Mortgage Rates, Markets, COP27, and World Cup (Podcast)

know where the Fund of Reserve is going. So I need some smart people to kind of kind of bring it together. Vince Signarella, global macro strategist at Bloomberg News, joins us uh and Jennifer Lee, senior economist the managing director at BEMO Capital Markets, joins us as well. Jennifer, I'm gonna start with you here. Um, I guess Mike have many questions. One of my questions is, all right, I get it where you are either in or we're

going into recession. Like a lot of people, just tell me how long it's going to be, how deep it's gonna be. Is there any way to kind of gauge that at this point? Oh, good morning. You know what, UM, I think that's still the million. The other question, UM, we continue to stand by our mild recession call. UM for now. Of course we're going to take it, and I'll quote all the different central bankers out there, especially

GUARD on a day to day meeting by meeting basis. UM. But we're still looking for, you know, the downturn to hit in the first half of UM and then a mild rebound in the second half, averaging zero point zero percent growth for all. This is for the US and for Canada as well. UM. I've been pretty surprised actually that after like what three and fifty basis points or whatever of remix, the US economy is still moving forward. UM. And it shows how resilience everything is. And it looks

like they're gonna keep hiking. I mean, they keep telling us they're not going to pause, they're not going to pivot. Vince, what do you think about the latest UM, you know Bowlard charts showing that we need to be between five and seven percent for a restrictive economy, sorry, restrictive rates.

I just don't doubt it. To be honest with you, I remember many years ago, I I was speaking with silly, said President Closter, And I asked, I was starting to ask him a question about whether or not he goes into a supermarket, and he abruptly interrupted and said, I do. When I've seen the price of cereal. I wonder if

that's the case with Bullard, because we're seeing in commodity prices. Well, he famously, um, you know, ordered a bicycle that he then couldn't get because the supply chain issues, and when it was finally delivered, he was given a two up charge. Um,

So he's worried about that. Maybe maybe that's paint at his point of view, because when I look at energy prices, uh, in particular, they're telling me, uh that exactly what Jennifer said that in a procession is coming U probably for the first quarter at least, perhaps the first two quarters of next year. But dude, when you look at c P, I what in the hell like you got to do

something right? Seven point seven or cent. Yeah, but it takes time for inflation to come down, and inflation expectations are starting to drop if you if you look at what crew futures versus inflation expectations for one year out in the University of Michigan. They're tied at the hip. And when with these crew futures coming down, I'm going to suggest to you that when we see the next

few mission one year inflation expectations, they're gonna come down. Also, we're going into a holiday driving season and guess only in futures dropping, we're going into the winter and all the entire energy complex is dropping precipitously. At w t I down four percent this morning. That doesn't strike me as there's real strong demand out there for the consumer.

Monket And and Jennifer, you know, we were just kind of getting through the bulk of the earnings releases from a lot of the big retailers, and again my takeaway, it seems like maybe with the exception of Target, pretty strong out there, the consumer seems in pretty decent position.

How do you think about the consumer um? It's you're right, And I was actually a little bit heartened by something that that James Bullard said earlier this week that who is mentioning the bullish factors for the economy, And he said he started like state flush, state government savings and he's still constituent continued to sit excess household savings and still high household wealth, and that's I think this is

where it's all coming from. And you know, you're still seeing wage increases that we're trying to avoid that whole wage price spiral thing. But I think that's the plus side, even though yes, that's insulationary. But on the plus side, you know, at least consumers are making money, at least they have a job and they're making a city income and be you know a hundred times where resibu is going the other way. But so, why do we see crude prices coming down? Is the concern that consumers are

gonna stop spending on oil next year? Is it more of a global story? Obviously it's a fungible commodity and it trades around the world. I mean, I don't think we're doing any less driving. I think I've heard people say this is gonna be a very busy Thanksgiving season. I'm taking my brand new Chevy Silverado z R two back to Ohio with a six point two leader V eight. It's naturally aspirated. I get thirteen point four miles a gallon, and I'm excited for that trip. So, so why is energy?

Why are oil prices dropping? I think it's still looking forward, I mean because yours are still spending, um obviously, but just looking at the data, but obviously the pace has slowed and they're not going to continue spending at this current rate. And hence this is why you know we're looking for that downtren in the first half. UM. And

with all prices. I mean that's this morning. But you know we've seen this week that it can be extremely volatile and you can't just scout Russia obviously ever from the mix, so they can just say one thing and boom you can see what oil prices heading higher again. UM. So I think it's more you know, looking ahead, UM, the coming slow down and things have started to slow,

but they're gonna slow more meaningfully in the new year. UM. Just given that we've seen such high prices, still high inflation, not even though it's coming off the peak, still too high for any for anyone's liking. And that's what's going to that's what's prompting. I think energy prices, the weaker weight on energy prices even thirty seconds have we seen peak US dollar? I think? So, I think when you see a bit in risk in the spud correlating UM

within inverse. Uh. Dollar. I like stocks higher going into next year and into the end of this year. Uh and I think that will that'll see the dollar all over all. Right, Vin's good stuff. We appreciated Vin Signarella, macro strategist for Bloomberg News, and Jennifer Lee, senior economist and managing director BEMO. That's Bank of Montreal all for the folks. I've been in this game a while BMO Capital Markets. We appreciate that good stuff. Here and again, Matt,

here's my gasoline chart. You know, it's my Paul Sweeney Personal Inflation gauge daily national average gasoline prices for regular unleaded three dollars and seventy cents. We're getting down to almost the low that we touched, you know, back in September. So gasoline rolling over. You called out the w t I crude. We've got a seven handle in their seventy

eight dollars fifty five cents. Uh. So that's your energy complex prices coming into the mortgage markets, interest rates, you know, coming down, and I'm looking at that, you know, the ten year you know Treasury it's three point seven nine percent. We were well over four percent, four and a half percent. So what does it mean for the mortgage markets? Am I gonna get a better deal in the mortgage biz

Erica Heidelberg. She's a mortgage backed security see strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence and she joins us live here on the Bloomberg in Active Broker Studio. So Erica just talked to us about the state of the mortgage market today. Well, in terms of mortgage rates. Uh, last Thursday, after the CPI print, we saw the biggest one day fall in secondary mortgage market rates in history, fifty four basis points.

About half of that was because rates fell, about half of that was because spreads tightened, both of them kind of a relief rally, you know, thinking that the Fed probably will slow down their rate of increases. So, um, you know, good news for homeowners. Uh, you know, still at six sixty according to the Friday Max survey rate

this week. So it's not like buyer if you're already locked in, right, home own buyers specifically, yeah, or if you want to sell us, good news right, because a lot of people have been having difficulty selling since the

buyers can't get good rates locked in. Yeah, I mean that the point that I'm kind of trying to make It's definitely good for you know, the housing market some degree, but we're so far above where you know, homeowners, home buyers, anybody's used to having to take out a mortgage that I don't think it's at this point going to move the needle at all for very many people. Um, even that huge drop, even that huge drop. At some point,

people get used to these rates, right. All of our parents, I'm sure have told us I used to pay for a mortgage right, um, which seems unbelievable now, but there was a generation of people that locked in those rates. Yeah. For for those who are able to afford to take out mortgages at these levels, it's probably not even that big a deal because they can actually refinance of rates do fall, and you know, who knows where we's are going. But I think a lot of people don't necessarily expect

us to stay quite this high. But for other homeowners or home buyers, sorry getting that confused. For other home buyers, they can no longer afford the type of house they were looking for at all, especially first time home buyers. So one of the interests you right off, by the way, because you can deduct your interest payments, right, but only up to a certain amount. Right, It's limited at this point. Um, yeah, that the salt tax you're trying to No, not the salt.

We're still praying every night. I kneel down next to my bed praying for the salt deduction. But that's a different You can still deduct, and I can even deduct my mortgage interest. But I think there is a limit. Um, you can only deduct mortgage interest. I believe up to seven yeah, seven on a loan of yeah, and I

think even there it's capped. I know, you know, personally, I think at this point we're limited to the standard deduction between the but the salt tax, you know, getting taken away, and you know we don't owe that much interest left on the mortgage. Is the Federal Reserve buy mortgages, selling mortgages? Doing nothing? What are they doing in a mortgage market? Right? So the Federal Reserve almost exactly a year ago declared that they were going to taper their

buying of mortgage backed securities. They then we invested paydowns uh through June, um and even some through the summer, even though they technically were letting the portfolio start to run off. Ironically, even though they announced that they were going to start withdrawing from the mortgage market a year ago, their portfolio is the exact same size it was a year ago, because they grew it again through you know, June basically, and then it began to shrink from then.

So what's interesting though, is without even having to have changed the size of their portfolio, rates or of course, you know, tire, even with last week's sell off, I'm sorry, last week's rally and mortgage spreads are significantly wider, and the housing market is an entirely different place right now.

We had existing home sales out this morning. Ninth straight month of decline in home sales, fourth straight month of decline in median home prices from the existing home sales, although part of that seasonals, but it's still um you know, we've gone from a twenty percent year of year change, we're now down to about a six percent year of year change. So obviously a lot of softening and again fourth straight month actually you know, a decrease in price

in that in that index. What's building like right now in terms of putting up new uh UM stock, Well, home builders are pretty depressed at this point. Uh you know, I forget what the last number of I think it was like thirty three or something like that, where it's a diffusion index, and that means that two thirds of the home builders I got that right, whatever, more than more than half of the home builders are pessimistic about future building. That optimistic housing starts have been coming down

consistently in single family housing. But the interesting counter trend there is that multi family housing starts are increasing. So I think that's a recognition that a lot of um potential home buyers are actally gonna have to go into the rental market, right because those people we were talking about who are going to have difficulties swinging and mortgage payments with rates at these levels, are gonna have to

rent instead. And that's why I heard a read guy telling me the other day they're they're still building big multi family housing and and to your point to there are still a lot of homes under construction and a lot of new homes coming online which should help also at the supply. Didn't mad dynamic normalization? All right? Erica,

thank you so much. We appreciate it as always. Erica Heidelberg, NBAS strategist, Bloomberg intelligent, just joining us live here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio, two days away from the World Cup beginning in Doha. And they pulled and they from undreag pulled the beer rug right out from under all the folks that want to enjoy a cold one. Uh. We want to break this down. This is the World Cup, this is huge. We all know this is a global

sporting event. We have some great assets to talk to here, some people that really know what's going on. Simone Foxman, she's a reporter for Bloomberg Television and News and she is based in Cutter. That's how I pronounce it, um and I know you do. And we have Ira Jersey, he's Bloomberg Interstrate strategist. Why do we have him on because he actually owns a soccer team. He's actually into this whole thing of soccer. I don't get it, but

he's all in. Simone, Let's start with you here. I guess the news on the last twenty four hours coming out of Cutter is no Budweiser beer in the stadiums. How's that playing over there? Especially since they promised it for so long people who bought tickets planned on drinking at the game, right, Yeah, well they were are always going to be curtailed, and if I may, it's technically cut um. But I know most folks can't. Uh it's hard to say for most English speakers. But yeah, so

so we have these rules in place. They were announced in September. You can drink within the stadium perimeter, not the stance themselves. You can drink within the stadium perim or for three hours ahead of the game. Uh, then you go to the game, then you come back and you can drink for another hour and you'd only be able to drink buzz light. But yeah, this is a bit of uh well at the very last minute decision, certainly to ban alcohol entirely. I mean, alcohol is a

flashpoint issue here. It is something that you know, taboo under in the conservative Muslim culture. I've caught the people do drink, but it's in limited spaces. Only certain people can actually um buy alcohol and and at specific places.

So it's not surprising that this is an issue. What I think is surprising is the fact that this is forty eight hours ahead of the World Cup and we're still making these you and can I just jump in here, Um, Yeah, so you know, I was last month when I was on a trip to London to visit some of my team there. I did go to a Premier League game and I thought it was interesting that, Um, at Premier

League venues you're not allowed to drink in the stands either. Um, so it's not completely on process because nobody trusts British people with alcohol. Well no, no, there was plenty of drinking going on before the game in the hallways outside. Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying, like in the stands they weren't allowed to have alcohol. So so I don't know, if you know. Part of that I think is just the the you know, over indulgence number one and number two, just you know, things like like maybe

making a mess. So so I think for some Europeans it won't be particularly unusual to have to imbibe prior to the matches and then go into the stands. You know, UM, feeling pretty good? Can you smoke? Simone? Can you smoking? It says no, I don't think so. But you know, honestly I have I don't know the answer to that, Hey, Simone, you and your colleague ad faith Nayer. If I get there right, wrote a fantastic story today on the Bloomberg terminal about what guitar built for the most expensive World

Cup ever. Just about some of the huge numbers associated with this. Well, the big number here, according to Bloomberg get Intelligence, is three hundred billion dollars. That's the amount of money that the government has spent, not just on stadiums. Actually stadiums are a pretty small piece of this overall, um, but spent on infrastructure in preparation for the World Cup.

So things like a brand new metro system, an entire new metro system in the last twelve years at brand new city called Blue Sale that was underway a little bit, but it's something that's been continue to be built. UM. And newport and expansion of the airport. All of these things, um were things that Cutter wanted to do anyway, but the timeline was really sped up as preparation for the World Cup. Stadiums again small piece of that, about ten

billion of that overall three billion dollar figure. Huge, huge, But how much money does the World Cup pull in? Do you? Do you have any of the figures here? I know you're too quickly just following the rates market, UM, but it's big business. Right. Obviously, um, if Qatar was willing to bribe FIFA with I don't know how much it costs them to to get to get the World Cup, but it must have been pretty pretty expensive. How much

does the whole thing generate? Yeah, so I mean it's similar to something like the Olympics, where you're going to be driving significant amount of tourism revenue and um you know, things like like rental. And it's also an opportunity you go to think about a place like Brazil when they hosted a few years ago, a couple of tournaments ago. UM, it's an opportunity for you to highlight what you have in terms of tourism and it and it gives usually

good vibes for UH for a particular countries. So so that's where this whole idea of sports washing comes in, where you know, countries host these big events that maybe don't have the um you know, don't necessarily have what what you know, Westerners would consider you know, good civil rights or or um UH or governments that are free and democratic, but it allows you to highlight what you

do have in terms of tourism, infrastructure. You know, whether or not you know cutter is going to be one of the great places that's going to benefit from from that from having the World Cup. I'm not sure a lot of people that I've talked to about this, we're you know, pretty disappointed. It was going to be in

the winter, right, This isn't a normal time. Usually it's a summer event, um somewhere, we're you know, May through um late May through through July event as opposed to you know, now in the middle of what is in most most countries, this is the middle of their soccer seasons for their their club sports. So um, so this is really not a particularly good time to be having this.

From a it's not a particularly good place obviously, right, I mean, who would have chosen Qatar for the World Cup had it not been for massive injections of liquidity into his bank account? Someone? Are they playing? Just let me take a little bit of issue with that though. I mean, this is a development story for this country for sure, and from a FISA's perspective, and in corruption allegations aside. You know, their desire is to expand football

into new parts of the world. That's why we're going to see a mainly US focused the World Cup come six. But also you know where else and Mina is actually going to be able to cobble together that kind of funds, the kind of infrastructure that you need in order to be able to host a World Cup. You're really looking at the Gulf. Yes, the Gulf has its own ambitions, but here the ambition is to build a non oil economy,

to move away um from hydro carbon. And so for them, that's why this three billion dollars, this makes a lot of sense. So are they going to host the Winter Olympics next? Saudi Arabia is actually gonna host the Asian Winter Games. I've I've forgotten the year here. I believe it's tight, but someone's gonna call me and tell me I'm wrong. But believe it or not, Yes, I believe it Saudi Arabia. Believe it all right some And thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate getting uh

your time here. Simone Foxman, she's in Doha. She covers that part of the world for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Television, so it's great to get her on feats on the ground type of reporting there. And we got our Jersey. He's Bloomberg Interest Rate strategist but he is our expert for all things football slash soccer, and uh, please take a look at Simone's article on the Bloomberg trompins from shirts on Bloomberg dot com. It gives you anything if you have a terminal in front of you and I

big take, and I big take. It's good stuff and great reporting. So check it out on Bloomberg dot com slash A big take. All right, let's check in and get a real, real overview what's going on in the retail space. We've had a lot of retailers report earnings over the last several days. We want to bring in Punham Goyle. She's a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence that covers all things retail. So, Punham, what are some of

your takeaways? And look like some decent numbers out of you know, the likes of the Gap and foot locker and raw stores. Consumers pretty good? Uh, consumer is not pretty good. I think they're okay. I think I think our expectations had been muted, so compared to muted expectations of results are definitely better. Um. I think it comes back to inventory really here, when I look at the

earnings that I've been out over the last week. UM, you are seeing inventory getting better aligned with demand, which I think is the plus point here, especially heading into holiday when you know you want to kind of control the markdowns even though we know it will be very promotional. That was probably most promising to me through a lot of these earnings. We had raw stores last night, and there it was about inventory control. They were able to,

you know, cut back on their inventories drastically. They were up I believe about over fifty at the end of second quarter and now down now just up less than ten percent. So really big inventory improvements is overseeing. So a lot of retailers are at least positively surprising the markets UM from Walmart UM to Ross stores. And we also have a lot of like Athletic and at leisure brands doing well. But Target has done the opposite. What's

wrong with them versus the rest versus everyone else? You know, it's given what we've seen out of everyone else, and when I look at Target, it's it's a bit surprising to what's happening there, But I think it may have to It goes back to inventory because compared to Walmart, you can argue that, you know, Target is more discretionary, which it is because half of Walmart fills do come from consumables. But then when you see gaps doing okay, you see Macy's doing okay, Ross, t j X are

all doing okay. But I think the expectations for Exami were much lower than they weren't than they were for a Target. So I do think Target UM just needs to work through its inventory position and then you know, people still love Tarj. It's still it's still a favorite brand. Hey put them Black Friday, Cyber Monday. I know they're not as big as they once were for retailers, but still it's a big deal. It's a big data point. What are you expecting? Lots of discounts, So if you

have shopping lists, shop on Black Friday. UM retailers have way too mench inventory on hand. There will be promotions. Everyone's in a bid to gain market share, and consumers are looking to spend as they're crunched for cash. This holiday season. They will be spending more over the five

day holiday weekend than they did last year. UM. We think overall online sales will be good, but they will be focused largely on Cyber Monday and overall holiday The online sales gains will moderate to single digit levels versus double digits in the past multiple years that I've watched it. How how how close attention do you pay to pump prices because for a lot of these big box stores, gasoline sales are also um, you know in play. Yeah. Absolutely.

I mean lower fuel prices as a plus going into the holiday season as people can fill up their tank and now worry about having to drive out a little to get their shopping needs. Matt Um. So lower fuel price you talked about earlier, I think is a positive right now for consumer spending. So on Black Friday, put them where are you going to be? I Am going to be at the Freehold mall and stores nearby, checking out to all the deals as always so I used to. I mean, I'll drive by the I'll drive by, not

going the Short Hills mall. I'm just expecting, fully expecting it. The parking lots to be packed. Am I going to see that? I think you will, because remember people haven't been out to stores for a long time, right because of the pandemic, So it's just that urge. We're seeing the revival of stories this year, and I think that

trend will continue. And also they're looking for deals, so they'll if there's only store specific deals this year, which we haven't seen the full deal calendar yet, then that will draw people to stories. All right, good stuff. As always, this is Punham's time of year, the big shopping season. She's got it all covered for us. UH put them Boyle Bloomberg Intelligence. She covers all things retail for b I.

She's been doing it for decades. We poached her from Goldman Sachs way back in the when we were building UH Bloomberg Intelligence, so she's been here since the beginning. We always appreciate getting her perspective. And literally the Black Friday, she along with all a lot of other Wall Street retail animals, they literally go to the stores that just kind of see what's you know, how many people are there, what kind of products are moving, what kind of promotions

are being offered. Uh, that's kind of feeds on the ground kind of research. So that's good stuff, and we'll look forward to reading Plutom's research well. COP twenty seven. The United Nations Environmental Conference in Egypt wrapping up today after a two weeks get together, so always a good time to talk about the environment and kind of what businesses are and what they're doing to deal with environmental issues. So we thought we'd check in with a VJ. Mathri Pragata.

He's a president CEO of Montrose Environmental Group. That's a New York Stock Exchange list a company m e G is the symbol we can put into your Bloomberg terminal. But most notably he is a graduate of the Duke University, so good for him. I guess he couldn't get into the Duke Business School, so we went to some place called work for the NBA. So pretty good stuff there. Hey v Jus what you guys at Montrose are doing these days? Hey Matt, Hey Paul, it's wonderful to talk

to you guys. UM uh and uh in another Duke grad it's uh, it's wonderful to hear that. UM. We are, you know, we're an environmental company. We we create environmental solutions, and so we are right in the throes of UM working on issues related to greenhouse gas measurement mitigation for our clients, which you know you started with talking about cop um. We're helping treat water to get it back to communities. UM, it's it's an incredible time to be

in this space. It's really exciting. So what exactly do you do, because that's a very broad environmental company, could mean so many different things. Um, what's the day to day business? Yes, I'll give you. I'll give you a couple of examples. We um. We were one of the pioneers, early adopters of optical gas imaging, which is a way to use cameras to see methane methane emissions right, which is an odorless and colorless gas. So our teams go

out and help our clients understand what's being emitted. It's a better, cheaper, fastor way of doing it that we then report out on that for them, which helps them reduce their emissions footprint, which is obviously very topical. And the recent methane rule that came out last Friday has now adopted that as the best system of emissions reduction. So that's an example of something we've been doing for

years that has material implications for broader climate objectives. V J talked to us about kind of your clients and how they view their impact on the environment. Has it changed are they is it becoming more front and center for them? Is it something their board is pushing for. How is that. I would point out to our listeners that you have a lot of clients who were probably previously big environmental sinners and you help them, um, you know,

recover oil and chemical companies, utilities, etcetera. Yeah, it's great, that's a great point. I mean we worked, we worked a lot with industry, and you know, our philosophy has always been that the environment's an interconnected organism and we're all participants in this right when we uh drive to work, when we go visit family, we interact with all the products that these companies produce. UM. And so it's an

interconnected whole. And so yes, we are working with them to become better stewards of the environment, and they've been deeply engaged. It's been really interesting to watch. Just Montrose is a you know, a ten tennis year old company. Even over the courts of the last decade. Uh, the environmental agenda has just become front and center in ways I never expected. Um, it is front and center for boards and C suites, investors and the markets have really

pushed on this. Uh. There's E s G commitments, and then obviously the regulatory landscape has been evolving really rapidly UM across multiple administrations and political UM parties across the world. So it's it feels like a very dynamic and attractive spot for us to be in as a business. So where are you guys investing in your capital? Where do you guys see the growth going forward? Yeah, so we've we are long on the broader greenhouse gas measurement and

mitigation space. I mentioned we were kind of early adopters of optical gas imaging. We're working with partners to develop methane sensors to plug into our software programs so people can see in real time what they're emitting. UM. We are forward leaning on helping manage UH and mitigate emissions from abandoned wells. UM. We've recently filed for some intellectual

property on carbon capture technology. We've been one of the leaders in UM the treatment of the forever chemicals, removing that from water and getting that back to communities made some doable progress. It's a large part of why the business is really growing as rapidly as it is right now. UM. We take agricultural waste, we make negative carbon intensity energy out of it. UM. The list goes on and on.

But we are. We're kind of having a great time working on what I would consider some of the world's most pressing issues. What uh you're you're not a nonprofit?

I mean you're out there to make money, right, Um, Well, if listeners could think, oh, but this must be a nonprofit, but you're you know, you're trading on the New York Stock Exchange right now about forty five dollars share a little bit more, um, And like most companies, you know, you had peaked at the end of one have come down with the rest of the market, but you've you've climbed considerably double or triple what you were at the beginning of UM. Tell us about the financial side of

the company we are. Um, gosh, where do you want me to start? I mean the yes, we went public in July. How did you get that done? Uh? We we I don't know. It's a good question. It's it's a blur. Um. That was obviously a really challenging time man, Paul, with the pandemic, but for what fifteen dollars a share and now you're trading at three x that? Yeah, Yeah, it's been it's been a crazy ride. Um. But most people seem to focus more on the fact that we were kind of at seventy five at the end of

last year, UM, and now we're down to investors. Are investors have been great, We've got all the big institutionals who have been really supportive. But yeah, the business. You know, look, we UM we were UH an entirely US based company five six years ago. We're now in Northern Europe, Canada, United States, Australia. You know, we're we went from people to now approaching three thousand. The business has more than

doubled UM since we went public. UM. We're very cash generative UM, which has allowed us to kind of put capital into research and development, which is where a lot of the things I mentioned earlier have come up. UM. So it's been it's been a it's been a challenging ride, uh, not to say the least, especially with this macroeconomic backdrop and some of the geopolitical stuff going on. UM. But you know, candidly, perhaps we're luckier than we are smart.

We're in the right place at the right time. I don't see the broader desire to solve these environmental problems go anytime soon, and that's a large part of what gets me excited every day, all right, VJ. Good stuff. Really appreciate getting some of your time now. You guys are busy over there in a growing company. VJ. MA three Pragada. He's a president CEO of Montrose Environmental Group there in New York's exchange traded company. And MS Mary E. G.

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. On ball Sweeney, I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney Before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio