Improvements in COVID-19 Testing

Business Week on iTunes, SoundCloud, al Bloomberg dot com. You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio every weekday, or watch us on YouTube by searching Bloomberg Global News. A lot of folks, us included, are thinking about what it's going to take to get back to the office. We're hearing that a lot here in the Tri state area. I mentioned a few minutes ago that New York City is starting to reopen as of next Monday. Neighboring Connecticut is also thinking

about this a lot. Let's get into that with Dr Eric Shott. He is the founder and CEO of Semaphore. He joins us on the phone from Connecticut and Dr shot. It's really nice to to talk to you. I'm fascinated by your background and your experience in both the clinical and researches also and also the commercial help us understand what back to work testing looks like, especially when you're looking at Connecticut. Yeah, well great, too great to be on.

So what it looks like is we need a more holistic solution, not just focused on testing, but really seeking to understand the context in which each employee is existing, like whether they have symptoms or not, who they're being exposed to, and so on, in addition to the testing, and we kind of wrap that altogether to provide guidance to employers on whether a given employee is uh, you know, low enough risk and not testing as positive and should

be allowed no problem back into work, versus somebody at high risk UH and maybe should not be coming in, should stay remote. So this is what you guys are doing, and I'm reading something from the Stanford Advocate. I mean, you guys are increasing the capacity for your new coronavirus testing program to at least ten thousand tests daily up to twenty and we're talking about the test of whether or not you've got the virus. But also antibody testing. Correct. Yeah,

that's correct. And a lot of that volume driven by you know, uh, you know, working with the State of Connecticut Governor Lamont and the progressive strategy they have to really uh, you know, get people back to work. So

proud to be helping those guys along. And so, I mean, I guess and I love the fact that you're looking at it very holistically, uh, Eric, I mean, just as a sort of rank and follow employees and you know, folks who are commuting and things like that, as as human beings, and obviously folks who have pre existing conditions and are more at risk. I think there's a different,

different set of circumstances. But what should the everyday person who's thinking about their office be Is there sort of a checklist that we should be thinking about in terms of our own uh thresholds, in our own sense of safety. Yeah. In fact, it's interesting and the dozens of employers we've talked to about these go back to work strategies and use of testing, A lot of this is employee driven, like the employee wanting to understand how safe are they

going to be at the workplace? Are they going to be exposed? Are they going to carry something back to the households which may have vulnerable others. So we're seeing a lot of this driven by the employees. Some of the employers like they need individuals back to be productive, they want come back in the workplace. And so what we're seeing is the employees really saying, well, we'll make us safe if we do that. So there are a bunch of guidelines to the employers about how to you know,

maintain social distancing within the workplace and so on. Um, there's the kind of symptom tracking that you want individual rules coming into to be taking. So increase awareness in the employee on whether they're you know, they're not feeling well or they've been exposed outside of the work environment. All of that, through the kind of digital engagement we have, can be reported and cataloged and used to assess risk in addition to the testing. So again it's it's trying

to cover as many variables as possible. Well, once you're in the work environment again, you know, just smart maintaining social distancing, wearing a mask if you're in public areas, are exposed to other individuals and so on. And I want to press you on one point because you brought up and I think it's so important, which is this idea that if someone and I certainly trust my employer. I've worked for a great company and I'm not just

saying that because I'm on its air. But you know, the thing that I think many people worry about is exactly what you said, the sort of inadvertently bringing bringing something home and is that just something? Is that a risk we're just going to have to to live with And how much of this goes down to kind of that individual responsibility and maybe the in between things that

are happening between work and and the workplace and vice versa. Yeah, it's it's a bit complicated because it has to take into account, you know, to to what extent does an employer actually need you working in the office. So one of the things we do with the employer groups is assessing helping them assess is an employee really needed to

come back in or can they be remote? And if they fall into higher risk categories, i e. They have individuals at home who are more vulnerable, elderly elderly parents living with them, immune compromise individuals, and so on. So that's number one. Number two is age, age plays a significant role in in the severity of response you may undergo if you get infected, so all of those parameters

are taken into account. Education is a key part of this, and it's helping everybody understand the risk to what is center they needed in the office, to what extent can they remain remote? And based on those, various thresholds are

set for the different risk groups. Our guest at this hour Dr Eric Shot, founder and CE at Semaphore, a patient centric predictive health companies, also Dean for Precision Medicine and amount Sinai Professor and Predictive Health and Computation Biology at the Icon School of Medicine at Mount sina As

we said, he's had lots of education and lots of schooling. Um, doctor Shot, it is nice to have you here with us, and you're talking about, you know, the work that you guys are doing at Semaphore with the State of Connecticut in terms of providing more access and more testing. Given your druthers, would you, as a member of the medical community,

pervert that people ultimately just stay home a little longer. Yeah, I think we're seeing, uh are already seeing that some of the timelines on when when governments wanted to see people back to work and people wanting to be back to work, that kind of getting delayed. Let things right out a little longer. The you know, the number are

definitely going down. But I do ultimately think that testing is sort of a core part of a key part of evidence, along with other parameters that sort of assess whether somebody does have active infection or whether they've been infected and may be immune and dr shot. You know, I know that this is top of mind for you because you have been involved in the collection of a lot of very sensitive data. How do we protect privacy amid all of this, Yeah, that's a great question. You know.

The digital solution we sort of provide to an employer that includes both an employer portal where they can upload who what employees do they want to have back in the workplace, so who's eligible, and then for the employee employee portals that we engage in clinical testing all the time.

So this technology that keeps you know, we're dealing with HIPPA, uh, personal personally identifiable health information like all of that, we stay of the art um you know, encryption techn oologies and so on, and many of the employers, like once these tests are run unemployees, whether they're positive or negative, UM, you know, the employers often don't want to see that information. They don't want to take in, um, you know, what's

medically happening to the individuals. So we have the ability to shield that information to guide UH employees who test is positive into the right channels of care. So it's employing the same kinds of techniques and technologies that we imply in clinical medicine to to to perform this kind of testing. I do feel like, you know, doctor Shot, that we have been talking about disrupting the medical community for a long time, and I feel like it's been

resistant for many different reasons. But I do feel like what's happened with COVID nineteen is is revealing that we really need to change how we do things. And unfortunately, as a result of that, we are going to be giving up more data, and there's going to be more sharing of data, and there's going to have to be data pools. Is that just kind of our new reality? Yeah, Carol, and I think you've hit it exactly on the head.

This is going to be a transformational event that way, like there's going to be much more remote monitoring of patients and engagements remotely, a lot more information being transmitted digitally that way. I think increasingly patients and consumers more generally becoming more comfortable that UM sharing that kind of information, having more information collected on them will have lots of benefits.

So there's kind of that risk benefit ratio that employees, you know, employees consumers always have in mind, and so I think, yeah, we'll gravitate towards a new equilibrium that I think will have us UM you know, tolerating higher risk and maybe greater privacy risk violations in trade for ensuring we stay healthier and don't bring bad stuff into the home. Last question for you before you let you go, what do you worry about the most interns of back

to work? Yeah, I think it's having a holistic enough solution that well enough characterizes what's happening in an individual and what is their risk profile. Really, as we start getting into different types of sample collection and make it more convenient, whether it's saliva and at home collections, you know, are those sensitivity and bessicity of the tests? Are they

going to be as accurate? So we're like a lot of energy being spent both with the state of Connecticut and all the testing we're doing to assess all of those different parameters to you know, we're all learning together. We have to adapt and as we learn, and and uh, you know, but yeah, it's that we'd be accurate enough, I guests would be mine. Now. I think that's I

think that's exactly right. I mean, we had a great story a few weeks ago colleague of ours in London did about getting four tests and essentially two of them are negative, to them were positive, and so you do wonder about the accuracy and that ultimately will make a huge difference our Thanks to Dr Eric Shott, founder CEO of Semaphore Jinus on the phone from Stanford, Connecticut. They are working with the state Carol to get that state back to work. And I take his point at the

end there. It's a really important one because that the data are only good if they're real and true, right correct, and it needs to be consistent. We've talked about this that if everybody is doing kind of their own thing and there's no consistency in terms of collection, and then you know how you look at it, it's not going to be ultimately useful in the end, so really really important. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason

Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Well. Among our most read stories on the Bloomberg today is one in the magazine this week. It's about how a decade of progress for women has evaporated overnight because of the pandemic. It was one of those stories we were talking about on our planning call this morning. The story by Shelley Banjo Bloomberg News is uh technology reporters. She joins us in a second lost nice place. She is our senior writer. Forgive me Shelley.

Shelley Banjo is our senior writer at Bloomberg News. Wanted to get her title correctly. On the phone from Dallas, Texas, she joins us along with Bloomber Business Week editor Joe Weber on the phone in Brooklyn and Joel, I mean it's a special magazine this week in terms of what you guys are doing. What I love about this story is that you really dig into what's going on telling the story, uh, the numbers, the stories that really give

us an idea of how the pandemic specifically is impacting women. Yeah, I mean every issue is special, Carol. You know, this is one of those stories that the momentum we started

talking about it. I just said, this is supremely important, and you know, it's been sort of bubbling for a second, like we've seen some of these numbers come out, but this was the first time that we actually really managed to put them all in one place to get a sense of just how dramatic this moment is for women specifically who have basically shouldered the burden of the pandemic in a way that um that men haven't. Um, Shelley, as you did. You're reporting. What were the numbers that

really jumped out to you? Oh, good question. I mean the first thing is definitely the job losses. Uh. You know, a lot of terms. We compared this to what happened in two thousand and eight, and a lot of those sectors that were most hard hit were things like housing, UM construction areas where a lot of men were and this time around it's a complete flip, but it's um areas where where women are. For that of the job losses, UM,

you know, was a big one for me. And the other number that really shoot out to me was just the sheer number of women that are breadwinners in their family. I guess I just didn't really quite realize, um, you know, how much how much that was, and how much of this, Shelley. I mean, this was a stunning story in many ways, although as both Carol and Joelhood said, it was one of these things that probably if you think about it,

was was hiding in plain sight. I mean, to me, one of the most troubling aspects of it is that it's going to be really it's gonna be a slow slog back to even where we were much less real progress.

Talked to talk to us about that and and sort of how this may how hard it may be to to really reverse this, and and Jason, one thing to add just there is that last year or women made up the majority of the US workforce for almost the first time in a decade, right, sull you like, just think about that in context as you as you sort

of respond to that. That's exactly right. I mean, I think your point on hiding in a plane site is a good one because a lot of these things you don't see, I mean, you don't see the hours, um that women are necessarily staying up later at night to finish and this kind of burnout potential of you know, I finish my work for the day, and then I'm with my kids, and then I'm planning on and again to work until two o'clock in the morning. And those are the type of kind of burnout that that starts

to um, that starts to really weigh on people. UM. And I think that could you know, have some bigger, long good term implications. UM. You look at all the women that are just kind of bowing out of the workforce, taking leave, taking parental leave. Now, UM, that's going to impact longer term, longer term earnings and income for women. UM. And then you look at a lot of women that have no choice like that. They they're single women who um, you know, provide everything for their family and so they

have no choice but to work. And so for them that means putting their kids in a lot of precarious and unsafe situations. You know what's interesting, Shelley and I think Jason, back to some of the early conversations we had once we went into you know, working from home, is that folks thought, you know, this might be helpful to women and giving them more flexibility in terms of

working operations because everybody was at home. We were realizing it was working more effectively than I think anybody imagined and thought that this might be a boon for women, and it's interesting to see how it's playing out ultimately. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, working from home does save you sometime in terms of commute and things like that. Um, but you can't do two things that wants. You can't both you know, breastfeed the child and uh, I'll lead

a conference call, which so I have seen that before. Um, but you know, it's it's you can't do two things at the same time. You can't be two places at once, and so kids some um, you know, I think it sums up in my fur in the very first line of the story, which is the reality of the pandemic. If someone has to stay with the kids, and so as long as you have kids, someone has to watch them, and in most cases that's ending up on the women. And when that means is then they can't do their jobs.

And so you know, to me, in a frustrating part of this, companies are saying, yeah, we're trying to be um, we're trying to be understanding of this, but but really, you know, I think it takes some greater policies, and so that's something I thought was very interesting, UM from some of the think tanks that I spoke to, which said, you know, this is really a moment where we can either take what's happened and make things worse, or we

can take what's happened and make things better and institutionalize some of these things that we've started to do around working from home and paid sickly even UM, some of these temporary provisions that have been written in for workers right now, and think, you know, how can we actually turn these into long term solutions because what the pandemic unveiled was, you know, we don't have this kind of safety net written into um, the government, into laws, into

the way companies work and across the board. And so you know, where can we what can we learn from this, what can we take away, and how can we emerge from this better. It also revealed, speaking from personal experience here, the importance of school where you can put kids and

and then actually, you know, go do your job. And you you know, just continuing that thought that you had there Shelly about what employers are are doing and can doing, Like what did you what else did you learn about um um you know, most effective policies that employers are using during this time. I think having a policy is effective. So a lot of companies have said, you know what, we're behind our employees, Well, we're gonna make um We're

gonna make adjustments. But what I found from talking to a lot of these women are I don't want to ask for an adjustment. I don't want to ask for a special treatment just because I have to take care of my kids. It's a bad economic time. People are worried that their job prospects are shaky or that their

next um, you know, promotion might not be there. If they're the ones who had to say, oh, you know what, during this time, it actually need you to give me a break a little bit, because for every person who might need a break right now, there are people who don't necessarily have the same kind of caregiving responsibilities that others have. And so UM, I think having a policy in place is something that makes it, um you know, streamlines the situation a little bit easier for people to take.

And I think you know, I'm hearing too from a lot of folks that those policies need to be very clear concise, understood and really written out so that people understand truly, you know, what a company is, okay with it followed without any repercussion, exactly, followed up on and enforced and enforced fairly. Yeah, I think it's it's a

really important point. This is a great story. Yeah, I think it's really important and I love I mean, I'm going to put it out on Twitter because the numbers in it to really tell you what's going on right now on and in particular, um the disproportionate impact that women are seeing. Shelley Banjo. She is senior writer at Bloomberg News. She joined us on the phone from Dallas, Texas, along with Joe Weber, editor a Bloomberg business Week on the remote line from Brooklyn. Check out that story in

the issue. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. All right, let's talk a little Business Week economics. We talked about this story a little bit. We teed it up, I think rather nicely. For our next guest, Elena Shats, She's quoted in the story that is one of the most read on the Bloomberg and it's all about what may happen next when it comes to who may lose their jobs

in the aftermath of this pandemic. She, of course, is senior US economists for Boomberg Economics, joining us on the phone from Long Island and Yelena, I have to say, you know, reading this research and understanding the data that you and your team collected, it is troubling for a lot of our audience in many ways, who I think was probably able to say, Okay, well you know, I'm not an hourly restaurant worker. I don't work in retail.

This is going to be much more widespread and as this continues, we're talking about a lot of higher paying white color jobs, right UH. And I think the key point here is that a lot of white college jobs and a lot of jobs in adjustent industry to those that work heat very hard in the first wave of leoffs.

I still at RIPA. So even though we saw better than expected number in terms of a DP payrolls this morning, UH, another report from UH non Manufacturing sim Services suggested that things that really not improving that well, and the employment component of the survey was still at a very low level. So that tells me that maybe this optimism about how quickly the job market is going to improve is a

little bit permecure. You know what can I just say, Lena, It reminds me of like using the um SPLC function on the Bloomberg the supply chain analysis, Right, Like you you look at a company, but you've got to look who do they buy from? Who do they sell from? Right, whenever there's a story, it's so much more, you know, wide reaching than just one entity. And that's what this is, right.

You know that if you know restaurants are hit, well, there the whole supply chain and it includes technology, you know, workers, that includes health care, educate. I mean, there's just so much that goes into it. So what we did, what our team did in terms of the analysis, we looked at input output tables from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to kind of trace the linkages between different industries. So

let me give you another example. So, uh, a really state less or somebody who rents out those um big retail spaces. They are in danger basically because a lot of stores are closing and maybe they're closing permanently. So

these companies are at risk of losing jobs. So what we did we tried to estimate across the whole economy how many in more industries in danger because of that first wave of layoffs that we saw back March in April, and our estimates suggests that as many as six million jobs in danger because of um this potentially of an adjustent industries, and also because white college jobs are now a risk given that a lot of frontline workers lost

their jobs and they might not be coming back. Well, that whole notion of coming back, I guess you'll and I want to just emphasize that point because one of the things that's given I think a lot of people comfort so far. And I'm sorry to dwell on this maybe, but I think it's so important is this idea of like, oh, it's gonna come back, It's gonna come back, and and I do feel like we're starting to get a sense that some of these jobs, especially the ones you're talking about,

don't so easily come back. It is there a delineation that that you make between sort of that first wave in second wave? Can you quantify how likely it is in the snap back? It's very difficult, and of course there are a lot of different factors around it. So yes, things may turned really great and all of a sudden everybody rebounds in terms of growth and in terms of jobs. But I I think it's very unlikely. And uh, even though we we have seen a lot of optimistic signs,

say coming from auto sales report. We so yesterday it was better than expected. Another report this morning, VP was better than expected. There's a lot of uh this um, you know, setbacks in terms of how much demand we will have in the industry, in the economy, on the part of consumers, on the part of other industries that

might not be coming back in a V shaped form. Well, and you do wonder I think, Jason, I harken back to our conversation with Margret Keen and Synchrony Financial, which is a bit of your talks in the magazine this week. But who talked about, you know, people who had asked for more time to pay off some of those store credit cards, about them said, you know, we don't need

these deferrals anymore, but they are paying down debt. And you know that also goes to if you're a little bit nervous about what the outlook is, you may not do any new spending. You're gonna you know, try and kind of shore up your financials. Uh. And what's interesting is one of the data points, more than one third of households making a hundred thousand dollars per year have lost some employment income since mid March, and and some of them, the statistics show they're worried about, you know,

making next month's rent or paying the mortgage. So you know, it's it's really hitting all, you know, aspects of the income spectrum. All right, Elena selective it. Thank you so much in your economist for Bloomberg Economics, A really nice one. Two punches that were between our Bloomberg Economics team and our Bloomberg News team really synthesizing some great data that

Elena and her group put together. And it's all about white colored jobs not being safe from this pandemic that continues to really wreak havoc, not just from health perspective, but from an economic perspective as well. Carol, and you also start to think about it in the context of the civil unrest that we're going through and everything going on there that's also laying there, Uh, some really really tough economic truths. We're going to talk about that next hour.

Nothing makes people feel more desperate than financial troubles, right, and either not having enough money to support your family, take care of your family, feed your family, keep a roof over your head. And you know, it's things that certain aspects of our society have dealt with for a long time, but it's certainly hitting a lot more today. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Jason

Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. In our weekly Bloomberg Green segment, Adjason, Today, investors are focusing on an interesting idea that we need to think of cars as more than just an automobile to keep selling that in a post COVID nineteen future. Provocative. So let's get more on this from Emily Chason. She is Sustainability editor a Bloomberg News and she joins us on the phone in New York City. I'm only good to have you back with us, so tell us about

this this story. Yeah, So, what we're seeing, thanks for having me back, by the way, is what we're seeing is that people are coming out of COVID all over the world and they're a little bit nervous about using public transportation. So they're what they're doing is they're looking at cars again and then, but you haven't using your car for a while, so you might not buy anyone right And before this, everybody wanted people to switch to electric vehicles. Um, automakers have a lot of bottles that

are coming out. Um there's now inventory. Um, so people are still buying electric vehicles all over the world. Um, probably because they were still on a wait list. It took months to get all but um, yeah, I guess electric vehicles have this optionality to them where they could be more than just a cars for people. They can hook up to the electric grid. There's a software they use there see if autonomous vehicle stuff. So you could actually think of your car as having an additional value

composition in the future. Um, if it's an orcer car and people are sort of trying to unpack them with that looks like in what kind of future that could make for automakers. Well, and it's interesting to think about to Emily, and and this is an area very familiar to you. It's there's also an element, at least there has been so far that you know, buying an electric car sort of says something about you, you know, it sort of says something about who you want to be.

And I do wonder from a lifestyle perspective, how that has changed in your estimation, not just in terms of the dollars and cents of buying a car and some of the infrastructure, but also about the maybe the softer side or the harder to quantify side of this. Yeah, well, people were looking to buy electric cars. UM probably still were. UM,

so it was sort of mutually did right. But today I think Mary Nickels out in California, who has in California everypoard, said they want to make the whole state in California electric vehicles only by so electro people are not going to be so rare anymore as they were in the past, Which means there's this whole infrastructure about elect of cars that really needs to be created right now. UM, are charging infrastructure is not there yet, it's the rest

of the US. UM. The battery replacement structure is not there, battery recycling. UM, there's a whole systimity created. But there's a lot of cool opportunities. I talked to this investor. He said, like you could think about your electric cars serving another pupots. It could be a generator for your house. Like, there's whole whole potential to have five days of power from your house, um, from your cars. You could plug your car into your house in the future. Um, And

that's not really available yet, but automakers are looking at it. Yeah. I also do wonder how public policy or government policy can play into this. Again, we know that when you get you know, incentives, I mean we replaced some windows in our house years ago because we got a break because they were going to be you know, better insulated, and so on and so forth. Like, I just do think about how government policy, whether it's a tax break

or something, can really induce people to do things. And I wonder if what you're hearing is we're going to need a little bit more of this going forward. And actually though, can government afford it after some of the spending that they've had to do because of the shutdowns caused by the virus and and other well, electric car

incentives are going to be really powerful going forward. We saw that like where electric car sales collapsed in covid Um, there weren't as many strong subsidies as there were in other places, and where cars electric cars was continued in covid Um, there were strong exensities. Um. So we're probably gonna need more that, especially because also automatic to have a lot of extra supply. They have been selling that

many cars lately. They're going to lower their prices. Cell electric cars are usually more expensive, and they're going to have to try extra hard to compete, So we're gonna be those incentives. Studism might actually be incentivized to do this because they don't want all these people coming in their cars and creating extra air pollution, which we know as the problems for covid um and lots of other things. All right, so electric cars they may find reason to do it, or they may even find sort of a

Harbon tax incentive. All right, Emily Jason, thank you so much, our sustainability editor for Bloomberg, joining us on the phone. How to make your electric car more than a car. I think people think about this a lot. I mean, even just looking at my neighborhood and sort of seeing you know, when people buy new cars, they're they're definitely thinking more about it. We've been talking about it. I mean, I know you're waiting for the electric station wagon because

you're a wagony stuff, but we do. But we talk about it a lot too. And you know who you know who we're you know, kind of waiting to do something UM so that it makes sense. I don't know if I would. I don't know. We've definitely talked about it, UM and I know your dad has one, UM and I know loves it, and I know everybody who has one loves it. I think, you know, we need to make sure that there are the charging stations that are around. UM. You really have to have the infrastructure to make it work.

But I really do think, and I do wonder, is electric vehicles the ultimate answer because you still have those batteries you've got to deal with, right, Yeah, true? And I just true. And you've got power facilities that have to charge the batteries. And I don't know if that's ultimately the answer. So you just want cars that run

on magic? What you're going for. I've been talking to Walt Disney and they've got some fairy dust that can Bob Iger in his role as executive chairman, is going to we can solve everything magic cars that don't run on anything. They've just run on pixie dust, hydrocarbon water, Like wouldn't that be great solar using the stuff. Like, there's just I just think we haven't pushed it, and maybe we need a global collaboration of people really trying to kind of push the envelope. Stop laughing at me,

Jason Kelly, I'm laughing at you. Full confessions. Carol Masster pulls up in her Pixie desk. Car anyway, bro journal, Yeah, but you let me drive? Oh no, no, no, I want to Bible. Just drying baby, good questions, trying this drive to the globe. Thanks, we'll drying us down on Bloomberg Radio. All right, Well, as we head to another green Clothes it's become a bit of a habit lately. Let's check in with Michael Sheldon, executive director, chief investment

officer for High Tower r d M Financial Group. Johnnys on the phone from Westport. Michael, nice to have you back with us. I trust all as well over there in Connecticut. Yeah, so far, so good, Thank you. Yeah. I mean it's interesting, you know, hearing a little bit more about reopening plans. We had a doctor on earlier who based out near you, a little down down down the coast from you and uh in Stanford, you know, talking about some pretty aggressive testing that's going to go on.

And we've heard a lot from your governor about what reopening looks like from where you are. What does reopening look like for Connecticut? Well, I think all the states are sort of in the same boat. I think the governors are looking at they want to see less cases going on, They want to see less people in hospitals, they want to see less mortality, less people dying. Obviously

from this, they want to see some improvement. And I think generally in Connecticut was one of the first states to get hard hit, and especially Westport and Fairfield County where I am, and we've definitely seen some improvement, which is a positive sign looking ahead and sort of sort of bringing that towards the markets. I wanted to start off by saying that there's an old saying in the markets, which used to be don't fight the FED, and I think the new saying now is don't fight the Fed

in Congress together. Fed in Congress have basically spent about six to seven trillion dollars over the past couple of months, and they're what they spent that need to temporarily replace the lost income from slowing down and shutting down the economy due to COVID nineteen. And now we're starting to see as the economy starts to open up, we're starting to see some improvement, which is now reflected in the

equity markets. I feel like it's also Michael, you know, don't Fed, don't fight UM Germany, don't fight the e c B. You know, there's a headline that just crossed Anglo Merkel's coalition reaching a deal on a German stimulus package. If one thing investors can kind of count on right now is that leaders central banks they're going to do what they need to do to make sure everything financially continues to work and move smoothly, and that usually means pumping a lot of money into the system to make

sure that there's no credit crunches or liquidity squeezes. Yeah, I think you're right. Central banks around the world have definitely coordinated and they pump money into the economy. In the United States, talking about liquidity, for example, when the Federal Reserve rolled out, it's planned to actually start purchasing

corporate both in the primary and secondary market. A few weeks ago, I thought to me that was a bit of a game changer, because the credit markets were really becoming on glued and just before the Fed even bought any corporate bonds, which they started just a week or two ago. They basically told the markets that they're going to do sort of their Mario Draggy moment where they said we're gonna do whatever it takes, and that's that announcement by the Federal Reserve a few weeks ago, basically

started to free up the credit markets. And you need a functioning credit market for the economy to function. So what do you worry the most about here, Michael, I think there are a number of concerns we have right now. One is China US relations seem to be getting worse after starting to get better last year. We have rising debt levels, that levels arising very quickly as a result

of all the spending going on. We don't think that's a problem for right now because it's so inexpensive to finance all this debt, but but down the road we may certainly face higher taxes. We have the upcoming election this fall, which will bring some uncertain and then there's obviously concerns about the strength the recovery, how long will we replet, how long it will take to replace all the jobs that have been lost. And then there's also the fear as we go into the fall, that COVID

nineteen could make a return later this year. That's what I worry about though, um certainly that the virus coming back, but I do wonder about labor dislocations of you know, temporary workers losing jobs and those temporary job cuts become permanent. And we just did a story. We talked with our Bloomberg Economics team. You'll initially of our senior US economist, you know that it's not just blue collar now we're looking at another way that will start to impact blue

white collar jobs as well. Right Like, It's just a reminder that when they're just slow down in the economy, it's not just one entity, one industry, one company that gets impacted. It's their whole whole supply chain, who they sell to, who they buy too. It'll be it'll be very interesting. We get the monthly jobs before coming out this Friday, and the numbers are expecting right now or

once again going to be sky high. They're expecting a decline of about another eight million workers and the unemployment rate of nine But I think one of the key things going forward is when we had the last job's number, the last jobs report, I think the number was something like seventy eight five of all the workers said that

their jobs had just been temporarily downsized. So if those jobs do ins fact, if those furtherard workers do eventually come back in the not too distant future, I think that would certainly set the stage for a more robust pickup in the economy and consumer sentiment, consumer spending, So that that the job market is definitely something that needs to be watched over time. And and so just to to press that point a little bit, Michael, the job picture,

you know, we saw a DP. Never say we see jobless comes tomorrow, as you say, we see the monthly jobs report on Friday, Like what's the what's the number amid all of that, you know, or even a specific data point within one of those reports that your most uh focused on seeing. Well, I think it's important that in general, we economic data has been trending higher. So it's not the absolute level that investors are watching, it's the rate of change, and that rate of change is

starting to get better. Weekly jobless claims have now declined for eight consecutive weeks, and they were still over two million last week, which is incredibly high number. Historically, but the trend is definitely positive, and you're seeing that in other areas like auto sales, for example, which rose from about eight and a half to twelve million units yesterday. The I S M Services Index rose from about five. So you're seeing a number of economic statistics either getting

less worse or starting to get better. But jobs will definitely be important. It could very well take several quarters or two or three years until we make back the majority of the jobs that were lost over the past several months. Michael, the jump back that we've seen in stocks, um the bounce back we're up about the S and P five was still off are high, yes, but we're still down about three percent so far to day. Makes

sense to you so far? Or is? Do you think the equity markets are getting ahead of them and just got about thirty seconds here? Sure? Well, looking at evaluation right now, the S and P s trading at about twenty four times this year's numbers and twenty times next year's numbers, so a lot of good news has certainly

been been priced in. I think as long as the direction of the economy continues to improve in the months ahead, I think the benefit of the doubt will be towards higher equity markets, but it won't be in a straight line, all right, Michael Sheldon, thank you so much. Good to catch up with you as always. Michael Sheldon is the executive director, chief Investment Officer of High Tower RDM Financial Group, joining us on the phone from Westport. Thanks so much

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