Happy Thanksgiving everybody, and thank you for joining us on this special edition of Bloomberg Daybreak. US markets are closed for the holiday. I'm Nathan Hager coming up this hour. It's been a voladile November for both the stock and cryptocurrency markets. We'll look at what's in store for the rest of this year and into twenty twenty six with Scott Martin, chief investment officer of Kingsview Wealth Management, and
Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike mcgloone. Plus, we'll update you on the latest anti trust battles facing high tech with Bloomberg Intelligence senior litigation analyst Jennifer Ree. But first, we are entering one of the busiest and most important times of year for retail. How are things shaping up as we get said for Black Friday and the countdown to the holidays. Let's ask a couple of our senior analysts in the retail space, Punam Goyle and Lindsay Dutch
of Bloomberg Intelligence. Happy holidays to both of you. And I think I saw a report going into this conversation from the National Retail Federation. They're predicting that holiday spending I think could pass a trillion dollars this year. Punum, I'll start with you. Do you see those kind of levels from consumers?
Yes? Absolutely. The consumer has been quite resilient all year, to our surprise, despite the tariff dwins, and we do think that spending will continue into Thanksgiving weekend especially and then into December. But that said, spending will be selective. Shoppers are conscious price conscious more notably, and they are spending where they find the product that they're looking for.
Lizzie, let's bring you in. What are you seeing in terms of consumer behavior and where they could be spending as we head into the holidays.
Yes, I would agree. I think we're seeing resilience, especially coming from that higher income consumer, while the lower income consumer might be pulling back just a drop when we compare that year over year. But as Puna mentioned, you know, we do see growth coming into the season, and although there is a focus on value and price, consumers are splurging on things that they really want or that they
need so for a best buy. For example, we see strength in gaming, computing, phones and the Dick's sporting goods. We see strengths continuing on both footwear and apparel for sort of those new trendy sports.
Items now I'll put them. I knowe you cover a lot of apparel retailers as well in your focus at Bloomberg Intelligence. How are some of those companies set up for the holidays.
I think they're set up quite nicely. I think the product there's a lot of fashion, there's a lot of newness. In fact, we ran a sneaker survey just earlier this month and what we found is that people want to buy sneakers for the holidays, So sneakers are a top category. Other top categories based on surveys we've seen are apparel, home, and, as a Lindsay said, electronics. So these are still the top categories in addition to of course toys where people will be spending their dollars this holiday.
Interesting to bring toys in as well, given some of the tariff headwinds those types of products could be facing not just in the holidays, but into next year as well. Could we be seeing tariff headwinds for retail going into next year?
Lindsay Yeah, So the toy backdrop this year is very different than most years prior. You know, typically we see big retailers like a Walmart or a target. They're taking their holiday toy inventory in July, sort of the mid mid middle of the year. This year, we saw a
significant delay in those orders. They kind of fell into the fourth quarter, so there was a delay, and they also were taking on smaller shipments than historically they've done, thinking that they might replenish some product with you know, domestic shipments, you know, in that holiday season. So there's a lot of uncertainty heading into twenty twenty six for the toy makers and that sort of category as a whole. Just because we saw us such a significant delay, you know,
we don't really know where demand is. And if we look at twenty twenty five as the whole, really most of the demand has not been driven by kids toys. It's really been driven by adults their interest in trading cards, collectibles and building sets, and the holiday is quite different with a focus on kids.
We're speaking with Lindsey Dutch, a senior retail analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, along with Punham Goyle, also a senior retail analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. Going into the holidays, of course, a lot of customers are thinking about deals going into Black Friday and beyond how important PUNAM is this weekend in particular for the retailers and what kind of deals are we seeing.
This weekend is very important. It actually kicks off holiday despite all the deals we've been seeing prior to today, so I think deals will be prevalent. We don't expect steep, steep discounts. You know, in the past, it's eight years ago when there were inventory issues, we saw fifty six seventy person off at sometimes. I think we'll probably stay in the range of between thirty and forty person off on average. That's what we saw last year. So I
do expect discounts to be similar at most places. But you will have those doorbuster deals to get the shopper into the store, and we expect those to be there at Walmart and Target and some of these department stores where that is how they draw in customers. That said, today's Thanksgiving Day and stores are closed, so everyone is shopping, likely online and spending time with family, and online sales we expect to still outpay store sales.
That's an interesting return to trend to keep the stores closed on Thanksgiving. In past years, we've seen some of those doorbusters come Thanksgiving night, but Lindsey, if we don't see the kinds of deep discounts that there have been in the past for the kickoff of holiday shopping season, what could that mean for foot traffic?
So we do still expect, you know, people to come out and shop. I agree with Puna Myke the level of discounting might be similar to last year, but rolling out those discounts and having those special promotions is really the key to driving you know, consumers to your store or to your website. And in thinking about foot traffic to stores, you know, Best Buy sort of discussed that they are seeing a strong interest in in store shopping coming from gen Z and we see that also in
our coverage of All to Beauty. So that younger consumer, they like to go to the store, they like in person shopping, and I think they'll be out for the weekend.
That's an interesting point as well, is that kind of a shift in trend in terms of shopper behavior overall, poonam.
The mall has become the new hangout spot, and especially the malls that are doing really well and have become entertainment hubs. So whether it's coming out you know, last weekend aired wicket, So there were a lot of teenagers in the mall, or if it's just going to a restaurant or with the new Dick sporting goods at the mall that I went to was the House of Sports, a concept where there's entertainment to build into it. That's what's attracting these younger people.
In terms of the overall outlook for retail, we've gotten a lot of reports from the companies themselves from their earnings just heading into this weekend, Lindsey. Based on what we've seen from the earnings reports so far, what does that tell us about what we could get into the holidays.
I think the companies remain pretty conservative in how they're thinking about the fourth quarter. They don't want to get over their skis when when they're thinking about, you know, what the sales might be. You know, we saw pretty you know, low outlooks coming out of Best Buy dis meaning a deceleration in same source sales growth from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. I think that outlook, you know, is conservative. They're not really sure on the consumer.
There is a lot of uncertainty still out there, but I think it does leave room for some surprises. You know, we have been seen better than expected sales in the third quarter, a lot of that being driven by back to school, you know, from many retailers across the board, and I think there's definitely reason to be optimistic for a strong holiday season.
If we're seeing those kind of conservative outlooks of from the businesses punam, does that point to a sort of more of a difficulty for these companies to provide the kind of, you know, deep holiday discounts that they'd been able to do in the past.
Yeah, I think the conservative outlook stems from the uncertainty of just knowing where consumer behavior will be. But in terms of the deep discounts, don't get me wrong, there will be discounts. It's just you're not going to see the store you know, at these deep discounts that we were used to seeing, maybe even prior to the pandemic.
And the reason why you won't see them is because inventory is you could imagine this year being a year with tariffs and levies added on to retailers, they didn't overbuy right so they've been very cautious on how they're buying inventory. And for a lot of them, inventory has been right sized, which is what's been driving the healthier margin and the healthier sales and also healthier full price selling.
You will find disconsoled. Nike, for example, is still clearing out aged inventory and a lot of the at leisure brands that are amiss to turn around. That's where you find inventory pals, but on old stuff. The new stuff I think will be fairly moderate levels.
Linzie, how do you see retailers weathering tariff impacts into next year? We've seen these companies kind of absorb the higher costs at least in the in the short term some front loading as well as Puna mentioned, But into twenty twenty six. What's your expectation there?
So, I do expect costs generally to continue rising, you know, into the next year, at least through the first half. So companies will be continuing with their mitigation strategies, whether that's you know, continue movement and how they're sourcing, where they're selling, the price points, all of those levers that
they've been pulling sort of this year. I think that cost pressure could continue, but we do we have seen, as you've mentioned, you know, some resilience on the profit line across many retailers, and that is you know, them passing some of those costs on or you know, the costs haven't come quite to fruition to the levels that
they were initially expecting. Also, you know, in some of the premium brands, like if you think about a Williams Soonoma, for example, they are keeping discounts and promotions even for the holiday season, very limited and that does allow them to maintain such a strong margin even when they're seeing some cost.
Pick up and put them. How do you see some of the companies that you cover mitigating tariffs into twenty six.
Yeah, I think so there's two things that we have to think about when we think of twenty twenty six. First and the first half of the year, and last year didn't have really tariff pressure. We were just speculating is what the tariffs could be. So there is more pressure. But that said, the reason we've seen so much resilience, in my view, is because they're finding opportunities elsewhere. You know, when you think about artificial intelligence generative AI and how
that's really helped streamline operations create efficiencies. I think part of the reason they've been able to offset some of this pain, in addition to supplier negotiations, is because of the benefit that they're getting from.
AI in our last minute, Lindsey, are there certain items that you think are going to find a big competition from consumers sort of fighting each other to get into the stores to get under the tree this holiday season?
You know, I think toys is typically a category where you might see something like that. When we looked at the toy lists, you know, coming out of Walmart, Target and Amazon, you know those top toy lists, you know, they look very similar to last year. So I don't know that there's a real hot item that you have to be at the door when they open to get
or wait in line. Even Nintendo Switch, the inventory on that console is much greater than the original Nintendo Switch that was rolled out a couple of years ago, So the inventory looks appropriate in that. I don't think retailers are over inventory this season, but they have enough for the expected demand trends.
All right, Well, happy holidays to both of you. Really appreciate you coming on with us. That's put them Goyle and Lindsay Dutch, senior retail analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence and up next on the special Thanksgiving edition of Bloomberg Daybreak. Is December going to bring any relief to stocks and crypto Alaska couple experts in both those spaces. As this holiday edition of Bloomberg Daybreak continues, I'm Nathan Hager, and this is Bloomberg. Thanks for joining us on this special
edition of Bloomberg day Break. US markets are closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm Nathan Hager. Well, after soaring from the spring into the fall, the stock market kind of took a breather this month. The S and P five hundreds on track for its first monthly decline in seven So is there more pain ahead or could this be a buying opportunity. Let's ask Scott Martin. He's the chief investment officer at Kingsview Wealth Management. Happy holiday to you, Scott.
I think we all remember what happened seven months ago, the April tariff announcement. We did get the bounce back since then. Can we be set up for a repeat of that this time around?
Yes, it seems you're less similar, actually, Nathan. And as we approach the holidays, I'm certainly in a little bit more of a market's been a little bit more of a giving mood, let's say, with regards to a give back in prices and so I believe that this is gonna be one of those stress points again that we did experience earlier this year where markets feel broken, they feel like they're focusing on the bad versus the good, and we're seeing that in price action, mostly across tech
and but also across some other areas of the market that have been bled into by the liquidations that happen. So I think, similar to what's gone on in April and into even many this year, we're starting to have
some of those weekends get out of the market. Those weekends get out of those areas where there has been a little bit of froth, and so I think those weekends are going to get out and allow these stronger hands to come in where you, the investor, could come in and find price levels that are built a little bit the same, more attractive than they were just a couple of months ago. And that's an opportunity for us to reallocate, rebalance, and get ready for next year as things go up again.
In our opinion, Okay, well, I'm going to go ahead and play a devil's advocate here just a little bit, because there is this debate in the market about whether you know the artificial intelligence names. The megacaps have gotten too stretched in terms of their valuations. Is it just froth or could there be more to give back here?
I think there's probably some more to give back, certainly because the markets have shown they need as they get extended to the upside. As we get frothy, the markets also get too scared, they get too too fighting, let's say. And so I think that's going to be the essence of what the market is. As investors ourselves, we have to remember that not only are markets nonlinear, they're also very emotionally driven. And so when fundamentals kind of get thrown out the window here with regards to both on
the upside and downside, that creates opportunity for us. And so what we look longer term here, and that's beyond
obviously five days, ten days, or thirty days. We tend to look at these price levels at a price action as opportunities, as points where investors who really like the space, who really like the tech space, who really like the AI space, if it's servers, if it's servers, if it's AI, if it's areas in the market that have really been strong and really shown, as we saw with Nvidia earlier in November that really have the earnings, and they really
have the potential to deliver what I believe the market expects when it comes to profits. For example, I think there's a long term story here in that space, or in the tech space, especially which has been hit reasonably
hard in the last day several weeks. There's opportunities there for investors to take a steak here and say that yes, things could be a little bit more volatile in the next month or two, but overall, in the next day six to twelve months, it's our opinion that the prices will again rebound and they will go higher.
Is it going to be an opportunity across the tech space or do you think it's going to be like a stock pickers market in terms of what we see in tech.
That's a great question. I think we've seen from the price action so far in Nathan, it's going to probably be more of a stock pickers market in the sense of some of the tech has been doing okay. If you look at some of the Googles of the world, and even in Vidia until most recently, and even Oracle
until most recently, there has been strength. And so if you look at some of the names that maybe have relatively stayed stable or relatively been maybe against some of the big moves in tech in general, those would be areas that I think you can find some strengths. But then again, if you look at the corwe's for example, if you look at say A M D, those are areas that have come on with an additional punishment that
in our opinion looks a little bit overdone. So when you pick the stocks here and you look at some of the names that have been say irrepidbly punished, I think those are areas where investors can find some of the most upside going forward, because those are companies too that are getting stay unduly punished because of this liquidation, and therefore that's probably where most of the upside exists.
Is there too much focus on the tech sector right now? Do you see any opportunities for either broadening in the in the a rotation out of tack?
We do. I think the rotation of the tech, depending on how long it lasts, will obviously spread itself into different areas where I've seeing that, and say financials, we're seeing that in pharmaceuticals. My goodness, healthcare, which was a dead space for the last couple of years has come on very strong. Utilities, what i'd like to call a very boring sector, have stepped up very well. So yes, as the tech let's say tech malay spreads through the rest of the year here, I think you're going to
see those areas step up and take leadership. But as we've seen in the past days and the real story here though, and the real story for growth and the real story for investors that want that long term appreciation
that still remains in tech. If you just look over history, if you look at the healthcare space, if you look at pharmaceuticals, if you look at utilities, telecom in fact too, those areas have stepped up in times when there has been this general fullback area, the general pullback sty attitude in the marketplace. But the reality is that over the long term, it's tech that's going to provide that long
term growth potential. And so while tech does stay weak here, say in the next short term period, there's going to be that long term appreciation in tech that we'll rebound and we'll reward investors that take a stake in some of these names.
So is it going to be about a return to a fundamental thesis here, the idea of fundamentals coming back into play, or is there going to be the need for the FED to support this market.
That's the greatest question that we all are waiting for, is that we have a FED meeting coming up in December. And in my opinion, I've been one of those that's been out there saying the FED shoon out of cut rates the last two times in fact, and so I believe the FED is definitely being relied upon by the markets by certainly the administration to come in and see quote
unquote as you use the words save this market. And it's laty to think about that because if you line that up with a fundamental story that you initiated there, what really is the FED doing here? Because yes, there's been some forced liquidation here. There's been some concerns of late about bank credits, about private credit and things like that being way too extended. It certainly interest rates being too high, I guess, But then again, we still have
inflation that is not teamed considerably. Inflation that's around her about three percent floss. We're supposed to get to two percent, never got there. That was the target of the three Reserve and Jerome Pal's commentary. We also have GDP growth now, Nathan. That's certainly above where it was some months ago when the FED was concerned about cutting rates to help support
the economy. GDP growth for our projections for both Q four and some of the first parts of Q one and two for twenty twenty six looks like it's going to be in the range of three and a half to four percent. And so with job growth obviously being recently strong as we put too a little pause in the job on the job numbers are the last couple
of months we started to see those come in. It's our opinion that the economy is strong enough for the FED not to cut rates actually, and so the FED is going to probably have to be this red herring, if you will, or this savior in the face of this emotional investment period where I don't think that's necessary really for the FED to do that, and so I think actually what's going to end up happening is whether
the FED cuts or not in December. That's not going to be a big I guess, patternshift or if you will, for our sake of things as investors ourselves, but it is something that if the FED does not cut, that
that could be taken poorly by the market. But I believe over and longer term that's the right move for the FED is to step back, let the economy breathe a little bit, let everybody kind of calm down, and then therefore we can be in a period where going forward, I think there's going to be a reason for the FED possibly to cut some other time, but certainly not now.
Interesting view on where things could go in terms of policy. Thank you for this, Scott, great you having me on with us.
Thank you very much.
That's Scott Martin, chief investment officer at Kingsview Wealth Management. Even harder hit than stocks this month have been crypto currencies. Bitcoin is plummeted from its high of one hundred and twenty five thousand back just a little more than a month ago in early October. So let's look at what might be ahead. We're pleased to welcome Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike mcgloan, and I say might be ahead, Mike, because it really is hard to predict what's going to
happen with bitcoin. I got to think it's tough for you as well.
Is it. It certainly is, But sometimes it's best to be a contrarian, and sometimes it's good to go with a flow. One mistake I did last year as I jumped on the contrarian battle and pass at least think a little bit too early. But now I think that's working in the right way. Bitcoin just got way too expensive wit and all the signs of a classic bull market peak with the President's flip and then all the ETF inflows and everything, and now look, I think we've
put in a pretty enduring peak. A key thing was breaking back down below one hundred thousand and then back down in the year, which is around ninety four thousand, and now it's hovering below that level, and I think bitcoin's just a good indication of a way overdo a bull market that's correcting, and it could easily go back to fifty thousand, which is still my base case.
Wow, what makes you think it could get down that low from the current levels that we're seeing right.
Now on the annual chart. Certainly going back to twenty twenty one to fifty thousand has been a key pivot. It looks like it can easily go back there. And the key thing is What has been happening is Bitcoin usually doesn't bottom until stock market bolatile also peaks, and stock market ballatley is just buried. It's running very low. If it ends the year at a current level around eleven percent, it'll be the lowest year and since twenty seventeen.
And bitcoin it's basically the opposite of vis in stock market volatile. So to me, that's the key risk that goes back there. What can get it to sustain back above one hundred thousand, I don't know, but I have to stock start with a higher stock market. I think the key risk is Bitcoin's warning on this ahead of time that we are way overdue for the third down
year for the stock market. Since two thousand and eight, we haven't had that, but every time we've had down years, there's only been two twenty and eighteen twenty twenty two that's coincided with the bitcoin to gold racial breaking down like it has.
So far this year, we've seen the correlation sort of breakdown as well between bitcoin and what the stock market's been doing. We've seen this pretty steady decline in bitcoin despite some of the fluctuations that we've seen in the equity space. What do you think is behind that breakdown.
The key thing I think is we just rate a pretty significant peak in cryptos. The key the bottom line is a lot of crypto people will tell you that bitcoin is different from the other ones, But I like to point out in two thousand and nine there was one cryptocurrency, and now on coin market camp there's listed twenty seven million. Almost those don't matter, But the bottom line is most of those have billions of dollars tracking them,
and they basically really track nothing. They're you know, So I think what we're doing is finally seeing the purge of excesses of a bull market.
So are you thinking that we might not see the peak that we saw just a little over a month ago. I mean, we've had some analysts that we've heard from saying that they see bitcoin getting as high as two hundred thousand. Are are you just out of that camp?
Definitely? Well, those are kind of things you see near peaks. And what I'm looking for is every single time we reached loaves, I have people calling for zero. No, I haven't seen those yet. But when we initially dropped to roun one hundred thousand. My first take for twenty twenty six was fifty or one fifty, and I stick with one to fifty. Now could happen this year, it's just normally how it does. Remember, there's a high spectrum of
digital ASCID with unlimited competition. Now Bitcoin is supposed to have a definable diminishing supply, but there's unlimited competition of other cryptocurrencies out there, and that's what we're finding out. So one good example is also look at ethereum. Ethereum is running has been betrayed between two thousand and four thousand for almost five years, and it's probably heading towards the other end of the lower end the range. So I think that's the key thing to remember. These are
not even commodities. They're just trading the vehicles, and they're trading in ranges, and I think the range is heading lower now. Particularly Also, let's look at it this way. Since the stock market's been resilient, if the stock market starts giving back some of it games, well know this
is a good leading indicator. And also we do have to point out it was the day that bitcoin dropped to eighty right before Thanksgiving that we started seeing FED rate cut expectations tilting towards a cut in the December meeting, so it's potentially a good leading indicator.
So how does activity in spot crypto ETF's play into your thesis about where cryptocurrency could be going from here.
In the run up to the launch of ETFs, my primary focus was we will see a peak in cryptos when we have widely disseminated ETFs, and we certainly have that. It's not just Bitcoin, it's all the ones now. So the average price we've heard from since ETFs were launched from bitcoin is around eighty nine thousand, and the markets drop below that level. So we're seeing those stops, people getting stopped down below that average price, and so now
we're seeing outflows. But to me, the whole crypto, the whole ETF space, that was the indication of the peak, you know, going from the ogs to the kind of more the tech geeks who got it and passing it on to the main people who are basically lambs. Look at me, I want to do the same thing, make a lot of money, And to me, that's part of the peak now, and the question is what shifts that.
That's my outlook, and my outlook now is I think we're going to see a bottom in the space, and we see a lot of the millions of cryptos that basically track nothing. I just pine the sky spec the digital assets go to zero and then eleven bottom Bitcoin. I'll mention one number nine on the Bloomberg Cryp page is Dogecoin. It's still worth, you know, between twenty and thirty billion dollars and it's a joke. It was launched as a joke and that tracks nothing.
Wow. All right, well, really appreciate this. Mike again, thanks for being with us, Thanks for having me. That's our Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist, Mike McGlone. And coming up next on the special holiday edition Bloomberg Daybreak will update you on the latest anti trust cases facing big tech. I'm Nathan Hager, and this is Bloomberg. Thanks for being with us on this special edition of Bloomberg Daybreak. US
markets are closed for Thanksgiving Day. I'm Nathan Hager, and as we head near the close of President Donald Trump's first full year of his second term, we thought this would be a pretty good time to get an update on the administration's anti trust cases against big tech, and for that we're pleased to be joined by Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Anti trust litigation analyst, Jennifer Ree, Thanks for taking some time out of your holiday to be with us, Jen And I know we've had a couple of judgments
already against Google when it comes to search and ad tech. Where do those cases stand?
Right?
And finally, because if you think about it, these cases, well, at least one of them, the Google search case was brought during the first Strump administration, so it just shows how long it takes to get to an initial decision. So on the search case, you know, we're really at the tail end. Google lost on my ability. It was found to have a monopoly in search and to have abused that monopoly position. But the remedy decision was kind of I think largely viewed as a win for Google.
It was pretty mild, you know, with the Department of Justice seeking to have Google force to divest Chrome. They did not win that. They won some what we call behavioral commitments from Google where it has to just change some of its conduct. But what the judge ordered was really much closer to what Google had offered up, you know, as an appropriate remedy than what the Department of Justice was seeking. The final touches are being put on that
remedy right now as we speak. The framework is out, but you know, the actual sort of nitty gritty language the judge is working on, and I suspect that'll be out fairly soon in the next couple months, and once is, Google will probably appeal that case, even though as I said, it kind of came out pretty well for Google. I think they will appeal on the ad Tech case you
mentioned now. There were just closing arguments on November seventeenth for an appropriate remedy in that case, because yes, liability was also found and that was about monopolizing these products that most of us as consumers don't really know about. But it's these digital products that Google owns that put advertisers and publishers together. So when you do a searcher, you go onto a website and these ads pop up.
It's the products the software that put those ads in front of you when you were looking at that specific website. And here again the Department of Justice is seeking a structural remedy that is for Google to sell what's called its ad exchange. This is kind of the auction area where the publishers and advertisers come together and bid for
space on a website and advertisers by that space. We also don't think it's our opinion after listening to the remedy hearings, that that's probably not going to happen either, that the remedy is more likely to be behavioral and about kind of Google unbundling its products right now. It sort of bundles everything it has together and forces publishers to use its products rather than rival products, and it'll this is unreally simplifying, so I'm really your technical market.
But we think this will be behavioral too, and probably get a decision sometime in the first quarter.
But it's interesting if it's seen that Google was kind of given a bit of a slap on the wrist when it comes to the search remedy, why would it go ahead and appeal that And is there a possibility that we could see, you know, something of a stronger remedy when it comes to ad tech.
Well, I think the appeal is because you have a liability decision calling your company a monopolist, and it may be that the company would want to appeal that piece of it. You know, they don't want that opinion now out there, especially as we move into the world of AI, you know, which many think is going to kind of take over for search and general search engines. And Google wants the freedom to operate within that AI marketplace and may not want this decision out there, but you know,
they did. It was really pretty good decision for them, and maybe they won't, but they have said that they are likely to on the ad Tech decision. You know, the thing is a harsher remedy than a behavioral remedy would be structural, and it's a real tall order to ask a judge to do something like that because it is complex. It's not a cautious decision. It's a decision that could easily get overturned on appeal, and that's not
really what most federal judges want to do. They're more likely to go for something that they view as a safer route for a remedy that could withstand an appeal.
Well, it's going to be interesting to see how these final remedies play out on the Google case is given what we saw, you know, just recently from the FTC's antitrust case against meta platforms. How big a loss was it for the FTC to have meta platforms declared not a monopoly.
You know, I think it was a pretty big loss. Now. I'll say this case has been controversial since the beginning, and the judge has expressed skepticism of the FTC from the very beginning in this case. So it wasn't a surprise, but it is a loss because, you know, the FTC had some very strong evidence in this case. They had documents that were Mark Zuckerberg's words himself saying, hey, we'd rather buy our competitors than try to compete with them,
and that is illegal under the antitrust laws. And this judge kind of skirted the need to explain away those bad documents by just saying, well, the Federal Trade Commission did not define a market in which competition takes place properly. The FTC said face Book competes with Instagram and Snapchat and that's it, and not TikTok or YouTube, and the judge just didn't buy it. And once you put TikTok and YouTube into that market, Facebook doesn't have in terms
of market share, doesn't have a monopoly position. And it's the first thing you have to prove in monopolization case is that a defendant has a monopoly position in a properly defined market, and that's where the failure was. So the judge didn't get to that next step. Well what about all these bad documents? He just didn't go there.
So do you see the Federal Trade Commission trying to appeal this case? Is it going to be more difficult given the parameters that the judge put on how he used meta market dominance.
I think it would be a difficult appeal because the judge's decision was based on evidence and testimony and how he weighed the documents and how he weighed the testimony, and an appellate court gives deference to that kind of a decision. They didn't hear the testimony, so they give
deference to the trial court judge. And I also tend to think the FTC may not appeal because when this case was brought, it was the tail end of Trump's first administration, when there were three Republicans and two Democrats on the FTC, and two of those Republicans sort of vehemently voted no in terms of bringing this case to begin with, So it was controversial. Only one Republican voted yes and two Democrats, and so three to two the
case was brought. Now, we have only two Republicans on the Federal Trade Commission, and I think they're more likely to say, let's just chalk this up as a loss and move to our next case, which is ftcv. Amazon.
Let's get to it ftcv Amazon and give what we've seen so far from the Google and Meta decisions, how could this one play out?
Yeah, I don't think this is a very strong case for the Federal Trade Commission and therefore possibly possibly could settle. There's a lot of time. Trial is not set until twenty twenty seven in this case.
Well, what's an issue here for Amazon?
Well, this is about Amazon forcing third party sellers in the marketplace to use Amazon's fulfillment services if they want the good locations to be in the buybox, to be right there, front and center for buyers to buy, which is something that the sellers want. They get the users
a lot more when they're in that position. And also Amazon forcing sellers to provide the lowest price on Amazon, so they can't offer a cheaper and less expensive price on some other website outside of Amazon, even if their costs are lower to offer on that other website, such as their own Dot Com and that causes a price raising effect across the entire market, not just on Amazon
dot Com. These are the allegations, and the reason I think it could settle is because there were very similar claims made against Amazon in the UK and in the EU, and Amazon made concessions. It basically said that we're not going to force sellers to use our fulfillment services. They can use anyone they want to, and we won't co work.
We won't force them to offer lower, lowest prices on Amazon, and we'll have to see how those play out in the marketplace, because if it looks like they've worked, I'm not sure why something like that wouldn't be acceptable in the US as well.
Well.
We have seen some pushback from the Trump administration on the European Union's tech regulations. How does that play into whether we could see a settlement, particularly for Amazon.
You know, I don't know that the pushback on the EU with respect to its new laws, its Digital Markets Act, and how it's sort of targeting a lot of big US companies, I don't know that they really operate fairly separately. Our laws are different. Our monopolization laws are quite different from the abuse of a dominant position rules in Europe.
And I think that the reason I think that the FTC could look to Europe is just to say, hey, they've had this settlement in place now for over a year, and if it isn't working in the marketplace, well then we shouldn't consider it an acceptable settlement. But if it is working, maybe that's something that we could accept here. But I think also the FTC is going to have
to weigh out weigh its case. If it keeps taking losses, it's not going to look good because because they have also recently lost on a challenge to a merger as well.
And even longer term, it's not just the Federal Trade Commission with antitrust cases against big tech. The Justice Department is considering action against Apple. What's going on there, Well.
The Justice Department did bring a suit against Apple. It has moved really slowly, even in terms of typical antitrust litigation. It's not yet separate trial. Efforts to dismiss it have failed. But it's a strange case because it's really about Apple not making its hardware and software as interoperable as it should with rival hardware and software. And the DOJ claims that this is because Apple wants to keep people within its ecosystem make it harder for people who have an
iPhone to switch to an Android phone. So, for instance, if you invest in an Apple Watch, you're going to keep that iPhone because the Apple Watch works best with the iPhone and it doesn't work well with an Android or vice versa. This one is really slow, so I think when you have that much time ahead of it,
there also is some possibility for settlement. The other reason I think I do think that this is also a case that might settle down the road because Apple has slowly been making changes on its own and changing some of the policies that the Department of Justice has targeted as unreasonable or anti competitive. And eventually, if Apple keeps doing that, by the time we would get to a trial,
there may not be in very many claims left. So it's possible if Apple keeps kind of making concessions and tweaking its rules as we go forward, that that case could also settle.
Now, I wonder, just looking at the Trump administration's overall strategy when it comes to antitrust enforcement against big tech weather, it might be looking at settlements simply because as you've been mentioning it's been facing a lot of setbacks in court with the Meta matter as well as Google.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I mean, we'll have to see what happens with some of the if there are any more challenges to mergers. I'm not so sure that there will be, because it seems that this administration is settling an awful lot of the time when they have concerns about two companies that are doing a transaction. But if they do have concerns that they will lose in court, it sometimes you can read the tea leaves. Sometimes it judge is fairly obvious about how they're feeling about a
certain matter. For instance, in FTCB Meta, the judge was clearly skeptical. As we go forward with those other two cases, the Amazon case and the Apple case. And by the way, we can't forget Department of Justice versus Live Nation, because that's coming to it may be that they'd be more inclined to settle.
All right, Well, we'll see where things go as we head into twenty twenty six and beyond. Thank you for this, Jen, really great having you with us.
Thank you so much.
That's Jennifer Ree, Senior Litigation analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. We'd also like to extend our thanks to her fellow Bloomberg Intelligence colleagues Punam Goyle, Lindsey Dutch, and Mike mcglohon for being with us on this holiday program, along with Scott Martin of Kingsview Wealth Management. Thanks of course to you as well for spending part of your Thanksgiving holiday with us. Here's hoping for a full and meaningful long weekend on
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