Hello, and welcome to What comes Up a weekly markets podcast. My name is Mike Reagan. I'm a senior editor at Bloomberg and I'm Aldana Higher across asset reporter with Bloomberk. And this week on the show, well the ink was barely dry on all those headlines saying that the SMP five was in a bear market last week and then it began to rebound a bit, and we never did get a closing price that was or more below the indexes last record in January. So was that it bear market canceled and the loads are in? Well maybe not. We'll talk with the chief investment officer who was not so sure, and thanks that we're in store for a bit of a cruel summer for stocks. But first, Viltanna, I need to let the listeners know that you're actually in jolly old England as as we speak. Yep, I'm in London. How's that going. I'm having a lot of fun. The Bloomberg office is so huge and it just looks like it's never ending. So I just keep getting lost and running into the same people over and over and asking them for help, and they're like, I already told you. I can't help you, So then I just keep moving on to the next person and the next person and the next person, and I never never ever find my desks. That's kind of like how you are in New York too, though even worse here. Honestly, I'm just wandering around all the time, like on the streets, in the office, the mess. But I'm having a lot of fun. Those friendly Brits, I'm sure are staring in the right direction. But then I gotta say, we did get two more reviews in of the podcast on Apple Podcast. I don't know your coercion strategies work. It is. Let me just read this one to you. Five stars to vill Donna for keeping Mike and check. I don't know what that means. I don't know what that that's referring to great podcast, one of my favorites. They also volunteered to be a tour guide to either of us if we are ever in San Diego. I could use that a few weeks ago. But I love San Diego. It's my number one favorite city in the world. I think number one. Yeah, you know why, because this person just gave you five stars. That's right now. I'm just kidding because it's sunny three sixty five days, or you know, like Rains wants me one day, yere exactly. Yeah, that's pretty good. And a second one came in It said, wait a second, do we know vol Donna's high school nickname yet? And the answer is not yet. I'm worried that your nickname might be a little boring. So I'm gonna if it's stretch this out. If it's too boring, I'm gonna offer the nickname that the transcription service offers for you, really good software we used to transcribe the podcast because they're they're they're pretty good. They're really really good and just for you, my crazy thing this week is is British themed, So just throwing that out there for you. Okay, but um let's bring in our guest. I'm excited to meet her. Yeah, it's Victoria Green. She's the founding partner in chief and investment officer G Squared Private Wealth. Victoria, thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely, I was laughing because I definitely need a GPS to get around, and the worst for me is when people are like go north or go south, Like I'm not not Lewis and Clark. I need I need a left or right here, like, please don't tell me to look at the sunbur directions. I'm gonna need a little help. I feel the same way. Um, But so you're joining us on the podcast for the first time, I was hoping you could just start out telling us a little bit about your firm. Sure. So, the Square Private Wealth is a boutique advisory firm. We focus more on ultra high out worth and planning and portfolio management for them. We tend to be a little bit boring with our asset allocations. You know, we're not trying to be a hedge fund, uh and what we do think positioning and active management is important. But at the end of the day, a lot of our clients are that don't mess it up clients, So you know, we're not looking to necessarily be day traders or anything like that. You know, we never got into the meme stocks where we're a little bit boring that way. Like I feel like traditional asset allocation now, like when you're trying to talk about it, it's just not not sexy anymore. Everybody wants to throw in something in there that that just is like alive in it up. But we do think it's important, especially now you know, we're working very closely with clients about where do we allocate capital, where are we on a bottom or a bear, how long this may last? And and so we spent a lot of time. We have a pretty small book, we're about fifty million, but we've got under a hundred clients. UM, So we spent a lot of the time with the extensive planning and portfolio management for the individual I like that don't don't mess it up strategy, that big, good name for investors, different additive, but I don't think that's allowed on this show. So yes, a family, a family podcast like this, A lot of kids, a lot of kids listening, especially since the beam stocks took off. So we'll see. But you know, Victoria, I always wonder with a firm like Years based in Texas, UM. You know, if if you were managing money in California, I'd wonder, in say, Silicon Valley, I'd wonder if everyone was, you know, very bullish on tech and venture capital. So in Texas I have to wonder, you know, does the energy industry sort of uh influence your clients? You know, are they gung ho about energy or are they looking to diversify energy. How does it sort of influence the investment decisions of high net worth clients in Texas. Yeah, it probably makes them a little more bullish on the energy industry. But some of our clients actually we run x energy because it depends on what their exposures are. So if you have a privately held company or you're on board of a public company, you've already got that exposure. So we're actually kind of trying to diversify and mitigate the concentration. Because everybody in Texas is well aware that the oil market is cyclical, right, so you're ride up the good times, but you know there's a flip side to it at some point, you know. And in this last decade has been super hard in the energy industry. We had like five crashes within ten years, um and and so they're just this waringiness about Okay, yes we are bullish energy and the energy transition. While E s G is coming and electrics coming, it's going to take a little bit longer to adopt than we are seeing that play out here in two So probably I would say not to generalize, but the attitude of a lot of our clients is that the death of energy was over exaggerated. So not to say that there aren't concerns about E. S G or climate change or things like that, but it tends to make them a little bit more willing to have a football hold in that that segment. So I do think it's a little bit of of what you know does influence what you feel comfortable investing in. Uh, you know, you have the same thing happened in California, and you know, if you're in San Francisco area, you probably are very very comfortable with your tech exposures and a little bit more comfortable with the early stage and the small cap tech and the the innovators per se. That's that's very interesting to me that the next energy portfolio is. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. You know, they know the the home base industry, but to get exposure everything else that they bring in, you guys, it's pretty interesting. Yeah, it's well, it look at this last decade, like I said, especially like fourteen, and you know you had energy well beloween when you had it well below thirty dollars and you just couldn't get it really above thirty dollars for years, you know, in the Saudias and ope kind of crashing that. I distinctly remember that because I was on vacation for Thanksgiving when OPEC changed their policy, and it really really messed up my Thanksgiving. So I've never forgiven OPEC to that. But you know, I think it's something that investors always have to be aware of their their you know, totality of their portfolio and wealth. So let's say you have your salaries tied up in energy or natural gas and your dock ops and they're tied up in that, or your networks tied up in some sort of energy exposed business, whether it's in uh, you know, the services or fracking or transportation. You just have to be aware of how cyclical up businesses and you kind of want to counterbalance it and say, yeah, I want my portfolio, but I don't want to be focused on energy. I wanted to be diversified because anybody that's lived in Texas for more than ten years knows at some point this it's going to come back down, you know, how long it stays elevated. If this is like A one where we saw that spike on the Gulf Woor, if this is an OH eight where again we saw a spike, but it came back hard. You know, how long does oil stay above a hundred? That's you know, the million dollar question down here. We do tend to think it's gonna stay elevated a little bit longer, just because of the supply demand dynamics. And we did see a lot of things shut down when we had negative energy prices and people were you know, paying you to take and store oil. I mean, wow, what what a difference twenty four months makes between like literally they were paying you to take it and now we're paying you know, five dollars at the pump to get it. Well, I know that you had sent us over our note uh talking about some of the energy names that you do like, so maybe could you walk us through some of them. I think it's like Devon Energy, e o G, Diamondback Energy. And I wanted to ask you because we had Daniel You're going on the podcast recently and he was saying we could continue to see the the supply crunch, meaning that prices are going to continue to stay elevated. Is that also your expectation for the energy? Yeah? I like it. So, And this goes into the greater theme of like what's happening in the world right now, and the de globalization and as you may see Russia removed from the market. You're seeing all of this rebalancing of supply and demand, and it's hitting commodities harder. It's not just energy, it's hitting it's fertilizers, it's it's all of the exports that are in some precious metals. I think, what are they. It's not lithium, it's what's the press palladium. They're a huge, huge supplier of palladium. And so you're seeing this rebalance and shift and all of these things take a lot of time to redistribute and build up supply chains. So our base cases oil is staying elevated for the next eighteen months. I don't see it coming back down. I don't see the demand cruns happening, you know. You know, yeah, China, you kind of live and die by China some But if you look at the travel and the consumption in the United States and Europe and where the trends are um most every developed nation has not does not have a zero COVID policy anymore. It's it's we're gonna just deal with it. I know COVID it's like a dirty word these day because we're so tired of talking about it. But it's still there. I mean, that's what's affecting China and Chinese demand. UM. And Chinese demand may also get a little messy because China and India have shown willingness to buy cheap Russian crewed. Some of its geographically easy for them as well as you know, if they can buy it at thirty dollars and they're you know, concerned about their economic growth. UM. So we may see some demand wane in China, but generally speaking, barrel for the next eight teen months, I think is distinctly possible. You have not seen this wildcat or mentality come back in right. So if you look at the graph of the Baker huge rig count, you know, and you saw like coming up the where like sixteen hundred rigs. And then obviously we had the OPEC change and everybody lost lost lost their ass to be quite frank with you. UM. And and so you saw this grand the investment in the oil and gas industry. And even now we're well well below peak, we're still well below pandemic era UM oil and gas rigs out there. So you have seen oil companies and you'll see this theme. And the oil and gas stocks that I like, the Devon, the e O G, the Fang, you know, UM and the Pioneer. They are US based with a big foot put in the permium. They have low brake events, and they're absolutely pushing cash to shareholders. They are not putting it back on the ground. They are saying, thank you, shareholders for trusting us, here's your money back. Really sorry, we didn't make you money for a decade, but here you go, let's make some money now. But you're not seeing that wild counter mentality that happened with other oil price spikes, because that would happen and you'd have this massive inflow of let's get more rigs out there, and just you know, supplying demand would eventually flip it over you. If you look at the slope of how the rig count has increased, it's a much lower trajectory. Nobody's really pushing a ton of money back into CAPEX. So we love the stocks that are giving our shareholders just a better return right now. Like Devon Energy at a hundred dollars barrel is like a sixtent free cash flow yield. They're pushing out of their free cash flow and a variable dividend every quarter, Like you're talking a lot of money to sit and wait. Plus you might get price appreciations still because they keep making more money. And if you look at where earnings revisions are happening, about the only place that we're thinking earnings are going to go up as energy, And so the pe s there are actually still even with this massive price moving up in a lot of these stocks, the ps are actually still very nominal and very value oriented. I actually I was writing about this earlier this week where there's this e t F. It's like a cash cows The ticker is really funny CEO w Z, but but it's been seeing tons of inflows. And when I was looking at the names within it, their energy names, and it's companies with high free cash flow yields. So does that make sense to you to see something like that, we want cash, we want money. Right now is playing defense and survival, Like not to sound super dour about the world, but by is let's survive as this year with as minimal damage as we can, Like we're trying to avoid falling on hand grenades and avoid it like a complete blow up and I do think the energy sector. I'm aware of commodity price spikes. We can go back and look through all the charts. We actually did this whole big research thing of what's killed off oil markets in the past. So what killed off the nineties oil market, the eighties oil market, oh a, and then the whole decade which was a complete lost decade in oil and gas, and then obviously implosion. Um. But when you look at these companies now you are getting massive cash flows back, and I feel like the cash flows are sustainable. So Devin Energy, I love. They're my top pick in the space, so I do talk about them frequently. But they've got only the oil hedged, so they're actually seeing a lot more of a fern um. You know, that was one problem a little bit with the e m p s last year. We still had pretty high hedges coming out of two thousand uh and then you see those fixed plus variable dividend and now other people have modeled after it is not as unique anymore. But they pushed I think one a dollar twenty seven as a quarterly dividend. It was a great yield. And if you look at how that's grown and how they expect their free cash flow to grow. They're they're they're doing everything they can to make their shareholders reap the rewards that they're getting UM and their share buybacks. I think they authorized another two billion and they've they've literally brought back three of their market cap. So if Devin thinks they're stocks worth owning, you know, share by backs are one of the good uses of cash, and it's a way to enhance your shareholder value. Victoria wondering what you think is causing that sort of you know, as you describe it, that wildcat or mentality from returning UM. Is it's simply just a legacy of the busts that that you've talked about in the last few decades, or you know, people love to politicize oil production and claim it's it's a result of you know, Biden and and energy policy. But is it you know, is there anything that policy could do right now to increase production or is it just you know, like you said, Uh, those busts of the last few decades have really left their scar and no one wants to rush in and oversupply the market right now. I think it's more they don't want to oversupply the markets I mean, like like if you again, if you look at the rig count and how we've messed up some of these other other um bull markets and oil, it's been an oversupply eventually happens, and that's typical and most commodity markets, right, commodity prices spike, you bring more production online. Now you're supplying demand rebalances. We never actually get balanced. I don't think I've ever actually seen it come out of your market that we would consider balanced. Were either under supplied or oversupplied. And quite frankly, the last two years, we've had this whiplash between the two um and that's something we'll talk about frequently down here. The Biden administration and the US energy industry do not have a good relationship. I think that's putting it mildly. I think there's a lot of angst about government regulations. I think there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of rhetoric about you know, the then the Biden administration is definitely pushing greener and and climate change issues in the oil and gas industry. It definitely felt a little unloved. But I'm not sure there's anything that Biden administration could do. Yeah, they could open up some more leases, but you actually have a lot of people that have a lot of leasing and permitting. And if you look at the timeline between when when a company can buy a lease, so when they actually like get that gasoline in your car, it's years and years. I mean, there's permitting, then you actually have to drill it, then you actually have to like pump the oil out of it. Then you gotta transport it, then you gotta refine it, and then you gotta transport to gas stations, and all of those things take a lot of permitting. So could it be eased if if regulations were eased, you know, that's that's the rallying cry of less regulation and less government coming from Texas. But at the same point, it's not going to immediately make an impact on the pump. You know, look at the release of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That did nothing. You know, at the end of the day, that did nothing to relieve it because some of it you just don't have enough refinery capacity right now. You have some refiners golf most refineries are finding it at So could the industry and the government have a better relationship, Yes, could that foster a little bit more drilling. Yes, Is it going to bring back a lot of supply quickly, No, just because of the timeline it would take between like, yeah, I'm gonna go get that lease and get it all permitted and get it drilled. It's not like it's showing up at you know, the gas station tomorrow. And just to bring us back to the broader market. Obviously, every conversation I've had this week has revolved around whether or not we've had a bottom, whether or not we've hit it or probed it or tried to form it or you know, I've heard some people saying that we are. It's going to be a rounded bottom. It's going to take some time to to to form. So I'm just wondering what you think and what you're expecting from the market. I don't think we found a bottom yet. I know Friday was a really great turnaround. We had that important thirty fifteen support level held and that was huge and that kind of caused that interday reversal. You know, yesterday you saw a rally off. I know we're on the tech side. We are approaching that very long term trend line that we might break through. Um, I just think we're we're not done yet. You know, I think there is a little bit more of the first leg because I always asked, you know, what is our catalyst? How are we going to get growth? You really haven't seen a lot of earning revisions, and so we talk about, well, valuations have come down. Yeah, the the P part of the P and E have come down. What happens when the E starts to go back down to you know, there's two parts to that. And if we don't have earnings expansion or at least earning staying status quo, you're gonna see valuations maybe aren't quite as low as they're looking now. Um. You know that being said, it has held. I just don't think we're done yet. I think this is more of a relief rally. Um. If you look for the signs of capitulation, down age, the VIC spiking, Um, you know, we're just not there yet. Yeah. Cash balances have have definitely increased, and yes we've seen some equity selling, but not a well and true panic. Like not to sound like a snob, but I need like a solid panic. You know, we just haven't seen that that that solid absolute capitulation. Everything selling off, you know, we we we aren't there yet. And then my concern also where is your growth where you know margins are definitely being squeezed, and and we we're gonna have to wait until the FED can send the economy into a recession to stop some of this. And my oppression is you think that's kind of inevitable that you know, the Fed's not going to be able to bring inflation from eight percent plus back to their target without they triggering I I not that I don't. Yeah, I mean I would. I would say I would love and I would challenge somebody to say, has the FED ever navigated a difficult situation? Well, not to rip on them, it's a thankless job because they're either too early, too late, too harsh, too too easy money. You know, they never get it just right. But you look at any other situation we've had high inflation or is any type of bubble irrational exuberance, you know green span, you know, you go through your history here and and I'm just like, prove it to me, show me a soft landing, show me that you actually can can navigate this and not just like nose dive. And I don't think there's any way. Well, I I guess the only way people think it could happen is if the supply chain issues sort themselves out, which seems unlikely with China stick into this COVID zero policy. I mean, does it Does it all kind of go back to China as much as the FED? Yeah, I would say the FED. You know, if we were gonna talk about the heavyweights here and what's going to impact it, one is fed to is China and global demand UM. And China is definitely a wild card. It's always a little questionable what their growth numbers are. I feel like you've got to take that a bit with the grain assault. Whatever China says they're doing, kind of kind of have to divide it by a factor of fives to see what it's really like. You know, what's lurking in China's market? Uh? You know the housing over there is that kind of rolling over How much? How many? How much problems does the Chinese market have, not just on demand but the zero COVID policy? UM? And then you know you talk about moving supply chains and resiliency and supply chains. Again, these are not easy things to fix. You can't just build a chip factory and call it. You know, Tuscaloosa in a day, you're talking about massive resources. And if you look at it, like aw, semi conductors start in Taiwan almost they're they're just the mecca and they have the technology and the expertise, and it is extremely the number of circus they're putting on semi conductors, which is like the problem child for supply chain, right, Like, if you're gonna talk about supply chain, semiconductors was like the number one thing that really messed up the entire world. I don't think you can move a lot of that stuff easily out of Taiwan because it's they're putting so much on those tiny little chips. It's such a specialized build with specialized technology. You can't just like pop it up like you can build a McDonald's. Can I ask you about peak inflation because I was reading some notes this week that that actually we're talking about China where we had everybody saying in the last couple of weeks that maybe we have hit peak inflation, and yet we now have China coming out of those lockdowns and that's gonna sort of have this put for the pressure on prices. So what do you see in terms of inflation peak maybe, but declining No, So I think there are different magnitudes here. So are we going to continue to see eight and a half year over year increases? Probably not right. So have we hit kind of our peak growth and inflation? Are we going to see inflation moderate or moderate quickly down to a more normalized level. No. I think we leave this year at a six handle. Like I think there's just too much pressure. The only caveat to that would be at the labor market and the housing market crashed. You can see those two things obviously rapid they bring down inflation. But look at you know, if you start to take apart inflation, we're pending spending a lot on services. Airlines are super happy, right They're charging US eleven twelve percent more, and they can keep hiking tickets and we keep buying them because we're so excited to travel again. You know, the same thing for for most services right now, you're seeing more and more hiking on the upside. And then look at the supply constrained areas like food. Food is actually something that I think is a huge risk. You know, we're a little more secure here in the United States, but if you look at what happened in Ukraine and all of the areas that Ukraine supplied wheat and some of the basic stables for uh. You again, you're seeing a supply taking off the market. That's gonna put more pressure on everybody else. And then we have some of our own crop problems. You know, farmers are struggling some with weather, higher fertilizing prices, higher diesel prices, um, and so you know, no, we're not having like a major flu outbreak or swine flu where we're having to kill off herds. But at the same point, I think you have a lot of sure on food. You have a lot of pressure on the fuels. I don't see the fuel inflation crash or so you start kind of parsing apart cp I on some of the inflation and saying, what do I think has wiggle room. I do think maybe rent and and average probe prices could come down. I mean the mortgage you know, some of the housing data we're getting is not super amazing. So I think you can start to see possibly outside roll over, But a lot of the other things energy, food, UM, and then services, I don't see that coming back. Yeah, I think that food supply story is about to become a very dramatic story over the next few months. As long as this were continues, it's gonna it's alarming. Um h. Victoria value over growth. Um It's it's sort of the Crips versus the blood story and markets all the time. I would ask a very simple question. It might seem oversimplified, but the more I read about value and growth, the less I think it is. But how do you define value? You what's your definition of a value stock? Uh? I mean one goes to peo or the price you're paying for your dollar of earnings, right, And so when you look at a value stock, you want to say, hey, we don't have this great growth trajectory. We expect some growth, but I'm paying a moderate amount of premium for this dollar of earnings that you're gonna give me. So I feel like it's reasonably valued for for what you're gonna give me and the fact that you're not gonna have exponential growth. So I think again, it's trading out a reasonable price of reasonable valuation based upon the cash flows, dividends and and the the earnings that you're expected to have. Now, I think there's a lot of kind of you know, growth and drag. Value kind of dressed up a little bit differently because the question is the sustainability of earning. So when you look at a value stock, is that stock truly a value stock where I feel like I'm not over paying for your cash flow in the future if their earnings are at risk. And I think a little bit, you know, when we can talk about the duration of the stock and and you know what what's happening in the ewth market. But I think that's one thing investors need to be aware of. It's a trajectory and projection of earnings and cash flows for those companies, um and and and how stable and how resilient are those And that's why I think you saw that retail wreck of a week last week, and and because you saw a lot of retailers saying, look, we're hitting inflationary prices, uh, and we're not going to be able to actually generate as much money. And a lot of those retailers are kind of a little more retailer staples. You know your your Walmart's right, let's let's pick on Walmart. You know, they're like the end all be all of consumer staples. If you think about consumer staples. You think about Walmart and the fact that they warned about where their growth and their margins are going to come from. Even though it's not a hugely over valued stock, if you look at it on matrix of price the book or price the e but a price the earnings, it still took a hit because there's just like, if you're not going to generate that much cash, maybe I don't even want to pay you know, fifteen times because it's just not worth it if you're not going to generate enough or so I think quality is key, but sustainability and where those cash flows come from. You know, how exposed are you to a consumer slowdown? How azilian are you to the consumer pocketbook taking it? Because I mean the consumer is being asked to absorb so much right when you think about it. Rants are high, gas is high, food is high. Those three things or something no human being in the United States can really avoid, right, Yeah, it Walmarts a good example I was taking target to. I mean it's you know, you're looking at a stock with an eleven or twelve p right now, and everyone's saying value value, value, Well, it's it's trickier than it sounds. I guess it is, and technically they're discretionary. I don't know exactly how we drew that line between Walmart being Staples staples and Target being discretionary, because I mean, I guess the tar J maybe as discretionary, but Target Staples, I'm not sure how we want to delineate that. But yeah, they're they're the example of you know, how much risk is their their margins and their earning is going to be and you are seeing changing in consumer buying habits um best buy, you know, but you also have for mixed signals right now of what this buy. I mean Nordstrom. Somehow Target had a horrible earnings, but Nordstrom it was just fine and and and excited and upbeat like that. That to me was a little bit of like I needed a drink after reading that, because if that one's a little crazy to me, Yeah, it's it's kind of the opposite of what you would expect in a recessionary environment, or at least concerns of a recessionary environment. Victoria, So can you talk about value versus growth because I've been seeing some notes recently. Let's say the sell off and growth has just it's gone on too long. It's it's overdone, and maybe it's time to start, you know, dipping your toe in the growth splace? What do you make of that? So your kids in a falling knife or you know, the other way I look at it, you're kind of looking for diamonds, and a pilot turns what you are. You're you're looking for things, and we have one like, no video is one we really like? You know, I may have a little we'll see what they look like after earnings. But you look and you have NA Video or Apple and some of the big ones, you know, the Luster, the fang stocks or the Magma stocks or whatever we're referring to them. Now. I'm not cool enough to know what the acronym is. Always I don't care if their name is Meta, is always going to be fang. I'm not calling it. Yeah, a large cap tech Uh you know, they're they're the poster child for the problems. I think it's just so much. So let's let's start parsing apart the tech market, right. Social media is one, I think, uh, and Snap scared everybody yesterday of where where the advertising dollars going to go? And social media I think is so fickle because as soon as you have and even a Netflix goes into that one, your subscription based or your eyeball based business, and especially ones that you're trying to you know, make the teenagers and the use of the world engaged so you get the biggest bang on your buck for advertising, you know. I think it's it's a fickle world. In ten years, As Facebook still relevant, I'm not sure as a social media platform. So if you try to stress test some of the earnings for Facebook, a Twitter, a snap and say, in ten years, is this platform still relevant, It's hard to know. I mean I was kind of thought we'd have flying cars by now, but you know, not yet. I mean not unless you have to overpass a little too fast yours. Yeah, I mean some of those things. Your trajectory on where the tech market goes, I think is what makes growth so hard. And that's why we like in the video because they're kind of continuing to modify. It's not just gaming. You also are getting into your data centers, you're getting the self driving cars. You're seeing the company continue to progress, and Facebook is trying to do that, but quite frankly, everybody is kind of you know, the metaverse is something that we're all struggling with. Even though multiple technologies now are talking about the metaverse type of situation. They want this all encompassing universe. Um, it's it's something I think we're having trouble kind of agreeing to move to this encompassing virtual reality world. Um. But then again, I'm an old millennial, so I barely know what's hip anymore. So I maybe shouldn't be a parting on on what happens. But I think that's the hardest problem with the tech industry. So as Apple still relevant in ten years, I think absolutely, because Apple has definitely continued to modify, They're getting more into health. The first person that gets their smart watch to do blood pressure or blood sugar and do it well is going to absolutely have a massive growth engine because it certainly health is pushing more and more virtual and mobile and and you know, and ways that people can manage their health has changed. And I know Apple, you know they can do the e k G and they can do heart rate monitoring. But as soon as you have those two things, that's gonna rapidly change how millions of people receive services. So I look at Apple and I say, yeah, they're continuing to evolve. And I'm sure at some point I'm gonna pay two thousand dollars for a stupid phone. But I'm all in on at Like, I've got my AirPod, my phone, my iPod, my watch. I mean, I couldn't leave Apple, you know, I could never divorce Apple would be so messy. I wouldn't even know what to do. They make so many decisions for me. They make it easy. They're like, cool, we have this set up here. Do you like it. I'm like, yeah, that's great, thank you for pouching that for me. And that's very helpful. Mike, I was I was invited to a conference in the metaverse this week, A conference in the metaverse. A conference in the metaverse. I will say, I think Victoria the metaverse may be the only place you'll get those flying cars anytime, anytime soon. And I'm a little confused. I mean, so if you go to a conference in the metaverse, you have to have like the VR goggles like in your little VR avatar, or do you just like show up in a zoom room like this and it's a horrible like non conference conference. I think it's that is a planthetic conference and a metaverse I want like VR and avatars like come on. That means that means we're cut in the metaverse right now, and this only count. The only innovation I would like from Apple is a watch band that actually stays on your wrist. I love to watch, but the band keeps falling off for some reason. Anyway, just a mommoo, Tim Cook if you I think. I think the thing that Apple is very good at is their their base successories kind of sucks. So they're like, please upgrade to your four watch band. So I think it cheap and poor, and so that's it. They know I'll lose the watch eventually and have to have to buy a do on and stuff. But but Victoria, you know, uh, the big question this year is, obviously, how do you play defense in this stock market? I gotta say that when I look at the bond yields where they're at now, Yes, I know they're still negative on a on a real basis and inflation adjusted, but if you have some sort of faith that inflation is going to come back to two, you know, are treasuries attractive? Yet? Are they? Are they looking cheap to you at all? Yeah? I mean well, I mean I like them or at three twenty that I do at to seventy five on a tenure, and I think that's one of the thing driving them down. And I also think this is what is not voting well for the markets. You know, the first part of the year was such an anomaly where you had treasuries falling at the same time you had the market selling off, which typically that correlation is not something that's very high. Um. And so now you've seen the correlation break and normalize, which is market is kind of in the toilet, and treasury market is rallying, and that does mean, you know, the tenure rallying. So it's a little less that's more about long term inflationary you know, if you look more at the two year and what's happening with that, that's more our short term expectations. UM. But I do think like to seventy five, I mean, what is it negative on a real basis that at eight and a half percent inflation? I mean the only thing not negative on a real basis is stocks and and and even then and not divided yields. So I do think parking some and playing defense there is good. You know, I'd watched your high yield bonds. I think a lot of people don't know what they own in a bond fund, and and a lot of them until recently, the best performing bond funds were the longer duration, higher credit right. And so sometimes if you're trying, you're looking at your four own K plan, you're looking at your menu, and you're seeing these total returns, or you're um, you know, anything that's opportunistic, you know, and that's my keyword. If there's opportunistic in a bond fund, that means there's probably credit risk. And so I think people learned the hard way a little bit more about credit risk. But I think you do play some defense. I mean two seventy five, you know, if you can get you're seeing the short term rates come up. Um, then again you might be losing on a real basis, but you can at least make something. And and we're coming off such a period of low rates. I'm like, I could buy a six months bond at one and a half, Like, oh my goodness, Like that's just amazing, Like I'm so excited for other nicest points. So, I mean, some of it's just a more normalization of where we might see yields, but um, you know, I do think it's it's worth it to have a little bit in that. You know. The one that's been surprising, it's gold. Gold really hasn't been you know. If you talk about how do you play defense in your portfolio, is it cash, treasuries, other bonds, alter natives. You know, some of the alternatives have done very well, you know, but you also have seen gold which is up, but it's not in this high inflationary period. You really have seen it struggle to break nine day above it um and it keeps trying and it keeps really not breaking out. So I think that's been eye opening talk about this year of both bond and or gold and bitcoin. The tried and true inflationary, supposedly inflationary offsets haven't really done what they're supposed to do. And I think Bitcoin has had a lot of a gut check this year in a period of massive monetary spending and printing money and high inflation. That was like the two core tenants of why bitcoin should work to offset those two things, and it's down what this year. Well, those core tenants are kind of a moving target though a little bit so, so I take it you're not a crypto ball. No. I mean, I do believe in blockchain, and I like the idea um and you know, every now and then in his thirty or a thousand dollars in my coin based account. But I mean I look at this and say it's I think it's gonna really depend what coin and how does it get used? Right, So we talk about cryptocurrencies, and it's not just Bitcoin or ethereum. You have all these different coins, but how are they actually going to be used? You know, I know there's the novelty of technically you could buy like a Tesla with it, but that's such a inefficient way because the price fluctuate so much as well as there's a lot of you know, the mark to market. How do you know exactly so what the price of bitcoin is? And and you know, anytime there's a free app, which I'm aware of, that that you are you you are the products. So that means somehow when you're transacting it's not just a transaction fee. But it's very hard to know what the markups. Maybe our true pricing transparency on on crypto is a little bit harder, it's still it's it's it's very much a frontier market. Regulation has not really been figured out yet. I mean the I r S figured it out real quick. I mean they're tax it too, you know. So the I R S was the first one to catch on that, hey we we got to do something here. But I think the existential question of is it a currency, is it an investment? Is it of an alternative investment? You know? And then how does it get used and adopted? I think those are are yet to be seen. Yeah, alright, Victoria. Well, if if you try to pay for your flying uber in the metaverse and they only take crypto, I'm gonna they only take My craziest thing it does have to do with crypto. Imagine that, Imagine that you found something crazy in the crypto. Yes, let's hear, what's your crazy thing for the week. Well, you'll remember that a couple of weeks ago I was in Miami and the big bitcoin conference there. There were twenty five thousand people. There was like lots of parties and techno music, and the mayor of Miami unveiled bitcoin bull statue. And my craziest thing is about Miami Coin, which is the city's cryptocurrency. Its price has fallen Wow, the stable coins are a little less stable. I mean that's been that's been a boy enlightening for people. Yeah. I like how Vildonna's in London one week, Miami the next week, an international woman of mystery. Here. They don't let me out of the zip code. Here. I can barely go to lunch without someone complaining watching the flight attendant. So I definitely think you're a c I a spy. Now like watching it too? What a fun show, right, it's a good show. It's good. I did think season one was a little bit better than two, but two is still very, very entertaining. So definitely, And I'm gonna assume you work for the CIA. Now I gotta watch that one. It's like a murder mystery and a TV show. Oh that's right up Phil Donna's alley. Yeah, I love that stuff. Yeah, I never heard of it. You know, Victoria, you say you're an older millennial when you're out of touch Wall, I'm practically a boomer. I have no idea what's going on any anywhere. It's true. But that's why I bill Donna to keep me, keep me up to date on the hip. And yeah, I do like a cheap seat sometimes to talk to like our next gen clients when I'm talking to their kids, because I'm like, I don't want to be like the parody where it's like, oh, yeah, that's whack, like you know or whatever the hip terms are. So I maybe like a translation. I think Google should should come out with that, right, like how to speak next Gen, so you know, and I don't. I still don't know if it's a gift or a jeff or a meme or mam. Like, I don't know. I'm fifty of what I'm going to say and how it gets pronounced. So definitely not cool in that regards. I try to rely on my teenage daughters, but they're they're too far, too avant card, they're too ahead of the curve that that you know, I'm talking done at TikTok. Uh. Yeah, I've been in a lot of TikTok's I'm not even aware of. I think they try to catch me doing something stupid and that's my worst. That is my worst. Yeah. Yeah, that I'm going to be the background of somebody's TikTok and I'm gonna like become this internet sensation for like stuffing my face as people are dancing or something like that. I'm pretty sure that's where I'm at already. But but Victoria, how about you, what's the craziest thing you saw in the past week. Um, has it only been a week. We'll give you a month. We'll give you a month of crazy things. A month of crazy thing. It's a good month to be crazy. I mean, I'm gonna have to just go with some of the weird inter day reversals we've had. Like, I know that's not tooper crazy, but again, we've seen those like thousand points moves in a day, and sometimes you really don't know, like the Invisible hand is has been at work this this month, so you've seen some of those weird reversals, and um, you know that to me is a little surprising. And then obviously, I think the weird thing for me is cash that last thirty minutes of trading. I'm like holding my breath because sometimes it's like, oh, we'll get this reversal, and sometimes it's like, mmmm, now watch me drop. And I don't really like that. But I think the the speed of some of these moves, it's just it's fascinating to watch it really is. I mean, I guess it's for liquidity to some degree. But I read a few charts the other day and Bitcoin has actually been less bottle than the SMP on like a five day rolling five day basis. So this week's sign of the apocalypse. I mean, I don't know what else I might be like, it's your apocalypse bingo card out, but Bitcoin being more stable than the is I mean, you get be a winner if you called that one. Yeah, exactly that believe it or not. That's not the craziest thing I saw in the last week. As I promised, mine is uh British themed in honor vill Donna's very large expense account for the week, I'm gonna have to not to take a look at your expense account after this week, Bildonna. But if you would like to live like a royal is how the Bloomberg story starts out. How much would you pay for Buckingham Palace? Some firm called McCarty stone actually did a an appraisal of Buckingham Palace. Um. I don't know why, I think just to get their name in the news. They are a developer of retirement home communities, so perhaps this being the pashious retirement home in all of England. They appraised Buckingham Palace, so Wildonna. We'll tell you what time it is. Victoria's time to play prices right here on what goes up? What do you think the appraised worth of Buckingham Palace is in British pounds sterling by the way, not US dollars obviously, I mean much difference now, I mean we're almost going to be a bit more. That's a fair point. That's a fair point. Okay, I'll accept either. Then do it. What's your what's your appraisal for Buckingham Palace? Well, I think British people would definitely say priceless, right, that's true. That's true, and it is and it's not really it's obviously not really for sale. Brexit hasn't been that bead on the on the Royals. They're not actually selling it. Let me give you a little, a little uh details on the listing here, seven hundred and seventy five room. Whoa palace, seven hundred and seventy five rooms with five hundred fifty million pounds five fifty million pounds. Victoria, what's your guests at the assessed value of Buckingham Palace? I'm gonna go with the prices right rules on, we're gonna go four or five forty nine million British pounds because right, we're playing prices right rules, so close, that's what we're under. Yes, so right, so you're going a dollar under under okay, one point three billion pounds. That's a hot real estate market in London, I guess, is uh answer. Yeah. I've also heard castles aren't that super fun to stay in. They're kind of drafty and cold. Yeah, I think Fla is probably staying in one. I got to check your expensive count. It's good time to hear though. It's nice, nice and worm in uh in London. But now here's the other then. The total value of the UK's royal property portfolio is three points seven billion pounds UM, up four hundred and sixty million pounds since two. So uh, this is my favorite line of the story. If the ten figures for a London home seems a bit steep, but cartley Stone also calculates Buckingham Palace could be rented for two point six million pounds a month, so come on, yeah, maybe that's the way to go, you know something. YouTuber would rent that out for a party in a heartbeat, it would. I mean, conference right, I don't know if you get the guard for that price with the fuzzy hats and the and the marching front and stuff, I don't know. I went I went down that rabbit hole a little bit because I googled what the Duchy of Cromwell was because I was very curious. You know, they started with the whole Megan and Hairy drama like the Duchy and the finances started coming out, and as an informed American, I had to google with a lot of things meant. But yeah, the royal family is has I mean, they own a lot of land. It helps when you owned it for hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of years. I mean talk about you know, real estate investment. That that's been huge for them. Yeah, buy and hold at its finest. I suppose because it diamond hand. The Queen's definitely got no state taxes. Somehow, I don't get that. When you set the laws, you get to do what you want. That's right, that's it. That's the key. That's the key to good investment. Get to set the laws. Victory. I think that is all the time we have, But we really really appreciate your insights this week. Um. Great to catch up with you and I hope we can have your back some day. Absolutely, it's fun, guys. Thanks so much, Yeah, thank you so much. What Goes Up. We'll be back next week and so then you can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal website and app or wherever you get your podcasts. We love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts, so more listeners can find us. And you can find us on Twitter follow me at Reaganonymous. Well, Donna Hirich is at Bildanna Hirich. You can also follow Bloomberg Podcasts at Podcasts. What Goes Up is produced by Stacy Wang. The head of Bloomberg podcast is francesco Leavie. Thanks for listening, See you next time.