Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser and I'm
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stanabek. We're here every day bringing
Speaker 1: you the latest news from the world's of business and finance,
Speaker 1: plus technology, politics, economics, all harnessing the power of Business
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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot Com.
Speaker 1: You can also listen to our radio show at two
Speaker 1: pm Eastern Time on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on
Speaker 1: YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. So much going on, and
Speaker 1: obviously we're going to talk more about the crazy silver trade.
Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about that already, but also
Speaker 1: a little bit more on Robin Hood and Reddit um.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, though it is Tim and I just mentioned,
Speaker 1: we are seeing um record numbers of deaths in the
Speaker 1: United States when it comes to COVID in January, the
Speaker 1: worst month since the pandemic began. We see crisis talks
Speaker 1: over vaccine access going on in Europe. There's so much
Speaker 1: going on, so let's see what our next guest has
Speaker 1: to say about it. He is Shawn Lane. He's the
Speaker 1: CEO of all of which is building a healthcare AI workforce.
Speaker 1: They're working with more than forty healthcare organizations made up
Speaker 1: of more than six hospitals, you know, for forty one
Speaker 1: states across the US. And m Sean joins us on
Speaker 1: the phone in Columbus, Ohio. Shown great to have you
Speaker 1: here with Tim and myself. How are you and tell
Speaker 1: us about your team and how they're doing and how
Speaker 1: the pandemic has impacted your world. Thanks, Carol's good to
Speaker 1: be here. UM. Well, first and foremost, I mean, last
Speaker 1: year was an incredible year for UM, for healthcare, I mean,
Speaker 1: under complete duress. You know, they already were disconnected, UM.
Speaker 1: You know, their systems didn't talk to each other, and
Speaker 1: then you compound that with the pandemic and it was
Speaker 1: just a really difficult time. But you know, we we persevered. UM.
Speaker 1: You know all of that. The company really, you know,
Speaker 1: started to engage with our health systems early to see
Speaker 1: if there was anything we could do, and we were
Speaker 1: helping them with all the administrative burdens excuse me, all
Speaker 1: the administrative burdens that they were experiencing during the endemic.
Speaker 1: So you know, you can imagine, um, a rush of
Speaker 1: right now vaccinations. It's a huge issue and we're just
Speaker 1: trying to help them work through all the administrative challenges
Speaker 1: that they're they're facing. How do you do that, Sean?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is something that we are seeing have
Speaker 1: a bumpy rollout to to say the least, Um, how
Speaker 1: do you at all have help with that process and
Speaker 1: help get these shots and arms? So our AI workers
Speaker 1: can take on administrative tasks that are brought on by
Speaker 1: the vaccination. So in order for a person to get vaccinated,
Speaker 1: they have to be registered. Um, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: steps involved administratively, take that and multiply it by you know,
Speaker 1: even in a in a single health system, they probably
Speaker 1: have twenty thousand employees. To multiply that administrative workload times
Speaker 1: twenty thousand and then multiply it by over three million
Speaker 1: for the entire US population and it's just an incredible
Speaker 1: mountain of work. So all of us, we train all
Speaker 1: of to go in and do that administrative work, to
Speaker 1: fill out those registration for ORMs, to check all the
Speaker 1: boxes necessary to submit all the applications so that it
Speaker 1: can happen more quickly. So give me an example if
Speaker 1: I'm a patient, so what's the experience that I that
Speaker 1: I'll go through. So normally you would have to fill
Speaker 1: out a lot of forms, you'd have to um take
Speaker 1: on a lot of manual processes, and then somebody who
Speaker 1: works at the health system would have to transpose all
Speaker 1: that into their system of record, you know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: an E m R or a registration system. In the
Speaker 1: case with all of you don't have to fill out
Speaker 1: all those forms. That registration happens automatically. All of is
Speaker 1: going to take on the task affilion out the forms
Speaker 1: and transposing it into the system of record, so saving
Speaker 1: not only patient time, but also saving the hospital workers
Speaker 1: an immense amount of time. Hey, Sean, how do you
Speaker 1: get hospitals on board with this, especially during a time
Speaker 1: when you know they are focused with their resources on
Speaker 1: getting people vaccinated and in some in some cases, Sean, look,
Speaker 1: they're they're worried about paying the bills because they've had
Speaker 1: to give up elective surgeries and the like. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: absolutely right. So we you know, all of it is
Speaker 1: considered a critical infrastructure resource, so all of it is
Speaker 1: there to keep the lights on to make sure the
Speaker 1: bill still get paid. To make sure the claim still
Speaker 1: gets submitted so that the hospitals are getting paid from
Speaker 1: the insurance companies. And since we're there, you know, working
Speaker 1: side by side the human workers anyway. Um during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: anytime there was a huge administrative burden, they would turn
Speaker 1: to all of and ask if we could do anything
Speaker 1: to help. So it was really we were just you know,
Speaker 1: in the right place, working side by side them anyway.
Speaker 1: So when these opportunities came up to help them with
Speaker 1: things like vaccinations, we were there to move quickly. So, man,
Speaker 1: we would all love it to move more quickly when
Speaker 1: it comes to vaccines getting out there now, minds you.
Speaker 1: In some cases it's a supply issue at this point,
Speaker 1: but in other places it seems like there are vaccines,
Speaker 1: but it's just not getting out to people. How have
Speaker 1: you been able to maybe step in and help or
Speaker 1: are you having any conversations on a federal level to
Speaker 1: maybe help within this process. So we haven't we haven't
Speaker 1: been asked to do this, you know, across the board
Speaker 1: from a federal perspective. But you know, initially we started
Speaker 1: by just really helping the front line workers take on
Speaker 1: these administrative burdens, and then slowly we were we've moved
Speaker 1: into more of the supply chain problem. And supply chain
Speaker 1: is a complex logistics challenge and oftentimes more advanced machine
Speaker 1: learning can help with that right to determine where the
Speaker 1: where the supply should be, where can you store it,
Speaker 1: how to make sure you're meeting demand. So we're moving
Speaker 1: into the more sophisticated help to get the get the
Speaker 1: vaccinations out to who needs it. But ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: the health systems get the right to choose who's helping
Speaker 1: them do that. There's not a federal mandate right now. Hey,
Speaker 1: one thing that's interesting about what you guys have done
Speaker 1: at all of is is early on in the pandemic
Speaker 1: you said you were going to allow workers to remain
Speaker 1: remote on a on a permanent basis um. What was
Speaker 1: the decision there and and how are you thinking about
Speaker 1: that post pandemic. So, you know, as this started to
Speaker 1: unfold and we moved to this remote as we call
Speaker 1: it a distributed work model, really we just our leadership
Speaker 1: had the foresight to say, we don't think this is
Speaker 1: going to be something that happens temporarily. We think work
Speaker 1: is changing. We think the nature of work is going
Speaker 1: to be changed forever, so we wanted to get ahead
Speaker 1: of it. We didn't want to be reactionary. Instead, we
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of determine and dictate the terms of
Speaker 1: how we would work. So we came up with a
Speaker 1: model called the Grid basically said from this point forward,
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna have a distributed and flexible system,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna let people choose where they work and
Speaker 1: across the country. And as the company, we grew from
Speaker 1: employees to have about five employees in January last year's
Speaker 1: we're about five sixty today. And we wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to do that incredible growth if it wasn't for the
Speaker 1: Grid model. All Right, we're gonna leave it on that note.
Speaker 1: He listened. Um, Sean, thank you so much and look
Speaker 1: forward to hearing more down the road. Seawan Laney's CEO
Speaker 1: of It All of phone from Columbus, Ohio. This as
Speaker 1: New York new virus cases fall below ten thousand for
Speaker 1: the first time since December. So a little bit about
Speaker 1: beating news. Tim, Yeah, nice to end on a little
Speaker 1: bit of good news. This is Bloomberg Business Week with
Speaker 1: Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. Look,
Speaker 1: Carrol I said it a few minutes ago. If you're
Speaker 1: a business journalist, the game stops story is one that
Speaker 1: keeps on giving. And I gotta tell you, I'm grateful
Speaker 1: to have colleagues like Annie Massa and Mr Laney Gafa
Speaker 1: Pulu who are doing a ton of the legwork on
Speaker 1: reporting out this story. Any Massa's investing reporter for Bloomberg News,
Speaker 1: and she joins us now on the phone from New
Speaker 1: York City. Hey, Annie, Um, your latest story asked the
Speaker 1: question about Robin Hood's business. This is a company that
Speaker 1: has absolutely been the darling over the last year and
Speaker 1: even longer of many venture capitalists. But take us into
Speaker 1: the issues that it's had to struggle with this week
Speaker 1: as we've seen this unprecedented story play out on Wall Street.
Speaker 1: Absolutely it has been a real world and her Robin Hood.
Speaker 1: In the past few days, we just saw the company
Speaker 1: announced that it's raised another two point four billion dollars
Speaker 1: on top of a billion dollars last week, which it
Speaker 1: will use We're reporting to post collateral at the central
Speaker 1: clearinghouse UM for the industry. Now, just stepping back for
Speaker 1: a minute, what's been going on is robin Hood was
Speaker 1: a key platform for users to purchase some of these
Speaker 1: mean stocks like game Stop and a MC in the
Speaker 1: past several kind of chaotic trading days, and all of
Speaker 1: that volume has put immense pressure on robin Hood to
Speaker 1: come up with additional cash at the central body that
Speaker 1: clears trades in the industry. So that's all led to
Speaker 1: this kind of wild environment that we've been um seeing
Speaker 1: and tracking in the past couple of days. I also
Speaker 1: think it's interesting and we're going to talk a bit
Speaker 1: more about this later on about the role of Citadel.
Speaker 1: It's feels like, you know, it's the Kevin Bacon of
Speaker 1: the game Stop, you know, for francy trading anything. Everything
Speaker 1: kind of seems to lead act to citadel Um. Citadel,
Speaker 1: as you note in your story, is a crucial piece
Speaker 1: of robin Hood's revenue. And it's kind of interesting that
Speaker 1: we're learning about kind of first of all, how you
Speaker 1: clear trades and how it all works on Wall Street,
Speaker 1: but also these kind of interesting relationships I feel like
Speaker 1: between kind of smaller investor investing platforms and larger investing platforms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really interesting to watch in real time because you
Speaker 1: take something simple, like the fact that robin Hood put
Speaker 1: the brakes on trading for certain securities last week and
Speaker 1: has been slowly coming back from some of the trade
Speaker 1: caps that they put in place. You know, that moment
Speaker 1: really sparked anger among some of its users, and they've
Speaker 1: been venting their frustration online about all of this. But
Speaker 1: you take something that simple, and then robin Hood has
Speaker 1: been kind of rushing to explain like these kind of
Speaker 1: arcane market structure issues. Now, like, here's the reason we
Speaker 1: did it. It doesn't It didn't come up the behest
Speaker 1: of Citadel, it didn't come up the behest of any
Speaker 1: other Wall Street intermediary to to the risk management issue.
Speaker 1: But I mean, that's a very hard thing to explain
Speaker 1: very rapidly to millions of users. The Citadel link is
Speaker 1: that Citadel Securities, which is the market making arm um
Speaker 1: of or the market maker uh that's owned by Ken Griffin,
Speaker 1: is connected very tightly to robin Hood. And the connection
Speaker 1: is that robin Hood sends its orders to be filled
Speaker 1: its customer orders to be filled by Citadel Securities, and
Speaker 1: Citadel Securities pays robin Hood to send those orders its way.
Speaker 1: And though although robin Hood, you know, does, has a
Speaker 1: lot of these different relationships with different market makers. Citadel
Speaker 1: Securities is the biggest one. And this is so called
Speaker 1: payment for order flow, right, yes, so this is again
Speaker 1: like getting into these complicated kind of guts of wall streets.
Speaker 1: But um, that is that's the payment for order flow systems.
Speaker 1: And well, it's gonna say any because we only have
Speaker 1: a little time left. Um, is there any concern that
Speaker 1: robin Hood's customers are going to start rejecting the robin
Speaker 1: Hood app after what happens last week? Because if you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, seeing three point four billion dollars
Speaker 1: pour into the company in a matter of days tells
Speaker 1: me that investors are certainly believing in it. And we
Speaker 1: only have about thirty seconds. Absolutely, so it's vc investors
Speaker 1: are still standing by it. To see three point four
Speaker 1: billion dollars pour in and just a couple of days
Speaker 1: is truly staggering. And you know, it will have to
Speaker 1: keep its customers happy as well. Um, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: that they still believe in the company after after these
Speaker 1: kind of wild days we've just seen, hey, just really
Speaker 1: quickly ten seconds as robin Hood lost to any customers
Speaker 1: that we know of the retail investors. Some have defected,
Speaker 1: although there was one report today that said on Friday,
Speaker 1: right in the middle of all this mayhem, um, the
Speaker 1: company actually managed to attract six hundred thousand new app downloads,
Speaker 1: which is wild. Oh yeah, yeah um. As to mention,
Speaker 1: this is the story that's going to keep on giving
Speaker 1: for some time. Any greatf you have just been spot
Speaker 1: on with the rest of our team, Bloomberg News investing
Speaker 1: reporter Annie Massa on the phone in New York City. No,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting, right, you know, they're trying to
Speaker 1: stay true to their initial clients who gave them the momentum. Tim,
Speaker 1: but you do wonder about kind of these tricky relationships
Speaker 1: between you know, Citadel and some others, and very briefly,
Speaker 1: care I gotta tell you other competitors to robin Hood
Speaker 1: are now saying, hey, we're no longer doing payment for
Speaker 1: it to flow. We're going to try something else out.
Speaker 1: So they're trying to seize the moment. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim
Speaker 1: Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. Tim, I feel like we've talked
Speaker 1: about things over the last week. We've talked about market collusion,
Speaker 1: market manipulation, you know, and kind of what it what
Speaker 1: it all means is we've seen basically hedge funds pitted
Speaker 1: against retail investors. So I guess, you know, we need
Speaker 1: to find out do people think that the market was
Speaker 1: being manipulated? And someone who writes about it for Bloomberg
Speaker 1: business Week is economics editor Peter Cole. He joins us
Speaker 1: right now on the phone in New Jersey, along with
Speaker 1: Business Week editor Joe Webber on the access line in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: This has been, you know, Joel, a big part of
Speaker 1: the conversations we've been having, like did the traders, the
Speaker 1: retail investors do something wrong? Was the market manipulated? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And that was why, um we asked Peter just to
Speaker 1: kind of dig into it and see what he could find.
Speaker 1: And it turns out to actually be a really difficult
Speaker 1: conversation and not one that that I think the you know,
Speaker 1: the legal side of this, there's a lot of interest
Speaker 1: in but it remains rather mysterious still. So so Peter,
Speaker 1: as you as you dug into your reporting, what what
Speaker 1: did you learn? Well, see, it's not just a problem
Speaker 1: of the fact the facts are in dispute, But it's
Speaker 1: even the theory that's in dispute. So I dig up
Speaker 1: a article that came out in the Yale Journal on
Speaker 1: Regulation where the authors said that more than eighty years
Speaker 1: after federal law first addressed stock market manipulation, federal coal
Speaker 1: remains fractured by disagreement and confusion about the most foundational
Speaker 1: questions about what manipulation even is. They say may be
Speaker 1: most controversial concept and securities laws. So even if people
Speaker 1: could agree on exactly what happened TikTok from the beginning
Speaker 1: of the game stop and other stocks up to the president,
Speaker 1: they might still disagree on whether it was illegal or
Speaker 1: not right exactly, So, well, what did you find out?
Speaker 1: And having conversations because it's obviously not black and white here, Peter, Right,
Speaker 1: So there are things that are pretty clearly over the bounds,
Speaker 1: Like if you claim to be a buyer of shares
Speaker 1: when you're really secretly selling and you're just trying to
Speaker 1: take advantage of others, that that constitute fraud. That's market manipulation. Now,
Speaker 1: if you buy and you start saying good things about
Speaker 1: the shares as you buy, a lot of people do that, right,
Speaker 1: that's kind of ordinary, like I'm really hyped up on
Speaker 1: the stock I'm buying. I I think it's good. That's
Speaker 1: that can be either illegal or illegal. If you're doing
Speaker 1: a specifically with the goal of pushing up the price,
Speaker 1: that could be market manipulation. And but that's only going
Speaker 1: to be possible if if your voice is powerful enough
Speaker 1: to make a move. If if I just said I'm
Speaker 1: going to buy a share of something, nobody would care
Speaker 1: because I don't have any influence. But and then then
Speaker 1: you get into the question of Okay, something is new here.
Speaker 1: Robin Hood changed everything. And what what it changed was
Speaker 1: it created a forum for in which people who are
Speaker 1: singlely individually powerless are collectively powerful. So if they agree
Speaker 1: among themselves to do something, then what might have been
Speaker 1: innocent enough on an individual level could become perceived as
Speaker 1: a market manipulation. Okay, so what happens then, I mean,
Speaker 1: what could what could regulators actually do considering this is
Speaker 1: happening in Reddit forums and on the robin Hood app.
Speaker 1: They can, They can and will not only study detail
Speaker 1: what's being said, but what the players who are saying
Speaker 1: those things are doing behind the scenes. Um they the
Speaker 1: SEC has the power to de anonymize the market data
Speaker 1: and target individual people to see what what's happening. And
Speaker 1: there could be some big, shadowy players here that we
Speaker 1: don't know about, you know, hedge funds even that are
Speaker 1: behind this action. And that's that's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that'll be looking at. But even if it's not, there
Speaker 1: could be smaller players who could be eventually prosecuted for
Speaker 1: market manipulation. Not saying it will happen, but it could happen. Peter,
Speaker 1: there's a term that I had never heard before that
Speaker 1: you include, which is momentum ignition. Uh, can you explain
Speaker 1: that term of art another name for a great garage band.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to put it out there. That's a
Speaker 1: good one. I liken it to standing at the top
Speaker 1: of a mountain, and this is a good metaphor for
Speaker 1: today with all the snow we're having and yelling boom
Speaker 1: and suddenly an avalanche starts. All you did was yell boo.
Speaker 1: That's not illegal, but you kind of recognizant of the
Speaker 1: conditions of the snow and you you should should have
Speaker 1: known or did know, that this would trigger an avalanche.
Speaker 1: So if the ski shell at the bottom of the the
Speaker 1: slope gets crushed under an avalanche. Maybe you're responsible for
Speaker 1: maybe you ignited that momentum. So, Peter, when we when
Speaker 1: you think about where the legal side of the whole
Speaker 1: game stop conversation could go, Like, you know, right now
Speaker 1: it's really nowhere. But but how realistic is it that
Speaker 1: this conversation could continue to fester. I think the SEC
Speaker 1: as we know, is looking at these cases now, so
Speaker 1: it could be not that long before. Well it could.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it's going to take them. They're
Speaker 1: gonna be careful about it, but I can edge and
Speaker 1: prosecutions arising out of this. Not to say everybody who's
Speaker 1: involved in this as culpable, no, no, but but there
Speaker 1: could be some people who are and that's what they
Speaker 1: could be looking at very close. Well, And I'd love
Speaker 1: how you likened it to what happened to the storming
Speaker 1: of the capital, Like we have never been environment between
Speaker 1: social media where so much is documented and people you know,
Speaker 1: gladly would put stuff out there of what they were saying,
Speaker 1: what they were doing, what they were thinking. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: I want to be careful of that because I'm not
Speaker 1: likening the people who were speculating in game stock or
Speaker 1: a mc or else to the people who invaded the capital.
Speaker 1: I mean, one case was a violent insurrection and one
Speaker 1: playing with stock market. But there you can find some parallels,
Speaker 1: and one of them is this question of who started
Speaker 1: it and who amplified it. So like, did Donald Trump
Speaker 1: incite people to invade the capital. He didn't tell them
Speaker 1: to invade the capital, but were his words um enough
Speaker 1: to trigger it? And should he have known, given the
Speaker 1: volatile situation right that this would be the result. That's
Speaker 1: a similar game stuff. Well, it's a really smart read
Speaker 1: and I recommend it for everyone to help kind of
Speaker 1: understand this situation. Peter Coy, thank you so much, and
Speaker 1: of course our thanks to Joe Weber. You're listening to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes.
Speaker 1: Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. All right, you are listening
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg Business Week. First of all, I just playing
Speaker 1: off of what we hear from Charlie. Um. I was
Speaker 1: looking at those jet blue mini sweets two people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm all in. Yeah, I mean when you get your vaccine, right, yes,
Speaker 1: when I get my vaccine. But you kind of kind
Speaker 1: of love those little cubicles. Where you're kind of closed
Speaker 1: in it, like kind of like a mini New York apartment.
Speaker 1: That's feels that way. But you're right. When we get
Speaker 1: that vaccine headline, we just want to make sure everybody
Speaker 1: saw robin Hood in talks with banks and raising a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in debt. This is coming from routers. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've already been getting a fair amount of cash infusions here, right.
Speaker 1: It is remarkable, Carol. The company has raised an additional
Speaker 1: two point for billion dollars from investors. That comes after
Speaker 1: it raised even more money last week, so three point
Speaker 1: four billion dollars in addition to what Reuters is reporting,
Speaker 1: this billion dollars in debt. Well, and listen, it spoke
Speaker 1: to what you said earlier, you know, for what we're
Speaker 1: worried about, you know, people saying no thanks, I'm not
Speaker 1: interested in using robin Hood anymore. Investors are interested in
Speaker 1: still pumping money into it. And we did hear that
Speaker 1: robin Hood from Animasa saying that they was at like
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand new downloads of the platform. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was at the top of the charts last week in
Speaker 1: Apple's App store. And look, I think from the marketing perspective.
Speaker 1: It's has to do a lot of work to do
Speaker 1: from reputational perspective after what happened last week. But look
Speaker 1: at the way that investors are being bullish on it.
Speaker 1: Those metro capitalists are right, they want a piece of it,
Speaker 1: voting with their money, certainly sharing their opinion. So, okay,
Speaker 1: we have been obsessed with game stop we were last week? Uh,
Speaker 1: and I do remember we had guests reminding us that
Speaker 1: there were some really other important things that were going
Speaker 1: on in the world, include the pandemic, earnings, a massive
Speaker 1: COVID relief plan, and as Bloomberg New Economy editorial director
Speaker 1: Andy Brown writes about in his weekly column, we saw
Speaker 1: both Wall Street and Washington take some big steps ongoing
Speaker 1: green and he joins us with more on the phone
Speaker 1: in New York. Andy, Um, good to have you here.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about You're right, there were
Speaker 1: so many things that were so important last week that
Speaker 1: we're going on that really got overshadowed. And tell us
Speaker 1: about what you wrote about, specifically when it comes to
Speaker 1: the green movement. Yeah, So it just seemed to me
Speaker 1: that you know, all of these day trade is building
Speaker 1: up a MC last week was really detracting or drawing
Speaker 1: attention away from one of the biggest stories of our time,
Speaker 1: certainly you know, a story that is is in the
Speaker 1: process of reshaping the whole global economy. And and it
Speaker 1: was so startling that last week you had this alignment
Speaker 1: between Washington and Wall Street on net zero, that um,
Speaker 1: you had Larry Fink, who manages or something like overseas
Speaker 1: something like eight trillion dollars of investment UM, coming out
Speaker 1: and saying, look, if you want our investment, you've got
Speaker 1: to start publishing plans to get to net zero by
Speaker 1: two thousand and fifty, at the same time that the
Speaker 1: incoming Joe Biden administration is announcing a raft of programs
Speaker 1: for a fully clean energy network and carbon neutrality by
Speaker 1: two thousand and fifty, in line with a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of other countries, not least UK, Denmark, New Zealand And
Speaker 1: and so on. I you know, the balance you put
Speaker 1: out you whatever you're putting into the environment in terms
Speaker 1: of of carbon emissions, you've got to take out net zero.
Speaker 1: But but Andy, I do question the timeline here because
Speaker 1: is look, that's a long time, that's twenty nine years. Uh,
Speaker 1: contextualize that for us because it does seem like a
Speaker 1: big deal. But at the same time, you know that's
Speaker 1: almost three decades. Well you're you're, you're right. I mean
Speaker 1: in some ways I was in the fifty year and
Speaker 1: never never. Um, you know, some of us may not
Speaker 1: be alive by them, but um, you know, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, we're talking now about pathways and and Sphinx
Speaker 1: point is if you don't have a plan to get
Speaker 1: to net zero by two thousand and fifty, you don't
Speaker 1: understand the biggest opportunities in front of business today. So
Speaker 1: that will include at Allah, the you know, Joe Biden plan,
Speaker 1: clean energy, but also includes clean mobility. It also includes
Speaker 1: smart cities, um, everything that goes under this rubric of
Speaker 1: you know, net zero. So in his view, and look,
Speaker 1: he's coming at this climate issue. Yes, he has his
Speaker 1: own personal views and it's informed by his own personal experience,
Speaker 1: like going fishing in Alaska and discovering how breathe because
Speaker 1: the tons because the tundra is on hire in Siberia.
Speaker 1: But he's telling it it's from an investor perspectively, saying,
Speaker 1: you know, company management needs to be on top of
Speaker 1: the opportunities and the side of this. The historic risks,
Speaker 1: and not just the risks from rising sea levels and
Speaker 1: and hurricanes and the kind of crazy was white up
Speaker 1: the snow storms that I'm looking at right now out
Speaker 1: of my window in New York, but also shifting regulation
Speaker 1: and reputational damage to companies that haven't figured this out right.
Speaker 1: It does feel like and you guys at you know
Speaker 1: New Economy, Andy, I think, are you bringing this together
Speaker 1: kind of the private public sector in terms of moving
Speaker 1: this forward and what we're hearing and you know, remember
Speaker 1: a story last week they talked about the Norway um
Speaker 1: Norway's sovereign wealth fund. They dumped a bunch of oil stocks.
Speaker 1: They've been losing money on those investments, and you know
Speaker 1: that was a pretty significant trade for them. So we
Speaker 1: are definitely seeing this a lot of momentum and lot
Speaker 1: of pressure from the investment community. I have to ask
Speaker 1: you before you go, because we'd be remiss knowing your background,
Speaker 1: your China editor, senior correspondent columnist at the Wall Street Journal,
Speaker 1: you know, China, um me and mar the developments over
Speaker 1: the weekend and what kind of response we might get
Speaker 1: from the Biden administration. How do you see what's key
Speaker 1: that you think our audience needs to know about here
Speaker 1: just just got about fifty seconds. Well, you know, um,
Speaker 1: from the perspective of China, China, of course, is extremely influential, uh,
Speaker 1: and it will back the general to every step of
Speaker 1: the way as it has done. UM. It's hard to
Speaker 1: know from the US perspective of what the US can
Speaker 1: actually do uh in this situation. I mean, look, we're
Speaker 1: coming out of a nominally democratic regime that presided over
Speaker 1: as we were talking about last week, genocide against the
Speaker 1: against the row Hinger. Um. So what sort of democracy
Speaker 1: is it that we're defending here? Uh? And the personality
Speaker 1: of course of Unsang Succhi, who is now a deeply
Speaker 1: ambivalent figure. Um. You know, so what are we what
Speaker 1: are we defending here in uh in myanma um? And
Speaker 1: And it's hard to know really what what what the
Speaker 1: United States can actually achieve beyond ritual denunciations and messages
Speaker 1: of concerned for the for the people of of of Myanmar.
Speaker 1: Al Right, Gonna leave it there, Andy, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I always appreciate it and always thoughtful. Andy Brown, Editorial
Speaker 1: director of Bloomberg New Economy, on the phone in a snowy,
Speaker 1: snowy New York City Bro Marow Ajournal. Yeah, but you
Speaker 1: let me drive? Oh no, no, no, no, please, I'll
Speaker 1: do the writing reveals me. I want to drive. Just drive, baby,
Speaker 1: it's the question. Try your job. This is the drive
Speaker 1: to the globe. Thanks well, drying us on Bloomberg Radio
Speaker 1: kind to say, I didn't see this coming, the rally
Speaker 1: that we have after last week, right, like I really thought,
Speaker 1: and I thought because of the weather it was going
Speaker 1: to be subdued, but certainly not. Let's get to the
Speaker 1: drive to the clothes and Miletti is back with that's
Speaker 1: head of aquid Active Equity at Wells Fargo Asset Management,
Speaker 1: and she has, uh, they've got about sorry, let me
Speaker 1: just look at my numbers here, six hundred three billion
Speaker 1: in assets under management. And she joins us on the
Speaker 1: phone in Milwaukee, and I said to everybody, I've been
Speaker 1: back at the office for a couple of months and
Speaker 1: back at home, and I'm like, I forgot how to
Speaker 1: do this. Um, how are you? I'm doing well, Carol?
Speaker 1: How are you doing okay? Doing okay? How do you
Speaker 1: see like you forgot how to do it? I look
Speaker 1: at you pretty often, and you got it. You got
Speaker 1: it down quite well. Well, thank you, thank you. Um,
Speaker 1: it's been a it's been a crazy it's hard to
Speaker 1: believe that already January is done. In terms of the
Speaker 1: market environment, UM, how do you see and how are
Speaker 1: you kind of making sense of where we are maybe
Speaker 1: where we're headed, and do you feel like you have visibility?
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting, Carol. We're trying to stay focused
Speaker 1: on the fundamentals and coming into we thought that that's
Speaker 1: what's going to matter the most. UM might have one
Speaker 1: more round of stimulus coming at us and that would
Speaker 1: be good for the market in the near term, but
Speaker 1: after that, fundamentals would drive the market. And then here
Speaker 1: we have, UM, what's going on certainly last week, UM
Speaker 1: and this week, which is I think taking people's focus
Speaker 1: off of fundamentals, off of earning season office things that matter. Certainly,
Speaker 1: that's not what's going on in our shop. Our managers
Speaker 1: are focused on the long term and on fundamentals, but
Speaker 1: the near term is being distorted a little bit around
Speaker 1: some of its retail trading. Yeah, I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine that the company's stock increased like we saw in
Speaker 1: Game Stop, you know, changing the conversation about fundamentals. UM. So,
Speaker 1: so what are you what are you liking right now
Speaker 1: in terms of companies with strong fundamentals. Well, certainly, our
Speaker 1: managers have been focused more on the economic expansion and
Speaker 1: recovery that we expected, led by the stimulus, certainly, and
Speaker 1: we're seeing the numbers in the economy bear that out, um,
Speaker 1: but then followed up the second half by broader scales, vaccination,
Speaker 1: and so UM. I really believe that the economic data
Speaker 1: will look good and that will continue to bode well
Speaker 1: for the market. So industrial financials were areas that our
Speaker 1: managers were getting into more broadly small caps as well,
Speaker 1: and then the emerging markets look like another place UM
Speaker 1: that kind of got left a little bit more behind
Speaker 1: over the past twelve months, and our emerging markets and
Speaker 1: international managers continued to be very optimistic about the global recovery.
Speaker 1: At interesting you said small caps. I mean that's certainly
Speaker 1: been an area, you know, full disclosure, that I've been
Speaker 1: interested in two and we've seen such a significant bounce back.
Speaker 1: Dave Wilson was just on, you know, with this chart
Speaker 1: of the day and kind of looking at the run
Speaker 1: up that we've seen so far, does any of it
Speaker 1: start to make you a little bit nervous? Nervous and
Speaker 1: or are you guys still feeling pretty comfortable about small
Speaker 1: caps overall and continuing their move to the upside. Well,
Speaker 1: I think when you have to be careful with the
Speaker 1: small caps is the distortion that you can see from
Speaker 1: events like what's going on today or actually over the
Speaker 1: last couple of weeks. Right, So when game Stop can
Speaker 1: move from where it came from to being the largest
Speaker 1: component of the Russell two thousand in backs and drive
Speaker 1: a big part of that performance, that can distort a
Speaker 1: lot of the returns that we're seeing. So I think
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do is pick through UM different
Speaker 1: industries and different companies and really try to figure out
Speaker 1: which companies have the strongest earnings, the strongest cash flow,
Speaker 1: the strongest balance sheets, UM, and focus on those companies
Speaker 1: for the longer term. And you mentioned what happened the
Speaker 1: markets last week. I wonder to what extent you're hearing
Speaker 1: from clients about that. I mean, are they starting to
Speaker 1: ask you about this stuff? Certainly our clients are very
Speaker 1: curious about this, wondering how it's impacting our managers today.
Speaker 1: They're worried about, obviously whether or not there's broader systematic
Speaker 1: concerns some of the things that you guys are all
Speaker 1: talking about as well, how long can this go on
Speaker 1: and what will be you know, are there dominoes that
Speaker 1: are going to start to fall if this goes on
Speaker 1: for much longer? Those are the biggest questions, um that
Speaker 1: they have. And then certainly there's going to be some issues,
Speaker 1: um around the impact of performance. What happens when a
Speaker 1: stock like game Stop can drive you know, the Russell
Speaker 1: two thousand, what happens when you're trying to manage money
Speaker 1: against that? You know, Um, it's interesting. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're buying an e t F of the Russell two
Speaker 1: thousand and today or on Friday, you were buying more
Speaker 1: game Stoff than anything else and you know, maybe that
Speaker 1: probably wasn't intended, but that was the reality. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: you know it is interesting though about you know, the
Speaker 1: role of retail investors and kind of what's happened in
Speaker 1: the last year, uh and their their role in the market,
Speaker 1: I mean, healthier market, do you think and if we've
Speaker 1: got more retail investors involved And I know it's hard
Speaker 1: to maybe feel that way after the last couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: but you do wonder, um, the impact and whether it's
Speaker 1: a good or bad thing, I absolutely think it's better.
Speaker 1: The more people that have knowledge about the market, the
Speaker 1: better off we will all be. So over the past
Speaker 1: several years, as I've talked to my own kids and
Speaker 1: their friends, as they've been investing on you know, apps
Speaker 1: like robin Hood and other things, they've learned a lot
Speaker 1: about investing in companies and investing in the market. But
Speaker 1: it's fun, you know all and the hope to money
Speaker 1: than really trying to figure out how to do research
Speaker 1: um and learn about the companies they're investing in. That's
Speaker 1: different than what we've seen over the past week. And
Speaker 1: I think what I worry about, you know, when I
Speaker 1: look at what's happened over the last week, is how
Speaker 1: many smaller retail investors will actually get hurt when this
Speaker 1: all comes to a rapid end, And how many of
Speaker 1: those retail investors will we scare away and scare out
Speaker 1: of the market. That's actually not good for our business
Speaker 1: long term. I'd rather see more people in the markets,
Speaker 1: whether they're doing it on their own or they're coming
Speaker 1: to us for more professional advice. Yeah. I mean, but
Speaker 1: that when it comes to game stuff and the rise
Speaker 1: that we've seen there. It's it's hard to imagine this
Speaker 1: ending any other way. Um. And and when we have
Speaker 1: about fifteen seconds left, yep, No, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think everybody has to realize that diversification is really
Speaker 1: important and understanding the risks, and the risks are very
Speaker 1: high right now in certain names and fundamental else Ultimately
Speaker 1: it's going to come back to fundamentals like if you
Speaker 1: have a business or and it's growing, great, If you
Speaker 1: don't and it's not growing, um, that's going to ultimately
Speaker 1: show up at some point. Uh. And good to hear
Speaker 1: your voice. And Miletti, she's head of active Equity over
Speaker 1: at Wells Fargo Asset Management six three billion in assets
Speaker 1: under management on the phone in Milwaukee. I forgot to
Speaker 1: ask her if it's snowing. Um, I know they got snow.
Speaker 1: They got snow, right, Yeah, I don't know if I
Speaker 1: don't know if they're still getting snow, but we're getting
Speaker 1: what they got. Yeah. And I actually just looked at
Speaker 1: the window and it looks like it is still snowing.
Speaker 1: Just you're wondering. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week.
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Speaker 1: Sarah to Bloomberg Global News