This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. We're right here every day bringing you the latest news from the world's of business and finance, plus technology, politics, economics, all harnessing the power of Business Week reporters and editors. And of course Carol that's part of a team of twenty seven hundred journalists and analysts the more than a hundred and twenty countries and Jason. You can download Bloomberg
Business Week on iTunes, SoundCloud, bl 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. You are listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Jason Kelly and Scarlet Food here with you on a Friday, and as we do on most Fridays, certainly the Friday's that we like the most, we check
in with Ian LUs Bader. He is a doctor and Clinical Associo Professor of Medicine at n y U Lane Gones Medical Center, joining us on the phone from New York City. Ian, It's always a treat to catch up with you, and I do want to thank you, as I always do, or as I always think I should uh for all your good advice and council throughout this pandemic. You've really been a valuable voice to us and we
really appreciate it. Very kind. Thanks, and it's great to be with you, and it's great to try and contribute to some knowledge and understanding of a of a challenging area. And welcome Scarlett, and always good to speak to you. Jason. So where are we right now? I mean here we are. It's the end of July, the last day of July. Here.
I think back to the conversations that we've had over these months, and while the overall picture doesn't seem great, certainly nationally, I feel like if you went but if we went back and told ourselves in you know, our sort of may selves are April selves, certainly this is where we'd be in New York City and its environs, we we'd probably feel pretty good about this. I agree.
I think certainly the northeastern New York has made great strides, and it does look like they're there were waves passing through the rest of the country, but certainly in the northeast here New York. Back in Uh, March and April was a ghost town, and hospitals were overloaded. The entire medical centers were really overrun, completely overrun with COVID patients and and regular medical care was not really being done.
This was some of the issues that Dr Faucian Redfield addressed today and the congressional hearings, and much regular medical care was not being done. Uh. And there were probably a number of deaths that we could attribute not to COVID but for people just being either afraid to come
in or not coming in. And I think one of the big issues as we have had cases drop, at least in the Northeast, is you know, reopening and getting back to school, and and a lot of that was addressed by Faucci and Redfield too, with the challenge of teachers and students um needing and wanting to some degree to get back, but also some fear about that as well. You described it as a ghost town back in March and April. I would argue it's still kind of a
ghost town. I come into the city every day and just outside of the office there are cars, but not that many, and there are very few people wandering around. Once people do come back, we know a lot of people fled town. They've gone to summer homes, the Hampton's or just outside of New York once they start to come back because of school, because things are starting to normalize.
What kind of pick up in the infection rate do you think we might anticipate or am I getting ahead of myself here, If we take the proper precautions, maybe we won't get a pick up. Well, I think that's a very fair question, Scarlet, And to me, certainly, I've been in the office every day since January and looking out the window and walking down the streets. It's definitely busier. I agree we're not back up to sort of our
baseline frenzy in Manhattan, but certainly dramatically busier. And I think it's unclear getting back to the office and getting back to school. But I would echo what Fauci and red Field um talked about, which were really sort of those five principles. You know, if people wear masks and avoid crowds, doing reasonable social distancing, which not every office has easily available, people will have to perhaps reconfigure a bit handwashing, avoiding yelling and uh loud speaking, in other words,
aerosolizing potential viral particles. I think we can reasonably get back to business. Um. There will have to be some accommodation, certainly in school. That may be smaller classrooms or alternate days, or we're hybrid learning. But overall, I think we can do that, and I think we should do that. You're right, there may be some pick up. We haven't really seen that yet. We will know, unfortunately by increased hospitalizations, but at this point it seems certainly very safe to let
people back to a more normal life. Ian. What's the most important headline in your estimation this week when it comes to either therapeutics or vaccines. What did you learn this week that we need to go into the weekend thinking and talking about. Well, I think we're seeing uh,
incremental um progress really in a variety of fronts. And that is the articles have come out about the origin of COVID nineteen, which I don't think necessarily changes our treatment at this point, but it does look genetically like this really did originate in bats, and uh, that's sort
of off the radar for most of us. We don't really think about that, but it does highlight that there are some changes like wet markets and so forth that probably we're really uh the source of this, although there's still some questions about you know, virology lab or or or potentially a lab leak, but it does seem at least based on some studies, that this really did originate as a as a virus and bats and whether or not modification or other things occurred. UM. In addition, there
was a recent article on masks. This did exclude the US, but in many other countries there was an observational study that really showed people who wear masks have a much lower incidence of touching their face and that seems to
be a significant contributor to reducing the spread. While we're waiting for more therapeutics like monoclonal antibodies which also have a lot of UM promise in addition to vaccines, and we're also making progress on the vaccine front, you know, phase three trials thirty patients, and I'm very optimistic about that Faucia is and what you was involved in one of those studies, UM, and I think for sure by December January, probably February at the latest, will really have
a vaccine that has been tested and hopefully should be safe. And then we have to see what people take it. That will be It's a huge question. All right, stick with us, Dr Ian LUs Bader. We've gotten more to talk about, including sports. We want to get your take on a lot of headlines Scarlet and I have been following when it comes to Major League Baseball, especially as sports get underway. Kind of, let's get back to our conversation with Dr Ian LUs Bader from ny us lingun
Medical Center. So, Ian, talk to us about sports. You've seen the same headlines we have, especially especially excuse me, around major League baseball. How worried are you that we're not going to see a full baseball season here? Well, everyone is concerned about how to safely get back to normal activities, whether it's the office, whether it's you know, patients, whether it's sports. Uh, and it's unfortunately going to be
somewhat imperfect. Fortunately, baseball in sports is important. It's not necessarily an essential service, but people really do need it to relax and unwind and really take their mind offul lot of the stresses and strange. So there are a variety of approaches that we use for testing. One, patients may come in and say, look, I was sick two weeks ago, or three weeks ago or a month ago, Uh, did I have COVID? We do an antibody test, and
if it's positive, that's pretty assuring. Now, those antibodies do drop off over time, so if someone says five months ago I was sick, a negative antibody test really is not that helpful. And we also do swab tests or other tests that really detect whether the virus is present in the nose or in the far yanx, or is it communicable, And those can be helpful to test before you travel, before you come back to work, before you
play in a sports game. Now, again, you can have people who are asymptomatic feel fine and harbord the virus. A number of young, healthy people do that, so uh. And of course baseball is not necessarily a high contact sport unlike football, and people may have the virus, but they may have acquired it elsewhere from families or the community, so it's not It's not that baseball itself may be necessarily risky. But people have normal lives outside of baseball.
But I think if we test people and we get these results back anywhere from ten minutes to twenty four hours later, I think if we can test a player and say the day before as we do before, say Colonoscar Bees. Uh, if they're negative, then I think it's reasonable for them to engage in in h in the sport right now, Mike will take a lot of testing right now. My understanding according to reports is that the MLB is testing players every other day, but the results
typically come in about thirty six hours later. So in the meantime, those players are continuing to do their normal routine, which includes traveling to other cities to play against other teams, and then they have to backtrack later on if they find out anything. I mean, this is a league that can afford to test its players every other day. What does it say about our ability to get youth sports
back online again? If clearly youth sports are not going to test players until there's a reason to, until the family member brings someone to the doctor's office because they suspect that there is something going on. That's a that's a great question, right, So typically we say, well, what are we going to do with the result? So if you are positive or negative, if you feel fine, are
we going to do anything differently? So, if someone is sick a respiratory infection, cought diarrhea, fever, you know, any of those classic symptoms. Yes, it's very helpful to do a swab and say you have it, and you may manage the patient differently. You're right in terms of dollars and cents. It can get very expensive to test people constantly, and most sports don't have that ability. I think for youth sports there there are two things. One um, the
more testing the better. But if a kid really is sick, fortunately, they tend to do better than older people. It's not like fifty or sixty or seven year olds who have a much much higher risk. I'm not saying they're at zero risk. I'm just saying that overall, kids tend to do better. On the other hand, of you know, they may have to have fewer games. They may have to test and wait thirty six hours and then schedule a game for everyone, you know, twice a week. Playing every
day may not may not be realistic. Yeah, there's so many big questions. I feel like we're still finding our way here for sure. Dr Ia lest made a great to catch up with you. Thank you so much for your time. As always, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at ny US, Lango Medical Center. Well, I have to say, if the vacation Carol Master were here, she would classify this as a wait what sort of story. It is
an amazing read. Danielle book Of wrote it. She is a reporter for Bloomberg News, but I have to say that title is actually outdated. As of this week, she has just been named our new Toronto ber chief. So congratulations to on that huge job and well deserved. She joins us from Toronto, and Joel Weber, the editor Bloomberg Business Week, he joins us as well. So Joel t this up for us because this is an incredible story about up golden hands. What yeah, do we get your
interest there? Um? You know, this has actually been sort of months in the works, and you know, then the pandemic hit and everything got weird. But the moment that we uh that that Danny pitched the story, we were like, wait what. So we got to rewind the clock a
little bit. And in the early two thousands, Nelson Mandela to South African icon UM had uh you know basically uh you know, become an international icon and UM as part of that um, some people cast his hands in South Africa and the ideal was that they were going to turn his these castings into uh, precious metals, gold and others that they would be able to kind of show around the world and really kind of like, you know, make his legacy be something that everyone could actually see
in person. So, uh that happened, and uh then it kind of went sideways because he said, you know, I don't want to be affiliated with this anymore, and I'm going to turn over to Danny. There because there was an art collector who stepped in and was like, you know, there's only a couple of these around, I'm gonna go ahead and just put them all together and make a set. So Danny, who was this guy and where did the
story go from there? So his name was Malcolm Duncan and I actually met him two years ago, so it goes back even further in I was approached by a PR firm representing this South African businessman, Malcolm Duncan, uh, and they were trying to drum up publicity for a sale. And at the time they had attempted to fire Arbitrayed, which was a Canadian cryptocurrency company, and at least part of the payment for these golden hands of Nelson Mandela was going to be in bitcoin, So even then it
was just a bizarre story. And I actually did a short article about the sale at the time, but I didn't have a lot of time to dig into the back story, and if it's sort of became one of those stories that you sort of regret never having delved into who as deeply as you could have. Then earlier this year, um Guernsey's auction house reached out to me through another PR firm to say that they were planning this spectacular event at Jazz at Lincoln Center to introduce
these amazing objects to the world. They were going to auction them off and what I like to cover the auction, So I called Malcolm back. I found out that the ARBITRTE deal had shockingly collapsed disastrously. I got more of that backstory, and uh, it just became one of those stories where the more I found out about these things, the more interesting I got. So what fascinates me here is that you would think there's a lot of demand for things that are linked to uh Nelson Mandela and
also for gold, given where gold prices are trading. But it's been hard for Malcolm Duncan to get a lot of interest for these Golden Hands. Why is that there's been a real um taint around Mandela Art. I think when he was initially released from prison after twenty years twenty seven years in prison. Um, this whole kind of cottage industry sprang up around Mandela Art. And you know, he had done his own art, but but people were slapping his names on everything. At at at a certain point
he got fed up with it. He shut it down. There were a lot of lawsuits and I think to this day people in fact get quite uncomfortable when you bring up the whole tawdry mess of Mandela Art in South Africa. Um. So because of that, there there have been plans to make just a ton of these things that they were gonna be in silver and bronze. There was gonna be one for every day of every year that he'd been in prison. As far as we know, and and harmony has confirmed this. Duncan is believed to
have the only surviving copies which are these four gold hands. Um. And you're right, I mean the I was there for two days at the auction. It wasn't well advertised, but very few people came out. What struck me though as amazing was those people who who did come out just how moves they were by these things. So Danny, I have to ask about the auction and tell us what went down and where things stand now. Okay, So the auction was a very bizarre situation. As I said, I
was there for two days. You know, not very many people came came around those and this was early early March, New York, pre pandemic. Yeah, so you know, to paint the scene, you imagine it's at jazz at Lincoln Center. So it's this beautiful, beautiful venue, dark red sort of jazz playing softly. These things are in these cases lit from above, uh, and the room is absolutely empty. People drift in from time to time. A lot of them are actually moved to tears when they see them, which
was quite something to watch. But most of the people that I saw there over the two days were actually people who had skinned the games. They were they were people associated with the auction. Um, you know, one of one of the investors of Arbitrary who now owns two of the hands. The ownership of these things was quite complicated. So the auction happens um only two of the hands
sale cell. Everybody's feeling quite flat afterwards. And then suddenly, like at the happens hour, Um, somebody's on the phone and it's the buyer and he says, actually he'll take the other two as well. So this mysterious buyer on the phone ends up paying more for all of the hands than he could have got them for fifteen minutes earlier had he just bought them during the auction. It was just bizarre. Everything was shocked. The auctioneer said he
had to sit down. Nobody had seen anything like this and it seemed like this great, perfect ending to my story. Except Malcolm Duncan never got paid. And so the twist is just like you keep you get You're like, okay, well that I mean, it's like one of these like thrillers where it's like but wait, I mean, it's crazy. It It was really crazy. And you know, you've got to feel for Malcolm Duncan. He's like this incredibly colorful character.
He tells the most amazing stories. Uh, and he has been trying to unload these hands for so many years. At this point, Um, last I spoke to him, the Guernsey is the auction house says that even though the buyer missed the deadline to pay. That that that possibility is still out there, that that sale is still alive, it's still going to happen. Um, Malcolm is very doubtful about this, but he thinks he may have an Italian buyer on the line. We don't know much about that person.
Uh so. So yeah, not a lot of resolutions, but it is. It is a tale fit for a Netflix series. I'll just say that it is amazing. Danielle book of She is our new Toronto beer chief, newly minted. Congratulations on that. Congratulations on this story as well. As I said to Danielle and I center him said earlier, it's a heck of a week to have this story and get that job. So congrats to her. It's a terrific rate. Joe Weber, editor of Bloomberg Business Week, you are listening
to Bloomberg Business Week. Well, we've gotten very interested, especially of late with the launch of Bloomberg Green In. What's going on in the world is sustainable investing. Luckily for us, we have Chris McNett with us. He's cohead of sustainable investing at Wells Fargo Asset Management, joining us on the phone from San Francisco. So Chris, it feels like, first of all, thank you for joining Scarlett and myself on this Friday afternoon. It does feel like sustainable investing starting
to have a moment. I would guess you would argue it's been having a moment for a while, but it does feel like the aperture is widening a bit in a good way, that more people are paying attention. Yeah, that's exactly right. And also it's it's a real pleasure to be here. Um. I would say that, yes, you know, for those of us like me, we've been in this space for a lot of years, it felt like it feels like, you know, now we're almost sitting in an
inflection of point um where it's really getting into the mainstream. UM. And we've seen the demand really pulled up through you know, the really chop chop the market for the first part of the year and really start to accelerate. And I think there's a couple of reasons for that that we can go into. Well, it usually comes down to performance
as well. I mean, along with people wanting to increase their exposure to sustainable companies and e s G principles, performance matters and usually in a E s G portfolio portfolios are going to underwake companies in the energy sector and perhaps load up on companies that are in the tech sector. We have a market right now that is all driven by technology, and when it does fall, it's
being led by energy stocks. How much how much technology exposure does well as fargoes e. S G portfolio or sustainable portfolio have, Yeah, I mean, it's performance does always matter at the end of the day, um, And I think that's what it's really starting to draw a lot more interest, is that the performance of sustainable funds have really held up particularly well, you know, not just here today,
but even if you look across longer time periods. And it's true that, um, you know, sustainable investing mindset might lead you to underweight energy, and of course the way that energy has performed, you know, blaked Um, that's kind of been a winning trade. But a lot of the outperformance is coming not from sector missuaits, but really from looking at the sc credentials m and reflecting that in
security selection. So we really go sector by sector when we analyze the s G. Rather than try and pick over underweights two sectors, we really look at particular companies and do that deep research. So, Chris, I do wonder, you know, what's been the impact it either kind of tonally or or demonstrably when are quantifiably I guess when it comes to COVID nineteen and maybe a change in thinking. You know, you reference some of the choppiness and the
volatility in the market. But I do wonder are people reconsidering kind of where they're investing in how they're investing, just given everything that's going on in the world. Yeah, I mean that's exactly right. I think there was a fair bit of commentary that so much of the growth and in the s G marketplace happened since the global financial crisis that was maybe a bear market luxury, and we've actually seen it UM not just hold up through
the pandemic, but but actually really thrived UM. And what it's also causing, to your points, is a bit of a rethink about what's really valuable UM from you know, maybe a values or moral like a human perspective, right, I mean, like I think people are thinking more about what they're doing for the world. Yeah, I mean that's
exactly right. And I think it particularly comes down to UM, you know, employee well being and human capital that's always been a SCARN is sustainable and the investors because of kind of the morality of fair in decent work, but also the potential performance benefits that can come from it. So we really start to see social concerns UM and that and that can university that could be you know, fair and equal employment really start to rise up the
agenda UM. And you know, I think that that's something that's probably going to persist, you know, through and beyond the beyond the crisis. Yeah, backing up your your principles with your money, UM, Chris. We spoke earlier this week, Jason I did with the sustainability chief of Philip Morris International, the cigarette company, and they have a pretty ambitious plan.
They are working towards a smoke free future UM. They're making changes to their supply chain, zero child labor for instance, ensuring that farmers make a living income by electronics, smoke free devices UM equipped with age verification technology. By you look at your potential stocks on a security by security basis. Would Philip Morris make the cut? Yeah, I mean that that that comes down to UM A lot of you know, what investors really value UM, And at the end of
the day, you know where we exist to serve our investors. Um. So some investors probably would have a problem with with a company like Philip Morris just because the types of products that they make, which in many ways you know, doing flick harm and a kind of a social cost,
you know. But if you're thinking about looking at say a Philip Morris compared to another tobacco company, then you would look at those types of things that you that you just spelled that, and then you could use them to assess, you know, which of those tobacco companies are which oil company, um, you know, are more aligned with a sort of a healthier and more sustainable future. And then in that context, sure you could have a portfolio
where you could find its way in there. Interesting. All right, well, we'd love to keep in touch with you. This is really interest. See Chris McNett, cohead of sustainable Investing for Wells Fargo Asset Management, joining us on the phone from San Francisco roc A journal. But you let me drive. Oh no, no, no no, no, honey, please, I'll do the riding vel exst me. I want to try it. Just drive, baby, the questions trying This is the drive to the globe commune. Thanks,
we'll try us on Bluebird Radio. All right, it is time for the drive s clothes. I have to mention one thing, Scarlett that Kikato. I just saw a tweet go by that said in reference to Microsoft and its potential acquisition of TikTok. Someone said, someone tweeted, Microsoft is in TikTok's It's funny. That's only That's something only a business journalist, I think could love. But there are a lot of things the only business journalists them any kind
of great pun, you know, especially in a Twitter format. Exactly, it really is. Twitter was made for ridiculous things like that. All right, let's get serious here. It's Friday. Henley Smith is back with a senior vice president, senior relationship manager for Stonecastle Cash Management once again with us. Join us on the phone from eastern Connecticut. Henley, how are you. How are things in Connecticut? Well, very very well, I'm calling you from rural Connecticut where we do social distancing.
We have it down to a science. Yeah, so yes, and I enjoyed that fun as well. I thought that was very clever. Good well, thank you, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, we do our best, you know, to keep it a little light here on a Friday. I mean, it's been an interesting period even this week. You know, I was asking Henley are Stocks editor Dave Wilson just a few minutes ago, like what's the thing that you sort of take away from this week? And I'll pose
the same question to you. What, you know, what's the most important thing is you maybe have a socially distanced cocktail or something, or maybe a zoom cocktail. Whatever it's going to be. What what really struck you about the markets this week or the investing world. Well, it's it's kind of been ongoing for us as we're dealing with
kind of an interesting dynamic. As you know, our focus is a short part of the fixed income curve and cash management, cash investments, and obviously we're dealing with ultra low interest rates yet again. But the interesting dynamic and the takeaway I have is that cash you teems to build up mostly on the institutional level, and with even with these low interest rates, the choices that institutional investors
have continued to be limited. So you're seeing a lot of money market funds, prime money market funds shut down, You're starting to see government money market funds limit their investors, and so it's kind of an interesting dynamic where again, you have all this cash that's kind of been building up as a reserve, as a rainy day funds. It's just you know what's going to happen next, and even with his low interest rates, uh, they're having trouble placing it.
So the curve really ensured, has really kind of flattened, as we all know, and it continues to compress. But that doesn't deter institutional investors. They're still building cash at this point. They're still building cash. What's going to cause them to make a decision to put it to work? I mean, Jason was talking about one half trillion dollars for private equity. We had Katie Greifeld on earlier talking about c l o E t f s because everyone's looking for some kind of yield. Cash is building up,
Cash is sitting there money market funds. At some point someone's going to want to commit it to put in something that will tied up for more than just a day or two or a month or a week. What's going to be that catalyst? Yeah, again, I don't know what the catalyst. I mean, I think we all know what the ultimate catalysts will be and that you know, a vaccine that's safe and effective, and we know that
that's the ultimate. But yeah, at some point that cash continues to build a is going to have to find a place that it can earn a better return. You know, most money market funds are paying under ten basis points closer to one basis point right now. Now, again, a lot of our clients still want to have the f d I c ensured through our our programs, and that's
what they're hanging on to right now. But at some point, uh, they're going to move out on the curve or do something that typically you know, a lower quality asset, and that ultimately might be the you know, a second mistake. There's really no uh premium to extend at this point. I was talking to a client this week and they said they could get place six month money at two basis points. So yeah, I'm not quite sure what it is. I said, I think we all know what it ultimately is.
But at some point that money is going to have to move somewhere. But right now it's you know, I want to stay safe, I want to stay liquid, and I'm not going to move it from there. And it's not if I'm not gonna paid less for it. As long as I know it's there, I'm I'm happy with that. And that's the message we continue to get from our clients.
So talk to me if you can about the political scene as it relates to investors, because I feel like, and I've said this on this program several times, in a normal presidential election year, we were really starting to be heating heating up right now when it comes to trying to figure out from an investment perspective what a re election or a new administration would mean historically. How
have you thought about that? How are your clients feeling about it now, given that the presidential election is really
just one of several major inputs that are on their minds. Yeah, I mean it's been a difficult period nonetheless, just having all this politicized back and forth and all the things that we've been dealing with, and as we've talked about before, it feels like we've just kind of tripped into one crisis after or next apter and next, And I think in typical years you would kind of wait till after Labor Day and then get all excited or not excited
or what have you or kind of do the analysis. Um, but yeah, I think from the very beginning this period that we've been in, this very unusual period has been politicized, and so we've been dealing with that back and forth and um, but you know again, I think that that kind of focuses and feeds into what we've been doing. That's why you've seen a lot of large businesses just hang on to cash and keep it there, and retail
investors as well. I mean, I think they're they're just going to let things play out and then then make a decision. And I think that's probably a smart thing to do. Speaking of companies with a lot of cash and retail investors, Apple, of course announcing a four for one stock split. Jason and I were talking about how ultimately maybe a play for retail investors because you bring down the price of each shares each stock. Do you
think that's how investors see it? I would think so. Um. You know again, it even that net net is the same price, but it looks cheaper. So obviously you see Apple uh moving up smartly again today. So yeah, I mean I think that that four for one split will
make the price uh that much more affordable. For a lot of people and no broaden out there their investor base, and I think a lot of people will will gravitate towards that it's a great name, as we know, and uh uh, you know, I think if it's if it's cheap on a share per share basis, then I think you'll see a lot more people get involved. Yeah, alright, we're gonna leave it there. Thank you so much. Kenley Smith, Senior Vice president, senior relationship manager for Stonecastle Cash Management,
join us on the phone. As he pointed out from rural Easton, Connecticut, have a great weekend. Thanks so much for listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, South Cloud, Bloomberg dot com, or wherever you get your podcasts. And of course you can always listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube by searching Bloomberg Global News.