This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week.
The global push into infrastructure, breaking the IPO logjam in tex.
The financial stories that shape.
Our world, cutting inflation without losing jobs. Do we need rate cuts? And if so? How many? Investing in a time of geopolitical turmoil.
Through the eyes of the most influential voices.
Ten Rogueff economists of Harvard, former FDIC had Shila Bert ge CEO, Larry Culp, San Francisco FED President Mary Daily.
Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
Market sped on a September rate cut, Vice President Harris wins a key endorsement, and the Paris Olympic Games begin after a rail sabotage. This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week. I'm Romain Bossed again for David Weston, and we begin with the week in markets. I saw our rotation out of big tech and into small caps. When you take look at an S and P five hundred that rallied here on this Friday afternoon but still ended the week
in the red. You have to overlay that with the massive outperformance that we saw in the small and mid cap space four straight weeks now where we've seen the Russell two thousand outperform, the Nastac outperform, the mag seven outperform the broader market overall, and a lot of that seems to be predicated on the belief the interest rates
might be coming down soon. Peter Boro is joining us right now, the chairman and CEO of Computer Trading, to talk a little bit about some of the moves that we saw this week, and Peter, some of this did seem to be driven by the macro, whether it was the economic data or maybe the feed through into what folks think that macroeconomic data is going to mean for the Fed.
Absolutely, but it could also go back to rule number one that we all learn by low sell high. This market has been one where everybody's been buying high, and so what did we have. We had a natural rotation to over sold stocks out of stocks that were highly overbought. Now the question is has the underlying fundamentals changed to me?
They have, As you know, the.
Last time I was on here, we talked about the seven c's of all the commodities that market in general has been much weaker, grains, crude oil, cotton, copper in particular, So that may be an indication that the FED is more likely to ease, and therefore the small cap stocks benefit significantly in a interest rate environment where rates are going down or more stable.
They would benefit from rates going down. But if economic conditions are weakening to the point where the FED thinks it needs to cut rates, how is that going to benefit small caps?
Great question.
So that also gets into the yield curve and interest rates and whether the FED cuts are longer rates going to go up is going to be a bear steepener. But the first reaction is mean reversion, so that's buying things that were over sold and selling things that were overbought.
There could be this week, and part of it could be the fact that Vice President Harris has done significantly better in the polling, and that may imply the expiration of the Trump tax cuts, which could lead to higher capital gains rates, which could lead to selling winners again and harvesting some of your losses which were in the small cap. So a lot of positive things have come.
Together for that.
It's interesting you raised that point here about people basically buying effectively the laggers. I mean, I was looking at one stock today on this Friday, neul Brands. Of course, it makes all those little rubber may things that you have in your cabinet, some more than thirty percent on the day. But then when you look at its performance prior today on a year to date basis, of course, it was also down double digits here, So people are definitely looking at the bottom of the barrel and maybe
finding some hope there. But it gets back to the question about economic conditions, consumer spending. And we had a PCE report on Friday. You had a GDP report a couple of days ago that, while still healthy, certainly showed some softening.
When it comes to the consumer, no question about it.
And what I look at for the strength of the consumer is I look at Visa, I look at MasterCard, and those stocks have been underperforming, let's say relative to American Express, where American Express tends to be the card of choice for higher income HULU. So the economy seems.
To be slowing.
It's interesting when we look at some of the market moves over the last I don't know, five or six weeks. I mean, you've obvious seen a bid come into some of those economically sensitive areas like utilities, like materials. Probably one of the more interesting stealth rallies out there and stealth to me at least, was some of the moves that you saw in banks over the last couple of weeks.
And not just the big banks. We're talking about some of those regional banks that everybody sold off about a year and awf half ago.
Yes, So who's going to be the biggest beneficiary of those cutting interest rates is going to be the regional banks. And over the last three weeks they have really outperformed the Goldman Sachs as JP Morgan's of the world. It's been to me that's been more impressive than the rally in the small cap IWN.
All right, Peter, always a great conversation, one of the best in the business. Peter Borish of Computer Trading Company.
Vice president Harris emerged this week as the likely alternative to former President Trump, focusing investors on what her approach to the economy would be and whether it would differ from that of President Biden to take us through the choices. Welcome back now, are very special contributor here in Wall Street Week. He is Larry Summers of Harvard Lurie. Great
to have you back with us. What do we know or think we know about what a Kamala Harrison administration would do with the economy versus a Donald Trump.
We don't know much yet.
The campaign's only been going for two days, but I think we've got some strong bases for optimism. First, it's been the Biden Harris administration, and if you step back, it really has a remarkable record. I don't think any administration has so outperformed the economic forecasts on the day that it came into office as the Biden Harris administration has. And that's because of an approach that is about investing in America and investing in America's future.
And if you look at some of the.
Things Vice President Harris has done, they have that orientation to the future. She knows that our children are our future, and that's why the childcare credit and investing in children investments that reduce the child poverty rate by a half when they were in effect, were so important to her. She knows that fiscal responsibility is central, and that's why she puts emphasis on the fact that we need to raise taxes where it is replacing the ineffective massive corporate
tax cuts that President Trump put into place. She understands that much of our future lies in exporting to the rest of the world. It's not her approach to call Africa and Al Salvador countries as President Trump did. It's her approach to work to strongly support their development because she knows that more prosperous countries around the world make
for a more prosperous United States. It's a new generational approach and a start contrast with what came before with Donald Trump, and, judging by what he's saying on the campaign trail, a even larger contrast with what would come if he were elected. What he describes David is a
prescription for massive inflation. Ignore the deficit, bash the Fed, trash the dollar, cut back on labor supply by trying immediately to send millions of people home, stop subsidizing clean energy, and put massive tariffs on so businesses can't get cheap inputs. It's hard to imagine a better strategy for creating inflation,
for creating high interest rates, and the Trump's strategy. President Harris I believe will avoid all those pro inflation mistakes, and much more important, We'll build a future oriented economy through our kids, through our technologies, through containing our debts, and through working with the world.
So let's talk about those pro inflation policies, and specifically on the fiscal stemua the side, because you've been outspoken about that in the past. That that has contributed to inflation, and we're investing in children obviously is one thing. She's also has been for expanded medicare. In fact, at one point she was for medicare for all. She backed off that a bit. She's also for rental assistance programs. What do you make of those? Are those good ideas? Assuming
she could get those through? Are those good for the economy.
I don't think it's fair to judge Donald Trump by the things he was saying when he was campaigning for office the first time, or even before, and that was a very different context. And I don't think that Vice President Harris feels committed to the things she said during her campaign for the presidency before she joined the Biden
administration partnership and advocated those policies for four years. No, I don't think medicare for all is a good idea, and I wouldn't expect that a Harris administration would push medicare for all.
Lauria, next week, you and I will both you got an Aspen for the Aspen Economic Strategy for meetings, And while we're doing that, the FED will be meeting in Washington. We'll have another Fed decision. We just had Bill Dudley, whom you know well we all respect, come on just this week in a Bloomberg opinion piece saying it's time for them to cut rates as early as next week, a part of the so called Sam rule about where's where on umployments going. What do you think about that?
On current facts, I would not cut rates next week. I think we need to be very careful about making the move, especially since when the FED starts to cut rates, there will inevitably be an expectation of some cascade of rate cuts. It's certainly true that as the news has come in over the last several months, it's tended to be on the low inflation and on the soft economy side, and so markets have now adjusted to expect a rate cut in September. I had thought that that was a possibility,
but not a probability. On current facts, I'd certainly regard it as probability, both in terms of what should happen and what will happen. But I think it's the better part of prudence, particularly in so unsettled an environment where the deficit figures are coming in in a very problematic way. I think it's the better part of prudence for the Fed to wait a little longer before cutting rates.
Larry, It's always such a pleasure to have you with us. Thank you so much. That is our special Wall Street Week contribuer, Larry Summers of Harvard, coming up, the view from Goldman Sachs on where this economy is taking investors with Sherman, most of our Ruckmanney.
Us pre eminence is intact and stay invested.
That's next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. A stock market that just won't quit, a bond market rewarding fixed income at long last, and inflation apparently coming under control at least for now. What's an investor to do? As Chief investment officer for Golden Sachs Wealth Management, Charmian most of our Rock Money answers that question every single day, and we welcome her back now to Wall Street Week. Always a delight to have you here, Charmin thank you for.
Joining us, Thanks for having me.
Okay, So you talk to investors all the time, customers all the time. What are they asking about? What are they concerned about?
Right now, they're asking the questions about our two key investment teams. We have been tending clients to be overweight US equities, and we've been telling them to stay invested. So after this big market rally that's been going on for so long, as you pointed out, clients are saying, are those themes still valid? Should we still be overweight US equities? And should we still stay invested after this unexpected be significant rally following twenty twenty three, which was
also very strong. And our answer to both of those questions is yes, US pre eminence is intact, and stay invested.
So let's break that down first of all the equities part, then we'll get to the US part. Equities, we do have real returns now in fixed income? Doesn't that shift the emphasis at least somewhat because you can make real money now on bonds?
Well, our view is that the upside in US equities is substantially greater. So when you're looking at the return to expectations, we do recommend especially with US clients, they need to look at the returns on an after tax basis. So you can't just look at the yield, for example, on treasury bonds or on corporate bonds and then compare that to the expected return for US equities. You actually need to look at both on an after tax basis.
And one of the most amazing things about US equities are if you have them in some passive tax efficient form, you have very little bit of a tax liability and there's much more long term upside. So we actually recommend clients be at their duration target for their fixed income acts, but still overweight US equities versus non US equities.
What about the valuation in the equity marketing, Some people are concerned, we're getting a pretty high valuation. So you say there's a lot of upside left inequities. Are we sure about that?
So there's no short term upside. In fact, the US equity market has exceeded our expectations for this year. So our good case for US equities this year when we published our initial outlook was up thirteen percent, and so now we're up about seventeen percent. You're today roughly, And so when we look at that we'll say, yes, it has exceeded our expectations, but earnings have been better than expected. Typically when you start having the Fed cut interest rates,
as long as we don't go into a recession. On average, US equities are up nineteen percent for the next twelve months, so we may not have much upside left for the rest of this year, but already the markets starting to think about twenty twenty five and what earnings will be. And then as investors shift focused to twenty twenty five and earnings and price targets, that's when you'll see some more upside.
You said something terribly important there, as long as we don't go into recession. We had Bill Dudley actually with an opinion piece in Bloomberg this week saying he's got some concerns now, growing concerns with a slower economy, sink with a p some rule that fell into the complicated rule about unemployment, and when it points to recession that he says, there is now our growing risk of recession and maybe the Fed should cut as early as next week. What do you think about that?
We actually followed Bill Dudley and try to talk to him often and think very highly of his opinion. He went into twenty twenty three expecting a recession and a very high probability, So we've had this discussion with him on the likelihood of recession. We started this year with a probability of thirty percent for the odds of a recession, and we have stuck with that, and people say, why
aren't you lower. Some people are substantially lower. We haven't changed our recession probability, partly because of the shape of the yield curve. The yield curve is significantly inverted, or it was more inverted before, and it has stayed that way, and we have what we call a yield curve diffusion index, and when that triggers, more often than not, you get
a recession. That's why we're at thirty percent. However, when we think about these various indicators, like the sam rule that you refer to, we also have to consider and factor in some unusual situations. So people talk about the amount of immigration in the US, and so that has pushed up the unemployment rate or post pandemic. We were at such low unemployment rates that getting slightly above that is not necessarily an indication of a recession.
Around the corner.
So do we worry about our recession? Do we need to be on the alert about it look at other indicators? Yes, But are we worried about a recession anytime in the next twelve months or so? Not at this point. Thirty percent probability. That means seventy percent probability of no recession.
Charman, it's always such a pleasure having you on. Thank you so much. That's Charmine most about ROCHMANI of Goldman Sachs. Geopolitical risk remains high and economies around the world face different paths ahead. Take us through what this means for investors. Welcome back now, David Hunt. He's president and CEO of PGIM. Great to have you back.
It's wonderful to be back with you, David.
So let's talk with the geopolitics, because we have a heightened level of geopolitical risk these days all around the world pretty much where ever, Look, how does that affect investors?
Well, the first thing I would say, David, is that it may be heightened the relative to the last ten or twelve years, but I would not say it's necessarily
heightened relative to the longer term sweep of history. We've actually had a period of real I would say moderation since the GFC in terms of political flashpoints, and it's really been the last few years between the health pandemic two wars that we've started to see these re emerge, and I would say it's more of a getting back to normal than it is actually a high of the averages. I would also say that I think that this kind of summer of democracy, which we're still working our way through,
is only heightening that as well. So I think we have even more geopolitical risk. And indeed, as I travel the world talking to our large institutional investors, their number one risk is geopolitical. It is not what's the ved going to do, It's not where are we in the interest rate cycle. They really want to talk about the heightened geopolitical risk and what that does for their portfolio construction.
So talk to me a bit about that very issue, the intersection, if you will, how that intersects with the politics and the geopolitics. I mean, how does the politics potentially affect the long term growth of a Europe, of a Japan, of the United States.
Long term investors have a very different attitude toward I think volatility in general and that's probably the biggest difference. I think a lot of the popular media confuse volatility and risk really not the same thing. So when I say we have heightened volatility, that actually can spell as
much opportunity as it does risk. I mean, the only way you lose money is to sell an asset for less than you bought it for or take a permanent impairment, but simply because market's move does not create a loss, and long term investors tend to look through those cycles and they use changes in market levels to actually get
in at a more attractive price. So as we look forward to the increased volatility, our key focus is do our clients have enough liquidity so that they can move and move in size when the.
Time is right.
And I would say that as people have moved more into privates and more into liquid assets, that liquidity has become a bit squeezed, and a lot of the work we're doing with clients is to make sure that they have the liquidity so that they can move when the timing is right.
It's one of the things your institutional investors take a look at your social clients is long term growth prospects. Because right now, right now, it looks like, for example, Europe is different from the United States, just to joke one example.
No, it's a great example, And I would say that we are seeing a pretty big rotation in how people view growth opportunities and where they're putting capital work. So if you start in Europe, you know, in general, people are quite I think pessimistic about growth. The EU is no bigger now than it was in twenty eighteen, and it really doesn't seem to be breaking out of the
cycle of low productivity and low growth that it's had. Meanwhile, you then go to Asia and you find, on the one hand, Japan, which is I would say in a new you know, kind of found optimism. They finally have inflation back, which they're grateful for. Growth has come back, They are very constructive about some of the reforms that they've made to corporate governance, and I would say there's more optimism there and about internet actional investors looking in
than we've had in a long time. And in fact, I would say that Japan has been the leading country to benefit from the tensions with China because many people are now building their plants and building their supply lanes around a strategy that's based in Japan, So Japan I think is much more positive. China, on the other hand, is probably in a more difficult position. Even last week with the Third Plan, and we did not see the kind of concerted action that we all thought was going
to be needed. So I think people are worried about growth, and they're worried that there isn't going to be a resurgence of consumer spending, which is what's really need to rebalance the economy, but rather continued focus on manufacturing. So there's no new money at the moment going into China. Then you come back to the US and as difficult, and we like to focus on all the problems of the US. Actually, productivities has looked not bad. Growth is looked,
you know, like it's powering through this difficulty. Wages continue to be pretty strong, so you know, the US is on a relative basis at this point doing very well. So the net of that is that there is really money coming out of Europe. There is money, no more money going into China. There's quite a bit more money going into the US and Japan, and then select emerging markets like I would say Mexico, Vietnam, Indonesia, which you're
benefiting from the changes in the global supply chain. So it's a very differencing shift in how people are putting their money to work geographically.
Let's pick up on one thing that you just referred to, which I find puzzling because here in the United States, maybe in part is the election not unteally, we tend to be very critical of what's going on economically. We're in a lot of trouble, a lot of uncertainty things, and yet the rest of the world seems to want to invest here. The inflows are remarkable here, by the way, a lot of people want to come here. It's one of the firt reason we have an immigration problem is
who wants to move here? Who's got it wrong? I mean, are we misperceiving our own economy or is the rest of the world overestimating what we can do.
I think it's maybe a little bit of both, and maybe a third as well. I think that there's no question that the corporate sector and therefore what's driving earnings and therefore kind of the markets is in better health than almost any of us would have predicted eighteen months ago.
That doesn't necessarily mean that consumer sentiment or the average person feeling that way, and for them, they're much more likely to feel actually, the world's twenty percent more expensive than it was three years ago, and my wages haven't gone out by twenty percent, So for the median worker, you don't feel that things are quite so great here. So both of those stories I think are equally true. But what we do have, I think is a very dynamic economy. And if the pandemic told us anything, it
was you know, we were chaotic. Every state did it differently. We couldn't enforce rules, all of the things that we don't like about ourselves, and yet we came out of it, I think, pretty strongly, pretty quickly, and our corporate sector was able to actually rebalance with a lot of help from the government obviously, and I'd say that our rebound is a real sign of strength of the fundamentals of the US economy.
David is such a treat always to have you on. Thank you so much. That is David Hunt of p JIM coming up the path forward for commercial real estate with Owen Thomas, chairman and CEO of b XP.
All CEOs, in my opinion, want their employees to be working in person more and one of those carts is to be in a great building.
That's next on Wall Street Week. I'm Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. Commercial real estate has been among the slow US to recover from the pandemic. We talked to b XP chairman and CEO Owen Thomas about the path forward for the space.
It has been a rough time.
I always say though, perception is worse than reality, and commercial real estate is bouncing back. Defined as office, there are two external drivers that really drive the office business, certainly the business of BXP. One is interest rates and the other is corporate earnings growth.
I think the interest rate story is pretty.
Obvious, you know, real estate stocks real estate are primarily a financial asset, and if the cost of capital is lower, those asset assets are worth more.
You know, we had a very favorable inflation report.
Last week, and since that came out, and with the prospect of more rate cuts and the fact that the ten year now is below four point two percent, you know, it's really escalated our stock price over the last week. The second important driver is corporate earnings growth. Because that leasing. In twenty twenty three, the S and P five hundred earnings growth was flat and zero. In twenty twenty two it was very tipid. But here in twenty twenty four, in the first quarter it was up eight percent and
this quarter is predicted to be even higher. So when companies are profitable and they're making money and they're growing their earnings, they're more likely to grow higher people and take more space. And we're seeing that in our leasing activity. In the first quarter at bxp our, the square footage that we leased was up thirty percent from the first quarter of twenty three, and in the second quarter we're seeing continued escalation both in terms of signed leases in our pipeline for future.
Quarters up thirty percent. Boots that off of a low base.
It was off a low base, yeah, because we went through as interest rates went up in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. You know, as I mentioned, corporate earnings growth slowed way down, and when that happens, companies aren't growing, they're thinking about waste cut costs, and we saw that a lot of BLAEF space got put in the market. There wasn't a lot of new requirements in
the market. But now that the business, the environment around corporate earnings is improving, it's improving our leasing because companies are growing again.
So strong corporate earnings make it a little easy to hire more people. As you say, yes, you have to actually get the people into the office.
Yes, that's true too.
How's that going, how's return to agics going? Yeah?
I do think there's no question that work from home has an impact on office demand. I do think in the premium sector where we operate, it's a little bit less so because the clients that we have generally want their employees to be in the office many days per week. But in terms of what we actually see, BXP manages today about fifty four million square feet and we have
badge data on about fifty percent of that space. And so what we're seeing today versus the last quarter before the pandemic is in New York Tuesday to Thursday, on buildings that are comparably leased, the visitation is the same. So, in other words, the badge swipes haven't diminished at all. So Tuesday to Thursday New York is back, and Monday is coming up slowly and Friday is very slow. By the way Friday was slowing down before.
The pandemic, but it's definitely slower today.
So that number in Boston is about eighty percent, also rising. So Boston is also improving Tuesday to Thursday, and then San Francisco lags. It's at fifty two percent, but again that is slowly improving. And the other thing that we see in the data is that if you look at the unique weekly visits of a worker, that gap between the East and the West Coast is less. However, those individuals are coming into the office fewer days per week on the West Coast than they are in New York or Boston.
When it comes to the stock market, it has been driven so much this year by that so called Magnificent seven, Yes, which seems to be a lot of it related to artificial intelligence.
Yes.
Is that spilling over into commercial real estate market?
It is? It is.
So if you look overall in space demand today, I actually would say the technology companies is the biggest gap. We see most of the demand today coming from financial services companies, law firms, professional service firms, and the technology companies are not leasing space at nearly the level that they were before or during the pandemic. Primarily driven by the large tech companies. However, in San Francisco, to your point, David, there are a number of AI companies, small startups and
medium sized companies that are taking space. I think the net absorption from those companies over the last year eighteen months has been about two to three million square feet. And also interestingly, those workers are in the office I think in many cases up to five days a week.
So when you get a new project, the three forty one matters in Otherwise, is the financing there for it?
Yes, so great question.
So on the financing, I think you have to divide it between the private market and mortgage financing that's secured by the properties, and also the public unsecured market. So on the private side and mortgages, it's challenging. You know, there are many banks, insurance companies, other lenders that are not getting repayments of their office loans and therefore they don't have fresh capital to lend on new office projects.
It's very hard to get. We did a very large secured mortgage financing last year on an ironclad building in East Cambridge and we didn't get a quote from a US lender. We ended up closing the deal with European and Asian lenders.
So that's on the private secured side.
But if you look at the unsecured market, you know there are a handful of well, there are many ruts that are investment grade or not investment grade rated, and they're funding themselves in the public investment grade bond market, which is what we do, and so we have access to that market. In fact, are spread are at long term averages, so we're you know, not being per se
penalized for being an office company in that market. The overall cost of the financing is a lot higher than it used to be, just because the ten year treasury rate is much higher than it was two or three years ago.
Go back to your Cambridge building in for a second. No domestic bidders for it done, so it came from overseas. Is that a larger trend? Because the United States in general is an investment haven right now, you're seeing a lot of foreign direction investmor coming in. Does that apply to commercial real estate?
I think so.
I think that there are buildings that are selling office buildings today. I think primarily they are distressed types of deals and the buyers tend to be family offices. And distressed asset funds, and my guess is the underlying capital for those is a mix of both domestic and non US sources. But you know, broadening that out, there also are large international, sophisticated investors that want to continue to
invest in US real estate. We announced last year a major joint venture with Norgis of the Norwegian Central Bank, and they invested seven hundred and fifty million dollars in two life science developments that we are completing in East Cambridge, and that was obviously a very significant commitment.
Since we started really talking a lot about commercial real estate, there's a lot of emphasis on the premium buildings. You're in premium, but there's an A and a B and a C and things like that. Is that difference maintaining, is it exacerbating? Is it diminishing the distinction?
Yeah, it's certainly maintaining and maybe even escalating further. So, the way we describe it is there's premier workplaces and there's everything else. And the premier workplaces we're defining as basically the top ten percent.
Of buildings in our market.
Those buildings tend to be a little bit larger, so it's about fifteen to twenty percent of the space. What is the definition of a premier workplace. Well, it's a building where if you have an industry leading client would be interested in leasing space in the building if it was available.
So it's that top ten percent.
And if you look at the data for those buildings, first of all, the asking rent for that ten percent is fifty four percent higher today than the whole the other ninety percent, and the vacancy the direct vacancy rate is about seven and a half percentage points. It's about eleven low elevens percent, which is seven percent seven percentage points lower than the rest of the market which is
at like seventeen or eighteen. And then lastly, the net absorption if you look at it for the five central business districts where we operate, the net absorption of space into that top ten percent has been a positive eight plus million square feet, and for everything else it's been negative over thirty million square feet.
It is the XP chairman and CEO Owen Thomas mellow Brooks taught us that it is in merchandising that the real money from the movie Is is made. This week, a lot of people in Paris are hoping that there will be real money to be made from selling Olympics merchandise, which four years ago is in Tokyo, brought in over one hundred and twenty seven million dollars for that Olympics, and they'll need every penny of that to help cover the Paris operating budget of over four point three billion dollars.
If Paris wants to get some real money for merchandising, maybe they should get a celebrity or two involved, like George Clooney, who with a friend put together a tequila brand he sold after four years for one billion dollars.
Everything about Kosamigos's real is nothing made up. George and I signed every batche will sign because we want to make sure that it's exactly what it's supposed to be.
Then there's the new Louis Vitan Timberland boots going for a mere twenty eight hundred and fifty dollars for the pair. Master Marketer Elon Musk appears to be raking in plenty of real money from a wide range of merchandise, including everything from spacesuit onesies for infants with SpaceX logo on the sleeve to a men's fragrance named Burnt hare described as quote the essence of repugnant desire to a cyber
truck inspired cat bed. And now, for all of those wanting to try their own hand at making some real money for merchandising the way George Clooney and Elon Musk have, you can go to Harvard to learn how. For a mere twelve thousand dollars, you can take Professor Anita Elberse's four day course That's the Business of Entertainment, Media and Sports and study everything from David Beckham's brand management to
how Beyonce launches her new albums. But you'll have to get in line behind executors from Hollywood and Madison Avenue, as well as Channing Tatum and ll Coolja. It's a safe bet, however, that one person who will not be needing any fancy Harvard course is the marketer in chief. He is, of course, the former President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, whose red Maga hats and other clothing
have become ubiquitous. According to website Chummy Tees, Online searches for the former president's T shirts spiked by over seven thousand percent after that attempt on his life in Pennsylvania. That is the largest spike in searches and clicks to our website we've ever seen, they say. And if that weren't enough, Axios reports that a Trump owned company was out with limited edition sneakers that include on the shoes a picture of mister Trump right after the shooting with
blood on his face. And for your two hundred and ninety nine dollars, you'll get not only the sneakers, but a chance to get one of ten pairs that will be autographed by the former president and given out at random. So Vice President Harris is now in a fierce contests not only for votes, but to win the merchandise competition.
She's playing from behind, but her supporters had unofficial T shirts and water bottles online within minutes of President Biden's announcement last Sunday, and it took her new campaign only twelve hours to get the real merch out there. But to make sure she comes out on top, she might want to take another look at the greatest movie about merchandising of all time. We've been down this aisle already.
We've never been down this isle. It's pain.
Church brought me.
I'm a married spot.
I'm a marriage spot.
That does it for this episode of Wall Streight Week. I'm David Weston. This is Bloomberg. See you next week.