Where’s the Volatility?

Published Aug 13, 2021, 7:19 PM

Many traders expected this summer to be a volatile one for U.S. markets, but so far it’s been quiet as can be. What happened? Chris Gaffney, head of world markets at TIAA Bank, joins the “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss. 

Hello, and welcome to What Goes Up, a weekly markets podcast. My name is Mike Reagan. I'm a senior editor at Bloomberg and Ilana Hi reporter on the Cross Acid team. This week on the show, well, a few weeks ago, we talked about the U turn that had happened in markets, with some of the moves triggered by optimism about vaccines and the reopening of the economy reversing and going the other way. Well, strap on your chin straps because it's all going back the other way now. Value in cyclical stocks are outperforming once again and the yield curve is once again stepening. So what's going on? Is the new old the old new again? And can we expect these trends to continue? We'll get into it with Chris Gaffney, who's the head of World Markets at t I A A Bank and of Wars. Will close out the show with the craziest thing we saw in markets this week, And remember, if you see anything crazy, give us a call on the podcast hotline at six or six three to four, three four nine zero, leave us a voice, bail and maybe we'll play your craziest thing on the show. Well, don one thing that's crazy. Is this weather? This is the type of weather where an old guy like me is forced to ask the age old question. You're ready, I'm read well. I was actually just before we started chatting, I was reading a story from one of our colleagues and one of the quotes really struck me was about the heat wave that's hitting New York City this week where where I live, and it said all the cement is going to radiate heat indoors. It will be life, life threatening situation, which is my goodness, you just took this to a very dark place. I was hoping for some and now, well, the cement that's only to radiate heat indoors is that's the part that struck me. I probably shouldn't have read the second part. Didn't mean to scare you. Well. I like that your answer was grounded in well and well sourced reporting. They're not just not a nothing off the top of the head. For Wildonna, she comes with the actual reporting. My secret is, and Vildonna, this is something as a Jersey native you'll appreciate. My secret is Italian ice. I can take any type of weather as long as the Italian Ice store is open. And we got a good new one in town. So I don't think you've got as good of an Italian ice selection as we do here in New Jersey and New York. Are you talking about Rita's that's like New Jersey ridis is good. I'm talking about They're actually a friend of the family to Cosmos. They only have two stores. They've been making Italian ice, or as we call him, Philly Wooter ice w W O O D E R. What are ice s ide? No, no one knows what you're talking about, but in Philly they do uh hundred and five years they've been making Italian ice and Elizabeth and now new store. In a touching, I didn't mean this to be a plug for the Cosmos, but so me it. My friends, my local friends will laugh because I'm kind of obsessed with them. I I've got a bit of an Italian nice problem, but in this heat, it's the best remedy. Even if I don't know what the concrete is gonna start melting on us or something. You're telling me, honestly, you have me sold in the water ice water ice, What do I all? Right? Well, even with even with the melting concrete, that that should be enough to keep us. Cool, But let's bring in our guest, um first time on the show. As I said, he's from t I A A Back. His name is Chris Gaffney. Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks much. I appreciate you the invitation and I look forward to the discussion today. Yeah, Chris, I'm gonna start off with an easy question. I just want to know I'm not very familiar with the World Markets department of t I A Back. UM, I'm guessing note some four X services that that type of thing talk us through what what your your group does and what your role is there. So we offer individual investors the ability to invest into currencies um, both for transactional purposes and for an investments, and then precious metals. So I've run a currency and precious metals desk UM. It's kind of unique. You you know, the institutions play in that field a lot um, but typically investor individual investors, uh, you know, have a tougher time finding uh the availability of currency investments in and precious metals. So we're big on diversification obviously, so we we think they're they're good asset classes. And I've been in this uh doing this job for I guess, uh, thirty plus years, thirty five years now, so I've been in in a while, still a rookie, you huh. Yeah. And Chris, I was going to ask you. You and I chat from time to time, and I really enjoy our conversations. I always turned to you when something's going on with markets and I need an explainer, And so I was hoping you could sort of start us out just giving us a sense of how you're making sense with what's going on with the stock market, because coming into August, I remember, the was tons of fear about the sort of seasonal volatility factor. In August was supposed to be a much choppier month, and here we are, We're record highs. It's been sort of tranquil. So how are you making sense of everything that's going on? It's been great markets, I mean, and it all goes back to the economic environment here in the US. I mean, this is just a fantastic economic environment for companies, and and stock performance always goes back to the earnings to company earnings. So um, you know, we've got low interest rates, we've got um pent up demand, and then you've got extremely strong consumer and corporate balance sheets. So all those add up to markets that are you know, I use the words flogging higher because it's it's not a dramatic rise that we've seen. Certainly, the numbers are pretty eye popping when you compare it to you know, the depths of the fall. But uh um, you know we're just marching higher. Uh continually marching higher. And something you brought up about Choppingess, we we expected a lot more choppiness in these markets. I mean we we thought volatility was going to be pretty high, um with all the push pulls that we're seeing. But you know, we've we've really just seen a slow and steady increase in these markets, almost almost boring at times. I you know, I hate to use that because now we'll see a dramatic swing, but uh um, you know they've just been marching higher. Well, one shoppiness I'm guessing your team must have had their eye on was that that plunge and goal to start the week? Um, even before the week started. I guess what was it Sunday night? Uh? You know, yeah, the precious metals prices. You know, conspiracy theorists will tell you that, you know, they're they always move on the weekends because the markets are you know, uh, there's less liquidity out there, and the big moves always come on the weekends. And but honestly, we we you know, we we couldn't figure out exactly what drove that drop. Um maybe it was the jobs data, you know, the coming in stronger and um looking, you know, the the focus of investors shifted from a worry about you know, about a slowdown to act a strong labor, strong GDP growth, and that's not necessarily positive for for the precious metals. You know, gold is seen as a risk hedge and along with inflation hedge. So um, good strong markets, good strong labor growth probably weighed on the pricycle And Chris, you just mentioned you guys had thought that the market was going to be a lot more choppy. There's so many superlatives we can say about this market. One that has been standing standing out for me in recent days is, you know, we're up more than from the previous peak that we had reached before the pandemic. And so I'm just wondering why it's been so hard to call what's been going on with with the market, with stocks just continuing to I forget the word you used, trudge higher, Yes, slog higher. Yeah. Um, you know, I think it comes back to you know we expected shopping is because um, we're an unprecedented times obviously, and when when you're trying to project where the markets are going to go or even economic data, UM, you typically rely on models and the economic models. When when you have the dramatic shutdown of an economy and absolutely stopping everything, um, and then the fairly rapid recovery, those models just don't work. Um. So you know, trying to project where we're gonna be trying to even even free cash flows. I mean, you know when when companies have to shut down and then start back up. Um. You know, the the base effect on is one item that you know, the numbers were so bad that of course they're going to be really good on the recovery. Um. But another thing is the comparisons. You you just can't make those comparisons, and it's kind of thrown the models out of wax. So uh, projections. I think most people thought economists weren't going to be able to really dial in where we were going. But uh, um, it's I'm glad to say we've been marching steadily high, you know. Chris I'm wonder the perspective of some of your clients, UM, who might be internationally focused. UM. You know, obviously, one of the big themes we heard a lot about earlier this year and and sort of at the beginning of the year, UM was a lot of people were bracing for sort of an outperformance of international equities outside of the US. UM. To some degree, we've kind of seen that, you know, I'm looking at the Bloomberg screen here of developed markets, US is about eleventh place out of twenty four. You know, there's a lot of European markets Austria, Sweden, Netherlands, France that mark doing doing better. What's kind of what's kind of the sentiment at this stage of the year in the game, is there has that bullishness for sort of the rest of the world worn off. I don't think so, you know, but personally I'm still bullish on your And it's really about the reopening. You know, the US was first to really really well. China was first, but then the US came in and reopened and uh, you know, with our vaccine policy or vaccinations, although it's stalled out now, we were able to reopen more quickly than Europe. Europe was a little slower to reopen, so you know, we we probably hit that reopening UM surge faster than Europe. And and I still think Europe is gonna gonna come back. And I think there's opportunities also valuations just favor UM some other UM, other markets besides the US. And then on top of all of that, you've got the dollar. And you know, anytime you you invest internationally, unless you had your currency exposure, you're also investing in the currency of of that market that you're investing in. So UM. You know, the dollar going into this UH was very strong and its not even stronger at the beginning of the pandemic because we saw a lot of safe haven buying of the US dollar. International investors into the dollar came to treasuries. UM we're still seeing them. The tenure market yesterday was was bought by UH central banks, so UM and and outside investors, so we're still seeing some of that. UM. The dollar declined over over last year, but so far this year it's starting to move higher again. So UM, I still think that we're going to see a dollar decline, and mainly due to interest rate differentials. UM. But UM, I do think there's opportunities overseas still, although the US market is still I think gonna gonna Marke car And speaking of international markets, I think you and your team are favorable towards China or and correct me if I'm wrong, But but I'm wondering if you think what's been happening and playing out with China over the last couple of weeks really is more of a localized event or maybe something that could potentially spill over into other parts of the world. And how are you thinking about the Chinese markets. I think there are randan by whichever you want to call it. The Chinese currency UM is still a goodbye. I think that it's it's a currency that will continue to perform if if the if the government of China lets it UM. I think that the Chinese markets, I mean, I mean it's it's the second largest some by some measures, the largest economy. UM. The delta baron is certainly probably having an impact there and so we could see some slow down. But uh, specifically on the regulation, I think it's you know, you can look at it two ways. It's it's either the Chinese government and being heavy handed and trying to get control UM of their economy, which in a way, you know, you understand that the governments want to control what's going on in their economy. Um, but you know, are they going to go too far and try to take it back into the communist I don't believe that. I I think that they'll continue to walk this tight rope between capitalism and communism and and try to keep their markets free and open. Uh as as much as they are. You could argue that they're not, but uh UM, I think the regulation is just a sign of a maturing economy and a maturing market. They know that in order to truly take their place among the world stage, investors have to rely and and trust on economic data, trust on company reports, trust that there's no fraud, if you will. And so some of the regulations that they're passing UM are actually positive and I think a sign that they are trying to you know, mature that market and trying to um be able to give investors confidence. Now, obviously it's caused the the opposite impact. Investors have worried that they're going to come in and maybe take control of certain industries, and that's certainly a concern and could grow into something bigger. UM. But right now, I think the Chinese economy continues to do very well, growing at a good clip, and as long as they don't get too heavy handed, I think it will continue. They've got just a huge consumer demand in China. UM got good uh good exports into the rest of Asia and in the US and Europe. So as the US and Europe recovers, I think China continues to do well. Yeah, the regulation, I mean that's made all the headlines, all all these every day you wake up to a new sort of crackdown on some industry in China, and and to me, that strikes me as at least for now dominantly a domestic risk to say Chinese assets, you know, equities, especially UM maybe to some degree to the equiporate bod market. But one thing I've read this week out of China that construct me is maybe something that the rest of the world needs to worry about, is the credit credit expansion credit and China growing at at sort of the weakest pace since the height of the pandemic. And I know this is something that a lot of internationally focused investors look at, is the credit impulse in China. UM as sort of a symbol of You know, for years we've all been focused on experts out of China, but you have to start thinking about that domestic demand, the imports into China, that consumer demand, like you talked about, is credit expansion in China, anything that you keep your eye on, is it any you know? Does this slowdown? Where are you at all? Yeah? It certainly does, because obviously the world runs on credit. Consumers, especially UM run on credit, so UM, you know, slowdown would mean our our would signal maybe a possible slowdown in the overall economy. Some of that is due to though them raining in some of the UM credit markets and tightening down control on some of the credit uh that that was going on there. So you know, slowdown isn't necessarily really concerning to me right now, but certainly keeping an eye on it. And it absolutely is something we we monitor across the global economy. It's one of the things that UM drives currency obviously and demand for currency, so certainly something we we monitor. And just to bring us back to the US and speaking of consumers, my team and I were looking at some research reports of just consumer behavior and credit card spending and Apple mobility data and some of those things just over the last week, over the last two weeks with the delta variant, and it's sort of a mixed picture right now. You know, you have reopenings obviously, but then at the same time mask man needs in certain areas and so on. So how should we be thinking about the delta variant, especially as it relates to the market. So yeah, I think the delta variant is really the largest risk to the to the markets right now. Um. And you know, as as we see UM hospitalizations climb, although you know they seem to be peaking now, it's certainly something that that concerns the market now. You know, I think Southwest recently announced that their bookings are down because of the delta variant. And if we start to see restrictions more restrictions and and um not, I don't think we're going to get the lockdowns. I just don't think uh of the public is going to uh going to go that route. Um, they're they're gonna um, you know, we we we've seen in St. Louis where I live, a big rise in in covid it in Missouri was one of the big hot states. So um, you know, we're starting to wear masks again. And and starting some of those, but the the more harsher lockdowns and closings that I don't think we're gonna get there, but it's certainly a risk and uh, you know, it's something that we're going to have to continue to deal with. Uh. And you know, the booster may be good or or just getting those those vactination rates up I think is the key and hopefully we'll we'll see that increase. You know, Chris, I wanted to get back to that that notion of of FX. You know, you made a great point that obviously, when you know, take an equity position in the in an overseas market, you're you're taking on that FX risk too. It's a bit of a pretty interesting year for the dollar, you know. I'm looking at this sort of the dollar versus all the major g T and currencies. It's pretty strongly against all of them on the year. But it's been kind of a wild ride, you know that the looking at the Bloomberg Dollar Index, it you know, started the first say court of the year very strong, that it came back down the sort of flat line. Now it's back up again near the highs of the year. I'm wondering. You know, I always think of that that what they call the dollar smile theory. You know that it dollar does real well sort of in when the world's going to hell and everything's risk off, but then it also does really well when you know things are going well, but the U s seems to be doing even better than than the rest of the world. Is it that latter part that we're seeing now in the dollar strength and walk us through kind of what you think has been pushing the and pulling the dollar around this year? Uh? Well, this year, Yeah, it's definitely about the rebound and the US. The strong gains we saw in the US that that attracts investors, It attracts international investors, and of course to buy the stock market in the US, they have to buy dollars. So um, I think it's all about the strength we've seen so far this year is all about, um, the the equity performance and investors coming into the US and in the out performance maybe of of of our economy and early recovery. The main thing we look at for for currencies, though, one of the main things is interest rate differentials, and um, you know, we were in an odd place over the past uh, a few years, probably probably five to seven years where um, you know, the dollar was in US interest rates were actually lower. UM, are are higher than most of the rest of the world. So um, you know the interest rates. When when the US interest rates are higher, US investments usually are risk free, they're they're the cream of the crops. So usually the interest rates in the US are a little lower than the rest of the world. UM. That that changed, and with the Europe going negative interest rates and and a lot of you know, Japan going negative interest rates, we saw the US interest rates higher and that caused this dollar strength, and it caused a five or six years of dollar strength. UM that started to reverse last year. The mentality was, um, US was gonna start, um, you know, keep rates lower for longer. We kept hearing Paul say lower for longer, lower for longer. The US rates are gonna stay down here and the rest of the world starting to HiPE rates. UM. I think we're gonna get back to that thinking. Um, as the US holds holds the line on on interest rates, we're already starting to see you know, Norway and and some of the other Australia and New Zealand start talking about raising rates, even Canada. So as you see these other countries start raising interest rates and interest rate ferential is gonna switch back to the foreign currency. So that is is one of the things that I'm basing my thought that the dollar um will start sliding again as as you see those interest rates different will start to change. So UM, I think the dollar UM. You know, it's strong right now, and if if we see of some of these risks that we talked about come back, I think you'll see safe haven flows. Um. But again, in my opinion, you know, there's there's other markets that are going to start performing well as they come out of the pandemic, and that's going to help their currency. So I think the dollar will start to define again towards the end of the year. Mike, can I admit something embarrassing? Oh? Absolutely. I've asked Chris to to define interest rate differentials at least thirty different times for me, and every single time, I'm like, yep, I got it. But that was a really great explanation. I was hoping for something really embarrassing. Vildata like this embarrassing, like you're wearing bell bottom jeans or something. I don't know that that that's not just if I can It's not just straight interest rates. I mean, you know, you can go to Brazil and get you know, some pretty high interest rates, but they have high inflation also, So you have to look at the real interest rate. You have to look at the difference between UM between the nominal rate and and inflation rate, and uh, you know it's that's what really drives investors. So um, typically they're gonna go for the you know, they're the typical carry trade is where an investor goes for real interest rates that are higher UM, invest in the currency and and you know, thinks that the currency is gonna move higher and along with getting that positive carry on the on the interest rate. Yeah, because I wonder how noisy that potentially can can get when you've got you know, uh sort of the if you're a believer in that and that the supply bottlenecks are a big part of the inflation story right now, you know, as it seems to me like maybe bottlenecks could start resolving in certain bographies and not others. You know, where we're gonna have say, uh, transient inflation being a little bit longer in one spot than the other. You know, is is that a you know, is that a risk that of sort of false signals being sent by inflation data that comes back to earth in some places spikes up again and others, but but at all being sort of noise compared to what you know, we can expect in the longer term. Great point, And yeah, I agree with you. Um, it can be very tough. You know, back to my um previous comment about you know, we're an unprecedented times. Uh, the supply bottlenecks when you when you shut everything down and not everything can open up right away and then um, you know, shipping and and you know, even opening some of the commodity minds. It's tough. But uh, um, you know, the inflation I think is transient. A lot of the inflation is trans and and and I was I really liked Paul's explanation of what transient is. He was asked, uh at the at his last press conference about transient And it's not that the prices are going to go back down. He's we're not expecting prices to shift back down. They just won't keep increasing as quickly as we've seen. Now, you know what could make inflation not transient is is wage growth. If we if we see continued strong wage growth, UM, that puts more money and consumers pockets on a permanent basis um, and that will lead to higher prices as demand comes back. So um, the supply bottlenecks getting back to it though, Yes, absolutely, their supply bottlenecks in certain sectors. And uh that's gonna drive obviously, when you cut supply, you know, and demand is still there, you're gonna see um swings and prices in order to alleviate that the difference. So um, I think it's tough to read. Again, Uh, the economic data is pretty tough. It can be really noisy. Um. And you know, I'm looking forward to when we we get all this behind us and it starts, uh getting back to normal. If you will, Chris to educate Fildona on rate differentials, I'm gonna I'm gonna dig up some stories from the European debt crisis, Fildana, to show you how how ridiculous it can get. You know, that was that was that was fun times. I mean when when you had uh, um, you know, but again, you know, the the interest rates. Uh, we we remember back in the European debt crisis, I think it was Greece or Italy had uh interest rates. They were just riding on on the German backing the implicit German guarantee of their debt, and their their debt was trading well below US at at one point, which uh again drove the dollar higher, um because of that, you know, and and uh when you could buy US investments at at a better real interest rate than than Greece or Italy, it definitely uh moved the market. Well, you look at some of those spread back then, you know, double digit percentages. It looked like you're you know, it looked at the time like Europe was going to fail, that the euro Union was going to fail completely. And uh it's remarkable to think where we are now compared to that. I mean, I guess it's just the magic of the ECB money printer to some degree. I mean they stabilized it. I mean, you know, you go back to you know the Germans uh in in Uh the ECB boy, I just I just absolutely Uh it's not le guard It was did a great job. You know, he was gonna do anything he could to support the euro. Um. You know, you had the UK trying to leave at the time. So there was a lot going on those days, and uh, yeah, it was. It was volatile markets, very volatile markets. We saw some really wide swings and interest rates. Whatever you send me, Mike can be my end of some of the treating you'll have nightmares about. Uh. But that was that was the uh. That was the driver of all markets at time, was the spread between either Italian and German debt yields or Greek Greek in Portugal and the German yields. I will, we'll get you up to speed on that fill dot and then that's gonna be the thing you worry about the most. I guarantee it. I can't wait to meet it any how. We just get past stuff like that too, though, isn't it. I mean, that is in the rear view mirror and and nobody ever talks about it anymore. So it's it's it's kind of crazy how those those um, you know, situations that you think are going to be around, you know, and going to cause these dramatic swings all of a sudden go away. Yeah. I think that draggy posture of whatever it takes is. I think every central banker around the world wrote down those words in a notebook somewhere and said, that's that's the party line you gotta take at times like last year. Stand clear of the craziest things we saw in markets this week, Chris, Uh, great stuff. Really appreciate all your insights, but now comes the big test for you, and that is, uh, we got to hear the craziest thing you saw in markets this week. Um, You're not allowed on the podcast unless you come with a crazy thing. I've been in the business a long time. I go to a lot of investment conferences and back in the day, Um, there was an investment booth that was selling ostro j egg's and it was back in the mid nineties. You can and buy a buy an ostro jag, and they were encouraging people to become ostrich ranchers, and literally ostro jags that were going for I think fifteen bucks apiece all of a sudden shot up. I mean it was just everybody was getting into the market and they shot up to three thousand dollars. Um. This was back in the mid nineties. But then as everything does it like the Toolip craze, it it met a very dramatic end and those three thousand dollars ostro jiggs Uh, you know went back to uh fifteen or or twenty bucks, so it was a dramatic fault. Well, I just read an article where they're starting to come back. I guess people that you know, we're during COVID wanted new paths, are wanting to find a way to to make some extra money around the house and and so especially in taxas where there's bigger ranching. Um. We we're seeing a lot of um interest in the in the ostra Jack's. Unfortunately, I think it may end up um the same way as before. I mean, you know, but we're starting to see people, uh, doctors and lawyers starting to try to flip ostriches. Uh. This might be my favorite craziest thing of in the history of crazy. Well, I gotta find the prices of the Ostrojacks. I don't think we have the ticker on the Bloomberg. I couldn't find it on Bloomberg. They're not what what what would what would be the ticker? I don't know. We got we gotta have you ever seen one? They're huge jaggs. I mean, and this this boot used to have them right there on. You know, they would show you what the Oscar jagg looked like. But you know they're used for meat and leather and so there's some good uses. But I think they're pretty mean birds too. So I was gonna say, yeah, well, we gotta find the data set on this. I need some price discovery on on Oscar jaggs. And yeah, I was. I always sat there, pretty wordery birds. I don't know if i'd want one as a pet. And what do you get? You gotta go out and sit on an Oscar jagg yourself for for a few days. That's you gotta go steal it. And then I guess you you know, you steal it from the bird, and they don't like that. I don't think this, this is fantastic. I gotta look further into that. This that is my kind of story right there. If they'll thought it, we'll do it. That's a hard one to follow. I gotta say, I know that's really that's a really good one. If if you admit it, if you had a real time price quote for me, it would have been better. But I I'll we'll get that. We'll get that. I'll get I'll find a broker. I'll find a broker somewhere. Yeah, that one, that one was really I can't can't really follow. I was gonna give us my my favorite headline that I saw on the Bloomberg terminal this week, which is about the garages that are being sold in New York City. So they're going for about three d fifty dollars per parking spot in certain for certain garages in the city, which is just crazy. But I was going to ask you, Mike, how you think that stacks up with the the the average the medium price of of single family homes, which is another number that came out this week, which which is higher, Yeah, which is higher parking space in Manhattan or a single family home. Man, that's a that's a tough one. I know, I know the single family home price has been going up. I'm gonna say the parking space at three fifty is still still a little higher than the median home price. Not much, but a little bit. It's not it's not the median home price is slightly higher, but they're just about even. So the number that came out this week for the median home price is that the prices rose something like which is another crazy story. But but yeah, they rose to to an all time high three fifty seven thousand dollars, so just slightly above. I didn't realize they had gone up that much. I knew they were in the three hundreds this year, but jeesus, that's that's what you really want a car in New York City, though, I guess just to get away on the weekends. I would never want to drive in that city. Ever. I might buy one of those parking spots and then I'll buy one of those tiny homes you know, have you seen these things, and I'll park it in the parking spot, and I might have that. I might end up with the nicest place in Manhattan with that. I don't know, what do you think you can open up your your I'm doing quotes backyard for drinks and tap us or something like that. Yeah, we have lots of Western boys. So I was amazed one of my first trips to New York and I had never seen him stacked cars, um, you know, and open parking lots, and I was like, what the heck is that? And yeah, there were all these just parking condos. I guess it's you know, and elevators up, and I thought that was just the wildest thing. Ever, but I see, I guess there's there's huge demand this. That's amazing. Three for parking, I imagine you have to pay some monthly you know, parking spot sweeping fee on top of that too. It's probably a thousand bucks a month. But these are these are both pretty good. I'll give you mine. I think I might end up taking the bronze in this episode, but I'll give you mine. But that As you know, I've been keeping a very close eye on AMC the movie theater stock just because you talk about crazy things. And uh, this week it reported earnings. Uh. The CEO obviously has really embraced the whole Reddit day trader crowd, which I think you have to if you're that guy. I mean, uh, you know your company is gonna win or fail based on what Reddit decides to do next. So on this conference call after the earnings, he decided to take questions from individual retail traders. I think they only took one question from an analyst and the rest of were from They call themselves the Apes, you know, the the AMC faithful are known as the Apes. I think it's a reference to the planet of the Apes. So here's my question, um My favorite question from one of the apes, uh, and the executive the CFO read out the question from a guy named Aaron and it said, Aaron asks, and I promised, this is not a sarcastic question, but can you guys make the AMC mascot officially a gorilla? And the response from the CEO atam Aaron is just so priceless, you know, He's like, how do you answer these questions? You don't want to offend any of these guys, and it's like, uh, well, it's an interesting question. I don't know. I don't think we're ready for a mascot though. Uh. You said, we're gonna watch what I're doing doing with our marketing programs, and I think you'll be pleased with what AMC is gonna do. But he wouldn't commit Bilboa to making an ape mascot, which I think might explain that the drop in the stock price after the conference call. I don't know. I'm just saying, well, our our Boomberg opinion colleague Mount Levin had a hilarious column about this where he laid out a bunch of those questions, and honestly, I was I was laughing reading it. And you're right. The very last question I believe was from an analyst, and there was only one, but it begs the question, do you think we need a mascot for the podcast? Oh, definitely, let's open it up to the Twitter Twitter Ostrich an Ostrich. I think an Ostrich is in Uh, is definitely in contention. And if we get anything, Chris has got a deal for us. Bill Donna, you're just gonna have to sit on the egg in your apartment for a few months. You can do that, right, If I sit on it, I'll break the egg. I don't know, but I have a feeling that they probably sit on their eggs for like years or something. Yeah, I wouldn't do. The good thing is that if we get anything wrong, we can just bury our head in the ground. And uh And kind of didn't happen, but all right with if and if you anyone on Twitter, call the hotline if you have a better mascot for us than an Ostrich. But I think that's the lead. That's our lead mascot contender at the moment. Sure, So thanks for that, Chris, and we really appreciate your time on the show this week. Really insightful stuff and hopefully we can get you back to do it again. I look forward to it. I'd love to come back. What Goes Up We'll be back next week. And so that you can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, website and app wherever you get your podcasts, We'd love it if you took the time to rate and review the show on Apple podcast so more listeners can find us. And you can find us on Twitter, follow me at Rea Anonymous. Wild A high Rich is at Wildta high Rich. You can also follow Boomberg Podcasts at podcasts and thank you to Charlie pelleto Bloomberg Radio and the voice of the New York City Subway System. What Goes Up is produced by Tofur Foreheads. The head of Bloomberg Podcast is Francesco Levy. Thanks for listening. To see you next time.

In 1 playlist(s)

  1. What Goes Up

    247 clip(s)

What Goes Up

Hosts Mike Regan and Vildana Hajric are joined each week by expert guests to discuss the main themes 
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 247 clip(s)