Speaker 1: Welcome to Trains.
Speaker 2: I'm Joel Webber and I'm Eric Belchunas.
Speaker 1: Eric April has been a little zany markets all over
Speaker 1: the place. Before Libration Day. You went to Vegas for
Speaker 1: the Exchange conference. First time it's been there, and we
Speaker 1: do a thing every time you do a little roadshow
Speaker 1: and go to a conference like this, you speak to people,
Speaker 1: bring a mic, get the vibes of the conference. What
Speaker 1: was the high level takeaway from the industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it was great. They did
Speaker 2: a good job. You know, it is hard to pull
Speaker 2: off these conferences. This is my fifteenth year going Joel,
Speaker 2: believe it or not, so I feel like I'm a
Speaker 2: veteran status. I know. The first year I went, it
Speaker 2: was in Hollywood, Florida, which I kind of dug. Hollywood
Speaker 2: is like a near Fort Lauderdale. It's kind of not
Speaker 2: a place you'd expect a big financial conference. And at
Speaker 2: the time, I was in data and the hedge fund
Speaker 2: analyst was going to Vegas to see salt and it's salt.
Speaker 2: You had like these really high profile speakers like Barack
Speaker 2: Obama and Kobe Bryant and stuff. And I remember the
Speaker 2: first ETF event, I went to in Hollywood, Florida. There
Speaker 2: was a YouTube cover band in ice Cream Social and
Speaker 2: I thought, I found my people, Joel. I like that better.
Speaker 2: So over the years we went there to Hollywood maybe
Speaker 2: nine ten years. Then they moved to Miami for three
Speaker 2: four years. Now they've moved to Vegas for the first year.
Speaker 2: So at the end of the day, the ETF is
Speaker 2: the star. The people were there. That's really ninety percent
Speaker 2: of the battle. I also like a place where you
Speaker 2: can wake up and take a jog in the morning
Speaker 2: and it's warm outside this check that box. It was
Speaker 2: a dry heat, but it got a little hot towards
Speaker 2: the afternoon, but it was fine to me. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not a huge gambler, so I was not really
Speaker 2: moved either way. I do remember one time I walked
Speaker 2: out downstairs at about six thirty am on Monday. That's
Speaker 2: probably the most sober time of the week, would you agree,
Speaker 2: And you walked through the casino and there's like n
Speaker 2: and Elos Don't Bring Me Down is blasting, and I'm
Speaker 2: just like, that's like a Saturday night two in the
Speaker 2: morning song played Monday morning at six thirty am. That's
Speaker 2: the alternative universe. I got a little dose of in
Speaker 2: between working the hallways, but I give it good grades.
Speaker 2: I thought it was fine and I got a lot done.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you brought your mic. We've got some highlights.
Speaker 1: You're gonna walk me through your time in Vegas. I
Speaker 1: am this time on Trillions Exchange. Okay, who we got first?
Speaker 2: I figure we start on the Vegas topic, right. So
Speaker 2: here's Todd Rosenbluth, one of the organizers of the event
Speaker 2: from Vetaphi friend of the show. Here he is on Vegas.
Speaker 3: I have not donated any money to the casino. I
Speaker 3: watched Michigan win its basketball game from the sportsbook. I
Speaker 3: might have been the only person there watching the game
Speaker 3: that didn't have anything on theline other than passion and pride,
Speaker 3: and Michigan won. They're in this Sweet sixteen.
Speaker 1: Now, good for you.
Speaker 2: First of all, Michigan has since lost. Yes, okay, there's that,
Speaker 2: so we can all have a nice laugh about that.
Speaker 2: But the question I asked him if he had gambled
Speaker 2: that was if you didn't catch that?
Speaker 1: I got it curious the vetefy, I feel like this
Speaker 1: is a vetify exchange conference, right, So, so, how busy
Speaker 1: was Todd while you while you were there.
Speaker 2: There was one time, well I was on in a
Speaker 2: podcast with him and his colleague was saying how she
Speaker 2: wanted she had to limit the number of espressos he
Speaker 2: had every day because he was started. So one time
Speaker 2: I saw him walking towards me and he was just
Speaker 2: like he was jacked wired, and I was like, no
Speaker 2: more espressos, Todd. So, yeah, he had a lot going on.
Speaker 2: I've been in that position. It's not easy. It's an
Speaker 2: unsung job because people get a complain if something goes wrong,
Speaker 2: but if everything's fine, no one says anything. So I
Speaker 2: feel for him. He did great though. Okay, next here's
Speaker 2: Todd also on the point of the conference of what
Speaker 2: he's hoping to achieve.
Speaker 3: The conference is going great. I mean we were talking
Speaker 3: on the first full day, but Sunday was great. We
Speaker 3: did the ETF education. Your colleague James was on with
Speaker 3: a couple other panels, a packed room of financial advisors.
Speaker 3: We did session just today on advisors sentiment, what advisors
Speaker 3: told us a vertify, and then the ETF implications. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of asset managers here, a lot of advisors here.
Speaker 3: It's a great buzz here in Vegas.
Speaker 1: Well, here we are in Vegas for a conference, and yeah, great,
Speaker 1: great vibes, great vibes everywhere.
Speaker 2: I mean, the heart of the conference started as a
Speaker 2: way to educate advisors on ETF's. Advisors have like forty
Speaker 2: trillion dollars. They are the biggest consumer of ETFs out there.
Speaker 2: So the goal of the conference is to get them in.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know how you ever go to a bar and
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, twenty dollars cover, but like ladies
Speaker 2: get in for free.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, things like college.
Speaker 2: Yeah that was but yeah, exactly, that's what this is. Like,
Speaker 2: I think advisors it's a very minimal fee. The issuers
Speaker 2: pay more, and that's the idea. So there was a
Speaker 2: mix of advisors. James did the educational part. I usually
Speaker 2: do it. I couldn't get there on Sunday. James Safer
Speaker 2: James Safer and uh yeah, so that's the heart of
Speaker 2: the conference. Okay, Next, next we have our own Katie
Speaker 2: I Felt Oh Katielberg News all right, So here she
Speaker 2: is on what she thought was the big topic of
Speaker 2: the conference.
Speaker 4: Well, it's really funny that the big story this year
Speaker 4: seems to be what was the big story last year?
Speaker 4: Multi share classes, and given the hype around it this year,
Speaker 4: and I don't know, maybe we're going to get it
Speaker 4: by the end of the third quarter or by the
Speaker 4: end of twenty twenty five. I don't know what we
Speaker 4: were so excited about this time last year. But it
Speaker 4: continues to be the hot topic. And what would it
Speaker 4: mean if a thousand or so is ETFs were introduced.
Speaker 1: We've touched on this a couple of times, I think,
Speaker 1: but like, is it still percolating? Is it really a
Speaker 1: hot topic?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I would take a little issue with the
Speaker 2: second year in a row because I thought last year
Speaker 2: Crypto was probably superseded it, but it was on people's
Speaker 2: minds last year. What happened was the acting chair of
Speaker 2: the SEC before Atkins gets in, Mark Ayuda, a little
Speaker 2: while ago, said that the ETF share classes were priority.
Speaker 2: And the reason this is important is that think about
Speaker 2: all the mutual funds out there right there's like seven
Speaker 2: hundred mutual fund companies. There's like seven thousand mutual funds,
Speaker 2: and this would allow these funds to just bolt on
Speaker 2: an ETF share class to the actual mutual fund rather
Speaker 2: than launching a different like clone that's an ETF so
Speaker 2: Vanguard has this patent right now, but it the patent
Speaker 2: was up last year, so not anybody can do it.
Speaker 2: And we have fifty one mutual funds that have filed
Speaker 2: to do this. And at one of the of events
Speaker 2: early I mean one of the panels early on, I
Speaker 2: think it was Sunday, there was a lawyer round table
Speaker 2: and one of them said it was going to all
Speaker 2: happen by the summer. So the idea of this was
Speaker 2: supposed to be like, oh, in the next couple of years,
Speaker 2: but what we're hearing is that's going to come way sooner.
Speaker 2: So when Katie said a thousand ETF, she's not lying.
Speaker 2: Imagine if all the mutual funds could just immediately come
Speaker 2: up with an ETF share class you're looking at, you know,
Speaker 2: just an avalanche of new ETFs.
Speaker 1: Okay, she was right, it's going to be a thing.
Speaker 1: We'll be talking about more. Okay, who do you got next?
Speaker 2: Katie? One more time? On Vegas. I figure you'd like
Speaker 2: to hear what she had to say about that.
Speaker 1: It feels like there's a breach of trust here of
Speaker 1: like what happens in Vegas days in Vegas. Well, let's
Speaker 1: hear what she has to say.
Speaker 2: She told me she won one hundred and sixty dollars
Speaker 2: and then walked out of the casino, and I'm like, man,
Speaker 2: you have no degenerate gene in you, because that's how
Speaker 2: they get you. You win early and you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm good at this, and then you leave with negative
Speaker 2: six hundred like Athenasios.
Speaker 1: Let's hear what Katie had to say.
Speaker 4: This is not a very pedestrian friendly city, which I
Speaker 4: don't think I was quite prepared for. I'm a big runner,
Speaker 4: so I've been going out to run in the morning
Speaker 4: and it just is bleak. Man, there is nowhere to run.
Speaker 4: It's all highway. That's the big difference that I've noticed.
Speaker 4: I will say it is a little strange to come
Speaker 4: back from the run and walk through a casino like
Speaker 4: in my sweaty clothes. But other than that, I mean,
Speaker 4: I think, like the actual hotel itself, the space flows
Speaker 4: really nicely. It's it's a little bit more cohesive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a treadmill. I think you're supposed to go
Speaker 1: run on the treadmill.
Speaker 2: Well, apparently the gym was packed every morning, so I
Speaker 2: went outside too. Katie had discovered that UNLV is actually
Speaker 2: two blocks down and there's a nice soccer field to
Speaker 2: run around. But before she told me that, hint, I
Speaker 2: went the other way and you start running down these
Speaker 2: sidewalks and it's fine, but you come across these dudes
Speaker 2: who like look like they've just been up for a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks. Yeah, like feathery skin.
Speaker 1: It's Vegas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's like you can see the underbelly of
Speaker 2: Vegas out he stands in the sun.
Speaker 1: You stand inside.
Speaker 2: That's what that's what, stay inside. Okay, next all right,
Speaker 2: Next up we have David Mann from Franklin. He oversees
Speaker 2: their ETF business and he also commented on the ETF
Speaker 2: share class, which again big topic.
Speaker 5: Well, so it's an act of filing. So we are
Speaker 5: you know, only only so much we can say. And
Speaker 5: I think they're what fifty other fifty one now is
Speaker 5: the official number. But yeah, internally, we are doing a
Speaker 5: lot of work to get ready for it. You know.
Speaker 5: One of the challenges is we had conversions as an option,
Speaker 5: we had launch a new differentiated strategy from scratch as
Speaker 5: an option, and now we've got door three. So we
Speaker 5: are certainly thinking through which which are the strategies we
Speaker 5: haven't done in those first two options that we might
Speaker 5: want to do in a share class. So we're having
Speaker 5: those conversations.
Speaker 1: Now, which strategy is going to win out? Do you think, Man,
Speaker 1: it's tough.
Speaker 2: That's a good question. And by the way that we
Speaker 2: call it, the three c's, clones, conversions or classes. Conversions
Speaker 2: have about eight hundred billion and clones probably in the
Speaker 2: same ballpark. Will the ETF share class have more than
Speaker 2: eight hundred billion? Yeah? Possibly, because if you bolt on
Speaker 2: an ETF share class and you allow investors to just
Speaker 2: move over with no tax consequences, well, whatn't you do that?
Speaker 2: Imagine having a huge CD collection and Spotify comes in
Speaker 2: and says I can get all this onto Spotify like
Speaker 2: in Heartbeat. You know, it's basically the same concept of
Speaker 2: making this move to the more desirable format just easier
Speaker 2: and less costly. It should result in a ton of
Speaker 2: money coming over. Vanguard was the test case, and over
Speaker 2: the sort of twenty years of that patent, we've seen
Speaker 2: a lot of people move over from the mutual fund
Speaker 2: of the ETF. So if that's you know, a precedent,
Speaker 2: look for both products and flows.
Speaker 1: So what will mutual funds look like? After this.
Speaker 2: I mean, they're always going to survive.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: I was just walking down you know, tenth Street in
Speaker 2: Philly on Sunday and this bookshop had like CDs for
Speaker 2: sale on the sidewalk. It'll be like that except you know,
Speaker 2: fun vehicles.
Speaker 1: Bleak.
Speaker 2: I mean, would you buy a mutual fund right now?
Speaker 2: I mean unless see four and K. Yeah, you're right, okay,
Speaker 2: I mean in the four yeah, four and K I
Speaker 2: would say, you know, is a place where the money
Speaker 2: will come in, probably because ETFs lose a lot of
Speaker 2: superpowers inside of four one K. But like I said,
Speaker 2: they'll exist, They'll be around. It's going to take a
Speaker 2: long time, but all of the new money, all of
Speaker 2: the new cash will likely go to the ETF format.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Next, here's David Man of Franklin, who is the only
Speaker 2: person who has seen me play tennis. I wanted you
Speaker 2: to hear him.
Speaker 1: Okay, talk about professional and then personal. Okay, let's hear it.
Speaker 2: You're the only person in this whole industry who has
Speaker 2: seen me play tennis. We played against each other. You
Speaker 2: played a Columbia. You're a what if we'd call a
Speaker 2: five to zero, which is the highest ranking for I
Speaker 2: would call it like a somebody who doesn't play professionally.
Speaker 5: Joel's listening right now.
Speaker 2: How would you rate my game?
Speaker 5: Okay? Lots of potential. Okay, the the the part we
Speaker 5: need to work on. So the next time you come
Speaker 5: out the backhand so still it's it's you know, as
Speaker 5: you start, because as you keep getting better, you be
Speaker 5: playing against better players, and the better players are going
Speaker 5: to identify your weakest shot and that's where they're going
Speaker 5: to pick on. So as soon as we get through
Speaker 5: your backhand cleaned up, watch out, you'll be a five
Speaker 5: to zero no time.
Speaker 1: I don't know about no time, But if you don't
Speaker 1: have a backhand, I know where I'm handling the ball,
Speaker 1: and I have a good backhand, So let's play.
Speaker 2: I got really good advice since I played him, which
Speaker 2: is when you do a two handed backhand, you're really
Speaker 2: it's a left handed forehand. Okay, and that really changes everything.
Speaker 2: I've gotten better already.
Speaker 1: I'd love to play with you, but this guy, you know,
Speaker 1: the one handed backhand is way more graceful.
Speaker 2: It is, it looks cooler, it's just harder. It's a
Speaker 2: lot more I have. You have one hander. Wow, let's
Speaker 2: play I'm down. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: David could be on my team, and then you can
Speaker 1: find whoever else you want and we'll play doubles.
Speaker 2: Okay, next, Okay, we have Elizabeth Kashner of fact Set,
Speaker 2: famous ETF analysts, been in the industry forever, and here
Speaker 2: she is again on the ETF shirt class. Again. I
Speaker 2: bring this up because.
Speaker 1: There's a theme. Yeah, there's a theme.
Speaker 2: It was the themes that.
Speaker 7: Puts idea expands to products that are perhaps not index
Speaker 7: oriented or to shops that may not be fully ready
Speaker 7: for all of the logistics. I think we might see
Speaker 7: some bumps along the road to get there. Like we
Speaker 7: have to remember that all of the ETF record keeping
Speaker 7: happens at the brokerage level, whereas for the mutual fund
Speaker 7: it happens at the asset manager level. Vanguard has been
Speaker 7: able to pull this off because they have a brokerage, right,
Speaker 7: but not every asset manager does, and so it can
Speaker 7: be a little bit more difficult.
Speaker 2: This is a good point, right.
Speaker 1: Because Vanguard really seems like they were in the driver's
Speaker 1: seat for this.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, they invented.
Speaker 1: Nobody benefits as much as Vanguard does.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: When I wrote my Bogel book. I went and talked
Speaker 2: to Gus Souder. He's the guy who launched VANGUARDDTF business
Speaker 2: member Bogle didn't want it, so he had to go
Speaker 2: against the founder's wishes. And while they were launching it,
Speaker 2: they thought, hey, why don't we make the ETF a
Speaker 2: share class. The reason they want to do it back then,
Speaker 2: in like the early two thousands was that this way
Speaker 2: that the buy and hold money would be protected from
Speaker 2: the short term money. So if you wanted to come
Speaker 2: in and out of their treasury mutual fund or whatever,
Speaker 2: you could just buy the ETF. If you wanted to
Speaker 2: buy and hold, you could buy the mutual fund and
Speaker 2: just stay there. Now, over the years people found out
Speaker 2: you can actually just buy and hold an ETF, but
Speaker 2: at the time that was the goal, so they made
Speaker 2: a patent on it and it actually worked. Now, the
Speaker 2: one thing is Vanguard does have a brokerage. You need
Speaker 2: a brokerage platform to buy an ETF. So what if
Speaker 2: you're a mutual fund company that doesn't have a platform.
Speaker 2: You're going to have to get people over to some
Speaker 2: like Schwab or something. That could be tricky. But the
Speaker 2: amount of money, the amount of lawyers, and the amount
Speaker 2: of companies involved. They're going to figure this out. There's
Speaker 2: all these problems are solvable, but they are interesting. The
Speaker 2: other thing is Vanguard is an interesting model because they
Speaker 2: only see inflows. So Vanguard's model is when you see
Speaker 2: inflows all the time. What about a company that does
Speaker 2: this but sees outflows regularly? Will the ETF get hit
Speaker 2: with capital gains? We like, we call it tax contagion.
Speaker 2: These are some unanswered questions. So if I'm going to bet,
Speaker 2: I'd say the over undraw on us covering this in
Speaker 2: the next like eighteen months is probably like four. I
Speaker 2: think this issue is going to come up and be
Speaker 2: big and worth covering a lot.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, next.
Speaker 2: Next, Okay, I would say the second biggest issue of
Speaker 2: the conference was private credit and private equity being put into.
Speaker 1: The ETF wrapper private markets.
Speaker 2: Let's go private assets. Yeah, and we just heard recently
Speaker 2: Larry Fink has come out and said he wants to
Speaker 2: augetize private Vanguard has met with Carlisle Group in Blackstone.
Speaker 2: This is happening, So how do you get it? What
Speaker 2: do you do? Here's Elizabeth Kashner on the ETFs holding
Speaker 2: some of this private assets.
Speaker 7: I think We're going to find out a lot when
Speaker 7: we get a reversal in the credit markets. Right, as
Speaker 7: long as things are calm, as long as there's not
Speaker 7: many redemptions, then you know, then the issue is primarily pricing,
Speaker 7: and can you rely on the price that you're getting
Speaker 7: on a day to day or even month to month basis.
Speaker 7: That's a question mark. Right when you have real only
Speaker 7: one bidder and that's also the entity that sold it
Speaker 7: to you, you know there's a spread in there. You
Speaker 7: just don't really know how big it is, nor do
Speaker 7: you know how deep the market is.
Speaker 1: She's got a lot to say. We should probably invite
Speaker 1: her on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she is very smart and we actually talked for
Speaker 2: about a half an hour before I even recorded her.
Speaker 2: So what she's saying is that when you have something
Speaker 2: that's like less liquid and ETF a good if the
Speaker 2: markets are fine and things are going pretty well, that's
Speaker 2: it's easy to say, Okay, I think this was a
Speaker 2: fine idea. But when there's a huge sell off, you
Speaker 2: sort of you can see the illiquidity form. Now there's
Speaker 2: been junk bonds put in ETF's high old muni bonds
Speaker 2: really had problems in the COVID cell off, so hyd
Speaker 2: had a twenty nine percent discount on some days. I
Speaker 2: mean that is massive. So I do think there's a
Speaker 2: history of you know, experimenting, but I do think sell
Speaker 2: offs when you see some of this come to fruition.
Speaker 2: So I do think it's fine. ETF investors are used
Speaker 2: to having funds that have less liquid stuff in them,
Speaker 2: even during selloffs. But she has a good point. This
Speaker 2: is part of the you know, debate on whether you
Speaker 2: should put something less liquid into what is a super
Speaker 2: liquid vehicle, and this debate will keep happening for ever.
Speaker 1: I think we're all going to be watching this closely
Speaker 1: and like, you know, looking for that thing where everybody
Speaker 1: will point to it and go I told you so,
Speaker 1: or or maybe the other way too.
Speaker 2: But okay, next, So next up, we have Tyler Williams
Speaker 2: of Nate Texas. This guy is I love this guy.
Speaker 2: Every time I bumpendo and we have a fun conversation.
Speaker 2: He kind of reminds me of Kieran Culkin the actor
Speaker 2: when you hear him. He even kind of looks like him,
Speaker 2: and he kind of sounds like him. But he's a
Speaker 2: has a lot of personality. So I thought I would
Speaker 2: ask him a little about working the booth. So here's
Speaker 2: a guy standing at a booth all day, and what's
Speaker 2: he doing? How does he get people to come over?
Speaker 2: Here's what he had to say about that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well, let me start the giveaways. I guess we've
Speaker 8: got a pickleball raffle here for advisors for dropping their
Speaker 8: base cars and they win this nice in the Texas
Speaker 8: pickleball set, which is a popular sport these days. Sure,
Speaker 8: we got our cups, and we had a tide pen
Speaker 8: there for folks that maybe spill their coffee on themselves.
Speaker 8: But yeah, and then for other handaways, you got our
Speaker 8: fact sheets and our brochure.
Speaker 1: But will say the.
Speaker 8: Paper route hasn't you know, been maybe as popular as
Speaker 8: it once was, but we still have it here. You
Speaker 8: certain advisors need to take some literature with them. But yeah,
Speaker 8: other than that, boot duty is it's kind of a
Speaker 8: you know, it's a hit or miss. Sometimes you get
Speaker 8: some advisors interested in your products. Other advisors that haven't
Speaker 8: heard of us. You got to give them kind of
Speaker 8: the one thousand feet view of who the Texas is.
Speaker 8: We're a bit different than some others that we are
Speaker 8: multi affiliate, so usually I'll lead with, oh yeah, we
Speaker 8: Loomis Sales is our biggest affiliate or Harri, so some
Speaker 8: education on our firm, and then advisors that know us,
Speaker 8: maybe you know some of the products and managers. Those
Speaker 8: are more of a deep dive conversations.
Speaker 2: And if somebody's like, say, eight feet away, do you
Speaker 2: do you try to, like Jena mind track them to
Speaker 2: walking over?
Speaker 3: Do you go?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you go accost them?
Speaker 5: How's that work?
Speaker 8: So I'm lucky that I'm with some of the best
Speaker 8: wholesalers in the game. Over here, so that's kind of
Speaker 8: their forte. They'll kind of have a little eye contact
Speaker 8: move and maybe come on over here things. So you
Speaker 8: can kind of tell when someone's lingering they're looking at
Speaker 8: your sign. There may be a bit shy if you're
Speaker 8: in conversation. So I'll let these guys kind of work
Speaker 8: their work, their their magic.
Speaker 1: When you don't flirt with them, you get them with
Speaker 1: pick a ball and tide pins. What would be if
Speaker 1: you were working the booth? What would be the shwag
Speaker 1: that you would be slinging.
Speaker 2: I I'm a big fan of the wireless chargers because
Speaker 2: when I walk around, I love those. I also like umbrellas.
Speaker 2: They go good at home whenever I come home with
Speaker 2: gifts because you know, I've been away for a couple
Speaker 2: of days, so the gifts ease the burden of my
Speaker 2: wife having to like take care of two kids while
Speaker 2: I'm gone. But umbrellas, play well socks, and and also
Speaker 2: the wireless chargers. I would go with those three. There
Speaker 2: was one company that gave away, you know, those sleep masks,
Speaker 2: and me and Tyler was the booth next to Tyler
Speaker 2: and we're like, what's the metaphor there? Like are you
Speaker 2: supposed to just not look at the market or fall asleep?
Speaker 1: Like I don't know both of those.
Speaker 2: That was a little odd.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like both those.
Speaker 2: Next up we have Ron de leje of ETF Guide.
Speaker 2: Ron is an old school trade publication writer and ETF
Speaker 2: nerd from the old days, and it was good seeing him.
Speaker 2: And he has a YouTube show called ETF Battles that
Speaker 2: have been on a couple of times where they they
Speaker 2: take a area like robotics and you have two analysts
Speaker 2: basically make the case for two ETFs and then they
Speaker 2: vote to see who wins, which is kind of a
Speaker 2: cool concept.
Speaker 3: Well, just trying to get the sense and I Paul,
Speaker 3: say what's happening in the industry and meet fellow colleagues
Speaker 3: to innovation in the ETF industry is pretty well known.
Speaker 8: But actually see people in the rush.
Speaker 3: I mean that there's no substitute for that.
Speaker 9: You can't do that with social media.
Speaker 2: So I asked him why he would still show up
Speaker 2: after all these years. I mean, he knows everybody, and
Speaker 2: he'd make a good point, you know, and this is
Speaker 2: why you should go one of these years, Like, you know,
Speaker 2: nothing beats the physical human contact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can do it.
Speaker 2: People ask about you, and I'm like, well, it's almost
Speaker 2: almost enigma. Well I almost like say that it's half
Speaker 2: a maneuver to keep the show the way it is,
Speaker 2: because you don't want Joel going full ETF Like, it's
Speaker 2: better that he's protected from the nerdery so that the
Speaker 2: show has general semblance.
Speaker 1: Yes, of safety, Yeah, but I like that.
Speaker 2: Obviously post pandemic people are back into seeing people, and
Speaker 2: it's nice.
Speaker 1: We should do ETF battles together. That'd be a fun one.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Extending the invite here to ron On behalf of both
Speaker 1: of us.
Speaker 2: Okay, next next up we have Todd Aiken, who I'm
Speaker 2: not sure. If you remember he was on this show.
Speaker 2: Before he was, Bloomberg wrote an article about who is
Speaker 2: using all of these sort of like hot sauce products,
Speaker 2: and they found Todd a YouTuber and they interviewed him
Speaker 2: and he basically was like, I love these things, yield max,
Speaker 2: the double leverage, like this is the retail investor. I
Speaker 2: think it's good to actually find the face behind the flows.
Speaker 2: And so he was a source for this big article
Speaker 2: and we had him on and he was great, and
Speaker 2: he said anitier invited him to the conference. But when
Speaker 2: I saw him, I was like, I did a double take.
Speaker 2: I'm like, is that you? Because you don't normally get
Speaker 2: direct retail investors there, it's rare. So here's what he
Speaker 2: had to say.
Speaker 1: By the way, if you're interested in that episode, it
Speaker 1: was October tenth, twenty twenty four, and the title was
Speaker 1: the Rise of the Quick buck etf.
Speaker 9: Well, I'm just trying to, I guess, expand the reach
Speaker 9: of my channel. I got invited by some other fund managers,
Speaker 9: you know, and so I'm just here to, I guess,
Speaker 9: bring awareness to my channel and see if there are
Speaker 9: any more ETFs and different funds that we can buy
Speaker 9: for my following. That would be safe that you know
Speaker 9: that they can invest in that would anchor their orfolio
Speaker 9: mostly with indexes and things like that. Maybe there's some
Speaker 9: some newer ETF issues here that have some index funds
Speaker 9: with dividends, you know, and you know, I'm after the dividends.
Speaker 2: Dividends that it was his dividends, especially when they're extra
Speaker 2: dividends like the yield max variety.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's been busy then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, he's nice guy. Really was nice to see
Speaker 2: a retail investor there.
Speaker 1: Amazing that he's turned a YouTube channel into a business.
Speaker 1: Cool to see. Okay, last one, bring it home.
Speaker 2: Okay. Sue Chang from CF Benchmarks actually saw this guy
Speaker 2: at the end when everybody was breaking stuff down. So
Speaker 2: it's gonna sound a little noisy in the background, like
Speaker 2: like there's construction going on. CF Benchmarks if you don't know, Joel,
Speaker 2: they actually do the pricing for most of the bitcoin ETFs,
Speaker 2: and they're gonna do them for Ether and so they're
Speaker 2: crypto kind of behind the scenes, a crucial part of
Speaker 2: behind the scenes of cryptos. So I thought we get
Speaker 2: a little crypto representation in these interviews.
Speaker 6: This is actually the fourth consecutive year we've good hit
Speaker 6: Oh wow, okay, say, there's been a huge sea change
Speaker 6: in the attitude to krypton bitcoin. We always whenever we said,
Speaker 6: whenever I told people what we did at some of
Speaker 6: the social events or hear at our booth, I would
Speaker 6: always get a good portion of people give what I
Speaker 6: call the look, a sort of a look that says,
Speaker 6: oh my word, these people are mad and I don't
Speaker 6: want anything to do with them. Over the years, the
Speaker 6: proportion of people who give me the look has dropped,
Speaker 6: and I would say this year was the first time
Speaker 6: no one gave me the look. Now, not everyone is
Speaker 6: allocated to bitcoin yet, and there's all kinds of reasons why,
Speaker 6: but they don't think I'm crazy anymore.
Speaker 2: The look no looks, Joel. What a difference Larry think makes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you no longer get the look. You mean it
Speaker 1: means you've been legitimized. You can show up, yeah, and
Speaker 1: shut the conference down at the end.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And some people were like, isn't it a little noisy
Speaker 2: in here? You want to go someplace. I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: it's real. I was like, I like the outer noise.
Speaker 2: You feel like you're there. Some of these booths are
Speaker 2: so big they literally had like ten people swarming to
Speaker 2: undo them and like banging all I mean, one of
Speaker 2: the booths had a Formula one race car. One booth
Speaker 2: was in fact a state street did it was a
Speaker 2: we would have loved this. It was like six baskets
Speaker 2: real basketballs and then a Connect four underneath, so if
Speaker 2: the ball went in, it was one of the Connect four.
Speaker 2: So you whoever won, had to make shots and be strategic,
Speaker 2: and then if you beat the next guy, your name
Speaker 2: went in a raffle for Magic Johnson Basketball, which I
Speaker 2: did beat my guy, but I didn't win the ball.
Speaker 1: Love that all right. Thanks for taking that mic, and
Speaker 1: thanks for all the guests that joined us from Vegas.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Trillions until next time. You can
Speaker 1: find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever else you'd like to listen. We'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. We're on Twitter, I'm at Joel Webbers Show,
Speaker 1: He's at Eric Baltuna's. This episode of Trillions was produced
Speaker 1: by Magnus and Rickson. Bye