Full Transcript for Fed Meets Amidst "Most Confusing Economy Yet"

without hurting, if you want to call it, the non-AI part of the economy. And that's the hard part here. 00:02:40 Speaker 1: Well, and is it a good US economy or is it just good for some? Because I keep feeling like Tim and I have guests on and they're like, it's a good economy. Look at the growth. Look at the spending. And Look at earnings. 00:02:52 Speaker 6: Yeah, aggregate data points to a strong economy. I mean, GDP growth is strong. Corporate profits are strong. Consumer spending is strong. So those are all good headlines. But as you say, of course, if you drill into the data, you start to get a slightly different picture on it. In particular, take retail spending or consumer spending. Yes, the headlines are good there, but a lot of people will tell you that it's the higher income earners who are doing the spending. Lower income workers are feeling the pain there. You talk about corporate profits, big companies doing well. Smaller businesses will tell you that the cost of a loan at their local bank is expensive for them. And of course, they face rising insurance costs and rising costs for buying the material that they need. So everyone has a different story on it. It is a strong economy, but I think the unifying narrative among everyone, household and business, is that costs are high and they're increasing. And that's, I think, where the tension is at the moment. 00:03:46 Speaker 5: Where are the costs highest for consumers? One of our regulars gets in touch with me all the time, and he says, you guys talk about high oil prices and high gas prices too much because the data show that that's not hitting Americans' paychecks or is not hitting Americans' spending. as hard as you guys, and he's meaning the media, are making it out to be. On the one hand, you have the iPhone Duo, this $ 2, 000 iPhone selling out on its first day that it's for sale. On the other hand, you have so many consumers complaining about basic costs. Just help us make sense of those two different economies. 00:04:17 Speaker 6: Yeah, well, like I say, this goes back to the conflicting signals I spoke about earlier. I mean, if you'd stopped someone in the street in January and said, look, the Strait of Hormuz will be closed and the world will go through an energy shock you would say, okay, well, surely that will slow the economy down. But here we are, growth is accelerating. We'll probably get GDP this week showing even stronger figures. So that absolutely is the case. But nonetheless, though, inflation figures for September showed an acceleration in broad-based price pressures, not just energy-related. We're seeing some spillover into merchandise goods. One example, toy prices increased by a record. That's for different reasons, but maybe tariffs are part of that story as well. And with the energy story, by the way, yes, for all the reasons we've just spoke about, it hasn't slowed spending or the economy the way it might have thought, but it is increasingly spilling over in

terms of costs. And diesel, for example, is a channel there. We hear farmers complaining about it. And if farmers complain about it, then food delivery costs will go up and the price of food will go up. So it can't be ruled out completely that the energy story won't spill over in the months ahead. 00:05:19 Speaker 1: And just 30 seconds here, Enda. I mean, you have a line in your column, your essay, most concerning of all, some of the most important economic developments of 2026 appear potentially to be beyond the Fed's control, like the war in the Middle East that has caused higher energy prices. And that's kind of the tricky wick here. Just quickly. 00:05:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really a problem. 00:05:38 Speaker 6: Like take the AI boom, shortage of chips, big demand for chips, setting up the cost of iPhones. Obviously, interest rates won't really impact the cost of iPhones or solve the AI boom. So that's part of the challenge facing the Fed. 00:05:52 Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this. The old asset manager, Harrison Street, recently out with a note, and here's what they said. Real estate recovery underway. Outcomes are becoming increasingly divergent across sectors, markets, assets, operators, and capital structures. Entering 2026, many investors anticipated declining interest rates, accelerating transaction activity, and a faster normalization of capital markets. Instead, economic growth has remained resilient. Inflation has pursued has proven more persistent, yes, indeed, and geopolitical uncertainty has increased. It's amazing. 00:06:32 Speaker 5: So you can make plans, but, you know. 00:06:35 Speaker 1: What do they say about make plans? We are so delighted to have back with us Christopher Merrill. He's co-founder and global chief executive at the Alternative Asset Manager. It is Harrison Street Asset Management. They focus a lot on real estate. They've got $ 110 billion in assets under management. He's here in studio. Topher, good to have you here with Tim and me. It is funny, right? We enter a year, we think this, and then we get that. How's that impacting the plays for you and the opportunities? 00:07:02 Speaker 7: For sure. Well, it's great to see you guys again. Thank you for having me. I think for our business, we've been so fortunate for 20 years, really focusing on essential service, really assets, things around education, healthcare. 00:07:15 Speaker 1: Student housing, senior housing, like these are things that. 00:07:17 Speaker 7: Medical, self-storage, we do some data centers, infrastructure, and both real estate equity and real estate debt. And the nice thing about that is it's really not through financial engineering. These are asset classes that are need-based, demographic-driven. And so these asset classes can perform well in inflationary environments. They can perform well whether we're... Again, if we're going to have higher for longer interest rates, we think these asset classes... are going to do well. And so for us, it's really focusing on the right universities, the right health systems, and it's just good fundamental investing. 00:07:51 Speaker 5: There's a lot that I want to get to with you. It all has the backdrop, though, of the AI boom that we see happening right now and the CapEx boom, data centers. I think a lot of people right now are thinking, wait a second, how can I diversify away from concentration risk when it comes to AI? Is that possible to do through your products? I mean, senior housing, health care, university, maybe university might be affected by AI. 00:08:14 Speaker 7: I don't know. 00:08:15 Speaker 5: You tell me. Yeah. 00:08:15 Speaker 7: I mean, I think you've got to think about AI in anything you do, but certainly hard assets, real assets, we're seeing a increase from our client base. We've got a global client base, not just US. We have capital from Asia, from the Middle East, from Europe. We're certainly seeing a focus on increasing allocations to hard assets, real assets, right? And Inflationary environment, these are assets that we can reprice on a regular basis. But you do have to sort of peel back the onion and think about how is AI going to affect education? We want to be with schools that are sort of embracing AI. How are they embracing online learning? So we're focused on the sort of big power for universities. How are we thinking about what is going to happen to medical office with AI? What's going to happen with technology advancements? moving things to outpatient. So I think you've got to peel back the onion. But the nice thing about hard assets is you really can... Go ahead. 00:09:04 Speaker 5: Yeah, well, is in-person higher education at risk? 00:09:07 Speaker 7: You know, it's interesting. I do think probably 15% to 20% of the universities will go out of business over time. And so I think you have to be very careful... where you want to focus. 00:09:15 Speaker 3: Wow, 15 to 20%. 00:09:16 Speaker 1: I mean, we're starting to see that. 00:09:18 Speaker 5: For sure. Yeah, but it's a tiny sliver of universities. 00:09:21 Speaker 7: It's going to be very hard for the smaller schools to survive. So we really want to focus on some of the more of the bigger enrollment taker, sort of the power for schools, really. And so you've got to be very careful as to what. 00:09:30 Speaker 5: Universities- But you think those schools will continue to attract students in person, regardless of the technology that can be offered in a virtual environment. 00:09:39 Speaker 7: I think those are the schools that will embrace it, right? So those are the schools that will offer some online classes and teach people how are we going to utilize AI. And those are schools that are going to offer the sports, the social environment, and those are schools that we're seeing actually, when we think of some of these powerful universities, these bigger schools, we're seeing actual enrollment increases.

00:09:57 Speaker 5: You can't pump a keg virtually, Carol. 00:09:58 Speaker 7: Okay. 00:10:00 Speaker 5: What I'll tell you. 00:10:00 Speaker 1: Not yet. 00:10:01 Speaker 5: I can tell you that. 00:10:02 Speaker 1: Not yet. What about demographics, though? Because people are having less kids. I mean, that's also impacting academia. But it also impacts everything when it comes to real estate demand. So how does. 00:10:15 Speaker 7: Well, I think, again, I think you have to be very... careful about what universities you choose. And again, we are seeing enrollment increases. We're seeing enrollment takers. And you like public universities. We like public universities, the enrollment takers. Those are ones that really need capital relationships with private equity. So we're working with off-campus housing as well as working with the on-campus. But when you think about demographics, I mean, look what's happening in the healthcare and the aging population. I mean, we really are staring at a wall and a huge number of people turning 80, almost 2 million every year. When you think about one in three people, some level of dementia, memory care issues, post-85, we're not creating enough product. And that's the challenge with the environment, with tariff issues, with higher interest rates. There's not enough supply. And so that is making it very difficult when you start looking at this. But for those that actually own portfolios and have assets... Great occupancy, great year-over-year growth, et cetera. 00:11:07 Speaker 1: What kind of senior housing? Because, you know, my dad was in senior housing. 00:11:11 Speaker 7: It wasn't inexpensive. 00:11:12 Speaker 1: It was expensive. So are you talking about a higher end in terms of the economic affordability? 00:11:17 Speaker 7: So I think it's affordable depending on what market. You know, we're probably in 35 to 40 different states. And so there's a different price point in each state. And that's what you really need to focus on is really affordability in that market. When we think about senior housing, it's really that continuum of care, independent assisted memory care. Right. Aging in place, private pay, rental. We don't really want to focus too much on skilled nursing, end-of-life public pay, a lot of volatility. 00:11:40 Speaker 1: Does Medicare often pay for most of this stuff? 00:11:43 Speaker 7: Medicare private insurance will pay for it. And in a lot of cases, what we've thought about is our student housing, we have the parents on the lease. And then when you go to senior housing, you get the kids. 00:11:52 Speaker 1: That is truly the cycle of life. 00:11:54 Speaker 7: So it's sort of a cycle of life with us. But again, to your point on AI, there's a lot of great ways that AI can help us with some of these assets and providing a better customer experience. 00:12:04 Speaker 5: Are you operating the senior care facilities as well? We work with local partners. Are the local partners having any issues getting staff right now? That's been a very tough issue. And for us, that's why partner selection has been important. We've been doing it for 20 years. We've got some great partners. That's been our secret sauce is these relationships with folks that are able to deal with hiring, being able to move people to different locations. 00:12:28 Speaker 7: And so we've tried to focus on those partners. The new entrants are having a hard time with that. 00:12:32 Speaker 3: I bet. 00:12:33 Speaker 1: I bet that's difficult. Data centers, you did say before we started going that you've got, I don't know, seven, eight billion that you've invested. What can you tell us about the demand supply dynamic right now? Are you seeing any signs of slowdown? 00:12:45 Speaker 7: Well, it's off the charts when you think about the need and demand. The challenge is, it's no secret, is the access to power and how are we going to get enough power to supply. 00:12:55 Speaker 1: And that's slowing this down. 00:12:57 Speaker 7: It's very difficult. And so what you're seeing is you're seeing a lot of investors taking risk on buying land and trying to get access to power. And that may take a long time. And so our strategy has been more about almost net leasing to hyperscales where we're signing longer term leases where there's access to power. And really, we're just providing them the core and shell. 00:13:16 Speaker 1: So it's already there. 00:13:18 Speaker 7: Yeah, that's really what our model has always been. How do we manage risk? We really want to think about who's the offtake with. We have a good relationship. Are we providing a data center for a university, a health system, that type of thing. 00:13:28 Speaker 5: Where geographically is that working right now? 00:13:30 Speaker 7: So Northern Virginia is a huge data center market right now. There's a number of nodes across the country where you've got great access to power. There are very good markets. The challenge with data centers is you're seeing things pop up in places where if that asset if something happens to that tenant, the reuse is going to be very difficult. So I think you have to be very careful about what markets you want to be in and what type of assets and who's your offtake. 00:13:52 Speaker 1: So your real estate infrastructure credit strategy, what's the most opportunistic for you guys right now? 00:13:57 Speaker 7: Well, I mean, each strategy has a different return profile. What we try and look to is we're trying to be relevant to our clients. And as I said, we have clients all over the globe. We've got a number of private wealth clients It's really trying to offer products that, you know, for them, allow them to differentiate their portfolio. So whether it's exposure in Europe, Canada, the U.S., we have evergreen funds, we have closed-end funds. To us, we try and create diversified products. We don't want to have to put all the money in one strategy. What we want to do is create diversified funds

because if right now senior housing is a high-conviction theme, we want to be able to invest more there than having to put it all into one strategy because... Again, that's where someone can make a mistake, trying to take large pools of capital and put them into these fragmented segments in too large a way. 00:14:46 Speaker 5: Do the midterms and the outcome of the midterms affect your strategy at all? 00:14:52 Speaker 7: It's interesting. We've tried to develop this strategy such that when you think about investing in need-based assets, it really is resilient in good and bad times. So it certainly will have some impact on what might happen with interest rates, what might happen with rent growth, with new supply. But it's not going to impact people's need to be educated. It's not going to impact people's, the aging population. And so it would allow us in certain situations, like I remember with Obamacare, pushing more people to doctor visits. It pushed our medical office strategy. And so certain things might evolve differently because of it. But for us, if you're focused on essential services, you know, it really, you know, you hate to say it, but we can perform in a higher rate environment. We can perform whatever administration there is, because these are assets that it's social infrastructure. 00:15:43 Speaker 1: So there isn't a point if yields go up eight, 9% that would make it a little bit trickier. 00:15:47 Speaker 2: For you guys? 00:15:49 Speaker 7: It's not that it's not trickier. It might be trickier to develop, but for our existing portfolio, you'll then start seeing higher growth rates and you'll see more, more demand for our existing portfolio because what's happening is as capital comes into the market, there's not capital chasing office and chasing retail. So folks are coming to us saying, boy, we'd love to buy portfolios from you because we'd love to get in these segments. So it's holding values as we've been very active sellers. One of the things I'm most proud of is our DPI. 00:16:15 Speaker 1: To buy and selling. 00:16:16 Speaker 7: Yeah, we probably will sell $ 6 or $ 7 billion this year. 00:16:18 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:16:19 Speaker 7: Because for us, DPI is almost like the new IRR. We really want to return capital to our investors. 00:16:27 Speaker 5: I mean, no, it's like you play almost, it's almost like you play everywhere. What's one area you don't want to be in? 00:16:36 Speaker 7: You know, what we don't want to do is we don't want to be in asset classes where we're trying to time markets, where we're trying to time cycles, economic cycles. So for us, we just want to be, if it doesn't have this sort of essential services component, this need-based feel to it, we don't want to plan it. 00:16:53 Speaker 1: Just quickly, is there any part of that essential services component that's a trend that we're not talking about that we should be? Because we've talked about people building homes for people who have a universal... What

is it, universal? 00:17:06 Speaker 5: Basic income? 00:17:06 Speaker 1: Universal basic income, because they're thinking about the impact of AI, just real quickly, like 25 seconds. 00:17:11 Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I think, you know, the big thing that's growing is going to be, we think, with the big health systems, big universities, these public-private partnerships, and this need for working with the private sector, because there's so much deferred maintenance, and there's a lack of capital for on-campus health systems. 00:17:32 Speaker 5: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this. Well, the world's largest industrial real estate investment trust, Prologis, recently said its push into data centers has been so far unharmed by public pushback against facilities across the U.S. 00:17:55 Speaker 1: Sounds like the... We know that there's a lot that have had to deal with it, but it's interesting. I want to hear the story. 00:17:59 Speaker 5: Yeah, so Dan Letter, the company's CEO, we've had him on our program just a few months ago. He spoke with analysts earlier this month. He said resistance to construction of facilities in some U.S. states is not hindering its progress on plans to deliver some 5.8 gigawatts of data center capacity in the coming years. 00:18:15 Speaker 1: We welcome back Tim Arendt. He is, of course, the CFO of the $ 122 billion market cap REIT Prologis, and he joins us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. It's been a little bit. 00:18:25 Speaker 5: How are you? 00:18:26 Speaker 3: I'm great. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you. 00:18:28 Speaker 1: We're fascinated by this. Talk to us a little bit about the data center, because we are talking about how it is kind of a referendum, informally so, on the midterms next week, because we do see a lot of communities pushing back. How do you see it, or what are you seeing specifically? 00:18:41 Speaker 3: Yeah, we will watch the elections carefully, of course. Look, we have a long history of redeveloping logistics facilities for higher and better use generally. And the nature of getting entitlements for our facilities or those higher and better uses is just challenging in real estate anyway. Data centers have brought it to a whole new level for sure. So we've had to invest really in our community reach out efforts. We're very present teaching what these data centers are and what they aren't. And that education effort is critical. So do you think some of the opposition to these has it wrong? Like what do they need to be educated about? Well, there needs to be teaching in on what is the cost of energy, what's going to translate to their personal households, what is the truth about water consumption and its recycling, what is the truth about potential benefits to their tax base, et cetera. All of that will come through. 00:19:37 Speaker 5: Well, on the water side of this, couldn't this be used? Couldn't closed systems be used? 00:19:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. 00:19:42 Speaker 5: With cooling gels that might be more expensive up front, but then you're not actually wasting water? 00:19:47 Speaker 3: Absolutely. Those are all technologies that we... lean into. We do this on a build-to-suit basis with our hyperscale customers who similarly have the same incentives in mind. They want what's best environmentally. So we go through those solutions together. Okay. 00:20:03 Speaker 1: So will you say no to a hyperscaler who doesn't have the environment in mind or the community in mind? 00:20:10 Speaker 3: Well, I wouldn't go that far. I don't think I need to. I think that the kinds of companies that we're working with, the big brand names you know, all have the right thing in mind here. We all have the same challenges going forward in this development. So we know the right way to carry out this development. And we've committed to some principles that try to do right for the stakeholder, the customer and our investors. 00:20:32 Speaker 1: So what are the principles? I'd love to hear more specifics because I think there are a lot of communities who are super frustrated because energy prices have gone up. And even in those communities where those household name hyperscalers are operating or the climate around them. 00:20:47 Speaker 3: It really revolves around the three. 00:20:49 Speaker 1: Because of the heat giving off, yeah. 00:20:51 Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. It really revolves around the three that we've discussed here so far. One around energy, a commitment to bringing energy in which is often upgrading critical infrastructure, by the way. A lot of this infrastructure is old and decrepit, needs new substations and transformers. 00:21:07 Speaker 1: So you guys pay for it? 00:21:08 Speaker 3: Well, it depends who pays for it. I would say the customer in the end pays for it. But these are all costs that it takes to bring the data centers online. There's various cost reimbursement agreements along the way. but they all find their way into the rent because a developer like Prologis needs a required return at the end of the day. 00:21:26 Speaker 1: So you're saying the hyperscaler customer pays for it, not necessarily the community or a little bit of everybody? 00:21:31 Speaker 3: Oh, that's right. Those sorts of improvements ultimately are going to be born either through a developer or a utility. And those costs find their way into the project, and it's going to be the rent that is required to deliver a return to the developer to compensate for all that. 00:21:46 Speaker 5: I'm trying to get a picture of new US leasing and what exactly is making that up. Because you said on the call that data center related customers accounted for about 17% of the company's new US leasing in the third quarter, 10% globally. 00:22:02 Speaker 3: That's right. 00:22:03 Speaker 5: Is that the new normal for numbers over the next few quarters, over the next few years? Does the mix change? 00:22:09

Speaker 3: We have forecasted, we think that, so this is all of the leasing related to building out the ecosystem to deliver a data center, to bring all the equipment in. So there's a large amount of the demand that's going to be needed to build the centers themselves. But there's going to be an ongoing lingering demand long term to maintain and refresh all the equipment in these data centers. So the ecosystem is being built up around them in the key data center submarkets that you can imagine. We think it's going to add about 150 million square feet of incremental demand through the end of the decade. And we'll see how it continues thereafter. But it is a new secular driver in our space. 00:22:46 Speaker 1: Talk a little bit more. What's involved? Is it a handful of people versus a lot of people to do the build initially? 00:22:52 Speaker 3: This is everything from fabricating equipment, assembling, pre-testing equipment. We have large users who do that before you move in the racks. We might be assembling them off-site, testing them, then moving them into the data center. Think of all the transformers, cooling equipment, as we were just discussing. 00:23:10 Speaker 1: But the secondary cycle in terms of maintaining, is that a much smaller impact in terms of what it gives back to the economy? 00:23:18 Speaker 3: I think naturally there's going to be a balance between the build and then the maintenance phase, but we still think it's going to be a substantial portion of demand from here. 00:23:26 Speaker 5: One thing that I keep going back to, and I don't know if it's because I just have a I'm a little more risk averse than I think some other people, but how do we know that in this environment of CapEx, we are not going to overdo it on data centers? 00:23:40 Speaker 3: I don't know how we're going to know that. We probably share a similar... Question I'll say and it's you know in our approach here. We're a logistics company, right? We build and operate warehouses and fulfillment centers. 00:23:53 Speaker 5: And a lot of you know touches physical goods Like it's a physical business. 00:23:57 Speaker 3: That's why I love the core of our business We have seen an incredible opportunity by right of building buildings that look and feel like data centers They're missing a lot of power and the equipment if we can deliver those things in we have a data center but we similarly don't know what a data center looks like in 10 20 30 years and So we are leaning into the value creation redevelopment opportunity. We're only doing it on a pre-let basis with hyperscale credit. That's the plan right now. And so it's pretty risk mitigated, just taking advantage of an unprecedented opportunity for our investors. 00:24:32 Speaker 1: So risk mitigated for you guys. But is it fair to say that we could see a bubble? This is a bubble? And there's going to be some fallout? 00:24:43 Speaker 3: I'm not going to call that. I think we have some important capitalization efforts underway here, anthropic, et cetera, that are going to really form a large ecosystem of capital that's needed for all of this industry. We've seen a lot of it on a private basis, a lot of it sort of commingled between players, as you've seen. These structures, getting some of these entities out in public, I think is going to shore up the financial picture. 00:25:07 Speaker 5: But still moving forward at your core, this is a logistics business. 00:25:13 Speaker 3: Absolutely. Absolutely. We love our business. 00:25:16 Speaker 5: The data center dabbling, you are still at your core logistics. 00:25:19 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:25:20 Speaker 3: And we, you know, we might take a, not offense, but exception to, to dabbling. I mean, we're really leaned in here. We have 5.8 gigawatts of energy. 00:25:27 Speaker 1: We say it and, you know, that's a good thing. No, we had a small business owner, Farm Girl Flowers, and she's like doing now logistics because of moving flowers around. It's expensive. So- creating like logistics hubs. Also expensive, but. 00:25:41 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:25:42 Speaker 3: Look, I love the real estate business and ours is challenging to disrupt. 00:25:50 Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this. 00:26:01 Speaker 5: All right, I got some numbers for you. Okay. $ 450, 000 to $ 650, 000, as much as $ 800, 000 per year in some cases. 00:26:10 Speaker 1: Not too shabby. 00:26:10 Speaker 5: This is first year comp packages for machine learning and related PhDs for jobs in quant finance. 00:26:16 Speaker 1: I guess I studied the wrong stuff. 00:26:17 Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess you did too. First year. Okay, pretty good, right? 00:26:21 Speaker 1: Mom, dad. 00:26:22 Speaker 5: So here's the thing. 00:26:24 Speaker 1: I can buy you a house. 00:26:25 Speaker 5: That was all well and good for a number of years, but now you've got these quant firms with a little competition because now some of these AI labs and startups are offering those same researchers a different proposition. They're talking about prestige, visibility, and in some cases the prospect of a windfall. from owning a stake in a fast-growing tech company. 00:26:43 Speaker 1: Times are changing, but it sounds like they're still going to do pretty well. Let's get into this story. It is one of the most read on the Bloomberg terminal today. It is about the AI talent war that has quant firms racing to fund PhDs and build labs. It's a killer story. Justina Lee has the byline. She's Bloomberg News senior markets reporter. Hey, take it away. Tell us a little bit more about what's going on here. 00:27:04 Speaker 4: Yeah, I think for the longest time, for a lot of the smartest people coming out of computer science or stats or physics PhD programs, like quant firms are where you go to to make money, right? But now you're getting really good compensation and obviously potentially a great equity stake out of frontier AI labs. And obviously, if you're going to go to a cocktail party, you would rather talk about like work on AGI than like predicting. 00:27:32 Speaker 3: Oh my God. 00:27:32 Speaker 5: I don't know if I want to be at that cocktail party. Do you want to be at that party and like talk about AGI? I feel like I talk about that enough at work. 00:27:41 Speaker 1: Is that a no? 00:27:43 Speaker 5: Yeah. 00:27:44 Speaker 4: I think we'd also rather talk about markets, right? 00:27:48 Speaker 2: Okay. 00:27:48 Speaker 3: Fair. Yeah. 00:27:49 Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, tell us about Charles Martinez. 00:27:54 Speaker 4: Yeah, so he's this guy who is a physics PhD himself, and he actually works at academic relations manager. at this London-based quant trading firm. And to be honest, I was surprised he spoke to me because this is one of the most secretive firms in the world. 00:28:09 Speaker 5: But I think on a meta. 00:28:11 Speaker 4: Level, he took this interview because now quant firms are coming out of the woodwork and they're having to talk to Bloomberg about what. 00:28:17 Speaker 1: They actually do. 00:28:18 Speaker 4: And the reason is they're trying to appeal to all these machine learning PhDs who have a lot of other options, including the frontier AI labs And I think this is really an existential recruitment concern for a lot of these quant trading firms. 00:28:35 Speaker 5: So talk a little bit about what these quant trading firms are now doing, how they're being more public, how they're rethinking some of these roles and support for some of these research positions in order to try to attract and retain talent as they do compete with the frontier labs. 00:28:53 Speaker 4: Yeah, so very often they're hiring PhDs that studied physics or computer science. And so one thing a lot of these firms are doing is they're building academic partnerships early. They're funding PhDs, they're funding postdocs to kind of raise their firm's profile at Princeton or Stanford. And another thing they're doing is that a lot of them have built their own AI labs that Now, I think this is partly because they are increasingly using machine learning in their trading operations. 00:29:26 Speaker 1: To predict markets. 00:29:28 Speaker 4: But I think it also reflects partly like a marketing drive, right? Because they're trying to tell a lot of these bright kids that, you know, you can work at an AI lab like OpenAI, but. 00:29:39 Speaker 1: There is also... an AI. 00:29:40 Speaker 4: Lab at Hudson River Trading or, you know, at Jump Trading. And I think they're trying to kind of appeal to that same slice of talent here. 00:29:50 Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. 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