July 24, 2021 • 27 mins
This week, Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein joined to react to bitcoin's selling off below $30,000 and said crypto investors are used to the volatility. Chairman and CEO of United Wholesale Mortgage Mat Ishbia went through this week's housing data and explained why he thinks the housing market will stay hot. Nicole Perrin, an emarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence came on to talk about Twitter and Snapchat's earnings and the pandemic boom in digital advertising. Then Willy Shih, a management practice professor at Harvard Business School, discussed the ongoing global chip crisis and whether anything other than time itself can mitigate the shortage.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
To watch a miss this week. I'm Caroline Hyde. This
podcast has some of our favorite interviews from the Daily
Show After the Market Clothes that I co anchor along
with Joe Wisenthal and Remain Bostick. What do you miss
on Bloomberg TV. It's a perfect way to kick off
your weekend. This week started with a sell off in Bitcoin.
The cryptocurrency felt below that all important thirty dollar level.
(00:29):
It's a key support level for the first time in
a month now. On days like that, it's pretty easy
for crypto critics to say, well, bitcoin can't be a
store of value, it's too follow tile. So we've got
some reaction from Michael Sonnensheine is the CEO of Gray
Scale Investments, and asked what his response to those naysays
would be after the sell off we've seen. I think
(00:49):
investors who are allocating to crypto know that volatility is
going to be part of it. Most of the investors
were dealing with, though, are not looking at short term
price movements, are not looking at sure term volatility. Their
crypto allocations are really over medium to longer term time horizons.
So I don't think people feel terribly phased when they see,
you know, sudden movements in the market like this, are
(01:10):
they phased when it acts like any other risk asset though,
because I thought the whole idea was as a diversification play,
but then it falls in line with stocks. It certainly
is a diversification play for a lot of investors. It
is a differentiated return stream. But on days like today,
when there's market fears, doesn't really seem like there's anything
any asset class that can really you know, avoid some
of that liquidity coming out of the market um and
(01:32):
a lot of that deleveraging happening. How are you thinking
about liquidity in the market. We're showing the Bloomberg Galaxy
Crypto Index. We know, of course your trust trying to
talk about when the SEC will allow any t F
and then the discount of course it's behind that. How
much of that is an integral to providing not really confidence,
but liquidity in the market as well well. So you're
(01:53):
referring to Great Scale Bitcoin Truss, our flagship fund trades
under symbol GBTC. And even though there is bitcoin ETF today,
investors aren't waiting to add crypto to their portfolios. GBTC
is doing hundreds of millions of dollars a day and
notional trading volume, and it really is for many investors
the easiest way for them to add crypto exposure alongside stocks, bonds, ETFs,
(02:15):
other things they may own, and so over time, as
the fund continues to grow, I certainly think we'll see
liquidity in the product grow as well. What about the
forty two million GBTC shares that are due to release
from July twelve to two. There's a look up that expires.
Is that a short time issue that investors are talking
to you about? What sort of pressure does that exist
not only on GBTC but also bitcoin price itself? Will
(02:37):
it go higher or lower? I think a lot of
not only investors, but people in the press have been
wondering what the effect of the fund growing so large
will do now that some of those shares are unlocking.
Um it's a little too early to tell, but what
we have seen is with GBTC trading at a discount
and net asset value, a lot of investors, particularly institutional money,
has been stepping into that trade, realizing that that cap
(03:00):
at all can actually help them own or control more
bitcoin than it would be if they were buying bitcoin
in the spot market. So ultimately we do see that
nav UM, that progression back towards nav happening um and
in the longest case scenario, it will be an e
t F that would arbitrage away any discount to net
asset value. And you talk about investors stepping into the market,
(03:20):
how have flows looked as of as of late, I'm
thinking bitcoin and also ethereum. As we were chatting with
Mike McGlone, I think investors, you know, for the most part,
have a lot of them their Bitcoin or their Theoryum allocations.
Certainly now the trend amongst investors to have diversity within
their crypto holding, so looking at other assets to build
out their portfolios. And I think a lot of them
(03:42):
are really starting to get excited about some of these
new use cases of digital asset protocols that are starting
to pop up. Let's talk about that because of cool s,
gray scale defy fudness. What you're just announcing new fund
coin doesk defight in next the sort of war it's
going to be tracking defy decept realized finance opportunities that
people wanted to get exposure to by going into this. Well,
(04:04):
so Decentralized finance or DEFY is really traditional financial services
meeting decentralization. So for typical users, typical investors, typical consumers,
they're going to banks and brokerage houses, um and other
service providers to get lending, to get borrowing, to get exchanges,
and DEFY really represents the opportunity to do that in
(04:25):
a completely decentralized fashion. And this is a new hot
area of crypto that we really think investors have been
telling us is an area they want exposure to. So
launching a fund that gives them that targeted exposure to
a wide array of digital asset protocols in the defied
space is a really attractive opportunity, and we're really excited
to launch this fund for them. What is that targeted
opportunity that investors are saying we want access to? The
(04:48):
rookie Joe Wison dolls out, Caroline does this all the time,
explained to me. Well, So I think DEFY represents a
new subset of assets within the broadly defined crypto space. Right,
we've seen Bitcoin emerged as a or value Ethereum emerged
as really the gas to power decentralized applications. We've seen
the emergence of stable coins, We're seeing the emergence of
defied protocols. So we're starting to see various assets come
(05:10):
up that have new and differentiated use cases, and investors
are eager to get exposure to them. Exposure in particular
when when they could also be getting into GBDC as well,
which is trading at a discount that has continued. I mean,
when how much you seeing come investors wanted to move
between your products? Is it going to be totally new
(05:31):
types of investors coming? How much you seeing some sort
of cannibalization within it. I don't think we'll see cannibilization.
I think, if anything, again, this trend towards diversification is
a really important one. This is Gray Scales fifteen fund.
We certainly have a lot of investors who have invested
across all fifteen funds as we've continued to be a
pioneer and bring new products into the market, and also
as investors are increasingly looking to us to provide them
(05:54):
with these interesting opportunities. Sometimes before there's even enough market
sentiment to really identify the um and you know, really
think about it as simplified access, you're due diligence, of course,
it's it's focusing on coin just DEFY index. Of course,
we've seen protocols not always work as intended. How do
you ensure that you're protecting people's money when they're getting
(06:15):
into these DeFi space. So when we look at the
DEFY index and now the DeFi fund that will be
based around it, every quarter different assets will be included
or excluded from the index itself, and so there's qualification
criteria that must be met. So over time, as investors
stayed invested in the fund, they'll remember and see that
the assets with the greatest value, the greatest exposure within
(06:36):
DeFi will remain in the fund and those that you
know are starting to fade away will be disqualified from
the funds holdings. Last question, Bitcoin, I mean, at what
point is it coming by? Because I hear this is
this institutional money sitting on the sidelines wanting to get in.
So I'll never want to make price targets or price predictions, um,
but I can tell you based on who's investing in
(06:58):
the market, um, the size of the allocations that they're
making in the convictions that they do that I think
the opportunity for bitcoin remains very, very bright. This week,
investors had a slew of housing data to sort through.
Confidence among US home builders fell to an eleven month
low in July. That's as builders were forced to contend
(07:18):
there's still sky high costs of materials and of course
that continuing shortage of labor. There was also a slight
called down in the mortgage applications and then less than
rosy picture on home purchase growth. So some are now
wondering if we might have a bias strike on our hands.
We spoke with Matt ishbia Is, the chairman and CEO
of United Wholesale Mortgage, who was in the New York
(07:38):
Stock Exchange for Mortgage Broker's Day, and asked him, well, look,
if real estate prices have just gotten too high for people,
you know, we're seeing it across the board, you know.
I think prices are definitely going up. But Rachel still solo,
so we haven't seen a big slowdown. We actually had
a great second quarter. We think the third quarters have
even better at u w M, and so we're excited
(07:59):
about what's going on. I think the slowdown is there's
obviously a little lack of inventory out there. People that
are in forebearans aren't selling their homes and so as
that comes out, I think the market is gonna stay
hot through the end of the year. Give us a
little sense here, though, Matt as to sort of what
the breakdown and uh, the types of mortgages that you're seeing.
Are these basically people coming in getting a buying a
home for the first time with the thirty year are
(08:19):
these refinancings? What are you seeing? It's a good mixture.
You know. As rates tick up and they didn't in
the second quarter, there kind of come down a little
bit lately, but as they take up, there'll be a
lot less refinances, and so companies that are relying on
only refinance you'll see a lot less of that. We're
seeing a lot of purchase. We had an all time
record purchase quarter. We're gonna continue to grow in the purchase.
So purchases, you know, is I won't say cycle proof,
(08:40):
but a lot less cyclical than the refinance and so
we're seeing a lot more purchased than REFI Uh, definitely
from from second quarter first quarter, and we think the
third quarter we're gonna see a lot of purchase. But
with rates ticking down, you know, f H f A
just reduced a fee, which actually helping spur refinances, and
so mortgage brokers across the country are getting busier right now.
So we might see even more business on the REFI
than we thought after that recent change. Why are you
(09:02):
so positive on the third cour to Matt, Why are
people gonna still be going out there and buying your homes?
You know, because there's there's a lot of opportunity. Rates
are very low, and the truth is people see homes
differently than they saw pre pandemic, and so since COVID,
we're seeing a lot more people realize that, hey, buying
a house, buying a house with maybe a couple extra
bedrooms or maybe with a little bit of yard matters
(09:24):
more home is something different than it did pre pandemic.
And so we've seen a lot more purchase than I
think a lot of the reports are showing. And so
it's been very good. And obviously we work with mortgage
brokers who are local in the community, and so we
we have a little bit more of a you know,
in the weeds approach, and we feel that right now,
and so purchase has been great. I see it continuing
rates are low. Housing is gonna is gonna continue to
be strong. It might not go up ten percent a year,
(09:46):
but it's not gonna go down, you know, or go
down significantly. We see it being very strong going forward.
All right, Let's talk about your business though. I mean,
obviously this has attracted a lot of folks, uh to
this industry. I mean, you are obviously one of the
dominant a whole sale is out there in the mortgage market.
I think Quicken is the only one even bigger than you.
But you've got a lot of competition out there from
Freedom and Wells Fargo and a lot of others. Yere,
(10:08):
How is that affecting your pricing power your margins right now? Yeah?
So we are the leader. We are the number one
whole sette and so we're bigger than Quick and bigger
than everyone else. We're the number two overall, and so
we have a lot of control and pricing and as
we've basically said, hey, listen, we want to make sure
consumers get great deals across the board while still making
money for our investors and making sure we're looking out
for our shows. And you're gonna see that in our
(10:29):
second quarter rings along with hopefully third quarter and beyond
and so definitely there's some pressure. As there's less mortgages
being done, people can compete harder. But we have a
big advantage based on our technology and our cost to
ridge an. So what you'll see is a lot of
mortgage companies look really good when rates are low. We
think we're the elite mortgage copies in all cycles, especially
as rates take up. And I didn't I didn't mean
to short change Matt and the side of his company,
(10:52):
State guy and dam from northwester you know, I couldn't
help but take him down to pay not a safe distance.
At a safe distance, I mean on that they talk
to us about you talk about your technology. And what's
so interesting is the way in which people are trying
to disrupt the mortgage industry. What we learn in COVID
is things can be done differently. But I've just signed
(11:13):
a mortgage and it and it felt really archaic. You
had to go in person, you had to sign, I
had to give over, you know, signing rights to husband.
Why can't we do more of this online? Why do
you still have to gather in an office sign your
name away? Are we seeing innovation keep pace with the
amount that deals need to be done? Yeah. So honestly,
(11:33):
I think you're just working with the wrong people. You
gotta go to find a mortgage broker dot com because
it's all tech, it's all simple. We're closing home in
seven days all the time, purchase REFI. I think our
average at the company's about seventy days. The industry is fifty.
So other people might be archaic, but we are not archaic.
At u WM. Mortgage brokers are an archaic there in
the weeds. They have great technology, the process nobody like.
(11:54):
It's it's interesting we have a mortgage business. Nobody wants
a mortgage. They want the house or they want the savings.
We have to make the process faster, easier, cheaper. That's
what mortgage brokers do. That's what you WM is doing,
and that's how we're differentiing and that's why we're growing
so fast while others maybe aren't. All right, talk to
us something here about the regulatory environment, Matt. Obviously a
different regime in Washington now, a regime that has actually
(12:14):
talked about potentially tightening regulations specifically for the mortgage industry.
Are you anticipating any significant changes on that front? You know,
we really aren't, you know, I'm I'm all for any regulation.
You know, we're a big company. People think we don't
want regulation. We see regulation as a positive. Anything that's
good for consumers helps mortgage brokers. It helps mortgage brokers
and helps you WM. So if the Biden iministration comes
(12:35):
down and tightens some things down, it's gonna help us
win long term. But I don't see anything coming down
the you know, down the pipe right now. We saw
loosening as in lowering rates with the f h F
a feed by Sandra Thompson, uh leaving that group, and
so that's positive for all of mortgage people across the board.
So we think it's all good going forward. Second half
of the year is gonna better than the first half.
The first half was an all time record, and so
(12:55):
we're excited about the second half and then leading into
two thousand twenty two. Did you bring the clothes in
bell today? Yeah, we got a chance. We had seventy
five our clients out here, so we had them out
of here ringing the bell, having a lot of fun,
you know, educating people a lot mortgage brokers a lot
of fun here today. It was a strong warm up
ahead of the big show, Big tech earning seasons kicked
(13:15):
off at the end of this week, and Twitter and
Snapchat posted quarterly revenue that blue past analyst expectations and
they're larger rivals. Facebook and Alphabet, of course don't report
results until next week, but those numbers were still enough
to give the entire sector a boost. But Twitter and
snap benefited well from a digital advertising and e commerce
pandemic boom that has companies of all sizes are still
(13:38):
turning to social media platforms to each customers were stuck
at home and are now pretty addicted to e commerce.
We got the reaction from Nicole Perron, an e marketer,
principal analyst and insider intelligence and asked her, well, if
these digital advertising levels, if we're sustainable, It absolutely is.
I mean, one thing that we don't see going backward
(14:01):
is the share of retail transactions that occur online. The
pandemic really accelerated that about two years forward in the US,
and so it just gives advertisers that much more reason
to reach people online in the place where they're converting. Now,
the growth rates this quarter, I would say, are sort
of not sustainable, and that's because Q two that was
(14:24):
the trough of the digital ad market last year, so
this is going to be sort of the easiest comp
that most of these platforms have. So I do expect
growth to moderate compared to this most recent quarter, But
in terms of the investment itself, no, we don't think
that will go backward in any way. And this is
sort of a real transformation, and we've been talking about
(14:45):
it is from what would normally be advertising on television
or advertising in uh, you know, a traditional sort of
newspaper periodical. Here the sense here that advertisers understand that
the users, at least the users they want to target
are on Snap and on a pinterest, and on Facebook
to a certain extent, and even to Twitter. Here is
the general idea here that the majority of the ads
(15:08):
spend needs to be on those platforms, not just a
small share. Well, I don't know if it would necessarily
be a majority, because in fact, one of the fastest
growing places that we see for ad spending right now
is on retail property, so directly on the places where
people are transacting, like on Amazon, um and and also
(15:29):
of course on CTV. These streaming players are becoming really important.
More people are spending more of their TV time with
streaming as opposed to traditional um. But I would say
a significant plurality of spending will continue to be on
these social platforms, and yes, it is because of the
amount of information they have about who their users are
(15:50):
and what they're interested in, and of course you know
what they'll click and convert on, which is what advertisers
are particularly caring about. You know, targeting is becoming harder
and lots of places with cookie deprecation and other changes
like what Apple has done for privacy and social companies
do have a lot of valuable information about they're logged
in user base. Talk to us about the pushback though
(16:13):
on not targeting and whether in the longer term, who's
in the most weak spot as that continues to become
what what consumers are talking about and wanting even if
they don't realize perhaps in practice they really want it. Yeah,
for sure. I mean it's a great question, and you
know who's going to be in the worst spot. The
answer is basically whoever has the least amount of information
(16:36):
about the users of a given platform. So when we're
talking about social platforms as they are logged in users,
perhaps you don't know going forward what they're doing all
across the web because that information is being pulled back.
It is becoming harder to collect even for the likes
of Facebook, but you still have a lot of valuable
(16:57):
information about them that you can use and having information
at scale makes that information more valuable to advertisers who
are looking for scale when they do targeting. But other
publishers have also really valuable information here I mentioned retailers.
Retail media has grown in importance because of the commercial
value of that specific info where Amazon or Walmart or
(17:20):
target know how you shop, how you search for products,
what actually makes you click through and buy a product,
and how often you're restocking some of those items for example,
And of course you know I mentioned the CTV players
as well. They also typically are logged in services. They
do have information about the households who subscribe that is
(17:42):
also valuable for them to facilitate targeting. And then talking
about other like more typical news or lifestyle content publishers,
they're really working hard to understand the insights that they
have about their audience that maybe they haven't quite put
the pieces together yet, but they're working to come up
with their own audience segments that will also be attractive
(18:02):
to advertisers or perhaps introduce more contextual offerings as well. Basically,
everyone's trying to find a way for this this personalization
to keep going. We'll talk a little bit about how
these ads are structure, because I mean, you still see
some of the more traditional advertisements, you know, you're fifteen
thirty second ads that are clearly ads, But on a
lot of these social media sites, you're starting to see
(18:22):
those lines really blurred here obviously with the whole advent
of the influencers on Instagram, but even to a certain extent,
you know what you goo scroll through on TikTok, You
start watching something and a lot of times you don't
even realize it's an AD, and you've almost gotten all
the way through it, and then you feel suckered, and
then of course you run out and buy it anyway,
because why not. Yeah, for sure, I mean, you know,
(18:42):
the watchword on a lot of these platforms is authenticity,
which I think is a little bit ironic because of
the case, like you just mentioned, You're you're going for
authenticity almost to try to to fool someone into thinking
that it's not an ad. But influencers have become really popular,
especially among these younger generations. You know, you mentioned how
popular it is to target millennials or Gen Z consumers.
(19:05):
They do follow a lot of influencers. Many of them
say that they buy based on formats like that. But
generally speaking, I think digital has really popularized what we
call native ad formats, which basically just means an ad
that's not obtrusive, something that follows the look and feel
of the site or the app that you're in, so
(19:26):
that it's not interruptive, so that it's not as annoying,
so it doesn't pull you out of the experience, And
consumers do tend to say that they find those types
of ads less annoying. For a company, well, therefore, paint
the picture for us in twenty two. Therefore, if you're
an e commerce player who's wanting to, you know, make
(19:49):
your mark, do you think you'll still be using a
Twitter twitsten extend. Everyone's always been trying to call the
death of that. Is it more that you're going to
be looking at Instagram and you're looking at TikTok, who's
going to be sort of you have to be spread
across old You cannot have this win. It takes all
kind of mentality. Yeah, I think you're you do have
to be spread across a lot of platforms. It's not
a winner take all. No one of these platforms has
(20:13):
everyone who is in your target demographic, even Facebook, which
is the most widespread, So you do have to look
across more than one. Um. You know. One thing that
I would mention is Twitter mentioned today that they really
strong resurgence of brand advertising. Historically, Twitter has been stronger
on the brand side as opposed to the direct response
(20:34):
or performance side. I know they've been putting a lot
of work into those direct response products and hope to
grow them. Um But but typically I do expect advertisers
to continue to focus more on platforms like Facebook or
Snap or Amazon or Google Search when it comes to
their really lower funnel goals and looking perhaps more to Twitter,
(20:55):
maybe more to YouTube, maybe more to see TV for
their upper funnel brand awareness oriented both. The global chip
crisis was top of mind again this week is Intel
and Texas Instruments reported quarterly earnings. Now Intel CEO predicted
a protracted shortage, so the supply disruption could last out
(21:16):
into the gap between ordering and delivering a chip. We're
still growing with an average industry wide weight of get
this nineteen three weeks for chip companies are so scarred
by this chip crisis, Well, then now they're kind of
stop piling them, exacerbating the shortage. So we got some
insight from Willie she he's a professor of management practice
(21:39):
at half A Business School, and asked him, well, is
it there anything to mitigate these shortages other than well
time itself. I think there has been a lot of
reallocation of production. So for example, t SMC has talked
about how they're giving priority to the automotive market. Of course,
when they give priority to the automotil at then they're
(22:00):
taking that capacity away from somebody else. So I mean,
I think we're going to start seeing some progress. It's
going to be some times. As you said, the lead
times are still out there. Uh. As Caroline was saying,
you know, people are stockpiling chips as well, and that's
probably making the situation a little worse because that means
they're they're buying in these chips and not using them directly.
(22:23):
But all of that stuff takes capacity and how much
does that affect well, the future of these chip companies
that are trying to make investment decisions now. But trying
to realize how real that demand is from the end consumer.
Well that that's the big question. Okay. For example, I
was just at Global Boundaries on Monday because they announced
(22:46):
the one billion dollar expansion and they're going to build
a new fab. And of course Intel has been talking
about adding new capacity. Texas Instruments just bought this Microme
fab in Utah, which is going to increase their capacity.
The bet everybody has is that as they add this capacity,
(23:07):
demand is going to continue to increase. Because of electrification,
use some more chips in basically everything. There are more
chips and cars, more chips and consumer devices. So they're
kind of betting that, you know, as this capacity comes
on stream, which is going to take a year or
two years in many cases, that that demand will keep up. Now,
the question is how many chips are being stockpiled, you know,
(23:30):
because these things also they also age, right, you know,
they go obsolete, so you've got to use them. So
it's a tricky balance and everybody is trying to figure
that out, right now, everyone's trying to figure it out,
and obviously these companies are all sort of jockeying to
be kind of the lead on that with regards to
domestic manufacturing here in the US and what it could
be down the road, Willie, is this a situation where
(23:52):
we're just gonna be talking about maybe just Intel and
Texas Instruments or are there going to be more players
in this abroad US a lot of companies to choose from. Well,
first of all, it's important to understand Texas Instruments is
in a very different segment than Intel, Right, Texas Instruments
is UH in this analog and mixed signal in that market,
(24:15):
the U S actually does pretty well. We have companies
like them. We have Analog Devices, which is another big player, UH,
you know, and you have some of these companies like
Corbo and Skyworks. Who are you know, really major players
in that market in the logic side, and that's where
a lot of the controversy has come. That's where you know,
(24:35):
the US Innovation and Competition Act is looking to fund
more competition there. You know, we have Intel, we have
t SMC, who's gonna be building who is building a
fab in Arizona. We have Samsung UH in Austin, Texas,
and then we have global boundaries. But those are the
big players in the US. The real question is in
(24:58):
that area. Are we going to get the leading edge capacity?
You know, t SMC is gonna put a fab in
this a little bit behind their leading edge in Taiwan,
Samsung will probably be the same Intel scrambling to catch up. Right,
So that that's where a lot of the questions, a
lot of the controversy are right now. How much pushback
(25:18):
is there when you get a company such as I
think you're saying it's TSMC says, look, we're going to
treat one sector by the autosector differently from the rest
of you. We're talking to Will Pool, CEO just earlier
on the show, and he's saying, look, actually, in a
lot of times, it's driving up the margins of the
cheaper goods the most, because of course that's where the
thinnest margins are. And then if a chip cost changes
(25:40):
or plastics cost changes there, it's going to hit the
price point harder. How companies make a decision like that, Well,
it's her right, because you know, I was talking to
people there are some number of years ago and they said, well,
we know what the whole market size is, okay, and
then we have they supply all the competitors and at market.
(26:00):
So they have an idea what the market is going
to look like, and then all the competitors come in
with their forecasts and uh, you know, the t Stency
guy told me, it's like they're all forecasting that they're
each going to get a dent market share, and we
know that's not going to happen. So now what you
have to do is you have to go back to
your customer and say, I'm not going to give you
all you want, okay. Behind the scenes, they're saying, I'm
(26:24):
going to give you what I think you're going to use, okay,
And that's how they allocate capacity. Now, if you're a
big customer, like if your Apple, you know, t SMCS
largest customer, you're gonna get what you ask for, right.
And then if you're a smaller customer, it's it's a
tough balance. They got to balance all these things. They
got to tell their customer, I can't give you what
you want. You know. By the way, sometimes the customers, uh,
(26:47):
you know, especially in the auto sector who we've seen
and also in the I T sector, when they don't
need it, they say, oh sorry, we don't want it anymore. Right.
So what you're seeing now is a lot of these
companies saying if you want a shirt capacity, then I
need you to prepay, I need you to put money
on front. That says you're going to take these jobs.
(27:09):
That's it from what you miss this week. If you
like the show, make sure to subscribe and rate us
wherever you listen to podcasts. We can catch our show
every week from four thirty five pm on blue Bag
TV and Twitter. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend.
To watch a miss this week. I'm Caroline Hyde. This
podcast has some of our favorite interviews from the Daily
Show After the Market Clothes that I co anchor along
with Joe Wisenthal and Remain Bostick. What do you miss
on Bloomberg TV. It's a perfect way to kick off
your weekend. This week started with a sell off in Bitcoin.
The cryptocurrency felt below that all important thirty dollar level.
(00:29):
It's a key support level for the first time in
a month now. On days like that, it's pretty easy
for crypto critics to say, well, bitcoin can't be a
store of value, it's too follow tile. So we've got
some reaction from Michael Sonnensheine is the CEO of Gray
Scale Investments, and asked what his response to those naysays
would be after the sell off we've seen. I think
(00:49):
investors who are allocating to crypto know that volatility is
going to be part of it. Most of the investors
were dealing with, though, are not looking at short term
price movements, are not looking at sure term volatility. Their
crypto allocations are really over medium to longer term time horizons.
So I don't think people feel terribly phased when they see,
you know, sudden movements in the market like this, are
(01:10):
they phased when it acts like any other risk asset though,
because I thought the whole idea was as a diversification play,
but then it falls in line with stocks. It certainly
is a diversification play for a lot of investors. It
is a differentiated return stream. But on days like today,
when there's market fears, doesn't really seem like there's anything
any asset class that can really you know, avoid some
of that liquidity coming out of the market um and
(01:32):
a lot of that deleveraging happening. How are you thinking
about liquidity in the market. We're showing the Bloomberg Galaxy
Crypto Index. We know, of course your trust trying to
talk about when the SEC will allow any t F
and then the discount of course it's behind that. How
much of that is an integral to providing not really confidence,
but liquidity in the market as well well. So you're
(01:53):
referring to Great Scale Bitcoin Truss, our flagship fund trades
under symbol GBTC. And even though there is bitcoin ETF today,
investors aren't waiting to add crypto to their portfolios. GBTC
is doing hundreds of millions of dollars a day and
notional trading volume, and it really is for many investors
the easiest way for them to add crypto exposure alongside stocks, bonds, ETFs,
(02:15):
other things they may own, and so over time, as
the fund continues to grow, I certainly think we'll see
liquidity in the product grow as well. What about the
forty two million GBTC shares that are due to release
from July twelve to two. There's a look up that expires.
Is that a short time issue that investors are talking
to you about? What sort of pressure does that exist
not only on GBTC but also bitcoin price itself? Will
(02:37):
it go higher or lower? I think a lot of
not only investors, but people in the press have been
wondering what the effect of the fund growing so large
will do now that some of those shares are unlocking.
Um it's a little too early to tell, but what
we have seen is with GBTC trading at a discount
and net asset value, a lot of investors, particularly institutional money,
has been stepping into that trade, realizing that that cap
(03:00):
at all can actually help them own or control more
bitcoin than it would be if they were buying bitcoin
in the spot market. So ultimately we do see that
nav UM, that progression back towards nav happening um and
in the longest case scenario, it will be an e
t F that would arbitrage away any discount to net
asset value. And you talk about investors stepping into the market,
(03:20):
how have flows looked as of as of late, I'm
thinking bitcoin and also ethereum. As we were chatting with
Mike McGlone, I think investors, you know, for the most part,
have a lot of them their Bitcoin or their Theoryum allocations.
Certainly now the trend amongst investors to have diversity within
their crypto holding, so looking at other assets to build
out their portfolios. And I think a lot of them
(03:42):
are really starting to get excited about some of these
new use cases of digital asset protocols that are starting
to pop up. Let's talk about that because of cool s,
gray scale defy fudness. What you're just announcing new fund
coin doesk defight in next the sort of war it's
going to be tracking defy decept realized finance opportunities that
people wanted to get exposure to by going into this. Well,
(04:04):
so Decentralized finance or DEFY is really traditional financial services
meeting decentralization. So for typical users, typical investors, typical consumers,
they're going to banks and brokerage houses, um and other
service providers to get lending, to get borrowing, to get exchanges,
and DEFY really represents the opportunity to do that in
(04:25):
a completely decentralized fashion. And this is a new hot
area of crypto that we really think investors have been
telling us is an area they want exposure to. So
launching a fund that gives them that targeted exposure to
a wide array of digital asset protocols in the defied
space is a really attractive opportunity, and we're really excited
to launch this fund for them. What is that targeted
opportunity that investors are saying we want access to? The
(04:48):
rookie Joe Wison dolls out, Caroline does this all the time,
explained to me. Well, So I think DEFY represents a
new subset of assets within the broadly defined crypto space. Right,
we've seen Bitcoin emerged as a or value Ethereum emerged
as really the gas to power decentralized applications. We've seen
the emergence of stable coins, We're seeing the emergence of
defied protocols. So we're starting to see various assets come
(05:10):
up that have new and differentiated use cases, and investors
are eager to get exposure to them. Exposure in particular
when when they could also be getting into GBDC as well,
which is trading at a discount that has continued. I mean,
when how much you seeing come investors wanted to move
between your products? Is it going to be totally new
(05:31):
types of investors coming? How much you seeing some sort
of cannibalization within it. I don't think we'll see cannibilization.
I think, if anything, again, this trend towards diversification is
a really important one. This is Gray Scales fifteen fund.
We certainly have a lot of investors who have invested
across all fifteen funds as we've continued to be a
pioneer and bring new products into the market, and also
as investors are increasingly looking to us to provide them
(05:54):
with these interesting opportunities. Sometimes before there's even enough market
sentiment to really identify the um and you know, really
think about it as simplified access, you're due diligence, of course,
it's it's focusing on coin just DEFY index. Of course,
we've seen protocols not always work as intended. How do
you ensure that you're protecting people's money when they're getting
(06:15):
into these DeFi space. So when we look at the
DEFY index and now the DeFi fund that will be
based around it, every quarter different assets will be included
or excluded from the index itself, and so there's qualification
criteria that must be met. So over time, as investors
stayed invested in the fund, they'll remember and see that
the assets with the greatest value, the greatest exposure within
(06:36):
DeFi will remain in the fund and those that you
know are starting to fade away will be disqualified from
the funds holdings. Last question, Bitcoin, I mean, at what
point is it coming by? Because I hear this is
this institutional money sitting on the sidelines wanting to get in.
So I'll never want to make price targets or price predictions, um,
but I can tell you based on who's investing in
(06:58):
the market, um, the size of the allocations that they're
making in the convictions that they do that I think
the opportunity for bitcoin remains very, very bright. This week,
investors had a slew of housing data to sort through.
Confidence among US home builders fell to an eleven month
low in July. That's as builders were forced to contend
(07:18):
there's still sky high costs of materials and of course
that continuing shortage of labor. There was also a slight
called down in the mortgage applications and then less than
rosy picture on home purchase growth. So some are now
wondering if we might have a bias strike on our hands.
We spoke with Matt ishbia Is, the chairman and CEO
of United Wholesale Mortgage, who was in the New York
(07:38):
Stock Exchange for Mortgage Broker's Day, and asked him, well, look,
if real estate prices have just gotten too high for people,
you know, we're seeing it across the board, you know.
I think prices are definitely going up. But Rachel still solo,
so we haven't seen a big slowdown. We actually had
a great second quarter. We think the third quarters have
even better at u w M, and so we're excited
(07:59):
about what's going on. I think the slowdown is there's
obviously a little lack of inventory out there. People that
are in forebearans aren't selling their homes and so as
that comes out, I think the market is gonna stay
hot through the end of the year. Give us a
little sense here, though, Matt as to sort of what
the breakdown and uh, the types of mortgages that you're seeing.
Are these basically people coming in getting a buying a
home for the first time with the thirty year are
(08:19):
these refinancings? What are you seeing? It's a good mixture.
You know. As rates tick up and they didn't in
the second quarter, there kind of come down a little
bit lately, but as they take up, there'll be a
lot less refinances, and so companies that are relying on
only refinance you'll see a lot less of that. We're
seeing a lot of purchase. We had an all time
record purchase quarter. We're gonna continue to grow in the purchase.
So purchases, you know, is I won't say cycle proof,
(08:40):
but a lot less cyclical than the refinance and so
we're seeing a lot more purchased than REFI Uh, definitely
from from second quarter first quarter, and we think the
third quarter we're gonna see a lot of purchase. But
with rates ticking down, you know, f H f A
just reduced a fee, which actually helping spur refinances, and
so mortgage brokers across the country are getting busier right now.
So we might see even more business on the REFI
than we thought after that recent change. Why are you
(09:02):
so positive on the third cour to Matt, Why are
people gonna still be going out there and buying your homes?
You know, because there's there's a lot of opportunity. Rates
are very low, and the truth is people see homes
differently than they saw pre pandemic, and so since COVID,
we're seeing a lot more people realize that, hey, buying
a house, buying a house with maybe a couple extra
bedrooms or maybe with a little bit of yard matters
(09:24):
more home is something different than it did pre pandemic.
And so we've seen a lot more purchase than I
think a lot of the reports are showing. And so
it's been very good. And obviously we work with mortgage
brokers who are local in the community, and so we
we have a little bit more of a you know,
in the weeds approach, and we feel that right now,
and so purchase has been great. I see it continuing
rates are low. Housing is gonna is gonna continue to
be strong. It might not go up ten percent a year,
(09:46):
but it's not gonna go down, you know, or go
down significantly. We see it being very strong going forward.
All right, Let's talk about your business though. I mean,
obviously this has attracted a lot of folks, uh to
this industry. I mean, you are obviously one of the
dominant a whole sale is out there in the mortgage market.
I think Quicken is the only one even bigger than you.
But you've got a lot of competition out there from
Freedom and Wells Fargo and a lot of others. Yere,
(10:08):
How is that affecting your pricing power your margins right now? Yeah?
So we are the leader. We are the number one
whole sette and so we're bigger than Quick and bigger
than everyone else. We're the number two overall, and so
we have a lot of control and pricing and as
we've basically said, hey, listen, we want to make sure
consumers get great deals across the board while still making
money for our investors and making sure we're looking out
for our shows. And you're gonna see that in our
(10:29):
second quarter rings along with hopefully third quarter and beyond
and so definitely there's some pressure. As there's less mortgages
being done, people can compete harder. But we have a
big advantage based on our technology and our cost to
ridge an. So what you'll see is a lot of
mortgage companies look really good when rates are low. We
think we're the elite mortgage copies in all cycles, especially
as rates take up. And I didn't I didn't mean
to short change Matt and the side of his company,
(10:52):
State guy and dam from northwester you know, I couldn't
help but take him down to pay not a safe distance.
At a safe distance, I mean on that they talk
to us about you talk about your technology. And what's
so interesting is the way in which people are trying
to disrupt the mortgage industry. What we learn in COVID
is things can be done differently. But I've just signed
(11:13):
a mortgage and it and it felt really archaic. You
had to go in person, you had to sign, I
had to give over, you know, signing rights to husband.
Why can't we do more of this online? Why do
you still have to gather in an office sign your
name away? Are we seeing innovation keep pace with the
amount that deals need to be done? Yeah. So honestly,
(11:33):
I think you're just working with the wrong people. You
gotta go to find a mortgage broker dot com because
it's all tech, it's all simple. We're closing home in
seven days all the time, purchase REFI. I think our
average at the company's about seventy days. The industry is fifty.
So other people might be archaic, but we are not archaic.
At u WM. Mortgage brokers are an archaic there in
the weeds. They have great technology, the process nobody like.
(11:54):
It's it's interesting we have a mortgage business. Nobody wants
a mortgage. They want the house or they want the savings.
We have to make the process faster, easier, cheaper. That's
what mortgage brokers do. That's what you WM is doing,
and that's how we're differentiing and that's why we're growing
so fast while others maybe aren't. All right, talk to
us something here about the regulatory environment, Matt. Obviously a
different regime in Washington now, a regime that has actually
(12:14):
talked about potentially tightening regulations specifically for the mortgage industry.
Are you anticipating any significant changes on that front? You know,
we really aren't, you know, I'm I'm all for any regulation.
You know, we're a big company. People think we don't
want regulation. We see regulation as a positive. Anything that's
good for consumers helps mortgage brokers. It helps mortgage brokers
and helps you WM. So if the Biden iministration comes
(12:35):
down and tightens some things down, it's gonna help us
win long term. But I don't see anything coming down
the you know, down the pipe right now. We saw
loosening as in lowering rates with the f h F
a feed by Sandra Thompson, uh leaving that group, and
so that's positive for all of mortgage people across the board.
So we think it's all good going forward. Second half
of the year is gonna better than the first half.
The first half was an all time record, and so
(12:55):
we're excited about the second half and then leading into
two thousand twenty two. Did you bring the clothes in
bell today? Yeah, we got a chance. We had seventy
five our clients out here, so we had them out
of here ringing the bell, having a lot of fun,
you know, educating people a lot mortgage brokers a lot
of fun here today. It was a strong warm up
ahead of the big show, Big tech earning seasons kicked
(13:15):
off at the end of this week, and Twitter and
Snapchat posted quarterly revenue that blue past analyst expectations and
they're larger rivals. Facebook and Alphabet, of course don't report
results until next week, but those numbers were still enough
to give the entire sector a boost. But Twitter and
snap benefited well from a digital advertising and e commerce
pandemic boom that has companies of all sizes are still
(13:38):
turning to social media platforms to each customers were stuck
at home and are now pretty addicted to e commerce.
We got the reaction from Nicole Perron, an e marketer,
principal analyst and insider intelligence and asked her, well, if
these digital advertising levels, if we're sustainable, It absolutely is.
I mean, one thing that we don't see going backward
(14:01):
is the share of retail transactions that occur online. The
pandemic really accelerated that about two years forward in the US,
and so it just gives advertisers that much more reason
to reach people online in the place where they're converting. Now,
the growth rates this quarter, I would say, are sort
of not sustainable, and that's because Q two that was
(14:24):
the trough of the digital ad market last year, so
this is going to be sort of the easiest comp
that most of these platforms have. So I do expect
growth to moderate compared to this most recent quarter, But
in terms of the investment itself, no, we don't think
that will go backward in any way. And this is
sort of a real transformation, and we've been talking about
(14:45):
it is from what would normally be advertising on television
or advertising in uh, you know, a traditional sort of
newspaper periodical. Here the sense here that advertisers understand that
the users, at least the users they want to target
are on Snap and on a pinterest, and on Facebook
to a certain extent, and even to Twitter. Here is
the general idea here that the majority of the ads
(15:08):
spend needs to be on those platforms, not just a
small share. Well, I don't know if it would necessarily
be a majority, because in fact, one of the fastest
growing places that we see for ad spending right now
is on retail property, so directly on the places where
people are transacting, like on Amazon, um and and also
(15:29):
of course on CTV. These streaming players are becoming really important.
More people are spending more of their TV time with
streaming as opposed to traditional um. But I would say
a significant plurality of spending will continue to be on
these social platforms, and yes, it is because of the
amount of information they have about who their users are
(15:50):
and what they're interested in, and of course you know
what they'll click and convert on, which is what advertisers
are particularly caring about. You know, targeting is becoming harder
and lots of places with cookie deprecation and other changes
like what Apple has done for privacy and social companies
do have a lot of valuable information about they're logged
in user base. Talk to us about the pushback though
(16:13):
on not targeting and whether in the longer term, who's
in the most weak spot as that continues to become
what what consumers are talking about and wanting even if
they don't realize perhaps in practice they really want it. Yeah,
for sure. I mean it's a great question, and you
know who's going to be in the worst spot. The
answer is basically whoever has the least amount of information
(16:36):
about the users of a given platform. So when we're
talking about social platforms as they are logged in users,
perhaps you don't know going forward what they're doing all
across the web because that information is being pulled back.
It is becoming harder to collect even for the likes
of Facebook, but you still have a lot of valuable
(16:57):
information about them that you can use and having information
at scale makes that information more valuable to advertisers who
are looking for scale when they do targeting. But other
publishers have also really valuable information here I mentioned retailers.
Retail media has grown in importance because of the commercial
value of that specific info where Amazon or Walmart or
(17:20):
target know how you shop, how you search for products,
what actually makes you click through and buy a product,
and how often you're restocking some of those items for example,
And of course you know I mentioned the CTV players
as well. They also typically are logged in services. They
do have information about the households who subscribe that is
(17:42):
also valuable for them to facilitate targeting. And then talking
about other like more typical news or lifestyle content publishers,
they're really working hard to understand the insights that they
have about their audience that maybe they haven't quite put
the pieces together yet, but they're working to come up
with their own audience segments that will also be attractive
(18:02):
to advertisers or perhaps introduce more contextual offerings as well. Basically,
everyone's trying to find a way for this this personalization
to keep going. We'll talk a little bit about how
these ads are structure, because I mean, you still see
some of the more traditional advertisements, you know, you're fifteen
thirty second ads that are clearly ads, But on a
lot of these social media sites, you're starting to see
(18:22):
those lines really blurred here obviously with the whole advent
of the influencers on Instagram, but even to a certain extent,
you know what you goo scroll through on TikTok, You
start watching something and a lot of times you don't
even realize it's an AD, and you've almost gotten all
the way through it, and then you feel suckered, and
then of course you run out and buy it anyway,
because why not. Yeah, for sure, I mean, you know,
(18:42):
the watchword on a lot of these platforms is authenticity,
which I think is a little bit ironic because of
the case, like you just mentioned, You're you're going for
authenticity almost to try to to fool someone into thinking
that it's not an ad. But influencers have become really popular,
especially among these younger generations. You know, you mentioned how
popular it is to target millennials or Gen Z consumers.
(19:05):
They do follow a lot of influencers. Many of them
say that they buy based on formats like that. But
generally speaking, I think digital has really popularized what we
call native ad formats, which basically just means an ad
that's not obtrusive, something that follows the look and feel
of the site or the app that you're in, so
(19:26):
that it's not interruptive, so that it's not as annoying,
so it doesn't pull you out of the experience, And
consumers do tend to say that they find those types
of ads less annoying. For a company, well, therefore, paint
the picture for us in twenty two. Therefore, if you're
an e commerce player who's wanting to, you know, make
(19:49):
your mark, do you think you'll still be using a
Twitter twitsten extend. Everyone's always been trying to call the
death of that. Is it more that you're going to
be looking at Instagram and you're looking at TikTok, who's
going to be sort of you have to be spread
across old You cannot have this win. It takes all
kind of mentality. Yeah, I think you're you do have
to be spread across a lot of platforms. It's not
a winner take all. No one of these platforms has
(20:13):
everyone who is in your target demographic, even Facebook, which
is the most widespread, So you do have to look
across more than one. Um. You know. One thing that
I would mention is Twitter mentioned today that they really
strong resurgence of brand advertising. Historically, Twitter has been stronger
on the brand side as opposed to the direct response
(20:34):
or performance side. I know they've been putting a lot
of work into those direct response products and hope to
grow them. Um But but typically I do expect advertisers
to continue to focus more on platforms like Facebook or
Snap or Amazon or Google Search when it comes to
their really lower funnel goals and looking perhaps more to Twitter,
(20:55):
maybe more to YouTube, maybe more to see TV for
their upper funnel brand awareness oriented both. The global chip
crisis was top of mind again this week is Intel
and Texas Instruments reported quarterly earnings. Now Intel CEO predicted
a protracted shortage, so the supply disruption could last out
(21:16):
into the gap between ordering and delivering a chip. We're
still growing with an average industry wide weight of get
this nineteen three weeks for chip companies are so scarred
by this chip crisis, Well, then now they're kind of
stop piling them, exacerbating the shortage. So we got some
insight from Willie she he's a professor of management practice
(21:39):
at half A Business School, and asked him, well, is
it there anything to mitigate these shortages other than well
time itself. I think there has been a lot of
reallocation of production. So for example, t SMC has talked
about how they're giving priority to the automotive market. Of course,
when they give priority to the automotil at then they're
(22:00):
taking that capacity away from somebody else. So I mean,
I think we're going to start seeing some progress. It's
going to be some times. As you said, the lead
times are still out there. Uh. As Caroline was saying,
you know, people are stockpiling chips as well, and that's
probably making the situation a little worse because that means
they're they're buying in these chips and not using them directly.
(22:23):
But all of that stuff takes capacity and how much
does that affect well, the future of these chip companies
that are trying to make investment decisions now. But trying
to realize how real that demand is from the end consumer.
Well that that's the big question. Okay. For example, I
was just at Global Boundaries on Monday because they announced
(22:46):
the one billion dollar expansion and they're going to build
a new fab. And of course Intel has been talking
about adding new capacity. Texas Instruments just bought this Microme
fab in Utah, which is going to increase their capacity.
The bet everybody has is that as they add this capacity,
(23:07):
demand is going to continue to increase. Because of electrification,
use some more chips in basically everything. There are more
chips and cars, more chips and consumer devices. So they're
kind of betting that, you know, as this capacity comes
on stream, which is going to take a year or
two years in many cases, that that demand will keep up. Now,
the question is how many chips are being stockpiled, you know,
(23:30):
because these things also they also age, right, you know,
they go obsolete, so you've got to use them. So
it's a tricky balance and everybody is trying to figure
that out, right now, everyone's trying to figure it out,
and obviously these companies are all sort of jockeying to
be kind of the lead on that with regards to
domestic manufacturing here in the US and what it could
be down the road, Willie, is this a situation where
(23:52):
we're just gonna be talking about maybe just Intel and
Texas Instruments or are there going to be more players
in this abroad US a lot of companies to choose from. Well,
first of all, it's important to understand Texas Instruments is
in a very different segment than Intel, Right, Texas Instruments
is UH in this analog and mixed signal in that market,
(24:15):
the U S actually does pretty well. We have companies
like them. We have Analog Devices, which is another big player, UH,
you know, and you have some of these companies like
Corbo and Skyworks. Who are you know, really major players
in that market in the logic side, and that's where
a lot of the controversy has come. That's where you know,
(24:35):
the US Innovation and Competition Act is looking to fund
more competition there. You know, we have Intel, we have
t SMC, who's gonna be building who is building a
fab in Arizona. We have Samsung UH in Austin, Texas,
and then we have global boundaries. But those are the
big players in the US. The real question is in
(24:58):
that area. Are we going to get the leading edge capacity?
You know, t SMC is gonna put a fab in
this a little bit behind their leading edge in Taiwan,
Samsung will probably be the same Intel scrambling to catch up. Right,
So that that's where a lot of the questions, a
lot of the controversy are right now. How much pushback
(25:18):
is there when you get a company such as I
think you're saying it's TSMC says, look, we're going to
treat one sector by the autosector differently from the rest
of you. We're talking to Will Pool, CEO just earlier
on the show, and he's saying, look, actually, in a
lot of times, it's driving up the margins of the
cheaper goods the most, because of course that's where the
thinnest margins are. And then if a chip cost changes
(25:40):
or plastics cost changes there, it's going to hit the
price point harder. How companies make a decision like that, Well,
it's her right, because you know, I was talking to
people there are some number of years ago and they said, well,
we know what the whole market size is, okay, and
then we have they supply all the competitors and at market.
(26:00):
So they have an idea what the market is going
to look like, and then all the competitors come in
with their forecasts and uh, you know, the t Stency
guy told me, it's like they're all forecasting that they're
each going to get a dent market share, and we
know that's not going to happen. So now what you
have to do is you have to go back to
your customer and say, I'm not going to give you
all you want, okay. Behind the scenes, they're saying, I'm
(26:24):
going to give you what I think you're going to use, okay,
And that's how they allocate capacity. Now, if you're a
big customer, like if your Apple, you know, t SMCS
largest customer, you're gonna get what you ask for, right.
And then if you're a smaller customer, it's it's a
tough balance. They got to balance all these things. They
got to tell their customer, I can't give you what
you want. You know. By the way, sometimes the customers, uh,
(26:47):
you know, especially in the auto sector who we've seen
and also in the I T sector, when they don't
need it, they say, oh sorry, we don't want it anymore. Right.
So what you're seeing now is a lot of these
companies saying if you want a shirt capacity, then I
need you to prepay, I need you to put money
on front. That says you're going to take these jobs.
(27:09):
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