00:00:02 Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. 00:00:08 Speaker 2: Happy Birthday America, Matt, What are you doing for America to fifty? 00:00:17 Speaker 1: People have asked me that, and I'm confused. 00:00:20 Speaker 2: What do you think? 00:00:20 Speaker 1: You know? I'm like going to the pool. Yeah, I might go to like the riverfront fireworks. I might not. 00:00:27 Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm also I guess the heat dome is descending the heat dome. 00:00:34 Speaker 1: The lateness of the fireworks. I want to go to the pool and stay on the air conditioning. 00:00:37 Speaker 2: And I love that. The World Cup, Yeah, I think I'm going to watch my first match of the World Cup tonight, which is Wednesday versus Bosnia. 00:00:47 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:00:48 Speaker 2: I didn't know that was happening, and then my dad informed me of such. Since I'm on my way to my parents' house after i do this podcast in anchor two hours of television, just so. 00:00:58 Speaker 1: You know, we're watching World Cup tonight. Yeah. I was come here with big ideas. 00:01:02 Speaker 2: It was like, it starts at eight pm, so you should get here before that. 00:01:06 Speaker 1: I sthized, I really enjoy watching the World Cup with. 00:01:08 Speaker 2: My children, So I'm psyched. I mean that's great. I just I like sports. 00:01:13 Speaker 1: I can't believe that you like like sports and have not watched any of the I don't know fifty. 00:01:18 Speaker 2: Imagined casual consumer. I have like two niche sports that I really care about, and then I'll watch anything you put in front of me pretty much. I'm excited to make this lobster cake. For some reason, the trend on TikTok right now is to cut up strawberries and arrange them on cake in the shape of a lobster. The algorithm has decided that this is the only thing that I need to see. So, like every other video is women making lobster cake, so I'm going to try that. 00:01:48 Speaker 1: It's interesting. I don't know you that well. I wouldn't have thought of you as a person who, like your number one interest is going to be cake decorating, But I guess the algorithm knows you're better than I do. 00:01:58 Speaker 2: I don't have a lot going on right now. A lot of my normal activities I can't do, which is like drinking alcohol and like running a lot, or like horseback riding. You know, those are kind of that's the kind of stuff I like to do, so I can't really do that, so I'm gonna be instead. 00:02:16 Speaker 1: It's like drunk horse back riding, like. 00:02:19 Speaker 2: Don't drink and ride. 00:02:21 Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Money Stuff Podcast, your weekly podcast where we talk about stuff related to money. I'm Matt Levian and I write the Money Stuff column for Bloomberg Opinion. 00:02:32 Speaker 2: And I'm Katie Greifeld, a reporter for Bloomberg News and an anchor for Bloomberg Television. 00:02:45 Speaker 1: Jeff yass Quehanna Investment Group, the big options trading market making quant firm. I've heard of him, yeah, back in nineteen ninety two. He did an interview in Jack Schueger's book New Market Wizards. Great great series of books, The Market Wizards books. It's like just these great, like super informative interviews with edgehund managers and traders. And in that interview they talked about Susquehanna being an options market maker, and they spent a long time talking about Susquehanna getting picked off by insider traders. Susquehanna would get a call being like would you make a price and hundreds of call options in some company, and they're like, sure, here's your price, because they're a market maker and that's what they do, and they don't want to say no, and they'd make a price and they'd sell a bunch of options and then ten minutes later the company would be taken over and they'd lose a bucket of money on the options. And he discuss this, you know, he gives an example and he's like, well, in case, we got our money back because the SEC found the guy who did it and he immediately gave back the money and we got all our money back. And he talks about like, you know, in the option of the market, the more you can trust the SEC to crack down and insider trading and stop insider traders, the better the pricing of options will be, the tighter the spreads will be because people like jeff Yass, people like sus Queahana won't get picked off by insider traders and so they can quote type prices because they're not going to lose a lot of money getting insider traded against. So that was thirty four years ago. 00:04:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, he's still doing it. 00:04:15 Speaker 1: So this week Susquehana sued one hundred anonymous people for insider trading against them. I'm like Chinese brokerage options. 00:04:24 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so cool. The Susquehana is saying that this would be one of the largest insider trading schemes in recent memory. Sure if it were insider treading. 00:04:36 Speaker 1: Yeah, outsider trading. 00:04:38 Speaker 2: One hundred people is a lot to organize, right right right. 00:04:41 Speaker 1: China announced everyone goes that a crackdown on cross border trading. So all these are Chinese brokers firms that did cross border trading. Their share prices plummeted on like May twenty second, I think, yeah, and this, you know, more or less game is a surprise in the market. Like the stocks were and then they were low, and some people bought short data out of the money, put options on these Chinese brokerages, and a lot of them bought them from Susquehanna. And Susquehanna's like all those people one had inside information and two were part of a coordinated scheme to pick us off by insided trading. And so Susquehanna is like, please give us the money back. And they went to court and they sued these people, but they don't knowho these people are. They just put like John Doe one through one hundred, and they sued these people, but like the real like sort of immediate object of their lawsuit is to get the court to order their brokerages to freeze their accounts and give up information about them to Susquehanna. And so then after that, you know, Susquehanna can like go look and see who these people are, and if they're like employees of like Chinese regulators or brokerage firms, they can be like, aha, you had inside information. Yeah, but like also not somebody who's frozen like you know, but Suskohada keeps pursuing this lawsuit that people don't necessarily show up up because one, probably most of them are in China, and two, maybe some of them are insider trading, maybe all of them inside. Maybe it was a coordinated conspiracy, and if they don't show up then maybe so Kohana just gets to give the money. So that seems to be the trade. 00:06:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, so in ensuing one hundred, John does is give is the idea that okay, maybe half of them were actually insider trading. 00:06:23 Speaker 1: Sus Quehanna's complaint suggests that there's evidence that it was all part of the same scheme, but like not really yeah exactly, Well, they were all on like a few brokerages, and they all bought short dated out of the money puts, and so yeah, it's all probably inside of trading, but like realistically, you know, sus Quehana is an option options market maker. They know what they're doing. It's a probabilistic better. Yeah, probably half these people were insider trading. Well the half can show up and ask for their money back. 00:06:50 Speaker 2: And we'll give it to them by lumping them all together. They did get to cite an impressive number seventy dollars. 00:06:57 Speaker 1: The rod Roger rata. Like insider trading cases even smaller than this, It's like, well that was one guy who actually did the trades. This is like one hundred people who are unified only by having bought some put options. 00:07:07 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I do think it's interesting that. Okay, Interactive Brokers, that's where a lot of the accounts were where the trades were made, but also Futu Holdings and Tiger Brokers, so these were firms that were targeted in the crackdown, and these are also platforms where these trades were made. 00:07:24 Speaker 1: Yeah. As well, if you asked me who is likely to buy put options on Chinese brokerages, I'd be like Chinese retail investors who are customers of those brokerages. Right, they've bought out of money bets. It's a good trad Like one thing I read about it is that I know this is rude, and you're not supposed to say this, but like, in a world in which Susquehanna is actually making markets in sports bets, they have to kind of think of Susquehanna as like not literally a bookie, but you know, analogous to running a casino or a sports book or whatever. And options market making with retail kind of like running a casino, right, Like, you're sort of offering people bets and you expect that some of them will and some of them will lose, and on balance they will mostly lose, particularly after the spread, and so you'll make a lot of money. And that's been a great business in the last few years because there's been a real rush of degenerate gamblers to the options market and it seems to be nice first sous Quahanta and other big options market makers. And the risk of that business is that you'll encounter sharp betters, people who win more than they lose. And if you actually run a sports book or a casino, like a lot of your business is about getting rid of sharp betters, right it's tracking who's a good better and if they win a lot, then you limit their size or you don't let them bet, and you can't do that traditionally in the stock market or the options market rely. One thing you can do is like one kind of sharp betting, which is maybe the main kind of sharp betting and short dated options is like insider trading, right, And if you can get rid of those people, then like most of the customers lose, the customers are win. You're like, no, not paying you. You cheated, and like they don't have to prove that they cheated. I mean maybe eventually they have to prove that they cheated it, but they haven't proved it yet and they've managed to keep the money so far. 00:09:09 Speaker 2: I hadn't been you know, reading the tea leaves enough going into May twenty second. I mean, you could make the case that this was an insider trading that if you you know, of course, looked at the body language of Chinese regulators, you knew this crackdown was coming. 00:09:23 Speaker 1: Two things. One is like, yes, you might have just made an educated bat based only on public information that this crackdown is coming. The other thing is, let's say there was some insider trading. Right, Let's say that you're just like a person, just a regular retail trader, I have no insider information, and you're like looking at a screen and you see that a lot of people have been buying put options on Chinese brokers, just saying you're like, hmm, I wonder if that means a crackdown is coming and you buy put options. As far as Susquehanna has complained, it's concerned you're a part of the conspiracy. Now are you justing to tell like, in a sense if you're trading based on like public condisha of the conspiracy, maybe you are, but like you're not, really, you're not insider trading. 00:10:00 Speaker 2: You're just like, you know, you're following the crowd, following the croud. 00:10:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, so it seems unlikely to me that all one hundred. By the way, one hundred is a fake number. It's just like to say John does one three hundred. But like it seems to buzzling me that all one hundred of these people are all part of an insider trading conspiracy. 00:10:17 Speaker 2: But wouldn't it be exciting if they were? 00:10:18 Speaker 1: It would be really cool. Yeah, But like if half of them are and the other half were innocent. It's like, how do you, like, you know, show up and court in a foreign country and be like, oh, like, I don't know. It's a strange. 00:10:27 Speaker 2: Something that was delightful about this story was a quote from Thomas Petterphy of Interactive Brokers at the bottom of this article. He was recently on Odd Lots I missed the nugget where he was like, actually, there shouldn't be any rules at all against insider trading, which is just live and let live. It would get information to market faster. 00:10:48 Speaker 1: So this is like a classic thing. I mean people in times for decades and like if you just made that the rule tomorrow, Susquehanna would adapt. Yeah, it'd be fine. Like they charge wider spreads, right, and they'd like do more to try to prevent getting picked up. But like, you know, there's a price. But you know, as Jeffy said thirty four years ago, the cost of insider trading is paid by the retail investors, right, because like in a world where insider trading was legal, then Susquehanna would still sell you short data out of the money call options, but they would charge a much wider bid ask spread. So like every other retail investor would lose more money trading options to subsidize the profits of the insider traders, which, by the way, it's fine because it's just gambling. 00:11:30 Speaker 2: But whatever, All right, do you want to talk about ETFs? 00:11:51 Speaker 1: Now, yeah, let's do it. 00:11:53 Speaker 2: Okay, good, and you don't want to say it's so good that you don't want to save it for the end of the podcast, because usually the ETF stuff we sort of, oh, no, this is great stuff, this is pretty good stuff. 00:12:02 Speaker 1: Okay, so no, it's not. ETF stuff is boring, but fine. Sports gambling ETFs are my white whale. I've been writing since March twenty twenty five. I think it's March eighteenth. Maybe that within two years there will be sports gambling ETFs in the US. I've written about there's this guy named Mike Wall who in the early twenty tens ran a sports gambling fund because he like wrote a paper when he was like a student at Warton about like if you bat moneyline bets on huge favorites in college football, like teams that are favored to win by thirty points, if you just bet on them to win, they win, like you know, ninety four percent of the time, and you get some money from these winning bets. Like it's not you know, you know, double your money, but you get some money. And if you do that on like every huge favorite, you pretty reliably make like a you know, low double digit ish sort of return. And so it's like a bond fund that is uncorrelated to the rest of the market because you're turns come from football favorites winning, right, And so he ran a fund for a while doing this and like you did, okay, but like you can't. This was in the dark age. It's when like you had to go to a bookie at like in like Las Vegas. 00:13:13 Speaker 2: Can you imagine your. 00:13:13 Speaker 1: Sports bets but now make sports bets on a regulated US commodities future exchange and so like, of course people want to launch sports gambling ETFs. Like one thing you can do is that can actively manage the sports scambling ETF where like you hire a really good gambler and he makes really good bets, right, But one thing you do is just bet the huge favorites and like achieve a bond like return with like no correlation to the market and be like haha, what a great product I have and sell that to like institutions and retail people definitely want to do it, and I definitely want them to do it because one I've like put a marker down that I've predicted it until it's just funny, it's just good comedy. 00:13:52 Speaker 2: Well, you've got one big hurdle. 00:13:55 Speaker 1: We have one medium sized hurdle. 00:13:56 Speaker 2: It's the SEC. I mean it's it's a size hurdle. 00:14:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, the SEC did say, whoa, they're slow down. We have like, however many I say sports. They have applications for prediction marketing. 00:14:12 Speaker 2: Yes, thank you. I don't think I mean, I don't think it's all sports gambling. 00:14:16 Speaker 1: I'm not sure any of it sports ye, sportsling. But right, well, the Republicans think the House ETF who cares? Who cares? Some people not you interesting, but yes, they have applications for prediction markets and they have been like whoa, they're slow down. And so this week they put out a request for comments on just sort of like weird ETFs. 00:14:38 Speaker 2: Generally, Yeah, there's a lot of them. 00:14:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like they have this process for approving well ETFs and they don't like it. 00:14:46 Speaker 2: That's the thing. It's not necessarily a process for approving the way that the SEC handles ETF applications is that rather than formally approve or reject, basically you're just you go effective and if the SEC doesn't want you to go effective and like bring this to market, they'll probably backchannel that to you and you'll politely withdraw your application. But it doesn't outright reject ETFs, but. 00:15:15 Speaker 1: It can suspenetrating, Yeah, which is rejecting. 00:15:19 Speaker 2: But the ETF was created. They can't get an application and be like this is a hank of junk. You can't launch this. 00:15:26 Speaker 1: Yeah, right, So they want to like fine tune their process for they want to be able to approve. They want to be able. 00:15:32 Speaker 2: To well that's the process that's not for some to be. I mean, there's this is a great story coming from Bluebird News. Basically, they're thinking about how they oversee the ETF industry in general. One of the things they're asking is whether there should be additional circumstances under which they could suspend the effectiveness of an ETF so launching. The way that ETF filings work right now is that once you file something, once you file an application, everyone can see. It's open to the public. It's not dramatic. But when you have all these new categories being dreamed up, when one person files for a new ETF prediction markets ETF, you see this like dog piling among issuers with copycat filings. And now they're asking, maybe this should be a confidential. 00:16:20 Speaker 1: Process, right, because like when someone other than me, yeah, dreams up the mousetrap of like what's bet on sports favorites? You want that to yourself. You don't want everyone to copy before you long? 00:16:31 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's like some of these it's like this copy and paste mentality of you know, we just we need to get our filing into so that we can maybe capture a first mover advantage exactly. Yeah, wouldn't it be sweet if you had the second or the first instead of the seventh. 00:16:51 Speaker 1: Wow, this is like not my problem, right, I get to just a box like there should be a sports gambling ETF to someone else to be the first mover in the sports gambling ETF. 00:16:59 Speaker 2: Well you say that, and then there's a blood bath to get your filing to the SEC. 00:17:03 Speaker 1: I don't care about that. That's their problem. 00:17:05 Speaker 2: Well, that's what the SEC is a little bit concerned about here. 00:17:08 Speaker 1: You know, the proposal is not just about the process. That's also like wonder you. Thing is like these things are investment companies under the regulation of investment companies, and like I think investment companies traditionally, the core of them is they invest in securities and none of the stuff of securities. I mean, like leverage singles like scuries, but like bitcoin, gold, sports bets, other prediction market bets all not securities. And so the sec is like, are these even ETFs? Yeah, I know that doesn't trouble me that much. 00:17:38 Speaker 2: I feel like I'm glad, I'm glad they're thinking about it. 00:17:42 Speaker 1: Sure, I have to say, like is this at all legal? 00:17:45 Speaker 2: It's like a worthy topic for a regulator to engage with philosophically, but. 00:17:50 Speaker 1: Like guess what, Yeah, great, sure, sure, I don't know. I mean, like the fact that they did pause the prediction mar thank you, there's some chance that they, in their secret sec heart of hearts, are like, actually, this sports gambling stuff has gone too far, But like, I don't know, man, there's no other indication of that. Like everything else is like full speed out on sports gambling. 00:18:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, So, I mean, I don't know the fund design of these ETFs seems a little bit tricky. 00:18:19 Speaker 1: Of course, that's what's fun. Their problem that the fund design is tricky, Like, that's the forsures probably the business. 00:18:30 Speaker 2: Aren't they in the business of protecting those investors? 00:18:33 Speaker 1: They should be like all these double you know, triple Leopard singles, nikes, like are they Yeah, this is not investing advice. I would rather invest in anything at all, the favorites college football ETF, than like a double levered micro strategy ETF. 00:18:50 Speaker 2: Brave, that's brave, right. 00:18:53 Speaker 1: It's just an arbitrary dividing line between like what's a quasi legal investment company and wants sports? 00:18:59 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:19:00 Speaker 1: Did you imagine ten years ago that financial markets would be like sports gambling ets? 00:19:04 Speaker 2: I didn't have. The thought was not close to my mind. I have to say, I am excited to leave here for six months and see what happens. I know, right, it's going to like I feel like the world's going to change. 00:19:17 Speaker 1: A steaming waistlet. 00:19:19 Speaker 2: I'm not going to recognize the kind. 00:19:23 Speaker 1: Of a beard done to my knees like that. 00:19:26 Speaker 2: What the heck happened to you? 00:19:29 Speaker 1: Sports gambling? 00:19:48 Speaker 2: You mentioned micro strategy? 00:19:49 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, make a strategy. How are they doing not. 00:19:52 Speaker 2: Great fives aren't great, man. The main problem is I've identified it is that big point Bitcoin continues to fall and they have a problem. They have a lot of it though, okay, but like it's a big problem. 00:20:06 Speaker 1: Okay, But like simply owning a lot of bitcoin that has gone down is not a problem. The way that it becomes a problem for a company or for anyone is when you have leverage. And it becomes a particular problem if you have borrowed money for two reasons. One is that you have to pay interest on the money you borre for sure, to make a strategy, borrowed so much money to buy bitcoin, and now it has to pay so much interest on that money. And it like it has a software bus that generates some. 00:20:35 Speaker 2: Money, which I love to think about it. 00:20:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, sure they don't. But like it doesn't naturally generate tons and tons and tons of cash flow too, for instance, pay interest on it's billions and billions of dollars of perferret stock. So that's one problem mm hmm. The other problem is that it did a lot of this borrowing. They say borring. It's all preferred stock, but it's like it's essentially borring. They call it a credit instrument. They think of it as borrowing. That a lot of this borrowing for this thing called a stretch, which is absolutely magical. It is like it has been widely reported that Michael Saylor, he's not the CEO, he's the eminence behind micro Strategy, like that, he's the chairman, He's the he's the guy. 00:21:13 Speaker 2: Was is he the founder? 00:21:15 Speaker 1: Sure, let's say he's the guy. Has been widely reported that he asked Chad Gpt to design the security for him, and Chad Gpt did a bang up job. It prefers thought that it's dividend rate resets every month and they reset it at their own discretion. But they said when they issued it eleven and a half months ago, issued this in July of twenty twenty five. They said when they issued it that our current intention, which is subject to change in our sole and absolute discression, is to adjust the regular dividend rate in such a manner as we believe will maintain stretched stocks trading price add or close to its stated amount of one hundred dollars pressure. So basically, the dividend floats every month to make a trade at par, which makes it basically a monthly data instrument that roll over every month, like automatically rolls over, but like if your borrowing costs go up, you pay more on the stretch, right, And that is like a bank deposit. They like use bank deposits to buy bitcoin, which is crazy on so many levels. A career Bloomberg reported in May that they were the majority of corporate and ETF bitcoin buying for the year. They were buying like all the bitcoin, and they're doing it funny with stretch, like issuing like short dated par liabilities to buy all the bitcoin you could sell them. Crazy thing to do, and then everything went bad. And now their market clearing interest rate on stretches fifteen percent on billions and billions of dollars, which means that like hundreds of millions of cash cost yeah, that they have to pay from somewhere. So this week they announced the series of measures to fix that, one of which was never mind where you're not going to keep stretch at par. They raise the dividend. It was at eleven point five percent. There is it to twelve percent, which is lot market clear and doesn't to trade a part's trading the eighties. Now they're no longer trying to keep it at par. They had said when they issued it less than a year ago, our intention is to keep it at par with no guarantees. And now they've already been like yeah, sorry, never munch. They've also like announced that they're going to sell some bitcoins they did to raise some cash to these dividends. Yeah, they're going to increase their cash reserves. They're trading it like around m I think on Friday they were below MNF, so like they were the value of the company is less than the value of the bitcoin. 00:23:31 Speaker 2: They did break the book at one point, broke the buck. It's just like it's a sad story. 00:23:36 Speaker 1: It's sad. You know, We've talked about it, and I've written about like a bunch of dats, like Digital Aid Treasure companies have also broken the buck. Yes, I have various problems and various solutions, including you know, selling crypto to buy back your stock or like activists have been trying to get them to do that. But that's all the minor leagues, like Strategy, the original dat the biggest that the one that was like we'll never all bitcoin traded above that asset value for much longer than the other ones and really really like, look like they might be able to weather the storm, but now it is not great. Not great. 00:24:13 Speaker 2: I mean the natural question is, how does this story end? If bitcoin rips from here, let's say it goes back to all time highs, does that solve a bunch of these problems. 00:24:24 Speaker 1: One, yeah, not necessarily all of them. Right. One thing that happened as bitcoin went down. Another thing that happened is like the whole dat story of like where's he going to have any Like they called it a creative dilution. Will always like issue stock to buy more bitcoin, which will be a creative because we're issuing stock at a premium. Like that story doesn't work anymore because you're no longer issuing stock at a premium. So even if bitcoin rips, people might be like, well, why bitcoin instead of buying strategy? But like, for the most part, bitcoin ripping doesn't hurt. Probably helps, but that's not necessarily exogenous. Like strategy is buying the called the bitcoin, right yeah, wh and bitcoin is down, it's strategy. It's not buying all the bitcoin anymore. Yeah, you have like conspiracy theories about how big a influence strategies buying is, but none. 00:25:09 Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, especially from a sentiment perspective as well. 00:25:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, Michael Steeler's that ever being like, yeah, I bitcoin like it's bad. 00:25:16 Speaker 2: I haven't checked his X in a while. I don't know if he's still posting those AI generated photos of like him as a bear, like a big b across his chest. 00:25:26 Speaker 1: There's so much like. 00:25:27 Speaker 2: Or no, he's slapping a bear, yeah with a bitcoin. 00:25:33 Speaker 1: Well. 00:25:33 Speaker 2: Another sad part of the story is that, I mean, they bought all the way up, like just every and now they're selling all the way down. 00:25:43 Speaker 1: That's life bad. It's not a life as a leverage investment. 00:25:46 Speaker 2: Oh you're supposed to do, man. 00:25:48 Speaker 1: I thought what you're supposed to do? 00:25:50 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:25:50 Speaker 1: The reason markets have cycles, and it's because everyone does that. 00:25:54 Speaker 2: So how does this potentially end? Assuming that bitcoin doesn't rip, we don't break one hundred thousand dollars in short order. 00:26:01 Speaker 1: So as you used to say, and I used to agree with them, that they had really good leverage because it's all long dated, most of its perpetual. You know, now most of their leverage is perpetual preferred, which means they never have to pay it back and they never have to pay interest. They can just be like we're skipping the dividend this month on stretch and they just do that. There's no contractual obligation to ever pay out any cash. So like one thing they could do is hybern it and just be like, we're gonna keep this bitcoin until it rips up again, and then when it does, we'll turn the dividends back on and sell more stock and it's going to be great. That's not a preferred outcome for anyone. 00:26:32 Speaker 2: No, I can't imagine, because like in. 00:26:35 Speaker 1: Theory, if you do that, you can really never sell preferred stock again. In theory, memories are short, and maybe if like some new part of the story comes in, maybe there's something there, But like, that's not what they're doing, right, I Mean, what they're doing is they're buying back stretch to try to you know, the answer to how does this end is it's like it's it's just the inverse of what they did on the way up. Right, It's like selling bitcoin, buying stock, paying down preferred just reversing all the trades that they did. And you know, there's a huge frictional cost in reversing all those trades, right, because you buy on the way up and you sell on the way down, there's a lot of money for sharel there's and then the question is how long does that continue until you know something better happens. 00:27:14 Speaker 2: I'm looking up right now how many employees Strategy actually has. It's over a thousand. We've talked about this before. I want to know what they do. I want to know what they all do. If you be yeah, but if you're if you're the average employee at Strategy, and I don't know what that looks like, how do you feel right now? Entertained, scared? I don't know. 00:27:35 Speaker 1: I don't know, but like this has been going on for a while in some form, right, Yeah, you have to have made your piece with like this is a weird bitcoin company now and like you have to like wear orange to work and stuff. 00:27:47 Speaker 2: It's like that is that for real? I don't think, but like a little bit, I feel like you could make that piece and enjoy it while the times were good and the line was going on. 00:27:58 Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, maybe you don't know now you're like, ah, like no one told me that the line could go down? Yeah, you just do you feel like it's amusing on the way up, it's amusing on the way down. Yeah, probably less so if you own a lot of stock options. 00:28:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, well it'd be fun to see how this all happens again six months from now. Who knows what strategy will look like. 00:28:21 Speaker 1: Yeah, Like for a while, they're really like shooting out weird capital markets instruments. 00:28:26 Speaker 2: I wonder if they're and you were living for it, I. 00:28:29 Speaker 1: Know, And like now, as I said, like the thing that's going to happen, as they're going to reverse that and buy back all these crazy instruments. But like maybe they'll find something else. Yeah, this is like I used to be a corporate acority derivative structure, so like this is near and dear to my heart. You know, there are people at banks are getting calls from like the people who cover MICROE Saler being like, could we find some kind of new preferred stock for them to issue now when they're treading below MNEV and their stock of going down? Like is there something that could we could work with here? 00:28:57 Speaker 2: Like just wrestle something together. 00:28:59 Speaker 1: So I hope that the corporate decretat to it as bankers are burning the midnight oil to think up weird transfer Michael Salator do, and I hope they find one. 00:29:08 Speaker 2: I hope they're having fun and think of one. 00:29:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, does not a lot makes sense here, but like you know, maybe I'll think of something. 00:29:14 Speaker 2: Maybe some of a noodle on over the long weekends. 00:29:17 Speaker 1: Yeah, America's real, real way to celebrate America's birthdays time. Yeah, find the new preferred stock for my consolidation. And that was the Money Stuff Podcast. 00:29:36 Speaker 2: I'm Matt Levine and I'm Katie Greifeld. 00:29:38 Speaker 1: You can find my work. I subscribe me to the Money Stuff newsletter on Blomberg dot. 00:29:42 Speaker 2: Com and you can find me on Bloomberg TV every day on the Clothes between three and five pm Eastern. 00:29:49 Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can send an email to money Pod at Bloomberg dot net. Ask us a question and we might answer it on the air. 00:29:56 Speaker 2: You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right now. Leave us a review. It helps more people find the show. 00:30:03 Speaker 1: The Money Stuff Podcast is produced by anamazerakas Moses Andam and Alexis HoTT Our. 00:30:09 Speaker 2: Theme music was composed by Blake Maples. 00:30:12 Speaker 1: Amy Keen is our executive producer. Thanks for listening to The Money Stuff Podcast. We'll be back next week with more stuff