Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News. This is Bloomberg Business Week, Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
It is Bloomberg Business Week on this Thursday, August twenty eight, twenty twenty five. We are not live from the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio today. We are on site at the US Open right outside of Arthur Ash Stadium here at the twenty twenty five US Open. I'm Tim Steneveek. That is Molly Smith. She's not just a Bloomberg News economics enter, she's also tennis expert, in house tennis expert at Bloomberg. Well,
our next guest needs no introduction. You know him from the Tennis Channel as a correspondent for sixty minutes, from his many books and leading Glory Days, the Summer of nineteen eighty four and the ninety Days that changed sports in culture forever. He also joins US pretty much each year at the US Open. We've got John Worth. I'm with us.
How are you good? Good to be here.
How are you guys? We're doing pretty well. How's the tennis this year for you?
Good?
It's like a three week event now, so it's it's Thursday, and it feels like February now because of Fan Week. Yeah, I mean Fan Week really has gone from sort of this fun novelty for hardcore connoisseurs to this is a three week event and they handed out trophies in week one for mixed doubles and hundreds of thousands of fans came through the gates and it's really great for tennis. For those of us working, it's you know, it can be a bit of a slug, but no, it's great.
This is where we feel like we're like at the halfway point, even though we're only a few hours into round two.
So as one of these hardcore connoisseurs, I'm gonna start using that one. I like that word, thank you so much, so I will self proclaimed hardcore connoisseur. I gotta hear from you, John, what did you think of the mixed doubles format this year?
Well, I'm interested to hear you're from where I stand. Twelve out of ten big success. I mean, we sort of had this irony where an actual to the defending champion. So a real committed mixed doubles team won the title over these sort of shotgun marriages of singles players. But uh, you know, they filled the stadium. There was great interest mixed doubles is it sounds great in theory. It's sort of one of tennis's great virtues. As the men and women compete at the same time, a mixed doubles has
kind of become a bit of a side show. And uh, this tournament figured out how to make it newsworthy and noteworthy, and it was.
It was great.
Do you think we'll see that from other tournaments because of the success here?
It's a great I mean this is this is tennis in a nutshell, like uh, you know, the sincerest form of flattery.
I don't think Wimbledon because of the grass, it's a variable you would get destroyed.
Your addition to I think.
Australian, I think Australia is looking very closely. I mean, you know, getting the player on site for three weeks as opposed to two is a bit of a challenge. But yeah, if Australia doesn't have something similar, I would be shocked.
Well, let's talk about the scheduling challenge. It was particularly a nightmare this year. We had the tournaments in Canada and Cincinnati coming into this a really bizarre scheduling where those finals were played on a Thursday and a Monday, respectively. Didn't know if they were going to get here on time for the mixed doubles. Can you tell us a little bit about how packed this tennis calendar is and why this summer in particular was really very jubled up coming into this US Open.
It's like I'm dating myself. Do you remember Tetris?
Oh?
Yeah?
The tennis calendar is just this sort of its NonStop combinations and permutations, and the players say there are too many events and these tournaments keep popping up. But it's a global sport, so you're I mean, it's the great riddle of tennis, and it has been ever since I started covering the sport.
It has not been solved.
I'm not sure overlapping events in Canada and Cincinnati is the end.
No, you're right.
We had a final in Cincinnati on Monday and then this event started Tuesday, and thankfully the Pennsylvania Turnpike was not crowded. No, I mean, even flying private and getting here as quick as you can, it's still logistically it's it's a bit of a challenge.
Unfortunately, a lot of those players have deals now with these private jack companies.
Exactly.
The Egos fiancee's singles final was played at Believe six pm in Cincinnati Monday night.
She had a match here in ash the.
Next day Pennsylvania Turnpike.
They got to figure something out, exactly, you got to figure it out. What kind of toll does that take on the players. I mean, I think people romanticize the life of pro athletes a lot. But if you if you look at this schedule and you understand these people, and I was going to say, in some cases, kids are literally living on the road, out of hotel rooms for much of their formative years, Like that takes a toll.
It makes me think of Amanda.
Yeah, I'm who you reference a player who who just basically needed a mental health sabbatical just basically said, you know, I'm gonna take a break. Maybe I'll come back, maybe I won't. We're seeing that more and more don't you know.
I'm sure your listeners can relate to this. You can stay at the nicest hotel and they can put a little orchid in the room service, and you know what, it's still not your bed, and it's still not your sheets, and it's just there's something that's disruptive that you're you're dislocated. And you can have all the amenities and drivers and people fetching you water, it's still not home. And I think that's something that people, you know, we all know.
In sports right now, we're seeing how sleep in the study of sleep is getting a lot more emphasis. Does not do great things for your sleep to change time zones and change hotels in different pillows and at some level, yeah, this is an international tour. This is what you sign up for if you're your Taylor Swift plays all over the world. Like, you can't have it both ways. But the flip side is it's a real challenge. I don't
think we talk about it enough. Even with the nicest amenities, it still takes something out of you to be on the road as much as these.
It takes a lot of money to do that too.
You know, only people at the top are the ones earning enough to actually like make a living too.
And this is where I wanted to come back actually to this mixed doubles tournament because I think what I would personally love to see and what I want to hear your opinion on this going forward?
Maybe this is the way to get mixed.
Doubles onto the map by having all the singles players doing it as this glorified exhibition, so to speak. But I think sustainably going forward, we want to see the doubles players. I mean, that was really the beauty of Irani and Fava story winning. And would you want to I personally, again, I know I'm the connoisseur here, I would love to see the mixed double the player the
doubles players playing doubles. Is this Does this format maybe set the stage to get them back in and get a chance at that bigger prize money.
They're the ones that are needing.
No, it's it's a good point.
I think it's a fundamental question of tennis really, of any workplace, right, what is the right sizing, what is the right number of tennis players, what is the right distribution of prize money? And I think getting these singles players to play mixed. It was a great coup, but what did it entail. It meant they had shortened sets, They had only sixteen players in the draw, and it
spanned two days. And I think if they opened the draw up and suddenly it's three days and suddenly it's thirty two teams, the top stars are just going to say, you know what, I'm trying to win the big trophy here, I'm trying to win the singles trophy. It was fun when it was you know, I knew it wasn't going to take much out of me. But I'm not playing three days of mixed doubles before I try and defend my real.
Title, of course.
So that's where the challenge has been to the mixed doubles is that it was played at the end of the tournament and the singles players kept advancing, and we're like, oh, we're not word to pull out now, We're focused on the singles. I want to hear from you this last one here, John. We talked to a lot of fans about how you know, a lot of people obviously this is such a marque New York event.
They love coming to the US Open. But a lot of people have grown.
Very frustrated about how crowded, how expensive it's become. You talked to so many of the players. What's their experience like being here from a play.
I mean it's an interesting you're you're right, we've sort of hit on this.
So's what's the ogi barrism that's so crowded?
No and goes there anymore?
I mean it's I said that.
Friends here exactly, you know, I mean at some level like this is great. This is what all entertainment events want, right, You want to high demand, you want ticket prices to go crazy. Something would be really wrong if you know they were begging people to come.
The players, I think, first of all, they.
Like the prize money five million to the winner, one hundred and ten thousand dollars if you lose in the first round. And as you say, this is an expensive sport. And we see the high end, and we see the Carlos Alcarez and fifty million dollar endorsements, there is a whole cohort of players that are on the other side of the net from Carlos Alcarez that you know, are taking extra bananas out of the players lounge so they don't have to pay for breakfast.
It's really not evenly distributed.
But I think the players are really they see the investment here, They see this is a great showcase. I mean not every event on a Thursday afternoon, pick your random tournament spot. They don't resemble this. They're not you know, mark bands and tens of thousands of fans.
What about from the perspective of fans, because I've noticed in just this is my fourth I've been to what more than a half dozen US opens? Molly, you've been doing the twenty you think, I think twenty.
Yeah, my first was in nineteen ninety six.
Yeah, so you were too.
Yeah, we're coming up on my thirtieth anniversary.
So you've seen it change a lot just in the last three years. I remember getting a ticket a grounds pass for my wife for one hundred and fifteen dollars day of oncon you know, ticket Master, what have you? I mean, if I look at the prices right now, which I did right before because I'm trying to get her at grounds pass for tomorrow, but a rund four hundred bucks, Yeah, well that's prohibitively expensive. And I went by the box office and they don't have it.
You know, they've they've done a great job of washing their hands with this whole discussion and saying, hey, listen, you know this is the market is speaking more.
So than any of the year. When colleagues came up to me, when friends or even people I had never met who realized I was going to the US Open, they asked me the same question this year, since the pre sale, what is going on with tickets?
Supply meets demand at a very extreme I mean.
I start to do an economics editor here, Yeah, I can.
I can give you my my spiel as my riff, which is, you know, it's fine, right, we have luxury goods, we have not not everyone gets a rolex at some level like this is what you want, right, you want the supply curve to look like it does here.
I do kind of think that you can't have it both ways.
And there's a lot of talk here about inclusion, and you have various you know, tributes and kids, and you come here and it's like, wait, Chicken McNuggets are twenty six dollars, My grounds pass is four hundred dollars. It seems to me you can't have it both ways either. You are those populist event that takes place in a public park and we want everyone to feel welcome or you are this commercial and this transactional, which is fine, you know, I get it. We're running a business here,
not a philanthropy. But I think it's a little bit strange that they sort of try to they try to play it both ways.
I mean, I guess that would be their answer to that is Fan Week of course, that this is this you know, a couple of days where you can come in and watch for free, but now that has also become increasingly a.
Ticketed event as well. That you know that, yeah, it is free to come in here.
You can watch the qualifying tournament, you can watch them players practice, you can watch.
A lot of DJ sets, that's for sure, but like you not ultimately watch a lot of really what people want to see.
Why so Wimbledon does not have DJ sets, but wimbled it has a lot of this this this sort of high end and you know, you've got the private jet set that that's come in. But they also there are ten thousand seats that are set aside for the cures people. I mean, you know, you got to spend the night
in a field to get these tickets. There are ten thousand fans that come through the gates Wimbledon, this sort of bucket list location, and the tickets are like thirty bucks strawberries and cream, you know the signature dish, it's like two pounds fifty, it's like three dollars yea. And so they've really done a nice job of Yes, you've you've got your high end and you've got your debenture group and your club seating, and you can spend thousand.
You can also spend thirty bucks and have a great day.
That's so interesting because it looks from the outside like such an exclusive event and it's so much more formal and buttoned up. John, We always love hanging out with you. You are a busy guy. Thank you so much for spending so much time with us and being janious with your time, John Worth. I'm even from the Tennis Channel
correspondent for sixty minutes. He's got more than ten books that he's authored and co authored, including Glory Days, The Summer of nineteen eighty four and The ninety Days That Changed Sports in Culture Forever. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast. Catch US live weekday afternoons from two to five e's during Listen on Applecarplay and Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch US live on YouTube.
Tim Stentevik and Molly Smith live at the US Open here in New York City. We're in Queen's right now at Flushing Meadows. It's still a windy one.
Molly.
Oh yeah, Oh my gosh, I just got distracted.
Sorry.
Andre Rufelov is walking by in front of us. I am distracted everywhere.
That's okay.
That's the part.
That's the part of being here. Scripts that's what makes the US Open magical, that you're just sitting. I mean, granted, we're in the media area, so we're close to the players. But the way that Andra got here was he walked through the entire crowd. Yes, he was flanked by some security, but if you're out there, you can get pretty close to these players, which is pretty cool about the US Open.
I mean, our seat is really, i would say, the most accessible to the players from where we are.
You got to stay here. You can't get up and go and talk to the players, just so you know.
I'm good. I mean, we've had a great guest here to stick with.
Let's talk a little media here, because last week ESPN, which is the largest sports media company in the world, did something that just a few years ago, I think many observers thought, who would never do? They undercut the traditional PATV business, which generates billions of dollars in profits for its owner, Walt Disney. Yet it was time to
just go straight over the top. We've got Tim Bunnell with US, senior vice president of Programming for Esgenny joins us here on site at the US Open and Flushing, New York.
So in my.
Early earlier career, I covered media and streaming and one thing that analysts told me over and over again was Live Sports holds the bundle together. And in a few very short years that narrative has seemed to shift, and I think this is a sea change moment for ESPN to say, you know what, in order to watch everything, you don't need to pay a PATV provider. What's thinking here?
Yeah, look, I think it's.
I would agree that sports holding the bundle together is an accurate description, but I think what we're seeing now is as you aggregate services, whether it's you know, whether it's Peacock or whether it's Paramount Plus or whether it's the ESPN direct to consumer offering. You know, we're starting to see, you know, kind of aggregation in a different way.
But I think where we feel, you know, we've done well is kind of manage that transition that you referenced from, you know, from a kind of a five hundred channel in universe is when direct to consumer offerings first were sort of a thing and the leagues were doing their own services. I think that the feeling at the time was, why does an ESPN go out and they should just
be the Netflix of sports. There's a very good reason we didn't do that right away, and you cited it, Tim that that you know that we were walking away from billions of dollars of revenue and you have to kind of manage your existing golden goose business with the future.
Well, you also had those negotiations that in those long term rights agreements that you'd made with leagues that sort of kept things together too, right.
Yeah, I mean, you know, those deals typically typically for the US sports least, we try to do as long term deals as we can, and I think the understanding going into them, is the world's going to Given the pace of change and the media business, the world's going to change, it's going to look very different by the time these deals, you know, expire, and so we've had to kind of, you know, whether it was the launch of ESPN Plus or our direct to consumer service you know, more recently, you had to.
Kind of manage that transition within deal terms.
And that's what these partnerships and these league relationships.
Are all about.
Let's come back to that, just for our listeners who maybe don't know the difference between what is the ESPN Direct to Consumer app now and ESPN Plus.
Yeah, so actually one contains the others the way to think of it. So the ESPN Direct to Consumer app, simply enough, is all of our video services available in one place direct to the consumer. That includes all of our linear networks. It includes ESPN and ABC and ES. What we know today is ESPN Plus and so when we launched the Plus service a number of years ago, it was didn't include any of the linear networks. It was just incremental programming that we anchored by UFC and
a bunch of other big properties. But the direct to consumer product takes ESPN Plus and all of the networks and available content we have and puts them in one place that's called the ESPN Unlimited. You can also still subscribe to just ESPN Plus called the ESPN Select Package.
So if you're only you know, we would prefer that people not do that. We'd actually like them, you know, to go for the full package.
But if you're only interested in making it up Bundesliga or something that's your passion for sports, we have all the matches on ESPN Plus and you could do just that as well.
Know when pre covid, when retailers were trying to figure out how to respond to the rise of online shopping, there was this sort of thing that people said, which is, okay, what can we provide in the store that you can't replicate online? So Lulu Lemon was doing like yoga classes and stuff to try to build a brand and build an audience. I feel like there's an opportunity with a direct consumer media offering where you can offer something that
you can't offer in a traditional pay TV package. We saw that with Peacock in the Olympics, where you could kind of choose different camera angles and watch a bunch of different stuff. I see that being and granted I've been watching the US Open Linear on ESPN, I see it being promoted the direct consumer app being promoted in a way that says, wait a second, I kind of would rather be watching this on the app because I get to watch whatever I want.
Yeah, Look, I mean I think there's some of it is just having all of the content available in one place just builds consumer choice. I think the other big piece of the app launch and of the product launch last week is the improvements to the ESPN app and the expansion of the app. So whether it's some of the stats and data and fantasy and betting info you can opt into.
Or the multiview experience.
That we're providing Sports Center for you, vertical video, and there are a bunch of things that you know that came along with the the what I would call the content offering at the same time, and so if you're asking sort of what is it that says to the consumer, I really I need this product. Apart from just the content that's provided, it's all these features and functionalities that come with it.
So with the US Open specifically, I mean, you guys have had the broadcast rights here for a number of years. Is your got a bit longer with the mixed doubles at the beginning, a lot more programming that you guys probably had to offer. Can you talk about what those conversations were like with the USTA when they were talking to you guys about this format, how that goes into planning the rights and the deals around this Because more airtime, that's got to be a lot more work for you guys.
Yeah, and a lot more fun.
So, you know, I would say that really there was there was two big innovations that affected us directly. One as the Sunday start, which we were totally in favor of. I mean, I you know, we've talked about this before, Molly that I always felt like the US Open beginning on a Monday morning at eleven am, which just began quietly, and this is New York City, like it should be
a festive opening. And so that Sunday telecast, that Sunday start, in addition to being good for the tournament as a whole, gives us the window on ABC on Sunday afternoon where we're able.
To program it there.
That allows us to be on ABC opening Sunday middle Sunday and the men's final, and then and then the other big thing was obviously the mixed doubles. So that's another one where you know, all of the Grand Slams that we work with talk about building a week that leads into the tournament.
That means something.
They've done a great job of it here, but mixed doubles was something that you know, sort of I felt gets kind of buried in the main draw and so lifting it out adding a lot of star power to it. And I know that was controversial, but to me that really sent a lot of juice to fanweek, which gives us a lot of added momentum for the entire tournament.
And you just alluded to ABC.
There's so many networks here under the Disney umbrella. At your disposal, we have ABC, ESPN, ESPN two of course, all the outer courts on ESPN Plus. How do you within the main cable networks, what's the decision making process that goes into where do we place which courts?
Good question.
I mean up until this year we actually sim willcast the semis quarters and final quarters, Semis and finals on you know, on ESPN Plus along with so so there was you can sort of get it both ways, But I think ultimately, you know, once you get to you know, once you get to the round of sixteen on it's pretty much it's all. You know, you can cover everything
on your miniar networks. It's early in the tournament where you're saying, all right, we were going to focus on Ash and Armstrong or if there's a you know, an interesting match going on court eighteen, you.
Know, we'll we'll head out there.
But to me, the app that we have and the multiview experience could not be better tailored to any sporting event than at tournament.
Maybe maybe a golf golf tournament as well.
Will you over that too?
Yeah, yeah, I gotta go to the other US Open and talking. We're speaking with Tim Bonnell, Senior vice president
of Programming at ESPN. Tim, when when you think about the tennis actually moving the needle when it comes to people subscribing, where where does it fall under the you know, when you think about sports that are so popular in the US, because tennis, even though it's really hard to get a ticket here and even though this draws a huge crowd, Like we're not talking NFL, MLB, you know, or NVA here.
You know, it's funny.
I think tennis is terrific for us, for it performs very well across the board. The the skew between men and women is very favorable for us. Often we're sort of, you know, it's a more heavily skewed male network.
Uh. And so that's an attractive element to us.
And I think, you know, just we're a network and a business that's about big events, be it tennis or golf or NBA or college football or whatever it is. And so when I look across the Grand Slam, this landscape, the US Open in New York, in our backyard, all the hospitality that it allows us to you know, to provide to our to our fans and to our sponsors and customers. Uh, it's you know, to me, it's it's punches well above its weight, even even apart from its
programming value. And so you know, this year, like we've gotten off to a terrific start through the first round. We're up thirty seven percent P two plus. Uh, you know, it's a it's a I feel like the US Open is is just it's an upward spiral for us, and and uh yeah, I mean it's speaking of program value, who just walked by us.
Oh goodness, Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness. We have Naomi Osco.
Painting the picture a little bit first. Yeah, went on here.
Yeah, all right, I feel like I've arrived.
You got got one more question.
But I'm sandwiched between the two tims right now.
Which is the most important part of the program. So tim long tennis calendar throughout the year. You guys have the US Open, you have Wimbledon, you have the Australian Open. Just quickly here in this last minute, do you ever think of the French Yes, yeah.
We actually have it in Latin America.
We've had it for a long time, so we were you know, we're at the tournament. We've been familiar with with the French Kinnis Federation of Rolling Garrels for a long time.
We looked at it.
We look at everything, any significant event that comes up, we look at it. But I think in the end, you know, the WVD put up a.
Big number, you know, and and.
I think that that the French Tennis Federation and IMG did an excellent job in negotiating it, and we would love to have it. It does work well with our schedule and obviously would complete the Grand slams for us. But what we're learning in this environment we're in as you can't have everything and you just have to make hard decisions here and there. So but you know, yes, that's we We love that event and.
Your job making that decision easier for the consumer when it comes to options. Tim, thanks for joining us and taking the time. That's Tim Bonald, Senior vice president of Programming at ESPN. From the US open. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after.
This, some macle how about you let me drive?
Oh no, no, no, no, this is not a toy, honey.
Please excuse me. I want to drive.
It's good question.
This is the drive to the Clothes Punk's musing well led it down on Bloomberg Radio.
It is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Tim Steneveek. That is Molly Smith. She is Bloomberg News Economics Editor, alive from the US opening the Shadow of Arthur Ashe Stadium here in Flushing Meadows, Queens. But we're not forgetting about everything happening with the markets, because we just have shy of sixteen minutes until markets close on what could be another record day for the S and P five hundred. I want to right now bring in Bloomberg News cross ass
that report. Isabel Lee and managing editor for the Bloomberg Markets, alag Christina Quino that join us from our studio back in midtown man Manhattan. Isabelle, I want to start with you and just set the scene for today's trade with of course in Vidia front and center.
In Vidia's front and center, but the stock is actually fluctuating. But for the broader market, we're seeing the S and P top sixty five hundred, and that's ahead of the PCE report tomorrow. That's all important because that's the fed's favorite or favorite price gauge. Molla Smith would know a lot about that. But really we're just really seeing recession Jater's kind of decline.
Now.
I feel like Christine, that investors aren't as worried anymore, even if Nvidia didn't really excite as much as people were hoping.
Yeah, absolutely, Isabelle. I mean you even forget that procession fears were a thing in markets like just a few months ago, right. I think that was theme in April when we first got the reciprocal tariffs announcement. From Trump administration and then since then, animal spirits have just taken over. I feel like, I mean, the fact that we're talking about six to five hundred s and BFI hundred right now, what recession risk?
Right?
And if you look at the cross assets.
Well that's the question. Yeah, go ahead as a belle, Yeah, go ahead as a bell.
Sorry, they just.
Really continue to feed positively into the equity rally, Tim.
So I want you to weigh in on that a little bit and sort of cross asset what we're seeing here because we're and this has been a theme really since I would argue, gosh May at this point, and a ton of people have come out and said, wait a second, why aren't we actually seeing the effect of tariffs on asset prices as a result, like similar to what we saw post you know, quote unquote liberation day before the president sort of said the bond market became
a little yippie and he did the pauses and stuff like that. But why do you think we're we're not seeing asset values declined as a result of the increased prices that companies or people depending on you know how you're defining it, are paying for these things?
Well, Tim, I mean from my perspective, you know, I think it's just a question of timing, right. It takes a while for that effect to be done. I think at the moment it's kind of lying primarily with a lot of the producers in retailer. We've seen a lot of commentary from the retailer earnings recently talking about how they are trying to absorb some of those costs because they don't want to be raising the prices on their
customers and turning them away. But I think the warnings that we've gotten from the likes of Best Buy Today, right and Coals and a lot of these major retailers also indicating that they might not be able to do that for very long. And so you know, we might suddenly get that wave of higher prices, probably just in time for that peak holiday season right as well.
Yes, and you see a lot of adjustments. Victoria's Secret for instance, their outlook includes an updated estimated tariff of around one hundred million dollars this year, double the prior projection. But you see Dick Sporting Goods, for instance, including expected impacts from all tariffs currently in effect. That's the key phrase I'd like to point out that's currently in effect,
acknowledging that things could still change. But Tim and Mollie, Tim, Christina and I were actually looking at this fun story. It's titled hell No Shop Okay. Nine hundred and thirty four dollar bill shows tariff pain to hit shoppers. So basically, there's this gentleman. He bought something and then suddenly a bill of almost one thousand dollars in tariffs came in and he owes this to the US Customs and Borders Protection.
Christine, how will you react.
If you get something like that?
What if you just want a fifty dollars I.
Probably react the same way.
Yeah, absolutely not.
But imagine buying something and then suddenly getting a follow up bill. Mollie, I saw you nodding. I think you're familiar with this. This is a deminimous exemption that a lot of American consumers have been enjoying up until this week, and that all goes away tomorrow, I believe.
Yeah, it's this is a brutal development for consumers. What this is talking about lower priced goods coming into the US, that if they're under a certain value, would not have a tariffy on top of that, that exemption though, is now ending. So that's what our friend on this story here that you guys were talking about, who had a nice hell no to skick off the headline. That's what he was reacting to right there. Keeping on this price data though, Christine, we're looking ahead to the PCE price
data tomorrow. I mean, you've got the SMP setting new records.
Basically every day.
Is there really any world in which the PCE report can really disappoint this momentum in the stock market right now?
Yeah, Molli, it's really hard to see, given that we are talking about just continued rally in the S and P five hundred. I mean, you know, unless it's maybe a big shock to the upside, that could be once an era where markets are suddenly thinking about inflation once again.
But you know, I think the feeling is that.
We are still headed towards a world of lower interest rates. In the latest markets Paul survey, for instance, that we conducted over an the M Live team, we asked readers,
you know, what would get stocks boosted again? Would a lower interest rate from the Fed boost stocks even if it comes at the expense of pressure from the Trump administration and a majority of Versawana has actually said, yeah, so we're in this environment where there is such an impetus to rally based on hope for lower interest rates, which seems like that's where a lot of the road is leading towards. We'll see, of course, once we hear
from the Federal Reserve in September. I'm sure Molly you're looking forward to covering that and seeing what the result of does is going to be. That's a big one, isn't it.
It's a big one. But I'd say, Molly, there's a lot of data that we're still going to gap it before that September meeting.
I was just going to say for me right now, I mean, I'm obviously trying to say in the moment of the US open, but I'm also thinking ahead to the jobs report next Friday, and then we get those
big revisions a couple of days later. That's going to be a huge one right now, and again, it's just so hard for me and my eco brain to conceive of right now the SMP just hitting record after record when we're supposedly in this environment where the labor market is weakening, and you know, maybe we'll see that jobs
market and the revisions show as much. Maybe you'll be what was probably perceived as a brief pickup to stocks because we're in that bad news good news environment right now where if we get a bad job zumper, we get a bad inflation number, it's great news because we're going to get an interest rate cut to That's.
That's where we are again. I feel like we were just there.
I think that's where we've been for the every lease. We're just waiting right goods.
I don't think we have a lot of them.
Hey, speaking of leaving, Speaking of leaving, we gotta go. We is windy here. We appreciate you guys holding down the port down at Bloomberg headquarters in midtown Manhattan. That's our Bloomberg News crossouts. That reporter Isabelle Lee, also managing editor for Bloomberg Markets Live Blog. Christine Aquino joining us from Bloomberg Headquarters. Just have about ten minutes ago until the close of it. Could be trading on this Thursday afternoon.
If we take a look at the S and P five hundred, we are hired by three tons of one percent as we speak, could be another record close today. Taking a deeper look at the industry, groups utilities in the red to the tune of nine tens of one percent, lower, consumer staples down six tens of one percent, health dot half a percentage point. On the upside, communication services up a percentage point, IT information technology have eight tens of one percent, and energy up seven tenths of one percent.
This is the Bloomberg Businessweekdaily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal