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- [00:01]
Hannah Fry / Michelle Hussain
I'm Hannah Fry and I'm on a mission to find out about a mysterious day called Q Day, which experts think could be the moment our most precious encrypted data is suddenly at risk. Learn more later in the podcast.
- [00:19]
Barry Ritholtz
So you're telling me that the AI that's meant to make everyone's job easier to manage just adds more to manage? On top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages? Funny how that works. Any business can add AI. IBM helps you scale and manage AI to change how you do business. Let's create Smile to Business IBM.
- [00:45]
Apollo Sales Platform Announcer
Tired of juggling sales tools or spending hours on prospecting just to book a few meetings? Meet Apollo, the go to market platform for finding leads, connecting with buyers and closing deals all in one place. Apollo gives you access to over 210 million contacts and AI that handles all your busy work finding leads, drafting emails, and even prioritizing your day. So stop paying for five different sales tools when one does it all. Visit Apollo I.O. and sign up free today.
- [01:14]
iHeartRadio Advertiser
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- [01:29]
Steve Cohen
Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?
- [01:31]
iHeartRadio Advertiser
You're a good boy.
- [01:32]
Steve Cohen
That's right there.
- [01:33]
Hannah Fry / Michelle Hussain
You're a good.
- [01:33]
iHeartRadio Advertiser
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- [01:46]
Hannah Fry / Michelle Hussain
Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts Radio News this is Masters in Business with Barry Ritholtz on bloo.
- [02:01]
Barry Ritholtz
This week on the podcast, another banger, Steve Cohen is BlackRock's chief product officer and head of product solutions. BlackRock runs three and a half trillion dollars. They're the world's largest asset manager. Their iShares ETF division is over five trillion dollars. There are few people in the world better situated to identify what is happening in the world of asset and wealth management then Steve Cohen. Not just fixed income, active index, Bitcoin digital assets, they're also moving into privates and alternatives. Whether that's an ETF or just part of that platform is something else entirely. I thought this conversation was fascinating and I think you will also. With no further ado, BlackRock's chief product officer and Head of Product Solutions, Stephen.
- [02:54]
Steve Cohen
Cohen, it's great to be here.
- [02:57]
Barry Ritholtz
We're going to talk a lot about what you do at BlackRock and how the company has been growing. But I want to start with your background. Degree in economics from Southampton College. Was the plan always to go into investment strategy or what were you thinking back then?
- [03:13]
Steve Cohen
I'm not sure I had a plan. I studied economics at school and then at university, and I was always very interested in this kind of concept of the markets. I didn't have any background, no family background in markets or investing, but I always found reading up about markets interesting and what kind of got me in. It was a slight fluke. We were talking about flukes before the show. One of my neighbors was a telecoms engineer and he used to go round to all the banks installing the dealer boards. And I was talking to him and.
- [03:50]
Barry Ritholtz
One day, like various ATMs, automatic teller machines, we call them here.
- [03:54]
Steve Cohen
Yeah, dealable.
- [03:55]
Apollo Sales Platform Announcer
The.
- [03:55]
Steve Cohen
The phone. Phone systems that you use on the trading floors.
- [03:57]
Barry Ritholtz
You know, the car with all the.
- [03:59]
Steve Cohen
With all the hoot and holler and all that kind of stuff.
- [04:01]
Barry Ritholtz
Die bolts. And I was missing.
- [04:02]
Steve Cohen
All right, maybe he installed those as well. I don't know.
- [04:05]
Barry Ritholtz
Those were the big ATM manufacturers way back.
- [04:08]
Steve Cohen
And. And he said. So I got talking about him and I'd mentioned his interest, and he said, well, why don't you do a day's work experience with me? We'll go to a bank. So we went to one of the banks, I can't remember which one it was, and I walked onto this trading floor and then, you know, for someone who had no experience or never experienced this before, it was amazing. There was people shouting, there was screens and flashing numbers and stuff like that. And I thought, you know what? This looks pretty cool. This buzz was so the kind of combination of an opportunity to work in something that took economics and markets and the world, and then this kind of feeling of a buzzy environment, that was the thing. And so I applied to a number of banks and out of university got an opportunity to go to ubs.
- [04:52]
Barry Ritholtz
So that was your first gig right out of school. You're working with convertibles and fixed income and something similar at ING Barings.
- [05:00]
Steve Cohen
Yeah.
- [05:01]
Barry Ritholtz
Tell us about your work at UBS and ing. What sort of job was it?
- [05:06]
Steve Cohen
So I worked. I originally started in fixed income and then. And then went into convertible bonds. And a lot of what I spent my time doing was kind of more market strategist type of roles. So talking to clients about what was going on in the markets, what was going on in the bond markets, developing trade ideas for clients. And then that's also how I got involved in spending quite a lot of time on the Japanese markets, which I found incredibly interesting and really got to understand the Japanese culture and the way the country operated.
- [05:45]
Barry Ritholtz
Is that what led you to Nomura or did Nomura come first? And then the Japanese exposure that kind of let.
- [05:51]
Steve Cohen
Yeah, it did. So getting involved in Japan kind of lent me to doing, to doing convertible bonds, originally at ING and then with a group of us at Nomura. And that's where I spent a lot more time on the Japanese markets. And I think it's all part of how you, I think back to those days, you know, Japan was very different to what it is kind of now. The market, definitely the market at the time was about nine, the Nikkei was about 9,910 thousand, down from 39,000, 39,000. Now we're back at 46,000. So there's like a proper V shape of that market.
- [06:26]
Barry Ritholtz
Right. Only took three and a half decades.
- [06:28]
Steve Cohen
Only took three and a half decades. And I managed to do the middle bit, which was not necessarily the most exciting bit, I've got to be honest. But I think, you know, again, it was a. What was interesting about it is you learn about kind of an economy and therefore a stock market that is in such a different place as it was then to, you know, looking at the US market or the European markets at the time.
- [06:48]
Barry Ritholtz
So that raises a really interesting question. How do you think about the 1990s, even the 2000s, Nomura till 2011, how do you think about those decades versus today? That world doesn't seem like it's that long ago, but it really feels like it was so different.
- [07:08]
Steve Cohen
It feels incredibly different. I think for Japan, it's completely different. You know, if you go back to, as you say, the late 90s, early 2000s, the banking crisis that was part of the bubble and the collapse had still not been solved. And it was only really in the early to mid 2000s that they finally kind of got their arms around the banking system. And one thing you read about history and unless you can get the banking system operating properly and lending, you really struggle to get an economy going. The second thing that's really interesting I think is so different is back then you would every six months, every year there would be a government led fiscal impulse, right? And you know, they used to call it the building the roads to nowhere, right? You know, paving the entire country. Just got to kind of spend and spend and spend and the reaction of the market to that was this is going to have no impact. The reaction now to fiscal spending is actually this is, you know, great. This is kind of part of the economy, the country kind of being back on its feet. You're now talking about inflation being potentially an issue in Japan, whereas there is all about deflation. So it's quite amazing how it has turned around and you're seeing that in the bond market and just the yields.
- [08:21]
Barry Ritholtz
One of the things I'm kind of fascinated about following the Japan Japan bubble popping in 89 and how long it took to recover from that is the concept and apologies in advance for my mispronunciation of Kiritsu, which is the Japanese concept of these vertically integrated companies. Manufacturing, retail, banking, like just every sector, if there's a banking problem, the entire economy seems to run into trouble because that whole vertical, sometimes it's Mitsubishi, sometimes it's whatever. Each of these entities are giant. And if the bank has a problem, wow, you're really doing some damage.
- [09:04]
Steve Cohen
Yeah, because I think if you look back to the history and again this is changing and different to the way we'd think about kind of Western markets and companies. But Japan, historically it was a bank lending market. You got financing through bank lending, all the stock market. And so banks were just so central to the way the economy operated. And you see parallels to that in Europe a little bit less. Here in the US it's very different. Now there's the banking sector which is obviously very critical to the way companies are financing. But you have this huge private sector sector. You have private lending, direct lending, things like that. So again, it's good. I think one thing I've learned over my career and have the opportunity to work in different markets is you start to see these, the way these economies operate is different and therefore the impact on the markets and therefore investors is very, very different.
- [09:52]
Barry Ritholtz
So you stay at Nomura till 2011. What brought you from Nomura to Blackrock?
- [10:00]
Steve Cohen
So I had an opportunity, having had a lot of great experiences in 2011, BlackRock was probably 18 months into the integration of the iShares business or the indexing business and really focused on how do we expand this business, particularly how do we expand iShares, this ETF business. And back in 2011, European ETFs was still a very nascent industry. Now it's like a two and a half trillion dollar industry. European iShares is over a trillion dollars. Back then it was very much still the very early days and you could see what was happening in the States and so when I was speaking to BlackRock, you could see this really interesting opportunity to kind of take all of what I'd done before in terms of the market's background and the breadth of experience, and then apply it to this thing that was still pretty new. And the kind of mission was how do you educate people about what an ETF is? How do you help people start to think about how to use an ETF in a portfolio? And by the way, also, what are the ETFs that don't exist yet that could exist? And again, you always have to. It's quite hard. You always have to cast Barry. You always have to cast your mind back to what it was then versus your perspective of where you are today. It was still fairly plain vanilla in.
- [11:27]
Barry Ritholtz
Terms of go back to the 1990s. I pretty sure the Qs were around then and Spy might have been around, but this IS before, really iShares was still part of Barclays. But no one really thought that ETFs were a giant market waiting to take place. Or I should say very few people thought that. The ones who did ended up being at the head of a giant wave. What made you realize 15 years ago that, hey, this iShares thing is going to be big one day?
- [12:01]
Steve Cohen
Honestly, it was talking to the people in iShares. It was having kind of been introduced to them and having been approached to go and talk to them. I learned a lot from just sitting down and understanding this. I'd sat in banks, we traded ETFs. They were, to be honest, a very, very small component of what we did. It was only really when I spoke to the people at iShares and the Blackrock and understood the history of how iShares had grown and where it was then, and that sense of mission, that sense of kind of the purpose of giving more access to investing to people and creating more transparency, that they had lived as they grown the US business and they were growing the European business. And that kind of just captured you. And I think, frankly, in the last 15 years I've seen that and been fortunately being part of kind of driving that. But it was very clear that there was a big opportunity to do something different in an industry, an asset management industry that hadn't really been shaken up. And I think One thing that ETFs have done and iShares has led this is really shaken up the industry on behalf of end investors in a couple of ways.
- [13:14]
Barry Ritholtz
At the very least, they're very low cost. And it's raised questions about are do most, not all, but do most active managers actually justify their fees relative to their performance? And then second, helping to move a lot of mom and pop investors, at least having a core as passive indexing as opposed to an allocation that's nothing but active managers, I mean, iShares has been the biggest driver of that. When you started at blackrock, what was, what was the first job?
- [13:48]
Steve Cohen
So I started in the iShares business and I actually set up an investment strategy team and what we did was go out and talk to clients about what was going on in markets. You know, we were part of BlackRock, now iShares was part of BlackRock. And so there's a huge pedigree of investing. And how do you take that externally to, to our clients and educate them about how ETFs could be used to implement these ideas, build portfolios? I have to say in the early days, a lot of it was just educating people on what is an etf, like, how does it actually work, what is a creation, what is a redemption and what do I need to understand and know. Secondly, how do I then think about putting them in a portfolio? And what's interesting, I remember a couple of years in, probably 18 months into my time at Blackrock, we did a big study on how do you blend active and indexing? And we're very allergic to the word passive because, you know, we used to go out and say to people, which we still do. You know, every decision you make is active, right?
- [14:55]
Barry Ritholtz
That's right. If you market cap weighted, I mean, it could be an equal cap totally.
- [14:59]
Steve Cohen
You know, investing in US equities is a decision, it's an active decision. Then deciding to use an ETF is an active decision. So we would, you know, we would talk to clients about what does it mean to use an etf, how does it fit with, with active management, which again go back to. I think it's pretty well accepted now. I think BlackRock has, and the ETF industry has played a big, big role in this. But the concept of blending indexing and active managers and alpha in one portfolio is, it's, that's kind of very accepted. People going to get that. It's pretty standard. It wasn't back then, 10, 14 years ago and in some respects it was slightly religious in terms of indexing or like you're either passive or you're active.
- [15:39]
Barry Ritholtz
I recall the phrase that was used in the 2000s, core and satellite, core and satellite. And you don't hear that all that much anymore. Now it's, you have a Passive core. And you're decorating it with active choices around it.
- [15:55]
Steve Cohen
Yeah, it's kind of how do you get the best out of, out of everything. How do you say, you know what, Actually here's an area where I think that we can deliver alpha, which is really what you. When you say active, what you're really saying is like alpha, something, something beyond the index. And I come back to a point you made earlier, Barry, about how the industry shifted. I think what ETFs did is they shone a light on what is, what is performance. And you know, if you can get the index through an etf, it's very efficient, then as an active manager, you've got to deliver something more. And many, many active managers at BlackRock do deliver more. But I think that that element of the more became a very important component of the industry and component of how for many investors, they could then blend these different tools together to create better portfolios. And I think that's the journey to me, in the Last kind of 12, 14 years has been so exciting.
- [16:53]
Barry Ritholtz
You said when you began, you went out and spoke to a variety of BlackRock clients. Were these mom and pop investors? Were these institutional clients? Were they brokers and RIAs that are investing in ETFs on behalf of their clients? Who were the folks that you first reached out to?
- [17:10]
Steve Cohen
It was pretty broad, actually. It tended to be wealth managers and it tended to be institutional investors, which would be primarily pension funds. But what's interesting is how that has, how that's expanded over the last, again, the last kind of decade. If I look at the breadth of users now, is anything from central banks through to end retail investors in 401k plans or the equivalent in Europe. And I think that's been one of the secrets to why ETFs have grown so quickly is that they actually are very much a product or a tool for anybody and everybody. So it started very much with, I would say, kind of wealth managers and pension funds. But it grew out and out and out. And frankly, in Europe, we learned a lot from the way the US Industry had grown. We talk all the time about how the European ETF industry is probably about 10 years behind the US and so there's a bit of a roadmap there. And, you know, I think we're seeing that happen in real time.
- [18:18]
Barry Ritholtz
Coming up, we continue our conversation with Steve Cohen, BlackRock's chief product officer and head of Global Product Solutions, discussing the idea of private market assets in an ETF wrapper. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.
- [18:45]
Hannah Fry / Michelle Hussain
Right now, bad actors are harvesting our data, hoping to decrypt it later using quantum computers on so called Q Day. I'm Hannah Fry, host of the Exponential Era, a series that explores the real world impact of future network technology. And I sat down with two experts to discuss how we protect our data from this quantum threat. Find out what I learned@Bloomberg.com Nokia.
- [19:14]
Apollo Sales Platform Announcer
Tired of juggling sales tools or spending hours on prospecting just to book a few meetings? Meet Apollo, the go to market platform for finding leads, connecting with buyers and closing deals all in one place. Apollo gives you access to over 210 million contacts and AI that handles all your busy work finding leads, drafting emails and even prioritizing your day. So stop paying for five different sales tools when one does it all. Visit Apollo I.O. and sign up free today.
- [19:43]
iHeart Podcasting Advertiser
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- [20:43]
Hannah Fry / Michelle Hussain
Hello and welcome. This is the Michelle Hussain Show. I'm Michelle Hussain. I speak with people like Elon Musk.
- [20:51]
Steve Cohen
I think I've done enough.
- [20:52]
Hannah Fry / Michelle Hussain
And Shonda Rhimes.
- [20:53]
Steve Cohen
That's so cute.
- [20:54]
Hannah Fry / Michelle Hussain
This will be a place where every weekend you can count on one essential conversation to help make sense of the world. So please join me, listen and subscribe to the Michelle Hussain show from Bloomberg Weekend. Wherever you get your podcasts, you certainly ask interesting questions.
- [21:18]
Barry Ritholtz
I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this week is Steve Cohen. He's BlackRock's chief product officer and head of Global Product Solutions. He also sits on BlackRock's global executive committee. When I look over at Europe and especially the UK it seems like index adoption has been very slow. People haven't quite bought into the concept of, hey, before you go after Alpha, at least start with beta. That. That hasn't really found a lot of traction there yet. Or are you seeing that start to change in Europe?
- [21:58]
Steve Cohen
We've seen that change. It's definitely behind the US but it is definitely happening. And I think the same forces and drivers that we've seen in the US are very much applicable to Europe and ultimately will be to Asia as well, which I think will go on that kind of same journey. So I think it's just more of a matter of time or timing as to where we are now versus the US and there are different country dynamics that everywhere in the world play into why different parts of the industry move quicker or slower. But I think the direction is definitely the same.
- [22:34]
Barry Ritholtz
Different regulatory regimes, different tax treatment technology. Is the technology really all that different? You would think that adoption maybe some countries on a lag, but not 10 years.
- [22:48]
Steve Cohen
Yeah, I think it's just so. I think the last 10 years in the US if we are today in somewhere like Europe in the ETF industry, where the US was 10 years ago, I think the next 10 years in Europe will be faster than the last 10 years in the US makes sense. Yeah. Because I think that partly because there is a roadmap that the US has created, it's different because of regulation, all the things that you mentioned, but I think that everything is happening so much faster now. And you're seeing that in ETFs, you're seeing that in other parts of the industry as well.
- [23:21]
Barry Ritholtz
So let's talk a little bit about what you've been doing at Blackrock for almost the past 15 years. You begin in 2011. The growth must have been explosive. What was that like watching this rocket ship take off?
- [23:37]
Steve Cohen
It's been fantastic. It's been an amazing experience. You know, the firm has grown so quickly in the last 10, 15 years. And not just grown in terms of assets, which is obviously one way to measure growth, but also just the breadth of what BlackRock does for our clients and the breadth of the number of clients that we talk to. What's. I think so for someone like me, what's been so great is the ability to be involved in lots of different parts of the firm. And whether that was, again, growing the European iShares business, whether that was running fixed income iShares, which was a fantastic opportunity and time or moment in time, I should say, in terms of really not just growing fixed income ETFs but changing the bond market and the impact we've had there to now where again, the breadth of the company with private markets and things like that. So it has been a great journey to be on personally, but also to see it from the inside.
- [24:40]
Barry Ritholtz
Can you explain what a Chief Product Officer does at a large asset manager? It's sort of an unusual title in the world of investing.
- [24:49]
Steve Cohen
Yeah. So there are a number of things that I look at and my team look at. One is how do we continue to make sure that our product range is at the forefront of innovation in terms of where the industry is going? How do we make sure that what our clients are looking for, we're delivering in whatever format they're looking at? And I think one of the biggest shifts that we've seen in the industry, we talked before about kind of how you blend active and indexing kind of together, how that's become more commonplace and kind of more accepted. I think the other thing that is happening is that the way all of our clients are consuming investments or accessing markets is also shifting. So this concept that pretty much for the whole time that we were growing the iShares business, when we talked about growing ETFs, we were really talking about. We were also talking about growing indexing. That was very synonymous. When you talk about growing ETFs, now, you're not just talking about growing indexing, you're talking about lots of different things. Active ETFs, digital assets. And so I think this concept of how we ensure that as we look across all of the investment capabilities we have as a firm that we want to bring to our clients, that we're delivering them in a way that works for our clients that requires us to think a little bit differently to the way we've had to in the past, and I think the way the industry has. And so that's why we've brought all this together into my role and my group. And that includes driving the iShares business and the growth of ETFs, making ETFs more central to what we do in the firm, but also looking across all of our liquid active business, our private markets businesses with our investment teams and those business leads to ensure that our product range works for our clients and then helping our clients actually get the best out of what we have. I started an investment strategy. We spent a lot of time talking to clients about what's going on in markets, how to build better portfolios, how to get the best out of the tools that they have that we need to build and then what's next? What's, what's the next trend or theme that's, that's on people's minds?
- [27:01]
Barry Ritholtz
So, so I'm hearing two approaches. One is a top down, hey, what's going on in the world? What's out there that's interesting that perhaps we're not addressing. And a bottoms up. What are clients asking for? What do they think they want? What do we think they need? What, what's the key driver of, of new offerings? We could talk a little bit about Ibit, which is a unicorn, the Bitcoin ETF approaching $100 billion in assets. I think it could be the fastest ETF to $100 billion. I don't even know what's close, maybe GLD, but that was a long time ago. How do you think about coming up with new products? How much of it is driven by client demand and how much of it is driven by just looking from the top down and saying, here's a hole that we really should fill.
- [27:59]
Steve Cohen
It's a real mixture. It is. You know, we'll have a lot of ideas, we'll have a lot of ideas that are driven by investment views we have as a firm, by our investment teams, by working with other people in the industry. And we will combine that with what we're hearing from clients and where clients are. You know, we're engaging with clients all the time around, you know, their portfolios and seeing where are their kind of gaps in a portfolio or where are there. Sometimes it's, sometimes there are investment opportunities, but there isn't a way to get to it again, come back to what ETFs have done. Like, how do you give that access to something that was new? If you think about ibit, you know, Bitcoin obviously had grown already to a pretty sizable kind of industry.
- [28:50]
Barry Ritholtz
I think when IBIT launched, Bitcoin was a little over a trillion dollars, something like that.
- [28:55]
Steve Cohen
Roughly that, yeah. Yeah. And, and so there was a sizable kind of industry already out there. But for many clients or many potential investors, the ease, the comfort, the knowledge, understanding of, of an ETF wrapper was a great way of allowing them to buy into crypto Bitcoin in this case, and make it potentially a bigger part of the portfolio. What's interesting is the number of, in that explosive growth that IBIT has had, the number of buyers, investors of IBIT who are already holders of Bitcoin in, you know, other forms was quite notable. And so I think it kind of tests to this idea of actually how do you access different markets sometimes in quite traditional ways. And how do you bridge between this kind of traditional world and this decentralized world? And you're seeing the same thing with Ether as well with our Ether fund.
- [29:55]
Barry Ritholtz
So, you know, the classic bitcoin issue is, wait, I have to make sure that this drive doesn't get damaged. I have to keep in the safe. What's my password? Hey, this is a lot of money and it's a bigger pain in the neck to keep track of than the rest of my assets. I can own this in an etf. Why do I ever want to own Bitcoin directly? Seems to be what a lot of people are saying.
- [30:19]
Steve Cohen
And that's what we heard over and over again, both again from people who had held or hold Bitcoin in digital wallets and felt that this was a kind of a, an easier, better way to hold it.
- [30:32]
Barry Ritholtz
Especially when you read the numbers. 25% of all coins ever mined. It might even be 30% have been lost. Either the drives were damaged or the passwords were lost, which is, there's some.
- [30:43]
Steve Cohen
Great stories out there.
- [30:44]
Barry Ritholtz
Crazy. The guy who went out and bought a landfill because he, because he was trying to find the $200 million worth of Bitcoin on the drive that was accidentally thrown away.
- [30:53]
Steve Cohen
I mean, so, you know, putting in an I share probably would have been a, at least an easier way of, of, of owning a landfill.
- [31:02]
Barry Ritholtz
It's, it's kind of amazing. But it raises a question that I've been thinking about for a while. Alternatives and privates, whether it's private equity, private debt, private infrastructure and real assets are probably the fastest growing segment of the market. Are we ever going to see something like that in an ETF wrapper and illiquid alt in an etf?
- [31:30]
Steve Cohen
Possibly. Look, it's definitely something that a lot of people are looking at, including ourselves, but there are a lot of ways to. I think the biggest story, I think people jump towards the kind of private markets and ETFs, and the real story is how do you open up access appropriately for more people to access private markets as part of the portfolio. So if we think about a world which we believe in, which you're kind of moving from, call it 60, 40, you know, the traditional portfolio to more of a 50, 30, 20, where 20 is private markets. And that's applicable to somebody who owns a defined benefit scheme. In fact, they've got that already probably more through the way the scheme's managed. But actually if you then apply that to say to other pension types Like a defined contribution scheme or a wealth investor, that kind of journey towards incorporating more private markets into a portfolio. For all of the diversification reasons that we've talked about a lot, that how that happens is the real work and that may end up requiring an etf. But I think there are lots of other ways that can open up the door to private markets being a bigger part, either a completely new part or a bigger part of a portfolio for an individual retiree or an individual investor. Again, it comes back to what we were saying earlier on about rather than than thinking about different product types, an ETF or a mutual fund being associated with one type of strategy, it's actually saying what are the strategies that we believe would help a client, an investor, have a better portfolio for whatever their goals are? And then how do you best put that together so it's less about the.
- [33:14]
Barry Ritholtz
Product, more about the solution. To the.
- [33:16]
Steve Cohen
To me, it's about the portfolio. Yeah, what's the solution exactly? What are you trying to achieve? And if it's a long term retirement or retirement income, whatever it is, and then what does the portfolio need to look like or should look like? And how does it evolve over time? And then how do you do it right? And what are the kind of mixture of tools that are most appropriate to get you there? That's the shift in thinking.
- [33:37]
Barry Ritholtz
So let's dive into that a little bit. You know, the advantage of stocks, bonds, convertibles, they all come with a CUSIP number. It's pretty standard in terms of the custodianship, where it's held, what sort of public information is available, the due diligence you can do about it, how to get liquid, when you want to get liquid, all those stocks, bonds, and put convertibles as sort of a hybrid, everybody knows how to operate around that. It seems like when we look at privates, they're all one offs. The custodianships are all a single thing. Doing the due diligence is time consuming and expensive. The hope is they're not correlated and you're giving up liquidity in exchange for the illiquidity premium. Can that ever be standardized enough that as a wealth manager I could say, hey Stephen, I want to move 10, 20% of these clients assets to a diversified set of equity debt and real assets. And I want some liquidity. Like is this a pipe dream? Oh, and I don't want any K1s because they're a disaster to deal with. Like if that were something that was turnkey and available, I would think that every wealth Manager in America would rush in that direction. How long might it be before privates look something like public markets or at least the pain points are reduced to something tolerable?
- [35:17]
Steve Cohen
I think we're on a journey and I think that that is about first of all developing investment strategies and therefore and being able to put them in products that work for a wealth manager. Secondly, there's a big, you know, the operational lift, right. The technology development that is happening. And we're working with a number of firms around. How can we make sure that, for example, model portfolios can incorporate private markets in a more efficient, easier to use way? It's going to be different to public markets. It should be different to public markets because I think the role of an infrastructure, for example, in a portfolio is different to the role of owning stocks or owning bonds. And I think that part of the way we've always thought, thought about the role of stocks and bonds has been different as well. You know, bonds is a ballast to a portfolio. Stocks as a growth driver, for example. I think you've got to think about.
- [36:12]
Barry Ritholtz
When bonds actually generated attractive yields.
- [36:16]
Steve Cohen
Maybe that'll come back. You know, we might need a bit of inflation, but yeah, one day. One day, Barry. So we'll be back on the podcast to. Absolutely. To cover that off. But I think that different role is very important. But there's a lot of development that is happening to be able to make that more efficient than it has been historically. And I think that's, I think we will see a lot of change in the next couple of years.
- [36:40]
Barry Ritholtz
You mentioned technology. Let's dive a little deeper into that. BlackRock acquired Prequen and acquired Efront and I read about some integration into your Aladdin platform. How significant are those tools when it comes to offering private market investments to the public?
- [37:02]
Steve Cohen
Incredibly important. I think that for anybody who is, for a wealth manager, who is running a portfolio for a client, it's not just, as you know, it's not just about buying the different products or doing the asset allocation. It's also about the risk management of what is that portfolio look like. And that's really what Aladdin is about. And as more and more investors, whether that is a retail investor or wealth investor or whether that's a big pension fund, incorporate private markets into portfolios and blend private and public. And I think again, if you go back over that 10, 15 year journey, we started with indexing on one side of the floor and active on the other side and we gradually brought those together and that became commonplace to blend. And I Think we're now in that world of starting to blend public markets and private markets, which historically were completely distinct. And we're starting to kind of blend those because the industries are crossing over more companies are staying private for longer, etc. Etc. So as we bring those together, the need to be able to risk manage and understand those portfolios in different scenarios is incredibly important. That's what Aladdin is about with Prequin. What is so exciting is that I think over time the private markets will become more transparent, there will be more data available and around and very similar to what what Aladdin and blackrock did with public markets will happen in the private markets as well. And that I think will help more and more investors access private markets in the way and understand what it is that that they have. Partly of which is again understanding the different liquidity and being comfortable that they're different for a reason. And you're not trying to create a one size fit fits all. You're trying to create a portfolio that delivers the right, the right outcomes. Aladdin I think is going to be critical for that.
- [38:58]
Barry Ritholtz
So let's talk a little bit about product development just in the ETF space. This year over a thousand new ETFs have come out or at least we're on pace to do that by the end of this year. This sort of hyper development of ETFs it, everything we've talked about seems to be very thoughtful and very measured with a really specific approach. Kind of feels like the rest of the industry is just throwing stuff up against the wall to see what sticks. How do you look at this?
- [39:31]
Steve Cohen
We can only focus on what we do, but you have to be aware of what's going on. But you are aware of what's going on.
- [39:36]
Barry Ritholtz
100% 3x inverse Bitcoin. Like why do I want that or why does anyone want that?
- [39:44]
Steve Cohen
Yeah, you'll have to ask them.
- [39:46]
Barry Ritholtz
I mean, I guess they want to give people an opportunity to make any type of trade and every type of trade. I'm assuming that's not your approach.
- [39:56]
Steve Cohen
I think there is a lot out there of throwing things out that sticks. Our approach is very much where do we believe that we can develop products, strategies, exposures that are going to help create better portfolios. And if you look at the evolution of the ETF industry and what's happened is it started go back 30 plus years ago, it started very much with how do you give access to kind of broad indices and then it was how do you inequities then how do you give access to more granular exposure like sectors or different countries. Then it was how do you move into different asset classes, like fixed income, for example? And then more recently it's been something like digital assets with, with IBIT. And that's really been the journey of iShares. Right. And I think that's been therefore the journey of the industry as we've led it. That remains very much our view, how we think about continuing to expand the iShares platform. And that includes now using the ETF technology we've built to take things like active funds and wrap them into an etf, because the ETF is a more efficient way for many investors to actually own those different strategies. But again, it starts with the strategy. And I think that for us it's about how do you. What is it that you're developing in terms of an exposure or strategy? Why? How does it fit with the world that we see today in terms of where we think the world is going from a market standpoint and a macro standpoint? How does it fit in terms of kind of a portfolio construction standpoint? You're going to have waves of innovation. Right now we're having a huge wave of ETF launches and in particular, last two, three years, the etf, it's gone from being very much on the side of the industry to being very central. We're excited about. That's what we've built at Blackrock and iShares. But it's also meant that ETFs are very much being used more broadly. And that's going to be, I think, part of how the industry evolves and.
- [41:56]
Barry Ritholtz
Then matures, especially on the active side, where you get all the benefits of mutual ownership without the capital gains penalty that you get in mutual funds. So it makes sense that a lot of active ETFs would develop where they might have been. Active mutual funds. What else do you see as changing or in the midst of transforming? Is it by asset class, is it by. You mentioned geography or sector? What is really in flux these days?
- [42:32]
Steve Cohen
So I think that when you look at. I'll give you a couple of good examples. So digital assets, I think is kind of fairly early days. IBIT is incredibly fast growing. It was the fastest to 20, to 30, to 40, to 50, and now hopefully to 100 billion as an ETF. And we have an Ethereum ETF. I think there will be more product development in something like that. And again, for us, that's about bridging this kind of defi world with the traditional kind of finance world. That's one area. The second area is take something like fixed income. We've been building out fixed income ETF industry for 20 years. The industry is now 2 1/2 ish trillion dollars. We think it's going to be 6 trillion by kind of 2030. The growth is huge. Less than 2% of bonds in the world are in an ETF.
- [43:27]
Barry Ritholtz
Wow.
- [43:27]
Steve Cohen
So it feels, and having been, I can tell you, having been on the journey and been out there kind of pounding the streets on the value of fixed income ETFs over the years, it feels like this has become really, really big. And it has. And yet when you think it in the context of the $140 trillion of fixed income out there, ETFs are still a pretty tiny part of the market in terms of how people own bonds.
- [43:53]
Barry Ritholtz
It's relatively large compared to what it was. But an absolute, but in absolute terms.
- [43:57]
Steve Cohen
I still, you know, we're still to use in the sports terminology given it's the World Series, you know, the first inning, maybe the second inning. And then even if you look at. What's really fascinating is you, if you look at and we talked about active, active ETFs and again that's still very early stage.
- [44:15]
Barry Ritholtz
But on fixed income they actually seem to do very like the broad the Bloomberg AG includes everything good, bad and different. It seems like it's relatively easy to capture a little bit of fixed income alpha with a handful of screens. You're taking out the lowest credit quality or you're taking out the riskiest credit that you're not getting compensated for. Why does fixed income active seem like it's a better bet or a higher probability bet than active equity?
- [44:50]
Steve Cohen
I think the historically fixed income and go back to when I started was very much a world of limited transparency and kind of understanding. Frankly, I think the understanding for most investors of fixed income relative to, I don't mean investors who are doing fixed income every day, but for most retail investors in particular, I think people have a much more natural affinity to stocks than they do for bonds. In terms of the understanding, bonds feel complicated at times. It feels like it's a world we don't quite understand. Whereas equities, you know, Google or whatever it is. And so I think there's always been a sense of kind of outsourcing those decisions kind of more so. The other thing is that the indexing market in fixed income has been slower to evolve. So you mentioned the ag and people tend to, when they think about fixed income indexing, they often automatically go to the ag. The AG is one index and it's a very specific index in terms of what it is. It doesn't have a huge amount of credit in it, for example. But there are other indices with Bloomberg for which we have products like Universal that actually are much more representative of fixed income. So part of it also is what are you benchmarking yourself against? And I think we went through that experience with equities and we are going to go through that or we're going through that experience with, with fixed income. And the other thing we're seeing with fixed income is that we're developing and building the more granular strategies in fixed income. So we're carving up the market in fixed income the way we did in equities through ETFs. So if you want to own zero to three year government bonds, own Escarf, if you want to own long term treasuries, own TLT. If you want to own bits of the different types of credit crossover, you can now do that through ETFs. So, you know, it is an amazing tool. And what's fascinating about fixed income ETFs is that some of the fastest growing users are asset managers. So fixed income managers using ETFs as a way to be better at their job. And I think again, that's that blending of indexing. But even in the equity world, you know, equity indices are evolving. We were saying if you look back to 2000, you know, the top seven, you know, the whole kind of S and P was worth the equivalent to what the top seven stocks were worth six months ago. And so you mentioned earlier in the program equal weight S and P. We're seeing a lot of demand right now for things like equal weight or capped indices. We launched a top 20 fund, top T. We did the same thing with NASDAQ. Even the S&P 500, owning the top 20 stocks versus owning the 500 stocks is a very, very, very different. And so even something like large cap US equities, which you would have thought there was nothing else to innovate in, even that has been the area where we've probably done more in the last six months than many other areas because the dynamics of the US Equity market have shifted so much in the last couple of years and investors are looking for different things.
- [47:56]
Barry Ritholtz
Coming up, we continue our conversation with Steve Cohen, Blackrock's Chief Product Officer and head of Global Product Solutions, discussing what goes into product development in finance. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.
- [48:23]
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- [49:52]
Steve Cohen
Bloomberg Daybreak is your best way to get informed first thing in the morning, right in your podcast feed. Hi, I'm Karen Moscow.
- [49:59]
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And I'm Nathan Hager. Each morning we're up early putting together the latest episode of Bloomberg Daybreak US Edition. It's your daily 15 minute podcast on the latest in global news, politics and international relations.
- [50:13]
Steve Cohen
Listen to the Bloomberg Daybreak US Edition podcast each morning for the stories that matter with the context you need.
- [50:20]
iHeartRadio Advertiser
Find us on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen.
- [50:27]
Barry Ritholtz
I'm Barry Ritholtz. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this week is Steve Cohen. He's BlackRock's chief product officer and head of Global Product Solutions. He also sits on BlackRock's global executive committee. Since we've been talking about technology and you mentioned the top seven, I'm legally obligated to ask a question about artificial intelligence and AI. What is AI doing to your business of developing new products? How are we thinking about either AI as an asset class or or actually deploying AI to help build new products?
- [51:10]
Steve Cohen
I think we're seeing AI in probably three areas. The first one is obviously AI as an Investment theme which is very well publicized, et cetera. And we're seeing that through things like data centers, obviously stocks, credit, et cetera. The Second one is AI in terms of investment strategy. For example, BlackRock, we're very fortunate to have a systematic group, investment group that has a 40 year track record and history of delivering really great performance. And they would argue they were doing AI well before it was called AI, when it was called machine learning or whatever it was called before that.
- [51:53]
Barry Ritholtz
Most people think it's new thing, it's.
- [51:56]
Steve Cohen
Been around a while.
- [51:56]
Barry Ritholtz
Watson played Jeopardy and I forgot the one. Or was it Deep Blue, played chess and go. Those were 30 years ago.
- [52:04]
Steve Cohen
Yeah, so you know, it's gone through its iterations and, and so, you know, and they've got some fantastic examples of the way they've used machine learning, stroke now AI to really understand, you know, every single day they will pass thousands of reports, earnings calls, et cetera, transcripts for, for, for sentiment. And, and the investment results of those signals that they create are really quite fascinating and very lucrative in terms of investment alpha. And so we're really seeing a huge demand right now for systematic investing. And this is something that historically people were nervous was because it was a black box and they didn't understand it. And now people are using things like ChatGPT, et cetera, which is a black box, but they're seeing the value they're getting. And so what's interesting is there's a psychological shift and a greater acceptance of saying actually systematic investing using AI, that's really interesting and exciting. And so I think the second thing is we're seeing it through using AI to be better investors. And then the third one is product development. And so how can we use the data that we are able to collect and effectively deploy big data? And the AI that we've developed in house that sits on that to identify what are some of those themes that are coming up, what are some of the things that clients are talking about or being picked up in the news or whatever it is and be more kind of systematic I would say, in being able to see what those are. And also we are able to use it to test and stress test strategies that are new in different market environments. So again, it's a really exciting time for product development because it's giving us new tools that we didn't have before.
- [53:59]
Barry Ritholtz
So blackrock tends to come out with these very well thought out, very rational products. And the question that I've been thinking about when I first started doing my homework for this is what are some of the crazy ideas that you looked at and said, yeah, no, that's just a bridge too far. What hasn't come out because it was just too. Either not solving a problem or just too wild and reckless.
- [54:27]
Steve Cohen
Oh, there's a whole treasure trove of, yeah, we could do another podcast, I'm sure. But you know, typically what's interesting about it is there are two reasons why you might end up like that. One is it's a crazy idea, but there's just really no demand for it.
- [54:46]
Barry Ritholtz
Well, that's an easy business decision, which.
- [54:48]
Steve Cohen
Is an easy business decision. The second time often is. You're just too early. And, you know, I mean, there could.
- [54:54]
Barry Ritholtz
Have been an ETF for ETH and Bitcoin 10 years ago if the SEC would have allowed it.
- [55:00]
Steve Cohen
If they were allowed. Yeah, yeah. So sometimes it's the regulatory. You know, it could be. It could be that the industry, the industry in the broad sense of the word regulators or whatever aren't quite ready. You're not able to actually build the thing that you've got an idea for. It could be that the market is not quite ready. Fixed income ETFs is a good example. We looked at things 10 years ago and decided that actually the fixed income market wasn't ready. We weren't quite ready to be able to do that in an ETF a decade on. And by the way, we launched a bunch of those as well, knowing that it would take a long time, we didn't expect to launch it, and it would take off straight away, knowing that it would take time for the, for the kind of market to get there. But we were comfortable we could manage that fund. And so often you end up in a situation where you're kind of waiting for maybe the liquidity of the market to be, to be broad enough that an ETF works. So, you know, it's going to work in the future. It's just a little bit early now. So there are a couple of different reasons why that may be the case.
- [56:00]
Barry Ritholtz
So. So that raises a question, what's next on the product roadmap? So we've talked about digital and crypto, we've talked about fixed income, and we've also talked about privates. What are you seeing as the next 10 years?
- [56:15]
Steve Cohen
It's really across the whole waterfront of what you just said. I mean, obviously with, with HPS and gip, with our new partners, there's a lot of opportunity, we believe, to develop in the private credit and the infrastructure space and also the crossover of those kind of areas. I think this crossover of public and private markets and what does that look like in portfolios? Whether that's within a fund or in a portfolio, I think is going to be a big and very interesting theme. And the third area I think is we constantly, obviously we're always working with our active portfolio managers to develop better strategies and new ideas they have. But we are always looking back as well because I think you can fall into the trap of thinking you've done it. And I mentioned the example of US large cap equities in indexing and what why would you ever look at that as an innovation area? Well, because these markets keep changing and I think the world where the world we're in right now and a good example of the last six months, the number of clients around the world, particularly outside the US who are questioning their US dollar exposure is pretty significant. And what does that mean for time? Look at the move in gold suddenly. That is, you know, the thing du jour. And so, you know, you see, you have to, I think you have to be willing to question the environment, the macro, the market environment, and say actually what does that mean for things that we kind of thought we'd done? And I think that creates a lot of opportunity for our clients to re innovate things.
- [57:49]
Barry Ritholtz
So before I get to my favorite questions, I have one last broad question for you. What do you think investors and clients are not thinking about talking about overlooking, but perhaps should be aware of? It could be an asset, a geography, a data point of policy. What is below the radar that really should be front and center.
- [58:14]
Steve Cohen
I think there are things that are kind of half on and half off the radar, like, you know, the impact of what's happening in demographics and immigration and changes like that. And what does that mean for, for inflation, for the different types of income streams that people are going to need is something that it's kind of talked about but always slightly in the background. I think that's going to come more and more to the fore. It ties into the fiscal policy which is very much kind of talked about. I think that's one thing. I think the second thing is we're still living through a lot of the post Covid impact and Covid's kind of done and it feels like it was many, many years ago. But there are a lot of industries and luxury is a good example which is still being impacted by what happened then both in terms of the lockdown and then the immediate kind of boom that happened afterwards. There are still a lot of things that are still trying to work their way through the system, as it were. And that tends to be something I think people have kind of forgotten, but from an investing standpoint is actually pretty important.
- [59:17]
Barry Ritholtz
I completely agree with you. It's funny, we were just having a conversation the other day about housing, and someone asked why we have such a shortfall of single family homes in the United States. Not even talking about affordability of homes, just sheer number. And the answer was that's a hangover from the financial crisis 15, 16 years ago. Following that boom and bust, a lot of builders shifted over, pivoted over to multifamily houses and apartment buildings, not single family. So it's 15 years ago and we're still, still suffering the effects of it. It's amazing how long a tail. Some of these things happen.
- [59:57]
Steve Cohen
It takes a long time.
- [59:58]
Barry Ritholtz
All right, I don't have you all day. I know you have a flight to catch tomorrow, so I have to get you out here at a decent hour. Let's run through some of our favorite questions, starting with tell us about your mentors who helped shape your career.
- [60:14]
Steve Cohen
So I've, I think I've been very lucky. I've. In. In each stage of my career, I've always had, I think, somebody who has been, whether a manager or a mentor, but really helped me think through and frankly just supported me in my career. I think two particularly jump out. One is the person who actually took me to Ing Barings and who I first worked with there, who sadly is no longer with us, but was just an incredible friend and in quite a pivotal time in my career, really helped me think through what do I want to do next? And, and kind of set me on that next kind of journey. And then the other one, I have to say, a shout out to someone who is very early in my career, who I worked with, who I kind of looked up to in terms of their success, who became my wife. So that became a kind of a good man. She continues to mentor me in slightly, you know, different, more direct ways.
- [61:13]
Barry Ritholtz
That's a, that's a nice couple of mentors. Let's talk about books. What are some of your favorites? What are you reading recently?
- [61:20]
Steve Cohen
Big fan of people like Ian McEwen. I know the name Martin Amos. They're just great, great authors.
- [61:29]
Barry Ritholtz
Give us some titles. Martin amos and Ian McKinnon.
- [61:33]
Steve Cohen
Yeah, there's a great book, Ian McEwen, called Sweet Tooth, which is all about. It's got a great twist, which I won't go into, but it's no spoilers. 1950s, 1960s kind of spies in. In. In the UK. And there's a. A book by Martin Amos, which is the first. I can't remember the full title. It's time something. But it's written backwards.
- [61:55]
Barry Ritholtz
I kind of remember my wife reading something like that from Martin Amos, and I don't remember the title.
- [62:00]
Steve Cohen
It's fat. It's fascinating. He writes it backwards, so everything happens backwards. So the day starts with the character going to bed and it's the. It's written in the. As the consciousness of the. The man. And so it's brilliant. It's just.
- [62:19]
Barry Ritholtz
I'll dig up the very title.
- [62:20]
Steve Cohen
Cleverly written, huh? And a good story.
- [62:23]
Barry Ritholtz
Not quite Inception, but it's in that guise of.
- [62:29]
Steve Cohen
Of trying to think about how time works. And. Yeah, I won't spoil it for you, but it's the kind of book where even the most simple paragraph, you kind of reread it because you're trying to get your head around the fact that it's being written backwards.
- [62:43]
Barry Ritholtz
Huh. Let. Speaking of Inception, what. What's keeping you entertained these days? What are you streaming either watching or listening to?
- [62:52]
Steve Cohen
So we've been on a bit of a marathon recently. We've done Yellowstone, 1883, 1923, and Landman.
- [62:58]
Barry Ritholtz
That is all on my. In my queue, and I haven't started. I saw the first Yellowstone on a plane and I'm like, oh, my God, to drag my wife into this.
- [63:06]
Steve Cohen
It's good. You need to commit, but it's well worth it. Very, very. Yeah, very grippy. All very different as well.
- [63:14]
Barry Ritholtz
So you're a Brit giving me an American Western recommendation. Let this New Yorker give you an MI5 London recommendation. Have you seen the film Black Bag?
- [63:29]
Steve Cohen
I have.
- [63:30]
Barry Ritholtz
You have?
- [63:31]
Steve Cohen
I saw it on a plane. I spent a lot of time on planes.
- [63:33]
Barry Ritholtz
Okay.
- [63:34]
Steve Cohen
I actually saw it on a plane. It was very good, very clear.
- [63:36]
Barry Ritholtz
All upside, Surprise. Wholly unexpected.
- [63:38]
Steve Cohen
Very good. I never heard of it. And then I assume you watch Slow Horses.
- [63:42]
Barry Ritholtz
That's where I was about to go is. So I had my wife watching through the second season and she kind of tapped out. I'm trying to bring her in for the most recent season.
- [63:51]
Steve Cohen
You've got to get in. We're very much the. We won't watch it until it's all out.
- [63:56]
Barry Ritholtz
We've made that mistake. Not doing that with certain things. It's incredibly binge watching. Like, what is this? Watching one show a week? What are we living in the 90s?
- [64:08]
Steve Cohen
I can't.
- [64:08]
Barry Ritholtz
Like, I'm a catering.
- [64:09]
Steve Cohen
It's like when an advert appears. Right.
- [64:11]
Barry Ritholtz
It really is. Final two questions. What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad interested in a career and fill up, fill in the blanks. Investing, ETFs, financial product, developing, fixed income. What's your advice for that person?
- [64:29]
Steve Cohen
Go for it. I really think this industry is changing so quickly. I think it's changing faster than I've in my kind of career in terms of what is happening, which I think creates a lot of opportunity for somebody starting out. My advice I always give to all of our analysts who are starting out and frankly I give it to pretty much all of our team, is you've got to keep learning. This is constantly changing and you've got to just, you've always got to be on that kind of learning curve and, and that's how you get better. It's also where the opportunities come from.
- [65:05]
Barry Ritholtz
A career standpoint makes a lot of sense. Our final question. What do you know about the world of Investing, product development? ETFs today would have been helpful back in the 1990s when you were first getting started.
- [65:19]
Steve Cohen
Well, if I'd known that Bitcoin was going to be at 120,000, I probably.
- [65:22]
Barry Ritholtz
Would have done well, that's going to say that.
- [65:24]
Steve Cohen
You know, I can say that about everything.
- [65:26]
Barry Ritholtz
Right back up the truck on Amazon in 2002 or Apple in 98 or Microsoft from the IPO.
- [65:33]
Steve Cohen
I think one thing it does lend itself to, and it sounds a bit strange for somebody who started out on a bond trading floor doing bond maths, is you realize over time, only when you look back, the power of compounding. I know everyone writes about compounding and you learn about it, obviously, but it's only when you have been around for a while and you look back at what compounding actually means as both an investor managing your own own kind of future retirement and wealth, or as somebody who works with clients about managing portfolios, what compounding actually does imply, and I was thinking about that the other day.
- [66:13]
Barry Ritholtz
Actually, it's very counterintuitive. There's nothing in the natural world, in your ordinary experience as a mammal that would give you any insight into just exactly how exponential it is. Yes, it's really fascinating. Well, thank you, Stephen, for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Steven Cohen. He is BlackRock's Chief Product Officer and head of Global Solutions. If you enjoy this conversation, check out any of the 586 we've done over the prior dozen years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify Bloomberg YouTube. Wherever you find your favorite podcast, be sure and check out my new book, how not to Invest the Ideas, numbers and Behavior that Destroys wealth and how to avoid them at your favorite bookstore. Now I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack team that helps put these conversations together each week. Alexis Noriega is my video producer. Anna Luke is my podcast producer. Sage Bauman is the head of the podcasts at Bloomberg. Sean Russo is my researcher. I'm Barry Ritholtz. This has been Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.
- [67:33]
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- [68:01]
iHeartRadio Advertiser
You know what your customers are doing right this second? The exact same thing. You are listening to me. Which, let's be honest, is kind of flattering. But my point Is, ads on iHeartRadio actually get heard in the car, at the gym, on the couch, while people are walking their dogs.
- [68:17]
Steve Cohen
Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy?
- [68:19]
iHeartRadio Advertiser
You're a good boy.
- [68:19]
Steve Cohen
That's right.
- [68:21]
iHeartRadio Advertiser
So why not make the next ad about you? Get started today. Call 844-844-IHEART or go to iheartadvertising.com that's 844-844, iheart or iheartadvertising.com the forces shaping markets and the economy are often hiding behind a blur of numbers.
- [68:36]
Barry Ritholtz
So that's why we created the Big.
- [68:38]
Steve Cohen
Take from Bloomberg Podcasts to give you the context you need to make sense of it all.
- [68:43]
iHeartRadio Advertiser
Every day in just 15 minutes, we dive into one global business story that matters.
- [68:47]
Steve Cohen
You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the sec. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week Buying Power column.
- [68:58]
iHeart Podcasting Advertiser
Very few companies who go viral are.
- [69:01]
Steve Cohen
Like, totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide.
- [69:18]
iHeartRadio Advertiser
Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.