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All Right, Sam and Tracy, here's the deal. Okay, we're recording this on Tuesday. This episode is gonna come out Friday, so we're recording this before the big FED decision. So how about we planned for this. I'm gonna ask you guys what your FED forecast is, and then if and then I'm gonna ask you again, and we can record two versions of it, and then in the actual episode we'll use whichever one was correct.
That does that sound like a good plan.
I'm just gonna hedge my bets and say I think they're gonna cut by thirty seven point five basis points.
I mean a Hawkers twenty five or a Dubvish fifty.
Yeah, you know, I think you know either after after the announcement, I think either the high end or the low end of the FED funds target's gonna be five percent.
I did a deadlift one, two, three, Okay, uh barges. This isn't after school special, except.
I've decided I'm going to base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US.
Where's the best with imposta these.
Are the important question is that robots taking over the world.
No.
I think that like in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the odd Launch podcast, And people say, I don't really need to listen to Joe and Tracy anymore.
We do have touching, the perfect welcome to lots more? Will we catch up with friends about what's going on right now?
Because even when odd Lots is over, there's always lots more and we really.
Do have the perfect guest.
Honestly that I think we're kind of splitting Harris. But don't you think we're kind of splitting Harris twenty five fifty bass.
I don't know.
I think the interesting thing is, like, well, we're journalists or media people, so we all kind of things journalists, Yeah, okay, we're journalists, and we all sort of think about things in terms of size and scope. So the interesting size and scope for this meeting is everyone expects them to cut, but there's never been this much uncertainty about twenty five BIPs versus fifty BIPs. Like the market the last time I checked was pretty evenly split between the two.
Of those, right, But yeah, no, in terms of backdrop, I think that's actually an important thing, right, Like, sure, it's never been more split in terms of what the consensus is. But well, why don't we also consider the fact that, you know, we're not on the cusp of an economic crisis.
Yeah right, We're not at.
The you know, in the throes of the inflation crisis. So I feel like, you know, monetary policy developments and rate cut announcements on the press conference probably has more risk of market volatility when we're we have a market crisis as a pose now, where you know, the stock market's at an all time high, unemployment is relatively low, and it's pretty calm. So I don't know, I think we're splitting hers.
All right, No more conversation.
That's going to be completely irrelevant by the time everyone listening to this. We are speaking, of course, with Sam Row, who writes the Fantastic Ticker newsletter, one of the substecs that I actually opened and that's real, Thank you, that's real. I actually opened it. I feel like Tracy like newsletters. They're the new Economists subscription where like, you know, you subscribe the economists and then like eight pile up and then.
You know, like people use I thought you were going to say in terms of prestige, like the way people always by the economists when they're at an airport so they can just like be in the last.
But also it is kind of like that, but so you subscribe to the economists that I used to, but like I didn't really read them, you know.
Or like I was actually on a content creator panel earlier this week for the future Proof conference and that question actually came up. You know, how do you guys think about cadence and publishing schedule and all this kind of stuff. Everyone on the K kind of had a different approach to this. Like some people say, you know, you got to do a daily thing. You keep the volume high because you never know what's going to hit in one of those things are going to.
Or remind people that you're there. I hear that a lot, like to remind people and be top of mind all the time.
Exactly, you know, give people, you know, value for their money or whatever. I don't know. I kind of taken a contrarian approach to that. Sometimes I joke that the less I sud, the more valuable my product is or whatever my output is.
I try to.
Think of, uh, you know, the reader's time as much as possible, like kind of like you know, the magazine stacking up, Right, There's the reason why that magazine stacks up is because you probably have other more important things to do. So I try to, you know, be really careful about, you know, sending stuff out that I think when people open it and read it, that they're glad that you did it, and so the next time they
open it, then they'll be happy to read it. And if I'm not sending something out, that probably sends a signal that, you know, I don't have anything to say that day.
Yeah.
I always think that you should do what you're best at.
Right.
There are some people who are actually very well Joe's one of them, who are very good at putting out thoughts on a daily basis.
Every morning.
Yeah, thank you. Scroll.
There are other people, probably me actually, who are better at kind of like selecting topics and then going deep into them.
Yeah, and you're very good, Thank you, thank you.
There was a pause, But that wasn't That wasn't just like that sort of like de facto reciprocation as very real thing. So we're out here at the future Proof Festival about the things on the stage but actually, what have you been writing about lately?
Sam?
You know you write every once in a while because you're so mindful of everyone's like me, who's always trying to be top of.
Mind with everyone. You know, you you store up. What have you been talking about?
Well, I mean market volatility has been kind of fun. Yeah, kicking August off with that huge sell off and then having the rebound, and then kicking September off with that huge sol off.
Wait, actually here's another media question.
Yeah, we're coral to the vis It's always good for a boost subscribers or listeners or Twitter followers whatever.
Do you find the same? Yeah?
Oh, absolutely, Like you know, a bull market with low volatility is terrible for business because no one has any questions when the market's going up. They just open their frow and k plan and they see the numbers going up and they're not concerned about They go on with the rest of their lives. You know, they'll go shopping, they go to Disney World, you know, they watch Netflix. It's only you know, when the numbers start going down, you know they're wondering, you know, should I actually be
more concerned about this? You know, how do I think about this, Why haven't I made a plan about this? And you know, hopefully you know I sent something out that helps explain that. But yeah, no, I've mostly been writing about and a lot of it is just repetition of the same old stats in that, you know, market
volatility is a thing. When volatility is low and the stock market is in your near record high, like, those are times where you have to start reminding yourself that you know, on average, you see a fourteen percent max
drawled down in a given year. So when you do see that big five percent, you know, ten percent drop in a week or two, you know, if you have that mindset knowing that, you know, I was prepared for a fourteen percent sell off and this is completely normal, and you know, you just make the best out of that situation as as opposed to panic and try to make a plan in the throws of that mess.
But August was so weird. We've we've spoken about this a number of times now, but like it was so sharp the draw down and so freaking short lived right like three days basically where it was the end of the world. Yeah, and the Fed's gonna cut by one hundred bases points and the Central Bank needs to be out there talking to people about what's going on. And then you know, it's September and I can barely remember what happened.
Yeah, it was strange. It was strange, and I still think people don't know what, yeah happened.
I was about to ask, what's your take on what caused the sell off? Because this is the other thing that I think was interesting. There was such a huge narrative around the carry trade unwined, and then it was like, well, we all kind of forgot about it a week later.
Right, I mean, you have to learn all that stuff in real time. I mean, I think that's why it's such great, you know, work to be in media and journalism and research and all that kind of stuff. When stuff like that happens and people start screaming about carry trade onlines and you know, movements and other markets that you should be worried about that might be somehow related
to why the US markets are down. When you hear stuff like that, that to me kind of echoes of financial crisis, because you know, there was so much stuff going on in the crisis that you know, was completely inscrutable. Like you know, you hear a little bit about a home price started down and this and that. But it wasn't until they start talking about mortgage backed securities and asset backed securities and CDOs and all this alphabet soup that you've never heard of that you start the panic.
And then afterwards you realize that was a big deal. So when you do hear about these new, you know, exotic trades that might be unwinding, you know, you rush to do homework.
Joe, I just realized, we can give the people what they want and just make this a conversation about financial media during two thousand and eight.
Oh, we could do that all over again.
I love that idea.
You know, we're here at the future Proof Festival, and for people who don't know what it is, it is sort of like associated with the whole Berry Red Holetz Josh Brown crew. Most of the people in attendance are registered investment advisors, and that's actually a world that we really have not ever covered on much, but it's absolutely gigantic and crucial and growing. And so these are people or small companies typically a few people maybe, and they manage people's money.
You're pretty plugged in.
I feel like you're really plugged into the world. I feel like you're You're like you're probably like a very must read among many of the people here. You're a celebrity here, like tell us about ari I a world as you see.
I mean, I don't know, I couldn't speak too much about the business, but the culture, you know, actually very much reminds me of the whole in the independent, you know, newsletter writer media kind of thing where you know, there are so many services and things that you can outsource now, and the you know, the regulation is very friendly. That you know, because a lot of these people here used
to work at bigger firms. Yeah, you know, they come from places like Ubs and Morgan Stanley and decided that you know, they're they they were sort of beholden to, you know, uh an.
Organization or a way of doing business, a way of.
Doing business that they thought they could do it differently or do it better, and you know, this whole boom and Rias basically said, hey, I can probably take a risk. I see all these other people doing it. I'm going to give it a shot. And then you know, the conferences like this happen where you can just walk around and people give you all the answers to all your questions.
And so like a lot of the attendees are arias here, and then there are all these boots and they're all the companies selling.
Services to arias. So it's like we'll.
Handle your texts things, and will handle your back end infrastructure, or will handle your social media marketing or what like all of these services, including like we'll handle your portfolio construction. So really the only thing that they need to do on their own is to read Sam's newsletter and then tell their clients about how stocks always go up.
Always sounds smart in front of clients, but it's.
Like a big thing, right Yeah, yeah, no, no that I mean that really is it? Like even what I do is, you know, there's not a whole lot of original stuff coming from me.
I do a lot of curate.
A lot of my work is curation and just sort of amplifying the work of other people. And you know, those are the kinds of conversations I do have with you know a lot of these professionals here is you know, you help me save time, you know, doing the research and finding interesting stuff because instead of me having to you know, read you know, fifteen pages of the Wall Street Journal every morning. You know, I'll read your Sunday newsletter and come out with like six different stats that
I could talk about with clients next week. You know, as much as I'm here to you know, enrich readers or help people become better investors, there's nothing stopping anybody from just ripping stuff off from my newsletter and then sending out to their clients.
That's kind of what media is there for. I feel like it's there to provide the talking points. And so Bloomberg famously has something called the Market Wrap, yeah, which sits on our top menu all the time, and it basically summarizes what's going on in the market. And I remember there used to be a discussion about, like, well, why do you need something that's just telling you if the s and P five hundred went up or down
that day? And the answer is because there are a lot of people out there who need to like talk to their clients and basically summarize what's been going on in the market. And if they can do it by just reading this one thing, it's actually really useful, right.
Right, And you know, there's a lot of ways to define a lot of people, right, Like, if you're doing this at an organization, where you actually have to have really big numbers to justify this kind of star service. Then you know you time it and you have to actually define what a lot of people is. But for me, a lot of people might be twenty thousand people or fifty thousand people, and those smaller audiences might be on a different kind of schedule or might be on a
different kind of cadence. When I've done research into the newsletter of Business, the financial newsletter Business, I do know that the biggest audiences exist in the mornings Monday through Friday, daily before the market's open. I don't have the capacity to write every morning, but I do know I'm missing out on an audience that way. But I'll send something out every Sunday, and there's an audience that exists for that.
It's not as big as the weekday audience, but they do exist, and it turns out they are actually being underserved by some of these other places that go for the high volume play.
Joe speaking of a lot of people, that's like one of two things that I've learned about Arias while I'm here is that like there's a.
Lot of them, a lot of them.
Yeah, And like the number of rias that are at this particular event seems to basically be double every year, which you know, a lot of that credit to Barry and Josh and what they've built here. And then the second thing I learned is that they all wear Polo shirts.
Yeah, yeah, polo and yeah, uh, leisure work wear yeah.
And Hoka Hokah sneakers or those nikes that are really comfortable and stuff like that.
I know I have a pair of those nikes.
I call them my old man early bird buffet shoes because I run because they're running shoes, but I don't run, but they are really comfortable to stand in. So like, if I'm standing in line at a buffet at six in the morning, I want to be in running shoes.
Yeah.
Actually, I just noticed, Joe, you're wearing like, uh, with socks.
No, it's I don't know why. I like having my feet warm, but I also like being able to slip in and out of slides.
It's very gen z of you.
Yeah, it is, so I've been told it's very hip.
You know.
The other thing too, that I think this crowd is really into and it makes sense from the perch of the investment advisors. They love behavioral stuff. They love stories about how irrational people are. There seems to be a limitless appetite for various studies that show that the human brain responds more to fear, and that we sell at the exact wrong times and just all the ways we're irrational.
But it makes sense because it's like the main thing they have to do to tell their clients, so like just remind them not to sell at the bottom, right.
Right, Yeah, and you know, to your point, it makes sense. Yeah,
it's funny. There's so much about finance that's theoretical, that's very quantitative, that's based off of models with you know, different number, you know, quantitative inputs you've put on, like something comes out the other end, and that thing never happens because people are irrational, right, Yeah, But when you hear about that, you realize that the markets are much more intuitive than you think, right, Like, I'm one of many people who are trying to trade the stock market,
but I'm also going to panic and freak out when the markets sell off, Like that's just sort of my nature. And now someone's explaining to me that actually there's a whole field of study based off of this, and every week someone is coming out with a new paper, you know, telling you about behavioral flinance and this is how markets work.
That's something that I always thought was really interesting when I first read The Intelligent Investor, which is honestly, it's kind of a dense read and it's kind of boring, but there's a lot of it in there that you know, talks about, you know, behavioral biases and how.
So they've known about this forever, forever, forever.
This is not groundbreaking stuff like I think it's. It's more popular now with the work of you know, Faylor and Schiller and all these people who are doing a really nice job of telling that story. But you know, behavioral finance has been around forever.
You know what I don't get about this particular event, Joe. You described how there are all the booths there and they're providing services for arias. But what do the arias talk about when they talk to each other?
Yeah, and they're all standing around about and stuff like that.
They're all competing, they're all competing the same clients. By the way, an Ria pitched himself to me and some of my fellow Bloomberg journalists, and it was actually it was a bit patronizing because he came up to us and he was like, oh, I'm an Ria, And we were like, well, what do you what do you do exactly? And we meant that as like who do you work for? What exactly do you do? And he was like, well, I manage money. One day, when all of you are rich and famous, you need to find someone like me
to manage your money for you. And we were all kind of like, okay, we understand that part. You don't need to pitch to us. But I assume they're all competing against each other for client money.
Yeah, I mean, you know what did journalist talk about when they get together, Like, you know, there's a big CNBC presence out here. You know, what are the CNBC people say to the Bloomberg people, Like there's obviously stories
that I'm sure that they can exchange notes on. And you know, as much as you're competing with people, you're also exchanging notes, right, like, especially like in this independent game, you know, they're probably all talking about how terrible they're they're you know, the last company that they worked with work.
You know, you're also get a tax deductible vacation to Orange County.
California, that's something my accountant has been telling me.
Yeah, well you run your own business now, so that's sure, Like tax is actually something you have to pay attention to.
Yeah, I'm the CFO. I approved the expenses on HR and you know I did all the info tech. But yeah, no, it's a it's a big part of it. And you know, I think something that's been kind of a positive experience about going independent is understanding and appreciating all that kind of stuff. But yeah, the tech, No, the tax go is designed to encourage businesses to go out and you know, do business stuff.
Here's a thought.
It's not about the conference. It's not about investing. When I come down here, one of the things I'm reminded of is like America is just insanely rich. Obviously not everyone, but the thing that like bow I think about a lot in America is that, like, you can have a house in Newport Beach, you can have a boat on
the marina in Newport Beach. You can go to a restaurant where clients, if you're rich enough, have their own wine locker in the restaurant so that they can just like keep their wine there.
And you could be a total nobody and have all.
That, like you really like there's the amazing thing about America is like they're all these people that have like so much wealth, and like in many other countries, they would be like a prince or they would be the person that owns the regional Coca Cola beveraging beverage distributor or whatever.
Here, you could.
Basically be a total nobody and never have really like done anything and still like, if you're lucky enough.
Have that life.
Well it's not it's not even just southern California. Yeah, it's everywhere because it's like, you know, we're surrounded by wealth advisors and they come from all over the country.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that's something.
I've I'm not calling them total nobody.
Oh no, no, no, I just want to be clear about it. Yeah, no, they they're flying under the radar and they're not on the forms four hundred. Yeah, like you can have one hundred million dollars and no one will.
Ever hear about you, have ever heard of your name.
But these people exist, these families exist in every state of the country. And so you know, when you do meet someone who you know has a team of twenty you know, analysts, but they're in Sioux City, Iowa. It might be jarring for people from bigger cities that are dealing with just ungodly amounts of wealth, but there are actually massive amounts of wealth across the country in every city.
And you know, that's something that's kind of interesting about going to these events where you know, they all provide similar or very same services to all these people, but you know, culturally they're a little bit different. I mean, did you see there's a booth that's got like guys with cowboy boots.
And Texas Texas something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Texas Capital. I think they also do like a barbecue.
Oh yeah, they.
Had beers last night, So shout out to Texas Capital for providing easily accessible beers at the event. Appreciated that one. Wait, okay, so I have an important question. But are you going to listen to Third Eye Blind later?
Yeah? Oh for sure. I mean the only thing I'm I mean, I'm really excited about it. The only thing I'm concerned about is I only know two of their songs, so.
It's one more than most people.
Well there are, I mean, only two of them became like the things, So I don't think that's unusual.
Yes, I don't know how long their set is, if it's like thirty or forty five minutes or an hour, but I'm sure it'll be great. Live music's always great, right, Tracy.
I really want to do an episode on the music industry tour event because all these event a lot of these events have them, and they're always like someone who is really big, like twenty years ago, and because everyone at the event is like kind of like our age, middle age, et cetera. You know, they're like people that we liked. I was never in the Third Eye Blind, people we quote liked when we were younger. And then it's like, oh, we're seeing Third Eye Blind or it's like, oh we're seeing you know.
Nelly, Nelly, Yeah, Nelly.
Or Sugar Ray or just like any of these bands, but like how that works and like they're pricing and how like Okay, let's say we're throwing lots event one day on the beach and we're like, yeah, we want to get someone Like how who do we talk to to get the price list of the bands?
I want to do that episode.
Yeah.
There must be like a market or an agency.
Yeah, there specializes.
In like one hit Wonders from the nineties, Yeah, or.
Just like the whole like what happens when a mega celebrity, you know, is out of the spotlight. Yeah, like when people you know, quote unquote retire in their twenties or thirty after they hit their peak, you know, they can still go out and have like, you know, a lucrative career, either doing exactly what they're doing or marketing their brand or just completely going into.
The other one that's kind of like very closely related to this is concerts and musicians and casinos, but not Vegas. But like if you go to like Atlantic City and go to you know, they're like, oh, earth Wind and Fire is going to be performing or something like that. And how that works because again they're not like they're they're long past their prime, right, but I guess they're not like fully retired, And so how that market works for like those artists and stuff like that.
Like I was actually just thinking about this because I remember that in high school is a really big fan of three eleven and so one day I decided to just google it and it turns out there on tour. Yeah, and like there's.
So many things. There's random towns there was.
Smaller ve and all this kind of stuff. But yeah, it's kind of funny. You just think about bands that you haven't really thought about for a while, and yeah, you just google it.
They're still grinding away.
Half of them are like currently on tour, and yeah, they're grinding away and you can go see them in like an intimate menu.
Three eleven. I don't know what they're called. They have some concerts coming up. They're going to be an Ocean City, Maryland, Oh on the September twenty seventh, Agora Hill which I don't know where that is on October eleventh, and Anchorage, Alaska on September twentieth. Yeah, so they're grinding away.
Yeah, I mean it's cool that they do that because you know, it brings attention to some of these smaller cities. Not that you know, this is not a tailor swebt tour, right, but like the hardcore fans will drive for two hours to go see a show.
Well, I was gonna say, you're talking about smaller cities, but where I am in Connecticut, there's a very famous county fair and it's like exactly what you would think of as a county fair. There's cows and pigs and chickens and things and like prizes for the most beautiful
tomato grown every year. But they do have a musical act and I can't remember who it was this year, but it's like it is people well, mostly from the nineteen seventies, like smaller bands, and they're all they're touring county fairs across America.
They're always they're always very notable names.
Yeah, Sugar Ray, I just looked up. They're also playing Ocean City, so there must be some sort of festival there you go. And then September twenty eighth they're playing at the Seneca Casino and Niagara Falls, New York. So the tour lives on.
I think it's funny that we're just talking about like touring music acts when we started out with the FED.
Yeah, but there we are.
You know, you go from macro to micro and you know whatever, there you go. That's the real economy for you.
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