Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. My co host Joe Wisenthal is away. However,
Speaker 1: I have a replacement co host for this very special episode.
Speaker 1: We're going to be joined by Matt Levine. He is,
Speaker 1: of course, a columnist over at Bloomberg Opinion. Matt, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Thanks for having me. So. I have
Speaker 1: been covering bond markets for many, many years now, and
Speaker 1: when you're covering bond markets, it feels like, at one
Speaker 1: point in time there was no escape from a certain
Speaker 1: bond investor, and that was a guy called Bill Gross.
Speaker 1: If you were covering bond markets, at one point or another,
Speaker 1: your path would cross with Bill Gross in some way.
Speaker 1: It was either something he was doing, something that he
Speaker 1: had said that you would inevitably have to write up.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if you feel the same way, Mat, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, in particular, he would write these monthly investment
Speaker 1: outlooks that were always both widely covered because they were
Speaker 1: the outlook of an important bond investor about the bond market,
Speaker 1: but also because he had, like he began them with
Speaker 1: embarrassing personal anecdotes, and you'd read them and be like,
Speaker 1: did did this? Did this professional investor really just say that?
Speaker 1: And every every month it would like he would top himself,
Speaker 1: This guy in charge of billions of dollars worth of
Speaker 1: people's money. Did he actually just write several hundred words
Speaker 1: about his cat and things like that cat watching him
Speaker 1: in the shower? I think was yeah? Okay. So Bill
Speaker 1: Gross loomed large in financial journalists imaginations end over the
Speaker 1: bond market. And then, of course we all remember when
Speaker 1: he actually left the company that he had founded, which
Speaker 1: is Pimco, and that just exploded into the headlines. You
Speaker 1: remember that, oh yeah, he went to Janis, which I
Speaker 1: think to this day remains a joke on financial Twitter
Speaker 1: when anyone leaves a job that we say that they
Speaker 1: went to Janis. That's that's sorry, that's exactly right. Um okay.
Speaker 1: So when Bill Gross left Pimco, there were all these
Speaker 1: questions swirling around both the man and the strategy and
Speaker 1: the company. And I remember writing at the time that
Speaker 1: there were still all these unanswered questions around who Bill
Speaker 1: Gross was, what he was actually doing at PIMCO, And
Speaker 1: I guess someone stepped up to try to answer all
Speaker 1: those questions. And I am very very pleased to say
Speaker 1: that today we're going to be speaking with Mary Childs.
Speaker 1: She is, of course, the co host of nprs Planet
Speaker 1: Money podcast and also the author of a new book.
Speaker 1: It's called The Bond King. How One Man made a market,
Speaker 1: built an empire, and lost it all And it's been
Speaker 1: many years in the making. And uh, I'm thrilled to
Speaker 1: have her on the show. So Mary, welcome to all thoughts.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to
Speaker 1: be here. So one of the things that always struck
Speaker 1: me about Bill Gross, and maybe this is why you know,
Speaker 1: you sort of took an interest in the story. But
Speaker 1: when people think about bond investing, they normally think about
Speaker 1: while you buy a bond and you know, you hold
Speaker 1: it to maturity and it's really really boring. But the
Speaker 1: thing about Bill Gross, and you go into this in
Speaker 1: some detail in your book, is that he was doing
Speaker 1: really complex things in the fixed income world. You know,
Speaker 1: his funds were full of derivatives, full of future swaps,
Speaker 1: lots of repo transactions, things that you wouldn't necessarily think
Speaker 1: of when you think about traditional plane vanilla bond investing. Definitely,
Speaker 1: and you're exactly right that That's one of the main
Speaker 1: reasons why I got interested in this in the first place.
Speaker 1: I feel like there is this misconception that, oh, my
Speaker 1: bond fund is managed by like some dork in Boston
Speaker 1: who doesn't do you know, Banana's stuff, And that's just
Speaker 1: kind of not the you know, so many of our
Speaker 1: retirement dollars do go to him, go and end up
Speaker 1: doing very exciting things. And yeah, there's there's so much
Speaker 1: room to to look into, you know, what Buil did
Speaker 1: and the kind of extremely complicated trades that he put
Speaker 1: on and the trade structures that I just find it
Speaker 1: really kind of it's interesting both because of that misconception
Speaker 1: but also just by virtue of being really elaborate and
Speaker 1: smart and and fun trades. So one of the most
Speaker 1: fun trades. And I feel like we could spend the
Speaker 1: whole odd lots on this because it's like very odd.
Speaker 1: In like the mid eighties, he did this trade on
Speaker 1: Jenny May futures that basically break that market forever. Can
Speaker 1: you describe that in enormous detail for the odd thoughts listeners?
Speaker 1: So this is my Yeah, this is my favorite trade. Basically,
Speaker 1: there was this futures contract that, um, I think was
Speaker 1: you know, extremely popular in and people were trading it
Speaker 1: with a lot of assumptions, you know, the mortgage markets,
Speaker 1: and nearly very few people feel like they are actually
Speaker 1: like can get into the particulars and the details and
Speaker 1: then kind of expand that into the way these things
Speaker 1: should be traded perfectly, Like like a lot of people
Speaker 1: trade on models that they got from someone else or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I think in this case, PIMCO just really read
Speaker 1: into the details of the contract and they heard that
Speaker 1: it was flawed, but they read into it and they
Speaker 1: were like, wait, this is really flawed. There were two
Speaker 1: kind of separate parts of it, two trades basically, where
Speaker 1: one trade relied on the ability to demand physical delivery
Speaker 1: and one trade relied on the fact that this this
Speaker 1: contract had the option for a perpetual so you could
Speaker 1: ask for it to be converted into a perpetual security
Speaker 1: that paid you eight percent forever. That makes no sense,
Speaker 1: I know. So I tried to talk to the guy
Speaker 1: who built the contract and he was kind of like, no,
Speaker 1: it's a great it's a great one. Love that one,
Speaker 1: by which I understand. But I think, you know, they
Speaker 1: were trying to make it attractive and rates were really
Speaker 1: high at the time, So I think there was some
Speaker 1: sense of like trying to entice people to play in
Speaker 1: this market in the first place, because again, mortgages were
Speaker 1: pretty poorly understood. I mean, there is a real explanation,
Speaker 1: but also they were still figuring stuff out, you know,
Speaker 1: like these were new contracts and this is kind of
Speaker 1: a new frontier, so trying to find out what would work.
Speaker 1: It was a little bit of trial and error. So
Speaker 1: what exactly did PIMCO do in this situation? So you
Speaker 1: have this new contract and this seems to be a
Speaker 1: bit of a hallmark of pimco's strategy at that time,
Speaker 1: but they actually read all the terms, did all their
Speaker 1: due diligence and research, and basically figured out a way
Speaker 1: to make lots of money out of it. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: So they basically realized that the market was, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to account for the negative convexity of mortgage backed
Speaker 1: securities in that that you know, would show up in
Speaker 1: these Jenny May bundles. But what they weren't accounting for
Speaker 1: was the kind of optionality and the fact that if
Speaker 1: you accrued enough of the underlying the cheapest to deliver,
Speaker 1: there just weren't that many in the world, and raids
Speaker 1: had started to go down, so they were going to
Speaker 1: be fewer and fewer, right, So Pimco realized this kind
Speaker 1: of before anyone else, and they amassed a huge position
Speaker 1: in these contracts, and then they demanded physical settlement of
Speaker 1: the futures, which is to say, they will give me
Speaker 1: your cheapest to deliver. Jenny May's right, and they didn't
Speaker 1: have to demand physical settlement, right, They could have just
Speaker 1: let the futures roll off, exactly, And that was what
Speaker 1: everyone kind of expected everyone else to do. So part
Speaker 1: of what they're playing with here is expectations everyone else's
Speaker 1: normal behavior, and Pimco seems to always find that there's
Speaker 1: just a little bit extra performance if you don't act normal.
Speaker 1: Trade is just like you. These futures are priced assuming
Speaker 1: that you deliver the cheapest to deliver security. And they
Speaker 1: bought so many futures that that they sort of had
Speaker 1: stripped the cheapest to deliver and like they were getting
Speaker 1: much more valuable securities. That's exactly right. So yeah, they
Speaker 1: would go to these people, you know, the counterparties, and
Speaker 1: say give me your you know, I'm settling now, please
Speaker 1: to give me the all of the you know, cheapest
Speaker 1: deliver that you have, and the counterparty will be like, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't we don't have enough. You have more than
Speaker 1: we can satisfy, and they would have to hand over
Speaker 1: much more valuable Jinny May's just to satisfy the delivery,
Speaker 1: but the settlement. So basically, yeah, PIMCO was able to
Speaker 1: outsize the market, which is actually something that you'll see later.
Speaker 1: You know, they do this trade in different kind of
Speaker 1: flavors over the years. So this is something that I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about a lot, and I've thought about a
Speaker 1: lot over the years. You know, I said earlier that
Speaker 1: PIMCO and Bill Gross loomed large over the market, and
Speaker 1: that is literally true. There was such a massive investor
Speaker 1: that at times it seemed like their success was sort
Speaker 1: of mixed up with their size. How much of Bill
Speaker 1: Gross's strategy and the success that he enjoyed, how much
Speaker 1: of that came from simply being bigger than everyone else.
Speaker 1: I think that's such a good and astute question because
Speaker 1: people often get that backwards, where they're like, oh, did
Speaker 1: he underperform because he was too large for the market,
Speaker 1: And you're right that that it actually was an asset.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess in equities it's harder to maneuver
Speaker 1: or or something, but in bonds it definitely can be
Speaker 1: an advantage, especially in you know, anchoring a new issue
Speaker 1: bond as it comes to market, you're gonna get more
Speaker 1: of the allocation. And those always basically always outperform, you know,
Speaker 1: pop when they when they hit the market. So I
Speaker 1: think it's hard to say how much of the outperformance
Speaker 1: was due to size and thinking of this paper that
Speaker 1: to researchers did in that kind of teased out the
Speaker 1: reasons for Bill Gross and pimcoes out performance over the decades,
Speaker 1: and that was one of their kind of grab bag items,
Speaker 1: you know, they were like, this is not something that
Speaker 1: they were able to strip out as a factor, but
Speaker 1: it's basically present throughout pimcoes total returns history, where they
Speaker 1: were always a bit big for the market and for
Speaker 1: the mortgage backed market, but we're the big factors. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting. There are three main ones that those researchers found,
Speaker 1: and it actually aligns pretty well with what so a
Speaker 1: source told me, gosh five years ago, because I've been
Speaker 1: working on this for too long, that there were only
Speaker 1: four things you needed to know to do well at PIMCO.
Speaker 1: Theres there are four things at PIMCO does long duration,
Speaker 1: the curve, focusing more on like the four or five
Speaker 1: year part, going long credit, and short ball. That's it.
Speaker 1: And you know, short ball means selling volatility and finding
Speaker 1: other ways to kind of embed optionality and leverage in
Speaker 1: in your kind of everyday life if you will, and
Speaker 1: avoid buying options to write like like, one thing that
Speaker 1: he says in some of the outlooks is that he
Speaker 1: like doesn't want to pay up for bonds with a
Speaker 1: lot of convexity because like, optionality is not worth anything
Speaker 1: to him right right. He wants to be selling it,
Speaker 1: not buying it because he realizes that people want to
Speaker 1: sleep at night and he doesn't care. Everyone else wants
Speaker 1: the optionality and unless he can get compensated over and above.
Speaker 1: It's in contrast to the Jenny May where there was
Speaker 1: a lot of optionality, but it was stuff that they exercised.
Speaker 1: They don't want options just to be able to do
Speaker 1: what they want to actually do it if they want them,
Speaker 1: you know. So he like he was the bond king.
Speaker 1: He had a great run for decades and then he
Speaker 1: left to go to Janice. You know, I think it
Speaker 1: would be fair to say did not continue to have
Speaker 1: a great run. So like when you when you list
Speaker 1: those factors, it's like long duration, long credit, you know,
Speaker 1: short ball that describes a sort of placid market of
Speaker 1: generally declining that's a strategy for a placid market of
Speaker 1: generally declining rates, which is kind of what he had
Speaker 1: for like thirty years. Did he just like miss a
Speaker 1: regime change? Was he like a really good investor for
Speaker 1: like a particularly long bond bull market and then he
Speaker 1: couldn't adapt? You know what's going on? I think to
Speaker 1: some extent, yes. And there's this um famous at least
Speaker 1: to me, investment outlook from April where he asks, am
Speaker 1: I a great investor? No? Not yet, because he was
Speaker 1: basically seeing the same thing that you are. That he'd
Speaker 1: had a long bull market to invest in. He'd done
Speaker 1: really well over that time period, but he felt that
Speaker 1: he was pretty untested, he and all of his peers, right,
Speaker 1: and you know when he went to Janice. It's it's
Speaker 1: hard to say because over the longer term, you know,
Speaker 1: interest rates are lower now than they were then, or
Speaker 1: they you know, were lower now than they were then.
Speaker 1: So they've walked around a little bit, right, But from
Speaker 1: his start date at Janice through his retirement date, you know,
Speaker 1: it actually did interest rates date go up. So I
Speaker 1: do think you're right. I think that that over that period,
Speaker 1: over his long career, he did have the benefit of
Speaker 1: a bullmark it. And yes, his strategies I think did
Speaker 1: perform better in those in that environment, you know, like
Speaker 1: buying credit, focusing on duration, like all of these things
Speaker 1: absolutely perform better when you have the wind at your back.
Speaker 1: Cash and cash equivalent arbitrage kind of is that an
Speaker 1: abuse of that word? Are you upset? I think it's okay,
Speaker 1: this is a safe space. You're allowing that. Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1: There's a colloquial arbitrage and then a real one, and
Speaker 1: I'm using the colloquial thank you all accept But basically,
Speaker 1: they you know, when they had a position that required cash,
Speaker 1: required them to hold cash against it, a lot of
Speaker 1: their competitors would be like, okay, cash, great, I shall
Speaker 1: hold cash, and PIMCO was like, okay, great, and cash equivalence,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? You know, how how can we
Speaker 1: what does that mean? Exactly? And they would go as
Speaker 1: far as they humanly could to the extent of risk
Speaker 1: taking in that cash equivalent bucket. So that means, you know,
Speaker 1: short dated corporate floating notes and making sure that they're
Speaker 1: getting every last potential a basis point out of that
Speaker 1: and equivalence bucket, where everyone else is just getting whatever
Speaker 1: cash is yielding and not sweating it, not kind of
Speaker 1: going that extra marginal mile to to get the extra
Speaker 1: basis point. So I love that. Like he's like this
Speaker 1: renowned bond investor who becomes a billionaire and at the
Speaker 1: end of like a bunch of the years in the book,
Speaker 1: you know, when he's like performing the market, it's like
Speaker 1: he had a blowout yere in youth asand eight he
Speaker 1: saw the crisis and no one else did. He outperformed
Speaker 1: his peers by thirty five basis point. Okay, it was
Speaker 1: two percentage points actually, as like, but this is like
Speaker 1: we're like, you know, John Paulson is like tupled his
Speaker 1: funder or whatever. Right, like people who like called the crisis, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of stereotype is that they like
Speaker 1: started with a little bit of money, ended at a billionaires,
Speaker 1: but like Bill Grass started with trillions of dollars and
Speaker 1: like added like two to it um. How does that like,
Speaker 1: how should we think about that performance? I don't know.
Speaker 1: The fundamental thing that I think you're hitting on there
Speaker 1: is the structure of the trade where a lot of
Speaker 1: the people that were you know, big short type crisis callers,
Speaker 1: they structured trades based more on time, where if they
Speaker 1: had messed up the time horizon, and many of some
Speaker 1: of them did and didn't make it into the kind
Speaker 1: of pantheon, the whole trade wouldn't work. So there was
Speaker 1: a lot of that was extremely risky. So the Pimco
Speaker 1: view was, yeah, we think this thing is coming, we
Speaker 1: have no ability to say when exactly, and we're going
Speaker 1: to structure a long, a longer term trade around this.
Speaker 1: Where they both pulled back on risk going into the crisis,
Speaker 1: and then we're able to scoop things up when things
Speaker 1: were healing. You know, everyone else was selling it a
Speaker 1: discount because they're panicking, and they weren't, you know, hadn't
Speaker 1: had the same foresight. Pim goes able to buy those
Speaker 1: assets at an extreme discount and then outperformed for more years.
Speaker 1: So if you look over the longer time horizon, and
Speaker 1: this is also Indiana Iversonce Fund and PIMCO income where
Speaker 1: you see that they not only did well stepping back
Speaker 1: and not taking the same risks as everyone going into
Speaker 1: the crisis, but then in the years after. So it's
Speaker 1: more of a cumulative over many years. But also, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just mutual funds. You're going to have less exciting
Speaker 1: or you're supposed to have less exciting. You're not supposed
Speaker 1: to have a blow out like that. Just on that point,
Speaker 1: here's a slightly weird question, but do you think that
Speaker 1: Bill Gross, either knowingly or perhaps by accident, missold what
Speaker 1: bond investing actually was, because I remember in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands, you know, he was talking about this idea
Speaker 1: that if you do it the right way, you can
Speaker 1: get stock like returns on on bonds which are supposed
Speaker 1: to be safer, and the way you do it is
Speaker 1: you use lots of volatility selling strategies and use lots
Speaker 1: of leverage and things like that. Is that is that
Speaker 1: what bond investing should be or is there inherently, you know,
Speaker 1: a discrepancy between stocks and bonds and the returns that
Speaker 1: are possible there. I love that. I think there's probably
Speaker 1: you know, he always got this ding. I think where
Speaker 1: people called him a hedge fund manager and a mutual
Speaker 1: fund rapper, and I think that's probably true. You're exactly right.
Speaker 1: I kind of wanted my bonds to be managed my
Speaker 1: bond funds to be managed by a Doric in Boston.
Speaker 1: Like I'm trying to stay calm here. I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: want you to be doing Like one guy told me
Speaker 1: that the consultants used to call this gross cash. They're like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're doing with this cash and
Speaker 1: cash equivalent stuff and lamb to cash and all these
Speaker 1: other strategies that they used. It. It was like it's working,
Speaker 1: so I don't mind. But I'm like, whatever, you're doing,
Speaker 1: this like weird magic in the market, Like thank you great.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to look too closely. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know they're all fiduciaries. Everyone looked closely. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they did that. But there is an element of like
Speaker 1: not examining it when it's working and it worked for
Speaker 1: a long time. You know, it was obviously to your
Speaker 1: benefit for a very long time. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's like, is this good risk that we're taking? Is
Speaker 1: this what I want to be doing there? This is
Speaker 1: kind of funny. To me where like the cash equivalent thing,
Speaker 1: there was apparently a pretty robust debate at times about
Speaker 1: whether or not Russian owners should count in the cash
Speaker 1: equivalent bucket, saying that right now today it feels bananas, right,
Speaker 1: like that shouldn't be a conversation. But in other times
Speaker 1: you can imagine that that's like, it's probably fine, it's
Speaker 1: probably fine, we can get away with it. And is
Speaker 1: that what you want as a mutual fund investor, like
Speaker 1: with your retirement money, you want to get away with
Speaker 1: Russian floaters. I don't know. I feel like it's odd
Speaker 1: lots we should talk about the bond market, but like
Speaker 1: your book is like partially about the bond market, but
Speaker 1: it's also a lot about like the human drama of
Speaker 1: Bill Griss's overthrow. His character is sort of like he's
Speaker 1: a genius investor who is not good with people, and
Speaker 1: he works at this institution where he's not the CEO,
Speaker 1: he's the chief investment officer, he makes the trading calls,
Speaker 1: and someone else in charge of management, and yet his
Speaker 1: managerial style is sort of what pervades the place and
Speaker 1: what ends up I think getting him outsted. How can you, like,
Speaker 1: you know, have that guy, run your investments and not
Speaker 1: drive everyone crazy. Yeah, I think. I mean it worked
Speaker 1: for a long time in part because there were people
Speaker 1: in the CEO position that Bill trusted and respected, and
Speaker 1: if that's the case, he kind of can or could
Speaker 1: allow them to do their job and manage people and
Speaker 1: make executive choices, and he wasn't really going to interfere.
Speaker 1: He might like snark around a little bit and give
Speaker 1: them the silent treatment for hiring too many people or whatever,
Speaker 1: but he's not gonna He generally let them do their jobs.
Speaker 1: And I think that's part of it is, you know,
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties and nineties, this was a
Speaker 1: bit easier because a lot of the people came up
Speaker 1: with him and were his peers and he respected them.
Speaker 1: And then when you get Muhammadalarian in the door. You know,
Speaker 1: there are multiple reasons why that that relationship didn't really
Speaker 1: work out. Um one being that their personalities are just
Speaker 1: so different and their managerial instincts and investing instincts are
Speaker 1: so different. One reason being that, you know, Bill, you know,
Speaker 1: there's this this sense that Mohammed at the eleventh hour
Speaker 1: asked to be co c i O and co CEO Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he was supposed to just be kind of
Speaker 1: Bill's air. But I think you know, having that, having
Speaker 1: someone in that role who he mistrusted, was probably to
Speaker 1: some extent always going to be a cursed outcome. If
Speaker 1: you're able to keep the lanes clean and able to
Speaker 1: to let him just do his job, Yes, it creates
Speaker 1: this culture. But I think you I think they were
Speaker 1: able to navigate around that culture for a long time.
Speaker 1: Is that there's an open questions to whether that would
Speaker 1: have been successful even with the optimal chief executive in
Speaker 1: today's climate where we've done a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: renegotiation of what we ask from our employers. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a matter of like respect and
Speaker 1: trust and allowing people to to give each other space. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say no. They were kind
Speaker 1: of trying to project that for a while, and I
Speaker 1: asked folks on the street, and I asked people inside,
Speaker 1: and they were like, no, if anything gets worse. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, take that as you will. So just
Speaker 1: on that note, I mean reading your your notes as
Speaker 1: an author, and there's a very funny but also disturbing
Speaker 1: anecdote about the rumors um swirling around you as you
Speaker 1: reported out this book for many, many years. But one
Speaker 1: of the things you talk about is this idea of
Speaker 1: the toxicity of that work environment kind of rubbing off
Speaker 1: on you as you interview all these people who all
Speaker 1: have their own agendas, who all want to tell their
Speaker 1: own versions of the history. What was that like. I
Speaker 1: don't know if this happens to every reporter, but I
Speaker 1: feel like when I talked to a particularly paranoid source,
Speaker 1: I come away just totally rattled. Like I internalize a
Speaker 1: lot of their anxiety and paranoia, and I just it
Speaker 1: just stays with me. And these people, the people I
Speaker 1: talked to you you for this book were largely all like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are some exceptions, people who had got
Speaker 1: out with their head on straight and retired and whatever.
Speaker 1: But to a very large extent, the people that I
Speaker 1: that I dealt with were very competitive, very petty, very
Speaker 1: score subtly. And one thing that I kind of didn't
Speaker 1: appreciate the magnitude of this, but like a lot of people,
Speaker 1: the events of messed up their profit sharing. Even if
Speaker 1: they were retired, you know, they had this kind of
Speaker 1: profit sharing slice of PIMCO, and because of the ridiculousness.
Speaker 1: You know, Muhammadalarian leaving Bill Girls leaving. It hurt the
Speaker 1: kind of forward profits for the firm, and people were
Speaker 1: really mad because it affected, you know, the payments that
Speaker 1: they expected to be get anyway. So there was a
Speaker 1: lot of financial anxiety that came to bear as well,
Speaker 1: which is like funny because you know, I'm a public
Speaker 1: radio journalists, so that contrast was a bit sharp at times.
Speaker 1: There was Matt Knows this story. There was one person's
Speaker 1: wife who was like, so, what are you going to
Speaker 1: do with the proceeds from the book? And I was like, um,
Speaker 1: eat them, Like I don't understand, Like it's my I
Speaker 1: was like, naughty. I didn't have a day job at
Speaker 1: the time. It was literally and and let me be clear,
Speaker 1: you know this comes in in chunk, so I was
Speaker 1: living on not a lot of money, and and she
Speaker 1: was like, well, if you need suggestions for charities, just
Speaker 1: let me know. And I was like, thank you. I
Speaker 1: do know of charities personally, but I appreciate the offer
Speaker 1: and I will consider it. Um, but yeah, there was
Speaker 1: definitely I don't know that insecurity can can rub off
Speaker 1: on you for sure, Like I'm not unfamiliar with rumors.
Speaker 1: You know, I was in a sorority. Like it felt
Speaker 1: very familiar to me, but it was also so unsettling
Speaker 1: because I'm just there to do a job. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to hurt anybody. I'm not trying to like take sides,
Speaker 1: which they all always thought. I'm not trying to like
Speaker 1: pick favorites. I don't have a dog in the fight.
Speaker 1: I just want to tell the truth in this sort
Speaker 1: of like fight over pushing grass out, like everyone was
Speaker 1: kind of using the press, where like you know, Gross
Speaker 1: is obsessed that like his enemies were leaking to the
Speaker 1: press about him, and then he would call into TV
Speaker 1: shows or call reporters and say things that in hindsight
Speaker 1: were really embarrassing. Um, was that fun? I yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it's tough because, as you know, I hate being
Speaker 1: a conduit. I really hate when my entire role in
Speaker 1: a situation is simply conduiting someone's thoughts. Obviously, as a
Speaker 1: journalist that happens a lot. But I like to be
Speaker 1: able to use my brain and participate and you know
Speaker 1: the way things myself and come to a judgment. You know,
Speaker 1: I like to be kind of an active participant in
Speaker 1: in my job. So to some extent it was it's
Speaker 1: really annoying to be used as a tool for score settling,
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's interesting because it's so not
Speaker 1: that emotional. It's so not that like, I just don't
Speaker 1: have a team, and that seems very hard for a
Speaker 1: lot of people to grasp. Do you feel like after
Speaker 1: finishing this book you have a better handle on what
Speaker 1: drives people like Bill Gross and at some of the
Speaker 1: other executives at PIMCO. So, I know you talked in
Speaker 1: the book a lot about Gross emphatically said he wanted
Speaker 1: to become famous. He wanted to I'm a very very
Speaker 1: famous bond investor, and obviously he wanted to get rich
Speaker 1: and he seems to have been very successful at doing that.
Speaker 1: And then you have a lot of money involved for
Speaker 1: the other executives. I think towards the end of the
Speaker 1: book you talked about one of the bonus um pools
Speaker 1: being something like five million dollars between just Gross and
Speaker 1: all area and yeah, yeah, which I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: half of five million. I'm sure we'll motivate anyone. But
Speaker 1: given all this revenge seeking and some of the behavior
Speaker 1: that you wrote about and that we witnessed in and
Speaker 1: years after that. What do you think drives these people?
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I think it's instructive to look at Bill's
Speaker 1: behavior without the money management, you know, since his retirement,
Speaker 1: there's this I get the sense that he digs in
Speaker 1: and he's he's put it that he doesn't back down
Speaker 1: from a fight. He can get entrenched in these bilateral
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't want to say wars, but
Speaker 1: you know, in a in a dynamic, in a relationship
Speaker 1: where he can't seem to find a graceful exit. And
Speaker 1: I mean that who among us right that been there?
Speaker 1: But it's it is this kind of you know, you
Speaker 1: wish that that people can find an exit and and
Speaker 1: you wish that people can kind of graduate beyond this
Speaker 1: kind of um allowing themselves to get locked in a
Speaker 1: dynamic like that. But I do think it is competition.
Speaker 1: It's competitiveness. It's trying to prove to someone else that
Speaker 1: you're the real deal. That's something builds out a lot.
Speaker 1: And Bill will tell you he did this throughout his life.
Speaker 1: You know, this is back in true in the eighties
Speaker 1: when he got divorced. I was trying to date and
Speaker 1: he always wanted to prove to the last person that
Speaker 1: they missed out on a good deal. There's there's something
Speaker 1: so normal about that. But at the same time, the
Speaker 1: scale of the competition gets so mind boggling when you
Speaker 1: start adding zeros and get to five million for one year, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it absolutely becomes ridiculous. But it's those numbers are actually
Speaker 1: meaningless to them, you know, except in a relative sentence
Speaker 1: compared to the person that they're locked in a terrible
Speaker 1: relationship with. You know. Yeah, I mean I've I've written
Speaker 1: and talked about this, but like one of my favorite
Speaker 1: things in the book is like, as like matters are
Speaker 1: coming to a head, uh, you know, Bill Gross calls
Speaker 1: him meeting and he like obsessively charts the seating plan
Speaker 1: and puts like the people he's mad at like not
Speaker 1: at the main table, and then they get all mad,
Speaker 1: and like I love the idea that like these people
Speaker 1: like Wright, the like number of zeros and their paycheck
Speaker 1: has sort of lost its meaning and like they're just
Speaker 1: they're just in the same like sort of like micro
Speaker 1: status battles as everyone is all the time, and like
Speaker 1: if they're not sitting at the right table, then they're
Speaker 1: just mad, and like that's what is motivating them more
Speaker 1: than like, you know, the hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 1: they're making. Yeah, you put it um. When we had
Speaker 1: our chat at McNally Jackson, you had a nice turn
Speaker 1: of phrase where you were like, they just want to
Speaker 1: be treated like adults, and they feel like they're being
Speaker 1: treated like children. And I think that's so true, like
Speaker 1: the degree of like child behavior among people that we
Speaker 1: trust as fiduciaries, and not that they were like, you know,
Speaker 1: not that that makes you godlike or beyond reproached, like
Speaker 1: of course fiduciaries or human beings, but there is something
Speaker 1: a little disorienting about that. There's a former Pimco manager
Speaker 1: who messaged me right before we started this chat saying
Speaker 1: that he literally he liked Bill Gross, but he used
Speaker 1: to speak to him like he was a one year old. Um.
Speaker 1: That's the way he put it, and they got on fantastically. Apparently.
Speaker 1: I have so many guesses as to who that is,
Speaker 1: but no, sorry, I think you probably know. But just
Speaker 1: going back to a point that Matt made as well
Speaker 1: about you know, Bill Gross's managerial style, this was an
Speaker 1: option that did come up towards the end of his
Speaker 1: tenure at PIMCO, the idea that well, maybe they remove
Speaker 1: him from all the managerial stuff, put him even in
Speaker 1: a different office and just give him some money and
Speaker 1: let him invest and not have to deal with people,
Speaker 1: because clearly he didn't like it, and he was arguably
Speaker 1: not very good at it. Why why couldn't that happen?
Speaker 1: Why wasn't that an option? I think by the time
Speaker 1: that idea was being batted around, it was just too late.
Speaker 1: Like they had had by that point a year of
Speaker 1: trying to negotiate an exit for Bill and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out the best path forward, and it seems like
Speaker 1: they were just so out of step with each other.
Speaker 1: And by day I mean Bill Gross and the rest
Speaker 1: of him Coast Management, where Bill would come to the
Speaker 1: table and say, hey, I'm ready to step back. Let's
Speaker 1: do this and this and this, and they would say,
Speaker 1: oh great, when can we do it? And then you know,
Speaker 1: he would, according to you know, my sources, that he
Speaker 1: would flip flap and say, oh, no, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want that. I never wanted that. And this happened
Speaker 1: in a bunch of different kind of iterations and in
Speaker 1: different ways, and um, you know, One example that's a
Speaker 1: little bit famous um among people that I talked to
Speaker 1: you is the time when he agreed to meet with
Speaker 1: a mediator for his relationship with Mohammed Hilarian, and basically
Speaker 1: he everyone says, oh, Bill agreed to this. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: we're going to schedule this. They found a mediator, they
Speaker 1: started to put it on the calendars, and Bill was like,
Speaker 1: I never agree to this. And Bill says, you know,
Speaker 1: people hear what they want. But I truly he to
Speaker 1: this day maintains that he never agreed to it. And
Speaker 1: I agree with him that people hear what they want.
Speaker 1: But there is this sense of like, okay, but eight
Speaker 1: people heard you say yes to this and wrote it down,
Speaker 1: and you know, at a certain point we have to
Speaker 1: try to move forward. By the time, the idea was
Speaker 1: being batted around that they could maybe just give him
Speaker 1: a pile of money, a little side car as they
Speaker 1: called it, and let him just play with the money,
Speaker 1: play in the market, be happy be over there and
Speaker 1: not bothering anybody his It was almost as though, I
Speaker 1: think this is kind of his characterization, but it's almost
Speaker 1: as though his presence was just too toxic, that there
Speaker 1: was too upsetting to even have him in the building,
Speaker 1: but basically that they couldn't. They couldn't. They felt like
Speaker 1: they couldn't trust him anymore to agree to this plan
Speaker 1: and stick to it and carry it out, that it
Speaker 1: would still be more drama, more chaos, more moving the
Speaker 1: goal post. One implication of the book is that although
Speaker 1: he was not the CEO, he was to such a
Speaker 1: degree the star performer that he could he like had
Speaker 1: the soft power anyway. Like at some point he tells Larya,
Speaker 1: I'm gretariat. You don't bet agan secretary. It's interesting because
Speaker 1: in the beginning, you know, they made such a big
Speaker 1: deal about the three legged stool of the co founders
Speaker 1: being equal, but the two other co founders kind of
Speaker 1: fell away and only Bill was left. And there seems
Speaker 1: to be this kind of institutional slap where the portfolio
Speaker 1: managers are the most important, where you know, if you're
Speaker 1: a client person, you serve the portfolio manager. If you're execution,
Speaker 1: everything revolves around the performer. So I'm not sure you
Speaker 1: know what it does sound like everyone was a bit
Speaker 1: more collegial back in the day. I mean, still with
Speaker 1: the same kind of um joking that I don't think
Speaker 1: I would be able to tolerate. But they but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. You know, it seems like towards the end, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was this extreme tilt that that made him the
Speaker 1: leader and made people want to be like him and
Speaker 1: act like him. And certainly he's at the tone. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't if Bill gros says no noise on the
Speaker 1: trade floor, there's going to be no noise on the
Speaker 1: trade floor. Do you think that's true? Like elsewhere in
Speaker 1: the financial industry, Like, like it seems so like ingrained
Speaker 1: that the person running the money and making the investment
Speaker 1: decisions is the most important person and the person like
Speaker 1: during investor relations or like managing HR is subservient to them.
Speaker 1: But like, is that is that how it works everywhere?
Speaker 1: Because like you know, I go back to like Philip
Speaker 1: gross is at performed by fifty basis points, right, Like meanwhile,
Speaker 1: people are raising trillions of dollars, right, Like like maybe
Speaker 1: those people raising trillions of dollars were actually quite good
Speaker 1: at their jobs. No, I think you're exactly right, And
Speaker 1: I think this is sort of like a there and
Speaker 1: there are other like you know, big financial instititions, or
Speaker 1: I'd be like, yeah, the investor remissions. People there are
Speaker 1: really important completely given the perform I are people and
Speaker 1: bad I are people. I think that's completely true, and
Speaker 1: that's underappreciated. And I have some views on this given
Speaker 1: that that's typically where you would find women in the
Speaker 1: financial industry. Um, you know, for for many reasons as
Speaker 1: to why that has turned out to be the case,
Speaker 1: and for you know, and I think that also kind
Speaker 1: of feeds why we think of it as I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a chicken and egg problem. But I
Speaker 1: have this argument that um, Pat Fisher should be you know,
Speaker 1: this is a woman who ran operations at PIMCO. And
Speaker 1: I strongly believe this is just me. No one has
Speaker 1: you know, no one else is making this case but
Speaker 1: me probably, But I shouldn't say that. Maybe some someone
Speaker 1: out there is making the case. But I have this
Speaker 1: strong belief that Pat Fisher should be counted as a
Speaker 1: co founder. She ran operations at PIMCO. And I was
Speaker 1: just talking to a guy who used to work there,
Speaker 1: who you know, doesn't know this theory of mine, but
Speaker 1: he was like, yeah, you know, PIMCO was so strong
Speaker 1: in operations and trade execution, and just if you're botching
Speaker 1: every third trade and calling Goldman and saying, shoot, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, do you mind Goldman's gonna not look to
Speaker 1: your trades that you know, they're gonna stop trading with
Speaker 1: you as much they're this person doesn't know what they're doing.
Speaker 1: And PIMCO wasn't that and that you know, there are
Speaker 1: a hundred different times that I do this in the book.
Speaker 1: But Pat Fisher helped to build the thing that made
Speaker 1: the company run seamlessly, and that is so underappreciated because
Speaker 1: it's back office. And again, I think there's some sexism
Speaker 1: in there, and um, you know, we we've built a
Speaker 1: world in which there's this like hegemony of um of
Speaker 1: portfolio managing or like you know, in the book, there's
Speaker 1: the scene where Bill Grows blows up at the woman
Speaker 1: who runs product and says, you're introducing products at the
Speaker 1: portfolio managers didn't approve and she's like, that's actually not true.
Speaker 1: But like you know, when I think about giant financial,
Speaker 1: like like giant asset managers, like I think more about
Speaker 1: product than about portfolio management, right, I think, like you know,
Speaker 1: the person is like, we've introduced a meme themed e
Speaker 1: TF like that's how they get the money it's not
Speaker 1: by like outperforming by ten basis points. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'm exaggerating here, but like that job of like figuring
Speaker 1: out like what sort of rapper people want things in
Speaker 1: seems like at least as important as like at performing
Speaker 1: se of like other you know, investment grade bond managers.
Speaker 1: I think that's true because if you look back, you know,
Speaker 1: at products that they were selling in like the forties,
Speaker 1: they're not that different, like everything is the same. In
Speaker 1: the process of reporting this book, I talked to a
Speaker 1: pension manager who had overseen the A T and T
Speaker 1: pension fund and he was like, yeah, you know, we
Speaker 1: were remember being a helicopter like looking at a mall
Speaker 1: that we were thinking about buying. And then I had
Speaker 1: a passive strategy and I was like weak, what you
Speaker 1: were doing a barbell in the seventies? Like where was
Speaker 1: I on this? I just wrote this article about how
Speaker 1: people are doing a barbell and it was like a
Speaker 1: new thing to me, Like I did I just wake up?
Speaker 1: Have people been doing this the whole time? And yes,
Speaker 1: like this is we we put new names on them,
Speaker 1: we find more tax efficient strategies or whatever. But to
Speaker 1: a large extent, it's the same stuff repackaged, and you know,
Speaker 1: as a person picking funds, you're kind of like, I'm clever.
Speaker 1: I want to pick the thing that's cool right now.
Speaker 1: I love a meme. Let's do this. You know what
Speaker 1: is PIMCO like right now? Because of course they had
Speaker 1: this exodus in they lost um. I think one of
Speaker 1: their few senior women they lost were their few senior
Speaker 1: persons of color, in the form of Muhammad l arian Um. Clearly,
Speaker 1: Bill Gross's focus was on the total return fund and
Speaker 1: what was going on with his portfolio management. But as
Speaker 1: you and Matt just laid it out, products were becoming
Speaker 1: more and more important. Um. There was more and more
Speaker 1: of a tilt towards getting even more passive as low
Speaker 1: cost as physically possible. Has PIMCO changed much, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to report that I don't think they've changed much. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's um. You know, I think they are
Speaker 1: working on it, much like a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: asset managers financial firms are trying to figure out what's
Speaker 1: gone so awry and why they simply have so few
Speaker 1: women and people of color like so weird. From what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing, it's it's not really going swimmingly. I think
Speaker 1: it was last year that there was a letter from
Speaker 1: twenty one current and former female employees saying, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a we've experienced discrimination here at PIMCO. And
Speaker 1: I think at the beginning of Pimco had never had
Speaker 1: a black partner, never not one. They just simply couldn't
Speaker 1: find one. And I just find that be on disappointing, right,
Speaker 1: Like if it's so troubling because if you think through
Speaker 1: what you know, they think it's a meritocracy, So what
Speaker 1: does that mean, Like if you take that further, if
Speaker 1: you go to the like logical extension of that, I
Speaker 1: just it's indefensible. And I don't think. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think there's this kind of obviously we're having a
Speaker 1: broad you know, pan industry reckoning with what we do
Speaker 1: at work and how we feel about work and what
Speaker 1: we bring to work and you know, what's allowed at work.
Speaker 1: And I think that's especially acute at a place like Pimco.
Speaker 1: At Pimco because those old school Wall Street cultures that
Speaker 1: are so tough and so exclusionary are they just look
Speaker 1: real bad right now. And to a large extent, I
Speaker 1: think it's just not tenable anymore. Meanwhile, Bill Gross has
Speaker 1: a book out. He's keeping busy beautiful, right, He's he's
Speaker 1: he's got a book, got a suspended jail sentence for
Speaker 1: playing the Gilgan's Island theme too long? Has he like
Speaker 1: what is he having a reckoning with any of this? Like?
Speaker 1: Is he do you think he's been into respective about
Speaker 1: like the the last few years and and and uh
Speaker 1: and about your book. Uh, it's funny. Yesterday I had
Speaker 1: my first interaction with Bill in over a year. I
Speaker 1: had tweeted the Planet Money story that we did Planet
Speaker 1: Money episode that we did about you know, the Mond King,
Speaker 1: and he replied to my tweet with a link to
Speaker 1: his book, which is just stellar marketing, um and and
Speaker 1: so on brand. But I do think so it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I have always kind of thought of him as a
Speaker 1: reflective person, as introspective, as a bit self aware, you know,
Speaker 1: to a point among us. But I was talking to
Speaker 1: a colleague who covered treasuries for ages, and he was
Speaker 1: saying that it was a performative self reflection or self
Speaker 1: awareness that actually Bill is It's part of that facade,
Speaker 1: that persona that he would put on. But actually there
Speaker 1: there isn't that much real soul searching, which I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's been, you know, in his book, he
Speaker 1: he talks about his ouster. In you know, a recent
Speaker 1: interview with the FT, he talked about his auster and
Speaker 1: what he did wrong, and he definitely has thoughts. So
Speaker 1: it's hard to It's hard for me to gauge how
Speaker 1: much of that is truly internalized and like from the heart.
Speaker 1: But he does seem to find fault with his behavior
Speaker 1: and that he you know, thinks he maybe should have
Speaker 1: done things differently, which probably we can all agree. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. He's been busy. He's been, you know,
Speaker 1: feuding with his neighbor, writing this book um publishing it
Speaker 1: two weeks before mine, and applying to tweets. What do
Speaker 1: you think Bill Gross's legacy in terms of the bond
Speaker 1: market or investing actually is mm hmm two answers. From
Speaker 1: a pure investing standpoint, I think it is seeing these
Speaker 1: market inefficiencies, these factors that he identified and was able
Speaker 1: to ring out performance from for decades, So those were
Speaker 1: true insights, and I do think that that is, you know,
Speaker 1: he is the bond king in that way, and and
Speaker 1: helped to bring about this revolution. Of active bond trading.
Speaker 1: And then the second answer would be kind of it's
Speaker 1: hard to say, and if if a world without Bill
Speaker 1: Gross would have the same cultural shape, that the bond
Speaker 1: market would look the way it does, and then that
Speaker 1: everyone would act the way they do in the bond market.
Speaker 1: You know, PIMCO is is certainly on the sort of
Speaker 1: extreme of behavior where they're harder on the street than
Speaker 1: everyone else. They're cut throat, they're a little meaner there whatever, um,
Speaker 1: but and it's I don't know that everyone like necessarily
Speaker 1: is quite as a serbic in dealing with their Wall
Speaker 1: Street coverage. But I do think that it was a model.
Speaker 1: It was a way, you know, people look to him
Speaker 1: as a role model that he's like on TV talking
Speaker 1: about his securities and talking his book, and people are like,
Speaker 1: that is so cool, that's amazing that he can do that.
Speaker 1: The beach does something and everybody follows, And that was
Speaker 1: absolutely you know that that degree of influence was certainly
Speaker 1: widely admired and emulated, you know, aspired aspirationally emulated. Mary Child,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. The book again is The Bond King.
Speaker 1: How one man made a market, built an empire, and
Speaker 1: lost it. All and you should definitely check it out.
Speaker 1: This was so fun. So Matt, obviously that was a
Speaker 1: fun conversation. And I know you've been sort of involved
Speaker 1: in the production of this book and acting as an
Speaker 1: advisor on a lot of um the content, and just
Speaker 1: I guess providing emotional support to Mary because it sounds like,
Speaker 1: um she needed a lot of it given the personalities involved.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that I find really interesting
Speaker 1: about at well, one of the things I keep thinking
Speaker 1: is that Bill Gross was sort of born out of
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies early eighties when you finally got a
Speaker 1: lot of interest rate volatility, which made bonds more interesting
Speaker 1: and then which gave rise to bond kings like him
Speaker 1: and a few others. And I kind of wonder if
Speaker 1: the period that we're entering now, if we're going to
Speaker 1: see the same sort of birth of a new asset
Speaker 1: class or a new group of investors with a slightly
Speaker 1: different strategy who come out of it really successful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's possible. I do think that one thing
Speaker 1: that that is true about Bill Gross is that he
Speaker 1: came up at a time when it was sort of
Speaker 1: hard to be a famous investor, and he ended up
Speaker 1: running like a like a mutual fund, which was sort
Speaker 1: of how you became a famous investor in like the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties. And you know, like, certainly there's a
Speaker 1: lot of volatility in two thousand and eight, and the
Speaker 1: people who became famous out of that were hedgemine managers.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's where the where the action
Speaker 1: is for the foreseeable future is like people who can
Speaker 1: make really kind of bold, concentrated bets rather than running
Speaker 1: you know, trillions of dollars for like households intentions. It
Speaker 1: feels like that's where like the celebrities are meant to
Speaker 1: these days. Yeah, I can't imagine that going back, you know,
Speaker 1: but certainly there will be celebrities meanted out of this,
Speaker 1: you know, out of out of unit today's volatility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but probably not your average et F manager or something
Speaker 1: like that. But that was the other thing that I
Speaker 1: was thinking about, was this idea of whether or not
Speaker 1: the way Bill Gross ran a bond fund was the
Speaker 1: sort of gold standard of running a bond fund because
Speaker 1: when you listen to Mary talk and describe you know,
Speaker 1: his strategy or the secrets of Pimco's success going along
Speaker 1: credit buying duration, selling volatility, treating Russian forwards as cash equivalents.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about someone doing that over
Speaker 1: the past month or two, it's just a recipe for disaster.
Speaker 1: And so you get that question once again whether or
Speaker 1: not uh Bill Gross was lucky that his period of
Speaker 1: being at the helm of a very large investor coincided
Speaker 1: with very low interest rates in a period of generally
Speaker 1: low volatility, or whether there was something else there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But it's hard to know because like it's not like
Speaker 1: it's not like he was born to sell volatility. It's
Speaker 1: like he came to a reason to complete identified the
Speaker 1: right for that environment, you know, and like he's he
Speaker 1: wrote not ites saying like this is how we expect
Speaker 1: the next ten years to go, and so this is
Speaker 1: why we're going to be structurally short volatility. And he
Speaker 1: was somewhat able to adapt, right. I mean, he ended
Speaker 1: up not doing as well in in a in a
Speaker 1: higher rate, you know, sort of different environment than he
Speaker 1: did during like the sort of long bond bull market.
Speaker 1: But it's not like he just sort of said it
Speaker 1: on autopilot for thirty years that had happened to work out,
Speaker 1: That's true. This has been another episode of the All
Speaker 1: Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Tracy Alloway. You should definitely follow our guest
Speaker 1: Mary Child's She's at m d C, and you should
Speaker 1: follow Matt Levine. He's at Matt Underscore Levine. You should
Speaker 1: also follow our producer Carmen Rodriguez, She's at Carmen Armant.
Speaker 1: And you should follow Bloomberg Podcast at Podcasts and the
Speaker 1: head of Bloomberg Podcast, Francesco Leedy at Francesco Today. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.