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Speaker 2: The tariff news, it just keeps on coming here. Trump
Speaker 2: says Mexico, Canada, and new China tariffs take effect March fourth.
Speaker 2: That's coming up soon. Let's get the latest. Brendan Mary,
Speaker 2: global trade editor for Bloomberg News, joins us. Right now. Brendan,
Speaker 2: you know, it's tough to keep track here, but it
Speaker 2: appears that these tariffs are going to take place and
Speaker 2: maybe use some incremental ones on China.
Speaker 3: What's the latest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Trump tried to clear up any confusion there
Speaker 4: was about whether the Canada and Mexico tariffs of twenty
Speaker 4: five percent we're going to take place on Tuesday, and
Speaker 4: he said they indeed will.
Speaker 3: And he added a bit of a surprise.
Speaker 4: He said, oh, and I'm also going to add ten
Speaker 4: percent tariffs to Chinese imports, which he's already He already
Speaker 4: imposed ten percent tariffs on China. So this is another
Speaker 4: ten percent and that will also take effect on Tuesday.
Speaker 4: So we're looking at the three largest US trading partners.
Speaker 4: About forty percent of US merchandise trade is done with
Speaker 4: these three countries totally, something like two trillion dollars a year.
Speaker 3: So he's turning the.
Speaker 4: Screws on China in particular and trying to drive a deal.
Speaker 4: It sounds like before before midnight Monday into Tuesday with Canada.
Speaker 3: Mexico, what's the off ramp.
Speaker 4: Then the off ramp is Canada and Mexico scrambling to
Speaker 4: show him that he's doing that. They're doing what he
Speaker 4: would like them to do on fentanyl trafficking and uh,
Speaker 4: in illegal migration. Uh, they have already done a number
Speaker 4: of things. So the question is, you know what exactly
Speaker 4: are the goal the goal the goals uh that they
Speaker 4: could they could reach uh and as you know, and
Speaker 4: are those even attainable you know, in the next you know,
Speaker 4: four days now?
Speaker 2: So all right, Brendan dumb question of the day. How
Speaker 2: do tariffs work?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: Who puts the tariff on which party? How quickly does
Speaker 2: it happen? Can you just explain the mechanics here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's a it's a pretty quick UH switch
Speaker 4: that you know, the directive comes from the President, it
Speaker 4: goes into the Federal Register, UH, it is transmitted to
Speaker 4: the Customs and Border UH agency, and they, you know,
Speaker 4: they plug it into their computer system and and and
Speaker 4: and that that system that that importers and exporters are
Speaker 4: are connected to UH customs agents and and you know
Speaker 4: the intermediaries of trade. That suddenly appears on there, you know,
Speaker 4: on their on their computer screen is it's another ten
Speaker 4: percent in the case of China, come come Tuesday. So
Speaker 4: it's it all can happen pretty quickly. You know, at
Speaker 4: the moment, these are just threats. The only tariffs that
Speaker 4: are in effect since Trump was inaugurated on January twentieth,
Speaker 4: our ten percent on China. But there are a half
Speaker 4: dozen or so others, including tariffs on the European Union,
Speaker 4: that that he's threatened.
Speaker 3: To put in place over the next five five or
Speaker 3: six weeks.
Speaker 6: So now what like if I'm an economist and I'm
Speaker 6: looking at my models, like what am I plugging in
Speaker 6: now to know like what growth is going to be,
Speaker 6: what inflation is going to be, what personal consumption is
Speaker 6: going to be?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, Bloomberg Economics have have have done a
Speaker 4: lot of number crunching in this area and and they
Speaker 4: do show that these the tariffs will have an impact
Speaker 4: on on on.
Speaker 3: Growth, on inflation.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: The the the freshest number we have was that that
Speaker 4: the the tariffs on the European Union that he's threatening
Speaker 4: will will cut their GDP by one point five percent. Now,
Speaker 4: one point five percent sounds like a small number, but
Speaker 4: we're talking, you know, to an economy and the multiple
Speaker 4: trillions of dollars, so it's a it's a lot of money. Uh,
Speaker 4: businesses pay it and then businesses passed those costs on
Speaker 4: to consumers. So uh, it will it will. H The
Speaker 4: goal from the Trump administration is to is to drive
Speaker 4: production to the US. But in the meantime, somebody's got
Speaker 4: to pay. Somebody's got to pay these tariffs. And uh
Speaker 4: and until those jobs are created as Trump hopes they are, uh,
Speaker 4: it's it will have an upward There will be upward
Speaker 4: pressure on prices, uh, for the for the products that
Speaker 4: he is targeting.
Speaker 2: Brandon, what do we know about from these countries China, Canada,
Speaker 2: Mexico in terms of retaliation and what is their policy
Speaker 2: or what are they saying these days?
Speaker 3: They're all doing something slightly different.
Speaker 4: Canada has said will hit you will hit one hundred
Speaker 4: and seven billion dollars worth of your products with with
Speaker 4: the same tariff that you're you're going to put on
Speaker 4: on twenty five percent. Mexico has has not been that specific,
Speaker 4: but they will. They will also they pledge that they will.
Speaker 3: They won't.
Speaker 4: They won't just take it that they that they will
Speaker 4: retaliate as well. China is a more interesting case. They
Speaker 4: have been very reserved in what they have targeted, but
Speaker 4: they've been sort of strategic. They they they launched an
Speaker 4: antitrust investigation into Google's operations in China. The total amount
Speaker 4: of tariffs that they have goods that they're that they've
Speaker 4: retaliated against is only fourteen billion or so so that
Speaker 4: they have. But but what they're what they're showing the
Speaker 4: US is we can we can target not just your
Speaker 4: goods but also your your big tech companies. So they're
Speaker 4: you know, they're playing they're they're they're seeing Donald Trump's uh,
Speaker 4: you know, the pressure putting on there and they're responding
Speaker 4: in a way. So far that's been reserved, but that
Speaker 4: can hit hard, you know, biking that company like goop.
Speaker 6: All right, Brendan, we really appreciate it. Thank you so
Speaker 6: very much. Brendan Murray, Bloomer Global Trade Editor, joining us
Speaker 6: on Trump tariffs coming into effect next week on Canada, Mexico,
Speaker 6: additional ten percent on China as well.
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Speaker 2: Let's get right to the Nvidia news, and nobody better
Speaker 2: to do that with than Gene Monster, managing partner co
Speaker 2: founder at Loop Ventures. Gene Suck's kind of been up
Speaker 2: and down today, it's investors trying to get a handle
Speaker 2: on it. What's your takeaway from the Nvidia news yesterday?
Speaker 7: Well, the results were good but not great. And specifically
Speaker 7: is the margin guidance at seventy one percent versus the
Speaker 7: three to seventy two and there weren't whispers that they
Speaker 7: were going to lower margins. I think that really stood
Speaker 7: out to me. The upside on revenue of a million
Speaker 7: a billion compares to the expectations of like a billion
Speaker 7: and a half to two billion, and so I think
Speaker 7: that these were good in the sense they did raise
Speaker 7: on revenue, but not great. This definitely wasn't an Nvidia
Speaker 7: like quarter. And I would say that if you put
Speaker 7: everything in the context and my senses, the stock probably
Speaker 7: trades lower today. I think that it probably should be
Speaker 7: down something like five percent ultimately, because effectively what they're
Speaker 7: doing is pushing the ramp to the back half of
Speaker 7: the year, especially on margins. That's when the margins they
Speaker 7: said to kind of go to seventy five percent. And
Speaker 7: I would add one other piece to this is going
Speaker 7: into the print. I believe that the most important point
Speaker 7: was related to commentary about how sold out they were
Speaker 7: on Blackwell. This is a metric that they typically give,
Speaker 7: and last quarter they said they were sold out for
Speaker 7: basically three quarters of this year. They were radio silent
Speaker 7: on the topic. They surprisingly didn't get asked a question
Speaker 7: on it. But I think that Jensen's comments about the
Speaker 7: need for compute being one hundred to one million I
Speaker 7: double checked that on the transcript, one hundred to one
Speaker 7: million times more compute needed for reasoning and physical AI
Speaker 7: and robotics AI that increase in compute. I think gave
Speaker 7: investors some optimism that well, this year might not be
Speaker 7: the year that twenty twenty six is going to grow
Speaker 7: faster than what people think, and so set a different
Speaker 7: way is that the results and guidance don't give a
Speaker 7: ton of optimism. But if you look at where this
Speaker 7: ultimately could go, if you take what Jensen is saying
Speaker 7: and divided by ten, that means they're still going to
Speaker 7: comfortably beat the numbers next year.
Speaker 6: Okay, there's a lot of unpack with that. So let's
Speaker 6: go back to gross margins for a second. Based on
Speaker 6: their call that gross margins will hit seventy five percent
Speaker 6: in the back half of the year, when do we
Speaker 6: think they're to bottom?
Speaker 7: So they got answered the guess that question on the
Speaker 7: call and they kind of sidestep it. But if you
Speaker 7: read between the lines, they probably go lower again in
Speaker 7: the July quarter. So there's an April quarter that we're
Speaker 7: in right now than they go to the July quarter.
Speaker 7: My guess is they probably bottom then at around seventy percent,
Speaker 7: So effectively, going from seventy to seventy five over six months,
Speaker 7: it's a pretty big jump. At the time of the call,
Speaker 7: the stock was up two and a half percent and
Speaker 7: excuse me, about two percent in after hours when they
Speaker 7: came to the last question on the call, which was
Speaker 7: related to that ramp in margins and how realistic is
Speaker 7: that if we have more export controls and the answer was,
Speaker 7: we don't know how export controls are going to impact
Speaker 7: our business. And immediately the stock went from up call
Speaker 7: it two percent to down a half a percent, So
Speaker 7: we saw basically two percent move in it. And so
Speaker 7: I think that speaks to investors saying like, that's that's
Speaker 7: a risk here, is like, are we really going to
Speaker 7: get to that margin ramp in your setup here? You
Speaker 7: talked about the seventy three percent margins for a tech
Speaker 7: company for a hardware company. I think at the end
Speaker 7: of the day, they're still remarkable. But for these stocks
Speaker 7: to keep working, you need to have margins at a
Speaker 7: minimum stable and growing. And I just want to put
Speaker 7: one final thought on this, Alex is that ultimately I
Speaker 7: think margins will get back to that seventy five percent.
Speaker 7: I don't know if it's going to be in Q
Speaker 7: four early next year, but if the ramp is what
Speaker 7: I think it's going to be for next year, I
Speaker 7: think we're going to get back to some go go days.
Speaker 2: Nvidia Gene, the driver for this stock tremendous performance over
Speaker 2: the past two years, has been beaten and raised by
Speaker 2: a certain order of magnitude. If for no other reason
Speaker 2: than the law of large numbers, that order of magnitude
Speaker 2: likely will be lower. Can this stock continue to work
Speaker 2: with just the law of large numbers not giving you
Speaker 2: that two three four billion dollar bet and raise every quarter.
Speaker 7: I think it can. And just to put in perspective,
Speaker 7: we've gone from a twenty billion dollar business a few
Speaker 7: years ago. It's going to be about a two hundred
Speaker 7: billion dollar business this year. But there's still our companies
Speaker 7: apples a four hundred million dollar business. I mean, you
Speaker 7: can still continue to grow from that, and it doesn't
Speaker 7: need to have that breathtaking growth. And I would come
Speaker 7: back to the central question here. It's not about twenty
Speaker 7: twenty five. It's the twenty three percent growth in calendar
Speaker 7: twenty six, And do you think that the number is
Speaker 7: going to be higher or lower than that? And ultimately
Speaker 7: I think the number is going to be higher. I
Speaker 7: think we're going to get back to a point where we,
Speaker 7: despite the law of large numbers, we get to some
Speaker 7: of those improving, those improving upsize and beats, and it
Speaker 7: just comes down to what I think is a large
Speaker 7: TAM and what I still believe is a competitive advantage
Speaker 7: that GPUs have over custom silicon. And we'll see how
Speaker 7: that plays out. But that's essentially the debate that's going
Speaker 7: on right now is just how much compute you need
Speaker 7: and how defensible is in video. I think there's a
Speaker 7: boatload of compute, much more than we realize it's going
Speaker 7: to be needed. And I think in videa's in a
Speaker 7: great position related to that. We're gonna have to wait
Speaker 7: to get to those results, but I think anticipation of
Speaker 7: that it's going to be positive for the stock at
Speaker 7: some point this.
Speaker 6: Year, gotcha. So it's basically like the story is still intact.
Speaker 6: This is now just a timing issue and a little
Speaker 6: bit of a macro issue when it comes to tarups
Speaker 6: Am I reading you right?
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's going to be the debate. That's the bowl
Speaker 7: caase that's the side that I'm on. I still think
Speaker 7: we're early in AI and I think in video is
Speaker 7: going to benefit. The bearcase is that we're seeing law
Speaker 7: of large numbers less beats, and you're going to have
Speaker 7: a compress multiple in that situation. But the central question
Speaker 7: again comes down bears their bulls. Do you think they're
Speaker 7: going to beat the numbers next year?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: That's been the tech call for you know, such a
Speaker 2: long time, for a lot of different names, and Gene
Speaker 2: has been there doing this stuff for a long time
Speaker 2: and he's got the perspective. So we really appreciate getting
Speaker 2: a few minutes at Gene Monster's time, folks. Again, he
Speaker 2: was there for you know, the birth of the Internet
Speaker 2: literally and calling it from an investment perspective, helping people
Speaker 2: understand what this whole internet thing is, and he's doing
Speaker 2: the same thing here for us and for a lot
Speaker 2: of his clients as it relates to AI.
Speaker 3: We appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Genemunster, managing partner co founder at Loop Ventures out there
Speaker 2: in that tech hub of Minneapolis. Oh Yeshoda, here you.
Speaker 5: Go, There you go.
Speaker 1: Fold time you're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch
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Speaker 6: So then let's get to the markets and kind of
Speaker 6: what do you do when we have a continued tariff threat.
Speaker 6: It feels like we are counting down by days until
Speaker 6: we get that twenty five percent tariff on goods from
Speaker 6: Canada and Mexico in additional ten percent and Chinese goods
Speaker 6: markets mixed Nastak still off by four tens to one percent.
Speaker 6: We cannot seem to keep the rebound that we see
Speaker 6: in the future's market. Well. Joining us now for more
Speaker 6: on how to handle it is Frank Makram. He is
Speaker 6: head of Macro Trading over at Buffalo by You. He
Speaker 6: joins us on the markets. Frank, you've been in this
Speaker 6: market for a long time. How do you protect yourself
Speaker 6: right now?
Speaker 5: Listen, it's it's it's an exercise that requires kind of
Speaker 5: short term protection that long term action here in the
Speaker 5: short term obviously, if you're worried about you know, the
Speaker 5: vicissitudes of having headlines after headlines around, you know, the
Speaker 5: policy agenda coming from the administration, then I think you've
Speaker 5: got to You've got several instruments that you can use,
Speaker 5: whether it's in an equities market, you've got to got
Speaker 5: short term options. Even though the this is kind of
Speaker 5: up up to eighteen nineteen close to twenty is still
Speaker 5: relatively you know, fairly priced in my opinion, based on
Speaker 5: the level of uncertainty that we've still seen in the marketplace.
Speaker 5: But if you if you're you know, willing to kind
Speaker 5: of ride it out, I think we're probably going to
Speaker 5: be in the choppy range here for a while. And
Speaker 5: if you're medium to long term view as that, you know,
Speaker 5: we we we're looking to probably see a bit of
Speaker 5: a correction here in the markets, and I think, you know,
Speaker 5: downside protection looks really really cheap in my opinion. You know,
Speaker 5: we're we're in a situation where it's really hard for
Speaker 5: equities to really get to escape velocity to the upside
Speaker 5: given all the uncertainty. Given word about euations are I'm
Speaker 5: not saying, you know, you want to be bearished, but
Speaker 5: it's just the key word is of vulnerability. Market is
Speaker 5: super vulnerable when you're when you're trading out these kinds
Speaker 5: of evaluations and you've got this uncertainty and you've got
Speaker 5: you know, the deep seek thing is nothing to scuff
Speaker 5: scuff at. I think you know, we see the video
Speaker 5: earnings yesterday that are failing to kind of lift the
Speaker 5: market up. That says a lot about the momentum.
Speaker 2: But on the flip side, I would have said I
Speaker 2: kind of went into yesterday frank saying I thought the
Speaker 2: risk of the market within video was everybody's been asking
Speaker 2: for or saying, why don't we get a real correction,
Speaker 2: you know, seven, eight, ten, twelve percent correction, And if
Speaker 2: a video really disappointed last night, maybe that would have
Speaker 2: been a capaist. Their numbers were kind of good enough
Speaker 2: just to kind of keep everybody kind of happy.
Speaker 5: I guess no, for sure, I think the numbers were
Speaker 5: I think, all things considered, kind of middle of the road,
Speaker 5: and you know, it allows us to remain kind of
Speaker 5: steady here. But this vulnerability, to me isn't gone right.
Speaker 5: I mean, we've seeing some more terrorists headlines today. There's
Speaker 5: a sense that the market is seeing a bit of
Speaker 5: sort of terrorists fatigue here a little bit, yeah, little.
Speaker 5: You definitely seen that being reflected in the bond market,
Speaker 5: where you know, initially you saw bonds, you know, so
Speaker 5: selling off pretty aggressively with tens, you know, testing again
Speaker 5: three sixty three seven year almost.
Speaker 3: But now we're back to three twenty five, three thirty.
Speaker 5: Level, and you know it just kind of goes to
Speaker 5: show that the you know, the convexity for bonds remains
Speaker 5: kind of to the downside and on yields given I
Speaker 5: think one the fact that you know, I think growth
Speaker 5: is you know, growless what we say, you know, terras.
Speaker 5: There's an inflation risk there, but it's inflation expectations more
Speaker 5: so than anything else. But growth is a is a
Speaker 5: presently observable data you can see, right, and the economic
Speaker 5: indicators have been kind of rolling over economy surprises are
Speaker 5: coming off, and you have also had an administration that's
Speaker 5: been adamant in terms of trying to bring yields down.
Speaker 5: So whenever you're seeing you know, kind of growth data
Speaker 5: looking like it's softening a little bit, I think yields
Speaker 5: are are going to come off pretty substantially. And I
Speaker 5: think one of the things also that I've I've looked
Speaker 5: at over the last you know, a couple of weeks
Speaker 5: here is how gold as kind of been looks like
Speaker 5: it's you know, pausing a little bit, and what's happening
Speaker 5: there because I think a lot of the safe haven
Speaker 5: flows have been going into gold because obviously, you know,
Speaker 5: treasuries have been kind of not very desirable at this
Speaker 5: morning time. But now that treasury has seen a bit again,
Speaker 5: you know, gold is kind of you know, being kind
Speaker 5: of left often not more necessarily, but you know you're
Speaker 5: seeing some some profit taking happening with obviously crypto also
Speaker 5: coming off, So that's also something I'm keeping an eye
Speaker 5: on as as it pertains to the relationship between gold
Speaker 5: and treasuries.
Speaker 6: What about oil? So used to work at gun Bore,
Speaker 6: which is an oil training firm. This is a few
Speaker 6: years ago. Yeah, but when you look at where we
Speaker 6: are in oil right now, what are the good trades? Like,
Speaker 6: what range are we in? What are you looking at?
Speaker 3: Listen for it? Right?
Speaker 5: I mean if you think about you know, since the
Speaker 5: beginning of year, what's what's been the biggest theme for
Speaker 5: to me, it's been everybody's focused on on policy agenda
Speaker 5: and all the terriff rhetoric. That's that's that's fine. But
Speaker 5: to me, what's been on wavering from Washington, it's been
Speaker 5: that they're pretty adamant on making sure that energy prices
Speaker 5: stay in check. You know, they ran on you know,
Speaker 5: fighting inflation. I don't think they're going to let that happen.
Speaker 3: So, you know, I feel like you know, there is a.
Speaker 5: Sort of call option from this administration on oil spiking,
Speaker 5: especially with Saudi's having so much spare capacity, and frankly speaking,
Speaker 5: I feel like at least based on the rhetoric, they've
Speaker 5: been pretty de escalatory from a geopolitical standpoint. So it's
Speaker 5: it's hard really so that the right tail to oil
Speaker 5: prices now to me is a lot betterer. Yeah, right,
Speaker 5: but trading in from the downside and Trump be sure,
Speaker 5: there's why we.
Speaker 6: Got the Venezuela headlines yesterday. Like oil didn't didn't do.
Speaker 5: Any epecially didn't go anything. I think right now, we've
Speaker 5: seen a bit of a bounce today. Last time I
Speaker 5: checked this morning, we're up like a dollar or something
Speaker 5: or twenty out thirty. Yeah, that's just coming off of
Speaker 5: kind of over soul levels and the market is really
Speaker 5: really light in the positioning standpoint if you look at
Speaker 5: the open interest in the future's market, especially on WTI
Speaker 5: back to you know, like you know, eighteen months low here,
Speaker 5: and that's just kind of leaving the market vulnerable to
Speaker 5: maybe a little bit of a short squeeze. But that
Speaker 5: is not really a sustainable rally, right, And what's what's
Speaker 5: really driving the old market these days is that you
Speaker 5: have very little positioning from you know, sort of manage money,
Speaker 5: so you have a lot of fast money type CTAs
Speaker 5: players that are in the market are whipping the market
Speaker 5: around and it just makes it vulnerable to test technical
Speaker 5: levels a lot faster than we think because the the
Speaker 5: sort of thematic participation into the way market really hasn't
Speaker 5: been there. I mean, we've seen a lot of themes
Speaker 5: with gold, we've seen a lot of themes even with
Speaker 5: copper and the AI story, but by really hasn't had
Speaker 5: that strong of a theme. If anything, it's like, well,
Speaker 5: how low does you know the Trump administration one wants
Speaker 5: to see oil prices going, and what's the level that's
Speaker 5: going to make a bigger way comfortable in terms of
Speaker 5: you know, break events. Right, So it's it's a market
Speaker 5: to me that that's still kind of verish, but you
Speaker 5: just got to be watchful of the fact that it's
Speaker 5: it's there's very little liquidity in the market because i
Speaker 5: mentioned manage money really isn't there, So you can see
Speaker 5: these random spikes that are just short squeezes that could
Speaker 5: you know, go a lot farther than you think. Sometimes
Speaker 5: you think it'll be two dollars, it can be five,
Speaker 5: so you have to respect those. But but I still
Speaker 5: think it's a market that doub wants to go over.
Speaker 2: All right, You got a great deep voice that this
Speaker 2: whole investing thing doesn't work.
Speaker 3: You got a career in radio. I'm telling here right now.
Speaker 2: Frank Macain, thank you, he said, of macrotrading a buffalo
Speaker 2: by you, which, by the way, is a whole nother
Speaker 2: discussion where that name comes from. But we'll talk about
Speaker 2: that at another time. So Frank, thanks very much for
Speaker 2: joining us here.
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