Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney, alongside my co host Matt Miller.
Every business day, we bring you interviews from CEOs, market pros, and Bloomberg experts, along with essential market moving news.
Find the Bloomberg Markets podcast called Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. Darkening the Door, I gotta describe here what's going on here? Pretty this is a little bit I'm thrown unnerving here. All right, let's start with anaag Rana. He walks from the door freshly shaven. Now, the reason this is important because he's had a scraggly beard. I'm calling it for
a couple three years. I don't know if it was a pandemic thing, but I was petitioning from the shave it off since the first time I saw it. That's gone looks a thousand times younger. I would say, he looks him ten years younger.
I gotta say, I saw him walking towards the radio studio and I see a double take.
I didn't even recognize it.
I know. Sorry, which we got that going for us? Yeah, and then we've got Dan ives he covers technology stuff for web Bush Security. So I think I'm scruff are you? Okay, it's just not it's not even a choice here with Ana. You gotta go. And then he's got the haircut. He's like, it's a whole new on ruck, all right. So dan Ives comes in with an summer outfit that is right on the edge of being summer cool chic.
It's like fresh back from Bermuda. What's going on here?
Or it's right on that line of being cool and being obscene. I don't know where we are.
It's it's like a Picasso painting in a very strange way, like I can't even I don't even know what's saying.
And you brought that look over to Asia because I saw your postings on social media Daan when you're over on your marketing trip to Asia. You weren't holding back, were you.
No?
I mean we brought it from from two to one two over to Asia.
Oh that's where the color is coming from. Okay, this makes sense two one.
Two color over to Asia, and I think, yeah, I think it worked well. It could be a media a trend. You've started seeing some tech investers throughout Asia. It's because I mean it could besides AI and some of the themes, you could have a all.
Right, so let me here's all right, Let let me just go to anaack here, what does Nvidia do and why are they seemingly getting all these all this chip demand for AIS? Is this high bitch or is it real?
Well, the high pot is will always be driven by you know, a little bit of valuation. But I think one of the things you have to think about when you run some of the very large workloads, even on the cloud, you need really fast computers and you really need faster chips. And Nvidia is the leader in those chips out there, and they really posted good numbers, which basically tells us that the world is investing a lot more in high powered computers right now because of all the AI frenzy.
Before I go to.
Dan, can I just point out that the reason an rag has haircut and fresh shave and all that because there's an event happening this evening, afternoon, afternoon, slush evening it is, I argue.
Went to tell them, Yeah, there'll be a big semiconductory event we are having in the one twenty park about well, have Micron, Intel and Global founderies. They're talking about, you know, the the making of the chips in the US from an executive from Department of Commerce.
Yeah, perfect suite of.
Some of the Yeah, some of the some the biggest and some of the best. Very excited about that. Yeah, they are on top of it. Somean deep thing. Bloomberg Intelligence will be there on ROG of course leading the charge.
Yeah.
Good, good lineup, Dan, talk.
To us a little bit about this trade here the idea that kind of AI is driving in video shares and video isn't a pure play on AI necessarily. So how quickly does this thirty percent move in the stock get walked back?
Look, this is historic. I mean in covering tech stocks twenty two years, I've never seen anything in my career where you have a guidance raise sixty percent in the quarter. And I think the difference and why this is I think the ripple effects here in terms of this goal rushers happen in AI.
It validates it.
Demand is Eshian's real because ultimately, as that Aerog talks about, they're the ones that see at first. I believe, in my view.
This is just a start.
I think it's a revolution that's playing out and in my view, Microsoft, Google, across the board. It's just the start of what I view is probably the biggest transformational theme that I've ever seen.
Cortentions, You've been.
A techable for ages, so this is this is pretty This makes a lot of sense that you would say that what flips your view?
What gets in the way of us?
It's when I talked and I can tell you the last three weeks, like whether it's asier whether us when I talk to CIOs, when I talked to product managers, and now they're looking to spend for every one hundred dollars in cloud, spend thirty five to forty dollars incremental for AI. To me, that that's the game changing. That's why like, look those if your valuation centric and we've talked about this, you would have missed the Facebook's Netflix,
has it? I feel like this is one where we're talking conservatively eight hundred billion over the next decade incremental spend and mebe aggressively in the trillions with the amount of names you count on two hands, all.
Right, so Anurag explain to me, I mean every company in yester p. Five hundred and the last quarterly earnings mentioned AI Yeah, for the average company, average person, what is AI.
So it's you get trying to get a lot more insights from what you're doing already and try to make better decisions either on the revenue side or the cost site.
Because you have data, You have data, another way to analyze, organize and analyze data.
So you know, it's much easier to do on the consumer front because it's you know, we have all the consumer data, you have the Internet, you can feed off that. It's a little bit harder on the enterprise side because your data is extremely disaggregated in multiple systems, so it's a little bit of a longer process. Means you have to buy the computers which we we're looking at, or
the chips. Then you've got to figure out how to put the data in a common data platform where you're going to bring all the data together from let's say hundreds of systems. Then you got to analyze it, and then you put the algorithm on top of it to get you insights. So it's a little bit more longer term view when it comes to enterprises, but a lot faster when it's it's a consumer application.
Well, explain to me, like put put some numbers on it. For us, if we're looking at what do you say in it was an eight.
Hundred eight hundred billion or eight hundred billion an incremental spend that basically six months ago, wasn't there?
Okay, eight hundred billion over the next decade. And Dan, I'm going to come to you next on this, but explain how the math works here, because if you're looking at Nvidia, I think that this data right or something was like the share price a loan or the market cap alone off this rally has risen like one am D or something like that.
It's most direct competitor.
How do you price in eight hundred million worth of market over the next ten years.
So one of the things you have to see is you know what kind of applications are going to be created. Who's going to be the big beneficiary? Now we talked about a chip manufacturer. For our point of view, the cloud players are going to be the biggest beneficiary because you have to build this thing on a cloud. You can't really run it in your basement and come up with applications. These are things that require very fast computation
and very large memory needs. So you need very very large you know, cloud hyperscale cloud wider, So that's one big beneficiary. We also think, you know areas where such as you have a lot of consulting companies are going to come out and help out to create these applications. So that's very downstream work. But it really starts with the chip and the hardware level. Then it trickles down to software, then it trickles down to services. Everybody in
the ecosystem will get some piece of it. And we've seen every company service now just had their analysts day. They spent entires analysts day talking about, you know, how they're going to improve their product portfolio through it. Adobe did the same thing, you know, a few weeks ago. So everybody is spending crazy amount of money trying to make their products a lot more smarter for the users to use it.
All right, Dan, your turn. What's your price target? By the way, on in.
Video, Yes, well, I mean we think the video right here, I mean five hundred hours when you start to work at where this could be fat to six hundred hours could be fair value based on the income and opportunity, and then you even stream it to Microsoft Poe case. I mean you could have a start with a foreign front of it, because now all that incremental spend, it's going to Microsoft, it's going to Alphabet, it's going to
potential to Amazon and others. In my view to your question, I view it that now, look execution is clearly there will be issues. Now there's gonna be losers. There's gonna be AI roadkill as well. Yeah, but this goes back to basically a late nineties type feel in terms of trying trying to identify the winners. There will be losers. From evaluation perspective, I think it's sort of the it's a goal rush because now it really changes the whole paradigm in terms of what the revenue opportunity Paul.
For a radio audience, it's worth saying, he said, a four handle on Microsoft shares Microsoft shares are training at three twenty one right now, and a five handle on end Video training about three eighty a share.
Here's what I see, having been in this market for more than thirty years, I see the average portfolio manager anywhere in the world saying I have to have exposure to AI, calls up as tech analyst. Tech anist comes back with the NVDA. That's what we're seeing here today. I don't see. I don't see a seven hundred and fifty billion dollar market cap stock up twenty five percent on anything more than just panic buying.
Almost But to your point, I mean, you call it FOMA, but so many investadors that sit there in debt ceiling, macro evaluation, you're you missed these moves in the video in Microsoft and Alphabet in terms of institutional speaking, you're trying to figure out what fond to use on the resume this year. And I think that's that's sort of the issue. You could sit there, well, you could talk valuation till you're blue in the face. That in three
bucks gets you. He is not a coffee don't get all right, So when.
You're in Asia talking to clients and they say I want to get exposure to AI, what do you tell them?
So on the China side, clearly there's there's bob about ten cent by do you know from a China perspective, But more and more they're looking for us, and I viewed as the basket. It's it's Microsoft, it's Alphabet. I view powervolunteers and name that's a play here Salesforce dot Com. You have the chip players navidian a MD and then you kind of go down stream data dog, Snowflake, Mango dB. I mean you're really now starting to look at baskets and that's why today it all changes. I mean, I
view this as historic. If there was an earnings Hall of Fame, this would be historic in terms of what it means for broader tech.
An a quick question here on the infrastructure investment dan Way and if you have any thoughts. One of the things that overnight, I promise they're connected, but overnight one of the things that was so shocking was kind of the DeSantis going on Twitter thing. Trust me this connects, but Twitter essentially crashed and a lot of people said, look, they were preparing for a bigger fallout without having the
infrastructure to do it. Could a similar thought be applied to this kind of AI boom that everyone's ready for AI, but the infrastructure can't catch up.
See that's why I'm saying the hyper schedus love provider us at the right place to be because you don't have a bigger computer than Amazon across the world.
Yeah.
Now Amazon doesn't having you know, partnerships with some of these leading AI. I'll goithm companies right now. But I can bet you in the next twelve months all of that changes. It is just going to happen. So you can't run this thing, you know, in somebody's back office. It just doesn't work that way. Now, we will over time, at any given time, we will see crashes in the cloud infrastructure, just because that's the nature of it. It's
a bunch of computers connected together. You know, somebody somewhere it is going to do something stupid that will crash this thing.
I'd also say it is Andy Jasey right now has a number of people in some room somewhere in Seattle, and they're looking at it like they see Microsoft, they see Alphabet. They got to figure out their AI strategy, and that right now, I think is probably the biggest person need there.
All right, guys on ock ten seconds. What's your conference again today?
Semigindert conference. You can see it on Life Go.
Live, Go okay, And two of the best dressed tech analysts on Wall Street right here on a rag Rana from Bloomberg Intelligence, Dan Eyes from what Bush Securities joining us here to help us put in perspective kind of what we're seeing out there on as Dan was suggesting kind of a historic day here for tech, and you've got it. Seems like the markets is opening its eyes today to what AI could mean across the tech stack, and that's what we're seeing. So we thank those gentlemen
coming in. This is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the team. Ken's a our live program, Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Let's get off the Nvidia trail for just a second, go little macro here and we could do that with one of our all time faves here, Danielle di Martino, Booth, CEO and chief strategists at QI Research. She was also a former advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, so we always appreciate getting her thoughts and her insight there. Danielle, Let's just start with our good friends Dan in Washington, d C. Trying to figure out a way to pay
the bills and everything. How does that hold I guess uncertainty factory and kind of to your outlook and your.
Work, Well, it factors in pretty largely given I was around in twenty eleven, and you know now that we're talking about Fitch possibly downgrading the nation's credit it's kind of getting real. And you know, for all of the headlines that speak of progress, that's the one thing that doesn't seem to be getting made is progress. So you have to stuff in wonder right.
Well, Danille, talk to us a little bit about the fundamental agreement here, because the formula for GDP is to econ one oh one. A big part of that is government spending. If you were looking at even the flatline offer from the Biden adminstiration, which is just to keep spending the same as it is right now, that's still got to take some sort of toll on economic growth. Why aren't we worried about that?
Well, you have a really fundamental question, and we should be worried about that, because once you dig into the the guts of the GDP math, we haven't been getting a lot from the biggest traditional inputs of business investment and consumption. In fact, we've been seeing just the opposite.
And if you look at Bank of America proprietary credit card debit card data, that's trending in the same way as well, so these are the times when your economy is slowing into recession that you need the offset of government spending the most exactly.
So we had some a little bit of economic data today. We're gonna get some more tomorrow with the PC deflator data, which is obviously real key with the Fed. But just on the job was front. I mean, I don't know how you want to look at I know we had some squirmy numbers coming out of Massachusetts, kind of stuff I usually expect to see in New Jersey. But anyway, jobs claims came in a little bit better and expected at the labor market still looks pretty solid. How do you think about it?
So I don't look at the labor market in absolute numbers I research, we haven't for some time. What we look at is the number of states that we have with rising claims, and that really does take all the Massachusetts noise out of the mass and we've had at least two thirds of the states with rising initial and
continuing claims here for a persistent period of time. And that tells you that while off, it is off a small base, a low base historically speaking, as it would be coming out of a pandemic that re employed people who wanted to be re employed and left people on the sidelines who were making enough from the government for a good long time. Think of how long the government was paying household rent and still is in states like California.
But given the breath of states be R, E. A. D H that are seeing rising initial and continuing jobless claims, we are at or passed recessionary levels.
Danille, Is there a way here to still get that shall recession or is the hard landing still the growing base case?
Well, I think it grows with every day that the media tells us there's been quote unquote progress on the debt ceiling front, and we up at the end of the day without that progress. So once we can take the air quotes off progress and we actually see a deal done. And even in that case, the Terminal had a story out a few days ago that said that that Wells Fargo figured that if the debt ceiling was resolved by Labor Day, call it, which seems like a we're not even a Memorial day, so Labor Day seems
a long ways away. But Wells Fargo said that even if the debt ceiling was resolved by a memorial day that the Treasury Department would have to sell somewhere around one point five trillion dollars in treasuries between then and the end of the first quarter twenty twenty four. That's a lot of liquidity to pull out of a system that's already contending with US households pulling money out of banks and putting them into investments that pay five percent or more.
Hey, Danielle. When I when I type into FED go function into the Bloomberg terminal FAD, I get a lot of information about the FED and what's going on there. One of the easiest piece of data is I got another appointment on June fourteenth, which is not only Flag Day, but it's going to be a big day for the markets. I'm guessing the Fed's going to know something about this whole debt ceiling by June fourteenth. One would think, how do you think the Fed's looking at this news every day?
Are they hanging on every word like we are, or are they just maybe working under the assumption that things will be okay.
So, given I used to work at the FED, I kind of know who's who. And let's just say that Christopher Waller is as close to if you can't get Waller, if you can't get Powell at a microphone, then you can substitute in Christopher Waller. He's about palace closest confidant. And yesterday he said he didn't like the position that the US government had put FED policymakers in, but that
that was not formulating into his calculus. I think that's a lot of the reason that we're being the probability of a June fourteenth rate hike the highest since it's been Now we're north of forty percent there for June fourteenth. Yesterday we were talking about, oh, will we get twenty five basis points by July. At this point, we're getting really close to a toss up on June, and we've got some critical data between now and that meeting, And
again Waller's saying, we are data dependent. So as we get into their hot employment report in who knows, who knows that they don't go right then on June fourteenth and raise the flag.
Danielle connect those dots for us though, how does the debt ceiling affect FED policy? How much of it is inflationary?
It's not inflationary, and well back in twenty eleven, the tenure bond. The benchmark tenure yield came down quite dramatically. It was a massive rally in the bond market, and immediately the stock market shaved seventeen percentage point. It's not a small move. So in that sense, it makes the Fed's job easier, But it is the disruptive effect of the financial markets that plays into how policymakers approach FED policy, and if there's something that's highly disruptive, very difficult, and
again we forget that. It's like the stock market does yoga before every FED meeting and financial conditions ease. Things always seem to be nicer, more complacent. But again that's just how it always seems to be. Right at the cusp of FED meetings. If there's a massive disruption in the financial markets because of this debt ceiling stand up, makes it much more difficult for the FED to go.
Danielle, you know, I've got Eco go on my terminal, But that's basically all I have for economic indicators, and it's pretty high, high level market stuff. I always know you always quote these really obscure things that for you are really important, and you think that really tell it maybe a deeper story, what are you looking at now these days? And kind of what's it telling you?
So two things this week, in particular, because it's been a pretty quiet economic data docket, we did see purchase applications for homes did right back down to kind of that thirty year low. And at the same time, I've put what my trader buddies on Wall Street se there, like Danielle, We've got teflation up on our screens, watched tru True inflation since it's like checking a billion prices in real time. And again, it was kind of a moment.
It was a threshold. It was a rubicon that was crossed in yesterday's trading that it traded south of the three percent mark. So in the real world, I understand the beautiful models that come out of agencies and the Census Bureau and the BA and the BLS and all of those happy acronyms in the statistical agencies. But in the real world, inflation is breaking below three percent, which is pretty close to the FEDS two percent targets. So and I'm seeing it. My grocery circular is thicker than
it used to be. There are more things on sale, and I'm sure as Heck, don't see any help wanted signs where I am. These are the telltale signs.
Okay, Danielle DeMartino Booth, thank you so much for joining us on this Thursday before Memorial Day weekend. We appreciated Danielle de Martino Booth. She's the CEO and chief strategistic QI Research, and she a former advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, so really has a unique view into the FED and we always appreciate getting some of
her time. And again, one of the many reasons we like talking to Danielle is because she looks at the economic data sets that I didn't even know existed, but they do. And she looks at the data and she's able to put that data into context for us and tell us why it's important and why we should focus on it.
You're listening to the tape. Ken's are Live program Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and The Bloomberg Business. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa, play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Let's step back a little bit shit gears and talk geopolitics. Let's head over to Europe. A lot of news coming out out of Europe, of course, and where you want to get the latest on the war in Ukraine and some other topics over there. Let's go to Maria today. Oh, she's a European correspondent for Bloomberg News. She is based in our Brussels office over there, but she's all over Europe covering the big stories over there. So Maria, thank you so much for taking some time out of your
busy afternoon and evening. Let's start with Ukraine here, the counteroffensive. I kind of thought we might have seen it start by Now, what's the feeling in Europe about when this may start, what it may mean, and how we should think about it?
Yes, and it's a free, good question. And today I happen to speak with one of the senior advisors to presidents and I key on this matter. Now, what the Ukrainians will say, and you hear two sides of the story. They say, we're still waiting for more weapons and the counter offensive will be successful, but obviously they do not
want to put a date on it. And then on the other hand, you also have other officials also from the Ukrainian government who say, when you launch a counter offensive, this is not going to be like d D when it all happens on one day and this is a make or break. This will be a serious of events that will happen. So it's very difficult and obviously for them too, it's not something that they would do to publicize a date or to say it has started already.
But what I can't say, specially when you look to European officials, is that this counter offensive will be key. There's so much going on for Ukraine in terms of the momentum for the war, in terms of whether or not they can make significant gains, and the West has provided money, they have provided weapons.
Obviously it's the.
Ukrainian people that suffer the war. Is the Ukraine army that fights the war and ultimately also dies in battle. I mean, that's the grim reality of this. But there is a sense that a lot is going on with its kind of friends. It means a lot. If it doesn't go well, it could remove some of the momentum. This idea that Ukraine can win if they are successful and they're able to claim some of the land back, it could change a lot of things in terms of what the future piece may look like.
So let's go from the war in Ukraine Maria to the economics of Europe broadly Germany and during its first recession. Talk us through the numbers here and essentially how the biggest economy in Europe is really being interpreted by its peers right now.
Well, Germany we always care about for two reasons. Obviously, just the biggest economy in the euro area. So obviously the cloud and the just kind of say they have in talks and negotiations when it comes to anything that
gets done in Europe is tremendous. Obviously, this is a country that has the biggest pockets, also a big industrial power for Europe too, on their husband's idea that we have to rebuild the European industry and that Germany will be key because of the well just simply the fact that they know how to make things and they make
them very well and also export them very well. When you look at the number today the recession, it is significant in some ways if you look at the political narrative all of Schultz, the Chancellor had repeated many times. Remember he did an interview with our editor in chief about two months ago, and he said, We're not going to have this recession. We're going to escape this recession that we're trying to flip the momentum of it. Today we see the economic reality is different. Having said that,
are we shocked surprise? Well, no, because the PMIS had been painting a bad picture for Germany. We knew that manufacturing was already in contraction. We knew that some of the implications of the energy crisis. This was not the winter from Hell that we were expecting. This was not the terrible winter that would break Europe, but obviously lasting effects on the industry, and now we see them play
out and beyond Germany. To answer your question a bigger picture, I think it also reflects some of the fears that I hear and see in every panel that I do, in every conference that I've done over the past months, this idea that Europe is losing attractiveness when it comes
to the industry. And there was this survey just very briefly, but I think this is so key that came out this week from a very influential European saying tank that said fifty two percent of CEOs would consider changing investments and operations and moving them to North America. That is
terrible means for main in Germany. But beyond that, and here's another stat and this is terrible, eighty percent of the CEOs that were surveyed they said that they believe, yes, Europe is losing competitiveness when it comes to the industry. So eighty percent of respond that number is really it is worrying, it is, it is.
And in Germany, just following up there in Germany, you know, when I think of Germany, I think some of these great industrial companies Semens and so on, and I think about them making big, big stuff and exporting it to China. So they must have a very difficult political and economic, you know, tightrope to walk in terms of the relationships, the relationship with China. How do they phrase it? How does the German government phrase it?
Yes, for sure, and it's not just the big companies in Germany that we all know of, and obviously they make things that are very well and then very well done and that they sell, but it's also the atames. Remember, Germany is a country that is built on small to medium companies too, that that are interconnected.
With the big ones.
But it doesn't stop there because Germany is also a country that buys components and parts to countries like Italy, So a recession in Germany has trickled down effects on countries like Italy. So overall this is a very heavily connected economy when you look at China. Look, this is a difficult question for Germany, but also the European Union overall.
When you see the G seven statement and all of Scheltz obviously participates representing Germany, they all agree in the communication that they have to de risk the economy, not decouple, and they mentioned China in that statement twenty times. I have never seen that in the GET statement, So that shows the political jitters are obviously playing out. They have
been accelerated by the war in Ukraine. But for Germany this is a very very difficult question because on the one hand, the relationship with Russia on the energy is over the North Triam blew up. But also a major recipient of your experts. You're now having to rethink is this country a partner, is there a revival? Is it a challenge? And now what do you do after years in which China was a huge market for Germany and continues to be Maria.
In the absence of, let's say, some sort of transition or diversification away from China, who's the benefactor from Germany's perspective.
From Germany's I look again, it's a good question because and it goes back to the initial point that I made on European CEOs being gloomy. What they feel is like, if we lose business with China, if we also have a lot of the regulation that kicks in, especially when it comes to the greening the economy, there's all these transitions that are going on, and we don't have the money and the type of subsidies that perhaps a transformation
like this would entail. Then one of the big beneficiaries is obviously the United States, and we know that for the Europeans there have been a lot of concerns now for the Inflatient Reduction Act. What they mean when obviously they see a survey, we're one in two CEOs essentially say I would consider relocated to North America.
That is problematic.
But at the same time, you find yourself in a situation where again politically and diplomatically, the United States and the European Union are very close now because of the war in Ukraine.
Maria, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate getting your perspective about all things Europe. Lots to think about there. Maria Today, European correspondent for Bloomberg News. She does fantastic reporting from all of the hotspots around Europe, including Ukraine. So again some great color there from Maria today on the ground in Europe.
You're listening to the Team Ken's are Live program Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts.
Next guest, this is kind of stuff right in my wheelhouse. We're talking leverage finance, you know, putting loan. I had the first when I was at Chaseman, a bank. We lent to a company called god I can't remember it became next Star, became oh, it's fleet Call. I was asking for a two hundred fifty million dollar loan on no assets, wow, no cash flow. We were lending against
air and we got the loan. Our committee we finally took us like three weeks of meetings, but we finally convinced her and it turned out to be fleet call. We made a ga jillion dollars on the warrants. Ted Swimmer, he knows what I'm talking about. He's head of Capital Markets and Citizens Financial. Ted. You guys at Citizens Financial kind of mid market upper mid market financing deals getting
deals done. Tell us about that part of the market today, because here's sman and I we just sit around and we talk about the debt ceiling and the FED and stuff like that. You're on the ground helping companies raise capital to grow and to buy stuff and build stuff. What do you see?
You know, it feels a lot better out there than it has in about a year year and a half. You know, a year ago, we saw M and A kind of cease, a lot of people concerned about how high rates we're going to go, People uncomfortable with trying to raise debt in the public markets and the private markets. And we saw a real pause in M and A
and in debt financing. If you've just looked the last two months, a fair amount of transactions that started to be announced, underwritten by banks, underwritten by debt direct lenders. We're starting to see the market unfreeze a little bit, and we're starting to see, especially for really good companies, a very very active m and a market, so things feel a heck of a lot better than they did.
That kind of sounds surprising to me because at the same time, you know, the Fed's talking about tightening lending conditions. You know, that's what we're hearing from money managers as well. And you're in this upper middle market space. Shouldn't this regional banking stress kind of take away from some of these things have the opposite effect.
Perhaps, Well, there's there's a lot of different parts in the lending market. There's a leverage finance market which is funded a lot by colos and things of that nature, and by direct lenders, and you know, as banks sell a fair amount of these exposures off the markets to do, those have unfrozen. You've seen the secondary levels trade up, both on the bank and the bond side, which are giving and banks a lot more comfort in underwriting the
transactions which they didn't have this time last year. I mean, you saw how the bank the bank index kind of went down about ten points, bond index trading in the low eighties. That's all reversed and if we're still not back to where we were twenty twenty one, but it feels a heck a lot better than it did recently. But let's go ahead.
You know, I just want to ask you about one of the big topics that I like here, and it seems like a real growth business on Wall Street over the several years has been private credit, not private equity, private credit, and coming down the Great Financial Crisis, a lot of the banks really were curtailed in their ability to take to type of lending they could do, with the risks they could take on. And I kind of created this private credit business and it seems like they're
raising money hand over fist. How do you deal with how do you view private credit in the marketplace as a competitor to you guys.
It's a competitor, and it's also it's also somebody we work with, so as we underwrite transactions, sometimes we'll move it over to the CLO market more of a public not public, but more diversified market, and sometimes we'll work
directly with private credit to help place deals. If you look at a lot of the deals that are coming out, some of the larger deals, you'll see a combination of bank underwriting and private credit both underwriting the transaction together now, so you're starting to see these markets I think, start to merge a little bit more. And it's not just private credit or bank you're seeing a combination of both.
Blackstone did a deal last year where you saw them both use the bank market and the private credit market to get something done. So you've seen a combination of those markets come together.
Well, we talked about this enthusiasm for private credit. I mean, has I feel like that's the only thing we read about on top on the Bloomberg terminal? Has this gotten over as skis? Has too much money been raised? Or how does this How does this money enter the economy over the next couple of years.
Well, it enters the economy with an increase in M and A flow. I mean a lot of the deals that are being h that are that are being a lot of the financing is going into these new M and A transactions. And I think you've seen a period of time over the last year where there hasn't been a lot of M and A and you've seen the
private credit funds build up capacity. So there's a lot of unused capacity which I think will help fund as people get more and more comfortable with valuations and whatever, this new rate environment looks like you'll see an avenue for both private credit and for colo credit put to work in order to finance these transactions.
So you guys at Citizens hosted a conference in Atlanta recently, and presumably that's where you bring companies together, sponsors together, and you guys try to generate some conversations and hopefully some some trades down the line. What was kind of the conversation when he brought these folks together.
Sounds like you were there, Paul, you described I described many of them. Yeah, you know, it was a very optimistic group. We've we've had we've hosted this conference in the last four or five years, and we saw more optimism. We we had a record amount of attendance, a market amount of sponsors, financial at private equity firms, and a record amount of companies looking to try to transact.
Now.
I think what we're what we're hearing is for really solid companies, there's a very very active market and an aggressive market to get those transactions done. For a little bit more storied credits. We're still seeing it'll be a little slow, but our pipelines right now at a record amount, and it's just a question of can we get a buyer and a seller together.
To how about you? You bring it? Host this conference, you get you get some conversations going boom, you think you got a deal, you get them together, you go to your credit committee, or you go to whoever. Can you get deals done? Leverage deals or with a little hair on them? What's it like going to try to get some some of these deals done right now?
It's not easy ran Obviously, banks are thinking about a lot of different things right now as they're putting capital to work. But again, a lot of these deals are distributed to markets where we can, which is very active and very liquid right now. I mean, to Simon's point earlier, you've seen a ton of private credit raised, there's a lot of there's a lot of desire to put money to work. You've seen very little loan issuance over the last year, so there's a really pent up demand on
the COLO side. So although banks are not necessarily desirous to hold big capital commitments right now, there are other avenues of investors that are and our ability to put the buyer and the seller together take some distribution risk has never I wouldn't say never been as good, but it is certainly improving over the last twenty for twelve months.
When you look down to I guess lower middle kind of credits, is that somewhere you see a little bit more anxiety.
Yes, absolutely, the lower And just to clarify what we're talking about, I would say upper middle market is epita sizes of the fifty million dollars or greater, so enterprise value somewhere between four hundred and a billion dollars type things.
When you start looking at lower that's become a market that has been more dominated by direct lenders as they've been able to do things that are banks would have a tough time during the due to a regulatory environment to get done, but the direct lenders can certainly do as they're not obviously regulated by the bank. So we're seeing a lot of appetite from that for those type transactions getting done with direct lenders.
Because it was really interesting, the CEO of Citizens Financial was on Bloomberg Markets yesterday and he was talking about how restricting reining in credit by two to three percent was going to essentially help the FED do its job, but it does seem to really disadvantage smaller businesses.
It's a great point. I think a lot of that was done prior right after, as Paul mentioned that the Great Recession, when the regulatory environment became harder, we really
saw direct lenders pick up some of the slack. But I think as you get to more corporate driven transactions that don't necessarily have tradition relied on the bank, I think that's where you're going to see some issues if things get tighter from a lending perspective, because banks are used to holding very large dollar amounts of those and obviously that's going to become more expensive as capital becomes more precious.
What are some of the sectors you guys like right here? Some sectors you like investing in and business with right now.
So we're doing a fair amount with data Center's. Digital infrastructure is a great space for us right now. We're seeing We just purchased an m and a firm called DH Capital that specializes in that, and we've had a great run in that business and we see that as a real growth engine over the next couple of years. A lot of business technology, business outsourcing, things of that nature. We've been showing a commercial industrial industrial flows stuff for
doing a fair amount in there. So those areas have really grown and seem to be somewhat especially the digital infrastructure, somewhat immune to concern around the overall economy that seems to be a never ending need for the capital and now business.
So all right, Ted, thanks so much for coming in. Appreciate it as always, Ted Swimmer, you set of capital markets at Citizens Financial, joining us live in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. None of this phony and in garbage coming in live to the Bloomberg Term studio.
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Marie Driscoll. She's a luxury retail analyst for Core Site Research. Got lots of experience in the retail space, and let's start with with the luxury space here. I'm just looking at LVMH. That's kind of one of the names I kind of know, and it's big. It's four hundred billion market cap. I'm looking at the French shares that trade in France up twenty percent year to date of fifty percent on a troilling twelve month basis. Talk to us about retail space. What are you seeing out there these days?
So if we're talking about luxury in LVNH, you know there's still pockets of money. The aspirational shopper is definitely more purposeful and making the purchases, you know, with thought. And we heard that from the likes of Walmart.
On up.
But for a company like LVMH that has seventy five brands in the luxury space, and brands that are powerfully supported throughout various economic cycles, these brands hold a lore and they never, they really rarely marked down. Their key brands like a Christian Dior or the Louis Duitan. They're not marked down, and because of that, many consumers look at them as like storage value, like you know that when you buy it, you're not making a mistake. It
won't be marked down next week. Luxury shoppers are still shopping. People are being more purposeful, and you do see a bifurcated market. The people that have are spending, and they're not spending flagrantly, but they're still buying luxury products. Has also benefited from price increases for the last few years. China is coming back, so we expect to see a slow down in US consumption of luxury as the US consumer deals with the impacts of inflation and also reverts
back to a pre COVID lifestyle of increased experiences. Experiences are where the consumer is encountering severe inflation. You know, twenty to forty percent increases in the price of going out to eat or staying in a hotel airfare, and yet consumers want that. There's pent up demand for that, and so as consumers spend on those experiences in America, they're less likely to be spending on another expensive handbag.
Though the handbag is the handbag that remains of choice and they'll spend on it when they when they decide to do so. But this year luxury will see the benefits of the Chinese returning to the market with the opening of China again, and other UAE will be strong. And also you have gen Z supporting you know, a younger a younger luxury shopper that is supporting luxury.
All right, Well, you know we have been hearing from CEOs across the consumer space about this softening of US demand. Take me through the details of that. Which demographics are feeling the pinch most, and that who are the recipients or of this potential cynicism and you know, inflation tightening of belts from consumers.
Yeah, so you see like people are tightening their belts. Like if you just listen to the Walmart Paul, people are purposeful, they're looking for bargains Walmart. During COVID, Walmart attracted many consumers earning one hundred thousand a year or more, and of course they're trying to retain them as customers this year. This year, you know, higher end consumers. Everybody feels inflation. And you know, except for the one percent,
most people feel inflation. They feel it in their growth rey bills, they feel it in going out to eat, and in their travel and it's and various services and experience it and so there while there's demands for selected items like if you recently cold, which is very Middle America reported, and where did they see strength? They saw incredible strength and beauty so people are still saying, I'm going to buy I'm going to have this cheap taste of luxury and with a fragrance or a lipstick. And
guess what, you can use ellipstick every day. So it's got efficacy which is similar to using luxury hand you know, so you can there's room for that. So the last few years, we've spent a lot on casual attire calls, a big increase in both men's and women's more occasion the attire or address the.
Attire right, you know, with calls though, I mean, you saw shares pop up seven and a half percent, but I think you know during the day that was quite a bit higher. Is it enough for these companies to just sort of like beat the estimates that their executives put out. Is that what we're seeing in the market reaction or are we seeing some fundamental sense from investors that the consumer is a little bit better off than they had anticipated going into earning season.
So you know, you know, reading enough and listening to enough call during the last week or two, A few of the big takeaways are that while sales may not be meeting ejectives, and the consumer is more purposeful and there's winners and there's losers. Here I'm going to quote what the Dick Hayne's urban outfitter said. The hostile operating environment of the last few years has finally abated. Freight rates are have normalized, Supply chain speed and reliability have returned.
Our initial merchandise markup. Improvement initiatives have begun to bear fruit, and total inventories are down and we're once again growing inventories that have slower rates themselves. That kind of the way he characterized his business is what I was seeing
across many businesses. While the top line isn't there. The erratic business operating environment we've dealt with in the last three years with peaks of this man not enough, not enough supply, then the rush of supply and too much and not enough demand is abating, and we're entering a time when now the costs of getting your products to the store are less. You're seeing a return to stores. Digital is strolling down, people are in the stores.
So the fundamental post pandemic improvements, you know, that's what we're seeing rather than yeah, I think consumer.
And if we can get through a quarter or two of you know, like the consume, like these are the summer is the week quarter. The summer is when the US consumer is out traveling. If we can get through that, the second half of the year should be a better time. And I think investors should be looking at that.
Hey, Marie, China reopening. As I walk through Midtown and down Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, I see tons of European shoppers. I don't see Chinese. When are they coming back?
Yeah, so, you know, of course that is very close to the Chinese consumer. We have offices there, we have analysts on the ground, and we've been following them for probably eight years and more, and but we're you know, it's going to take six to twelve months for them to come back. They just opened up in February, basically, and it takes a while to get your travel plants
in order. We don't really see it coming end of this year, next year, but the Europeans are here, and the Chinese are starting to travel domestically within within the Asia region, and so many American brands will benefit from that, you know, the European brand.
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely well, they're welcome on Fifth Avenue, the walkome on Madison Avenue. I'm sure I speak for all the retailers there, because when you talk luxury retail, a big, big component, a big driver is the Chinese Chinese consumer. Marie Driscoll, luxury retail analysts at Corsite Research, joining us
here to talk to us all things retail. Despite some of the tough headwinds out there in terms of inflation and economic concern NEI, there are certain pockets of some retail strength, and we're seeing other areas where some consumers are trading down a little bit.
You're listening to the tape. Can's are live program Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and 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.
I think one of my favorite stories coming out of Bloomberg News this week was won by John Gittelson about Downtown LA's office distress. So's the pain coming for cities A. This is an incredibly well sourced and reported story, and it's got just killer graphics by Kyle Kim, and it really brings home some of the problems we're going to see in some of these big US cities that you wouldn't necessarily think but like LA, go figure. So anyway,
us on. He's a reporter, real estate reporter for Bloomberg News. John, thanks so much for joining us here. I said to our producer Eric, we got to get John on here because this is a great story. Here. Talk to us about LA and some of the primo building's iconic been in buildings in LA. They're in a lot of trouble, aren't they.
Yeah, they really are. I mean, downtown LA has not really been a magnet for office workers for quite a while, but the pandemic really gave it this punch to the stomach. And so the biggest landlord, Brookfield, is defaulted on three buildings and it's got more troubled dead out there. So one point one billion dollars worth of loans it's not been paying and uh more trouble on the way trying to refinance those buildings.
Yeah, talk to me about what happens exactly to those buildings. I'm sure some of it we don't know. So Brookfield in some cases has said we'll step away from this building completely. I believe based on the story, but it's not necessarily true for all of them.
Take me through the process, that's right, Well, I mean there's a lot of options. Basically, though, these buildings are underwater, so that means their debt is bigger than the value of the buildings themselves. So what can happen is the lenders can say, Okay, well take a haircut and you can keep running the building. You can keep managing it. Or the owner can walk away and somebody else could take over the building could sell for a loss to
a new owner. Theoretically, down the road, maybe some of these buildings could be converted to another use, like an apartment building. But a lot of these are kind of like nineteen eighties nineteen nineties office towers that would be very hard to convert to apartments.
The eighties were very good for me, John.
Well, they weren't necessarily good buildings in today's world. You're in your prime, so.
So it's interesting, John, like I noticed, you know what my experience with downtown la is. I would go see Capital Research Group and the Trust Company of the West, and that was kind of it. Every all the other asset managers and financial firms were kind of scattered throughout the Greater LA area. Who is in downtown before, Well, that's a good point.
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of law firms. There's a lot of accounting firms. One of the two of the towers actually that Brookfield owns at the top of the building once says ey Plaza, which is Ernest and Young. The other one is Deloitte, another accounting firm. A lot of law firms. Those businesses are classic like we don't need all this office space because our workers maybe work in somebody else's office, or they can work remotely so they don't necessarily need to go downtown. Then there's a
lot of government workers downtown. About a third of the employment based downtown is like city, county, state, federal court type of government workers, many of whom continue to work remotely.
You mentioned potentially converting these buildings into you know, perhaps apartments or something like that. Kyle bass Back, I believe last month was talking about how, you know, maybe these buildings are just going to have to come down wholesale because they're not necessarily built for people to live in.
I think he was speaking specifically about warehouses and that sort of office space at least in you know, smaller cities, but in LA is that a realistic thing that could happen these buildings get converted into residential real estate.
Well, I think the sort of trophy office buildings that you see in the skyline photos of downtown LA, those ones would be very hard to convert. But actually, there are dozens of older buildings built in early nineteen twenties scattered around that are now already converted to apartments, lofts, condos, and they were before the pandemic, very attractive places to live.
Downtown LA is relatively affordable and has a lot of new multifamily offerings compared to like the West Side or other parts of LA where there's it's very expensive to live and it's also kind of difficult to build new products. So there is a possibility that people will move into some of these buildings. The glass and steel late twentieth century ones are going to have a very hard path forward, though.
Hey, John, just about I don't know, thirty two minutes, I'm going to begin my walk from Bloomberg at fifty eight and Lex to Penn Station at thirty fourth and let's call it seventh Avenue, So right through the heart of midtown Manhattan, and I'm going to see a lot of empty buildings, a lot of dark floors. But it's bad here. But it's a lot worse than other big cities like Houston and Los Angeles that your reporting brings out. So what are those cities thinking about?
Yeah, well, I mean part of the problem with cities like Houston, La, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, they're car centric. So people have a lot of opportunities to go outside of the city to offices to they have big houses that they can work from. Commuting to downtown is very hard. So yeah, those cities have a problem. They're facing falling revenue, They're facing retailers who are not making street life very attractive.
So urban planners are really kind of trying to figure out what to do with all of this real estate. Downtown could be potentially a great place to live in La for example, there's great transportation downtown. It's a good place to leave, not necessarily just a good place to go into nine to five during the day, so people who live downtown can get to a lot of other
parts of this metro area and jobs. For example, in the entertainment industry, you may work in Hollywood one six month period, and then you're going out to Burbank for a job for another six month period. So living downtown can be very central and easy to commute from.
Hey, John, One of the things that I you know, maybe the next shoe to drop in this whole commercial real estate, office building real estate story is we start seeing some transactions, some sales of buildings, and I think the write down that we'll see in some of these is going to be shocking to a lot of people. Have we seen anything change hands in Los Angeles to give us a sense of how far down that market's fallen.
Well, yeah, in LA they're Union Bank building sold in March for one hundred and four million dollars. It lasts sold in twenty ten for two hundred and eight million dollars. So there's an exam there. Yeah, fifty percent price drop. There was a motivated seller, and there was a little bit of timing. If you did the deal before March thirty, first, you didn't have to pay a five and a half percent transfer tax. That's a new kind of disincentive to
real estate investors in LA. So anyway, there are multiple which hauld I say, factors at play here. But basically, you know, it's going to have to get a lot worse before it gets better for offices here in LA.
Now, does this have a ripple effect on the residential space in LA that downtown is suffering? How does this emanate from that central area?
Yeah, well, if the offices are vacant, if people aren't on the streets. What's happened in LA is the sort of ratio between homeless and you know, housed normal people has fallen out of whack. So there are fewer people going to offices, there are fewer commuters, and it seems like the population of people who are unhoused, who are not necessarily very how to state this anyway, they can be scary, and so it's a deterrent to people, you know there, it's a deterrent to businesses. There's just a
lot of factors at play. Safety is a key issue being downtown that has really come to the forefront as office vacancies have risen.
Yeah, it's a challenge for LA, as you're reporting indicates, but lots of other cities around the country be very interesting to see how this plays out over the coming years. Is probably how it's going to play out.
Again, it's going to be a slow melting ice cube.
Yeah, I think you're right, John. So that's John ghettos On. He is the Bloomberg News real estate reporter. He's got this great story out. Check it out Bloomberg dot Com. Check it out. Downtown LA's office distress shows the pains coming for cities. I also want to call out the
graphics because I like pictures. They me understand things. So the graphics here by Kyle Kim were outstanding, really blended really well into this story, and it just gives you a sense of how tough things are out there in the commercial real estate business.
Yeah, making real these numbers.
Exactly exactly, and what it means for the lenders, you know. I mean, that's that's the next wave that a lot of people are concerned about. Are we gonna start seeing banks take some big write downs on commercial real estate? So good story.
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Small Foxman Paul Sweety here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Seems like for months all we've been talking about is AI, and then of course in the last twenty four hours with uh in Nvidia even more to the front and center.
Let's bring AI to investing. People are doing that. Our next guest is part of that whole wave frame O. He is the APEX CEO and head of AI E t FS and the firm's name is Craft Technologies APAC with a Q, Craft with a Q. Francis you know we're applying AI, or at least people believe we're applying AI to just about everything we do in life. I think it feels overdone to me. But what do I know?
How about for in the business of investing? How can artificial intelligence help individual investors just kind of navigate the whole investment process?
Right?
First of all, thanks for having me here. It's great to speak more about how the Craft Technologies applying the AI into the investment practices we have been developing our AM all since twenty sixteen. Two different area one is stock selection based AI. The out one is the sl location tope of model because.
We want to stock selection. Two important things you've got to get right.
As yes, okay, yes exactly. And the technology we are using you see something similar to the chechipt as well. CHAPT is the the core AI engine is a transformer engine and the transform engine is combination of attention layer. Attention is a difficult tom but attention layer yourself. What it does is the trying to analyze the relationship between
the input data. So when we type something, the CHPTPT is trying to analyzing the wordings or the sentences or paragraph to analyzing relationship, trying to get the context what we are asking to them so they delivered answer back to us. Where we are applying that attention layer to our Stacks election model is trying to analyze input data, price data, fundamental data and macro data and relationship of that to the future expected return of the stack within
the universe. So we've been using that for since twenty nineteen. That for our Stacks election model. But yesterday we launched our AI t B a power that's a location ATS.
So it check us AIDB for yes okayes.
But that is thes a location type of btfs. It first lunch in here.
Well, congratulations on the launch.
I've been looking back. They rang the opening bell today.
In your Yeah, it was so owner.
Yes, you know, look, I'm looking back at the performance of some of the ETFs that you have out there. Pretty spectacular twenty twenty thirty seven point six percent for the US large capt Yeah. But you know what's clear is it's not always the market beating, at least against the S and P total return. When does AI perform better? When do AI generated investment decisions perform better than the overall picture? Is there any sort of common threads that go into this?
Okay, show is very the cancussion, yes to we lalid a lot to Don twenty. First, it start to decrease your bit. Remember the moment of the Alpha Go when the Alpha Go was a batting the professional good players. It beat the human most of the time, but only the one game it was losing the game as well, there was unexpected the play was happened by the uh, the professional goal player, and it could be similar to
our AM model as well. Something unexpected happened for you, like or the very sharp the regime reversion or regime changes. It could be make our AM model or confused on the stock selection, but that could be also happening for the human perform manager. And the main difference is or the possible a distinctive advantage. You see, AM model at least has doesn't have ego like or the big perform manager. It didn't attach it to the previous investment decison making to the next one.
So I mean does that make moments like game stop and the meme crazes. Does that make it a little bit easier for you guys to capture that?
Uh, there was the moment, Yes, but we are are using atfs are mostly the last v. It didn't get to have a chance for the GM or the other memes that yeah, project could be Yes.
So to what extent, Francis, are retail investors or retail advisors, retail investors, institution investors. To what extent are they using AI today? Is it happening? Is the typical broker out there or fund manager using artificial intelligence?
It's started to start boling in the market right now. So we are having so we are the B to B solution provider and then lucky enough get the size of funding from sub bank group beginning of the laws one hundred for six million. So we currently providing we have our AA t ETF, but at the same time providing our solution to twenty different financial institutions for PUFLO
signals or trading execution mode less TRU. And right now, the big agenda I keep hearing from our potential patnus is the how to leveraging AI to deliver a personalized investment solution or advice back to the clients the like a freeom like a banking or the lost managers. The top tier of the clients is covered by the human private bankers, but those who are under are still uh and the dead areas could be probably lossouped by the AI.
As a market participant that uses a lot of the AI technology. And we're looking at you know, this massive gain and Nvidia on the verge of maybe, I mean maybe it's surpassed at this point a trillion dollar company. How do you see some of this demand for chips for these various different components because you're putting together these models that use that stuff, right.
Yes, we use a lot of chips from them video, Yes, we spent a lot of money.
Well, I guess is this is this over Is this overplayed?
Yes, it's true, but at the same time I believe the watch it is literally changing the game for the AI in the public space or the private market. Is the It gives A the two A the experiences and stop to building up the trust of the This is the level of the AI can deliver back to the the client solution services rust. So there will be more and more demand. And one funny thing for the not funny thing, one interesting for the m VIDA is the
beginning of dismay. The one of our A A t F A M O m us last momentum MEDIAF is dumbed the Apple and then pick the Nvidia as the things. So you're seeing the huge gain. Uh today, I'm excited about it.
How about your just thirty seconds left the demand for your ETFs? What are you seeing out there? Who's who's interested in your A t FS?
Yes, mostly from these who have the savvy understanding of the tech background or who wants to feel is lee that I want to experience the new adoption of the AI could be helpful. What I want to envision into five to ten years later is the if one of our goal is trying to deliver a sustainable alpha generative solution by the AI. And if that is happening, I believe there will be a moment that AI power investment solution become in the new bat you baykind the market.
Great stuff, exciting stuff. Francis Oh, I'm glad there's somebody doing this stuff. Francis Oh APAX CEO and head of AI ETFs, Man Technology Changes Everything, Craft Technologies APAC. That's the name of the firm. They've got some ETFs out they're really using to integrate artificial intelligence into the investment process. And why not. You're using AI for just about everything else in life. So we've learned just maybe in the last six months, it seems to have been front and center.
Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcasts. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer.
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And I'm Paul Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio