Inflation Shocker

two on a year over year basis in April. That's the fastest in almost thirteen years, and if you exclude food and energy, the month over month jump in core cp I was the biggest since stock market duly freaked out about it. It worried that it's a sign that the Federal Reserve will have to tighten monetary policy sooner than later. We're gonna get into it with a macro strategist from a big bank this week, But first, Charlie Pellett, let's introduce this week's mystery cohost. This week's mystery co

host is Joanna awesome erp. Joanna is on Bloomberg's cross Aset team in Singapore. She has visited all fifty States, has met Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and once bumped into Alec Baldwin twice in three days. She loves to travel, and she says, for fun, she visits the stock exchanges in whatever country she's in, And then it has Reagan wondering if she actually knows the definition of the word fun. Joanna.

Usually Charlie's insult comedy is aimed at me, but I guess he knows we we know each other well enough that he could give you a dig there with that one. But I have to ask, what is the most interesting

stock exchange you you visited. I enjoyed the Warsaw one partially because they had a tank of Piranha's outside the c e o S office, and I remember the PR person talking about how, oh yeah, sometimes they just kind of all gang up and eat one, and it kind of seemed like a nice reflection of capitalism in general.

But I have to say I also loved uh seeing c boat with Bill Brodsky, who had this huge collection of images of exchanges from around the world historically, from centuries past and everything, and gave me this huge tour of it. It was that was amazing for an exchange junkie. But um, but there are a lot of really interesting ones and their beautiful buildings and everything. So yeah, it's definitely fun. I promise you know I'm changing my tune here that is that does sound pretty fun. The problem

I did not know about the pranhas. We've got a lot of fish tanks at Bloomberg. Maybe we could slip a pewn into one of them. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Don't fire me over over that. But but anyway, and you know, I'm setting a theme with you, Joanna with predatory sea life here. You just returned from Baby Shark Live with your two kids. How was that? It was

kind of horrible for the adults. The kids loved it, and of course that's why you go, right, but the plot is pretty vapid, and um, I was actually falling asleep and the kids were away. But I guess, yeah, at least we're able to go now, right. But yeah, it's one of those you buy the tickets and you're like, oh, this is great, and then it gets to it and you say, wait, why did I do this? And then, by the way, Joanna is joining us from Singapore, so that's kind of an interesting little bit of color on

the economy. And Singapore reopened enough that you can go see a show like that, it's pretty good. Yeah, it's been doing okay, although actually they've tightened back a little bit because they've had more local cases than they've wanted recently, so and they're staying that's stubbornly high. So we'll see how things go in the next couple of weeks, because they've said it's kind of a it could go either way.

But yes, for the past year or so, it's been um, well, I guess maybe ten months, it's been a little bit open. But yeah, masks are mandatory in public and with the threat of finds or imprisonment, and um, you definitely have to play by the rules here, right right, absolutely, as in all things, not just the virus. I guess it's exactly reputation goes Let's bring in someone who I think plays by the rules. I don't know, we'll find out,

but we'll get get to that. Market's chat now and this guy's by now kind of a frequent flyer on the What Goes Up? Show, and we're really happy to have him back. It's a good week to have him with the FED, with interest rates and inflation all coming into focus. He is a macro strategist at Wells, Fargo. His name is Zach Griffith's Zach. Welcome back to the show.

Thanks for having me. Always good to join you guys. Yeah, and Zach, you know this inflation print this week, you know, obviously, I think it's been interesting how vague the Fed has been intentionally vague on exactly how hot they will let inflation run above there at least what was a previous target of two um, and for how long they'll let it run. You know, the the duration of transitory, I

think is is very much open for debate. You know, they've they've said they believe this popping inflation will be transitory. I'm not sure how long anyone thinks that is. And I'm not sure you know, when we thought of inflation running hot, boy a CPI that's more than twice that two percent target um, although they target pc but close enough. I think it's a shocker for a lot of people.

But I'm wondering, from your perspective, has it really moved the needle at all on you know, when we can expect that, you know, the quote unquote punch bowl to be drained either, you know, the start of tapering of asset purchases or the eventual UH normalization of of interest rates. Anything changed from this print in your mind as far as what how you're thinking about the FED, I'd say that's the million dollar quite sin, and our answer is

not just yet. I think it was well understood that at least on a year over year basis, the c p I print would be huge. Now I would point to the month over month over month figures, which were also very impressive zero eight percent on the headline and zero point nine percent on the core, So you can't really say that this was all driven by base effects are all driven by the volatile food and energy components,

with core pc I U zero point nine percent. So I think it's something that the FED will take into account, certainly looking at some of these underlying pressures that are not necessarily driven by the reopening of the economy or driven by supply pressures, and we saw some of that in the subcomponents, so I think it it's something they're

looking at. But they've really set the stage to dismiss at least this print and maybe one more as transitory, and from there, I think that's when it gets really interesting and the FED is going to have to determine if these factors are going to be persistent or if inflation does come back, call it in June and July

and they're able to to stay patient. We think that with the shift in their longer run framework, they're going to remain patient for much longer than they have in the past, and they've at least attempted to make that very clear with their communication. So we haven't changed our view yet. We think that tapering is likely to be announced later this year to commence in early two. That could change, but this one print does not change your

mind at least not not yet. Hey, Zach, so wondering if there's a specific factor that you're looking at, like are you looking at supply chains to see what what the direction of inflation might be, or are you looking

at wages? Are there are there certain things that you think of as a tell for you know whether this will be something more So, one of the key measures that we've kept an eye on for a long time and is really a bell weather for where underlying trend inflation is going in our view as shelter costs, and you did see shelter costs tick up this past month with the overall index rising zero point percent, but that was really driven by a big jump in hotel and

motel lodging, and you know, that's kind of a smaller subcomponent.

But when you look at owners of equivalent rents, which we considered to be a better underlying gauge of shelter costs, it was still at zero point two percent, which prior to the pandemic, it was really ticking along around zero point three percent, which doesn't sound like a huge difference, but when gauging these underlying trends, it is something that we keep an eye on, and if we don't see those types of pressures, then perhaps you see inflation pull back and call it June and July and the FEDS

able to keep this patient mantra. But that remains to be seen. And you know, our economists have revised up their inflation forecast for quarters further out than just Q two and Q three of this year, so I think, you know, we are seeing real inflation. But as far as this one print goes, it's it's not going to change the FEDS outlook or communications in our view, and it's going to get increasingly difficult, especially later this summer.

If inflation remains well above that two percent target. But we think that they've really set the stage to wait and see and even if we have expectations rising and remaining very high, they want to see realized data and

they've made that very clear recently. Yeah, that rent UH or owner's equivalent rent I guess it is in CPI is such a such an important thing, you know, big waiting in cp I. We had a guest on the show last week, vincin Delaware, talking also about how the you know, I guess every data set has basically been ruined by COVID. You know, it's hard to hard to make heads or tails out of any of it. But with that eviction moratorium, surely must be playing some kind

of role in in rent. So I wonder if that's something to watch going forward to as well as that, you know, on Thursday, after the CPI report, we got producer prices the pp I induct core pp I up four point six percent. I mean, is it, you know, is it possible we haven't even seen the peak of inflation yet for this year? Do you think? Yeah, that's a great point, especially when you consider what's going on with commodity prices, whether it be energy or food. It

seems like everything is rising. Lumber, that's that's been a huge one. So when you look at this pp I print, which again well above consensus expectations, that would suggest that price pressures, consumer price pressures could remain very high further down the road. And again that's that's going to be what we think shifts the FEDS at last rhetoric or perhaps policy if if you do get that later this year. So I think that's definitely something to keep an eye on.

And you make a good point, Mike. I mean, if you talk about the non farm payrolls report for April that fell below all economists expectations, We had a one point four million job range on economists forecast, we were below all of those and as far as cp I, and I can't say for sure, but I think pp

I probably came above all of those expectations. So we've been really pointing out that economic data is extremely difficult to predict at this point, and the market reactions have also not really been consistent with what you'd expect, either on the downside or upside, at least looking at treasury yields. And I think you can make that our argument for equities as well. So it's it's interesting. There's a lot

to keep an eye on. It's very difficult to predict, and not only are the numbers themselves difficult to predict, but the market reaction also seems to be out of whack with what would be considered historical norms. Yeah, so, Zach, Actually, since you brought up the payrolls report, it seems like a lot of strategists are really looking at you know,

they're kind of revising what they thought of it. You know, there was the initial take on Friday, and people are still chewing it over because it was just so surprising and complicated. So at this point, what's your take on it? Do you what do you think about it? Just kind of a big picture. Yeah, our economists have done some great work on this, and I think the big takeaway is that the issue is on the supply side and

not on the demand side. And what I mean by that is, you know, you have the is unemployment benefits that are set to expire not for another three or four months down the road from from the latest COVID relief package, and you have job openings at at record high, so we don't see the you know, it's not a demand problem, um the supply of labor. We think people are probably on the sidelines more as a result of of the fiscal backdrop, and and maybe that that changes.

But I guess as far as the outlook for the economy goes, it's it's not overly concerning in the sense that the economy has all of a sudden slowing down and doesn't need to hire more workers. I think it's

really just the opposite. It will be interesting to see how that very low data point is smoothed over in the next month and months ahead, as expectations are for job gains of a million per month for the next several months, and if we have a big paybacks, you know, something like closer to two million and in May than I think, you know, it kind of washes out and the trend is still what was expected prior to the

print in April. You know, Zack, I'm still uh. My background UH is as a stock market reporter and editor. You know it think of me is like the equities in Dallas, type of type of knuckle head uh, equities in the touch of New Jersey. I guess in this in this case, like the Dallas of New Jersey. I guess,

but I gotta say whatever. I try to wrap my head around the narrative that's moving the dollar at any given time, I my head just starts spinning, and I'm I I get so confused about what the main drivers. I think you touched a little bit on this in UH in a note recently after the c P. I you know that initially we saw this dollar strength. Now to me, when I think of high super high inflation or higher than expected inflation, I think, okay, weaker dollar

is is sort of the knee jerk response. But then you you think, well, is it going to cause higher interest rates? Okay, stronger dollar in that sense? How do you view the balance between those two sort of classic dollar catalysts here, um, especially in light of I mean, so many people have died on the hill of being

barished the dollar uh in recent years. UH, this point in time being where you do want to stick out of position on that hill and be a dollar bear, I would think, But I'm just curious how you're walking through the cross currents of the of the currency markets. UH. You know which is more important to the dollar right now? Is it this high inflation or is it the prospect of higher yields. Yeah, there's a lot to balance there, and we've recently changed our view on the dollar to

to bearish, and that's a near term view. And the big thing that we're focused on, or a few things that we're focused on, are sort of the US exceptionalism theme is is waning, we think, and that comes from both economic data but also vaccination. I think early on the UK and the US we're really leading the or major nations in Europe and Canada and that gap has closed, So we think that's going to be a key driver. And when you think about this inflation report, we're seeing

big wage pressures, big price pressures for consumers. That's that's dollar negative in our view. And I think the other key component that comes into play here is the FED has been resolutely more dubbish than even some other major central banks such as the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England that have started tapering. The Nords Bank could be raising rates by the end of this year.

So I think that last component, with the FED remaining dubbish, remaining patient even in the face of higher inflation, is what really shifted our view on the dollar to to barish.

Over the next one to two months or so. So, Zack, since you're talking about the central banks that have gotten a little less of it, do you think that bodes well for other central banks, like the FED, to be able to rein it in or is this sort of like the FED is really just as long as the FED is out there providing the stimulus that it doesn't really matter say what the Bank of Canada does. And I apologize to any Canadians about that question. Yeah, that's

a great question. I think that perhaps it does give the FED some room to shift, but I don't think any of these other major central banks have had this codified shift in their long run framework that we got from the FED in August of last year. So they've really went beyond just saying that they're going to be more patients. They're going to focus on shortfalls from maximum employment instead of deviations from maximum employment and this flexible

average inflation targeting. So I think the FED is is

kind of on its own. And while I'm sure they will take into account what's going on in the rest of the world, what other central banks are doing, they have a clear mandate of pray stability and maximum employment, and I think that the big shift and focus on maximum employment is what they've been saying for almost a year now and what they've been focusing on, and that gives them the headroom to remain more patient and not necessarily feel pressure from these other central banks to change

tax just because they have you know, z that It's interesting you bring up the the vaccination rates. Europe is catching up with you with us, um. They seem to me, like, you know, we've all become obsessed with all data related to the pandemic. You know, first it was the number of cases, number of hospitalizations, number of deaths, that sort of thing. Now it's really the focus on is on vaccination. I feel like we're getting close to a point where

all of that is is not gonna matter anymore. We're gonna sort of move back to, you know, the real fundamentals of national economies. And I'm kind of fascinated with with Europe right now. I mean that German tenure yield that everyone watches. It's almost back in a positive territory. Who would have ever thought we'd see positive fields in Germany in our lifetime. Craziest thing I've seen in this week.

But I'm curious how you're thinking about Europe because to me, you know, once we get through this fixation on the case rates and and the vaccination rates, and I kind of feeling like we're getting close to the light at the end of that tunnel where Okay, enough people are gonna be vaccinated, and all all the developed economies, that sort of advantage of who's doing better in that is not gonna matter, say maybe by the end of the year, even by the end of the summer, I would guess,

And then you know, we start thinking about the old all the old issues in Europe that we had before the pandemic. I'm just curious what Europe is gonna look like at the other side of this. I mean, is that notion of European austerity that had really played such a big role in markets, is that is that notion dead? I mean, the pandemic basically kill the the European fixation on austerity and all the sub a point repples that

has in markets. I'd say it seems to have at least pushed it to the back burner, and that's probably going to remain the case for a while. I think you're right that we are starting to approach a point where maybe the focus shifts back more to traditional economic data and after a couple of months from now, perhaps you're getting a more true reading on what the underlying economy is doing here in the US and in Europe. I think you started to see some more encouraging signs

there finally in some of the more recent data. I think, you know, Q one as a whole was was not great, so they have a ways to go. But I do think that the austerity focus and obsession has probably taken a hit, and it's going to be a longer term one.

You know, defining longer term might be difficult, just because we really are there's still plenty of uncertainty and things are looking up, but you know, you can't dismiss a step in the wrong direction with a particularly virulent strain, or you know, you're reminded of how things can go in places like India where it's it's been really unfortunate, seemed like they had things well under control and you sort of take your foot off the gas of of

taking precautionary measures, and very bad things can still happen. So I think to your point, yes, it's taken a hit and probably moved to the back burner. Whether or not it comes back into focus down the line remains to be seen, but I think it's it's going to be a while until focus can shift back to that austerity that that was really a huge focus part of

the pandemic. Okay, and Zac sins. We're starting to talk about the rest of the world a little bit, and you mentioned you think US out performance may be fading. Where do you think the next out performance will come from? Just regionally, I think it could come from the UK, which has has done fairly well with with vaccination and seems to be moving perhaps a bit more briskly through a to a broad reopening. And I think I recall correctly early June is when Prime Minister Johnson had targeted

for a big reopening. So I think that that kind of sets up a decent backdrop for for economic growth in the UK. And as I know it earlier, starting to see in some of these more high frequency monthly prints for for Eurozone as a whole. As you know, that's a decent proxy for for what's going on, you know, whether it be the p M I S or otherwise. So you're seeing some encouraging signs there. So I think, you know, both in in the U k and and

the EU are are possible. And you know, the Bank of Canada has has moved to to tapering asset purchases, so clearly there's been some strong economic growth there. So I think you're you're getting it from a lot of different places where the US is not going to be as much of a standout relative to sort of a broader swath of of major economies than uh going forward. So the basic trade I guess there would be by British and europe risk assets like stocks, by the currencies,

and and sell the bonds. I mean, that's the that's the traditional approach. But you know, as far as we're concerned from the perspective of, you know, relative value between the US and other nations, we I mean, if you look at yields in the US, they're they're still more

attractive than anywhere else. And when we consider where things are going from here, we do expect US yields to to continue to rise, but perhaps that takes government bond yields across developed nations with it, and that's kind of been a big story. We think yields will rise. There's a huge supply story treasury supply story in the US, but you're seeing that elsewhere and having a globally coordinated economic reopening is not something that we've seen in recent history.

So yeah, we we think yields will rise, and if you do get this globally coordinated reopening, it should should be more positive for risk assets, and to the extent that risk assets and other nations have lagged, perhaps they do begin to catch up as that narrative really takes hold this summer and into the fall. Okay, so Zach, what's your outlook for volatility? I'm a huge volatility nerds,

so I have to ask this question. So if you see a background for risk assets, do you think volatility is going to decline as we start to come out of the pandemic hopefully, or do you think it's gonna be pretty bumpy still as we work through everything. So, at least with respect to the US, we think that volatility could pick up over the coming months, which would be inconsistent with a risk on general risk on sentiment. But what we think you're going to see is sort

of a battle between the market and the Fed. We think that if you get another very high inflation print, even better economic data, the market's going to start to price in aggressive hikes by the Fed. You know, perhaps not in or even necessarily too much, but kind of looking at a longer term measure, looking at call it December euro dollars, if we've seen that come up quite

a bit and back down more recently. But if if you have market pricing of the Fed getting much more aggressive than what they've signaled, we think that's going to put a lot of pressure on them to really tailor this message that they're on hold for now. But they can change tech when they need to, and it's going to be a really difficult needle to thread in the sense that they want to be patient, but if the market is telling them and suggesting that they need to tighten,

they're gonna have to taylor this message. That's been very difficult. Everyone refers to the taper tantrum back in. The FED

really wants to avoid anything like that happening again. But we think it's going to be difficult, and you know, our our view is they're going to take the approach that they want to have as little lead time between announcing a taper and actually commencing the taper, which is why we think you would see it maybe in December of this year to begin in early So that kind of push pull from the market and the FED, we

think is going to create more uncertainty. And if you look at the valve service at least in US swaps here in the US, you kind of see that that peak of uncertainty, at least implied by recent data, is around the two to five year period. And that's when you really, how is the FED going to come out of this? How are they you know, are they going to have to raise rates aggressively? Can they really stay on hold for a long time after tapering? And we

think that does result in more volatility down the road. Zack, I like talking to a guy like you, because in my view, there's there's three types of people in the market. Okay, there's there's those that read every speech by every f O m C member and every governor, even if they're voting or not. Then there's a second type who just read the headlines, maybe the first paragraph of the story about these speeches. I confess I'm in that category. I've got a stack of FED speeches that I plan to

read one day. They're they're they're on my nightstand, right next to the books. Yeah, right next to the books of all that all my friends have written that I'm I swear I'm going to read it happen. Right. But then the third type is a guy like you, and you read speeches that I think the rest of us didn't even know happen, you know. And I'll give you

an example. You you mentioned a speech by the FED Soma manager Lorie Logan, and she hinted UH in the speech that the FED might reduce their purchases of tips. And I think this is this is such a huge important topic, especially when you talk about, you know, the supply of treasuries coming. So I'm gonna ask you one of my famous multipart questions here about this. I'm trying to think of the motivation behind UH reducing the purchases

of tips. You know, my guests would be and maybe they don't want to say this come out and say this, but they want to have some influence on the break even inflation rates in the market. Um, whether or not that be their prime motivation, it certainly could play a role in that and sort of bring down these break evens that everyone is so fixated on because they look like such hot inflation for the next five, five or even ten years. So I'm curious if you think it is.

Would that be part of the motivation at least the unspoken motivation of reducing TIPS purchases, were messing with the the amount of TIPS purchases at all? And also, how are you thinking about sort of the match between the different types of duration we can expect the Treasury to sell and what the Fed then in turn will buy as part of its asset purchases. Yeah, Mike, that's certainly going to be an interesting announcement that that will get

here soon. And with respect to tips, the speech from back in April really alluded to the fact that as Treasury increased nominal coupons drastically in finance the Cares Act and follow on COVID relief packages, tips issuance wasn't increased as much. So what they want to do, what the FED wants to do, is to better align their current

state of purchases with what Treasury has been issuing. So Treasury has been issuing less and tips as a percent of overall issuance just because they didn't boost those auctions the same way they did that the nominal auctions in The other big thing that we think they want to address is have this bucket of purchases between seven and

twenty years. And that was fine before there was a twenty year security because that really captured either very rolled down thirty year issuance or or the ten year sector,

which is where they were focusing those purchases. Now it's unclear when they do these operations if they're going to focus on the ten year sector or the twenty year sector, which has notoriously suffered worst liquidity in the twenty year bond has cheapened quite a bit, so we expect them to really address that and perhaps breaking into a seven to fifteen year sector and then a fifteen to twenty five year sector, leaving twenty five to thirty year to

cover the back end. So we think that's going to be the big focus in the next month of FED purchases, and that's also important when considering, like you mentioned that the supply of duration to the market and the biggest increases on an annual basis per ten or have been

in the seven year and twenty year bucket. For the twenty year it's really focused on increases to to the auction sizes, but also we just have a full year of auctions, whereas the twenty year was reintroduced in May of last year, and you've seen problems in both of those tenors. So I think that the duration story really came into focus in February when you had the seven year auction with some of the worst stats we've seen in over a decade, and that really pushed the whole

curve higher and steeper. And and the twenty years, as I noted earlier, has been notoriously cheap recently and and maybe richened up a bit. But we think that the supply of duration is going to be huge, and and you've seen that in the first quarter, and that's going to be a story that persists through the remainder of

the year. While at the same time, and even if the FED remains on hold with its eighty billion per month and purchases as we expect, is taking down much less duration this year than last year, So that big mismatch leaves a glut of duration for the market to take down, and we think that's what gradually pushes yield higher along with this global reopening and higher inflation for the remainder of the year. Okay, so Zach, what are you thinking of most in terms of US policy going

forward or potential legislation. What are you focused on, And especially if there's something where you think the market is really missing something or under pricing something that there's potential for, say later in the year, that's a great question. I think with the packages that the Biden administration is introduced, there's almost four trillion and perhaps additional spending out there with you know, at least a chunk of that offset

by tax hikes. So I think if if I had to guess what might be miss priced or hasn't gotten as much focused that that could disrupt markets are our tax hikes if it becomes clear that that those are going to get enacted. You mean, equity markets are still near all time highs. They've come off a bit recently, but I don't think the tax hike narrative has really

taken hold yet. So that's a risk. And just with respect to additional spending broadly and what it means for the treasury market, our economists don't think that both of these packages and full can get past, but something maybe on the magnitude of one to two trillion could get past, and just considering bills like the ones that they're considering

for the second half of this year. They're much different than these cod relief bills that were depths of finance, and we're cash out the door very quickly, so the impact on the economy and importantly Treasury assurance will be much more minimal, even if we do get another one to two trillion this year. So that's something that we've

been making sure people focus on. You look at the headline number and it looks similar to what we got with the American Rescue Plan, but the economic impact and the depths of impact are going to be much different, much more prolonged, and even partially offset by tax hikes, So really a whole different ball game, and not as impact it's full in the near term, more of a longer term story with any of those types of legislation, Zach, I think that is a wise thing for your clients

to focus on. I'll tell you what our listeners focus on, though, and that's the craziest things we've seen in markets this week. Tiden up your straight jackets. It's time for the craziest things we saw in markets this week. I know you can't prepared. I know you can't prepared, Joanna. I have high hopes for you in this this segment. I know you. I have a feeling you can you can spot a good, crazy, crazy thing when you see it. So let's let's start

with you. What's the craziest thing you saw in markets? I have to say, I mean doing crypto stuff. I'm gonna go with the the easiest one here, which is Elon Musk saying that Tesla isn't gonna take bitcoin anymore and saying he's concerned about the energy usage. I mean, just a few weeks ago when Cathy Woods are put out a paper saying that bitcoin actually could help with renewable energy, must responded to a threat about it, saying true about bitcoin being good for this stuff. So he's

we know he's been watching it. But all of a sudden something happened, and you know, Bitcoin tanked somewhat, and the rest of crypto tanked. Even Dogecoin tanks, though the one of the co creators did make a case to Ellen to take dogecoin, and Ellen has told people about whether Tesla should take dogecoin. Um, I think Tesla's stock may have risen actually after this announcement, which is kind of funny too, but that that was just pretty crazy.

I mean, Crypto covering this stuff. I feel like it's it's sort of like the Trump administration where you think, wow, things, this is about as amazing as it can get, and then something even more amazing happens. You know. I feel like this was definitely a pretty interesting twenty four hours. I agree, that's a great one. Elon Musk is sort of in the Crazy Things Hall of Fame. I think I think we get him in there about once a week.

But yeah, it's just amazing that he's after investing how over a billion of Tesla's uh at one point five billion, he then later found out about the energy issues. I don't know, it sounds he could sell a lot of Tesla batteries. I think to these minors. Maybe that's where this Yeah, well but you see, like there are so many people who just have all his faith in him, Like you look at the memes online, there's like him as a saint protecting the baby doge and stuff. I mean,

it's really incredible. Yeah, there's a lot of role within Crypto, but Ellen has definitely made it a lot more interesting, but not not not even to mention the SNL appearance. This. I know you were, you were watching the SNL appearance. I was talking to Jenny Paris, one writers, and I was like, I don't want to be the one to suggest it, but I feel like some reporters should watch SNL and write about the reaction. She said, don't worry,

Joanna is already on it. I said, okay, that's a more reasonable time zone for for that sort of coverage for you. Yes, it was my morning. Saturday Night Live is not the time you want me writing or editing. I'll just put I'll just leave it at that. I'll leave it at that. Not my best work, but Zach, Joanna's had a pretty high bar there. I don't I don't know, can you top the Elon musk Uh crypto extravaganza. I'm gonna give it my best shot. Here was something

that's near and dear to home. I didn't see this personally, but I saw an article highlighting that gas prices had risen to six dollars and cents in certain gas stations here in North Carolina with the Colonial Pipeline being shut down. And you know, if we want to talk inflation, if you got six gas. I'd say that's that's going to give another transitory pop to the to the headline cp I. But I think things, hopefully are are getting sorted out. And you know, the lines at gas stations have been

crazy here. I think we're supposed to be. You know, the pipeline is supposed to open back up this afternoon, so hopefully that gets cleared up. But yeah, I got a little got a little crazy here for twenty four to forty eight hours. Unfortunately, that's right, I forgot. I forgot you were in North Carolina. Have you been like filling up your tupper wear with with gasoline? Some people have.

I have not. I'm actually fortunate enough to have my old Cadillac in the driveway with a gallon gallon tank that I I recently filled up before all this, So I think that's gonna be my my reserves for this. Hopefully I don't need to tap into it, but I've got it there if I need it. Luckily, you've got your own strategic petroleum reserve in the in the in the drive exactly. That's pretty good. We talk about a black swan, uh if ever there was. I mean, when

you think of how much work. It could have been if they shut that thing down permanently. I mean, we'd be in kind of mad Max territory right now. Yeah, we sure would. So hopefully that's all cleared up. So everyone update their north in Nanny or McCaffrey, I don't know whichever. Maybe you need something a little more heavy duty for the pipeline systems, I don't know. Alright, Well, those are both good. It's certainly the crazy things keep

on giving. In the past year and year. We we uh, we have a lot of talk about I want to talk about um for mine. You know, we've heard so many different people talk about the ways to trade the reopening, especially now in Europe as it seems like that was a little bit behind the US and as now as picking up steam. This, however, is one of my favorite trades, uh,

for the European reopening. Uh. This is courtesy of a charted the Hour on Bloomberg, a little feature we have by Joe Easton in London, and it's playing the reopening based on dirty laundry. And I love alternative data sets like this, like when you look at the volume of trash somewhere or I don't know, so he's saying, uh, there's a portfolio manager at Rathbone Brothers in England who was saying, there's gonna be a lot of dirty laundry

as the economy reopens. When you think of restaurant, the napkins, the linens. So they're they're buying our advising being bullish on a company called Johnson Services Group which launders all the linens and the napkins and the chef outfits. So I like that one. I like the dirty laundry alternative data set. I gotta say, if if dirty laundry is a sign of a booming economy, it really is the roaring twenties in my house right now, I will tell you that. So wow. So even came with a stock

tip there. That's exciting. Yes, yes, yeah, that's interesting. Not me, but this is this is courtesy of Alexandra Jackson of Rathbone Brothers says her her fund is bought shares of of Johnson's Services Group. And I dig it, I dig it. I think this was a good, good episode for crazy things. I think we all we all brought our a game. I'm gonna reward us all first place. Who a three a three way time? It alright, well, I think that

is all the time. We have Joanna Ostnger reporting in from Singapore with the fresh report on Baby Shark Live. Great to catch up with you and hope to talk to you again soon. Zach Griffiths of well Spargo. Always a pleasure to catch up with you. Yes, very fun. Thanks for having me, and that's it. We'll see you all next week. 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 really 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. Joanna Ostinger is at ossenger. J can also follow Bloomberg Podcasts at podcast I. Thank you to Charlie Pall, the Bloomberg Radio and the voice of the New York City Subway System. What Goes Up is produced by Laura Carlson. The head of Bloomberg Podcasts is

Francesco Levy. Thanks for listening. See you next time.