00:00:02 Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. 00:00:04 Speaker 2: Podcasts. 00:00:05 Speaker 3: Radio. 00:00:06 Speaker 4: News. 00:00:12 Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at 7 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay or Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube. 00:00:28 Speaker 5: We know somebody who knows about this tech space here. Dan Ives, he's a partner at Yorkville, Ives & Company. So here's the top story on the Bloomberg terminal. Anthropic and open AI are promising measures to rein in the pursuit of cutting-edge AI models to better understand the risk posed by the technology. Dan, I'm not sure I saw this coming. I'm not sure the market saw this coming. What do you make of it? 00:00:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I mean, I think there's a few ways to sort of dissect it. One, This is a step in the right direction relative to safety because it's our view. Self-regulation is going to be the ultimate path. But, you know, call it regulatory capture. When you see calls in the beltway looking for more and more regulatory, ultimately open AI and topic, they took it by themselves and said, OK, we're going to. ultimately start to now say that there should be a slowdown. But the reality is China is not slowing down. And if China doesn't slow down, this is all words because US tech's not going to slow down. I think that is what investors are trying to navigate to understand what's real versus essentially just more talk. 00:01:41 Speaker 5: This is coming from the companies themselves, Dan, and presumably they have a lot more knowledge than I do, than Tom does, and most folks out there do. 00:01:50 Speaker 6: I think a lot of folks out there are just saying. 00:01:53 Speaker 5: A, even before this talk over the last week or so, we really didn't know the risks associated with AI. 00:02:00 Speaker 6: Now, if these folks are telling us to put on the brakes, how do you think this plays out? 00:02:06 Speaker 4: Well, I think part of the problem is that you can take the elevator to the penthouse and then stop the elevator so others can't come. 00:02:14 Speaker 2: So there is a competitive issue here. 00:02:17 Speaker 7: Right, where. 00:02:18 Speaker 4: especially when you think about sovereign AI, a lot of the stuff Palantir and others are doing, I think that will be, I think investors will view it skeptically relative to open. 00:02:27 Speaker 2: AI and anthropic. 00:02:29 Speaker 4: Two, this is not stopping one penny of money that's going into the data center and the AI CapEx. And I think that, right, you'll have a knee-jerk reaction in terms of stocks, but as investors digest it, the reality is China's not slowing down. U.S. 00:02:46 Speaker 2: Tech's not going to slow down. 00:02:47 Speaker 7: Good morning across America. The commitment of our guests to get up early. Daniel Ives, killing it out of Los Angeles at a way too early hour as well. I want you to fold in here, Dan. Over the weekend, I was deep into AI. Should the turkey be cooked at 3.30 or 3.40? Dan, I look at AI and all I can think of is the Chinese. I got a massively split Washington, but I have a China with one plan. With all of your tech experience, is this just simply the dawning reality of China with a cheaper, better distribution product that's not quite as good? 00:03:33 Speaker 4: Yeah, I'd say that as well as China having a government that's trying to pour gasoline on this to really accelerate them rather than maybe the opposite that's happened in the U.S. Because for the first time in 30 years, the U.S. is ahead of China when it comes to tech. You don't want people in the Beltway that are still using BlackBerrys to then regulate that AI. 00:04:00 Speaker 2: Then when you talk. 00:04:01 Speaker 4: About anthropic and open AI, it comes down to like these companies are essentially the top of the mountain. Do they want others not to come up? And that's where the industry is going to be. 00:04:13 Speaker 7: Well, Paul was too kind on how dumb I am. That was an accurate statement. But all the smart people I talked to, Dan Ives, are adamant they don't know where we are in six months. Dan, let's go narrow. Where are we in six weeks? Are we just going to see a new Claude, a new Chet this, the Chet that? I mean, are we just going to just grind forward here? 00:04:34 Speaker 4: Tom, I think it's also the models over time will become more commoditized. 00:04:39 Speaker 2: The values and the data. And you're seeing that. 00:04:43 Speaker 4: You talk about software companies, you talk about what's happening in cybersecurity infrastructure. You're now going to the second, third, fourth derivative because of the trillions of dollars being spent. Claude, when you see Chad GPT, those models are going to continue to get better and better. But it's about the data. That's why sovereign AI... NVIDIA, Palantir's talked about that front and center. 00:05:05 Speaker 2: That ultimately is really the golden goose. 00:05:08 Speaker 5: Hey, Dan, whenever I see a kind of a graphic of the global AI ecosystem, I see NVIDIA right smack in the middle of it. What is Jensen Wang saying about these big, big picture issues? 00:05:21 Speaker 4: I mean, I think Jensen's talked about it. He's going to say the bark's worse than the bite. The industry has put the safety sort of guardrails in. But look at the hugging acquisition that they did. You talk about open source. It comes down to you have to distinguish between the core frontier model players versus what's happened in the rest of the industry. 00:05:46 Speaker 2: And I think Jensen. 00:05:48 Speaker 4: Nadella, if you saw what he talked about over the weekend, George from CrowdStrike, those are much more, I think, realistic and I think very good words of wisdom relative to maybe some of the you know, kind of fire in a crowd theater type of conversation. 00:06:05 Speaker 7: Dan Ives, thanks so much. Got to get Yanni again here soon to talk about what matters, Apple and all that, into Q4 and into the Q3 earnings season as well. Daniel Ives, yeoman's duty, way too early in the morning here on this tech blowup. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Surveillance coming up after this. 00:06:32 Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 7 to 10 a.m. 00:06:38 Speaker 4: Eastern. 00:06:38 Speaker 1: Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube. 00:06:45 Speaker 7: I think we need a briefing. Laurie Calvacina joins us right now with RBC Capital Markets. Laurie, within your really important, dense, statistical Excel spreadsheet research, which distinction stands out right now? 00:07:02 Speaker 8: So I would say in my work, Tom, there's a clear line between sort of where we are right now on the 10-year and what's being priced in in terms of hikes, which is about three hikes over the next 12 months. Our rates team is still forecasting 10-year yields are going to stay below 5% over the next 12 months. That seems to be like what equities can handle. It wouldn't necessarily be pleasant. I'm not saying we wouldn't have a short-term drawdown, but when I look out on a 12-month view, the market looks okay. But if we sort of take things up to, say, six hikes, if we take inflation closer to 4% than 3%, and if we kind of model in 5.5% on the 10-year yield, then we start to see some real damage done to equities on a year-over-year basis. So I think we're at sort of a critical juncture right now. And my modeling says, you know, as Blake, when our rate strategist put it, he's expecting three kind of adjustment hikes over the next three meetings. I think equities can handle that. But we are kind of pushing up against the ceiling of what they can handle. 00:08:04 Speaker 7: Paul Sweeney in real time, a headline. 00:08:07 Speaker 9: Again, I'm. 00:08:09 Speaker 7: Just not capable to translate this. NVIDIA. Palantir, Booz Allen, to limit anthropic model use. That from the information. And this moves the market. NVIDIA breaking down to new intraday lows. Futures are negative 51 and negative 58. Futures now negative 61. I have a VIX out, two big figures. 00:08:34 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:08:34 Speaker 6: Laurie, what's the... view. 00:08:36 Speaker 5: How do you think about earnings? They've been so, so strong for the first half of the year. If nothing else, comps are going to make it really tough going forward. How do you kind of think about earnings as a continued driver of this market? 00:08:49 Speaker 8: So, you know, I would give you two points, Paul. Number one, normally estimates start out too high if you're looking at bottom-up consensus estimates and have to be ratcheted down. And if you look back at 2019 and 2023, so years after the first trade war, years after the Russia-Ukraine war, we saw the kind of current year numbers, 2018 and 2022, held up well, but the following year numbers got ratcheted down, you know, pretty significantly. When I look at twenty twenty seven the numbers just continue they they did the growth rates were to move down initially just on the basis frankly of upside surprises to early twenty six. But now we've started to see the growth rates implied in twenty seven move up again so. Their divine define the typical gravity that you you normally see to pulling down estimates. I think the other thing, Paul, that I've noticed is when I talk to investors, there has been over the last kind of month, six weeks, some concerns that maybe the AI side of things is a little too frothy. So what we've done in our modeling, we were at the beginning of the summer kind of baking in a 5% haircut to consensus EP estimates for next year. We model now right to the second quarter, trailing twelve months- but now in the last two updates we started doing ten percent really to kind of address investor fears and see if equity still have a path higher. If we bake in all these things were worried about on rates inflation the fed. We're And now a little bit of AI froth as well. We can still get you to eighty one fifty on a 12 month time frame right now. But admittedly, you know, those concerns about the AI side of things has started to creep in over the last, say, four to six weeks. 00:10:21 Speaker 5: So we are going to hear one of those cross currency mentioned or one of those issues for the market to deal with is the Federal Reserve. And we're going to hear from the Fed this Wednesday. And a lot of folks are saying this is one of the more highly anticipated meetings. How do you think it's going to go? What do you think the market is kind of discounting here? 00:10:38 Speaker 8: So, you know, I love that I don't have to forecast the Fed. 00:10:42 Speaker 1: I leave. 00:10:46 Speaker 6: That looks like a frozen. 00:10:48 Speaker 8: And he yeah, he's moved. He's moved to looking for three three hikes over the next three meetings. And he thinks the Fed pauses after that. You know, I have one chart I look at in terms of how much hiking is baked in over the next 12 months and compare it to small, large performance S & P 500 performance. We're seeing that kind of hold steady, you know, kind of in the three hike ish type area. And you've seen small caps suffer pretty significantly on a relative basis over the last few months. So I think that equities, you know, we can watch small caps for a signal to see how the market feels rather, I would say, than the S & P 500 itself. But small caps have really been kind of taking the brunt of the pain on a relative basis for the hike fear trade. 00:11:30 Speaker 7: Just one final question. And then do you feel like you need to rewrite your message in the Q4? I mean, to me, you stagger to September 30th. You come up with Larry Kalfasino wisdom before you write the big 32-page memo. It's like an 85-page PowerPoint. 00:11:48 Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. 00:11:48 Speaker 7: I mean, it's nuts. End of year. 00:11:50 Speaker 5: Yeah, sure. 00:11:50 Speaker 7: But what's your mystery September 30? What are you going to be writing about? 00:11:55 Speaker 8: So I'll tell you, Tom, we moved from a December 31st price target, you know, which is what most strategists do to a rolling 12 month view. And that has really forced us this year to keep our eye on the long term with that price target. So I don't think we have to rewrite much. I think that new process we've introduced allows us to adjust every single month to what we think the long term view is. I do think that, you know, kind of big question that I have in the back of my head is not just as the Fed stop at three, do 10 year yields stay contained at this five percent level? But it's also a question of what happens with inflation in the middle quarters of next year. So you look at consensus numbers there in the low two. As I've talked to my economist friends, I'm hearing that has to do a lot with normalizing gas prices. Well, the war kind of throws a monkey wrench into that. Right. So, you know, what happens with those inflation forecasts is an open question in my mind. 00:12:47 Speaker 7: Laurie, thank you so much. Laurie Calvacina, RBC Capital Markets. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Surveillance coming up after this. 00:13:03 Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 7 to 10 a.m. 00:13:09 Speaker 4: Eastern. 00:13:10 Speaker 1: Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube. 00:13:16 Speaker 7: This is beyond timely as we focus on America. David Tinsley, Senior Economist at Bank of America. Starting with the seminal work of Michelle Meyer, which I think was middle 20th century. The consumption analysis of Bank of America is truly amazing. world class. It really is a buoyant consumer, David, isn't it? Absolutely. 00:13:37 Speaker 9: I mean, just if you look at our latest August data, spending was up four and a half percent year over year. That's a very good number. On the month, it rose 0.9. Should be a very good retail sales print this week. Absolutely. The consumer is in resilient, good shape. 00:13:56 Speaker 7: Is it honeydews? Are honeydews a line item, $ 23 at the open? 00:14:03 Speaker 6: I think they were. Boy, people were stacking those cups up, that's for sure. 00:14:06 Speaker 2: I saw one woman with four of them in her hands. 00:14:08 Speaker 6: Yes, exactly. 00:14:09 Speaker 7: Exactly. 00:14:10 Speaker 6: Talk to us about the K-shaped economy. 00:14:12 Speaker 5: You folks at Bank of America with your credit card business and your consumer business, nobody's got a better view of the consumer than you guys. 00:14:18 Speaker 6: Talk to us about the the K-shaped economy today. How do you guys view it? 00:14:21 Speaker 9: Well, you know, it's really interesting. For about two years until a couple of months ago, we were talking month in, month out about a higher income consumer outspending the lower income consumer, often a margin of one or two percentage points. The last couple of months, we saw a marked acceleration of the lower income consumer spending growth. Right now, they're pretty much neck and neck. Discretionary spending growth in August was about 5.7% for higher income consumers, 5.7% for lower income consumers. So that K has largely closed. 00:14:57 Speaker 7: Really? 00:14:58 Speaker 5: Where are they getting the money for this? Because I'm not seeing wage growth that great relative to inflation. 00:15:04 Speaker 9: Well, you know what we see in our data? And we see wages coming into people's accounts. We get a view on this, too, is we do see an acceleration after tax wage growth in our data for lower income consumers. And I think of that sort of two-legged. First leg is the hangover of fiscal stimulus. Basically, tax withholdings are lower this year for many people, particularly if you're an overtime or a tip earner. And so, that's boosting take-home pay. Second is we see some signs that the labour market at the lower end has improved. People are moving around more. They're getting bigger raises when they move. And so, there is indication, I think, that at the lower end, there has been some improvements. 00:15:50 Speaker 6: What's the call for this week for our Federal Reserve? 00:15:54 Speaker 5: Because, boy, I tell you, Global Wall Street's paying attention to our Fed this coming Wednesday. 00:15:58 Speaker 9: Well, our economists at Global Research, they've had a longstanding call for a hike this week. I know the market's moved around a bit, but they've been on the money for a hike for some time. So that's the view. 00:16:12 Speaker 7: You're out of Cambridge. The blue button, the victorious Detroit Lions blue button. Bar's not here. The NFL this weekend was nuts. 00:16:23 Speaker 6: Good weekend for New York teams. 00:16:24 Speaker 7: We've got to talk about this. 00:16:25 Speaker 6: No, New York finally. 00:16:26 Speaker 7: David Tinsley, Premier League was nuts this weekend. I'm not shaving until Tottenham scores. 00:16:32 Speaker 9: That's all there is to it. 00:16:35 Speaker 7: David, you've got to help me here with nominal GDP. I mean, just for starters, you've got Mark Cabana. OK, Bank of America, how can nominal GDP come down constructively to maintain a consumer buoyancy in America? Is it all just about pulling inflation down or do we have to pull real GDP back a little bit to get nominal away from this crazy boom banana republic economy we got? 00:17:05 Speaker 9: I'm guessing you're going to see some cooling in the consumer and that's going to do some of the work. Probably not all of the work by any means. You know, the economy is a dichotomous beast at the moment being driven by this AI boom too. For a long time, the contribution from the higher income consumer was really driving consumer spending growth. That's still... Somewhat the case now even though the lower income consumer is picked up So you've got to see and that higher income consumer is of course been stoked by wealth effects So, you know, there's a circularity here, but you've got to see some slowdown. I think in consumer spending To get real GDP cooler for sure. 00:17:47 Speaker 5: I mean Leisure and travel related spending show the largest improvement since January People are still out there flying around, traveling, right? 00:17:57 Speaker 6: I mean, wow. 00:17:58 Speaker 7: Yeah. 00:17:58 Speaker 9: I mean, over the World Cup, for example, we saw really strong spending data in the host cities. You know, people were going and they were spending just generally airfare spending. Some of its price, obviously, is holding up. But people aren't pulling in despite those price hikes. Restaurant spending, you know, broader leisure spending, all looking relatively positive, I'd say. 00:18:21 Speaker 7: What does the Fed rate hike mean? For the American consumer, totally removed. They're not having honeydews at the U.S. 00:18:30 Speaker 4: Open. 00:18:30 Speaker 7: They're trying to get to the next month's paycheck. What's that mean? 00:18:34 Speaker 9: Well, you know, just like on the way up, we saw. 00:18:41 Speaker 9: Essentially, a large chunk of the consumer is fairly immune from these short-term hikes, just because they're on fixed-rate mortgages. It hurts people who aren't in that position. So, you know, in our data, the millennials and the Gen Z are probably in a tighter spot than the older Gens who've got the wealth effects, who've got the housing, and got the equity in that housing that's ramped up over decades. So, I think... I wouldn't expect too big a pullback in consumer spending from a couple of Fed hikes. I think the consumer will wear that. But obviously, everything's interrelated ultimately. And if the equity market sells off as a result of that, then these wealth effects might dissipate, go into reverse even. 00:19:26 Speaker 7: Are you based in New York? I'm in London. You're in London? Yeah. Come visit again. I will. We'd love to have you here. David Tinsley, thank you so much. From London with Bank of America in our studio. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Surveillance coming up after this. 00:19:50 Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 7 to 10 a.m. 00:19:56 Speaker 4: Eastern. 00:19:56 Speaker 1: Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube. 00:20:02 Speaker 7: This is an immense joy for me as well. Ages ago at B & B Paramount, I think she was 15. 00:20:10 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:20:10 Speaker 7: She came out of school. Naomi Fink in China was a massive Japan fan. acts, I should say, in Japan. And Naomi Fink has just continued to own the high ground over the last number of years of monitoring Japan with the MOVA Asset Management. Really honored to get a quick brief from her this morning. Naomi, is this the same institutions when you and I first met? Is this a different Bank of Japan? Is it a different Ministry of Finance? 00:20:42 Speaker 3: Same institutions, but different context. So we're in a totally different economic context than when we first met. Then Japan was mired in its last decades and deflation, and now it's staging a remarkable recovery from those last decades. And institutions, just like everybody else, have to adapt to the times. 00:21:09 Speaker 5: So where are we here, Naomi, with the Japanese yen here? I'm looking at it, you know, kind of 154.50. Boy, that's a long way from 163, 164. Is it the central bank? 00:21:21 Speaker 6: Is it the U.S. Federal Reserve? What's moving the yen here longer term? 00:21:27 Speaker 3: Well, longer term, let's take a look at measures of fair value of the yen, which we're very far away from. So if we look really long term, which I don't think is a good forecast, but purchasing power parity puts a dollar at about 100 yen. 00:21:43 Speaker 2: And we're very far from that. 00:21:45 Speaker 3: I don't expect that we're going to achieve that anytime soon, but it just tells you how cheap the yen was when it was, you know, 10 figures higher, um, or. 00:21:55 Speaker 2: Five figures higher even. 00:21:57 Speaker 3: Um, So I think, you know, there was an overextension going on. And then even though risk tolerance remains plentiful and the relative interest rates are still higher in the U.S. than in Japan, there is a gradual normalization taking place by the Bank of Japan, by other central banks, too, but by the Bank of Japan, most importantly, for the yen. And so that means sooner or later, there's going to be less liquidity tomorrow in the future sometime than there is today. 00:22:35 Speaker 5: So what is the Bank of Japan thinking right now? I mean, where would they like to see the end here? I mean, it's had an appreciable move here. Where do you think they'd like to see it? Maybe, I don't know, year end or so? 00:22:48 Speaker 3: Well, so the Bank of Japan is not in charge of intervention. That would be the Ministry of Finance, even though the Bank of Japan does execute the interventions. So the Bank of Japan, as far as I know, doesn't really tend to look at the yen as any type of target. Recently, it's focus on the yen has intensified, but that's only because the yen is, the weak yen, I should say, is inviting more inflation than there might otherwise be if we didn't have such a weak yen. 00:23:18 Speaker 2: But that's only one part of the picture. 00:23:21 Speaker 3: Inflation has been If we look at the core measure of inflation, it's been above the Bank of Japan's target for several years now. I mean, it looks at underlying inflation, which is not quite core inflation. But, you know, we have progressed quite a lot from those days of deflation and stagnation. 00:23:38 Speaker 7: Naomi, brief us on the Pacific Rim and the knock-on effects. of this immense turmoil in Japan, and for that matter, the very different turmoil in China. Do you see a Pacific Rim of stability, or should we be aware of the idiosyncratic moves like Philippine peso that's out there? 00:23:59 Speaker 2: Well, so. 00:24:00 Speaker 3: I mean, for Asia, there is, generally speaking, currency undervaluation if we look at it on a purchasing power parity basis to differing degrees. And I think that doesn't necessarily have so much to do with confidence in China. each of the individual Asian economies. In fact, for Japan, I think it's very dangerous to look at the yen as some type of barometer of economic health. Economic health is probably better than it's been in a while in Japan, but the yen is weak. And the yen is weak because there's been this large amount of liquidity left in the system. As far as volatility goes, if we do see some sort of risk off trade, then yes, yen tends to strengthen. If we see a whole bunch of risk being taken off the table, then I would expect the yen to strengthen quickly. But that's not my main scenario. And I think that that's a scenario that most policymakers would like to avoid, if possible. 00:25:00 Speaker 7: Joy, thank you for the brief. Now let me think with us with a move this morning from Tokyo. 00:25:04 Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each weekday, 7 to 10 a.m. Eastern, on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.