FDA Grants Full Approval of Pfizer-BioNTech Vaccine

You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on the Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube. Searched Bloomberg clovel News. Let's get to Dr Seth Letterman, the CEO of and the co founder of Photonics Pharmaceuticals, also the chairman. He joins us once again on the phone from Massachusetts. Dr Letterman, It's great to have you back with us. How are you great to be with you again? Um, well, it's a great day to be speaking to you about COVID vaccine. Yeah, a

lot of news when it comes to COVID vaccines. We just heard from President Biden encouraging everybody who has not yet gotten a vaccine to go out there and get it. Do you agree with the President that this continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated? Absolutely, President Biden is a tough act to follow. I thought he had a clear message and I agree with him that by and large, the particularly fueled by the delta variant, this is a epidemic or pandemic of the unvaccinated in the United States

right now. And so Dr Lettiman, we heard from President Biden that FDA approval it's the gold standard. But I'm curious to hear your take that you know, now that we do have full authorization, it's finally here. Do you think this will actually lead to meaningfully more vaccinations? Well, I hope so. First of all, I think it's a sign of a great achievement for Fire in their partner

by Intech to get their vaccine to this point. And I think many people believe that Madonna is not far behind or in an unusual situation where the Surgeon General all Um is kind of tipping his uh, you know, tipping his cards on some of these approvals coming up. So I think that the m and A technology that they developed and rapidly deployed has two shown great promise

and it's a very exciting time. But on the other hand, you know, there is also an announcement by the CDC, FDA and a bunch of other groups, the White House, COVID Task Force, etcetera, that booster shots are going to be recommended and that they're going to be starting on September. So at the same time where this is a great advance and a recognition of what's happened so far, I think there's also been a concession that these vaccines are

providing only temporary protection, not durable protection. We'll talk to you, talk to us about where you are with the type of protection that you're developing right now at Tonics Pharmaceuticals. What is the vaccine against COVID that you're working on, and what's the latest on the timeline for when it could actually be something that's used on us. Thank you. We're developing a live virus vaccine and it's based on

a novel platform that we developed. But live virus vaccines are the oldest type of vaccine technology, and even an Operation Warp Speed there were four pillars of Operation Warp Speed, where you know, one of them was a highly successful Arna vaccines, but the other The fourth that they never really got to was live virus vaccines. Merke was developing two of them, but then in January of this year abandoned those programs. So we're developing a live virus vaccine

against COVID nineteen. Because traditionally, live virus vaccines have provided durable immunity, meaning years, decades, even lifelong. And when President Biden mentioned some of the great successes in the history of vaccination, he specifically mentioned smallpox, measles, mumps rebella, and polio.

Those are live virus vaccines. So we don't know all of the reasons why live virus vaccines provide such durable immunity, but many people believe it's because they stimulate T cell immunity, and a particular type of T cell immunity that has this long durability. So hypothetically, speaking with a live virus vaccine, would a booster shot be needed for that type of

vaccine versus, you know, an m R and a based vaccine. Well, we won't know for COVID until we get into human trials, but for smallpox there is no booster required, and measles monster rebella typically is lifelong um so they do last a very long time, but again it's something that will need to figure out when when is the timeline for human trials. Thanks we expect to be in human trials

from the first half of next year. The thing that's holding us back is that it's more difficult to make the high quality of live virus vaccine necessary to do human trials. And that's really the advantage of the m R and A vaccines. Since they are completely synthetic, you can rapidly manufacture them. And again, hats off to Fiser and by In Tech for what they've done. They've really delivered a solid blow to give us some breathing room

with this pandemic for the vaccinated anyway. But live virus vaccines are harder to develop, but when they're developed, they can be easier to manufacture, easier to store, easier to transport, and typically are one shot vaccines. And so Dr Lettterman, I want to go back to the topic of boosters, and in the notes you sent over, you made the point that you know we would be better protected by vaccinating the unvaccinated here in the US and around the world.

But I got to ask, what about for those who don't want to get vaccinated. If you assume that there's you know, a certain percentage of the population that will never willingly take the vaccine. Uh, in that situation, what would what? What do we do? Well? It's an excellent question, and it seems to be uh hodgepodge of reasons why people are reluctant. Hopefully, the President said, Hopefully the FDA

approval will allay some of their concerns. I know at least some of them feel like they don't want to be um, you know, the subject of tests or something. I think at this point, as the President said, two million Americans have been vaccinated, so I think we're beyond the test stage. But I think that brings up another potential weakness of the m R and A vaccines that we really don't know whether they block forward transmission. Forward transmission means that if someone is infected, are they able

to transmit it to someone else? And for the big vaccine successes that we've had in history, smallpox, for example, it really does block forward transmission, and that was one of the reasons why this concept of herd immunity was so important. But we really don't know for the delta variant whether vaccinated people will be less infectious. Yeah, that's certainly. That's certainly what remains to be seen as Dr Seth Letterman, the co founder, a chief executive officer and chairman of

Tonics Pharmaceuticals. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, pregnant women with COVID nineteen, they are fifteen times more likely to die, fourteen times more likely to need to be intubated, and twenty two times more likely to have preterm birth than those who are uninfected. That's according to a study published this month by j A n A Network.

Open Joinning's now is Shira Stein, healthcare reporter at Bloomberg. Lash joins us on the phone from Washington, d C. Shere. It's great to have you with us. The part that I didn't get to in your story is the fact that fewer than three quarters of pregnant people are vaccinated. If you're than one quarter, I should say seventy pregnant people are unvaccinated. Why is that so low? Yeah, it's

a pretty shocking statistic. I think it's really because of the fact that none of the vaccine clinical trials, of the three vaccines in the US that are authorized and approved, none of them included pregnant people in their trials. Um. That's pretty common in clinical trials. Not to say that

it's a good thing, um, but it's pretty common. And so pregnant people didn't have any data to rely on around safety or efficacy until after the vaccines were publicly available and when people who decided that it was worth it for them to try and see how until we got more data, and so for for months, we didn't have data on how this vacts, how any of these vaccines worked in pregnant people, and so where do we

stand now? Because sure, pregnant people were excluded from the vaccine trials, sounds like that's pretty common, But do we actually have data now now that you know the vaccines have been available widely for months now, have they actually run trials that include pregnant people? Um. So it's not a trial so much as it is like data from what we've seen in the real world. But yes, absolutely, UM,

vaccines are safe and effective for pregnant people. They do not cause miscarriages as there is, or fertility issues as there is the misinformation about that around UM, and as the as we saw and as I reported, there is there if you get COVID and you are pregnant, you are in a really really bad spot if you are unvaccinated,

talk a little bit about that. Yeah, So what I found speaking to doctors across the country in places like Texas at Florida, but also places like Los Angeles and Seattle, Washington, was that they are seeing, with this latest surge in cases from Delta, a new trend of pregnant people who are getting really sick, who are needing to be intipated and put on a ventilator, who are having to deliver their babies early, and some who are dying UM and some who are having to spend months in the hospital.

I mean, it's just really awful. These are largely unvaccinated pregnant individuals, and um they're largely young and healthy age like eighteen to thirty. So it's pretty shocking to hear this. You know, we've been hearing a lot about kids and and COVID in hospitals right now, but this is another problem,

is pregnant people and getting COVID. So, I mean, those are terrifying stories, and I'm curious, I mean, is there is that because pregnant people are more at risk than a normal unvaccinated person, or is there any reason to believe that you're more at risk to become more seriously ill if you are also pregnant. Yeah, so pregnant. Being pregnant tends to suppress one's immune system, so that could

be part of it. Um, what I the doctors I spoke to, you think that it's not so much a fact that you are more likely to get COVID if you're pregnant, more so that it's a compounding of factors. You know, your immune system is not as good, you're around, um, a number of people having to go to the doctor. Um, you know, there's there's a number of factors that could lead to it. And if you do get get COVID,

then you're more likely to have severe illness. Based on your reporting, I know you spoke to a lot of people who were vaccinated and weren't vaccinated. What did they give you for the reasons they ultimately did decide to get best vaccinated who are pregnant and those holdouts who who decided not to. Yeah, I mean I actually had a really hard time talking to some of the people who have remained unvaccinated. UM. But what I what I can say is people are just really nervous because of

the lack of information that there was. They're also, the CDC did not wreck men that pregnant people get the vaccine until a few weeks ago. UM. Two of the major medical societies for pregnan individuals, the Market College of Obstetrician and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal and Fetal Medicine, they recommended it about a month ago. So it's just this is just a really recent thing. Some doctors still

aren't sure about recommending it to their patients. You know, I'm beating stories about people saying, well, I talked to one doctor and my doctor said it was good for me to get but my sister's doctor said she shouldn't. And so I think there's just a lot of confusion out there. I don't think it's you know, people being quote unquote anti vaxers so much as it is that they are just genuinely nervous because of the lack of information because their doctors aren't sure what to tell them. Yeah,

I think the confusion will continue to persist. When it comes to boosters and to what extent, Like, you know, somebody got a shot before they got pregnant, you've got fully vaccinated, do they get a booster? Right? That's that's the question, and I think a question that many people

will have moving forward. It is a fantastic piece. It's the reason that it's a the most read in the Bloomberg terminal right now, it's called Pregnant, unvaccinated and intubated Doctors alarmed by rise that Shira Stein, healthcare reporter for Bloomberg Law, joining us on the phone from Washington. D c Uh, Katie. I think the question remains that, you know,

the science continues to change. So the CDC coming out and actually saying that this is helpful, uh, that women need to do this, then that's a very important move there. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, the bidding war over a maker of airplane wheels and fire detection systems may herald a fresh wave of consolidation in the aerospace sector, so writes Brooke Sutherland, deals in Industrials columnists

for Bloomberg opinion. Brooke story will be featured in the upcoming issue of Bloomberg Business Week magazine. You can read it now on the Bloomberg and at bloomberg dot com slash business Week. Also joining us is Joel Webber, editor at Bloomberg Business Week. He's on the remote from Massachusetts. So Joel, the big question is bigger is better back when it comes to aerospace and navy ation. Well, I'm gonna be honest, this isn't a space that I watched

that closely. I'm glad you picked up on it. Um the uh, but that was what kind of jumped out at me from from brookes story, is like, you know, this isn't a place that we have seen a whole lot of action, and then all of a sudden we have and and it's not everyday companies, right Brooke? Who are what kind of players are we talking about here? Sure? So Megga makes um they're they're well known for their wheels, breaks, fire detection systems, things like that. Um, this is sort

of a perennial takeover target. It often comes up in m and A speculation, but we've never really seen any deal get this far, and now it has not one but two suitors. The first is Parker Hanisons, which has been aggressively expanding its aerospace business over the past couple of years, trying to get out of some of its more traditional heavy duty industrial markets that tend to be

a little bit more economically volatile um. And the other is trans Time, which is also an aerospace supplier and has a reputation for being particularly aggressive on pricing when it comes to the parts that itsels and parts and services to airplane makers. And so it's going to be a really interesting bidding war too to watch how it plays out, which you're right, I mean, just the fact that we have a bidding war at all is notable

for a sector that's been particularly beaten down by COVID. Yeah, pro I want to talk about that the timing of this bidding war, because it feels like the industry at large is in a really weird place as we try to emerge from this pandemic. It is, and it's certainly trying to look at it right now when you have the headlines of it, the airlines warning about, you know, not quite seeing the demand they were hoping to see in August, the people canceling bookings, or you know, maybe

just not making bookings at all. But um. At the same time, you know, those in the aerospace sector that weren't in the same position as Boeing, which you know, was dealing with the seven thirty seven Max crisis, actually their balance sheep looked pretty good. Um. You know, they were able to at the debt markets when they needed it. But you know, they're really coming out of this in a pretty strong position financially, and I think they're preparing

for the next leg. And you know, one of the things that's been really interesting is this bad as this downturn had been for the aerostas sector, we're already starting to talk about getting back to a moment in time where we're not worried about not having enough passengers but worried about having enough planes. Um. And that's really where the industry was before the pandemic hit. I mean, there was a mad rushed by all of the airlines to try to get planes, trying to get the capacity so

that they could fly passengers where they wanted to go. UM. And you know, against that that job, it does make

sense to consolidate. You have you know a number of sort of midsized players but you also have a lot of very large players that have been doing a lot of deals, perhaps in this notable being Raytheon which acquired Rockwell collins Um also merged with raytheon the defense contractor, and so as you have other suppliers getting bigger um obviously as a duopoly as well, but in your airbus it makes sense to try to be as big as you possibly can beat yourself, Hey, Brooke, When it comes

to this industry, the thing is is these companies, the airplane the airlines have to make these orders years and years in advance of when they expect to actually have that need, that capacity, they actually expect to have delivery of those aircraft. What are they? What are we hearing from the from Airbus and from Boeing right now about the way that airlines are canceling or actually ordering new

planes and when are those going to be delivered? And are they all E three twenties and seven thirty seven maxes? What about alternative fuels take us into it. Yeah, no, So it's uh, we're starting to see you know, more actual orders men ancelations, which is a nice positive trend um, particularly for Boeing. They've really seen a ton of order activities from the US airlines that's really been the driver

of their purchases. Today, there was a massive order from United Airlines for Boeing Jets Southwest also topped up at

seven seven max order. And then Airbus had not seen as many cancelations as Bulling because they were in the um beneficial position of not having one of their planes grounded for nearly two years, which meant that the airlines have less selexibility to cancel their orders, and so they're being a lot more aggressive and looking at their production schedule and they think they can get back above their

pre COVID pace by three. So that gets to that point you know, I was talking about, we're moving door to future where the airlines. Airlines are gonna be wanting these airplanes um that maybe they thought they didn't need a couple of months ago, but they will see find themselves in the position where they do it, and the planemakers and their suppliers are really going to have to ramp up capacity relatively quickly to meet that neat um.

And then as you play that out further down the road, everybody is very concerned about the carbon footprint um of all aspects of the economy of a particularly air travel, and there's a lot of discussion about you know, using UM sustainable aviation fuels or even moving into sort of

next generation engine technology. I don't know if we're there yet UM in terms of you know, hydro gender batteries or anything like that for for large airplane, but certainly they want to make as many changes as they can that are realistic right now. And you need money to do that. You need a bigger balance sheet, you need research and development dollars, and so that's another key driver

for the consolidation thing. So what standing between this Megat deal in a finish line broke because it's uh, it's not clear if it's actually going to be a slam dunk or not, right I mean, And it's not price because both the buyers are offering very attractive valuations. They're above MEGASU pre pandemic high UM, We're talking about you know, pretty meat evaluations here. So price is not going to

be the issue. But it's going to be more down to the UK government UM, which has been particularly prickly lately about takeovers, especially when they involved key domestic assets that have a link to national security. So Mega is also a defense supplier UM and this is happening in concert with another takeover of the UK defense supplier, Ultra Electronics, and so it's a difficult backdrop right now to try to do a aerospace and defense takeover in the UK.

And so Parker Hannafon has made some pretty strong commitments to the UK government in terms of keeping the headquarters, keeping head count in engineering and manufacturing flat. They pledged to ramp up R and D spending pretty significantly over the next five years, which you know, those are meaningful commitments, and we haven't heard yet from trans Dynast it's willing to match that or perhaps go a little bit further.

But I think that that is the biggest issue in this deal and probably what will determine who ultimately wins this sitting more well, there you have at brook Sutherland, Deals and industrials columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, joining us on the phone from New York City. Also with us Joel Weber, editor at Bloomberg Business Week, on the remote from Massachusetts. You can read brooks story. It's featured in the upcoming

issue of Bloomberg Business Week magazine. You can read it at Bloomberg dot Com and of course, at the Bloomberg terminal. Also go to Bloomberg dot com slash of Business Week. This is the Big Day, the best of Bloomberg's in depth original reporting from around the globe. Well, we actually make sure we do as the economy. What covers is look at the data kind of broken down a bit. It's fun to becoming more and more expensively to be looking at the shifting billion dollars for the red entry levels.

There's been ways of immigration that have taste a lot of resistance, a lot of color behind the scenes in a great untold story. How did Bezos really come out on top? It's the cover, says Jeff Wins. He always seems to win the Big Take on Bloomberg Radio. Today's Big Take, the very best of Bloomberg's in depth original reporting front around the globe every day, is by Rich Miller,

economics reporter for Bloomberg News. He joins us on the phone from Washington, d C. It's all about FED Chair Jerome Powell's policy revolution and how it was blindsided by the COVID nineteen crisis. Rich Miller writes that when FED chair chair Jerome Powell rolled out a new motus up Rundy for running military policy at Jackson Hole. A year ago, the economy was just coming out of a pandemic driven nose dive. That was after a decade of disappointingly slow

growth with inflation stubbornly below target. Well, times have changed, rich What was the mL he rolled out a year ago? And where are we now? Well, I mean it's as you say, times change. Where where at an inflation rate at least by the Fed's measure, which is two times higher than than than they liked it four percent instead of two We're at an economy that's growing at at

at rates that we haven't seen for decades. And um uh we've got um, we've still got a monetary policy setting that's the same as it was a year ago. So that's raising questions about whether the Fed is it's going to be uh too slow to try to rain things in and then we're going to either get you know, housing bubble or some sort of financial bubble or or you know, a return of something like we saw in

the nineteen sixties with inflation starting to creep higher. So Richard feels like the FEED is in a tricky spot because you know, if they wait too long and stick to the framework, you know, they could risk what you just mentioned that we could enter a multitude of different bubbles. But it feels like it would be difficult to back away from the framework without losing some sort of credibility. So, I mean, what don't you expect the Fed to do here?

Do you think that they'll stick it out or do you think that they'll lift probably earlier than they might have wanted to. It's a tough question, but it is a key question. Um. I think for the first part, they're gonna they're starting and we're starting to hear that already, is that their rhetoric is going to start to turn a little more hawk is I mean, and the aim

of that is to keep inflation expectations in check. Um. They seem to be well and check in the treasury market, because we have yields well down from where they were earlier in the year, but consumers seem a little bit more worried and uh um, so they want to keep those So you're starting to see the rhetoric shift, and I would expect that Chair Powell will give us a little bit of more insight, um, not too much but a little more insight into their plans for beginning the

taper when he speaks at the end of this week at the Virtue. It's a virtual Jackson Hole again this year clause of COVID. I think that's an entirely news story on its own that we learned about late last week, that the fact that the delta varian is running so rampant that this thing that they thought would be virtual or wouldn't be virtual, would be for a second year

in a row, rich would be virtual. I wonder about the feds dual mandate here and to what extent the Fed is willing to let the economy run hot in order to satisfy its other mandate, which is to get maximum employment. Like how hot is the FED gonna gonna let the economy run hot? Uh? Well, right now, you know, uh uh, they're focusing not so much on how high the inflation rate is, but for how long it's gonna last,

you know, stay there? Right. So their their story that this is our story and we're sticking to it, is that you know, uh uh, the inflation we're seeing is transitory. So um. I think though that argument may get a little stale as we get into next year, and so that you know that maybe the time when when you might see them getting a little more worried, or they may turn out to be right and you know, inflation

will settle back down. You know, we've already seen you know some you know, subsiding and inflation on some of the areas like rental car prices that have proven most troublesome. So but I would think if if you're still seeing pretty uh inflation, like three percent or more at the end of this year, uh, they might get start getting more worried and so rich. This is something I think about a lot, and it's kind of impossible to answer.

But if the FED had known this pandemic was coming, if they had known the trillions of dollars of fiscal stimulus were on the way, do you think they would have committed to this new average inflation targeting framework. I think, well, they were going off what they saw of a history of decades right of of you know, this whole secular stagnation story of of Larry Summers that you know, we we we for decades we've seen um uh low inflation,

low interest rates, and slow growth. And you know, ever since they introduced their inflation target in two thousand twelve, they've basically been short. So they were going on that. I think, you know, you could argue that maybe they went a bridge too far in the forward guidance they gave. And when you know, not only did they have the framework, but they have the forward guidance, and they say, well, we don't expect the raised rates until we hit two

percent inflation. Rich Rich Miller, We're gonna have to leave it. Their economics reporter at Bloomberg News running us on the phone from a Watchington d C. You can read riches story and more like it from Bloomberg's The Big Take at Bloomberg dot com and of course on the Bloomberg terminal. This is Bloomberg Business Week, and this is Bloomberg Radio. I'm Broom the journal. Yeah, but you let me drive. Oh no, no, no, no, honey, please, I'll do the

riding rivals. I want to drive. Just drive, baby, good questions driving the drive to the close community. Thanks, we'll drive us dawn on Bloomberg Radio, and we're driving to the closed with it just over ten minutes away from the market close on this Monday, August Stocks in the Green, the dal higher by more than seven tenths of one percent, d higher by more than nine tenths of one percent,

the NASDAC higher by one point six three percent. Let's get right into it with Mitch Rubin, chief investment officer and a managing partner at River Park is joining us on the phone from New York City, matche It's great to have you on the show today. UH shares of US equities are rallying today on the news that the fiser by on Tech has been approved by US regulators, fully approved. Are you surprised to see an equity market reactions such as this considering that this was this was expected?

You know, it's We're in this strange time where I think people have this large perspective of risk on versus risk off. August is a light trading month, so small amounts of move of news can move the market. I think right now, the biggest thing on people's head, you know, headlines,

is are we going to have another shutdown? And I think the more people think the vaccine is becoming more accepted than uh, we're more likely to fight back against delta, and that's positive for the market and for equities and optimism. So it's not surprising to see a decent sized move. Do you think we're gonna have another shutdown? Yeah? I certainly don't think we're gonna have a full backdown. Could we have another spike a COVID that causes people to

be worried? Uh, certainly. I mean, I think the difference now with where we were back in April when we were seeing shutdowns is we know so much more about the virus in the way it's spread, and about vaccines, and we also know how to work in an environment that's that's hybrid, right, an environment that the virus is running rampant, but also one that still requires us too and many people actually physically be in the office. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a society conversation and there's

a markets and economy conversation. I think the markets and economy conversation is the virus isn't a particularly important economic event. It's been our reaction to uh, the virus in in shutting down certain businesses and what is going to be

our change in day to day life? And I think I think what the market is as a forward looking mechanism is saying, Okay, we're beginning to think beyond the virus as disrupting corporate or nings, and how do we think about, you know, what we're willing to pay for stock or for equities for the next few years. I think in the near term, we're all hyper focused on what does life look like for the next few months and years, and when do we go back to work

and when do we feel safe? And I think that disconnect is troubling a lot of people because the markets seem quite forward looking and optimistic, and we're we're all still anxious and nervous and not quite sure what the new normal looks like for day to day life. And so if we think about, you know, where we are. August is supposed to be a pretty volatile month. You're supposed to see, you know, over the past five years about a one point six per cent gain for the

SMP five hundred. But if we think about the August that we've had so far, we've actually seen the VIX move lower, We've seen the SMP outperform, uh you know, it's five year average. I mean, where does that leave us as we head into September? Are we have we just stored up volatility or can we continue to grind higher here and can that disconnect you're talking about persist. Yeah, I mean I think I think what people may be

using a slightly broader lens um. I think most people are surprised when you tell them, hey, hey, open your eyes for a second. The S and P fives up twenty this year. And despite all the conversation about growth and value in different things. You know, growth stocks are up eighteen and a half percent. Value stocks are up. Using just some of the large cap indices, most stocks have done quite well. Uh And and the economy in general is strong. Interest rates are low, earnings have come

in very strong. I think if it continues to be the case that that businesses do well, uh and interest rates stay low, stocks are reasonably priced, fonds are not offering much yield. It certainly is our opinion that the market still has an upward bias to it. I think the bigger question as we get it later into the year and the next year, is will the markets begin to have more dispersion and it won't be just risk on, risk off, but which businesses are prepared for a host

COVID kind of digital first future and which aren't. And as you get into and twenty three not every company is going to have an earnings growth compared to a shutdown yere in. And it's our perspective that stock picking and which businesses you own is going to matter a lot more than do you own equities or are you in cash or box? Yeah, well, I'd love to get

into positioning a little bit more. And how uh you know you are you know, orienting your portfolio in this environment, because if I look at the river Park Long Short Opportunity Fund, you know, I've seen tech names like Amazon and Microsoft. I also see the I Shares Russell two thousand e t F, a small caps e t F.

Can you walk me through some of your top holdings. Yeah, so, so we run both a large growth fund which is fully invested in equities all the time, and then we also run a long short fund, which is really a traditional hedge fund but offered in a mutual fund wrapper. I think what you're referring to in the long short fund is that some of our bigger longs, which definitely in some of those high growth TEX stocks, but but a good um diversified book of of other growth businesses

and other industries. Some of the industries you're pointing to or some of our short positions. So we we hedge out our longs, sometimes with market indexes where we think our long book will outperform the market as a whole, but more often with just individual shorts. And so um, we are short a little bit of the small cap

index just as a hedge against our long book. Um. And you know, the belief we have is that a select group of equities, even though the markets had a good run, are still incredibly well positioned and reasonably valued for the future. But there are a lot of businesses whose future is less certain as we get post COVID. Uh, And that is an really interesting time to be selective. And whether it's a select group of longs and not the whole market, we're actually owning a long short run

which has the ability to protect capital on the downside. Well, let's talk a little bit about that. And some of the shorts that that you like. Peloton shares are actually lower on the day today because a price cut at Oppenheimer. Um. Why do you say that Peloton is not a sustainable volume of business post COVID and that it's too expensive? Yeah, I mean we the way we invest is what do we believe the business has the potential to earn three, four or five years from now, and how is it

value today? And Peloton is a business, it's a great product. It obviously was the right in the right place at the right time. But as we look to the future, we don't believe people are regularly replacing their exercise bife. These are relatively expensive pieces of equipment generally exercise uh um, you know, stay at home exercises, going fads, and people buy one thing and then a few years later they

buy another. And Peloton is being priced as if the business they did during the shutdown was going to be perpetual and growing off that base. And so we don't we don't necessarily think it's a poor business. We just think at thirty billion of market gap um, the level of business they did in two thousand twenty might be the peak level of business they ever do. And if we're right that people either won't replace their bikes regularly over time where they move away from that fat towards another,

that the business is just overvalued um. Which isn't to say, again, we don't necessarily think they're going to miss the next quarter or whether today's downgrad was right. We just think relative to the things were long, Platon is more likely to be lower in market top three years from now than higher does report later this week. Yeah, it's really quickly curious to hear about your thoughts on healthcare. We

have just about twenty seconds. Yeah. I think healthcare, like like a lot of other industries, is going through massive innovation. And I think those businesses that are looking to use the combination of data, um and science in the future to make us all um uh treat things earlier, whether it's detecting cancer earlier or or doing surgery with robotics and things like that, we think that's fascinating place to invest in our business. So is that are gonna be

a lot? We're gonna have to leave it their Mitroub and chief investment Officer and managing partner at River Park Funds. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com, and you can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube. Search to Bloomberg Global News