The Secretive Committee Behind the S&P 500

episode of Trillions. Yeah, this is I can't remember being more excited for an episode than this one, especially because of some recent news. So everybody knows the sp F it is. It's beyond a rock star. It's really kind of the sun that the whole thing revolves around. I mean, it's got eleven trillion dollars benchmark to it. Everybody knows it.

The media quotes that constantly. It is the It is the biggest thing out there, really definitely the most infellectual thing in the passive world, if not the active world. Every active manager is trying to beat it, everybody's benchmark to it, etcetera. So we're going to be able to speak to somebody who basically was the head of the quote committee that ran the SMP five hundred. And the reason this is so interesting is that most indexes have

rigid rules and and so does the SMP. But unlike other indexes, most of them, the SMP has a committee of humans who can override the rules. And recently they decided not to add Tesla, which is the top twenty biggest stock, and it's they're gonna delay atting it. And it just shows you that humans are essentially in control of this index. And we're going to talk to the man who was the head of the committee for about

fifteen years, and that uh somebody is David Blitzer. He's now retired, but like you mentioned, Derek, he was the head of the SMP index committee from n to nineteen, which is an incredible stretch. I mean, he's basically seen it all and we get to talk to him. Also joining us is going to be Katherine greifeld uh et F reporter with Bloomberg News, this time on Trilliance, the

Sun of the stocked Solar system. David Blitzer, thanks for joining us on trillians Pleasure So I want to ask about the elephant in the room, which Eric mentioned in the intro. But S and P obviously hugely important. The index is just this, this gigantic thing that we all think about and watch constantly. And there was this event recently where the index was gonna potentially add some new names and one of the big name, Tesla, was excluded,

even though it checked all the boxes. Why wasn't it included? Well, exactly why the committee did something in the last few weeks. How to know? It's I think back the past history and so on. Um. But first thinking back, there are plenty of times when they're big names are popular names, well known names that don't get add at the moment

they're eligible or something like that. In fact, probably cent of the time only the committee knows what is and is not eligible because in the season have gotten big because everybody talks about Tesla. UM at least a thousand people went to the website, downloaded the methodology of the road book and checked all the boxes at oh my gosh, um. Most of the time, you know, they're nine people sitting down in Water Street, nobody else. Those are cares. But

I think the real question is why the rush. Uh. Stocks can sit out there. Um, if you had a stock, it gets a little bump for a few weeks, and the bump goes away. And the committee's goal, at least certainly in the past, because well, all I'm saying is in the PAD committee's goal is to have an index that really is a great measure of the market. The market goes up, the index goes up. Any statistic about the market, you can do the same calculation on the

index and you'll be very close. That's the goal, and so adding a company is to look at the index, look at the market, and say, is there something that's we're I lined up quite right with? And then you also look at what's happening in the market. What's happening in the index, Um is some big company to give be acquired six weeks out and we'd rather wait for that one than do it now kind of stuff. So there's no rush. In fact, there's a rule I think of.

There used to be a rule anyhow, It said that you had to have a stock paid for at least twelve months before you even thought about it. That Tasma Zombi meets that rule. But there are plenty of other hot stacks over the time when you know, we waited, I can't do this yet, that's we just kind of sit tight. I think that's logical. Most people would agree to most of that. But all the other large cap

indexes do have tesla. And is there a fear that there's an assumption that a lot of people just look at the spop hundred is trying to capture the stock market and the biggest stocks generally, and by not having it month after month, you aren't able to do that when some of your competing indexes do do that because they do have tesla. Well, certainly most people think the five hundred, five hundred biggest stocks, and it's not a

lot of people think that. Um No, I don't when it comes to competing and we're doing better, doing worse than than the competition. Um it's not been on a single stock basis. One case where it has come up a lot is between the top six hundred, which is run small camps run by the same committee, and the Russell Too thousand, and that one of the big differences there is that for the six hundred, like the five hundred,

company has to be profitable before it's put in. Let's start losing money later on, it may stay in Russell has no profitability rule, and in fact, S ANDPS analysts have pranked out reports year after year after year pointing out that the six hundred does better because of the

profits rule, either as a marketing thing, as absolutely correct analysts. So, David, I want to ask, you, know, thinking back on your time on the committee, have there been other cases where maybe you waited a little bit, even though a name was eligible going by the rules, you waited to add it. And I'm curious how that worked out, whether the shock or backlash was to the same level that we've seen to Tesla not being included. Yeah. Um, now sitting on

the outside and maybe prepare comparison. Uh, the amount of chatter about Tesco is staggering. I've gotten calls from people who know I'm not hadn't been on the committee for a year and a half and who barely never called me about stocks and they said, why didn't they do it?

Where's it going in time? So there's a huge amount of stuff they closest an think about, UH was Microsoft and way back then Microsoft went publican about and up until some time in the early nineties, dates and Allen together owned about sixty of the two thirds of the stock, and then in in fact for most of the town of Ireland and committee it you had more than half

the stock postly controlled was ineligible. And we got pounded a whole lot about Microsoft because it was as big then as Tesco is now maybe, And after the fact we still got they sold some stock, we put it in the in deck, everybody figuring to forget it, and we still got who played, why did you ad it? So on? So there have been other big ones. But um, you know, I guess someoneays used to learn to shrug and say, you know, wait till next month. It's nothing

of that. David, Can I ask about the committee because there's a question that, Um, I think it's really important. Is the first role of the committee not to talk about the committee? Well, there's there's an evolution in this. And I was on the committee started in nineteen nine and then became chairman in n and the fellow who preceded me as chair he stayed on the committee and he's a great guy, very sharp. Thank you probably do

more in that end the season. I did at that moment, and I went to one of the senior executives, and I said, now, now that gave you switched us. What am I supposed to do? Elliott didn't do And at that time I was chief economisted and they said, look, you just like you get to talk about the economy and the markets, and the press talk about the Index.

So my charge was to get out there and they act that idea has changed over time and rolled forward to early twenty nine UM and for a whole lot of reasons, people the anxiety of the lawyers and regulation and some other things things that had shifted, and the idea was that the chair of the indext comity shouldn't

be like a front and center spoke first. Between ninety five and two thousand, the number of employees probably went up like, uh, twenty five people in Index and when I left, to have that six hundreds the organization, you're gonna go bigger, and instead of one or two spokespeople, we probably had fifty two folks people. So the Index

parent would have gotten lost in the crowd. There was a specific decision not to list all the members because early on, probably sometime in the late nineties, Forbes magazine wrote us up. They had a picture Hagan in his very ornate wood panel dining room. Uh. We used to call it the Supreme Court picture because we looked as as serious as as the classic pictures of the of the Justices. UM. But the day of that story ran, everybody on the committee got identical uh FedEx packages from

various companies that wanted in. So that's why you know one day now, but everybody else got to be anonymous accept me. So I got all the FedEx packages in the phone call. That's that's great. The Supreme Court visual will is perfect because I actually had that metaphor in my next question, how does it work? Are you guys in a persistent chat? Is there an email chain or do you physically meet? And what if there's a split vote? What if not everybody agrees? How does that get worked out? Uh?

Obviously the testment meeting they had some time in the last month or two was was probably zoom or on some other thing. And we've been using for committee meetings. We've been using a lot of technology over the last five, six, seven years. There are other committees that cover other indicas. So we had we had a committee that covered a lot of indicase in Europe that by necessity had half people in Europe and half in New York. So that

was clearly electronic. But the Five Committee, um, yeah, up until COVID came along or up and certainly until I left um with everybody sat down in the same room. Every once in a while somebody would be on the phone because they happened to be traveling or something, but that was was unusual, rare. Um And how many people are on it it varied between I don't think it was ever less than six and I don't think it's ever more than ten. And it was just a question

of practicality. Um, you know, you had twenty people. You can never get everybody together, and he had less than six if you lose somebody because they're on vacation, if you're really down law. So it was in that range. But there was no no fixed number. Remember, and how did you decide when you had different which it was? It basically a vote, It was at least typically a vote. Most of the most of the votes were aunanimous, are

very close to it, and so on. There was sort of a tradition which I may be somewhat responsible for. If there was clear disagreement and the discussion was going on and on UM, my tendency would be to say all I don't want to go around the table, which meant everybody everyone had a chance to say that two cents for it. If you didn't want to say anything, you'd say I passed, or you could say I agree

with the last guy or something like that. But we didn't want to have a situation where the next day somebody would start bete me, you didn't hear what I had to say. That was a requirement. Um, they go around the table usually would end up. Um, it's not get animous with a clear majority, it's not, And there was some people just had strong opinions. They knew they weren't going to carry it, but they liked the like the notes to say there was in the sending vote.

So the fact that there's a committee with people making decisions, doesn't that kind of basically make the s and P five hundred and active fund. And I'll add that um uh Gunlock at double Line recently made that point as as well. So it's like it's not been said. Well the comment of like that that I like the best with the fellow, I think he's still in the game. Bill Miller, who ran a big fund for leg Mason with great performance, I mean the outperformed the index like

about a thirteen years or something like that. So and he wrote to a shareholders one time that the best demonstration of the successive active management was the SPI. But who aren't trying to be active managers in the sense the committee is not. The goal was not top performance. The goal was it is an index that represents the market and meets the same statistical rules as the market, and and that kind of thing. It's it's not to beat the market and not to be a top performer.

And judging a stock is not do we think the stock is gonna go up by at least ex percent over the next six months. Judging a stock is first does it meet the rules in terms of size and liquidity, profitability and this kind of stuff. And second, we'll get the index and look at the market. Where where is the index not quite online to the market? And will

this not improvement that alignment? Plus a sort of looking at what's happening in the future, because the committee tracks announced mergers, so you know, the committee knows most of the big corporate actions six months into the future because the news is already out there and there's not clairvoyance. It because we read in the newspaper and we're gonna boom.

The committee gets a little flak for being a human you know, human management on a passive fund, and it brings up the nothing is passive, which is a decent argument. I mean, there really is nothing truly passive unless you market kept wait, the whole entire market. Um that said, you know, with a Russell they did a rebalance or a reconstitution recently and beyond meat, which was this high flying stock, got added to the Russell value and everybody's like,

how in the heck did that happened? And that's because they don't have a committee and the rules rule um, and beyond meat was in didn't have enough data to use its own PE ratio, so it got put into to the package goods average PE ratio. In other words, the sector it was in dictated where it got put and that's just the rule, and they could not change it, and thus beyond meat was a value stock for fire

Russell standards. Is that why the committee exists? Is that why it was developed in the first place, to have that ability to avoid the rules doing something where it really doesn't make any sense. Yeah, I I don't know the full history of the committee. I mean, I know who the two or three couple of prior caremen to me were, and I that would take me back to probably very late sixties. They're only seventies. But how the committee came to me and I'm honestly don't know when

we went this way. I wrote the first rules and it was to the years after we wrote him, before they were published. Yeah, there was there was tradition when there were that rule now the rules, uh, and that kind of thing. But I think in the beginning, it was just the sense that this was you had a bunch of people together for the same group every month or whatever, and this is this is what you do.

And I want to talk a little bit about you started as the head of the committee and in I don't quote me, but Passive might have had a four percent market share. I mean it didn't really be Yeah, it was really tiny. I'm in the middle of reading Vogel's last book and um, he's talking about he had to wait thirty five years really for Passive to get big.

You saw it go from really a tiny minority player to a gigantic force, And I just talk a little bit about the from an index perspective, seeing the funds tracking you get so big, and how did it? Could you feel the power of the index growing? Uh? From your perspective during that time, I did one thing in terms of the dates, and that is the the first U S E t F, the State STREETSTF. The big spider I think was UM and aren't of the growth

of indexing and so on? Uh is E t F S and it's et s because before that it was all mutual funds. And you know, if you wanted to buy the Vanguard five hundred funds, which was big, even you had to go to Vanguard. You couldn't call up your broke wins I want to do this. He might tell you how to I probably wouldn't tell you how to go to Vanguard, who is the business, but he could see E t F suddenly meant that every broke in the United States could put you in it put you in an E t F. And I think that

was part of the change. The other thing that drove it was in the late nineties in the tech boom, you had a period of months where the outperform of the actively managementual funding that I say which should not happen. I mean, that's it's just crazy. But what happened is the tex not as the tech bubble. It's quoted every month.

They were the biggest games and eat the month they were bigger share of the index than last month because it's cap weighted and it's at an acceleration given built into the cap waiting, and that's helped put put everybody on the month, put the index on the map because peopleould say, what's this thing that beatcent of everybody? You know, it makes no sense and then they say, oh my gosh,

it's just an index and it's cheat. Besides, but I you can't touch it without really complimenting or Jack bobble uh between the marketing they did and the pricing of their products, and most of all Jack Bogo himself. He was the most incredible pitchman you know, I've ever met. And I mean that is a great compliment because he was out there all the time beating his drum and tell you everybody, you know, buy an index fund and

never sell um. And he did more were in the average investor into the United States than anybody probably in the modern history or something of that sort. So he deserves a huge amount of credit, uh for the whole

index thing. But it did grow, and you know, gradual, I think, starting with the tech boom and then coming out of the tech bus when everybody thought, oh, you know, this is the terrible thing and nobody would buy an index fund ever again, and recession of two thousand one two thousand two, the indext did very respective and was

often running at that point, and and so on. There was clearly growing news attention and the NBC looved to make excitement about it at the same time, and that helped down UM and it grew, and then indexing overall grew. Not only SMP expanded, and it's the eye expanded. Russell, which was somewhat different corporate structure at that time, began

to expand very rapidly. So, David, it's interesting to hear you, you know, harken back to the tech boom in the nineties, because the situation that you just described sounds pretty similar to what we're seeing today. You know, you have a handful of huge tech stocks just leading the SMP higher,

even without Tesla. And I'm curious whether you know, you see parallels between that period and now and whether it gives you any pause about market cap weighted indexes because again in the situation, it is just you know, five to seven stocks powering this index higher. Well, all right, one big difference between that and now is that pets

dot Com certainly never made money. I mean now this time around, the companies are hugely profitable and and you know they their growth and their stock prices are are make more sense now than their equivalents of twenty years ago. Do some of them may still be overpriced Oosually the b ratios are pretty rich. Um. Well, one looks back the index goes through periods of one sector another being you know, being hugely taught right before the financial crisis,

it will completely top eavy and financial stocks and so on. Um. I think there is some disconnect internal in the market today. And is what you mentioned that you've got a handful of stocks that very high pe ratios, very high, dragging the index up, and the rest of it doesn't do too much. I mean, I think it's nothing like the docks in the index. Um. You know, he certainly hadn't recovered from the you know, to the February highs or

something like that. Um. And if you look compare the five hundred to the equated version of the five the cap weighted version is rather than substantially out performing. Now, there were a lot of periods from the time we started doing equated version, which about two thousand two, when equal weighted version did much better. And the equal equal weighted version is a planet value, which is a dirty word this this year. Mm hmm. And then I also

wanted to sort of pickyback off of Eric's last question. Uh, you know, like he said in the intro, the SMP five hundred is sort of the sun around which we all have revolved, and um it obviously is a very powerful force. The the sort of speculation that a stock might get added or removed causes huge moves in the stock price. And just this month we've seen the the SEC look into an S ANDP employee for potential insider trading. He might have tipped his friend off that maybe he

should put on some options ahead of the rebalance. I'm curious, you know, thinking about the power of indexes and their ability to move the stock market. What do you think of this trend and where do you see it going? I guess it, you know, two or three comments in terms of the power of indices and so on, UM

and moving stocks. What happens that stock is added to the What art studies and other studies should constantly show is that you know, if it stock gets announced and then five days later it actually goes in the index to the five days the announcement period. If the stock moved, that would take up three or four percent over that five day period, and then it would give it back

in the next two or three weeks. So if you looked at in a month, two months later, it had given back this this game, there was no sort of permanent game or something like that. If you wanted to play that, you options were probably the logical thing to do. UM we were, or I was always concerned about. It was a lasting game where screwing twisting the stock market somehow,

and I never saw any evidence of that. And the other aspect in terms of the you know, the inside information aspect, which I think is what you're hinting at. I don't know anything other than one I might have read in the newspaper about the current events. I passed on that because I don't have anything about to say about it. What I will say is that, uh, everybody involved in the indsease and SNP is an organization very very aware of the sensitivity of the data when it

was still confidential, when it hadn't been announced. There were procedures really to protect that in the sense that announcements were made only after the market clothes that they were gonna be made. It was always the same time of day, There was no there was no pre announcement or hint or anything like that. All the people involved in working in the enduites were subject to compliance rules and restrictions.

None of us were permitted the own single stocks. In the fact, that was one point when UM I unloaded a whole bunch a number of stocks, and some of which had probably helped for fifteen twenty years and had inherited or something like that. My wife had to do the same thing with a portfolio. Um they left me, they gave me SMP stock. They didn't make me self had But other than that, there were restrictions and brokerage accounts alsent duplicant statements to SMP and and you guys

are off familiar with those rules. And that's truly every every bank and and probably every journalist organization. And I just want to comment real quick on a lot of the attacks on passive. One of them is, you know, once you get into the SMPF under you can relax. But I think to your point, yeah, there might be some buying ahead of it, but stocks get killed after they're in there, like g and Macy's got sold off

and then they got kicked out. So I think just looking at some of those cases, active players are in control. If anything, the indexes is reacting to that. One of the hardest things on how to when to get rid of a stock, when to drop it. From the committee point of view, maybe I'm told that active managers have a bigger problem. They fall in love with the stocks. I don't think it falls in love with them, but

it is very difficult. Um, you know, if it just missed the rule to get in by a little, you're gonna keep it for a while. Or how big is too big or something like that. And some of them come along for other reasons. Um, you've got a big company index doing a spinoff, and you look at the spinoff, what's gonna be spun and you say that the spin it's gonna be an SMP You know that both the parent and spin should be in the index. So here's

the choice. Um we announced that we're not adding the spin, and then we come back a couple of months later and say, oh, we changed my and put it in, but we turned everybody's account, which is not a nice thing to do, or we had to spend the same time. It's it's been happens right away, it goes in, but we don't want to have five companies in the index. That's not the name, So we got to chuck somebody out.

So at that point, we're gonna go and book at the the bottom fifteen twenty names and see who's consistently sinking and and there's our guy in and so um so some of the some of the eggs are sort of easy. Some of the eggs are very difficult. You know, he was once. He was once bigger than any of the texts in the United States are than today's text

and you know, when do you they are? That's so how do you uh, you sit there and you agonize over the you know, the dowb the Committee for the Dow, which I also chared, which SMP now runs, has run since twelve. It's harder in the Dow. You know, sometimes that five hundred you throw out a sock, everybody forgot it was still around. Don't get that opportunity in the Dow. You're dropping the stock. Everybody knows it right away. I mean some people can recite all thirty dames in the Dow. Uh,

nobody can recite all five undred days. And speaking of things not really being passive, the Dow uses price waiting. Um, you know, I get it. The index was designed, you know, back when Grover Cleveland was president, and it wasn't really thought to be an investment tool. But the d i A has I don't know, a fifty billion in it. The media keeps quoting it. But price waiting just seems so absurd. You're just waiting it based on the price it is, so Apple has a stock split goes from

the biggest waiting by far to like number seventeen. Nothing really changed about the value. So I mean, when you were running the doubt, it just sort of marvel at how I don't know, weird that system is and why the media still is like obsessed with the Dow. I't we gonna ask you the next question that I don't have a good answer, so don't ask we We talked a lot about other versions. You know, well, we took it on two. We took for a lot about all

kinds of changes it was. Now. I think a dividend based index is based on the down, which is probably waited by dividend dividend yield. I think that we created, we used it. Wait and it's an analyst at SMP was very much still there. In fact, you probably don't talk to him all the time about data. Uh he set up and runs the cap weighted version that the DOW was sort of under the table or something like that. And but all of us, including myself, you know, we used to call up say, you know we sent me

that day. I want to do some stuff with it, the way around with it and that kind of thing. But um, I don't think it's gonna change. There's one other price weighted index I know of, and that's the deck to to five. And I'm sure there a lot of people in Tokyo who love it, but mostly they love the topics which is cap weighted and done right. You're such an index guy, and I'm wondering do you look at other indices q q Q for example, and the and NASAC one hundred and how how does that

compete and complement. Uh SNP five hundred's sort of a measure of American companies. The point that or the I guess the cues more than even though the cues is the the e T s detectively. That's really a sector oriented index or a sector focused index. You know, we slice the five hundred into eleven sectors and do in the season all eleven and all this kind of stuff too. And the only thing I would say is that if somebody came to me and said, I'm um, have a

one Indeck portfolio. I'm in the cues, I'd say, you know, I don't think you really have the market. You've got something else that's got to be good. One inde portfolio, the five hundred, I think you have the market. You've done so, David, I want to quickly ask you one more question on self indexing. UH. You know e t f s under huge price pressure. We've seen some of them come out. It hasn't really taken off yet, but we have seen some success stories such as GSLC. It's huge.

We featured it on Trillions a few weeks ago. UM. But other than that, you know, you're still seeing big brand index makers really dominating in the E T F world. But I'm curious, on a longer term time frame, do you think the SMP and the M s c I, for example, could eventually lose business to self indexing. Well, I think there are two or three things that show up that really get somewhat restricted limits self indexing and that kind of thing. One thing, it's a huge amount

of brand management. It's in the in all of this. You know, I'd love to say that five hundred is so out there and so widely because you know, they think they think we're all geniuses, we were all geniuses or something like that. But it's supporting the brand, managing the brand, keeping the brand out there, making sure people have a lot of respect and faith in the brand. And that's the same thing with any other products. So somebody comes along, Vanguard has an incredible brand name, and

Vanguard has other than the Vanguard five hundred. You gotta really dig to find out who's doing the index or where the index came from. And you know, and they have a brand that has the power equivalent to you know, SNP or mc ir or foot see or somebody else. Uh, But there are very few of those who's got a brand that that kind of that kind of recognition and

that kind of crown. So so if you're, um, you know, three guys in a garage or whatever it is, putting together in an E T f UM, you're gonna have a you gotta have a brand if you wanna get noticed. You call it the you know, west Side Garage Index, and uh, it's not gonna fly, so right away that the brand barrier. The second thing is scale economies. You know, if you're gonna camplate one index and trying it's day

I have five socks in it. It's somebody overhead, you know, a two or four guys tracking stocks, and a couple of guys running the computer and the hardware and software and everything. Advertize that of course one index you're operating expense is gonna be you know, two percent, which you're out of the market at that point. Yeah, S ANDP.

I don't know how many industries we calculate. I don't think anybody could figure it out, but it was clearly a six figure something every Yeah, every market marketing in the world, that every equity market the U S would let you do business in. We were in, uh, every stock with a market cap over about ten ten, fifteen, twenty million dollars we were tracking, so that scanal economies were mind blowing. You know, we calculated more indusseries every

night than almost anybody else. So obviously the scanal economy is were great. So that's gonna mean that self indexing. Unless you're biggest Vanguard or something like that, it's cheaper to come to SMP or m s c I or Russell and say will you run this for it? And there's a big custom index business. The third reason Nick stands out is UM and it's really because of in mixed business. And they really started with investment banks where they took up some kind of rage index and they

write options on it and they'd sell the options. And so here you've got a product that you know the index is more than six, your option pays off. You're gonna trust your friendly investment banker to tell you it was only five point nine too at the settlement day or not. Well, they're all honest, but I wouldn't trust

to me either. If you go to an independent group, my guest MP or or or the rest of us and say, um, you know calculated and so we do, and they'll say calculation by standard fors and that's it, you know all that I think it limits self indexing. Um. You know, the big guys like Vanguard are still gonna be interested in it. And um, Vanguard, black Rock, State Street maybe in bastcumb maybe if you want. It created a price war in this business a few years ago. Um,

driving down et F fees. You know, self indexing isn't worth that much because they've driven down everybody else's fees. Um. Okay, next question, um, which is one that I often ask on trillions to close this out, but I have a better kicker today. But what is your favorite et F tkicker? My favorite et F ticker probably then by the big Spider because the first of course it would be okay. So now now I have to ask a new kicker on behalf of my friend Eric. How does Eric get

on the committee? Well, first of all, you have to remember you had to be employed by SMP Global. You had to work work in the index in the index business, you know, SMP Dow Jones indusease the division. Um. But more than that, you probably have to have been doing it for at least five, six, seven, eight years or

something of that sort. And I don't remember the exact details, but like any organization, there were standard titles and managing director, director so on and some way, and there was there was a minimum title that that probably takes another ten years. Committee you had to have that title. That was a rule. And then you come to work one day and open your open your locker and there's like a little pink slip waiting for you, and that's when you know you're in. No,

it's it's not like the movies, is it. You get you get probably you get a phone call from the chairman and then then you and then an email that's sent around to the group that works for the index

calculation group. I grew a better term, um wopen doing this all the time, and all who were restricted in in a separate point wing in the office and selling its so forth, an email will go around to all of them saying, um, Joe Smith has been added to the five committee and and then everybody starts kissing your butter on the office. Or no, actually, I would say all of the CEOs of the three thousand stocks that

aren't in the SMP five hundreds start being a lot nicer. Yeah, well, there's a rule not to release the names other than the chare person's name. And I think today, if I understand it, there's a rule that not even to release the name of the care It's fascinating anyway, I really appreciate the insight. Um, we're definitely I don't know. I mean the fact that I live, eat, and breathe this stuff. And I couldn't tell you one member it's this weird.

It's just the most important were David Blitzer. Thanks so much for joining us on Trillions, High pleasures. Thanks for listening to Trillions until next time. You can find us on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot 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 fall Tunas, and you can find Katie at kay Grifles. This episode of Trillions was produced by

Magnus and Rickson. Francesca Levy is the head of Bloomberg Podcast. Bye