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And corporate news from across the globe.
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You see some so called low quality stocks driving this short term rally.
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On today's Bloomberg Intelligence Show, we dig inside the big business story is impacting Wall Street and the global markets.
Each and every week we provide in depth research and data on some of the two thousand companies and one hundred and thirty industries are analysts covered worldwide.
Today, we'll look at how the automaker Ford is being impacted by its struggling ev business.
Plus we'll dive into why the food and beverage giant Craft High is replacing its CEO.
But first we begin with research. Bloomberg Intelligence recently put out on companies to watch for in the new year.
It's titled fifty Companies to Watch in twenty twenty six. We were joined by Tim Craig head, Bloomberg Intelligence Global Chief Content Officer.
We first asked Tim to break down this research put a little bit of context.
This group of fifty are all part of what we call focus ideas. It's a broader group of about one hundred. These are all high conviction ideas. They have high confiction ideas where we see something very different from what we think is embedded in market expectations and there's catalysts ahead to change the market mindset. Those catalysts coming up in twenty twenty six, and that's where these fifty come into and across the group this year. The biggest bucket are two.
One is just simply new product innovation that is being rapped out into twenty twenty six. The other no surprise AI related, and some of it's the tech companies. Some of it are companies that are feeding into the process and happy to get into some of those or other topics as well. Suches, cyclical pressures and competitive concerns. On the negative side, and there's a couple of other things as well.
So on the new products, give us an example of a new product that you guys think might really be important for a company in a stock.
Yeah.
So, you know, it's interesting because some of these can be quite technical, Paul. You know, you think a Nilan Pharma or Bridge Bio are two biotech companies that have new products coming. One of them relates to heart issues, another relates to dwarfism. But it's new products that will expand to market and drive we think, significantly better revenue and earnings. On the other hand, there's some good old
fashioned names that you know and you love. Canada Goose has new product flow coming through that we think reinvigorates the top line. Brinker, I think Chili's the restaurant are going through a whole new upgrade of their menu and up selling clients with good stuff like Margarita's with Patron and so the new product idea can expand across a whole number of different segments. It's quite interesting.
Yeah.
I'm looking at Decker's as one of the new products companies you highlight, and their ug is introducing styles to stay relevant beyond the winter months. Let's talk a little bit about AI because that's going to continue to be a big theme, even as investors are starting to make distinctions between companies that are in it for good and those that maybe kind of fat ish. What are some new names that surprised you in terms of their making the list.
Yeah, it's it's interesting. I'll give you the new names and the ones that aren't on here, and i'll do the latter first. There's none of the big llms this year that are on our list, or in Nvidia that's not on a list. What you find are other either enabling technologies, so I think LAMB Research. It's a semicap equipment company that makes the gear that you make the
semiconductors with. That's quite well positioned. TSMC, the world's largest foundry that's making the AI accelerator chips that feed into the llms, or even back up in the channel of how do you build out AI constellation, which is the US's largest nuclear utility. That's quite important if you're going to generate the electricity to drive the data centers to drive AI acs. Interestingly, European construction company they own Turner, which is the US's largest construction company. They've got the
biggest order book for building out data centers. There's a host of different kinds of ways you can think about leveraging AI beyond just simply the big lllms like Google or Open AI or things along those lines that you hear about.
Tim On this list, you and the bi analysts also highlight stocks that might be have pressure on the downside, whether it's cyclical pressure, competition, MNA, project delay. Give us a name or two that might have some downside risk this year.
Yeah, it's interesting on that think about what's going on from the standpoint of you're just talking about airlines from a European vantage point, we've got wage pressures that are a rising and for Air France KLM, a big chunk of their business is the Transatlantic market, which is getting more and more competitive. And with both of those factors, we think that there's risks to estimates. China Railway Group it's a big state owned enterprise in China. It's one
of the big four engineering companies. And to the degree that China is shifting towards more technology and innovation driven investment and less away from bridges and roads and railroads and things along those lines. China Railway Group we think has downside risk. A couple little companies that are unusual but intriguing. Dino Polska, which you've never heard of, I'm sure, is a Polish supermarket company, but they've got two big
European competitors that are coming into the Polish market. Again, downside risk to earnings. And the same thing can be said about Joined Labs. We talked about a couple of positive healthcare companies. This is one of the contract research companies that helps a pharmaceutical do their drug development. China is now looking to go broad and global with approvals
on new pharmaceutical products. Join, who focuses in all in China is losing some of their business, So there's lots of ways we can think about this our.
Thanks to Tim Kraik, head Bloomberg Intelligence Chief Content Officer, we.
Recently focused on a Bloomberg Big Takes story entitled Saudi's Sisters wieled fifty billion dollar fortune as global powerbrokers. You can find out on Bloomberg dot com and the Terminal.
The story looks at the Olion Group, a Saudi empire led by sisters that has grown in influence. It has a nearly thirteen billion dollars stock portfolio in the US, as well as steaks and companies like black Rock and JP Morgan Chase.
For more.
Scarlett and I were joined by Devin Pendleton, Bloomberg Wealth Reporter. We first asked Devin to explain what the allion is and who the sisters are behind it.
So it is.
Lubna and her sister Husam Allion. They're both in their early seventies and they have been at the helm of this family enterprise for decades, for more than forty years.
Wow.
And they have fairly low profiles too. That's the thing that is striking. They have these low profiles, but they are known as steally negotiators. Tell us what they've done.
Yeah, they've done an incredible job building this family business, which was started by their father, who was a really unbelievable character. He basically worked his way up from nothing.
You know, he's not a royal, was not connected to the royals at a young age, but he built an oil servicing company which he grew striking deals with all sorts of consumer brand companies in the US, bringing them to Saudi Arabia, everything from Coca Cola to cheese its to Oreos, and he came over to the US in the early nineteen sixties, was very inspired by what he saw and bought some bank stocks, and basically his daughters
took over that business which was sprawling. I mean it was in all sorts of sectors real estate, oil, filled services, consumer goods, and hung on to those equity stakes, banking stakes. So now they have this incredible portfolio of investments in the US on Wall Street as well as this you know, booming multi sector business in Saudi Arabia.
So but people in power know these two sisters, they were at the White House recently tell us about that. How do they subtlely wield their influence?
They are not noisy people. I think it's one thing to do business and thrive in Saudi Arabia as you have to really sort of be be quiet, be force full, sort of no be a little bit deferential to you know, who's really in charge, which would be the government and the king and the Crown Prince. But they have had long term ties with the US. I mean, you really saw that at the White House dinner. You mentioned Paul,
she was sitting right next to Elon Musk. But you know, arguably one of the most important people in the room because she has these connections on Wall Street through their long term equity investments. It's really important right now, especially because the Kingdom is trying to bring in a lot of inbound investment to transform their economy past oil. It's a big deal for them to be bringing in money.
And these Alliance Sisters have had these connections for a long long time, so they're more important than ever.
So they have the connections with the right people in Saudi Arabia. How does their I mean when I think about prominent investors in the kingdom, I think about Prince Abolid beIN to Lull and how he's been very vocal about his positions. He's often seen on media networks. You don't hear about these Alliance Sisters at all, and I wonder how much of that is, you know, is part of their success story.
Totally, it's so so important. I think they are extremely discreet. They are, like I said, like they really know their role in the kingdom, like they're important. They step in and help when they need to. For example, in Saudi Ramco Ipo. Back in twenty nineteen, the kingdom was having trouble kind of getting people excited and really getting the investors they needed early to get backstop this IPO. They ask some influential families and the Alliance were one that
you know, they really showed up. That matters for the kingdom, and it also gives them, you know, license to really expand their business as much as they need to into being a position of power to help out, but also you know, have favors in return.
And the Bloomberg the Rich Go function lists their wealth of the family at approximately fifty billion dollars US.
Right, Yes, fifty billion dollars US. But I can guarantee you that that is a conservative estimate.
Is that right now? I understand that they while they keep a low profile of these sisters, they have good relationships with some of the big folks on Wall Street and like Larry Fink of black Rock and things like that. So that's got to be useful.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just through one portfolio alone, they have their big investors in Blackrock, the equity investors. They have a one and a half billion dollar steak in black Rock. They own an almost billion dollar steak in JP Morgan. It's actually where lived No Lion first got her start. She was initially working a low level banker at JP Morgan right after college. So they're really worldly, very well traveled and just tough, tough in this sort
of very you know, meaningful business sense, like negotiators. They're very involved in their investments.
Our thanks to Devin Pendleton, Bloomberg Wealth Reporter. Coming up, we'll move to the biotech sector and why my aloma patients are failing to get the treatment they need.
You're listening to Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio, providing in depth research and data on two thousand companies and one hundred and thirty industries.
You can access Bloomberg Intelligence via bi go on the terminal. I'm Scarlet Food and.
I'm Paul Sweeney, and this is Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Intelligence with Scarlet Foo and Paul Sweeney on Bloomberg Radio.
We moved now to loose in the auto sector.
This week, automaker Ford announced it will take nineteen and a half billion dollars in charges tied to an overhaul of its EV business. And this comes after years of Ford struggling to make its electric vehicle business profitable.
From what we were joined by Steven Mann Bloomberg Intelligence Global Autos and Industrials research analysts.
We began by asking Steve for his reaction to the nineteen and a half billion dollar charge.
Yeah, it is a very big number. It pretty much backed up the truck on these charges. But the important thing is it's clearing the deck for next year.
Right.
There is a couple of earning's tailwind for Ford and actually to their competitors in Detroit as well. So the biggest, I think the biggest write down. Two biggest write down is writing down the losses on their Mustang Mochy. You know they've been losing around twenty five thousand dollars on the EBIT line per vehicle, so it's massive. The other is the charges really on their joint venture with their battery supplier in Korea. So you know they're going to
repurpose one of those plants for energy storage. So again it's really clearing the deck. There's a couple of tailwinds for twenty twenty six, which includes you know, Trump's loosening the MPG miles per gallon rule.
Yeah, absolutely, does that reflect Steve. Investors want these auto companies to kind of back away or proceed more cautiously towards their move towards EV's.
Yeah, definitely, especially in the US. And look, Ford is you know, not just pivoting in the US, but they're also pivoting in Europe. You know, they just announced a joint venture with Renault to develop EVS over in Europe. And you know, Ford doesn't really have a big presence in Europe, so they're taking that approach of partnership. GM is doing the same thing. Remember they took one point six billion dollar charge, much more modest than the nineteen
billion that Ford is taking. But you know, GM is dialing back but keeping one foot on the EV's. I think they I believe they still think that they're you know, they still can succeed, especially when they introduce the Chevy Bolt in the new year.
So, Steve, you know, we're many years into this transition to EV's and you know, I know there are many there are European country, Scandinavian countries where it's almost one hundred percent of their fleets are are their new car sales are EV's. That ain't the case here in the US. With some hindsight here, why hasn't why haven't EV's taken a better hold here in this US market.
Yeah, it definitely needs more, you know, regulatory support for EV to take grow because you know, EV uh, there's a lot of three hurdles right that consumers have to get over, which is the price, the range, and the convenience right of charging infrastructure. You know, without government support to actually build that out, it's going to take some
time for the electrification transition. I think a lot of people in the industry still feels that electrification, battery EV, maybe hybrids in between is the way to go in the future. But you know, I think there's a huge paradigm shift that consumers hair have to get over, and it's really challenging to do that without government support.
Here our thanks to Steve Man Bloomberg Intelligence, Global, Autos and Industrials Research Channels.
We move next to some news in the food and beverage industry.
This week, craft Times announced it would be replacing its CEO with former Kelenova CEO Steve Kahaling on January first.
This comes as the company plans to split into two separate publicly traded companies. One will sell condiments and boxed meals, while the other will include its slower growing grocery products like lunchibles for.
More, Scarlett and I were joined by Christina Peterson Bloomberg Food Industry. We first asked Christina to break down the CEO change.
We had expected in September that the current CEO would lead one of the two new companies, specifically the one that it's the grocery Staples. They actually don't have official names yet, but that was a collection of the least profitable or less profitable food items there, including things like
lunch a Bowles and Oscar Meyer Deli Meats. The surprise came this morning that he is in fact not going to lead that company, and instead they are bringing in Steve kay Helene from Kelenova to lead the second company after the split has gone through. That is being called the Global Taste Elevation Company, and that's going to have Heinz, Ketchup, Kraft, mac and Cheese, some of those beloved iconic products.
So that's the fastcoring part of the company, and the other one is kind of the you know, the equivalent of CNN TNT and you know, the leave it behind assets that you know are are you're managing the decline? What can you tell us about Steve cal Lane, the former Kelenova CEO. What is his approach his philosophy.
Well, I just spoke with him and he said that he's going to be focused on bringing organic growth to the company. We talked a little bit about focusing on some of the health and wellness trends that consumers are looking for, increasing offerings with protein, with fiber, with shorter ingredient lists, you know, the so called cleaner labels. So they'll definitely be leaning into that. It sounds like a little bit more. He also led Kellogg through its split.
The Kellig Company split into w K Kellogg and then Kelenova. Both of those companies were then separately acquired. I asked him if he thought that could be a path here, and he said, it's hard to predict the future, so not rolling it out.
So what's been the challenge for craft Minds over the last number of years?
I mean, in general, the food companies are all struggling with this shift as consumers move towards healthier, less processed food. The company says that they just had too many brands and that splitting into two will help them focus on each component. I think that there is some analyst chatter that that's what companies say when they just need to
know spin off some of their less profitable items. But they will tell you that they expect both companies will have better value when there's an ability to focus more on the condiments and box meals and then on some of the other foods.
Put this all into context for us when Paul talks about how you know this group has been kind of struggling overall. We also saw that with PepsiCo with Coca Cola, I mean, they have had to rethink their strategy completely.
Yet there's just been a lot of movement in the food industry right now. PepsiCo announced some pretty dramatic changes. They're going to reduce the number of products they sell by twenty percent and lower prices in some of their key brands as part of agreement with activist investor Elliott Investment Management. Coke has a new CEO. I think coc is in pretty solid shape. They've been doing their shares have been doing really well compared to some of the
other business companies. But yet, in general, the companies that I think are really tapping into this health and wellness interest in consumers are often the smaller startup brands and the big companies are playing catch up not only with them, but some of the private label companies too that are really nimble and able to get some of these new products to market really fast.
Are thanks to Christina Peterson Bloomberg, a food industry reporter.
We move next to the biotech sector. Bloomberg Intelligence recent came out with research which gives an overview of the blood cancer myloma.
According to Bloomberg Intelligence, multiple maloma patient numbers are rising globally due to the aging population and just by an evolved treatment landscape that's leveraged the FDA's accelerated drug approval. There's still unmet need for more.
On this and the latest in the biotech sector. We were joined by Sam Fazzelli, Bloomberg Intelligence, director of Research for Global Industries and senior pharmaceuticals analysts.
We began by asking Sam, where we are in terms of treating maloma.
Well, let me tell you about these cancers, treatments and these cancer areas where patient numbers in terms of those who live rather than those who die is fundamentally changing. Breast cancer has been one of them. Prostate cancers another one, melanoma is another one which of course people are familiar with, and of course myloma has been one that we've also
got there. There are patients who are alive today who were diagnosed in nineteen ninety six, nineteen ninety eight, and there are and there have been people developments in that space that literally are changing completely the way that people end up living with their disease. Of course, it's not for everybody that ends up like that, but the average mortality or the average life expectance you have the patients
with maloma has significantly changed. And what is it. It's a cancer of the bone marrow, which then of course translates to some changes in your blood, so he's a hematological cancer. And yet another major development in the last week or so that came out at Orlando, a conference that was held last week.
What is the treatment landscape then for myloma?
Yeah, so, given that it goes on for so long, now we've got first line, second line, third line, fourth line, fifth, et cetera. Right, there's so many patients. There are some patients that enter trials these days that have had eight lines of therapy. But that's I would say, a good thing. That means we have drugs to treat people every time
they fail a previous one. The most exciting recent development was this data that came out of Johnson and Johnson's trial called Majestic three, which takes a special type of antibody, married it with a well known accepted drug on the market today called Darzelex. Also another J and J Rug and Lo and behold. At thirty six months therapy, eighty three percent of patients were alive versus the next big thing, best thing that we've just had recently added to the
armamentarium at about fifty the massive shift in survival. I mean, these are things that we don't often see in oncology. Do you see it? You get standing ovations and you get celebrations because it makes a huge different to patience. So that's what we've been seeing recently.
I say, I'm here in the United States. The Trump administration has taking a real hard line against some federal funding of universities, and I know a lot of universities are saying that's really hitting their funding for their medical centers, for example, some of the medical research. Are you seeing that? Are you hearing that from the companies? Is the effects are they being felt yet? Or is that something in the future.
No, I would say that type of research funding is something that's going to translate into trouble in five to ten years time if indeed it sticks, and if indeed you really end up with people not being able to start a scientific career because they can't get money to do their research. Now, I had a conversation with somebody who said, actually, it's not as bad as it sounds, only some areas that are being caught. The budget hasn't
been halved, And then others tell me something different. So let's see how this all pans out in twenty twenty six. But if it goes in the bad way that you were just referring to, you're going to end up with fewer scientists in five to ten years time in US universities developing these new ideas. And then of course betters that all go China and they are doing a fantastic
job of getting their research funded and pushed. And that's where I think we all US and Europe need to watch because you will lose the competitiveness angle.
Our Thanks to Sam Fazelli, Bloomberg Intelligence, Director of Research for Global Industries and Senior Pharmaceuticals analyst.
Coming up, Well, look at why the global management consulting firm McKenzie is cutting headcount.
You're listening to Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio of writing in depth research and data on two thousand companies and one hundred and thirty industries.
You can access Bloomberg Intelligence through b I go on the terminal. I'm Scarlett Faxe.
And I'm Paul Sweeney, and this is Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Intelligence with Scarlett foo and Paul Sweeney on Bloomberg Radio.
We move next to some news at the global management consulting firm McKenzie and Company.
This week, the firm announced its leadership is cutting about ten percent of headcount across non client facing departments.
Good amount to a few thousand job cups over eighteen to twenty four months. And this comes even as the firm marks its one hundred year anniversary.
McKenzie's revenue growth has flatlined in the last five years, leading to a reset after some rapid hiring over the prior decade.
For more on all of this, we were joined by shri Na Aranjin, Bloomberg News Chief Wall Street correspondent.
We began by asking Tree to breakdown why the firm's last five years have been so disappointing.
Around twenty twenty one, McKenzie revenue at the fifteen billion dollar monk. Here we are in twenty twenty four to twenty five. By the timesas y RNZ, we're going to be sixteen billion, just a little bit over. So they've operated in this narrow band of fifteen billion dollars to sixteen billion dollars an annual revenue, which is great. Any other management consulting firm would absolutely love to post numbers like that. For McKinsey, it is a sense that their
revenue has flatlined a little bit. And you did mention their one hundred year celebrations right which twenty twenty six, that is when they will turn one hundred. So they had this annual partner gathering which also doubled up as this kickoff for their one hundred year festivities. And for those who were there who listened to Bob's Turnfels, the global managing partner at McKenzie, the de facto leader, you could sense some plan spoken bravado. He was asking people,
are you in for this mission? And those who say yes, I can assure you good times are ahead, because it is also an acknowledgment that the last few years have been rocky, not just from its standpoint of its financial health, but you have to think about some of the challenges in the controversies that McKenzie has had to navigate, the opioid scandal, some of the criticism over their work in China and Saudi Arabia and even back home here in
the US with Ice for instance. These are questions that were asked and stuff that McKenzie has had to answer, and it presented an unwelcome distraction. But the bottom line is for this firm is when it looks at its numbers, it does realize people weren't like hearing this, but at management levels that's how they talk about it. It realized that there was some bloat and the message that's percolating through the firm right now is it's time to get leaner.
I was interviewing with McKinsey when I was in business school, and like the second round, they asked me to get up in on a whiteboard and sketch out kind of like a business flow model. I just turned to them and said thank you, but no thank you and walked out the door. Anytime you bring a whiteboard, I'm out of there. I can't think like it. So when trade it stocks for a living? After that, shre Why has
revenue been flat? Here? Is there some concern that maybe all this AI spending is taken away from other budgets where maybe I don't need the consulting or.
That's certainly the concern on the forward perhaps, but just in the last few years, the the reality of the industry, and McKinsey in some ways is the flag bearer for the industry. But there are perhaps other major consulting firms that are struggling even more. And the fact is that the demand for traditional consulting services may not be as high as it used to be. Companies and clients are
getting cost conscious. When your clients are not able to post great revenue growth, the only other level that they can pull is expenses, and consulting fees are the first ones thrown out.
The window, right Advertising is the first one.
I think, advertising, then consulting perhaps, But is mckensey's solutions so out of the box. I mean, at this point what McKinsey recommends is kind of dogma in corporate boardrooms. You don't need to hire McKenzie to tell you how to do some of these things.
Look, and I think the way you're framing it is just a little bit more of a polite way of some of the memes that you see out there right, which is this idea that all that consulting firms do is prescribe, grow revenue and cut costs. You know, in the moment, it might be funny, but to some extent it is an oversimplification of what they do because if you look at the list of clients that they've wrapped up.
We talked about them starting out in nineteen twenty six university professor who advised a local meatpacker, Armors and company. From that, what they've grown up to they are the go to advisor to blue chip companies from Coca Cola and Goldman Sacks to everyone else, and also countries that span the globe, and a lot of these people are
repeat clients. So you have to assume that it's not as simple as wrote advice that they're doling out, because for these big companies to turn to McKinzie again and again tells you that they see value in most of what they do. There might be some extreme cases on either side. One it might be some undesirable work and two it might just be obvious advice. But for the most part, they're clearly doing something that companies value and country's value.
Speaking of countries, you mentioned China and Saudi Arabia, China wants its company is to continue to bring in consults, but they just want them to be homegrown.
Consultants, right and like that seems to be the push in China, which is a good job relying on all of these Western firms to figure out how you need to modernize and be ready to compete on a global scale, but they are also encouraging them now to turn to homegrown consulting firms. Saudi Arabia is a completely different channel.
We have a person at McKenzie. You estimated that in the prior decades are twenty fourteen to twenty twenty for McKinsey earned at least five hundred million dollars a year from the kingdom, which is either with companies affiliated with Saudi Arabia or the government itself. But the challenge in Saudi Arabia is also obviously you've seen some of the
recent headlines where they're pulling back on consulting expenses. Some of these pie in the sky projects are not working out as they had hoped for, and again consulting fees are going away. And Saudi Arabia had become one of mckinzie's most important clients globally, so that is obviously also a place where they don't necessarily see a lot of room for.
Our Thanks to shred Narajen, Bloomberg News Chief Wall Street correspondent.
This week we looked at another Bloomberg Big Take story called a Shadowy Global Network helped Trump make millions and meme coins.
You can find out on Bloomberg dot Com and The Terminal. The story looks at how Donald and Melania Trump have made millions from meme cooin hip.
For more on this, we're joined by one of the stories authors, Zeke Fox, Bloomberg investigative reporter.
We first asked Zeke to give us more context on this story.
During his first term, just a couple of years ago, Trump was calling crypto a scam. But as he prepared to take office this time, he and his family started two big crypto ventures. And for this story, I went deep on kind of the silliest one, which is the Trump and Millennia meme coins.
I forgot about that one.
Yeah.
So this was on the eve of inauguration the president and then his wife both announced they were creating new cryptocurrencies that didn't do anything at all. And these are like transparently useless. It's kind of like a gambling game. And at the time this was really hot in crypto, so many people dived in that on paper for just a second, the Trump meme coin. The Trump family had fifty billion dollars of holdings of this meme coin. But this is a crypto world where things can go poof overnight.
The best estimates we've found from chainalysis and bubble maps to crypto research firms were that the Trump family made about three hundred and fifty million dollars of real profit on these meme coins.
Wow, help them market these coins? Who helped them, you know, presumably profit off of that. That's the gist of your story. And was it a difficult question to answer?
Yeah, Like, on the one hand, the whole thing sort of happened in the open, and it felt like there was we sort of knew what happened. On the other hand, as I tried to dive in and figure out who was behind this. It was really tough. You'd think that people might be proud to say that they'd helped the president with an important business venture, but really nobody was talking.
The trail took us in a very convoluted way, but it ended up with a guy who uses an icon of a cartoon cat wearing an astronaut suit on Twitter. He goes only by mew and he runs a crypto exchange.
Or he was the co founder of a crypto exchange called Metiora that was actually home to a ton of these giant mean coin launches, and all of them were Most of them seemed to follow this pattern where they'd go up a lot on hype when they got announced and then soon crash, and we were trying to figure out, you know, who knew what When the trail took us to Istanbul to Singapore, you got to read the story to see how close we got.
So what was Is the meme coins still in existence?
Yeah, these things like never really die, but there's uh, there's no excitement around it anymore. The price is down about ninety percent from its peak.
Do I find the price?
You know, their coin market is a pretty big uh uh crypto tracking site. But one funny thing we found in reporting this was talking to meme coin traders. A lot of them said that Trump actually killed this boom. Like for a while, we were all having a lot of fun trading these meme coins, but the Trump's made so much money off theirs that the gamblers in the casino were like, you know what, we're we've emptied our pockets, we got We're done with this. We need bring on
prediction markets. We need something different to gamble on.
So are meme coins they peaked already, they've died or I mean they're still there, but no one's making money off of them the way they used to.
Yeah, it's a little bit like if you remember the NFT bubble, the like uh digital crypto art. For minute, it's hot and people are making good money, they're telling their friends, and then at some point people just they crashes and people move on. So a lot of the same people who were in on NFTs got in on meme coins and while this was while this was running,
it was a great business. We talked to one twenty two year old who started one of the biggest meme coin creation and trading apps, his company, which just had a few employees generated a billion dollars from the during this meme coin bubble. But now a lot of the people who are excited about meme coins have moved on to prediction markets, where the Trump family has its own interests as well.
Yeah, Don Junior, right, has some pretty big stakes or it has a pretty key role in some of the companies.
Yeah, he is an advisor to both Calshie and poly Market, the two big prediction markets. And then the Trump families social media platform truth Social has announced plans to create its own prediction market. But it's kind of a pattern where the Trump family has these business interests in this kind of gray area market, and then the Trump administration is creating rules that are legalizing these markets and helping make them grow.
As President Trump or his family or his administration comment on your story or about the mean coin part of it, So.
The Press secretary got back to us, not really getting into the specifics, but just saying, hey, the Trump family would never engage in conflicts of interest, but not really addressing how they manage having interests in both the business side and being in charge of drafting the rules.
And I guess no one cares anymore.
I'd like to think that people still care. But you know, when it came normally you have like let's say this was the stock market and somebody created like a penny stock that went up, you know, one thousand xs in trash. Yeah, somebody would be diving in. They'd be digging through people's messages. They've been trying to figure out what happened meme coins.
A few weeks after Trump was elected, the SEC has put out a statement that basically said not our business, okay, And nobody has stepped up to look into these yet our Thanks.
To Zeke Fox, Bloomberg Investigative Reporter.
That's this week's edition of Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio, providing in research and data on two thousand companies and one hundred and thirty industries.
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