Crypto, ETFs, and Stocks (Podcast)

of dollars photographer. It's been a wild ride for the cryptospace, and we want to break it down with some experts here Mike mclogan's senior commodity strategist with Bloomberg Intelligence, and Katie Greifeld, cross Asset reporter or Bloomberg News. They are both in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Thank goodness, Thank goodness, I have some things I need to get off my check. Do you go all right? First of all, cz guys has suggested some kind of lender of last resort fund right?

Is he gonna next suggest some kind of central bank that will print bitcoin whenever they're needed? I mean, does he not understand the idea that the origins of cryptocurrency, Mike, does it not bother you? It does. And I've actually this weekend was so much of that kind of information around. I deliberately try to ignore it because it it gets

past what really matters. Now, this is just digging into what person who turned out to be duked us all, including me um And but you didn't have any money on FTX did I didn't, And I'm not allowed to invest a lot in cryptos. I can invest the minimus amounts, so I have a lot of just changes small amounts. I didn't. But the key thing would start with first of all, Bitcoin is actually down on the on the day because what you see in the screen was from yesterday,

and that's it's always messes me up on Monday's. So it's actually it's actually down about one or two percent on the week because you have to compare Apple's apps. Okay, you're saying from Friday's Fridays, but that's the thing to remember about. People are realizing this thing never stops trading. So and I'll also point out what so it really might me dig into what's happened so far as cryptos

have gone down a lot. But if you look at the Bloomberg Galaxy crypto indic, since this whole thing started end of two thousand nineteen, it's still up two so we can drop, it's still up, so I can drop fifty and still percent it's still be in the nantics. So it's just maximum performance going back down. But what I see coming out of this is more regulation. What more regulation means institutions need that more centralization is what

they need. What you're saying right, this is what the decentralized financial world needs, Katie, Uh, your crypto native or at least digitally native digital. When you and your cohort um want to buy trustless currency, um, do you then leave it on someone else's in someone else's wallet? Do you let somebody else have the keys? Why do people not take their crypto immediately, put it in their own walls and take it offline. I will not speak for myself, as I am a journalist and like Mike can't not

really invest in cryptocurrency. But when I talk to my appears, for example, I mean a lot of them, the one who are crypto curious. They went through the likes of coin base for example, maybe Robin hood. But what's interesting now is that you're seeing billions of dollars from exchanges because no one really trusts them. I mean, people are going into cold storage they want their keys back. I think f t X is a great example of why if you're a hardcore bitcoin believer, maybe you don't want

to be on one of these centralized exchanges. You want your bitcoin, you want to know where it is. So there you go. So I want to get to just want angle with you, Sam Bankman Freed, what what do we know? Was? Is there fraud there? Why is he not in an FBI office somewhere answering questions right now? As opposed to the Bahamas. It's an interesting question that I don't have the answer to. Is why f t X filed for bankruptcy in the US if they're based

in the Bahamas. I believe he's in the Bahamas. The reporting would suggest that he is. I mean, we know that Bahamas authorities spoke to him. That would imply physically they're in the Bahamas. I don't el though. I mean there's an ongo I mean, there are million questions that we have. I'm sure Katie has the same questions even if she had a hunch as to an answer. Probably wouldn't want to give it to us on live radio, right, but maybe Mike will um. I mean, how did they

have such a big eight nine billion dollar hole? Was their fraud? Also? Who took the four to six hundred million dollars of coins in the last couple of days? Is anybody on the run? What can you tell us? I think the word first world is illegal co mingling? Now how we've heard this in future since I've been in the business, and you've seen firms going there. It's just a different level, different people, different time. And LaMDA was a research arm, which was they say they were

channeling of customer funds. Apparently they might have been channeling customer funds into campaign donations to the Binding compaign. Number number two donator to the Binding camp campaign was SPF. So oh yeah, so it's it's shocking that way. And see ze, by the way, it was an ex Bloomberg employee, so we have had quality from X Bloomberg employees coming

from c Z. I did not know that. Wow, all right, Mike, you're in Miami not just because you love the warm weather and you had enough a Connecticut But let's face it in the crypto world. They're trying to establish themselves as a a physical leading space where the smart crypto people go. Given that backdrop, what's the feeling out of Miami over the past three or four or five days. Are people just kind of throwing their hands up, like what do we get ourselves into? Or I'm not sensing

that public? Give you one example, MasterCard. A good friend of mine who is a former New York you know Wall Street guy, just moved to Miami to work for MasterCard in cryptos. That's how things are changing. Two years ago that that sentence, what would have been an oxymoron. So I think the big just did and he's getting a pink slip tomorrow. Well that's the problem. But here's the thing that's happening. One thing that's you look at Ethereum. Athereum is up one thousand or ten x since two

thousand nineteen. Sure it's dropped a lot, but you know it started a hundred now just over a thousand. What is it doing. It's revelized the revolution is in fintech and like it makes possible the most white Trady cryptos. It's the dollar crypto door. So I think it's gonna bring on US regulation. But the US realizes this is making the base layer for the whole world to be a cryptos. The dollar and Ethereum is doing that, so

people get the technology. This is a major sell, but it's just a bump in the road I've seen in terms of what I love that perspective because I don't have that perspective a last week. Right, we gotta get Mike and Cameron cries On together because they disagree like a hundred and I was playing that. Alright, Alright, guys, that's good stuff. We'll gonna keep on top of this story. And we can do that because we got some really smart people that have experience in this space and that

is hard to find around there. Mike McLoone, Senior Commodity Strategies with Bloomberg Intelligence. He's been dealing and trading commodities forever and that's what crypto is for a lot of folks. And Katie Gray Felt Cross Asset, Cross Asset Reporter and that now includes a crypto. She does that with Bloomberg News.

We take a look at some of the price action of last week, particularly towards the end of the weekend that big Thursday rip kind of brings back that bowl call that's been out there for a while, which is, you know, these risk on assets can work late into the year, maybe rally towards the year because we've seen peak interest rates, we've seen peak inflation. Uh, earnings have come down, they've been reset. Maybe this is kind of

sets you for good clothes. Sean O'Hara, President of pac your et S. Sean, what do you think of that calls out a little naive or or do you in fact think that maybe a lot of the headwinds are starting to abate and it might be time to take on some more risk. Wel, good morning, Thanks for having me. Um. I think it's a little premature to to to sort of make that call, you know. I mean, it's just

doing some simple math. If you if you think the SMP is gonna earn like, you know, two thirty bucks next year, we're still trading at a level that's probably higher on a pe basis than perhaps the market should be. But that's the whole market. And so I think the big,

the big drag on that is potentially going to be tech. Uh, you know, tech is as a sector the last six years have seen their stock prices go up about fifty percent more than their earnings, whereas the rest of the market has sort of adjusted itself in its healthcare as an example, Actually the stocks in the healthcare sector have gone up less than their earnings the last six years.

There are pockets of opportunity. I wouldn't be making a broad market call that, you know, things are going to go back to the way they were, and that inflation is not a problem anymore, and inflation is going to continue to be stubborn. You know, we saw a minor decrease in the year over year increase, and I think everybody took that to mean, well, you know, we just have to have a couple more months and this is all over with and we're back to the races. I

don't think it's going to play out that way. So, but there are sectors you find attractive, healthcare being one of them, um energy another. These are obviously huge pieces of the inflation picture. I mean healthcare. I guess we see massive inflation there all the time, even when we don't have it in the rest of the economy. But why do you like why do you like them? Well, we we have a large cap fund ceow Z and our et F family. It's cash cow, that's one of

our favorites, and it's up here to date. It's up like five percent year to date. So, uh, you know, it's overweight energy, it's overweight healthcare and silver right materials. It's as underweight as it's ever been consumer discretionary in tech, and so you know, the consumer is going to be I think in a big, big quandary here. They're gonna get squeezed. They're going to have to make decisions. You know, this winter, some people are gonna have to decide whether

they want to eat or heat their house. I mean, I think, you know, the Thanksgiving holiday is going to be a big shocker to people in terms of how much more it's going to cost this year. But when you look at detectors like energy or healthcare, they're trading in relatively inexpensive levels historically. I think the healthcare trade

is both in inflation and a demographics play. Um. You know, the demographics and healthcare got hidden by COVID, and once COVID is out of the way, I think that demographic trend will pick back up. You know, as people get older, they need more health care of the baby boomers ten thousand people a day for the next decade or so turning age sixty and energy is you know that they've just got so much cash flow in the energy sector. And I don't think that oil prices are going to

go back down. I think they're more likely to continue to hover in this ranger or maybe maybe increase a little as the winter months come on. So there are plenty of places to make money. I just don't think it's going to be the same places that people have made money in the past, and so we accepted adjust our expectations and our views. I don't think you can continue to be a broad market investor. Um. You know, Mike Wilson's a very smart guy, has been very right

on a lot of his calls. And if he's saying that next year the SMP is going to be where it is this year, then you just can't buy the SMP. You've got to figure out how to find places within the SMP to make money. So far, that's been you know, the under you underliked or undernoticed sectors like energy, healthcare, materials, industrials, and staples. So Sean we we we had some elections recently and looks like we're gonna have a divided government.

A lot of folks saying that's bullish for risk assets. Are you in that camp? I am, um, although I don't know what the it's ultimately gonna wind up that way. I mean I would wait waiting on Georgia. Um. I mean, well, George, the Senate's over there, you know, the Senate, we're not.

The Republicans are going to control the sense. All that's left is really that they can squeak out a win in the House, and that would be you know, the most divided of all divided governments, because all spending bills start in the House, and so they won't you know, with the Democrat House, they can at least make their way to the Senate and then the ultimate to the

President's desk. I don't think there's going to be any spending bills that will come out of the House if it's controlled by the Republicans, and the market generally likes that. But you have, you know, this over I don't think you can go purely based on historical trends. You know that every time we have you know, divided government, the market goes up or from November to April. The markets always up and these sort of you know, cyclical stories

or historical or trend aask trends. I think, you know, you have to take a look at what's really going on, and and what's really going on is that, you know, inflation continues to be a struggle. It would wouldn't surprise me if the FED changed its target for inflation and moved it up a little bit since they're having such a hard time. But they're just committed to raising rates so much so that they are going to damp in quote unquote demand, which means they're going to basically slow

down the economy. And the question is going to be are they going to slow it down and have it, you know, come to a soft landing or they have to slow it down things come crashing down. And I think, you know, if you base you know, your judgment on historical you know, anomalies with them, you know, do they ever get it right at the Fed? They very rarely do get it right. So I will hope for better performance coming up here. Shaun O'Hara, he's a president of

pacer Ets, hope for it, but we won't invest that. Yeah, I think it's what said that's right. Hope for the best, prepared for the worst. Shawn Ohara, thanks so much for joining us your ETF shows at one End Wall Street time today. Right, that's correct. You talk a lot butts because that's where the money. Well, they've been huge this year, right when you haven't seen any I, P O, S, M and A has burned out, but E t F launches just continue to pile in it and investors are

loving it. And some real names in terms of the firms no larger global head of E t S at one of those real names, Alliance Bernstein. Uh no, thanks so much for joining us here talk to us about active e t f s and kind of how that plays into kind of what you guys are doing there at Alliance Bernstein. Thanks very much for having me on this morning. Yeah, I think you know, active ETFs are

pretty interesting part of the landscape multiple last two years. Uh, you know, we're coming up on thirty years of et F s in the U S. But but the active scene is really While we've had active products in the last fourteen fifty years, it's really popped in the last couple of years, um for us and Alliance Bernstein. You know this was an important step of taking some of our best thinking and figuring out how to put it into a vehicle that's very accessible, UM, easy for clients

to get to. Uh, just just really meeting them where they are, and the land escape is shifted. In the last couple of years, the SEC made some some changes to the rule set for issuing ETPs about two and a half years ago, and that's been a driver behind a lot of the firms, you know, Laton like lines Burnstein and others saying it's it's a good time to get into this space. So, I mean, does this completely

take over? We've seen a lot of UM mutual funds convert into e t s, which makes sense right because you have a smaller cost basis and they're easier to trade. Is it? Do you think the future do we do we even need mutual funds anymore? Yeah? I think I think there's still a place. I mean, it's very you know, look at the trend is absolutely there that etp s are growing continuing to take a greater and greater share

of the flows. But you think of the retirement space where maybe a mutual funder like a collective trust structure UM is still you know, incredibly vibrant, um other other areas of distribution where um, you know, the et F doesn't always fit as neatly. So I don't think. I mean, I think since I've been in I've been doing this for more than uh more years, and I care to say um, and people have been sort of saying, oh, against the end of mutual funds. But but really, you know,

we know that from the utility perspective. You know, there's rarely a one size fits all and the space for separate accounts for ets, for mutual funds, um, they're utilized heavily by by investors across the well the past, you know, et s were kind of um stealing Jack Bogel's lunch, so to speak, because they were passive. Now, okay, Vanguard happens to be one of the top two issuers of ets. But um, But but and mutual funds, you know you could have active management there, which is what kind of

separated them. Now you've got actively managed e t f s. Yeah, and that's that's again. I think we're we're um, that's going to be an area of growth. I mean, the flows and ets this year we're on track, probably had the second best flows of overall dollars into et F and you know, it's obviously a very confused market period over thirteen and that it's going into active et S with again a lot of the sponsors just coming in. So I think it's as much about putting new strategies

into the marketplace. You mentioned the conversions. I think it's still early days for that. There's um pros and cons to that strategy. Uh, But I think overall, if if a manager has the ability to bring ETPs into the marketplace, um, again, because of the the accessibility and some of the cost and tax advantages in the US market, it's a pretty attractive means for active managers to get some of their

best thinking out there. Hey, no, give us a sense of you know, retail versus institutional ownership of e t s, how has it evolved in and how do you think it's going to play out over the next you know, several years. Yeah, it's it's actually remarkably steady. I mean, if if you look at at the market as a whole um, it's tended to be almost fifty fifty, which you know, every time I look at that, I always think God that you know, it's kind of shift at

some point. But for new ets, the the adopters are often you know R I A S are are a big player that's facing investment advisors because they have that ability to think about what it's best for their clients for loil and what they want to put in there. And then institutions UM love the ETFs. It's you know,

you think it's counterintuitive. A big institution could probably get something for even lower cost or or greater um flexibility, but they love the ETF structure for the same reasons that the retail audience does, which is they can buy as much or as little as they want, they can hold it for as longer as little as they want, and there's not sort of the gating process there to keep them in or out of the marketplace. And so

we still see really heavy participation newer issues. Sometimes it takes a little while for an institutional to engage, but that's not always the case. Sometimes you'll have institutions coming right out of the gate because it's a it's an exposure that it's their portfolio needs. Yeah, I mean, costs can't get much lower, right, We're talking just a handful of basis points UM to to own a lot of e t F s. What do you think the um the next wave of issuance is and we we saw conversions.

There's an e t F for everything. So we've seen it grow into um different spaces. We've even seen them UM chop up uh you know debt levels. If so, if you want you know, uh C minus debt exposure,

you can get that. What's what's on the horizon? Yeah, I think that it would the entrance of of you know, more active managers and certainly you know a aligns Furnstey in the way we're looking at this is UM BTF does let you get very granular if you want to your point, you can you can go really deep in one area or you can look at at broad market teams.

And that's pretty important. UM. If you think about, you know, the evolution the most investors in the US, you know, over the span of decades, it's like, well, you know, if you like the individual security, that's great, but there's risk theirs. So maybe by the industry, if you like industry, by the sector. UM, you just sort of diversify your

best thinking. And I think we continue to see thematic you know, global thematic trends playing out in portfolios, and I think that's one of the areas of growth that you're going to see where people think about some of

these cross sector aspects. We saw over the last couple of years some of the concerns around supply chain and where um, some of the great strength of the global economy stumbled a little bit, and so what companies are set up to take advantage of the fact that there might be a retrench you of some of those systems are a different way of thinking about how to move goods and services around the globe. And I think that type of thematic thinking is going to continue to play out,

especially in the in the active ETF space. So in an active et F, I mean Matt was just mentioning the low fees, But in an active et F, don't I have to I guess, utilize an active management team, and don't I have to pay them? How do I keep the cost of Yeah, so I think, yeah, there's I mean the range of costs and in et F

are you know, it's it's pretty extreme. I mean you go from you know, three or four basis points for some of the largest broadest equity index products you know, up into basis points for some active constructs where you've got you know, unique UM, you know i P being brought into play. And and you know what we've seen over time is that, UM, the low cost beta story you know, remains interesting and relevant for for some some

aspects of the core portfolio. But investors are very much willing to engage at different price points if they feel like from a performance perspective or from a risk perspective, or just trying to attain some goal in the portfolio, whether that's income or some type of you know, a buffer type strategy. UM, they're still willing to pay for it. And we certainly saw that over the last couple of years. UM since you know, since spring of twenty UM price

wasn't the only factor. Ye alright, no, great stuff. Appreciate checking in with us. No Archer, Global head of ets at Alliance Bernstein, and those are two of the bluest chip names in asset management, Alliance and Bernstein, and now they're together and they are in the et F space in a big way. All Right, Amazon Matt ten employees that are laying off. Okay, that's kind of news, but context they have over one point five million employees, so

less than one percent, but true. Still the story, the theme is big tech, who's done nothing but higher for literally a generation, nothing but in the hiring mode. This is the first time I can remember. I know that we had a little bit and obviously the dot com area, but um that you know, kind of there's a theme there. They're starting to pair back a little bit. Remember the fact that the new generation of reporters that comes into the studio to talk to us does not remember the

dot com bust. They were born front center, on the front line. And so yeah, I think the interesting thing is you're seeing a lot of these companies, especially the ones who did big hiring last year, start to do layoffs beyond Elon Musk just firing half of Twitter. You've got Facebook, You've got Microsoft, You've got uh now now Amazon. But the thing to me is, um, they usually need to add employees this time of year. Right, that's amazing.

All right, let's talk cars. You want to do that? Yes? Please? All right, why don't you bring in Kevin Tynan because I think he does that stuff right. Kevin Tynan joins a senior automotive analysts Bloomberg Intelligence and Kevin let's talk about UM. Well, first of all, rivan Um putting some price hikes, uh, putting putting some price hikes out there, and they're already expensive enough. I built one, I think pretty conservatively and already got to dollars. Is that going

to hit demand? Well? Sure, yeah, I mean but look at the stage we're in. You know, if one fifty lightnings are transacting above eight tho. Yeah, well I'm saying the average, and we get those numbers every month, it's still well into the eighties on average, but yeah, you can get them up into six figures UM. And that's just the point we're at. And it's even intensifying now

because of material costs UM. Where to sell something at even break even, We're talking about sixty thou plus, so you're not gonna you know, and there's gonna be very few automakers that will sell something unprofitably. Right. This is what I've been talking about forever UM and now that point is just getting higher and higher, which is why you're seeing price increases. So, Kevin, here's why this whole ev thing is can be a lot bumpier than I

think the bulls think. I mean, don't you have to replace almost every gas station out there with a charging station. And some of these trucks require, like, you know, enough power to power small talent. There's a Bluemark article out today with that kind of analysis. Yeah, and and it's interesting. I was just in UH speaking with the greater Cincinnati auto dealers who doesn't do that luncheon last weekend. And this is what Kevin does. He goes to speaks to

auto dealers in Cincinnati. That's what you're gonna do. You want to cover this business, and you have to talk to the dealership owners. Yeah, yeah, and and and we had dinner the night before with the UH some Ford dealers and one of the things that you know, we've heard about Ford requesting from their dealerships and investment of a million US dollars to update to be able to sell evs um. And was talking to some dealers and they were saying, we were fine with all that, changing

the store, new tile, new entryways, charge points. And when they went to the local utility, they said, yeah, you're talking three years before we can get that kind of power from the street to your store. So even even these dealers who want to go along with Ford sort of you know, internal combustion side and e V side still have to wait because the infrastructure is just not there yet. And imagine what it would be, Um, if we were talking e V or or more as we're

saying it's gonna be this, is gonna be this. I'm not sure we're ready for that. But they're still gonna I mean, someone who's gonna buy an e V uh today, Um, they're still gonna buy it, right, Yeah, they're still gonna sell as many. These companies are still gonna sell as many as they can make. That's not a constraint. Yeah, that the issue is they won't make that many. Uh, that's because they don't get the kind of margins that

they'd like to. They still get the margins from the big trucks from the six point to leader V eight and not from right. Well. So, so the concept we hear all the time is, oh, when there's price parity between internal combustion and e V, the consumer will adopt and will That's where the tipping point in EV adoption comes.

And I'm saying it has nothing to do with price parity, has everything to do with profit parity, because the whole adoption thing is determined by the automaker, not by the consumer, because the automaker is the is the entity that decides am I going to build and sell something unprofitably? Probably not? Or am I going to sell the profitable thing? And

that's kind of where we are. So you know, if if internal combustion and e V are both thirty five thousand dollars, well how much how much margin is each of those will determine which one gets adopted, because that's what the manufacturer is going to market and push and

and that's what the consumer will end up buying. I mean you you know, if there if there's a twenty thousand dollar difference on a thirty thousand and thirty five dollar vehicle in terms of profitability, well you know, you're just not gonna purposely sell things unprofitably for very long. What's the deal with riv and kevin Um. The stock has been up to one seventy two, it's down to thirty three right now, even with the massive rally the last couple of days. Are they gonna make it? Yeah?

I mean, you just it's this push for scale now, right, which is interesting because you guys are talking about tech companies and that was this sort of veil that everybody hit under. We're not an automaker, We're a tech company. And now that's right, Like that's not Maybe it's such a great thing, um, but but at the end of the day, the auto industry has if there's one word, it's scale. You just need to be able to build

a lot of things. Margins aren't great. Uh, you need to do it all over the world, and you need to just keep cranking them out. And these these companies that were wildly valued were on this potential or total addressable market, not on the reality of where they were scales scale wise. Kevin, just real quick, what are you driving right now? I actually have the Ionic five from Hyundai their e v We get four hour blocks to

charge them here in Princeton. So I just ran out there to UM to update my charging and froze my butt off, and I'm thinking, how is this better than me sitting in my car while somebody put that vehicle that's one that consumers love. Alright, good stuff, Kevin Tyne. And he's our auto analysts, quasi tech analysts now covering the auto industry from Cold Prince, New Jersey. Here's the story, Matt that really got my attention on the Bloomberg terminal.

Today London loses crown of biggest European stock market to Paris. I didn't even think that was an issue. I didn't even think that was on the table. So I said, all right, let's get somebody smarting here to kind of tell us how this happened, what it means going forward, because I guess this is a Brexit situation ration here or fallout from Brexit. So we've found a great guest,

Marianne Scordell. She is the founder of a Bourgeville consulting Actually like that pronunciation solid perfect Mary, and so this again, it is just amazing to me. Tell me how this came about because we used to think, and I guess we still do those that along with New York, London is like the global financial hub. But I guess this is a victim of Brexit. Well, you know, since the referendum was voted, which was a few years ago now

it was in there's been a trend. So for a long time people were wondering, or where shall we go from London, because in order to operate on the continent, you now you have to be on the continent. You could do it from London, but you can't do it from London anymore. You don't have what they call the European passport from London anymore. So the question always was

where shall we go? Where shall we go? And for the last like since a lot of financial services companies have opened small offices in continental Europe, sometimes with just one person, very small kind of to hedge their beds at the beginning, and now they're just beefing them up. And that's what's happening. So we still have huge asset classes, you know, dominated by London. For example f X right is. I don't even know how many trillions of dollars f

X trades a day in London, but it's giant. How big is the stock market, the European stock market trading in Paris versus what it is in London, Well, I don't know. But the choice of Paris really is to have like people in one city to exchange because a lot of what happens happens like physically. I know in the last two years we were all like not in the office, but it's really important to be all in

the same place, in the same office. So that's one of the reasons why you know, people, companies, business managers were looking for one location to have everybody. I guess that's kind of what I'm what I'm really asking is where are all the people because um I remember when I'm not sure if there's still the case, but it used to be that you had the trade equity is in Osaka, actually physically enter your orders in Osaka. But everybody in the equities industry wanted to live in Tokyo.

So what they would do is, you know, the top guys would pick some kid and and send him to Osaka and whenever they want to make trazy, just call him up. Right, Is this same thing happening? Are the important managers still living in uh, you know, Mayfair or Chelsea and just calling in their orders to Paris? Sometimes?

I mean I know people who actually commute, you know, with the Eurostar it's about two hours to go from London to Paris, maybe three hours door to door, so so you know it's a lot of people still have the kids at school in London and they go they spend the week in Paris. It was the case, to be fair before before Brexit, some people did that the other way around. Actually, the Flamilies were more on the continents, people worked in London and they spend the weekend on

the continent and the week in London. Now they do the other way around. It's not a big deal at all. So Mary and you spent a lot of time of your professional career in London and no more, no Mura, Barclays. When you talk to your clients over there, do they feel like that the time of London as a global financial hub, that that is in fact in the rear view mirror, that's in the past where we've kind of lost that position. I think it's not a done deal yet.

People are still kind of in two minds. It's been really progressive since the referendum. So now they are adding people, even like banks such as Golden Sacks, Morgan Standing, they're adding stuff to their Paris office Paris offices and so it's but but it's not a done deal yet. I mean, you can't say now Paris is bigger than London in terms of being the financial center. It's working progress and things can still change a little bit. You know, it's not um it was, It's not yet black or white.

I think we have to bear that in mind. The elephant in the room when you're talking about France or the same is true. I guess another sort of social democracies as tax right and the Wall Street crowd or um, you know, the London finance crowd doesn't want to move there, um and then find out that all of a sudden

the Parisian left has brought out the guillotine again. Well, I hope they never will do that anyway, but it's very true that that's one of the big questions, together with the labor law and tax However, the French want to refer like the French government has done a big marketing pushed towards the financial community, so they for example, they come to New York fairly, you know, fairly often to meet fund managers to say how Paris has become, you as a business friendly in financial services but in

business overall. And it's true that they're trying to reform, but that's very obviously very slow. That's normal. Um. So it's it's basically taking time, but hopefully hopefully they'll get there.

From experience, what I can say is that it's a lot easier now than it used to be to access regulators, to access even like the government, when you need to ask questions they have like they're more open for business now than they were maybe ten years ago, and I know that from experience doing that for my clients have been moving a few hege funds too to continent Continental Europe, um Portugal, also Paris. So it's interesting. But is Germany

an option here? Because when I think of just I mean when I was on the south side, might stop in Germany was always Frankfort that was a major European financial hub. Is that still the case and are they trying to get are they successfully taking some of that talent from London? So I do a lot of less business in Germany. One reason is very simple. I don't speak German. I speak a lot of other languages, but

not German. So you know, usually clients who come to me are clients who are more interested in the continents. A lot of people are saying that Germany is I'm sorry, I maybe it's not true, but they are saying it's a bit dull. So that's why, you know, that's why traders and salespeople prefer to live in Paris and Germany. That maybe one of the reasons. It's deadly, deadly boring living in Frankfort and the best Thingstchester I've lived. I've lived.

I've spent years living in Frankfort and the I mean, it's really fantastic to have the airport so close and easy to get out of Frankfort. But otherwise there's not a lot to do. They're compared to Paris. Dublin was also an option that a lot of people were interested in. Madrid is one that I think would be great. Um, you mentioned Portugal. What are some of the alternatives? Where

else are people looking at? Yeah, there's also Amsterdam. Several clients have asked me to enquire about the regulatory regime in Amsterdam, and you know, everything around it, because if you go somewhere and you live there, it's not just wherek it's you know, how how is it going? What is it going to be like for the schools for kids? Schools? They have a lot of international schools in Amsterdam. Everybody speaks English as well, which is not necessarily the case

in Um, for example, in Spain. Right, UM, definitely is not the case in I know that exactly because you flounder. My wife is Spanish and none of her family knows how to speak English, and I don't know how. Maybe they just don't want to speak to you. That's all right, Maryanne, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate getting uh your perspective. You're on a story that I think it's just really fascinating. Uh. London Loser's Crown the biggest

European stock market to Paris. Marianne Scordell found her of a Bougeviilt Consulting. I appreciate you being in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews with Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller. Yet on Fall Sweeney I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney Before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio