Bitcoin Hits $100,000

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We bring you all the top news and business, economics and finance. There are a lens of Bloomberg Intelligence folks. They cover two thousand companies and one hundred and thirty industries all around the world. So, in case you didn't know, bitcoins now up over one hundred thousand dollars. This comes a day after President Trump picked a pro crypto pick for the SEC.

That was a hard thing to say. Pro pro crypto pick. Yeah, try to be that fast. More so than Gary Gensler, I guess much more so. This is Paul Atkins.

Apparently he is a crypto proponent, but also very much in favor of.

Less regulation et cetera. Broadly, Yes, I'm.

In an upgrade on the Newark closing. Oh okay, okay, just real quick, the FAA says Newark Airport closed to general aviation aircraft, so not commercial, not the big jets, the smaller planes. That's the rinking planes that I flowed.

That's what That's why we have titoborough going too there for their ranking, the smaller private craft.

Right, Okay, Okay, well I'm glad. I'm gonna be sure.

About to find them Marshtown.

Okay.

So we bring you weather updates and air updates as well as talking to our Bloomberg Intelligence guys, and for that we have go to Michael mcgloan. He is Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist and he's in Florida, so he doesn't have any win weather issues right now. All right, Mike, I know a lot of hayes being made about one hundred thousand dollars, does it?

Do we need to retrace here though at some point.

That seems a bit elusive at the moment, Alex, it's it's it's fouled the money. It's been since this year started, about thirty two billion dollars of ETF inflows. Since President Trump was elected, about eight billion dollars of ETF inflows. And to put that in context, there's been on the year about almost six billion dollars of outflows in gold ETF Now they've picked up recently, but yeah, so me to me, that's from a commander standpoint, this is what's happening,

Right now it's about thirty eight.

And questions what stops that trajectory from going higher?

Mike, give us a sense of how you think it might be reasonable to try to value a commodity or a currency like bitcoin. Do I look at a relative to I don't know, pork bellies or gold?

Laughing at you right now, yeah what do I do?

Paul?

I enjoyed the question bit snickering because it's like, right now, it's animal spirits.

It's it's the way I always look at.

Commandis supplying demand. Now that's one thing about bitcoin has definable diminishing supply. Basically on the mount you can only mine a day is four hundred and fifty bitcoins, and that's going to cut and be cut in half in twenty twenty eight. And it's just the way it's set up. And there's increasing demand and adoption, so price must go all over time, and it's just going to have these nuances.

It's it's the animal.

Spirits right now. But it's the key thing I'm worried about is now that we have it into the mainstream and all the ETF people are buying and adding to

Oh wow, I.

Did not know that stat when we when we had the optimism from Paul Atkins now being the nominee.

For SEC, What regulation what?

What do you think the crypto guys were so pumped about and that it was him versus a Gary Gens or like what kind of regulation there needs to be rolled back or needs to happen?

In general, I.

Think it's the the stop of the pushback. There was significant pushback. Let look how I mean the crypto people had to go to court to get ETF's launched and these things have been in it works for a decade. It was just kind of silly. I mean, those of us who trade commodity ETFs so forever, so they're very much more risky than a bitcoining death. So it was just silly. Some of the extreme relation that pushed against it.

All right, Mike, always good stuff chatting with you. Mike mcglowan, Senior commodity strategist. We'll talk port bellies next time.

He's there.

With Bloomberg Intelligence based down in Miami, I went to talking about oil because I'm watching the TV series Land Now.

It's all the oil and history.

How is it awesome? And I'm learning all about the oil and gas business.

You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, card Play and Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just Say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.

The top TiO political news of the last twenty four hours is what's happening over in France. We are still looking for President Emmanuel Macron to speak later on this afternoon. We're all waiting to see who he'll nominate as his next our premiere. They're facing a political crisis over in France, if you remember, the government lost a no confidence vote in parliament. In an exclusive interview at Bloomberg's, Francine Lachwa Marine La Penn, leader of the National Rally the far Right,

What I said was that the president's resignation is a personal decision for him and can only take in my view, when a political crisis happens or an institutional crisis, can no longer have any other solution than the resignation of the President of the Republic. What I do wish, on the other hand, because for sure there will be new legislative elections in the next few months, is that we work on a voting system by then that enables us to have a real majority, whatever that majority may be.

All right.

That was marine A lepen, a, leader of the National Rally Party of France along with Bloomberg's front Sine Lacroix. Let's got the latest reporting from the French political situation. Phil Serafino joints a senior markets editor for Bloomberg News. He is in France, Phil, can you give us the latest reporting? What are the next steps here for French politics?

Well, as you mentioned, Macron is speaking on French TV tonight Paris time, and the expectation is that, you know, by rights, he should be naming a new prime minister because because it's not good to have a caretaker government. The other existing Prime minister, Michelle Barnier handled in his resignation today after the no confidence vote. It's not clear though that in fact he will have a name ready

So when Marie Lampenn comes out and says, I don't think you should resign, it's up to him, And then Matcross says he has no intention of stepping down.

Are people asking him to do that?

Like?

Is that now in the zeitgeist?

Yeah, there has been much talk of that. It's been kicking around for a few months since his party lost badly in the European elections and then in the following French parliamentary elections. That has been kicking around and he's said he's not going to do that. His term runs

So we'll see.

Boy, I'm not sure i'd want to be prime minister there because as I understand the kidding, as I understand, it's almost like a no win situation here with the right and the left seemingly having some level of you know, being united here. Is there any room to govern here?

Well, it seems like it's a very difficult needle to thread because the far right and the far left, you know, both have demands that Macron does not want to meet. He particularly does not want to deal with the far left party, which sort of dominates this three party coalition of left wing of left wing parties. So he's trying to come up with a sort of centrist approach to the budget. But they just tried that. They came up with what they thought was a compromise and it got rejected.

Okay, so on that here in the US, if you can't approve a budget or an extension, the government shuts down. What happens in France.

I think they can do sort of an emergency budget. The problem is there are EU rules on the budget deficit and France has far exceeded those, and France has made pledges to the European Union that they will get that deficit under control with an emergency budget. I don't know that that does what they need to do as far as cutting spending and possibly raising taxes, And that's the sticking point. You know that the budget needs to cut spending and raise taxes. They're going to raise taxes

All right, Phil, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Phil Sarafino, Senior market seditor for Bloomberg News. He is located in our Paris bureau.

Here.

Again, we'll hear from French President Macron at two pm Wall Street time eight pm Paris local time, and we'll see what he has to say about this government. Well, will he have a new prime minister to offer.

I think it was.

Carolyn Kannan yesterday who was talking to us about the fact that Marie La Penn doesn't actually want to be seen as an agent of chaos, like.

That's not part of her goal.

So that is also quite interesting in terms of how they will negotiate who will become the next premiere at the end of the day. I've also read some articles that look, Macross should give an Olive brand.

To say the right, etc. More than centrist right. So it's gonna it's gonna be really quite complicated.

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So for the markets, we hit the fifty six record high of the year. Market's going nowhere fast today. So what happens then if we get the Santa Claus Rally? What happens after? In twenty twenty five, Carol Pepper, founder and CEO at Pepper International, joins us. Now, Carol, that was a great survey that came out today that talked about our CEO confidence is smashing it. After the election, CEOs feel so much more confident about the economy, etc.

Does this last?

And is that optimism reflected inequities and should be?

Yeah?

I think they're confident for good reasons.

I think first of all, the fact that we have peaceful election and there's not going to be any other problems in January is making everybody very happy.

The new team is organizing, getting itself together.

There are checks and balances with the minority Democrats and some of the other Republicans. So the political situation here has become very calm.

That makes people very happy. There's also a commitment to keeping regulation.

Low, not adding additional burdens on companies, so CEOs are justified being happy. And on top of that, the economy is humming along, inflation is under control. If you were a CEO, what more could you ask for other than a big bonus at Christmas, which a lot of them are because they had a great year this year.

So what are some of the areas when you talk to your clients, your private clients here, what are some of the themes that you're bringing to bear on twenty twenty five.

Yeah, Well, as you know, I run money for family offices with over one hundred million dollars and basically we look for long term try friends that will continue to do well over the whole year and even twenty twenty six and twenty seven going forward.

So the big themes are.

Things like global data centers, continued rise of AI.

Recovery of real estate.

You know, there's a lot of positive themes here for people to look at. So we're looking at things that will continue to grow in frankly a risk on environment.

Of course there will be consolidations.

Of course there will be down days and corrections, there has to be, But it doesn't mean that the.

Overall trajectory for the year will not be up. And that's the direction that we're going.

We're going to hire US markets for a whole bunch of reasons, and for that reason, the clients are happy.

And they're not looking to pull back on their equity positions.

If anything, down days are good times to add to positions that you know will do well over the long term.

So the counter to that is that the US makes up so much now of the global markets that everyone is just so heavily allocated to that also, can we get all the things?

Can we get lower.

Inflation, a good jobs market, continued fed cuts, some kind of fiscal stimulus from Washington, and higher equities?

Is that all reality for us? How do you push back against that?

Well, I don't see any headwinds. Nobody is telegraphing very loudly. For example, Powell is not saying I'm stopping cutting. There are no big inflation numbers that are zapping people and warning the data is supporting that thesis.

Right now.

So obviously if the data changes drastically, if suddenly there's a run on US workers and suddenly wages are shooting up, we will hear about it. It will show up in the numbers. So right now, there's not a lot of evidence to counter the continued dominance of the US equity.

Markets for that reason.

As you know, I work with also a lot of non US families, and for them, this is the safe haven. Come and put your money into US equities if you wanted to grow. It used to also be US real estate, but I think right now equities are equally attractive and obviously much more liquid than US real estate.

So let's go to some names. That's your Amazon, what are your thoughts there?

I love Amazon because again this is a company that has many, many arms and many ways to make money, lots of revenue sources.

They'll do well over the holidays.

There's always a bit of grumbling, you know, will consumers shop online? And then every year we see the amount of consumers shopping online increasing relative to in person shopping. And Amazon's you know, next day delivery is fairly flawless. They're also making you know, have the Amazon Web services and have huge cloud computing capabilities they're pushing into AI. So I think Amazon is continuing to be a dominant player.

And again, the big are going to get bigger. The winners are going to win more. That's the kind of market that we're in right now.

This is not a market, in my opinion, to bet on the underdogs, take the stupid bet, take the momentum bet, and bet on the big winners because they're going to continue to win and certainly, you know, Amazon and Vidia, names like this are going to continue to be the winners, certainly for twenty twenty five.

Okay, and dip because Amazon closed it a record high yesterday, so any dip you want to buy them?

Yeah?

Absolutely, I mean if you don't have them, I've been telling people to buy them for a few years now, so hopefully they did. But it's a great Christmas present. Rather than buying Disney stock, although it's very nice. Disney is a bit of a one trick, Tony. Go ahead and buy Amazon for your kids trusts or when you're doing your final gifting for the end of this year, go ahead and put some Amazon stock in the trust for all the kids and the charities, and you'll be very glad you did.

So my daughter will be so excited Christmas morning. Here's Amazon stock fairness exactly, so.

When she's going to college, trust me, yep, exactly.

Carol, talk to us real quickly. I know you've been consistently bullish on it. In Vidia. What's your thoughts here?

Yeah, I think that again they're the dominant player. I don't think anybody's going to catch them in the near term. And so again, think of if you had been smart enough to buy Amazon when it.

Came out, how wealthy you would be today.

So again, buy Nvidia, hold your nose at the price and put it away because it's going to be worth ten to fifteen twenty one hundred times more five years from now.

So hold on to that stock. Nvidia continues to be the best play out there.

Of course, others will come along, but it doesn't mean they won't continue to be the market leader, and they have plenty of cash to keep innovating.

All right, Carol, thank you so much. We appreciate getting your thoughts. Carol Pepper, she's a founder and CEO of Pepper International, joining us from New York City via the zoom thing.

You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

All right, let's get to some oil talk here. You got WTI up by two tenths of one percent. Sixty eight is where we print the news. Widely expected, by the way, as it opec plus is delaying the revival of its oil production by about three months. It's the third time it's had to defer this move as crude prices really struggle. So wanted to get a read on that with Ellen Waald, president of Transversal Consulting and senior fellow at Atlantic Council.

Ellen, how unanimous was this? How what was it like for them.

To get to this decision because opep plus is not as harmonious as one may think.

Absolutely, it does seem as though this decision was arrived at, you know, by consensus.

It doesn't seem like it was all that controversial.

Though.

Remember the meeting was actually supposed to happen last week or earlier in the week, so clearly they needed a couple more days to get all the ducks in a row, get everyone to agree. I would imagine that some of the tougher parties to get online might have been the UAE, because they're they've been waiting for this baseline quota increased for a while, and now they're pushing it off again by another three months.

So you know, that's what That's what I imagine.

Because it was all done virtually, we didn't really get a front row seat into, you know, how it all happened and what was going on. But it does seem like everyone is on board with all of these changes.

Ellen. I know when we talk, you know, global crude oil, we have to have a sense of supply and demand. Heary is a commodity, what's the what's the demand model? Looking for a lot of folks out there these days. I think hence, you know it's sixty eight dollars for WTI crude, will I I just deduced it's not that great.

Yeah, I think that that's probably lower than most OPAQ.

Members would want right now.

I think Saudi Arabia is really fine with it. I mean, would they all like oil to be higher?

Sure?

Of course, they would, but you.

Know, we're not in like crisis territory at all right now. I do think that, you know, when we're looking at demand, it's a very it's a very sketchy picture. For a while, OPEC was having forecasts that we're showing a lot higher demand, and that was definitely what was fueling a lot of the anticipated return of this.

Production to the market.

The OPAQ forecast, OPEX, you know, economic team was showing a lot more demand growth that was going to be happening in twenty twenty four and twenty twenty five. Then I think materialized and I think that they see going forward, and so this is definitely a.

Reflection of modifications in terms of what they think demand's going to be.

I think the long term picture is still pretty strong, but right now, you know, we're really not looking at major increases in demand.

Javier blast is a Bloomberg opinion columnist. He also writes the book on OPEK as well, and he had a really great column out earlier in the week that said that the number two official in the Iranian delegation to OPEC plus published commentary in his country's state run news agency on November twenty six, it was since taken down, it's taken down really fast. But he argued that OPEK plus is facing a supply glut, largely of its own making,

Is that of view that is.

Acknowledged at all in any way among the doors of OPEC officials.

So I think that that's definitely kind of this ongoing debate here. Is OPEK, by curbing their own production to try to support prices, is that in effect basically opening the door for all of this non OPEC production to flourish. And that's been the case basically since OPEK got started. I mean, this is not a new point that he's making.

It all goes through cycles.

There's boom and there's bust, and there's higher prices, and there's lower prices, and there's always non OPEC production to contend with. And unless OPEK has a real hold on the most or the majority of the supply, they can't control the market. And a period of very high prices is going to lead to more production, you know, from non OPEC sources, and then you have periods of low prices and you're going to see some go go bust.

So I think that he's making a point.

He's saying that by curbing production for so long, we've supported prices enabled these other guys to produce more, you know.

I think that's that's normal. They could have decided to continue to take the Ali.

Naimi strategy, which was all out production, produce as much as you can and try to get these higher cost producers out of the market.

I don't think that worked as well as they thought it would. It definitely has.

Potential, though, So it's it's definitely a tension within OPEC that is ever present.

All right.

I told Alex, I'm watching the TV show Landman all about the oil business down in like West Texas. I'm learning all about this stuff. What are our friends in Texas and Louisiana and Oklahoma. What are they doing in terms of their drilling activity these days.

So it's nice that you're watching that.

I haven't haven't tuned in yet, but I've definitely got it on my list.

I think that down in Tech it's.

A totally different picture now than it was, say, five years ago, ten years ago. They're really looking at a very different picture. We've got much larger producers running the show now. We've had so many, you know, consolidations, not just of the really little guys, but also even bigger acquisitions, I mean, an excellent acquired pioneer, you know, we've got.

They're much bigger players.

Now, and they can afford to be more strategic about their production.

So I think that in Texas now they're not.

Really all that concerned about what Opek is doing all that much.

Production is at a record high in the United States right now.

Apparently we're thirteen point five million parrels a day of production, which makes the US.

The highest producer in the world right now.

And so I think that they're really looking at it, you know, in a longer term situation now, because they are larger producers and they're more established, and they can afford to whether the lows more effectively than a lot of the smaller producers could.

All right, Ellen really appreciate it. Thank you so very much.

Ellen will called a president of Transversal Consulting and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, joining us there.

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