After the Meme-Stock Gold Rush

mean a bigger correction is inevitable. We'll get into it with a veteran Wall Street strategist, but first, Charlie Pellett tell us who is this week's mystery co host. This week's mystery co host is sid Verma. Sid as a

senior editor with Bloomberg's Crosssset team in London. His hobbies include trolling Joe Wisenthal on Twitter, and while he and Mike Reagan share the title of scene, You're out of here said is much younger and nowhere near as washed up as Reagan said, claims his parents are proud of him, even though he never did become a doctor. Said, I'm gonna need to talk to Chu earlier about these intros. I'm not sure what I did to get on his

bad side. Maybe I didn't stand clear of the closing doors the right way or something, But anyway, Dr said Vermont, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. I mean, if Charlie says that it's true, I feel like this is a Bloomberg writer. Passes said, before we get into the markets, I wanted to get a sense from you of what it's like in London these days, especially now that the pubs are back open. I can't really picture London with closed pubs. I mean, is it really London

if the pubs aren't open? Yeah, I mean there are a lot of pernicious effects. Um. A lot of people were forced to talk to their family, express their emotions in a in a civilized way um, and basically fraternize with their neighbors UM, and do very American style subversive things like go do fitness um, and we'll go enter the positivity industrial complex and is Instagram and exercise with teams. Um. Now things are opening up, so hopefully we can get to the London of old um. And Yeah, I mean

it's it's crazy. I don't know how much of you guys have been going out, but um, I went out, and it's kind of you're relearning social norms when you go to the pub, when you're queuing to actually get around in um, and it's kind of it's we're entering new territory. Anyway, let's get to that market chat with our guests. Our guests this week has a list of

awards and accomplishments that's a mile long. But in my opinion, her biggest claim to fame is that, like me, she's a graduate of the number one university in the state of Delaware. She is the chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab and her name is Lizianne Sanders. Liz, and welcome back to the show. Well, thank you, Mike, thanks for having me in high Stid. How are you very well?

Thank you very much, and listen. Uh, it's very nice of you to not point out that I've made that same joke about the best school in the state of Delaware probably every time we've we've been in the same room together, So I appreciate that. That's okay. Hey, we have the President United States is also a blue hen so yeah, the alumni is moving up in the world. Listen, let's start with that idea of the individual retail investors.

There's a sense, at least in the media that the reddit type of traders have sort of sobered up a bit and at least aren't chasing meme stocks the way they used to. From your perspective, I'm curious if you

think that's true. And I wonder if in the past year or so, when you're trying to analyze the market, if you've been sort of looking in the mirror a little bit more than normal, in other words, looking at what the retail investors at Schwab and elsewhere have been doing, if they're moving as a flock, uh, and what sort

of the sentiment is there are among that cohort right now? Yeah, So, there there are some indications that the robust volume driven by that that crowd, the newly minted day traders, the Reddit crowd, whatever you wanna call, and it's broader than just the Reddit flash mobs that became um so in the news in the January February time frame. But if you look more broadly, there's some indication that there's a little bit of a waning in terms of that participation.

But it also sometimes gets masked because the the outset of interest by that fairly new cohort dates back to the June July period of last year, and it didn't that that cohort didn't get as much attention even though the likes of Citadel came out last summer and said that retail traders represented of daily volume, but where their interest was most dominant within the market, at least outside

of the options market. We're in the fang type style in the big five names that were otherwise the leadership names, so their activity blended into what was otherwise working in the market. It really wasn't until the beginning of this year that that cohort got more interested in the meme stocks, heavily shorted stocks, weak balance sheet companies, penny sheet stocks, some of the spacks obviously cryptos. So it was just more noticeable when it was in those lower quality, uh

not sort of typical leadership areas of the market. What we don't know is whether that money is sort of morphed back into where leadership has been more recently, really since mid February, we've seen us shift, believe it or not, back toward some semblance of fundamentals driving stocks, a bit more of a quality bias, profitability bias, a little bit of evaluation bias. Notice I say valuation, not value, because

I think those sometimes are are separate. So it's gonna be interesting to see when we really open back up and doing people or some percentage of people go back to work and we've got sports betting again, whether some of the forces that that drove that cohort to a level of interest that we've not seen before, whether that fades a bit, or whether we truly have brought them into the world of investing for a more extended period

of time. We've seen this whole euphoria in markets UM and yeah, as you've explained, a lot of it has been retail driven. One thing that is incredibly different from this UM business cycle compared to other crisis eras has been the fact that savings right it's amongst the middle class, has standard out stood out very respectfully. And you know this is down to fiscal policy redress and other such

factors that what could challenge this business cycle. I guess it's it's just like a business cycle like no other. You know, if we forget about exultinist shocks, which no one can predict and just thing cur broader forces. I mean, I'm used to thinking of business cycles as young, you know, middle, middle aged, and old. That kind of framework seems kind of out of place because we seem to be going

back to the pre COVID business cycle. It seems that people are talking about wage inflation and that could reduce corporate margins and lead to a bit of overheating. I find that's a really interesting question. What are your thoughts on that. I think that this cycle you're right is is more unique than any we have seen in the past, and I'm not even sure there's a consensus assumption of what the path of recovery looks like from here. It's

sort of all over the map. From the more bearish end of the spectrum that believes this is just a fiscal stimulus sugar high, we'll get the inevitable pop in the data by virtue of base effects, but that after that we're gonna quickly move back down to a pretty subdued pace of growth, much like we had pre pandemic.

So for all the we have to remember, for all the cheering about the cycle that preceded this, and it's it's factual that it was the longest economic expansion in history and had lovely stats associated with it, like a three half percent unemployment rate, But the reality is that the strength of the expansion was the weakest in history

by far. So long, yes, weak, yes, And so I'd say the negative cases that we're going to revert back down to that muddle through that kind of pace, and then of course at the under the other end of the spectrum is the roaring twenties kind of scenario. I think that the the honest answer that I can provide

is I have no idea. I think you you mentioned at the outside of the question the savings rate, and certainly embedded in the more optimistic case for the economy is that if we that savings rate goes from the current down to this a five to seven percent that's been typical in the last cycle, or to do the app of how many trillions of dollars that means in the consumption pipeline and even going ahead forward where we're not going to have the benefit of fiscal stimulus, that's

enough to power the economy for years to come. I don't know that that's a safe assumption. What we don't know is whether, like the Great Depression, whether this also ushered out a paradox of thrift to an era where there's a mindset toward lower debt levels, higher cushion. We already knew that household deleveraging came out of the financial crisis, and we never levered up the consumer side of the economy in the last expansion like we had in the

prior expansion. Debt paid down was was paramount, and thinking we still had strong consumption data, but it wasn't on the back of debt. And what we don't know is whether that savings cushion is going to stay higher. The other potential faulty assumption I think in the really robust case is that pent up demand is both really robust on the good side and the service society of the economy, uh,

and that it's likely to be persistent. And I just question that piece of the really optimistic story because the good side of the economy we are well above pre pandemic level, so arguably the demand has been extraordinarily strong, consistently for the past year, and that demand has been met. So if anything, I think the pent up demand will be much more on the services side, and just the nature of pent up demand on services is a bit different.

It's a little more one time in nature. So I do worry that as we start to get these really strong numbers that there might be too much extrapolating too far into the future. I think there are still a lot of questions to which we don't have answers. As a tournus, I've never extrapolated from one time data. Well, one thing I find fascinating about the savings rates. It's such a simplistic calculation, you know, it's basically income minus consumption. And I don't think we get a lot of sort

of granularity about where that savings is. You know, I wonder how much of that savings is actually housed in brokerage accounts. And if we do start talking about a drawdown in savings, does that mean, you know, emptying out your your Schwab account. God forbid, Liz, you know, God forbid?

But well, it depends on, honestly, what what's going to be The interesting test is at whatever point we get something more than the six seven eight percent pullback, which is what we've been limited to in the past year. You had one in June, you had a period in September October where you got a couple We didn't really have it for the SMP to get a temper cent correction in the NASDAC earlier this year. But at the

inevitable point, something is a bit more severe than that. Uh, an actual correction, a severe correction, even God forbid a bear market does that? Does that? Uh? Sort of what we saw last year was it? It almost stimulated that cohort a bit more. It didn't, It didn't scare them off, and they looked at it the way we all know we're supposed to, which is, boy, now we can buy cheaper. But what we don't know is whether the inevitable something more severe. And I don't have any crystal ball in

the timing of that. UM, what what we see with that, with that cohort? You know, is our bonds too boring for retail investors these days? Um? Looking at rates of returns? And do you think treasuries and bond products need to be marketed to be fun to get the online meme crowd interested in the asset class. Well, I would argue that a lot of the online meme crowd, and I don't want to generalize here, are are largely pure momentum

uh players. I don't think they're doing a tremendous amount of kind of deep fundamental analysis like many of us do that have been long in the business, and I think on the fixed income side, I think that that's

the same thing. I don't think there's a lot of understanding on how the bond market works, the nature of truly what is a bond bear market relative to an equity bear market, where what the correlations are depending on what is maybe causing the rise in yields, the growth component, the inflation component when it starts to hit the equity market, the impact it has on valuations, but how it's still can serve as a diversifier what you do when rates are rising in terms of how a position you're fixed

income portfolio, whether it's barbells or ladders, or longer duration or short duration. I've had conversations like this with some younger, newer investors and the eyes sort of glaze over. Maybe it does mean you need more confetti and excitement. But if if the bond market it becomes an area where there's momentum in one direction another, could that crowd follow it and try to play that trend short you know

listen yet an interesting note recently. The title is the stock market Disconnected from the economy um and what struck me uh in that is a really cool graphic you had where you go through I don't know, it's about ten or a dozen of some of the most commonly looked at valuation metrics, a few obscure ones, you know, like the buffet indicator, the ratio of market cap, the GDP, Tobin's Q, the ratio of market caps, replacement value of assets. And to describe the graphic, on the left side, it

was green meaning sort of valuations were attractive. The right side was read meaning unattractive valuations. Pretty much everything was pinned to the right to the red except for the metrics that are influenced by the interest rates, like the FED model. And that's sort of thing which kind of explains why the market tends to have a freak out when rates suddenly have lurched higher a few times over

this year. As you point out, though, the stock market is forward looking, so you know, there is a case to be made to maybe not take all these metrics as seriously as perhaps you would have in a in a more normal environment when the base effects so weren't so ridiculous compared to last year. Um And we actually did a story not too long ago about people we're less trying to shoot down each and every one of these types of metrics, And I get it in one way, I totally get it. And as you point out in

your note, valuations are a lousy market timing tools. I mean, really probably everything is allousy market timing tool when you get to it. But still, like, I can't help but wonder you know, whenever you hear the paradigm is shifted and this time is different, it just it just makes me nervous. It makes me think of to some of the turn of the century geist of looking at new metrics and not worrying about the traditional metrics. How are

you thinking about all that? I mean? Is it? Is it more of a expect weaker returns over say, the not so distant future, than it is trying to worry about an imminent correction? You know, how do you sort of incorporate these valuation extremes into what you're thinking about

the future. Sure, so, when when I wrote that report recently and in conjunction with that heat map, I highlighted as one example, what you mentioned, which is valuation, at least in the shortish term, is a terrible timing indicator. And I agree with you if there's no such thing as a perfect timing tool. If there were, boy this would be easy, and it's not. But it looked at the forward PE historically and then subsequent one year performance.

In this case it was for the SMP, and yes there is a negative correlation, meaning higher PE ratios have been followed by lower one year performance and vice versa. But it was a very small negative correlation, only point one eight. And if you look at a scattergram which I put in the report, the the observations, the individual observations are far and wide. They're literally all over the map.

There's plenty of instances, and you can certainly go back to the late ninety nineties to see some of them where you were in stratospheric valuation territory, but you still had a pretty robust runway before ultimately the market peaked out.

I think the key difference in the current environment versus say the rise into two thousand and this doesn't suggest that I think it's all clear ahead and that there's no valid comps to the excess of the late nineties, and there are a lot of valid comps, But the one potential offset to some of those concerns is that into the peak in two thousand, when the SMPS PE for a couple of years had been hovering around the twenty seven level, underlying that the earnings, the denominator on

a forward basis was also rising. It's just prices were rising more robustly than than earnings. What we now know what the benefit of Pine site, is that earnings were rising at the time, but they were rising into a peak. What caused the parabox spike in the pe in the current environment was, of course last year's epic plunge in earnings, and needless to say, the plunge in earnings last year

was not your typical dipp in earnings. It was an epic depression era reaction to what was going on in the economy, and unlike CIRCUITOO thousand were now on the upswing and earnings which had the effect of quickly seeing once we rolled into improving forward four quarters, most of which was now in one, you saw the forward pe

drop quickly from twenty seven down to twenty two. It's popped up a little bit since then, and I'm certainly not suggesting that a twenty two or three p is cheap, but there is the potential that if like last year, this year's earnings bar is still set on the low side, that ultimately where earnings moved to could put continue to

bring down valuation levels. Now it's in conjunction. Was still really frothy sentiment which has been positively offset by strong breadth, but breath is starting to look a little shakier, and it's quite weak for Nasdac and Russell two thousand. It's

been kind of hanging in there for the SMP. So I think that's really key to watch because when you when you have like in two thousand, wildly optimistic sentiment but deteriorating breadth and an earnings trajectory that is peaking, that's that's sort of a triple whammy on the negative side.

And we we we only have sort of formally the sentiment concern, but the other two are absolutely worth watching because the market by no means cheat, I mean implicit in that scenario is the idea that perhaps value in cyclical stocks might not be able to pick up the slack if some of the big mega caps disappointment. You know, we saw some of the story UM take a shine with Netflix earnings, UM and so forth, and breadth has

already improved as well. We've seen a large number of members actually trade above their two two hundred day or fifty day moving average recently. And so it's a it's a huge conundrum when it comes to just how much good prices are good needs is already priced into value in cyclical stocks, UM, what's your view on that part

of the market. So I think what's been going on from a value perspective has more to do with the with the sectors that we're doing well for that span of time, in particular from late October until about mid February this year, and there were fundamental drivers to that. In the case of financials, it was rates going up,

a steepening of the yield curve. In the case of energy, obviously it was an improvement in global economic growth sort of China coming back from a demand perspective, and then industrials was also driven by China sort of coming out of the COVID environment and seeing a ramp in economic activity. Well, those sectors happened to be dominant in the value indexes so I think it was more of a sector driver

than it was a shift into value. Now, I think we're in an environment where valuation, where a focus on

the factor of value is essential. I think for particularly for individual stock pickers that want to try to be in the types of stocks and parts of the market that will do well, it's almost a hybrid or Garpi kind approach which has really started to work in the last month, and it's part of the reason why active managers have been doing better relative to passive managers, why equal weighted has been performing better relative to cap weighted.

So I think there is a shift towards sort of a value mindset, which can be very distinct from value indexes doing well. Um that one of the reasons why we don't put tactical recommendations on growth versus value, even though we will on large versus small is I think there are times where there can be a huge difference between growth and value in terms of the types of stocks housed in the indexes versus the versus the fundamentals

of say value. You know, in october O VO two, after the tech bust, NASDAC one trough overall, nasdack down s SMP down fifty. If you wanted to buy deep value and you did, and you did well in doing so. A lot of that deep value was found in the tech stocks there still housed in the Russell growth indexes. More recently, utilities became really expensive. That doesn't mean Russell moves them into the growth indexes. They're not growth stocks.

They're just really expensive stocks that are housed in the value indexes. UM sometimes called the value trap. So when I when I say that I think investors should have a value mindset. That shouldn't be seen as the same comment as just take a passive am broach approach and just blindly by you know, the value indexes, either Russell or SMP or other symmetric I think now we need to be factor oriented. I think cyclical leverage to an upturn in the economy. But that doesn't mean just think

of what typical cyclicals are. Hey, listen to what you know. The first six months of this bull market last year, it was the defensive names that did well. But this era's defensive names were the Big five. They were Apple, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, Amazon. Typical defense of areas are staples and utilities, but this cycle just had a different definition of what was defensive, and I think this cycle is probably gonna have a

different definition of what is cyclical. Where the cyclical leverages, It's probably going to be in segments of the market that might have a lot of the stocks housed in the growth indexes. But that's where the damage was most significant in terms of the economy and the stocks. So yes, value factor that I think will still work cyclical, yes, but but don't think of that just in terms of the traditional definitions and the traditional labeling and housing in

terms of standard index. I think one of the craziest things I saw of the year was looking at the growth estimates for the value indexes and the growth indexes, and the yearnings growth estimates were higher for the value index than for the growth index, right, because that's where I mean, look at what's going to happen in the second quarter. I think the definitive consensus for earnings growth in the second quarter for energy is for digits. I

think it's over a thousand percent. So they obviously the areas of the economy that got most severely hit are going to be where you see the greatest growth characteristics. So it's characteristics are very different than index constituents, I'll say, Lucien refinitive, we've we've never heard of it. I never heard of that that particular company. But just to shift gears a little bit, Um, you had a good note

talking about the federal debt. Obviously it's exploded. Uh, fiscal stimulus has been such a huge driver for once, let's say, for once of both you know, the economic recovery and the market. I think if if for a lot of people getting a check, it's kinda like house money that that you can go then you bet on memestocks or whatnot.

But I think I think what also drove that that cohort of course also may have had something to do with zero commissions, which we have trobbed, may have had something to do with um and and then things like stock slices as we call them for actional shares. So I think it was a confluence of events. But certainly the stimulus checks as a feeder into accounts that now allow you to trade free and more easily. Yes, it

was all part of the recipe. You know, if we if we all put our politics for aside and just look at the debt analytically about you know what it could or could not be a headwinder at heil Wind two growth. Obviously, I think you know that the glory days of fiscal stimulus are are are probably behind us. I mean, maybe you know if if we're lucky, we'll get some sort of infrastructure bill, but I mean the big work has already done. There. Walk us through sort of that work you did on the debt and and

what it means as it relates to the economy. Sure, so first let's talk about the deficit, which of course is the annual mismatch of what's coming in and going out and um. And then debt is a cumulative effect of running deficits, and debt, of course, can be categorized

in a number of different ways. Typically these days, when we talk about debt, most people are talking about federal government debt, but you know, add to that state and local debt, non financial sector debt, corporate debt, and every variety of household debt. And whereas government debt is going above ad of GDP this year and that's just federal government debt, total credit market debt is closer to about fo of GDP, which by the way, doesn't include any

of the future debt associated with unfunded entitlements. Um, that's when you get up into the nine percent of GDP. But what's amazing to me, and again not to get political, but here I'm gonna I'm gonna be not a bipartisan critic. It's amazing to me how many people I hear in Washington, senators, congress people who when talking about either the deficit or the debt, will conflate the two and as they're talking about the deficit, I think they're actually talking about debt.

And I don't know whether many of these people, and I've heard both sides of the i'll do it, I don't know whether they don't know the difference or they do when they're trying to confuse people. It's sadly it's probably the former. You know, In terms of the stock market, what's interesting, and this is just simple fact. This is not an assessment on my part that deficits don't matter, but there's been a positive correlation with the deficit in

the stock market. Higher levels of a deficit as a share of GDP have typically been accompanied by better stock market performance. Moving on to the debt, though clearly the environment wherein you talk about headwinds associated with debt, and typically I get the question in terms of at what point do we hit a wall of a point looking forward does it start to become a problem. However, one defines a problem, and my argument it has been a problem for quite some time now. It's a bit of

a chicken in an egg argument. Nonetheless, going back the long history of data that we have on economic activity across the spectrum of GDP, productivity, inflation, capital spending, housing, and total credit market debt, so not just government debt, but total credit market debt, lower zones of debt have been accompanied by much higher economic growth. Higher zones of debt much lower economic growth. You know, I talked earlier about Yes, the last expansion was the longest in history,

but it was also the weakest. I think the high and rising burden of debt was a contributing factor to that. Now, the chicken the egg piece of it comes with well, because growth has been subdued for whatever reasons, maybe demographics or lack of productivity, that has in turn stimulated more uh, fiscal stimulus, which is added to the deficit, which is added to the debt. So that's the chicken egg argument. Nonetheless,

we can go outside the United States. Look at Japan, which has much higher debt levels, certainly government debt levels than we do, and they've had unbelievably weak growth, but interestingly, accompanying that has been low levels of inflation. So where I where I disagree with some of what the consensus is that this high and rising burden of debt is an inflation accident waiting to happen. For decades and decades and decades, there's been a I think complete mirror image

relationship than what the consensus believes. Higher zones of debt have historically been companied by lower inflation rates, largely because it tends to be accompanied by lower economic growth. So I don't worry about the inflation piece as it relates to debt, but I worry, especially as interest rates go up further than they already have, that it's the crowding out effect and a much greater share of revenues coming in have to be devot it's simply to paying interest

on on that debt. But what evidence do we have that public set of spending has had a crowding effect already? What evidence do we have if it's the classic crowding out effects. I didn't see much evidence of crowding out.

Yet I agree with you. I agree with you. What we can look at perspectively is all the big areas that government spends money on, whether it's education, health, defense, and look at the growth rate expected based on you know, CBO assumptions, and then look at some sort of standard assumption of the change in interest rates over the next ten years, and what the growth rate in servicing that debt will be. The growth rate and the interest on

debt the growth rate is going through the roof. But if we are truly all m M tears now and we're in a different paradigm where we're just not going to worry about and we're going to spend at a level akin to what we've seen this year and disregard any concern about deficits in the near to medium turn, then I agree with you. It isn't automatically the case that a high and rising burden of debt crowds out

spending or investments elsewhere. I think we're at the beginning of an experiment to see whether we are in a in a different MMT like paradigm of which there is implicit supporters on both sides of the aisle. You know, if there's one area of somewhat bipartisan supporter or a game that both sides are are playing pretty effectively right now,

it's it's kicking the can down the road. So I agree with you while we we may not have to um sort of face the implications of that crowding out effect, because it's not something that's that's a worry right now. I wonder if you know MMT works if you are guaranteed that you're the global reserve currency and that oil

continues to be traded in dollars. You know, if if the Southeast decide that they want to sell their oil and euros or renmimby or douge coin or whatever and and start keeping reserves in other currencies, if that sort of upturns the case for m MT a little bit. Well, that's certainly a big part of the case that we we sit in this extraordinary, you know, privileged chair of having the being the global monetary standard and having the

world's reserve currency. And I do think possibly even in my lifetime, we live in a world where there are multiple reserve currencies, but in terms of the dominance of the dollar and it representing the monetary standard. When you look at what percent the dollar represents in global reserves, the present represented in global trade, and how the doomsayers have been suggesting a plunge in that for decades that

I don't buy. I I see the ideas we have more sort of siloed segments of the global economy, that there will be the emergence of more regional transaction with local currencies. I think that's the nature of technology and the speed with which that can be done and translations can be done. But I don't worry about the dollar losing its reserve status. There's really not many countries, if any, you can think of that, certainly not China. I get the question all the time, well, what would stop them

from just dumping their treasury securities. Well, if that would be aiming the gun squarely at their own economic foot so I'm not sure they want to do that to to make some point, and they're just is nothing out there, including the Chinese yuan or the euro, that has anywhere near the weight in those metrics on percent of reserves for our trade that I think dethrones the dollar anytime soon. So that as an underlying sort of basis for m M T, which I don't fully agree that it's a

theory that can persist at infinitum without negative consequences. Um, but I don't worry about the dollar losing its reserve status. But I think you can have that view but still take issue with them. Empty said, I brought up that was no accident me bringing up dose coin. That is that is meant to be. Uh. The segue to the part of the show that I think a lot of listeners tune in, Charlie Pellett once again, we'll tell us

what that is. Tieden up your straight jackets. It's time for the craziest things we saw in markets this week, So said, I have a lot of faith in you to deliver us with the craziest thing you ever saw this week. A lot of faith that will be a good one. What do happen? There are lots of crazy things have been happening in recent weeks. But I think one crazy thing that I don't think has got any

attention whatsoever. Um, is the fact that Ghana came out the country of Ghana came out with a zero coupon bond. And this is after they try to go for a century bond. And the zero coupon bonds are just weird instruments UM, and they found ample demand UM, and they found a way to UM issue whilst trying to pacify credit rating agencies. And to me, that was an interesting deal about how credit markets UM just all the UM firepower and all the leverage is with borrows and UM.

This week, for example, I was on a call with some some of my colleagues and we find that European distress funds of buying high quality effectively buying much higher quality credits than you could ver imagine because it's just a sortable shortage of investable assets. So when you see Gharner, an emerging market issue is able to do funky stuff like that, that that always gets to be interested. That is, I assume that's a local currency bond, not a not

a dollar bond. It that is actually a euro bond, so zero coupon bond. But yeah, it's usually more volatile than bonds that pay regular interests, So it's definitely one of the weirdest things out there. Liz, are you gonna put any clients into a zero coupon uh A B Well, I I don't personally put any clients money anywhere, and they should all be very thankful for that. But I would say as a company, no, I don't think you're going to see it on any Schwab recommended list anytime soon.

Just just just a guess, just a guess. What was that anything crazy from you this week? Yeah? You you already, you already used it to tease this uh segment, the doge coin. I I have trouble sort of getting a lot about the valid cryptocurrencies, if you want to call it that, let alone something that was started as a as a joke. So um, I've been shaking my head

at that one. I have to admit, Okay, well you're gonna shake it even harder when you hear my craziest thing because this is a little self indulgent, but I I actually tweeted out a chart of the SMP five d priced in doge coin, denom denominated in dog coin, simple ratio of of the SMP level to doge coin. Possibly the stupidest thing on Twitter this week, as well as the craziest thing And I'm proud. I'm proud of that because it's that's not an easy accomplishment, given Twitter

what it is. But here's where we're gonna have some fun in is I'd like to turn this segment into kind of a quiz show, like the price is right, SMP five hundreds done pretty well since the presidential election, at least since the day after. I it's a more than since November fours. And what do you think the performance of the SMP five hundred priced and doge coin

has been since the US election? No idea. Honestly, you know, I haven't even done the calculation on on what the performances of doge coin from whatever recent trout to whatever recent high, so I'm not even gonna adventure a guest. I imagine your bosses and the and the Schwab clients are probably happy to hear that that I'm not spending my time looking. Yes, I hope they're happy to hear that. My boss is maybe not as happy to hear to

hear me doing ratios. Said, what's what's your guests at the doge coin denominated performance of the SMP five since election day? I'm gonna say it's good, seriously down. But you know, I do think there's a serious point to be made, Lausanne, is that people are throwing money at things that are literally jokes. You know, maybe Game Stop had some you know, fundamental turnaround story. I don't know, but you know a lot of people are just trading on the memes. I just can't wrap my head around it.

Muther and I it's not even you know, what they say often, what many often say about just the other cryptocurrencies is that at this stage it's less a currency. Let's use bitcoin as an example, less a currency, less an investment, more a religion. You know, it's very faith based.

I don't even know how to categorize something like doach coin. Uh, it's just it's we're at some point we're going to look back whether that's going to be the poster child, but there will be some poster children associated with us looking back at some point and thinking how did people not see this? I think I was created with with the intention to be the poster child of excess. I mean that's a coin of pure tonical way of looking

at it. I mean, no one who's buying dose coin things that's going to be changing the world, Like the bitcoin believers argue, no one believes that it's going to be a medium of exchange or store of value. You have market participants who fully aware that it's ridiculous but find it fun, isn't it? You know, similar just to buying expensive shoes, you know, having a night out on the town. It's it's an experience that everyone's enjoying. It's

the greater full theory. Uh so you know, if somebody else's is willing to pay an even more ridiculous some than I'm a winner. It's only that greatest fool who gets stuck holding the bag, I guess. But with that, I think we have run out of time. Lizen, always such a pleasure to catch up with you. Appreciate your time. And I know you're in Florida now, so where that sunscreen?

Be sure to wear the sunscreen I always do. I'm inside working, I'm I'm in front of this camera all the time, and if it's not a fake backdrop, I'm actually inside outside. But it's a lovely place to live, all right. And our old, my old co host, Sarah pond Zac moved to Florida too, so if you see her, say hello and Sid Dr Sid Verma, very happy to have you on the show. I hope we can get you back to thank you very much for having me.

What Goes Up. We'll be back next week. Until then, you can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, website and app, or wherever you get your podcast. We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple Podcast so more listeners can find us. And you can find us on Twitter, follow me at Reaganonymous. Sid Verma is at Underscore sid Verma. This week's guest,

Liz Anne Saunders, is at Liza Anne Saunders. You can also follow Bloomberg Podcast at at podcast and thank you to Charlie Pelletta, Bloomberg Radio and the voice of the New York City Subway System. What Goes Up is produced by Laura Carlson. The head of Bloomberg Podcast is Francesco Leavy. Thanks for listening, See you next time.