Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser. Every day
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Speaker 1: New York City with checkpoints around the Thanksgiving holiday. We've
Speaker 1: also heard the World Health Organization come out and say
Speaker 1: that people will probably have to take precautions against COVID
Speaker 1: nineteam for the next year as countries continue to vaccinate
Speaker 1: and UH and and actually needs some time to vaccinate
Speaker 1: their population. So just some of our headlines on this Tuesday.
Speaker 1: Let's bring in though, with an interesting perspective on really
Speaker 1: our whole wellness situation, if you will, against the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Let's bring in Dr Rachel Do. She's Board certified doctor
Speaker 1: of Natural Medicine and she's also the CEO of Moody house,
Speaker 1: she joins us on the phone in Los Angeles. Dr Do,
Speaker 1: nice to have you here with us UM. How are
Speaker 1: you What is your world been like on the West
Speaker 1: Coast and and and especially with just some of your patients. Hi, Carol, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me on UM. It
Speaker 1: has certainly been UM an interesting season, right, So we
Speaker 1: are all having to make so many adjustments and transitions,
Speaker 1: not just in how we care for patients, but also
Speaker 1: how we care for ourselves in this time. So we're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of those adjustments and the needs to
Speaker 1: be more flexible and to really take personal accountability. What
Speaker 1: does that mean? They'll break it down. So if I'm
Speaker 1: a patient, I'm listening to that, I'm sitting at home
Speaker 1: and I've got stresses of working, I've got stresses of
Speaker 1: taking care of my family. What are you telling me? Absolutely? So, Look,
Speaker 1: you know this pandemic, we have the concerns around catching
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen, we have that, but also the pandemic has
Speaker 1: really caused an uptick in many other health crisis right
Speaker 1: from mental health and emotional health to physical health, everything
Speaker 1: from injuries, illness, and chronic disease. And you know this
Speaker 1: is really due to patients avoiding in person care due
Speaker 1: to safety concerns and putting off treatments and things like that. Right,
Speaker 1: So tele medicine has been providing a solution to meet
Speaker 1: these concerns, and now Telly Care is really easier and
Speaker 1: safer to access in order to get that continued care. Right. So,
Speaker 1: we're seeing this as a major shift that that we've taken,
Speaker 1: we've needed to take in order to care for ourselves
Speaker 1: and also practitioners needing to care for their patients. But
Speaker 1: what we also see is that the need is greater
Speaker 1: now more than ever for a whole person care approach,
Speaker 1: really an integrative approach, and that really includes not only
Speaker 1: traditional health care prevention, but also well being. Well We're said,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to be quite honest with you, You're
Speaker 1: you're preaching to the choir, because I'm someone who certainly
Speaker 1: believes in kind of that holistic approach when it comes
Speaker 1: to health care, having done yoga for years and you know,
Speaker 1: believe in meditation and things like that, that you really
Speaker 1: do need to take care of your whole being. It's
Speaker 1: just not physically, you know, it's not just about physical ailments,
Speaker 1: but it's also about mental well being, And I do wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, is there something about this time of crisis
Speaker 1: and it's conversations that I've had to be quite honest
Speaker 1: with a bunch of my guests about are we looking at,
Speaker 1: you know, our health very differently. Will we come out
Speaker 1: of it being smarter in terms of preventive health and
Speaker 1: and thinking about kind of holistic care when it comes
Speaker 1: to our well being? Absolutely, and I think that that's
Speaker 1: one of the positive set's coming out of this pandemic
Speaker 1: what we're seeing. So at Moldi Health, we're the only
Speaker 1: hell of medicine and hell a wellness integrated platform in industry.
Speaker 1: What does that mean because there's lots of tele medicine
Speaker 1: out there. We've been talking about We just off with
Speaker 1: Susan Lan yesterday. She's a venture capitalist saying, you know,
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that all of a sudden
Speaker 1: it has just taken off. So tell me about what
Speaker 1: that means that integrative platform. Sure. Absolutely so. While there
Speaker 1: are many telemedicine platforms out there, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of wellness platforms out there, like health clubs are moving
Speaker 1: classes and yoga as you mentioned, are moving classes online,
Speaker 1: there's really no marriage between the two of this holistic
Speaker 1: care and traditional care. So Moody Health on our integrative platform,
Speaker 1: we offer access to virtual care with both traditional medical
Speaker 1: practitioners as well as complementary, alternative and natural and then
Speaker 1: also wellness things like mental health practitioners, life coaches, fitness instructor, nutritionists,
Speaker 1: all of those different types of needs under one virtual
Speaker 1: roof to be accessed. And I think that that's what's
Speaker 1: critical right now and we're seeing at Moody Health so
Speaker 1: many people are focusing on wellness and prevention through a
Speaker 1: more fulistic approach or a whole person approach to help.
Speaker 1: And so people that are coming to our platform are
Speaker 1: really concerned about being as healthy and also as resilient
Speaker 1: as possible. Well well, who, well, who is your demo?
Speaker 1: Who comes to your platform? Every person you can possibly imagine.
Speaker 1: So we have, you know, all different types of care
Speaker 1: available for people that are younger demographic millennials, we have
Speaker 1: baby boomers and everything in between. Really, the pandemic has
Speaker 1: created this massive need to shift and begin using online
Speaker 1: platforms to access care. So it's really invited people that
Speaker 1: may not have considered doing that type of care before. Um,
Speaker 1: it's really invited them into using and experiencing the ease
Speaker 1: and safety of telecare. UM, I totally get what you
Speaker 1: guys are doing, and I do think when it comes
Speaker 1: to health care, we do need to think about kind
Speaker 1: of top to bottom, you know, all the layers that
Speaker 1: make up a person's well being, right, And there's different
Speaker 1: forms of treatment. There's certainly, you know, traditional medicine, there's
Speaker 1: you know, evolving medicine. There's just different things that are
Speaker 1: out there, and you really do feel like it's maybe
Speaker 1: not one person but multiple people who really have to
Speaker 1: look at someone and say, Okay, here's here's the here's
Speaker 1: the full picture, right, and here's the different things you
Speaker 1: can be doing. Having said that, I do feel like
Speaker 1: kind of newer waves of thinking or newer ways of
Speaker 1: thinking when it comes to healthcare. Your traditional insurance companies
Speaker 1: aren't so great to embrace it, at least not so quickly.
Speaker 1: So where are we on that? Absolutely? I am so
Speaker 1: glad that you brought this up. It's it's something that
Speaker 1: I'm hugely passionate about. So we have a unique approach
Speaker 1: at multi Health since we are founded by practitioners and
Speaker 1: we really believe that patient care needs to shift. The
Speaker 1: patient care should be dictated by doctors, not health insurance companies.
Speaker 1: And right now, most holistic or alternative care, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: is out of talkt which not only limits access, but
Speaker 1: it really restricts access to those who are unable to
Speaker 1: afford that kind of care out of talket. So at
Speaker 1: Motive Health we've addressed that by making consolts more affordable.
Speaker 1: But as we're shifting and as we are seeing this
Speaker 1: whole person care approach, and we're seeing so much more
Speaker 1: research and data that is pointing to the future of health,
Speaker 1: including that type of full person care. With the future
Speaker 1: of health insurance reimbursements, there's a huge market demand and
Speaker 1: that's only going to continue to grow. So insurance companies
Speaker 1: will eventually need to address this by increasing wellness care
Speaker 1: and complementary and alternative care coverage and also reimbursement. So
Speaker 1: we need to shift the focus on people, keeping people
Speaker 1: well versus just treating health crises and problems once they arrive.
Speaker 1: So how do we do that? I mean, if anything,
Speaker 1: the pandemic has an earth uh and laid bare once
Speaker 1: again is the inequities that are out there right and
Speaker 1: it's it's easy, maybe for some of us to say, okay,
Speaker 1: I can focus on well care, right, Uh, wellness care
Speaker 1: because I've got the time, I've got employers who understand
Speaker 1: I've got a great health care plan. There are those
Speaker 1: folks who are just trying to you know, pay the
Speaker 1: rent and keep food on their table for their families,
Speaker 1: and you know, health care is often a emergency situation,
Speaker 1: if you will, and that's really important if we're going
Speaker 1: to raise the wellness of society. So how do we
Speaker 1: deal with that which is so important? Right? I mean,
Speaker 1: we keep doing things that you know, people who are
Speaker 1: already in a good place get to kind of top into.
Speaker 1: But it's if we're gonna if we're gonna learn anything
Speaker 1: from this past year, right, is figuring it out how
Speaker 1: more people get to benefit from the successes of society.
Speaker 1: I completely agree with you. It's such a critical point.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're really seeing this shift when it comes
Speaker 1: to wellness and preventative and alternative care. We're seeing that
Speaker 1: it's becoming only accessible by the wealthy. So it's becoming,
Speaker 1: you know, a social level of achievement to be able
Speaker 1: to access. But we've got to make this type of
Speaker 1: not only care, but life healthy lifestyle choices and options
Speaker 1: more affordable and accessible to the masses, and you know,
Speaker 1: I mean that's something we're really passionate about and we
Speaker 1: worked really hard to a motive health to do, you know,
Speaker 1: not only by making you know, consoles more affordable to
Speaker 1: live virtual care, but we've we've come up with some
Speaker 1: creative solutions and really it's going to take all of
Speaker 1: us doing you know, putting our minds towards creative we're
Speaker 1: solving this problem. So you know, what we've done is
Speaker 1: we've created a health streaming service. So where someone might
Speaker 1: not be able to afford meeting with a nutritionist or
Speaker 1: a personal trainer or a health coach for example, um,
Speaker 1: they might be able to afford a nine dollar you know,
Speaker 1: a month virtual streaming service that gives them access to
Speaker 1: all different types of health and wellness classes and health
Speaker 1: education and fitness classes. So it's really about getting creative
Speaker 1: in order to solve this, right, which is what it's
Speaker 1: going to take. You know. It's interesting the Bloomberg New
Speaker 1: Economy Forum was just held virtually with global leaders and
Speaker 1: one of the verticals, one of the pillars, is all
Speaker 1: about health and this whole concept of you know, how
Speaker 1: do we learn from what happened this year in terms
Speaker 1: of the virus, But more importantly too, is how do
Speaker 1: we fix some of those elements, whether it's heart disease,
Speaker 1: whether it's a lung disease, whether it's cancer that you
Speaker 1: know certainly has an impact on people generally, but also
Speaker 1: holds back society from being even more prosperous uh than
Speaker 1: it could be. So um, these are good conversations to have,
Speaker 1: Dr Do. Thank you so much, UM, good luck and
Speaker 1: want to you know, we'd love to hear back from
Speaker 1: you as you guys can continue to proceed with what
Speaker 1: you're doing. Dr Rachel Do she is Board certified doctor
Speaker 1: of Natural Medicine. She is CEO of Moldy Health. Joining
Speaker 1: us on this Tuesday on the phone from Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Safe to say, there are many heroes that have stepped
Speaker 1: up during this global health pandemic, and that includes this
Speaker 1: really cool story about a small army of data gathering
Speaker 1: gatherers and most of them are volunteers and they have
Speaker 1: become perhaps the most trusted source on how the pandemic
Speaker 1: is unfolding in the US. Let's get into this story
Speaker 1: with Bloomberg Business Week editor Joel Webber. He's on the
Speaker 1: phone in Brooklyn along with Bloomberg News US Healthcare team
Speaker 1: leader Drew Armstrong, reporting once again for a Business Week
Speaker 1: Drew with another incredible story, Joel. Yeah, we like to
Speaker 1: keep Drew busy. I hope to have many more Drew
Speaker 1: Armstrong stories in our future. Um. This is one that um,
Speaker 1: he came to us with and and as we started
Speaker 1: talking about it, I was like, Wow, this is actually
Speaker 1: just a great story for the moment because these are
Speaker 1: basically data heroes, UM. And we're talking about the people
Speaker 1: behind the COVID tracking project. And at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the year, we didn't have any data about how many
Speaker 1: cases there were, and you would have expected the federal
Speaker 1: government to fill that void, and federal government still not there,
Speaker 1: and these folks have just kind of kept it going. UM.
Speaker 1: So Drew, tell us more about who they are, what
Speaker 1: they do, and and you know, I want to know
Speaker 1: more because you also did some of this data entry yourself. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a fascinating story to work on,
Speaker 1: in part because I think that it really revealed some
Speaker 1: of the weaknesses with this country. UM. And and its
Speaker 1: ability to react to an unknown crisis. You look at
Speaker 1: disease agencies like the CDC, which I have to say
Speaker 1: are full of very kind, very smart people trying very
Speaker 1: very hard, but when they were confronted with this kind
Speaker 1: of new, unknown disease, it showed us how bad we
Speaker 1: actually were at being able to find out what was
Speaker 1: going on in the country. And this project was basically
Speaker 1: an effort to try and answer the question of how
Speaker 1: hard are we looking for covid um and this was
Speaker 1: back in early March, and how much of it are
Speaker 1: we finding? And what they began to discover as they
Speaker 1: did the really gritty work of just calling around states
Speaker 1: and scraping state websites and pulling data from states is
Speaker 1: that we weren't looking for it nearly as hard as
Speaker 1: we thought we were, and we didn't really have a
Speaker 1: great grip on how big the outbreak was or wasn't um.
Speaker 1: It's then evolved into this thing which is a very authoritative,
Speaker 1: authoritative source of statistics on how covid is spreading, where
Speaker 1: hospitals are, what's the death count of and things like that.
Speaker 1: But at the start, it was just fundamentally about asking,
Speaker 1: you know, what's going on and are and are we
Speaker 1: finding as much of the stuff is actually there? Well,
Speaker 1: drewe I gotta say, as we all kind of pat
Speaker 1: ourselves on our back, you know, enter a couple of
Speaker 1: journalists and then a really other smart investor. Basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the one thing I will say with these
Speaker 1: folks UM, and you mentioned there's there's a handful of
Speaker 1: journalists Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Myra for The Atlantic, who
Speaker 1: are kind of started a version of this. UM. One
Speaker 1: of Alexis is college friends with this guy, Jeff Hammerbockers
Speaker 1: actually started the data team at Facebook, and they teamed
Speaker 1: up with UM, a woman named Aaron Cassine who essentially
Speaker 1: is a you know, her job title kind of defies description,
Speaker 1: but she builds communities and works with tech tools and journalism.
Speaker 1: And what they eventually pulled together was a a kind
Speaker 1: of a basically just a Google sheet to go and
Speaker 1: start answering these questions and cataloging these data. But it
Speaker 1: took this really unique combination of curious journalists, UM, some
Speaker 1: serious data and numbers talent, and somebody who could help
Speaker 1: build the communities they had. And the community is something
Speaker 1: that they emphasized over and over again. This thing is
Speaker 1: powered by volunteers, people who show up into their black room,
Speaker 1: the only place this organization exists, and do the hard
Speaker 1: work of going to state websites and pulling this data
Speaker 1: every single day. And it's just a lot of work
Speaker 1: to be able to pull this together. But they've been
Speaker 1: doing it for nine months. Um. It's amazing that they
Speaker 1: built this kind of volunteer powered engine to do this
Speaker 1: stuff that's basically data gathering, day in, day out, UM,
Speaker 1: to better understand this pandemic and bring some sense to it. Andrew,
Speaker 1: you raised your hand to actually help enter some data.
Speaker 1: How did that go? You know? This was wonderful of them.
Speaker 1: They really trusted me, and they said, we want you
Speaker 1: to understand, you know, both what we do, how we
Speaker 1: do it, and alter the culture that is behind this
Speaker 1: whole thing in the volunteer effort. So they invited me
Speaker 1: into their slack. They put me through a data gathering
Speaker 1: training that they did that everybody else. I was on
Speaker 1: a zoom call with lots of other people around America,
Speaker 1: you know, seeing everybody's living room behind their computer camera,
Speaker 1: just like I was. They taught me how to go
Speaker 1: through their process and I worked a data gathering shift,
Speaker 1: um you know, entering everything from the hospitalization data in Maine, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to what was going on to some other states.
Speaker 1: One of the things you realize when you do this
Speaker 1: work is just how just pointed that David gathering system
Speaker 1: is some states have wonderful portals that has you know,
Speaker 1: updated every day. The definitions of what counts as a test,
Speaker 1: as a positive, go, and so forth are very clear.
Speaker 1: Others are not at all. I mean Hawaii, when I
Speaker 1: was doing this, the place you had to go to
Speaker 1: get the number of hospitalizations in the state was the
Speaker 1: tenant governor's Instagram account, which, when you think about a
Speaker 1: country and that's been singing like that is not where
Speaker 1: you should be getting this type of public health data.
Speaker 1: So do I also, let's just stay on the data
Speaker 1: for a second, because I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that they've also sort of done that you you kind
Speaker 1: of talk about in the story is that they've actually
Speaker 1: sort of effectively helps standardize what the data is even.
Speaker 1: Can you talk more about about that element of the
Speaker 1: story and the effort. Yeah, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things that is really really really important that I think
Speaker 1: is hard to appreciate until you've tried to make sense
Speaker 1: of medical data, is that it's vitally important that you
Speaker 1: have kind of standard definitions for what stuff is, so
Speaker 1: that a, you know, a test means a certain kind
Speaker 1: of test, or do you separate out the different types
Speaker 1: of COVID tests to get run into different categories. And
Speaker 1: they ran across this problem of you know, states didn't
Speaker 1: all report the same information. Sometimes they were report things
Speaker 1: that seemed like they were similar, but in fact we're not.
Speaker 1: They started to give states great letter grades, basically say okay,
Speaker 1: this state gets a plus for the type of data
Speaker 1: of courts. This when gets a D. And the reason
Speaker 1: for that was they had someone on their advisory board
Speaker 1: would work in government who said, I know this seems stupid,
Speaker 1: but government officials really love grades. And you know, when
Speaker 1: they started giving out these letter grades, one of the
Speaker 1: things they saw was that the states they're done well.
Speaker 1: They had public health officials and the governors out there saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we got an A plus. They gave us an A plus.
Speaker 1: This prominent website that everybody's looking at. Things were really great.
Speaker 1: And they began to see other states make efforts to
Speaker 1: get more transparent, to get better about standardizing their data,
Speaker 1: their data. They have helped kind of push along the
Speaker 1: quality of the data to better understand this. Listen, there's
Speaker 1: many good moving parts in this story. I love where
Speaker 1: you say the project demonstrate is a demonstration excuse me,
Speaker 1: a citizen know how and civic dedication at a time
Speaker 1: when the country feels like it's being pulled apart, right, So,
Speaker 1: when all else fails and you feel like things aren't
Speaker 1: working like you see the community come together and we
Speaker 1: understood that the importance of community, especially when it came
Speaker 1: to COVID, how important it was, and to see them
Speaker 1: come together on the COVID tracking project is pretty remarkable
Speaker 1: and really makes you feel good ahead of this Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: Day holiday. Um, Drew, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: We'll put this story out on Twitter for everybody. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week editor Joel Webber along with Bloomberg News US
Speaker 1: Healthcare Team leader Drew Armstrong read everything that Drew puts
Speaker 1: out at Bloomberg dot com. You're listening to Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week with Carol Messer on Bloomberg Radio. All right, So
Speaker 1: that's caught our attention. It's among the most read stories
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg gets a top story on this Tuesday
Speaker 1: about how Amazon is doling out hiring bonuses as high
Speaker 1: as three thousand dollars. It's all about making sure it
Speaker 1: has enough people to get through the busy holiday shopping season.
Speaker 1: So everyone's happy, right, Not so fast, Let's get more
Speaker 1: on this story. I go to when it comes to
Speaker 1: all things Amazon, Spencer Soaper. He's Bluemberg News technology and
Speaker 1: e commerce reporter follows Amazon really really closely, and he's
Speaker 1: back with us on the phone in Seattle. Um so, Spencer,
Speaker 1: good to have you here. So what's going on? Uh? So,
Speaker 1: I guess we have an example of just how tricky
Speaker 1: that the job market is right now in terms of
Speaker 1: employers trying to keep people happy. So yeah, Amazon was
Speaker 1: you know, it's giving out bonuses of up to three
Speaker 1: thousand dollars because it's got to get make sure it
Speaker 1: has enough people to meet this explosive demand in online
Speaker 1: commerce that just keeps, uh keeps growing, and this is
Speaker 1: going to be a record busting holiday shopping season. But
Speaker 1: that that that's angered existing workers who have been toiling
Speaker 1: all along, and you know, many of them got vouchers
Speaker 1: for turkeys, you know, as little as ten bucks. So
Speaker 1: there's this kind of disparity and how Amazon's taking care
Speaker 1: of existing workers who have been working all through the
Speaker 1: pandemic and then the new recruits that they just need
Speaker 1: to get through the holiday shopping season not to be ungrateful, right,
Speaker 1: And we see this right where people get hired and
Speaker 1: they come in at one salary and then somebody comes
Speaker 1: in later and they get a better salary. Like this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff happens, but it does make you wonder
Speaker 1: about what Amazon is thinking that they're willing to do
Speaker 1: this and they know it's going to get out there
Speaker 1: publicly right about the discrepancies. You know, what were the
Speaker 1: you know, inside conversations that that they had about this
Speaker 1: before doing it, knowing that they were going to be
Speaker 1: workers are like, what they're getting three thousand and I
Speaker 1: got a fifteen dollar turkey voucher. Yeah, well that's that's
Speaker 1: a good point. And we don't even know if there
Speaker 1: were conversations like that because they're just right now, they're
Speaker 1: just trying to manage to chaos and and and and
Speaker 1: meet demand and so on. These bonuses they offer bonuses
Speaker 1: every year, uh, and so they're coming. We just haven't
Speaker 1: seen them quite this high, this three thousand dollars, and
Speaker 1: so the UM the significance there and the new tish
Speaker 1: there is that even a lot of people are out
Speaker 1: of work, they're still scared of COVID and so having
Speaker 1: Amazon's having to ratchet up the amount of money it
Speaker 1: will pay to compel new workers to come in UM,
Speaker 1: and then that's that's angering the exist the workers that
Speaker 1: are already there. Well, so how is Amazon, spencer, you know,
Speaker 1: this company, you talked to a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are willing to go, you know, tell you what's going
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes. How is Amazon handling UM workers
Speaker 1: and making sure that they stay safe amid COVID. Amazon
Speaker 1: has been pretty public about that in all of these
Speaker 1: safety measures, you know, they're going to spend more than
Speaker 1: ten billion dollars this year on a variety of things
Speaker 1: including you know, masks and UM temperature checks at the
Speaker 1: facilities and COVID tests of employees and stepped up cleaning.
Speaker 1: But a lot of that cost is also simply lost productivity.
Speaker 1: And that's where, because of social distancing, these facilities that
Speaker 1: Amazon has that are already you know, will be pushing
Speaker 1: capacity in a normal shopping season. Uh Now, we're just
Speaker 1: not as productive because they have to space people out,
Speaker 1: so they're getting less work done in their uh in
Speaker 1: their normal facilities, and so that's putting an extra strain,
Speaker 1: you know. So not only did have the higher shopping
Speaker 1: demand on one end, on the other end, each of
Speaker 1: their facilities is less productive than it would usually be
Speaker 1: because of the need for social distancing. Yeah, exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, whenever I think about Amazon and just the
Speaker 1: amount of workers, especially as they continue to hire, and
Speaker 1: I mean they hire like I feel like nobody else
Speaker 1: out there in terms of the size of people that
Speaker 1: they continue to bring in to meet demand. I do wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of unionization, what progress or you know,
Speaker 1: are there more steps likely to make it maybe a
Speaker 1: possibility here in the U. S it already I think
Speaker 1: in your story you point out it. It happens, it
Speaker 1: is unionized over in Europe. Yeah, they have, they've avoided
Speaker 1: unions in the In the US, there is a new
Speaker 1: drive that was just launched in Alabama. Interestingly, Alabama is
Speaker 1: the worst place where they got ten dollar turkey coupons.
Speaker 1: I think that's the lowest that we saw that we saw.
Speaker 1: So there's a there's a new campaign down down there,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly hard to form a union UM. And and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of tools that that employers can use
Speaker 1: to prevent unions from happening UM up to an including
Speaker 1: just simply firing people. Uh. Even though it's supposedly against
Speaker 1: the law, the penalties are very soft. And so what
Speaker 1: you can often see happen is if someone agitates for
Speaker 1: a union, an employer can simply fire them, and then
Speaker 1: that that puts the onus on that worker to fight them.
Speaker 1: And and the only real consequence for the for the
Speaker 1: employers is to pay them back wages and rehire them.
Speaker 1: So I do wonder come I think they report next
Speaker 1: in late January, their next earnings report, And I do wonder, Spencer,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking as an investor, you know how these increased
Speaker 1: costs of you know, paying higher bonuses perhaps to get
Speaker 1: workers and right because Amazon can't can't me demand unless
Speaker 1: they get the workers to show up. As you said,
Speaker 1: there's concerns about you know, COVID obviously in social distancing.
Speaker 1: Will these costs, these higher bonus says UM end up
Speaker 1: showing up. Um, They're going to write on the expense
Speaker 1: line when it comes to reporting and I do wonder
Speaker 1: how to impacts the company financially potentially. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: going to affect them. It is going to put pressure
Speaker 1: on their profits. They've projected that, They've said as much.
Speaker 1: And I think that UM investors are very tolerant as
Speaker 1: long as Amazon still showing the strong growth. If Amazon
Speaker 1: can muscle through this uh and with marginal profits, but
Speaker 1: still take care of its customers and accommodate all of
Speaker 1: this growth, that sends a strong message to investors that
Speaker 1: that this company can you know, it is well run
Speaker 1: and confunction through this, through this pandemic without letting people down.
Speaker 1: It would be much more significant long term to Amazon
Speaker 1: to say, you know what, sorry, folks, we can't bring
Speaker 1: this to you. UM, go go shop somewhere else. You
Speaker 1: know that that would be much more devastating for investors
Speaker 1: than than a high cost holiday quarter. Hey, Spencer, just
Speaker 1: got about forty five seconds here. I mean, what are
Speaker 1: your expectations? What are you hearing about what the holiday
Speaker 1: season will be like for Amazon and will they be
Speaker 1: able to meet the demand. Especially I keep hearing from
Speaker 1: everybody I've already seen it, I'm already doing it. I'm
Speaker 1: ordering online, I've started earlier than before. Um, and that's
Speaker 1: how I'm going to shop this holiday season. Yeah, A
Speaker 1: lot of that's gonna depend on exactly what you said.
Speaker 1: Are our shopper is going to heed the warnings? Are
Speaker 1: they going to shop early? Um? And and a lot
Speaker 1: of that's going to fall in the pain is going
Speaker 1: to fall in the consumer as well. If you're procrastinator
Speaker 1: and you wait till the last minute, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to pay plenty to get the stuff on time. If
Speaker 1: you if you can get it at all, All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna leave it there. Hey, Spencer, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Spencer Souper. He is, of course Blueberg
Speaker 1: News technology and e commerce reporter writing on all things Amazon.
Speaker 1: You can check him out as well on Twitter and
Speaker 1: you can find him at Spencer Souper bro macro a journal. Now,
Speaker 1: but you let me drive? Oh no, no, no please,
Speaker 1: I'll do the right I want to dry. Just strive
Speaker 1: the question trends. This is the Drive to the globe.
Speaker 1: Thanks well, un on Bloomberg Radio, it is time for
Speaker 1: the Drive to the close and back with us. As
Speaker 1: Hillary Kramer, She's president and chief investment Officer at A
Speaker 1: and G. Capital Research, author of Game Change or Investing,
Speaker 1: How to Profit from Tomorrow's billion dollar Trend. She is
Speaker 1: on the phone in New York City. Hillary, did you
Speaker 1: see the Business Week cover last week? I did. I
Speaker 1: have to tell you, we have quoted you so many times.
Speaker 1: It's all about Chewi the cover story and anybody who's
Speaker 1: been walking around their neighborhoods during the pandemic. I've seen
Speaker 1: lots of Chewi boxes on the curb because we know
Speaker 1: that these are essential items to make sure pets have
Speaker 1: everything that they need. I mean, you have talked about
Speaker 1: Chewy for a long long time. What's your investment THESI
Speaker 1: still on the company going forward? Of course, we have
Speaker 1: a much older valuation, uh, hovering in the seventy dollar
Speaker 1: range of versus let's say, the first three times I
Speaker 1: spoke about the stock on Bloomberg when it was in
Speaker 1: the low twenties, starting in June two into September two,
Speaker 1: November two thousand nineteen. And I do want to thank
Speaker 1: you Bloomberg, you know, Bloomberg, your analysts, all of you
Speaker 1: who have listened to me, have given me the opportunity
Speaker 1: to explain my thesis and why a company like Chewie
Speaker 1: could give someone a return, and indeed it did. And
Speaker 1: that's why all these investors today have to be so careful,
Speaker 1: because everyone's jumping in head first and they don't realize
Speaker 1: that when they're buying companies like Trade Desk, they don't
Speaker 1: realize that, you know, this was a company that had
Speaker 1: one tenth of the stock price, you know, a year ago,
Speaker 1: and they don't realize. And so my thesis on show
Speaker 1: is thrilled to see it. I do think that you
Speaker 1: could go to a hundred dollars to share. I have
Speaker 1: always maintained that there was as uh, this backstop, which
Speaker 1: is that Amazon would probably love to make an acquisition
Speaker 1: of Chewy. It makes all the sense in the world
Speaker 1: to you know, two sirs of Americans own pets. We
Speaker 1: have had this whole humanization of pets, Chewy as a
Speaker 1: customer service. Now, of course, luck is always important that
Speaker 1: they say, I'd rather be lucky than good, and I
Speaker 1: did have some luck there in the in the in
Speaker 1: the sad sense that of course we have had a
Speaker 1: pandemic and then length and our animals have become more
Speaker 1: important than ever. But even still we would have seen
Speaker 1: a company like Chewy Dot com Rise and rise um
Speaker 1: precipitously because um it was very simple and where the
Speaker 1: differentiation came. And I love that Bloomberg article and Chewy.
Speaker 1: The whole point is that yet Amazon is the eight
Speaker 1: pound guerrilla, but there's certain products that people do not
Speaker 1: use Amazon for. And Amazon's amazing growth, so much of
Speaker 1: it comes from the Amazon Web Services. It's not because
Speaker 1: they're selling everyone, you know, their milk blone dog biscuits.
Speaker 1: It's because if you have all of these software companies,
Speaker 1: you know, like z Scalers, which you know are are
Speaker 1: are doing so well, that are using Amazon Web Services
Speaker 1: because nobody none of these companies want to put their
Speaker 1: software onto their actual um you know, they don't want
Speaker 1: to download it. They want everything to be cloud based
Speaker 1: UM and which which reminds me, you know, usually only
Speaker 1: speak positively, but if you take a look at HP enterprises,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why that stocks you know, trades around
Speaker 1: ten dollars of shares because no one is buying software.
Speaker 1: Everything is this annuity base model now, which is you know,
Speaker 1: you pay by the month, and uh you you access
Speaker 1: all the software, including cybersecurity software you know offline. Is
Speaker 1: it a you know, on a day when we're expecting
Speaker 1: earnings from HP. The old HP UM. You know that
Speaker 1: that was the company everyone thought, Okay, that's the old one,
Speaker 1: that's the boring one. We're not excited. HP is what
Speaker 1: we're all excited about. HP is actually up on the year,
Speaker 1: not so for HP. Right And and that's as simple
Speaker 1: as that, because we have seen such a dramatic change
Speaker 1: in the way that businesses utilize software, download what they
Speaker 1: used in terms of that whole kind of cloud based
Speaker 1: the cloud based UM, the cloud based lifestyle that we
Speaker 1: have now. And it's as a matter of its human
Speaker 1: resources stocks as I just said, cybersecurity stocks, or you know,
Speaker 1: every kind of integration salesforce. That's the where we go.
Speaker 1: All right, So Hillary Kramer, what's the next Chewie? In
Speaker 1: your view? I have boring Chewies, but it'll make you money.
Speaker 1: We go everywhere looking for stocks, and anyone who really
Speaker 1: wants to try to make money out out there, you've
Speaker 1: got to go for some of these smaller UM insurance companies.
Speaker 1: Companies We love UM Safety Insurance s a f t
Speaker 1: F four point nine percent dividing yield. It's a small
Speaker 1: cap at one point one billion dollar market cap, here
Speaker 1: pent institutional owners ship, and it's every kind of insurance.
Speaker 1: It's a whether it's umbrella insurance, title homeowners This is
Speaker 1: the direction where you're going to get a cheap stock
Speaker 1: are other one that we love is Old Republic O
Speaker 1: R I that in particular specializes, amongst other some funky insurances,
Speaker 1: specializes in UH title insurance. So O R I the
Speaker 1: book value eighteen dollars and the stock of O R
Speaker 1: I Old Republic Insurance is at twenty one dollars, and
Speaker 1: you have a four point six percent divid in yield.
Speaker 1: And so get the title insurance, get the aeronautical aerospace insurance,
Speaker 1: and that is where the money will be made. Because
Speaker 1: we just mean, look this word software. Okay, I have
Speaker 1: to say, Carol, remember Groucho Marx and you had that
Speaker 1: show and everyone looks for the word what was that word?
Speaker 1: You said the word a toy duck would like come down.
Speaker 1: That looked like Groucho And anything today that you say
Speaker 1: the word software, cloud based, soft, where that's what it is,
Speaker 1: it just gets brought up and uh and and and
Speaker 1: of course you know I do have a growth portfolio,
Speaker 1: and I have investors that want to see growth names
Speaker 1: and so what do you do. You hold your nose
Speaker 1: and you do what you can, and I just try
Speaker 1: to take them out as quick as I can once
Speaker 1: we get those uh once once we make the number
Speaker 1: and we get some return. But these are these are
Speaker 1: no nose bleed stocks right now, they really are, and
Speaker 1: that's why we're seeing a rotation. Let's say, you know
Speaker 1: the Doubt, What an amazing day on the Doubt. But
Speaker 1: you also have to look and realize. Now, you know
Speaker 1: the Dow has bowing in it these days, right, so
Speaker 1: Boeing had to you know, finally went back over two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars a year. This month. You have Apple in
Speaker 1: there in Microsoft and JP Morgant and Goldman Sacks. So
Speaker 1: everything is changing as we know it. But we all
Speaker 1: have to realize that these are these are very precarious
Speaker 1: times we're in. Everyone needs to be careful. I have
Speaker 1: rose colored glasses, Carol. You know, I'm like bool bool
Speaker 1: bool bye bye bye, but just how I am. But
Speaker 1: now I want to say we all have to be
Speaker 1: careful and just just just just wait until we see
Speaker 1: what kind of um you know changes. We're going to
Speaker 1: have an all right, yeah, got it? Yeah, No, you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, like and we all know when it comes
Speaker 1: to something like a vaccine, that's still going to take
Speaker 1: a little while to get to the other side of this.
Speaker 1: Hillary Kramer, thank you so much, President and chief investment
Speaker 1: Officer at A and G Capital Research, joining us on
Speaker 1: the phone in New York City. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: or at Bloomberg dot com, and be sure to check
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