in that space
- 31:27Speaker 10: and still needs to be purged. And the fact we
- 31:29Speaker 10: had a big boom, a big bounce, means to me
- 31:32Speaker 10: the risk is it tilts back lower. So typically what
- 31:35Speaker 10: happens if we're having this, you know, NASDAK lifting all
- 31:38Speaker 10: boats rally, Crypto should be leading and they're not. So
- 31:41Speaker 10: I'm sure I'm pointing out that maybe the Nasdaq is
- 31:43Speaker 10: just in a short term bounce and everything's heading back
- 31:45Speaker 10: towards that recession. That most of the spect and on
- 31:48Speaker 10: along pointed out. Is this work from home unemployment. It's
- 31:52Speaker 10: really ticking up. It's a good sign. Ono Wong's are
- 31:54Speaker 10: chief economists. It's truly ticking up, showing signs.
- 31:56Speaker 1: Of RECESSI familiar with this whole work at home concept,
- 32:00Speaker 1: but I hear that's the thing, all right. I appreciate it.
- 32:02Speaker 1: Mike mcglohone, he covers all the strategy stuff, all the
- 32:04Speaker 1: commodity stuff for Bloomberg Intelligence based down in the self
- 32:08Speaker 1: proclaimed crypto capital of the United States, Miami, but we
- 32:11Speaker 1: got him up here on our Bloomberg INTERACTI Brooker Studio
- 32:13Speaker 1: in New York.
- 32:14Speaker 6: You're listening to the tape Cat's are live program Bloomberg
- 32:17Speaker 6: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 32:21Speaker 6: tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com.
- 32:23Speaker 8: And the Bloomberg Business app.
- 32:24Speaker 6: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 32:27Speaker 6: flagship New York station, Just say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven
- 32:31Speaker 6: thirty Madison.
- 32:34Speaker 1: My fixed income strategy is simple. I'm walking up, I'm
- 32:37Speaker 1: buying a two year treasury like four point five percent,
- 32:40Speaker 1: and that's it. I'm done. I'm going down to the
- 32:41Speaker 1: beach toes in the sand. That's it. But some people
- 32:44Speaker 1: make it more difficult. I think our next guest is
- 32:46Speaker 1: one of those guys, Steven O, Global head of fixed
- 32:48Speaker 1: Income at pine Bridge Investments. He's based in Los Angeles,
- 32:51Speaker 1: but of course he felt the need to come to
- 32:53Speaker 1: the global financial capital of the world that is New
- 32:56Speaker 1: York City, and he's in our Bloomberg INTERACTI Brooker Studio. Dave,
- 33:00Speaker 1: what do you think of my strategies buying to your
- 33:02Speaker 1: treasures and just kind of rolling them over.
- 33:04Speaker 12: You know, it's not a bad strategy at this point
- 33:06Speaker 12: in time, giving the yields that you're getting, although I
- 33:08Speaker 12: would recommend if that's the approach you're going to take,
- 33:10Speaker 12: you're probably better off rolling three month t bills because
- 33:14Speaker 12: our view is that the FED is not going to
- 33:16Speaker 12: be as aggressive or as quick to cut rates than
- 33:18Speaker 12: what's being priced in.
- 33:20Speaker 11: You think a longer pause or.
- 33:23Speaker 12: I do you know? Right now, the market is expecting
- 33:25Speaker 12: that the FED will start cutting at the end of
- 33:27Speaker 12: this year, as well as the depth of cuts into
- 33:30Speaker 12: next year. We think it's just unlikely to play out,
- 33:34Speaker 12: and therefore market expectations are a bit too optimistic with
- 33:37Speaker 12: respect to FED support.
- 33:39Speaker 1: All right, So if I wanted to take maybe a
- 33:41Speaker 1: little bit more risk, a little bit more duration corporate credit,
- 33:45Speaker 1: where should I start my analysis there?
- 33:48Speaker 12: Well, corporate credit right now is much maligned, in part
- 33:51Speaker 12: because of all these talks about recessionary pressures, the faults
- 33:54Speaker 12: and so forth. We think there's a lot of value
- 33:57Speaker 12: across the spectrum of corporate credit. Of course, for more
- 34:00Speaker 12: risk averse investors, investment great corporate credit is a very
- 34:03Speaker 12: good space to be. But I think some parts of
- 34:05Speaker 12: the leverage finance market right now, I think the you know,
- 34:09Speaker 12: ugly step child is leverage loans. But we think leverage
- 34:13Speaker 12: loans are a little bit misguided in terms of what
- 34:16Speaker 12: markets believe are going to be the default race and
- 34:18Speaker 12: the problems and the absolute yields that you're getting there
- 34:21Speaker 12: are more than adequately constant compensating you or another hybrid
- 34:25Speaker 12: way to play that market is CLO tranches. Right now,
- 34:28Speaker 12: when you look at where CLO tranches are yielding, you know,
- 34:31Speaker 12: double bclos are fourteen to fifteen percent, Triple a's are
- 34:35Speaker 12: spreads of you know, one eighty to two hundred over.
- 34:38Speaker 12: And then finally, last year for US was a theme
- 34:41Speaker 12: about going within the US as a defensive strategy because
- 34:45Speaker 12: we thought US was really where the fundamentals were superior.
- 34:48Speaker 1: This year it's about.
- 34:49Speaker 12: Also expanding outside of the US more toward emerging markets
- 34:53Speaker 12: and other parts of the world.
- 34:54Speaker 11: Is that strategy partially because you're anticipating downside to the
- 34:58Speaker 11: US dollar or what's the single I guess driving force find.
- 35:01Speaker 12: That the downside to the US dollar is a small component,
- 35:04Speaker 12: but more so than expecting the dollar to depreciate meaningfully.
- 35:08Speaker 12: We don't think that the dollar has much risk of appreciating,
- 35:12Speaker 12: and so the headwinds will dissipate. But the bigger element
- 35:15Speaker 12: of that is if you look out for the next
- 35:16Speaker 12: two years at the growth expectations of US, which is
- 35:20Speaker 12: decelerating versus emerging markets, the gap is going to increase,
- 35:25Speaker 12: which favors the fundamental outlook for many parts of emerging markets.
- 35:28Speaker 1: All right, Steven, So if I'm an analyst in one
- 35:31Speaker 1: of your funds and I bring an idea to my manager,
- 35:36Speaker 1: to you as the head of fixingcome, am I running
- 35:39Speaker 1: my recession model for the forecast? Or am I running
- 35:42Speaker 1: kind of the world's okay kind of model?
- 35:45Speaker 12: Well, first of all, we have over one hundred investment
- 35:48Speaker 12: professionals who are focused on the strategy, So you know,
- 35:51Speaker 12: what is the analyst giving us in terms of that
- 35:53Speaker 12: outlook and what is our top down view? And even
- 35:56Speaker 12: though we get caught up into debate around recession or
- 35:58Speaker 12: no recession, I think it's more important is what type
- 36:02Speaker 12: of recession environment will it be? You know, we believe
- 36:05Speaker 12: that there will in all likelihood be a technical recession
- 36:08Speaker 12: or recession definitionally, but we don't see unemployment levels going
- 36:12Speaker 12: up much more than another percent or so. So it's
- 36:15Speaker 12: the type of recession which would be very mild in nature.
- 36:18Speaker 12: And I think that the FED is definitely headed toward
- 36:21Speaker 12: engineering a soft landing.
- 36:23Speaker 11: Do you think the FED has had any missteps along
- 36:27Speaker 11: the way or would you advise them to do anything
- 36:29Speaker 11: differently than you're anticipating.
- 36:31Speaker 12: I think it's easy to criticize in hindsight, and that's
- 36:34Speaker 12: what we do all the time. But I think the
- 36:36Speaker 12: FED has done a fairly laudable job. I think the
- 36:39Speaker 12: one area where I would somewhat disagree with is we
- 36:42Speaker 12: are definitely in restrictive terrictory, and I would argue we
- 36:45Speaker 12: have been. It's really how quickly do you want to
- 36:48Speaker 12: achieve the deceleration goals with respect to inflation in particular.
- 36:53Speaker 12: And you know, my view is that you're much better
- 36:56Speaker 12: easing on the breaks to a glide path rather than
- 36:59Speaker 12: slamming on the bs.
- 37:01Speaker 1: And I don't think.
- 37:02Speaker 12: The FED necessarily needed to be even where we are today,
- 37:05Speaker 12: but they want to achieve their goals a lot more quickly,
- 37:08Speaker 12: and that's the differential that I would have with them.
- 37:11Speaker 1: Early in my career was at the Chase Manhattan Bank
- 37:13Speaker 1: lending money to media companies, technolo telecom companies. They had
- 37:17Speaker 1: no assets. We lent against cash flow, We land against
- 37:20Speaker 1: airwaves frequencies. My credit guys had no idea what we
- 37:24Speaker 1: were doing, but we would lend to four or five
- 37:26Speaker 1: six times cash flow on a senior basis. That's leverage lending.
- 37:28Speaker 1: To me, what are you guys doing in leverage finance
- 37:31Speaker 1: these days?
- 37:32Speaker 12: What are some of the sectors you guys like, you know,
- 37:34Speaker 12: we are value investors and traditional credit investors.
- 37:37Speaker 1: We look at cash flows.
- 37:38Speaker 12: And for me, I just never understood when the telecom
- 37:42Speaker 12: infrastructure build out was taking place into early two thousands
- 37:45Speaker 12: on business plans. That may be a great equity story,
- 37:48Speaker 12: but that's certainly not a fixed income.
- 37:50Speaker 1: Creditsortance we took on. We led money to fleet call,
- 37:55Speaker 1: no company. It was just against spectrum. People don't know
- 37:57Speaker 1: what fleek call is. It was basically a taxi thing.
- 38:00Speaker 1: But we lend money those guys, but we got warrants.
- 38:04Speaker 12: Well, you know you're talking about the days of excess,
- 38:06Speaker 12: right and during Polish periods, that's exactly what you have.
- 38:10Speaker 12: And I think make Samir John, it's very important to
- 38:13Speaker 12: have discipline when when you're chartered with making loans, when
- 38:17Speaker 12: you have capital to invest, often it's not about making
- 38:20Speaker 12: prudent investments. It's about what do you do that's the
- 38:23Speaker 12: relatively the more attractive, And I think it's important to
- 38:26Speaker 12: say we're not going to lend to those types of segments.
- 38:28Speaker 12: That's not what we do. That's beyond our knitting, that's
- 38:31Speaker 12: beyond our comfort level, and be willing to in the
- 38:33Speaker 12: short term in some ways underperformed by not getting the
- 38:36Speaker 12: type of yields that the market may offer.
- 38:38Speaker 11: Wait, but I love this line of questioning, Paul, because
- 38:41Speaker 11: you have the exact experience.
- 38:43Speaker 1: To why to what you do now we didn't know
- 38:46Speaker 1: any better?
- 38:46Speaker 11: Give me another example.
- 38:47Speaker 1: I love this, Why just again? My favorite stuff? We
- 38:49Speaker 1: just again? You lend against cash flow and Steven knows
- 38:52Speaker 1: all about that because your cash net income doesn't pay
- 38:55Speaker 1: you back. Cash flow pays you back. Free cash flow
- 38:58Speaker 1: is what pays you back. Are there some sectors here
- 39:00Speaker 1: right now? Let's talk about that emergent market thing, because
- 39:03Speaker 1: we don't talk about emerging markets enough. In emergent markets,
- 39:06Speaker 1: where would I start? I mean, I can't go to China?
- 39:08Speaker 1: Can I?
- 39:09Speaker 12: You absolutely can go to China. We think there's a
- 39:12Speaker 12: fair amount of value in you know, Asia. Credit is one.
- 39:16Speaker 12: Even though China's you know rebound right now is bit
- 39:20Speaker 12: irregular and there's fits and starts, it is absolutely rebounding.
- 39:24Speaker 12: So one component of China where there'd be no greater
- 39:27Speaker 12: comfort level. Everyone tends to focus is on real estate
- 39:29Speaker 12: and property. But that's not all about China. There's other
- 39:32Speaker 12: things beyond that. I think travel and leisure rebound. For example,
- 39:36Speaker 12: we have been proponents of the McCall casino reopening and rebound.
- 39:40Speaker 12: So there are pockets of consumer leisure and entertainment and
- 39:43Speaker 12: consumer travel that we think just as the US coming
- 39:46Speaker 12: out of COVID still is on the rebound.
- 39:48Speaker 1: That's the sector.
- 39:49Speaker 12: But also we believe that with China reopening greater parts
- 39:53Speaker 12: of Asia, whether with or without, China has also experienced
- 39:56Speaker 12: some very good growth dynamics overall our opportunities, but we
- 40:02Speaker 12: tend to approach it not from necessarily a less buy
- 40:04Speaker 12: a basket of everything. You got to pick and choose,
- 40:07Speaker 12: and we have teams on the ground over there who's
- 40:09Speaker 12: responsible for doing that.
- 40:10Speaker 11: And you think that the China reopening story has just started,
- 40:14Speaker 11: then like what inning are we in when it comes
- 40:16Speaker 11: to the demand that's going to come from that.
- 40:18Speaker 12: The demand is going to be a little bit disappointing
- 40:22Speaker 12: and has been versus expectations overall, but we do see
- 40:27Speaker 12: if you look at things like airline travel data within
- 40:30Speaker 12: and outside of China, that's one area where we're still
- 40:33Speaker 12: in the very early innings of that demand rebound. Overall,
- 40:37Speaker 12: I think the manufacturing side is going to still struggle
- 40:40Speaker 12: a bit. So that's why we're turning more toward the consumer,
- 40:43Speaker 12: more towards services, and more toward internal expenditures.
- 40:48Speaker 1: Steve, and I know you spend some time at Bank
- 40:49Speaker 1: of America, which I refer to as Merrill Lynch on
- 40:52Speaker 1: the Hyld trading and distress that trading desk. If you
- 40:55Speaker 1: have a big position in pine Bridge and you need
- 40:57Speaker 1: to move it, can you move it?
- 41:00Speaker 12: The good news is we don't have big positions because
- 41:03Speaker 12: we're mid size of institutions. But no, you cannot move
- 41:06Speaker 12: big positions anymore. The market is, you know, has always
- 41:09Speaker 12: been semi liquid for distress or even you know, any
- 41:13Speaker 12: type of credit, and now it's become much more illiquid overall,
- 41:18Speaker 12: and so it becomes a much more challenging environment where
- 41:21Speaker 12: you have to have greater conviction of what you're buying
- 41:23Speaker 12: within credit because the liquidity is definitely going to be
- 41:26Speaker 12: more challenging. And I think at some level of size,
- 41:29Speaker 12: you know, for example, in the most liquid part of
- 41:32Speaker 12: credit investment, great corporates. You know, back pre financial crisis,
- 41:36Speaker 12: we used to get fifty by fifty markets. Now you're
- 41:38Speaker 12: lucky if you can get a five y five market yep, yep.
- 41:41Speaker 1: Chat times have change. Steven Oh, thank you so much
- 41:44Speaker 1: for joining as Steven Oh. He's a global head of
- 41:46Speaker 1: fixed income at pine Bridge Investments based in the City
- 41:49Speaker 1: of angels but he joins us here in New York
- 41:51Speaker 1: City on our Bloomberg Interactor Broker studio. We appreciate him
- 41:53Speaker 1: coming in giving us his lay of the land in
- 41:56Speaker 1: the fixed income space. I'm just looking down at the market.
- 41:58Speaker 1: I'll give you some of the treasury quotes here. We
- 42:01Speaker 1: got the two year treasury four point four to nine percent. Again,
- 42:04Speaker 1: I can sit there for a couple of years and
- 42:06Speaker 1: get that that's not too bad. Ten year treasury off
- 42:08Speaker 1: about three basis points here, three spot six eight percent
- 42:11Speaker 1: on your ten year treasury.
- 42:13Speaker 6: You're listening to the tape can'ser Live program Bloomberg Markets
- 42:17Speaker 6: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the tune
- 42:20Speaker 6: in app, Bloomberg dot Com.
- 42:22Speaker 8: And the Bloomberg Business App.
- 42:23Speaker 6: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 42:26Speaker 6: flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 42:33Speaker 1: All right, now, let's pivot to Maddie. I think this
- 42:36Speaker 1: debt ceiling discussion, which was front and center for you know,
- 42:39Speaker 1: a month or so, it seems like it's been resolved.
- 42:42Speaker 1: In My question is kind of what comes next. Doctor
- 42:46Speaker 1: Nancy Kimmelman joins us. She's an economics professor from Northeastern
- 42:50Speaker 1: University and Tuffs University. So doctor Kimmelman, thanks for joining
- 42:54Speaker 1: us here. What does come next here with this debt
- 42:58Speaker 1: ceiling deal? What should we be thinking about?
- 43:01Speaker 13: Well, I think what we're seeing on the political side
- 43:03Speaker 13: right now is sort of an interpretation of what was
- 43:09Speaker 13: the dynamic, what were the dynamics between the Biden administration
- 43:12Speaker 13: and the Republicans in Congress. And there have been some
- 43:16Speaker 13: interesting articles written about how really Biden seems to have
- 43:20Speaker 13: gotten a good handle on the Republican Party, and maybe
- 43:24Speaker 13: there's some opportunity ahead through the two parties and for
- 43:28Speaker 13: Congress and the White House to work better together. I
- 43:31Speaker 13: think that would be hopeful. At the same time, we
- 43:34Speaker 13: do know certainly that the Republican members of Congress are
- 43:38Speaker 13: our claiming this of success and that it got the
- 43:42Speaker 13: administration to take some cuts. The cuts aren't actually that significant,
- 43:47Speaker 13: and in fact, you know, everyone pretty much knew that
- 43:49Speaker 13: there was eventually going to be a deal, and there
- 43:51Speaker 13: was a deal. I think at this point, you know,
- 43:54Speaker 13: other than maybe a little bit of post mortem, I
- 43:57Speaker 13: think the markets and most people are sort of looking
- 44:00Speaker 13: ahead and saying to ourselves, Okay, well we're now what
- 44:03Speaker 13: We're past the dead ceiling. We're back into worrying about
- 44:07Speaker 13: whether what the FET has done is enough? Yette. Is
- 44:10Speaker 13: the economy weakening? Is it weakening considerably? Is it weakening
- 44:13Speaker 13: at all? So I think, unfortunately the Friday employment reports
- 44:17Speaker 13: that we got through a lot of questions our way,
- 44:21Speaker 13: and we're back into the sort of old story of
- 44:24Speaker 13: we in terms of this, in terms of this tightening cycle,
- 44:28Speaker 13: and where's the economy? Where's it going?
- 44:30Speaker 11: Does the back and forth over the debt ceiling lead
- 44:34Speaker 11: to any repercussions for the US economy on the global
- 44:36Speaker 11: stage moving forward? Or is the global world sloughing it
- 44:40Speaker 11: off as much as markets did.
- 44:43Speaker 13: I think everyone's sloughing it off. First off, I don't
- 44:46Speaker 13: think it has any repercussions in terms of economic performance
- 44:50Speaker 13: from what I have read. I don't personally have my
- 44:53Speaker 13: own macroeconomic model, but I read the results of those
- 44:55Speaker 13: who do, and the folkse who run these models do
- 44:59Speaker 13: not see any real impact on the performance of the
- 45:02Speaker 13: economy and the remainder of this year or even next year.
- 45:05Speaker 13: Did the debt ceiling talk the most aggressive? The most
- 45:09Speaker 13: aggressive result that I saw was that maybe it would
- 45:12Speaker 13: turn into a one tenth of one percent increase in
- 45:14Speaker 13: the unemployment rate at some point this year. So I
- 45:17Speaker 13: think the economic impact is mooted, muted, and I think
- 45:22Speaker 13: also the political point is moot at this point. The
- 45:26Speaker 13: fact is, everyone sort of knew that they were eventually
- 45:29Speaker 13: going to get together. They took it a little bit
- 45:31Speaker 13: too close to the wire for everyone concerned, but they
- 45:34Speaker 13: did come through and it was sort of back to normal.
- 45:39Speaker 1: So I guess with the deal in place now, there
- 45:42Speaker 1: are some folks in the in the money markets, I
- 45:44Speaker 1: guess that are concerned that the Treasury will soon replenish
- 45:47Speaker 1: its cash balance by selling more than one trillion dollars
- 45:50Speaker 1: of bills through the end of the third quarter. That
- 45:53Speaker 1: seems like a big number to me. How does that
- 45:55Speaker 1: all work?
- 45:55Speaker 3: Is a big number.
- 45:57Speaker 13: It is a big number, but it's not a surprising number.
- 46:02Speaker 13: I mean, the Treasury had to train its auction schedule
- 46:07Speaker 13: as a result of the potential for the debt ceiling
- 46:09Speaker 13: not to be lifted. Now that things have gotten back
- 46:12Speaker 13: to normal. They're going to resume a much more normal
- 46:15Speaker 13: after we get through the next couple of weeks, They're
- 46:17Speaker 13: going to resume a much more normal auction schedule. You know,
- 46:21Speaker 13: I looked this morning, and from what I could see,
- 46:24Speaker 13: the three and the six month Treasury auction, the results
- 46:27Speaker 13: that I thought eleven thirty looked pretty damn good. So
- 46:31Speaker 13: my suspicion is that people are worried about there being
- 46:35Speaker 13: enough liquidity in the market in order to be able
- 46:38Speaker 13: to stop up the new securities that the Treasury is
- 46:41Speaker 13: ready to offer. And that really hasn't been an issue
- 46:44Speaker 13: for the US Treasury for many years now. And I
- 46:47Speaker 13: suspect that there's plenty of money on the sidelines, whether
- 46:50Speaker 13: it's in money market funds or maybe it's in some
- 46:53Speaker 13: equity funds where they were just sort of hoping at
- 46:57Speaker 13: some point to be able to push it back into
- 46:59Speaker 13: a saber asset like treasury builds. So my suspicion is
- 47:02Speaker 13: that we're not going to see distortions in the yield curve,
- 47:06Speaker 13: and we're not going to see distortions in the in
- 47:09Speaker 13: the markets due to the Treasury and zooming fairly fairly
- 47:13Speaker 13: aggressive schedule of auctions.
- 47:16Speaker 11: So money market funds specifically, that's that's all good from
- 47:20Speaker 11: your perspective.
- 47:21Speaker 7: Well, I think I think the.
- 47:22Speaker 13: Money market funds. First of all, there's a lot of
- 47:24Speaker 13: money there, but I think those money market funds will
- 47:27Speaker 13: tilt towards putting more treasury securities in the portfolio. And frankly,
- 47:32Speaker 13: if I were running a money market fun and I
- 47:34Speaker 13: were an aggressive active manager, that is something that I
- 47:37Speaker 13: would want to do. First off, because the economy is
- 47:41Speaker 13: still uncertain. We don't know where the said is going.
- 47:44Speaker 13: But the other part of it is that the banking
- 47:46Speaker 13: system is a little bit risky. We're seeing we've seen,
- 47:50Speaker 13: you know, already a couple of name failures this year.
- 47:54Speaker 13: People are concerned about the fact that there's going to
- 47:57Speaker 13: be new bank capital regulations UH that are imposed upon
- 48:01Speaker 13: the banks, and that could lead to some more trouble
- 48:04Speaker 13: amongst some of the big name banks. So I think
- 48:07Speaker 13: it makes sense now that the Treasury is going to
- 48:09Speaker 13: be back selling a lot of treasury securities, I think
- 48:12Speaker 13: it does make sense for money market funds and a
- 48:14Speaker 13: lot of actively amounaged funds to put more treasuries back
- 48:17Speaker 13: in the portfolio because the risk profile is there.
- 48:23Speaker 1: So January twenty five, do we just come run and
- 48:25Speaker 1: do this all again? Is this kind of the new
- 48:27Speaker 1: normal or them?
- 48:29Speaker 13: You say, yeah, oh yeah, unless by some miracle we
- 48:32Speaker 13: end up with either a fully Republican or a fully
- 48:35Speaker 13: democratic Washington. Yeah, we're going to do it again. We've
- 48:38Speaker 13: been doing it over and over again. It is a
- 48:42Speaker 13: broken system. That's the easiest way for me to say it.
- 48:46Speaker 13: We should have a government that is functioning. We should
- 48:50Speaker 13: have a government where the Treasury, the representatives of the
- 48:53Speaker 13: Late House the Treasury sit together with representatives of Congress,
- 48:57Speaker 13: and we have to have a budget and then cows.
- 49:00Speaker 13: We've patched out the budget. There's an agreement that will
- 49:03Speaker 13: raise the debt ceiling in order to be able to
- 49:04Speaker 13: fund that budget. But for reasons which evades me, unfortunately,
- 49:10Speaker 13: we do not come up with a budget and then
- 49:13Speaker 13: at the same time agree this is what we need
- 49:15Speaker 13: to raise the debt ceiling too.
- 49:17Speaker 3: In order to fund it.
- 49:18Speaker 13: Everything that this debt ceiling was going to put off
- 49:21Speaker 13: the spending and make ways in the marketplace, it was
- 49:26Speaker 13: all based on spending that has already been approved by Congress.
- 49:30Speaker 13: Now facing at the third the Congress has already approved
- 49:34Speaker 13: the spending, and yet now they're saying, we're not gonna
- 49:36Speaker 13: let you raise the money. Uh, it's got to be
- 49:39Speaker 13: done better than that. But we have not, we have
- 49:43Speaker 13: not had a two party system that has allowed that
- 49:46Speaker 13: to happen.
- 49:47Speaker 1: All right, interesting analysis there, because this is an issue
- 49:51Speaker 1: that just keeps coming back and back. It seems like
- 49:52Speaker 1: doctor Nancy Kimmelman, economics professor at Northeastern University and at
- 49:57Speaker 1: Tufts University, so got the Boston area covered there from
- 50:01Speaker 1: economics perspective. But again, talking about the debt ceiling, it's done,
- 50:05Speaker 1: that's the good news. Looks like the Fed has to
- 50:08Speaker 1: rebuild its balance sheet. It's the lowest level of cash
- 50:11Speaker 1: they've had on balance for a number of years. So
- 50:13Speaker 1: they could be out there in the market selling up
- 50:15Speaker 1: to one trillion dollars in securities to replenish the balance sheet.
- 50:21Speaker 1: And so the folks in the bond market, the money
- 50:22Speaker 1: markets are getting ready for that.
- 50:25Speaker 6: You're listening to the tape Cat's are live program Bloomberg
- 50:28Speaker 6: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 50:32Speaker 6: tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and.
- 50:34Speaker 8: The Bloomberg Business app.
- 50:35Speaker 6: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 50:38Speaker 6: flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 50:44Speaker 1: Just do a little tech talk? Shall we round table
- 50:47Speaker 1: at Madison. We can do that because we've got a
- 50:49Speaker 1: couple of smart analysts joining us here, Man Deep Singing,
- 50:51Speaker 1: anorog Rana, their senior tech analysts for Bloomberg Intelligence. We've
- 50:55Speaker 1: got an rog Via Zoom and mandeep here in the
- 50:58Speaker 1: studio on rag are with you. You're kind of one
- 51:01Speaker 1: of your companies. I don't know. I think it's called Apple,
- 51:03Speaker 1: Apple Computer or something. It's out in California. I think
- 51:06Speaker 1: in some valley out there. They got an event today.
- 51:09Speaker 1: What are they eventing? What are they going to show us?
- 51:13Speaker 14: Yeah, thanks, Paul, so it Such events are very common
- 51:16Speaker 14: for all the technology companies. And you know, historically on
- 51:20Speaker 14: this event in or Apple, they've been launching new software updates,
- 51:24Speaker 14: any kind of new products. So I would say the
- 51:27Speaker 14: biggest product launch is going to be their mixed reality
- 51:30Speaker 14: headset that's going to come out after the use of waiting.
- 51:33Speaker 14: It's going to create a lot of buzz. It's already
- 51:35Speaker 14: creating a lot of buzz. But I think it's going
- 51:38Speaker 14: to be a spectacular event when it comes to showcasing
- 51:41Speaker 14: of what this thing can do. Frankly, on the functionality
- 51:43Speaker 14: side of it.
- 51:44Speaker 1: What is multiple what's it called again?
- 51:47Speaker 11: Mixed reality?
- 51:47Speaker 1: Mix mix, mixed reality? What's mixed reality? From virtual reality?
- 51:51Speaker 1: From augmented reality? What is mixed reality? I thought was.
- 51:56Speaker 14: Well, mixed reality is a combination of augmented and virtual reality.
- 52:00Speaker 14: So in virtual reality you would have you know, your
- 52:02Speaker 14: avatar drinking some you know, something nice, and then the
- 52:05Speaker 14: augmented reality you would have half of it real and
- 52:08Speaker 14: half of it not real.
- 52:10Speaker 11: So Google Glass didn't work. I'm never going to put
- 52:14Speaker 11: a headset on my face. Menteep. Does Apple care about that?
- 52:19Speaker 8: Well?
- 52:19Speaker 15: So I think they're trying to create a new form factor.
- 52:22Speaker 15: That is when they're to their you know, iPhone AirPod ecosystem,
- 52:27Speaker 15: and really this is their way to drive more you know,
- 52:32Speaker 15: sps out of the install base they have. And look,
- 52:36Speaker 15: I think the reason why Apple works so well in
- 52:38Speaker 15: terms of just keeping their ecosystem intact is because of
- 52:43Speaker 15: the bundle that they have created. And to me, you know,
- 52:46Speaker 15: they can sell this high priced product to a subset
- 52:50Speaker 15: of people that can afford it, and they may find
- 52:52Speaker 15: a use case around it, whether it's on the corporate
- 52:55Speaker 15: side or consumer side. But the problem that Meta had
- 52:58Speaker 15: is they never were able to bring the developer community
- 53:01Speaker 15: to build on their ecosystem. Apple doesn't have that problem.
- 53:04Speaker 15: They can have developers build on this ecosystem because they
- 53:07Speaker 15: already have a big ecosystem.
- 53:09Speaker 12: Built on the iOS.
- 53:11Speaker 8: Oh.
- 53:11Speaker 15: I see the apps that they already have, some of
- 53:14Speaker 15: that can be extended into this augmented reality or the
- 53:17Speaker 15: mixed reality form factor that Anarag mentioned, And there could
- 53:21Speaker 15: be certain apps that are good in that sort of uh,
- 53:25Speaker 15: you know, form factor because it can enhance productivity. And
- 53:28Speaker 15: I think that's the part that Meta, even though they
- 53:31Speaker 15: were early to it they have invested billions of dollars,
- 53:34Speaker 15: they never had that ecosystem aspect where developers would come
- 53:37Speaker 15: and build on their platform.
- 53:39Speaker 1: Hey, an Rog, do I have to pay attention to
- 53:42Speaker 1: this AI thing or did you guys have your time
- 53:45Speaker 1: in the sun last week with a big boom and
- 53:47Speaker 1: in video stock? What's your view here on AI and
- 53:51Speaker 1: how it may develop?
- 53:52Speaker 14: So, I mean, at the end of the day, it
- 53:55Speaker 14: will develop at its own pace, frankly, but it is
- 53:57Speaker 14: one of the bigger you know, you could say change
- 54:00Speaker 14: is in the technology ecosystem and almost in each and
- 54:04Speaker 14: every piece. We're trying to figure out how it impacts
- 54:06Speaker 14: different players. You know, from our side, this is just
- 54:09Speaker 14: another boost the technology industry gets. And you know, some
- 54:13Speaker 14: of this thing is you can't run this stuff in
- 54:15Speaker 14: older infrastructure, old and stuff. You have to have newer,
- 54:19Speaker 14: shiny toys like moving things to the cloud. So I
- 54:21Speaker 14: think it really helps the entire technology ecosystem in all forms,
- 54:27Speaker 14: whether it's hardware, software services. I mean, it's going to
- 54:30Speaker 14: be a fun thing to see how it evolves over
- 54:32Speaker 14: the next few years.
- 54:33Speaker 11: But this is my question. Isn't the metaverse a couple
- 54:36Speaker 11: of years ago what AI is today? But AI is better?
- 54:40Speaker 11: Like did Apple bet on this when the metaverse was
- 54:43Speaker 11: cool and now the actual product is coming out a
- 54:47Speaker 11: little too late. I'm looking at Mandy if you can't
- 54:49Speaker 11: see that on early.
- 54:50Speaker 15: Yes, Look, I think for me, the key thing is
- 54:54Speaker 15: if Apple was to leverage generative AI, they have to
- 54:57Speaker 15: do it on their phone. The difference is the loud
- 55:00Speaker 15: guys are all adding AI capabilities in their data center,
- 55:04Speaker 15: whether it's awlu ass, Google Cloud. Apple has the install
- 55:08Speaker 15: base in terms of the edge and we actually distinguish
- 55:11Speaker 15: that and a report the training versus the inference side.
- 55:14Speaker 15: So the training side is where you train a large
- 55:17Speaker 15: anguid model. Inference is where you use a large anguige
- 55:19Speaker 15: model to answer questions. And that's where Apple has that
- 55:23Speaker 15: install base. So if they develop a phone that can
- 55:25Speaker 15: leverage generative AI, that would drive a whole new refresh cycle.
- 55:29Speaker 15: And so imagine Apple phones are refreshed every three four years.
- 55:33Speaker 15: This could just be things up in terms of everybody
- 55:35Speaker 15: wanting that new iPhone version because it has that generative
- 55:38Speaker 15: AI element.
- 55:40Speaker 1: All right, who's our chip guy?
- 55:41Speaker 15: We have a chip guy, right, Well, we have Kunjin
- 55:44Speaker 15: who is based out of the West coast.
- 55:45Speaker 1: Kunjin, right, he's right, okay, so he's our chip guy.
- 55:48Speaker 1: So he had his moment in the sun with Nvidia
- 55:51Speaker 1: and stuff like that. But I know you guys, and
- 55:52Speaker 1: I know how technology works, hardware software. It's almost like
- 55:57Speaker 1: you want to play the arms player for you know,
- 56:00Speaker 1: I think the beginning of the Internet we said by Akamai,
- 56:03Speaker 1: you know, because they make this stuff that makes the
- 56:04Speaker 1: Internet go, and we don't even know what the Internet's
- 56:06Speaker 1: going to become. What are you guys thinking about now?
- 56:08Speaker 1: On Rock I'll start with you, what are you guys
- 56:10Speaker 1: thinking about hardware software? How should investors approach this thing
- 56:15Speaker 1: called AI?
- 56:17Speaker 14: See from again, one of the things I mentioned before,
- 56:20Speaker 14: you have to upgrade your oldest infrastructure, which means, you know,
- 56:23Speaker 14: from our side, the hyperscale cloud providers are the biggest
- 56:26Speaker 14: beneficiary of this particular shift on the software side. Almost
- 56:30Speaker 14: all the all the big companies, you know, whether it's Microsoft,
- 56:34Speaker 14: whether it's Adobe, whether it's you know, Salesforce, all of
- 56:38Speaker 14: them will be investing heavily because remember, if they have
- 56:41Speaker 14: the biggest installed based of users, millions of people using
- 56:45Speaker 14: their products, they are the ones who can figure out
- 56:47Speaker 14: things in a much faster way compared to a smaller company.
- 56:51Speaker 11: Man do anything to add on that.
- 56:53Speaker 15: Well, so to me, I think the interesting aspect here
- 56:57Speaker 15: is these are all the companies that are on the
- 57:01Speaker 15: verge of disruption, but we are betting on, you know,
- 57:04Speaker 15: these companies actually being the kind of the torch bereers
- 57:08Speaker 15: when it comes to the disruptive element that's going to
- 57:11Speaker 15: play out. And so there will be I'm sure you know,
- 57:14Speaker 15: a new startup that will really come out big in
- 57:17Speaker 15: terms of finding that stellar use case that will scale revenues,
- 57:21Speaker 15: and maybe chat GPT.
- 57:23Speaker 1: Is that use case.
- 57:25Speaker 15: But clearly there's a lot of disruption on the horizon.
- 57:28Speaker 15: I think the interesting point to make here is that
- 57:32Speaker 15: we're really betting on all the incumbents to drive that
- 57:35Speaker 15: disruption forward.
- 57:36Speaker 1: Right so, I'm waiting for the next wave of the
- 57:41Speaker 1: Google facebooks of AI, and.
- 57:45Speaker 15: So right now it is the Metas and the Googles
- 57:48Speaker 15: that are the most likely gonna disrupt themselves. And you know,
- 57:53Speaker 15: I don't see and look, there could be somebody else
- 57:55Speaker 15: out there, and that's why I mentioned chat GPT. But Meta,
- 57:58Speaker 15: given its scale and the first party data it has
- 58:01Speaker 15: and the resources it has, looks to be the best position.
- 58:05Speaker 1: Who's the merry meeker of AI?
- 58:07Speaker 15: Is it?
- 58:08Speaker 8: You?
- 58:08Speaker 1: And Honora? We got to establish because all right, let's
- 58:14Speaker 1: go down allay, this is where man Deep is. He
- 58:16Speaker 1: can go high on the hog on some of the
- 58:18Speaker 1: big tech but Twitter, what's elon? I mean, is anybody
- 58:23Speaker 1: buying ads on this thing? We keep hearing the reporting
- 58:26Speaker 1: is just brutal.
- 58:27Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean down fifty nine percent, But to me,
- 58:30Speaker 15: the engagement isn't down fifty nine percent. So even though
- 58:32Speaker 15: some advertisers have pulled back that's more of a reflection
- 58:36Speaker 15: of them being concerned in the short term about the
- 58:38Speaker 15: brand safety on Twitter's platform. Twitter's engagement is still holding up.
- 58:43Speaker 15: I mean, I would bet you know it's down, but
- 58:46Speaker 15: probably not down more than single digits.
- 58:48Speaker 1: These dollars go on to Facebook and Google and Snap and.
- 58:52Speaker 15: I mean, we are in that part of the digital
- 58:55Speaker 15: ad cycle where everybody is pulling back. And we know
- 58:58Speaker 15: digital ad is a cyclical market, so some of it
- 59:00Speaker 15: is that. But yes, clearly meta and you know, all
- 59:03Speaker 15: the kind of the direct response players, including Alphabet, they
- 59:07Speaker 15: are the ones who are still kind of doing much
- 59:10Speaker 15: better than the smaller players.
- 59:11Speaker 11: But Elon has said he doesn't care, right, hon rog
- 59:14Speaker 11: At some point does Elon have to care about the
- 59:17Speaker 11: lack of ad dollars?
- 59:19Speaker 7: There?
- 59:19Speaker 11: We have just about forty five seconds left.
- 59:22Speaker 14: See, from my point, this is a two different business models.
- 59:25Speaker 14: You know, I can't mix enterprise versus consumer oriented stuff.
- 59:29Speaker 14: I think in my personal view, if he just focuses
- 59:32Speaker 14: on the car, that's going to be best for all
- 59:33Speaker 14: of us.
- 59:34Speaker 1: Focus on the car there you go, right, all right,
- 59:37Speaker 1: So all right, we're gonna let you guys go. We've
- 59:39Speaker 1: had enough of technology talk for the day Mandy's saying
- 59:42Speaker 1: on Rock Rana, their senior tech analysts part of this,
- 59:46Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, a global team of close to twenty
- 59:48Speaker 1: technology analysts around the world, and you know, we're gonna
- 59:53Speaker 1: send man Deep to London next week. We're gonna send
- 59:54Speaker 1: him to Asia the week after that to kind of
- 59:56Speaker 1: check in on all our tech analysts, make sure they
- 59:58Speaker 1: are focusing on the right things, make sure they're you know,
- 1:00:01Speaker 1: focusing on the right trends. And AI has got to
- 1:00:03Speaker 1: be at the top of the Listcus boy, even for
- 1:00:05Speaker 1: like you know, people like you and I, Matty, we
- 1:00:07Speaker 1: hear about it every day.
- 1:00:08Speaker 11: We can't stop hearing about it. And it feels to
- 1:00:11Speaker 11: Mendep's point, I guess the idea is that the BMTH
- 1:00:14Speaker 11: names we already know are going to be the ones
- 1:00:16Speaker 11: with the power to gobble up the next big AI
- 1:00:19Speaker 11: names as well.
- 1:00:20Speaker 1: Yeah, but it just you know, I keep again, when
- 1:00:22Speaker 1: you think about the beginning of the Internet, in some
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: of these big companies like a Google, and then in
- 1:00:27Speaker 1: social media came along you had Facebook. You know, are
- 1:00:30Speaker 1: there going to be similar moments like that when new
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: companies come into the marketplace, And you got to think
- 1:00:34Speaker 1: the answer is yes, But I guess people were just
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: trying to identify where those companies, what type of companies
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: are they, what applications do they have, What's what technologies
- 1:00:43Speaker 1: do they bring to the marketplace, because we keep hearing
- 1:00:45Speaker 1: about artificial intelligence being the next big, big, big thing
- 1:00:49Speaker 1: in technology, so have to see how that plays out.
- 1:00:54Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can
- 1:00:57Speaker 2: subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple past or whatever
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- 1:01:05Speaker 2: at Matt Miller nineteen seventy three.
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: And I'm Paul Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney.
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