Pompeo on Ukraine Corruption, Coronavirus Update

Week on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot Com. You can also listen to our radio show weekdays at two pm Eastern only on Bloomberg Radio. Bloomberg Chief Washington Correspondent Kevin's Surreally host Bloomberg sound On has been traveling with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Kevin spoke to the Secretary an exclusive interview from Jamaica. Kevin started by asking the Secretary about her on backed Hezbollah finding a foothold in South America.

When you see the scope and reach of what the Islamic Republic of Run regime has done, you can't forget. They tried to kill someone in the United States of America. They've conducted assassination campaigns in Europe. This is a global phenomenon. When we say that Iran is the leading destabilizing force in the Middle East and throughout the world, it's because of this terror activity that they have now spread as

a cancer all across the globe. This past week, as you've traveled the world, we started in Germany and Berlin, where you met with world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. You talked I'm sure you talked about Iran, but as you know, Europe has not always followed the same strategic route as the United States when it comes to iron. Did your meetings with European leaders moved the needle in that direction at all? Yes, their look there, we've been clear.

We've had a different view on the right way to proceed to mature that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, that their missile program is contained, and that this terror regime we were just talking about is pushback. They've never wavered from the shared objective. That just had a different view about about how to proceed. But if you've seen what Iran has done even in the past few weeks, but that's nuclear extortion. They're now threatening to leave the NPT.

So I did we I talked with my European counterparts while I was or they have now uh taken a step under the j c p o A to invoke

the dispute resolution mechanism. I think not only they, but the world can now see that this rogue regime has no intention of complying with the central tenants of what that agreement contained, and the world must unite to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear When I saw President McCrone say that yesterday, I know he means that now we need to work together to achieve When you say they have no intention, than than how do you get Tamron to go to the United Nations, to come to

the United Nations to work with the international community aside from the sanctions and the various military response options. Ultimately, the people of Iran will get what they so richly deserve, a regime that behaves in ways that are consistent with the value sets of the Iranian people. In the end, the Iranian people will demand their government. You see see

it in the protests. You see it when they walk around American flags that were put down by the Islamic Republic's leadership and in a them to so they can show pictures of Iranian people walking over American flags, and in fact, people go out of their way not to do that. Uh. This isn't about Iran versus the United States. This is about a regime that has treated its own

people terribly. The world can see it. It's a regime that even now the i a e. Is trying to figure out how nuclear material got to places that the Iranian leadership said it would not be. Uh. And so

this is a global risk. President Trump started his remarks at the night after an American response by saying, Iran will never have a nuclear weapons or primary purpose, but we have a broader set of objectives to We just want them to behave like a normal nation and re enter the society, the community of nations, and and traveling with you all week, I mean, I'm struck by just the range of hotspot issues around the world that are going on, and back home, the only thing that they're

talking about his impeachment and the Senate impeachment trial. Did that come up at all in your conversations with world leaders? And has the Senate impeachment trial endangered US interests and reputation around the world? You know, Kevin, it hasn't come up today except where I received a question at a press conference about it. So, and you said you would testify it. Yeah. I've said consistently if the law required me to testify, I would do so. Uh. You know,

it hasn't come up. It almost never comes up in meetings with my counterparts. There's too many important things going on in the world. America is too close a partner today have with countries in the Caribbean reaching here in Kingston. Uh. They care about so much that we do. They're such good friends and allies. They see the noise in Washington, but it is not something they would think in the time that we have between us, that they would raise.

How Democrats are saying that Rudy Giuliani orchestrated a shadow foreign policy And can you assure diplomat serving overseas all around the world in dangerous places, that that's not the case. Yeah. The foreign policy we were executing then is the same foreign policy we're executing today. With respect to Ukraine. It's an important country. It sits at this cross roads. It's under enormous pressure from Rush. President Trump has taken actions

to counter Russia the President Obama refused to take. We've provided defensive systems for the Ukrainian people so that they can defend themselves. We've supported this new leader, President Zelinsky, in his efforts to stamp out corruption and to build his democracy. Were continuing to do that. Our policy with respect to Ukraine has been set on the fundamental principles of reducing the footprint of corruption and helping the Ukrainian people build up a democracy while under threat from the

Russians in the east and southeast. You said that you look forward to going there, that you have other issues that you want to discuss with them, or is that still the case. Yeah, I'm going to get there. I'm gonna get there before too long. I had a trip planned and then we had an issue arise in the Middle East that had to attend to. UH. While that issue is not behind us, there's still a lot of work to do there, and that is our chief Washington corresponded.

Kevin Creali speaking with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Kevin has been traveling with the Secretary of State, as he noted, on this sort of WorldWind tour of the world. They spoke today in Jamaica. Obviously very much on the news,

very much on the impeachment News. Ukraine obviously is right in the sphere of influence that the Secretary of State plays into, so him saying that he will make a trip there before too long, given its importance, and a reminder that there are some kind of big, major foreign policy issues that are still out there right and that have been kind of plaguing certainly this administration for some time. So we'll see where that goes. Brands Energy, we do want to talk a bit about energy. It's been an

interesting market to watch and I think it's timely. I think about the launch of our Green not interesting if you're in it, if you're long, if you're short, you're great, um, But it's interesting in a week where Davas is all about climate change and we are seeing the energy space certainly be disrupted by alternative energy. It was the worst performing sector major industry sector in the S and P five last year and it's continuing to be at the bottom of the pack. In Ryan Kelly has to deal

with all of this and find the opportunities. He's senior vice president portfolio manager at Hennessy Funds. He's back in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio studio. It's not easy right now, right, and sitting here thinking if I wanted to know all that, I just want to stated, thanks very much. Can I have my butt off to get a recitation of how bad the market? Here's my therapy session. No, but I mean running a gas um and utility, our guest utility

fund not easy. UM, It's it's actually going okay, it's it's it's confusing. UM. Certainly, if you're talking just about the overall energy sector, about oil, about natural gas prices, those of all plummeted energy is pretty tough last year. Obviously, as you just alluded to, UM, the natural gas side has actually been doing pretty well in one regard because of these low prices. It's very good for the end customer. It's very good for the natural gas distribution companies, it's

very good for the utilities. And our fund focuses on utilities in general and natural gas utilities specifically. So what we have is that because we've had so such affordability, abundance, accessibility of natural gas for many years. Here, Uh, it means actually that natural gas you do, the utilities are doing pretty well, and the fund is up about two point eight percent in the past month. So at the beginning of the year. Last year was up about two

and a half percent. Performance though, do you feel like it's not where you'd like it to be? Yeah, performance could have been better overall for the whole year last year. The fund is the SMP of course up. That's a big laggard. UM and Uh. I think that what's going on is that we also have some more some larger major pipeline companies that move natural gas around the country.

They're related both to oil and natural gas, so there's issues there that's been holding a speck And forgive me, I think I said two and a half percent last year, and I did just mean year to date, right, year to day. Yes, but as you said, it was double digit games last year. Yes, yes, Um and uh. And interestingly though, when you just look at the fundamentals of

the companies, UM. The utility space for the last three quarters has been has had the highest growth and earnings out of any of the sectors, which is pretty pretty crazy. This year, it's or this quarter on a year over your basis, it's expected to be up nine on an EPs point of view, which is not the sort of growth that we're seeing elsewhere in the market. To be sure. Well, let's talk about some of those names. One literally close

to home Duke Energy. Uh tell us about that. Yes, Well, I think that a couple of ways that you can play this this spaces is to buy the bigger utilities. Utilities have a real opportunity now to switch from UM more traditional fossil fuel type sources to renewables. Duke Duke Energy d u K is in the process of doing that. They have very lofty goals of transforming themselves over the next thirty years, and I think there's gonna be a

nice long runway for that company. It's also a nice large company, seventy billion in market cap, a pretty good pe compared to peers. So I think that there's some opportunities. I think people forget, Like how massive that the dividends. I think you're saying. I was looking at the dividend. It's almost four percent, So dividend eiels are a big part of the utility play UM and and you know,

it's interesting. I do think about these big utilities and the transition from UM you know, traditional fuels if you will, or fossil fuels to alternatives. I mean, how twenty years is that it takes years, decades, decades because of the infrastructure build out, because of the infrastructure, And you know, one thing I'd maybe like to talk a little bit about is that this future energy complex that we're looking at is probably going to be predominantly renewables and natural gas.

And that's some of the debate that's going on now, and I think some of the misinformation that's out there is that natural gas is very important part of all of this. We've gotten to uh lost two percent in greenhouse gas emissions last year because natural gas has been replacing coal in large scale power plants. So um, this is a decades long process to get to more renewables. About twelve percent or so of our overall energy is

produced from renewables right now. It could get to twenties to even thirty over time, but it's going to take a lot to get there. You don't think there's an urgency. I've just got to push a little bit. With climate change, we only have about thirty seconds. But I do feel like that there's an urgency all of a sudden. Maybe it's the fires in Australia or California or what have you, But I mean, I feel like the clock is ticking. I think there is an urgency. I think that we're

getting rid of coal. I think that we're producing a lot less energy out of oil. Those are two great things. But I think that, um, the amount of infrastructure you'd have to change or to go straight to renewables is phenomenal. In fact, we'll be hurting the environment until we got there, so we need to do it a little bit more at a measured pace. All Right, We're gonna leave it.

They're great stuff. Get to catch up with you. Ryan Kelly, Senior Vice president portfolio manager for Hennessy Funds, looking after the Gas Utility Fund. I want to watch for sure. So Deep, No Body, So Wow, A bold call for the walk in music for this song. But it is all about the shorts. Just ask Elon Musk. He is the subject of this week's cover story. It's all about Tesla and those shorts for the moment being proven dramatically wrong.

Dana hall pennd the story. She covers the company day to day, and this is just an amazing step back story about everything going on there. She joins us from our nine sixty studio in San Francisco. Joe Webber, the editor of the magazine. He's here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Dana, First of all, congrats on this story.

It's such a great read, you know, Carol, and I got to read it ahead of it over the weekend as it sort of in process, and it's just such a tale in many ways that captures the spirit of where this company is. Tell us what you set out to do. Sure, well, I've been covering Tesla for quite quite a long time at this point, and unfortunately for my mental health, spend a lot of time on Twitter, which is really where the Tesla conversation takes place. I mean,

it is the water cooler for this company. Elon tweets, the fans tweet, the shorts tweet, and you know, over the past couple of years, I started seeing this tesla q hashtag more and more. It really kind of accelerated after the Solar City buy out and uh and then kind of erupted in with a whole go private debacle and I just sort of tried to figure out, well, Okay, who is Tesla Q? Who are these guys, and like, there's so many different characters. Um. But when Tesla filed

a restraining order against Skabushka. I sort of found my character and just tried to spend as much time as possible understanding really what his motivation was. And I think what's what's really fascinating is that, you know, a lot of these people are not actual short sellers. Some of them are just skeptics, and they really don't buy the kind of mythology around musk that has been created. Scaboush, What who is that? Dane so Scabushka. His real name

is Randy Pothy. He is a graduate student in ann Arbor. He's a fascinating guy. He speaks five languages. He's getting a doctoral dissertation in Asian Languages and Culture. But he grew up in Fremont, which is where Tesla has its factory. And in eighteen when a lot of people were questioning the ability of Tesla to manufacturer it's Model three, he was in this rare position to actually check things out

because you know, his parents still live in Fremont. So he started tweeting out these pictures of production that people took very seriously. I mean you would see on the Tesla fanboy forums, you know, all these messages like Scabushka production numbers and they were remarkably accurate. And uh so he just sort of became this intriguing figure. Well in triguing And didn't you actually talk to us about the first time you reached out to him data, because I

think this is interesting too. I mean, he had information, right he was tracking this company that to some extent could be helpful. Oh sure, Well, I mean, so you know a lot of short sellers do a lot of research, but a lot of them are based in New York and they're and they're you know, fantastic and in terms of like digging into financials and filings and you know, they look at things on the on the balance sheets.

Scabush was actually someone who was clearly like going to the factory every day or had a beat on what was happening at the factory. And I live in the Bay Area, and so there was this whole thing where, you know, it was clear that Tesla was building some kind of new tent to house its production line. I kept hearing from employees, you know, Ellen's building a tent out back. So um. And at the same time, Scabushka

was sort of posting these photographs. So I was actually at the Fremont bart station looking at this tent, and I wasn't positive if I was looking at like the new tent or an old tent, And so I sent him a picture and I was like, am I looking at the right thing? And he confirmed it? And I really, I mean I was, you know, legitimately trying to kind of cultivate him as a source. I asked him if he wanted to meet, but he always declined and I

didn't meet him until much later. So talk to us more about tesla Q, because that is like they're on Twitter. They are sort of amazing and sort of this hive mind ability to kind of look at Tesla and Ellen from all these different angles, and they've actually impacted the stock over the time. But yet life has gotten very expensive for short sellers of late as Tesla's stock has

sort of started to soar. What uh, what do you make of where we're tesla Q stands now and what are they saying about what could happen in the year to come, especially on a day right as you know, Dana, right, we saw a Tesla market cap a hundred billions, surpassing VWI. Yeah,

that's real psychological logical milestone. Sure, well, I guess I would say that, you know, once you sort of I mean a lot of folks within Tesla Q, I mean they they view Musk through the lens of fraud or fabrication or a cult of personality, And once you see him through that lens, it's very difficult to kind of be moved from that. Just like you know, the fans who see him as like, you know, our great hope for for solving climate change, I mean, they will not

be moved either. So it's very it's a very bifurcated community. But I think, you know, short sellers would probably say or yes, the stock is on a terror but but it's completely divorced from fundamentals. And you know, just because the stock is high doesn't mean that the company is ever going to be sustainably profitable. Clearly, Tesla reported a profit in the third quarter. They're going to report earnings next week. But you know, will will the company ever

have a profitable year like that? That remains to be seen. And why ultimately is this stock, this company so binary? You know, we and I know we have ski this all the time, but I keep coming back to this idea that there's essentially no one who's like yeah, right, yeah, like it just doesn't happen, So why is it. I think it's like a two for one, right, So you can short Apple, you can short Netflix, you can short Amazon.

But people who aren't really like shorting Tim Cook or Bezos or you know, like they're they're really I mean, this is really about Elon, and Elon himself trolls the short sellers all the time, and so it's become this long running war that is very personal between both sides, and it's people are people are shorting the company because they fundamentally do not believe you know, Elon and the hype that he has created around himself, and so they

fundamentally have have issues with him as the chief executive and with the company. The go private thing was just kind of like the icing on the cake. I mean, once that happened, like tesla Q just doubled down and they will not be moved. You know, they will not be moved. Now to be clear, some of that, I mean, people everyone has a very different trading thing. Some some people are swing traders, they trade every day, some or

puts some options. I mean some some people like they might consider themselves a short but they might not have an act of short position at this moment. I mean, you know, that gets into like everyone has a fundamentally different strategy when it comes to how they trade. Okay, so, Dan, I'm closing question for you. You cover elon tesla so closely. This was a kind of a longer, longer term story that uh that you know is your first cover for

the magazine. What did you learn? That's a really good question. I mean, I guess what I learned was just how kind of diverse this community of tesla Q is. I mean, to be honest, when I first saw Scobushka's tweets, I thought that this guy was either a supplier or a contractor, or an employee or a former employee. Like I never would have guessed in a million years that he was a graduate student. You know, I thought, for sure, this guy must have some kind of in with the company.

But his research was so profoundly good. And then when I met him, I was like, wait, you're a graduate student writing a doctoral listener. You're like, you're just like a guy, just like a guy exactly. It's a great story, a must read. The cover story in this week's magazine, Joel Webber, Thanks to you, Editor Bloomberg Business Week at Dana Hall, she wrote the story. Tech reporter for Bloomberg joining us from San Francisco. Need it out right now

as we speak. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Certainly, one of the big stories that continues to be on everyone's radar is about the respiratory virus over in China. China ramping up its efforts to contain it. Uh the virus so far killing at least seventeen people, infecting hundreds as the

outbreak has spread beyond Asia. China State broadcaster CCTV her Charlie talking about this earlier, reporting that the death toll has nearly doubled from a previous total as I mentioned, of nine. And there were two preliminary positive reports of this virus in Hong Kong, another diagnosis in the US, patients under examination in Mexico and Russia. So well, it feels on what contained we are hearing more and more

about the spread. Let's get the latest on this. Bloomberg News Health Science and Medical Technology reporter Michelle Cortez joining us on the phone from Minneapolis, So, Michelle, how should we as investors view this? And I don't mean to be so clinical about it, but we have seen it impact the market. So is it contained? Are we getting a better control of it? What are you hearing? It is very much a situation that influx. We really don't know,

especially in the beginning. People are reporting out what's happening, and the numbers are increasing dramatically every time we talk to anybody in China or public health officials speak out. The good news is it doesn't look like it's going to be as severe as stars or maybe even mirrors, or maybe even the seasonal flu. On the other hand, it's so early and the case rates are increasing so quickly.

There's no guarantee. And Michelle, you know, one of the things that some of our guests were saying earlier on in the show is that there was a sense, as we've talked to investors that people are sort of on it. You know, that this wasn't allowed to spread literally your figuratively, even the sort of the hysteria is probably not the right word, but you know, this notion of you know, maybe the institutions are sort of doing the things they're supposed to do you know this better than we do.

What's your sense of the response and the response time here? Well, you're absolutely correct. China has been so forthright, especially in comparison with the Stars outbreak from two thousand and two and two thousand and three. The important thing for investors to keep in mind is, of course, is not the actual severity of the outbreak itself. It's it's the response that everyone takes in order to contain it. So we're seeing like just breaking news right now. Uhan has shut

everything down. They're not letting people in and out of the city, they're not letting people on buses, you can't fly out, they've shut it all down. So if they can do that, and that's you know, let a million people, it's not small, but that's going to affect certain commerce there. If that spreads within China, then that's where you're starting to get your economic hit coming from. On the flip side, there are no signs from the public health piece that

things are happening. We're not seeing human to human transition in the second and third and fourth situations, right, So it's not like we're seeing someone who's sick who then gets their healthcare worker sick and then their healthcare worker get someone sick. It's very much more contained than that currently and the virus needs to be not mutating an awful lot, so that's also good. But again from the business perspective, they're just now starting to shut things down

and we don't know how far that's going to go. Well, and I think we all, you know, can remember Stars, right and what was it? I think killed people in a in a short period of time, just a few months, So I think that's our reference point. Um safe to say one would hope that the world has learned something by that at in it and that we are quickly, you know, running to contain this. I mean there is

a difference, right, well, there's a significant difference. I mean the situation with Stars is we didn't people didn't know what to do. Not only do you know what to do when they're taking that action quickly. I mean there was a study in the New England Journal Medicine that just one person on an airplane with Stars infected nineteen other people around them, just in one flight. Now they're not letting people get on a plane if you have the fever, so you know, so so yes, we're definitely

much better than we were just quickly. There's a story on the Bloomberg to that talks about a potential vaccine to prevent the spreading of the virus. Uh maybe moving into early stage human testing the next three months. This is from the NIH. Uh they're infectious disease chief. Um, you know, we're not quite there. It takes some time, but at some point we might have a way of controlling this. Absolutely true. Another thing that's very interesting, people

are moving aggressively into that. Maderna is the company that's working on and I h with that, but there's other companies as well, So that is a you know, a positive negative thing. We you know, when these bad things happen in our world, we do get an infusion of interest and effort and money into some of these public health efforts like ramping up vaccine. Than we are starting to see that the early gave that first studies in Man in three months. It will take years before it

actually is widely available. Great context. Thank you so much. Michelle Cortes, l science and medical technology reporter for Bloomberg, joining us on the phone from Minneapolis. Brom a journal Now, but you let me drive, Oh no, no, no, no, who's going home? Honey? Please, I'll do the right gravel. Excuse me, I want to drive, Just drive, baby. It's the questions trying. This is the drive to the globe. Give me thanks, world dry un. On Bloomberg Radio, it

is time for the drive to the close. Aliber Porscha is back with US, chief market strategist at Rutimann Asset Management. Over one point six billion in assets under management, based in Connecticut. Right well, midtown, New York. Actually I live in Connecticut, connecticution, big word on Bloomberg RADI in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio in New York. We kind of like those big words occasionally. Well what all right? I'm going to ask you? Since you live in Connecticut, can

I get real estate? We've been talking about the stories. It's been having a tough time. Gave me this evil look. Oh my lord. So well, I bought my house in two thousand and four, and it's worth less today than it wasn't two thousand four, by significant margin. And it's not because I bought stupidly. Um. Look, I think it's it's going to be ebb and flow. Right now, you're still going through the shock of ge having moved out,

in particular in Fairfield, which is where I live. You've got the tax situation, you get the fiscal state of the state that's not particularly great, although it has improved significantly in the last couple of years in terms of reserves and everything else. Um. Look, you know, real estate

has always been a long term proposition. I know we've gone through cycles of flipping homes and we know where that ended in two thousand seven, two thousand eight, So I'm not overly concerned about on a long term basis. At the end of the day, it's going to come down to Canada State, like any state, get businesses to come in, get investment going, and get people to want to live there. I think they've got plenty of people who want to live there. It's a question of affordability

and jobs exactly. Does come down to that, right, that's the mix. Um, thank you for doing that. I was just curious since we've been talking a lot about it. Hey, let's also, um, talk about the market. You walked in and we're like, you were like, we're after a strong start, um, and I'm like, wait a minute, you know, kind of do you buy it? I mean, do you think the fundamentals are there over I think they're generally there, yes,

And I say that for a couple of reasons. Number One, while everybody likes to talk at how well the market stocks did in two thousand and nineteen, if you go back to October one, SMP is only about ten percent higher, So you have to take into account that sharp dip that we saw in the fourth quarter of two thousand eighteen. Also, a lot of the headwinds that we faced going into two thousand nineteen are now gone or about to be gone.

Trade is looking pretty stable with regards to u c M H u C M c A having been done, as well as the Phase one trade deal with China. It's unlikely that you're going to see a lot of more trade, hard trade talk out of the administration, or certainly not action against Europe during the election year because

they just don't want to rattle that cage. The FED has effectively told us, hey, we're standing pat We're not planning on doing anything this year, which incidentally also falls in line with what they like to do during election years. They don't like to be particularly active in election years, right, And you've got an economy that's kind of pottering along.

So you could take all of the those things along with what's presumed to be probably somewhere around five six seven percent earnings growth for the year, because comparables are going to get so much easier this year than they were last year. I mean, there's reason for optimism. What was earnings growth by the end of last year? What

do we see last year? What were all in We saw a drop of about two percent year over year, and yet the market rallied again forward expectations, right, and so the expectation and what you saw really is a strong rebound in the first quarter of two thousand nineteen, nothing in a second and third quarter, and then another ten percent rally in the fourth quarter as trade, brexit and interest rates became fairly clear and towards this year.

So there are fundamental justifications, alright. So let's talk about some names that you like in this current environment. Adobe is an interesting one to me, especially because the cloud they're sort of playing in there. We talked about the clouds so much, but usually in the context of the big names, the Amazons to Googles, and more recently yesterday and today IBM with with Redhead talk about Adobe in

that content. Well, Adobe to us has really been successful at moving to a subscription model, which carries a higher multiple and profitability on a long term basis. They've become a one stop shop for marketing. Right. You can pretty much do everything with the uh the Adobe suite of applications. And so when we look at that, we think that there's a tremendous amount of potential. And in particular, while they've underperformed and has been challenging, their enterprise software has

got a lot of upside potential. So we like the stock and we think it's a category winner. This stock is up over a thousand percent um since the end of even a thousand percent just year after year after year after games. And we prefer buying strong companies that are up sharply than companies that we think are undervalued because something went wrong. Wait it again, we'd prefer to buy in an up market like we've seen over the

last decade. We would much rather pay and own a strong company that's performed very very well then a company that we think might be undervalued because something's gone wrong. So forward looking pe if thirty six doesn't are you it does not because as long as the growth is delivered, then we're in good shape. Yeah, this is just as as you say, just smartly back to uh even at the beginning of tween nineteen, just a nice little steady rise up. Talk to us about Bristol Myers Squib. Obviously

a dealmaker in some ways. Is that what makes this a more attractive stack? Yes, in many ways it does so a couple of things. If you think about healthcare companies as a whole, they have a huge problem as a sector, which is effectively declining revenues and profits because so much stuff is coming off patent. That holds true for the industry. Some of them are executing better than others. In the case of Bristol Myers Squib, they bought cell Gene and so they've effectively emande their way out of

their declining earnings and revenues. And we think that it's a strong management team. We like the balance sheet, we like the outlook. We think they're gonna do more strategic acquisitions and as a result, we see a pretty strong path in the industree right, and then you've got to dividend almost two point seven percent on top of it. All um intuitive Surgical ticker I s r G For those who might have forgotten, we're talking about robotic surgery.

Robotic surgery, which is the wave of the future. Every year when you look at that industry, more and more hospitals and and and now even already an enormous amount, but it's still just scratching the surface. And they intuitive is ten years ahead of their nearest competitor in terms of their technology. So again, if you believe that that's going to continue to grow, which we certainly do, and be part of the landscape, then you want to own

the category killer. And that's intuitive right now, Revenues up year over year, earnings growth of about five point six percent year over year. Alright, big biggest worry about this market right now, you don't sound worried. Well, the biggest worry is that economic data continues to deteriorate, and so that we get into kind of April May with very weak data and the two two to three GDP growth that is our base assumption doesn't come true and gets

a one handle. That will be problematic for investors. Would the FED maybe move then I doubt it. Yeah, I think you'd have to see low ones or below one for the FED to move, especially in an election year, it feels like all right. Oliver Proporcha is Chief market Strategies for Bruderman Asset Management up there in Connecticut, gave

us some good context on that. He's here in our Bloomberg Interactor Broker Studio today, some really interesting ideas as we move deeply into Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com. You can also listen to our radio show every weekday at two pm Eastern only on Bloomberg Radio