Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Trillions presents the E t F Story.
Speaker 1: I'm Joel Webber and I'm the editor of Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we're going to focus on a critical
Speaker 1: part of the e t S rise, which Eric baltun
Speaker 1: Iss likens to something out of early Silicon Valley. It
Speaker 1: almost seems like webs and spy at this time. We're
Speaker 1: like the PC or the mouse went back when Xerox
Speaker 1: had it, where some people just recognize its potential, even
Speaker 1: of the people who actually own it at the time
Speaker 1: don't see it. This is Dave Noddi. He's the managing
Speaker 1: director of e t F dot Com. The comparison to
Speaker 1: what happened with the pala Alto Research Center, the Park
Speaker 1: Labs having the the gooey for what became the mac
Speaker 1: uh and that sort of that idea, whether it's stolen
Speaker 1: or borrowed or whatever, it's very apt for the e
Speaker 1: t F for number of reasons. It's it's apt because
Speaker 1: you can argue about the intellectual property and is it
Speaker 1: theft or is it you know, people just recognizing greatness
Speaker 1: and building on it. But it's also relevant because it
Speaker 1: was that big a phase shift in how people thought
Speaker 1: about investing. Naught has been around E t F pretty
Speaker 1: much since the beginning, and he says that, yes, the
Speaker 1: Market Break Report is largely credited as the genesis of
Speaker 1: the E t F, as that's where Nate Most and
Speaker 1: Steve Bloom got their idea for spot success has a
Speaker 1: thousand fathers. So everybody tries to claim on a given
Speaker 1: day that they were the father of the E t F.
Speaker 1: It's really whatever unnamed person probably slid that into the report.
Speaker 1: But I will say this that once that idea was
Speaker 1: planted in that you know, SEC report, the idea was
Speaker 1: in the air. Bob Tole is president of his own
Speaker 1: E t F consulting company, but was with Morgan Stanley
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, and he says nothing is right
Speaker 1: about there being something in the air after the seven
Speaker 1: Market Break Report was published. He says people were trying
Speaker 1: to come up with something like a collective investment, but
Speaker 1: that treated like a stock. Meanwhile, Leland O'Brien and Ruberstein
Speaker 1: are really trying to redeem themselves in the financial community,
Speaker 1: and they start working on a product called super shares
Speaker 1: up in Canada, the Canadian Stock Exchanges, working on a
Speaker 1: thing called tips. All of these became the precursors to
Speaker 1: both securities. Remember John O'Brien from episode one, who, along
Speaker 1: with a team at Leland O'Brien Rubinstein, created portfolio insurance,
Speaker 1: but most people in Wall Street didn't understand what that was.
Speaker 1: Some big asset managers did, some big focal dealers did,
Speaker 1: and they realized when the market went down, portfolio insurance
Speaker 1: required selling stock and buying bonds. As Toll says, O'Brien
Speaker 1: and his firm were working to redeem themselves because their
Speaker 1: portfolio insurance was largely credited to stock market crash. O'Brien
Speaker 1: says that what they were working on was the first TTF. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think we were the creator of the t F
Speaker 1: all it wasn't called any TF back then. He says.
Speaker 1: They were communicating with folks at the am X at
Speaker 1: the time, and we have a handshake agreement they would
Speaker 1: not copy our products and they would benefit from the
Speaker 1: trading of it. O'Brien says the AMEX didn't hold up
Speaker 1: their end of the deal, so they undercut us, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe not so intentionally, but maybe intentionally, and came out
Speaker 1: with the spies exactly one month and one day after
Speaker 1: the super Trust began trading on November five, and when
Speaker 1: I called him up, they said, well, the handshake agreement
Speaker 1: is good for a month. Meanwhile, up in Canada, a
Speaker 1: spy is waiting for SEC approval. A team from the
Speaker 1: Toronto Stock Exchange managed to get their version of a
Speaker 1: market basket product approved within a year. It was called
Speaker 1: the Toronto Index Participation shares or tips and attract the
Speaker 1: Toronto Stock Exchange Index. And this was an e t
Speaker 1: F launched. Now, if you go around to conferences like
Speaker 1: I do, there's a general view amongst the analysts that
Speaker 1: Canada came out with the first TTF. However, when I
Speaker 1: talked with people from that time, even from Canada, and
Speaker 1: they admitted that what happened was the Toronto Stock Exchange
Speaker 1: had come down and met with AMEX and just I
Speaker 1: guess they just you know, we're friends, buddies. They took
Speaker 1: the spy idea and basically resketched it up there. And
Speaker 1: the Canadian regulatory body is much more liberal than the US.
Speaker 1: We've seen that time and time again. Since then, they
Speaker 1: were in and out of approval process within a year.
Speaker 1: Dave Nodding says he's not proving to all those details
Speaker 1: about how TIPS came about, but one thing was for sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the am X was driving it. And whether or not,
Speaker 1: you know, Nate showed the idea to somebody over a
Speaker 1: T s X or Toronto at that time, um, and
Speaker 1: they stole the idea, launched it there. To some extent.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of I don't know who really cares,
Speaker 1: I mean exposed in retrospect. You can make a good,
Speaker 1: you know, thriller movie out of it. Somebody running the
Speaker 1: briefcase across the tracks kind of thing. We spoke with
Speaker 1: Peter Haynes, who began his career on the Toronto Stock
Speaker 1: Exchange as an intern. I came back work full time
Speaker 1: in eighty nine and Tips from launched and nineties saw
Speaker 1: as part of the launch team for TIPS, so I
Speaker 1: do have that on my resume. TIPS Toronto Index Participation
Speaker 1: Units is what they were called. The symbol was t
Speaker 1: I P listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange on March nine,
Speaker 1: and probably the most interesting factoid of all is that
Speaker 1: there was zero feet. Haynes says there was no management
Speaker 1: expense ratio or mirror at the time, and that the
Speaker 1: exchange ran as a way to give retail investors access
Speaker 1: to the market with just one trading vehicle. The hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty million dollars that were seated at the original
Speaker 1: launch of TIPS all one million institutional investors, so that
Speaker 1: was a bit of a surprise in the shock. Haynes
Speaker 1: says that yes, there were conversations with Nate Most and
Speaker 1: Stephen Bloom at the time, but that the most significant
Speaker 1: influence on their product was not the AMMYX the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: Exchange as they were attempting to launch something called SIPs
Speaker 1: cash Index Participation securities and they struggled to get that
Speaker 1: product through the sec And this was in the late
Speaker 1: eighties early nineties that they were trying this, and our
Speaker 1: management at the time had spent some time with the
Speaker 1: Philly guys and said, hey, let's try this in Canada.
Speaker 1: And where we were lucky and I think forward thinking
Speaker 1: in terms of our regulators was the time from the
Speaker 1: time the obviously was approached to the time was approved
Speaker 1: was I believe less than six months, So it was
Speaker 1: late at the end of the day. A lucky thing
Speaker 1: that the Toronto Exchange happened to be the first market
Speaker 1: in the world to launch an e t F but
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.
Speaker 1: Reggie Brown of Cantor Fitzgerald, whose nickname Mr ETF, was
Speaker 1: working at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange when the PHILIX developed
Speaker 1: Certificate Index Participation Shares or SIPs, and I remember uniquely
Speaker 1: that they were born from the seven Crash and some
Speaker 1: gurus at the Philipstock Exchange came with an idea based
Speaker 1: on a report, and I do remember they traded briefly
Speaker 1: on the phile X, and in my role on the industry,
Speaker 1: I always recall, Hey, by the way, the Philix had SIPs,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately it was overlooked, not well recognized, and they
Speaker 1: were designed based on the report that came out from
Speaker 1: the government said there needed to be a vehicle in
Speaker 1: order to help offset sell in bounce at orders in
Speaker 1: the marketplace, and the phil X was ahead of their time,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately they went away. Brown says there was a
Speaker 1: legal issue with McGrath hill, who owned a license name
Speaker 1: of SP five under a standard and Poor's and McGraw
Speaker 1: hill sued and successfully got in a junction around trademark
Speaker 1: issues around SIPs and it stopped trading because of that.
Speaker 1: So the reality is these other products did come to
Speaker 1: market before Spy. Here's Eric again. So to sum this up,
Speaker 1: even though you may hear that Canada came out with
Speaker 1: the first TTF, that is true, but the idea was
Speaker 1: in the US. I think that's important. So it's a
Speaker 1: good footnote to the story. In the end, the fact
Speaker 1: that Spy is the biggest et F on the planet
Speaker 1: almost by twofold says all you need to know. And
Speaker 1: the Tips product has been bought and merged and doesn't
Speaker 1: even have a ticker anymore, and that kind of also
Speaker 1: matters to the story. So the fact that Spy outlasted them,
Speaker 1: outlived them, outgrew them, and is the most trade to
Speaker 1: security four times over on the planet as to its
Speaker 1: so legacy. But some have tried to take away from
Speaker 1: it by saying, well, actually it wasn't first, and so
Speaker 1: I would say, well, it depends on how you define it.
Speaker 1: And I don't blame Toronod for doing it. It It was
Speaker 1: a heads up play. But the fact that just because
Speaker 1: they had to wait four years, you can't really blame
Speaker 1: them for that. They would have been out in one
Speaker 1: if they could. They have been at nine if they
Speaker 1: could have. But why didn't these products that were birth
Speaker 1: from similar circumstances at the exact same time gained the
Speaker 1: same success well, as Bob Tole says, there are a
Speaker 1: few reasons. Well, first of all, you had the most
Speaker 1: renowned index in the United States, next to the dal
Speaker 1: Jones Industrial thirty right being the benchmark for it. It
Speaker 1: was a full replication, so there was no question on
Speaker 1: the back of the SEC that somebody was managing this asset.
Speaker 1: And you had the publications that they required daily of
Speaker 1: information to provide a level of transparency that was nowhere
Speaker 1: available in the mutual fund industry, information including the composition
Speaker 1: the assets, the holdings, and what the waitings were. Also,
Speaker 1: these similar products hadn't undergone the same level of scrutiny
Speaker 1: with the U. S. Government as Spy had because Spy,
Speaker 1: remember was filed under the forty Act. A move toll
Speaker 1: Fields was worth the weight. Oh absolutely, honestly, I do.
Speaker 1: You could have had a structured note, but then you
Speaker 1: realize you're taking balance sheet risk. At that time, especially
Speaker 1: after the eight seven crash, nobody wanted balance sheet risk. Okay,
Speaker 1: then you say, okay, I'm gonna buy a mutual fund. Well,
Speaker 1: that was what everybody thought was froll to begin with.
Speaker 1: So now you have to have a new structure, so
Speaker 1: you have your choices. Right, you can have a closed
Speaker 1: end fund which has premiument discounts. Right, you could have
Speaker 1: a traditional mutual fund, or you could have this new
Speaker 1: animal called at this time an index share. And the
Speaker 1: index share was really I mean, it was an epiphany.
Speaker 1: Dave Not says, a lot of Spy success can be
Speaker 1: attributed to its no frill structure. If you actually look
Speaker 1: at the structure of Spy, it was phenomenally simple. A
Speaker 1: lot of the index participation, securities models and things really
Speaker 1: were almost like versions of structured notes, right. They were complex,
Speaker 1: they had counterparties that people weren't used to dealing with.
Speaker 1: And I think that the genius of the Spy model
Speaker 1: and then later the sort of more traditional forti act
Speaker 1: versions that came after it, where they took really simple
Speaker 1: existing structures and they used those to create what they
Speaker 1: needed to create. Um, you know, they used the U
Speaker 1: I T structure to you know, embed the index into
Speaker 1: the product. That I think was a really critical part
Speaker 1: of getting that approved. But you know, they used that
Speaker 1: structure that existed already that lawyers were comfortable with. That
Speaker 1: everybody was comfortable with, and they said, oh great, that's
Speaker 1: our investment vehicle. And then they took sort of a
Speaker 1: traditional prime brokerage model of moving large baskets of securities
Speaker 1: in and out, and they said, hey, we're just going
Speaker 1: to take what was then the default prime brokerage trading model.
Speaker 1: We're going to use that to do these creation redemption baskets.
Speaker 1: So what they did was take all the pieces that
Speaker 1: already worked and changed as little as possible to make
Speaker 1: something new happen. And now spices footprint is enormous as
Speaker 1: the largest ETF with two dred and seventy billion in assets.
Speaker 1: For a comparison, the second largest et F has one
Speaker 1: billion dollars less than assets than SPY. It's really stood
Speaker 1: the test of time. Here's not again. But but in
Speaker 1: the end, all of these things come down to execution.
Speaker 1: And I think that's actually been the story of ets
Speaker 1: for twenty five years, is it's always down to execution.
Speaker 1: Next time on trains presents how the e t F
Speaker 1: really started to gain steam. It wasn't until I was
Speaker 1: sitting on a trading desk and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I could like hit a button and get a million dollar,
Speaker 1: exposure to the cues. That was all in. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Trillions Presents until next time. You can find
Speaker 1: us on the Bloomberg Terminal, bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: and wherever else you want to listen. Trillions Presents is
Speaker 1: produced by Jordan Bell with production help from Magnus Hendrickson.
Speaker 1: Francesco Levy is the head of Bloomberg podcast