Halftime Report: A Roundtable Discussion - podcast episode cover

Halftime Report: A Roundtable Discussion

Jun 25, 202032 min
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Episode description

The first six months of 2020 has felt more like five years, at least in ETF terms. So much has happened: the lockdown, the selloff, the rebound, the Fed, not to mention oil, airlines, ANTs, ESG, and day-trading on Robinhood. On this episode of Trillions, Eric and Joel invite the Bloomberg Intelligence team of analysts, including Athanasisos Psarofagis, James Seyffart and Morgan Barna, to discuss and debate all the big ETF topics from the first half, as well as themes to watch in the second half. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Welken to trillions. I'm Joel Weber and I am Eric bel Tunis. Eric. I realized recently that, um, you know, I've lost sense of time. No no sense of time anymore. But we're basically halfway through the year and it's been a weird year. It felt appropriate that we should do a halftime report. Yeah, I mean, so much has happened. I I almost feel like time has slowed down, like like two or three years has been stuffed into six months. Even the sell off people were saying that it was

like two thousand eight squeezed into six weeks. And I think the recovery was, like, you know, the same deal. Everything just seems to be so condensed, and with the lockdown throw on top of that, I think everybody's very disoriented. But um, certainly this first half was a lot of et F storylines have have developed a lot to chew on, so helpe less make sense of what's been going on.

We figured we'd lean into Bloomberg Intelligence and your analysts, Eric, So we've got your team who's basically had some observations both for the first half and then kind of looking ahead for the second half. So who's all joining us? So we have from London or I think he might be in Greece already, but uh, Athanacio, Sarah Fagus otherwise known as Tom Um, James Seffert, who is in Summit, New Jersey, and Morgan Barner who is in d C

but was just in California. We're all over the place, but you know we are constantly in Twitter, d m s and I v s talking about these issues all the time. So basically I asked the Meats to bring the big issue they've thought was the big deal from the first half, and also maybe something to watching in the second half. So um, there's gonna be a lot to chew on today just for people listening. You know, we have all four of us, and there's some vacations

and whatnots coming up. So we recorded this right in the middle of June, so we're gonna go over some numbers. They could be a touch stale, but I think directionally think it's going to be exactly the same this time. On Trillions the E t F halftime Report, Morgan, Tom James, welcome to Trillions again. Hey guys, good to see you guys in this zoom. Uh this is my closet, don't you guys think it has a blared witch vibe in there.

I do, because all you see is the late kind of like kind of up in his face, and he's just looks like he is scared and like hiding from something Like it's just feel like a horror movie going on. If you see me looking into the corner, please please call for help. Um okay, James, I want to start with you first half. What do you want to talk about? What was your big takeaway? I mean, the big takeaway is the FED jumping into the e t F market

and buying ets. So they basically stepped in and said they were going to be buying fixed income e T s UM. We call it kitchen sinc Day in Marche. Basically, jerol Al just said he was going to be buying things left and right. U and E T s were added to that description. As of June tenth, we know that they have somewhere around five point three billion in ETS and we are five point five billion in e

t F s UM. They're all fixed income, mostly investment grade, but there's some high yield ets in there, and we're also obviously watching to see which ets are specifically buying and they're going to re release that report um on a monthly basis, so we have the most recent data as of May nine. We won't know exactly when the June report will come out, but that they tell us basically everything you could ever want to know with what the FED is doing in the e t F market.

A lot of people when they hear the FITS buying e t F they think, oh, are we Japan now? The Bank of Japan of the e t F sets there just for perspective, that five billion would be point three percent of all e t f s, but it is two percent of corporate bondy tfs, and it's about ten percent of all the flows into corporate bondyts this year. So in that niche, the FED is becoming a bigger player. And I think if you looked at the top ten holdings of like an l q D or h y G,

the FED would be on the cusp. It might be, you know, flirting with the top ten holder of these funds already and there's still you know, some time to go. So one of the observation I had about what James is talking about is the portfolio that the e t F s the FED uses was really advanced, in my opinion. Normally, when an institution like a Yale or a I don't know, New Jersey pension uses e t F, they use like one or two liquid ones, you know, for liquidity purposes.

They're afraid to swim away from those big liquid ones. And the FED had what thirteen to fifteen e t F some most people would never heard of, probably half the list, And I think that really speaks to black Rock holding their hand. I mean, they are definitely working with someone who knows e t F and so their portfolio to me looks a lot more like an e

t F strategist than it does like an institution. Yeah, and the other thing to highlight here is, as I mentioned, they're given there being very transparent here, Like we knew they were going to be so much transparent, but when they released this report at the end of the month of May, we're at that. Maybe they were vocal about this, but I didn't think they were going to be as

transparent as they are. We can see the trade level data, what time they bought, these e t F s, who bought it, all these different things, so they're telling you everything that happened, and it's you're looking back and it's not live, but you can see exactly what they're doing in the marketplace when it's happened, after it's happened. Okay, Eric, You've got a couple of topics from first half that I think we we've talked about a couple of times, but I just feel like it is the zeitgeist of

the of the year so far. Do you want to talk about them? Yeah, I think I'm becoming associated with the E t F jets at this point. Um, I've been obsessed, even addicted, but I admitted, so at least there's that, um that you have a problem. Yeah, I do have a problem. Um, this E t F Jets. It's just really I don't know if it's lack of sports, but it's really just captured my attention at big time because you know, when we look at flows into Vanguard and black Rock, it's you know, they take the hoover

and money like giant vacuum cleaners. So anytime a small E t F is able to just sort of go from obscurity into the big time within a couple of weeks or months, it's fascinating. It's it's a rare and in Jets's case. Let me give you the numbers here. Um. What stuck out to me was the flow streak. It took in money seventy straight days before finally seeing an outflow. Seventy days of straight inflows is absurd, especially for an e t F that had thirty million dollars at the

beginning of it. I looked at the longest streaks of inflows of all e t f s, and Jets would write number three at seventy days to Vanguard B and d X and v W. Oh, we're number one and two with eighty five and eighty three days. But the whole top ten was Vanguard except for Jets. That is how unusual it is. UM. I also think it's interesting that Jets was so bought up after being so bad. Normally, when you see retail sort of pile into a theme et F, it's because it's having its shiny object moment,

it's having a good performance run. This was the opposite. This was people buying something beat up. I mean, the evaluation on the airline stocks was really low. It also speaks to this whole robin Hood situation that everybody's obsessed with robin Hood being like the face of the day trading retail investor who's board at home with no sports, and I think there's a case we made. Although you know, Morgan ran the numbers and they don't have a lot

of assets. If you look at Jets, we would estimate maybe five to seven percent of Jets is robin Hood, but they represent other people on other platforms, so you have a bigger robin Hood effect. And that's definitely bigger than that seven percent, so they're definitely buying it. You know, it's retail because of how small the trades and the flows are UM. And then this retail thing is interesting because it basically puts all these small investors on the

opposite side of a Buffet trade. You know, Buffet sold his airline stocks on early May. Since then Jets is up up big. As of today, it's about thirty since he sold UM, but it had a rough week last week, so we'll see where this goes. I also think this brings into the fact that Dave Portnoy from Barstool Sports has been really into the airlines, and we looked he put out this sort of hype video that was to an a C d C song. Since that video came

out Jets. His volume quadrupled and hasn't looked back. So I do think with Robin Hood Dave Portnoy, there's there's Jets, sits in the middle of a bunch of major trends right now. So it's it's bigger than just this little engine that could them E t F. It's really to me a huge story and as well a proxy for how fast the economy opens up. A lot of these smaller traders are betting against the expert class and saying no, people are going to start flying and moving around faster

than you're telling us. And so again there's so much at stake here and it's just totterally fascinating. Okay, Morgan, you're next on my list. First half big story, what was yours? Yeah, not to be confused with jets, but we cover the launch of a new E t F bets b e t Z, which is a round hill sports betting and I gaming e t F. This actually was a launch that we predicted on trillions back in I think last not we congratulations. I was hoping that we would see a sports betting et F, in part

because a lot of these companies haven't been public. We just saw DraftKings enter the public markets, Flutter Entertainment owned fan duels. So there's now finally enough sort of global exposure in the public market public markets to see and benefit from UM the legalization of sports betting in the US. A lot of this is going to be mobile driven,

tech forward. But launched the et F was really historic in and of itself, just given the volume that it traded in the first couple of days after launching, I mean, it was pre remarkable. Seventeen million trading, seventeen million the first day, I think, fifty million second day. I mean,

just kind of a huge launch. And you know, hearkening to what Eric just said, a lot of that breadth in traded volume think came from, you know, the fact that the fund you know, in in around a week of training, has over eighteen thousand holders on robin hood, which is just pretty remarkable but not shocking when you

look at UM. The highest held names in robin hood include you know, some of bets is top holdings like DraftKings and pen So this is already an audience on robin Hood that is interested and familiar with UH sports betting companies and names. They may even some some may even say they're betting on stocks as well. So this is a really good audience for the for the e t F BETS and the way the ETF is designed, I mean we're seeing give you know, it's harder to

bet on individual names. The way the e t F is set up, it's sort of dynamically rebounces, got more global names that some US investors may not be familiar with. So the fact the fact that the e t F has already taken in seventy million also connects with just the up tips we've seen in thematic fund flows, i mean eight percent over last year. So thematic products overall our seeing traction and BETS echoes back and to bring

this to a bigger perspective here also the distribution. You know, if you're going to launch an e t F right now, you kind of have to peel to this. Like older advisor with who has a lot of rich clients, you know, they're not going to buy an e t F on day one. They tend to stay away from theme ETFs for the most part. They don't like new ones with

low volume. It's interesting how BETS was able to bypass that advisor and go right to the do it yourself smaller retail investor, and that might be a growing channel of for issuers to just go right there. Um. We also, I Morgan sent me on a TikTok rabbit hole and I looked up E t F and bets. Even though it just came out, there was two TikTok videos from

people on there. So I think it's also this interesting look at younger investors who's seemingly doing their own research and you know, are willing to buy an e t F that's new and from an unknown, relatively unknown issue where it's interesting. Well, that speaks to the moment just going direct to consumer during the middle of the pandemic. I mean, that's sort of cut out, cut out all

the middleman, and just go straight to your people. I also think there's a bigger story of play here as well, because I have a lot of friends I'm in my late twenties who like to bet on sports and stuff like that, and they have a lot of them have picked up trading on robin Hood. As we kind of talked about, there's a lot of people in robin Hood and I've had friends who've never talked to about investing who reached out to me about this specific e t F or gaming e t F video gaming ets specifically

and things like that. So there's definitely a lot of interest coming from as you mentioned, possibly the Barstool Sports founder Portnoy, a few different things, um, where people are very interested in this specific et F and getting more into trading. Sarah Fagus, You're in You're in London still, although it looks like Greece. Tell us about your big

story from the first half. Yeah, sure, um, And if I could just add something really quick from the European perspective on the thematic stuff, I promise I won't say you SIT's, but um, if the thematic stuff is really interesting in Europe because it's attracting a lot of retail

investors too. It's very much an institutional market here and actually you're seeing a lot of buying on some of these thematic ets, so you're actually seeing a new sort of class of investors coming into the market through thematics. But that's not what I wanted to talk about, and what I want to look at is active, non transparent ets.

And normally this probably would have been like one of the biggest stories of the year, like leading up in the beginning of the year, but just given what happened in the market, this sort of kind of got put to the to the back burner. But there was a couple of ets that launched UH right after the sell off in March, and now we're that was by American Century. Now we're seeing more firm sort of joined in fidelity,

like Mason Um. And so I think there's two things that's interesting about this is one of the timing of it UM. They sort of avoided some of the big down draft in March, so their performance out of the gate is really good. The the American Century Growth Fund is already up thirty percent UM since it launched, so it's really imperative for them to have good performance out of the gate. UH. And because I think there's gonna

be a lot of scrutiny on these products. They really have to show that, Okay, you went through all this effort to hide your holdings and do all this. Now you actually have to show that there's value to the structure, right. So I think there's gonna be a lot of pressure on these products to perform really well, and they're off actually to a pretty good start. But I actually think

what's happening. So not only against the going up against regular ETFs, they're going against active ETFs that are fully transparent, like cathy Woods funds right here, and they're actually doing really well. Little Kathy at one point had the best performing ETF out there. And so now I actually think that presents a problem for these active, non transparent funds because they're you're looking at a fully transparent ETF out there that's doing really well. It's almost like, well, why

do I need to hide my holdings. You're having one that's that's doing really well. So I think that if Cathy's funds continue to do really well, so I think it's gonna provide it's gonna be a headwind for some of these funds. But um, I think we're going to see more and more now with the market sort of stable coming into the market. So it's definitely gonna be something that we've watch and I'll continue to watch. And you know, I think they're stuck in the dead zone.

I think you've seen them come out between forty five and sixty five basis points as a fee, and I don't doesn't look like any of them are taking big swings. So unless you're dirt cheap or going to create a shiny object moment by being like a Cathy would I just don't know. Uh, it's it's it's gonna be a tough road in my opinion. Although it looked like American

Century put its own money in there. They have like two million now in those So if they're able to move money from the mutual funds over, uh, they could save assets potentially for themselves. But I don't know about grassroots. Yeah, I agree, Um, I think I'd probably take the under on it. It It is actually seeing like real demand from clients outside of just money being moved from from the firms themselves in it. So Tom, when you think about this topic, what do you what are you most looking

for in the second half. Um, for this, it's gonna be they have to really prove their value prop Like Eric said, they're more expense if they're going through all this to hide their holdings. Um, they really have to. I mean it's gonna it's gonna they're gonna really have to show that we are by doing this where we're adding more value than even the e T s that

are out on the market. Because I think there there's just a lot of hurdles that need to get off of them, and I'd be interesting to see who else comes into the market. So you have American Century, They're obviously a big name. Fidelity is a huge name. Um, so I'd be willing to see who else gets gets brought into the market here. And I think they're gonna

be looking obviously what these first entrants are doing. I sort of engauge if some of these other bigger firms are gonna you know, some a lot have been filed. But I think also market timing plays a role here too. There was like three e t F launched in March, then in April all these new ETF started launching, including these active ones. So um, it's also probably interesting like a sentiment gauge too to see, Hey, do they maybe think that the market has stabilized here and that's why

they're they're starting to roll out some of these products. Okay, let's use this opportunity to transition into a second half preview. So, uh, we're in the locker room. John plays Uh, James, I'm gonna start with you. What what's the second half look like? Yeah, so this is something that I've been tracking for the

past couple of months. We obviously are constantly tracking where money is going in in the asset management industry, mutual funds ets, and the big thing that jumps off the screen is the money that went into money market funds in the first half UM. So basically everyone likes to say cash on the sideline, I would I would argue the term is overused, but right now there's more cash on the sideline than UM. They're virtually ever has been in the well, not ever has been but since two

thousand eight by different measures. So you look at this, we see we saw seven hundred seventeen billion when it'so money market funds in March. Four hundred and ten billion went into money markets in April. It's slowed down, but there was still inflows in May at forty two billion UM.

And what this comes up to is there's over five there's five trillion dollars in money market securities, which to be what money market securities are there basically cash, commercial paper repurchase agreements, these short term overnight type vehicles, very short term vehicles. And if you look at it as a percentage of the SMP five market cap right now, it's at about it was at the end of April.

It's now around nineteen because the equity market has come back a little bit, but that's the highest level we've seen since. And then if you look at as a percentage of mutual fund assets, it's at the highest level since two thousand eleven, so it was up at last we checked UM. So there's basically a lot of cash on the sidelines. Now I should also caveat this with

what happened in March. The part of the reason why there were such big inflows as all these corporations have these bank loans revolvers are kind of like credit cards essentially for corporations with the bank, and they drew down that money and so they took in billions of dollars and rather than sit on cash, they put it into these money market funds. So that's big chunk of where this money is coming from. But still that's still money on the sidelines UM, and there there's money to be deployed.

Also on e t F s alone, we there's a lot of UM. There's a few et F that's focused on treasuries, so one to three month treasuries less than one year treasuries that are basically similar to money market funds in a in a sense or the way they're being used. They've also seen significant inflows. So there has been a lot of money on the sidelines. And if you look at fixed income and equity flows, equity flows

have been muted. I mean, the equity market is obviously up in April and May, and we haven't really seen anything significant on the equity side of e t F flows. The only area that's been significant has been sector bets. There's definitely a lot of money flowing into specific sector e t s, as Tom wrote about last month on a research side. But fixed income has taken in a lot of money. But again, equity has just been kind of muted. It's been not there's nothing really happening on

that side. And let me just this is an important issue because no flows into equity e t f s is unusual for a rally. And there's a couple of theories. There's portfolio rebalancing, there's taxation, there's maybe other opportunities, but I gotta I mean, Tom's been covering this the most. I do found myself a little dumbfounded that there hasn't been at least a healthy amount of flows given the rally,

it's up what markets up since the low in March. Right, it's definitely little odd, Like James said, a lot of it, some of it's just shifting, but still like you're just going from a broad sector to like a specific sector et F or from like SMP to like attack. But net net, there's no new flows. I think that's really interesting, right, there's not actually new money coming into the market, so um, you know, I think that the it's very odd to see the market rally so much not have flows sort

of follow up behind it. Yeah, and there was there was nine billion that went out of equity e t s in May, so the market was going up and we saw outflows. And we have this one chart that we like to show every year. Flows tend to pick up when the equity market does well, so for to

have a breakdown in that relationship is pretty significant. These e t f s like Voo, which tend to have dri drip retail money coming in, I think they're more in models, and I think the models all had signal shifting to pick didn't come when the FED was going to start buying those bondy tfs. So I think that's

when you saw, uh, some of that too. So I think sometimes these e t f s that were tended to be always like just used directly by advisors are getting more and more in these models, which we discussed by the way in the last episode with Tim Clift

of Investnet. If you're interested, okay, Eric, your second half preview. Yeah, it's on E s G. Which when we did the Hester Purse interview with the SEC, you called me an E s G hater and then Magnus cut out my response which didn't make it on the final cut, which was, I'm not a hater per se. I'm just a I'm a realist, Like I'm not anti E s G. I'm just anti nasty surprise, and I'm also anti hype and bias and there's a lot going a lot of that

all in this E s G soup. So I'm always watching E s G. Look when I talk about the bias, when you look at the the articles on E s G recently, all of them will say record flows into E s G. And it's true. E s G've taken in thirteen billion this year and they took an eight billion last year. Both of those are records, right, So it's a ton of money for a category that didn't have much going on before last year. And I think most people know this, but they just don't say it.

Most of that money, the majority, like in the case of this year, about ten billion of it isn't is because of two investors, one big institution in Europe as well as black Rock. Black Rock has moved after Larry Fink had that big announcement earlier in the year, they moved E S G U and a couple others into their models that advisors use and that is responsible for most of them. So yes, that money still counts. And believe me, in the Terror Dome, I give credit where

it's due. It does count. I just think people are presenting this as millennials have E S G fever. That's you know, that's what they want. I just don't think that's true because the grassroot flows just aren't there. Like if you take the Vanguard E t F E S g V, it's taken in seven million this year, or how about Spy the SMP fossil fuel Free E t F that's a hundred million. That's more where the market is.

And I think it's just underwhelming again. And I also think this Robin hood situation has shown us that, if anything, millennials and gen z are much more into trading than they are into E s G, and I think people might have under estimated how much millennials want to change

the world with their investments. Further, E s G U, which is the one that black Rock put in the model, to me, this is probably the biggest of the biggest hope for E s G because remember what g SLC the Goldman Sachs Multi Factory t F did to Smart Beta. It moves a lot like the SMP and it only charges nine basis points, so an advisor has a story, but they don't have any tracking error to worry about. E s g U is kind of that for E s G charges fifteen basis points and it tracks pretty

closely to the market. It's virtually going to give you similar returns. But here's the thing, you're not going to really, I mean, how much change are you really an infect here? Because E s GU holds x On and Chevron, you have smaller waitings, but they still own them. Most people who want E s G to me are looking to not hold those companies. So I think this is part of the issue with E S G. Why are you investing in it? Are you going to be happy if

it doesn't you know, match the market's performance? But to me, E s G U which is you know the one that to me is uh, you could replace your S and P five hundred exposure with this or your equity and you wouldn't be that much different than the market. So I think for advisors that's a big deal because they don't really want to have to explain to their clients why they've underperformed. Plus they also want everything cheap, and this one's fifteen BIPs, so there's a there's some

bright spots here, don't get me wrong. I just think relative to the media hype, if you look at a chart of E s G mentions, it just keeps going up and up and up and up. The media really wants this to be a thing, and I just you know, what's that quote in mean girls like you're trying to make fetch happen and it just won't. I think that

what he's talked about E S to you. There's also SMPE in the US, in on the US exchanges, which is basically smp F s G index, And what these indexes do that there's there's two ways to look at this. You can either be inclusionary or exclusionary as far as are not concerned, and there's like a scale, so if you're exclusionary, you're excluding the worst actors. If you're inclusion or you're going after the companies that are meeting these

the specific criteria, they're doing everything they can. But the problem in some of this is like there's some of these companies are so big, they're bound to have issues. So the bet the way that some of these other ones are doing an exclusionary factor where they're just excluding i don't know, controversial weapons, tobacco, and a few other things.

But then the rest of it is they're trying to give you the same risk return characteristics as the market, but just taking out the things that are the least E s G the things that are performing the worst by sector. So you're gonna get some oil exposure and just get rid of the companies that are the worst on the E s G scale things like that, and that gives you a similar risk return profile. And you

could argue that it's it's basically a risk metric. You're taking out the risk from environmental issues or social issues of governance issue, try to limit them as much as possible, And these funds are outperforming the SMP five since their launched in many cases. So it's it's showing that it's working, and it's I think that's where there's gonna be a

lot more interest. We've seen, as Eric mentioned with g SLC in the smart beta world, the real water down factors, the one to give you a lot of beta but give you a little bit of the factor the ones that advisors like the most. So I think these are the most of the I'm the most bullish on this aspect of the category for gaining significant assets. That said, isn't like when you think about advisers doing that, that's

very different than I want to change the world. I mean, how many people who go into E s G thinking I'm gonna clean up my portfolio. Then you're like, oh, this fun holds xon. By the way, this is where I completely agree with you. I don't think like E s G investing is the way to change the world. I think that you can benefit from the things that are going to happen with governments and regulations and all

these different things by avoiding the worst actors. But I don't think just investing in a company is going to make them more E S G friendly, Like theoretically it could happen. Um. I mean, I would argue that you're probably better off getting a bunch of money investing in the worst actors and trying to invoke change and we of proxy votes potentially, there's all the different ways to

do this. I just think the most viable asset gathering wise, productive wise for a portfolio is the exclusionary route, where you're getting a similar return characteristic of the market. Alright, second half is upon us, what's your pick to watch?

I'm watching small caps. I think we're going to see whether sort of a rotation equity leadership actually happens and holes and I want to see whether you know, et F investors are ahead of of a rotation and sort of believe that that small cap recovery could be part of another leg in a rally here and I think you know, we've seen head funds and other bigger speculators roll back short positions starting in dint. This tend to be a bit leaving um and so now Russell two

thousand futures are sort of net long um. We've seen I mean you know, high yields spreads are still relatively high, which is when small caps tend to do better. Um. And so just looking at the size factor within the Russell one thousand, we've seen our strategies team sort of site mid single digit gains attributable to the factor in the past couple of months. UM, I think that might

be encouraging some some flows. And then you know they've also are you know, our our strategy counterparts have pointed out, you know, the way that small cap is continuing to trade at fundamental discounts, and and you know, I think the next most optimistic investors are looking at small caps. So you know, I w M has actually seen, um, you know, it's a sort of representative ETF tracking the

Russell two thousand, it's actually seem pretty sizeable outflows. And that may be because of how heavily it's used tactically, but it's gotten. You know, small caps in general have seen offsetting inflows UM to the category, and some of those leaders are VB and SPSN, So it's just other small cap ets are kind of leading this. But Tom wrote recently about that this beta small cap segment has

taken in really pretty strong flows in June. I think it's one point six billion as as of today, and invest goes equal weight RSP find this kind of leading that category. So we're watching that for the rest of the year. And just one thing on the small caps versus large caps. The large caps are dominated by these giant companies. If they ever try to break up some of these companies, or there's just a shift in the way people shop. I mean you could see small caps.

I mean they've just been down and out for ten years, and you know, nothing stays down and out forever. UM. Maybe small cap value, which by the way, a lot of people are asking, is there a bankruptcy et F because of hurts and stuff? And I think small cap value is as close as you can get or micro caps, but I j R. I think is the small cap value in case anybody is interested in that. I mean, it's put that up against SMP five hundred. It is just like it is brutal. What what's the ticker for

a bankruptcy e t F bust if they had one? Yeah, I think Tom, bring us home? What's your second half? Pick? What I'm watching? And because we're going into the summer now, um, normally the summer. It's not a secret, it's it's markets really quiet. Et F trading is really quiet during the summer months and the third quarter it's usually like just the lowest quarter for trading. But I think this year is going to be very different. You have everyone continue

to work from home through the summer. You probably have a lot of vacations that either got cut short or they're just doing you know, staycations. Now you have the first full summer where like every platform is commissioned free et F Trading, Robin Hood, Schwab, all of those. I think this is gonna be a really busy summer for

et F trading. UM some of the stuff that Morgan mentioned with the interest in thematics, I think we're I think the third quarter, in the summer months are going to punch away above their weight this year, just because of the environment that we're currently in with just more people working from home and just more attached to their screens.

This year, what happens if there's a big second wave, uh, then I we'll definitely see I mean, I think we'll see just a lot of market altility, but I think we're definitely going to see more uh E t F trading in the fourth quarter is normally really busy anyways, but I think this second half of the year is going to be really is gonna put up some pretty big numbers for E t F trading. All right, Tom, James Morgan, thanks so much for joining us on Trillions.

Thanks for having us say thanks a lot, Thanks for listening to Trillions until next time. You can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and wheber else you'd like to listen. We'd love to hear from you. We're on Twitter, I'm at Joel Webber Show. He's at Eric fall Tunas. You can find Morgan at M Barnes six, James at j S E y f F, and Tom Sara Vegas at TA Sarah Vegas Good Luck Spelling that. This episode of Trillions was produced by Magnus Hendrickson.

Francesca Leady is the head of Bloomberg Podcast by O

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