Bloomberg Television brings you the latest news and analysis leading up to the final minutes and seconds before and after the closing bell on Wall Street.
A lopsided trade for US equities at that end of the quarter. Window dressing continues live from Studio two here at bloomberg headquarters in New york. I’m Romaine Bostick that I just want to get this over with. Like get to the next quarter. Do you? Yeah, I just like to dive.
Let’s go. Let’s go. I don’t know. All right, I’m Alix Steel. We’re kicking you off to the closing bell right here in the U.S. The S&P is up by about 3/10 of 1%. Not around the highs of the session, not
At a record, but the equal weighted index is also the Russell making a nice move today. Lots of 52 week highs also in the market. What I wanted to point out was Cintas. They raised their forecast for this year. Guess what? They make uniforms and business
Supplies. You would think if the economy is growing over, they wouldn’t lose their forecast. That to me had a nice macro signal a dollar yen. This is only for Romania. There is the yen mentioned, right? There’s verbal intervention all over the place.
Had a 50 a 34 year low. The yen did against the dollar and there you go. Now you have the dollar up by 1/10 of 1%. We’re still over 151 that that there’s going to be a lot more work on that and the seven year yield pointing to that
Because we had a pretty solid auction earlier in the day Romania. All right. One 5336 on the yen. Take a snapshot of that picture because, well, you might not see it again for a while or maybe you will, as we see it almost every day.
Alex, let’s go back to the US equity markets here and take a closer look at that end of the quarter. Rebalancing with volume this week actually still tracking below recent averages, but so too is volatility. When you look at what’s going on here, 30 day realized volatility for the S&P
500 is about a third of what it was just four months ago back in November. And premiums have also narrowed only about a point higher, then realized volatility, which year to date is holding at 11%. That’s down from 13% for all of 2023 and a half.
The 24% reading that we had for 2022. Now, why do I bring this up? Well, the 9% gain in the S&P 500 over the past three months has been driven in large part by that relative market call. The collapse in realized volatility.
Well, it effectively pushes a lot of those risk control funds to increase their exposure to equities as much as 90% exposure, according to calculations by Bloomberg Intelligence. The catch, though, is that systematically targeting any sort of constant level of market calm means that
Those funds would quickly bail on any spike in realized volatility and any sharp drop in prices. But so far, no worry. The VIX right now, which measures forward expectations for volatility, hasn’t traded above 18 all year long and last closed above 20 back in late
October. A reading today, which right now is less than 13. It implies investors expect the broad market index to move up or down by about 3.8% over the next 30 days. That sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that would mean roughly 5400 on an
Upside basis and even on a downside scenario, Alex, that still keeps the market above 5000. I know. And if you’re below that for your under target, you’ve got to do you got to chase at some point the press. You got through that without saying Gamma, that was like super big props. That’s tomorrow.
Yeah. Okay. And this leads us to the valuation conundrum. I feel like I’m saying the same thing every day, but on different charts. And this is just another way of talking about what’s expensive and what is not. So the blue line here is the S&P full stop.
Then you have the white line is the S&P. But backing out the MAG seven and you can see that there is a discrepancy about 18, 19 times versus 21 times. Now, Bloomberg intelligence also pointed out that at the sector level, you still
Have eight of the 11 groups that are trading at a discount compared to that pre-pandemic level. It’s only technology’s materials and industrials have that premium would suggest there is a lot more room for upside. And if you take a look at, say, a market
Capitalization remain weighted price to book ratio, you have about three fourths of the S&P that are below that. Again, it means that potentially we could have a lot more catch up potential. All right. I love when we start the show off with a
Lot of wonky numbers. Mimi Duff joining us to help kick us off to the close to try to make sense of it and explain it to you in layman’s language what Alex and I were just talking about. She’s managing director over at Gen Trust.
Maybe always great to have you here. And I do want to kind of cut through those numbers because it was a lot we went through. But it’s important stuff here. And when we start talking about what the potential upside is for this market, where does that come from?
Is that going to come from earnings expansion? Because we haven’t necessarily gotten that, at least not on a broad on a in a broad way. That’s right. We haven’t yet. And there is the market is pricing in something like 11% earnings growth this year.
So it’s a pretty lofty goal. I would say thus far, like nothing bad has happened this year. Right. We haven’t we haven’t seen the recession that was called for all last year. The growth estimates that are due to come out tomorrow are pretty solid north of 3%. So nothing bad has happened.
The on the employment and inflation side inflation has been sticky not we we saw a good deal of progress the second half of last year. A little bump in the road the first part of this year and then the. Employment picture is pretty strong still as well.
So I think nothing bad has happened is really what’s the driver? Nothing bad happen and I don’t think anyone really is predicting anything bad will happen. There’s still that obsession with inflation. We’re going to get that PC report on Friday when apparently nobody’s going to be working.
But nevertheless, the government continues on working radios. Well, good for them, because if you believe what what the Bloomberg economists expect, we are expected to see a little bit of a bump up in some of those numbers, maybe not enough to get Jay Powell to start pulling his hair
Out, but certainly enough that maybe makes all those rate cut dreams, maybe just that a dream. Well, we think that we’re in Powell’s camp in this in this front, because he doesn’t seem in any rush to to cut rates, given that nothing bad is happening.
And on the the last two months have been disappointing on the inflation side. And he said in his comments last week that they’re glad they didn’t get ahead of themselves last fall because they have more space now. So let’s see what what that number comes out at.
I love the way you said that nothing bad has happened. That’s the best way to frame up like what we’ve seen in the past six months in terms of equities. Is there a case to be made to prep for something bad to happen? Is it like rotating to quality or no?
Well, we’re squarely we’re in the rate stability camp. That’s kind of how we’re playing. If rates stay here, we’re happy to earn the yield and to have some flexibility to be more reactive if, if and when data materializes. And then if rates stay up here for a
Very long time. We do think there are segments of the economy like commercial real estate, like all this refinancing we’ve seen in corporate debt that so far has gone so well, that might be a little harder to digest over time in a in a slowing economy.
So we like the rate stability type bounce. You know, it was interesting. I had Ridge cleared up earlier on radio, formerly with the Fed, and he was saying that I said, what’s the one word you’d use to describe inflation? You said transitory back in the day.
What about now? And hit a couple of words, but one of them is like sticky and persistent. Yeah, I don’t know that that resonates. How do you see nothing bad happening? Well, the wage inflation is part of what’s been sticky and services. And in a way, people feel better when
They’re making more money, even when things cost more. So that that part of the equation, it’s really hard to see the overall inflation coming back to 2% when wage inflation is closer to four. So how do investors feel? I mean, I’m talking about your clients over there. Again, trust.
I mean, are they I mean, are they and their S&P is up nine points. Yeah. I mean, if you look at your at quarter end, what happened, you know, you’re going to you’re in pretty good shape. We’re really closely tracking our benchmarks this quarter. So I think and, you know, following last
Year’s very strong performance, I would say people are are happy. Yeah. All right. Well, good reason to be, I guess, 9% in three months. I think most people would take that. Maybe tough. Always great to talk to you, managing director over a generous helping this
Kick off to the close here on this Wednesday afternoon. Coming up, we’re going to check in here on the Baltimore bridge collapse and the rerouting of cargo. The shippers are now having to take a conversation coming up with the head of the Port of Long Beach, Mario Cordero.
And plus, you got shares in marketing a record more. And what’s fueling the surge? It is our Stock of the Hour. And Robinhood rolling out a new credit card that’s actually sending the stock up here. We’re going to dive a little bit deeper
Into the move and share highlights from the conversation we had earlier in the day. On Bloomberg with the CEO, Vlad Tenev. All that more coming up in just a bit. This is the close on bloomberg and. I think it will take a while. And those are ships that we’re obviously
Concerned about. They even include vessels that are overseen by the Department of Transportation, though those ships are not currently actively tasked. There are vessels that had cargo loads on them. They are being offloaded and also cruise ships that were planning to head to Baltimore no longer obviously are going
To be able to berth where they had planned to. We just don’t know yet how long it’s going to take to clear that channel. We do know that there are other ports that are preparing to absorb some of the traffic that’s been diverted, as well as handle some of the export cargoes that
Had to be diverted. We’ll be watching closely to see the impacts of that. And tomorrow, I’m going to convene different players across our supply chains, shippers, cargo owners and workers to better understand what they’re facing and how we can help. Now, as U.S. transportation secretary, people the
Judge speaking with Bloomberg just moments ago, the Baltimore bridge collapse forcing many shippers now to reroute to other ports, adding new pressure on an already strained supply chain. Here with his view is Mario Cordero. He is executive director of the Port of Long Beach. Mario, thank you so much for joining us.
The basics are more container ships and vessels coming your way. Well, Alex, thank you again for your invitation here. At this point, again, it’s first of all, I’d like to say our condolences to the families of the victims of this tragedy and, of course, our full support of our
Colleagues at the Port of Long Beach. In terms of what may arrive here at the Port of Long Beach, that’s yet to be determined, I think, at this point. What you’re seeing and what the secretary just stated, I think it’s a regional approach that they’re looking at right now.
But I’m sure that, again, as the shippers make decisions where to go to the east or to the West Coast here, we may have some some some cargo from that diversion. What is your capacity like?
So if I’m a of a vessel and I have some cars and I was going to go to Baltimore, but I want to go to you instead, could you take me right away? Is there a line? What what’s the process of all of this?
We’re very fluid here at the San Pedro Bay Complex and in the West Coast overall. So I think there’s plenty of capacity at this point. And so I’m sure that if, in fact, some of this diversion of cargo comes to the West Coast, we’re prepared to handle it.
Talk to me, Mario, a little bit about some of the shifts that we had seen leading up to this. We had already, of course, come out of the pandemic and seen how a lot of shippers had to try to find alternative routes. And it looked like we were kind of going
Back to some sense of normalcy. Certainly, we saw that in the levels coming out of the Long Beach port and over there, not too far away in Los Angeles here. Do incidents like this have longer term effects on the psyche and on the planning that these shippers make?
Well, certainly the supply chain has been disrupted for a number of reasons here in the last several years. But as you mentioned, Romaine, we have been now in a state of a normalization as to incidents that occur in Baltimore. There’s always those unforeseen events and instances that will occur.
And I think at this point, the way we’re looking at it is going to be an impact to the to the specific region there in the Northeast. And hopefully, again, over time, they’ll get back to a normal scenario. But I’m sure the shippers at this point in their conversations are talking about
Any and all ways to, again, move that cargo there in the East Coast, specifically from Baltimore. I am also curious, I know we can’t really speculate on exactly what happened with that ship, why it lost propulsion here, but it did raise some concerns about how these ships going in
And out of these ports, particularly tighter ones like the ones that we have at the Baltimore Marine terminal. Should there always be tugboats and other sort of measures in place to make sure these ships navigate along the straits that they’re supposed to be in should anything happen?
Well, I could tell you what we do here at the Port of Long Beach at the problem is tugboats do at all times help navigate the vessels coming in and out of harbor. So depending on the size of the vessel
In terms of the tugboats that are available, that we do assign could be to for the bigger vessels or for tugboats, but that comes from the entry to the departure. So there’s no times within the harbor complex that there’s not a tugboat or tugboats involved with these vessels.
Mario, put put me in the mindset of a shipper. And if I’m used to going to the Baltimore port and I don’t get there for another two years, do I just permanently reroute to you? Is that how things work or no? Well, the shippers will make those
Decisions, Alex. Again, I don’t want to prejudge or or speak on behalf of the shippers, but this is not the first time we’ve had disruptions in supply chains and, of course, unforeseen incidents. Obviously, this is a tremendous situation that occurred with a falling bridge. So I’m sure they’re having those
Discussions in terms of how they pivot and divert cargo. So I’m sure with all the ports here in the nation, we will be there on call, so to speak, to serve and support the port of Baltimore in any way. And I’m sure that can be said for all
The ports up and down the east. Anyway, the Gulf in the West, for sure. And I don’t mean free to speculate, I guess, from a poor perspective. How sticky are your customers, basically. I’m sorry. How sticky are your customers? Well, you know, time is of the essence.
You know, time’s ticking. Time is money. So, again, the customers do expect the car to be moving. So I’m sure, again, as I indicated, they’re having these contemporaneous discussions with regard to how to move the car going. So there are ways to get this supply chain moving.
But again, on the other hand, obviously, it’s a very difficult situation there at the port of Baltimore. It certainly is here. And of course, as we also keep a mindful eye here on the human toll of this. Mario, there’s been a lot of questions here about the rebuilding process, not
Just of that bridge, but really the idea of also sort of making sure that the paths in and out of these ports, whether it’s by sea rail, road or whatever, is also sort of updated for a modern era. I know that you’ve already been in
Discussions over the last few years with your own folks out there in California, as well as the federal government here. How much more is needed to make sure that our port system is, I guess, ready for this new era? Well, the good news in terms of the administration, the Biden
Administration, is they have had tremendous investment in U.S. ports as compared to any prior point in our history here. You’ve heard the administration, both the secretary, they’re going to give 24 seven full court press to address those issues in Baltimore.
So I think this is another instance where, again, it shows that no matter where we need this infrastructure improvements, it needs to be done, like in the case of Long Beach. You know, we have a cable state bridge.
The pillars that support the bridge are land based, not in the water as as you saw the case in the in Baltimore. So I’m sure it’s going to be some rethinking in terms of the design of a future bridge that’s going to be placed
There in that entry. All right, Mario, always appreciate you taking time for us. Mario Cordero is the executive director at the Port of Long Beach out there on the West Coast in California. As we focus, of course, on the collapse of that bridge on the East Coast here
And the shippers trying to find some alternative docks to port. Yeah, And just you know, now I’m really focused on, too. It’s just how long it’s going to take to get all that stuff out of the port, just like all the material. And how do you do that?
I mean, we’re talking about building the bridge. We’re not even remotely there at that kind of conversation yet. Yeah, nothing that’s being loaded or offloaded. There are still ships stuck there, not to mention the actual ship itself. I’m saying, like, that’s the stuff now in the channel and that’s going to take
Some time as well. Absolutely. All right. A lot more coming up here on the show. We’re going to take a look at one of the big movers in the equity market. That is Robinhood, up about 3% after announcing that it’s getting into the credit card business talk, don’t you think?
Yeah, it is. Does anyone use an actual physical card anymore? I do. All right. Well, we’re going to talk about it after the break. This is the close on Bloomberg. All right. Let’s get a view from the sell side. It’s our top calls. That’s where we take a look at the big
Movers on the back of analysts recommendations. And we start today with Spotify. HSBC starting coverage of the audio streaming platform with a buy rating and a $310 price target. Now, the analyst says there are opportunities out there beyond music for Spotify, and that includes the company’s push into audiobooks.
That, along with better ad sales, has the potential to drive growth and expand margin. So says the analyst, shares moving lower, though, on the day by about 2%. Next up, let’s take a look at Disney. The price started getting bumped to 140 from 120.
This over at UBS. That’s among the highest estimate on the street right now with the analysts seeing multiple sources of earnings growth drivers. He also likes the performance over at Disney’s theme parks, though he still has some reservations about the health of the streaming business. Shares of Disney getting a modest bid on
The day. And finally, let’s take a look at Lowe’s, the downgraded neutral from buy this over at D.A. Davidson analyst Michael Baker, expecting a drop in operating margins, a bigger drop than rival Home Depot. Baker says that when you consider year
To date outperformance of low as a stock, the shares may be due for a pause. The shares now kind of in a holding pattern higher by about 3/10 of a percent. And those are some of our top calls we do want to say in the sell side space
And get some perspective on Robinhood. The trading platform is broadening out its services, rolling out a credit card to U.S. consumers, Co-Founder and CEO Vlad Tenev told Bloomberg television it’s a win win for both Robinhood and its customers. We’re not going to enter a business
Without a path to it being a profitable business, even though it will be great for customers that are paying off their balance in full. We also think it’s going to be an incredible card for people that are building credit and getting started on their journey. Yeah. All right.
Dan Dollar follows this company. He’s a senior analyst covering fintech equity research over at Mizuho. He’s got a buy rating on Hood shares. Dan, great to have you here on the program. As always, a credit card. I mean, when I hear that, I mean, what
Are we talking? Is this like an earnings revenue growth story or is this just about creating a product that sort of keeps existing customers in the fold? I think what was great to be on your show. Sorry I couldn’t be there in person today. I tried.
So, look, I think this is basically what I’ve always said about Robinhood, which is you own it for the future. And now it’s sort of getting to a price target that you would have believed. It literally doubled. And what they’re doing now is they’re retaining the existing customers.
Robin Hood code is like a super, you know, it’s like really turning into the super app of financial services, retaining existing customers, and then also going for new customers across every aspect of the economy, low and high. So this is a homerun.
We’ve been waiting for that moment. And I think this is kind of the inflection point that we’ve been waiting for. Dan, I’m confused, though, is too, if they make money off of this because they have 3% cash back and no fees, but it seems like that’s not the point.
They’re getting a lot of people to use the card. And remember, they’re also getting if you’ve a revolving interest, you know, you obviously pay interest. I mean, there’s no fees on the cards either. No fees to retain the card.
But if you carry a balance, etc.. So there are you know, obviously you pay interest. But I think that overall they’re getting people into the ecosystem. This is this is the game they’re playing, right? They’re getting people into the ecosystem. Those people are going to trade. Those people are going to trade crypto,
They’re going to trade equities. They’re going to make a lot of money on the users over time. Yeah, and it’s obviously a clever bit of marketing, Dan, And we’ve been showing, of course, the gold flowing from the cauldron to create these cards, which I don’t think they actually use.
I love it though. But still, Dan, it’s it’s a great optics for the company here. Give us a sense here, because you talk about this kind of becoming that’s that’s sort of our super app or whatever the phrase you use. Is there a sense here that they have
Tapped into something, particularly with the younger generation, that the more traditional banks and traditional investment companies that maybe our generation knows is kind of just behind on right now? Yeah, I think that the banks fell asleep at the wheel, but they basically, like,
Didn’t they? They woke up one morning and all of a sudden, Robin, Robin Hood was just trading for millennials, right? The 21 working kid, etcetera. Now they’re waking up and Robinhood is basically starting to get more and more share from their traditional banking avenues. It was started with trading, Now it’s
Lending, Now it’s credit cards, deposits, right? Nobody’s talking about deposits. They’re offering, I think, over $2 million of FDIC insurance with membership. So they’re getting deposit inflows. They are becoming your go to financial services firm and someone’s going to have to pay for it.
And I think the traditional banks are going to see this in a way. What happens? They really fell asleep as they were doing each year. Really interesting stuff. Hey, Dan, thanks a lot. Really appreciate it. And Dan Dolev over at Mizuho. I should point out it’s actually
Stainless steel, but it does weigh 17 grams. So what were we looking at there on the screen? I don’t know. But it was pretty I want that one to pull out the card. So. Yes. Okay. I don’t I just use my phone now. I do.
But there’s no flex anymore. Like you don’t need the apple white apple car or the black American Express. Yes, it’s true. There is no flex on that. Put on your phone. But sometimes I take it out, you know, just to flex. Yeah. You know, I’m totally like that to my
Where you see you still haven’t bought me dinner, by the way. Yeah, it’s true. On a related note, this is a close up Bloomberg. And. Just about 3:30 p.m. here in New York City. This is the countdown to the close. I’m Romaine Bostick and i’m Alix Steel.
That does not look good. Yes, i’m starting to look a little ominous out there, i think is supposed to rain but deluge tomorrow like another flood warning situation. I didn’t say I was going to deluge. I just thought I was going to rain. But that’s the. Yeah. Yeah, You’re welcome.
So last day of the quarter, last day, the week, and then a deluge of rain. Anyway. It’s time for the stock of the hour. So let’s take a look at Merck hitting a record earlier. They jumped after new treatment for a rare and dangerous form of high blood
Pressure. One approval from the FDA. Bloomberg’s Abigail Doolittle has more. Miguel, break it down for us. Yeah, this is a big, big deal. It’s the best day since October of 2021. So that really tells you how much investors are, in fact excited about it.
And it has to do with the fact that they have this new drug that’s been approved by the U.S. for a rare form of blood pressure. But the big reason investors are so excited about this is that they have this upcoming hold for KEYTRUDA. That’s their cancer drug.
It comes off patent in 2028. It’s more than 40% of their revenue. So when it comes off, you are going to again have that whole. So right now they’re thinking about filling that pipeline for years out, which sounds like a while. But for these big companies, it’s really
It’s really not. So they got this drug, it’s called It will be sold actually, it’s called something different for its technical name, but will be sold as Wind River $242,000 per year. You take it every three weeks. And they did get it from their 2021 1
Billion acceleration acquisition. Has there been any battle analyst chatter on this, particularly when it comes to the price, Abigail? I mean, we’ve been talking a lot about some of the pressure we’ve seen just today from members of Congress and others who are concerned about the costs
Of other drugs unrelated to Merck, particularly some of the weight loss drugs. But when I hear $200,000, I think while I think it doesn’t have to come down, I mean, it will be interesting to see whether or not it does. I have not myself seen any particular
Commentary on that. But Elizabeth Warren comes to mind immediately in terms of potentially making a big deal of it and then creating some kind of pressure. But it’s not just Merck that’s in the news today. It’s also Moderna. They received a big investment from Blackstone for their flu treatment, $750
Million. Blackstone’s return will be based on commercial milestones and royalties. Moderna will keep full control. What’s so interesting to me here about material, because of course, I think of Moderna as the COVID vaccine, if we take a look at Moderna, Pfizer and JNJ out of
March 2020, what would you guess in terms of like stock returns up, down all around oh four from the peak? Yeah, not pretty. Not, not even from the peak, from from the bottom, from from basically four years ago. Moderna is still up more than 250%. Wow. JNJ up 10%.
Pfizer down 16%. Real divide by Moderna’s had a lot of trouble kind of turning that they have COVID vaccine technology into something. And this would be for cancer. For and for cancer. Yeah. And then then they pivoted to do the COVID vaccines. Now they want to do the combined shots.
Yeah, flu and COVID in one you kind of jab at you’re done to people. So they call the shots. It’s like it’s like carrying credit cards. I do also because Covid loves me. So so we’ve established in the last few days you don’t own a computer and you
Still carry physical credit cards. You read you read hard copies of the newspaper, too. No, I do. I do. I have a big pile of Wall Street journals. And we also know that you’re waiting for a deluge. I know because I walk past Abigail’s
Desk every morning. There she is with our Wall Street Journal, her and Mike Bloomberg. Our thanks to Abigail Doolittle for a closer look at our stock of the hour, a closer look at Merck and Moderna when we come back after the break, a focus on Zoom and their bet on A.I.
Adding new tools to the Zoom platform to keep users there and get some new folks in that conversation coming up after the break. This is the close on Bloomberg. All right. Zones. Next meeting is with artificial intelligence. The company releasing a new AI powered workplace platform meant to enhance
Productivity for the hundreds of millions who use that platform daily. Please to say. Joining us right now through the magic of Zoom is James. He’s the chief product officer over at the video conferencing company. And I look at it like it or not, I mean,
Everyone knows AI is just increasingly a part of our lives, whether we want it to be or not. So it makes sense that you would try to integrate more of these tools into the Zoom platform. Give us kind of the layman’s take on this.
What exactly is being added here? What will I be able to see the next time I log on? That’s absolutely Romaine Bostick Well, thank you for having me here. And we announced the Zoom workplace platform. Zoom workplace platform is a collaboration platform for employees. It includes communication like meetings
And phone. It includes productivity, like whiteboards and documents. It includes employee engagement, like a social intranet, as well as in-office solutions like desk reservations, visitor management, and all of these we have Zoom I companion, a generative assistant working across these. So I’m going to and I’m going to ask you
A very dumb question. So meta, but do people need this or let me rephrase that, Do people want this? Are you hearing that from your users, from your clients, that they want these types of tools? Yeah, absolutely. Actually, we are very, very customer
Driven, so we are very responsive to what customers ask us. And they absolutely want more products which are simple to use, which are which, which really like help them out and generated. There’s so much demand and interest in generated by and for customers to be
Able to get that in base that is responsible, affordable and they can bring it to everyone. One thing about us is, as you may I companion is included at no additional cost. This is very different. While some of the major players in the market. Sweet for someone like me the average
Joe who turns on Zoom to do meetings. What does this do for me when I do that? Yeah. So when you turn on your Zoom meetings, what you will see over here, you know, Zoom meeting. You will see a companion button. You turn it on and you can ask it to
Create a meeting summary for you. So you don’t have to focus on taking down notes. It will create those notes for you. It will create the action items for you. You can edit them, but it creates them during the meeting. If you have more people joining in and
You coming led or you lose attention, you can bring it up on the side and you can see, Hey, what did I miss? Was my name mentioned? So it’s something which really keeps the conversations flowing very smoothly and frees up your time to really collaborate and focus on working with other people.
Okay, that’s quite interesting. Especially the note taking part would be quite helpful. My note taking skills are not the best. What’s next? How do we how do you keep refining? How do you keep staying ahead of the competition in this area? Absolutely. So we keep expanding.
I companion what we announced today was that we have also brought a companion to Zoom. Zoom phone is also very popular. So many times like sales, people are having phone conversations and you are having it you are having it from the car.
At the end of it that echoed is gone. But now with Zooming Companion, it can create summaries for you. And if you are a person, you’re getting a lot of calls and maybe Lisa you do it can even prioritize your voicemails and
Help extract dots out of it. So that is an example of an expansion we announced today. Another one. And so smart as we talk about the growth of this company, obviously you had that sort of parabolic growth during the pandemic and some of that has obviously
Stuck. You have a lot more competitors in this space now than maybe what you had in 2020 when we are all locked inside here in terms of building the business. That means getting more customers, retaining the ones you have and monetizing them better here.
Are these the type of tools that are going to do that? We definitely believe so. We think with some workplace and with AI embedded and included in it, we feel like that’s a game changer and we are seeing a lot of interest in that. The other part of our business domain,
Which you may be less familiar with, is that we have also developed solutions for customer Zoom contact center. We have a solution for sales and Zoom Contact Center in particular is an area of big focus and disruption. And this is really changing the agent experience, the supervisor experience,
And as part of that, the customer care experience, all of it that I embedded in. And we announced a lot of innovations around that as well. So when we think of our business Agile, we think about the employee experience and we also think about the experience
For your customers and people who are taking care of your customers. What’s been the cost to the company to build this out here? You know, we talk a lot about the promise of the AI, but we’ve also heard from quite a few companies about the added expense that comes with this with
These types of features here. How do you balance out that cost versus the potential benefit? Absolutely. So. So, I mean, we actually take a very unique approach to building out the AI. It’s a federated approach. And a federated approach means that we work across multiple models.
So we partner with Openai, we partner with entropic. We also have Zoom’s onboarding, so we can use a variety of models from small to large in real time in order to get the best answer for our customers. And with that, this flexibility models actually are cost at a fraction of the
Cost of what you would need to need to invest if you were just wrapping a very large model. So I think that technical innovation helps us manage the cost. And then, you know, and then of course, we take that and then we ask to be included in our products.
We believe we get the customer interest at best, one out of five from that. And customer customers are more and more interested in working with you as me. Before we let you go, you get you got to help me with something.
So if I’m in a workout class and the teacher does this, things happen on the screen or like I’m posing in my class and then they say, Do you have a question? Can you can we not do that anymore? You know, so are you
Are you on a MacBook? You know, so yeah, we love Apple, but they have added some automatic gesture support, but they’ve also been very responsive and we are working to fix that for you. So basically with Apple. All right. All right. It’s great to catch up with you, Smith.
I assume she’s the chief product officer over at Zoom, the company integrating more features into the platform And a lot of stories out there today surrounding AI, including DoorDash, trying to poach some engineers from other companies here. We also heard from Amazon, or at least
The Bloomberg reporting that Amazon now upping its investment in AI start up and drop at $2.75 billion. Yeah, that’s a lot. That is a lot of money. You know what that’s also going to mean? It’s going to mean a lot of power. So every story is an energy story to me.
We’re talking about that. The third best selling stock this quarter contemplates energy and power company fueling A.I. Centers. And. Exactly. And then you go to the idea of what Zoom is trying to do. There was a story. These are now integrating A.I. features to combat fraud.
So everybody is doing this, but there is a cost there. The cost, obviously, to run the service, the cost to store that data and the cost, of course, protect it. Yeah. And I’m looking so let’s look if we look the Amazon, we’re looking at what, 4
Billion total now that they’re investing in this company. They had an early investment in September. To your point, yes, we’re going to have a ton of I mean, one point to hit the company over, but a lot of M&A definitely in the space because of it, I would think now. Yeah.
I mean, this is where the activity is at. I mean, you look at the big gainers here in the quarter as we wrap up the quarter here, Supermicro Supermicro was right at the top of the list and now you’re getting those second tier companies. People are really looking for those
Opportunities and they’re finding them out there. Alex. Yeah, exactly. I guess the question becomes how long does this run? But you could make that argument. Eight months ago we were saying the same thing. They have to keep proving it.
They have to keep proving it. Then they do and then you have to you can’t. Not on them is the problem. Yeah. And then when it gets in effect, that sort of costs reward balance, right? I think if the cost is too high and the reward doesn’t materialize, then it peters out.
Right. But if the promise is everyone seems to think there is going to be more cost savings, more efficiency, if that is true and that outweighs the cost of actually doing this, then yeah, sure. So my question then becomes in terms of the power and the generation at some
Point, is the greater utility or power guys going to turn to the data center builder and say, Guys, you can’t build this here. Like I can’t supply you power. So what were you expecting? Does that automatically have to shrink because we were not able to supply it?
Yeah, I guess it depends on jurisdictions, given how fragmented our power system is here in the U.S.. A lot more coming up here on the program. Stick with us. We are counting you down to those closing bells just about 14 minutes ago. Lauren Goodwin over at New York Life Investments, she’s on deck.
This is a close on Bloomberg. This is the countdown to the close Romaine Bostick alongside Alix Steel. 10 minutes until we get to the bells. Alex And unlike yesterday, where we saw a lot of selling into the close, seeing some buying come in, some strong bids as
We get closer to the bells. Record high. Record high. Record high. Record high. Yeah, that’s quite a record. We’re getting there. Yeah, that you’ve got an index at a record. The Russell isn’t. It’s a two year high still, and the Nasdaq was at a record for a fleeting moment.
Nasdaq 100, but not as of yet. But I mean, that’s some solid stuff going into the end of the quarter. Yeah. So you’ve got the equal-weight up there, a 1.4% gain. The Russell getting in on the action, a 1.8% gain here on the day as a rotation
Continues. Lauren Goodman joining us right now, economist and chief market strategist at New York Life Investments to help us count down to the closing bell, make sense of all this. So, Lauren, we’re at the pretty much at the end of the quarter right now. It’s a phenomenal quarter by pretty much any measure.
You cut it. But of course, everyone’s staring at these gains and wondering what exactly sort of propels this market any higher than where it’s already is. Well, what’s propelling the market right now is financial conditions. The Fed has given us this marvelous gift. It’s backed by good economic growth.
But what Sherpao described last week was pretty immaculate. Growth will stay good, employment will stay good inflation. It’ll come down eventually and we can still cut rates. That is a risk on story on every measure. Well, I go back it was like kind of right at the start of this rate
Hiking cycle, I should say. And there was this idea where he himself, Jay Powell, referenced Greenspan and specifically, I think within 94, 95, that that sort of string of rate changes that Greenspan made without actually breaking the economy or the labor market, if you will, here, And
He cited that as kind of the holy Grail and what he thought he was going after. One of the things I think is so interesting about this just most recent Fed meeting is that Chair Powell is having a Greenspan moment.
He’s looking at the environment and saying, we may be able to have it all in the way that we had in the mid-nineties. And there’s two things that are particularly interesting about that. First, in order to have that sort of immaculate disinflation, something had to happen.
You need to have a magic boost in productivity or change in the labor market. And what the CBO data has showed us in the last couple of weeks is that we have in fact had one of these immaculate changes in the labor market through immigration.
I think what’s interesting about the Greenspan moment, part two, is that it’s a risk, right? It’s not clear yet that that’s correct. And that palace having really a Greenspan moment, as opposed to an Arthur Burns moment where they eased too early. And so for now, it’s all risk on for the markets.
Our key concern is that overheating is what comes next. Right. So we were talking in our guest the top of the hour said nothing bad has happened. Right. But then data dot yet and the New York Fed had a paper out yesterday. Right.
That talked about the fact that if China’s manufacturing industry, as she seems to want, picks up, that actually is going to have a lot of commodity and demand pull that could actually raise inflation significantly and push off hikes more than we think cuts more than we think they’re overheating is by far
Our biggest concern about the economy. It’s an upside risk and it comes from just the reality that today isn’t like the nineties. In the mid nineties, we had not only China starting to come online with its labor force, but also the Soviet Union changing and opening a lot of cheaper
Labor for Europe. There was a broad globalized disinflationary force. That’s not the case today. Competition over the technology supply chain, that sort of reshuffling of supply chains globally, these are all inflationary forces. And so it’s it’s cyclical. It’s interesting that for now we have
This sort of magic Goldilocks moment. But again, it’s unclear that the global environment supports that moving forward. Is your overheating risk. Is that like a base case risk? Like how much weight are you putting into that? We’re we’re calling it walking on a tightrope.
We’ve been concerned about the reality that the longer interest rates stay where they are, even if the upside risk of them moving higher I think is very, very unlikely. Even interest rates staying where they are makes a slowdown even six months from now just a lot more painful than it
Would be if we started to see some of that deceleration now. And that’s because you have a higher likelihood that a credit cycle evolves along with a gradual slowdown. But we’re we’re calling it about 5050. Our base case is that if the Fed is able to cut in June, which we expect, then
You do have a sustained cycle throughout the end of the year, a sustained cycle. Do do we still, though, end up in a situation where we’re going to have to deal with a higher level of inflation, not high inflation per say, but
Certainly well above that 2% target? And if so, how does that change our allocation? I think the Fed has even said that they expect higher than 2% inflation for the next couple of years. So I have to expect that based on what we’re seeing, what they’re seeing, that
That’s more likely to be the. You’re an economist, and why should 2% still be the target? 2% should be the target for a couple of reasons. The first is that research suggests that between -1% and 2% inflation, we don’t notice it doesn’t impact consumer or
Business decisions around what they’re paying people, how they invest. And that’s important because that’s that’s really the sweet spot that the Fed and other central banks are looking for. So that 2% level doesn’t come from from nowhere. But the other reason not to change the target midstream is that it upsets
Market expectations. And that’s a that’s a from my perspective, an almost immediate credit trigger. But to answer your question about what do we do then if we expect not only higher than 2% inflation, but also more inflation volatility, it’s a structural shift in allocation. It’s a structural allocation to
Commodities and materials, in part supported by the global themes that Alex was pointing out. It’s an understanding that yield and total return are even more important than in a what was the normal environment I don’t think would be normal anymore. Wow. That’s a pretty that’s a pretty big call. I like that.
So if so we’re in a structural kind of shift. Does that mean that the neutral rate for the Fed will be stubbornly higher than we think it is? Because of that, the neutral rate moves higher because economic activity potential move structurally higher. And that is something that right now looks very plausible.
Again, a lot of what we’re seeing bad. No, it’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a very good thing. It’s why we’ve we’ve been able to have this sort of immaculate disinflation to date. What it means or what we should keep an eye out for, however, is that the
Investment in in productivity that we’re seeing today, it cannot be sustained. One of the things that we learned through past surges in investment, like with the Internet, just as an example, is that it’s hard to get businesses to continue to invest, to force change, to get people to use different technologies
Over and over and over again. And so it usually comes in a 2 to 3 year search. We haven’t actually seen it yet. The productivity surge that we’ve seen to date has been a result of the big ebbs and flows in the labor market, not a result of investment to date.
So that that is still fully unproven. Oh, we got to get you back to talk about whether I or at least some of the technology underpinning that could actually change that productivity story. Lauren Goodwin, always great to talk to you, economist and chief market strategist at New York Life Investments.
All right. Just about two and a half minutes until we get to the close. Alix Steel stocks off the highs of the day, but you’ve got an S&P still holding at record levels and a big turnaround
From where we were just a few hours ago. This is why I want to get to the second quarter like we know. Okay, fine. We had a really great quarter. Five months of gains for the S&P. Okay, Let’s get to the good stuff, new stuff, a full breakdown of all the day’s
Actions coming up just ahead as we take you to the bell and beyond. Beyond the Bell. Bloomberg’s Comprehensive cross. Coverage of the U.S. market. Close starts right now. And right now, we are 2 minutes away from the end of the trading day Romaine Bostick alongside Alix Steel.
We’re counting down to the closing bell. Here to help take us Beyond the bell. It’s a global simulcast. Scarlet Fu joining us in the television studio, Carol Massar and Tim Stanek on Bloomberg Radio as we welcome all of our audiences across all of our Bloomberg platforms on Wednesday afternoon here in
New York City, Carol Massar. It looks like the S&P is going to close at another record high. Yeah, that would make it. I think the 21st record that we’ve seen here in 2024. So we’re watching it. The last one was 52 4153. So we’re definitely above it. I think what’s interesting, guys, last
Couple of days, I feel like we’ve seen some selling into the close. Today, we’re certainly seeing some buy to the close in the last half an hour or so. So a little bit of a different trend here. I’m wondering how people are reading into this, buying that we’re seeing late into the session.
Is it about end of quarter, quote unquote, rebalancing scarlette? Is it about making sure that allocations in certain companies and certain sectors are within lines of certain mutual funds? It could certainly be that way. If you look at the performances of the
Different sectors, the biggest gainers are the ones that have been the worst performers year to date. So that might be a little bit of a contrarian take. What’s interesting here, Alex, is that it’s not just the US stock market that’s been making highs.
Japan, Canada and Germany also record highs in the past week. Germany, I didn’t know that. Seeing the growth thanks to Cameron crisis. Yeah, growth have been terrible and the outlook has not been great for Germany as well. And U.K. is interesting, though, because of that
Weaker yen. Honestly, guys, it’s really hard to make a lot about the buying into the end of the quarter, to be honest. Like, let’s wait till Monday. Yeah, I was really trying to look at technical levels because, I mean, the fundamentals don’t really seem to seem
To tell the story. And at least on the technical side, I mean, there does seem to be that argument that there is still a lot more upside there, particularly when you look at how muted volatility has gotten over the last few months. All right.
Let’s walk you through the numbers. Here in New York, it does look like the S&P 500 is going to hold on here at another record high. It takes a while for these numbers to settle, but right now we’re right around 52, 49, up 45 points or about 9/10 of a percent.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is going to move higher on the day by about 478 points or 1.2%, while the Nasdaq composite, which was trading at a record high a little bit earlier in the day, looks like it’s not going to hit that up
About 5/10 of a percent here on the day. And a phenomenal day for the small and mid-cap. S&P 400 midcap up 1.6%. The Russell 2000 up 2.2. Yeah. And for the most part looks like investors kind of all in the risk trade are on on this Wednesday. What’s interesting where you get into
The industry group performance in just a moment but just look at the S&P 500 most names folks 456 to be exact, are gaining in the session. 47 scarlette to the downside. Yeah, look at the map here for the sector break down and a lot of green there.
There are some spots of red, but that’s mainly because you’ve got tech and communication services barely higher up only 1/10 of 1%. They’re the laggards there. So when you do see some red, it pops up pretty prominently because they’re such heavily weighted sectors.
But in terms of leading advancers, utilities and industrials with utilities and reeds each up by at least 2.4%. All right, guys, to the individual gainers we go. This one was the number three gainer in the S&P 500, Number one gainer in the NASDAQ 100. We’re talking about Cintas Corporation. Cintas Corp.
Finishing the day with a gain of about eight and a quarter percent. It’s a worker, uniform company and business service provider boosted its EPS guidance for the full year. It also saw an earnings and revenue beat for the third quarter. So investors liking what they heard from
That company, Marvell Technology number two gainer in the Nasdaq 100 and that one on the day with a gain of about just shy of 6% after Citi opened a 30 day upside catalyst watch on the chipmaker ahead of the company’s I era invest in
Investor event next week. So some excitement around that name obviously a player there in the chip space. I did want to mention Robinhood just because I can finishing definitely off its best levels of the day at its highs up more than 6%, finishing the day with
A 3.7% game known for a right. It’s commission free trading. Well, it rallied after the company said it’s rolling out a credit card to U.S. consumers as it pushes beyond trading, rallying to its highest in about three years. And I just because you guys would expect
Me to I’m just going to throw one more in. DJT Trump Media and Technology, Another gain in its second day of trading in its newly formed entity, if you will, up 14% after a 16% gain yesterday. All right, You got the gainers, Carol. I got the decliners.
I do want to start with Nvidia, the biggest drag on the S&P 500 day, finishing down 2.5%. Worth keeping an eye on. No fundamental news still up more than 80% so far this year and just shy of about 5% off its all time highs. Also, DraftKings finishing.
They’re down by close to 7%. This after NCAA president Charlie Baker announced that he’s pushing to ban a college prop betting. It’s a type of side wager that allows gamblers to bet on an event or a statistical outcome that’s not directly tied to a.
Final result of the game. We saw a lot of these happen during the Super Bowl with the whole like you know Travis Kelsey Taylor Swift thing Taylor Swift cry she do. Yeah yeah yeah. So NCAA president does not want those in college which I think some people would
Argue makes sense. So DraftKings shares moving lower there. GameStop. Let’s talk GameStop real quick. We talked about this after the market closed yesterday when the company did come out with result. Shares falling today by 15% intraday fell as much as 17%. It was the biggest intraday decline
Since June of last year. The company came out with fourth quarter revenues and adjusted EPS. That missed the average analyst estimates. An honorable mention to Reddit today. They’re having their worst day since going public. Last week. Hedge risk management came out and said
That it’s adding to it as a short idea, saying that it should trade about 50% below its current levels. Shares falling today by about 11%. All right. Just a quick check in here on the bond market buying across the board. You have a seven year earlier today and
It was a pretty solid seven year. But overall, you guys just pointing out this this quarter has been something for the bond market, like 30 basis point increase for the two, for the ten, definitely not what we maybe would have been expecting, say, as we entered the quarter. Yeah, absolutely. Here.
And I just want to point out to just on the bond front, we did have a Reddit crossing the terminal. There was a lot of speculation about South Korea and India being added to those footsie indexes. They’re not going to do that. They remain on that global watch list
Where they’ve been for quite some time. The next review coming up in September, I believe, here anyway. Carol Massar You’ve been taking a look at some of the big drug stocks and some big moves there, right? Well, watching Novo Nordisk, it’s ADR. They’re actually down about 1% today.
Interesting story that was on the Bloomberg terminal about how basically it shows epic drug could be produced for maybe pennies in terms of its usage, if you will, for about $5 a month when we’re talking about charitably, I guess, compare. Well, they said Novos popular drug could
Be manufactured for $0.89 to $4.73 for a month’s supply. This is in JAMA Network, a study, a bunch of researchers coming out with this and they said it could be done profitably. We know it costs almost ,000 a month for that weekly injection of ozempic.
So it’s just kind of interesting and it kind of brings up, once again, you know, the debate over the costs of drugs where drug companies say, hey, we do a lot of R&D and this is why we have to kind of factor this into our pricing.
You have some lawmakers weighing in, none other than Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has a history of talking about high drug prices, holding hearings in the past, about high drug prices. He says this outrageously high price has the potential to bankrupt Medicare, the American people and our entire health
Care system. He called on Novo Nordisk to lower the list price of his epic $255 a month or less than that, which actually is what it charges in a lot of other countries. Yeah, but, you know, this is the way the drug system works. So was there anything in that in in that
Reporting what their current cost to make those drugs. Well, they did not they did not provide. I don’t think they break it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is from a study by. Yeah. Pretty college Hospital Doctors Without Borders. I’m just curious here to the German.
It actually says drug production costs are often shrouded in secrecy. So they do that on purpose. So I don’t know for this exact reason that can’t go into that R&D budget. Right. And that’s R&D. But they have to, of course, cover through the cost of the drug that they
Sell. So yeah, it’s a big black box. Yeah. All right. We are getting some earnings out. RH The furniture company are reporting earnings right now. It looks like on the bottom line, a pretty significant miss adjusted EPS coming in at $0.72 a share.
The consensus on the street was for a dollar 69, so about less than half of what the street was looking for here. I have to dig a little bit deeper into these numbers to get you some sales figures in such year.
But the initial knee jerk reaction, the shares down 8% in after hours trading. Yeah, that’s a big hit to the Dow. All right. That certainly is a big hit to the share price. I’m just looking at what it’s been doing here in 2024.
And the stock is just up about 2% here for 2024. We’ve got about a 12% short position excuse me, on the outstanding shares. So that’s a big hit down seven and a half percent here. The bar was pretty low heading into
These results for RH. They were not high and a lot of analysts say they were looking for challenges in the near term. There’s going to be really be the focus will be on sales and growth accelerating into 2025. But for 2024, a lot of weak near-term
Demand as the company focuses on long term growth initiatives. Yeah, there’s a letter to shareholders from the chairman and CEO. There’s which is known for being candid, writing that aggressively investing during a downturn has put pressure on short term results. It also positions us to capitalize on the long term opportunities that present
Themselves during times of disruption, calling out the share repurchasing during fiscal 22 and 23 that represented approximately 35% of shares outstanding. Yeah. Before we go, I just want to mention the Discover Financial. The CEO stepping down, of course, Discover are going to be combining with Capital One and now learning that
Michael Rhodes, the CEO, has tendered his resignation that has been accepted Discover saying that they did not actually expect a Rhodes to have any sort of long term role in the company after the deal. So it looks like he’s moving on for another position somewhere else.
Yeah, I’m looking at the stock in the after hours, not seeing really any movement, but not a surprise. But nonetheless. Good to squeeze that headline in. All right, guys, that’s a wrap. Our cross-platform coverage, radio, TV, YouTube, Bloomberg Originals. We will see you again for Beyond the Bell.
Same time, same place tomorrow. And our earnings coverage continues right here on Bloomberg Television. A full breakdown of some of the results are getting, including out of our eight. So shares lower in after hours trading. Stick with us. This is the close on Bloomberg. And.
Welcome back to the close. I’m Scarlet Fu with Romaine Bostick. For the last few days, we saw stocks take a bit of a dive in the final minutes of trading before the close as investors positioned for the end of the first quarter. A different move today in that we got a
Late surge and you had the s&p 500 closing at yet another record high, up 9/10 of 1%. But the big winner among the major indexes was the Russell 2000, closing at its highs of the day, up more than 2%.
And it’s set to close out the first quarter with a gain of at least 4%. Right now, all 12 industry groups in the Russell 2000 finishing up as well. Pretty solid demand for the seven year auction that took place today.
The yield on the ten year comes down about four basis points and keeping an eye on dollar yen. The yen finally strengthening after government officials ramped up their warnings that they’re serious this time about intervening, intervening to support the currency. The yen had weakened to one 5197 before officials began speaking out.
In terms of individual movers, let’s start with some decliners here. DraftKings losing almost 7%. It and other companies that have sports betting operations declining after NCAA President Charlie Baker said he’s working on banning prop bets on college athletics across betting markets.
We also have a risk to networks losing for a second day, down 3%. The FCC accused the co-founder Andy, backed of slime of insider trading. He supposedly traded off advanced knowledge of Cisco buying Acacia Communications back in 2019. Arista said that back while Showtime
Serves in a non-executive role at the company and the charge does not involve trading in Arista stock. Nevertheless, there is that linkage there. Trump Media and Technology trading under the ticker DJT powering higher for its second day of trading. It’s a meme stock now and of course a proxy for the former president’s
Re-election campaign. About when I last check more than .7 billion of shares changing hands. That is more than Alphabet’s value of traded stock, which of course has a share price that’s double that of DJT and Cintas, the work uniform maker closing up eight and a quarter percent
On earnings. The company announcing that it has boosted its full year EPS guidance from me. All right, Scarlett, we do want to get back to some earnings that’s just out. RH the furniture company out with results. The shares had been down an after hours trading, now moving higher here.
Despite a big miss on both the top and the bottom line, net revenue in the most recent quarter coming in at about $738 million, a little bit lighter than the 777 that the Street was looking for as far as adjusted EPS.
That also was a miss $0.72 a share. The Street was looking for .69. Lindsay Dutch joining us right now, a retail analyst over at Bloomberg Intelligence. Lindsay, what do you make of these numbers here? On the whole, they missed. But when you start to look at that guidance, it doesn’t look like the
Guidance is all that much better. Yes. So they missed, as you mentioned, a little bit on the top line. More so on the bottom line. Sounds like some supply chain pressure, cost pressure. We’re also continue to see sort of weak demand for big ticket items, especially in the furniture space.
Looking at the outlook, you know, the top line looking for 8 to 10% growth is a very aggressive number. I also cover Williams-Sonoma. They’re looking more like flat revenue on the year as they continue to see pressure on demand. RH seems to be having a much more
Optimistic view that demand for furniture and their big ticket items is really going to bounce back even as early as the first half. How much is RH tied to the state of the existing home sales market or new home sales overall? We know that mortgage rates continue to
Stay elevated, but we’re basically entering the really busy spring selling season and typically that’s when people start thinking about outfitting their homes with new furniture. Yes. So they are very much tied to that market. And very specifically, they’re tied more to the luxury end of that market.
And, you know, the headlines that I’ve seen is that the pricing on luxury homes is still very much elevated. It’s still rising. There’s not much movement in that space. And when we don’t see movement and exchanging of homes like that, there’s just less demand coming to.
RH You know that customer who’s really going to RH for their design expertise and looking to re furnish entire homes, if not multiple rooms, you know, that’s that’s really who the customer that they’re looking for and they’re hoping to see a rebound after a really difficult 2023.
All right. Great to catch up with you, Lindsey. Lindsey Dutch over at Bloomberg Intelligence. A closer look at RH. Those shares were down about 8% in after hours trading, now up about the same amount here as we continue to move forward. Some other breaking news now on
Jeffries. Those results crossing the wire for the asset manager here. One Q Net revenue coming in at excuse me, 1.74 billion. It’s hard to create whether that’s a beat or not because there’s only two analysts really tracking this year. But. The average of those two estimates was
Was 1.52 billion. As far as the bottom line numbers adjusted, EPS coming in $0.87 a share. The street, those two estimates once again, $0.75 a share. Investment banking revenue up 31% year over year. Joining us right now to talk a little bit more about this is Neil Seitz. He’s Bloomberg Intelligence financial
Analyst. Also joining us is Bloomberg reporter Catherine Doherty. And Neil, I want to start with you here on the results. Not a whole lot to go off of here on the numbers here, but still a pretty strong quarter on the investment banking revenue side. Yeah, that’s right.
And that’s really the bread and butter of Jefferies. Now, it’s undergone a multiyear transition to really emphasize its business on the investment banking fee side rather than trading. That’s more capital light. That’s where they believe they can compete more with the JPMorgan’s Morgan’s and the Goldman’s of the world.
So it looks like from early look we see fees that have increased on a sequential basis, which this is a business that’s been under pressure for 18 to 24 months across advisory underwriting. So it’s nice to see continued momentum We’re going to want to see. Typically, they’ll comment on how
Clients are transacting, how sentiment is under the surface and how that’s going to feed into 2024 and 25 results. Catherine, let me bring you into this conversation. A lot of the reasons why we pay attention to Jefferies, which is pretty small compared to some of the other big
Banks that that we really fixate on is because it provides somewhat of a tool for the likes of J.P. Morgan City, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley. How much does it really indicate have you seen that bear out based on what Jeffrey says and then what the big banks
Say a couple weeks later? Absolutely. When you look at capital markets specifically, so sales and trading there in this release, talking about the momentum that they’ve seen and they’ve talked about some certainty that has come in 2024 that really they didn’t see last year. And that’s just in the form of volumes.
There’s a pickup in a pickup also in M&A activity. So that’s going to translate potentially to J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, other investment banking arms. So I do think that that is what investors will be looking for. These words like momentum to continue, the market share gains that we’ve
Achieved compared to the prior quarter. They’re they’re expecting that the business will further mature is what they’re saying. So I do think that this is something that is going to be a positive outlook for what we can expect when banks start reporting next month.
Yeah, all that is in the Bloomberg story that’s on the terminal right now, which has your byline on it. So that’s a quite a feat that you’re able to write that while sitting here. In all seriousness, that you wrote another story earlier today, and this is about their distressed debt investing
Business. Yes, I know that’s not sort of the core of this business, but it sounds like it’s doing pretty well, too. So it’s within the fixed income sales and trading. And yes, this team, it’s about 17 in New York.
They have some others in Europe, but it’s led by a former Navy SEAL and they very much look at their business. Distressed in general is a very niche and often contentious part of the credit market. And when you’re getting into restructurings, you need to really dig
Deep into the analysis of these companies and also the future either growth growth aspects when it comes to what the company will look like post restructuring. That is what this group specializes in. Not only are they taking some positions, smaller positions in these restructured
Companies either before or after the restructuring, but they’re also helping clients and then trade the bonds and the loans of some of these companies, too. So it’s it’s as if you’re putting your money where your mouth is. They’re saying to some of their clients, hey, we have a position in X company and
We can help facilitate a trade in the bonds or the loans of of that skin in the game. But they don’t have a traditional banking license the way the other banks do. So they can do that despite the Volcker rule. Really appreciate your joining us today, Catherine Doherty of Bloomberg News who
Wrote the story on Jefferies latest earnings and Neil Sipes of Bloomberg Intelligence with the instant analysis on Jefferies results. This is a close on Bloomberg. There’s always those unforeseen events and instances that will occur. And I think at this point, the way we’re looking at it is going to be an impact
To the to the specific region there in the Northeast. And hopefully, again, over time, they’ll get back to a normal scenario. But I’m sure the shippers at this point in their conversations are talking about any and all ways to, again, move that cargo there in the East Coast.
That was Mario Cordero, the Port of Long Beach executive director, speaking with Bloomberg earlier. We want to continue the conversation right now about the ramifications of the collapse of the Baltimore Bridge with Dr. Walter Kennedy’s since he is managing partner at the Kansas group. Walter currently advises several major U.S. port authorities.
Walter, it’s good to speak with you. We know that docks in New Jersey and Virginia could quickly become overwhelmed by traffic diverted away from Baltimore. I’ve heard that a sudden 10 to 20% increase in volumes report is enough to cause massive blockages and congestion
Backlogs, all of that. Are you anticipating at least 10 to 20% that we’re not really, you know, just a bad way? It’s good to be back again. You know, we we you know, the system is reacting to the situation. You know, we have, you know, hurricanes
That travel up and down the coast. We’ve had snow storms that froze containers together. So port became dysfunctional. And while these events occurred, the port industry had ships stopping at unscheduled places to drop off a lot of the boxes.
You can’t hold on to them until it makes good sense to be able to send the boxes to to the destinations they were originally intended to go to. And the port stuck to each other a lot. I was privileged once to sit in during a
Hurricane period with the executives at one of the ports on the East Coast and listen in on the forecast sharing and all of the planning that goes into this. So you’re the port industry is prepared for a terrible day like today because,
You know, the only thing you can’t prepare for is tragedy and loss of people who support us. Right. My understanding is Baltimore still open for truck transactions. Right now, it’s only the waterway traffic that’s been suspended. How useful is the port as a as a destination for trucks when the key
Bridge is no longer There are basically talking storage. But but you’re bringing up a really good point. The one of the things that I keep hearing about is that the port will be closed for years. I just don’t understand why anybody
Would say that if you just, you know, go through Google Maps, take a look at the the Tabasco River and you’ll see that the bridge is way down the river from the Citigroup container terminal and the Dundalk car terminal.
And once you moved enough of the bridge to treat us and opened up enough space for a ship to go through, yeah, you should be able to engage in normal old or semi-normal port operations. Yeah, it’s a different story, right? Yeah.
Walter And we should point out, too, there’s already been reports coming out of some of the logistics companies that The Wall Street Journal has reported on, that actually those southern terminals are already back in use and they actually did accept at least one cargo ship of cars.
And that was at that trade Point Atlantic terminal, which is all the way down at the bottom by the river. And that’s what gets us to this point here. Is there a way as it takes time to rebuild this bridge and the other infrastructure around here, that at
Least some of those southern portions that are below where that bridge is and below where the the cleanup and the rebuilding will be, that that can operate at least with some degree of normalcy. Yeah, there is there is room there. I’ve worked at Trade Point Atlantic.
I helped bring in patient in bulk swag and some of the other users, you know, onto their property. And yes, there is definitely room to be able to accommodate that. If you go a little bit north, you could drop cars off, even containers off at the port of Long to Delaware.
You’ve got Philadelphia and Philadelphia, Glassboro So there’s an awful lot of optionality in the port industry that could be used. All right, Walter, going to have to leave it there, but we need to catch up with you again. This is going to be something that’s
Obviously going to take a lot of time and a lot of money as people to Joseph said Walter Kim Seeds of the Kim Sears group there. A closer look right now at the current status of that bridge collapse in
Baltimore when we come back after the break, we’re going to take a look back in history, a look back at Silver Thursday and the zany tale of the Wright brothers and their attempt to corner the commodities market. The question before we go to break, how many million ounces of silver did the
Brothers stockpile? Scarlet got 7 seconds, double digits. This is Bloomberg. Right. Today is the anniversary of Silver. Thursday, March 27th, 1980, the day the billionaire Hunt brothers met their comeuppance after trying to corner the commodities market. It was one of the Zenith episodes in financial history.
Seated all the way back in 1973, when the energy tycoon’s Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brothers Herbert and Lamar, seeking to hedge their oil fortunes from inflation and taxes, began buying silver at around $2 an ounce. And when I say by silver, I mean by actual silver.
Remember most commodities traders? They’re just buying and selling paper contracts for the rights to buy something physical. But the hunt’s. They wanted that physical bars of silver. They chartered Boeing jetliners to fly the metal to warehouses in Switzerland at least three times.
Within seven years, they had stockpiled more than 200 million ounces of silver. That’s roughly two thirds of the privately held supply in the world at the time. Prices soared, tripling to $6 an ounce by the end of 1978, then surging to $30 by the end of 1979, peaking a couple of
Weeks later at around $50 in early 1980. On paper, the Hunts had made billions off that trade alone. But in response to the concentrated positions, COMEX and the Chicago Board of Trade imposed an emergency margin requirement that would ultimately break that trade, a trade that by then had
Become kitchen table talk around America. So much so that jeweler Tiffany took out a finger wagging advertisement in The New York Times, calling it unconscionable for anyone to hoard several billion dollars worth of silver and depriving folks of having to pay
More for baby spoons, tea sets and photographic film that add their brand. On March 26, 1980. The next day, March 27th, came the margin call. COMEX asks the hunts for 34 million in extra collateral. Now, there are a lot of conflicting reports as to exactly what happened next.
But what we do know is ultimately the brothers who had four and a half billion dollars in Silver Holdings couldn’t or at least didn’t come up with the cash to pay that margin call. So their broker had no choice but to liquidate. That caused prices to crash 19%.
That’s Silver Thursday, which still stands as the single biggest daily percentage drop on record. Prices slid 13% more the following Friday, all the way down to 4 an ounce. Fed Chair Paul Volcker, concerned about systemic risk, gave the nod to a group
Of private banks that lend the hunts ,000,000,000 to halt the crisis. And there you have it wrapped in a bow with the plotline for dozens of magazine articles, Harvard case studies and lawsuits. A federal court in 1988 did find the hunts did attempt to illegally cornered
The market. That was a ruling that would drive the Hunt Brothers into bankruptcy. But they did rebound while bunker Hunt was banned from trading commodities. His father’s company, Hunt Oil, it did survive and his brother Herbert became a billionaire all over again after
Investing in North Dakota Shale. And Lamar spent the rest of his years managing his various sports ventures, including the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. So I guess things turned out okay for them in the end. They were also the inspiration, I believe, for the Duke brothers in trading places. They were so O.J.
Futures. That’s right. Things turned out a little bit differently, though. They had a valentine in Winthorpe at the end of Trading Places. All right. Let’s switch gears for a moment here. We want to talk about consumer spending on pets, because for many Americans, the
Cost of owning a pet on top of everyday living expenses is getting a lot pricier. Food and health services have surged since the early days of 2020, when the U.S. pet population jumped 6% during the pandemic. So joining us now to make sense of these costs is Nick Jones.
He’s equity research analyst at Citizens GMP. Nick, good to speak with you. I guess the first question here comes down to demand, because the pet population, as we mentioned, surged during the pandemic. Shelters are running out of dogs and cats. There were strong pet household
Formation trends. It has since normalized, but has it normalized to a level that’s lower or higher than pre-pandemic? It’s about stable to pre-pandemic. I think new pet household formation is actually a little bit below pre-pandemic again or a huge pull forward. So overall, we think it’s more stable trends from here.
All of that said, millennials are the biggest cohort of pet owners and the expectation is Gen-z will follow. So there is a kind of a long runway here for pet ownership to continue to increase in the US. Yeah, especially since it’s cost so much money to actually have human children.
To what extent is there a correlation between the rate of pet household formation and human household formation? They’re very similar. I mean, we actually think a huge factor in this is, you know, the cost to own a home. It’s becoming increasingly more
Difficult for people to buy a home. It’s increasingly more difficult for people to start families. And it shows up in marriage rate. It’s getting older and older. So as people get into relationships, you have an easy way to create a mini family is by including a pet in your in your household. So.
We think that is a fact that is driving pet ownership and the premiumization of cats. In lieu of having children, which is, you know, we’re seeing in prices. Well, when we talk about the premiumization, I mean, how sticky is that, Nic? I mean, times economic times overall have been relatively good for recent
Years. So it makes sense why people would maybe want to splurge a little bit on their pets for things beyond just the basics here. But what happens if we do hit economic hard times? Does that get sacrificed or is that sticky enough where people say, it doesn’t matter, I’m still Biennial
Snowflake or Snowball or whatever they are he or she wants? Yeah. So I think snowball or self doesn’t get whatever they want. But what we do see is there is a premiumization of food. You know, there’s kind of human quality food being fed to pets. Now through various brands.
People are more focused on the nutrition, other pets. We’re actually already seeing it today through companies like Chewy where there’s less spend on discretionary products. So maybe Snowball gets one less treat a month or a few less toys a year or something like that. So we actually think that’s showing up
Now in the pet market. Yeah, absolutely. And then this gets to the question, too. As you know, you cover retailers, you know, like a chewy, the ones that we buy this stuff from, there’s been a lot of discussion, I guess, whether there’s
Even a moat around that business. I mean, how much loyalty is there right now amongst pet owners to some of these third party retail brands, whether it’s Petco or Chewy or whatever else is out there? Oh, that’s a really good question, because there’s so many places you can
Buy Amazon, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Costco, Chewy. You know, I think what Chewy specifically is dialed into is the same love your pet parents have for their pets. They want the company they’re buying from to appreciate the pets as well. So the things that Chewy does that no one else really does.
Is it actually right hand letters to pet parents about their pets on a birthday or for pets passed away? And if you talk to folks who use Chewy, those who have kind of been Platformed really love it. And I think that kind of goes into the premiumization and humanization of pets,
Is you want to buy things from brands who essentially share the same values you do. And I think Chewy is a company that’s figured it out. That said, you know, there’s always going to be cost conscious shoppers. They’re going to look at Walmart, Sam’s
Club, you know, Costco, the usual suspects to buy these types of things. All right, Nick, Nick Jones over at Citizen’s GMP. That’s a closer look at the retail side of it. But let’s get right to the companies that are actually making those products,
Like Nestlé Purina, one of the largest producers of pet food. It’s now setting up shop in North Carolina, opening a new manufacturing plant in the state to help meet the growing demand for pet food and other supplies. Joining us right now to talk a little
Bit more about this is normally Krueger. She’s a CEO of Nestlé Purina Pet Care. Nina Lee, you must be the most popular person out there because we all love our pets and we all sort of want to treat them. Two things here. Give us a sense here when you talk about
Making these moves for Purina to sort of follow these trends or maybe you’re out in front of these trends here, is there a limit to what people are willing to pay? So what I would say is that consumers, as Nick said, that pets are such an important part of our modern family and
They add so much value to our lives that consumers really are willing to pay for high quality products. And at Purina, we are science based, consumer obsessed. And so the products we create provide that value to consumers that they’re looking for.
And so when we talk about whether pet products and let’s just talk about, I guess, the food itself or whether it’s the actual meal or the snacks that we give in between, do you consider that to be kind of a consumer staple, if you
Will, or is there still a discretionary element to that that you have to plan around given the fluctuations in economic conditions? So absolutely it’s a stable that that people can that people purchase for their pets. What we find in economic situations is
Pet pet owners tend to stick with the foods that they already feed because it’s it’s good quality, high quality. Their pets react positively to it and they don’t want to change because of what might happen to their pet. So it’s definitely a stable. You know, I want to ask you about the
The wellspring of direct to consumer pet food that’s become available Farmer’s dog, for instance. I always get banner ads for it. For instance, there’s a lot of talk about how there’s not a whole lot of regulation preventing anyone from coming up with an idea and saying, I’m going to
Start selling pet food. How frustrating is that from where you sit to see companies that may or may not have done a whole lot of research into pet food just coming up and saying, you know what, we can get in on this as well. So, you know, being the number one pet
Food manufacturer in the United States that we are, we really set the standard in quality and safety. But we always welcome competition because it keeps us smarter and stronger and on our toes. We don’t really spend a lot of time trying to figure out what they’re doing
And how they do it. From a quality and safety perspective, we just know that quality and safety is our number one priority and we will never do anything against that. What they often say is that they are themselves pet owners and therefore they have the pet’s best interests at heart.
But they don’t necessarily have, for instance, veterinarians on staff the way that Purina does. What does the expert staff that you’ve assembled to help you out, Farina, provide you that perhaps these one off companies may not offer their consumers? So at Purina, we have over 500 experts
That sit on our staff with us. They’re behaviorists, they’re veterinarians, they’re nutritionist. They have the deepest understanding of all elements of the pet from a nutritional standpoint, a behavior standpoint. So we can lean on that to help us when it comes to the innovation. Most of our innovation is science based,
And so we really take that into consideration. And it’s very important to us. We’re pet owners here at Purina as well, and we care about pets. So Italy, what what does the science say about grain free dog food? Because there’s a lot of controversy about that. That’s interesting.
It’s possible to have grain free products out there that you can today as long as it meets the complete and balanced nutrition standards that are set out there for the pets. So when we look a little bit forward, you know, we talk about long term
Trends. There was a lot of talk about, you know, how during the pandemic everybody was adopting dogs and cats and other things. And that kind of led to a spike in demand for pet supplies here. And I know that’s moderated to a certain extent, but when you look at long term
Trends and like we were talking about with Nick Jones just prior to you over GMV, this idea that people have found a way to sort of, I guess, create their own families, if you will, for lack of a better phrase, by using by going through
Pets rather than, you know, children, which eventually they’ll get to. But I do wonder if you see that long term trend continuing. Well, we know that over 60 million households today own a pet. We saw slight, modest growth in 2023 in pet households from cats.
We do expect that to continue. We know that pets are an important part of the modern family. And so the pet category will continue to be a valuable category in the industry. I mean, it’s $60 billion when you look at food litter, trade supplements, and it’s growing faster than most
Categories. And AOC today to the tune of about three times faster. So it’s going to be is still going to be a great industry and again, a great place to be. What’s the fastest growing part of the PET category, I think, about services
And how truly impeccable have all expanded into pet health care, for instance, where the margins presumably might be higher. So I would say that PET category growth now has more stabilized. I would say dry dog and wet cat tend to be where a lot of the growth is today,
And that’s because they are more of the staples, as we talked about. If you have a dog, dry is kind of where you are in cats. Once you feed wet cat food, you know your cat loves it. So you’re not going to probably change from that.
Okay. So sticky consumer behavior in terms of what we feed our pets. Nina, we really appreciate your joining us. Nina Kruger is CEO of Nestlé Purina Pet Care. And of course, they have veterinarians on staff. I don’t know about you remain, but I my
Loyalty is to whoever gives me that 20% off coupon. When you when you had a pet, I mean, were you sticking to a brand? Yeah. Well, we have a dog now. Yeah. I mean, she eats basically the same thing that she started eating when we got her as a puppy.
And I don’t think we could change it. Otherwise she would revolt. Probably lock the door on us. I’m pretty sure she’s, like, in my bed right now under the covers. Pretty much owns the place. Yeah, well, she runs the household. That makes sense.
All right. In terms of markets today, we did have a bit of a rally at the end, which was a change from what we saw earlier this week. Tomorrow, of course, will be the last day of trading for this week. The bond market will be closing early as
Well. So tomorrow afternoon could be really interesting with. Thin volume. Things could really shake up a bit. But you did have the S&P 500 closing at a record high. The Russell 2000 did even better, up 2% on the day there was a seven year auction. Pretty decent demand and dollar yen remain.
We continue to look at that. Yet some people do want 5132 Right now you’re doing again. This is the close on Bloomberg. And. It’s time now for the top three. Every day at this time, we take a deep dive into the people at the center of the day’s top stories.
And first up is David Rubenstein. Major League Baseball has approved the Carlisle co-founder and co-chairman as the new controlling owner of the Baltimore Orioles. And this is one day before the team’s opening day in Baltimore. Of course, a lot has happened in
Baltimore this past week, so it’ll be very poignant when they do play ball. Yeah, it’s certainly poignant, obviously, for him. I mean, obviously, he’s a Baltimore kid, born and raised there, grew up. He has a big connection. And like you said, given the bridge
Collapse here, you’re talking about a silly really looking for, I guess, something a little more positive. Yeah, a reason to celebrate. All right. Next up, I should point out that David Rubenstein, of course, is the co-host of Peer to Peer, which airs on this network. So just to point that out.
Yes, absolutely. And of course, one other thing that we should mention, as well as the ownership group does include Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, and of course, he is the founder and majority owner, Bloomberg News, which is the parent or Bloomberg LP is the parent of Bloomberg News.
So the other person I’m watching Remain is Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, settling a lawsuit with Disney over the municipal authority that governs Disney parks in the state, the culmination of a feud that started back in 2022. Is it over? I mean, maybe for now. Yeah. Okay.
All right. Well, eventually, to see what happens, don’t forget we get a big Disney meeting next week here, Obviously not surrounding this issue, but could come up. I do want to take a moment here to really focus on someone I think really special to everyone watching this. And that’s Daniel Kahneman.
Everyone knows and really the lay people know him from his book Think Fast. Things like that came out about a decade or so ago and really introduced a lot of people to this idea of behavioral economics. He was a pioneer in that space, won a Nobel Prize in economics for it, despite
The fact he’s not actually an economist, he’s a psychologist. But, you know, he really had a huge imprint on just how we view the markets. And this whole idea, the one that really stuck with me. I remember when I’m studying for my CFA, this idea of loss aversion, right?
The idea that when we’re afraid of loss, we actually make more rational decisions. And when you know, we’re taking on the risk for actual gains and there are a lot, a lot of other components to those theories. But one of the core ones there.
Yeah, absolutely. His work helps explain why we often make what seems to be illogical decisions. And in later years he actually studied happiness, which yeah, I like. Right. And one of the analogies I love in the book and you’re into sports but he
Talked about golf and I don’t if he said are this analogy where he said if you’re shooting you’re putting and you’re and you’re putting for par, you’ll actually do better than if you’re putting for birdie. Interesting. Which I think is interesting that gets
To this whole idea of loss of aversion. Anyway, he was yeah, he was 90 years old. He had a huge impact on a lot of other prominent economists out there, including Richard Thaler, Milton Friedman and quite a few others here, really just a giant in his field.
Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who really, really helped to move us into this world of behavioral economics passing away at the age of 90. Quite a few things to keep an eye on over the next 24 hours, and that includes a sentencing for FTC’s founder, Sam Bankman-fried, that’s scheduled for
Tomorrow. Following the November conviction for his role in the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange. Here with Moore is Bloomberg Businessweek senior reporter Max Chapman. And Max, I know what the prosecutors want, like 40 something years. Sam Bankman-fried lawyers one what, like
Six the same and freeze lawyers have suggested 5 to 6, prosecution has said 40 to 50. So a huge gap there. And in theory, the sentence could go even higher. You know, the judge the guidelines could could give sandbagging freed as much as like 100 years. So so we’re looking at some potentially
Very long sentences. And, of course, what happens here could set the tone, could create a template for what happens to others who’ve been involved in cryptocurrency issues like of finance. Well, that’s possible, although with finance, it’s a very different situation
Because he cut a deal with prosecutors. He pled guilty and he’s not accused. He’s accused of money laundering, which is a very serious crime. But Sam, I mean, Freed is accused of stealing a huge amount of money. And the numbers that we’re talking about here, billions of dollars, is what makes
The sentence so potentially severe. And it’s the idea that he may have stolen, you know, eight, nine, 0 billion from customers. It’ll be interesting to see what exactly happens to him. You’ve covered this story for pretty much from the start.
I am curious about was there any sort of attempt at restitution for those folks who lost money in this? Well, that’s what makes this so interesting. The bankruptcy attorneys are saying now that they are going to recover or potentially recover as much, you know, 100% perhaps, of the funds that were lost.
Now, same thing before. His lawyers have used that to say, oh, if you’re recovering the money, then, you know, I guess there’s no problem here. And the prosecution is saying, no, no, no, no, it doesn’t work like that. But that is the argument we’ve seen play
Out in court filings. Now, the thing is, bankruptcy attorneys are often successful at recovering assets. Bernie Madoff’s the attorneys in that case have recovered something like 90% of the assets. So it’s not totally unexpected, but it does throw another wrinkle in this. All right, Max, traffic in there covers
This up for us here at Bloomberg. We are expecting that sentencing at some point tomorrow. We’ll have full coverage right here on Bloomberg. A quite a few other things to keep an eye on as well, including some big earnings scheduled to come out tomorrow.
I know I’m still some I’m surprised that earnings season continues right now because of that. The first quarter ended a while ago. But of course, you do have Walgreens that’s coming out at 7 a.m. Eastern Time. Yeah, Walgreens is coming out with some
Economic data as well. It looks like on GDP, that’s going to be a revision of the numbers you already seen. But we do get some sentiment data. Yeah, University of Michigan, consumer sentiment and of course, current expectations. What people are expecting going forward, jobless claims, high frequency data
Point as well. We’re trying to cram this all in sort of before the holiday on Friday. Yeah, why didn’t they cram? And I know I don’t get I guess it’s like I guess I just figure what also, Jay Powell is going to speak on Friday, just, you know, keep things interesting,
Just to keep things interesting here. But get to the question, is that really going to change the narrative for the Fed? I mean, we saw the dot plot we saw on the Jacksons. What’s what are we going to learn over the next few days are really changes.
The bar is pretty high for something to change. All right. We were just talking about Sam Bankman-fried. The SBF sentencing is scheduled for tomorrow. We’ll have full coverage of that as well and is an opening day of Major League Baseball.
It is, at least in the US, right? Because of course, the dogs are going to be played in Seoul and that was last week’s event. And of course everything that went along with that with Shohei Ohtani. But yeah, and the one we’re paying attention to, of course, is opening day
In Baltimore. Yeah, opening day in Baltimore. And of course, that’s going to take on a much different significance than maybe what it was going to look like just a few days ago. We should also point out to just in terms of scheduling, you were mentioning Good Friday. Yes.
The US bond market, it’s going to close early at 2 p.m.. So and this will be the end of the first quarter as well. So things are going to crawl to a complete halt. It feels like in the three or 4 p.m. hour.
Not to say that there won’t be any action, but not a whole lot going on. Yeah, we’ve already seen the volume start to be tempered just a little bit. We’ll be back tomorrow with full coverage right here on the close. Balance of power is up next. And.
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Amazing show
What if NO ONE was blamed after the investigation is closed?
… HOW HOW HOW IS THIS HAPPENING THEY SAYING THIS WAS NOT … T/ FIRST TIME … W-H-A-A-A-TTTT…GOD IS GOOD I NO LONGER LIVE IN BALTIMORE
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