Speaker 1: What kind of trains. I'm Joel Weber and I'm Eric Beltuns.
Speaker 1: Eric who were going to talk to today? Perth? Who? She?
Speaker 1: She's somebody that I've bumped into several times on the circuit,
Speaker 1: the E t F conference circuit and various events. Just
Speaker 1: really nice person. Very Uh it's a distinct name. I
Speaker 1: remember she's actually been on the podcast before. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: got a little clip of her from inside et F
Speaker 1: S and she was on E t F i Q
Speaker 1: there's the TV show I do about a year ago ish.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting about Perth is I've been bumping into
Speaker 1: her this whole time, and she's just had an index
Speaker 1: and a dream for a couple of years. And this
Speaker 1: is always one of our favorite things about T t F.
Speaker 1: And yes, there's a Silicon Valley element to it all,
Speaker 1: and Perth, to me embodies the Silicon Valley element and
Speaker 1: the indie world as I call it. And finally her
Speaker 1: E t F is coming to light. So it's called
Speaker 1: the Freedom one hundred Emerging Markets TTF. It's basically a
Speaker 1: freedom weighted and filtered version of the Emerging Markets. It's
Speaker 1: kind of an easy E s G type tilt on
Speaker 1: it so not only is that a lot to dig
Speaker 1: into what's going on there, um, but the story of
Speaker 1: how the e t F got to daylight is also fascinating.
Speaker 1: So I just thought there was a couple of angles
Speaker 1: here that we're really a lot to dig into this time.
Speaker 1: I'm trying Freedom Investing with Perth Toll High person. You're
Speaker 1: joining us from Houston. How's Houston today? Hello? It's a
Speaker 1: humid as usual? I bet it is so so, Perth,
Speaker 1: what are you bringing to market here? So? I am
Speaker 1: bringing to market and e t F called the Freedom
Speaker 1: one hundred Emerging Markets e t F, and I'm doing
Speaker 1: this in conjunction with Alf Architect, who is our issuing partners.
Speaker 1: He's been on the show West Grade. We know well,
Speaker 1: I know well, Um, he is was from the he
Speaker 1: was in the Marines and then he is now a
Speaker 1: quant and he does sort of more hardcore smart beta
Speaker 1: factory ETFs. That's just background on West and that's why
Speaker 1: potentially Freedom uh caught his attention because of the Marines background. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So the Freedom one hundred Emerging Markets et F would
Speaker 1: be based on the Freedom one hundred Emerging Markets Index.
Speaker 1: And I'm just gonna stick with talking about the index,
Speaker 1: because that's my part of it. UM and the index
Speaker 1: is basically a freedom weighted emerging markets approach. So UM.
Speaker 1: What I noticed with the emerging market indexes as an
Speaker 1: investor is that they are, you know, the market cap
Speaker 1: weighted ones, and most of them are market cap weighted
Speaker 1: on the country level. They have a very high allocation
Speaker 1: to China. So they have about thirty five allocation to China.
Speaker 1: If you look at all of them UM M, s
Speaker 1: c I, foot see SMP, they all have about thirty
Speaker 1: to thirty percent in China. UM Footsie already has added
Speaker 1: a shares and ms C I is adding a shares now,
Speaker 1: so that will only increase. And that's a huge allocation
Speaker 1: UM to one concentrated country that is somewhat high risk
Speaker 1: as far as geopolitics go. UM And the reason why
Speaker 1: I personally didn't want kind of a China fund in
Speaker 1: disguise in my investments in my emerging markets UM index
Speaker 1: funds is I am actually from China. I grew up
Speaker 1: half in China and half in the US. I was
Speaker 1: born in Beijing, and I, you know, being somewhat familiar
Speaker 1: with the situation over there after living and working there
Speaker 1: after college. UM I kind of didn't want my my
Speaker 1: investment dollars to be allocated that way, So that's why
Speaker 1: I created the freedom weighting methodology, which basically gives freer
Speaker 1: countries a higher weight in the index, less free countries
Speaker 1: a lower weight, and the worst offenders as far as
Speaker 1: human rights and economic freedoms are eliminated from the index.
Speaker 1: So who gets the biggest waiting? Taiwan actually has the
Speaker 1: biggest waiting currently, so it's Hiwan, South Korea, Chile, and
Speaker 1: Poland with the biggest waitings. You know, if you look
Speaker 1: at v w OH, that's the big emerging markets ETF.
Speaker 1: China is a thirty waiting and that's only going to
Speaker 1: go up as a shares get more included. So China,
Speaker 1: could your your e t F is going to differ
Speaker 1: pretty drastically from the more popular emerging markets. Yes, so
Speaker 1: we have actually zero China allocation because of their freedom
Speaker 1: scores which we get from a third party. Um, they
Speaker 1: are eliminated from the They're excluded completely. Um. But we
Speaker 1: do have high allocations in Taiwan and South Korea, which
Speaker 1: are very free emerging markets. So it's kind of a
Speaker 1: happy accident that we have low tracking yourr um with
Speaker 1: high active share because those those markets are highly correlated.
Speaker 1: So what was that? What was a memory from your
Speaker 1: time in China? If you can share one that informed
Speaker 1: what's become your investing thesis here. Yeah, so there's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I saw in China. Um,
Speaker 1: both as a child when I was growing up there
Speaker 1: and also when I went back after college. UM. I
Speaker 1: do remember things from from you know, childhood, like before
Speaker 1: I was nine, where somebody would say something politically sensitive
Speaker 1: and then somebody else, like an adult, and then an
Speaker 1: adult would say, oh, you know, don't say that the
Speaker 1: next near the kids, like they'll hear you, or they'll
Speaker 1: repeat it. Or there was one time my my grandfather
Speaker 1: in his library had all these books and I I
Speaker 1: found a book that had a story about two people
Speaker 1: in a garden. Um, I guess that's the beginning of it.
Speaker 1: So now I realized it was probably a Bible. My
Speaker 1: grandfather was his life was saved by a Christian missionary
Speaker 1: doctor in the in the World War two, UM, so
Speaker 1: he probably did have a Bible. UM. And then I
Speaker 1: remember my grandmother getting really mad at him that I
Speaker 1: had found that, and I never saw it again. UM,
Speaker 1: so things like that. But also, and I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever told those two before, but when I went
Speaker 1: back to Hong Kong after college, that's when I realized, Wow,
Speaker 1: my life would have been completely different had I never
Speaker 1: gone to the States. UM. And then, you know, for example,
Speaker 1: I'm a child of the I'm a product of the
Speaker 1: one child policy. UM. And I met a friend there, Maggie,
Speaker 1: who was in Shanghai at the time. We traveled to
Speaker 1: Shanghai and Beijing often from Hong Kong, and she was basically,
Speaker 1: you know, very similar to me. She was the exact
Speaker 1: same age um, and we had a lot of common
Speaker 1: interests and basically just like any other of my friends
Speaker 1: who would be my age um in the US. But
Speaker 1: the only difference was she didn't exist on paper in China.
Speaker 1: She doesn't have a birth certificate or state benefits or
Speaker 1: you know, hospital records or school records because she was
Speaker 1: UM a girl. And they this family had two children,
Speaker 1: and they they registered the boy for school for existence.
Speaker 1: So you know, yeah, so as a product of the
Speaker 1: one child policy, I saw when I went back there,
Speaker 1: UM very clearly at you know, freedom matters, UM. Looking
Speaker 1: at just the Hong Kong market at the time versus
Speaker 1: mainland market, there was a difference. And there's also obviously
Speaker 1: a difference between US markets and Chinese markets and so
Speaker 1: um and and policies matters, so policies and governance. So
Speaker 1: for example, this one child policy which is now the
Speaker 1: too child policy, you know, it changed the culture of
Speaker 1: my generation, not to mention all the societal and economic
Speaker 1: effects is going to have. You know, now it's too
Speaker 1: child policy, but no one's having two children because the
Speaker 1: culture has changed. And what was the spark that made
Speaker 1: you realize that capital markets could be a change agent here? Um?
Speaker 1: I think it's when I was working as a financial
Speaker 1: advisor of Fidelity and I saw that a lot of
Speaker 1: my clients wanted to invest in China and wanted to
Speaker 1: invest in emerging markets. But we as Americans sometimes project
Speaker 1: our own optimism onto these other places. We can't imagine
Speaker 1: the stuff that goes on um as far as human
Speaker 1: rights abuses and things like that, So you know, to us,
Speaker 1: they don't exist because we can't even fathom it. And
Speaker 1: then as far as my own personal investments, not wanting
Speaker 1: my investment dollars to be allocated to some of these regimes,
Speaker 1: that are more authoritarian and had you know, more human
Speaker 1: rights abuses. UM. I think that's that was the catalyst,
Speaker 1: Like a combination of working in finance, seeing clients want
Speaker 1: to invest in this without knowing what they're actually investing in,
Speaker 1: and also my personal UM, my personal investing preferences and
Speaker 1: perth when you back tested this, how did it perform?
Speaker 1: So it does track very well too. We use ms
Speaker 1: c I UM as our backtesting benchmark, and it does.
Speaker 1: It does perform very well, like very It tracks the
Speaker 1: ms c I pretty closely. It does have a slight
Speaker 1: alpha ad over the five year UM and we do
Speaker 1: expect to see some alpha over time. Though we are
Speaker 1: creating this as as more of a differentiated emerging markets
Speaker 1: exposure that is freedom weighted, so it's it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: we're promising that every year it's gonna you know, beat
Speaker 1: the other UM in the market cap weighted indexes. But
Speaker 1: freer countries are expected to perform you know, more sustainably
Speaker 1: over time, and they do from what what we found
Speaker 1: in our back tests. They recover faster, and you know, intuitively,
Speaker 1: you know that they use their human and economic capital
Speaker 1: or their capital and labor more efficiently so they have
Speaker 1: less capital flight and less capital destruction. And you see that,
Speaker 1: you know, and I use China as a kind of
Speaker 1: a poster child example for all of this because it
Speaker 1: does have such a high weight in the other indexes.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you kind of see that in China, like
Speaker 1: a lot of money tries to come out, people try
Speaker 1: to come out, So you lose a lot of capital
Speaker 1: and labor um to freer countries if you're more of
Speaker 1: an unfree country. And so we do expect that over time,
Speaker 1: especially in emerging markets where there's such a huge discrepancy
Speaker 1: between freedom levels, We believe that there is opportunity there
Speaker 1: for alpha. Can you just break down for us why
Speaker 1: China was eliminated? Like what, what where? Did you flag
Speaker 1: them that? And could they improve that? Yeah, so China
Speaker 1: has made a lot of improvements over the last thirty
Speaker 1: years as far as their economic freedoms, opening up a
Speaker 1: little bit more um, and that has created you know,
Speaker 1: a huge drastic effect on their on their market and
Speaker 1: living living standards and so forth. But investors saw very
Speaker 1: little of that. A lot of that, you know, remained
Speaker 1: in state owned enterprises and and honestly disappeared from investment returns.
Speaker 1: So and you see that happen a lot in the
Speaker 1: more un free markets, is that investors don't take part
Speaker 1: in the in the growth quite as much UM. But
Speaker 1: as far as why they're not in this index currently, yeah,
Speaker 1: their economic freedoms are still lower than UM relative than
Speaker 1: some of their peers, but it's really their human freedom
Speaker 1: UM scores that that caused them to be to be
Speaker 1: excluded from the index. So we look at both human
Speaker 1: and economic freedoms and we use we use the Fraser Institute,
Speaker 1: Cato Institute, and Friedrich Naman Foundation for Freedoms UM data
Speaker 1: set on human and economic freedom. So it's a combined
Speaker 1: score of seventy nine variables including what I categorized into
Speaker 1: the rights to life, the rights to liberty, and the
Speaker 1: rights to property. So is their rights to life and
Speaker 1: liberty or civil and political freedoms that caused China to
Speaker 1: not currently be in the index. So you've got this
Speaker 1: great idea of Perth and now it is coming to market.
Speaker 1: You're effectively like a gladiator who's just stepped into the ring. Right,
Speaker 1: So what does success look like? And by the way,
Speaker 1: let me just set up the ring here. Okay, we
Speaker 1: try to call the terrorism I cannot understate or overstate
Speaker 1: rather how brutal the E T F industry is, especially
Speaker 1: for an indie. This is like, this is like um
Speaker 1: pers walking in as a human amongst all these gigantic
Speaker 1: monsters and beasts, Vanguard and black Rock, and they will
Speaker 1: squash you so quickly, they'll copy your idea, they'll undercut
Speaker 1: you on fees. But shot you do that, You you
Speaker 1: are David to the goliath. What's your plan of action? Thanks? Eric,
Speaker 1: That's that's great. So it doesn't feel exactly like that actually,
Speaker 1: So um I do know that, you know, we are
Speaker 1: coming up against a lot of industry forces that are
Speaker 1: not favorable to indie issuers and two new types of
Speaker 1: approaches and and yeah, we we don't have the pricing
Speaker 1: power that some of these in the Big three have.
Speaker 1: Um I think what we do have, though, is is
Speaker 1: enough of a differentiation and idea. So it's different enough
Speaker 1: concept that you know we are going to have first
Speaker 1: to market. We are the only one doing it. Um
Speaker 1: I talked with some some very well known investors and
Speaker 1: people that that you know, my partners are surprised would
Speaker 1: be interested in in taking part in our kind of adventure. Here,
Speaker 1: and what I think those investors see in this is
Speaker 1: one they resonate with the freedom idea. So I'm hoping
Speaker 1: that investors to will resonate with that um and that
Speaker 1: will attract people who care about freedom and want to
Speaker 1: invest in a way that aligns with those values. But
Speaker 1: also I think it's just it's different enough that you
Speaker 1: really can't get it anywhere else currently. I just did
Speaker 1: a quick search on f search on the terminal for
Speaker 1: e M that has less than one percent China. These
Speaker 1: are e M ETFs. There's a handful, but a lot
Speaker 1: of them I'm going to eliminate because their leverage or
Speaker 1: just have something we're going on. But like x C
Speaker 1: e M is one Columbia e M core x China,
Speaker 1: Like that whole thing is like we're just gonna go
Speaker 1: e M and we're just gonna kill China yours again,
Speaker 1: and I think more thoughtful. But think obviously Columbia wouldn't
Speaker 1: have done this if they didn't think there was some
Speaker 1: market for somebody who wanted something like this. So Perth
Speaker 1: in my view, when these Indians come out with these products,
Speaker 1: I think you've got two angles here. You can sell
Speaker 1: the story, but the story probably is going to be
Speaker 1: really much more sellable, if you will, when China has
Speaker 1: a rough couple of years and your E T F
Speaker 1: outperformance E M and VW O in spades, and then
Speaker 1: I think the story is going to really take hold.
Speaker 1: I have seen this happen before and before with robotics, cybersecurity.
Speaker 1: I think that's usually the key for these niche players.
Speaker 1: So you should probably root for China to have a
Speaker 1: rough go of it right now. I do want to
Speaker 1: be clear that I'm not rooting for China to fail.
Speaker 1: This is not an ex China fund so this is
Speaker 1: you know, I hope China can can be in the index,
Speaker 1: you know, someday, and I don't see that happening soon,
Speaker 1: but I hope that happens. Um. You know. But it's
Speaker 1: not just China that we we exclude. We also exclude Russia, Egypt,
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia just about to be added to MSCIS index. Um.
Speaker 1: We don't have any any allocation too. And and it's
Speaker 1: a similar situation to China where I don't expect that
Speaker 1: to change anytime soon. Um. And and again we are
Speaker 1: not deciding, you know, what countries go in there. I
Speaker 1: couldn't game the system if I tried. We're using quantitative
Speaker 1: freedom metrics from a third party UM for complete objectivity
Speaker 1: so UM. So yeah, so we we don't have any
Speaker 1: China and that is most notable because the other indexes
Speaker 1: have so much China UM, and I think that does
Speaker 1: give us a lot of differentiation and and just gives
Speaker 1: investors a different, different exposure UM that would lower their
Speaker 1: risk you know, overall, if they were to incorporate both
Speaker 1: the you know, commonly used benchmarks and UM something like this.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's not just just China that we're picking
Speaker 1: on UM and and we're using basically third party objective
Speaker 1: quantitative metrics. So I have a big question for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what have you learned about the world that you didn't
Speaker 1: know before you you start this process? UM. So Actually,
Speaker 1: I am very thankful to be in the e T
Speaker 1: F equal space because it's been a lot more supportive
Speaker 1: than you would imagine some you know, Wall Street industry
Speaker 1: to be so UM and I think you find that
Speaker 1: people agree with that across the board. That is more inclusive,
Speaker 1: it's you know, more diverse UM and just open to
Speaker 1: new ideas because you know, for a long time e
Speaker 1: t s have been the underdog. So you know, we
Speaker 1: tend to you know, stick together, and even your competitors
Speaker 1: become your friends. So that is UM something that I
Speaker 1: really enjoy about the E t F world, you know,
Speaker 1: UM as a good example, since we're on this show
Speaker 1: with Eric, when I first started doing this, and I'm
Speaker 1: not just saying this because were on this show with
Speaker 1: Eric by the way, UM, if it's complimentary towards me,
Speaker 1: Joel's about to cringe. You know, I've looked up to
Speaker 1: him for a long time since we since basically the
Speaker 1: he did the you know, movie ratings article. I believe
Speaker 1: it was like a couple of three years ago, maybe UM,
Speaker 1: right when I first started this. UM, him and just
Speaker 1: the industry giants you know that that we work with now,
Speaker 1: like Reggie Brown, who when I when I've worked with
Speaker 1: Fidelity before this for you know, many years as an
Speaker 1: investment advisor and UM. I left Idelity in two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen UM to spend time to basically become a stay
Speaker 1: at home mom to a young child. And the month
Speaker 1: that I left Delity was April of two four UM
Speaker 1: and the cover story on Bloomberg Markets that month was
Speaker 1: Mr E t F. And it just had this gigantic
Speaker 1: headshot of Reggie Brown on the cover. Blom wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so that was the month I left, and I
Speaker 1: just remember that article. UM and then when I started
Speaker 1: doing this UM officially and went to inside ETFs for
Speaker 1: the first time, I you know, made it a point
Speaker 1: to meet Reggie just because to me at the time,
Speaker 1: because of that magazine article, because of that cover, he
Speaker 1: was Mr e t F. So now he is the
Speaker 1: lead market maker on our fund. So I mean, stuff
Speaker 1: like this that happened, you know, over this time. I
Speaker 1: just I couldn't have I couldn't have imagined and uh
Speaker 1: a lot of this I couldn't have orchestrated if I tried.
Speaker 1: I just think that people this idea is something that
Speaker 1: I feel like it's bigger than me, and I just
Speaker 1: I get to do it, but really it's it's bigger
Speaker 1: than me. And the way that I met a lot
Speaker 1: of my investors, like Rob or not, you know, was
Speaker 1: the same way when you talk to investors, what are
Speaker 1: you hearing so far? And how do you get them
Speaker 1: to actually put assets into your fund? Yeah. So something
Speaker 1: that I learned as a financial advisor, it's it's easier
Speaker 1: to sell stuff to people that they already want. So
Speaker 1: instead of convincing people that freedom is important in the
Speaker 1: very beginning when I have when I have to do
Speaker 1: things that are ailable, I'm talking to people who already
Speaker 1: believe in freedom. So my very first investor, committed investor
Speaker 1: in the fund was Rob or Not, and Rob is
Speaker 1: someone that I you know, looked up to as well
Speaker 1: for a long time. Um. In fact, back in the day,
Speaker 1: like way before this was an official thing, I was
Speaker 1: interested in indexing and non cap weighted indexing. He his firm,
Speaker 1: Research Affiliates, was in Pasadena on Lake south Lake Avenue,
Speaker 1: and I worked at the Fidelity on South Lake Avenue,
Speaker 1: so he was a few doors down and I would
Speaker 1: sometimes like walk over there and just stalk the Research
Speaker 1: Affiliates building because I thought they were so cool. So
Speaker 1: so so after I left Fidelity and eventually started this,
Speaker 1: when my kid, you know, started started going to school
Speaker 1: full time, I called Research Affiliates and I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: do you guys want to partner on this? And they
Speaker 1: were just like, please go away. Uh So they didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, want to talk at all. I couldn't. There
Speaker 1: was no chance of getting through to Rob Um. And
Speaker 1: then I went to that inside ETS the first year,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, where I met Reggie Brown, but also um,
Speaker 1: I met this They had an app that year at
Speaker 1: the conference. It was like an in intra conference Twitter
Speaker 1: app and people could just tweet each other just within
Speaker 1: the conference. And then somebody from a China talk tweeted,
Speaker 1: I can't believe this guy is talking about China, but
Speaker 1: he's not mentioning the one child policy and all its
Speaker 1: implications on the economy and society. And I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, like somebody else knows and cares about
Speaker 1: the one child policy. And I look him up and
Speaker 1: he's a portfolio manager in Tennessee, and so, um, we
Speaker 1: end up meeting and his name is Ralph Lehman. And
Speaker 1: I believe Eric you know him as well. He's coming
Speaker 1: out with a book soon about ETS. So he invited
Speaker 1: me to go speak. He was he's the president of
Speaker 1: a cf A society in Tennessee. It's a tiny society,
Speaker 1: it's like twenty people. Um, he invited me to go
Speaker 1: speak there. I was like, sure, i'll go. I'll go
Speaker 1: speak in in Tennessee. So he had me to speak
Speaker 1: at the Chattanooga Society and the Knoxville Society and they
Speaker 1: were both about twenty people each event. It was super
Speaker 1: fun um And then after that they referred me to
Speaker 1: the Tampa Society for their annual Forecast Dinner. So, as
Speaker 1: you know, the Forecast Dinner is kind of a bigger
Speaker 1: event with c if A societies, and this society at
Speaker 1: this event had about three hundred people. And this was
Speaker 1: my first year doing this and barely started, had no
Speaker 1: idea what I was doing. And I was on this
Speaker 1: panel with black Rock Morning Star and this guy named
Speaker 1: David ko Talk and it went well. And after the panel,
Speaker 1: David ko Talk invited me to a fishing camp called
Speaker 1: Camp Coo Talk And at first I was like, who
Speaker 1: does this. It's literally like fifty economists and finance people
Speaker 1: that go fishing in the woods for three or four
Speaker 1: days with at the time no WiFi. So you know,
Speaker 1: my friends were like, you should go, you know, you
Speaker 1: can meet all these cool people. So so the beginning
Speaker 1: of it does like stuck stuck in the woods with
Speaker 1: with a bunch of scientists and we're going to go fishing.
Speaker 1: They actually call it the Shadow Know Fed because there's
Speaker 1: people people there that are on the shortlist for the FED.
Speaker 1: So I've not I know people who go it's seems
Speaker 1: like it's a wholesome time. It's actually it was super fun.
Speaker 1: But but you have to take a seaplane to get
Speaker 1: from the Bangor airport into this very remote campsite, which
Speaker 1: is like almost in Canada. Or you can drive, so
Speaker 1: I was initially planning on driving, but I was, um,
Speaker 1: just kind of tired from my meetings. When I was
Speaker 1: flying there from New York, and I called the seaplane
Speaker 1: company and said, Hey, is it too late to get
Speaker 1: a seaplane for today? And they were like, no, you
Speaker 1: can share with Rob or Not. I was like what
Speaker 1: they were like, yeah, you just intercept him at the airport.
Speaker 1: Here's his flight number and so forth. And so I
Speaker 1: literally intercept Rob or Not at the Bangor airport and say, hey,
Speaker 1: did they tell you that we were gonna be writing together?
Speaker 1: And he's like yeah, And so we basically met that way. Um.
Speaker 1: We ended up fishing together for several days, and after camp,
Speaker 1: he got on a call with me at my quest
Speaker 1: with a potential client. The potential client didn't end up
Speaker 1: committing assets to the fund, but after the call, Rob
Speaker 1: told me that he would basically became my first investor
Speaker 1: that he told me he would put in some massets
Speaker 1: to get the fund started. And then over time that
Speaker 1: just kind of kind of grew. Um. And then once
Speaker 1: once uh West and I were talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: launching an ATF on my own, that's when I started,
Speaker 1: you know, raising money for not only the fund but
Speaker 1: also for the company. And Rob is now the biggest
Speaker 1: investor in my company as well. You know, this story
Speaker 1: speaks to the indie world. Um. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: a vanguard and you put this thing out for three
Speaker 1: basis points. I mean, like I said, it's um I
Speaker 1: referenced field of dreams. We call it lower it and
Speaker 1: they will come, Um the fee of dreams. That's our theme,
Speaker 1: our ongoing theme. That they don't have to do all this,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just that it's just that they just
Speaker 1: come and they buy it. When you're indie and you
Speaker 1: have a niche product, people don't know, you gotta you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to hit the streets. You've had to say
Speaker 1: yes to things, take seaplanes, chat people up relationships, relationships.
Speaker 1: There's some companies that you see that where they work
Speaker 1: this really well that are indie. That and that's why
Speaker 1: there's a lot more. I don't know. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of stories in that world versus say, the big gigantic
Speaker 1: beasts that just sort of put it out there for
Speaker 1: almost no cost and get all the ass. I mean,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to invite to this fishing
Speaker 1: trip for the record. You've got to You've got a ticker. Yep,
Speaker 1: how did you settle on it? Yeah? So, so the
Speaker 1: ticker for the index and the fund are the same.
Speaker 1: So I'm talking about the index here when I when
Speaker 1: I say this, so tickers F R, D, M and
Speaker 1: um My, I have a friend who was a mom,
Speaker 1: friend who came up with this ticker while at the
Speaker 1: grocery store. So we I was at um. It was
Speaker 1: a summertime when I first started the index, and we
Speaker 1: had our kids in the same summer activity and we
Speaker 1: were picking up and I was like, I can't think
Speaker 1: of a ticker. She's the one that did my graphic
Speaker 1: to signed for my you know, business cards and things
Speaker 1: like that, so you know, she she knew about what
Speaker 1: I was doing as far as the business, and so
Speaker 1: I mentioned that, you know, when we were picking up
Speaker 1: our kids. Later on in the day, she texts me
Speaker 1: from Kroger which is a grocery store here, and she's like, hey,
Speaker 1: how about f R d M. And I'm like, that's
Speaker 1: kind of perfect and so so literally, you know, my
Speaker 1: my mom friend came up with this ticker. Her name
Speaker 1: is Monica. That's awesome. No, it's good. It gets the
Speaker 1: point across. I mean free would be good too, but
Speaker 1: that would I mean, that could be taken, but that's
Speaker 1: also indicative of maybe like free costs was taken at
Speaker 1: the time and then it became free. Uh yeah, but
Speaker 1: but then we thought of the cost issue, so yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah her. Congratulations on your e t F. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us on truly, thank you so much. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Trillions until next time. You can find us
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple podcast, Spotify,
Speaker 1: and whatever else you'd like to listen. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. We're on Twitter, I'm at Joel Webber Show,
Speaker 1: He's at Eric Faltriness, and you can follow Perth at
Speaker 1: perth Underscore, Toll t O l l E, her tickers
Speaker 1: f R d M, and her websites Life and Liberty
Speaker 1: Indexes dot com. Trillions is produced by Magnus Hendrickson Francesco
Speaker 1: Levy is the head of Bloomberg podcast by