Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Markets, Tech, And Air Travel (Radio)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney, alongside
- 0:04Speaker 1: my co host Matt Miller. Every business day we bring
- 0:06Speaker 1: you interviews from CEOs, market pros, and Bloomberg experts, along
- 0:11Speaker 1: with essential market moving news. Find the Bloomberg Markets Podcast
- 0:15Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and
- 0:18Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. All right, let's talk
- 0:22Speaker 1: to a professional investor now, Steve Wyatt, chief investment strategist
- 0:28Speaker 1: for b Okay Financial. Steve, You're in Oklahoma, isn't it right?
- 0:32Speaker 1: And Tulsa, Oklahoma. Tulsa, Oklahoma. So let me just I'm
- 0:36Speaker 1: gonna assume that you've got an opinion on oil at
- 0:39Speaker 1: w t I crude oil and a hundred two dollars
- 0:41Speaker 1: of barrel. What are the smart people in the oil
- 0:45Speaker 1: biz that you talked to? What are they saying about?
- 0:47Speaker 1: Where do they think oil is going? You know, it's
- 0:49Speaker 1: interesting here. Look be Okay Financials, an energy bank, were
- 0:52Speaker 1: one of the larger banks and the energy business. And frankly, uh,
- 0:57Speaker 1: not just in Oklahoma, but in Texas as well. We've
- 0:59Speaker 1: got kind of a love hate relationship with oil prices.
- 1:03Speaker 1: We don't like it. As consumers when gasoline prices are high,
- 1:06Speaker 1: just like everybody else. So much of our economy is
- 1:09Speaker 1: driven by the energy business, employment, personal incomes, a lot
- 1:13Speaker 1: of people with royalties that as oil prices go up, UH,
- 1:18Speaker 1: personal incomes are rising in this UH, in this part
- 1:21Speaker 1: of the in this part of the country, we're still
- 1:24Speaker 1: i would say constructive on the energy business. There's a
- 1:27Speaker 1: lot of moving parts there. There's a lot of things
- 1:30Speaker 1: outside of outside of our control. When you start thinking
- 1:33Speaker 1: about what's going on with Russia and Ukraine and how
- 1:35Speaker 1: OPEC is handling some of this UH, and then you've
- 1:38Speaker 1: got some regulatory issues I'm gonna say issues in Washington
- 1:43Speaker 1: that almost ironically, if you look at the performance of
- 1:47Speaker 1: the energy markets, the more restrictive policies have been, the
- 1:51Speaker 1: better the performance of the energy equities in the price
- 1:55Speaker 1: of oil. But to the degree that we see ongoing
- 1:59Speaker 1: demand and for energy both oil and natural gas were constructive,
- 2:05Speaker 1: we're still constructive. Does it make sense to you, Steve,
- 2:09Speaker 1: that the US would go all the way over to
- 2:12Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia and ask them to pump more oil rather
- 2:16Speaker 1: than just taking a little trip down to Oklahoma in
- 2:19Speaker 1: Texas and making it easier for our folks to pull
- 2:21Speaker 1: our own natural resources out of the ground. So one
- 2:26Speaker 1: of the hard parts of our job is we try
- 2:27Speaker 1: to be as a political as possible when we're when
- 2:30Speaker 1: we're answering questions like this. But I didn't say the President.
- 2:33Speaker 1: I said America just in general, as we think about
- 2:38Speaker 1: how we move forward from an energy policy standpoint, and
- 2:42Speaker 1: nobody's pushing back on the fact that the direction that
- 2:45Speaker 1: we're going is towards more green energy. But as we
- 2:48Speaker 1: sit here today, Uh, it is hard to understand why
- 2:52Speaker 1: the administration would find it better to go to OPEC
- 2:56Speaker 1: or Venezuela or countries to ask them to produce more
- 3:02Speaker 1: oil when that is a resource that we have domestically.
- 3:05Speaker 1: We're the largest producer of oil in the in the world.
- 3:09Speaker 1: We've got a h an industry that has that that
- 3:12Speaker 1: has you know, built out and put us in a
- 3:15Speaker 1: position where we could we could be energy and dependent
- 3:19Speaker 1: if that's what we wanted to do. I understand there's
- 3:21Speaker 1: uh competing thoughts around the direction that we should be
- 3:26Speaker 1: going to really more around the timing of how quickly
- 3:29Speaker 1: we should be moving forward. But yes, it's hard to
- 3:32Speaker 1: understand why we're not engaging our domestic energy business at
- 3:36Speaker 1: a different level than what it seems we are hasteve
- 3:39Speaker 1: you know what I've heard from folks that do follow
- 3:41Speaker 1: the energy markets globally, they say, you know, the U
- 3:44Speaker 1: S producers, the shell producers, who have been had such
- 3:47Speaker 1: tremendous growth over the last twenty years. Uh, They've been
- 3:51Speaker 1: told by their equity holders, by their bondholders, maybe even
- 3:55Speaker 1: by their commercial lenders, discipline, do not drill more turned
- 4:00Speaker 1: that cash to shareholders and creditors. Is that part of
- 4:04Speaker 1: the issue as well? It certainly is, And and you
- 4:08Speaker 1: have to look at how again, just go to how
- 4:10Speaker 1: the industry is actually performing. Uh. Since that shift when
- 4:14Speaker 1: it was you know, drill, baby, drill, Uh, it has
- 4:18Speaker 1: been better from an economic standpoint for the holders of
- 4:22Speaker 1: equity energy equities. Uh, it's been better for the debt
- 4:27Speaker 1: holders of those energy companies. Energy makes up a pretty
- 4:30Speaker 1: large portion of the high yield index. And then in
- 4:33Speaker 1: past periods, Uh, the energy sector has been responsible for
- 4:38Speaker 1: a lot of the problems in the high market. That's
- 4:40Speaker 1: just not the case. Again, working for a financial company
- 4:44Speaker 1: that is in that business, UH, it does not hurt
- 4:47Speaker 1: our credit profile when we see oil prices um and
- 4:51Speaker 1: natural gas prices as high as they are. All right,
- 4:55Speaker 1: talk to us about Oklahoma State football. What's the outlook
- 4:57Speaker 1: for this coming year? Steve, I have to look, I
- 5:01Speaker 1: went to Oklahoma State. I played on the tennis team there.
- 5:05Speaker 1: Interestingly that when I was at Oklahoma State though, to
- 5:07Speaker 1: tell you just how long ago that was, Jimmy Johnson
- 5:09Speaker 1: was our head football coach. Um, Look, we've done a
- 5:14Speaker 1: fabulous job of being relevant for the last fifteen years.
- 5:18Speaker 1: I think as a as a long time Oklahoma State fan. Uh,
- 5:22Speaker 1: it's a lesson and expectational management. You never let your
- 5:26Speaker 1: expectations get away from you on the high side. But
- 5:29Speaker 1: we've certainly done a good job in the last fifteen
- 5:31Speaker 1: years or so we being relevant in D one football. Absolutely,
- 5:35Speaker 1: Oklahoma State Cowboys had some good stuff there. Uh. Steve Wyatt,
- 5:39Speaker 1: chief investment strategist for be Okay Financial. We were gonna
- 5:42Speaker 1: talk like broad Marcus b Someone's are talking about energy
- 5:45Speaker 1: oil and with those folks down there, it's their business
- 5:48Speaker 1: in Oklahoma and Texas. Uh, they've been quite disciplined. All right,
- 5:55Speaker 1: let's go technology. I'm loving you know. The SMP went
- 5:58Speaker 1: down almost almost percent year today, but when you look
- 6:01Speaker 1: at the tech heavy nastack that's down almost thirty percent
- 6:05Speaker 1: year today, and you think about the nastack tech stocks,
- 6:08Speaker 1: they've really lead this market since a great financial crisis,
- 6:11Speaker 1: but certainly under performing year to date this year. Let's
- 6:15Speaker 1: get a little bit of a preview because we're gonna
- 6:16Speaker 1: have some tech earnings really in earnest start next week.
- 6:19Speaker 1: We've got uh Netflix after the close tonight, Ivana the
- 6:22Speaker 1: Lefska founder and chief investment officer of Spear invest joins us.
- 6:27Speaker 1: Ivana again the underperformance attech this year, Um, what's your
- 6:31Speaker 1: view of the tech space here? Is there still? Is
- 6:34Speaker 1: this still a core part of people's portfolio? Should it be? Well,
- 6:40Speaker 1: I believe it's should Then I believe this major pubek
- 6:43Speaker 1: presents a really good, attractive, really attractive entry point. If
- 6:48Speaker 1: you look at tech the under performance with them not
- 6:52Speaker 1: that being down. If you look at the big innovators
- 6:55Speaker 1: in the space, they're down significantly more than that. So
- 6:58Speaker 1: we didn't arcovery universe. Companies that have delivered on earnings
- 7:03Speaker 1: and had solid outlooks are still down. Some companies that
- 7:07Speaker 1: had some hiccups are down seventy and you have somewhere
- 7:10Speaker 1: like the business model is in question that are down,
- 7:14Speaker 1: So we think the sweet spot is to look into
- 7:18Speaker 1: this area of stocks that are actually performing pretty well.
- 7:21Speaker 1: The fundamentals are strong, but you can still get these
- 7:24Speaker 1: stops cheaper compared to what you could have gotten a
- 7:28Speaker 1: year ago. How else do you divide the technology sector
- 7:33Speaker 1: other than you know innovators UM or by sort of
- 7:38Speaker 1: executing on business strategy in terms of you know, the
- 7:41Speaker 1: products they make or the services they provide. So we
- 7:46Speaker 1: are we've focused on industrial technology. The way we look
- 7:49Speaker 1: at technology more broadly is either consumer driven names or
- 7:55Speaker 1: industrial or enterprise driven companies. So in the last text cycle,
- 8:01Speaker 1: we saw a lot of in the innovation in the
- 8:03Speaker 1: consumer space where you had between streaming social media. Those
- 8:08Speaker 1: were really the big companies that drove the the drove
- 8:12Speaker 1: the text cycle. Going forward, we think industrial and enterprise
- 8:16Speaker 1: technology will be the big driver of the of the
- 8:20Speaker 1: next cycle. We think a lot of the innovation in
- 8:23Speaker 1: tech has been around data, how to use data, how
- 8:26Speaker 1: to store it in the cloud, how to secure it well,
- 8:31Speaker 1: and then how to use it and use processes like
- 8:33Speaker 1: ai UM. So we think we're just at the cost
- 8:37Speaker 1: of UM where we can start using some of these
- 8:40Speaker 1: technologies into mainstream businesses or traditional businesses like autos aerospace,
- 8:47Speaker 1: and there is a real potential to transform this entire
- 8:50Speaker 1: end market. So on that end, Ivanna a lot of
- 8:53Speaker 1: folks when they're talking about the future, the next three
- 8:57Speaker 1: or five years of where investors should really think about
- 9:00Speaker 1: the text act, they say cyber security. How do you
- 9:03Speaker 1: think about cybersecurity? What what's your view on that space
- 9:06Speaker 1: and and how do you think is the best way
- 9:07Speaker 1: to play it. So we're really excited about cybersecurity. It's
- 9:13Speaker 1: the most it's the largest team within within our portfolio.
- 9:17Speaker 1: We have a publicly listed dts UH Spear Alpha with
- 9:21Speaker 1: the ticker SPRX, and cybersecurity is one of the largest
- 9:25Speaker 1: teams within that that that portfolio. We love the space
- 9:31Speaker 1: for several several reasons. One of them is as architectures
- 9:35Speaker 1: have changed and data is no longer centralized. People are
- 9:40Speaker 1: using either multiple devices or they're using data that store
- 9:44Speaker 1: at the cloud or at multiple clouds. So this change
- 9:48Speaker 1: in architecture requires completely different cybersecurity solutions then you would
- 9:53Speaker 1: have needed several years ago. So there are several of
- 9:56Speaker 1: the space is pretty fragmented. There's several different areas that
- 10:00Speaker 1: we like and we focus on that have over growth
- 10:05Speaker 1: of just the end market. Endpoint security is one of them.
- 10:09Speaker 1: Here we like companies like crowd strikes. Another area is
- 10:13Speaker 1: securing workloads to the cloud and within the clouds. Here
- 10:16Speaker 1: a name is z scaler. And then for people that
- 10:20Speaker 1: want to play a more platform approach, power out on
- 10:23Speaker 1: networks is a good way to play where they play
- 10:26Speaker 1: both on the endpoint UM and the traditional firewall firewall products.
- 10:32Speaker 1: What about AI UM it's something we hear so much
- 10:35Speaker 1: about and you know, investors put so much faith in it. Obviously,
- 10:40Speaker 1: eventually the machines are going to turn against us and
- 10:42Speaker 1: then you'll feel guilty about all the money you made.
- 10:44Speaker 1: But is it a good place to go into right now? Well, yes,
- 10:48Speaker 1: So it's very interesting because it's been a team for
- 10:51Speaker 1: us over the past few years, but we really didn't
- 10:54Speaker 1: have any significant investments and as there weren't any ways
- 10:57Speaker 1: to play that scale. And over the last year we've
- 11:01Speaker 1: seen a lot of developments where AI is becoming at
- 11:04Speaker 1: the core of many processes. So even if back to cybersecurity,
- 11:09Speaker 1: even if you look at cybersecurity, a lot of the
- 11:11Speaker 1: new products are AI based. So crowds rate products are
- 11:15Speaker 1: AI and machine learning based the scalers products same thing.
- 11:19Speaker 1: So it's really gaining mainstream adoption. And this is just
- 11:24Speaker 1: for running like, uh, processes that you wouldn't necessarily be
- 11:27Speaker 1: able to even do manually, right. Uh, This algorithms can
- 11:32Speaker 1: pick up on a NORMALI is by just by training
- 11:34Speaker 1: training the model. So we think the A is going
- 11:37Speaker 1: to gain adoption to even more mainstream like autonomous driving.
- 11:42Speaker 1: We still believe that's several years away because it is
- 11:45Speaker 1: a pretty complex problem, but we do see AI is
- 11:50Speaker 1: gaining pretty uh, pretty broad adoption. AVNA just real quick
- 11:55Speaker 1: thirty seconds. Bloomberg Broker story yesterday that Apple may slow
- 11:59Speaker 1: some higher ring in certain businesses and that we've seen
- 12:02Speaker 1: that from other companies. We've seen that from other companies.
- 12:05Speaker 1: Do you get a sense of Silicon Valley is kind
- 12:08Speaker 1: of gearing up for a recession? Yeah? Absolutely. I mean
- 12:12Speaker 1: at this point we are at a at a point
- 12:15Speaker 1: where recession is almost a foregone conclusion. Um, We're we
- 12:19Speaker 1: trucked a lot of industrial data points and things really
- 12:21Speaker 1: became really really turned even since since March, we started
- 12:26Speaker 1: seeing the trucking market soft and consumer discretionary softened and
- 12:31Speaker 1: that's really now just been affecting the broad at the
- 12:35Speaker 1: broader market. So things have just spread to like manufacturing,
- 12:39Speaker 1: things have spread to technology. So we're gonna see this
- 12:42Speaker 1: from everybody. Microsoft said that they're gonna slow hiring the
- 12:46Speaker 1: same things they're slow and hiring. All right, Evanna, thank
- 12:49Speaker 1: you so much for joining us. Ivana Delevska foundery, chief
- 12:51Speaker 1: investment officer of Spear invest getting a update on all
- 12:55Speaker 1: things technology. I want to check in with Liz McCormick.
- 13:01Speaker 1: She's Chief corresponding Global macro Markets for Bloomberg News and
- 13:04Speaker 1: a proud bachelor's and NBA graduate from the State University
- 13:09Speaker 1: of New Jersey. That would be Rutgers. Uh, Liz, some
- 13:13Speaker 1: smart people tell me I need to pay attention to
- 13:15Speaker 1: this yield curve, this two year ten year thing, which
- 13:18Speaker 1: I think is inverted. Is that something you worry about?
- 13:22Speaker 1: Is that something that you and the smart people in
- 13:25Speaker 1: the credit markets think about. Well, it seems like and
- 13:28Speaker 1: go are you um? It seems like definitely. You know,
- 13:32Speaker 1: the yield curve when it gets inverted always is kind
- 13:36Speaker 1: of in the focus, right because you know, historically and
- 13:40Speaker 1: you know a lot of the research was done on
- 13:41Speaker 1: the broad curve three month rades versus tenure, which isn't
- 13:44Speaker 1: inverted yet, but the two year tenure, like you said,
- 13:47Speaker 1: drives a lot of focus. It builds on these recession
- 13:50Speaker 1: fears because inverting curves have been linked to recession. So yeah,
- 13:54Speaker 1: I don't think you could ignore it, whether you might
- 13:56Speaker 1: want to or not. But yeah, it's kind of adding
- 13:59Speaker 1: to you know, a lot of the comments were seeing
- 14:01Speaker 1: that the Fed might tighten us into a recession, tighten
- 14:05Speaker 1: us into a recession. But we've got about I think
- 14:07Speaker 1: a week and a half till or no, wait now,
- 14:09Speaker 1: seven days I'm sorry, right, Tuesday, seven eight days until
- 14:13Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve next Federal Reserve meeting. Liz, there's this
- 14:16Speaker 1: big debate about seventy five or a hundred at the moment.
- 14:19Speaker 1: How much more of a difference does a hundred really
- 14:21Speaker 1: make relative to seventy five? As we know Governor Chris Waller,
- 14:25Speaker 1: I think it was last week that Mike McKee interviewed him,
- 14:27Speaker 1: said seventy five is still a lot. Do we really
- 14:30Speaker 1: need that extra five? Right? And I thought that was
- 14:33Speaker 1: an interesting point he made, like kind of in a way,
- 14:38Speaker 1: what does it matter? I mean, I think it's more
- 14:40Speaker 1: psychological because I think he's right. Obviously, seventy five and
- 14:43Speaker 1: two in a row. You know, they just did seventy
- 14:46Speaker 1: five in June, which was the huge move they haven't
- 14:48Speaker 1: didn't hadn't done since night before. So I think he's right.
- 14:51Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's it would just kind of
- 14:54Speaker 1: a hundred BIPs would just kind of slap the market,
- 14:57Speaker 1: like we are so all in on inflation. So the
- 15:01Speaker 1: FED is saying, not that people don't think they're doing
- 15:03Speaker 1: that now, but I think, you know, in the bag
- 15:07Speaker 1: of Paneta did a hundred, which some people were joking
- 15:09Speaker 1: kind of grease the reels for the Fed. But I
- 15:11Speaker 1: do think that, you know, the pricing is getting more
- 15:14Speaker 1: like seventy five is looking like the things, So now
- 15:16Speaker 1: a hundred would be a little surprong, So that doesn't
- 15:19Speaker 1: like to surprise people. So it seems like people are
- 15:22Speaker 1: leaning back to seventy five. What's the dollar telling us, Liz,
- 15:26Speaker 1: I'm looking at the d X Y index. It's as
- 15:28Speaker 1: high as it's been in you know, since like twenty
- 15:30Speaker 1: years ago. Um, I can't hear a bear case for
- 15:34Speaker 1: the dollar out there. How do you and some of
- 15:37Speaker 1: the smart folks out there that you talked to, How
- 15:39Speaker 1: are you thinking about that U s. Dollar? Well, you know,
- 15:42Speaker 1: the dollar has been a real headache for many nations,
- 15:45Speaker 1: you know, like especially emerging economies which anytime the feed
- 15:48Speaker 1: is aggressively tightening, even if they're trying to keep up,
- 15:52Speaker 1: you know, there's a negative knock on to them and
- 15:55Speaker 1: that they've seen their currencies really weak and even forget
- 15:58Speaker 1: velve economies. Look at the Euro which just you know
- 16:00Speaker 1: rising today but you know recently went through parody. Um
- 16:04Speaker 1: So a lot of these countries which are trying to
- 16:06Speaker 1: combat inflation, and weaker currencies creates important inflation. So it's
- 16:10Speaker 1: a headache for them. Um. The FED also, I mean,
- 16:13Speaker 1: you know, strong dollar. You might think that's great for
- 16:15Speaker 1: the US, but you know, the Fed to a point,
- 16:19Speaker 1: it helps tighten financial conditions. So the FED is trying
- 16:22Speaker 1: to kind of get their calculus right of how much
- 16:25Speaker 1: to live rates. They got the q T going, you know,
- 16:28Speaker 1: they want to tighten financial conditions and they have. But
- 16:31Speaker 1: the dollar, if it just keeps plowing on, that does
- 16:34Speaker 1: speed things. You know that that's into their models. But yeah,
- 16:37Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, I think the people long dollars,
- 16:40Speaker 1: we're really happy, right, Um, those who bought bonds in
- 16:43Speaker 1: the US from foreign countries have done well because you know,
- 16:47Speaker 1: let's just assume that even they're flat on their bonds,
- 16:49Speaker 1: they convert those dollars back to their home currency. That's
- 16:52Speaker 1: an advantage. So there's people who have one from that.
- 16:54Speaker 1: But it is creating some kind of more fundamental headaches
- 16:57Speaker 1: for some nations. Fundamental head aches for some nations, including
- 17:01Speaker 1: the entire euro Area, which brings us to the e
- 17:04Speaker 1: c B. I believe they're meeting on Thursday. There are
- 17:07Speaker 1: calls out here for not a basis point hike, but
- 17:09Speaker 1: a fifty basis point hike. This week, Liz can explain
- 17:13Speaker 1: to our international audience the significance of that fifty Well, yeah,
- 17:19Speaker 1: you know, the ECB has been, you know, flower to
- 17:22Speaker 1: move than such like the FED. As far as rates, Um,
- 17:25Speaker 1: that's one thing that hurt the euro But you know,
- 17:27Speaker 1: Christine Lagarde had laid out in the last meeting that hey,
- 17:30Speaker 1: kind of preset we're gonna raise rates. We were looking
- 17:33Speaker 1: for about twenty five basis points, and of course we
- 17:35Speaker 1: gave some caveats of data changes, but for them to
- 17:39Speaker 1: kind of jump on these kind of more aggressive bandwagon
- 17:42Speaker 1: like seems to be leaked, but at least some of
- 17:44Speaker 1: the hawks at the ECB, you know, that would be
- 17:46Speaker 1: a big move. I mean, number one, it would show
- 17:49Speaker 1: that central bank is really, really, you know, focused on inflation,
- 17:53Speaker 1: you know, more than maybe some people thought, or you know,
- 17:55Speaker 1: it's willing to be more aggressive. Um. It also might
- 17:58Speaker 1: help some of these display alreadies. You know, we've seen
- 18:00Speaker 1: the euro rally today off those expectations, the markets pricing
- 18:04Speaker 1: about as does the ECB do twenty five or fifty
- 18:08Speaker 1: basis points um, but would kind of bring them more
- 18:11Speaker 1: in line. Of course, the b o J is a
- 18:13Speaker 1: whole separate story, but with a lot of central banks
- 18:16Speaker 1: that are tightening quite aggressively. You mentioned it be a
- 18:18Speaker 1: j and I just want to get your thoughts there.
- 18:20Speaker 1: I mean, we we don't talk about Japan that much
- 18:23Speaker 1: relative to Europe these days. But what can the bo
- 18:26Speaker 1: J do? What do you think? What are they signaling
- 18:29Speaker 1: right now? Well, it seems like they're single signaling that
- 18:33Speaker 1: they're going to keep their policies that they've been on
- 18:36Speaker 1: the dobsh side. There they have yeel curve control going
- 18:39Speaker 1: on which they're targeting the tenure yield to not go
- 18:41Speaker 1: above a quarter percentage point over there, and there was
- 18:45Speaker 1: a lot of speculation for a while. Of course, the
- 18:47Speaker 1: end has been very weak that the b o j
- 18:50Speaker 1: may have to give this up. It's costing them too
- 18:52Speaker 1: much to defend this as rates are rising all over,
- 18:55Speaker 1: they have a weaker currency. But it seems like people
- 18:58Speaker 1: are starting to say, well, it seems for an the
- 19:00Speaker 1: Bank of Japan was going to leave this. You know,
- 19:02Speaker 1: they wanted inflation for a long long time. Now there's
- 19:05Speaker 1: beings some so I think most economists think they'd be
- 19:08Speaker 1: hard pressed to reverse course now, even though the you know,
- 19:11Speaker 1: they're most of their peers are tightening um. But you know,
- 19:15Speaker 1: they've been wanting this two percent inflation level, so you know,
- 19:18Speaker 1: to have a little bit of hot inflation is not
- 19:21Speaker 1: so bad for them, and at least it seems to
- 19:23Speaker 1: be the consensus view. Alright, good stuff, Liz McCormick. Appreciate
- 19:26Speaker 1: getting your thoughts as always. Liz McCormick, Chief Correspondent, Global
- 19:30Speaker 1: Macro Markets for Bloomberg News. Okay, all right, let's talk technology.
- 19:38Speaker 1: I'm looking at the you know, the SMP. We're down
- 19:41Speaker 1: almost almost year to day. But when you look at
- 19:44Speaker 1: the tech heavy nastack that's down almost thirty percent year
- 19:48Speaker 1: to date. And you think about the nastack tech stocks,
- 19:50Speaker 1: they've really lead this market since a great financial crisis,
- 19:54Speaker 1: but certainly under performing year to date this year. Let's
- 19:57Speaker 1: get a little bit of a preview because we're gonna
- 19:58Speaker 1: have some tech earnings really in earnest start next week.
- 20:01Speaker 1: We've got uh Netflix after the close tonight, Ivana the left,
- 20:05Speaker 1: founder and chief investment officer of Spear invest joins us.
- 20:09Speaker 1: Ivana again the underperformance attack this year, Um, what's your
- 20:14Speaker 1: view of the tech space here? Is there still? Is
- 20:17Speaker 1: this still a core part of people's portfolio? Should it be? Well?
- 20:22Speaker 1: I believe it should. Then I believe this major pubic
- 20:26Speaker 1: presents a really good, attractive, it really attractive entry point.
- 20:30Speaker 1: If you look at tech the underperformance with them now
- 20:34Speaker 1: that being down, if you look at the big innovators
- 20:37Speaker 1: in the space, they're down significantly more than that. So
- 20:41Speaker 1: within our coverage universe, companies that have delivered on earnings
- 20:46Speaker 1: and had solid outlooks are still down. Some companies that
- 20:50Speaker 1: had some hiccups are down seventy and you have somewhere
- 20:53Speaker 1: like the business model is in questions that are down.
- 20:57Speaker 1: So we think the sweet spot is to look into uh,
- 21:00Speaker 1: this area of stocks that are actually performing pretty well.
- 21:03Speaker 1: The fundamentals are strong, but you can still get these
- 21:06Speaker 1: stops cheaper compared to what you could have gotten a
- 21:10Speaker 1: year ago. How else do you divide the technology sector
- 21:15Speaker 1: other than you know, innovators UM or by sort of
- 21:21Speaker 1: executing on business strategy in terms of you know, the
- 21:24Speaker 1: products they make or the services they provide. So we
- 21:28Speaker 1: are we've focused on industrial technology. The way we look
- 21:32Speaker 1: at technology more broadly is either consumer driven names or
- 21:37Speaker 1: industrial or enterprise driven companies. So in the last text cycle,
- 21:43Speaker 1: we saw a lot of in the innovation in the
- 21:45Speaker 1: consumer space where you had between streaming social media. Those
- 21:50Speaker 1: were really the big companies that drove that drove the
- 21:54Speaker 1: text cycle. Going forward, we think industrial and enterprise technology
- 21:59Speaker 1: will be the big driver of the of the next cycle.
- 22:04Speaker 1: We think a lot of the innovation in tech has
- 22:06Speaker 1: been around data, how to use data, how to store
- 22:09Speaker 1: it in the cloud, how to secure it well, and
- 22:13Speaker 1: then how to use it and use processes like ai UM.
- 22:17Speaker 1: So we think we're just at the cost of um
- 22:21Speaker 1: where we can start using some of these technologies into
- 22:24Speaker 1: mainstream businesses or traditional businesses like autos aerospace, and there
- 22:30Speaker 1: is a real potential to transform this entire end market.
- 22:34Speaker 1: So on that end, Ivanna a lot of folks when
- 22:37Speaker 1: they are talking about the future, the next three or
- 22:39Speaker 1: five years of where investors should really think about the
- 22:42Speaker 1: text act, they say cyber security. How do you think
- 22:45Speaker 1: about cybersecurity? What's your view on that space, and how
- 22:48Speaker 1: do you think is the best way to play it.
- 22:51Speaker 1: So we're really excited about cybersecurity. It's the most it's
- 22:56Speaker 1: the largest team within within our portfolio. We have a
- 23:00Speaker 1: publicly list todts uh Sphere Alpha with the ticker SPRX,
- 23:05Speaker 1: and cybersecurity is one of the largest teams within that
- 23:08Speaker 1: that that portfolio. We love the space for several several reasons.
- 23:15Speaker 1: One of them is as architectures have changed and data
- 23:19Speaker 1: is no longer centralized. People are using either multiple devices
- 23:25Speaker 1: or they're using data that store the cloud or at
- 23:28Speaker 1: multiple clouds. So this change in architecture requires completely different
- 23:33Speaker 1: cybersecurity solutions then you would have needed several years ago.
- 23:38Speaker 1: So there are several of the space is pretty fragmented.
- 23:40Speaker 1: There are several different areas that we like and we
- 23:43Speaker 1: focus on that have over twenty up growth of just
- 23:48Speaker 1: the end market. Endpoint security is one of them. Here
- 23:52Speaker 1: we like companies like crowd strikes. Another area is securing
- 23:56Speaker 1: workloads to the cloud and within the clouds. Here a
- 23:59Speaker 1: name is the scaler. And then for people that want
- 24:02Speaker 1: to play a more platform alo approach, power out on
- 24:05Speaker 1: networks is a good way to play where they play
- 24:08Speaker 1: both on the endpoint UM and the traditional firewall firewall products.
- 24:15Speaker 1: What about AI UM it's something we hear so much
- 24:18Speaker 1: about and you know, investors put so much faith in it. Obviously,
- 24:22Speaker 1: eventually the machines are going to turn against us and
- 24:25Speaker 1: then you'll feel guilty about all the money you made.
- 24:26Speaker 1: But is it a good place to go into right now? Well? Yeah,
- 24:30Speaker 1: So it's very interesting because it's been a team for
- 24:33Speaker 1: us over the past few years, but we really didn't
- 24:36Speaker 1: have any significant investments and as there weren't any ways
- 24:39Speaker 1: to play that scale. And over the past year we've
- 24:43Speaker 1: seen a lot of developments where AI is becoming at
- 24:47Speaker 1: the core of many processes. So even back to cybersecurity,
- 24:52Speaker 1: even if you look at cybersecurity, a lot of the
- 24:54Speaker 1: new products are AI based. So Crowdstrate products are AI
- 24:58Speaker 1: and machine learning based this kaler's products, same thing. So
- 25:02Speaker 1: it's really gaining mainstream adoption. And this is just for
- 25:06Speaker 1: running like processes that you wouldn't necessarily be able to
- 25:10Speaker 1: even do manually. Right. Uh, this algorithms can pick up
- 25:14Speaker 1: on a normally is by just by training training the model.
- 25:18Speaker 1: So we think is going to gain adoption to even
- 25:21Speaker 1: more mainstream like autonomous driving. We still believe that several
- 25:27Speaker 1: years away because it is a pretty complex problem, but
- 25:30Speaker 1: we do see AI is gaining pretty uh pretty broad adoption.
- 25:36Speaker 1: Avana just real quick thirty seconds. Bloomberg Broker story yesterday
- 25:40Speaker 1: that Apple may slow some hiring in certain businesses and
- 25:44Speaker 1: that we've seen that from other companies. We've seen that
- 25:46Speaker 1: from other companies. Do you get a sense of Silicon
- 25:49Speaker 1: Valley is kind of gearing up for a recession? Yeah? Absolutely.
- 25:54Speaker 1: I mean at this point we are at a at
- 25:56Speaker 1: a point where recession is almost a foregone conclusion. Um,
- 26:00Speaker 1: We're we trucked a lot of industrial data points and
- 26:03Speaker 1: things really became really really turned even since since March,
- 26:08Speaker 1: we started seeing the trucking market soft and consumer discretionary soften,
- 26:13Speaker 1: and that's really now just been affecting brother at the
- 26:18Speaker 1: broad market. So things have just spread to like manufacturing,
- 26:21Speaker 1: things have spread to technology. So we're gonna see this
- 26:24Speaker 1: from everybody. Microsoft said that they're gonna slow hiring thing.
- 26:30Speaker 1: They're slowing hiring all right, Evana, thank you so much
- 26:32Speaker 1: for joining us. Ivana de Levska, founder and chief investment
- 26:34Speaker 1: Officer of Spear invest getting a update on all things technology.
- 26:41Speaker 1: Nationale Basket joins is here in a Bloomberg Interactive broker
- 26:44Speaker 1: studio for our next question on what're bringing our next guest,
- 26:47Speaker 1: we'll talk a little fintech. Yeah, it's perfect timing to
- 26:50Speaker 1: have Matt's left chin with us. He's the CEO of
- 26:52Speaker 1: a firm. It's just the day after big bank earnings, guys,
- 26:56Speaker 1: when we have had some optimism on the consumer, but
- 26:59Speaker 1: it left a lot of investors with a lot of
- 27:01Speaker 1: worry that a lot of consumers around the country might
- 27:04Speaker 1: be buying basic goods on credit given the inflationary crunch.
- 27:08Speaker 1: And so Max, you're a great person to talk to
- 27:11Speaker 1: about the real state that the consumer is in. You know,
- 27:14Speaker 1: you're buy now, pay later. Craze has really become so
- 27:18Speaker 1: popular in the last couple of years. It's now taking
- 27:20Speaker 1: different shapes. How are you seeing the health of the
- 27:23Speaker 1: consumer when inflation is just troubling them everywhere? Thank you
- 27:30Speaker 1: for having me, I think I would so. Summer right
- 27:34Speaker 1: is as still healthy but concerned. We saw it just
- 27:39Speaker 1: the fourth or July weekend, really healthy spending. So we
- 27:43Speaker 1: you know, ten x in concert tickets. People are trying
- 27:46Speaker 1: to get out COVID is over. They can't take it anymore.
- 27:49Speaker 1: They gotta go see a concert. Airline purchases up three
- 27:52Speaker 1: x year on year. Bridle is really healthy. You know,
- 27:56Speaker 1: it's the year of weddings. People are finally getting married
- 27:58Speaker 1: after all the postponements, and so there's a lot of
- 28:01Speaker 1: good what I would consider to be healthy spending. That said,
- 28:05Speaker 1: just in our conversations with our consumers surveys, we see
- 28:09Speaker 1: that vast majority are concerned about inflation. They're spending power
- 28:14Speaker 1: is weakening fairly quickly. They're turning to Binopaulator and Affirm
- 28:18Speaker 1: in particular to stretch their dollar. And so you're right there,
- 28:22Speaker 1: there's some something to be worried about in the horizon,
- 28:24Speaker 1: but for the moment, they're still feeling pretty good. So
- 28:28Speaker 1: Max talked to us about I'm looking at your stock
- 28:30Speaker 1: down seventy year, Dad, I know a lot of the
- 28:33Speaker 1: tech stocks have taken it on the chin here uh
- 28:36Speaker 1: fintech in particular. Kind of what do you tell your investors,
- 28:41Speaker 1: your employees about kind of the future of the of
- 28:45Speaker 1: the company, how the prospects for the company as it
- 28:48Speaker 1: relates to its stock price. I think most, if not
- 28:54Speaker 1: I hope almost all of my employees and certainly many
- 28:57Speaker 1: of my investors joined the affirm mission because they believe
- 29:01Speaker 1: in it and are very much concerned with the long
- 29:04Speaker 1: term as opposed to the immediate. We're a pretty good
- 29:07Speaker 1: company as far as uh down stocks are concerned. But
- 29:10Speaker 1: we've been executing really, really well. If you look at
- 29:14Speaker 1: our core the earnings. We've only been public for just
- 29:18Speaker 1: over a year and a half. We continue to really
- 29:21Speaker 1: perform and deliver all the numbers that we said we would.
- 29:23Speaker 1: We continue to grow, we continue to maintain all the
- 29:26Speaker 1: credit metrics that we've committed to. So I'm just very
- 29:30Speaker 1: very focused on delivering this long term value to my shareholders,
- 29:33Speaker 1: and I think my employees are very supportive of that.
- 29:36Speaker 1: Are you concerned at all about accumulating debt when it
- 29:39Speaker 1: comes to using this model. I mean, we're already talking
- 29:42Speaker 1: about people switching more from using their debit cards to
- 29:45Speaker 1: using their credit cards. UM. It's something that also has
- 29:48Speaker 1: been a warning. UM. I want to say from some
- 29:50Speaker 1: of the major investors in the market at the moment,
- 29:53Speaker 1: is that something you're concerned about leverage? UM. I am
- 29:57Speaker 1: concernedout leverage, but I would argue that folks that are
- 30:01Speaker 1: turning their eye to and B n p L are
- 30:04Speaker 1: concerned about the exact wrong thing. It's credit cards that
- 30:07Speaker 1: should be worried about. There's the by now, pay later.
- 30:11Speaker 1: Credit cards are by now and pay forever. As soon
- 30:13Speaker 1: as you swipe that card, you're gonna start paying interest
- 30:15Speaker 1: and interest on interest. Vast majority of Americans are revolving
- 30:19Speaker 1: the very very small percentage of people who really understand
- 30:22Speaker 1: what their credit card terms and conditions say. If you
- 30:24Speaker 1: look at a firm, it's a much about alternative. We
- 30:27Speaker 1: don't charge lead fees, we don't do differred interest. We
- 30:31Speaker 1: make sure that you cannot pay more than we showed
- 30:34Speaker 1: you on the very first page when you're signing up
- 30:36Speaker 1: for the transaction, and we approve or decline every single
- 30:40Speaker 1: transaction a consumer asks for it, which allows us to
- 30:43Speaker 1: be much safer as a lender. But also allows consumers
- 30:47Speaker 1: to be very clear as to when they're over attending themselves.
- 30:50Speaker 1: So I'm a huge believer. Obviously I'm a little bit
- 30:53Speaker 1: biased by not appealing a model, but beyond that, I'm
- 30:56Speaker 1: I'm a believer in it as a replacement for credit cards.
- 30:59Speaker 1: I'm really curious, what should you not buy now pay
- 31:02Speaker 1: later with. You know, there's a lot of stories about
- 31:05Speaker 1: you know, a lot of consumers putting a lot of
- 31:08Speaker 1: money on credit on by now pay later, just kind
- 31:10Speaker 1: of spreading out their financial lives in a significant way,
- 31:14Speaker 1: and finances are starting to get stretched under this inflationary environment.
- 31:19Speaker 1: And I really believe that byompulator is a better alternative
- 31:23Speaker 1: to credit cards. I think, if you're revolving and revolving forever,
- 31:25Speaker 1: just because card cards have been around, can you buy
- 31:27Speaker 1: anything on it? You know, we are primarily offered at
- 31:32Speaker 1: the integrated point of sale, so there are many things
- 31:35Speaker 1: that are not yet integrated. Plenty of places for us
- 31:38Speaker 1: to go and partner with merchants. That said, we do
- 31:41Speaker 1: believe that byopay later is a better model and should
- 31:44Speaker 1: be used ultimately for everything. Everywhere you think you should
- 31:47Speaker 1: use your credit card, I think you should stop and
- 31:49Speaker 1: think and switch to a firm. Alright, Max, great stuff.
- 31:53Speaker 1: I really appreciate you taking some time out of the day,
- 31:55Speaker 1: Max Election, founder and CEO of the company called firm.
- 32:00Speaker 1: A f r M is the nastack symbol you can
- 32:04Speaker 1: type into your Bloomberg terminal to get a sense of
- 32:06Speaker 1: what's going on there in the buy now, pay later space,
- 32:08Speaker 1: which is a fascinating space, hnale Um and I think
- 32:11Speaker 1: investors are just trying to get a handle what the
- 32:13Speaker 1: risk profile is, especially as interest rates start to rise.
- 32:16Speaker 1: I think it's an interesting option for consumers, but there
- 32:19Speaker 1: are a lot of questions. You know, in the past,
- 32:20Speaker 1: there's been a lot of behaviors like you can and
- 32:22Speaker 1: you can't do this with a firm, by the way,
- 32:24Speaker 1: but by by now pay later on credit and so
- 32:28Speaker 1: you do see some double averaging out there. But again
- 32:30Speaker 1: we're gonna leave Max outill clear in this one sale.
- 32:36Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us. Shall Bass that covers
- 32:38Speaker 1: all things Wall Street for us, and we appreciate her
- 32:41Speaker 1: chiming in here with Max Election. Thanks for listening to
- 32:46Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to
- 32:49Speaker 1: interviews of Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer
- 32:54Speaker 1: I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller three,
- 32:58Speaker 1: put on Falsewheeney. I'm on twit her at pt Sweeney
- 33:01Speaker 1: Before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide at
- 33:03Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio