Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to What Goes Up, a Bloomberg Weekly
Speaker 1: Markets podcast. I'm Sara Panzac, a reporter on the Process
Speaker 1: That team, and I'm Mike Reagan, a senior editor on
Speaker 1: the Markets team. This week on the show, third quarter
Speaker 1: earning season is in full swing. The banks kicked off
Speaker 1: reports with beats pretty much across the board, and after
Speaker 1: all that market talk, we'll be sitting down with one
Speaker 1: man at the center of one of the world's best
Speaker 1: performing stock markets. But Mike, I think we should leave
Speaker 1: people hanging. All right, we believe him hanging. We'd like
Speaker 1: to leave him hanging. Usually we leave them hanging un
Speaker 1: till the end for the craziest thing we saw in
Speaker 1: markets this week, But this time we're gonna leave him hanging. Uh.
Speaker 1: For the world's hottest stock market, I'll call that might
Speaker 1: be a little bit of a hit. And also, for
Speaker 1: fans of our segment, the Craziest thing I ever saw
Speaker 1: in markets this week a special treat. I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be an elongated version of that segment because Sarah
Speaker 1: and I the stars were aligned this week and we
Speaker 1: both picked the same crazy market story to talk about,
Speaker 1: and it's a big one. It's a doozy so right,
Speaker 1: so we'll get to that earlier than usual as well,
Speaker 1: and also joining us this week on the podcast. So
Speaker 1: you know, it was a big week for bank earnings.
Speaker 1: All the big banks reported earnings. These are incredibly important
Speaker 1: for a variety of reasons in markets, UH, and to
Speaker 1: help us break it all down, we are happy to
Speaker 1: have Bloomberg reporter Felice Morans on the show. Fleee welcome,
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me and for our craziest thing
Speaker 1: we saw in markets this week discussion. We're bringing in
Speaker 1: the big guns here, Chris Nag, Executive editor of Markets
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg. Chris, welcome to the show. Welcome back. I
Speaker 1: guess police let's start with you though, Um, just big picture,
Speaker 1: what was sort of your main takeaway from this UH
Speaker 1: parade of bank earnings saw this week? So it's important
Speaker 1: to remember that four big banks all reported simultaneously on
Speaker 1: Tuesday morning, and that really doesn't happen too often if
Speaker 1: every day. Yeah, so a lot of what happened passed
Speaker 1: in a giant flood. I would say the big takeaway
Speaker 1: is that everybody did really well except for Goldman Sacks.
Speaker 1: So walk us through the results. So let's start with
Speaker 1: Goldman sacks. They didn't do well. So where was the
Speaker 1: big miss? What was the issue? So with Goldman, Uh,
Speaker 1: there were a couple of things. Overall, the earnings per
Speaker 1: share did miss. There were just a lot of things
Speaker 1: that caused them to miss and to be disappointing. On Tuesday,
Speaker 1: you had spectacular results from JP Morgan, and then Goldman came,
Speaker 1: and then you had City and Wells Fargo. And City
Speaker 1: and Wells Fargo weren't initially received so well either, but
Speaker 1: as the day went on, people became more positive. So
Speaker 1: a lot of what I've read is that one real
Speaker 1: stand out point of the business in this quarter was
Speaker 1: what they call fick uh, you know, fixed income commodities
Speaker 1: and currency trading um predominantly because of the volatility in
Speaker 1: the bond market we saw. So, you know, I'm as
Speaker 1: a consumer, you know, as a suitor sort of non
Speaker 1: bank stock investor, I always want to see what the
Speaker 1: macro takeaway is from these earnings, you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that a robust bond trading environment is necessarily
Speaker 1: a great sign for the economy. Uh. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of this volume came because, uh, you know, markets
Speaker 1: were so nervous about the economy uh in this quarter,
Speaker 1: but walk us through sort of the consumer facing elements
Speaker 1: of the bank, I understand they were pretty strong results
Speaker 1: as well, despite this really narrow yield curves that we've
Speaker 1: seen that presumably would affect their net interest margins. I
Speaker 1: would say that if you were looking at trading, you
Speaker 1: would indeed think, oh, fick, that was a standout. But
Speaker 1: if you look overall at these results, the consumer was
Speaker 1: very healthy and one big bright spot was credit card
Speaker 1: spending that helped lift City Group. In fact, shares of
Speaker 1: City Group after its executives talked about how good credit
Speaker 1: cards were. I know Jamie Diamond flat out said on
Speaker 1: the earnings call that the consumer still seems to be
Speaker 1: very healthy. However, he did signal out business confidence and
Speaker 1: said that we still see an issue surrounding business confidence,
Speaker 1: and he even talked about the trade war and tariffs
Speaker 1: to a sense, did we hear any of the other
Speaker 1: executives talking about it on these calls? I mean, how
Speaker 1: much was consumer confidence or business confidence really a focus
Speaker 1: of some of the conversation when analysts or even the
Speaker 1: media we're asking questions. Well, I think Jamie Diamond's comments
Speaker 1: were very interesting in the statement. He was very careful
Speaker 1: to swing back and forth between saying something very positive
Speaker 1: and then caveatting, and then saying another positive thing and
Speaker 1: then caveatting. I did notice that some people felt he
Speaker 1: wasn't as exuberant or cheerful as he usually is. He's
Speaker 1: seen as a big, very charismatic cheerleader for banks, and
Speaker 1: and he wasn't as much this quarter. I did also
Speaker 1: read at UH several of the banks UH did increase
Speaker 1: their reserves for potential bad loans going forward. Was that
Speaker 1: a common theme and is that just them reacting to
Speaker 1: what the rest of us have reacted to all years,
Speaker 1: that this uncertainty about the economy. Well, there had been
Speaker 1: a little bit of an increase for energy loans, capital
Speaker 1: markets were soft, there was some energy problems. UM. I
Speaker 1: think some banks also talked about credit normalization. That's because
Speaker 1: they've made more loans, so you have to UH take
Speaker 1: precautions just because you have more lending out there. I
Speaker 1: think the takeaway really was that the consumer is healthy,
Speaker 1: people are still employed. There may be some hints or
Speaker 1: signs in the distant future, but for the third quarter,
Speaker 1: the economy stood solidly on the shoulders of the U
Speaker 1: S consumer You know, Chris, I often hear people say, well,
Speaker 1: you really need the bank stocks to rally to do
Speaker 1: well in order to kind of confirm a bullish stock market. Um.
Speaker 1: Are you a buyer of that theory? Uh? And you know,
Speaker 1: does this week's earnings sort of make you optimistic about
Speaker 1: the chance we'll get to another record this year. I'm
Speaker 1: not really a buyer of that theory, but I'm probably
Speaker 1: a sayer of that theory. I think that's one of
Speaker 1: these Wall Street uh um axioms that you you have
Speaker 1: trouble uh not repeating about four thousand times in your career,
Speaker 1: even if you wonder if it's true. Um. From the
Speaker 1: perspective of here's the engine of the uh the consumer
Speaker 1: engine of the economy, I think you you basically have
Speaker 1: to say, at least that plank looks a little better
Speaker 1: than it did a couple of weeks, or at least
Speaker 1: you get some confirmation that isn't falling off a cliff
Speaker 1: in the same way that manufacturing has. And that's by
Speaker 1: far the biggest the market's biggest concern at the moment,
Speaker 1: So that's good. We talk about bank earnings as if
Speaker 1: they're almost all that's happened this week, because we typically
Speaker 1: focus on bank earnings the first week. But we got
Speaker 1: results from Honeywell I want to point out in which
Speaker 1: we did see them raise their profit forecast for the
Speaker 1: fourth quarter. Uh. We also got some not so great
Speaker 1: earnings from the likes of Netflix. I guess you could
Speaker 1: call it except shares rallied because international subscriber growth was
Speaker 1: much better than expected if you just look across the board.
Speaker 1: It's still very early on. But where do we currently
Speaker 1: stand in the earning season and how do people feel
Speaker 1: at this point in time. Well, I feel like Netflix
Speaker 1: is a big deal because there's sort of this creeping
Speaker 1: concern right now that for various reasons, most of them
Speaker 1: having to do with we work that basically the price
Speaker 1: of speculative equity on Wall Street is about to come
Speaker 1: come in for a reckoning and a reevaluation. So the
Speaker 1: fact that one of the poster children for those valuations
Speaker 1: is able to rally, and I don't think the rally
Speaker 1: totally lasted, and the fact that Netflix uh was was
Speaker 1: able to stay elevated with that valuation after earnings is
Speaker 1: also basically net net a good sign for for the
Speaker 1: market state at the moment, so fo least, obviously we
Speaker 1: had the big banks come out. What else is coming
Speaker 1: up in the next week that's on your radar that
Speaker 1: we should keep an eye out. Well, I think it's
Speaker 1: interesting that Chris mentioned we work. I want to point
Speaker 1: out all so that Goldman reduced the value of its
Speaker 1: stake and we work by I think it was eighty
Speaker 1: million dollars. And people are keeping an eye on I
Speaker 1: P O s all sorts of things. Another thing happening
Speaker 1: in the week to come, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, is
Speaker 1: going to be testifying again in front of Congress. Uh.
Speaker 1: The payments companies who are partners in Libra have been
Speaker 1: dropping out, so he's probably not going to be uh
Speaker 1: in the spotlight for the cryptocurrency Libra as much as
Speaker 1: he would have been, but he'll still get asked a
Speaker 1: lot of really tough questions. So Fulice, you also report
Speaker 1: a lot on the intersection of markets and policy. Give
Speaker 1: us a sense, Like you said, Mark Zuckerberg will be
Speaker 1: testifying once again as we lead up to and the
Speaker 1: presidential election. We just had another Democratic debate this last week.
Speaker 1: What's the general sense how much our investors, analysts strategists
Speaker 1: really thinking about the election is something you need to
Speaker 1: take it into account when thinking about how to invest.
Speaker 1: Investors are definitely keeping a very close watch to investor surveys. Uh.
Speaker 1: Just in recent days showed us that investors think Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Warren is going to be the Democratic nominee and they
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly think at the current moment that President Trump will
Speaker 1: be re elected. In hard to reconcile this, I guess,
Speaker 1: but I'll tell you what, Sarah, I think. We it's
Speaker 1: time to transition right into the craziest thing for the doozy,
Speaker 1: all right, And as we both agreed, uh, this is
Speaker 1: uh wild story. It was in Vanity Fair by William Cohen,
Speaker 1: and let me just read the headline to you, uh quote,
Speaker 1: there's definite hanky panky going on. Okay, I got my interests,
Speaker 1: all right. And then the rest of it is the
Speaker 1: fantastically profitable mystery of the Trump Chaos trades. And what
Speaker 1: the story is about is a bunch of really high
Speaker 1: volume trades in SMP futures h that the author believes
Speaker 1: or points out occurred right before announcements from President Trump
Speaker 1: were sort of other geo political events that ended up
Speaker 1: boosting the stock market, and you know he you know,
Speaker 1: writes about them suspiciously. Let me just read you one
Speaker 1: paragraph of this story. Traders in the Chicago pits have
Speaker 1: been watching these kinds of wagers with an increasing mixture
Speaker 1: of shock and awe since the start of the Trump presidency.
Speaker 1: The precision and timing of these trades and the vast
Speaker 1: amount of money being made as a result of them,
Speaker 1: make the traders wonder if all this is on the level.
Speaker 1: Are the people behind these trades incredibly lucky or do
Speaker 1: they have access to information that other people don't have
Speaker 1: about say Trump or Beijing's latest thinking on the trade war,
Speaker 1: or any other of a number of ways that Trump
Speaker 1: is able to move the markets through his tweeting or
Speaker 1: slips of the tongue. So basically kind of accusing Trump
Speaker 1: of leaking insider information about his plans to Uh traders
Speaker 1: and investor is in the market. Uh, Chris Nag, you're
Speaker 1: one of the gurus in this company as far as
Speaker 1: analyzing trade by trade. Uh, you know what's going on. Um,
Speaker 1: we talked about this earlier. I think if you were
Speaker 1: editing this story, Uh, it might not have been published
Speaker 1: in exactly the same form. No, one would have read it.
Speaker 1: But what's your sort of takeaway on the story. And
Speaker 1: I know your team's working on a story basically dissecting
Speaker 1: what happened here. I mean, I don't think that there's
Speaker 1: gigantic opposition to the idea that the basic premise that
Speaker 1: Trump could be, as you put it earlier, wittingly or
Speaker 1: unwittingly telegraphing stuff that Wall Street traders in there, you know,
Speaker 1: immense wherewithal are able to pick up on in some
Speaker 1: cases front run pretty much the unanimous view of of
Speaker 1: of people we talked to is that this is sort
Speaker 1: of an instance of proof through a kind of juxtaposition.
Speaker 1: You're you're able to take, uh, Wall Street coughs up
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of gigantic futures trades in any given
Speaker 1: day or week, and if you want to go, uh
Speaker 1: find one at times in a sort of overly lucky
Speaker 1: way against some geo political eventor basically anything my my
Speaker 1: cats rolling over, you can you can you could easily
Speaker 1: uh make a case that there's a causal or there's
Speaker 1: a casual link between the two. I think some of
Speaker 1: the words that you use, uh in describing the article
Speaker 1: are are key. He he's pointing these things out and
Speaker 1: he's juxtapsing, he's juxtapositioning them. He's doing it in a
Speaker 1: very arch and moral way, and he's making it clear
Speaker 1: with his what his point is. But really it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a marvel of juxtaposition and a lot of
Speaker 1: things are trotted out that would be true literally at
Speaker 1: any time. It's also true that Trump is moving markets
Speaker 1: all of the time too, so you have a very rich,
Speaker 1: uh landscape to mine, uh, whatever thesis you want out of.
Speaker 1: And I think that's basically how people are viewing this.
Speaker 1: I was speaking with an investor and trader about this
Speaker 1: article and he said, yeah, you can basically back up
Speaker 1: a story or a narrative for any trade out there.
Speaker 1: The problem is that if you have a story like
Speaker 1: this that runs, they never actually write about it obviously
Speaker 1: when you're wrong. The big Yeah, it's sort of the
Speaker 1: no hypothesis argument that, uh, there can't be tons of
Speaker 1: other trades that look just like this that fall flat.
Speaker 1: But the fact is there are uh, your average you
Speaker 1: know whatever, ten ten thousand or a hundred thousand contract
Speaker 1: sp futurest trade doesn't proceed a big market move, and
Speaker 1: all of those get ignored. People aren't in the business
Speaker 1: of trying to sell magazines by writing about those, which
Speaker 1: I think is irrelevant topic here. So what we're left
Speaker 1: with is some unnamed traders in the Chicago Pits saying
Speaker 1: this looks a little fishy. I gotta say, I didn't
Speaker 1: even realize there were any pits left in Chicago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: still has. Chicago Pits are where basically the high frequency
Speaker 1: trading industry grew out of, so one of the great
Speaker 1: technological things that's ever happened in this country. People are
Speaker 1: gonna also, it's not like it's not like we want
Speaker 1: to disparage the Chicago Pits, but it's also true that
Speaker 1: a scary amount of conspiracy theorizing seems to emanate from
Speaker 1: that area as well. Well, I gotta call those guys
Speaker 1: up more. I need to know journalists take note. We'll
Speaker 1: leave it at that then, Chris nag Police Marins, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on the show. Thanks, thank you.
Speaker 1: So Sarah, let's shift gears now to that world's hottest
Speaker 1: stock market, and let's give listeners a little hint here
Speaker 1: courtesy of a great band from Baltimore called jaw Works. So, Sarah,
Speaker 1: obviously the name of this podcast is what goes up?
Speaker 1: And one thing that's been going up consistently in recent
Speaker 1: years is the Jamaican stock market. Last I look, it's
Speaker 1: up about four percent since the end of two thousand
Speaker 1: and thirteen, and that's in US dollar terms. By far
Speaker 1: and large, it's the best performing stock market in recent
Speaker 1: years by by a mile. Um. And it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting market. I mean, it's uh small market, obviously a
Speaker 1: small country, small stock market, um. And it's not the
Speaker 1: most convenient for foreign investors to invest in, but you
Speaker 1: cannot ignore how well it's been doing so earlier in
Speaker 1: the year, or actually at the end of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen, it was I I traveled to Kingston to
Speaker 1: report on it, and I'll tell you it was just
Speaker 1: a pure coincidence that my trip was in the middle
Speaker 1: of the winter. I'm sure that there was no other
Speaker 1: reason that you pitched a story idea to travel to
Speaker 1: Jamaica in the middle of what was it the February
Speaker 1: maybe Coincidencember December. So as it gets a little bit
Speaker 1: colder now, I'm thinking it might be time for a
Speaker 1: return trip to the record on it, because once again,
Speaker 1: it's one of the best performing stock markets, and pretty
Speaker 1: much everyone I talked to while I was there talked
Speaker 1: about the reasons for it being linked to the government
Speaker 1: finances being brought in order the dead to GDP ratio
Speaker 1: and Jamaica was approaching about a hundred and fifty percent
Speaker 1: after the last recession, and they took some some very
Speaker 1: dressed steps to get that down UH, including a debt
Speaker 1: exchange where holders of Jamaican bonds swapped their bonds for
Speaker 1: UH for bonds paying a little bit less interest and
Speaker 1: longer maturities UM. And one of the fellas who was
Speaker 1: very instrumental in that debt exchange that for the first
Speaker 1: that exchange they did too, but he was the finance
Speaker 1: minister during the first exchange, and he's joining us on
Speaker 1: the show. His name is Oddly Shaw. Welcome to the show. Oddly,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. And now his title, he's got
Speaker 1: a better title now it's Minister of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture
Speaker 1: and Fisheries. So you've got a lot on your plate there, yes,
Speaker 1: thank you. And and I was Finance Minister between all
Speaker 1: seven and eleven and then sixteen to eighteen, and it
Speaker 1: was in that period into my shron the the stock
Speaker 1: exchange that I in fact guided that process in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine when we established the Junior Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1: But I must say to you that it it had
Speaker 1: come out of a period not just of of important
Speaker 1: adjustments on the watchful eyes of the I m F
Speaker 1: in terms of the whole macro economy and how we
Speaker 1: managed the budgetary process and so on. It also came
Speaker 1: out of a period when the private sector had gotten
Speaker 1: risk averse. They had suffered from uh periods of extremely
Speaker 1: high interest rates. In fact, in the nineteen nineties, the
Speaker 1: average commercial bank lending rate was in excess of for
Speaker 1: a decade. It was the highest, if not the highest,
Speaker 1: in the world. Okay, unbelievable. So so people just came
Speaker 1: out of productive end of us and investments and we
Speaker 1: went into buy and sell because you have to buy
Speaker 1: and sell and making money fast to pay those kinds
Speaker 1: of extraordinary interest rates. In some countries, including yours, it's
Speaker 1: illegal to have interest rates like that. So so um,
Speaker 1: this talk exchange came out of the need to say,
Speaker 1: hold on, forget about going to banks to borrow high
Speaker 1: interest rate money, go for equity, right And I started
Speaker 1: there and and at the same time simultaneously we started
Speaker 1: a program of bringing down interest rates, and I can
Speaker 1: I can probably tell you that today we are now
Speaker 1: having private sector borroing money in single digit interest rates.
Speaker 1: It's six percent, seven percent, eight percent, absolutely right. And
Speaker 1: at the same time they're also investing heavily in the
Speaker 1: junior stock exchange, and that is why it is growing
Speaker 1: at the phenomenal rate that that is growing at that
Speaker 1: at this time because in urging equity investments and a
Speaker 1: lot of young entrepreneurs um are our targeting that avenue
Speaker 1: and we're very pleased with the progress that is making.
Speaker 1: So the junior exchanges for very small companies that was
Speaker 1: it a hundred millions makion dollars I believe or less
Speaker 1: roughly that right, and they get a tax in center,
Speaker 1: isn't that correct? Yes? Absolutely fun the stock. No, they
Speaker 1: don't have to pay uh income tax for what is
Speaker 1: it a few years after it's it's ten years, ten years, yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1: In In fact, in fact, in much of two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen, the previous government was going to close it
Speaker 1: down and that's when I became a finance minister again
Speaker 1: after after a four year break, and the first act
Speaker 1: that I took was to was to keep it the same. No,
Speaker 1: the junior stock Exchange remains in place, and as a
Speaker 1: result of that, there is renewed interest, more people going
Speaker 1: for equity financing rather than than than you know, loans
Speaker 1: and um. And it's it's really phenomenal what's happening now.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I'm now encouraging the human
Speaker 1: and stuff finance to look at at another feature called
Speaker 1: nano stock exchange. It's it's aimed, it's aimed at the micro,
Speaker 1: the micro even smaller than than what the Junior Stock
Speaker 1: Exchange targeted. And because you see of Jamaican businesses are
Speaker 1: small and medium enterprises. Okay, And one of the things
Speaker 1: that is ironic about it right now is that the
Speaker 1: bulk of loans to the private sector are elevated among
Speaker 1: the ten percent. Many of them don't even have loans.
Speaker 1: But if they were able to get more equity financing right,
Speaker 1: then they will be able to be more productive. Then
Speaker 1: they will be able to systematically work with the government
Speaker 1: in targeting critical areas of new development and growth. Uh
Speaker 1: export markets. I mean, in Jamaica, we produce so many
Speaker 1: good things that that we now need to put it
Speaker 1: at an industrial level to to replace the traditional sugarcane.
Speaker 1: We have orchard crops, you have mangoes, you have fruit
Speaker 1: of all types, avocados, um you know, all kinds of
Speaker 1: things that are that are in global demands. And what
Speaker 1: you don't sell fresh, you can sell it processed. You
Speaker 1: have clear markets, you have the tourism industry of carry com.
Speaker 1: You have the diaspora with Jamaica and in the US, England, Canada.
Speaker 1: You have third country markets that are crying out for exotics.
Speaker 1: And I'm introducing another one which is exciting for us.
Speaker 1: It's a home grown school feeding program. All of these
Speaker 1: things require investment, right and if we can and if
Speaker 1: we can get the micro and small businesses to embrace
Speaker 1: these opportunities, and part of embracing that is to have
Speaker 1: to have them access money in an affordable way through
Speaker 1: the junior and possibly a microstock exchange. So the returns
Speaker 1: are undeniably strong on the Jamaican Stock Exchange, but I'm
Speaker 1: wondering how many companies have you guys been getting interests
Speaker 1: from in wanting to be listed on whether it's the
Speaker 1: regular stock exchange or a micro stock exchange or the
Speaker 1: junior stock exchange. Well, a lot of companies that don't
Speaker 1: have the exact numbers now because I'm not um that
Speaker 1: intimately that ministry anymore, but but the interest is there.
Speaker 1: And that is why I'm actually proposing to my minister,
Speaker 1: mic colleague minister, and to the Prime Minister that that
Speaker 1: we don't rule out looking at at a at a
Speaker 1: nano stock exchange, um, because I think that that will
Speaker 1: that will help to further us to mulate they drive
Speaker 1: towards more productive investments, right, and the old tradition of
Speaker 1: buy and sell. Is that enough to help you to
Speaker 1: to to lift especially rural areas from poverty. Okay, we
Speaker 1: need to add value and we need to build a
Speaker 1: value chain from what you grow to what you process
Speaker 1: and what you target not just the local markets, but
Speaker 1: to the export markets. And if you were to speak
Speaker 1: to sort of the international class of investors, which I
Speaker 1: imagine there's a few of them among our our listeners, um,
Speaker 1: what type of investment into Jamaica would be your preferred
Speaker 1: uh style? I mean, I'm thinking, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: necessarily sure that Jamaica wants to see say a Starbucks
Speaker 1: on every corner or a McDonald's on every quarter. What
Speaker 1: is the type of investment that you would like to
Speaker 1: see happen. Well, I'll tell you something. The construction industry
Speaker 1: booming right now, absolutely booming. That's the only word I
Speaker 1: can I can use to describe it. Partly as a
Speaker 1: function of interest rates, I imagine it absolutely. But in
Speaker 1: addition to that, now, where where investors can come and
Speaker 1: benefit is to bring technology and and and work with
Speaker 1: our farmers and and and create the industrial base. So
Speaker 1: they're moving to from fresh to agrib processing, right, So
Speaker 1: what you don't sell fresh yourself processed, and I mean
Speaker 1: nowhere as as as demonstrated that more than the United States, right,
Speaker 1: And that's an opportunity that that we could have between
Speaker 1: investors coming, bring technology, bring bring markets, and and share
Speaker 1: in joint venture with Jamaican producers. Now one emerging industry,
Speaker 1: of course as the cannabis industry, and that is an
Speaker 1: area now that requires a lot of drilling the because
Speaker 1: part of what is holding up the rapid advancement of
Speaker 1: a legitimate international medicinal cannabis industry, ironically is the is
Speaker 1: the slowness with which the United States is dealing with
Speaker 1: the issue. Um, there are some good early signs, however,
Speaker 1: they have now approved the hemp production which is low
Speaker 1: in the THHC, which is the toxic level UM zero
Speaker 1: point three that's now approved in a farm bill right
Speaker 1: and which means banking is all right for that. A
Speaker 1: few weeks ago they approved the Safe Banking Act, which
Speaker 1: is allows for banks within within each state to do
Speaker 1: banking of cannabis. What has not been done and needs
Speaker 1: to be done now is interstate banking. It needs to
Speaker 1: be allowed and then correspondent banking between countries that have
Speaker 1: a legitimate licensed at international standards a cannabis industry uh
Speaker 1: and and that correspondent banking once put in place, we'll
Speaker 1: see the rapid advancement of an industry which your own researchers.
Speaker 1: By the way, I was at a Harvard, I was
Speaker 1: at Harbord recently a few weeks ago at at US
Speaker 1: a conference on fight amnicnce and cannabis. And they have
Speaker 1: since come to Jamaica because of our uniqueness with with
Speaker 1: cannabis in Jamaica, and they are it is being demonstrated
Speaker 1: beyond the shadow of a doubt that medicinal cannabis is
Speaker 1: a credible alternative to the opioid epidemic that is killing
Speaker 1: off Americans. Between fifty to seventy thousand Americans are being
Speaker 1: killed from opioid overdose right now, and medicinal cannabis, beyond
Speaker 1: the shadow of a doubt, has been proven to have
Speaker 1: more good to it. Right well, cannabis has more good
Speaker 1: to it than bad. And of course medicinal cannabis carefully targeted,
Speaker 1: carefully researched, is a credible answer as an alternative to opioids,
Speaker 1: and I obviously a tremendous potential source of economic growth free,
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely, and from a stock market perspective, which is
Speaker 1: the way through the lens we view things from. I
Speaker 1: know for you, it's it's very frustrating to see Canadian
Speaker 1: companies able to list in the United States and yet yeah,
Speaker 1: you're pretty much completely locked out of the But but
Speaker 1: can you guys tell me explain to me why our
Speaker 1: banks that are inextricably linked to New York banks, where
Speaker 1: we're transferring money from Jamaican banks, we go through New York.
Speaker 1: Can you please explain to me how it is that
Speaker 1: that cannabis companies in Jamaica the bank schools them down
Speaker 1: right because of the lack of correspondent banking in New York,
Speaker 1: Yet cannabis companies from Canada can list on the New
Speaker 1: York Stock Exchange. Hello, can somebody explain this to me?
Speaker 1: I wish I could explain it. I cannot explain it.
Speaker 1: If anyone can, they can call the What Goes Up
Speaker 1: Hotline and explain it to us. Uh, the Honorable Oddly Show.
Speaker 1: It is great to have you on the show. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate your time. Thank you, Thank you, What Goes Up.
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