Speaker 1: But knowledge to work and grow your business with c
Speaker 1: i T from transportation to healthcare to manufacturing. C i
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Speaker 1: small and middle market businesses. Learn more at c i
Speaker 1: T dot com put Knowledge to Work. Welcome to another
Speaker 1: edition of Odd Lots. I'm Tracy Alloway, executive editor at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Markets, and I'm Joe wi Isn'tal, Managing editor of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Markets. So, Joe, when you think about a modern
Speaker 1: market place, what makes it modern? I think about a
Speaker 1: lot of people around computers and data flashing in their eyes.
Speaker 1: And maybe maybe there's not even a person from the computer,
Speaker 1: maybe just some software making decisions, but lots of screens
Speaker 1: and blinking data. Basically, so you're actually thinking about some
Speaker 1: very specific markets, probably the stock market, maybe the currency market.
Speaker 1: It because there is actually one very large market that
Speaker 1: has stubbornly resisted all attempts to electronify itself and to modernize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I am. I guess I'm probably stocks and currencies, probably,
Speaker 1: that's all right. The one that's been left out is
Speaker 1: basically the bond market. This is the place where people
Speaker 1: trade corporate debt. Uh, securities issued by companies, and a
Speaker 1: lot of that is still taking place over the phone,
Speaker 1: sometimes even by facts, which is kind of insane when
Speaker 1: you think about where we are today in terms of technology,
Speaker 1: that is sort of pretty hard to believe. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before, and of course you can
Speaker 1: look up prices of a corporate bond on a terminal
Speaker 1: and you'd think that why not just be able to
Speaker 1: enter in that you want to buy or sell? But
Speaker 1: it's still kind of blows my mind. It's not that
Speaker 1: it's the case that it's not that easy. All right,
Speaker 1: So today we are going to delve into the mystery
Speaker 1: of bond market modernization or lack thereof why it hasn't
Speaker 1: happened before, And I'm pleased to say that we have
Speaker 1: a recurring guest with us today. It's Chris White from Well.
Speaker 1: He's now at Viable Markets, used to be at Goldman
Speaker 1: and was very involved in the bond trading platform they
Speaker 1: built there called g Sessions. And to make things extra special,
Speaker 1: Chris has brought along his former boss, it's les sef.
Speaker 1: He has a very long history not only in bond
Speaker 1: market structure but also in stocks and he's currently at
Speaker 1: a software firm called a pass. I'm really excited about
Speaker 1: this because the last time we talked about market structure
Speaker 1: with Chris, I think was one of my favorite episodes.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad we're returning to the well and going
Speaker 1: deeper on this subject, which is fascinating. So let's let's
Speaker 1: get gone, let's dig deep. Chris and Lez thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining us today. Uh, my pleasure to
Speaker 1: be back, Tracy. Um, you know, just having listened to
Speaker 1: a lot of the other odd lots podcasts, I'm just
Speaker 1: happy to be a part of some of the original. Uh.
Speaker 1: The exact thing to say to get you on again, Well, no,
Speaker 1: I really do enjoy it. That's that's an honest statement.
Speaker 1: And I think that you're in for a really special
Speaker 1: treat today because um less CEF can talk about an
Speaker 1: area of equity market structure history that I think is
Speaker 1: really pertinent today. It was the formation of a piece
Speaker 1: of architecture that if you look through history, um, the
Speaker 1: Nasadack system is something that's been mimicked throughout other market
Speaker 1: systems in terms of being a critical piece of architecture
Speaker 1: on their way to modernization. So I think it's going
Speaker 1: to be very interesting to hear what Less has to
Speaker 1: say about the before and after picture in the equity markets. UM.
Speaker 1: In nineteen one, that's when Nasdaq was introduced, and that's
Speaker 1: when Less arrived on the scene. Well, Less, why don't
Speaker 1: we start with you then? UM, you've said you've been
Speaker 1: in trading in some way or another. Is the nineteen seventies?
Speaker 1: Tell us what the stock market was like back then? Sure, Well,
Speaker 1: let's start with nineteen seventy one, which is when I started. UM.
Speaker 1: At that time, not only was the more the market
Speaker 1: not connected by computer, or the equity market not connected
Speaker 1: by computer, but the people that comprised the trading departments
Speaker 1: were very different as well. Uh, today you've got m
Speaker 1: B a's from M I T sitting on the desk.
Speaker 1: Then basically we were a bunch of street fighters, UM.
Speaker 1: And the connection between UH one firm and another, or
Speaker 1: the connection was something called the pink sheets. If you
Speaker 1: wanted to know the price of a stock in those
Speaker 1: years pre NASDAC, that is, UH, if you wanted to
Speaker 1: know the price of an over the counter stock was
Speaker 1: called over the counter at that time, you would get
Speaker 1: a copy of the pink she eats, open it up
Speaker 1: to the alphabetical listing of the stock, and there'd be
Speaker 1: a list of five or any number of market makers
Speaker 1: that traded the stock with their name and their phone number,
Speaker 1: and you would simply call them up and ask them
Speaker 1: for the market in X, y z, and you you
Speaker 1: were obligated to make three phone calls that may have
Speaker 1: been ten market makers. You were obligated if you were
Speaker 1: executing a client order, you were obligated to get three quotes,
Speaker 1: which left seven out potentially. So even with pink sheets,
Speaker 1: you had best execution requirements. Best execution was really if
Speaker 1: it's a fuzzy concept now, it was even fuzzier than
Speaker 1: because the markets were very, very thin, so an execution
Speaker 1: of a thousand shares could have been at multiple markets,
Speaker 1: and the uh, the guy on the desk who was
Speaker 1: executing getting on behalf of the client would basically stay
Speaker 1: with one firm MHM. So obviously, these days with electronic trading,
Speaker 1: there's so much talk about collapsing margins of trading and
Speaker 1: you know, people making fractions of a penny here and there,
Speaker 1: but this sounds like, you know, the extreme opposite end
Speaker 1: of that, where lots of lots of opportunity to make
Speaker 1: money in the human interaction and the fact you only
Speaker 1: had to call three out of ten people and so forth,
Speaker 1: spreads that you could drive a bus, Yes, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that was that was very true. I mean markets
Speaker 1: have collapsed, uh in recent years, primarily as a result
Speaker 1: of increased volument as a result of decimalization back you know,
Speaker 1: almost fifteen sixteen years ago. But in those years there
Speaker 1: was no such thing as decimalization. Stocks are traded with
Speaker 1: very often a point spread. Uh, a half a point
Speaker 1: spread was not unusual, and stocks under a dollar was
Speaker 1: sometimes traded with three eighths to a half a point
Speaker 1: spread as well. So the difference between the bidden offer
Speaker 1: was you know, as you said, you could drive a
Speaker 1: truck through it. So market makers could essentially pocket the
Speaker 1: difference between the spreads on the buy and sell orders.
Speaker 1: What made that change, Like, what was the impetus for
Speaker 1: the stock market to start modernizing and to head towards
Speaker 1: things like decimalization. Well, uh, there were a number of reasons. Firstly, Um,
Speaker 1: while the spreads were substantial and the likelihood of making
Speaker 1: money on a trade was pretty substantial, Um, the volume
Speaker 1: just wasn't there. I remember a big trader in NT
Speaker 1: which is before I'm thankful to say, before I started,
Speaker 1: UM was making somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars UM
Speaker 1: and his profitability was there for like maybe two fifty
Speaker 1: and that was that was huge at that time. UM.
Speaker 1: But as I said, the volume was just wasn't there. Uh.
Speaker 1: Subsequent to that, uh that period uh in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: late seventy yearly seventy one, I believe it was NASDAK
Speaker 1: started and NASDAK was a more transparent view of of
Speaker 1: the markets. Now during the pain sheet environment, as I said,
Speaker 1: prior to NASDAK, the client or the trader at another
Speaker 1: firm would call up the market maker and asked for
Speaker 1: a quote. As a result, market makers would give different
Speaker 1: quotes to different folks. UM. If they sense that you
Speaker 1: were a buyer, you might have gotten one quote. If
Speaker 1: they sensed you were a seller, you might have gotten
Speaker 1: another quote. And if they sensed that you were calling
Speaker 1: on behalf of a competitor competitor, then you've got a
Speaker 1: really strange quote. So actually less This is one of
Speaker 1: the things that I think is most fascinating is that
Speaker 1: you're talking about a period in time that was almost
Speaker 1: fifty years ago, but in terms of the cultural practices
Speaker 1: and the infrastructure, it's not that far away from where
Speaker 1: we are in terms of the modern day corporate bond
Speaker 1: market UM today. There there really isn't a facility that
Speaker 1: organizes all of the quotes the way that NASDAC organized
Speaker 1: the quotes UM. And also what you describe in terms
Speaker 1: of different prices for different people is absolutely function of
Speaker 1: the market. UM. What sort of drove the idea that
Speaker 1: you need to get out of the pink sheets and
Speaker 1: into UM something that was a bit more centralized and
Speaker 1: focused around pricing, Well, it was it was driven uh
Speaker 1: partially by the retail firms. I don't remember now the
Speaker 1: name of the guy who started uh NASDAK, but I
Speaker 1: believe that it was sponsored by the n s D
Speaker 1: and UH I believe that Reynolds, which was one of
Speaker 1: the larger retail firms. One of the executives at Reynolds
Speaker 1: was the guy who was tasked with, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: starting the NASDACK UH the NASTAC system and basically it
Speaker 1: was kind of rolled out over time and the functionality
Speaker 1: changed over time. Initially it was simply a presentation of
Speaker 1: the median market, which is the most repeated market. UH
Speaker 1: so if they were make an easy example, if there
Speaker 1: were four traders trading stock. One was ten eleven, another
Speaker 1: one tenant a quarter eleven and a quarter, third one
Speaker 1: was tenant a quarter eleven a quarter, and the fourth
Speaker 1: one was nine and three quarters tenant three quarters. The
Speaker 1: inside market was tenant a quarter a three quarters. The
Speaker 1: market that was visible UH to level one was tenant
Speaker 1: a quarter, eleven and a quarter. It was the most
Speaker 1: repeated market. So they didn't see the inside market. The salesman,
Speaker 1: for example, at Merrill Lynch didn't see you know, just
Speaker 1: not not to single them out, but the salesman at
Speaker 1: UH the brokerage firms didn't see the inside market at
Speaker 1: the time, and they weren't aware of what the volume
Speaker 1: was day one. So how did the market makers actually
Speaker 1: feel about those changes? That was exactly what I was
Speaker 1: gonna ask, Like who, yeah, like who who fought it?
Speaker 1: Or these changes happened? And so how do they feel?
Speaker 1: And were there any people right from the beginning resisting
Speaker 1: the changes? Try? Everyone was resisting the changes. Um, the
Speaker 1: market makers were shaking in their boots because they were
Speaker 1: in their minds making a living and this was going
Speaker 1: to destroy their living because you didn't want your competition
Speaker 1: to know your market. And this was going to making
Speaker 1: market very transparent. Uh. Plus you had to honor your market,
Speaker 1: which prior to actually divulging what your market was. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, in a NASDAC environment, you had to honor
Speaker 1: what the market said you were on NASDAC. And that
Speaker 1: was kind of a new concept to say, try to
Speaker 1: stop it or yeah, all the soldiers tried to stop it.
Speaker 1: The generals thought it was a good idea and and
Speaker 1: basically it was an amazing idea. It was it was
Speaker 1: right for the client. Being right for the client, uh
Speaker 1: meant that a volume exploded over time, but really just exploded.
Speaker 1: And and uh from seventy one to you know today,
Speaker 1: I mean, volume is just so different than it was then.
Speaker 1: And um, in addition to the volume exploding, the profitability
Speaker 1: of the market maker exploded with it may not have
Speaker 1: made as much money her trade, but but the spreads
Speaker 1: ultimately tightened a little bit. They didn't really change until
Speaker 1: years later when uh, in in the mid nineties, when
Speaker 1: the dealers were accused of collusion. So were they eventually
Speaker 1: able to make up the tighter spreads and volume? In
Speaker 1: other words, yes, by far? Okay, well, let's fast forward
Speaker 1: many decades to the bond market, because Chris, as we've
Speaker 1: all discussed before, in many ways, the bond market is
Speaker 1: where the stock market was many years ago. In fact,
Speaker 1: I remember talking to one bond dealer who said it
Speaker 1: was like the last ages of the Roman Empire, and
Speaker 1: the dealers are essentially trying to protect the profits that
Speaker 1: they can make from bond trading. Well, I think that
Speaker 1: similar to the fall of the Roman Empire, when finally
Speaker 1: I think it was the it was the Goths or
Speaker 1: some tribe of barbarians that stormed the walls. Um there
Speaker 1: was deterioration for some time, and I think if you
Speaker 1: just look at even how the top five dealers have
Speaker 1: been performing in market making for corporate bonds. Uh Ever,
Speaker 1: since two thousand and nine, they've seen declining results year
Speaker 1: over year. So I think a lot of people are
Speaker 1: starting to question the efficacy of the traditional model. One
Speaker 1: of the things that's fascinating about the way Less talks
Speaker 1: about the fears of the market makers in unlisted stocks
Speaker 1: prior in Nazdac as they say sound very similar to
Speaker 1: a lot of the fears that we're hearing when we
Speaker 1: talk about transparency in the bond market, we're having issues
Speaker 1: around secondary trading, and yet there are some people in
Speaker 1: the market who are actually saying that less information in
Speaker 1: the form of delaying the post trade tape would bring
Speaker 1: market makers back into the market, which I think that
Speaker 1: we've looked at all the other markets that have modernized,
Speaker 1: and they've done so by actually adding more information, not less.
Speaker 1: So I think that culturally we're at the same inflection
Speaker 1: point that the equity market was in almost forty six
Speaker 1: years ago. So how do we get over that hump then,
Speaker 1: because it seems like it's it's not only a business
Speaker 1: model change, it's also a cultural change, and there are
Speaker 1: people who will fight it every step of the way. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's really good to understand history and really
Speaker 1: what happens. I mean, what Less is telling you is true.
Speaker 1: Anyone who was trading NASDACK stocks and who went through
Speaker 1: the change of the actual NASDAC platform, which is stands
Speaker 1: for National Association Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System, at first
Speaker 1: they were afraid, but then they found that it was
Speaker 1: beneficial not only to the customers but to the market
Speaker 1: makers as well. So I think that if you look
Speaker 1: at the history of other markets. For example, UM the
Speaker 1: FX market started with a consolidated quote board and something
Speaker 1: called the Reuter's Market Data service. In the listed market
Speaker 1: had to organize into its consolidated quote service. In four
Speaker 1: the treasury market, after recovering from the Solomon Brothers government
Speaker 1: bond scandal, had to produce a consolidated quote system something
Speaker 1: called gov picks. So it seems to me and the
Speaker 1: more I talked to Less and other people who have
Speaker 1: worked in those markets, that organization around pre trade information
Speaker 1: is a key piece of architecture for UM modernizing market.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break for work from a sponsor,
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Speaker 1: I T from transportation to healthcare to manufacturing. C i
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Speaker 1: small and middle market businesses. Learn more at c i
Speaker 1: T dot com put knowledge to Work. We're talking to
Speaker 1: Chris White and Liz Sef about mark a structure and
Speaker 1: how the bond market is arguably decades behind where the
Speaker 1: stock market is in terms of getting into the modern era.
Speaker 1: So Chris, I want to return to the point that
Speaker 1: you made before the break. Your basic argument is that
Speaker 1: sure bond market participants, like stock market participants decades ago,
Speaker 1: are resistant to change. But that from your perspective, the
Speaker 1: current model is already broken. It's sort of already Um,
Speaker 1: it's already not working for them as it was several
Speaker 1: years ago, So they should see the benefit to modernizing. Essentially. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that there there's universal acceptance within the institutional
Speaker 1: market that something needs to change. I think the way
Speaker 1: that we're trying to change the market is missing a step.
Speaker 1: Just to to ask you less, when the NASTAC board
Speaker 1: was put into place in seventy one, was it a
Speaker 1: trading system or a bulletin board? Like could you actually
Speaker 1: complete a trade by pressing a button on the screen. No, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't interactive. It wasn't until after the eight seven
Speaker 1: crash that there was any electronic interface where you could
Speaker 1: press a button and get an execution through the NASDACK
Speaker 1: system that was called the SOL system Small Order Execution System.
Speaker 1: So explain how the process of trade worked. You then
Speaker 1: you got your quote through the NASTAC system, but then
Speaker 1: went back directly to the market maker for the actual
Speaker 1: call in the trade. You were back to uh calling
Speaker 1: him up on his phone. Um. And if you were
Speaker 1: and if you were lucky, you had a direct wire
Speaker 1: to him, in which case you flicked the switch and
Speaker 1: you were into him, and and you saved five seconds.
Speaker 1: So I bring this up because let's just told you
Speaker 1: that there was a sixteen year gap between the introduction
Speaker 1: of NASDAC and actual robust electronic trading in the equity markets.
Speaker 1: So when you look at a lot of the unstructured
Speaker 1: fixed income markets, people are trying to fix them or
Speaker 1: reform them using modern electronic trading protocols and ideas. But
Speaker 1: I think we've missed something um And I think that
Speaker 1: what illustrates the fact that we've missed this piece of
Speaker 1: architecture is a lot of the attempts to fix the
Speaker 1: market with electronic trading have failed. In the corporate bond
Speaker 1: market and myself, the G session system for Goldman Sachs
Speaker 1: had some fundamental flaws with it, and it's only seeing
Speaker 1: those flaws that I started to think that maybe there
Speaker 1: was something missing. And then when you look back in history,
Speaker 1: there is something missing. Every other market that we consider
Speaker 1: modernized today had to organize their pre trade quote information
Speaker 1: before they started trading electronically. Well, how come we made
Speaker 1: that leap? Then? Why did we avoid the step of
Speaker 1: sort of centralized pricing and just jump straight off to
Speaker 1: pure electronic trading in corporate bonds, which, as you point out,
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to necessarily be working. I think it's a
Speaker 1: combination of two things. One, I think it's a misunderstanding
Speaker 1: of in market struck sure, believing that electronic trading is
Speaker 1: not market structure, it's it's really the result of having
Speaker 1: a good foundation of market structure. And then, quite frankly,
Speaker 1: a lot of the people who saw this history in
Speaker 1: the equity markets, uh, are either no longer on this
Speaker 1: earth or you know, just not available to to help
Speaker 1: people in the bond market. Um. That's why I think
Speaker 1: that you Know Less is a treasure because he can
Speaker 1: actually speak to the before and after of a of
Speaker 1: a key part of the equity market structure history that
Speaker 1: I think just a lot of people are not aware of.
Speaker 1: But you know, at some point in time, equity markets
Speaker 1: traded out of a magazine, and if you look at
Speaker 1: old newspapers, you'll see if you wanted to understand what
Speaker 1: your stock was worth, you were just looking through the
Speaker 1: quote page. Um. Which sounds funny to us now that
Speaker 1: you could pull up anything on a Bloomberg screen and
Speaker 1: see information around it. But it really did function as
Speaker 1: a market back then, but eventually they had to change it,
Speaker 1: and it seems like the path that they created was
Speaker 1: mimicked by other markets. But what about the argument that
Speaker 1: the bond mark kit is in some way fundamentally different
Speaker 1: to the stock market because stocks, you know, you buy
Speaker 1: a share of Apple, it's a share of Apple, but
Speaker 1: if you buy an Apple bond, it could have a
Speaker 1: different maturity, different coupon, whatever. And that's what people say
Speaker 1: is often holding back the bond market from becoming standardized
Speaker 1: in some way. Well, yes, I mean it is different,
Speaker 1: and I think that is a solid argument. But um,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the sequence to market modernization, it's
Speaker 1: happened in different products but the same way. Meaning that
Speaker 1: you didn't see robust electronic trading in the SPOTFX market
Speaker 1: until they organized their quotes. You certainly did not see
Speaker 1: electronic trading in the U. S. Treasury market before they
Speaker 1: organized their quotes. So I think what we're really arguing
Speaker 1: about is semantics. Nobody is saying that the corporate bond
Speaker 1: market is going to trade in an order book and
Speaker 1: you're going to have high frequency trading coming anytime soon.
Speaker 1: But we do have an issue that those other markets
Speaker 1: faced in which those markets had reached an inflection point
Speaker 1: in terms of the size and pop pularity of the
Speaker 1: market that now necessitated people knowing what something was worth
Speaker 1: on a screen. UM. I think that what we're um
Speaker 1: really looking at is any market that's modernized has done
Speaker 1: so by decreasing ambiguity around the trading process and seeing
Speaker 1: best bid best offer is something that just doesn't exist
Speaker 1: in a lot of the unstructured fixed income markets that
Speaker 1: are now begging to be reformed. Less. When the NAZAC
Speaker 1: first took off and there was this sort of bulletin
Speaker 1: board where you could see all the prices everywhere, was
Speaker 1: it clear that that was a first step towards um
Speaker 1: a new way of trading, or at the time the
Speaker 1: dad seemed like, Okay, this is the new reality, because
Speaker 1: obviously in the telling of history it's a first step.
Speaker 1: But at the time you don't really know which way
Speaker 1: things are going to evolve. We thought that that was
Speaker 1: about as far as things could go, and uh uh,
Speaker 1: months or years later, I don't remember exactly when when
Speaker 1: they started talking about reporting volume. That was another seismic
Speaker 1: shift in the in the marketplace, the fact that now
Speaker 1: your competition could deduct what your volume was was offensive
Speaker 1: to the trader and and scary and ultimately real time reporting.
Speaker 1: Uh that you know, that was also an evolution that
Speaker 1: occurred years later. There was no price reporting at the
Speaker 1: time that the trades were done in the early Nazdak environment. Chris,
Speaker 1: it's been about a year since we last had you on.
Speaker 1: What are the chances that have been almost Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know it's scary, right, What are the chances if we
Speaker 1: had you on again in a year, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: we will, But if we have you on again in
Speaker 1: a year, what are the chances that something will actually
Speaker 1: have changed in the corporate ball market? Because I feel
Speaker 1: like we have this conversation continuously and we're all always
Speaker 1: talking about the inflection point that's coming, and we're inevitably
Speaker 1: left disappointed. Well, I think conversations like this are a
Speaker 1: part of the change. Um. A lot of the times, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, with the exception of of the people that
Speaker 1: I read at Bloomberg and a couple of the other
Speaker 1: publications I read people telling a story about markets, it's
Speaker 1: not exactly exactly accurate in terms of the history and
Speaker 1: sequence of things. UM. So, I think first there there's
Speaker 1: a bit of knowledge that needs to be built up
Speaker 1: around how do markets reform? Um number one, uh, number two.
Speaker 1: I'm willing to place a bet that people are going
Speaker 1: to push forward with ideas that that may start to
Speaker 1: change the way we're thinking about markets. I think one
Speaker 1: of the main reasons why I feel so confident about
Speaker 1: this is you're seeing a lot of people who have
Speaker 1: been sitting in traditional seats at Wall Street firms UM
Speaker 1: now on the street and trying to become UM innovators
Speaker 1: and entrepreneurs. Most of the people leading new initiatives right
Speaker 1: now are people who are actually were sitting in the seats,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's a step in the right
Speaker 1: direction because obviously they have some experience as to what
Speaker 1: the actual problems are, and therefore they know what solutions
Speaker 1: would be most helpful. All right, well, Chris, we'll have
Speaker 1: to have you on again in a year, hopefully, hopefully
Speaker 1: I will have cash in my bet at that time
Speaker 1: and we can talk about how the bond market is
Speaker 1: actually changing, and I look forward to it. All right,
Speaker 1: Chris and Lez, thank you so much for what's really
Speaker 1: a fascinating dig into the lost history of financial market modernization.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you for having well Tracy. I'm really uh.
Speaker 1: I like the idea of doing this episode once a
Speaker 1: year and sort of watching our our annual bond market,
Speaker 1: our annual look to see if anything's changed in the
Speaker 1: bond market. I'm excited about having to be a recurring future.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like people are as much hopeful
Speaker 1: about reforming that market as they are also wary. Like
Speaker 1: you talk to the guys on the street, and there's
Speaker 1: still this huge, huge resistance to any form of change,
Speaker 1: which again is kind of amazing because we have seen
Speaker 1: the corporate ball market explode in size. It's something like
Speaker 1: seven or eight trillion dollars now, it's really one of
Speaker 1: the hot areas on Wall Street. Yeah, I get. I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 1: it's sort of understandable that nobody wants change in an industry,
Speaker 1: particularly if they're making money in that industry, though given
Speaker 1: the direction of a lot of things, maybe the lack
Speaker 1: of making money will be an impetus. I thought that
Speaker 1: was just this sort of timeline point that Chris made
Speaker 1: and hearing, let's talk about it, the idea that you
Speaker 1: can't just say all right, we're gonna make it all
Speaker 1: digital now, and everyone put up your bids and asks
Speaker 1: and start trading. And how important it is to first
Speaker 1: um in the history of the stock market. First just
Speaker 1: established that there's a singular place to go and get
Speaker 1: a quote from securities is a fascinating point. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: speaking of change, shall we change the topic and say goodbye?
Speaker 1: Sounds good. I'm Tracy Alloway, Executive editor of Bloomberg Markets.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway. And
Speaker 1: I'm Joe wi isn't All, Managing editor of Bloomberg Markets.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. Put
Speaker 1: knowledge to work and grow your business with c i
Speaker 1: T from transportation to healthcare to manufacturing. C i T
Speaker 1: offers commercial lending, leasing, and treasury management services for small
Speaker 1: and middle market businesses. Learn more at c i T
Speaker 1: dot com. Put Knowledge to Work.