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Dot Plot Shocker

Jun 18, 202133 min
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Episode description

A few dots moved higher on a Federal Reserve chart of interest rate projections, and it caught many investors by surprise. Yet the hawkish turn tamped down market-based readings of inflation expectations and that could help the central bank keep stimulative policies in place longer, according to Brent Schutte, chief investment strategist at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. He discusses the dot-plot shocker and what it means for allocation decisions.

Mentioned in this podcast:

Risk and Opportunity in a Post-Pandemic Economy

Fed Sees Two Rate Hikes by End of 2023, Inches Toward Taper

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

Hello, and welcome to What Goes Up, a weekly markets podcast. I'm my freaking a senior editor at Bloomberg, and this week on the show, I guess you could call it a dot plot bombshell, with the shifting of a few dots on a chart of what various Federal Reserve policymakers expect for their benchmark interest rate, as well as Chairman Pal's acknowledgement that it's time to at least start talking

about talking about tapering outset purchases. Well, the markets are coming to grips with the idea that the Feds ultra loose monetary policy maybe tightening a little bit sooner than previously thought. What does that all mean for how you should allocate your investments? We'll get into it with a chief investment strategist in Milwaukee, but first, Charlie Pellett tell us who this week's mystery co host is. This week's

mystery co host is Katie Greifeld. Katie is a cross asset reporter and co anchor of take Stock on Bloomberg Quick Take. She's an animal lover at heart and celebrates every Friday by tweeting a picture of a hairless cat in a milk bath. No need to rewind. You heard that right, A hairless cat in a milk bath? You know, Katie, would you actually say the words hairless cat in a

milk bath? It makes it sound a lot more kind of weird than it really is, I think is I hope I would direct people to my sort of page. It's not as profane as it sounds. I promise. It's just a very relaxed cat enjoying some self care. It's some self care, some self as we all should on Friday nights. It's a very soothing image. Again express verbally it sounds a little weird, but it is a soothing image. It always makes me feel like Friday is here. As I know does the show for a lot of people,

which publishes on Friday afternoons. But Katie talked to us a little bit about quick take. How's it going? You're answering what noon? So one pm these days noon to twelve thirty. We actually just had our one month anniversary launched on May seventeenth, so the last month has been kind of a blur. But it's a daily market show and we're really aimed at retail and individual investors. Um so a little bit of a different flavor from Bloomberg

Television for any Bloomberg television watchers out there. We we definitely try to keep it more geared towards, you know, the individual rather than the institution. Hey, uh, well, those retail traders, as we all know, are the lords of the market now, so you can imagine what we've been spending our time on. It's a lot of a lot of memes, a lot of game games. The half hour of memes, it should just be all memes. I think that that would be. We should call it take stock.

We've joked about that stock. Well, let's get into it with the markets, uh discussion here with our guests. Actually, before we do that, one more thing, I've been very remiss in reminding people that we love to hear from you.

If you want to give us a call on the Bloomberg Podcast hotline and leave us a voicemail, the number is six four six three to four three four nine oh and by all means, call in and tell us what the craziest thing you saw in markets this week was, and maybe we will play your voicemail on the show. But let's get to that market's talk. We're very happy to have on the show this week. He is the

chief investment strategist at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management. As I said, he's in Milwaukee City, running pretty hot with the bucks these days. Uh don't don't add me if you're a Brooklyn Nets fan, but but they're looking pretty good anyway. His name is Brent. Shoot you, Brent, Welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, Brent. I wanted to get into it a little bit at first with this FED

meeting that we saw on Wednesday. UM, and I reflecting back to a note you guys had out I think it was a month or two ago that sort of details your your asset allocations, some some changes you made. Um. Still bullish on equities, but a little bit less bullish than than say the double fisted buying. Uh, you might have recommended that at this time last year. But I want to read just one quote from this because I

think it's it's pretty pertinent this week. Uh, you're in your colleagues wrote, you know, while we believe there's ample time left in the economic cycle, we must also be aware that we are progressing at a quick pace, especially in the US. And here's the important part. While the Federal Reserve will have a high tolerance for rising inflation.

Their comfort could wear thin. And boy, I can't help but look at the dot plot this week and see now the medium projection for two rate increases in three and UH greater likelihood not yet the median projection, but a higher likelihood of perhaps a rate increase UH next year in twenty two. UM. But to me, I think

what the dots really signify. UM, I'm not sure the market is freaking out so much about two hikes in three instead of one, but rather the idea that the tapering UH might come a little bit sooner than what people were expecting. That perhaps, you know, this Jackson Hole meeting in August will be a sort of a live event where we're gonna have to be on the lookout for possible a a greater signal that tapering is coming. I don't know by the end of the year. We're

the beginning of the year. But I'm curious what your takeaway is from the statement and from Chairman Pal's press conference. UM didn't move the needle at all for you as far as what you're expected, and given what I read from your your note, you kind of were expecting a little bit of sort of cold feet from the FED at least some FED members as we watch these inflation numbers go higher. Um, a little bit of uh, concerned that maybe transitory isn't as transitory as we thought. We'll

walk us through your reaction to the FED this week. Yeah, So, I mean, in many ways, UM, this was right along why we've actually made the change that we made, because we knew this was coming at some point. And no matter how many times people tell you the market looks forward and expects things, I think traders still react. Uh. And so our base case is that this doesn't change anything. Um, So I will say that the Federal Reserve, I believe

is still who I think they are. That famous quote I think from Dennis Screen if I recall correctly, Um, they are going to let the cycle run hot. But people are going to worry more and more about the comment that you made that the cycle is going to end prematurely. And I still believe it won't. But that doesn't mean that it won't have an impact on markets.

And certainly the other reason we took down the equity ratio is because we actually had some pretty explosive returns and just going forward to expect those to moderate quite a bit more. The Federal deserved it something Wednesday, which I'm not for sure they planned to, but it looks pretty brilliant. And so what they did is they really didn't change anything with taper expectations. They bought themselves time and flexibility actually to keep the pedal to the metal,

so to speak. But they tamp down inflation expectations, which are a big determinant of intermediate to long term inflation. So think about it this way. They're gonna keep a policy accommodative. They bought themselves flexibility to stay accommodative even as inflation rises in the near term because guess what the market believes now that they're still worried about longer term inflation. And so that actually tamped those down. You saw, you've seen the break even curve come down. But they

didn't say anything with regards to tapering, so to speak. Droom, Jerome pal actually said that there's still a long way away from their labor market goals. And so you know, I'm not for sure anything changes. And if you look back at the dot plot um, when Jerome Palace says, take it with a grain of salt. I encourage you to look back on your Bloomberg terminal at the old dot plots in two twelve and thirteen and see what they thought rates would be by now, or see when

they thought with liftoff was going to be. They missed the mark on more than one occasion. And I keep coming back to the Fed is still outcome based, not outlook based. And so take the dot plot with a grain of salt um. And right now the taper is not yet coming. And the FED bought themselves time to not taper even if inflation rises, because the market actually

took down their inflation expectations. I mean, you mentioned that they were able to actually tamp down inflation expectations, and you did see a big move lower and break evens on Thursday, And you also saw a huge flattening in the yield curve, particularly the five dirties curve. I think at one point, I mean, it's it's the biggest move

since late February. Could you walk me through that market reaction, I mean, does that just go hand in hand with what you're saying that you're seeing such a big rally in the long end of the treasury curve just because the FED was able to do some fantasy footwork and

managed to bring down those inflation expectations. Yeah. So, I mean the crazy thing to me, and I know you're gonna ask me that at the end of the show, but the crazy thing to me is that traders are trading as if this is the end of the cycle. And we're talking about two thousand and twenty three for the first rate hike. Consider that two years away. This is much much different than the FED tightening the economic

environment into a recession. We're just talking about taper, talking about talking about tapering, uh, and we're not talking about the first rate hike to two three uh. And So to me, um, you know, the Fed um got what they wanted. They brought inflation expectations down, but they're able to keep policy extremely accommodative. And the crazy thing is that traders are trading it as if we are now at the end of the cycle, which kind of back

to Mike's comments in the opening. I don't think we're there yet, um, but the traders are reading the playbook, and that says by long bonds, I think this will be long forgotten in a couple of months. I do think you'll see UH rates move higher. I do think you will see cyclical stocks move higher. And I think the defensive stocks that are rallying are that rallied in the past week based upon the fed perceived U turn will actually um uh not be the market leaders. Yeah,

it's interesting. I think the most traumatic reaction, at least on Thursday, the day for the FED, was just this massive flattening of the of the yield curve, which you know, in theory should take some of the wind out of the sales of the stars of the cyclical trade, the financials. But it sounds to me like, do you think it was just a sort of a positioning washout that we saw this week and and we'll, like you said, we'll

forget about it in a few weeks. Or is it an overreaction where how do you make sense of what we've seen this week? Both of the above. I think it's a positioning wash out as well as UH an overreaction. I don't think much change with the FED. To me, there's still outcome based, not outlook based. I think they want to keep monetary policy as easy as possible UH as long as they can. I think they bought themselves some time with this in an ironic way. But to me,

the FED shifted last year. Um, the Fed that I knew for the prior years of my career was lurching in that way, and last year they put it more in stone, um, where they're actually going to target inflation above two pc. The mandate post was one mandate that was inflation. Employment was secondary. Now we've swapped those. Employment is first, inflation is secondary, and the Federal Reserve is not going to stop until they get everything they possibly can out of the labor market, even if that means

risking higher inflation. And so to me, the backdrop from both monetary and fiscal policy is still highly accommodtive in the future. Uh, And that meeting didn't shift that in my belief that. So I want to dig in more on um, what the read through for equities is. I mean, you mentioned that you know, you're still optimistic on cyclical stocks. Uh. You know this move into defensives that we're seeing maybe is overblown. Where do tech stocks fit into all this?

And particularly the things I mean I read a lot of commentary on Wednesday after the FED meeting that this isn't good for you know, the speculative corners of tech. But what about just those you know, cash cow companies Apple, Amazon, What does it mean for those blue chip companies that are probably going to make money in any environment. Yeah, I think there's still opportunities there. I agree with you.

And one of the ironic things last week was that those hope streams and themes tech stocks actually did rally post the FED meeting based upon I guess the view that lower rates are going to help them and that that's where you have to go for potential or earnings growth, which I still think the cyclicals if you believe my story that we're still in a cyclical upswing, that the economy hasn't even peaked yet, um, and that it still has time to run for some time. I still think

cyclicals have room to run. Now. The thang stocks, the older technology stocks, um, you know, there's probably still some value there, But I think, you know, from the standpoint of where we're focused, it's more towards the value segments of the market, the cyclical segments, and increasingly more so places like the Eurozone, which benefit from a cyclical growth upswing around the globe, which I think is occurring as

COVID restrictions come off in some of those economies. Also interesting, Brent, you guys, you're only overweight in the US recommendation? Is is US small caps? Which you know, I assume it's it's part of the makeup of the indexes, A lot of banks, a lot of uh, sort of more cyclical UM type of companies less obviously no megacap tech, but but even less you know, tech in general. You know, is it all sort of the industry makeup? Or is that the primary driver of where you're finding value around

the world? Um? But or is it for say, US small caps? Is is there embedded in that sort of a call on risk tolerance? Um? And with Europe too, I mean obviously European banks, uh, you know, famously sort of risky. Um. You know, is is it kind of an animal spirits call as much as it is cyclical and and sort of what is it makes up the majority of the weights and these indexes, absolutely, I mean, there is something about what makes up the what weight

makes up the weights in these indexes. But you know, typically small caps do well in the beginning to mid part of an economic cycle. And I think we're still there even though, as you mentioned, the question that we have is how quickly do we progress? Um. I still think we have time. We're early on. Valuations are cheaper relative to large cap from the standpoint of real interest rates. Small cap stocks really like negative interest rates and I think we're going to continue to have those for some

period of time. Uh. And uh, you know, I think everybody wants to run back to the safety of large cap growth, or the perceived safety of large cap growth, because they did feel well for the past couple of years and maybe even longer than that. But I just think this economic cycle is gonna be different in the past, and then this one you're gonna worry more about upside risk to growth, upside risk to inflation, not downside. And

I think you have you know, go back to risk tolrens. Um, you have a federal reserve that you know, I know what happened the other day, But the stutter reserve needs the market to move higher. The markets in the economy are connected. They've done that by doing quee. Uh. And I just think you have a risk backdrop that aporable first small caps for some period of time. You know. I think if you look back historically, Um, the explosive

move is probably over in small caps, cyclicals and value. UM. But I think everyone gets it wrong about how long this typically last. If I look historically, those types of things continue to outperform until the FED starts aggressively raising rates or the yield curb inverts. And I don't think we're anywhere near that yet, and so I think you

still have time to run in that trade. Now. We did take a bit of it off because I could be wrong, and part of this job is realizing that you have to have be humble and that you're playing trade offs. UM. But UM, I still think it has time to run. And I think if you look at Europe and where Europe is, they're a bit behind the curve. They had negative GDP in the first quarter, UM, and they're just emerging from COVID lockdowns. And that back to

your index composition. Their indexes are really cyclical in nature, and they really benefit when global growth ticks higher, which I think we're moving from more of a US centric to now the globe being much more in the growth mode and that should favor international equities. And I think the euro Zone is primed UH to be a part of that. Right, you brought up index composition, and uh, this is one of my favorite topics, and I have

to bring in the meme stocks at some point. And when you look at the Russell two thousand, the small cap index, it's biggest weights are a MC and game stop right up there. And I mean, if you really dissect a lot of the performance, I think both of those stocks are still the biggest contributors to the indexes. Game. I mean, as a manager, how do you invest around that that you you do have these stocks totally disconnected

from fundamentals sort of just ballooning in these indexes. I mean, do you just try to ignore it or how do you factor that in? No, so I think you tear apart the performance and you look and you see that there's a lot of other things in the indexes. And we use the SNP six so it's a bit different of the composition than Russell two thousand. But look and you realize that that is a decent sized part of it,

but there certainly are other parts to it. The other thing that I'd say is that active management could have the ability to add value above and beyond, just because sometimes performance is created by avoiding certain things, not just what you buy, um and so I think there's a couple of messages there, and I've made reference this in prior interviews that I do think this reminds me a

lot of late nine uh. And I should add that postd uh that a lot of stocks that hadn't done well or that weren't overbid actually did very well during that supposed last decade. Uh. And active management also did very well during that time period because the market broadened out beyond just a few names moving each and every one of the indussy is kind of what we've seen over the past couple of years, you know, Brett, I'm curious, just anecdotally, what it's like working for a firm like

yours in this era of the meme stock craziness. I mean, you guys have a lot of advisors out there who were, you know, in in contact with individual retail investors, you know daily. You know, it's it's the phone ringing off the hook with people asking about why can't I get dose coin or should I but you know, should I buy AMC calls? That does it change the mindset of of your clients when all this stuff is going on? You know, I certainly have heard a lot about cryptocurrency,

So that's been although a lot less lately. UM. Not surprisingly. UM. The meat stocks I haven't heard too much about, although I'm sure the advisors are answering questions. You know, I think we're we're a firm that's focused much more on blocking and tackling and overall asset allocation and the importance of planning in that aspect rather than what's the hot stock of the day. UM, and our advisors do a

great job of planning, combining insurance and investments. Uh. And so I'm sure those conversations are happening, but they certainly haven't filtered through too much to me, although you know, I do. I suppose here a bit about cryptocurrencies, and certainly we've heard a bit about AMC and and GameStop, but more from the perplexing common terry not necessary, I want to buy this. They're trying to make sense of it, and and is this something they need to be doing?

And I think the answer has been for the most part no, uh. And I think that's acceptable for our clients, just because they're more ground in the fundamentals of how you actually grow well, which is more along the blocking and tackling of saving investing in a diverse, bied portfolio. Uh, and protecting your assets. Um, you know from the bad things that happen in life, you know, Brent. One thing I found interesting in your allocation note, uh that was

out recently, Um is the discussion of emerging markets. Um. Because at first, Blush, I think, well, if if you're bullish on inflation, uh, if you're bullish on cyclical and value stocks, that you'd probably be bullish on EM. I mean, just looking at the the E M E T F A is a proxy real heavy waiting to banks and financial services, decent sides, waiting to energy commodities, that sort of thing. And as far as tech, a big waiting to two chip makers. UM. You know obviously Korean and

Shine and whatnot. Um. But you're you guys are a bit more cautious about emerging markets, um. Uh in an inflationary environment. So walk us through why that is why? Um, is this not really the best place to be in this type of cyclical possibly inflationary environment. Yeah, And that's it's it's it's kind of a base case discussion versus

what I discussion. Uh. And so UM, if you think about emerging markets of inflation were to be more persistent, they would probably be hit hardest and first just because a lot of those countries don't control their monetary policy per se, and they often times have to raise rates uh when inflation rises and money starts flowing out of their economies, and that actually harms them. You can actually

have a currency crisis. And so you know, we still do have a modest overweight, a very minor overweight t e M. It's much less um So I guess that that trade was two fold. We took midcaps down to decrease or actor ratio, and then essentially we moved some of our emerging market overweight into the Eurozone, thinking that they had much more control of their monetary policy than

some of those emerging economies do. And so again I bring it back, and I think people think this job is all about trying to get everything right all at once. It's kind of the opposite. In many cases, we're managing risk, uh. And so while I may have some risk on one side, I may want to actually take it off on the other side or figure out where I can get the same exposure with less risk. And so I think of

it that way. It's just more of the anoledg acknowledgement that I do think this a bout of inflation that we're having right now is more transitory, but I do think it could become more permanent. Uh. And if that were to be the case and it would run away, um, I think emerging would be amongst the first, you know,

to be hit, and to be hit pretty hard. And so we wanted to take some of those chips and move them more towards developed international markets which have a lot of the same characteristics and are tied to global growth. But actually have you know, the European Central Bank who can choose more so to do what they want rather than be forced to tighten because the fet is tightening

or something of that nature. And Brent, I want to shift gears a little bit and ask you about real estate because it also caught my eye, uh, in your investment allocation that you are unfavorable on real estate. And this is a market I know very little about, just to be completely honest, but I mean, it's been hard to miss headlines about just how hot the housing market is. You know, it feels like there's just zero housing supply and everything it takes to build a house also costs

a lot. UM. So I mean, walk me through your call there. I mean, is that market just too hot to touch? Yeah, So real estate is much more than the housing market is. Certainly office reads, storage reads, things of that nature, and so there's a lot more to it than the housing market. And certainly, you know, to me, um, and I'm just back in office for the first week this week, I mean, to me, real estate was the asset class that had the most COVID tail to it.

And so how do companies react in the future. What does the world look like? Do people go back into offices? Do we need the same amount of office properties that we had in the past? Um, rent abatements, what happens there? And so we were actually max underweight read going into COVID. That was lucky UM, and that was a different call UM. And then we recently, so the acid allocation that you're reading the one before that in January, we actually opt

our reats from max underweight to UM slightly underweight. UM. But to me reads UM, you know, they certainly rallied recently. UM. They are more of an income play and if you look historically, they trade almost based like long bonds, at least in the past four or five years when the FED is really tied this to UH to the to you know, keeping rates low. And this is where I guess tourist investors who are looking for income went there and whenever the yields would rise, they would bail. And

so you know, think of it this way. If you look back you're worried about a taper tantrum, you want to the asset classes sold up the most reads, They felt a lot, and that's just because they trade as if they're long bonds and they trade based upon yields. Um. I could show you a chart that shows you the SMP, for example, divided by reads, and you can overly attend your treasury and they're almost moved exactly alike for the

prior three or four five years. And so um, you know, we're we've warmed more to reads that we did buy them back in January. The one area that I think, and I think I've made mention that I think yields could rise more. But one of the things that could happen over the summer, I think think about the euro Zone, think about government debt all around the globe, think about negative yields in Germany, if the euro Zone starts recovering, might those yields in Germany move higher, which would allow

UM some US yield movement higher. UM And our thinking is if that were to occur, possibly that would be an attractive point to re enter reads because they are so incomsensive. I would imagine they would sell off on that scenario. Well, uh, Brett, one thing we are very much overw on in the show is the crazy things that that we've all seen this week. So I hope you can't prepared. I know they warned you about this. Uh. Are crazy things segment stand clear of the craziest things

we saw in markets this week. But let's just get started with Katie. Katie, I have high hopes for your crazy thing. What's the craziest thing you saw this week? All right? So this is crazy. I don't totally understand it because it has to do with defy UM. But this is a blog already, the centralized finance. It's like, I've got so many people to explain it to me, it still won't quite click in my brain. But um,

there's this token to defy titanium token. It was trading around sixty dollars now at zero But the crazy thing is that Mark Cuban had put out this blog post about how excited he was about defy, how he was providing liquidity to the Titan this token. Um so it wasn't it wasn't that he necessarily held it. I hope I'm understand this correctly. But he would could collect a fee on the volume. But now it's a zero um so that's pretty amazing. It's just I feel like this

perfect little illustration of how cookie the cryptospace can get. Yeah, yeah, I read about that. Yeah, there's some arb between arbitrage trade that's automated between that token and some other token. I don't understand it either, and I think that the real world the story is Mark Cuban didn't understand it clearly, and so but when I saw it went to zero, I was like, okay, I'm a buyer. I'll take all of it. I'll take it all. But it must be like not quite zero. It's got to be zero point

zero zero. There must be one in the decimal place, something there that I would imagine, because who's sounded for zero? I don't know. Amazingly, I can't get a price for it on the Bloomberg terminal. They haven't put that in there yet. I don't think we got I don't think we have dogs either. Still, no, you don't, there's no dog in there. I've looked forward a couple of times. Yes, Yeah, I don't know if that's a good or bad idea on our part. I've leaning towards a good idea, I guess,

but uh, Brent, I don't know. Katie came pretty big there. That's a good one. You have something that's crazier than that. I know, you tease something for us at the beginning. Yeah, I know. I just think I mean, that's more tame probably than I don't know if it's crazy, but I think it's crazy. I mean it's crazy to me that, Um, every meeting that we go into the FED, people say it's the biggest FED meeting ever, and then people choose

to trade it. Uh, and then you know, a few weeks later we'll forget about in the next meeting will be the big one. Yeah. And I just think it's crazy that people are trading the end of an economic cycle. When you think about the dots being moved forward and there, their record historically is not very good. Um. I just

think that's kind of crazy, I guess, Um. I certainly think it's still crazy that one person UM can tweet about a cryptocurrency and cause it to move as much as that person does, And that probably shows Katie kind of ties back into what you're just mentioned. I mean, there's ten thousands of these cryptocurrencies, I believe, uh and when one person can move, it kind of shows you

how immature the whatever this is asset class still is. UM. But I thought i'd i'd maybe end with a comment and a question that I get quite often uh more this week, and I saw it actually maybe pop up on one of your blogs potentially where someone asked, UM, you know, with regards to inflation, the question that is coming up quite often is well, do you think these companies are just going to roll back their prices? I want you to think what inflation is and how we

measure it. So inflation is a year over your measure. If these companies don't roll back their prices next year and they stay the same, inflation will be zero. So I think people just need a little bit of a math reminder, um that even if they don't roll back their prices and they keep them at these elevated levels and they're the same next year. That's not inflation. That's

actually zero inflation. So I don't know. I guess it's more of a math thing and a question that I'm getting quite often and if it's crazy or not, but it's certainly struck me as a bit crazy. Well, I I agree with you, and I keep thinking that we're gonna be talking about transitory deflation, uh, you know, or disinflation at least at some point next year when that exact thing happens that you know, everyone plays catch up

and just leaves prices where they are. The commodities that we're running hot go down a little bit, you know, the base effects work the off site direction next year. Right, this year you had higher inflation, last year had lower inflation. Yep, yep. Yeah, that's pretty good. AT's your point about it being a crypto being an immature asset class, which I agree with, especially when one ah know named person can move it with the market around as much as as they can.

What's it's mature? That was the amount of money involved in the market caps of of some of these That's what's fascinating to me. It is a very immature asset class. But yet the assets are there. It's it's so it's kind of a scary thing. Yeah, the stakes are much higher than they we're in seventeen now that you have you know, a lot of Wall Street actually getting involved and putting real money into it. Yeah. Yeah, that's a

great way to put it. The snakes are higher. All right. Well, I I'll give you my crazy thing, and it is I'm delving back into the crypto space myself. Uh. You know, the president of El Salvador obviously made a lot of headlines by declaring bitcoin legal tender. This I think is even crazier and more interesting. I'm not sure I would even call it crazy. I think it might be crazy like a fox might be a shrik of genius. He is suggesting that they use El Salvador's volcanoes as a

source of power for bitcoin mining. Obviously, the energy intensive use of these bitcoin miners is a hot topic these days, causing Elon Musk to sort of take a step back away from it. But El Salvador does have a pretty what sounds like a robust geothermal energy and for structure and some power plants that aren't running at capacity, why not mine bitcoin off of the volcanoes of El Salvador. I don't know, I've I've heard crazier things, I think, but I like it. I like that outside of the

box thinking. But it makes you think, Katie, you know, if if that's where the mining is going to go eventually, is too countries that are able to produce the energy in some less provocative way than say burning coal or royal. I was gonna say, I guess, you know, volcano powered bitcoin mining that counts as green. That's, you know, a removable source of energy theoretically. I don't know. I hear the phrase volcano powered bitcoin mining and like refuses to

process what could possibly go wrong. I just can't can't wrap my mind around it. But that I mean, that's I can't wait to watch how that evolves me too. And that's that's sort of courtesy a coin desk. By the way, I like to give credit where it's do um. But with that said, Brent shoots Katie Greyfeld, thank you so much to both of you for coming on the show. Really enjoyed this conversation and hopefully we'll have you back again soon. Thank you, thank you. 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 podcasts. We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts so more listeners can find us. And you can find us on Twitter follow me at Reaganonymous. Katie Greifeld is at k Greyfeld. You can also follow Bloomberg Podcasts at at Podcasts at That Get to Charlie Pelletto, Bloomberg Radio, and the voice of the New York City Subway System.

What Goes Up is produced by topor Foreheads had a Bloomberg Podcasts is Francesco Levie. Thanks for listening, See you next time. The Foo

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