Wall Street’s Return-to-Office Continues

Bloomberg Business Weekend iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot Com. 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. There's a fair amount of COVID and vaccine headlines. Once again Novavax's vaccine candidate showing strong efficacy against the virus, including some of those mutated variants. That was a large trial, and we have also those saw the uk UH in terms of their lockdown they

extended or expected to announce. I don't think it's happened yet or did Borce Johnson do it a four week extension into pandemic restrictions beyond June. Because of that surge in that delta variant, we are all focused on that variant yeah, Well, let's get right into it with dr Iman Abuse Aid co founder and CEO of Incredible Health, joins us once again from San Francisco. Dr abbuside, it's great to have you back on the show. Um, how have you been. I'm doing well. Thank you so much

for having me. Well, let's get right into it. And because we are getting some mixed signals from around the world. On the one hand, we're getting more great data about vaccines here in the United States and more and more people getting vaccinated. But you have a unique position as being on the front lines essentially because of of what you do of being a career marketplace for connecting hospitals

to nursing talent. So we always love to get a update from you about how your employees, how the nursing talent is feeling right now, what's the latest that you're seeing. Yeah, So, certainly in many parts of the country there's some relief right particularly where vaccination rates are very high, like at California as one example, Washington State as well. Um, However, the nursing shortage and our our shortage of healthcare workers in this country continues, um as as a demand for

health for you know, for their work continuing to rise. Um, we are seeing an all time high in terms of demand for for nursing and hellm, how bad is it dr abuse in terms of demand. Give us an idea and how it compares with where we were pre pandemic um. It has probably the demand has probably increased by at least thirty or for the pandemic um. What's specifically different, Yeah, ahead in a few metrics. So one is that we're seeing that nurse turnover, So nurses quitting um has gone up.

It used to be seventeen annually. That's an annual turnover that has gone up to more like two percent now. And then the other big change we're seeing is the days to fill, So the number of times that the amount of days it takes to higher a nurse has extended from the eighty two day average to closer than ninety days now on average across the country. You know, it's so it's it's so interesting. I'm just thinking. We're

talking about the Federal Reserve. We talked about the idea of things being transitory chip shortages, shipping container shortages, and demand exceeding supply. Right now we're seeing the same thing when it comes specifically to to nursing talent. And I wonder what this solution is here, Dr Apps. Is it all about it? Is it about raising wages? Is about paying paying these nurses more? Yeah, so certainly that's already

been happening. Wages over the last twelve months have increased over twelve percent UM, which is a big which is a big increase in the twelve month period UM. And then there's two you know, there's two issues to resolve here. One of the improving the efficiency of hiring and the second is increasing the underlying supply. UM. On the efficiency piece, we're like seeing that a lot more hospitals and healthy spines are embracing any kind of technology and marketplace technology

that that can UM that is to their advantage. Right. So, well, what we're seeing if we've just hit an exciting milestone ourselves in our mission where we're partnering with over of the best hospitals on the US News and World Report list UM and that's very rapid growth for a team, that for a company that only just started a couple a few years ago, and that's UM. We've just seen a substantial increase in growth in the last eighteen months.

So you mentioned also increasing supply, and I do wonder who typically becomes nurses, and I do wonder in terms of immigration restraints, is that part of the problem. It is, so you know that the underlying supply shortage is has is a multi fascinate problem. Um. First, first and foremost, we can't act. We're struggling to train more nurses. So nursing schools are completely full. Um. There they have very long waitlists because they simply can't get in more faculty

to train more nurses. Um. And so there's a bottleneck there. There's another bottleneck happening after nursing school where not enough hospitals and healthystons are willing to train nurses new graduate nurses. Um and so there's another bottle neck there. And then yeah, to your point, there is an an integration bottleneck as well. In the past we were able to really welcome nurses from all over the world. That's become much more challenging

as um. You know, the US immigration and rules have changed. And also, to be honest, I mean in the U S we have a nursing shortage, but there's also a global nursing shortage going on as well. That's what I was curious if this is U S specific or if this is very similar what's happening around the globe. It's happening across across the globe. I know you just mentioned the UK and new challenges. They have the exact same, exact same challenges that we have here in the US.

As the CEO of this company, Dr Apps, I'm wondering how you're thinking about when this gets resolved. What's your timeline? Um, there is It's it's perpetual. I mean, there is no timeline for how this gets for for this getting resolved. I mean, it's a multi faceted problem problem. We're gonna need some government intervention. We're ne gonna need hospital and

health system leaders to take the initiative. We're gonna need nursing schools to step up as well, and we're going to really have to make nursing as a profession as well the other healthcare worker professions appear more attractive UM and to attract more and more people into those professions. How do we do that? Is it just money or is it something more than that. It's it's emphasizing, Yeah, this is this is for the amount of education you need to become a nurse, which isn't too many it's

not too many years. UM. The average pay for a nurse in the US right now is eighty thousand dollars. In states like California and New York, it's definitely well over a hundred thousand dollars annually. So this can be a lucrative career for for for you know, maybe only three or four years of education. UM. And so we definitely need to promote the career a little bit more and really um make the appear the career, emphasizing the

mission of the career too. I mean, at the end of the day, that care deeply about patient care and taking care of people, and that is the ultimate driver for why UH individuals enter the nurse and profession and other healthcare worker contessionals. What are the changes that you've had to make an incredible health as a results of this shortage, UM, We've had to really just emphasize operation

efficiency of hiring. We've had to add, you know, first of all, add lots of features that automate the interview scheduling, that provide data analytics that help identify any bottlenecks, and really really have built quite a little lot of software to improve the efficiency of the hiring and then on the talent side, we really have to add a whole range of features and tools for nurses beyond just getting

a job. UM. So we've become the place where they're managing their career, things like free continuing education for the nurses. We've had to add mental health services as well as a community for nurses inside our inside the Incredible Health

apps as well. UM. That's really been paying off. You know, over fifty of hospital beds in both Texas and California or facilities that use Incredible Health to hire permanent nurses, and in some cities like the l A area, in the Dallas area, it's almost seventy percent of hospital beds are using are using our platform. You know you mentioned UM the milestone for you folks about now UM participating in over sixty of the top hospitals in the United States.

And there's a stat you shared with our producer Paul Brennon hospital send an interview request every four minutes UM their platform, flipping this raftin giving healthcare workers and precedent and control over their careers, but an interview request every four minutes on the platform. So talk about that is wild demand, dr Aposide, It really is. I mean there's uh, you know, so every four minutes, another interview request is being sent from from an employer to a two talent

on the platform. UM. And we've really had to, you know, step up our operations and make sure that you know, both the talent and the employers are having a very delightful experience on the platform. And you're right, we are seeing more demand than we would have ever expected. UM. And the other thing is the product works. I mean, we we do very you know, we do an effective job of ensuring that hiring happens rapidly as well. Dr Episade.

One last question here wondering about the patient experience. If we're having so much trouble getting nurses, how does that translate into what patients experience in the hospital. Yeah, it does translate very directly, honestly. When so when a unit is understaffed, we see healthcare outcomes drop. So the quality of Jerry Cross UM, and so that is something that every um, gosh, every every single person on the executive team in a hostel or health system is concerned with.

And so UM, they've there's several different initiatives that base put in place in order to kind of mitigate that, um, they've added more support staff. So so beyond nurses, you know, there's other types of staff that you can add that can do some of the kind of lower skill work, um, in order to enable nurses to operate at the top of their license. UM. But it's definitely, it's definitely a challenge that every executive across across the country is facing

right now. Yeah, this is not a group that's you know, we know they've already been stressed and certainly would like to lighten the load. Uh, certainly in today's environment. Dr Iman abuse Aide, thank you so much. Dr Abuse, great to have you back with us. She's co founder and chief executive officer at Incredible Health. Joining us once again on the phone from San Francisco. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim

Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Among our most stories on the Bloomberg in fact, I think it might be the number one most read story. Who's going back to work exactly? And you know what the return to office among the Wall Street community. You know, everybody's not saying the same tune. Tim, They're certainly not. Some banks are moving faster than others. Fortunately, we have Sally Bakewell, Finance team leader here at Bloomberg News, joining us right here with us in the Bloomberg Interactive

Broker Studio. Sally, it's great to have you on the show. Let's start with Goldman Sachs, because today is a big day for him. Yeah, it is a big day. And we have one of our reporters, Shinali Bassack, down there today as the employees streamed in in the drizzling rain. Um. It's a bit of a tale of two wool streets really, because we have Goldman on the one hand that's been incredibly ambitious. It wanted everyone back by today. Um. And you know there was a bit of fan fast surrounding.

It had food trucks, there was music, There are coffee machines. They're trying to create this very welcoming, exciting atmosphere. They have interns coming into right, so I bet it's trying to welcome them and make them feel good exactly. Um. But then on the other hand you have City Group, which taking a slightly more flexible approach. Employees don't have to be back in their HQ until July, and even when they do return that they're going to be able

to work on under a flexible schedule. I wonder about specifically about what it means for morale and and and having employees back in there in some places after being a part for fourteen sixteen months in some cases, and at the same time Sally where we've heard that so many of them have been uh working a lot. Yeah. Absolutely. I think Goldman is interesting here because, um I heard today that seventy percent of staff are either millennial or

under thirty. So perhaps the family issue isn't such a big issue there, and so it's maybe a bit easier for some people to come back, but of course for a lot of other people. Um as well as the morale issue, and you know this kind of psychological shift from being virtual to being in the office. You also

have the addition childcare element. And perhaps you know City is now under Jane Fraser, and just going to ask you that I do wonder it with Jane Fraser at the top of a City group, whether there's a little bit of a different perspective there. It's very interesting question. I mean, this has got to be one of the biggest decisions for her in her new gig, and so how she handles it and what she's done is a

real differentiator. UM. And you know she she's a brand new CEO on a on a Wall Street that's generally been white dudes UM for so long. So it does,

but you know she's charting slightly different course here. The thing that I wonder, and I think we've done some reporting on this, is all of the all it's going to take is for one Wall Street firm to get the deal because there was a face to face meeting that somebody else didn't do because they were embracing hybrid and then I feel like everybody's going to say we want you back in the office. Is that I don't know, Like what's the conversations around that. I think I recall

Diamond even saying something to that. You know that they have lost out on deals because of the lack of fate, face to face interaction. So it's definitely I think it's definitely going to be a factor that they'll try to mediate and try to avoid. But there is perhaps part of the striking of the deal where that really matters

in and preference will go to those interactions right. Well, Look, one of the reasons we talked about this a lot in what the banks are doing is because the health of the finance industry is inextricably tied to the health of New York City and the economics of New York City and the economy of New York City. And in this story by your own Jenny Serene, she talks about how a significant portion of New York City's economy relies

on the finance industry. There directly or indirectly take us into how important it is for these people to be back in office is when it comes to the city's health, super important. And I think Shinali was telling me earlier that, um, there were local vendors who noted the employees going into the building and we're asking them, how long are you going to stay? You open for good? How long you staying open? Because it's such a huge force, huge commercial

force and business force for them. So each one of these banks that they have this ecosystem around them which is a very um and they're a very powerful force in the economy. Well, and it's interesting too that this comes on a day where JP Morgan, Jamie Diamond came out and talked about wanting of a bigger trading revenue drop after the pandemic boom, and you know, he's he felt like he was touching upon, you know, the competition amongst some of the fintech startups and just whether or

not competing with it. So, you know, I wonder what he's trying to do, whether it's to be like, listen, folks, we are to be back at work figuring out, strategizing, you know, what's next, because there's a lot of stuff coming at us. Absolutely, and actually was quite interesting what he said today about their trading revenue. They're expecting it and Gorman echoed the sentiment they're expecting it to be to be to drop or not to have the gangbusters

feel that they had in the first quarter. Um, but with that was something it was expected, and I think Diamond was perhaps quite clever in that he said that, Um he kind of reset expectations a bit in a way that means they will probably still um not due too badly next to analyst predictions. UM. So it was a kind of you know, reset expectations a bit about their numbers for the second quarter. So how are other banks thinking about the summer right now and potentially getting

people back by Labor Day. Um. So we had Gorman Morgan Stanley CEO today saying that they would be disappointed if people aren't back by Labor Day. This was Goldman, sorry, yeah, And um we have Bank of America said says that it's asking it's UM employees that are vaccinated to start coming back and giving them thirty days notice. So I think there is a kind of expectation that Labor Day perhaps is where everyone's galvanizing around. Well, I think it's

important for a couple of reasons. One is returned to school, and people who work for these companies who have kids and child care has been such I speak as a parent, childcare has been such an issue over the last fourteen fifteen months, I mean as as schools have been closed. And I wonder about flexibility on the other side, and you alluded to Jane Fraser, but I'm wondering if there is going to be some sort of see change in the way that these companies think about work life balance.

And I'm not talking about balance and I'm talking about like you know, being a parent and also being an employee. I think it will be what it will be as a really interesting leverage element. So depending on what you do in the bank, maybe that gives you more leverage to be more flexible. Um. There are certain jobs, we know, the trading floor, where it will be more difficult perhaps to um be a kind of work from home or

hybrid employee, but I think it will. It would be really interesting how that does settles which rank ranks of staff are able to kind of get the flexibility that they one, and which actually find that they don't, they're not afforded it and they want to move elsewhere, And that kind of thing we might see in September when a lot of these policies really hit flost into place. The interesting thing is is just that these banks did really well during the pandemic, right, even with everybody working

at home. They were really productive. But yet we're on the other side and things are changing, right, and so maybe the differences between firms could give someone an advantage of another. Possibly. Yeah, I think that's an excellent point, and we'll we'll definitely see that play out. And I feel like there's a divide between what's going on in Wall Street versus corporate community. Overall, no one knows what answer is no, that is that is so clear exactly, Sally.

Good stuff, great stuff. Thank you so much, Sally Big while she's our Finance team leader of Bloomberg News, joining us in our Interactive Broker studio. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. You are listening to Bloomberg Business Week Carl Master along with Tim Stanovik in our Interactive Broker Studio.

Top of mind for us this Monday, and especially as we wait to hear from President Biden from Brussels this weekend's gathering at the leaders of the world's richest economies. What needs to be top of mind really for them? And here to get into it is Bloomberg New Economy Editorial Director Andy brown Out with his latest column. He joins us in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Andy. They talked about a lot of things, but you really kind of whittle it down to what they really need to

be concerned with. Talk to us about this, So we need to be concerned about vaccines, And it looked like they were concerned about vaccines, and they are concerned about vaccines. But they fallen short. They promised a billion additional vaccines to the developing world, and this it was a big, deliberately big splashy number, and it was meant to signal the superiority over the of the free market democratic system over the autocracies of China and Russia. And the reality

is they came up short. They didn't have a billion new vaccines. They actually had six hundred million. And the US came out of this the best looking, the best it's it's kicked in five million, UK kicks in one million, and the rest was sort of sort of calum it up through creative accounting, accounting all of the existing pledges, both of doses and of money. But a billion is not enough. Yeah, we're a world round eight times that,

so we need more than that. Um. You point out in your peace andy statistic from the Economists to notes that uh, seventy percent, or that I should say that magazine argues that rich nations are passing up the deal of the century. That's that's a quote from the Economist. Um, seventy percent of the world to get vaccinated, only fifty billion dollars. That's not much money, right, It is not

much money. So you know what they should have said at the meeting in Cornwall is we're the world's richest countries. We are just going to underwrite this entire effort, whatever it takes, and we will lobby in however many doses it is required, because it's in everybody's best interests, including us. The I m F says that and the accelerated vaccine UH campaign would add something like seven trillion dollars to

the global economy, four trillion to rich countries. Right, So that's why the economy says this is the deal of the century, and and it looks it looks like they've turned it down. So Andy, it's you know, above and beyond, it's the right thing to do right for the developed world to help out the developing world. We've talked with was it Joseph Steglenn talked specifically about this as well

on our air. But it's just it's also there's an economic cost by this delay, and we continue to talk about this being it's a global health pandemic and it doesn't know borders, and if we don't eradicate it, it doesn't matter. It's going to kind of stay within our world. Look, we don't even know what this cost me. The cost could be astronomical. What would happen if it already costs? But what's going to happen if if if we get a variant that renders the existing vaccines ineffective, and then

we're all back to square one again? Right, Exactly where does China come into this? Because there was a Bloomberg Business Week story a few weeks ago that talked about the way that many of the countries that were not contributing to the vaccine effort around the world are missing out because China is stepping in and saying, here, use our vaccine. It is but you know, their vaccines aren't as effective. They're just quite simply not as good as

Visor and Madonna and Astra Zeneca. And they've got one point for billion people that they need to vaccinate to. So the world can't count on China to rescue them. It's going to be there in the end. It's going to be the rich world that's gonna that that is going to have to come in way, way bigger. We're

talking about billions of vaccines and not one billion. Well, and this what's interesting to you have a quote in your story from the Deputy General Secretary General excuse me, of the United Nations who said this to the Wall Street Journal. This has become the inequality of virus. It's something we have talked about so much over the past year. And if we don't even get this right in terms of getting vaccines out, I mean, those gaps just widen even further and it takes a long time to kind

of regain ground. This is a genuine catastrophe. I mean, it unwinds so many of the gains that the emerging world has made over the last forty fifty years, which has resulted in hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of poverty, and now you're seeing a hundred million or more people being plunged back into poverty. Is it too late? It's not too late, but it needs to

happen now. And this was the other problem that came out of Calm Well, that that these vaccine supplies were promised in the future, sometime into next year, and of course the pandemic is ripping right now through India and could rip through Africa. Do we know why the priority seems to have shifted? Do we know why that the United States, which originally had talked about helping with a goal such as this, Why and why other developed nations

aren't stepping up? Well, of course they prioritize domestic populations, which of course every country, every country can and and and should do. But and and and look, you know, I don't want to I want to hit out at the United States. I mean, it's it's done better than any other country, right, five hundred million. But the fact is that they have been vaccinated. You're now vaccinating younger people in rich in rich countries when the vaccination program

hasn't even begun. I mean, Haiti hasn't had one vaccine, right, So we're talking about emergency work as elderly people in the emerging world that are completely defenseless, while younger people who are less susceptible to the virus are being vaccinated in rich countries. This is the kind of inequality that the United Nations has been talking about. This is what I want to ask you. You know, this is part

of the problem. Going back to almost day one, right, it was like everybody is thinking about their own country and Andy, you know, we talked about that there needed to be a global response to this, and that we could have said, all right, the most vulnerable globally, let's do them first. We didn't do any of that. And again, does it just go back to we weren't together as a as a global community in terms of dealing with this.

I think that's exactly right, and it makes it really worried about you know, if the world can't pull together against this pandemic, what about the even greater threat of climate change in terms of getting that done? So where do we go from here? I mean, is there as you know? Timid asked, is this are we too late? Um? How do we ramp up? What can developed nations do? At this point? The big debate now is around intellectual

property protection. The World Health Organization and others have been calling for rich countries to waive i P protections for vaccines so that you can start getting production ramped up in the developing well. Joe Biden has come out behind this, got a lot of criticism, had got a lot of

got a lot of criticisms to him. It looks like Angelo markel uh in Germany's block this this The G seven statement talked about ramping up manufacturing in poorer countries, but it didn't address this this issue of IP transfer. What's the best economic argument for the world to get together and vaccinate the parts of the world that don't have access. Well, it's it's it's just as as as

Carol says, the pandemic doesn't end until everybody has been vaccinated. Um, and it's in everybody's economic interest and it's a moral imperative of course to get that process started immediately. I do wonder when we get on the other side of this, whenever the heck that will be andy? Do we walk away?

I mean, what you folks do at New Economy, You have these global conversations, right, and often these problems are identified, we know where they are, what needs to be done, and yet here we are, you know, still to some extent, dealing in crisis mode. So how do we fix this? What do the smart voices say? You know it? In the end, I'm afraid what happened at the G seven doesn't give us much much faith that the world is going to fix this. I mean, these are the world's richest,

most powerful countries, you know. And and the interesting thing was that China halved over this whole. Everything they talked about was sort of you know, China was behind it, and here they are coming out to say, you know, we democracies, you know, the free market economies, we've got the answers, and you know what an opportunity right now. They could and should have come out and said, we're

gonna do this. We're gonna get this done. We're going to vaccinate the world, right, that's how we're going to demonstrate this, and it's in their power to do it. Um. You know, they have the technology, they have the vaccines, they certainly have the money, and they kind of felt came up short. So wait just one more time, because I know we're so why aren't they? Like to me, it's a no brainer, right, And it's like I said,

you know, it's morally the right thing to do. Why aren't they Lack of vision, lack of will, lack of political purpose, all of the above. Politics a big thing in terms of domestic politics for each of these folks back at home. That's that's that's certainly part of it. Look off to number one, Andy, Just from a logistical point of view, I'm wondering about the number of vaccines that that companies can actually produce right now without actually

transferring the intellectual property. UM is it something that's feasible within the next you know, X number of months, given the availability of vaccine, given what we know about how quickly companies can manufacture them, and given what we know about distribution, Like, what's a realistic way to think about this? If if the United States and other G seven nations were to go to commit to getting the world vaccinated? Well, there are there, there are, There are dozens of vaccines

in the pipeline. We just heard today about the test results of another incredibly positive I think it was like effect the novovax vaccines. So you know, we we've we've got a lot coming into the pipeline. The question is equitable distribution of what we have right? Well? And I think which kind of shocks me is I feel like all along the past year we kind of knew where this was going, right, We had these conversations last year,

what about the developing world? You know, you have millions billions of people, uh, and you look at Africa, you look at India, you look at emerging Latin America. What were we going to do? We knew that this was going to be a problem. Yeah, Africa, Africa could be the next problem. I mean, they seem to have sort of miraculously escaped. So we don't quite know why, but

right well, I will. The last thing I'll say is it also speaks the importance of having a single dose shot because if you think about the respective of and look again, I only know what what I know and what I experienced here in the US, But I was helping relatives figure out how to use the websites to schedule their vaccines. UM. We were, you know, taking time off of work to go to the second dose UM.

And it speaks to the importance of having a single shot to be able to do this in an effective way if you don't have so much of the world actually having that technology. Right well, it's a very thoughtful column, and you know, here we are. We kind of knew we were going to get there, but it's upsetting to see, especially after the G seven meeting where you thought this was the perfect environment for them to all come together. Andy, thank you as always, Andy Andy Brown. He's our editorial

director of Bloomberg New Economy Inner Interactive Brokers Studio. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Joining us now is Joel Weber, editor a Bloomberg business Week, also Lucas Shaw, entertainment reporter at Bloomberg News. Lucas, you have a fantastic, fantastic feature available in the current issue of Bloomberg Business Week magazine you can get on news stands now in

at Bloomberg dot com slash business Week. It's called The King of Cards. Tell Us Lucas who is Ken Golden Golden. Ken Golden is a lifelong sports collectibles enthusiast hobbyist who started electing cards and other collectibles when he was a twelve year old kid in in South New Jersey. He now runs what is the largest independent auction house for sports collectibles and trading cards. Uh and the house that so far this year has broken a new record for

sales just about every month. He's been doing this for some time, correct. Yeah, he started Golden Auctions in two thousand twelve. He saw, coming out of the global recession in No. Seven or oh eight, that there was an interest in investing in alternative assets and that trading cards would be one of those places that that all these

people with excess cash would put their money. But the business has really taken off over the last twelve eighteen months, so much so that they had a recent auction right and crashed the site. Is that right? Yeah? There has been he works at this coming on simple auctions dot com. And because Golden is such kind of a shameless self promoter and has attracted so much attention, there are hackers

that frequently have attacked the site during his auctions. Let's bring in Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Weber, who joins us now on the access line from Brooklyn. Joel, why do you think that that that this type of asset right now? I mean, look, Lucas said, it's it's been having a moment over the last twelve years, but why over the last year, over the last sixteen months, has

it really been having a moment. I think people are craving um assets that are are slightly alternative, right, and I think like even things like memestock sort of have shown that so as we did in that cover story um just a couple of months ago about sneakers being yet another place if if you can flip something and make a buck, h have fun doing it. H I think all of that stuff suddenly starts to resonate in newfound ways when you know many people have too much

time on their hands. Um. You know the question I have for you, Lucas is, um, how much are all these baseball cards from my childhood worth film? You know? It depends on what kind of condition they're in? Are if are they have you had them graded? Are they essay eight or above? No? I have not emims grated. Um, and I think there's um, it's a lot of like maybe don notdingly seven tops cards. I will say it's

distressed me how much? Now? I think I could probably look at a card and analyze all the tiny little flaws in it. Because I had Ken sit down with me one day to talk me through these, Like we had ten Michael Jordan's rookie cards graded one to ten, and I actually it was very easy to spot the defects at the lower end. Seeing the difference between what the p s A eight and a p S A

ten seems pretty arbitrary to me. Okay, so a grade ten is in the example in your piece from Michael Jordan's Michael to Michael Jordan example, a grade ten is four hundred and eighty thousand dollars versus a Grade eight that would be just eleven thousand, six hundred to twelve thousand dollars. Not to mention if you go all the way down to a Grade one, which is poor condition, U under two three dollars. Lucas. Yeah, there's a huge range in prices, uh, you know, all of which is

determined by these third party grading companies. P s A is the number one, but there's also back at those others. They have been so overwhelmed by demand this year because of people probably like Joel, trying to get their cards graded, that they stopped grading new cards for a period. P s A has sworn to me that they're hoping by July to be back up and running fully. Hey, listen, I want to understand how this story came to be, so Joel, what was the pict or how did it like?

How did it come especially start like this with a character like this, As with so many things, it starts with Lucas and I talking about something else, and then he and then he would he emailed me a little bit later and he goes, by the way, what are you doing about trading cards? And I was like, nothing, tell me more, tell me everything, And he was like, well, there's this character that that we should profile and and

and thus began his reporting. Um uh so, So Lucas, I'm curious, like, you know, the there's the cards that I grew up with, and then which are, let's just be honest, worth nothing, and then there are the cards that, um are are truly collectibles, and they I think they might even they might even push the envelope of like what a card means, right, So talk to us about where the market is has gone on that front. Yeah, one of the things that happened a long time ago.

There used to be people would manufacture tons of different cards, and now all the card manufacturers have gotten a lot smarter about it, and so there are going to be just kind of generic rookie cards which can be really valuable, but they also make kind of one off cards or limited sets of ten. Like there's this Luca don Chech card that that sold early this year for more than four million dollars, and it's because it's one of one, and he's this guy who everybody thinks is going to be,

you know, the next Lebron the next Michael Jordan's. So there's been a lot of a lot of efforts to restrict supply and create special editions to kind of create scarcity, because that's like any market, it booms based on scarcity. There's also the added wrinkle sort of where do n f T s fit into this, because they're kind of

like trading cards, but they're not like trading cards. And even Ken Golden has started to sell them in his auctions, none of them have generated as much money as the top of the top of the line trading cards, but they still go for tens of thousands of dollars. So that's what I was just going to ask you about Lucas or n f T s and if that's sort of the way in for the next generation, or if the next generation is going to continue with the classics. I think that a lot of the people buying these

cards now are the next generation. They're younger people buying Pokemon cards. They're also buying basketball cards. The real shift in the collectibles market here has been from people who want to buy the Don Mattingly cards, the old baseball, old school baseball cards, the people who want the the

contemporary athlete, especially in like basketball, football, soccer. They a lot of people have compared it to a form of gambling or form of fantasy sports where you are, you know, you see somebody play well and their value will jump in the market, or you see somebody have an off game and maybe you go in to buy it because you think that their prime to actually play really well for the rest of the season. What about my POGs, I think you're you're, you're, you're your out of luckments.

I don't know if much about right now, Lucas. You had a number of really good voices in the story. I'm curious what was your what was your favorite interview that you got to do and what and what was the insight that you got from it. Um, It's a good question. Uh, there were a lot of good ones. I mean, I love talking to Bill Simmons, who's a lifelong collector and who has who has looked at space

for a long time. I like talking to Kevin Durant's business partner, Um, because Kevin Durant has gotten really into collecting. We didn't even end up getting to quote him in the story, but Kevin Durant has gotten really into collecting

his own cards. And there was an auction that I was monitoring, uh in in in March that Ken did, and he had been on the phone with Kevin Durant's business partner earlier in the day strategizing to get this one rookie card, and then over the course of the night, Kevin Durant his partners based in New York, fell asleep and the Ken didn't have the clearance to go above a certain price threshold to bid on it. So Kevin Durant ended up getting out bid for his own rookie card. Um,

which was just funny to hear. Uh, Steve Cohen, there's an aspect of this story, right. Steve Cohen, along with this collector, Nat Turner, who was probably the most helpful collector that I spoke with, bought this bought Collectors Universe, which is the parent company of that grating firm p s A. Nat Turner. By the way, this guy who you know, he sold his healthcare company along with his co founder for like one point nine billion dollars to

Rosch a few years ago and has since. He is he is sitting on so many different cards, is so much value that he doesn't know how many cards he has or what they're worth. He just knows that all told, he's probably got like cards that are worth at least a few hundred dollars apiece. So how much is Golden

really making off all of this? His firm takes a cut from every sale so so far this year, I think they're at like a hundred fifty or two hundred million dollars in sales, which means that his company is taking thirty to forty million, which by the way, is more than they made in total sales, like the net sales from just a couple of years ago. You know, he he sold his majority stake in his company earlier this year for about forty million dollars, mostly to a

company called the Churning Group. But there were a ton of celebrity investors, and I spoke with Ken not long after that deal closed, which at the time it seems like a lot of money because he'd never made anything close to it, and he already felt like he probably sold too soon and didn't get enough given given the

amount of money that's not coming in for him. Hey, lucas Um, when I when I think about the work that you've you've done over the last year, I think a lot about well a lot of course media reporting, but a lot about the way that you've written about the way that musicians have sold their catalogs to private equity investors and how some investors are treating those as an asset class. Is there any connection here to what

we're seeing with with trading cards? And I know you do mention this in the piece, but what is the connection between the way that that investors are thinking about this type of asset um It's a little I do. I think it's related in that there is just too much money out there among people to deploy the differences. Is music makes a lot of sense to an average

investor because it performs kind of like a bond. It's just an annuity, right, You're like buying an asset that's gonna you generate a very reliable amount of money every year, and you're betting that that's going to keep going up because of streaming. Trading cards does feel a little bit more like art, where it's kind of arbitrary people choose to just set the market um. But you know, you could also, like I said earlier with the gambling, you could argue that this is sort of like playing the

stock market, where you're betting different players. As an individual stock you're basically by buying a card of John and you're basically buying a stock a piece of a piece of stock in his long term value. Alright, we're gonna leave it on that note. It's a great I'm sorry, Joel,

did you have a last one? Oh? I just was gonna the One of the other things that this UM story and in the accompanying video that was also an incredible UM revealed to me is that there's thing I think called a break, which is like truly like kind of a public service announcement, I guess so, So, Lucas, can you quickly describe what a break is and how I can get in on it? So when you you can buy a box of cards, right, and each one

of these boxes has several packs within it. And one thing that has become very popular on YouTube and Instagram, which is how a lot of young people have gotten into it, is they make a display of opening these boxes and going through it because there's a there's an element of surprise right where you open that pack and you're going through, it's like want oh, and then on the seventh hard happens to be the thing that's gonna be really valuable. So Ken breaks every week on Instagram

with his son. Bill Simmons, the sports writer breaks often with his son on Instagram and Ken Golden Flute to l A and part earlier this year because he did a like a Pokemon break with Logan Paul, the YouTube celebrity. So this is a huge thing in youth culture right now. I've seen that online. Um, great stuff and a great read, Lucas,

Thank you so much. Entertainment report at Bloomberg News on the phone in Los Angeles, Joe Weber, Editor Bloomberg Business Week on the remote access from Brooklyn, and they're actually, I guess tried and entertainment pitching an unscripted TV show set in the world of trading cards, and we produced by a former ESPN executive and a Pond Stars producer, which was I was thinking, this has a Pond Stars

element to it right big time. Yeah. Look, after reading this piece by Lucas in Bloomberg Business Week, I'm thinking, Okay, this is something I want to know more about. And also my pods. 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 Bloomberg Global News