Tesla's Eye Popping Record

You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. Let's get to a story that definitely plays into I feel like something Ken Griffin said at Citadel saying that the scientists of Maderna and fires where they should be at the White House being commended for how quickly they got vaccines together. This story is talking about Messenger RNA. It's all the rage now.

We all are talking about it. Investment venture money pouring into the area and that includes one specific biotech startup or a therapeutic So let's get into it with Rick Shine, bloom Work News senior editor on the phone in New Jersey along with Business Week editor Joel Weber and our Bloomberg Business Week Uh, I should say in our Bloomberg

Interactor Broker studio right here in New York. So we are all like, I feel like we're all like like i'mate your scientists a little bit here armchair virologist slash scientists at this point yet, Uh, well, you haven't heard this part, which is that you know you've known about m RNA, that that if you didn't know about it, um,

you know about it now. But Angelica Levito's story in the current issue of the magazine UM is about perhaps the next frontier in RNA, which is that's a linear little strand almost like a thread, if you will, and scientists are now working on a way to bend it. And Rick Shin, who who helped edit the stories on Rick, why why is bending our RNA into a circle? Why would you want to do that? So, hi, Joel, I would definitely put myself in the category of arm tore virologists.

So um. Yeah. So this is basically a technique that researchers at Stanford and then later M I. T. Came up with two make RNA or a kind of our name that also give the message more durable, more stable than what we think of as m RNA, which, as you correctly put it is that like like a straight little strand. So because uh, they're able to like now transform this kind of strand into a circle, Uh, it

makes the the message lasts longer. And so whereas m RNA works perfectly well for a vaccine, which has been fantastic as we certainly know with moderna advisor vaccines, a circle, the hope is will be able to treat cancer and other diseases because it will be able to just hers is longer in the body. Uh that's thee And this um uh young company or a Therapeutics was founded based on this research. It's very theoretical still, it's um, you know,

nothing has really been proven. But uh but investors, are you excited enough to have put in a hundred million dollars which is not nothing? And so so uh orna, you know, it's like it's kind of the story though of just like everybody's looking for exposure to like what could be the next thing here. And obviously m RNA has has potential to do a lot of things other than just fight fight COVID. And this could be potentially one of those uh things that it could could be

working against. So who who's behind ORNA? Who are the who are the players there? So ARNA was created um by a group from m I t uh uh the uh let's see um it's um this guy um sorry Daniel Anderson. It was like a big deal in uh in rna uh technology. One of his researchers actually came up with the kind of way that you do this, which is essentially cutting up the strand into little pieces and having it reformulate itself into a circle. So um

uh they met with some investors, they created a company. Uh, this group MTM got behind it and uh and they're they're they're often running. I mean they still have a very very far road to go. There's other also, I just want to say, there's other companies that are doing this what we didn't really have space to get into it into the story, but there's a company called Laurent's Therapeutics.

It's also working on a very similar technology and they're backed by flag Chip Pioneering, which is the venture firm that helped create modear not. So there's a lot going on in this space. Is this that all being considered something like Rick kind of a holy grail in terms of really changing how we deal with serious diseases cancer. Of course, um when it comes to we always talk about disruption innovation, right, and it's we feel like medicine to some extent and how we think about it and

treatment modalities that it's lagged a little bit. Could this really be the game changer, that it really is a very different form of treatment and much more effective, although even though it'll take maybe a little while to get there. I mean, that's certainly the big hope. And you know, people who are former far more knowledgeable about those than I am, and we have much deeper pockets than I do. Are are really betting on this? So I would I would, You know, I would. I would say, we have to

see where we get. But you know, as I said, it's still early, early going. So when we when would we know best case scenario? Rick? Like, what's the timeline for something like this? Because m R and A was kicking around forever before it finally found its momentum. Is this something that's like, you know, a year or two we'll know what the results of this are. Is it more like ten years? I think it's more like a year or two because, um, you know, because there's so

much focused on this and there's so much momentum. I mean that the whole story of the m R and A vaccine was that there were terrific advances made, but you know, no one paid attention to it. They were just kind of out there for you know, decades before before I really sort of came to came into into sharp focus. And so now it was so much money and so much expertise focusing on this, I think we will go faster. Yeah, exactly. You do feel like that

there's a lot of money and attention being spent to it. Hey, Rick Shawn, thank you so much, Senior editor for Global Business News at Bloomberg News on the phone in New Jersey, of thanks to Joe Weber, Editor Bloomberg Business Sweek here in our Interactive Broker Studio. Be sure to check out this story at Bloomberg dot com, business Week dot com and on the Bloomberg you're listening to Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer

and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. All right, so you know, it's attracting a lot of money. Bloomberg Intelligence in fact expects e s G e T S to reach a trillion dollars E s G debt eleven trillion by five. It's enticing and perhaps still a bit confusing. I gotta say, tim, when it comes to UH investing in the E s G space, we're talking about environmental,

social and governments investing. And in a Saturday column, Andy Brown writes about this, Yeah, does it really have the effect that people think it's having? He writes about someone named Terreek Fancy was an evangelist for the idea that capitalism can help save the planet from global warming. Andy Brown joins us now he's editorial director at Bloomberg New Economy. He joins us on the phone from New York City. Hey, Andy,

so what happened to to Rieke Fancy. I mean he was he was all about s G for years at black Rock. Indeed, he was he ran this at black Rock for two years. He was, as you say, absolutely convinced the capitalism and capitalist markets could save the planet from climate change. And after two years of the world's largest asset manager, he came to the conclusion that this was entirely illusory, and the idea that Wall Street is part of a solution um rather than the problem, in

his view, simply delays real action. And he thinks that was absolutely necessary is the government to change the rules of the game and to impose a price on carbon emissions, thus forcing companies to take responsibility for their own polluting behavior. Well, the whole idea is right. I mean, there's got any how many conversations do we have and you picked your investment from They're happy to come on and talk about their e s G funds and e s G space

and everybody being all in. And what's interesting, though, is he points out and as you write, you know, just by saying we're not going to invest, let's say in oil companies or or what have you, somebody else will be very happy to pick up that and put their money into that space. Exactly as he writes. He writes in a very in a very lively way, and he says, you know, losing ten percent of your shareholders is not

the same as losing ten percent of your customers. You lose a customer, you've lost a customer, you lose and investor you just go out and find another one. And he makes the point actually that you know, these funds advertise themselves as E s G funds don't actually put anything new into the market. It's not like they invest

in green projects and initiatives which otherwise wouldn't find funding. Basically, they take the universe of available assets and talk them up into sort of smaller pieces with a kind of a we do. And it's like academic research shows that are surprisingly small amount of the waiting off these funds is actually um, is actually green um. The rest is more or less business as usual with the waiting towards

large cap companies. In fact, what Terek says, in fact is that you know it's designed really for for purposes of differency, and so yes, is this new thing. It's an exciting new product, look for the planet and good for your pocket book, you know, and that in fact, you know, he said, contentially, it's just a mechanisms which these fund managers got to learn fatter fees. So he lays out the problem, but does does he allowed to solution? Andy, Well,

he doesn't, And I asked him about that. He was on my show the other day and I said, look, you know you it's just what you've said. I mean, you lay out all the problems here, what's the solution then? And actually what I also had he runs uh sustainable to thing for CalPERS that the Canadian billion dollars under management. And she said, look, you know it's not an either role that you know, I it's an end and government does have a role to play in civil society does,

and investors do. And she actually gave a concrete example of how they combined really can change things. And the example she gave with this activist hedge fund Engine number one, which replaced three directors of Excellent Mobile is backed by backed by CalPERS because I didn't think the Excellent Mobile

was moving cost enough on a green transition. You know, it's interesting because I have a lot of conversations with folks to Andy and it's it's it can't be just I know net zero is the focus so much for a lot of e s G at this point in terms of you know, if you create emissions, they're bounced by absorbing basically an equivalent amount that's out in the atmosphere. But we really have to get to a way where we have alternatives that don't create anything bad for the

atmosphere because it's rapidly going out of control. And unfortunately there's not a lot of transparency in this E s G space right now, at least not for every every part of the letters, if you will. Um some of them are easier than others. But we've really got to think about it differently, especially when it comes to the environment. Yeah, exactly,

And that was the point that Anne was making. This is the role of the vital role of government regulators have to play, which is to force companies to um to to to publish their climate risks and opportunities so that investors can make real decisions about where they put their money. But on the question of divestment, I also had on the show no Quinn, the the CEO of HSBC, and you know, he made the point, it's a it's a very reasonable point that you know, divestment doesn't actually

do much good. That we're gonna be living with polluting industries for a long time, whether we like it or not. In the the trick is to work with them on solutions rather than to completely cut them off. And actually I think pretty much everybody agreed on that point. So Andy, just in the last forty five seconds that we have left with you. What are takeaways for investors and listeners who are listening right now. Well, I think Tarry makes

a good point. I mean, he's drawn attention to abuses in a big, growing financial industry, which and describes as being snake oil, sort of pretending that it's the answer but not really. Um. But I think probably to Anne's point, um, he overstates the case and that solutions in this in this area really are going to require a coalition, everybody pulling together, um and forcing change on companies from within.

Smart conversation, and you're you're making me think, Okay, we've got to get him on our air too, because we talked so much about E S G UM And maybe the two of you can join us and we can continue this conversation here on a Bloomberg radio. Andy, thank you, Andy Brown, editorial director at Bloomberg New Economy, on the phone in New York City. We have these conversations. The E S G space is exploding. Everybody wants to be involved, but um, there's a lot more to be developed there

there is. And I wonder how backlash will or if it will will continue to grow. Yeah, And you know, I think many people are calling for more transparency, and we've been watching shares of Tesla. They were up more than four percent at their highs today, still up in what is an overall down market, still up almost one percent, and they are higher Following some upbeat news over the weekend, Timmy electric car maker reported record third quarter deliveries that

easily beat the estimates that were out there. Thousand, three hundred cars were delivered worldwide in the third quarter, as Carol said, a record for the ev maker lad By CEO Elon Musk. Joining us now is Dana Hole, technology reporter at Bloomberg News. She joins us on the phone from our San Francisco bureau. Danna, when these numbers came

by came out on Saturday, what was your action? Well, you know, it's interesting because so much of the game is about beating expectations, and so, you know, Bloomberg we had estimates of around two thousand. Tesla itself send estimates to investors of two one and then they beat quite handily. Um, which I actually wasn't surprised about. But I guess it

makes me question, like how good is everybody's models? But I think that I think the reason why it's important is because, you know, for so long, one of the things that we've heard from you know, the bears or the short sellers is that there's got to be a demand cliff. I mean, how many people really are there in the world who want to buy new Tesla cars?

And with more electric vehicles coming onto the market, like, at some point Tesla is going to hit this wall where they're not going to be able to continue to grow. And you know, not only did they grow, but they grew in the face of this chip shortage and all these logistical challenges, and they just did really well. I mean, they're really close now to making you know, a quarter of a million cars a year, which is just something that no one ever thought was possible, you know, a

decade ago. So it bodes well for them going into the into the end of the year. Yeah, exactly. And what's interesting another story on the on the Blueberg talks about that this time it's hard being short it lately because it has had such a rally from it that was hit back in March. I think it's up more

than Danna. You know, this company, you understand it, but you also see that it's becoming a marketplace that once was kind of all you know, Ellen kind of had it all to himself when it came to EV specially higher end uh evs. There's more coming into the market. Do you think he can maintain or are you hearing from folks who walk to this industry that he can

maintain it? You know, I think what's interesting is I would like to kind of challenge everyone to reframe how they think about competition in the EV space, because it's not really about evis battling each other for this tiny slice of market share. It's really about evies growing their share of the overall automotive pie and competing with the

ice vehicle. So I think that you know, you're going to see two things happen, Like, yes, there will be more electric vehicles to choose from, but the goal really is, you know, the next time you buy a car, will it be powered by gas or will it be powered by an electric vehicle? If it's power and so we're just gonna see electric vehicles continue to grow, and so they're just gonna be It's like the piece of the pie that everyone is fighting over is going to be

a bigger piece of the pie, if that makes sense. Well, it's interesting, right, like how many different automakers do we have today, right for combtion combustion engines, Right, so why can't we have a bunch of very successful e V companies right? As more, because I know my next car I'm hoping, Tim, I don't know about you, but I hope it's an evy and just kind of planning on it. I do too. But here's the question, I don't know where I'm gonna Well, I live in New York City,

so you know, it's hard to keep cars somewhere. Yeah, where do I plug it in? And that's that's the question. After we're not going to be allowed to buy a gas powered car anyway, right, New York has joined California in banning the sale of the car. So it's it's kind of time to think ahead, like what is your next car geting be? What kind of infrastructure do you

need to support it? Um so, so, so I think that, I mean, I think and I think that Tesla does have first mover advantage, and you know, China is a big part of their growth, and so you know, it's hard for those of those who live in the United States to kind of always remember this, but they are now producing a ton of Model threes and wise out of that factory in Shanghai, both for Chinese consumers but

also for export to Europe. And we just have to remember that, like the big battle over EVS is, it's really happening abroad as well as as well as here. I wonder what it's going to take though, to get it to a point where the vast were not even the vast majority, but the majority of cars that are purchased, the majority of new cars purchased our electric vehicles and not ice vehicles. Yeah, I think a lot of it really is just a consumer had it. I mean, I

was thinking about this. You know, I have not flown very much at all recently, but I did fly to the East Coast over the summer to visit friends and family, and like, at the airport, like I wanted the most fuel efficient car possible, and the only thing that they had was a Toyota Prius, which is what I got. But like, there was no way for me to rent a Model three or a Chevy Bolt or a Nissan

Leaf at the airport. And if I could have, like that would have been a really cool way for me to like experience the car before actually considering whether to own one. But it's still just not part of like our culture, and people are just used to going to gas stations and so making the leap to electric cars like it's just going to take a lot of consumer education. And that's why Tesla has been successful because so many

owners basically serve as the facto brand ambassadors. Like, you know, someone gets a car, they invite their brother or their sister or their mom to take a ride, and then that's another person it's like, oh, wow, this is actually really cool, and so you know, it's all like word of mouth and the experience of having your button the seed and like going for a drive and realizing that you know, charging is not that big a deal and um, but you know you just need to do that on

a much wider basis that we have now. I will say, I'm seeing a lot more cars in and around the New York metro area, and I agree with you that it used to be like the outlier. You'd meet somebody like, oh, what's it like, And now it's like my friends, Oh yeah, we have, and my husband's got one too, and everybody's kind of all buy in. Jill Webber just talking about

our friend. Our friend just got one too. But it's like you have to live in the suburbs or I mean, look that's yeah to plug in, or you know, pay a lot of money for New York City garage in order to do that. Yeah, exactly, all right, they're working it out. Danni Hall always great when it comes to all things Testla Bloomberg Technology reporter, joining us from our San Francisco burope. You know Carol, the classic children's book, No Good, Very Bad day. Okay, Well, it's one of

those days for Facebook. I don't know if people have logged into Facebook or attempted to use any of the Facebook family of services today, including What's App, Instagram, and of course Facebook Messenger, but there have been challenges as those have been offline for much of the day today, not to mention the other challenge that Facebook is dealing with today, cleaning up the mess thanks to a whistleblower who appeared last night on sixty Minutes and turned out

she had been for months providing not just lawmakers but also the Wall Street Journal with internal documents about the way that Facebook balances profits and balances moderating content lots and lots of internal documents. Let's get the latest on the company, the stock, the concerns. Kurt Wagner is Bloomberg News tech reporter. He joins us on the phone in San Francisco. Kirk Uh, Kurt, it's nice to have you here. Um.

The selling that we're seeing in Facebook shares. Mind you, it's a risk off trade and big tech in particular are really feeling the most pain today. But the trade has to do. I would assume with some of the news today, how do you see it? What are you hearing? Well? I would imagine that, Um, you know, this was a blower interview from last night got a ton of attention. Um. She is supposed to testify before the Senate subcommittee tomorrow about kind of the harms that Facebook products might have

on children. And I do feel like that there's a bit of a common ground here between Democrats and the public pians that didn't always exist. I think they've they've

oftentimes both disliked Facebook, but for different reasons. And I feel like in this case, you know, rallying around Facebook is a safety issue for children has kind of given them a little bit more um common ground, And so I imagine if you're someone who's investment in Facebook, you have to look at this and say, Okay, well, maybe this is the most likely we've seen so far for there to either be some type of regulation or new

law that could actually hurt the business. This is speculation at this point of course, but I would imagine that that's weighing on people's mind. Okay, but we've seen this story play out before, whether it's Cambridge Analytic, the wake

of January six, President Trump on the platform. I mean, the list goes on and on current when it comes to Facebook, and at the end of the day, uh, small businesses around the world do find it a very effective place to advertise because people go to these platforms, and I wonder if that changes in the wake of this, and as as as a result, investors have rewarded the company.

I don't think it's going to change, and I think the only thing that would change it would be if, uh, you know, Congress passes some type of data collection law or some type of law around what can and should be used in ad targeting. UM. I think for now, if you are a small business, Facebook continues to be arguably the best place to go and spend your money. And that's not going to change even if you know

there's public sentiment against Facebook. But again, I do think something that any type of regulation or law around what Facebook data the company uses for ads, I think that's where you could suddenly see a change because, um, that's going to impact the ability of these businesses to get their message out, right. I mean, I guess at some point Kurt, my husband, I were talking a lot after the sixteen minutes pieces. You know, is what is Facebook? What is it? Is it really a media company? Is it?

You know, a social platform? You know, I'm thinking about the whistleblower, a place where people are allowed to just kind of dump stuff. You know, what's the responsibility of Facebook for this? Is? You know, what's put on its platform? It's it's a lot of questions and I guess we have to just figure out and we'll see what regulators ultimately decide it is and what it's responsible for. Right Yeah, I mean I think this is the ultimate challenge right

now with the Federal Trade Commission. You know, they are basically they're doing Facebook to try and um break the company up. You know, They're they're claiming Facebook was anti competitive when it bought Instagram and when it bought WhatsApp. But the biggest challenge I see in that lawsuit is that they're having a tough time themselves describing what Facebook is, and they're saying it's a monopoly and personal social networking.

But you know what, that they don't include messaging in that, they don't include necessarily video watching in that, right, I think of how much of Facebook is now just scrolling through watching videos similar to YouTube. So Facebook has gotten so big a touch of so many areas that it really has become hard to define and as a result, it's hard to regulate. Hey, the adages are they fixed? You know, real quickly? Five seconds? They're not fixed. That

is about three minutes ago. They are not f Alright, alright, we'll watch for the headline to say whether or not they're fixed or still ongoing. Um. Kurt Wagner, thank you so much. He's tech reporter here at Bloomberg and new shares a Facebook still down, Tim five? Yeah, but you let me drive? Oh no, no, no, no, this is not a toy. All right, please, I'll do the riding revels. I want to drive. It's good question. Drive. This is

the drive to the Clothes up on Bloomberg Radio. All right, we are just under ten minutes away from the close of trading on this Monday, October four. We're seeing right across the screen broad based declines on the DAO S and P five, d NASDAK and the Russell two thousand. Joining us as Ed Rosenberg. We're driving to the Clothes with him. He's head of e T F set American Century Investments, got two hundred forty billion dollars in assets under management. He joins us on the phone from Chicago. Ed,

help us make sense of a day like today. What what's going through your mind right now? I mean, look, there's so many things going on outside of the market that are driving the market. Do we have inflation? Right?

The debt ceiling keeps coming up, and Biden did a speech earlier, right, So people are taking potentially taking risk off the table and shifting money around into other places, whether it's riskless less risky assets, or looking for ways to take advantage of this market and maybe find different spots to move money into. As we keep seeing this, so it's not like they're necessarily it's interesting that you say that, right, shifting around, finding better opportunities at this

point is maybe the changing psychology within the market. Whether it's for a day, for a week, for a month, we'll find out. But what's interesting is I looked at things like gold. We're not necessarily seeing a huge move into safe havens. I think that's the same case if you look at the dollar, at the same case for the treasury trade. It's not like we're getting the equal kind of trade that everybody's just running for the egg

a dork. That's not what we're seeing today. No, and we're not seeing people, you know, obviously growth is the story today, right. The growth stocks are the ones that have been falling off the table. I mean even during the announcement we talked about I heard Apple, Facebook, um all mentioned in Amazon, all coming down. But it's where's the money going? Right? As people sell off, what are they looking to put it into. We've had these questions come up even before this last week week and a

half where the market has been cycling. Where what do I do about inflation? Because it's been a story for a long time, and you would oil up today right and pushing higher, and it's higher than it's been for a while, and so what does this all mean to the end consumer and what does it mean for the investor?

And I think when we talk about inflation, you're seeing people shifting more money into things like short duration bonds, right which obviously when you report on the stock market, we're not going to see that money in there because it's not driving those prices. And I think people have been looking for talking about this, but this market has given them a kickstart actually start putting into action what

everyone's been talking about. And when you take a step back and you think about the health of the American economy, there aren't a lot of the signs that we're seeing right now that perhaps are spooking investors and spooking equity markets. Aren't they net net a pretty good thing about the recovery globally and here in the US. Yeah, I mean, I think overall, I mean, if you think about what's happening right through actually I'm just gonna go through the

entire pandemic. The market has been strong throughout except for obviously the beginning of it with March. And we've seen you know, unemployment coming down over time, and we've seen rates while they haven't ticked up to the level that people said they would. I mean earlier this year they moved up, they came back down to around on the ten uere and now it's back up to Those aren't drastic moves. And overall, when you think of where inflation could take us, it could take us much higher. It

feels like the economy is still healthy now. Granted, we do some things out there right the debt feeling limit is one of them. Does America actually default on its bonds? That is something that could happen, Although it never happened before, it's come up as a discussion point and all of

a sudden the last hour it's always been saved. But if that happens, that's a whole different story of what's going to happen moving forward, as we talk about the health of the economy and the health of everything tied to the US, from the dollar to its own bonds. No, that's I mean, you're talking about then global investors, countries who plow a lot of money into US treasuries looking at the US in a very different way. So much you know whether or not it's no longer the safe

haven that maybe everybody thought it was. Yes, exactly, and then what does that mean does money come out? Does it come out? I mean there's been that money has been going into from foreign investors for a while now, not even just treasuries, but even our own real estate, right, whether it's office buildings or even residential properties. Money has been moving in and what happened into all of it

if we default? That's really the big question is that are we seeing those fears actually reflected though in the market right now? Because it seems to me like if the if if investors were really concerned about that, we'd we'd see even steeper declines today. I think you're right.

I mean, I think, look, we've all lived through We've seen political posturing out of Washington before, whether it's today's the debt ceiling, right, whether it's other things, and I think to the market it's a lot of white noise, but there is some reaction to it, right. Inflation is something that's been talked about, and that's not quite political posturing. We've seen prices go up across the board in different commodities.

And I know you mentioned gold, but if you think of the cost of some other commodities, right, they have risen steadily for a while now. The price of food for the consumer has gone up, the price of gas has gone up, So those things are real. And I think as these markets start to get a little edgy and we keep hearing more noise, I think people are looking for different places to put that money, whether it's cash or quite frankly, other investments that they feel are

more safe haven. Does it matter to you? And just speaking of commodities, the Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index rising to a record, so it's playing out certainly in this trade just quickly, doesn't matter to you. I mean the S and P is down more than five from its early September high, DABS down about four and a half percent from its mid August high, than Nasdaq one hundred is down almost eight percent from its early September high. Uh,

could there be more selling? Do you anticipate it? And just got about thirty seconds left here, Yeah, I mean, I think there's always I think in this environment, we're going to see a rocky road ahead and there's going to be more selling. We'll get a couple of days like we did Friday, where there's some buying, but I think we're going to see a rocky road ahead. And really I think the key going forward, it's going to

be volatility. Well, I was just gonna say, you take me and set me up really well for the volatility. The volatility index is up two points now at twenty three and change, so we've definitely been seen ing um it up and down some big moves, so volatility is definitely on the rise. Ed Rosenberg always great to get your thoughts. Head of exchange traded Funds of American Century Investments two forty billion in assets under management, on the

phone from Chicago. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com, and you can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube. Search to Bloomberg Global News