Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: So what you do you know if you're a nineteen
Speaker 2: year old kid, Yeah, I mean, you know, it was
Speaker 2: a difficult child. Jason Trenner with this right now, and
Speaker 2: he summed up up in a book recently. We're Strtigua's
Speaker 2: working with Edheimen years ago, and this is a book
Speaker 2: from like, you know, ages back my side.
Speaker 1: Of the Street.
Speaker 2: Why Wolves, flashboys, quants and Masters of the Universe don't
Speaker 2: represent the.
Speaker 1: Real Wall Street? What is the real Wall Street?
Speaker 3: Well, you know the point of that book is that
Speaker 3: you have about six million people in the financial services
Speaker 3: in this country, and I truly believe financial services serve
Speaker 3: a social purpose, an important social purpose to raise capital,
Speaker 3: breed life into dreams, and raise capital for research and development,
Speaker 3: all the rest of it. Unfortunately, the headlines tend to
Speaker 3: get hijacked by so the bad behavior of Wall Street.
Speaker 3: And I just wanted to give a very human, you know,
Speaker 3: approach to the way I grew up. And I grew
Speaker 3: up in any sort of you know, Wall Street family.
Speaker 3: But I love the financial markets and I think they're important.
Speaker 1: You have led the way on this of almost it's.
Speaker 2: Almost like Robert Schuller, you know, leading on a social
Speaker 2: mandate of it.
Speaker 1: Once again, Paul's lead on this.
Speaker 2: Frankly, we have the joy of private credit, private equity,
Speaker 2: and some would say the greed to make another two
Speaker 2: hundred beeps on yield. Did you perceive it's strateiguous that
Speaker 2: private credit is a challenge to our future?
Speaker 3: I do, I mean, I you know, and this is
Speaker 3: just based on experience. I think the problem with the
Speaker 3: private assets, of course, is the opacity, which also tends
Speaker 3: to be the attraction for a lot of pensions, endowments
Speaker 3: and foundations because it seems less voliible, although it's not.
Speaker 3: But based on experience, I would say that there's probably
Speaker 3: going to be more problems, and that's only because Wall
Speaker 3: Street is great at finding ways, very creative ways to
Speaker 3: extend credit to marginal, marginal players, and it usually works
Speaker 3: that worse than people thought.
Speaker 4: Jason, what's the conversation you're having with your clients these days?
Speaker 4: We've got geopolitical risk front and center seemingly for a
Speaker 4: long time now now with what's going on in Iran?
Speaker 4: How do you put that in context of kind of
Speaker 4: just the conversation you have you with clients.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's good quite The three big things we're
Speaker 3: talking about with clients obviously the war, private credit, and
Speaker 3: the sustainability of the infrastructure spend on artificial intelligence, and
Speaker 3: the way the way we're looking at it is, as
Speaker 3: we discussed, we think private credit is going to stick
Speaker 3: around for a while. I don't think it's we don't
Speaker 3: think it's systemic. We think the war is a big deal.
Speaker 3: The long the longer it lasts long. You know, people
Speaker 3: forget we've had a fifty percent increase in the price
Speaker 3: of oil and three it's only two weeks. You know,
Speaker 3: this last another couple of weeks. It's going to be
Speaker 3: real problems. Ironically, the infrastructure spend, it's really hard to
Speaker 3: fade that. I just have to say, we look at
Speaker 3: the cash flow, as we look at the fact that
Speaker 3: these companies are issuing debt ye and we look at
Speaker 3: Jensen Wang's comments last night. I mean, it's pretty stunning.
Speaker 3: And he's been you know, he hasn't been. I'll try
Speaker 3: to clean this up. He hasn't been. Uh, he's been
Speaker 3: lying to us, let's put it that way.
Speaker 1: And promotional.
Speaker 4: Some people will say, of course, maybe, but a boy,
Speaker 4: he's been right there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's been you know, it's it's again hard to
Speaker 3: fade what he said because he's largely been correct.
Speaker 4: So so I mean, I guess the you know, before
Speaker 4: Iran erupted, I guess the AI trade was really the
Speaker 4: driver for these markets really for the last two or
Speaker 4: three years on the way up. I mean, you probably
Speaker 4: spend enough on AI and now it's coming to the
Speaker 4: point where we want to see use cases, we want
Speaker 4: to see returns on investment, and that's where we've seen
Speaker 4: it spin to another direction. If you're a software company,
Speaker 4: you've got a lot of explaining to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, And we actually in our piece this morning,
Speaker 3: we have a chart from the Census Department that's also
Speaker 3: based on the Anthropic Study, where you look at the
Speaker 3: companies that and industries that are using AI. It's actually
Speaker 3: quite small. I mean, if you according to the Census here,
Speaker 3: it's only five percent of companies on a on a
Speaker 3: labor weighted basis, it's maybe twenty percent. So there's a
Speaker 3: long way to go. Although I will say to someone
Speaker 3: runs a business, you know, it's it's expensive and it's
Speaker 3: not always easier or obvious what you need to do
Speaker 3: to incorporate into your business.
Speaker 2: An extended discussion with Jason Trent. It's strtiguous research with
Speaker 2: us to help me here with the meat and potatoes
Speaker 2: of retail, which is growth. Stocks always work. I fear
Speaker 2: missing out step in by seven, ten, twelve, fifteen stocks.
Speaker 2: You know, years ago you'd put this up front and
Speaker 2: linked into Ed Hyman's economic call. Now you do it
Speaker 2: with your great stream statigue as you put up with
Speaker 2: Dan Clifton, which.
Speaker 1: Itself is a challenge.
Speaker 2: Recapitulate the value of growth right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the funny thing is tom uh you know,
Speaker 3: I started maybe thirty five years ago. Graham and Dodd
Speaker 3: was like a it was important, you know. Now it's
Speaker 3: a book. Now it's like a doorstop, you know, valuation
Speaker 3: basically since the TAF it's tragic.
Speaker 1: I legally have Graham and Dodd folks on my desk here.
Speaker 2: Alexis told me to clean my desk, but underneath it
Speaker 2: there's a Grammy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no discussed.
Speaker 3: It's kind of sad because well, if it's kind of
Speaker 3: saying if you've been trained, and this is because you
Speaker 3: almost throw out a lot of your training and you
Speaker 3: have to you have to really focus on the liquidity
Speaker 3: in the markets, and you have to focus on obviously growth,
Speaker 3: top line growth as opposed to necessarily bottom line growth.
Speaker 3: But I do think Tom that the going into this year,
Speaker 3: we were very much of the view that you wanted
Speaker 3: to be an equal weight S and P, you wanted
Speaker 3: to be more in value sectors, and you wanted to
Speaker 3: be more in international mainly because they were more value
Speaker 3: orient and growth oriented. What you see, though, when you
Speaker 3: have this locations is it's really hard to get away
Speaker 3: from the US because it's the only country in the
Speaker 3: world that really has this kind of innovation. Sadly, but
Speaker 3: it's the way it is.
Speaker 4: How about alternative investment alts as the kids out to
Speaker 4: call them, I mean the sixty to forty portfolio of
Speaker 4: equities and fixed income. It really increasingly, particularly with the
Speaker 4: biggest endowments and pension funds in increasingly increasing their allocations
Speaker 4: to alternatives. How do you think about that, because a
Speaker 4: lot of folks are starting to question that now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they should question it. And as we
Speaker 3: were talking about before, people are conflating the idea of
Speaker 3: risk and volatility. The thing is, the observe volatility of
Speaker 3: private assets is very low, and that's because they don't
Speaker 3: transact very often, but if you actually had to sell it,
Speaker 3: it would the volatility you're do very high. And so
Speaker 3: again the opacity is that is the feature in many ways.
Speaker 3: But I think what a lot of endowments and foundations
Speaker 3: are finding pensions too, is that liquidity has a significant price.
Speaker 3: When the markets get in trouble and if you have
Speaker 3: trouble meeting the actual real assumptions, or you have trouble
Speaker 3: meeting the spending requirements that you have, the liquidity has
Speaker 3: a significant price. So liquidity's always there until you need it,
Speaker 3: and then it's then it's an issue.
Speaker 1: What's a trendard exuberance meter look like? Right now? Are
Speaker 1: we in the silly season? I mean, Paul helped me here.
Speaker 2: How many square feed I mean Hampton's is up like
Speaker 2: twenty five percent or something.
Speaker 1: You know, there are we in the silly season?
Speaker 3: I think for wealthy people we're very much in the
Speaker 3: silly season. I think it's gotten kind of out of
Speaker 3: control and there's a lot of signs of conspicuous consumption.
Speaker 3: I don't want to make normal the judgments, but it's
Speaker 3: not kind of my thing. But by the same token,
Speaker 3: I think for the average person it's nowhere near the
Speaker 3: silly season. And I do think mercifully a lot of
Speaker 3: individual investors are investing in the market, which I think
Speaker 3: is there's more of a conception now that's an important
Speaker 3: thing for even middle class people, which wasn't the case.
Speaker 3: But let's say for my parents, young are absolutely I.
Speaker 2: Think the younger people have learned from us and they're
Speaker 2: more serious about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is great, and you know there's there will
Speaker 3: be some bruises along the way, of course, but but
Speaker 3: it's much better than burying it in the savings account.
Speaker 2: Most people when they get sick, they hyatt. You wrote
Speaker 2: it up with Charlie Gasberno on the New York Post.
Speaker 2: How do you check in the Sloan?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a that's a long story, but the bottom line,
Speaker 3: I wasn't feeling well. I was about to, as you know,
Speaker 3: it's about to enter the Treasure Department as Assistant Secretary
Speaker 3: of the Treasury for Financial Markets, and I wanted to
Speaker 3: get checked out before I moved down to Washington. And
Speaker 3: they discovered multiple dilmam and so the you know, there's
Speaker 3: not great news in that. The good news and multiple
Speaker 3: dilumas it's not usually not fatal. It's cancer, right, It's
Speaker 3: just it's just chronic and it's treatable. But last nine
Speaker 3: months was was was something else.
Speaker 1: I'll just say.
Speaker 3: I'll just say that unlike anything I've ever experienced.
Speaker 1: But right, you know, he get through it. Speak to
Speaker 1: the people that don't.
Speaker 2: They ignore, they ignore the pain in the elbow, you know,
Speaker 2: colon cancer, more serious cancer. Frankly, what's the trigger where
Speaker 2: you say, I've got to go to Sloan, I gotta
Speaker 2: go to Walcorn.
Speaker 3: Now, you know, Tom, I don't know, because before this happened,
Speaker 3: I was going in about one thousand miles an hour, okay,
Speaker 3: I was traveling seventy eighty days a year.
Speaker 1: I would go to the doctor maybe.
Speaker 3: Once a year, and I would ignore a lot of
Speaker 3: things and familiar, you know, so you would just go
Speaker 3: kind of just in time, and that type of thing.
Speaker 3: I really would stress to people that it sounds corny,
Speaker 3: but you've got to focus on your health because you
Speaker 3: can't do all the other things, you know, being a father,
Speaker 3: being a husband. But you know, it sounds very corny,
Speaker 3: but when you're in a situation where you're dealing with
Speaker 3: the treatments, you really are incapable of doing all the
Speaker 3: things that you love to do. So it's it's it's
Speaker 3: important that you catch this stuff early.
Speaker 2: Are you back at strtigas there's Dan Clifton running the
Speaker 2: whole thing.
Speaker 3: Kidding me now, Dan is of course one of the
Speaker 3: great great, oh of the great analysts. But I'm back
Speaker 3: every day, every morning, and so that's the best medicine
Speaker 3: FORMUTA fantastic.
Speaker 4: So what's what are you telling your clients?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: These days?
Speaker 4: Just about investing going forward here because it seems like
Speaker 4: there's more options than ever there's that's blown up in
Speaker 4: our lifetime to become such a huge asset class. What
Speaker 4: are you telling your clients here? Is it the diversification story?
Speaker 4: Is it the courage to be in the market? Is
Speaker 4: all of above?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So, I mean our clients are institutional investors, so
Speaker 3: sometimes they must be fully invested. Other times they don't
Speaker 3: have a lot of leeway in terms of let's say cash.
Speaker 3: But I'm very much of the view that you have
Speaker 3: to and I've been saying this for a while, but
Speaker 3: I think people have to matter as their expectations about
Speaker 3: returns moving forward because you're starting at let's a used
Speaker 3: round numbers twenty two times earnings and about what a
Speaker 3: little less than twenty five times earnings for the ten
Speaker 3: year treasure yield. So there's not a lot of room.
Speaker 3: You have to really find idiosyncratic bets, or you have
Speaker 3: to find things to really get big returns. Doesn't mean
Speaker 3: you shouldn't be invested, but it also means that, as
Speaker 3: we were talking about before, you can't rely on outsized
Speaker 3: returns from the public markets to sustain you.
Speaker 2: One final question, a sea change on Fifth Avenue. Archbishop
Speaker 2: Ronald Hicks. Boy, does he have big shoes for you?
Speaker 2: Bet discuss that shift.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's I'm a big fan. I'm a big
Speaker 3: fan of Cardinal Dolan and big you know, big fan
Speaker 3: of Cardinal Hicks. Cardinal Dolan is a character. I was
Speaker 3: seated next to him at the Museum of American Finances
Speaker 3: gala and he's eating a chocolate bar and he looked
Speaker 3: at me and he said, it's good for the kidneys.
Speaker 3: So this guy, you know, this guy's ready to give
Speaker 3: you a hard time. He's very funny and I'm so
Speaker 3: thrilled that he'll be sticking around in the city as
Speaker 3: chaplain for the new police department. I think Hicks obviously
Speaker 3: will benefit from the fact, although some people question that
Speaker 3: he'll benefit from the fact that Cardinal Dolan is around.
Speaker 3: In any event, we're blessed to have those two gentlemen
Speaker 3: leading the flock.
Speaker 1: Jason Trynick, thank you so much.