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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
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Speaker 2: Podcasts.
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Speaker 1: Radio.
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Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily. Reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead. With insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. With Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek. on Bloomberg Radio.
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Speaker 4: Hi, everyone.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week weekend podcast. This was a week. It started off with Anthropic's big reveal on Monday, the company filing for its long-awaited IPO and laying out all the risks. There were a lot. The filing's risk factors ran 94 pages, more than 70,000 words. And the stock, when it goes public, will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker ANT.
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Speaker 5: We also had another drop of big tech, Mag7 earnings, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon, all great reads on the AI build. So too were the quarterly updates from a couple of other names, one in the semiconductor space, Intel, and the memory maker, SanDisk.
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Speaker 1: And let's not forget, we got the second to last Fed decision of the year. All of this as we count down to the midterms this coming week, which in many ways will be a vote on AI and really on the economy and inflation, two of our main focal points this past week. It was a lot, and the specifics on all of it can be found on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg.com.
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Speaker 5: That was our backdrop as we headed to Boston to broadcast live from Schwab Impact 2026. It's an annual event, and it brings together advisors from around the country to discuss the environment right now. What's coming at them? Everything from agentic AI and advising clients to security risks and tokenization, wealth transfers, and the Washington playbook. That's just scratching the surface.
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Speaker 1: On all of this, we'll hear from a very familiar name to the Bloomberg audience. We're talking about Schwab's chief investment strategist, Lizanne Saunders.
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Speaker 5: Plus, with the U.S. midterm elections coming up, we explore the impact of the political environment in Washington on investors and the capital markets. We do that with Mike Townsend. He's Schwab's Washington-based political analyst.
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Speaker 1: All of that to come, we begin with Schwab president and CEO, Rick Worcester. Go back a couple years, AI was not necessarily the focal point. It is now.
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Speaker 6: Is anyone talking about it here at the conference?
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Speaker 1: Yes. You guys in particular. What's happened? What's the conversations, Rick, that you guys have internally?
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Speaker 7: Well, it's been a huge accelerant to our business and I think to all the advisors here. I think it's primarily helping us in a couple different ways and helping the advisors in a couple different ways. Number one, it's helping us be more efficient and effective with clients. It's streamlining operations effectively. It's helping advisors be more prepared for meetings to recall what the last discussion they had with a client was or what's important to that client. And at the same time, I think it's creating new pathways to engage clients. And for all of us here at this conference, it will allow us to reach new clients that we couldn't have before with a personal relationship.
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Speaker 5: Well, one way you're doing that is by investing in Nevis. A year ago, you were sitting with us. You had just acquired Forge Global. Is this investment in Nevis part of something bigger?
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Speaker 7: Well, it's part of us trying to nail the basics for our advisors. our biggest advisors have pretty sophisticated technology stacks. And what Nevis, I think, can do for them is provide an operating layer that makes it easy for them to work across their tech stack and integrate into us. And so what we're trying to do with our investment in Nevis is create ease for the advisor and make it even easier for them to work with us, which hopefully gives us a preferred position in being their custodian of choice.
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Speaker 1: How do you think about AI and being cautious? Because I think we're in this narrative around the AI spend. Look at Alphabet today, erasing about half a trillion dollars in market cap. And I think there's increasingly the conversation about return on investment and will it all pay off? So how do you think about your moves, whether it's partnerships or doing deals, and what makes the most sense versus kind of watching how this ultimately plays out and what will be the ROI for everybody.
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Speaker 6: Well, for us, we start with what's the end game? What are we trying to accomplish?
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Speaker 7: And at Schwab, it's all about delighting the client, whether it's an advisor or a direct retail client. And so we've been placing our emphasis on how do we bring AI to our clients in a way that helps their financial journey and their investment life.
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Speaker 6: And I think there's a plethora.
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Speaker 7: Of ways that that can happen from stitching together more of their investment life in one place to having insights that they wouldn't have before. to making all these advisors more productive with their clients. So we'd like to start with the end goal, and I think AI has a really big role to play in all of that.
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Speaker 1: I'd love to know what you think about all of the bubble conversation that's been out, whether it's Ken Griffin of Citadel, some concerns, and then there are others who are pushing back over at Blackstone saying, no, no, no, we've got to keep going. You've seen a few market cycles. What do you think?
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Speaker 7: Well, it certainly feels like a boom, and we've had several years of great returns, which is terrific. In terms of a bubble, you know, one thing that gives me some confidence that maybe we're not in a bubble is there is a tremendous number of stocks that I think are either fairly valued or undervalued. And you certainly see stocks that are highly valued. Their fundamentals are incredible, and they're creating an entire new market, a new way of working. It's not surprising that they have high valuations attached to them. And at the same time, there's so many companies that I look at, I'm like, wow, this company is cheap.
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Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 5: So to that end, I mean, we spent a lot of time over the last two days talking about AI in terms of advisor services and what it can do for RIAs and ultimately the end client. But what is AI doing for you at Charles Schwab right now on your back end that's making you more efficient?
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Speaker 7: It's helping us all over the place. I visited a branch in Austin, Texas last week, and I sat with one of our financial consultants. Their job is to sit with clients and help their financial dreams come true and play an important role. That financial consultant told me that the AI tools we had put on his desktop saved him two to three hours a day. And so what he's able to do with those two or three hours a day is go see another family, go talk to another couple trying to retire, an individual trying to buy their first house. That's two or three hours he's getting back every single day to help more clients.
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Speaker 5: Are you seeing it show up on the bottom line at all in terms of earnings?
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Speaker 7: Absolutely we are. We for sure have... Fewer people per client answering phone calls.
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Speaker 3: Wow.
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Speaker 7: We're able to serve more clients with each of our financial consultants. Now, we're still net positive from a hiring standpoint, but we're more efficient. We have 1,600 more people than we had two years ago, so we're growing. But if you look at the number of people we have per client, per client account, we continue to scale our business. And AI has been an important part of that.
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Speaker 1: So making you more efficient in certain areas, you are hiring. Where are you hiring?
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Speaker 7: We are hiring a lot of client-facing people. And the interesting thing I'm seeing about AI, and there's so much talk about it, and justifiably so, at the same point, relationships matter either just as much or even more. And when I look at all the statistics in our business, relationships are driving more growth in technology. When we have a financial consultant relationship in a branch like we have here in Boston, and we have a client relationship, that client relationship grows three times faster than when we don't have that person-to-person relationship. Likewise, our RRA business is the fastest growing segment of our business, and that is entirely fueled by the relationship these wonderful advisors have with their end clients.
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Speaker 1: So kids, go get a liberal arts degree, right? We do think about, what do we tell the next generation in this environment?
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Speaker 7: Well, I think EQ matters a lot, no matter what you choose to do, and I think there's probably lots of ways to learn EQ.
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Speaker 5: So I want to talk a little bit, there's a lot we want to get to with you, but you know at this point that when you sit down with us, I'm going to ask you about prediction markets.
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Speaker 6: There was a market on that.
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Speaker 5: I wake up this morning and I see the news, CalSheet, a $ 40 billion valuation, raising another billion dollars today from a large group of investors, including some financial services firms, interestingly enough. Are you missing the boat on prediction markets?
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Speaker 7: Well, my point of view on prediction markets is, Things related to financial events that could make sense in your portfolio, we think there's a market for that and a justification to have it in your portfolio, and we pursued that. We're working with the CBOE to make financial-related prediction markets available. I do not think, and I strongly feel, that sports gambling is not an asset class, despite what some of these firms that offer it say.
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Speaker 6: It's gambling.
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Speaker 1: They say it's not gambling.
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Speaker 6: Right?
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Speaker 1: They push back constantly. What do you say?
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Speaker 7: I believe it's 100% gambling, and I have no problem against gambling. People like to go to Vegas, go to Vegas, have a good time. But you need to realize when you do that that you are very likely to lose some money. That is completely different than being an investor. And I just want to make sure people understand the difference, particularly young people who are being marketed to with sports... gambling being an asset class. Listen, go gamble if you want to. Take money you might have gone out to dinner with.
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Speaker 6: Gamble.
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Speaker 7: But don't mix that with buying stocks that if you're 22 years old when you're 65 are going to be worth a lot more.
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Speaker 1: Why is that bad?
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Speaker 5: Prediction markets say there's no difference between betting on the outcome of sports or the markets or betting on the outcome of what Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will do at the next meeting.
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Speaker 7: I think it's factually incorrect to say that sports gambling is the same as being an investor. Nine cents and a dollar on average people lose when they sports gamble. And again, that's fine. You go out to dinner, you leave with less money, you had a nice time with your wife or your friend, you're happy that you spent the money. And people enjoy sports and have a good time with it. If people want to do that, I think it's great. I just want to make sure the young investor in our country doesn't think that sports is an asset class the same way that investing in stocks is, because they are fundamentally different. One has a positive expected return that will benefit you in your financial life and make you wealthy. The other is going to take money out of your pocket.
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Speaker 1: Do you ever think that these prediction markets are going to grow? substantially when it comes to the financial markets and having a role in the financial system?
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Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't know because there's so many ways to participate in markets today and take different positions. I don't know how much that adds. I think it simplifies things and it might be a unique way for younger investors to engage. Maybe it's easier. But I think the reason you see 90 plus percent of the volume in sports gambling is because it's got around the sports gambling rules and it's opened up nationally and allowed people to do that.
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Speaker 5: So just last question on this. When do you think we'll see the actual prediction products from you?
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Speaker 7: Well, we already are in it in a small way. We're beginning with a relationship with CBOE where we have financial contracts on the S & P that are structured as prediction markets. We will launch more in the next year. But they are going to be financially driven. We're going to stay away from sports. Again, I have no problem with sports gambling.
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Speaker 6: I have at it. Just don't confuse it with investing.
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Speaker 1: I want to go back to AI and agentic AI. And I know you've had some, I think, thoughts about this in terms of that ability. Do we want to be able to open up and let agents basically make decisions on your portfolio or your retirement assets? Do you have a view on that? as you guys lean more and more into AI?
00:11:09
Speaker 7: Well, I think at the moment, I think very few people want to do that, number one. And number two, we're not going to allow it on our platform. There's too much risk for the client. Well, I'm not going to say, I'm not going to commit to ever. Things can change. But as we sit here today, I think it's too much risk for the client to bear and too much risk for us to bear. Now, interestingly, we are blocking traffic from agents that are unauthorized. But here's an interesting thing. We track how many times we have to block a client. We've got 49 million client accounts. I get a weekly report with the weekly hits. It's like 30 times that use was blocked, 40 times that clog was blocked. Clients are not yet willing to give their passwords to these agents to go take activity on their behalf.
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Speaker 5: I'm not ready.
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Speaker 1: I'm not ready.
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Speaker 5: I don't think I ever will be ready. I mean, it's sort of the most sacred thing that somebody can do is part with their money and to make that decision themselves. But maybe I'm just old fashioned.
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Speaker 6: I don't know.
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Speaker 7: Well, you look at examples like Hugging Face and there's been others where agents maybe do things that they weren't intended to do and By the way, I'm very pro-AI. I think AI is terrific, and it's going to help us in lots of ways. But the idea that you might expose all your money or give your password and credentials to an AI agent, that makes me very nervous and certainly makes us nervous that our clients would do that, which is why we don't allow it. But we will create safe ways in because we know clients want to use large language models. We've got two ways for clients to engage with us and use their large language models. but in a very safe and secure way.
00:12:34
Speaker 1: So, Rick, I've got to say, the wars, midterms, there's just AI, there's just so much coming at investors right now. And I know you and John Beattie, right, did a keynote earlier, and you guys were kind of talking about the outlook. How do you see the outlook right now?
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Speaker 7: Well, the markets are strong, the economy's strong, and that's a good place to be. Employment's good.
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Speaker 1: Why does it always feel so bad, though?
00:12:56
Speaker 7: Well, there's always things to be concerned about, and the market doesn't love uncertainty, and the midterms create uncertainty. But we'll get past that soon. And if you look at the past midterms, 19 of the last 19 midterms, after we've got through them, the market's gone up. So maybe we'll make it 20 in a row. But yes, there's been uncertainty. But I think what's kept the markets continuing to go is that the economy's strong. You're seeing incredible productivity growth. This birth of AI that's driving a lot of incredible level investments, certainly level of investments I've never seen in my career. So fundamentally, there's a lot of great things happening.
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Speaker 1: Is there, what's one risk that you keep on your, I don't know, on your mind?
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Speaker 7: I think to me the biggest risk is inflation because the way inflation could hurt the markets is if bond yields continue to go up, there's a lot of debt in the world. And so that debt becomes more expensive. The discount rate on equities becomes higher. And so I think inflation is something to watch.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems to be a little bit persistent, right? Thank you so much.
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Speaker 7: Thanks for having me on. I always love coming on and seeing you, too. I always have a great time.
00:14:03
Speaker 5: We have fun with you, too. Thanks, Rick. It's always good to see you.
00:14:05
Speaker 6: Thank you.
00:14:05
Speaker 1: Rick Worcester, of course, President and CEO of Charles Schwab Corporation.
00:14:13
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m.
00:14:20
Speaker 1: Eastern.
00:14:20
Speaker 2: Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube.
00:14:27
Speaker 1: We're back here on Bloomberg Business Week with some of our guests from Schwab Impact 2026. It was held this past week in Boston, Massachusetts. The annual event brings together financial advisors, registered investment advisors from all over the country, as well as those in the industry who support them with services, technology, and tools. And it really is dealing with what's changing, what's new, what's the outlook.
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Speaker 5: On that, we checked in with Schwab's chief investment strategist, somebody who you know, Lizanne Saunders.
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Speaker 4: Well, it's getting a little sketchier, and there's less tolerance for misses. What I think is interesting is a lot of these companies that are then perceived to have missed based on stock action, in many cases, the companies beat the sell-side consensus published number, but they arguably undershot the buy-side expectation, the unpublished, what we used to call the whisper number.
00:15:24
Speaker 3: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: But that's enough to really hit the stocks. It happened to Samsung a few months ago, which then took the Kospi down with it by 40%.
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Speaker 5: Is there something that signals where we are in a cycle when we see a knee-jerk reaction like this?
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Speaker 4: Well, I think the CapEx story arguably is not super late cycle. But we're at the part of the cycle where, of course, the questioning is about The chase for capital, the cost of capital, are the revenue assumptions too lofty? And what is the spread between the cost of capital and the return on invested capital?
00:16:01
Speaker 1: Which investors should be asking, right? Of course, of course.
00:16:05
Speaker 4: And there's a more discerning lens being applied to the market right now, but it's not happening in an aggregate sense. So it's very targeted at the misses. Whether it is something that spreads, I don't know.
00:16:20
Speaker 5: What would you have said if I said to you two years ago that we're going to see a handful of the Mag7 not have positive free cash flow in two years?
00:16:31
Speaker 4: I think the expectation would have been for worse performance than what we have seen.
00:16:37
Speaker 5: So they're not being punished as much as you think they.
00:16:39
Speaker 6: Could have been?
00:16:40
Speaker 4: I think where we're seeing punishment is the lower quality companies that in this chase for capital... have less opportunity to capture that capital. And that's why you're seeing a much greater amount of dispersion as you look at quality type attribution or factors, especially when you go down the cap spectrum. Like the last year, the non-profitable Russell 2000 stocks were up twice as much as the profitable this year. As of last week, because I only look at this on a weekly basis, the profitable stocks are about 20%, handily outperforming the S & P. And they're small caps, but they're profitable. The non-profitable, about flat. So a 20 percentage point spread just based on profitability. So that's where you're seeing. You have to look under the hood of the cap-weighted indexes these days to get a true sense of what the market is doing. And that's where you're seeing the connectivity to all of these macro concerns, capital raise concerns, you are seeing it in terms of how individual segments are performing.
00:17:45
Speaker 1: What's your take on the bubble conversation?
00:17:48
Speaker 4: I don't think it's a bubble akin to the late 1990s. That was a valuation bubble because all the growth was in the P, there was no E. So you had no denominator in the equation. This time, the E has been growing faster than the P. Where there might be a bubble is in forward expectations, the longevity of this cycle and the concern about extrapolating. So I think there might be a little bit of an expectations bubble, but there's so many differences. Back in the late 90s, it was a build it and they will come. By 2001, you still were only utilizing 3% of the fiber optic cable that had been laid. This time we've got supply trying to chase demand. But now even questions about how sustainable is the demand?
00:18:31
Speaker 1: Right, because the demand, the ROI, right? Is it going to make sense for everybody in my, if I run a company, for all my employees to have access? What's the cost of it? What's the return?
00:18:41
Speaker 4: And there's a recent estimate I saw for the data center operators, how much revenue they need to generate over the next four years to kind of make it make sense. And it was a number somewhere around $ 8 trillion. Yet the estimates for what the revenues are going to be is less than half of that. So that's where I think people are starting to do a lot more math to figure this out.
00:19:05
Speaker 5: Speaking of math, let's do some math with Anthropix S1. It was remarkable just to see the numbers in there for a company that started, what, in 2021?
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Speaker 4: You know I can't talk about this.
00:19:16
Speaker 5: Okay. I'm not going to ask you specifically about this. It's a big picture question. What does it mean when a company goes public that is only a few years old and it already has a valuation of $ 1. 5 trillion or $ 2 trillion? We saw this with SpaceX earlier this year, but that was a different case because SpaceX is as old as Meta at this point.
00:19:40
Speaker 4: We've never seen companies this large that are private. It's part of the reason why there's so much enthusiasm about access to... private companies and the private markets. There's a risk associated with that too, but there's also the concern and part of the reason why you're seeing more dispersion in even just the performance of some sort of AI cohort, much more dispersion in performance having to do with concerns about the crowding out. When you bring these big, very popular companies public, does that crowd out investments in other areas, especially in what has become an unbelievably rotational market? I mean, metrics associated with that are breaking records. And what we ultimately saw with SpaceX is you didn't get a big run after the launch. I'm not going to opine on whether we see that with Anthropix.
00:20:38
Speaker 1: But that rotation, that's a good thing.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, all else equal, I think it is a good thing. I think what is unfortunate is there's a lot of investors that think the key to success is trying to gauge what the next shift in the rotation is going to be in advance. That's a fool's errand. I think, if anything, what these rapid-fire rotations tell you to do... is maybe consider rebalancing based on what your portfolio is telling you. A lot of rebalancing structures are based on the calendar. It might be semi-annual or it might be annual. Take advantage of these rotations by maybe rebalancing a little more frequently and stay in gear by essentially reacting. So taking profits when you get a big run on the upside, whether it's in a cohort or a sector or a group of stocks or even a broader asset class, add into what is underperformed. That would have served really well in this latest rotation back toward more traditionally defensive areas.
00:21:35
Speaker 5: Real quick, 2027. Give us your outlook very briefly.
00:21:40
Speaker 4: I think that we are likely to base case from an economic standpoint is that we continue the rolling nature of this cycle where you get rolling recessions and rolling expansions happening simultaneously. Allowing the avoidance of a full-blown aggregate recession, that helps to explain the rotations that are happening. Base case, I think a rotational market persists at least in the first half of the year.
00:22:03
Speaker 5: That's Schwab's chief investment strategist, Lizanne Saunders. Sticking with Schwab impact and shifting gears from stocks to bonds, some big news recently in the world of fixed income. Microsoft drew a blowout demand for its $ 25 billion bond offering. This has investors made room in portfolios stuffed with AI-related debt for the top-rated company's first major issuance in almost a decade. Also this week, U.S. Treasury surged as a sell-off in shares of tech stocks revived investor appetite for bonds as insurance against the possibility of an economic slowdown. For more, we caught up with Colin Martin, Schwab's head of fixed income and research strategy, from Schwab Impact 2026 in Boston.
00:22:43
Speaker 1: The issuance in the corporate debt markets, especially when it comes to the hyperscalers in these big AI companies, investors are interested. Is it just because, sure, I don't think Microsoft's going to go under? Is that what it's all about?
00:22:56
Speaker 3: I think in this instance, it probably is. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best one. And you think about the hyperscaler space and the risks that are present, right? Everyone's talking about the risks. Not all hyperscalers are created equally. They have different credit ratings. But Microsoft is Microsoft, you know, AAA rated and higher than the U.S.
00:23:16
Speaker 6: Government.
00:23:17
Speaker 3: So it's not surprising that there's a lot of demand there. You know, we see this bill that I'm sure there's a lot of investors that are saying, sure, you know, give me some of that. Right. The risk is, you know, how does that affect other companies, right? I mean, that's a lot of supply, $ 25 billion, right?
00:23:32
Speaker 1: What gets squeezed out?
00:23:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, but if we see that now, what if you're a company that might not have had as much demand already and someone just said, well, I just lent to Microsoft, right?
00:23:42
Speaker 5: Look, I'm not going to ask you to talk about the merits of the credit rating agencies, but just the fact that you said this is a company that's rated higher than the U.S. government just gets my attention. How is that possible? Well, who has more debt? Because the U.S. government can't go out of business. Who has more debt? I mean, the U.S. government has more debt than everybody.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: I know.
00:23:59
Speaker 5: But there's only a couple companies, you know.
00:24:02
Speaker 6: But the U.S.
00:24:02
Speaker 5: Government can't go out of business. We can print our own currency. We can can't default really like bingo so how is this possible yeah.
00:24:09
Speaker 3: You know i think diversification people want to spread out where you know who they're lending to not you know we can't provide specific guidance on individual issuers but when you see these long-term tranches right 30 40 40 years i still kind of like a treasury there i think our i think our government's going to be around in.
00:24:24
Speaker 5: 30 or 40 years unless the ai gets.
00:24:26
Speaker 3: Us well and like you like you said for better or for worse we can issue in our own currency you know so we have the ability uh i I don't know if we have the willingness to be paying right now, but we have the ability.
00:24:38
Speaker 1: So let's talk about.
00:24:39
Speaker 5: For.
00:24:39
Speaker 6: Better or for worse.
00:24:40
Speaker 5: I mean, the reason I'm laughing about that is because we just chatted with Jim Ferrioli over on the digital currencies product and research. So I think there's a discussion there to be had between, you know, the U.S. fiscal... situation and cryptocurrencies. But we're not going to have that conversation right now.
00:24:57
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Fed meeting this week. It definitely is already a very different U.S. Central Bank under Kevin Warsh. You're laughing. But it is, right? Do you think it's right that the Fed needs to cut back on some of its involvement, its communication, and is the market ready for that?
00:25:21
Speaker 6: I don't think they should.
00:25:23
Speaker 3: I don't like it. I think there's a fine line between providing, it doesn't have to be forward guidance, but the reaction function. The Fed still controls the Fed funds rate, whether they tell us exactly how and when they're going to do it. But, you know, all bond yields to a degree are priced off of Fed policy. And I think we need to separate the idea that if they, you know, just because the markets are reacting or there can be some sort of circular logic there, they're still in charge and that's okay. give us a little something. We got really nothing yesterday. And what I worry about is what that means further out the curve. And is there going to be a higher uncertainty premium with long-term treasury yields?
00:26:00
Speaker 5: What do you think the strategy is behind that? The less is more approach.
00:26:04
Speaker 3: I think it's just a personal approach from Kevin Warsh.
00:26:07
Speaker 5: But is there a merit to it in the market? Like to not to keep the market guessing, but to have the market do some of the work that an SEP would typically do.
00:26:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could be, you know, and maybe that, you know, Warsh mentioned that. He said financial conditions have tightened but aren't necessarily tight. If that trend continues, maybe some of that work is done for them. I mean, when you look at the meeting itself, they held rates again. I think a case could have been made that they could have hiked. I mean, inflation is still a problem.
00:26:36
Speaker 5: That was Colin Martin, head of fixed income and research strategy at Charles Schwab.
00:26:40
Speaker 1: Coming up, more from Schwab Impact 2026, including as voters head to the polls this coming week What could change on the regulatory and policy front out of Washington for businesses and investors?
00:26:52
Speaker 5: We talk about political risks and market implications with Charles Schwab's Mike Townsend. This is a Washington insider. He has spent decades in the nation's capital and he has an understanding of what could happen.
00:27:04
Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg.
00:27:12
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube.
00:27:27
Speaker 1: The midterm elections in the United States are this Tuesday, and the stakes extend well beyond the balance of power in the nation's capital.
00:27:35
Speaker 5: From the future of crypto regulation to Wall Street oversight to tax policy and more, think prediction markets, the deficit. The outcome could shape the landscape for all types of investors.
00:27:45
Speaker 1: For more on what investors should be watching out for as Election Day approaches, we caught up with Mike Townsend, Managing Director of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs at Charles Schwab. He joined us live from Schwab Impact 2026 in Boston.
00:27:59
Speaker 5: I'm going to put you on the spot. Start with your predictions. What happens Tuesday?
00:28:04
Speaker 8: Sure. I think we've moved from can the Democrats win the House to by how much will the Democrats win the House? So, you know, I think we're reasonably talking about a double digit margin, 12, 15, something like that. So I think that's the most likely outcome.
00:28:21
Speaker 5: In the House.
00:28:21
Speaker 8: I'm 85, 90 percent there. I think the Senate is where all the intrigue is. And I've been telling people we have nine Senate races within the margin of error and those could go a little bit one way, a little bit the other way. You could be looking at a radically different.
00:28:37
Speaker 5: Or they could all go one way or all go the other way. I mean, that happened in 2024 with the presidential election, right?
00:28:44
Speaker 8: The momentum seems to be with the Democrats, right? But some of these races, Iowa's Senate race, the average poll is like 0.4%. It's meaningless. So it's tied. And we'll see which way they go.
00:28:57
Speaker 1: What does it mean in terms of if indeed it's a blue wave. And maybe, so we're talking maybe even the Senate. What does that mean in terms of the business environment, the market environment?
00:29:09
Speaker 8: Yeah, look, I've been telling people on the market environment for months that, you know, the history of midterm elections, if you look at the three months leading up to a midterm election, S & P 500 is up an average of 1.7%. It's basically flat, which is not surprising, right? Elections are a big source of uncertainty. But three months after a midterm election. Since 1974, this is just midterm elections, the average S & P 500 performance is 5.3%. Doesn't matter what changes? So my point is that. the markets don't care who wins. The market just wants the election to be over.
00:29:56
Speaker 5: Because once the.
00:29:57
Speaker 8: Election is over, right, the market can make some assumptions about sort of what the landscape will be over the next couple of years.
00:30:01
Speaker 1: But will it be over right away, Mike?
00:30:03
Speaker 5: There's the question.
00:30:04
Speaker 4: Okay.
00:30:05
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:30:05
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, obviously with Alaska being part of the Senate, you know, mix here, you know, even in a normal Alaska year, we will probably be talking about a day or two. And if that's decisive, we could You know, some of these races are incredibly close. We could be talking about recounts and that sort of thing. So it could be a few days. You keep talking about the polling being so close. And what did you say?
00:30:27
Speaker 5: Nine Senate races within the margin of error. If you look at prediction markets, though, they are overwhelmingly favoring Democrats in states such as Texas. I mean, if Tallarico at 68 percent chance of winning on Talshi right now. In Maine, Troy Jackson at 61 percent. El-Sayed in Michigan at 73 percent. Should we believe these prediction markets?
00:30:48
Speaker 8: So I think they're interesting, and I'm going to be really interested in how they perform in this election, because I think that'll help give us more data. The reality is that there's quite a lot of money at stake in the big picture question, will Democrats win the Senate or not?
00:31:04
Speaker 5: Money at stake in what sense? In cow sheet, right? In terms of the markets. Making it accurate.
00:31:09
Speaker 3: Right.
00:31:09
Speaker 8: Making more, some of these races, the individual races, don't have a ton of money into them.
00:31:16
Speaker 5: So how much, I mean, just from, you have a background in politics. I mean, you worked for two main senators. Is it fair to say that because prediction markets, maybe you can answer this question for us Wednesday or next week, because prediction markets take into account all the polling and look at that entire race, environment, and they do have money behind them, that they could be more accurate than the polls?
00:31:40
Speaker 8: Well, I also think they take in more than polling, right? There's kind of a vibe to it. That's part of the sense that momentum is going that way, right? So that's part of it. But you talked about Texas, right? I mean, we've been down this road before.
00:31:55
Speaker 5: In Texas, right? Beto O'Rourke can tell you all about it.
00:31:58
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
00:31:58
Speaker 8: I mean, Texans have not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. So I keep saying I'll sort of believe it when I see it.
00:32:07
Speaker 5: Do you believe Texas?
00:32:09
Speaker 8: I think James Tallarico, the Democrat nominee, is a very talented candidate, and he's raised incredible amounts of money. Ken Paxton, the AG, who's the Republican nominee, not the most dynamic campaigner.
00:32:23
Speaker 5: Some people might call him a flawed candidate. And quite a bit of baggage, shall we say.
00:32:28
Speaker 1: So....
00:32:30
Speaker 8: This is a pretty unique environment for the Democrats, and yet it's still Texas.
00:32:35
Speaker 5: So I want to.
00:32:36
Speaker 1: Ask you, I'm already thinking about not, yes, next week, but also two years from now, the next presidential race, and thinking about that. That's an important one. And I wonder what that's going to tell us about politics in America.
00:32:50
Speaker 5: Absolutely fascinating to me.
00:32:51
Speaker 8: To me, the 2028 presidential is kind of an existential election for both parties, right? No incumbent on the ballot. Democrats have to figure out a way to articulate a forward-looking vision, right? You can run a midterm on we don't like Donald Trump and that's what's happening, right? But they have to articulate a forward-looking vision and figure out who is going to do that because there's no obvious Democratic messenger. On the Republican side, they have to figure out what is life in this party after Donald Trump. And I've fascinated with the idea that, you know, what you and I would call years of mainstream Republicans, do they sort of wake up and go, oh, that was weird. Let's go back to, you know, things that we've talked about for.
00:33:33
Speaker 5: A hundred years. I think that ship sailed in 2024. I think it did. I agree with you. But Republicans have to figure out what they are after Trump.
00:33:43
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:33:44
Speaker 5: The post-Trump question, right? Is it J.D.
00:33:46
Speaker 6: Vance?
00:33:46
Speaker 8: Is he going to be the standard bearer? So I'm skeptical that he may be the standard bearer. If that's the case, I'm more skeptical that he could win a general election. Because I'm not sure that the sort of Trump voter just automatically goes, oh, it's J.D.
00:34:02
Speaker 6: Vance.
00:34:03
Speaker 5: I think many of those Trump voters are uniquely Trump. Are you saying that the president is a once-in-a-generation political personality? I think he is.
00:34:12
Speaker 8: I think he is for all these kind of strange reasons that we maybe never experienced before. But I don't think it is a slam dunk that J.D. Vance is the nominee or is the winner.
00:34:24
Speaker 1: Is it time for something beyond just two really main political parties? How do you see it?
00:34:30
Speaker 2: Sure.
00:34:30
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, we talk about this all the time. And I've been traveling all around the country this fall talking to investors. And the most common thing I hear is, ah, pox on both the parties, right? They just want to, like, can't we get something else?
00:34:46
Speaker 2: Right?
00:34:46
Speaker 5: But that.
00:34:47
Speaker 8: that sort of sentiment doesn't turn into a third party sort of, you know, you can imagine or an independent candidate. It just hasn't worked that way. And I don't know that it will.
00:34:57
Speaker 1: Mike, what about the grift that we've seen in Washington and, you know, alleged, alleged grift.
00:35:04
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:35:04
Speaker 1: But I think it's fair to say, I don't know that there is. I think I, I don't think we've ever so visibly seen an administration and a president in who has business assets that are very clearly in the midst of changes in policies that are impacted very clearly. So I just do wonder about grift generally in Washington. And to be fair, both parties and the ability to trade stocks and obviously have inside information. And that's been a thing that's been going on for years. So does any of this change going forward?
00:35:38
Speaker 8: I feel like Let me give you a fascinating story from this conference. So you're probably aware there are a bunch of students here who are sort of learning about finance from finance programs all over the country. I talked to a student who is a junior at the University of Indiana at the Kellogg School. And one of the things he asked me, he said, I don't know any politics other than this. He was nine when President Trump was elected the first time. And he was like, is this normal? And I've been kind of thinking about that question for two days because he's like, yeah, this is what politics is. Like the name calling, the kind of alleged grift, all that. And I just think, wow, that's what the youngest generation, the newest voters, they just think this is how things operate. I don't know if we can change that.
00:36:30
Speaker 1: What did you say to him, though?
00:36:31
Speaker 8: Well, I said I do think historically... We're on sort of a pendulum, and you're way out here, but historically that has come back. We've had world wars. We've had a civil war. We've come back towards the middle. I don't know if that's four years from now or a generation from now. Incredible perspective from a young voter. Hey, before we let you go, I said you worked for two senators in Maine. One of those was Susan Collins. She's in a fight for her political life right now with Troy Jackson. Cal, she has Troy Jackson at 63% odds of winning.
00:37:00
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:37:03
Speaker 5: You know her. Can she pull this off?
00:37:06
Speaker 6: She can. She always has.
00:37:08
Speaker 8: I think she was farther behind six years ago in some of the polls than she is now, and she won pretty easily. She surprised then. I would not count her out at all. I do think, if anything, the environment, overall environment, this may be the environment that knocks her out. You know, she is the last standing Republican senator in a state that voted for Kamala Harris last time around. But don't count her out.
00:37:38
Speaker 5: It would be pretty remarkable if she lost to Troy Jackson, given the challenges that the Democratic Party had with Graham Plattner there just a few months ago. Yeah.
00:37:46
Speaker 8: And Troy Jackson's a very, very nice, you know, ordinary kind of politician. But, you know, I wouldn't call him the most dynamic person in the world. And you know, he didn't win the nomination. And, you know, he ended up here. So we'll see. I think that's more of a sort of overall environment than anything else. Susan Collins knows everybody in Maine. She has touched almost everybody in some way, bringing federal dollars back. Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she has the ability to do that. So I absolutely think she can win.
00:38:19
Speaker 1: What are you doing on Wednesday?
00:38:21
Speaker 5: On Wednesday, well, I will.
00:38:22
Speaker 8: Have been probably up all night and have to put out something before market opens.
00:38:28
Speaker 5: Come on our program on Wednesday. I'd love to. Really? Okay.
00:38:31
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:38:32
Speaker 6: We'll see where we are.
00:38:33
Speaker 5: And we may be at a point where we're like, I don't know what's happening. That's fine.
00:38:37
Speaker 1: We say that every day.
00:38:39
Speaker 5: That was Mike Townsend, Managing Director of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs at Charles Schwab.
00:38:43
Speaker 1: And that does it for this special edition of Bloomberg Business Week. featuring some of our conversation from Schwab Impact 2026 held this past week in Boston. Be sure to check out our podcast feed for all of the interviews from the event.
00:38:57
Speaker 5: Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Businessweek daily Monday through Friday, starting at 2 p.m. Wall Street time on Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg TV, and on Sirius XM channel 121.
00:39:05
Speaker 1: You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Podcasts. We're simulcast on Bloomberg Originals, available on Bloomberg.com slash originals, and streaming platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus, and more.
00:39:19
Speaker 5: Find our Bloomberg Businessweek podcast at Bloomberg.com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The latest edition of the magazine. It's available on newsstands now at Bloomberg.com and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. I'm Tim Stenevek.
00:39:32
Speaker 1: And I'm Carol Master. Have a good and safe weekend, everyone.
00:39:35
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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
00:00:04
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00:00:05
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00:00:06
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00:00:08
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily. Reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead. With insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. With Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek. on Bloomberg Radio.
00:00:31
Speaker 4: Hi, everyone.
00:00:32
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week weekend podcast. This was a week. It started off with Anthropic's big reveal on Monday, the company filing for its long-awaited IPO and laying out all the risks. There were a lot. The filing's risk factors ran 94 pages, more than 70,000 words. And the stock, when it goes public, will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker ANT.
00:00:58
Speaker 5: We also had another drop of big tech, Mag7 earnings, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon, all great reads on the AI build. So too were the quarterly updates from a couple of other names, one in the semiconductor space, Intel, and the memory maker, SanDisk.
00:01:12
Speaker 1: And let's not forget, we got the second to last Fed decision of the year. All of this as we count down to the midterms this coming week, which in many ways will be a vote on AI and really on the economy and inflation, two of our main focal points this past week. It was a lot, and the specifics on all of it can be found on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg.com.
00:01:34
Speaker 5: That was our backdrop as we headed to Boston to broadcast live from Schwab Impact 2026. It's an annual event, and it brings together advisors from around the country to discuss the environment right now. What's coming at them? Everything from agentic AI and advising clients to security risks and tokenization, wealth transfers, and the Washington playbook. That's just scratching the surface.
00:01:55
Speaker 1: On all of this, we'll hear from a very familiar name to the Bloomberg audience. We're talking about Schwab's chief investment strategist, Lizanne Saunders.
00:02:04
Speaker 5: Plus, with the U.S. midterm elections coming up, we explore the impact of the political environment in Washington on investors and the capital markets. We do that with Mike Townsend. He's Schwab's Washington-based political analyst.
00:02:16
Speaker 1: All of that to come, we begin with Schwab president and CEO, Rick Worcester. Go back a couple years, AI was not necessarily the focal point. It is now.
00:02:25
Speaker 6: Is anyone talking about it here at the conference?
00:02:27
Speaker 1: Yes. You guys in particular. What's happened? What's the conversations, Rick, that you guys have internally?
00:02:35
Speaker 7: Well, it's been a huge accelerant to our business and I think to all the advisors here. I think it's primarily helping us in a couple different ways and helping the advisors in a couple different ways. Number one, it's helping us be more efficient and effective with clients. It's streamlining operations effectively. It's helping advisors be more prepared for meetings to recall what the last discussion they had with a client was or what's important to that client. And at the same time, I think it's creating new pathways to engage clients. And for all of us here at this conference, it will allow us to reach new clients that we couldn't have before with a personal relationship.
00:03:05
Speaker 5: Well, one way you're doing that is by investing in Nevis. A year ago, you were sitting with us. You had just acquired Forge Global. Is this investment in Nevis part of something bigger?
00:03:14
Speaker 7: Well, it's part of us trying to nail the basics for our advisors. our biggest advisors have pretty sophisticated technology stacks. And what Nevis, I think, can do for them is provide an operating layer that makes it easy for them to work across their tech stack and integrate into us. And so what we're trying to do with our investment in Nevis is create ease for the advisor and make it even easier for them to work with us, which hopefully gives us a preferred position in being their custodian of choice.
00:03:41
Speaker 1: How do you think about AI and being cautious? Because I think we're in this narrative around the AI spend. Look at Alphabet today, erasing about half a trillion dollars in market cap. And I think there's increasingly the conversation about return on investment and will it all pay off? So how do you think about your moves, whether it's partnerships or doing deals, and what makes the most sense versus kind of watching how this ultimately plays out and what will be the ROI for everybody.
00:04:07
Speaker 6: Well, for us, we start with what's the end game? What are we trying to accomplish?
00:04:10
Speaker 7: And at Schwab, it's all about delighting the client, whether it's an advisor or a direct retail client. And so we've been placing our emphasis on how do we bring AI to our clients in a way that helps their financial journey and their investment life.
00:04:23
Speaker 6: And I think there's a plethora.
00:04:24
Speaker 7: Of ways that that can happen from stitching together more of their investment life in one place to having insights that they wouldn't have before. to making all these advisors more productive with their clients. So we'd like to start with the end goal, and I think AI has a really big role to play in all of that.
00:04:39
Speaker 1: I'd love to know what you think about all of the bubble conversation that's been out, whether it's Ken Griffin of Citadel, some concerns, and then there are others who are pushing back over at Blackstone saying, no, no, no, we've got to keep going. You've seen a few market cycles. What do you think?
00:04:56
Speaker 7: Well, it certainly feels like a boom, and we've had several years of great returns, which is terrific. In terms of a bubble, you know, one thing that gives me some confidence that maybe we're not in a bubble is there is a tremendous number of stocks that I think are either fairly valued or undervalued. And you certainly see stocks that are highly valued. Their fundamentals are incredible, and they're creating an entire new market, a new way of working. It's not surprising that they have high valuations attached to them. And at the same time, there's so many companies that I look at, I'm like, wow, this company is cheap.
00:05:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:05:30
Speaker 5: So to that end, I mean, we spent a lot of time over the last two days talking about AI in terms of advisor services and what it can do for RIAs and ultimately the end client. But what is AI doing for you at Charles Schwab right now on your back end that's making you more efficient?
00:05:44
Speaker 7: It's helping us all over the place. I visited a branch in Austin, Texas last week, and I sat with one of our financial consultants. Their job is to sit with clients and help their financial dreams come true and play an important role. That financial consultant told me that the AI tools we had put on his desktop saved him two to three hours a day. And so what he's able to do with those two or three hours a day is go see another family, go talk to another couple trying to retire, an individual trying to buy their first house. That's two or three hours he's getting back every single day to help more clients.
00:06:14
Speaker 5: Are you seeing it show up on the bottom line at all in terms of earnings?
00:06:17
Speaker 7: Absolutely we are. We for sure have... Fewer people per client answering phone calls.
00:06:24
Speaker 3: Wow.
00:06:24
Speaker 7: We're able to serve more clients with each of our financial consultants. Now, we're still net positive from a hiring standpoint, but we're more efficient. We have 1,600 more people than we had two years ago, so we're growing. But if you look at the number of people we have per client, per client account, we continue to scale our business. And AI has been an important part of that.
00:06:46
Speaker 1: So making you more efficient in certain areas, you are hiring. Where are you hiring?
00:06:49
Speaker 7: We are hiring a lot of client-facing people. And the interesting thing I'm seeing about AI, and there's so much talk about it, and justifiably so, at the same point, relationships matter either just as much or even more. And when I look at all the statistics in our business, relationships are driving more growth in technology. When we have a financial consultant relationship in a branch like we have here in Boston, and we have a client relationship, that client relationship grows three times faster than when we don't have that person-to-person relationship. Likewise, our RRA business is the fastest growing segment of our business, and that is entirely fueled by the relationship these wonderful advisors have with their end clients.
00:07:29
Speaker 1: So kids, go get a liberal arts degree, right? We do think about, what do we tell the next generation in this environment?
00:07:38
Speaker 7: Well, I think EQ matters a lot, no matter what you choose to do, and I think there's probably lots of ways to learn EQ.
00:07:43
Speaker 5: So I want to talk a little bit, there's a lot we want to get to with you, but you know at this point that when you sit down with us, I'm going to ask you about prediction markets.
00:07:50
Speaker 6: There was a market on that.
00:07:52
Speaker 5: I wake up this morning and I see the news, CalSheet, a $ 40 billion valuation, raising another billion dollars today from a large group of investors, including some financial services firms, interestingly enough. Are you missing the boat on prediction markets?
00:08:04
Speaker 7: Well, my point of view on prediction markets is, Things related to financial events that could make sense in your portfolio, we think there's a market for that and a justification to have it in your portfolio, and we pursued that. We're working with the CBOE to make financial-related prediction markets available. I do not think, and I strongly feel, that sports gambling is not an asset class, despite what some of these firms that offer it say.
00:08:29
Speaker 6: It's gambling.
00:08:30
Speaker 1: They say it's not gambling.
00:08:31
Speaker 6: Right?
00:08:32
Speaker 1: They push back constantly. What do you say?
00:08:34
Speaker 7: I believe it's 100% gambling, and I have no problem against gambling. People like to go to Vegas, go to Vegas, have a good time. But you need to realize when you do that that you are very likely to lose some money. That is completely different than being an investor. And I just want to make sure people understand the difference, particularly young people who are being marketed to with sports... gambling being an asset class. Listen, go gamble if you want to. Take money you might have gone out to dinner with.
00:09:02
Speaker 6: Gamble.
00:09:03
Speaker 7: But don't mix that with buying stocks that if you're 22 years old when you're 65 are going to be worth a lot more.
00:09:08
Speaker 1: Why is that bad?
00:09:09
Speaker 5: Prediction markets say there's no difference between betting on the outcome of sports or the markets or betting on the outcome of what Fed Chair Kevin Warsh will do at the next meeting.
00:09:19
Speaker 7: I think it's factually incorrect to say that sports gambling is the same as being an investor. Nine cents and a dollar on average people lose when they sports gamble. And again, that's fine. You go out to dinner, you leave with less money, you had a nice time with your wife or your friend, you're happy that you spent the money. And people enjoy sports and have a good time with it. If people want to do that, I think it's great. I just want to make sure the young investor in our country doesn't think that sports is an asset class the same way that investing in stocks is, because they are fundamentally different. One has a positive expected return that will benefit you in your financial life and make you wealthy. The other is going to take money out of your pocket.
00:09:57
Speaker 1: Do you ever think that these prediction markets are going to grow? substantially when it comes to the financial markets and having a role in the financial system?
00:10:05
Speaker 7: Yeah, I don't know because there's so many ways to participate in markets today and take different positions. I don't know how much that adds. I think it simplifies things and it might be a unique way for younger investors to engage. Maybe it's easier. But I think the reason you see 90 plus percent of the volume in sports gambling is because it's got around the sports gambling rules and it's opened up nationally and allowed people to do that.
00:10:27
Speaker 5: So just last question on this. When do you think we'll see the actual prediction products from you?
00:10:32
Speaker 7: Well, we already are in it in a small way. We're beginning with a relationship with CBOE where we have financial contracts on the S & P that are structured as prediction markets. We will launch more in the next year. But they are going to be financially driven. We're going to stay away from sports. Again, I have no problem with sports gambling.
00:10:48
Speaker 6: I have at it. Just don't confuse it with investing.
00:10:51
Speaker 1: I want to go back to AI and agentic AI. And I know you've had some, I think, thoughts about this in terms of that ability. Do we want to be able to open up and let agents basically make decisions on your portfolio or your retirement assets? Do you have a view on that? as you guys lean more and more into AI?
00:11:09
Speaker 7: Well, I think at the moment, I think very few people want to do that, number one. And number two, we're not going to allow it on our platform. There's too much risk for the client. Well, I'm not going to say, I'm not going to commit to ever. Things can change. But as we sit here today, I think it's too much risk for the client to bear and too much risk for us to bear. Now, interestingly, we are blocking traffic from agents that are unauthorized. But here's an interesting thing. We track how many times we have to block a client. We've got 49 million client accounts. I get a weekly report with the weekly hits. It's like 30 times that use was blocked, 40 times that clog was blocked. Clients are not yet willing to give their passwords to these agents to go take activity on their behalf.
00:11:48
Speaker 5: I'm not ready.
00:11:49
Speaker 1: I'm not ready.
00:11:50
Speaker 5: I don't think I ever will be ready. I mean, it's sort of the most sacred thing that somebody can do is part with their money and to make that decision themselves. But maybe I'm just old fashioned.
00:11:59
Speaker 6: I don't know.
00:11:59
Speaker 7: Well, you look at examples like Hugging Face and there's been others where agents maybe do things that they weren't intended to do and By the way, I'm very pro-AI. I think AI is terrific, and it's going to help us in lots of ways. But the idea that you might expose all your money or give your password and credentials to an AI agent, that makes me very nervous and certainly makes us nervous that our clients would do that, which is why we don't allow it. But we will create safe ways in because we know clients want to use large language models. We've got two ways for clients to engage with us and use their large language models. but in a very safe and secure way.
00:12:34
Speaker 1: So, Rick, I've got to say, the wars, midterms, there's just AI, there's just so much coming at investors right now. And I know you and John Beattie, right, did a keynote earlier, and you guys were kind of talking about the outlook. How do you see the outlook right now?
00:12:50
Speaker 7: Well, the markets are strong, the economy's strong, and that's a good place to be. Employment's good.
00:12:54
Speaker 1: Why does it always feel so bad, though?
00:12:56
Speaker 7: Well, there's always things to be concerned about, and the market doesn't love uncertainty, and the midterms create uncertainty. But we'll get past that soon. And if you look at the past midterms, 19 of the last 19 midterms, after we've got through them, the market's gone up. So maybe we'll make it 20 in a row. But yes, there's been uncertainty. But I think what's kept the markets continuing to go is that the economy's strong. You're seeing incredible productivity growth. This birth of AI that's driving a lot of incredible level investments, certainly level of investments I've never seen in my career. So fundamentally, there's a lot of great things happening.
00:13:31
Speaker 1: Is there, what's one risk that you keep on your, I don't know, on your mind?
00:13:35
Speaker 7: I think to me the biggest risk is inflation because the way inflation could hurt the markets is if bond yields continue to go up, there's a lot of debt in the world. And so that debt becomes more expensive. The discount rate on equities becomes higher. And so I think inflation is something to watch.
00:13:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems to be a little bit persistent, right? Thank you so much.
00:13:58
Speaker 7: Thanks for having me on. I always love coming on and seeing you, too. I always have a great time.
00:14:03
Speaker 5: We have fun with you, too. Thanks, Rick. It's always good to see you.
00:14:05
Speaker 6: Thank you.
00:14:05
Speaker 1: Rick Worcester, of course, President and CEO of Charles Schwab Corporation.
00:14:13
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m.
00:14:20
Speaker 1: Eastern.
00:14:20
Speaker 2: Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube.
00:14:27
Speaker 1: We're back here on Bloomberg Business Week with some of our guests from Schwab Impact 2026. It was held this past week in Boston, Massachusetts. The annual event brings together financial advisors, registered investment advisors from all over the country, as well as those in the industry who support them with services, technology, and tools. And it really is dealing with what's changing, what's new, what's the outlook.
00:14:50
Speaker 5: On that, we checked in with Schwab's chief investment strategist, somebody who you know, Lizanne Saunders.
00:14:56
Speaker 4: Well, it's getting a little sketchier, and there's less tolerance for misses. What I think is interesting is a lot of these companies that are then perceived to have missed based on stock action, in many cases, the companies beat the sell-side consensus published number, but they arguably undershot the buy-side expectation, the unpublished, what we used to call the whisper number.
00:15:24
Speaker 3: Yeah.
00:15:24
Speaker 4: But that's enough to really hit the stocks. It happened to Samsung a few months ago, which then took the Kospi down with it by 40%.
00:15:32
Speaker 5: Is there something that signals where we are in a cycle when we see a knee-jerk reaction like this?
00:15:38
Speaker 4: Well, I think the CapEx story arguably is not super late cycle. But we're at the part of the cycle where, of course, the questioning is about The chase for capital, the cost of capital, are the revenue assumptions too lofty? And what is the spread between the cost of capital and the return on invested capital?
00:16:01
Speaker 1: Which investors should be asking, right? Of course, of course.
00:16:05
Speaker 4: And there's a more discerning lens being applied to the market right now, but it's not happening in an aggregate sense. So it's very targeted at the misses. Whether it is something that spreads, I don't know.
00:16:20
Speaker 5: What would you have said if I said to you two years ago that we're going to see a handful of the Mag7 not have positive free cash flow in two years?
00:16:31
Speaker 4: I think the expectation would have been for worse performance than what we have seen.
00:16:37
Speaker 5: So they're not being punished as much as you think they.
00:16:39
Speaker 6: Could have been?
00:16:40
Speaker 4: I think where we're seeing punishment is the lower quality companies that in this chase for capital... have less opportunity to capture that capital. And that's why you're seeing a much greater amount of dispersion as you look at quality type attribution or factors, especially when you go down the cap spectrum. Like the last year, the non-profitable Russell 2000 stocks were up twice as much as the profitable this year. As of last week, because I only look at this on a weekly basis, the profitable stocks are about 20%, handily outperforming the S & P. And they're small caps, but they're profitable. The non-profitable, about flat. So a 20 percentage point spread just based on profitability. So that's where you're seeing. You have to look under the hood of the cap-weighted indexes these days to get a true sense of what the market is doing. And that's where you're seeing the connectivity to all of these macro concerns, capital raise concerns, you are seeing it in terms of how individual segments are performing.
00:17:45
Speaker 1: What's your take on the bubble conversation?
00:17:48
Speaker 4: I don't think it's a bubble akin to the late 1990s. That was a valuation bubble because all the growth was in the P, there was no E. So you had no denominator in the equation. This time, the E has been growing faster than the P. Where there might be a bubble is in forward expectations, the longevity of this cycle and the concern about extrapolating. So I think there might be a little bit of an expectations bubble, but there's so many differences. Back in the late 90s, it was a build it and they will come. By 2001, you still were only utilizing 3% of the fiber optic cable that had been laid. This time we've got supply trying to chase demand. But now even questions about how sustainable is the demand?
00:18:31
Speaker 1: Right, because the demand, the ROI, right? Is it going to make sense for everybody in my, if I run a company, for all my employees to have access? What's the cost of it? What's the return?
00:18:41
Speaker 4: And there's a recent estimate I saw for the data center operators, how much revenue they need to generate over the next four years to kind of make it make sense. And it was a number somewhere around $ 8 trillion. Yet the estimates for what the revenues are going to be is less than half of that. So that's where I think people are starting to do a lot more math to figure this out.
00:19:05
Speaker 5: Speaking of math, let's do some math with Anthropix S1. It was remarkable just to see the numbers in there for a company that started, what, in 2021?
00:19:15
Speaker 4: You know I can't talk about this.
00:19:16
Speaker 5: Okay. I'm not going to ask you specifically about this. It's a big picture question. What does it mean when a company goes public that is only a few years old and it already has a valuation of $ 1. 5 trillion or $ 2 trillion? We saw this with SpaceX earlier this year, but that was a different case because SpaceX is as old as Meta at this point.
00:19:40
Speaker 4: We've never seen companies this large that are private. It's part of the reason why there's so much enthusiasm about access to... private companies and the private markets. There's a risk associated with that too, but there's also the concern and part of the reason why you're seeing more dispersion in even just the performance of some sort of AI cohort, much more dispersion in performance having to do with concerns about the crowding out. When you bring these big, very popular companies public, does that crowd out investments in other areas, especially in what has become an unbelievably rotational market? I mean, metrics associated with that are breaking records. And what we ultimately saw with SpaceX is you didn't get a big run after the launch. I'm not going to opine on whether we see that with Anthropix.
00:20:38
Speaker 1: But that rotation, that's a good thing.
00:20:41
Speaker 4: Yeah, all else equal, I think it is a good thing. I think what is unfortunate is there's a lot of investors that think the key to success is trying to gauge what the next shift in the rotation is going to be in advance. That's a fool's errand. I think, if anything, what these rapid-fire rotations tell you to do... is maybe consider rebalancing based on what your portfolio is telling you. A lot of rebalancing structures are based on the calendar. It might be semi-annual or it might be annual. Take advantage of these rotations by maybe rebalancing a little more frequently and stay in gear by essentially reacting. So taking profits when you get a big run on the upside, whether it's in a cohort or a sector or a group of stocks or even a broader asset class, add into what is underperformed. That would have served really well in this latest rotation back toward more traditionally defensive areas.
00:21:35
Speaker 5: Real quick, 2027. Give us your outlook very briefly.
00:21:40
Speaker 4: I think that we are likely to base case from an economic standpoint is that we continue the rolling nature of this cycle where you get rolling recessions and rolling expansions happening simultaneously. Allowing the avoidance of a full-blown aggregate recession, that helps to explain the rotations that are happening. Base case, I think a rotational market persists at least in the first half of the year.
00:22:03
Speaker 5: That's Schwab's chief investment strategist, Lizanne Saunders. Sticking with Schwab impact and shifting gears from stocks to bonds, some big news recently in the world of fixed income. Microsoft drew a blowout demand for its $ 25 billion bond offering. This has investors made room in portfolios stuffed with AI-related debt for the top-rated company's first major issuance in almost a decade. Also this week, U.S. Treasury surged as a sell-off in shares of tech stocks revived investor appetite for bonds as insurance against the possibility of an economic slowdown. For more, we caught up with Colin Martin, Schwab's head of fixed income and research strategy, from Schwab Impact 2026 in Boston.
00:22:43
Speaker 1: The issuance in the corporate debt markets, especially when it comes to the hyperscalers in these big AI companies, investors are interested. Is it just because, sure, I don't think Microsoft's going to go under? Is that what it's all about?
00:22:56
Speaker 3: I think in this instance, it probably is. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best one. And you think about the hyperscaler space and the risks that are present, right? Everyone's talking about the risks. Not all hyperscalers are created equally. They have different credit ratings. But Microsoft is Microsoft, you know, AAA rated and higher than the U.S.
00:23:16
Speaker 6: Government.
00:23:17
Speaker 3: So it's not surprising that there's a lot of demand there. You know, we see this bill that I'm sure there's a lot of investors that are saying, sure, you know, give me some of that. Right. The risk is, you know, how does that affect other companies, right? I mean, that's a lot of supply, $ 25 billion, right?
00:23:32
Speaker 1: What gets squeezed out?
00:23:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, but if we see that now, what if you're a company that might not have had as much demand already and someone just said, well, I just lent to Microsoft, right?
00:23:42
Speaker 5: Look, I'm not going to ask you to talk about the merits of the credit rating agencies, but just the fact that you said this is a company that's rated higher than the U.S. government just gets my attention. How is that possible? Well, who has more debt? Because the U.S. government can't go out of business. Who has more debt? I mean, the U.S. government has more debt than everybody.
00:23:58
Speaker 1: I know.
00:23:59
Speaker 5: But there's only a couple companies, you know.
00:24:02
Speaker 6: But the U.S.
00:24:02
Speaker 5: Government can't go out of business. We can print our own currency. We can can't default really like bingo so how is this possible yeah.
00:24:09
Speaker 3: You know i think diversification people want to spread out where you know who they're lending to not you know we can't provide specific guidance on individual issuers but when you see these long-term tranches right 30 40 40 years i still kind of like a treasury there i think our i think our government's going to be around in.
00:24:24
Speaker 5: 30 or 40 years unless the ai gets.
00:24:26
Speaker 3: Us well and like you like you said for better or for worse we can issue in our own currency you know so we have the ability uh i I don't know if we have the willingness to be paying right now, but we have the ability.
00:24:38
Speaker 1: So let's talk about.
00:24:39
Speaker 5: For.
00:24:39
Speaker 6: Better or for worse.
00:24:40
Speaker 5: I mean, the reason I'm laughing about that is because we just chatted with Jim Ferrioli over on the digital currencies product and research. So I think there's a discussion there to be had between, you know, the U.S. fiscal... situation and cryptocurrencies. But we're not going to have that conversation right now.
00:24:57
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Fed meeting this week. It definitely is already a very different U.S. Central Bank under Kevin Warsh. You're laughing. But it is, right? Do you think it's right that the Fed needs to cut back on some of its involvement, its communication, and is the market ready for that?
00:25:21
Speaker 6: I don't think they should.
00:25:23
Speaker 3: I don't like it. I think there's a fine line between providing, it doesn't have to be forward guidance, but the reaction function. The Fed still controls the Fed funds rate, whether they tell us exactly how and when they're going to do it. But, you know, all bond yields to a degree are priced off of Fed policy. And I think we need to separate the idea that if they, you know, just because the markets are reacting or there can be some sort of circular logic there, they're still in charge and that's okay. give us a little something. We got really nothing yesterday. And what I worry about is what that means further out the curve. And is there going to be a higher uncertainty premium with long-term treasury yields?
00:26:00
Speaker 5: What do you think the strategy is behind that? The less is more approach.
00:26:04
Speaker 3: I think it's just a personal approach from Kevin Warsh.
00:26:07
Speaker 5: But is there a merit to it in the market? Like to not to keep the market guessing, but to have the market do some of the work that an SEP would typically do.
00:26:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, it could be, you know, and maybe that, you know, Warsh mentioned that. He said financial conditions have tightened but aren't necessarily tight. If that trend continues, maybe some of that work is done for them. I mean, when you look at the meeting itself, they held rates again. I think a case could have been made that they could have hiked. I mean, inflation is still a problem.
00:26:36
Speaker 5: That was Colin Martin, head of fixed income and research strategy at Charles Schwab.
00:26:40
Speaker 1: Coming up, more from Schwab Impact 2026, including as voters head to the polls this coming week What could change on the regulatory and policy front out of Washington for businesses and investors?
00:26:52
Speaker 5: We talk about political risks and market implications with Charles Schwab's Mike Townsend. This is a Washington insider. He has spent decades in the nation's capital and he has an understanding of what could happen.
00:27:04
Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg.
00:27:12
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube.
00:27:27
Speaker 1: The midterm elections in the United States are this Tuesday, and the stakes extend well beyond the balance of power in the nation's capital.
00:27:35
Speaker 5: From the future of crypto regulation to Wall Street oversight to tax policy and more, think prediction markets, the deficit. The outcome could shape the landscape for all types of investors.
00:27:45
Speaker 1: For more on what investors should be watching out for as Election Day approaches, we caught up with Mike Townsend, Managing Director of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs at Charles Schwab. He joined us live from Schwab Impact 2026 in Boston.
00:27:59
Speaker 5: I'm going to put you on the spot. Start with your predictions. What happens Tuesday?
00:28:04
Speaker 8: Sure. I think we've moved from can the Democrats win the House to by how much will the Democrats win the House? So, you know, I think we're reasonably talking about a double digit margin, 12, 15, something like that. So I think that's the most likely outcome.
00:28:21
Speaker 5: In the House.
00:28:21
Speaker 8: I'm 85, 90 percent there. I think the Senate is where all the intrigue is. And I've been telling people we have nine Senate races within the margin of error and those could go a little bit one way, a little bit the other way. You could be looking at a radically different.
00:28:37
Speaker 5: Or they could all go one way or all go the other way. I mean, that happened in 2024 with the presidential election, right?
00:28:44
Speaker 8: The momentum seems to be with the Democrats, right? But some of these races, Iowa's Senate race, the average poll is like 0.4%. It's meaningless. So it's tied. And we'll see which way they go.
00:28:57
Speaker 1: What does it mean in terms of if indeed it's a blue wave. And maybe, so we're talking maybe even the Senate. What does that mean in terms of the business environment, the market environment?
00:29:09
Speaker 8: Yeah, look, I've been telling people on the market environment for months that, you know, the history of midterm elections, if you look at the three months leading up to a midterm election, S & P 500 is up an average of 1.7%. It's basically flat, which is not surprising, right? Elections are a big source of uncertainty. But three months after a midterm election. Since 1974, this is just midterm elections, the average S & P 500 performance is 5.3%. Doesn't matter what changes? So my point is that. the markets don't care who wins. The market just wants the election to be over.
00:29:56
Speaker 5: Because once the.
00:29:57
Speaker 8: Election is over, right, the market can make some assumptions about sort of what the landscape will be over the next couple of years.
00:30:01
Speaker 1: But will it be over right away, Mike?
00:30:03
Speaker 5: There's the question.
00:30:04
Speaker 4: Okay.
00:30:05
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:30:05
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, obviously with Alaska being part of the Senate, you know, mix here, you know, even in a normal Alaska year, we will probably be talking about a day or two. And if that's decisive, we could You know, some of these races are incredibly close. We could be talking about recounts and that sort of thing. So it could be a few days. You keep talking about the polling being so close. And what did you say?
00:30:27
Speaker 5: Nine Senate races within the margin of error. If you look at prediction markets, though, they are overwhelmingly favoring Democrats in states such as Texas. I mean, if Tallarico at 68 percent chance of winning on Talshi right now. In Maine, Troy Jackson at 61 percent. El-Sayed in Michigan at 73 percent. Should we believe these prediction markets?
00:30:48
Speaker 8: So I think they're interesting, and I'm going to be really interested in how they perform in this election, because I think that'll help give us more data. The reality is that there's quite a lot of money at stake in the big picture question, will Democrats win the Senate or not?
00:31:04
Speaker 5: Money at stake in what sense? In cow sheet, right? In terms of the markets. Making it accurate.
00:31:09
Speaker 3: Right.
00:31:09
Speaker 8: Making more, some of these races, the individual races, don't have a ton of money into them.
00:31:16
Speaker 5: So how much, I mean, just from, you have a background in politics. I mean, you worked for two main senators. Is it fair to say that because prediction markets, maybe you can answer this question for us Wednesday or next week, because prediction markets take into account all the polling and look at that entire race, environment, and they do have money behind them, that they could be more accurate than the polls?
00:31:40
Speaker 8: Well, I also think they take in more than polling, right? There's kind of a vibe to it. That's part of the sense that momentum is going that way, right? So that's part of it. But you talked about Texas, right? I mean, we've been down this road before.
00:31:55
Speaker 5: In Texas, right? Beto O'Rourke can tell you all about it.
00:31:58
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
00:31:58
Speaker 8: I mean, Texans have not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. So I keep saying I'll sort of believe it when I see it.
00:32:07
Speaker 5: Do you believe Texas?
00:32:09
Speaker 8: I think James Tallarico, the Democrat nominee, is a very talented candidate, and he's raised incredible amounts of money. Ken Paxton, the AG, who's the Republican nominee, not the most dynamic campaigner.
00:32:23
Speaker 5: Some people might call him a flawed candidate. And quite a bit of baggage, shall we say.
00:32:28
Speaker 1: So....
00:32:30
Speaker 8: This is a pretty unique environment for the Democrats, and yet it's still Texas.
00:32:35
Speaker 5: So I want to.
00:32:36
Speaker 1: Ask you, I'm already thinking about not, yes, next week, but also two years from now, the next presidential race, and thinking about that. That's an important one. And I wonder what that's going to tell us about politics in America.
00:32:50
Speaker 5: Absolutely fascinating to me.
00:32:51
Speaker 8: To me, the 2028 presidential is kind of an existential election for both parties, right? No incumbent on the ballot. Democrats have to figure out a way to articulate a forward-looking vision, right? You can run a midterm on we don't like Donald Trump and that's what's happening, right? But they have to articulate a forward-looking vision and figure out who is going to do that because there's no obvious Democratic messenger. On the Republican side, they have to figure out what is life in this party after Donald Trump. And I've fascinated with the idea that, you know, what you and I would call years of mainstream Republicans, do they sort of wake up and go, oh, that was weird. Let's go back to, you know, things that we've talked about for.
00:33:33
Speaker 5: A hundred years. I think that ship sailed in 2024. I think it did. I agree with you. But Republicans have to figure out what they are after Trump.
00:33:43
Speaker 6: Yeah.
00:33:44
Speaker 5: The post-Trump question, right? Is it J.D.
00:33:46
Speaker 6: Vance?
00:33:46
Speaker 8: Is he going to be the standard bearer? So I'm skeptical that he may be the standard bearer. If that's the case, I'm more skeptical that he could win a general election. Because I'm not sure that the sort of Trump voter just automatically goes, oh, it's J.D.
00:34:02
Speaker 6: Vance.
00:34:03
Speaker 5: I think many of those Trump voters are uniquely Trump. Are you saying that the president is a once-in-a-generation political personality? I think he is.
00:34:12
Speaker 8: I think he is for all these kind of strange reasons that we maybe never experienced before. But I don't think it is a slam dunk that J.D. Vance is the nominee or is the winner.
00:34:24
Speaker 1: Is it time for something beyond just two really main political parties? How do you see it?
00:34:30
Speaker 2: Sure.
00:34:30
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, we talk about this all the time. And I've been traveling all around the country this fall talking to investors. And the most common thing I hear is, ah, pox on both the parties, right? They just want to, like, can't we get something else?
00:34:46
Speaker 2: Right?
00:34:46
Speaker 5: But that.
00:34:47
Speaker 8: that sort of sentiment doesn't turn into a third party sort of, you know, you can imagine or an independent candidate. It just hasn't worked that way. And I don't know that it will.
00:34:57
Speaker 1: Mike, what about the grift that we've seen in Washington and, you know, alleged, alleged grift.
00:35:04
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:35:04
Speaker 1: But I think it's fair to say, I don't know that there is. I think I, I don't think we've ever so visibly seen an administration and a president in who has business assets that are very clearly in the midst of changes in policies that are impacted very clearly. So I just do wonder about grift generally in Washington. And to be fair, both parties and the ability to trade stocks and obviously have inside information. And that's been a thing that's been going on for years. So does any of this change going forward?
00:35:38
Speaker 8: I feel like Let me give you a fascinating story from this conference. So you're probably aware there are a bunch of students here who are sort of learning about finance from finance programs all over the country. I talked to a student who is a junior at the University of Indiana at the Kellogg School. And one of the things he asked me, he said, I don't know any politics other than this. He was nine when President Trump was elected the first time. And he was like, is this normal? And I've been kind of thinking about that question for two days because he's like, yeah, this is what politics is. Like the name calling, the kind of alleged grift, all that. And I just think, wow, that's what the youngest generation, the newest voters, they just think this is how things operate. I don't know if we can change that.
00:36:30
Speaker 1: What did you say to him, though?
00:36:31
Speaker 8: Well, I said I do think historically... We're on sort of a pendulum, and you're way out here, but historically that has come back. We've had world wars. We've had a civil war. We've come back towards the middle. I don't know if that's four years from now or a generation from now. Incredible perspective from a young voter. Hey, before we let you go, I said you worked for two senators in Maine. One of those was Susan Collins. She's in a fight for her political life right now with Troy Jackson. Cal, she has Troy Jackson at 63% odds of winning.
00:37:00
Speaker 7: Yeah.
00:37:03
Speaker 5: You know her. Can she pull this off?
00:37:06
Speaker 6: She can. She always has.
00:37:08
Speaker 8: I think she was farther behind six years ago in some of the polls than she is now, and she won pretty easily. She surprised then. I would not count her out at all. I do think, if anything, the environment, overall environment, this may be the environment that knocks her out. You know, she is the last standing Republican senator in a state that voted for Kamala Harris last time around. But don't count her out.
00:37:38
Speaker 5: It would be pretty remarkable if she lost to Troy Jackson, given the challenges that the Democratic Party had with Graham Plattner there just a few months ago. Yeah.
00:37:46
Speaker 8: And Troy Jackson's a very, very nice, you know, ordinary kind of politician. But, you know, I wouldn't call him the most dynamic person in the world. And you know, he didn't win the nomination. And, you know, he ended up here. So we'll see. I think that's more of a sort of overall environment than anything else. Susan Collins knows everybody in Maine. She has touched almost everybody in some way, bringing federal dollars back. Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, she has the ability to do that. So I absolutely think she can win.
00:38:19
Speaker 1: What are you doing on Wednesday?
00:38:21
Speaker 5: On Wednesday, well, I will.
00:38:22
Speaker 8: Have been probably up all night and have to put out something before market opens.
00:38:28
Speaker 5: Come on our program on Wednesday. I'd love to. Really? Okay.
00:38:31
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
00:38:32
Speaker 6: We'll see where we are.
00:38:33
Speaker 5: And we may be at a point where we're like, I don't know what's happening. That's fine.
00:38:37
Speaker 1: We say that every day.
00:38:39
Speaker 5: That was Mike Townsend, Managing Director of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs at Charles Schwab.
00:38:43
Speaker 1: And that does it for this special edition of Bloomberg Business Week. featuring some of our conversation from Schwab Impact 2026 held this past week in Boston. Be sure to check out our podcast feed for all of the interviews from the event.
00:38:57
Speaker 5: Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Businessweek daily Monday through Friday, starting at 2 p.m. Wall Street time on Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg TV, and on Sirius XM channel 121.
00:39:05
Speaker 1: You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Podcasts. We're simulcast on Bloomberg Originals, available on Bloomberg.com slash originals, and streaming platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus, and more.
00:39:19
Speaker 5: Find our Bloomberg Businessweek podcast at Bloomberg.com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The latest edition of the magazine. It's available on newsstands now at Bloomberg.com and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. I'm Tim Stenevek.
00:39:32
Speaker 1: And I'm Carol Master. Have a good and safe weekend, everyone.
00:39:35
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.
