Climbing the Alps with Paul Baiocchi

This is years ago. I get assigned E t F s in data. I'm in data and I don't know much about them. So where do I learn about them? I go to this place, Index Universe, as well as reading books and whatnot. An Index Universe was a hotbed of et F analysis way before it was cool, and Paul Baiacky was one of these original analysts. They had about ten people there who were really good. I mean they'd be good today, but they were. They were ten years ahead of their time. This was led by Dave Natick,

who we found the show, and Matt Hogan. Dave now at E t F Trends. Matt is now a bit wise and but they had a whole crew and I would listen to their podcasts, and Paul had a podcast, he wrote articles, and since then he went to Fidelity, a lot of them went other places, and so he

was at Fidelity. Now he's at ALPS. So today we'd be talking to an analyst who is smart as an analyst and used to have to judge ETFs critically, who now went to an issuer and now he's got to talk to advisors about the e t s that this one firm sells and make the case. And so we wanted to sort of take you into how an analyst, a specialist talked to an advisor about why they should use not only the e t F that the firm cells, but that that category like why should I buy and

energy et F now? And then why should I buy yours? In other words, this episode is you taking me to your record shop. Yeah. This is definitely someone who I

would call it early influence on my career. So it's it's it's it's fun to talk to him a and be just um, you know, talk about some of those early days, but also really talked about what he does today and how he uses all that knowledge and you know, it is interesting once you go to an issuer, you kind of have to sell their products, and it isn't interesting, you know how you have to wear. But I'm I am certain that all of his analysis, on all the articles he wrote have got to come in very handy.

Who's Alps and how big are they? They're a mid size issuer. They've been around for a while, I don't know, probably ten fifteen years. They've got six billion in assets, so I guess that puts some rate around the top twenty somewhere maybe biggest. Uh. They have sixteen products, um and I know them for things like a m LP which is the big MLP TF those are passed through high yielding securities. And also the dogs they have like

S dog E dog. These are dogs of the dow E t S. So it's a you know, honestly, this is a classic like shop that had a couple of hits enough to keep it going. I mean, you need a couple none of these. The MLP was a blockbuster, and then they had a few moderate hits and then someone they struggle with. It's a it's really a metaphor for the whole industry. But as long as you get a couple of couple of hits, you know you're good.

And I think a lot of what they do now is making sure they re um reintroduce those e t F s that were hits, but also the new ones they have that can compliment thus so which we will discuss it this time on Trillions Climbing the Alps with Paula. Paul, Welcome to Trillians. Thanks for having me. I'm excited, so talk to me about what you do. So currently, I am what in the E t F industry is typically defined as a specialist, so I support a subset of ALPS, s S S and c ALPS et F specifically in the

MLP energy infrastructure space. So basically I'm the subject matter expert for our wholesaling team. I helped them when they're meeting with advisors to talk at a high level about the the industry, the product suite, portfolio solutions. And then I also work with our portfolio management team, our capital markets team, and then are management team to ensure that distribution strategy on down to portfolio management is operating in a way that's as efficient as possible. So talk to

me about your journey. How did how did you get there. Yeah. Sure. So this podcast isn't anyways a decade in the making. I mean, Eric and I have known each other for for quite a while, and it's it's money because ten years ago I was at index Universe, which became e t F dot Com, and it was at the time this team of analysts that they built too really disrupt the way that advisors and investors thought about and analyzed ETFs.

We were sort of going after morning Star in terms of an et F classification system and and E t F analytics, and that's really how I cut my teeth

in the E t F world. Before that, I was working at a small r A that was building indexes for U I T S and we built an index four And this is going way back now, the first global shipping a t F s c A, which you think about launching an e t F in two thousand and eight, two thousand nine on global shipping not exactly the best timing, and so I would say that my timing in in many ways in life isn't always perfect,

as as I'm sure is the case with everybody. But now ten years on I've gone to Fidelity to help them build out their et F capability and grow their asset base. And now I'm at SS and c ALPS. I want to go back to the index Universe world that was before et F dot com. They used to have these conferences. I remember Paul the first time I went there. I mean, I was probably the only person from Bloomberg besides Chris Condon who covered UH funds. At

the time, it was two of us there. The last conference, I think there was like twenty people from Bloomberg, but this is probably back in maybe And I remember Jim Wyant opened the conference with welcome to the right side of history, and there was a buzz about it, and that just before a trillion. Now they've got five trillion, basically, but for a long time, et s for the underdog.

And do you as you go out on the road and you talk to clients knowing all that, and now you're talking to them about, like say a m LP or specific e t F, how far have advisors come or the users in using them, and also how much further could this industry grow. So I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of sort of the counterculture of the early days in the E t

F market, And I think advisors. Back then, we're being introduced to the e t F rapper, and in many ways you just had this opposition, this this structural opposition to the e t F rapper because of either misinformation or just misconceptions about what e t f s were designed to do and what they were actually doing. And I think ten years on, advisors are are less opposed to the sort of ideal of the e t F and they're more accepting of the fact that e t

F s can fit within a broader advisory strategy. And that's important because it gets to the heart of what these advisors are trying to do, which is just investment solutions that take into account things like asset location and

taxes and financial planning. And so now when I talked to an advisor, that that conversation about what an e t F does, or how an e t F operates, or what the creation redemption processes, that those conversations don't need to be had because there's there's now this varied user base of e t f s that maybe didn't exist ten years ago, and the intelligence around e t F application has evolved and accelerated in many ways, and so it makes it easier to have the conversation about

the exposure and the product as opposed to having to take three steps back and start from scratch, if that makes sense. How often do you meet with someone who's like, w t F is an e T F well, or somebody who's just read the latest article in the FT or something that's just says they've never been tested or they're gonna blow up. Is that still a thing because those articles do come out, I don't know. Quarterly, there's usually one that just like has everyone buzzing, but then

the flows just come in despite it. It feels like they almost are meaningless of this point, But do advisors still have worries? You do, and and you never want to paint with two broad a brush in terms of stereotyping certain demographics or certain cohorts of the advisory community.

But I do think that some of the the older advisors who are used to doing things a certain way, are very comfortable with a certain product type or a certain strategy, are more likely to to sort of take de bait as it were, around some of the sensationalist research or or articles on e T S. So you do still have a conversation where a guy in the fixed income space will will say, hey, we we saw these products traded deep discounts, and and I told you so.

And in some ways, that's just the confirmation bias that exists in people generally these days, whether it be financial advisors or otherwise. And so I think when you when you get down to it, the reality is is that a lot of the e t F flows now are just structural in nature. I mean, there's automatic buying that takes place as a result of home office model subscriptions at the big wire houses or otherwise, and so some of the flows just happened regardless of what's happening on

the ground level. In some ways, in other words, the e t s are more in models, target date funds, and just where the money's coming in rain or shine, right, and then there's tactical money. Speaking of tactical let's let's dive into some of the e t F here, because I think the ones that you're an expert or the specialist in now it alps. I think we'll get a

system interesting conversations. Now, let's talk about m l P. This is the MLP e t F. I believe it's the largest m l m l P E t F on the market right, And this was one of the oldest and this is a classic case of what you guys would have done an index universe and what we stilled, which is a MLP versus a a m J which is the E t N or uh the one that I think MLP X which only owns m LPs. There's a tax issue with mlp s and the way that they get taxed, which makes it all kind of picking

your poison kind of situation. Now you're on team a MLP. Now, so sell me on a m l P if I'm an advisor, And I said, well, the there's such a big tax drag inside that thing, why don't I just use the E t N instead, which doesn't have that. So it's it's one of these trade offs and investors make in the markets in that if you want to own, if you want to own an individual MLP, you're gonna get issue to K one and in some for some advisors that's just not palatable or for some investors that's

just not palatable. And so if you want to be in the MLP space, which is a pass through vehicle and has some interesting income characteristics, some tax deferral associated with them at means they in order to get a diversified pool of MLPs, you have to make some trade offs because the RICK structure and i r S guidelines cap MLPs of a RICK compliant mutual fund or et F, and so the workaround is to create a C corps around the e t F and so, without getting too

far in the weeds, but to answer your question, that can create some tax drag in periods of positive performance. Now, currently a m l P has what's called a deferred tax asset, which means there is no tax drag for for the foreseeable future given the near term performance of MLPs, and so removing the tax consequences or some of the

tax complications of of running a C CORPSTF. What I'll say is of MLPs distributions historically have been considered tax deferred return of capital, which means those that portion of your income that's coming into the into the funds just lowers your cost basis and isn't taxed in that tax

here when it's kicked out. And so in that way you do have some tax benefits for a taxable investor that you don't get it in e t N, which is just paying out a stream of income replicating the income that's thrown off by the underlying securities in the index. And it's taxes as ordinary income, as as any coupon payment on a fixed income instrument would be. And so so this gets down to sort of asset location and

tax consideration. So if you're in a I R A or a tax defered account, something like an e t N might be more appropriate because you're not really concerned about tax deferral. And in a taxable account, that tax deferral can be significant because let's say that you're an older investor who's panning, planning on passing on your investments

to your children or your grandchildren. You get a step up in basis at that point, and that can be signal eificant in terms of the state planning and and other tools that advisors are now being asked to deliver to their clients. And so MLP is the largest, most liquid ETF. To your point, it was the first MLP

only t F launch. We just had our tenure anniversary and did a little bit of a bell ring at the NYC and some some press around that, and so in many ways, as you know better than anybody Eric the first mover advantage in ETFs can be significant in the right categories, and MLPs have proven to be that

over time. Now MLP X and the RICK compliant Energy Infrastructure Products are sort of apples to oranges in some ways to MLP because they capped their MLP exposure at which means you mute some of the tax deferral and you include some c corps that don't have the same structure as an m LP from a tax perspective or from a pass through perspective. You still play on the same theme. And in recent years, Kinder Morgan in one know can some of these large MLPs have converted to

sea corps. So in many ways, they're all different ways to play this theme, which is companies that move that process and store crude oil and natural gas, and and that's a pretty simple business model. You collect a fee for doing that, and that leads to pretty steady cash flows relative to other pockets of of the energy complex. And so if I'm going to make the case for being in the energy infrastructure space, that's it. They historically

have pretty compelling distributions and and dividends. The yields right now in the market in fixed income or in utilities of reats or other sort of bond procty sectors is somewhat low, and advisors who are trying to generate income off the equity allocation in their asset allocation might be looking for something like a MLP or the energy infrastructure as an alternative, which historically has had pretty low correlations

to reach in utilities and other income producing asset classes. Sure, and I think most people out there who have heard of MLPs think of it as yield and just so for people who it's master limited partnership, they you know, it's these companies that have the pipes that that which brings me to another question, which ye say, m LP yields four currently, so that's a juicy yield. Mlp X, by the way, is half that. So to your point, that has more of the MLPs and the higher yield.

Although now we're in energy, and I know energy has had a tough go of it, like have you found it difficult that you're in that sector? Yes, you have the yield, but your energy energy has really taken it on the chin lately. And could we see an energy rebound um That's something that I think many people, just some people say will never happen. Um, I'm not in that camp. I think there will be an energy rebound. I don't see energy consumption going down that all that much.

But what do you say about that? So I think you're being a little bit diplomatic and saying that energy has been a difficult place to be. It's been an awful place to be for certain periods of time recently, and so you look at the energies waiting in the SMP just as a way to reflect that, and it's at its lowest levels in thirty plus years, and that's I think aligned really well with this growth value disparity

that we've seen in the market. And so you can sort of relate the too, in the sense that there are value managers out there who are pounding the table saying value is going to come back, and we get these short pops and and value relative to growth, and and people say, is this the start of that mean reversion as it relates to the value versus growth, and those tend to be short lived, or at least they

have recently. I think energy is very similar to that in the sense that we've had these short periods of outperformance. People are sort of saying, well, is this the energy renaissance? Is this when energy starts to outperform the market and retake its leadership in the market, and then you get negative headlines, or you get a pause, or you get a significant period of extended negative performance. And so I don't think that energy is as we currently see it

goes away anytime soon. I mean, the reality is is that natural gas, in any version of the Green New Deal or otherwise, is going to be an important bridge to a renewable energy future. We we rely on it to generate electricity if you're gonna be plugging your car into the wall of your garage. That electricity currently isn't coming from wind or solar, and it's unlikely to come extensively from wind, solar or hydrogen in the future. And

so natural gas does provide us with the bridge. Crude oil, on the other hand, is the one that's perhaps most at risk, at least from an existential perspective right now, and as we think about more progressive or or overhaul of our energy policy. But even then, if you look at some of the projections for energy demand going forward, a lot of the incremental demand for crude oil isn't

coming from highway mileage or jet fuel. It's coming from petrochemical demand, an emerging market specifically, and that's not likely to subside anytime soon. And so there are these structural challenges facing the legacy fossil fuel industry that I think are real and and investors have to be wary of. But as it relates to midstream energy infrastructure, I mean,

the reality is is that pipelines are valuable assets. And if you look at the d A p L news where there was an attempt to shut down this pipeline that was already operating for an environmental review and then a court stay and then an abandonment of a pipeline on the East Coast, I mean, if anything, that means that existing pipelines are more valuable than they were because they're gonna be harder to build and harder to get

approval for. And the production in the United States, whether it's in any of these various basins where fracking is going on in natural gas and crude oil is being produced, those pipes connect that to the various demand sights, whether it be a refining facility for crude oil or whether it be utility site and that's going to contin need

to be the case. Now, if you're an investor and you have some energy exposure, whether it's a m LP or something like let's say x l E Abroad Energy TF that includes the integrated companies and some of those large oil oil service companies, well, I do think that it's prudent to think about how you can pair that legacy fossil fuel or legacy energy position with something a little bit more growth oriented or maybe even an option on some of these emerging technologies in the energy space.

And so you talk about the thel C t F lineup and ACES, which is our renewable energy TF is something that we talk to advisors a lot about combining with say MLP or a legacy energy position as a way to to sort of pair the current with the future. I want to talk about ACES more, uh, Paul, because that's had a great year, like sixty year to date that it's up right, what what exactly are you guys

are accomplishing in that fund? So it fits within this thematic lineup of ETFs that that s sn C ALPS has launched in the past couple of years, and it tries to give you a blended exposure to a range

of different themes within a theme. And what I mean by that is you think about renewable energy, and people might think of wind or solar, but there's also fuel cell technology and battery technology, hydrogen for example, that are all part of this broader renewable energy push and are all going to have a role to play in the

future energy mix within the country. And so what ACES tries to do is give you exposure to all of those themes in a way that maybe a pure play solar fund when in or maybe a pure play wind fund would not. And and I think that's why it's

been popular. I mean, it's over three million in assets now to your point, you're a day performance has been really compelling, and I think advisors are starting to use it in the way that I described as a complement to their legacy energy position, because the reality is you can get a diversified energy sectory t F for example, for less than ten basis ones, but you might be willing to pay up a little bit from an expense ratio perspective to get the growth oriented nature of renewable

energy exposure as a complement to that, and it's not that you don't necessarily have exposure to some of those themes in your portfolio through the SMP five hundred or or you're diversified equity e t F because a lot of these things sort of blur the line between technology and energy because that's just the nature of renewable energy

development and production. But when you get it targeted in this way, you do in many ways provide yourself with some optionality on these these legacy fossil fuel companies, the exons of chevrons of the world. And this is, uh, this one's getting a huge kick from Tesla, So Tesla is the top holding that that that helps UM. But yeah, this is It's interesting when you think about E s G, A lot of people think about like taking companies out

that are bad, right, this is not really that. This is more of a theme fund going for a small group of companies that are trying to make money in the clean energy sector. Totally different. So it's probably this would probably get classified under E s G. It's a in a big tent kind of way, but it is not E s G per se. It's more of a play on a growth area. Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. In fact, it did get the blessing of the E s G reviewers, if you will.

But to your point, it's not a fund that's taking the whole market and screening companies based on an E s G methodology by Bloomberger M s c I. It's simply a strategy that happens to fit within the construct of how people think about E s G. At one point about E s G that I think is worth mentioning is people focus on the E, and they focus on the S. And certainly aces would in theory fit the E to uh perhaps a capital E. But the G and that is is really important and and it

gets sort of lost in the shuffle of of a lot of E s G conversations. And so there are pockets in the market that are making strong governance improvements that don't necessarily fit that E or that S in most investor minds, and a m l P is one

of those. And I just mentioned it not to sort of force it in here, but just to remind investors and advisors that that G part is really important, because you can have a technology company that the knocks it out of the park on the E and the S, but their governance might not be as strong as you might need it to be given the goal of a

broader E s G initiative. This is a huge problem for E s G what you're tapping into, because they there's just images people have of energy or oil, but they forget the S and the G. I think in just capitals, E T F XN is in there um been if if energy has a rally, I think E s G people that have completely excluded energy are going to be unhappy for however long that rally lasts. But on the other on the other flip side, I will push back on the G a little. There's an interesting

came with Berkshire. Berkshire is not in like any E S G T S because the governance I think it's fift independent board and the average is like eighty six or something, and Buffets like, yeah, I've been on independent boards. They're not independent. And it's an interesting issue because it's Buffett talking. And that's why E s G is like, um, how did Churchill describe Russia a labyrinth wrapped in a mystery inside a riddle? I feel like that's E s

G for me. I constantly find contradictions and things that over overrule the other thing. But your point is a good one, Paul. The G can actually you know, there's a waiting to it that and a lot of people have said this that the G is actually more important than the E and the S. Want to talk about the dogs though, Right, this is another uh success for you guys. And it's based on the dogs of the

Dow theory, right, can you explain that? Yeah? So, in the most simple terms, the dogs of the Dow theory just said, of those dirty companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the ones with the highest yields are effectively the companies that you want to own the next year, because based on mean reversion or historical performance, those are the ones that are most likely to outperform the market on a go forward basis. And so what the dogs do?

And it started with s dog, which is really sort of an old DTF that's been around quite a while and has been used by a wide range of advisors and investors over a long period of time. It was one I remember back at my et F dot com day's interacting with Jeremy Held, a former ALPS guy, about and trying to understand what they were trying to achieve

with it, and it's pretty simple. You just sort of take the highest yielding stocks from the ten at the time time and now eleven different sectors of the market, and you don't have market weights on the sectors. You have equal weights to all of the sectors, and so the idea is you're just sort of maximizing your exposure to the to the companies with the highest yield which within each sector of the market. And it's a different way to look at value. It's a different way to

look at yields. And you think about most dividend strategies, they take the whole market, they do some simple in the case of some of the first generation dividend ETFs screens for the highest yielding stocks, maybe they try and protect that yield a little bit by payout ratio or something to that effect, and then you just wait them based on that score, and you end up having a lot of exposure to utilities, into staples and some of the sort of higher yielding sectors of the market sort

of by definition. And then you have some of the other strategies, which are aristocratic strategies, which look at companies that have paid dividends for twenty years, or grown dividends for twenty years, or perhaps you do something that's a little bit more of the thodical or quantitative in nature, trying to screen out for the quality of that income stream.

And so you have all of these different approaches to dividends which are really aligned closely with the value strategy, because the dividend factor tends to to look a lot like the value factor over time. But the Dogs is just different because it takes this really old world Wall Street strategy, the dogs of the doubt theory, and applies it in in the E T F Rapper, and it was one of the first to do it, which I think makes it really relatable to advisors. And then we've

we've applied it to other markets. So we've got an emerging markets and an international and then more recently a real estate dog. And it's it's worth mentioning that that S Networks, the creator of those indexes, is now part of the Allarian family of indexes, and Hillaryan is our partner on on MLP and e n F are the

the index provider for those strategies. And so in some ways, this relationship between issuer and inde provider is being reflected in in at S sinc Alps in a way that is perhaps unique to the industry, given the changes that have been made between self indexing or otherwise. And you broke up something interesting, S Dog spawn E Dog and there's a there's a three or four dogs now, um, And when you have a hit E t F do you meet in a room and say, okay, we should

just run with this a little bit. And and like a movie, if you have a hit movie, you come out with a sequel. Yeah, it's it's a good question. I mean, I've only been at S sinc Alps since the beginning of the year, and so I haven't been

in a lot of those product development sessions. Now, I have been in product development sessions at other firms, and so I do think that if you have a strategy that's successful and it makes sense to port it to a different market, whether it be region specific, development specific, or even cap specific, certainly firms are going to do the research and determine if it makes sense to launch those products. And I think S Dog was certainly a

template for the dog and Eyed Dog and our dog. Um, there's another name in the lineup of your E t F. I want to talk about river Front. You've got a couple of e t s with river Front in the name. I want you to go into them. But I recall when I wrote my E t F book river Front, I refer to them as the e t F whisper because a lot of firms were going to them because they are master They use E t s and their models, and they were telling the e t F firm, hey,

you should come out with this. One of those products is b KLN to invest Go. I think another one was s p l V M lp X I think was one. I think they told Jeremy Schwartz at Wisdom Tree they should make d x J lean towards exporters before d x J blew up. And then I get the feeling they were like, hey, we're tired of giving away all our our ideas, but now there's three of them branded under your product lineup. How did that happen

and what do they do? So I think river Front is a great example of these early E t F strategists that have in many ways help shape the E t F industry as as you described. I mean you think about med Faber and Cambria. There's there's a number of these firms. Even Adelman worked with black Robe, I believe to to launch some ETFs or at least to help conceive some et F strategies, and so I think that feedback loop has been very positive in terms of

innovation and et F strategy development. And and river Front I've known forever, I mean Rob Glaunia and I sort of go way back, and I've moderated some panels with him and inside e t F s, and so I've

always been really familiar with the firm. But I mean as RIGGS, for example, the Riverfront Strategic Income Fund relates to the broader SS and C ALPS business I think is probably more revealing than sort of digging into the individual strategies themselves, in the sense that ALPS has this really unique business where we we have a ton of different partners, whether it be in ex providers or advisors who we partner with either from a distribution perspective, remember

ALPS is the distribution partner for the select sector spiders.

And then you have a strategy like RIGS, which is sort of a multi asset income strategy designed and built by Riverfront that needed the infrastructure to manage and to actually execute on that e t F and the and the piping the infrastructure and then e t F, whether it be the day to day operations or otherwise, is critically important to the success of an ETF, and that's one of the sort of mini services that ALPS as a broader brand offers to firms like Riverfront, and so

I think the the idea is is that historically, some of these advisors have gone out in monstero mutual fund, which is just an easier way to to sort of wrap up their strategies for their clients. Instead of cobbling together a mix of different mutual funds, you sort of have your one stop shop mutual fund that provides you

the exposure that you need for those smaller clients. And the ETF rapper just happens to be the latest evolution in that product delivery mechanism that allows a firm like Riverfront to deliver on some of these And the added benefit is that, unlike a mutual fund, anybody can buy the t F and so in theory, you know only have this mechanism to deliver your strategies to your existing clients.

You open up the door to all of these other potential clients and and in theory, leverage the ALPS distribution team to help deliver that to a wider audience. You go way back right. I remember listening to the podcast with you and you go Eggboniki. I think, I know, I see him once in a while. He's great. He's one of my favorite people. I know. You guys had a nice little spark. You followed David Matt, who was tough act to follow, but you did a great job.

Those podcasts were like graduate school for me at the time. And again we're talking about E T S had a trillion back then. What inning are we in Now? You have that base knowledge, Now you're on the road talking to advisors. So where do you see this going? Both E T F s and passive as a percentage of

the market. Well, I think the point about David Matt, I think is an interesting one ten years ago because what was it three or four years ago where their own stage and E T F are gonna get disrupted by direct indexing, which, by the way, we've pushed back on that a little bit. I think they got a little ahead of themselves. I think direct indexing make carve out a five percent niche, but I just don't see it disrupting. I don't know if you have a different take.

I was aligned with them, and I still think that direct indexing will have a large role to play. But I think it it's one of those sort of old adages where people overestimate what can be done in a year and underestimate what can be done in five and so I think in some ways direct indexing is an example of that. But I do think that the e t F asset base is going to continue to grow,

both through the market move and through increased adoption. I mean, again, we talked about the structural drivers of e t F

flows and I think that will continue. But I do think that there are disruptive forces out there that will challenge the the e t F orthodoxy, and whether that be token ized versions of an smp F t F that exists on a blockchain and perhaps even lowers the cost of of getting exposure and lowering the friction of getting exposure to the SMP five hundred in the version that that exists now in an e t F. I mean, there are threats and and that's one of the beauties

of this market and of this industry in some ways is that there's always innovation taking place, and and the minute you rest on your laurels, no matter how great this e t F run has been, you have to be aware of them and try to understand them so that you can do your own job better and hopefully provide the clients that you're working with, regardless of what step you are in the value chain. Alright, Paul, I gotta ask my closing question, what's your favorite et F ticker,

what's your favorite ALPS ticker? And what's your favorite non ALPS ticker? So I love Aces just because it's a it's a great product, but also I just think it's a great ticker. I mean, MLP is one of those really what's the word I'm looking specific and like straightforward, right, I mean, there's not a lot of nuance to it. It says exactly what it is right out of the gate.

And so I think robos a cool ticker. I've always been sort of fascinated by the tickers that explain what the fund does in four letters in a way that you wouldn't have thought was possible. And and what's funny is is you know, just to sort of go inside Baseball a little bit. I think more et f issuers than you think. Go to Urban Dictionary when trying to determine what their tickers are. All right, Paul Backy, thank you so much for joining us on Trillions. My pleasure.

This is great. Thank you guys. Have a great rest of your week in Labor Day weekend. Thanks for listening to Trillions. Until next time. You can find us on the Boomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and whatever else you like to listen. We'd love to hear from you. We're on Twitter, I'm at Joel Webber Show, He's at Eric Faltunus, and you find more about Alps at Alps Funds dot com. This episode of Trillions was produced by Magnus Hendrickson. Francesca Levy is the head of

Bloomberg Podcast. Bye.