Speaker 1: Welcome new trillions. I'm Joel Webber and I'm Eric Belchertis.
Speaker 1: We're in the middle of March Madness. Eric, It's just
Speaker 1: like my favorite time of year, just because it's like
Speaker 1: chaos and I love watching basketball college basketball sports bliss.
Speaker 1: Not only is it great because every game is sudden death, right,
Speaker 1: everybody cares so much. I love that it's better than
Speaker 1: the regular season. But by the time the tournament's over,
Speaker 1: it's kind of springtime and sunny out. It's the greatest
Speaker 1: tournament for multiple reasons for me, and I'm a big
Speaker 1: basketball fan. Two. So we have a special way to
Speaker 1: celebrate the spirit of March Madness with E t f S.
Speaker 1: We've gone to Bloomberg News reporters who cover E t
Speaker 1: F S. We've asked them each to pick their favorite ticker,
Speaker 1: eight different teams, eight different tickers, and we've seated them
Speaker 1: based on assets under management, and we're going to have
Speaker 1: a gigantic SmackDown on today's show. It's going to be
Speaker 1: epic to determine the very best ticker of all. Before
Speaker 1: you tune out, thinking this has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: invest thing, let me tell you two reasons this actually matters.
Speaker 1: And what what you're gonna hear? First of all, marketing
Speaker 1: and ETFs is huge. Of the flows go to two
Speaker 1: or three companies black Rock, Vanguarden, State Street. That leaves
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty companies fighting over of your money.
Speaker 1: And tickers is a huge marketing advantage if you have
Speaker 1: a good one, it sticks out every category. Now it's
Speaker 1: fifty t F s. So picking a ticker is big business.
Speaker 1: It matters, and it can really help sell an e
Speaker 1: t F. But it can also be a shiny object
Speaker 1: that leads you to something you know once. So the
Speaker 1: ticker shouldn't be all and I think we're gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: explore a lot of that. So so give us a
Speaker 1: couple of examples of how it can help block. The
Speaker 1: blockchain ETF that came out with the ticker bl okay
Speaker 1: came out the same day as another blockchain ETF with
Speaker 1: a ticker blcn, which is, let's admit it, a little
Speaker 1: more boring. Block is just easy. You can say it,
Speaker 1: it's a it's now. Yeah, that block has one seventy
Speaker 1: million blc N give me another one. Fan versus p
Speaker 1: w n D FAN is the Global wind Energy p
Speaker 1: w n D is also a wind energy. Obviously Fan
Speaker 1: kills and Fan has eighty eight million dollars and more importantly,
Speaker 1: it's alive p w n D liquidated in the graveyard.
Speaker 1: So literally worst case scenario, like the better chicker wins
Speaker 1: the war. But a good ticker doesn't always save the
Speaker 1: day absolutely, Like a ticker is like icing on the cake,
Speaker 1: but it's not the cake. For example, here's some good
Speaker 1: tickers where from the graveyard. These are E t F
Speaker 1: that are liquidated, waste wst E for the waste management
Speaker 1: ETF gone room for the car, et F that's gone,
Speaker 1: bite restaurants, f A A for airlines, and puff for
Speaker 1: sins as basically gambling in cigarette stocks gone. Why why
Speaker 1: didn't those work? A lot of times it comes down
Speaker 1: to timing. But like in the case of Careu Australia
Speaker 1: small cap that was around when Australia has some good runs,
Speaker 1: but it's just too niche. It sliced the it sliced
Speaker 1: the onion too thinly, and no one cares. This episode
Speaker 1: ticker madness. Okay, So joining us today, we have a
Speaker 1: bunch of different Bloomberg News reporters and we also have
Speaker 1: an editor named David Papadopoulos, who's going to be the
Speaker 1: judge deciding who advances. Now, I've already paid him off
Speaker 1: so that I win this whole thing. But maybe you
Speaker 1: guys have paid him off too. But David, welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you very much. And actually, Joel I,
Speaker 1: I was greatly appreciative, and I was shocked that no
Speaker 1: one else drew me a little cash. It's not too late.
Speaker 1: He's probably still able to take bribes um, which is
Speaker 1: actually really in the spirit of marsh madness with what's
Speaker 1: actually been going on with the n C double A. Okay,
Speaker 1: first matchup Move versus E M. T Y. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: throw it over to that bracket. Can you introduce yourselves
Speaker 1: what you do and why you've picked the tickers that
Speaker 1: you've picked. Okay, I'm Suzanne Whale. I picked Move, which
Speaker 1: is the ticker for Van Eck Factor's Agro Business et F.
Speaker 1: I picked because it's a classic, it's been around since
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. It's the most evocative ticker out there.
Speaker 1: You think, moo, you think, what do you think if
Speaker 1: you think of a farm, you think of agri business.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's the two seed. The seventh seed, Ben
Speaker 1: Steve Hman, Yeah, yourself. My name is Ben Steve Berman.
Speaker 1: I cover personal finance here and my pick is E
Speaker 1: M T Y or empty, which is the pro shares
Speaker 1: decline of the retail story TF. So basically, this is
Speaker 1: what I love about it is it's funny, and also
Speaker 1: it's this delightfully evil bet against main street retail in
Speaker 1: the United States. This is a brand new ETF came
Speaker 1: out in November, doesn't have very many assets so far.
Speaker 1: But what I love is, first all that's funny, and
Speaker 1: second of all that it's very evocative of this post
Speaker 1: apocalyptic landscape that so many malls and shopping centers all
Speaker 1: across this country you're turning into. And it's basically this
Speaker 1: bet that all that gonna go and can continue to
Speaker 1: go and get worse, and Amazon's gonna eat everybody's lunch.
Speaker 1: I want to throw a little shade on this. I
Speaker 1: want to know I use the word evocative, Okay, So
Speaker 1: I think it's sort of you know, I've got a
Speaker 1: new ticker for Ben's argument here, which is like l
Speaker 1: A M A lamb. So I'm just throwing that out there.
Speaker 1: So before I rule here, I gotta ask so Ben,
Speaker 1: as I make that bet against right, and I bet
Speaker 1: sort of the retail pocalypse tangibly, How do I? How
Speaker 1: does this eat? How does it? What is it invest in?
Speaker 1: How does that? So? It is? It uses a swap
Speaker 1: and which means that it's it's basically shorting another index,
Speaker 1: which is the bricks and mortar retail stores index, and
Speaker 1: it's so that that has all the classics, Gap, Dick,
Speaker 1: Sporting Goods, Dollar General, Ross Stores, like all these traditional
Speaker 1: mainline retailers that are struggling. The other thing I love
Speaker 1: about it is that, as Eric and Joe have talked
Speaker 1: about on this show many times, betting on one of
Speaker 1: these inverse ets is actually pretty dangerous strategy. So in
Speaker 1: some ways, the empty that could be happening here is
Speaker 1: not just the emptying of the retail stores. It could
Speaker 1: be the emptying of the investment accounts of the people
Speaker 1: who invest in this thing, because it could be a
Speaker 1: really dangerous play. That's nice, Ben, that just went next level. Well,
Speaker 1: she's saying before I rule here, do you do a
Speaker 1: final any final words? Um, I'm just going with classic
Speaker 1: and I'm going with like food, this is food, this
Speaker 1: is global, this is huge. I'm being a positive, positive
Speaker 1: force in the world supposed to be negativity. We've got,
Speaker 1: We've got, we've got a ruling, and we have we
Speaker 1: have our very first upset after Moon after Moon was
Speaker 1: putting it on him early and it looked like a
Speaker 1: total blowout. It looked like it was early on. It
Speaker 1: was move twenty three. Empty seven Empty just kind of
Speaker 1: kept wearing me down. Ultimately, what told me beyond the
Speaker 1: great Empty name, is that it is just a huge
Speaker 1: part of the of the American story, the investing story,
Speaker 1: in the economy story, what empty is about, and that
Speaker 1: that's opposed to Yeah, I suppose that's correct, that's post.
Speaker 1: This is stunning. I'm shocked. You know. I frequently call
Speaker 1: Moo the Mona Lisa of E T F tickers. It's perfect,
Speaker 1: that usually makes the number one of everybody's list. But man,
Speaker 1: empty is pretty good and made a good case I
Speaker 1: should have paid off Papa Topolos. Okay, now we're gonna
Speaker 1: go to Philadelphia to the Wells Fargo Center where Eric
Speaker 1: is a three seed, and we kind of let him
Speaker 1: have a little bit of an advantage, which he actually
Speaker 1: has two tickers, Yin and Yang, which he's going to
Speaker 1: talk about as a grouping and then with a six
Speaker 1: seed Carolina Wilson with Tan ca. Yeah, Carolina Wilson, I
Speaker 1: cover E t F s for the U S Stocks
Speaker 1: team here, and I'm from Miami, Florida, where everyone and
Speaker 1: their mother quite literally wants to be more tan. And
Speaker 1: I think actually the floor area has the most tanning
Speaker 1: salons and any other state in the country. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I was pretty torn undering research on on spray
Speaker 1: tans and fake tans versus what tan actually does. But no,
Speaker 1: so I have the Guggenheim Solar Energy Index e t F.
Speaker 1: And since the whole point of this is to defend
Speaker 1: the importance of a ticker, Tan has already undergone an
Speaker 1: easy peasy stress test scenario for this, and Eric has
Speaker 1: Actually this is from one of your handy dandy Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: So two solar ETFs launched about ten years ago, within
Speaker 1: about a week of each other. So Tan was one.
Speaker 1: What a great taker. And kWt I think it's like
Speaker 1: for kill a lot. But do you want to guess
Speaker 1: where most of the assets on volume one too? And Dan,
Speaker 1: but I'm talking about Tan raking in close to four
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars in assets and kWt didn't even manage
Speaker 1: to get much more than fifteen million dollars. So if
Speaker 1: you don't want to believe me, I mean you could
Speaker 1: follow the money. You've done your research, alright, Eric, what
Speaker 1: do you got? I picked UH to leverage ETFs triple
Speaker 1: leveraged China Yin and Yang the Direction Daily Foot see
Speaker 1: China Bull three x shares and the Bear three x shares.
Speaker 1: And the reason I picked these is because who doesn't
Speaker 1: love the Yin yang symbol. I mean, it's basically thousands
Speaker 1: of years old. It's a from Chinese philosophy, which is
Speaker 1: perfect because here you're betting on either bullish China or
Speaker 1: barish China, right, and it's it's one of the rare
Speaker 1: ts where you don't even need to know the name.
Speaker 1: Really you know what's going on there. I mean you
Speaker 1: probably should because it's leveraged, and that adds a whole
Speaker 1: another wrinkle. But I think it's a good ticker, especially
Speaker 1: because when you have leverage going one way and the other,
Speaker 1: it's real nice to have two things that appear to
Speaker 1: be opposite, and I think this one nails it. And
Speaker 1: you know, when you go back, look, the balance of
Speaker 1: the universe is sort of contained in the Yin yang symbol,
Speaker 1: and to me, that's sort of the leverage et F area.
Speaker 1: You've got, you know, equal number going long, equal number
Speaker 1: going short. But unfortunately they all don't bounce out. They
Speaker 1: do lose money over time. So as we've talked about
Speaker 1: many times their trading tools. But in our traffic light system,
Speaker 1: this is a hard red light. But that doesn't take
Speaker 1: away from the fact that it's just a killer ticker.
Speaker 1: But just a little dig on tan. I think tan
Speaker 1: is what you get. In fact, I think you get
Speaker 1: burnt when you hold tan susception. But but the investors
Speaker 1: of that get a nice juicy yield because since those
Speaker 1: solar stocks are so hated, they are really like that
Speaker 1: they're required for shorts, and so this thing brings in
Speaker 1: some extra cash because of its like aggressive securities crowd.
Speaker 1: The crowd is not even agreement. I am literally surrounded
Speaker 1: by e T F nerds. Yeah, except for the Greek,
Speaker 1: except for the job um. So we have a ruling.
Speaker 1: We have a ruling, and and what is ultimately it
Speaker 1: was also it was a close game here, but ultimately
Speaker 1: sometimes the higher seed wins, and the higher seed despite
Speaker 1: the whole thing being a touch convoluted. Frankly, you know,
Speaker 1: triple leverage, the multiple tickers, the higher seed wins out.
Speaker 1: Carolina did give up a good fight, ultimately a touch
Speaker 1: too much stick on Florida. I only want to hear
Speaker 1: so much about Florida, just as you prepare for for
Speaker 1: next time around. But I did like the I did
Speaker 1: like to fight. And also the fact that he pulled
Speaker 1: out that plunge on you late. That wasn't helpful. I'm
Speaker 1: by the way, why do people are to eat any bits?
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you need them more of? Not enough? It's all
Speaker 1: right Brackett too. We've got Danny Burger in London with
Speaker 1: her ticker this is a one seed s m h.
Speaker 1: And she's going against Lukawa at an eighth seed with
Speaker 1: a ticker boon. Danny, Who are you? What do you do?
Speaker 1: What's your ticker? I am a cross asset reporter. I
Speaker 1: besides reporting on cross asset, I also eat a lot
Speaker 1: of snacks out of the London pantry. I consider that
Speaker 1: my profession you're joining. I am based in London, yes indeed,
Speaker 1: but as you can tell from my accent, I come
Speaker 1: from New York, so I I am hip with the
Speaker 1: US based tickers. For some reason, the tickers aren't as
Speaker 1: exciting in Europe, so I did go with a U
Speaker 1: S one this time around. And why why SMH? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I want to take issue with the
Speaker 1: fact that I'm a one seed this. I think I'm
Speaker 1: coming here as the underdog because s m H was
Speaker 1: not intended to be a fun ticker. This is the
Speaker 1: Van Eck vector's semiconductor e t F. And the reason
Speaker 1: SMH is so brilliant is because it's not gimmicky, but
Speaker 1: still it is fresh. It is new. S MH, for
Speaker 1: those who don't know, is internet lingo for shaking my head.
Speaker 1: And there's no way that Van Eck decided when they
Speaker 1: made s MH that they wanted a ticker that was
Speaker 1: shaking my head. Yeah, but you know one point three
Speaker 1: billion and sets. Okay, yeah, But the reason I love
Speaker 1: this so much is that every single time this thing
Speaker 1: sells off, they're outflows. You can say, s MH a
Speaker 1: billion from this fund is awesome. I love how like
Speaker 1: accidentally perfect this is. Well. Vadek is the same company
Speaker 1: that has a ticker crack the reserve for the triple
Speaker 1: leverage junior goal miners, but it's actually the some sort
Speaker 1: of like oil type ETF. I've heard enough from the
Speaker 1: from London. Give me the real h down. I want
Speaker 1: to hear what they have to say. All right, lu
Speaker 1: Kawa Boone. Al Right, I'm Luka I am also a
Speaker 1: Crosshasset reporter and as you will be able to tell
Speaker 1: at some point from my accent, originally from Canada. But
Speaker 1: you know again before starting to extol the virtues of Boone,
Speaker 1: and you know that is the n Y S. Pickens
Speaker 1: oil response e t F A first really again, like
Speaker 1: Danny over there, like to question the wisdom of both
Speaker 1: Danny and whoever put these tickers together. The number one
Speaker 1: rank is going to a product that's an abbreviation for
Speaker 1: a negative form of non verbal communication, coming about from
Speaker 1: what millennial do when they're too lazy to spell things.
Speaker 1: When I look at my portfolio, the last thing I
Speaker 1: want to do is think shaking my head. Last thing
Speaker 1: like this terrible, terrible branding, terrible advertising. Danny makes the
Speaker 1: case against it better than I ever could. But it's
Speaker 1: hard for like this octogenary in this multi multi, multi
Speaker 1: multi millionaira wildcat raider turned oil tycoon could ever be
Speaker 1: considered an underdog or the new kid on the block.
Speaker 1: But that's the case with Boone. This e t F
Speaker 1: is it's brand new, it's got very little in assets.
Speaker 1: But what it is is it's basically it's a reflection
Speaker 1: of the most defining macro trend, probably since the financial crisis,
Speaker 1: and that's the rise of U S Energy. Ta Boon,
Speaker 1: along with his lieutenants who helped formulate this Equal Weight Fund,
Speaker 1: wants you to go in all in on the US
Speaker 1: energy renaissance. We got things like I'll away in there.
Speaker 1: You've got things like cutie Brands, First Solar. But inasmuch
Speaker 1: as this is kind of, you know, an energy and
Speaker 1: an energy link to play, I think the timing is
Speaker 1: also pretty darn good for Boone. Right now, the relative
Speaker 1: performance of energy stocks versus the spires has trailed and
Speaker 1: lagged the oil price by the most on record. So
Speaker 1: you know, at some point we've got to be playing
Speaker 1: catch up, and I think Boone is the way to
Speaker 1: catch up. And you know, some e t F providers
Speaker 1: they want to have their name on the ice of
Speaker 1: the Madison Square Garden. Like Spider T. Boon Pickens, he
Speaker 1: wants his name on the front of the stadium both
Speaker 1: his name and his company's name. So if you've got
Speaker 1: some aspiration, I think you're going. Here's the thing. I
Speaker 1: don't need a rebottle period. I've got I've got to
Speaker 1: I've got a ruling. By the way, eight seed coming
Speaker 1: out thick. Yeah, you gotta lay it all up. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you're gonna have for leader rounds, but
Speaker 1: it's like eight seeds showing up. That's all I got.
Speaker 1: Vermont over here. Yeah, No, the H doesn't have to
Speaker 1: do in this case. Worry about later rounds because H's
Speaker 1: got knocked out. I'm gonna say this so so, Luke,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. I love the energy and the firepower,
Speaker 1: and and I think as you come back to this
Speaker 1: next year, you know you're gonna do well. But all
Speaker 1: the end of the day, what does he in here?
Speaker 1: Is boon is It's just it's just ultimate, it's just
Speaker 1: too scrawny. It's just I can't two and a half million.
Speaker 1: It's I just I just can't. I'm not Feelish's back
Speaker 1: to back La. He's still fighting. He's still and one one.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fit in London, London. You survived in advance,
Speaker 1: but you gotta bring a little more fire that it
Speaker 1: was sleeping. It was leep, I'm not you know, if
Speaker 1: ultimately Boone didn't do itself in with its scrawniness, that
Speaker 1: you would have gotten knocked out. You gotta bring a little,
Speaker 1: a little something more for the next round we have.
Speaker 1: We have Joel is the what seed? Jel, I'm a
Speaker 1: four seed, you're a four seed, and we have Rachel
Speaker 1: Evans who is a five five. Oh, so this is
Speaker 1: a good one. This is that four five matchup. Anybody
Speaker 1: could win here. Joel is coming at us with the
Speaker 1: ticker would, and Rachel has the ticker she. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna start with the four seed Joel, go ahead, all right.
Speaker 1: Wood is the I Shares Global Timber four Street et F.
Speaker 1: I picked this one because I'm an Oregonian. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: back when the Ducks won their only n C Double
Speaker 1: A title, it was all about the big guys from Oregon, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm picking the big trees. Going with the Wood.
Speaker 1: This is a thematic et F, which is one of
Speaker 1: the things that Eric and I often get to talk
Speaker 1: about it on the show because they're in vogue a
Speaker 1: little bit. Uh. This has been crushing it up over
Speaker 1: the last year. It's got companies that are not only
Speaker 1: US and North American. You got a little bit of
Speaker 1: Canadian in there, You've got some Brazil you also got
Speaker 1: some other global stuff. So I like that it's diversified regionally.
Speaker 1: And then what's been crushing it has been the fact
Speaker 1: that e commerce has been buying up everything paper. Right,
Speaker 1: You've got all these Amazon Prime boxes. You need cardboard
Speaker 1: for that. So I think it's a strong play. I
Speaker 1: will say that I don't like this head to head magic.
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, I'm I'm really scared of this, but I've
Speaker 1: made my case all right. Well, and so Rachel, just
Speaker 1: a little bit who you are and also the ticker
Speaker 1: that you brought and why you did it. So my
Speaker 1: name is Rachel Evans. I'm an E t F reporter
Speaker 1: based here in New York, though we're a very international
Speaker 1: bunch today as I'm from the UK originally. So I've
Speaker 1: come to you guys with SHE, which is the Spider
Speaker 1: s s G a Gender Diversity Index e TF SHE.
Speaker 1: Now what that E t F does is it invests
Speaker 1: in companies that really have a positive attitude towards getting
Speaker 1: women onto boards, getting women into executive positions. And having
Speaker 1: women CEOs, chairs, other executives and directors. The reason I
Speaker 1: chose this ticker is because for me, a ticker should
Speaker 1: stick in the mind, should be simple, it should be
Speaker 1: evocative and tell you what the fund does, but it
Speaker 1: should also be memorable. Now this is where for for me,
Speaker 1: she really stands out, partly because of my English heritage. Right,
Speaker 1: so growing up in the nine nineties and the UK,
Speaker 1: notting Hill was a massive movie, and the end of
Speaker 1: the credits notting Hill you have Elvis Costello doing a
Speaker 1: great version of She by Charles Asnivor. Every time I
Speaker 1: look up this ticker on the terminal, I sing she
Speaker 1: in my head and sometimes occasionally out loud as well.
Speaker 1: So for me, can you sing it now? She face?
Speaker 1: So I can't forget not only are we in the
Speaker 1: middle of the meat you moment, but I picked would
Speaker 1: head to head with she going to bring up another
Speaker 1: thing that's perfect for this tape, but I will say,
Speaker 1: I just want there's some rony here, which you know,
Speaker 1: I looked up your holdings number one holding fer Yes,
Speaker 1: So top of all this, there's a viagraa moment going on.
Speaker 1: So it's just like that's the interesting thing when you
Speaker 1: do look at the holdings like this is often categorized
Speaker 1: as an environmental social Governance fund, and obviously on the
Speaker 1: governance side you can see why that is. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily tick the boxes that you might see from
Speaker 1: a typical E s G fund. It's not steering clear
Speaker 1: of your kind of multinationals. It's steering into that and
Speaker 1: rewarding those that really kind of actually advocate for women.
Speaker 1: But I would just say on the point of the
Speaker 1: Me too movement, these guys have been incredible with their
Speaker 1: marketing from the word go. This This et F was
Speaker 1: launched on International Women's Stay Back in twenty six they
Speaker 1: set up the Fearless Girl sculpture downtown. Everybody shrinking over here, Rachel.
Speaker 1: How much money is in the ct F. It's just
Speaker 1: over three million, and that's its weakness. But when you
Speaker 1: look at e t F, you really only start to
Speaker 1: see growth and assets from about the three year mark onwards.
Speaker 1: She now has two years under its belt, so I'm
Speaker 1: thinking that come March next year, we're really going to
Speaker 1: start to see people moving money in. But with three
Speaker 1: hundred million, it's hardly all right, all right, there haven't
Speaker 1: been many blowouts so far, but this was this was
Speaker 1: one of them. Rachel just put it out. I'm going
Speaker 1: to say one of the things. I mean now it
Speaker 1: was Rachel, really good man. I mean, you're just for
Speaker 1: you next year. Don't come in with your first thought
Speaker 1: them being like, you know, I picked this one because
Speaker 1: I'm for more a god in. Nobody can't. No one can't.
Speaker 1: It's pronounced Oregon. So that's shame on you. We'll see
Speaker 1: if you come back next year. You can't fire the
Speaker 1: judge I just did. It's actually organized show. By the way,
Speaker 1: this this reminded me of Rocky four when Drago fought
Speaker 1: Apollo Creed. Yeah, that was exactly what happened here. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if Joel's alive. I'll take the Russian. I'll
Speaker 1: take that all right. Back to Oregon to you quietly
Speaker 1: shrinking away now, Okay, Final four, number one seed s MH,
Speaker 1: number four, seed she, number seven seed e m t
Speaker 1: y number three seed Yin and Yang. First off, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do SMH versus She. That's number one versus number four. Danny.
Speaker 1: All right, So, just like University of Virginia, which happens
Speaker 1: to be my alma mater, I am now claiming this
Speaker 1: number one seed and will not be complaining about being
Speaker 1: seated as number one. And you know why, it's just
Speaker 1: like Virginia because it's not flashy, it's not in your face,
Speaker 1: and it's patient, which is exactly what s MH is not. Only,
Speaker 1: as I said before, is this some great internet lingo
Speaker 1: for shaking my head that works awesomely as a reporter
Speaker 1: when covering this. But this e t F waited for
Speaker 1: its time to shine. Semiconductor stocks are hot right now,
Speaker 1: and in the past two years, this thing has doubled
Speaker 1: its assets. It didn't need to go after some try
Speaker 1: to pander to the crowd, need to erect a statue
Speaker 1: on walls up. It sat there. It played defense, just
Speaker 1: like University of Virginia, and like Tony Bennett, who not
Speaker 1: only is a singer but is also the coach of UNI.
Speaker 1: Versity of Virginia taught its team patients, which is exactly
Speaker 1: what this fund did with its holdings until they came
Speaker 1: into favor. And you know what this makes me say,
Speaker 1: s MH. Shake in my head. This is a great
Speaker 1: fire she alright, she I feel like I'm a bit
Speaker 1: of a disadvantage with all the basketball metaphors going on.
Speaker 1: But nonetheless, SHE is the e t F that you
Speaker 1: can pretty much buy if you want to get your
Speaker 1: corporate governance exposure sorted out right. You've got the me
Speaker 1: too movement which we touched on before that that is
Speaker 1: really having a day. So and this is something that
Speaker 1: I think is going to develop over the next year.
Speaker 1: So I think if you start to watch the flows
Speaker 1: going into SHE, I think we're going to start to
Speaker 1: see an uptick in these like this fund is becoming
Speaker 1: more and more seasoned in terms of the amount of
Speaker 1: time it's been out in the market and what it
Speaker 1: does that's very different to other funds out there in
Speaker 1: the E s G space Environmental social governance is that
Speaker 1: it really allows you to tilt your holdings to stuff
Speaker 1: that actually benefits women are. The way it does that
Speaker 1: is you have the ratio of women on boards to
Speaker 1: the overall boards, you have the ratio of women executives
Speaker 1: the overall executives. And it's actually quite as sophisticated methodology.
Speaker 1: It's not as simple as SMH perhaps, but the methodology
Speaker 1: really allows you to be very targeted in your approach.
Speaker 1: Having that target has actually really paid off. If you
Speaker 1: look at the returns for for she over the last year.
Speaker 1: You're looking at around fifteent or so. Now that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: That's pretty much in line with the SMP slightly below,
Speaker 1: but pretty much in line with the Rachel. Please san
Speaker 1: Antonio spurs basketball. It's like highly efficient triangle, lots of
Speaker 1: passes and she just like keeps it coming. Danny, any
Speaker 1: final comments before we are before we have a ruling.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm pretty cloar. I think I think I know
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna say, But hit me with any final thought.
Speaker 1: Final thought is why Hugo, Who's I can't beat that? So? Um?
Speaker 1: There's a an expression in horse racing, uh the bounce
Speaker 1: when a horse runs a huge race and a huge
Speaker 1: figure one race and then tends to regress a little
Speaker 1: bit aggression. I think we had a bit of a
Speaker 1: regression here. She shouldn't have, i mean, ultimately put too
Speaker 1: much of a beating on Webber and just should have
Speaker 1: saved a touch of that first round was a tough matchup,
Speaker 1: it was, but you didn't ultimately maybe she ultimately didn't
Speaker 1: need to win by forty three points that first day.
Speaker 1: So and whereas wah whu wah, indeed sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: after a sleepy round one backing into a round two
Speaker 1: wah wah was very impressive. S mh. You are in
Speaker 1: the finals. Go back to your locker room, get pumped up.
Speaker 1: And if you bring that same firepower to the finals,
Speaker 1: I mean you're gonna be a handfuls No mean reversion here,
Speaker 1: no mean reversion best person one. Al Right, we got
Speaker 1: a number one seed in the final. And now let's
Speaker 1: see a number seven versus a number three. We got
Speaker 1: Ben with E. M. T. Y. You had a great
Speaker 1: first round. Eric. You know, I don't know what to say.
Speaker 1: You're the three. Let's hear your battle. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: I went with Yin and Yang. This is the triple
Speaker 1: leverage China Long and triple leverage China Short, which is
Speaker 1: I mean arguably a masterpiece. Because the Yin Yang symbol
Speaker 1: is a masterpiece. It's it's older than gold. Okay, it
Speaker 1: dates back to like fourteenth century BC. It's been around forever.
Speaker 1: What other ticker can say that? And I personally have
Speaker 1: a personal relationship with the Yang symbol because I'm very
Speaker 1: lazy about Halloween and when year in college, I was
Speaker 1: like trying to get a costume together. So I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll be a cow. So I painted my face light.
Speaker 1: I put a little dot on it, like to like
Speaker 1: the spot of the cow. I went to the party.
Speaker 1: Everyone's like, dude, you're the Yin Yang symbol, and so
Speaker 1: I was. I proceeded to be the Yin Yang single
Speaker 1: symbol for the next couple of years for Halloween, which
Speaker 1: is a great costume by the way, everybody loves it.
Speaker 1: So I realized then how powerful and like well the
Speaker 1: symbol is and it's perfect for the metaphor you know,
Speaker 1: it says everything. You don't even need to know what
Speaker 1: the E t F does your long china or your
Speaker 1: short chin to take a pick. I like how he
Speaker 1: saved the personal touch for the second round, right, Unlike
Speaker 1: someone else, I was gonna say, can I just go
Speaker 1: shake to the next like alright, ben um. This reminds
Speaker 1: me of like your college roommate who read one book
Speaker 1: on Buddhism and then thinks he's Richard Dear or Dalai Lama.
Speaker 1: Like this is like literally Yin Yang is like this
Speaker 1: is an American ETF based on the fifty biggest Chinese stocks,
Speaker 1: and like the people put it together probably know as
Speaker 1: much about this Eastern philosophy as you or me. This
Speaker 1: is like, this is Panda Express, This is not authentic
Speaker 1: Chinese food. Um E M T Y. So the price
Speaker 1: to earnings ratio of Amazon right now is three D
Speaker 1: twenty four. How do you bet on the decline of
Speaker 1: American retail which is the big, one of the biggest
Speaker 1: economic stories right now, and when a recession hits, it's
Speaker 1: going to be epic. It could be epic if these
Speaker 1: retailers can't pull out of it and develop a better
Speaker 1: online strategy. I think that this, of course I said
Speaker 1: in the first round, this could totally empty out your
Speaker 1: bank account. But I also think that this is actually
Speaker 1: providing something for investors that they need a way to
Speaker 1: bet against the decline of retail. A bit on the
Speaker 1: decline of retail. And yes, it's a little evil to
Speaker 1: bet on profiting from millions of people losing their livelihoods,
Speaker 1: but it's a legit strategy. It is evil. The other
Speaker 1: thing I would say about empty is, if you're really
Speaker 1: committed to this strategy, why not go with clicks which
Speaker 1: is short those small stocks, but long Amazon and the
Speaker 1: e commerce Well not everyone. Can you know, throw multiple
Speaker 1: ETFs in there, you know, in their pair um empty
Speaker 1: final thoughts. My final thought is think back to when
Speaker 1: you were a teenager. Well, I think back when to
Speaker 1: when I was a teenager, and think about nostalgically about
Speaker 1: walking around the mall, going to the gap, going to
Speaker 1: the video game store, going to the bookstore. All that's over.
Speaker 1: Life in America has changed. Kids aren't hanging out in malls,
Speaker 1: are hanging out on Instagram when what'sapp there's a this
Speaker 1: is an important tool to profit from that And things
Speaker 1: just got real quiet of real cultural moment in the
Speaker 1: you know, in you in the US. I actually think,
Speaker 1: strangely enough that find a little plea may have Have
Speaker 1: you gone to j C Penny lately? It's not bad
Speaker 1: that you can get gloves, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: older Jenny, by the way, who has the money, the
Speaker 1: older people. I'm telling you, j C. Penny is full
Speaker 1: of people. The mall is underrated. You can try stuff on.
Speaker 1: It's not that bad. It's gonna take forty years for
Speaker 1: this trade to play out. Forty years empty. Forty years
Speaker 1: is gonna take me to make a return on this thing. No,
Speaker 1: it's the downward spiral. These malls are emptying out, hence
Speaker 1: the name, and when a store leaves them all, they
Speaker 1: can't replace that revenue. We had a great video game
Speaker 1: on on Bloomberg dot com that basically let you manage
Speaker 1: them all, and there was no way to win it
Speaker 1: because every time of retailer was suffering, you had to
Speaker 1: cut your maintenance budget, your cleaning budget. It was this
Speaker 1: fun exercise, these things in a downward spiral, and uh,
Speaker 1: the next recession is going to be really painful, so
Speaker 1: that this game ends with big Ben clock running out,
Speaker 1: crosses over, Eric steps back, knocks it down, ball game
Speaker 1: over in a barn burner. I was really really inclined
Speaker 1: just because I'm you know, this is my little the
Speaker 1: judge's personal preference. I'm a sucker for the triple leverage,
Speaker 1: triple leverage. I mean, I was really I was just
Speaker 1: my natural want was to go that way. But I
Speaker 1: gotta believe the the emptying of America's molle it is
Speaker 1: a big story. Despite what Yin Yang says, it is
Speaker 1: a big Eric's over there with a towel owner's head.
Speaker 1: It's true. I'm like the Isaiah Thomas. I'm not even
Speaker 1: gonna like shake his hand beat me. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: like really be bitter as opposed to Rachel Ben I
Speaker 1: hate you all right. So it was so and he's
Speaker 1: probably exhausted now because he gets he's gonna go against
Speaker 1: the number one seed who's just lying, lying and wait
Speaker 1: in London, right's shadow boxing right now as we speak.
Speaker 1: I think we got in fairness to empty, who just
Speaker 1: emptied the tank. You gotta give him like thirty seconds
Speaker 1: to get up, clear as head, walk around, right, and
Speaker 1: you gotta did you gotta bring it again. This is
Speaker 1: one of these finals nobody expected. Might not draw the
Speaker 1: viewership of say a duke right like a move versus
Speaker 1: Tan would, but it's gonna be intriguing and I see
Speaker 1: a close match. So we got number one seed shaking
Speaker 1: my head smh versus number seven seed empty. So Papa,
Speaker 1: did we start with the seventh seed or the one seed?
Speaker 1: I think you gotta give the seventh seed their shot
Speaker 1: to come out find seven, seven seed. You've never been here, yeah,
Speaker 1: seventh seed. The nerves, the nerves have been a seven
Speaker 1: seeding in the final. Ye okay, I've got it. Versus
Speaker 1: secular semi conductors, go up, go down, up and down
Speaker 1: and up and down since semiconductor was created. And uh,
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about here with empty is a long
Speaker 1: term secular play. Now is an inverse ETF the best
Speaker 1: way to do something among term I'm not really sure
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to bat for that, but this is
Speaker 1: something that is happening. Drift listen. I know I appreciate
Speaker 1: Ben saying that because we just had an episode on
Speaker 1: like why you probably shouldn't use inverse c ts. So
Speaker 1: Ben's just being prudent. I wouldn't. I'm a personal finance reporter.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna I don't want anybody to lose their
Speaker 1: use their money on this fair enough, So remind me
Speaker 1: of returns on the inception of this thing and returns.
Speaker 1: What's a little more informative. That's interesting. Uh, it's actually
Speaker 1: down about ten percent since it originated. I think it
Speaker 1: hasn't done that great. I think that there's been a
Speaker 1: small recovery from the retail stocks, but it's a dead
Speaker 1: cat bounce and this is a this is a good
Speaker 1: long term play. So so this is the kind of thing, right,
Speaker 1: so it pays nothing, I lose a little, I lose
Speaker 1: a little, and then when it hits your thinking, I'm like,
Speaker 1: it's gonna hit like in a big number all of
Speaker 1: a sudden out of the blue. Is that is that
Speaker 1: the way we play out conceptually? That's that's the plan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's wait till either there's a really bad recession
Speaker 1: or wait till some of these retailers just can't keep up.
Speaker 1: And you guess what kind of number I could be
Speaker 1: and you could be looking at when this thing hit.
Speaker 1: If this thing pops, well, the one thing about inverse
Speaker 1: funds is they are path dependent, as they say, and
Speaker 1: if if we do see them like go down in
Speaker 1: a nice steady path, this thing will start compounding a
Speaker 1: bit and you could be ringing up some serious returns.
Speaker 1: That's sort of why it's a little dangerous because it
Speaker 1: is so inviting, but you'd have to this thing would
Speaker 1: really hit the triple seven's if you had a nice, steady,
Speaker 1: long term decline at these mall stores. I'm getting an
Speaker 1: assist from Luke Kyle and this one who points out
Speaker 1: retail sector may see more defaults. So this isn't everything
Speaker 1: must go going out of business moment. Luke from the
Speaker 1: day helping him from the ground. I think Danny number
Speaker 1: one I won't take offense to the fact that uh
Speaker 1: Luke gave Ben the assist in this moment, because I
Speaker 1: would like to point out, on the eighteenth of April
Speaker 1: two thousand seventeen, Luke unintentionally gave me an assist by
Speaker 1: tweeting at me, whoa at Danny Berger can't believe you
Speaker 1: jump the gun in writing off this e t F
Speaker 1: s m H. So even though you battled against me
Speaker 1: in the first round, I'm so sorry, I'm still going
Speaker 1: to say that you gave me an assist here, all right.
Speaker 1: So what comes to mind, and Eric was touching on
Speaker 1: this a little bit, is the idea that my competitor,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been I've been studying the tapes though
Speaker 1: though he is undefeated. I've been thinking about other e
Speaker 1: t s along his path that have been defeated before.
Speaker 1: And what comes to mind our short e t s.
Speaker 1: You know, there there was another short e t F
Speaker 1: out there that people said was a sure thing that
Speaker 1: you'd be making money off of it. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: not saying that E M T Y is as uh
Speaker 1: poses a structural threat to the market like some other
Speaker 1: E t F did, But you know what people said
Speaker 1: that uh X I v looked like a short thing,
Speaker 1: a short E t F, just you know, picking up
Speaker 1: pennies and in front of a steam roller. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then here we have this classic E t F following semiconductors. Uh.
Speaker 1: Such a great story to the market of this super
Speaker 1: liquid e t F following these stocks which have really
Speaker 1: carried the market higher. And it's a really interesting story
Speaker 1: to see how that's evolved. But this is a clean play. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's uh not using swaps to get its exposure. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is a pure e t F, so pure that
Speaker 1: they accidentally gave it a ticker that we could all
Speaker 1: use to make fun of it. But well before before
Speaker 1: I rule, I got a question for the panel for
Speaker 1: Eric here. So and this is actually gonna have a
Speaker 1: lot of bearing on the on my my decision. So
Speaker 1: she's comparing empty with essentially some iteration of the VIX
Speaker 1: short And as I immediately think about it, conceptually, to me,
Speaker 1: they're actually even though they're both short, they involved shorting
Speaker 1: the pretty different concepts. Uh, in the sense that right
Speaker 1: you are essentially you were picking up nickels along the way,
Speaker 1: you're essentially selling that insurance, right you are betting on
Speaker 1: the continuous stability things, whereas he's actually he's going for
Speaker 1: the home run. He's saying, I'm gonna day to day.
Speaker 1: I don't care, right, I'm looking for the home run
Speaker 1: down the road. Walk me to walk me through this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of it's like throwing some elbows. Uh, you
Speaker 1: could call the foul because empty is no x I V. However,
Speaker 1: they are both short. But look, I saw it as
Speaker 1: scrappy personally. I thought it's just like a you know,
Speaker 1: it's a physical game. Is playoff basketball and the finals.
Speaker 1: In no way for anyone listening out there, x I
Speaker 1: V was just in a league of its own in
Speaker 1: terms of what it was doing. Um, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of short ETFs. They're probably two hundred of them
Speaker 1: that didn't implode over the past fifteen years. X IVY
Speaker 1: is a special case. But so that's why bringing in
Speaker 1: is a little bit illegal. If the refs didn't see it,
Speaker 1: the ref the judge, but the judge was on the
Speaker 1: judge was on it. So here, so here we are,
Speaker 1: Here we are I think I have I think for
Speaker 1: a final? Is it a little sleepy? No? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: right into it? No, it's good. I'm into it. Kind
Speaker 1: of offset the Luke thing, because that was a little
Speaker 1: It's like the guy from the stands holding up something
Speaker 1: on the paybo the other team to pree throws. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got one word to describe League, which
Speaker 1: is bitter. He seems like he's a little bitter. But
Speaker 1: you know, here's so, here's the thing, Danny, she was
Speaker 1: just like meticulously like a machine, just working at break down.
Speaker 1: And and and I and I was starting to lean
Speaker 1: that way, but you know what, I just sort of
Speaker 1: keep going back to. I keep going back to and
Speaker 1: I know, Eric, uh, it wasn't feeling this so much,
Speaker 1: but it just strikes me that yet the fate of
Speaker 1: the American consumer and the American mall, I'm actually just
Speaker 1: feeling that story is a big story. And and and
Speaker 1: and and I know in a lot of this is
Speaker 1: why it was the number seven seed. It's this short
Speaker 1: and and and it's and it's minus ten return and
Speaker 1: it's only gonna pay out, you know, if it goes big.
Speaker 1: But I don't know if it's actually gonna ever pay
Speaker 1: out the et of itself. But it paid out on
Speaker 1: this show, Empty Villanova. It's taking this thing, is taking
Speaker 1: this thing down and and Virginia were Virginia was playing
Speaker 1: offense and they were doing well, but it was really
Speaker 1: in the attack. But this is ultimately Virginia's defensive team
Speaker 1: because you know when they're when they're in this full
Speaker 1: offensive mode, every once in a while they can make
Speaker 1: a mistakes. Well, Danny, thank you so much for joining
Speaker 1: us from London. You put up a good battle. But
Speaker 1: then personal finance for the wind. And by the way, Dandy,
Speaker 1: your constant ation prizes that Van X probably gonna call
Speaker 1: you the day after this comes out and ask you
Speaker 1: for a job. Does a victor have any words to say?
Speaker 1: I just want to say, don't invest in this. No, no,
Speaker 1: I can't wait a minute. Danny, Luke, Rachel, Suzanne, Ben Carolina,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining the show. This was
Speaker 1: an absolute glass and a special props to David Pappadopolis.
Speaker 1: Thank you very well. We get some cans applause. So
Speaker 1: we started with marketing and lo and behold empty kind
Speaker 1: of a great chicker. It ends up winning it all.
Speaker 1: What do you think, Well, this kind of really hits
Speaker 1: to the whole thing because the marketing is what gets you.
Speaker 1: It's like a shiny object that gets you close to
Speaker 1: what it holds. But as this went on, you know,
Speaker 1: you could see how the strategy sorted to become the
Speaker 1: bigger way that the judgment was made, and that ultimately
Speaker 1: is probably pretty symbolic of how this happens, because the
Speaker 1: ticker really shouldn't be the only thing. It's something else
Speaker 1: going on, right, But the ticker is important because again
Speaker 1: you have in a category, the ticker can draw you in.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, like Ben said, he loves the ticker as
Speaker 1: a marketing I know, but he's not that hot about
Speaker 1: what's going on underneath. And so Ben would be a
Speaker 1: classic investor who's doing his job of maybe he was
Speaker 1: sold on the ticker and the name, looked at the
Speaker 1: holdings and said no. Thanks. Thanks for listening to Trilliance.
Speaker 1: Special things to Danny Burger, Lukawa, David Papadapos, Rachel Evans,
Speaker 1: Suzanne Willie, Ben, Steve Berman, Carolina Wilson. This was a
Speaker 1: fun episode. Until next time, you can find us on
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcasts, and probably
Speaker 1: a bunch of other places I haven't heard about yet.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. All of us are
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Eric's at Eric call Tunas, I'm at Joel
Speaker 1: Webber Show Trillions is produced by Magnus Hendrickson. Francesca Leavy
Speaker 1: is the head of Bloomberg podcast by