49: The Man Who Wants to Better Trading by Slowing It

the podcast. Uh, it's special because we're not on it right. Yeah, it's extra special because we've edited ourselves out. Now we are going to be playing an interview today that Bloomberg View columnist Matt Levine, and a friend of this podcast, as you know, has done with Brad katsu Yama. He is the co founder and CEO of an exchange that I think we've all heard of. It's called I e X. Uh. You might remember it from such movies as Michael Lewis's movies,

such books as Michael Lewis's Flashboys. Right, this was the exchange because there's been all this anxiety about high frequency trading exactly. So Flashboys is about the evils of high frequency trading and how they're messing up markets. Um. There were some examples in there that some people took issue with, but basically, high frequency trading is the villain of flashboys. Certainly a lot of politicians and regulators seemed to be

on board with that view. And then we had I e X that sprang forth from this guy called Brad katsu Yama, and I X was basically the antithesis of high frequency trading. They kind of install speed bumps to prevent people from doing that, and they're supposed to be a different way of trading, a better way of trading. And I mean, the book is worth reading. I don't know if you've read it, um, but what's definitely worth listening to is this interview. Great, well, this is an interview.

It's associated with the November six edition of Bloomberg Market magazine, and uh, I hope everyone enjoys it. There's sort of an origin story for you were traded at RBC almost ten years ago. You noticed that there was that, you know, you try to buy a hundred thousand shares, you can only get them. You're wondering what was up. I thought it was a software problem. Eventually figured out that it was a sort of issue with the structure, with the

deep structure of the stock exchanges. So you built the thing at RBC that would help your clients avoid that

and get the full hundred thousand shares. Then you're like, l, we can do this more broadly, and so you built the trading venue called i X that did the same thing that you You coiled wire in a shoe box so that when people sent you an order for a hundred thousand shares and you had twenty five thousand, you'd give them the twenty five and before you told anyone else about this, you would run to the other exchanges and get the other seventy thousand that were displayed and

give people the full size of their order. And that was kind of like the origin story of i X that's told in Flashboys. It's sort of a plot of Flashboys. I've seen you tell it on stage, and now that you've become a stock exchange, it occurs to me that

story is not quite true anymore. Right, Like the thing that is the sort of basis of the origin story is this router that skips the speed bumper, that that allows people to get all the shares before the high prequoncent trators learn about it and can raise ahead of them, and as part of the sec process you had to take that out. So I want to hear like just kind of what what your thought presses on that was liked you miss it was ever a moment and you said,

we'd rather not be in exchange than do this. Part of the story was that we realized that when we were trying to buy or sell stock across the broader market that executions, that the venues that we got to first would lead to fading of liquidity or trading ahead at other venues. And so we originally started i X under the premise that we would be this router for clients that wanted to trade through. Any broker could send a rottable order to to i X and we could

get that order out to the market. And that was the original premise that we started with UM and thank goodness, kind of it evolves because we're we're only we're routing I think forty to fifty million shares a day, we're matching ten million shares of that on our own market, which means that if that was our only premise, we would be doing a very small amount of volume on

I X and sending a lot of volume elsewhere. And I think the way that UM the concept evolved was to say or ask the question, well, why does why can someone get a signal from one place and get

to the next UM. And it really came down to co location and this idea that UM people could pay to put their servers as close as possible to the exchanges, UM get fast information and now with microwave connectivity, etcetera, can beam orders to other markets faster than people that are traveling through cable or people that don't have the same level of sophistication or have paid for the same

level of access and UM. So when we thought about it, you know, RBC as a broker could only solve a very narrow part of the problem, and the problem was broader because not only for orders that were routed, what about orders that are resting on the exchange, or what

about orders that are pegged on exchanges? How are those orders treated when there is this huge kind of disparity between who knows what when, And that evolved into things such as you know, discretionary PEG and midpoint PEG and basically the evolvement of the speed bumps so UM, I think if we had stayed as focused only on the router, I don't know if I X would have made it because because the router became secondary to our operation as as a market and so you don't missed the former

structure of the router. The benefit and I guess the slight change now is the fact that the router trades a little bit less on I X because the router doesn't know there are certain orders that are displayed and their certain orders that are not displayed and then not displayed. Non displayed orders aren't being broadcast to the router because that would create an unfair advantage, even though that advantage

exists for certain exchanges. Today hopefully that gets addressed. But you know, from our standpoint, so it trades slightly less on A X. So I guess that's that's a small change, But the customer experience doesn't change. So I think that's that for us was most important. So can I ask you like the customer experience? So I said, the origin story, the story that you tell on stage is this thing

about the kind of the routing. Um, the customers on I X, the people that you talked to who are like you know, owners who are the sort of ultimate customers. What is important to them? Like is it is it kind of this fill rate on routable orders? Like what are they kind of what do they think that is your vantage versus other exchanges? I think most important to them is they feel like we've represent their interests. I

think they've they've What does that mean? It means that the market has evolved in a way where they were kind of in a position to be the last to know, I mean clients, since clients can't be members of exchanges, meaning that a broker is a member. The client has to route in order through a broker member to get the exchange they're they're kind of, you know, just by

that relationship on the outside looking in. And as a result a lot of these things that evolved over the last decade um, we earned a lot of credibility when we were at RBC going out there and meeting with these customers saying here's what's really happening, here's here's an explanation for this experience you're having when you can't buy or sell what you see. That level of trust parlays into us as an exchange, saying here are the things that you should be focused on. Here are the things

that we think are important. Here the ways that we're different. Um, So I think it starts first and foremost with that. So for a customer, would you say that they use I X for kind of more the the specific structural like we have d Paget partically answer this crumbling quote, or would you say that it's more a kind of general sense of These are the guys who explain stuff to us. These are the guys we trust, These are the guys who have kind of more transparency on fees

or whatever. Like is it about you or is it about Deepeg? I think I think it depends. Um. You know, we work a lot with by side clients who are just as sophisticated as we are, who do a huge amount of analysis, and they actually teach us a lot about the market and so so they are very specifically using us for a particular reason. Um. Some others that let's say, haven't dove that deep into market structure turned around and said, you know what, you did the right

thing for us at OURBC. You did the right thing for us as as an a t S. We trust you, we believe you, and and you have a sophisticated following. It depends. I don't think everyone's as sophisticated as um, you know, as as some of the by side shops, nor can they because they don't have the resources. But I think in general, um, you know, we have a we have a good group of of of supporters. Um. Some based on data, some based don trust. But we

like the fact that we have very sophisticated supporters. I gonna tell you a little bit more about kind of like the origin story flashblay stuff, just because like you are the hero of Michael Lewis book, which is an unusual situation for for anyone in finance to find themselves on one question that I kind of asked, is Michael Lewis for for a generation on Wall Street created this um or like popularized this notion that equity traders are dopes,

right like equities in Dallas became a famous insult after a Liars Poker. Um, did you ever talk about that with him? I don't think so. No. I knew that I had read that. Well. It's funny. When I first started the business, the first book I was told to read was Liars Poker, and I was I was starting on the equities trading desk, and I remember specific equities and tells. I was like, wow, okay, well you know I saw that as an opportunity. Um, but no, I don't.

I don't recall us ever talking about that. Was it strange too? I mean, he is not just that, but like he's kind of created the mindset, He's created the way that a lot of Wall Street thing about Wall Street for a generation. And you were kind of telling him how Wall Street works. Was that like a strange experience to be like, no, no, Michael, you have it all wrong. Well, the the Moneyball was was a huge

kind of influential book for me. I mean, starting at the role Bank of Canada back in two thousand and two, you know, we needed to find ways to to be different with you know, without the same resources as the biggest banks out there. And so I read Moneyball and that I felt like that had a pretty big influence

on on the way we thought. You know. The discussion with Michael started with really helping him write a story about somebody else he he um had stumbled on the story of Sergey Alannakov, who got who got thrown in prison for taking computer code, and I went to a couple of people characters in the big short who I know, And so really the first the first few months was really just giving him background and saying he'd ask a question, what is this, and I you know, we tried our

best to kind of answer it, and that evolved into him getting to understand and know our story a little bit more so in many ways, it's it's you know, we were telling him the same things that we had been talking to the by side about for a long time, and there was a decision point where we had decide whether we were going to talk about us or not. Giving him back around and writ a story about somebody else is very different than give talking to him about

you and in your life and your decisions. And at the time it's it's there was a bit of a conflict. The personal side of me was a little bit more reserved, and I had to like really kind of talk it through with my wife and say, is this something that

you know, we really want to do. But as the CEO of i X, which was you know, brand new, we hadn't launched, it was there's all and and really it's a it's a very complicated subject and and he's someone that can tell that in a different type of way as the CEO of I X. It was a no brainer when you sort of first started talking about I X specifically, did you think, Wow, this is a Michael Lewis story or did you think we just you know, we run some were on the stock venue like we

had been told for a while that this is a Michael Lewis story. Did I Did I necessary believe that I I could be the main character one? Probably not. And it's funny because one of the things he told me kind of in the middle of his research, He's like, you're fairly bored person. It's kind of it's hard to you basically said, it's hard to make you jump off the page. So and I suggested that I asked you,

could you be where you are today without Flashboys? And I kind of I wanted to the answer it sounds I mean, you seem do you think you're very lucky that that had happened. I kind of want to want to ask the opposite question, which is like, you know, there you were, you had by side clients, you had kind of a business going, and I mean, you tell me, but it seems like it would have worked without Flash Boys.

At least in some commercial way. Has kind of going so big and so pop culture has that put pressures on you that make it harder as it spread you too thin or made things too controversial. Like has there been a downside of the book? There have been upsides and downsides, and but I do think the upsides far out way the downsides. You know. The upsides were the story had much greater reach than Ronan and I could

have ever gotten going door to door. Um, So I think that on that front that was that was important. And it's important not not to be an a T S or like a mid sized A T S. You didn't need that, but to really kind of be in exchange and kind of try to take this to the next level. I think I think that was critically important.

You know. The downside was that it upset a lot of people, and and we made the decision early on we wanted brokers to be our our members and and our customers, which was hard because the by side was our was our strongest relationships were sticking the broker in between and Flashboys upset a lot of people. So we had to try to say, listen, what we're not going to back away from what we said, But we do think there's a there's a way forward here for us all to kind of work together. And you know, it

worked in some cases. In some cases, I'm sure you know some people are still upset. But if I were away the pros and cons, I'd say it's it's absolutely helped. But knowledge to work and grow your business with c i T from transportation to healthcare to manufacturing. C i T offers commercial lending, using and treasury management services for small and middle market businesses. Learn more at c i T dot com put knowledge to work. So you're now in exchange, you have been for like a month. What

does it look like for you to win? Like what's the end game? And I guess like what I mean by that is like there's one model that is like there are different types of participants in the market. Some of them think that your model favors them, is good for them, and so they come to you. Others think that bats are nice here and as das model is better for them to go to them. There's a there's

just sort of like a market segmentation. There's room for a bunch of different approaches and a bunch of different exchanges that kind of cater slightly to different investor types. And the other way to think about it is you need to kill everyone that you have the right model, everyone else has the wrong model. So like what's the right way to look at it? And like what what

success looked like to you? So it it's hard for us to try to say a specific market share goal is what we want to do because a lot of the decisions that we make, I mean, we trade less volume. So deep peg is about preventing trades from happening. UM the speed bump deterred some type of some types of activities. Not paying rebates as an exchange is a huge differentiator, and we think it's benefit to I X and it's a benefit to to kind of the investors and brokers

that we're trying to cater to UM. But not paying someone for an order to send you an order when a bunch of other exchanges are doing that, there's there's a disincentive there. I think if you're paying rebates would be a lot more of the volume. So we try not to set market share targets. UM. We try to focus mostly on is the data kind of showing our third parties, you know, are the brokers happy with their execution, and it's really kind of an education process. You know.

The rebate is such a huge short term incentive. You have to have a very strong sales pitch to get someone to change their behavior to come to a market that won't pay you to come to come there. So I think for us, it's it's a longer sales cycle. You know, in many ways, if I were, if I were to really drop the hammer and say we have to get to X present by this time, people internally at I X would probably start making different decisions. And I think that that's something that we don't want to do.

It's we don't have a revenue target, we don't have a market share target. We care mostly about the experience on on our market. It's interesting because you're you're sort of um, you're not choosing one or the other of what I said. On the one hand, like it sounds like you don't have any near term goal to be of the market, right do You are happy to have a ecosystem of different competitors, but then there encounter as a win when your competitors kind of moved towards your approach.

You do think that you're doing at least some things the right way, and there's only one right way, and you're moving the whole market to your way. Well, it depends on whose perspective you view the right way. So they the exchanges clearly have set their trading models up to sell latency and to basically provide certain advantages for

people that want to pay for them. Caters do a certain class of the market, and we're trying to do something almost the exact opposite, where we're created universal speed bump and there's one way in and one way out. Do we think we're serving the most critical player in the market. We do, because at the end of the day, the stock market was built to serve long term investors and help them invest in companies. Um. But does that mean that everyone should have to serve that one constituent.

That's no, because that that's what makes for competitions. Can we talk about some of the other speed bumps? Sure? The one I think is maybe most maybe the most interesting, is the Chicago one, because you know, again I go back to the origin story of I X more than like the kind of exact present structure, which is this notion that you want to get all the volume that's listed in the market you send, you find a way to send out an order such that you get every

piece of displayed liquidity. The Chicago speed bump Chicago saks change. What they've done is created a speed bump that applies only to incoming liquidity taking orders, which means effect that market makers on Chicago have a last look. They can put up an order, and when a new order comes in to take their liquidity, they get a few microseconds or whatever to decide whether or not they want to pull their order. So it's sort of the opposite of the story that is told in flash plays. What do

you think about that? So, so it's what they're trying to do is actually very similar to what Nasdac I think proposed a few years ago. Um and I think when Nazac proposed it, it was a five millisecond um speed bump as opposed to three or fifty, which is an eternity of it, right. So, so I think it'll be interesting to see how the SEC handles it, because it's it's a it's an asymmetrical application of latency, so which which means that it slowing down certain parties and

not others. I think I think we'll create a bit of a challenge. I think that one thing that happens is that people customers come to exchanges and say, hey, this would be a good idea. And I think like a year or two ago, you'd read news articles about that dialogue and there would be a certain level of suspicion because the customers coming to the exchanges would generally be high frequency traders, and everyone would say there's a

new order type on an exchange. That probably means that it's a high frequency trader coming to game the exchange or to pick off other people. One do you think that's true? And too as your as your kind of view on that change, as you've run an A T S and then an exchange and had customers come to you and talk to you about new order types, and yeah, I think it's true that customers are trying to get markets to do things that would help them. I think

that's natural. There's a certain level of influence that customers are going to have in the bigger the customer, the greater the influence. I think that that's perfect. You know that that's that It probably exists in most business cultures. Um, you know what the exchange does with that information, I

think is something that's completely different. You know, we of the order types or change that we discuss, we don't implement um because we'll find edge cases, or we'll find things where okay, well that's not gonna work, well that that will never get approved, or you know, this has some unintended consequence that we didn't think about. So part of you know, the reason you know we have such a good group is it's very diverse. There's people from

New York and NAZDAC, from high Speed Traders. We just added our chief strategy officers as guy Eric Stockland, who came from get Go or k CG. Now, in his perspective, he's teaching us things every day. He's got an incredible perspective, but you know he's looking at the world through a lens that helps us understand, okay, well if we did this, then here's here's the result of that. So most of the things that we talk about internally never see the

light of day. And I think because we want to ensure that each thing we we roll out has has a pretty universal utility UM and and in and in many cases, if if anyone is upset with this particular order uh, type or change. It's it's kind of a very narrow section of of of part participant. It's it's really trying to look to change things for for with the greatest possible utility. But do I think customers are

trying to influence outcomes? Of course, I absolutely. I think to think otherwise would you have more simpathy for your competitors there after, I don't think people set out, having talked to people that worked at some of these firms, they set out to really end up where they are. I think you put one foot in front of the other and some and and you know, this kind of wake up call comes and you pop up and you say where am I? You know what? How how do

we get here? And I think I don't So I don't think it was it was this massive chess match where they saw every move coming and played it the way it is. I think it was part of it was a reaction, you know. I think I think bats had a tremendous influence on New York and Nazadac and I think that you know, competitively, they started to kind of chase different types of revenue streams and um now ended up where they ended up, and and so I think,

do I have sympathy for them? I don't, But but do do I think it was it was part of this massive plan that's unfolded for the last decade exactly how they thought. Probably not how are you going to avoid ending up in ten years somewhere very different from where you want to be? Like, what's what's your check on that? Oh? I think I mean a big check on that? Is is really how you know, how I X was formed in who we've been supported by, and I think our number one asset is the relationships and

trust we have with the by side. I think if we lose that, we lose a lot of credibility and it becomes harder to do what we want to do. Were driven and motivated in a different way. It took us nine and a half months to raise the money we needed to um and that was Those were like pretty tough moments, but you know, deep kind of in our hearts, we knew that we had to be owned by the by side to to give us number one.

We wanted to be neutral. We wanted the by side to own us, and we wanted the Cell side to be our members, and we wanted to try to align them in a way that was unique. You know, I do think that our relationship with the by side is just something that we're not willing to sacrifice for some money. I think it would be a very bad short term as day. So I don't get back to something you said about the diversity of your team coming from exchanges

and higher concentrators. Is there do you notice like philosophical differences do people say, you know, do you say this is wrong? And people say, no, that's we do that all the time. That's fine because there there are there different perspectives that that surprise you. Yeah, there are certainly different perspectives, you know, And and so that's that's been kind of what's been great. And I think you know, even you know, John Ramsey came from the SEC and

and so there's all sorts of different perspectives. We tend to be very collaborative in terms of like big decisions, and yeah, it's and we don't always agree on everything. Is there an example of like a fight that like you and your kind of guys from like the RBC world just philosophically think one thing. And the guys who come to you from exchanges are high for concentrators, or whatever like no, no, no, you're you have it all wrong. You're you're not not like a factial question, but like,

you know, a sort of philosophy question. What's right question?

I'll give you one interesting one. So as the as the the application process escalated, and you know, we were doing our best to answer, you know, and address the questions through the comment period and then the exchanges and others took it kind of to the media with pretty sensational language and started to kind of shape the conversation and you know, the un American and these types of things came out, and so we we felt like we needed to respond in an equally strong way and and

I think that created a bit of of uh, you know internally to say, why don't we just keep going the process that we're going, you know, we'll win on merit and other people are like, no, no, we have to amp this up because we're we're losing. We're we're playing one game and they're playing another game. And I think so things like that that would say that like you started that game with flash, well yeah, so so yes, I guess if you wanted to roll, if you wanted

to roll and talk about um. But but again we so we have debates internally a lot. You know, I had written like six op eds over that application process. None of them ever got published. I've I've written one, one's got I've written many, but one has gotten I've got one through my team and and and you know, I'm thankful to the team. You know, I was, I

was trained as a trader. Something happens and I and I react, and I'm I'm learning to be patient, and I'm thankful for to to the team for not you know, because once you get in this this habit of responding to everything, you almost have to keep that up. Whereas if you if you're smarter and more strategic about how you respond and how you engage, it actually lets us focus on the most important thing, which is running the company.

So so yeah, so there are you know the best part about I X as were aligned at the at the highest levels, and that helps us sort out, you know, any disagreements we have at at you know, any levels

lower than that. But in general, it's been you know, I've learned, I've learned more from the people inside the walls at I X and I have kind of ever, I've learned more since you know we started, I X, I've learned more about marcut structure and then I think I did before, mostly because I'm getting all these different perspectives your stock exchange. You're also like a famous guy. You're like Michael Lewis here, you're sort of a voice on some issues around like the fairness of Wall Street

and like these big questions. My first questions like what's the next from a business perspective, and you tell me. But one obvious thing is listings, like what's coming on there. So one of the benefits of Flashboys was that it got the market structure story to public and trading companies who had no idea that their stock wasn't trading of its volume on New York um or wasn't trading you know, or or that you know that there other other markets could even trade their stock. And I think that um so,

that was a big benefit to us. And so we got a lot of inbound interest about saying, you know, there's really been no choice for us, and this seems like something different, and our shareholders are talking about it and and can we learn more? So so listening is something that we're definitely interesting it in. But um it's we're still in the process of kind of working through, you know, how how how can we be different? So that's a business yet to be formed, but one that

has some interest. You know, We've looked at other asset classes, We've talked about other geographies and and the number one thing for us is to not get distracted. We still feel like there's so much work to do in US equities that, um, I think spreading ourselves too thin would

be a mistake right now. So although although we do get a lot of inbound interest from varying parties and traders and customers and other and other assets and regions, you know, we're universally, we're seventy four people, and so we're universally focused on on US equities. But I do think that if we start to gain traction looking elsewhere, you know, we always have our ears and eyes open um. So I guess we'll we'll kind of see down the line.

But yeah, the focus is definitely US equities. There's a discussion about you are helping long term investors kind of invest in a in a very specific market micros actually a way there's another big discussion and kind of US equity markets around people saying shareholders have two short term

or perspective, or companies have two short term or perspective. Um, it seems to me that there's like at least the sort of like verbal overlap there right where where companies come to you and they say you're the long you're the stock exchange for long term investors. We want long term investors. We want people who don't care so much

about quarterly numbers. Do you think about that overlapping in terms of like listing standards, in terms of anything, or is that just kind of like further afield from your subject expertise. I think I mean it is a bit further afield for us. I mean we so like the long term stock exchange. That idea, it's an interesting idea, and and I like Eric and what they're doing. It's always it seems like a natural fit for you again in like a sort of verbal sense. Yeah, and so

philosophically were aligned. Um, but yeah, to dramatically change the listing standards that is, I think you kind of summarize it. Will It's not it's not our core expertise is to you know, arm up with lawyers and try to change, you know, Dorothy and cross the teas a different way. So I think what they're trying to do is is extremely interesting to us. We do see it as as a problem, but not one that I X necessarily solving those types of like regulatory rule based, um, you know standards.

I don't think that it's high on our on our list, although I think there are equal merits to what they're trying to accomplish because it is you know, short termism. Is is definitely a you know, a problem in the market, and I think them setting out to try to solve that, you know, we we give them a lot of credit and I think we have a good relationship with them, so, um, it's good. We were encouraged by the fact that people are trying to take on different parts of where they

think the market can improve. So maybe sort of like thinking about it, probably like it seems like you have like one big idea and you're kind of working with full focus to like implement and sell that one big idea, and you're not kind of looking to kind of branch

out into other big ideas at this point. Not not yet, yeah, not yet, we we we it keeps in second or third inning, and I really think that's like the case, there's so much work to be done that and and and we're relatively small to try to to try to spread out um spread ourselves really thin. I mean, so you know, Ronan In, Rob Park and John Shwal and Sophia we all have core expertise. We're all super focused on the business, and to start to like spread that

expertise around, I think it becomes really really tough. So we we we've built a team to kind of take this challenge on. And I think as if the business starts to mature and we start to kind of settle on a path, you know, could we invest and look look at other areas. Absolutely, But it's you know, as you as you say, we're seven days in, Uh, we got a lot of work to do. Were talking a little about the SEC process, sure, like what kind of

surprised you about that? So I think the most surprised I was was how vocal the exchanges were against us, and and kind of how how the level got turned up. You know, I think the by side came out of the gates with supportive comment letters, and I think that forced this process from kind of happening behind the scenes to happening in the public comment process. I mean Bat's I think Bat's bats and directed for the last four

exchange approvals. And I could be wrong in this, but I think they had three comment letters between the four exchanges, so there was never really any you know, debate, public debate about about those. And I think people would say those were structurally pretty similar. Yeah, they were all they were all. They're all fairly similar. I think that if if, certainly, if if we had known what we know now at the time those proposals, we might have had a few

things to say about it. It It was hard, it's it's hard to say what they look like at the time they got to prove. But I think that, um, the by side coming out and supporting NYA X forced kind of our opposition to become public. And I thought I was a bit surprised with with the exchanges. Um you know,

it was tough. Was that there were so many letters, there were so many comments in general, rated so much interest that that the SEC had to sort through all of that to make the best decision they could make. And so I think that the timing of it, you know, I kind of in a way understood why I had to take so long, because there were so many comments, but you know, we're just thankful that we got through

it and got approved. In terms of the SEC, it's off where there are things that you're kind of like disappointed by or like surprised to the upside in terms of how they dealt with the application and how they dealt with a lot of like sort of incommensurable pressure on both sides. Right and me, you have like all these like op eds saying i X or the exchange of the people, and then you have all these exchanges

saying i X well ruined market structure. Yeah, it's it seems to me it would be difficult for the SEC to deal with that. Like what was your kind of impression of how they dealt with it? Yeah, they So the people that were directly on I X is kind of application were extremely thorough and and and you know, ask a million questions and we we did our best to work with them, and it was a you know, it was a fairly rigorous and thorough process. So kind

of gives me. It's like one of those things where you know, some people are are upset when they get padded down at security lines at airports, and I don't mind, I don't mind, because I'm like, at least they're you know, they're they're in there, you know, kind of you know, trying to trying to vet things out. So it was it was I think you know, they did a thorough job. I think that you know, the pressures in your right

it was coming from both sides. I think that that showed what was at stake, and I think that that caused probably even more deliberations internally to make sure that they were making the right decision for the right reasons. So, you know, at the end of the day, I think it's it's you know, we're we are. We're just thankful that that that process is kind of behind us and we got the approval and now we just have a

chance to compete. Like what's your what what would you tell someone who works on the All Street has like they're a big idea and like once the change the world with like one thing that hasn't been tied about, Like what's like, what's your advice for the next year. I think it was it was it was a very hard decision to leave RBC, and because there's a certain level of comfort of of working at a large firm

and of being as a part of the system. And I think, um, I do think society in general is shifting to a more transparent society, and I think that what that does it casts a brighter light on on how people make money. We don't have any issue with how with people making money. I think that's just part of capitalism and and you know, we're capitalists at heartwork for profidility. But I think how people make money is

going to be a greater focus going forward. And I do think so if people are are are thinking about doing something different with their life, just think about the incentives that you know that that that are there for you to do what you do. And if you don't believe in that incentive structure, then finding it a different thing to do with your life isn't as risky now as it as it was in the past. I don't believe. So. I think the world's more receptive to people trying to

trying to do things differently. That was, like I said, a special edition of Odd Lots because we weren't in it, but it was great. Nonetheless, there's been another edition of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart and I'm Tracy Alloway. I'm on Twitter at Tracy Alloway. Thanks for listening. Put knowledge to work and grow your business with c i T.

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