Bloomberg Surveillance: Beyond the Crypto Winter (Podcast)

Cameron Dawson, Newedge Wealth Chief Investment Officer, says that signs of a recession will come from the market, not the Fed. Bill Dudley, Former NY Fed President & Bloomberg Opinion columnist, expects central banks to introduce digital currencies amid disarray in the crypto sector. Mike Mayo, Wells Fargo Senior Equity Analyst, says AI can take the relationship between banks and technology to another level. Katy Kaminski, AlphaSimplex Chief Research Strategist, says she's concerned about the risk-on rally in the bond market. Norman Roule, Center for Strategic & International Studies Senior Adviser, breaks down the latest on the Israel-Hamas war amid the release of more hostages from Gaza.

Get the Bloomberg Surveillance newsletter, delivered every weekday. Sign up now: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/surveillance

Full transcript:

This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keane, along with Jonathan Farrow and Lisa Abramowitz. Join us each day for insight from the best and economics, geopolitics, finance and investment. Subscribe to Bloomberg Surveillance on demand on Apple, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts, and always on Bloomberg dot Com, the Bloomberg Terminal, and the Bloomberg Business app. Cameron Dawson tear eyed over the quality of that data. Check Cio of New Edge Wealth joining us right now. What's your conviction the next year? I'm talking about you need to get conviction. Now, do you have a lot of conviction? I think that we have to judge as we go into the end of the year when we look at where we in the year with positioning and sentiment and valuations and earnings expectations, because if we get to a point where those things are stretched, where people have been drawn into the market, everybody chases the market into a rallying to the year end, that's when you probably want to start asking questions of how sustainable or durable is We learned that lesson really powerfully this year in the opposite direction. People were underweight, valuations had come in, positioning was very light, and that set up for a very powerful year this year. One really difficult thing for a lot of people is to get two things right. Won the call on the economy and to what the economy means for financial markets. I was looking at Deutsche Bank's call yesterday least when I were going back and forth on this, They've got recession one hundred and seventy five basis points of cuts. Then bink chat is saying fifty one hundred on the SMP. Is good news bad news? Or is bad news good news? What is it? I mean, it's sort of that I want it all and I want it now kind of mentality, which is that I want a FED that's supportive, and I want an economy and earnings that are going to be growing very strongly. And I have to think that we need to ask the question of if a strong economy and strong earnings are consistent with having FED rate cuts and a recession, and if we can have both at the same time, meaning that if the FED is cutting rates, can we really grow earnings at twelve percent next year? Do we actually have the potential that we could have a third year in a row of earnings being closer to flat. If we have a recession. Well, this is John Sulfis basically saying people think we're late cycle, we're actually mid cycle. That if the Federal cuts rates is just sort of a mechanical year over year trying to adapt restrictiveness to inflation, and that that will pave the way for companies to continue to evolve, particularly in the consumer cyclicals. Thoughts. Yeah, it's interesting. You go back to the times when the Fed cut rates and we didn't have a recession ninety five, ninety eight, and twenty nineteen. What's interesting is that the Fed was actually very fearful of a recession in each of those times. They talked about the US not being an island. What's interesting is that the market wasn't scared of a recession. There was no impact to earnings. You had the market hitting all time highs as they were cutting rates. So I think we have to take the cue from the market if it starts to sniff out that data is weakening, that data is starting to come in where we need to be cutting earnings stents we don't hit all time highs in markets, that's when you'd say maybe recession risk is actually higher. So what's your conviction is it to basically shift away from the conviction of everybody else that equities are going to go higher and to take the other side. I think it's incredibly important to remain invested even in times of uncertainty, and the way that we do that is focusing on quality, focusing on companies that can block and tackle, which just means that I want to take out the risk that the economy is going to roll over and I'm going to have big earnings downside. But I also don't want to be over levered. I don't want to be overextended on risk having to have the best case scenario in order for my investments to work. So it's still that middle ground. It's worked really well this year, it likely works really well next year as well, as we think we are still in that late cycle environment. What's so interesting to me is the idea of developing a conviction with five percent money market fund trillions out there. Is part of your optimism of that money shifts given disinflation yields? Yeah, you know, it's a really good question. If all the money market funds is truly investible cap not all, but even at the margin that supports the bid. And we do know that investors compared to the twenty twenty two peak are about three percent less allocated to equities than they were at the peak and twenty twenty two looking at the AAII data, so that would suggest that there is still money on the sidelines, that there still is positioning to be drawn back in. And the good news is that there's cash, there's liquidity. In order to do that, we'll have to continue to watch that data because once people get fully invested, this is critical. I don't mean to interrupt, but you've nailed it. Three percent as the delta here from AAI or whatever it is, AARP, whatever. But the answer is if that money shifts and makes up the three percent difference, what does that do in SMP or Dell points, Well, it likely means that we can continue the rally, But then it calls into question the durability of the rally. Do we test the twenty twenty two high, do we break through it with gusto and really have the kind of rally that we saw coming out of time like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, or instead, do we have this sideways chop that looks a lot more like what we experienced in the seventies or even in the two thousands. And it's Chris Harvey is talking about did you just request a down forecast? I did, just busting this. You have a down forecast? Absolutely not. I'm sorry. That was beautiful. Do you want to explain why you don't have a down forecast because it's a price weighted index? Thank you, Cameron Tak Is that enough? Jar Denney SPX five thousands, forty one thousand on the show clip that? I mean, honestly, you guys just gonnatrol each other all morning beautiful. And I said, the perfect ending to this exchange was very good. You know it was great. It was very good. Camera. Thank you. It's going to see it. Cameron Dawson, I knew ittch Wealth, welcome back anytime. I'm going to play this off my book of the year years ago, Ken rog I was very courageous, The Curse of Cash. He's writing about where we are with digital currencies, what the Bank of International Settlements in Geneva thinks, what Central Bank says. He was at the New York Fed. Thanks. Bill Dudley joins us right now writing an important column on c B d C central bank digital currencies, Bill Dudley, very valuable and thought provoking. This morning, we just saw criminal trials, guilty verdicts, maybe appeals involved. But are we getting away from the presumed criminality, the punishment, the secrecy that Ken Rogoff had the courage to talk about. Well, I think that the crypto space is in disarray right now, and the real question now is our central banks around the world going to introduce central bank digital currencies to sort of take up that slack. I think that's going to happen, probably going to be more evolutionary than revolutionary, because it depends on what payment system that you're starting with. I think we're central bank digital currencies could play a very very important role. This is highlighted a new paper that we put out by the brent Witz Committee is really on cross border payments. We had a system of central bank digital currencies where the interfaces were harmonized, you could probably execute payments on a cross border basis at a fraction of the cost. Today, for a lot of migrant workers when they're sending their payments abroad, it costs over five percent of the value of the payment just to execute the trade. It's very slow. So we can certainly do a lot better than than we're doing right now now in this process. The FIT is very far far behind in terms of their work on central bank digital currencies, and in the US there's a quite a bit of skepticism about the need for central bank digital currencies. Why is this work continue? Well, that's so hard of the matter. I'm going to go to Raphael Our owns a high ground on this at BIS. He's documented the incredible friction of transactions in the real world. We all thought we'd be trading bitcoin and you know, John would be down at Selene trading bitcoin for a sweater, but the answers were not. We could really get down to where this is efficacious for central banks. We could really squeeze us down to where there's no transactional friction. Well, that'll obviously always give a little bit of transactional friction, but we can do a lot better than we're doing right now. I mean, in central bank digital currencies should be a pretty significant improvement over cash. I'll be just the safest cash, but in terms of the fault risk, because you'll be guaranteed by the sovereign nation, but you don't have worries about storage. You can transact with digital cash across long distances, So to me, it's like cash plus it's superior to cache and something that we the US should start to innovate on. There's a concern bill that as you disintermediate banks, essentially those agents that really capitalize from those frictions that exist, that some of the functioning of markets that traditionally has supported things like treasuries starts to ebb away. How concerned are you as you start to adopt new, less friction build methods and as capital markets slow in the wake of rate hikes, how much does that really disintermediate banks that really are still essential for the functioning of the treasury market. It really depends on central bank digital currency design, and I think there you want to have a two tier system where the banks continue to own the customer relationships. Central banks don't want to have customer relationships with hundreds of millions of households, so they should hand that off to the banking system. The second thing you want to do is make sure that the central bank digital currency doesn't pay interest. If it doesn't pay interest, it's basically going to be used for payments, not for investment, So that preserves the role of the central of commercial banks as intermediaries. So I think if you do those two things essentially protect that the commercial banking system is providing financial intermediation services, but the central bank helps provide a better payments medium. The reason why I ask is on a broader sense away from digital currencies, is there is increasing concern about how much of the risk taking activity and how much, frankly, of financial market functioning has moved outside of the highly regulated banks into the private sector. Earlier this morning, UBAS chair Clem Kelliher came out warning again that there's a bubble in private markets and that there's risks building there as an increasing amount of lending moved to that area. Are you concerned about that? Do you think that there is this sort of situation forming on the heels of rate hikes, on the heels of the more tightly regulated banks that deserves greater scrutiny. Absolutely? I think this notion that all we need to do to fix the problems that we saw in March of twenty twenty in the banking system is to appile a lot higher capal requirements on the largest banks. I think that's misguided. Increase the cabal requirements on the biggest banks, You're just going to push activity out into the non regulated banking sector, and that's going to make the financial system less secure, more unstable than the current regime. So I think we need to think really hard about what were the problems in March twenty twenty and how to address them. Bill, thanks for catching out with us. Give us an your view on that built outly the former New York Fed President Lie So this is joy. Why don't you bring in mister Mayo here because he's all AI in bankings, which makes me very happy actually because Thanksgiving dinners several of them. All of the discussion was about artificial intelligence. Mike Mayo focused on artificial intelligence as well, saying that it's not just going to be in big tech, it's also going to be in banks that you need to have AI talent at the financial institution, saying the marriage of banks with tech, including AI, is a long term positive that can help the industry trend toward record efficiency. Joining us now is the one and only Michael Mayo, Mike, thank you so much for being with us. So tell us just how much banks could benefit at a time where people have written them off as utilities that are overspending and are not going to make big returns. Well, if you're a bank and don't have an AI strategy, then you don't have a strategy because if the bank across the street has calculators or spreadsheets or Bloomberg terminals, yes, and you don't have those, then how are you going to compete? So AI is here to stay. The marriage of banks and tech has been a good one. It's stalled recently, but I think AI can rekindle that relationship by taking the productivity benefits which have been revenues per employee have improved by one third over the last decade. So banks and tech have been working, but I think AI can take that to another level. Is it a kind of thing where there'll be a few winners you mentioned Golias Mike Mayo in your noe is a kind of thing where four or five will win and the rest lose? Or can it actually be a benefit distributed across the industry? Well, I think most jobs at banks will be impacted. I mean, think of what I do. I'm an analyst, and analysis can be improved by this extra tool called a Now I do think there will always be a human in the loop for most cases. In other words, to prepare for your show today, Lisa and Tom, I went to chat GPT and said, what should I say in one sentence about this? And they said it's a revolution that will enable productivity, savings and better customer service. Well that's an improval. Well that's an improved starting point. But you know it's partly wrong. First, I'm not sure it's a revolution, especially at banks. It tends to be more of an evolution, and simply by enabling that potential doesn't mean that becomes a reality. And you've seen false starts cloud, You've had some buyers remorse. Blockchain didn't come out as quickly as expected. You know the dot com bubble one point. Oh, Tom, you remember all these Internet pollows which didn't survive. So I'm positive on the implications of AI, but I also I'm aware of the cast come back even further. George Ball E. F. Hutton. They blew it. They couldn't keep up on technology. This is Lisa. When there were cards with holes in them and a thing called Fortran. The answer is I want to know who the losers are going to be in this. I mean, I know you've got single best buys in all this, but what is the scale of the losers that you see in technology and banking three to five years out. Well, I do think Goliath is winning, and you have this poll by Evident. I know they've had the founders on your show. In fact, they have an all day conference in New York City tomorrow. So JP Morgan is number one front and center right now and their investment in technology are paying off. I'm surprised to see City Group in the top ten for all their issues with their back office, and they have major issues. They're making some efforts with AI. On the other hand, those banks that have not advanced with digitization and the cloud and getting their data together could struggle. And I do wonder about some of these mid sized banks. I mean, do they have the scale to really leverage these solutions and getting talent. Talent is such a big issue and you can't just buy talent off shelf. You can get solutions, but who's actually going to implement those solutions in each business line? So when I'm listening to you, I'm thinking how much are they're going to pay them. I mean, we're talking about open AI paying eight hundred thousand dollars to engineers at just at of a base level. I mean, how much your bank's going to have to pay some of this talent to come to their bank and develop similar solutions that can effectively support and reduce certain headcount in certain areas well. I think what you'll see is you'll see a reduction in headcount and some of those savings plowed back into paying other employees more money, especially AI engineers. They're in serious demand. But if you go to one of the largest banks, you have a whole career path. You can scale these solutions across tens of millions of customers as opposed to going to a smaller bank. I mean, what's your pitch. Now? There are some smaller banks in this evidence survey that performed quite well because they were already ahead on technology. So I think those winning in technology can keep winning more and those that are behind are going to have to have kind of a existential moment here. This can all work if banks have the cash to invest right and that sort of you put a pause on that at a time when potentially there could be a slow down and there could be some kind of reduction in revenues tied to slowing capital markets how much I understand this is a longer term call, but how much do you see a thawing in that kind of environment next year versus a tightening and the screws I mean, this is sort of one of the big disagreements for the backdrop for banks and capital markets activity at a time where yields are still high, but we also are potentially going to start seeing the effects of that. Well, I promise you I will be the first analyst to ask that question or earnings calls. If banks are spending too much money. Banks have no choice because of the headwinds from rates, recession possibility, and regulation. They must get more efficient. So if I'm the CEO of any bank and you're coming to me with the program for AI and want to invest a lot of money, I'd say, great, where are you saving the money to fund that? Nobody cares. All we want to know from Mike Mayo is what to do this year? Twelve months out, twelve months ago now flat on its back. We've had a magnificent seven moonshot right now. Keith briat Indexes twenty five percent above the pandemic low. Is this the year twenty twenty four of the banks? Do you load the boat here on banking? Well, look, the long arc of the benefits of the industry de risking has still yet to play out. Banks didn't get credit through the pandemic. The excuse was the government stimulus. Right now, you had some smaller regional banks fail earlier this year, so it's still delayed. So I still think over the next two to three years you see the benefit of the improved banking industry resiliency play out, and then they aren't as risky as perceived and they re rate at least back to historical And then the bigger question is longer term for the rerate above. Now, it's not immediate tom. I think as you get further out, you get better inflection points when it comes to banks, bread revenues, interest rates, effects, monetizing that capital markets backlog, and more clarity on regulation, which is a very big issues. Still, just real quick, just to follow up on the AI, what is the right AI investment? Is it getting some sort of application to write your reports for you. Is it being able to collate data from your customers to basically prescribe what they're going to do or want. What's the correct way. There's no one size fits off when it comes to AI investments. It's about banks tailoring those AI investments to their use cases that they have that's unique to them. So I find interesting anything related to compliance, fraud, cyber that's where you're seeing some really low hanging fruit early benefits. I think when it comes to some additional automation in the back office. I love what it can do for technology, the idea of Cobyl program change to Python, change to c plus plus, the ability to change archaic code. And by the way, most or almost all large banks still are advertising for Cobyl programmers. Tom, why are you killing me? By my first programming class at punch cards too so fourteen Yeah, what were that? Ancient? Lisa is like, what are they talking about? Single? Best buy ten seconds, JP Morgan and City Group. I had said, Okay, Barbell approach, Barbell approached, Mike Mayol, thank you so much, as WILLI s Fargo, Kati Kaminski, Chief Investments, trying to just to Alpha Simplex joins us now Katie the journey the low on a tenure yield back in twenty twenty in spring fifty basis points the high over the last couple of months through five percent. It paid to be short this bond market. You have been short, but the turnaround in the last couple of months has been brutaled the other way. We've come from five percent down to four forty on a ten year Katie, you've been short. Are you still short? And if you are, why, Yes, still short? But that has to do with different signals having different views. Take a look at the chart for the year. If you look at the year chart, the last month has been a miraculous turnaround relative to where we've come. So we're still way ahead of where we began the year, even prior to what happened in post what happened in the regional banking crisis. And so I think the key question to ask yourself about bonds right now is where are we going next? We have been looking all year for a distant version of the curve, and we got that in October, and the next point is still really uncertain. Are we moving to a steeper curve and if so, which way? Or are we just going to move around and sort of a range until we figure out what's actually happening with the Fed, Katie, Why is it not as simple as taking a look at the economic data coming out showing that it is disappointing much more frequently than it is outperforming, and just sort of leaning into that which the rest of the market seems to be doing. This is a good question, because really what I find the most concerning about the last month is there's been a massive has gone rally on weaker economic data, and that to me is sort of a relief rally from where we've come, because we've been through a lot, particularly in bonds, and so I think most people are buying right now because they're saying, if we see cuts soon, then we know that yields are going to come down. My concern is that it could take a lot longer than people think, pointing out that inflation is still way above target, or at least one percent above target, so we could take a year or so to get there. People are very quick to think that things are over when they take time to actually get through the system. Katie, we're setting up for the new year. I want to go back to the advent of all this, and this is trend based studies, and it's Andrew Low the giant, and you know, working with Elf Simplex and Wells Wilder and Monroe Trout, John Henry and the rest and the Germaine question twenty years ago is the same today. If you look at trend based studies or the complexity of trend based setups, are they elegant right now? Is the math good or are you blind? Well? Turning points are notoriously difficult for trend following. It's because we're not really set up to pick the tops and bottoms of big moves. And what happens in these turning points is we have to figure out using math, where is the next step of the trend. And that's where right now is an inflection point. And I'm looking forward to see if we can actually see that steeper curve. And when we've done historical analysis, what you do see is flat curves or steepening of curves. Is very difficult for trend signals because it's moving. Everything's moving, so it's a stochastic environment and you've got to find a new trend. What is the key attribute for our listeners and viewers to establish the trend? Well, I think the key thing that we always think about as trend followers. We try to blend different views. So right now, the long term view is still cautious. The shorter term view is very very optimistic, And if you combine those two together, you're really sitting in a situation now where we need more data and we need more time to understand where the market's going next. And that's why I think the market is so focused on every data point that comes out, because we're trying to sift through which view is correct. Is there a new trend, have we moved to a new era, a new phase of the of the curve shift, or are we still sort of treading water trying to figure that out. Time is expensive for shorts, and that's something that we have seen play out again and again. How much are some of the short positions being washed out adding to the rally? The stability that we've seen in bond yields over the past week and something that you think maybe can't last, Yes, of course, but I think there's a lot. There's been plenty of shorts this year, especially last year as well. When you think about where we've gone, we definitely need a balance between shorts and longs in this market. We have seen more buying pressure recently, which has been of perhaps causing some deceleration or deleveraging in short positions. But from the trend space, that's a strategy that's much more slow moving than some that you might be discussing. But there are definitely potential that some people are unwinding shorts as well. Hey Kitty, thanks for the update. Still short on this bomb market, Keady Commitski of Alpha Simplex. We take immense pride and I'm talking for the wonderful team we have working twenty four seven of giving you people of experience as we look at the horrific war in the Eastern Mediterranean. We've been advantaged by Norman Rule to say he's a former senior US intelligence official at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, barely describes his public service to the nation. Mister Roland, I want to cut to the chase here my amateur reading of fiction. Is it a ceasefire? Is an intelligence opportunity? Is this ceasefire good for the Israelis to develop intelligence in Gaza? Good morning, and you are absolutely correct. Keep in mind that the Israelis have a variety of means of intelligence. They must ingest a preasent. Prisoner interrogations take quite a while. Laptops have thousands of pages of data that must be reviewed, and you're looking to identify locations of individuals, hiding sites, weapons capacities, movement profiles, so that your troops can then use this as they plan operations when hostilities resume. So this is indeed probably one of the busiest periods for Israeli and partner intelligence. Does their military effort on a longer cease fire? Well, their military right now is supportive of the hostage release. They are concerned obviously that they allowed hostages to be taken and there because of the failure of October seventh, and this period is allowing that innocent Israelis are returning home, but that does not undermine their commitment to eradicating Hamas. Do we understand Have they articulated an endgame? Norman, No, And I think it may be a bit unfair to even think about what an endgame may be. So let me give you a give you an example. We are, in some ways in the easiest period of hostage negotiations. Once the negotiations turned to Israeli soldiers or men, you're going to see Hamas perhaps demand a lot more from the Israelis, the Israelis are unlikely to give, and therefore this could extend the hostage negotiations far longer than Israel could permit. And also we're looking at a period of time when the American presence among the hostages remains significant. Only one American has been released, likely because Hamas wishes to keep American political pressure on Israel. So it may well be that Americans may not be released in the initial period. There's something that you've said that I'd like you to explain to our audience. You said it's important not to confuse procedural hangups with strategic differences on hostage releases. Can you just go through what that actually means, Norman. In the early days of hostage negotiations, you've got issues such as how do you bring hostages to a safe location, exactly which hostage is going to be released, and what that particular group holding the hostages feels about their loss of that influence. And then on the Israeli side, you've got prisoners who have committed in some cases quite horrific acts, and the families of the individuals behind those sentences are going to be unhappy about the release. So you're going to have a process of working through this. But it doesn't mean that each side in this issue isn't interested in the release and the ceasefire. In fact, all sides involved Hamas, Israel, the United States, Qutar, they all benefit from a ceasefire and hostage release. Norman, can you just elaborate on the different factions within the Hamas group that are holding hostages and why they might be reluctant to release certain hostages. How this is sort of playing out in a political sphere over in Gaza. Well, we not only have different factions among the Palestinians, primarily Hamas, palestin Islamis Shihad criminal groups that may have taken hostages and seek to sell them to their own Palestinian partners, but we also have a communications problem. Imagine if you are these various groups and you know the Israelis are looking for your communications and looking for your movements, how do you exchange the data and conduct those intra Palestinian negotiations just to get that process going. It's a very complicated situation. What do you expect Tony Blinken to do on his latest tour of the region. We're always going to push for some sort of continued pressure on Hamas to release not only hostages, but to think about how they would consider a day after event. There's been very little actual crystallization of what day after means. You may have anything from an international police presence to Hamas thinking it can still survive because it will retain hostages for a period of time. And these talks are ongoing among all the various partners, and perhaps most important here are going to be the Saudist because they're leading such a large portion of the Islamic the Islamic world in Israel. It's really to make sure that he has a sense of where the coalition is in terms of resumption of hostilities and how Natanya, who is handling the various hostage debates within his own government. Norman role Aaron David Miller with us yesterday was just brilliant, and how this is not nineteen sixty seven, if that is true, and if there's not going to be a Camp David visit, a Camp David accord. Whatever our memory is of normal diplomatic ties, what do you presume will be the administration's approach to finding some kind of accord. Where are we a year from now, two years from now? Very difficult to think forward. First, you've got to identify which partners are going to show up for a camp David's style agreement meeting. I mean, think about it. Will Benjamin Netanyahu survive in his current political situation? It's stoutful. Who is going to be the leader of the Palestinians? Abu Mazen Mahammuda Bass, the head of the Palestine Authority is eighty eight years old. There will be no hamas presidents at the table. So who do you bring to the table that those entities don't actually exist at present? That's a massive question. Norman has tried to get your for you, it always says no one. Roll of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Subscribe to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live every weekday starting at seven am Eastern. I'm Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can watch us live on Bloomberg Television and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. Thanks for listening. I'm Tom Keen and this is Bloomberg,

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.