The Great Resignation Is Great for Low-Paid Workers

You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on the Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube. Searched Bloomberg Global News A couple of things going on. Wearing a face mask more than have the risk of getting COVID. That's according to a review of eight studies published in the British Medical Journey. And then, Tim, you've got a more infectious new version of COVID nineteens Delta variant spreading fast in the UK. It does seem

less likely though, to cause symptomatic illness. But there you have it. Yeah, we've heard this story before, right right, new variant. The most recent one that caused issues here and around the world was the Delta variant. It has been the delta variant, but epidemiologist and experts have been saying that this thing continues to mutate exactly. All right, let's get our daily check on the pandemic and the vaccine.

Joining us right now is Tara Kirksel, Senior Scholar for the Center for Health Security and Assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering over at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder, Bloomberg GILP, and Bloomberg Philanthropist. She, by the way, an Olympic medal winning athlete, which I just think is really cool. She's on the phone from Bremerton, Washington. Tara, so great

to have you here. Uh, lots of information on a daily basis, We rely on folks like you and other members of the medical community to really pull fact from fiction,

if you will. Misinformation about all of it is so key. Yeah. Well, you know, the real problem here is that miss misinformation really reduces trust, and so you know, when we're communicating about what you need to do to protect you and your family, it's really hard because we have this in pandemic where we just have so much information, and some of it's true and some of it's not, and it's just blasting people, and people just don't know what to believe.

So it's really tricky. And the problem here is now people have sort of lost trust and there's an uptil babble here on you know, getting people to do the things you need to do to end the pandemic. Well, somebody who studies this stuff closely, misinformation in particular, I'm wondering what your research has told us and told you about where this comes from. What is the number one

source of this misinformation? Well, I mean there are different sources, right, that can be different, you know, different political, different social, different monetary motivation, and it's coming from all over the place. But you know, I think that the important thing here is to know that it's not just words, right, it causes real harm. Um. And so like if we did it, actually we did an economic analysis, um that you know, show that Look, can we just look at non vaccination

and we make a really conservative estimate. You know, it's just fivet of non vaccination is attributable to misinformation, the cut between fifty and million dollars of harm every day, which is just an incredible amount of harm and it's hard to sort of imagine, oh, these words are really actually translating into you know, these problems in real life.

So what is the best way to combat this? Because you know, I hear you talking about this, and this is something we've been talking about for more than a year at this point, and I think to myself, well, you know what that ship is sailed? Yeah, well, you know, this is not an easy solution, and I think that that's something that we're still trying to figure out the best ways to go about solving this. I think, you know, we can have these big, big communication campaigns, but that

doesn't really solve the problem. Right. The problem is is in um, you know, how we deal with each other on an in a personal basis, how we use social media UM, and how we you know, value what's true and what's not true UM. And so I think it's going to come down to when we're talking about, you know, dealing with misinformation about the vaccine, that's coming down to trusted sources. We can't you know, depend on PDC to blast out any more information because those people aren't listening anymore.

So it needs to be more on these community level interventions that are that need to go on, um Tara, we have so many conversations about the inequities that are out there when it comes to healthcare, how it's affected different people during the pandemic, What signs, what hope do you have that as we get on the other side of this that some of those inequities are truly dealt with, that we stopped talking about it and actually do something and fix it and make it better for more, uh,

not only Americans, but global citizens. Well, I think the pandemic has really highlighted that this is you know, these global inequities of affect everyone UM, and that you know, when we are dealing with big problems like the pandemic or other health issues that sort of you know, continue continue every day that you know, these these equities, UM, you know are really really part of the biggest part of the problem. UM. Now, are they solved? Definitely not.

You know, weason to come out of the pandemic and say we've solved, you know, the problem with health and equities. Know, but I think that you know, we have shined a light on it, and I think that this is something that is gaining more and more attention UM as something that needs to be addressed when we deal with for parents, for pandemics. You know, you can't just just think about

how well just one broad solution. You need to think about all these subpopulations that really do need this attention. What holds it up from us making more significant progress? I mean, we think about some of those big global issues, whether it's climate change, inequities, certainly healthcare. I know it's a big nut to fix. But what is it that holds us up the most? Is it policy? Is it politicians caring? Is it that the people that are affected

that most don't have much say in government? What is it? I mean, I think it's all of those things. Um, But you know, at the end of the day, I think you know, I study misinformation play. Do you think a lot of stuff which is related to misinformation? People don't. People don't see it as an important problem because you know, that's some other information they're seeing. It's just not a priority. It's not a priority for people that it's not a

priority for politicians. But I do think, you know, when we talk about misinformation, when we talk about these pandemics, you know, this is something that needs like a whole of society approach. We need to have, you know, a national strategy to deal with health related misinformation in and for that matter, you know, we do have these strategies for pandemics. We need to sort of understand that we just can't make a plan that we actually have to invest it. All right, we gotta run. Hey, thank you

so much. I know it's Thursday, but still have a good weekend. We call it Friday's Eve here, so uh, Tara, take care. Tara Kirksl she's senior scholar for the Center are at the Center for Health Security. She's an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering overt Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health. Of course, as we say, because it's true, it's a part of by Michael R. Bloomberg, founder, Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

We didn't talk about her Olympic silver medal, No we didn't. It isn't that cool, Very just in awe of anyone who's achieved that. Also just career switch such as this, Yeah, incredible, doing some incredible work as well. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, we talk about this a lot

when it comes to trying to understand today's labor market. Really, the impact of the COVID pan make writing about it in a Bloomberg opinion column about how the Great Resignation is great for low paid workers is known other than justin Fox. He's calmnest to Bloomberg Opinion. He joins us here in our interactive brokers studio, nice to have you here. We're chatting a little bit before we got going. We

talked about this a lot. Tell us what your intel has said are shown about what really is going on when it comes to the Great Resignation. Well, I mean, everybody's been talking about it for months, and at least in my inbox, it's mostly all these consulting firms and pr people wanting to talk about white collar workers being dissatisfied with their jobs or otherwise wanting to reboot their lives and work life traitors on while studio can't date and they switch for another job exactly, And a lot

of that's totally real and for love Carol, exactly. But there's this monthly report that the Bureau of Labor Statistics put out and the one for September came out um last week and where and where they measure the quits rate, which is just the percentage of jobs that people left voluntarily in that month, and it was the quits rate was three September. That's the highest it's ever been since they started measuring it in two thousands, and it's jumped a ton over the past um six months or so.

And if you look at it by industry, it turns out it's not the financial industry. It's not information, which is where a lot of the tech companies are and where Bloomberg is too. It's leisure and hospitality. It's um non durable goods manufacturing, which doesn't pay as well as durable goods. It's um healthcare, but you know you've got

most healthcare jobs are not highly paid doctors or nurses. Uh. And so what it seems to be, at least lately and again over the course of the pandemic, different things have been happening. But the phenomenon of right now is low paid people are quitting to take slightly higher paying jobs. And that's how because hires are up even more highers

are higher than quits. Are, and that's just happening all across the board, and it's kind of I mean, I'm sure it's very frustrating for the employers who are losing some of those people, but it's kind of a very healthy phenomenon that was not happening for most of the two thousand tents. It was starting to happen a bit

in two thousand and seventeen. Age I'm glad you say it was kind of a healthy phenomenon because I think about the way that prices have not been raised in many parts of our lives over the last decade, and I wonder to what extent this type of pattern is supposed to happen, where workers are supposed to have this type of choice that if they do actually find a job that pays more, they can go to that and those jobs are available when they haven't been in the past.

I mean, one the the Atlanta fed um breaks down wage gains by income quartile, and basically the bottom quartile people who make the least money are seeing the biggest gains right now, and the last time that happened in an extended and then and they've been seeing the biggest gains since about two thousand, fifteen, but they keep going higher. And the last time that happened in a significant way it was the late nineties, which was a pretty great

time economically speaking. And so that's a good thing. That's like, that's decreasing. Wage inequality has totally been decreasing over the past few years. I don't know if overall economic inequality has because obviously a lot of people are getting rich off things other than wages, but wage inequality has been decreasing. Opportunities for people who don't have college educations have been improving for the last few years. It's good stuff in

a lot of ways. So net net to take away do be does this work towards reducing the gap that we're seeing between the halves and have nots essentially? Um and longer term, does it mean wage inflation? Maybe it isn't sticky because sometimes those jobs have a lot of turnover and just kind about thirty five seconds, I mean, who Yeah, it seems like wage wage inflation might be a little stickier, though I would imagine COVID is still

holding some people back from the labor market. Um. And yeah, this closes the gap, it doesn't close at all, And it's not the only thing that needs to be done, but yeah, it decreases inequality well, and it equips us with a smart a smarter round of conversation because we are talking about just people rethinking right, they're rolling in

the workforce. Also, after reading a column, makes me wonder too about price increases that we'll see at some of these places that haven't been raising wages that realized they do because they're going to need more money to pay their workers. All Right, we gotta run. Justin, thank you so much. Justin Fox. He's calumnist of Bloomberg Opinion. Check him out at Twitter at Fox just and he's joining

us in our Interactive Broker Studio. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, the news show, Bloomberg business Week Magazine. It is out. It's on the Bloomberg at business Week dot com, also on newsstand and the cover

It's all about inflation. Yep, it's back. Several articles covering what is one of the most talked about subjects this year, including a story by Bloomberg News Cross Asset Reporter on Bloomberg Quick Take host Katie Greifeld, which is about getting inflation right. Is a make or break trade on Wall Street. The folks on Wall Street have had a hard time figuring this one out. Joining us now is Joe Webber, editor at bloom Burg Business Week. He joins us on

the access line from Brooklyn. Katie Graandfeld is in the studio with us. She's Bloomberg News cross asset reporter. She's also the co host of Bloomberg Quick Take stock at as each and every day at noon Wall Street time. Joel, I want to start with you and just talk a little bit about the entire package here because this is this is a special issue of Bloomberg Business Week that

really focuses on inflation. And I think for a lot of people, uh, they might think back to the question of wait a second, wasn't inflation dead just a few years ago? Were we out of the era? In fact, we even had a cover story that was is Inflation dead? Which was uh, you know, in the before times and boys at not now. Um, but you know, this has been an obsession on in finance and on Wall Street

for for years. You know, this idea that inflation which basically just disappeared, like what was going to bring it back? And then all of a sudden, Um, it's back and in back in a big way. UM. So we tried to look at that um for as many different angles as we could. There's historical elements, there's the political ramifications and what it means for for President Biden who really doesn't have that many options to even attempt to deal

with it. Um. And then where where Katie fits in with technically the cover story, which is a joke between her and me, uh is that careers are going to be made or or or or broken over this thing, um, especially on Wall Street in terms of of who who doing what, what their calls are, what their trades are. UM. So Katie, what's that? What's that inkst feel like on the street? Well, Joel, technical cover story, I will take it. I do remember the Inflation is Dead cover as well.

I think there was a deflated dinosaur on it had an article in that one with a question mark to be it was a question mark, not a state. There is a dinosaur that was out of inflatable dinosaur that was out of air at the bottom of the question there it is. I remember that we're showing it to everybody who's watching right now on YouTube. Great cover man,

What a time this article. I think, um, there's sort of an optimistic or silver lining here, because I mean, we're looking at it from the psychology of money managers, this inflation question. I feel like we come at it from the economic angle a lot trying to answer the question of whether inflation is transitory. But if you're a money manager, this is the question you have to answer in designing a portfolio. And if you're wrong, I mean,

for sure that can destroy your returns. But if you're right, I mean, you can really be a hero here, you can really make a name for yourself. So there there's a little bit of an optimistic bent there, Katie. Though here we are you and I anchor this show on on quick Take that's geared towards retail traders. A lot of our audience doesn't hasn't ever lived through an inflationary environment.

And I wonder what your sources told you about the idea of us entering a time when you know, we were I think in the words of Matt Miller, this was like pre nirvana, is what he said earlier today. I think that's what he said that that was a fun interview. But yeah, I mean we're talking about numbers that we haven't seen since if you think about headline inflation, if you think about core PC, which is what the

FED likes to look at. I mean a lot of money managers that I talked to that, I mean, even if you've been money managing money for fifteen for twenty years, you haven't seen these numbers in a long time. And I mean myself, as a millennial, I know a lot of people who casually trade in the market. I mean that when they came into being started, you know, paying attention to trading stocks, all they've really known is super

low interest rates, tech dominating everything. There's a potential for a real reshuffling of leadership here, which is a really interesting time to be alive. And so, Katie, when when we're talking to people who are attempting to like navigate how they construct portfolios around this and this feeling like, as one guy said, it's like if I get this, if I get this wrong a year out, like I'm kind of screwed. I have to get it right. Um,

how how existential is this for people? Are they feeling like, are they feeling it with every decision that they make or and and how far out are they even attempting to look? Well, if you're looking two to three years out and you know you think this is uh just going to be an issue, maybe you know inflation will peak in February two and start to cool off. If you really in two to three out three years out,

you're probably not that stressed about it. You're still going to be, you know, looking for the best companies, etcetera. But if you think that this really is we're going to see a sustained spiral upward and inflation may be driven by wage pressures, you're probably nervous here. And I spoke to Michael schul for this. Peach SE's the CEO

of market Field Asset Management, Super Smart. He said, the real risk here is that basically bond investors reach a psychological breaking point when it comes to real rates, because real rates at record lowse deeply negative. At a certain point, you start to demand more, and you know this starts and ends with the bond market. If that starts to happen, you start to get cracks where the bond market isn't necessarily taking its cues from what the FED is saying

that reverberates across assets. That has you know, really wide ranging, not very good implications for equities. I'd say, for sure, what about what the FED does and how that will impact this is That's the question. And this is something I was talking about with Matt Miller that you know, you think back to Volker who what hyped rates to which which kind of went against the thinking, right like why would you do higher rates in a high rate environment?

But that's exactly what was needed absolutely. I mean I can't imagine a power FED doing that. I can't imagine a brainerd Fed doing that. I mean, this current regime of FED policy, we know that they want to let inflation run hot for a while. And I mean, even if you look at what's priced into markets right now, the terminal rate is priced in at one point seven five per cent. That's a pretty shallow hiking cycle that's

priced in. It's far, far, far cry from So what's at stake here for the folks you talked to on Wall Street about the ones who are going to make or break their careers. Well, again, did bring it back to Michael Scholl. He said that you know, if the worst case scenario is right, that absolute psychological breaking point. This wouldn't be a five to send percent correction and then we bounced back. This would be a sign a

market of significant losers. That wouldn't be winners and losers. Right, there's the likes of somebody getting it right and for us for like the next five years saying remember he made or she made that great call. I mean, Michael Burry is proof. We talked about him all the time, like big short fame came to prominence during you know, the last financial crisis. How many years ago? Was that a long time? And he did just end his bet

against Tesla, Yeah, he sure did. Anyways, great stuff and the whole takeover that the section devoted to inflation in the magazine must read really looking at it from so many different angles. Katy gray Pelt, thank you so much, Bloomberg News crocess at report of Bloomberg Quick Take co anchor here in our interactive broker studio, and of course old Weber editor Bloomberg Business Week on the access line

from Brooklyn. Check out that new issue of Business Week on newsstands, online and on the Bloomberg So much to come. You're listening to Bloomberg Radio. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. All right, so we love the ticker, we love the company. We're talking about Petco Health and Wellness,

which reported earnings this morning. No, it was a third quarter beat for earnings, revenues and com sales outlook from the CEO, Ron Coglin, saying the third quarter comp sales growth to giving them confidence to raise guidance for the full year of one. Even so, investors not impressed. The stockdown hovering near lows, down about twelve and a half percent. So great to have back with us in our interactive broker studio. The chairman and CEO of Petco, Ron Coglin,

joining us. Good to have you here, great to be here, Thanks for having me. We'll talk to us about the quarter. It seemed like a pretty good one. Yeah, I mean we had a great quarter. If you look on the top line, we were up fift we asked it through. On the bottom line up sevent um. If you look

on a two year basis very strong. You look at our digital business up thirty plus hundred and fifty percent on a two year basis, which is one of the strongest prints in terms of digital business of any retailer. We're gaining share in a growing category. But and also we uh we added fifty three million dollars of gross margin year over years. But from a gross margin rate standpoint, there was three dynamics. One was we sold more consumables food and treats versus supplies. And I can explain that

more um we have right now. Okay, alright, so basically, let's talk about a pet's life side. Um you're one of a pet. So first of all, the question there's been a question do people spend more year one and then down in year two. It's common all through the pets life, with the exception of end of life where you have more m r X and more veterinary bills. But it's your one two is the same, but the mix is different. You're one, you get your great you

get your bed, you get your leash, your collar. Year two the pets put on my guys case about and guess what. The bowls are bigger, the fill is bigger. So what happens is the food versus supplies mix is adjusted. This is amplified because of the pandemic puppies. Uh, and so we had a mix towards consumables. The second thing that happened was we had basically two x the share game we had year ago because we're able to get our hands on supply and the other programs were doing so.

Do you think that that shift towards consumables indicates that the pandemic pet boom is over? That we will not continue to see the growth and people actually buying new pets and as a result, buying more from you. First of all, we prefer adopted versus by adopt. I'm sorry, you know, sadly no I should say. I wasn't picking on you. It's just with our pet go love. We support all the rescues and we're trying to eliminate ethan petty youthan age which unfortunately still exists. Um. But actually

adoptions are still at an elevated level. They're just not the exact same level of two thousand and twenty, which was you know, the planets aligned two thousand twenty. But it's still at an elevated level. But the second thing that we now know is millennials and Gen z ers adopted a lot of those pets and guess what they do. They spend more, So spend per pet is going up. So from an industry standpoint, the industry went from a prediction of six to seven percent from one to twenty

five to prediction of seven percent for those years. So the industry is going to be strong and we're gaining share. So what would you say to investors like, oh my god, you've got it wrong. Yeah, I would say we have a great category, we're gaining share, and there were some unique dynamics between twenty and twenty one that are playing on the gross margin. But in this market where you have consumers wanting to spend more, the main thing is

the gross margin dollars, not the rate. Because we've got fifty three million more gross margin dollars and we flowed to the bottom line ahead of our top line. So I think that we're executing very well in this market. What's the outlook from here? And we've got to ask you a little bit about supply chain. I mean we ask everybody, and I'm sure you've been asked a million times here in this latest quarter, what's your supply chain like? Yeah, Well,

first on the outlook, we raised our guidance. So it's our third executive beaten, beaten raise uh and early Q four is strong. And that's what we said today. UM. In terms of supply chain, from our standpoint, we only have about a third of our revenue of our revenue that is exposed international supply chains. The remainder of it is domestically sourced or services. We have less exposure to

that issue. But that said, we're moving on to carriers that have new carriers that have capacity, new ports that have capacity. So our supply chain team is doing a great job being nimble, UM, because it has to be nimble because it's strained. Because you look at Long Beach, right, there's lots of conversations about Long Beach, UM. But you know, at the same time, we got enough supply to you know,

grow fifteen percent. And if you ask me our consul strength, we got you know, more than our fair share of supply. What's the port you're using that's not as crossed, Um, There's there's Northwest Ports, there's Texas Ports. So we're being creative as we as we wherever there is capacity. All right, Yeah, I just want to ask one more on margins because we saw a few different stories played, especially with Target and Walmart this week, sort of absorbing those costs rather

than passing them on to consumers. How are you thinking about it right now? Yeah, So we have a highly un elastic category. We have the highest spending pet parents in our portfolio. So the way we see it is we have offerings for every consumer. So if you want to high end fresh frozen, we have it. If you want a premium, you want a value, we have a great value in our own brand, Wholehearted. So we make

sure we have are offering for everybody. But at the same time, you know we are able to pass through a lot of that pricing. Hey what about getting workers stores? How tough is that? Yeah, Well, in the last year we had double digit increases and wages. We are bonus.

We just paid out above target because the mantra is as the company does better, employees do better, um, and we've done a lot of things and in return, what we're seeing is our retention amongst our pet care center our store employees full time employees is above nineteen in terms of retention. And actually, believe this or not, forty we had increase in applications versus the beginning of the year. So um, we feel good about how we're heading into

the holiday, save all the workers you want. We feel good about how in the holiday. It's a tight market, but as I said, our applications are so all right, we gotta run. Thank you so much, appreciate it. Yeah, always great to have you on Coglan of course, he is the chairman CEO of pet Co. Joining us here in our interactive broker studio. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. What wolf all right? It is a great ticker. Come on, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and

Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. So retail definitely uh, front and center. Americans are out their shopping, at least at Macy's and Calls, both stocks staring in today's trade. Both beat third quarter sales expectations and both raised full year outlooks. Macy's tim is up roughly two and twenty seven percent so far this year. Calls is

up about forty nine percent this year. Well, let's get to it with Jordan Holman, retail reporter for Bloomberg New She joins us on the phone from Atlanta, Jordan's I want to start with with Macy's. What do we learn in the company's most recent earnings report that's really got investors so excited. So Macy's supposed to have stronger expected earnings um SO sales were very strong this past quarter, and I think investors also got excited about their due

strategy around digital. So today Macy's announced that they would launch a digital marketplace, so highly curated um products and then also third party products. And this is a way a trend that we've seen in retail. You know, very specific about the type of products that you're marketing to folks, and it looks good. So Macy's has done strong on this. And the last thing I would say is that people are closely watching inventory levels going into the holiday season,

especially with all the concern about supply chain. Macy showed that they're in a good position. Macy's has been on a tear this year. As I mentioned that more than two here, they really got lost in kind of the old ways of doing retail for a long time. It sounds like they've really awakened and are really embracing digital. It is you mentioned, is it all about that really

going forward? And the growth that they're seeing. Well, Macy's has also had some encouragement to get more into digital, and not just from consumers starting to shop more mobile on digital, but think about activist investor John of Partner's earlier this month. UM. They have pushed Macy's UM to consider spending off their e commerce business UM from their traditional brick and mortar business, and that's really reinvigorated the conversation about how valuable a digital side of retail business

can be. So that was another news item that happened today with Macy's. They said that they have hired alex Partners to help them evaluate that process to see if that's something that they would want to do. That's interesting. I mean, we are, Caroline, I talked a lot about this last week when we talked about the end of the conglomerate. But why would we see and what would be helpful to Macy's to separate these businesses? And I certainly understand the difference in growth, but can't you have

you know, some quote unquote synergies here. I mean, certainly, in recent years, at least before the pandemic, we saw online only directing consumer companies start to open brick and mortar stores they could get that in personal experience in places because I think, like a um czar right exactly, that seemed to be able to do both exactly. Yes, um, And that's a really fair question because, like you said, the next move for growth for a DBC is always

opening store. So there's still something about a store that drives growth. And Macy's earlier today they really emphasize their omni channel strategy. Is the fact that when you have a brick and mortar store in a certain zip code, they see digital cells go up. So they are tying the connection between that. And when I was talking to um MA CEO jeffin Nett earlier today, he said, we've looked at this before. This is not new for us

considering um if we should split off the business. But because of the high valuations that we're starting to see um when it comes to e commerce, you look at Saxforth Avenue, they spun off their e commerce business. That he said it is they're doing their due diligence to see if that actually the right strategy. But let's left. Look, let's left for the brick and mortar. If you if you spin off e commer like, how do you have that division of a Macy's brand, one being e commerce

and one being brick and mortar. You honestly would make you would have to make sure you don't have silos when talking because the way that we as consumers shop, we expect if we see something online, maybe we do want to go to the store and try it on. And if those businesses aren't connected at all, there could be friction, which is like the worst thing that a

retailer want. So it's this it's kind of going back to the early two thousand's when they were separate businesses for a lot of retailers and that caused friction, and so it's interesting to see this conversation come back to see maybe it would be good for shareholders, but as consumers experienced it, that might not be the case. Okay, let's talk Coals because it's another company that you cover.

What did we learn about their company's most recent quarter and how they're thinking about the remainder of the year. Cos also posted strong sales for this quarter. They raised their outlook um. One thing that we did see but that could be a concern for the rest of the year, is that their inventory levels are down, and even though they did want to work on lowering inventory, UM, the Cold CEO told me today that that that's not as low as they wanted to go, and part of it

with supply chain issues. Women's apparel really took a hit. Um. And so as you look into the holiday season, UM, it just kind of adds to the concerns that people have about out of stocks. But they did say that items like home and toys, which are major during the Christmas season, are well stocked. Right, Like, if you walk into a coal store and the shelves are empty or you can't find what you need, you're gonna walk out and you're gonna go somewhere else, And that means you're

also going to maybe buy other things elsewhere. So those inventory levels are always key. Hey, Jordan, thank you, Bloomberg News retail reporter Jordan Holman in our actually, I should say, on the phone from Atlanta, just looking at the S and P supercomposite retailing industry groups, some of those results from Macy's from Cole's UH sending the overall group hires

up about two point six percent overall. That inventory comment that Jordan's made, UH, it's particularly important given where we are in the holiday shopping season, just before Thanksgiving right this point. Yes, I've seen have you seen all these like pieces that are being done about you know, different supermarkets or stores in detail because their shelves are empty. They're like trying to figure out how to fill out.

I did see that and doing kind of creative things that they might you know, get your shopping then I haven't even started. Same. We got time, We got time, right, that's what we're telling ourselves. Yeah, but you let me drive? Oh no, no, no no, this is not a twin home an please, I'll do the ride gravels. I want to drive. It's a good question. Drive is the drive to the globe? On Bluebird Radio? All right, folks, just

about ten minutes left in today's trading session. And will it be another record for the S and P five hundred that would make it I think sixty six for the year overall, I am, or the Nazak one hundred two, we could see another record. They're really propelled by Nvidia and some of those tech names. But quite a bounce back that we've seen in today's trading uh session. When it comes to equities, we're well off our loads of the session. So let's get to it with our guest.

Christian Manafo is with us CIO over at Liberty Street Advisor's portfolio manager of the Private Shares fun It's a closed in interval fund investing in private, operating, late stage, venture backed growth companies. He is with us on the phone in New York City. Christian, how are you. I'm doing well. I hope you guys are having a great day. Great day, because we're almost at Friday lunch with you. We're loving it. We're loving it. UM investors kind of

loving the trade. I mean, at least they're dragging it down or dragging it back from some of its loads today. What is it about the market environment right now, the financial market environment that you find in stay Well, you know there's the market we played in particular, which are the private markets. You know, we've just never seen this level of demand from all investors, including public market investors.

And if we we really try to deconstruct that demand, which is also flowing into the public markets, there's just so much demand for you know, disruptive technology and innovation. On one hand, we know that this works, you know, favorably. In other hand, it works you know, more in a

more challenging way. What I mean by that is, you know, the surge of demand in our market at least is attracting investors who traditionally have not been active here, and some of them have been driving up certain valuations while also providing opportunities for certain companies to go public that we would argue, you know, may not be ready to be public. Right, So there's premature opportunities for some of these private market companies to go public, and we're seeing

all types of volatility. But that said, overall, we continue to see a lot of robust businesses that are growing in the private market and that are doing quite successful. Okay, so with market companies, So can explain explain exactly how investors can access this? Uh? Even like, you know, even if it's been difficult for accredited investors to get into these types of companies, Like, how can an investor actually

get into the private Shares Fund? Yeah? So, you know, our objective in creating this fund was to democratize access so that not just large institutional grade and high net worth investors can be able to access all this private market innovation and growth, but also that you know, an investor with as little as without accreditation can access it. And so we have a fund um as you said,

that structured as a Fortiac interval fund. It trades with a ticker on the ticker you know, you can look up this p I I v X and you know, with this ticker on a daily basis, we provide investors the opportunity to invest in our fund. It provides you know, we believe are a lot of inefficiencies compared to traditional private market strategies, one of which is the ability to democratize the access. We also think there are are cost efficiencies.

You know, there's an evergreen nature, so investments don't have to worry about investing every few years to stay in touch with our best ideas. So it's a it's a really disruptive fund structure. It's available on most platforms, and we're offering it um at what we believe are very attractive economics. Help me understand something. It looks like your biggest holding the Goldman Sachs Government Fund. It looks like you've got a lot of cash. Are a lot of

assets in cash or cash like investments? Is that because it's hard to find opportunities? I mean, I guess I'm trying to ask, is that normal indicative of or of pessimism about the outlook, or indicative of that there's nowhere that makes sense to put that cash right now? Yeah, no O. Our fund right now is sitting a little over seven million and a M. The vast majority of that is invested. We actually have a smaller cast position.

The way the way the private markets work is you can't just press a button and buy the assets you want to own. That we have contractual obligations against a lot of the underlying deals that we invest in because private markets are nowhere near as efficient as the public markets will could take you know, weeks or months to

execute on private market opportunities. That that way, that is where a lot of the attractive this comes in, right because there is a lot of asymmetric information and an efficiency that we can one take advantage of them to offer that you know, to our investors. But the majority of our a u M is currently deployed across the portfolio of nearly eighty zero positions. What companies are attractive to you right now in not just in the portfolio, but outside of the portfolio. Yeah, I mean, when we

think about you know sector themes. Obviously, the space economy is an area of substantial interest. You know, we think this represents a compelling opportunity and there's a lot of historical advancements in terms of cost efficiencies as we're seeing um as well as you know, more safe ways to get payloads up there. Uh. You know, financial technologies an area obviously that's disrupting all aspects of our life. You know, we haven't gotten incredibly deep into the blockchain crypto world yet.

We're still you know, being cautious there, but we do think there's a lot of disruption even actively playing a role in payments and reinventing how lending and personal finance work. Cybersecurity, we think is a very attractive area for obvious reasons. Healthcare innovation, you know, the ability to provide various digital

health solutions. You know, cloud technology. When we think about what it's called, you know, generally data gravity, which is simply the amount of data created far exceeds the bandwidth that allows us to process it. And when you have all of this cloud migration to you know, off premise, hybrid or even on premise, there's a lot of challenges with the interoperability of the applications and security, So there's a lot of technology that's helping that work. We think

agricultural technology is really attracted. So without naming specific companies, we really think there's a lot of innovation that's happening and we're trying to provide to our clients. But twenty three and me is one that is certainly uh of interest correct? Uh? And the reason I bring it up is Business Week recently did a story and it's not just about you know, figuring out your ancestry, but it's also then being able to collect data and then ultimately

use it to develop healthcare. Uh. Is that of interest to you? And just got about thirty seconds forgive me? Yeah, it is, it is and and that's that's that's a position that you know, our fund is held. Um. I think what you're getting at is this is becoming more of a a genomics play, right, and a lot of the pharmaceutical companies can use this data to really help create a lot of different solutions using the research they can apply with this data. So, yeah, that's absolutely a

very interesting name. All right, kind of run really fascinating, uh, And I hope you come back soon. I really appreciate it. Christian Enofo. He is chief investment officer at Liberty Straight Advisors, partfolio manager of the Private Shares Fund UH and very interesting to hear about UM some of the areas that he's finding that take her by the way, P I I v X aerospace, fascinating aerospace, UM satellites up there. Yeah. Absolutely, and it feels like I'm, you know, talking down miss

Cathy Wood the ideas. 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