Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Schwab’s Trading Volume Swells at End of Strong Year for Markets
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- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
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- 0:21Speaker 1: or watch us live on YouTube.
- 0:24Speaker 2: Lots of news flow out today. We want to get
- 0:26Speaker 2: back to some earnings. Are good friends of Charles Schwab.
- 0:28Speaker 2: They put up some some pretty good numbers taking in
- 0:30Speaker 2: more assets. It just blows me away. Here. Let's get
- 0:33Speaker 2: some of the details on Charles Schwab, a big financial
- 0:36Speaker 2: company reporting their results stock trading hire here today Neil
- 0:39Speaker 2: Sipstrain's he covers the financials for Bloomberg Intelligence. Neil talk
- 0:42Speaker 2: to us about the Charles Schwab. What's going on there?
- 0:44Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we're seeing a lot of franchise traction here.
- 0:47Speaker 3: I mean, you look at Schwab, right, we think about
- 0:50Speaker 3: massive retail broker forty six million touch points across the US.
- 0:55Speaker 3: So this is the mass affluent all the way up
- 0:57Speaker 3: to smaller buckets in higher networth jewels. And what we're
- 1:01Speaker 3: seeing is the fourth quarter was excellent, right in terms
- 1:04Speaker 3: of retail engagement markets were near all time highs. We're
- 1:07Speaker 3: still kind of floating around there despite some choppiness. Margin balances,
- 1:12Speaker 3: these are obviously very lucrative lending opportunities for a name
- 1:16Speaker 3: like Schwab, robin Hood, etc. You know, margin balances were
- 1:21Speaker 3: at a record So we're seeing that sort of exuberance
- 1:25Speaker 3: in the markets, and all of that is you know,
- 1:27Speaker 3: positive to the fundamentals that someone like Schwab where people
- 1:29Speaker 3: continually you know, it's a cyclical name, but you tend
- 1:34Speaker 3: to add more assets into your account when markets are
- 1:36Speaker 3: performing well, you tend to trade a little bit more.
- 1:38Speaker 3: Engagement sentiment is higher. All that sort of feeds feeds
- 1:42Speaker 3: the franchise.
- 1:43Speaker 4: Does that exuberance extend to speculative for verb, meaning is
- 1:47Speaker 4: Charlie Troub going to lean into prediction markets or crypto?
- 1:51Speaker 3: Yeah? So I guess two different answers there. Crypto yes.
- 1:55Speaker 3: I think the more favorable outlook at least for crypto
- 1:58Speaker 3: regulation and enforced has sort of allowed them to move
- 2:02Speaker 3: forward and rolling out spot crypto trading, which we expect
- 2:06Speaker 3: in the first half of twenty twenty six. They've talked
- 2:09Speaker 3: about how a lot of their customers are trading the
- 2:11Speaker 3: bitcoin ETFs and alike and sort of moving into the
- 2:16Speaker 3: spot trading that you've seen for a longer period of
- 2:19Speaker 3: time at crypto native firms, as well as names like Robinhood,
- 2:22Speaker 3: so expanding into that business that should you know, provide
- 2:26Speaker 3: yet another additive product, not necessarily becoming a crypto powerhouse
- 2:31Speaker 3: like some of the other names like a coin base
- 2:33Speaker 3: of Robin Hoood that we know of. Prediction markets, on
- 2:35Speaker 3: the other hand, they've been slower and more measured in
- 2:38Speaker 3: the plans there, staying away from the sports. They've talked
- 2:42Speaker 3: about if those financial type contracts that are tied to
- 2:44Speaker 3: economic outcomes or stock outcomes, those eventually could make their
- 2:49Speaker 3: way under the platform. No plans yet, but for now
- 2:52Speaker 3: sports gambling is not on the table.
- 2:55Speaker 2: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 3:02Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
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- 3:17Speaker 2: We want to turn to David Gerry here from Bloomberg News.
- 3:19Speaker 2: He joins us here as in our studio. David that
- 3:21Speaker 2: was a long, rambling speech from the President in Davos,
- 3:24Speaker 2: had some tough words, as I guess should be expected
- 3:28Speaker 2: for some of those in attendance from the world leaders.
- 3:31Speaker 2: There any takeaways for you there? It was striking.
- 3:35Speaker 5: I was in this very same seat yesterday listening to
- 3:36Speaker 5: the President as he went to the White House to
- 3:38Speaker 5: that press briefing, and a lot of what we heard
- 3:40Speaker 5: that seemed scripted was what we heard the President say yesterday.
- 3:43Speaker 5: So we talked about the domestic economy, talked about the
- 3:45Speaker 5: last year, and all he sees is himself is achieving
- 3:47Speaker 5: over the last year, the first year of his second term.
- 3:50Speaker 5: But almost as an aside, he said to the audience,
- 3:52Speaker 5: you want me to talk about Greenland, and lo he did,
- 3:55Speaker 5: and as Scarlett pointed out, he referred to it as
- 3:57Speaker 5: a piece of ice, cold and poorly located that can
- 3:59Speaker 5: play a vital role in world peace and world protection.
- 4:02Speaker 5: And he, over the coorus of maybe fifteen or twenty minutes,
- 4:06Speaker 5: made the case for the US acquiring that territory. Didn't
- 4:09Speaker 5: say explicitly how we would go about doing that. As
- 4:11Speaker 5: Scarlette pointed out, said that the goal here for the
- 4:13Speaker 5: US is not to use force to do so, but
- 4:16Speaker 5: said that he needs it for strategic international security. That's
- 4:18Speaker 5: our territory, the President said, And he dovetailed that Paul
- 4:22Speaker 5: with commentary on NATO and criticism of NATO in a
- 4:26Speaker 5: way that I think would shock a lot of people
- 4:28Speaker 5: in the room, people from Europe especially, who likely blanched
- 4:33Speaker 5: when he said that if something were to happen, if
- 4:35Speaker 5: the US were to be attacked and the US were
- 4:37Speaker 5: to call NATO, he's not sure that those allies would
- 4:38Speaker 5: come to the defense of the US. And I just
- 4:41Speaker 5: have to point out here the one time that Article
- 4:43Speaker 5: five of the North Atlantic Treaty has been triggered invoked
- 4:46Speaker 5: was after September eleventh. That's when NATO got involved. So
- 4:50Speaker 5: we talk about his sandwiches often as sandwiches, you got
- 4:53Speaker 5: to focus on what's in the middle. I think that
- 4:54Speaker 5: was the case during that speech as well. Again, a
- 4:57Speaker 5: lot of boilerplate that we've heard before about his achievement,
- 5:00Speaker 5: it's in the state of the economy, but really it
- 5:01Speaker 5: was the middle. It was the substance that was the
- 5:02Speaker 5: most interested to people there in the room. And I'm
- 5:04Speaker 5: frankly not sure that what the President said there is
- 5:06Speaker 5: going to do anything to kind of play cat or
- 5:08Speaker 5: pacify or turn down the temperature in the room of
- 5:11Speaker 5: those European leaders who have been so gravely concerned by
- 5:13Speaker 5: what the President has said about Greenland.
- 5:16Speaker 4: But it didn't seem to alarm investors because we see
- 5:18Speaker 4: equities higher right now, the SMP five hundred of seven,
- 5:22Speaker 4: tens of one percent. You're also seeing yields lower too,
- 5:25Speaker 4: with the ten yure yield, you know, marginally lower, but notably.
- 5:29Speaker 4: It's a negative sign in front of the movement there.
- 5:31Speaker 4: So for investors, it wasn't alarming to the point where
- 5:35Speaker 4: anyone needs to do anything.
- 5:36Speaker 2: It wasn't.
- 5:37Speaker 5: And you know, this is a game that we play
- 5:39Speaker 5: over and over again as the President introduces something, expounds
- 5:42Speaker 5: upon it more, maybe walks things back, and investors are
- 5:44Speaker 5: trying to process all of this in real time. So
- 5:46Speaker 5: I think while this speech was important to hear from
- 5:48Speaker 5: the President directly on Greenland, more than we've heard from
- 5:50Speaker 5: his posts on social media, I think attention now turns
- 5:53Speaker 5: to what these European leaders saying. Next, we were talking
- 5:56Speaker 5: on surveillance about how there is no unanimity among European leaders. Yes,
- 6:01Speaker 5: I think there's an effort underway by a lot of
- 6:02Speaker 5: these leaders to kind of get everybody on board with
- 6:04Speaker 5: a coordinated response with the US is proposing here. That's
- 6:07Speaker 5: what I think we investors are going to be paying
- 6:09Speaker 5: attention to in the days to come with Now, that's.
- 6:11Speaker 4: A structural weakness with Europe, right, that they can't get
- 6:13Speaker 4: together and come up with a decision quickly.
- 6:16Speaker 5: It is a structural weakness and one I think that
- 6:18Speaker 5: these leaders acknowledge, and certainly President Trump acknowledged in that
- 6:21Speaker 5: speech as well in the run up to it. I
- 6:23Speaker 5: think that he sees Europe as being weak because they
- 6:25Speaker 5: can't come to a coordinated response on issues like this,
- 6:27Speaker 5: and he kind of extended that further in those remarks
- 6:29Speaker 5: to talk about a potential military response to some sort
- 6:31Speaker 5: of attack. So I think that he has and continues
- 6:34Speaker 5: to see Europe as being weak by the way that
- 6:36Speaker 5: it's structured here, and that sort of manifests in this
- 6:39Speaker 5: speech as well. So again I think that's the more
- 6:43Speaker 5: sale and important point for me, is sort of the
- 6:45Speaker 5: way that Europe talks about this and acts here in
- 6:47Speaker 5: the coming days.
- 6:49Speaker 2: Mark Carney from Canada some strong words today. How does
- 6:53Speaker 2: that relationship do you think work between Canada and the
- 6:56Speaker 2: European Union broadly defined, because obviously there are some close
- 6:59Speaker 2: ties every mister. He had some pretty sharp rhetoric.
- 7:02Speaker 5: Yeah, he delivered a very forceful speech in which he
- 7:04Speaker 5: said we're in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
- 7:07Speaker 5: So he is not minimizing what's going on here. And
- 7:10Speaker 5: I think you've seen him go back and forth to
- 7:12Speaker 5: Europe a number of times since he started in the
- 7:14Speaker 5: job as Prime Minister. He clearly has good relationships with
- 7:16Speaker 5: many of these European leaders, both through his work in
- 7:19Speaker 5: this job and certainly the job that he had before
- 7:21Speaker 5: that when he was at the Bank of England. He
- 7:23Speaker 5: knows a lot of these principles and I think he's
- 7:26Speaker 5: worked hard to better fortify that relationship between Canada and
- 7:29Speaker 5: these European nations. And so the substance of that speech, yes,
- 7:31Speaker 5: it was this criticism of the liberal order. He basically
- 7:35Speaker 5: said that the many countries have been misled by alliging
- 7:38Speaker 5: themselves with the United States. But if you look at
- 7:41Speaker 5: how that has kind of turned into an economic policy platform,
- 7:44Speaker 5: he's very much making the case for mid sized countries.
- 7:47Speaker 5: I think this is fascinating and something to chart going
- 7:49Speaker 5: forward here. There's been so much focus on the premacy
- 7:51Speaker 5: of the United States, the role of the alliance that
- 7:53Speaker 5: you would have with the United States. He's saying, Look,
- 7:55Speaker 5: Canada is a good, middle sized country in its own right.
- 7:58Speaker 5: There is room here for more core nation collaboration among
- 8:01Speaker 5: countries like that. And so I think that's part and
- 8:03Speaker 5: parcel of what we've seen near him extending this arm
- 8:06Speaker 5: to Europe to try to develop that kind of relationship
- 8:08Speaker 5: going forward.
- 8:08Speaker 4: Right, And it's not just to Europe as well, because
- 8:11Speaker 4: Canada has now looked to China as a partner increasingly
- 8:15Speaker 4: in this new world order, right. I mean, he's embraced
- 8:18Speaker 4: China in a way that would probably have surprised Justin
- 8:21Speaker 4: Trudeau just a year or two ago. They've come to
- 8:24Speaker 4: an agreement here opening the door to electric vehicles from China,
- 8:29Speaker 4: auto investment from China. I mean, he's in a way
- 8:32Speaker 4: being forced to remake Canada's economy.
- 8:34Speaker 2: Absolutely.
- 8:35Speaker 5: And Davos was the last stop on a very significant
- 8:37Speaker 5: trip for the Prime minister. He's going back to Canada.
- 8:40Speaker 5: We'll have a cabinet meeting over the next couple of days.
- 8:42Speaker 5: But he said in that speech we actively take on
- 8:45Speaker 5: the world as it is not wait around for a
- 8:47Speaker 5: world we wish to be. So he went to Beijing.
- 8:49Speaker 5: There was a lot of groundwork laid for that visit.
- 8:51Speaker 5: There was a new trade agreements that were negotiated and
- 8:54Speaker 5: signed while he was there. Went to the Middle East,
- 8:57Speaker 5: similar sort of there for deals. So we've seen the
- 9:02Speaker 5: Prime Minister, as you say, Scarlett, taking on the world
- 9:05Speaker 5: in a very different way than his predecessor, Justin Trudeau.
- 9:07Speaker 5: But again I think there's a thick level of realism
- 9:10Speaker 5: there that the Prime Minister is very confident and content
- 9:13Speaker 5: to talk about wherever he goes.
- 9:15Speaker 2: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 9:22Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us Live
- 9:26Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
- 9:29Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
- 9:32Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
- 9:36Speaker 2: Well, the US Supreme Court well wig whether President Donald
- 9:39Speaker 2: Trump can fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook over mortgage fraud
- 9:42Speaker 2: allegations that she denies. The case concerns whether President Trump
- 9:46Speaker 2: can oust Cook temporarily while her challenge continues, but the
- 9:50Speaker 2: legal issues may have a broader effect on the fed's
- 9:53Speaker 2: independence gets more color on that. We welcome our next guest,
- 9:55Speaker 2: Nikki Lanier, CEO of Harper Slade and a former Saint
- 9:59Speaker 2: Louis Federal Senior Vice President, joining us from lovely lectioning
- 10:03Speaker 2: Kentucky via that zoom thing. Nikki, what do you make
- 10:06Speaker 2: of this case here with Lisa Cook here, I guess
- 10:10Speaker 2: on its face and then maybe even broader implications for
- 10:13Speaker 2: FED independence?
- 10:15Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, the significance of the implications on FED
- 10:19Speaker 6: independence should not be lost on anyone at this point,
- 10:21Speaker 6: anyone drawing breath on this planet. The Federal reserves independence,
- 10:26Speaker 6: as we all know, is the bedrock of American economic credibility,
- 10:29Speaker 6: and so efforts to politically target or remove a sitting governor,
- 10:35Speaker 6: especially especially as this case reaches the Supreme Court, this
- 10:39Speaker 6: risks politicizing monetary policy, destabilizing global trust in US markets.
- 10:45Speaker 6: There's just there's no upside to this, and the intentions
- 10:51Speaker 6: of this president and unseating and extraordinarily beautifully qualified Federal
- 10:57Speaker 6: Reserve governor is not only unprecedent but reckless.
- 11:02Speaker 4: So Nikki, the fact that three conservative justices have expressed
- 11:06Speaker 4: skepticism about the US government's argument so far, Amy Cony
- 11:10Speaker 4: Barrett has asked about the potential for risks to markets
- 11:13Speaker 4: if Lisa Cook is removed. Does that give you some
- 11:16Speaker 4: measure of confidence that she's getting a fair hearing?
- 11:20Speaker 6: I mean, hopefully so, hopefully so. I think, you know,
- 11:23Speaker 6: politics aside, which is hard to kind of set aside
- 11:27Speaker 6: in this context. There is I think an understanding among
- 11:31Speaker 6: our nation's leaders that the importance of the Federal Reserve
- 11:36Speaker 6: remaining independent and not corrupted by political whims or personal
- 11:43Speaker 6: gain is so core to the American economy, really the
- 11:47Speaker 6: global economy, and I think that that's not lost on
- 11:49Speaker 6: several of our Supreme Court justices. And I hope that
- 11:52Speaker 6: that will be the case as this case ensues, that
- 11:55Speaker 6: that will be the actual result of this that the
- 11:58Speaker 6: President will not have the any of authority to remove
- 12:00Speaker 6: this city governor.
- 12:02Speaker 2: So, I mean, this is a FED that's like pretty
- 12:05Speaker 2: much all FEDS in memory said that they are driven
- 12:08Speaker 2: by the data. Here is that potentially at risk. I mean,
- 12:12Speaker 2: could we get to a point where this FED does
- 12:14Speaker 2: become too politicized and maybe the data isn't what's driving
- 12:18Speaker 2: the decision.
- 12:18Speaker 6: Making, absolutely absolutely, and then it is game over. I mean, honestly,
- 12:23Speaker 6: game over that's core to the Fed's independence is really
- 12:26Speaker 6: relying on the data. These are stalwarts and studied and
- 12:30Speaker 6: highly pedigreed decision makers who are opining and deliberating painstakingly.
- 12:36Speaker 6: I've seen it in these FOMC meetings over whether to
- 12:40Speaker 6: raise interest rates and how to think about monetary policy
- 12:42Speaker 6: for the interests of the whole. And they are extraordinarily
- 12:45Speaker 6: data driven, not just empirical data. But my job when
- 12:48Speaker 6: I work for the FED was part of my role
- 12:50Speaker 6: was to solicit the anadotal data that rounded out the story,
- 12:55Speaker 6: giving rise from the from the empirical data. And so
- 12:58Speaker 6: they rely on that very heavily, and it is an
- 13:00Speaker 6: extraordinarily painstaking process that the lay citizens like you and
- 13:06Speaker 6: I and your listeners really have come to rely on.
- 13:10Speaker 4: So, Nikki, I'm sure after years of doing just that
- 13:14Speaker 4: kind of sifting through the data, considering all the anecdotal
- 13:18Speaker 4: out there and assessing the economy, you don't just stop
- 13:21Speaker 4: because you're no longer working at the FED. What is
- 13:23Speaker 4: your take of where the economy sits right now? What
- 13:26Speaker 4: is the biggest challenge here for FED officials as they
- 13:29Speaker 4: consider what to do On Jerry twenty.
- 13:31Speaker 6: Eighth, Listen The biggest challenge right now is the independence
- 13:35Speaker 6: and the Federal Reserve is under direct threat, direct threat
- 13:39Speaker 6: by the President of the United States. And so this
- 13:42Speaker 6: idea of a president being able, possibly being sanctioned in
- 13:46Speaker 6: a permissive way, to require the Federal Reserve to bend
- 13:50Speaker 6: monetary policy to political interests and personal grievances, it is
- 13:55Speaker 6: an extraordinarily dangerous precedent. If intimidation works, If intimidation is
- 14:03Speaker 6: able to prevail, then monetary policy leadership, the infrastructure giving
- 14:08Speaker 6: rise to the federal reserves dual mandate, how we've come
- 14:11Speaker 6: to know and understand and rely on how the FED
- 14:14Speaker 6: assigns rigor to the process of determining policy is entirely upended.
- 14:19Speaker 6: So I'm not even I can't even fathom what that
- 14:21Speaker 6: would look like in a world where a Federal Reserve
- 14:24Speaker 6: is entirely relenting to and acquiescing to the political whims
- 14:28Speaker 6: of any president, and especially this president.
- 14:31Speaker 2: And Nikki, we have a FED Chairman, Jerome Pale, actually
- 14:33Speaker 2: in attendance at the Supreme Court proceedings today. What does
- 14:37Speaker 2: that say? What kind of messages that send big dag
- 14:40Speaker 2: on deal?
- 14:41Speaker 6: That's a big deal?
- 14:42Speaker 4: Uh?
- 14:42Speaker 6: Chair Pal's decision to personally attend to personally attend these arguments.
- 14:48Speaker 6: It's it underscores the gravity of the moment. FED chairs
- 14:53Speaker 6: don't usually appear in court casually, and so his presence
- 14:56Speaker 6: signals the independence of the Central Bank itself. Not simple
- 15:00Speaker 6: the fate of one governor. This is far from just
- 15:02Speaker 6: a personnel kind of pedestrian personnel decision. This is a
- 15:06Speaker 6: significant decision now before the judiciary, really deciding whether the
- 15:11Speaker 6: FED will remain independent and be able to do its
- 15:14Speaker 6: job with the extraordinary rigor and discipline that it has been,
- 15:17Speaker 6: or if it must cave to the whims and the
- 15:20Speaker 6: wants for president and his political desires.
- 15:25Speaker 4: Niki, have you had a chance to speak with any
- 15:27Speaker 4: sitting FED governors or even Lisa Cook herself. I'm just
- 15:31Speaker 4: curious what you've heard on your end.
- 15:35Speaker 6: I've not had an opportunity to speak with either of them.
- 15:37Speaker 6: But what I will tell you, just from my perspective,
- 15:39Speaker 6: if I might be so bold, I worry about this
- 15:45Speaker 6: moment and the crisis that it presents, the compounding crisis,
- 15:49Speaker 6: the calcified crisis in many ways that it presents for
- 15:53Speaker 6: what's happening in the labor market and specifically the labor
- 15:56Speaker 6: market regarding black women. This is you know, this is
- 16:00Speaker 6: not sitting outside of a vacuum. This is in a
- 16:02Speaker 6: larger context. This president in his administration has very much
- 16:06Speaker 6: racialized his political policies, their core to who he is
- 16:09Speaker 6: and core to how he's planning to administer his priorities
- 16:16Speaker 6: and right in this in his administration. So what I
- 16:20Speaker 6: really worry about is with the signals in terms of
- 16:23Speaker 6: codifying continued attacks on professional black women.
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