Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Also joining us now on set is Lynn Martin. Of course, she is the Nicey Group president the New York Stock Exchange. You are so connected to the broader corporate community. What was this morning like wake? I mean, frankly, you had news will he won't hear? A lot of uncertainty up to this moment. What is everyone saying? Yeah?
I mean we were watching it closely yesterday as you saw the market sell off, particularly in the afternoon, as it appeared that tarrifts were going to be imposed. But you never know until something is implemented if the rumors
are true or if he would carry that out. I think it comes down to looking at the overall state of our US economy, and if you think of the president's core three objectives their border security, resolving geopolitical conflicts, and the the US economy, and I think what you're starting to see is the confluence of those three objectives start to come about in market.
Is that going to result in slower growth? I mean, is we've been talking for weeks about part of the plan to get inflation down is lower aggregate demand. Right, you drive the economy into a recession, then you won't have a price problem. It does look like the market is worried about a growth scare.
Well, I think if you look at the key indicators, so first just take two steps back. No one hipanic. There is volatility in markets. Markets go up and markets go down. And if you look at two of the key economic indicators, you look at the Dow and the S and P, those levels are still at above pre election levels. If I look at where both of those indices closed on election night, where they are today is
still above. So your recall that there was a post election ephoria, if you will, and now years of the market may be recalibrating. But as the day progresses, as the weeks progress, there's no reason to assume that the markets are only going to move downwards. They could absolutely move upwards, particularly if we start to consider the revenue side.
Right, we should point out that the levels we saw on the close of November fifth fifty seven eighty two on the S and P five hundred, so we're still above fifty eight hundred to your point, and the Nasdaq closed it two hundred twenty seven, so we're still above that as well. Well.
To put that in percentage terms the S and P five hundred. It's still higher by about one point six percent on a total return basis since election day, but we know that it's come down mightily. There's a lot of volatility in this market as we really center our focus on tariffs. That is the topic for investors right now, and we were expecting to see a more robust IPO landscape, sort of marrying together the M and A landscape and
the IPO landscape, but we haven't quite seen that yet. Lynn, during what the trickle down effect from tariffs, the volatility in the markets to your IPO business looks like.
So I think it's important to consider that during this time of year, many pre public companies, many private companies, their financials go still, so they're in the process of restating their financials. We're still gearing up for an active Q two from an IPO perspective, which depending on how those deals go, we think will inform the way that, yes,
the rest of the year will will progress. But we still have a very active pipeline and we're still working with a variety of companies to come out in the next few months.
Are you seeing companies rush to market, do they want to get there quickly before maybe this trade war develops further.
I think every company is considering where they are in their own evolution. Are they profitable, do they have a good story to tell? Have they used this time while they've been raising money and the private markets to refer the strategy to bring about a more deliberate P and L one that's more focused on a few strategic areas. So it's really down to a company to decide is it the right time to go public. The markets have been open for the last few years, which most people
don't want to talk about. And if I look at the IPOs that occurred on the New York Stock Exchange last year in the secondary market, they grew fifty eight percent. So the market is there for companies to go when they're ready to go, when they have a good story to tell.
So what about the vis you know you look at slowly starting to take hire. We're at a twenty three handle just this morning. They are not alarming levels by any means, but you can see there just you're to date, we are a lot higher than where we started. Is there a level in of the VIX that would start to stifle that pipeline that you're talking about.
For Q it's generally around twenty, but recall that there have been some large companies that have gone in the last year two years where the VIX has been above twenty, well above twenty for sustained periods of time. Again, don't look at the data on just one day. Just take a breath and look at the long term trends of the market.
That's a really interesting point on the vis it seems like the one year average is about sixteen, so we're not quite there, but certainly seeing a lot of volatility. This specific morning, I want to talk about somewhere where we've seen a bit of a bright spot for US exchanges, and that is companies switching their listings from abroad and coming into the US market. It's been a popular sort of trend that we've seen emerge over the past couple
of years. Talk to us about what you see in that sort of pipeline, if you want to call it that.
Yeah, I mean, I think what has shown over the last couple of years is the breath depth liquidity of the US markets. The US markets are the Enva of the world, and over the last few years they've really shown why. Given the growth in the US markets, we've welcomed a variety of companies who have transferred their listings out of domestic markets in Europe and the UK, specifically Flutter Croch, and they've seen a notable appreciation in their valuations.
Absolutely, yeah, better liquidity, higher multiples you can command over in the US. Seems like a good deal. Lynn, We have to leave it there. It's so great to kick off our invest with you. That is Lynn martinstrab is the president of the NISI Group.