Speaker 1: So here we go. Welcome to Trallians. I'm Joel Weber
Speaker 1: and I'm Eric bell Shones. Eric, one of my most
Speaker 1: favorite things about the e g F universe are tickers,
Speaker 1: and it's just like, it's so much fun. When you
Speaker 1: see somebody get a good ticker and I have a
Speaker 1: good E t F idea that goes with it, it
Speaker 1: just speaks to one of the reasons that this industry
Speaker 1: can be so much fun. Absolutely, I mean, everybody loves tickers.
Speaker 1: Remember when I first did E t F hits on
Speaker 1: Blueberg Television. The anchor at the time, Adam Johnson, UM,
Speaker 1: he loved the tickers. And even my mom can get
Speaker 1: into them. They're very accessible, they're fun, they can communicate
Speaker 1: a lot quickly, and and on our team we call
Speaker 1: it the ticker Premium. We believe that a good ticker
Speaker 1: can give you a little extra juice in the marketing
Speaker 1: efforts of an e t F and UM. I was
Speaker 1: down in Florida at the Money Show, my first physical conference,
Speaker 1: and ran into a UM a couple of E t
Speaker 1: F pros and had some drinks and some of the
Speaker 1: stuff they were telling me about their trials and tribulations
Speaker 1: of reserving tickers. I thought, this dish really is a
Speaker 1: perfect podcast. Plus sometimes I'm asked about ticker reservations and
Speaker 1: whether you can like sell a ticker, how long it lasts,
Speaker 1: and I can't quite technically answer all their questions. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to really nail this down finally how it works.
Speaker 1: So joining us Uh, a couple of your friends from Florida,
Speaker 1: and then we widened the circle, filled back with signal
Speaker 1: advisors Mike Venudo with Torosso, Laura Morrison with Cibo, and
Speaker 1: then joining us from Bloomberg News Claire Balentine, this time
Speaker 1: on Trillions Tickers. Phil, Mike, Laura, Claire. Welcome to Trillions. Thanks. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm really excited about this. Um, let's just start
Speaker 1: with some basics. What do I have to do to
Speaker 1: hold a ticker? So, in order for a client of
Speaker 1: an exchange to reserve a ticker, they simply need to
Speaker 1: reach out to the exchange and make the request. It's
Speaker 1: pretty simple and straightforward. If the ticker is available, we
Speaker 1: reserve it for them. If it's already reserved by another exchange,
Speaker 1: we can place ourselves on the wait list and anticipation
Speaker 1: of it potentially becoming available or we can reach out
Speaker 1: to the exchange that has it reserved and ask it,
Speaker 1: ask them if they'd be willing to release it. So
Speaker 1: is this like, go daddy, though, Do I like pay?
Speaker 1: Should I pay? Do I pay? And I just plunked
Speaker 1: down some like twenty bucks and I get to sit
Speaker 1: on the u R O. No. No, you actually don't
Speaker 1: need to pay anything in order to reserve tickers. The
Speaker 1: exchange doesn't look at that as a revenue line. Nobody
Speaker 1: really owns tickers, to be honest with you, I mean,
Speaker 1: just by way of background, and this is going way back. Um,
Speaker 1: when I started my career at the New York Stock
Speaker 1: Exchange in corporate listenings, there was literally one guy. He
Speaker 1: sat in a very small office with a huge ledger.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking it was maybe two ft by three feet
Speaker 1: in size. It was leather bound, and you'd walk in
Speaker 1: there and you'd have to bring a piece of paper
Speaker 1: actually in triplicate and asked to reserve the sticker. Um.
Speaker 1: It was very manual at the time. Exchange is eventually
Speaker 1: utilized other software technology, but it was all individual by exchanges.
Speaker 1: Fast forward to today, there's this concept of the intermarket
Speaker 1: symbol Reservation Authority Israel, and it is all under the
Speaker 1: regulation reagain a mess National Market System Plan and filed
Speaker 1: with the SEC. So it's much more um, much much
Speaker 1: more specific as it relates to the ability to be
Speaker 1: able to reserve tickers in for how long. So so
Speaker 1: essentially each exchange has the opportunity to reserve up to symbols,
Speaker 1: and the symbols reserved for twenty four months, and if
Speaker 1: that exchange hasn't used that and applied it to a listing,
Speaker 1: then they actually lose that reservation and it goes to
Speaker 1: the next person, the next exchange on the wait list.
Speaker 1: But like I said, it's not like Go Daddy, where
Speaker 1: exchanges can just sit on the symbols and reserve what
Speaker 1: they think will be the next hot symbol. They we
Speaker 1: really have to keep documentation to to prove that there's
Speaker 1: an intent by an issuer to use this symbol within
Speaker 1: the next twenty four months. So, Eric, I know you
Speaker 1: always like the analogies. It does sound a lot like
Speaker 1: the Bureaucrats and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, right
Speaker 1: like it's it's weird, you walk in, you don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. But I think one thing, Laura said
Speaker 1: at the end there that's really important is it's not
Speaker 1: like anybody off the street can just call up the
Speaker 1: exchange and reserve a ticker. There has to be evidence
Speaker 1: that you're actually have and intend to launch something with it.
Speaker 1: It's it does. It's not like a commodity that has
Speaker 1: value to somebody who's not going to launch that they
Speaker 1: can transfer our sell Well, and what's that evidence that
Speaker 1: you intend to launch something? What qualifies as evidence? I mean, Ali,
Speaker 1: Laura hit that one, because you know, usually if somebody
Speaker 1: cause I run a white labeled business, if somebody wants
Speaker 1: to launch an ETF, they're more likely to get it
Speaker 1: reserved the ticker by coming through me because it exchanges
Speaker 1: know that we have the ability to actually launch. But
Speaker 1: I just wrote down a great idea on a napkin.
Speaker 1: Does that count yep? Laura, you have the ability to launch.
Speaker 1: As we get to know our clients. It comes in
Speaker 1: through the process of listening, so as we um appreciate
Speaker 1: how sophisticated and knowledgeable they are about what their intentions
Speaker 1: are than you know, it gets to a certain point
Speaker 1: we're like, okay, well let's talk about symbols. So then
Speaker 1: it's brought up at the appropriate time. There are some
Speaker 1: instances where are we we get prospects because their first
Speaker 1: question is may I reserve this symbol? But then we
Speaker 1: go through further exploration to be sure that you know
Speaker 1: it truly is a um an opportunity for us to
Speaker 1: do business. UM let's talk about it from the issuer
Speaker 1: point of view. So this is I think what most
Speaker 1: people fantasize about. Okay, I've got this idea. I'm an
Speaker 1: independent issuer. A lot of times on Twitter, somebody will
Speaker 1: bring up something and people will start imagining what the
Speaker 1: ticker should be. So you, guys, Mike phill or our issuers,
Speaker 1: how many tickers do you reserve? How do you go
Speaker 1: about it? How important is it? Uh? Start with Phil?
Speaker 1: How much time do you spend thinking about it? I
Speaker 1: guess I have a lot of questions. It's really one
Speaker 1: of the first things you do. It's one of the
Speaker 1: first things you do as soon as you have the
Speaker 1: concept of the fund, before you've nailed down to details,
Speaker 1: before you've written the perspectives. You grab those good tickers
Speaker 1: because you know they're hot item and they're gonna go.
Speaker 1: The language of trading desks and asset allocators is the ticker,
Speaker 1: not the fun name. So some of the fun names
Speaker 1: sound like law firms, you've got you know, issuer, index, provider,
Speaker 1: asset class, blah blah blah, fund um. But the ticker
Speaker 1: is a great The tickers are more fun um. The
Speaker 1: ones that don't work as well are probably the acronyms,
Speaker 1: the ones that stand for a long in a series
Speaker 1: of of you know, parties that are involved in the fund.
Speaker 1: But the ones that really hit the nail on the
Speaker 1: head can really you know, be very sticky and memorable,
Speaker 1: and it's an incredible edge, is an incredible marketing tool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: premium is the right word here, because I was telling
Speaker 1: you back in Florida, feel that I got together to
Speaker 1: run a separate businesses together eventually culminating and me buying
Speaker 1: Phil's company, all because of the ticker bl okay. Right um.
Speaker 1: And one thing that you think about when you're reserving
Speaker 1: tickers is what are the competitors that are gonna come
Speaker 1: and what are they going to reserve? So I own
Speaker 1: some derivations of bl okay as well, right because like
Speaker 1: go daddy, I don't want somebody to have you know,
Speaker 1: roso dot net or Taroso dot or all those sorts
Speaker 1: of things, so that premium is very powerful. When we
Speaker 1: first came out with block we weren't allowed to use
Speaker 1: blockchain in the name, but the ticker was explicitly clear,
Speaker 1: and we launched the same day as another fund and
Speaker 1: literally doubled their assets. All in my opinion, in the
Speaker 1: early days were about ticker premium. This was like right
Speaker 1: at the peak time when everyone was saying blockchain not
Speaker 1: big cooin, right, and the blockchain was just getting super hot,
Speaker 1: and we were looking to launch a blockchain theme fund.
Speaker 1: There weren't that many public securities that were really pure
Speaker 1: plays in the space that were just coming up, and
Speaker 1: we're getting to that point, and there were two other companies,
Speaker 1: Mike's Company another company, that were also working on a
Speaker 1: blockchain fund, and I didn't know if we could beat
Speaker 1: them to market. We had other priorities we're working on
Speaker 1: the things. Really what we're focused on was automating our
Speaker 1: trading desk. So I said to Macan said, listen, I
Speaker 1: don't think I could beat you to market. Why don't
Speaker 1: you take the ticker, you launch it, but we'll do
Speaker 1: the trading and subadvisory work for you, because that's where
Speaker 1: we're focused and it turned into a wonderful partnership not
Speaker 1: only on a fund but for our businesses. One of
Speaker 1: the stories that we went over down there that I
Speaker 1: think really exemplifies how it works is Mike, your story
Speaker 1: with the ticker d O g E. So explain, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: you thought of it, you registered it, and then and
Speaker 1: then what happened? Tell me that your history with this
Speaker 1: ticker and what's happening here. Yeah, so let's start with
Speaker 1: this is not an endorsement for dose coin, So so
Speaker 1: we're all protected. Um that said, I am a fan,
Speaker 1: but you know, three years ago we reserved that ticker
Speaker 1: um with the idea that maybe we would do like
Speaker 1: a gray scale thing around doze or something, since you know,
Speaker 1: and we were way early. Um, and by the time
Speaker 1: you know, that was something viable was maybe a month
Speaker 1: or two ago, and by then it was expiring. Now
Speaker 1: I knew that I wanted to reapply for it, right,
Speaker 1: but somebody else was already on the waiting list. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing Barry got it. Uh So, so yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you could have something and be thinking about if for years,
Speaker 1: but if you don't use it, you lose it. Another
Speaker 1: example of that is I had Hell as a ticker
Speaker 1: H E A L. And we didn't have a great
Speaker 1: product for it yet, but we knew we would eventually,
Speaker 1: so we spent the legal money to file so that
Speaker 1: we'd get the extension um. Eventually, we still let it
Speaker 1: go because we never came to an idea that would
Speaker 1: fit it. But you will go out of your way
Speaker 1: to keep a good ticker if you can see the
Speaker 1: product that could fit with it at sometime. And one
Speaker 1: last thing I want to add to the going and
Speaker 1: getting tickers thing is a lot of us think about families, right,
Speaker 1: So I've done the risk on risk off row row,
Speaker 1: I've got Jojo coming, I've got other ones that are similar.
Speaker 1: So when you're thinking about a fund, you're usually thinking
Speaker 1: about a family of funds and what tickers can come
Speaker 1: together around that family of funds. So you'll see a
Speaker 1: lot of these new groups that come out with like
Speaker 1: options overlay, they'll put an A in front of everything
Speaker 1: like Asymmetric or things like that, or or got them
Speaker 1: with the g spy, So you'll you'll see people build
Speaker 1: as bet best as possible families. And the last thing
Speaker 1: is anything with E S G in it is gone
Speaker 1: and nobody can get it right. They all the E
Speaker 1: s G tickers are gone. So um, there you go.
Speaker 1: There's some inside baseball. How often would you say it
Speaker 1: happens that you think of the ticker and that are
Speaker 1: looking for a fun to fit with it versus the
Speaker 1: other way around, because I would think you have the
Speaker 1: fun first, and then you figure out a ticker oil
Speaker 1: you want to take that one. And there are very
Speaker 1: few tickers that are good enough that you would build
Speaker 1: a strategy around it. But there are some out there.
Speaker 1: I think we've seen some maybe in the cannabis space,
Speaker 1: you know, where there's some real you know, premode tickers
Speaker 1: and the space was just exploding. Um, there are some,
Speaker 1: but I think you know, there's two kinds of of
Speaker 1: of product, um, like target markets. Right, You've got your
Speaker 1: thoughtful uh let's say, quantitative strategy or active value you
Speaker 1: know value strategy, which is, you know, really it's gonna
Speaker 1: be ground up, it's gonna be an E Smith manager
Speaker 1: who was a philosophy that they've developed over years. And
Speaker 1: then you've got your fast money retail stuff right, which
Speaker 1: is like you know a weed fund or blockchain fund,
Speaker 1: and that stuff can come quick. And you've got to
Speaker 1: be fast, because the only way it works is really
Speaker 1: if your first maybe second to market. Um. And those
Speaker 1: are the ones where the ticker can in some cases
Speaker 1: drive the product development. I think that would be rare,
Speaker 1: but I could see a couple of tickers good enough
Speaker 1: where that could happen. Yeah. I think it goes back
Speaker 1: to the family concept, right, So this will be close
Speaker 1: to you, folks. UM. We had this idea a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago that all the major like family offices
Speaker 1: and big names out there will eventually have their own ETFs.
Speaker 1: So we reserved a bunch of names including I'm looking
Speaker 1: at it, b LMR, with the idea that Michael would
Speaker 1: someday launch his own ETF. Bloom was not available, so
Speaker 1: but we had Zuck and things like that. Um. Now
Speaker 1: it hasn't come through, But if you're thinking ahead of
Speaker 1: where the industry might be going, owning that ticker premium
Speaker 1: early could be very valuable. I think what you're saying
Speaker 1: that you you think of a billionaires, Yeah, because they
Speaker 1: would embrace the tax benefits at some point. But just
Speaker 1: to be clear, you can't sell that. I cannot. Only
Speaker 1: you can only build an e t F around it
Speaker 1: and hopefully they'll be involved, but you can't like sell
Speaker 1: that to them for a certain amount of money. No,
Speaker 1: But what more likely happens is what Phil said, Right,
Speaker 1: we figure out ways to work with each other and
Speaker 1: further the industry of Phil and I call it the
Speaker 1: rebel alliance, you know, like me, him, meb West, all
Speaker 1: the smaller guys and girls working together. Um, the indies, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the indies have the best tickers. I mean, there's definitely
Speaker 1: a correlation there, Meb. You said, uh Med has toke
Speaker 1: to me, that is Mount Rushmore. I like herbs. We
Speaker 1: don't know these names. Me Med favor is the CEO
Speaker 1: of Cambria UM and he has UM. He also has
Speaker 1: I heard he has h O d L, which to
Speaker 1: me is you could probably sell that for a million
Speaker 1: dollars to one of these bitcoinis. I know, but you
Speaker 1: probably could. Mike you you talked about um the premium
Speaker 1: and also this family idea. You know. Another trend that
Speaker 1: Eric and I have have notice and talked about before
Speaker 1: on the show is like when there are e t
Speaker 1: f uh tickers that are verbs that seems to be
Speaker 1: also really effective, like hack being a really famous one.
Speaker 1: You said, he'll I thought what that was that triggered
Speaker 1: that idea for me, Like, how much do you think
Speaker 1: a premium goes for for tickers that are can also
Speaker 1: be verbs? So I think the key is that the
Speaker 1: ticker tells the story. If you can find a ticker
Speaker 1: that tells the whole et f story and one word,
Speaker 1: it's amazingly half powerful, like hack block, you know what
Speaker 1: they are, and it's it's just done. Um. The other
Speaker 1: thing that's very powerful with a ticker is I know
Speaker 1: I've Joel, I've heard you on your podcast here talk
Speaker 1: about some of the stupid names we have to deal with.
Speaker 1: Believe it or not, Those stupid names come from our
Speaker 1: regulators trying to protect um. Right. So so if I
Speaker 1: say I want to do something, they say will prove
Speaker 1: to me that of the revenue is coming from there,
Speaker 1: And I say, yeah, right fine, Like, and it's really
Speaker 1: about pigeon holing in with the naming convention rules. If
Speaker 1: a ticker can get across what we're doing better than
Speaker 1: the name, it's super super powerful. Just to be clear,
Speaker 1: you're talking about like your block, which we've been mentioning
Speaker 1: over and over. Sorry, official name not here to pitch. Yeah, no, Um,
Speaker 1: the official name is Amplified Transformational Data Sharing e t F. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so thank god for block. Yes, if that was a
Speaker 1: t d S, good luck, But it happens with a
Speaker 1: lot of them, like these hydrogen economies. And remember when
Speaker 1: there was the Whear e t F. The name of
Speaker 1: the E t F was the same as the symbol,
Speaker 1: and it was supposed to be about wearables and then
Speaker 1: the SEC said no more of that. So the person
Speaker 1: who who governs how we use a ticker is Laura
Speaker 1: or UG or one of the exchanges and their self
Speaker 1: regulatory organizations. The person's the entity that regulates what the
Speaker 1: name is is the SEC inus. So so there's a
Speaker 1: lot more leeway with the ticker because you're not getting
Speaker 1: a regulator saying no unless it's a cash management product
Speaker 1: UM low duration stuff. So I had mentioned to you
Speaker 1: I have a t M. I was told I couldn't
Speaker 1: use it for short duration fixed income fund because it
Speaker 1: would imply its cash I think another thing is, you know,
Speaker 1: we tend to take ourselves real seriously in the sm
Speaker 1: management industry, and the tickers that don't take themselves too seriously,
Speaker 1: the tickers that are more fun seem to do really well,
Speaker 1: like I had a fun called the Reverse cap waited
Speaker 1: US Large Cap et F and for the ticker, I
Speaker 1: shows reverse r vrs to spell out reverse and it
Speaker 1: kind of fell flat for the most part. When we
Speaker 1: launched a fund, Ben Johnson and Morning Star putt saying, oh,
Speaker 1: this should be YPS for spy spy backwards YPS, and
Speaker 1: it got a great reaction on Twitter. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: miss did well. We ended up a couple of years
Speaker 1: later selling the fund to Arrow Funds and Joe Barrado
Speaker 1: at Arrow Funds is like, hey, let's use now we're
Speaker 1: moving it over, let's use YPS. It's much you know,
Speaker 1: it's much lighter, it's much more fun, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: tell the whole story right there. Um, And he didn't.
Speaker 1: Immediately we got another like eight or nine million into
Speaker 1: the funds. So you know, it was that that it
Speaker 1: can't have an effect. Yeah, you could have the opposite
Speaker 1: effect with a bad ticker, which you've teased me about
Speaker 1: on bolth Twitter and on various shows. Yeah, wait, E
Speaker 1: t F Industry E t F. It should have been meta,
Speaker 1: should have been meta, or there was other ideas, but
Speaker 1: T E t F just well, So what we learned
Speaker 1: was t E t F everybody I thought that that
Speaker 1: meant it owns all the E t F s, right,
Speaker 1: so like total E t F s or something like that.
Speaker 1: So we figured out way too late in the game
Speaker 1: that our ticker gave the wrong message. And that's even
Speaker 1: that's instead of ticker premium, what is that ticker deficiency
Speaker 1: ticker dysfunction? Okay, well, wait, I gotta go. I got
Speaker 1: a good follow of that. Like, okay, So one of
Speaker 1: the things that we've talked about before is like the
Speaker 1: E t F graveyard where we we see a fund
Speaker 1: that you know is no longer viable and get sunseted.
Speaker 1: And how often are you keeping an eye in the
Speaker 1: graveyard to see if you can, you know, steal something
Speaker 1: from beyond the grave and bring it bring it back
Speaker 1: to something else. So I have a list here of
Speaker 1: a couple of these because I was talking with Phil
Speaker 1: about the last night. So, uh, the only ticker that's
Speaker 1: been used for the same et F twice is s
Speaker 1: E A, which was used for the shipping so it closed, reopen,
Speaker 1: closed again. And now, um, I mean the filings out there,
Speaker 1: but I'm bringing something similar back as boat b A
Speaker 1: B O A T Why y Y closed as a
Speaker 1: weird fund. It was one of the first ever active funds,
Speaker 1: and then it was reopened as a passive fund at etc.
Speaker 1: And then Amplify and then um I mentioned the risk
Speaker 1: on risk off right, So State Street had that. Ironically
Speaker 1: when we launched it UM in our trust separately after
Speaker 1: they died, there immediately was approved at all the wirehouses
Speaker 1: because they thought it was still the State Street fund.
Speaker 1: So we're getting orders in and then like three days
Speaker 1: later they're getting rescented because the order books that the
Speaker 1: wires still were connected to the old fund and the
Speaker 1: old ticker. So all kinds of weird things happen from
Speaker 1: tickers and the graveyard. Can I jump in here with
Speaker 1: the story. And we saw recently where uh BTC, which
Speaker 1: clearly is going to be a coveted ticker for a
Speaker 1: bitcoin ETF. I mean that's like gold um gray Scale
Speaker 1: took a position in this smaller issuer who had a
Speaker 1: fixed income fund. They changed their ticker but not the
Speaker 1: strategy from like something appropriate to BTC, and then they
Speaker 1: undid it. So I'm guessing the SEC sort of sent
Speaker 1: them an email. Is that is that fair? But that's
Speaker 1: also how valuable the ticker is that gray Scale was
Speaker 1: willing to like do this whole maneuver just to hold
Speaker 1: onto BTC in the hopes they can convert GBTC to
Speaker 1: an e t F. Do I have that right? I
Speaker 1: don't know if any of us have the specifics of
Speaker 1: that case or would know you know, what the SEC
Speaker 1: and may or may not have said. But I have
Speaker 1: to say that the idea of buying a separate fund
Speaker 1: just to stick it with the ticker, to take the
Speaker 1: ticker off the table because they already have GBTC, so
Speaker 1: they don't need more ticker recognition. They just need to
Speaker 1: prevent somebody else. I think it's an incredibly I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just a brilliant defensive move. It's brilliant. But it
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting. I was watching that from AFAR
Speaker 1: as well. There are other things that exchanges do is
Speaker 1: just try to eliminate confusion, so reducing confusion the like
Speaker 1: for example, Mike, like what you said, if a fund closes,
Speaker 1: we typically put that ticker on the shelf for seventy
Speaker 1: five days or so, just so that there's not an
Speaker 1: immediate confusion and misunderstanding for actually what you're investing in.
Speaker 1: If if you're just focused on tickers. M One thing
Speaker 1: that we did, like when v XX relaunched as the
Speaker 1: new v x X, we actually didn't give it the
Speaker 1: v XX ticker immediately. Um, we would have liked to
Speaker 1: put the VXX ticker on it sooner, but we just said, okay,
Speaker 1: let's just make sure that there's there's time in between that.
Speaker 1: But then there's also the standpoint of, you know, BTC
Speaker 1: ticker means something, and it put a BTC ticker on
Speaker 1: you know, the intermediate fixed income e t f is.
Speaker 1: We were just there's got to be an ulterior motive here, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's ultimately it's just probably not the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: It's not it's misleading. Yeah, I can't explain that one.
Speaker 1: That one looked bungled to me. I'm curious to find
Speaker 1: out if it was truly strategic or a complete, you
Speaker 1: know cluster. What do you think the ticker premium is
Speaker 1: actually worth? Is there a way to quantify it? I
Speaker 1: think it's a case by case Joel. It depends on
Speaker 1: if you have a competitor at that time. It depends
Speaker 1: on a million different things. If if the theme is
Speaker 1: hot and the messages in the war single word. I mean,
Speaker 1: the hack is where it is because of that ticker
Speaker 1: and the fact that they launched it in two days
Speaker 1: later you had the Sony hack. Like right, I think
Speaker 1: sometimes all else equal, it seems to be worth a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's not worth a lot on its own. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to it's like an art to it.
Speaker 1: It just but it can actually, like you said, I
Speaker 1: think it can confuse people. One story that comes to mind,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if somebody can share the details on
Speaker 1: this one UM is t r x T, which was
Speaker 1: the Bill Gross ETF which launched from PIMCO. That's not
Speaker 1: a great ticker, especially for you know, Bill Gross at
Speaker 1: the time was like king of Active Management and like
Speaker 1: three months later, bam, they got bonbed. So I thought
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like the Godfather, Bill made an offer
Speaker 1: to somebody they couldn't refuse. UM. But any I don't know,
Speaker 1: anyone know the background there. The story is not that good.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I was. I was involved in that listing at
Speaker 1: the time, and we were we went to celebrate the
Speaker 1: launch on the day of and actually I was at
Speaker 1: their headquarters in California and Newport Beach and Bill looked
Speaker 1: at me and said, why don't we have b O
Speaker 1: n D? And then I looked at his team and
Speaker 1: I did some research and I was able to obtain
Speaker 1: the ticker b O n D and apply it to
Speaker 1: this fund. Prior to that, it was reserved elsewhere, and
Speaker 1: the entity that had at reserved was willing to let
Speaker 1: it go. They were willing to let it go because
Speaker 1: Laura asked them in a way where they were willing
Speaker 1: to let it go. But prior to all that happening,
Speaker 1: they had gone to their rep and and y see,
Speaker 1: he asked for the ticker bond. The rep at the
Speaker 1: time was me and I said, I tried, I couldn't
Speaker 1: get it. So they got stuck with t r XT,
Speaker 1: which was a terrible ticker that when they went to Laura,
Speaker 1: Laura was magically able to free it up after they're
Speaker 1: already launched with a bad picker. So, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: there's launch time they ever asked me for anything. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's an amazing story. Um. You know, there's a really
Speaker 1: basic one Laura that I that I have to ask you,
Speaker 1: which is I can think of a lot of bad
Speaker 1: words that are usually four letters. Um, and how do
Speaker 1: you evaluate you know, the bad words that that people
Speaker 1: come and I'm sure it happens not infrequently. How you
Speaker 1: get some of those inquiries? Yeah, that's true. We um
Speaker 1: and like when I, like I mentioned before, we get
Speaker 1: an inquiry for every letter, every potentially available symbol that
Speaker 1: starts with X, whatever that is. You pull that list
Speaker 1: and you have to scan it before you send it
Speaker 1: to the company, because I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: none of those those are included in that Excels friendsheet
Speaker 1: that you're sending. To be honest with you, So, so
Speaker 1: do you have to go to like Urban Dictionary just
Speaker 1: to keep up with like slang? Yes, I'd like to
Speaker 1: think that we're pretty well up on things, but there
Speaker 1: are a few things that slipped by asad. And what
Speaker 1: happens if you if you did send that list out
Speaker 1: to somebody and they they've spotted something, do you do
Speaker 1: you have an ability to to like walk it back
Speaker 1: before something launches just in case? Okay, yes, yeah, because
Speaker 1: once you send in the list, then they come back
Speaker 1: to you and say, this is what we'd like. You know,
Speaker 1: we were going to be launching one fund. This is
Speaker 1: our order priority would really like number one, number two
Speaker 1: and number three and then we go through that process
Speaker 1: to try to secure it for them. Um, so that's
Speaker 1: when that's when we catch it. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I wanted to do here was sort of imagine
Speaker 1: that we were issuers and that we were going to
Speaker 1: reserve tickers for things we might launch, which is a
Speaker 1: show we did. Uh, but two years ago we had
Speaker 1: a competition for it was like a shark tank for
Speaker 1: who had the best DTF idea. So, um, each of
Speaker 1: us has got five tickers or so that we wanted
Speaker 1: to see if they were available and if we could
Speaker 1: reserve them, just to see what our rate is like
Speaker 1: our hit rate, uh, and how much is reserved. I
Speaker 1: thought that'd be fun. So um, we each have what five, five,
Speaker 1: six tickers. It was hard to find. It was hard
Speaker 1: to keep it at fun, but you know it was.
Speaker 1: It was a fun exercise. So so I I can
Speaker 1: go first, Um, and Phil, how did you find out
Speaker 1: if this was taken or not? So I went to
Speaker 1: the incomparable Raw Morocco at Cibo, who works with Laura Morrison. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know he was able to go through
Speaker 1: each one with me and tell me which ones were
Speaker 1: available and which ones were not. And I honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't think you guys are gonna be very happy with
Speaker 1: the availability here. But let's see where we got. Okay,
Speaker 1: by the way, Rob Morocco is an amazing name, uh
Speaker 1: that the character will have to revisit it sometime. Okay.
Speaker 1: My first one was ACME, as in, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: watching a lot of uh Saturday morning cartoons with my
Speaker 1: kid ACME brand. That just struck me as something like
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, but like ACME is
Speaker 1: that one available as of today, as of this recording,
Speaker 1: ACME is available? Look at you chill, one for one,
Speaker 1: one for one. Okay, Next, well, I don't know what
Speaker 1: that would be. An ETM, you know you'll figure it out. Yeah, explosives,
Speaker 1: dynamite and coyotes. There you go, there go, Yeah, weapons,
Speaker 1: weapons manufacturers. That's pretty good. Okay. What about what about
Speaker 1: hot with two T s or one either way? H
Speaker 1: O T T is currently reserved? What about what about meme?
Speaker 1: Meme is reserved? I know who has that. It's a
Speaker 1: round hill. Make him o an offer they can't refuse,
Speaker 1: and I'll just yeah, I think they're really trying to
Speaker 1: do a meme TF. Okay, what about not as an
Speaker 1: n O T N O T is available. Okay, wow,
Speaker 1: I hit right pretty high. Okay, what about l G
Speaker 1: S T that I was thinking like long short? Okay, uh,
Speaker 1: l G S T is reserved currently. Yeah, okay, Now
Speaker 1: this was like the one that I thought was the best.
Speaker 1: Um funk funk is available? Ah, I don't know what
Speaker 1: I do know what would that be for? That would
Speaker 1: be good for the the q J kind of concept.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, music streaming, that's got us. I'm good at this.
Speaker 1: I have more, but I feel like I should put
Speaker 1: this down before I started striking out. So I just
Speaker 1: want to tell you that the not one does not
Speaker 1: surprise me because we all avoid anything negative, right, I
Speaker 1: know who has risk and a couple of these other ones.
Speaker 1: You never want anything negative in the ticker, just so
Speaker 1: you Yeah, well that's just like your opinion. While I
Speaker 1: was striking Joel, I also checked for the ticker Joel
Speaker 1: j O E L, which was available reserve for you.
Speaker 1: Of course, I have to throw it back because there's
Speaker 1: no intention to use it unless you quickly come up
Speaker 1: with a fund that we can file. Um, but as
Speaker 1: of this moment, I do have it for you. So
Speaker 1: by the way this idea of reserving random names, uh
Speaker 1: not Zuck and Mike and those, I just I do
Speaker 1: think that there will be point um like like random
Speaker 1: Wall Street bet type people will emerge from the underground
Speaker 1: and you'll see tickers just like Greg. It's just like
Speaker 1: what this dude Greg likes and he just happens to
Speaker 1: be very good and followed. I do think we'll see that.
Speaker 1: But what about like a Dave E t F like
Speaker 1: Dave Portnoy. Yeah, like his just his picks what he likes,
Speaker 1: and just follow him and you just now your own
Speaker 1: Dave stuff. Yeah, that's simple, that's kind of like public.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I love that concept. Yes, some superstars from
Speaker 1: there will could get their own E t F tickers,
Speaker 1: and so I think names far were you guys, I'd
Speaker 1: reserve like all the famous names. Yeah, like you know,
Speaker 1: somebody needs to get Did you check on Eric? Eric
Speaker 1: is an active symbol right now, and of course I
Speaker 1: checked Phil and Back are also active. Claire, I couldn't
Speaker 1: quite fit your I couldn't quite fit your name into
Speaker 1: into four syllables. So yeah, ce L A R maybe,
Speaker 1: But okay, I'm gonna quit while I'm ahead. I felt
Speaker 1: pretty good about that, and by the end of the episode,
Speaker 1: let me see if I can come up with something
Speaker 1: for my own uh name, But Claire, do you want
Speaker 1: to take a shot at yours? Sure? Okay, so um
Speaker 1: we talked about some of mine. I had Doge and
Speaker 1: Meme on my list too, but related. I had WSB
Speaker 1: for Wall Street bets. That's a great one. It's already reserved.
Speaker 1: I bet it's round hill um. And then I also
Speaker 1: had I don't know, does this violate any like profanity
Speaker 1: bands if the ticker l m A O that, I
Speaker 1: don't think it would. It is currently reserved as well.
Speaker 1: So by the way l m AO is used for
Speaker 1: a spack, does that mean it could not be used
Speaker 1: as an E t F Also, yes, that's correct, that's
Speaker 1: why it's taken. Yeah, that's actually like a spack, all right.
Speaker 1: And then I had um food f O O D
Speaker 1: for like a restaurant et F food is currently reserved,
Speaker 1: not available. Not surprised, um. And then I had Life
Speaker 1: l I F E reserve not available. I don't know
Speaker 1: what that would be for everything, but the CTF is life.
Speaker 1: That would be like a pro life version of the
Speaker 1: SMP or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that Catholic
Speaker 1: value thing, or or you could do like genome, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not as clear. Now. I didn't have this
Speaker 1: on my list, but I'm wondering if this would be possible.
Speaker 1: Could you have an E t F with the two
Speaker 1: grew E t F. So I went through this because
Speaker 1: I had t E t F. So the E t
Speaker 1: F ticker was actually owned by a closed end fund
Speaker 1: when I launched, which was just ironic ironic, like like
Speaker 1: a lot of Morrissett song like literally defined by the
Speaker 1: fact that a closed in fund has the ticker E
Speaker 1: t F, and I think they got rid of it,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if it's available anymore. Okay, Eric,
Speaker 1: let's hear it. Okay, the first one I have is God.
Speaker 1: God is currently reserved and not available. Who has that?
Speaker 1: Probably the uh you know what are they called? There's
Speaker 1: a Bible ETF. So, so, Eric, just a little inside baseball,
Speaker 1: I can tell you, Lord Jesus Pope, all of those
Speaker 1: are not available either. Not surprising, although that would be
Speaker 1: some E t F anyway, all right, um, here's another one.
Speaker 1: This is one that I had my idea for an
Speaker 1: E t F, which was the s p X Mondays.
Speaker 1: So you just invest Tuesday through Friday because Mondays are
Speaker 1: always horrible. Traditionally that's when the worst sell offs happen.
Speaker 1: Q mom q q m o N. That is available.
Speaker 1: It's a oh, that's a great one. Eric, Um, here's
Speaker 1: another one that I think would be great, and it's negative.
Speaker 1: But I'll explain why evil. So I was really surprised.
Speaker 1: But evil is available. Okay, So here's so much to do.
Speaker 1: If any issuers listening. What you do is take the
Speaker 1: least the worst E s G rank stocks, called the
Speaker 1: anti E s G t F, slap evil on it,
Speaker 1: and you'll get investors who are just so sick and
Speaker 1: tired of the E s G righteousness who will buy
Speaker 1: it just for just to send a message. I can't
Speaker 1: believe this doesn't exist. Yeah, Mike's buying this as we speak. Now,
Speaker 1: that's it's not my Eric pitched this one to me
Speaker 1: a couple times. I don't disagree with it as a
Speaker 1: good investment idea, but as like you know, we all
Speaker 1: have these gate sepers. We deal with all these things.
Speaker 1: So like you're always thinking about will this product affect
Speaker 1: by other products? Right? So how am I going to
Speaker 1: have a social justice fund and a Shariah compliant fund
Speaker 1: in my trust next to Evil. It's not gonna happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's only a few issuers who I think could like
Speaker 1: do this and it would not mess with their other products.
Speaker 1: But it could be a family there, Mike, come on,
Speaker 1: I think I think this is for Advisor shares. Let's
Speaker 1: send it to Noah. By the way, Evil was Suzanne
Speaker 1: Woollie's idea for E t F on our E t
Speaker 1: F Chank episode a couple of years ago. All right,
Speaker 1: here's another one UM which I thought r j k T,
Speaker 1: which is for reject because we have this idea for
Speaker 1: factor rejects. Our j KT is available, all right, so Ethanacio,
Speaker 1: so my team will be happy about that. Here's another
Speaker 1: one b r r R for money printer go burr.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, you know what. You sent me that one,
Speaker 1: but I didn't seem it's not on my list here,
Speaker 1: I didn't check that. I bet it's taken. I mean
Speaker 1: I would that that should be scooped up in a
Speaker 1: heartbeat anyway. All right, well, speaking of that, I also
Speaker 1: asked about fed F E d F E D is
Speaker 1: currently reserved. Of course, you think do you think Jay
Speaker 1: sitting on that one? Did you check j pow? J Pow?
Speaker 1: I checked, and j pow is also reserved. Somebody reserved
Speaker 1: j p That's awesome. That's hardcore. I may have come
Speaker 1: up with something for my name, but Eric, can you
Speaker 1: think of anything better for for what to do with
Speaker 1: my name? No, I would just think of like stocks,
Speaker 1: stroll likes. Yeah, that was what I was going to
Speaker 1: go with, which I think that will be a thing.
Speaker 1: I'll stand over my shortlist, foul. I have a question
Speaker 1: back to back to Claire's question about l m What
Speaker 1: was it l M AO, what about like O M
Speaker 1: f G. Not really think if it's available, but whether
Speaker 1: or not that would violent rules? Like Laura, if I
Speaker 1: came to you, would you edit me out for even
Speaker 1: trying to get up? That's awesome because there's there's an
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer fund O MFL and every time I see it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, man one degree away from you might have
Speaker 1: a pretty fun job. There's a lot of side chat
Speaker 1: chatter coming out of that equation. Yeah, that's great. One
Speaker 1: probably sees things all right before we wrap. We we
Speaker 1: always end with asking people their favorite tickers. That is
Speaker 1: not that is not your own, Mike, what's your favorite
Speaker 1: ticker that is not your own? So karma k R
Speaker 1: m A um. Two reasons. I love the concept, you
Speaker 1: get it one second. And second reason is my business partner,
Speaker 1: Guillermo came up with it and I love it just
Speaker 1: like it's. Every time I see that fund, I think
Speaker 1: of him. Laura, I have to say the favorite ticker,
Speaker 1: but it was never used because the company decided not
Speaker 1: to use it as fool. Very political of you, but
Speaker 1: I like that. That was good. Um. And and Phil,
Speaker 1: you know I love tail the tail risk funds from Cambria.
Speaker 1: It's real simple, straightforward. But I especially love it because
Speaker 1: it pars now with fail for the global tail risks,
Speaker 1: which is perfect. Good. Yeah, that's the family concept. He's
Speaker 1: got jail and for chunk as well. He's got a
Speaker 1: couple of them, all in the family, Mike, Laura, Phil Claire,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us on Trillions. This is
Speaker 1: one I appreciate it. Bill. You better say something thank you.
Speaker 1: I thought I did right now. Thanks thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to Trillions until next time. You can find us on
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and
Speaker 1: whatever else. You'd like to listen. We'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. We're on Twitter. I'm at Joel Webber Show.
Speaker 1: He's at Eric Baltunas. This episode of Tryan's was produced
Speaker 1: by Magnus Hendrickson. Francesca Levie is the head of Bloomberg
Speaker 1: podcast by m h m hm m m m