The Rise of the Anti-Woke ETF

It's in the current issue of the magazine. UM, and it's about UH an et F company called Second Vote Advisors. Have you heard of them? Uh? Yeah, I mean they I think they have two funds out. I remember the filings. But there's been a couple type companies like this, and they sometimes blend together and largely they just sort of go right to oblivion. UM. So we're not on our radar a lot, but I do it does sort of

ring a bell, if you will. UM. And I think one of them's what pro life and the other ones pro gun. And there's gonna be another one that comes out next month. UM. And it was interesting about this obviously the strategy here is to appeal to UH sort of more of a right wing UH style of politics then you would probably usually see in investing. And we've actually done a version of this story on trillions a couple of years ago around them MAGA E t F

that ticker. Um, how is that one faired historically? Yeah? So I remember that was with Rachel Evans, she went to Dallas. That was one of our field reports that we need to do more up. By the way, those are really great. It was like from the from the before times. Yeah. So look, the MAGA E t F hasn't done much. I mean talk about everyone. That filing hit and I tweeted out the ticker. Everybody went crazy and it obviously broke through in a marketing sense, but

it didn't really gather much assets. You know why because it tends to be light tech and heavy like industrial rills and energy. UM, so for the most part, it's underperformed. That said, there was a time in the first quarter and and this year in general, where tech, especially in the Q one, really lagged and energy and industrials were

coming back and those value stocks. So I actually wrote a note saying that MAGA was actually an ironically backdoor way to play the Biden presidency because that there had been a shift in the sector. So I would say that if you wanted an industrial, oily kind of play that doesn't have tech, MAGA will work in that regard. I don't know if anybody would use it for that, but it actually has this sort of other purpose in

my opinion. But um, it is beating the SMP this year by a little bit, but it's been destroyed lifetime by about thirty eight percentage points, largely because it doesn't have any tech this time. On trillion, the Rise of the anti woke et F. Okay, Josh, welcome to trillions. Great to be with you. Dan Grant, what's his pitch? So?

Dan Grant is uh former JP Morgan banker, conservative guy who I know through politics, who last year started up a company called Second Vote Advisors, and the idea basically is to pitch right leaning E t F products to balance out what he and his colleagues feel is a kind of galloping on Wall Street towards E S G

woke liberalism. Dan thinks that this is a bad politics, but more important, bad investment, and so uh, he and his company, which has some conservative luminaries on the board are rolling out a series of e t F to try and appeal to that conservative MAGA audience. And how's it going so far? Well, it isn't an entirely new idea, you know, as you guys had said in the intro. Uh, you know there's a MAGA fund rolled out in seventeen. There was another e t F that came out I

think last year, American Conservative Values Fund. So people have had the idea before of trying to sell financial products to you know, a Trump friendly MAGA crowd. And if you look at the huge inflows into et F over the last year or so, and especially you know E s G, that does seem to be an audience um of consumers who have at least a kind of a political awareness. I mean, so far it seems to be more geared toward environment and social justice and not so

much right leaning stuff. But Dan's belief is that, you know, there are a lot of conservatives out there who are gonna want products that that both reflect their personal and political views and and can also turn a profit. That's the pitch. Now. Having said that, as I say in the piece, none of these funds has managed to amass more than thirty five million dollars, so they're still trying

to get off the ground. And I think that that's actually like an interesting point because so much money, as Eric and I have talked about before, has gone into E S G and Eric, so when you when you think about that, because you're no fan of V S G T. By the way, I'm not generally speaking, I'm not. Um. Well, I don't care how people want to invest. I mean, if you want to invest with your values one way or the other, I don't. I mean, I don't mind.

I I just think they're not practical. Um and it usually practical and and returns trump everything or cost no pun intended. Uh, not your values. I think people like to exercise their values at the polls or you know, writing or in other ways or you know, in their spare time. Um. The E S G funds. The problem I have with those is is they're they're sort of trying to dislodge Vanguard from the core of your portfolio. And no one is really going to let go of

a three basis point like total market fund. It's too good a deal even if you do believe in these things. The other thing with E s G. I feel like they're selling the feeling of doing something good, like oh, we're not gonna hold energy stocks, but then they fly off on vacation, they have an SUV. I mean, honestly, I feel like it's almost um like a uh insincere form of slacktivism. And there's no evidence that will actually return better, Like their academic studies have not been able

to show that E s G investing does better. But the media eats it up. They love E s G. It gets it's the most press per assets that I've ever seen in the history of etf s. And about the s G t fssets are black Rock moving the funds into their own model portfolio. So there's actually not even a lot of grassroots interest. But there is more

than the right leaning stuff, I will say. But that said, I could see why if you're on the right, because I have people who aren't even political on Twitter who are a little annoyed about the E s G sort of um high hat thing going on where it's like we're doing good, we're doing great, you know, we're changing the world, and I don't know, I think a lot of people smell bullshit in it, Yeah, and I think it's I think it's part of part of the second

vote Advisor's pitch is that listen, everybody says politics and investing don't mix, but but look at what's happening with the s G. You know they're there, they become slaves to this idea of of being kind of woke and foregrounding social justice, that whole kind of thing. That's not the way to go. I mean, my sense in talking to Dan Grant and the people around him is that you know, they're offended by that politically um, but also

that they think that it's it's bad business. I mean, one of the things that Grant talks about a lot is that he believes in, uh, you know, Milton Friedman's famous dictum about the only job of corporations to make money for shareholders. And if you're busy, as Dan says to me in the piece donating to Black Lives Matter, they're trying to save the planet, then you're not focused

on your shareholders. So uh, you know, I think the interesting question with these funds that I mean, you point out that they haven't gotten a lot of traction, is is this an investment vehicle or is it really another means of political expression, because I think part of the inherent pitch in this and one of the reasons why we're seeing so much activity around Trump and investing. Right, he's got his back. You can buy non fungible Trump tokens.

We've got a bitcoin eat here. They are all sorts of ways you can kind of begin to express things. I think there's a feeling that everything in American life has become so hyper politicized. Dan Grant would say, you know, why shouldn't e tfs too, And I think it's a fair question to raise. Yeah, you know, and sports in particular and entertainment. It is unfortunate. Used to be these places you can hide out, and investing was one of those places where you can just escape the politics. Used

to just be in politics. But just the way it is, I guess um, and I think to your point about E. S G. There's two ways to pitch both of these things. It's just like you can do better return wise, or you can express your values. So when I think of the expressing of the values, I think that when when people really think, deep down, do I really want to like, you know, potentially the SMP, because if you do charts.

Let's say you get five pc of the SMP five seven percent every year, that's gonna end up being like like so much money difference over like ten years. You would probably hate yourself then. That said, the other side of the coin is if you go in thinking it will out perform and it doesn't, it's almost like but betting on an active manager back in the day, and it's just so difficult to outperform. And most of these

funds have decent, you know, pretty high expense ratios. So to me, a lot of this is almost like just new active. Instead of hiring a tro price manager to pick stocks based on fundamentals and paying seventy five BIPs, you're hiring second vote to go and screen these companies for political vocalism, and you're paying them seventy fives. I mean, you might not perform, you might not and ultimately, though the odds are in the numbers show you will not.

So Josh actually talk to us about how they decide what they put into their et s. Well, So this is this is surp risingly controversial. Um As I'm sure you guys know as as political observers, there's a lot of infighting among Republicans about who is a genuine Republican

and who is a rhino a Republican a name only. Uh. And what's kind of funny about the different right leaning you know MAGA type ETFs is that each one of them has a different measuring uh stick for what constitutes an authentically conservative fund and they all differ, and they all kind of bicker with each other. So uh, Second Vote Advisors, I think probably has the most sophisticated one,

although it's often difficult to understand um. The company grew out of a nonprofit that was started by a guy named David black Back in twelve, a conservative who became upset when he gave money at the supermarket's a March of dimes and then found out later on that March of Dimes, I guess gives grants to plan parenthood. That offended his values. So he started me on. I mean, we're talking like, there's the pennies that you put at the box at the ready. Yeah. Well you know, hey,

you know I sent them off. We've all got our trigger points, right, And and so what he did was he took a bunch of money, independently wealthy guy and he started an outfit that rates every company in the S and P five hundred according to his proprietary scale

of whether the company is liberal or conservative. And that's based on, uh, it can be you know, political donations, corporate policies, you know, whether the CEO say nice things about block Lives matter that kind of thing, Whether they give grants to outfits like Planned Parenthood to try and detect and rate like where they where they rank on a scale. And then what what what the the group does that they send by certified letter. They send their

reports to the boards of all fire companies. There's no no idea if anybody ever opens these letters, but this is what they do. They go out there and you know, they've they've had these crusades against Nike for quoting here denigrating the American flag. They put out reports on Walt Disney um because the Muppet Baby's TV show they allege promotes gender confusion and youth. So these you know, hardcore kind of kind of conservatives here trying to influence conservatives,

spending habits without any real evidence that it's working. But was interesting was last year they decided, hey, you know, we're going to start the second vote. Advisors we're going to try and make money doing this in the vehicle we're gonna use or these conservative ETFs. And then the way I first found them was the way they're trying to reach retail investors is, you know, they're not going so much to investment advisors who are gonna like put them in a fund that Eric would like three pip

Vanguard five hundred. They're going on right wing talk radio. Dan Grant is railing against woke corporations like Nike and Coca Cola and trying to get those fired up talk radio listeners to invest some of their retirement money and a second vote E t F. And you know, last I think I checked for this piece went to press. Yeah, they were up somewhereround fifty million dollars. You know, in a year they were they were kind of gaining, not

a huge fund, but not nothing. And I think the hope is, especially now that Democrats are in charge and Joe Biden as president, is that they can somehow find a way to kind of harness that Trump energy that's been so powerful and culture in other ways and get people to use it to buy their products. Josh, something interesting you said earlier is the Disney, like the Conservative

ETF doesn't want Disney in there. Well, I remember we interview with the woman who's behind the Vegan e t F, which I would assume is sort of left leaning that doesn't hold Disney, and I think we asked her. I think it was something about the animals usage in the movies and maybe at the theme park. They didn't like that. Um. But it's interesting that there's probably a couple of companies that they both agree on that are good, and maybe

some they both agree are bad for different reasons. And this is so very subjective, I think, but I gotta agree. I mean, you're right, it's entirely subjective. And one of the reasons these conservative funds are bickering is that they measure different ways. Right, so that how Lambert the guy runs the MAGA E t F, he measures it based very simple metric, do you give more money to Democrats

or Republicans. Well, what's interesting is they disagree on specific companies and one I mentioned the piece as Goldman Sacks, And so these conservatives at Second Vote Advisors are happy to have Goldman Sachs, you know, in one of their funds because you know, it doesn't offend their right to life stuff or what have you. Whereas how Lambert calls me up, these guys are total rhinos, total fakes. Because Golden gave more money to Democrats and Republicans last cycle,

how can they call themselves conservative? So you're right, it's completely arbitrary at the end of the day what gets called conservative and what goes into these funds. But but really what they're trying to do, and I think grants branding on this, is to try and capture a slice of that anti woke energy you see royal ing in

servative politics and direct some of that energy toward their products. Man, it is such a yin and yang to the E. S G. Because E. S G. If you ask ten d SG analysts is tesla E s G five will say S five will say no. They'll have an argument and Amazon somethink. Amazon does great things, but then they

treat their workers like crap. Uh. This subjectivity is exactly the whole thing is one big mirror, I think, and E. S G. I think, is also trying to tap into the reverse energy, which is corporations are bad, they only want to make money. These are trying to do good things and there's there's a very they're almost like the same ends. What we're trying to say that the same size of two sides of the same mirror images. Now

that's that's that's exactly right. It's funny. My way of coming into this, I write mainly about politics, was the bickering among the different MAGA advisers sort of mirrors the bickering among Republican politicians about who is closer to Trump and who can show more fealty and a you know, like that's the currency in Republican politics these days. But it's funny because it really is a mirror of kind of what's going on with the s G. It all comes down to, you know, how do you how do

you define what it is what you're gunning for? And everybody doesn't in the way that is you know, self serving, and everybody is going out there stabbing their rivals in the back, trying to convince you that they're the phonies, that they're the authentic ones. And it's the same thing playing out in finance that I see playing out in politics. I think that common denominator between everything we're talking about

his purity. It's like there's a purity test. Remember on the Democratic primary, M Warren and Buddha Jes got into that over the purity. She was like, oh you had you had a one of those fundraisers and you all bought like forger bottles of wine with like millionaires in the cave right, Yeah, in the cave right. He's like, look, is this a purity test? Like are we gonna have to all live in the woods and like not, do you know? And so there is this sort of thing of like how pure are you in this sort of

cause that you take up. And that's a problem with some of the E s G funds that are popular is they hold a lot of right cular stocks because people want to have something close to the SMP so they wanted to perform. But then you end up holding Facebook and JP Morgan and you're not pure, your fake get out of here. Yeah, okay, I gotta throw another company out here. XXN. How How did how does everybody in this uh, you know, this universe feel about Exxon Josh?

I mean, look, if you're asking me, you know, uh fossil fuel hydrocarbon that that would rate as an old school conservative company and yet second vote on their on their ratings scale considers both Exxon and Chevron liberal companies. So going back again to the idea that all of this is entirely subjective. I mentioned that to a liberal friend who works on climate and like his head exploded.

He's like, wait, what you know? You know the idea that Wall Street is this bastion of of out of control rampant liberalism driven by hippie companies like Exxon Mobile, Like just didn't didn't compute with him. I don't think we compete with a lot of people. By the way, Um, why does life hold black Rock? I mean Black Rocks like the biggest pusher of yes she funds there is.

I think the answer is because, um, they apparently don't violate the social screen on abortion or or or right to life that second Vote Advisors is applying on that fund. I mean, Dan was was Dan Grant was a little defensive when I pointed set this out, but he said, I think, in fairness, look like for this fund, we apply this screen, and if companies make it through that screen, we're gonna pick the ones that we think are gonna

perform best. And it may be that you know, or I guess it is that he thinks black Rock is gonna gonna do a good job and perform well, and is is kosher on the issue in this particular fund, whereas if it were like an anti climate fund ors something like that, you probably woudn't see them in there. Okay.

So another interesting element here is that, especially with MAGA for instance, like the goal here was to appeal to a retail audience, and I so I suppose that sort of happened also with the Trump uh Digital World acquisition Corps back, you know, the Trump's back that happened. I mean, there's like a retail fervor for this in this kind

of the age of meme stocks. But the other thing that your article goes into is that um Dan Granted and Second Vote seems to think that there might be an institutional dollar that they could attract, right, So so what's what do they see on that front? So this

is a great point. I mean, as as as uh, you know, Eric has explained in the past, you need to reach a certain scale to be viable, and it's not clear you know you need you know, Grant says they're gonna need a hundred fifty dollars assets under management

in order to remain of going concern. It's not at all clear that you're gonna get that through the retail investor right hasn't really worked yet with these funds, um But what what what he is eyeing at second Vote Advisors are a lot of these Republican led red state pension funds where you have politicians in these states who are, you know, adamantly anti liberal, anti woe Oak and so Grant has been traveling around the country. He met last

week with Arizona's Republican treasure. He's met with pension funds, I think a state pension funds in Louisiana and Missouri, and last week he was down in Orlando talking to a gathering of state treasures, trying to basically appeal to their political beliefs and say, listen, you guys should be investing in my funds because I'm against all these anti

woll companies and you're against them too. And if he were able to tap into those institutional dollars, well, that could be a real game change, I think for his company. One of the interesting things that I see in politics is I don't think that that's a crazy belief to have, right If you look at a state like Texas Governor Abbott there has gone after his past laws, you know, banning specific bank banks and bank practices because they've taken

e s g stands against fossil fuels or guns. And just last week in Florida, Ron de sand As, the Republican governor, I think, uh possibly a Republican frontrunner for president or at least candidate for president, give a speech to the Florida Chamber of Commerce in which he blasted quote, the rise of woke capitalism. And he said, and I quote, if you're using your powers of corporation and you're leveraging that to try and advance in ideology, I think it's

gonna be very dangerous for the country. And I'm not just gonna sit idly by. So the Republican governor of Florida is like threatening Florida businesses overwoke capitalism. To me, that says that this has salience in Republican circles, among

Republican politicians. So who's to say that, you know, at some point in the near future we might see red state Republicans trying to push the Teacher's Fund or the Firefighters Fund or whatever in their state to invest in companies like second vote advisors, and that's certainly something that Dan Grant is gunning for. Yeah, two things I want to dive into their with what you're talking about, Josh

is interesting, which is first, this just portfolio practicality. I think if you're an institution, I mean, if you have a lot of money, usually can get a lot cheaper than seventy five basis points. I would wonder if Dan would offer maybe an s M A. I Honestly, the E s G E T s that do the best are the ones below twenty. In fact, E s G didn't take off at all until the category got vanguarded

and became below twenty. Vanguard came in at like thirteen BIPs and then black Rock following now would explode it because advisors and institutions just don't want to pay. They know that cost will really mess up the return. So has he talked about the fee if? I mean, it's

really high, and that's that's a great point. One of the things that they're working on rolling out are indexes that would essentially be you know, have much lower fees, but also more closely tracked some of the benchmarks you're talking about earlier, So you don't wind up with these

very actively managed portfolios. Instead, you have, you know, hypothetically the S and P five minus you know, the companies that are mean to Donald Trump and Bannon from Twitter and the companies that you know won't invest in guns or whatever. Subtract those out. Maybe that at a much lower fee is something that you can sell to you know, a Florida or a Louisiana or a Texas pension fund at some point, or an advisor. And that's exactly what

they do. On the E s G side, that's when it started working if you But then again that's not pure. It would not pass anybody's purity tests. If I showed you E s GU the biggest D s G t F there is, Facebook is in the top ten uh exns in their most people seeking E s G would be not into that. But on the flip side, advisors and other people also don't want to have tracking are So those two things are always going to be opposed. But I will say you can move more product if

you're cheaper and look more like the SMP. On the other point, though, is this idea of like all these people just wanting to affect things. I mean, I just ever, so much conversation is on the investor instead of the consumer. You just not shop there, not use Google, there are other search engines. Don't use Twitter um, And same thing on the s G front. I wonder how many SG investors have actually curbed their oil use where they don't use Netflix or Amazon, which are excluded from plenty of

funds UM. I think a lot of this is just like sort of I hate to say it, like a lazy way, And how much does this really matter? Like if you don't own Twitter, someone else is gonna buy it if it has a good valuation. On the flip side, there was an article on Bloomberg this week about how black Rock divesting from coal companies m actually provided opportunity for other investors because again, the demands still there until

you actually curb the actual demand. So if I was advising people to invest with your values, I would actually really move them more towards their power as a consumer and as a voter. I think those two things are much more powerful. And then just just you know, live with your beta and exercise those influences through your voting and through your own pocketbook. I don't know, is that crazy? No? I you know the funny. The funny example to me again coming at this through a wick in politics is uh.

The greatest example I can think of the difficulty of falling through on those kind of boycotts was back when he was in the White House, Donald Trump um got angry at at Coca Cola. I think I think it had to do uh with with something in the state of Georgia, and he said, we're gonna boycott Coca Cola. And like two days later, a press photographer snapped the picture of his desk and there's a can of coke right there. So even he couldn't adhere to his own boycott.

I think that's that's why though, I think that part of part of what these funds are going for isn't this pure investment play. Even if they present themselves this way, it is it is to offer themselves up as a means of political expression. You know, you're listening to Sebastian Gorka's talk radio show, the Trump kind of crazy right wing Trump advisor who got fired, and you know he's got a got a radio show now, and you hear

him railing against wold capitalism. You know, this company comes on and says hey, by our e t F. Let's stick it to these woke companies. Yeah, who knows? Maybe you know you click here, you click their boom by you know, by ten dollars worth. You've done it. You feel good about yourself. Is it a smart investment? Maybe not? But I think that's that's what they're looking for. This isn't the kind of green eye shades. What's going to earn me the best return? It's how do I tap

into that political anger? And I think we see that on both sides of the aisle and all kinds of funds, now, whether it's you know, woke e s G or anti woke second voter visors. So, Eric, have you ever heard about the you know them going for institution money like this? Have you ever have you ever come across anybody else in the E t F landscape that's attempted to do something like that and kind of crack a different category. Well, black Rock has been effective at getting institutions in their

E s G funds. In fact, that's where a good chunk of money comes from. But they're they're pricing them at like twelve basis points and it's usually like a European institution and it's a fund that will keep we have little tracking. Er. So if I show when we had a webinar and we had our E s G analyst at Alene from Europe on and she does not like E s Q to her, it's not pure, doesn't really do anything. It just I think it allows that institution to check a box. But they might argue, well, um,

we can't have tracking er. So what this does is it gives us real pretty good tracking, but it does tilt a little towards what we want. And it's almost like that's why we have spectrum scores for all ets, whether it's value or E s G. Just like alcohol content on a beer, you need to know if it's like you know, Odul's zero or like one of these like German beers like alcohol level or an I p A in the middle, and that is to me, what

what you need here? So that way a person approaching this, whether they want to do a political expression or to perform, knows I want the water down version. I'm cool with just that way I can track the market, or I want the hardcore one, but the water down one has to be cheap, and that's the one the institution will typically buy, but also Maga, the Maga guy and the second Amicu they're not They're not black Rock. I mean black Rock is a major force. They have these relationships

for years. So if a big record performing and the and the institution, I will say, you're not gonna get any brad press going into E s G. If it went into this, it might get some bad press. And that's just the way it is, right or wrong. UM. I will say. The one thing though, when it comes to these political sort of E s G. The one E t F idea that is a't out that's political ish that everybody wants is Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio. Um I Actually somebody said who's the best active manager right now?

And everybody was replying Nancy Pelosi. So I think Nancy is the best political idea. Both sides of the aisle can agree that her portfolio kicks ass and there should be an et F tracking it. And some ETFs have come along and tried to capture like the legislation politically, and it kind of reminds me of there was a guy named Ben Phillips who came out with the GOP and dem E t F. I'm not sure if you had a chance to talk to him. But his e t f were more about investing in stocks that would

benefit from legislation, not necessarily a political expression. And and I don't think those did that well either. Yeah. I think the cautionary tale in the idea that that politics and investing don't mix was his company. I think it's called Event Shares, And back in seventeen they came out with two e t f s TICK or symbol GOP and Dems. And these were actually not political funds. They were essentially trying to bet on companies that would win

based on which party was in control of government. Right, so if Democrats come in and they want to build highways and spend a bunch on infrastructure, hey, let's go buy these construction companies. They'll do well. Vice versa with the Republicans. UH had a lot of research to back this up, but he spent six months going around the country talking to wealth managers. All of them said, listen,

we understand what you're doing. It's clever nowhere. We're touching this thing with a ten foot poll because if one of my clients, as a Democrat, opens up his his his statement, it sees that he's investing in GOP E t F, he's gonna flip and vice versa. And so after about six months it became clear to the guy running this, Ben Phillips, uh, this isn't working. There is no market for this. Like wealth managers by nature, especially institutional ones, are cautious, risk averse. They're not going to

buy my products. Eventually it's shut down. I think what's interesting that that that Dan Grant and some of these other guys are doing is they're not trying to sell to an institutional investor necessarily. They're going out and they're flying their freak flag and saying, you know, we are the MAGA E t F, we're the Second Amendment E t F. We are actively flouting our political affiliations and

hope that that's going to bring us investors. And we'll we'll see if he's able to kind of crack the losing streak that a lot of these political funds had had up until now. One thing about that Dem GOP fund, which is so could there there was a middle stage there where he said we're gonna call it p LC Y and it's going to be legislative alpha. When that came out, people like, well, you know, because they try to.

There's all these marketing terms that pop up in the t F world, and people got to kick out of that. But I could see that way. He was like, well, it's not demo republican. We're just going after alpha that

results from legislation. But even that didn't work. So I think the bigger, the bigger challenge here is something that I told you when we talked about the article, which is almost all the money in E t F S goes to dirt, cheap or shiny objects, and these are really neither unless one of them catches fire and just starts destroying the smp um or they get below fifteen basis points or or or or Trump tweets about it, you know, like possibly, I mean not you do that

without without equity in the in the company, but even sometimes or or an active Twitter account exactly well good, Honestly, if you were on that side, I think buying his back would be a quick, easy way to because that exercises a lot of It's like, let me invest in this thing, doing this alternative Twitter, which is what I sometimes advise, not advise, but I think about when we think about E S G. Instead of replacing Vanguard five hundred, what you could do is go after companies that are

literally conservative companies. Trump's back would be a great example, and just by a small little portfolio concentrated stocks that have those and that compliments the chief beta you already have, and that to me is more practical than trying to sell your Vanguard or whatever and plump in this thing that may or may not perform basically because you're piste off or think you're changing the world. Mhm. You know.

The other thing that I'm just really curious to see how this plays out over the next year, especially as we walk up towards mid terms here, Josh, is the thing that when when Maga came out and we did the episode, you know, a couple of years ago, you know, effectively was a different day, and you know, Trump as president and and now having Biden as president actually kind of feels like it might work in their favor a little bit because they can rail against Biden and say,

we have antithesis for that, right, and it's like that, you know, giving something to someone who who can use the the president sort of as a bully pulpit, you know, invest in this instead. So I'm curious to see Eric, I want, I want you to read on this. If we if we look at this in a year and we've got midterms, what's the what are the odds of this thing is cracked? A hundred and fifty very low, very low. I'm sorry, it's just it's not Republican or Democrat.

It's just the way portfolios and investors are behaving now and this just doesn't fit into where this just flows. Don't go to stuff like this. But interestingly, what you just said are cable news like don't Fox's ratings go up when there's a dump president? And like, didn't see CNN's ratings crash left Like there definitely is a market for this. Um, I don't know. I just outside of like maybe a fringe audience, it just doesn't seem to

reach the mainstream of investors. But maybe I'll be proven wrong. I'm very doubtful. Yeah, no, Joel, what what you said is exactly the spin that these funds give. Well, you know, when Trump was in the White House, people people could get their fixed no problem. Now he's been pushed off the stage, and Grant said to me, actually this is a quote. He said, you know our funds offered the investor a mechanism to fight back, so I think they're going exactly for that, Like we're out of power. This

is a way to strike back at the establishment, at democrats. Whatever. We'll we'll see if that's enough of a sales pitch to kind of, you know, a mass, meaningful scale going forward. Josh, I got one more question for you, which is one that we ask everyone who joins us on Trillions, and because you're, you know, kind of a E t F newbie, I'm curious to see if you have an answer to this. But what is your favorite E t F ticker? Um?

You know, I gotta say Marga because it's just so clever and and perfect, and I do have to say I'm surprised really that that it hasn't taken off more with the investors they're focusing on, because you know, you could spend a lifetime trying to think of a more perfect ticker symbol and not be able to improve on Maga if that's the audience you're looking for, So good call to your point, Josh on Maga. Maga had never had a period about performance, so I was always curious, Well,

maybe if it has its moment in the sun. Then they'll come. But it did. For the first half of it was up doubling the SMP. It went on a nice run. It was ironically perfectly situated for the Biden. In fact, as soon as Biden got elected, I think started taking off. I don't that's figure, but nobody bought it in that run, and that's a that's a bad sign to be honest, Josh Green, thanks for joining us on Trillions pleasure. Thanks for listening to Trillions until next time.

You can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg Com, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and wherever 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 Falcinus. This episode of Trillions was produced by Magnus Hendrickson. Francesco Levie is the head of Bloomberg Podcast. Bye.