# Affordability In Focus Ahead of Midterms; US National Wealth Tax Debate

An episode of [Bloomberg Intelligence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/326301337), 24 Oct 2026, 44 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/1b0c2805-9805-43e6-9662-b4ab0110f413/485a590c-2d31-4909-9872-b4ec014a8cb1/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=0ad812bf-fd15-4012-a18c-ae3c00090c76

Bloomberg Money takes the pulse of your financial life, powered by the reporting of our global newsroom. Today's show features: • Whitney Tilson, Stansberry Research Editor • Stephanie Guild, Robinhood Chief Investment Officer See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
[0:04] Speaker 2: Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 3: Radio.
[0:06] Speaker 4: News.
[0:07] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Money.
[0:12] Speaker 5: This is the Bloomberg Money Podcast. I'm Tom Keen with
[0:16] Speaker 5: Scarlett Fu. Join us each week for a smart look
[0:19] Speaker 5: at the forces shaping your financial life on personal finance,
[0:23] Speaker 5: on retirement, and wealth management. We will explore how people
[0:27] Speaker 5: are earning, investing, and building wealth. We are live Fridays
[0:32] Speaker 5: at noon Eastern on Bloomberg Television. Subscribe to the podcast
[0:36] Speaker 5: wherever you listen, and as always on the Bloomberg Terminal
[0:40] Speaker 5: and the Bloomberg Business app.
[0:55] Speaker 1: Good afternoon, everyone.
[0:55] Speaker 5: Bloomberg Money on personal finance, retirement, and wealth management. I'm
[0:59] Speaker 5: somehow getting through the week. Scarlett Fu and Tom Kane.
[1:02] Speaker 5: I aged yesterday.
[1:04] Speaker 1: Yeah. What we saw in the market.
[1:06] Speaker 5: And once again, today, it seems like we're healing a
[1:08] Speaker 5: little bit as we have for the last five years.
[1:11] Speaker 2: But it feels like we're in a new phase now
[1:13] Speaker 2: where things are getting really messy, really volatile. We don't
[1:15] Speaker 2: know if there's a bubble, if it's peaked already. It's
[1:18] Speaker 2: all very unclear.
[1:19] Speaker 5: It's very, that's where I want to go. We're going
[1:20] Speaker 5: to go there with Joe Weisenthal in a moment. Coming
[1:23] Speaker 5: up today, well, what do we have? We have Whitney Tilson,
[1:25] Speaker 5: editor of the Stansbury Research. Yes, we'll talk hedge fund talk,
[1:29] Speaker 5: MAG7 talk, but also Scarlett, since we've talked to him
[1:32] Speaker 5: about his public service, a mayoral candidate ago at the
[1:36] Speaker 5: New York.
[1:36] Speaker 2: He also helped found Teach for America as well. So
[1:39] Speaker 2: we'll get into that. Plus, we've got Stephanie Gill, the
[1:41] Speaker 2: chief investment officer at Robin Hood on how the digital natives,
[1:44] Speaker 2: that is Gen Z, are using AI to help manage
[1:48] Speaker 2: their investments. Yes, the young people.
[1:49] Speaker 1: We'll have to see on that as well.
[1:51] Speaker 5: Stocks, it's been all over the place with a nice
[1:53] Speaker 5: recovery this morning. At one point, I actually saw the
[1:55] Speaker 5: Nasdaq with green on the screen. You still have that
[1:58] Speaker 5: right now up a nice six-tenths of a percent. The
[2:00] Speaker 5: VIX out over 20 earlier. 20 is like.
[2:03] Speaker 1: The new 30. It used to be nobody got rattled
[2:06] Speaker 1: until 30.
[2:07] Speaker 2: We're not yet at 20. We're below 20 right now.
[2:10] Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about what's going on in the
[2:12] Speaker 2: other asset classes, because as stocks look to fall for
[2:17] Speaker 2: the week, the 10-year yield is moving higher. But look
[2:20] Speaker 2: at that. It is below 5%. And of course, we're
[2:23] Speaker 2: days away from the next Fed decision. Yeah, the dollar
[2:25] Speaker 2: moving up marginally. It peaked in early October, has kind
[2:28] Speaker 2: of stalled in the last two weeks. And WTI, crude oil,
[2:32] Speaker 2: now at 103 a barrel or just about We're looking
[2:34] Speaker 2: at four straight weeks.
[2:35] Speaker 5: And Brent Cruder, that 116 print into the weekend. You know,
[2:39] Speaker 5: from Istanbul down to Dubai, what our team is doing
[2:41] Speaker 5: on Iran and the Persian Gulf will be critical this
[2:44] Speaker 5: weekend as well. We need to drive a conversation for
[2:47] Speaker 5: you on this Friday. We do that with Joe Weisenthal.
[2:50] Speaker 5: He's co-host of Odd Lots Podcast with Tracy Alloway. Nikki
[2:53] Speaker 5: Waller here, always driving forward our money coverage.
[2:57] Speaker 6: Worldwide.
[2:58] Speaker 1: And David Midterm-Gura is here. Blum, are you going to Kansas?
[3:04] Speaker 1: Are you going to Minnesota?
[3:04] Speaker 7: I will be right here, anchoring late in the evening
[3:07] Speaker 7: and providing updates on the house races.
[3:09] Speaker 5: And I've been advised, seriously, not a joke, late into
[3:12] Speaker 5: the evening is really going to matter.
[3:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, midnight to two. Stay up late, Tom.
[3:15] Speaker 5: We'll have to see that. Joe Weisenthal is with us.
[3:18] Speaker 5: This is his first time with us. We talked to
[3:19] Speaker 5: his people, and they said, yeah, okay, we'll try it.
[3:22] Speaker 5: Why is Joe Weisenthal here? Headlines used to be, stocks
[3:26] Speaker 5: are up today. And then a kid down in Texas,
[3:29] Speaker 5: a couple years out of Texas, said, stocks go green.
[3:33] Speaker 5: That's what Joe Weisenthal changed in business journalism. Tanking markets
[3:37] Speaker 5: was an original Joe Weisenthal headline. My first question to you,
[3:41] Speaker 5: I've never seen a fire hose. of distraction and news
[3:45] Speaker 5: and emotion as we have right now, hour to hour,
[3:49] Speaker 5: day to day. How do you adapt to the firehose
[3:53] Speaker 5: of news that we didn't know when we were younger?
[3:55] Speaker 8: I built a AI bot that scans it all for
[3:58] Speaker 8: me and tells me what actually matters. This is, can
[4:01] Speaker 8: we talk about the phenomenon of the firehose for a section?
[4:05] Speaker 8: Then maybe we can actually get into some of these
[4:07] Speaker 8: headlines and what actually matters. The AI philosophers who have
[4:12] Speaker 8: been talking for like, you know, they talk about this
[4:13] Speaker 8: idea of the singularity. And what they mean by that
[4:16] Speaker 8: is that time is speeding up.
[4:18] Speaker 4: Right.
[4:19] Speaker 8: And so millions of years ago, you know, humans like
[4:23] Speaker 8: went for a million years.
[4:24] Speaker 6: They only came up with.
[4:25] Speaker 1: Oh, I thought you were going to say clean shaven
[4:27] Speaker 1: in Texas. A million years.
[4:29] Speaker 8: There was a period of time in history on Earth
[4:32] Speaker 8: where there was only one invention, and that was the
[4:34] Speaker 8: hand axe.
[4:35] Speaker 6: It went through like a million years.
[4:36] Speaker 8: And then it's like, oh, maybe then a million years
[4:38] Speaker 8: later they found a second invention, right? The space between
[4:42] Speaker 8: novel developments keeps getting shorter and shorter. This even pre-AI,
[4:49] Speaker 8: the space between important things.
[4:51] Speaker 6: That happened here on Earth keeps getting shorter.
[4:54] Speaker 8: And what we're seeing, again, AI aside, is that if
[4:58] Speaker 8: you just count the number of things that maybe we
[5:00] Speaker 8: would call red headlines here at Bloomberg, the things that
[5:03] Speaker 8: catch your attention, that say we should talk about this,
[5:06] Speaker 8: are happening so fast now that in a given day, Again,
[5:11] Speaker 8: we went.
[5:11] Speaker 1: A million years. Absolutely overwhelming.
[5:13] Speaker 8: And now on a given day, we might get 100
[5:16] Speaker 8: headlines that if we had the mental capacity, we might
[5:19] Speaker 8: like to.
[5:20] Speaker 1: Think about it.
[5:20] Speaker 5: I envy Nikki Waller, who gets to do a story
[5:23] Speaker 5: and plan it for three weeks.
[5:25] Speaker 1: Going to Eddie's. Got to pick it up here on
[5:27] Speaker 1: the news flow of the moment.
[5:28] Speaker 2: With all these developments that you're referring to, they all
[5:30] Speaker 2: come back to a handful of companies. And they're the
[5:33] Speaker 2: big tech companies that we're all, at this point, overexposed to. Nikki,
[5:36] Speaker 2: I know you're thinking a lot and writing a lot
[5:38] Speaker 2: about the concentration. or the overconcentration to tech that we
[5:41] Speaker 2: all have.
[5:42] Speaker 9: Yeah, this is something that institutional investors are looking at,
[5:46] Speaker 9: but it's also something that individuals should be thinking about
[5:49] Speaker 9: as well. We all think that we are in index funds,
[5:52] Speaker 9: we're doing the right thing, we're diversified, but actually those
[5:56] Speaker 9: index funds are really making a big bet on a
[5:59] Speaker 9: small number of U.S.
[6:00] Speaker 3: Tech companies.
[6:01] Speaker 6: And We are putting out a.
[6:03] Speaker 9: Podcast called The Portfolio Reset that has been looking at this.
[6:06] Speaker 9: It's a little bit of a how-to with Maren Webb
[6:09] Speaker 9: and is kind of diving in using the SpaceX moment
[6:12] Speaker 9: and other things.
[6:13] Speaker 1: What do you reset to?
[6:15] Speaker 5: What does Maren suggest that we reset to from a
[6:18] Speaker 5: given 54% of a portfolio?
[6:21] Speaker 1: In SpaceX.
[6:22] Speaker 9: Well, we absolutely do not give investment advice here at Bloomberg,
[6:25] Speaker 9: but we are telling people to understand what they're holding
[6:29] Speaker 9: and get under the hood. And what you think might
[6:32] Speaker 9: be really diversified is less than you imagine.
[6:34] Speaker 5: So you know that I've been recommending the triple levers
[6:37] Speaker 5: on cash fund.
[6:38] Speaker 9: I'm in.
[6:38] Speaker 2: I've been in from day one.
[6:40] Speaker 9: I'll see you by the bike racks after work, Tom.
[6:43] Speaker 2: So, Joe, I look at what's happening in the markets
[6:46] Speaker 2: and the AI trade is kind of wobbly, certainly. And
[6:48] Speaker 2: bonds kind of seem to be working again as a
[6:51] Speaker 2: hedge for now.
[6:52] Speaker 5: Right.
[6:52] Speaker 2: The flight to safety is overwhelming the U.S. fiscal concerns.
[6:55] Speaker 2: Feels like treasuries could be kind of be an anti-AI trade.
[7:00] Speaker 1: This is so important.
[7:01] Speaker 8: Think about like two months ago or a month ago
[7:04] Speaker 8: when like rates were shooting up.
[7:06] Speaker 6: And what were people saying?
[7:08] Speaker 8: Oh, we're really worried about like fiscal dominance. We're really
[7:11] Speaker 8: worried about the size of the national debt, etc. Did
[7:15] Speaker 8: something change in the last two weeks that suddenly the
[7:18] Speaker 8: national debt went down?
[7:19] Speaker 1: No, clearly not.
[7:21] Speaker 6: What does that tell us?
[7:22] Speaker 8: Therefore, in retrospect, that all those stories about how it
[7:25] Speaker 8: had to do with the national debt or whatever were wrong.
[7:27] Speaker 6: What was correct, what.
[7:29] Speaker 8: I believe is obviously correct, is that we have this
[7:32] Speaker 8: extremely intense investment intent cycle. There's a lot of money
[7:37] Speaker 8: being spent. That creates an inflationary impulse. When you have
[7:42] Speaker 8: an inflationary impulse, that all things equal means the Fed
[7:45] Speaker 8: has to raise rates. When these structural drivers of spending
[7:48] Speaker 8: and AI is just one of them, are expected to.
[7:51] Speaker 6: Go on for a long time. Rates are going to
[7:53] Speaker 6: be high for a long time.
[7:54] Speaker 5: He thinks it's a 52-minute odd lot podcast, doesn't he?
[7:57] Speaker 1: Let me jump in. You mentioned flight to safety.
[8:00] Speaker 5: What's the GOP flight to safety given 11 days to
[8:03] Speaker 5: the election?
[8:04] Speaker 7: I think things are looking pretty bleak. You had the
[8:06] Speaker 7: president in Iowa last night. He won that state in 2016, 2020,
[8:09] Speaker 7: and 2024. So wild to see him there delivering a
[8:12] Speaker 7: stump speech for the Republican Senate candidate. Look, there's very
[8:16] Speaker 7: little that he can do to change the narrative here
[8:17] Speaker 7: 11 days out from the midterm elections. And I think
[8:20] Speaker 7: a lot of Republicans are trying to plot a path
[8:21] Speaker 7: forward here. But you look at the Cook political report,
[8:24] Speaker 7: moving more Democrats into the likely category in the House.
[8:27] Speaker 7: We have seen the frustrations of this House speaker dealing
[8:29] Speaker 7: with a very slim majority.
[8:30] Speaker 1: Where is the House speaker? Where is the House speaker?
[8:33] Speaker 7: He is meeting with his caucus, trying to plot a
[8:37] Speaker 7: path for you. Again, Tom, it's not looking like there's
[8:39] Speaker 7: much that they can do here less than two weeks out.
[8:41] Speaker 2: And, of course, some states are also going to be
[8:43] Speaker 2: voting on one-time billionaire's taxes, like in California. The idea
[8:47] Speaker 2: of a national wealth tax is kind of picking up steam,
[8:49] Speaker 2: isn't it? Our Lisa Bromwitz talked with the CEO of
[8:52] Speaker 2: United Airlines, who kind of gave his endorsement to the
[8:55] Speaker 2: idea that maybe a national wealth tax wouldn't be a
[8:57] Speaker 2: terrible idea. Fascinating.
[8:58] Speaker 7: Building on the work of our former colleague, Jordan Holman,
[9:00] Speaker 7: who sat down with Scott Kirby, Lisa, asking about this,
[9:03] Speaker 7: and he's floated the idea that he'd be fine with it.
[9:05] Speaker 3: He would be OK for him to have it.
[9:06] Speaker 7: And he suggested it be done at a national level.
[9:08] Speaker 7: And I think that's the most fascinating facet of what
[9:11] Speaker 7: he said. If you do it on a state by
[9:13] Speaker 7: state basis, people are going to move. You're going to
[9:15] Speaker 7: get the kind of threats that you saw from Mark
[9:16] Speaker 7: Zuckerberg that maybe Kauai is more attractive than Palo Alto.
[9:19] Speaker 1: Maybe indeed he would move. That wouldn't happen if we
[9:21] Speaker 1: were national. You read my script.
[9:22] Speaker 5: Joe Weisenthal, Mark Zuckerberg, I'm having a tantrum, I'm leaving California.
[9:27] Speaker 5: What did we learn from this recapitalization of Facebook?
[9:31] Speaker 1: Well, yeah.
[9:32] Speaker 6: So the key thing here is that, well, two things.
[9:35] Speaker 8: They need more cash. Everyone needs more cash. We all
[9:39] Speaker 8: knew that. And he doesn't want to dilute his voting power.
[9:42] Speaker 8: That's really important for him. So those are the two
[9:45] Speaker 8: things we learned. But on the subject of the wealth tax,
[9:47] Speaker 8: I would say two things. There is no doubt in
[9:50] Speaker 8: my mind that across the, quote, Western world, et cetera,
[9:55] Speaker 8: that we're going to need to find some way to
[9:57] Speaker 8: tax wealth.
[9:58] Speaker 1: Otherwise, the only.
[9:59] Speaker 8: People were trying to build an entire tax base on
[10:02] Speaker 8: W-2 workers.
[10:03] Speaker 6: That's not working. That's not sustainable, obviously, because wealth.
[10:07] Speaker 8: Is such a driver of people's ability to consume and
[10:10] Speaker 8: so forth.
[10:11] Speaker 3: We're going to do it.
[10:12] Speaker 8: We're going to have to find a way to do it.
[10:14] Speaker 8: But capital, capital mobility is a real thing. We might
[10:17] Speaker 8: complain and say, Mark, you're greedy. Why you would leave
[10:20] Speaker 8: Florida or leave California, et cetera. Call him all you want.
[10:24] Speaker 8: Doesn't change the reality.
[10:24] Speaker 1: Nobody cares.
[10:25] Speaker 5: What we care about is this. Your family's heritage at
[10:28] Speaker 5: the University of Texas. Can you see Mark Zuckerberg in Texas?
[10:32] Speaker 6: Really hot. This is what people don't get about Texas.
[10:34] Speaker 6: I love Texas.
[10:36] Speaker 8: But I think people moved there from California and they thought, oh,
[10:40] Speaker 8: it really is hot here.
[10:42] Speaker 1: In October.
[10:42] Speaker 9: I will say, too, I think these are boom times
[10:45] Speaker 9: for state investigators who are trying to figure out residency
[10:48] Speaker 9: for everybody.
[10:49] Speaker 2: The teddy bear test.
[10:50] Speaker 1: Exactly. The what?
[10:51] Speaker 2: The teddy bear tax. Where is your teddy bear? And
[10:53] Speaker 2: that determines what state you actually live in.
[10:55] Speaker 1: How did you know I had a teddy bear?
[10:57] Speaker 8: This assumes that there are laws. We were in Chicago
[11:00] Speaker 8: last week. And the first question, we interviewed CME chief
[11:03] Speaker 8: Terry Duffy.
[11:04] Speaker 6: The first question I asked him was like.
[11:06] Speaker 1: Are there laws anymore?
[11:08] Speaker 6: Do we live in a world.
[11:09] Speaker 8: That actually has financial regulation? Because it doesn't look like
[11:12] Speaker 8: to me.
[11:13] Speaker 1: He sounds like it's a philosophy class.
[11:15] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[11:17] Speaker 8: And he was like, well, look, there's still laws, but
[11:19] Speaker 8: the state of like any sort of enforcement or regulation,
[11:22] Speaker 8: it's seen better.
[11:24] Speaker 6: Times for sure.
[11:25] Speaker 8: So, yeah, you can like what state do you really
[11:28] Speaker 8: rely on? Maybe there's a law, but someone actually has
[11:30] Speaker 8: to have the impulse to enforce it.
[11:32] Speaker 5: Thank you for wearing a green collar matching with the set.
[11:35] Speaker 1: Great style.
[11:36] Speaker 2: Joe Weisenthal going existential.
[11:38] Speaker 1: He's the host of the.
[11:39] Speaker 2: Odd Lots podcast. And of course, Nicky Waller, managing editor
[11:42] Speaker 2: for Money Coverage at Bloomberg News. And David Gurra, co-host
[11:45] Speaker 2: of Bloomberg This Weekend. Coming up, Whitney Tilson, editor at
[11:48] Speaker 2: Stansbury Research. Who joins us next? Texas.
[11:53] Speaker 1: It's like a seminar.
[11:54] Speaker 5: Texas.
[11:55] Speaker 1: Who's going to win, Joe? Joe, please. Seminars.
[12:00] Speaker 5: You're listening to Bloomberg Money. Stay with us with more
[12:03] Speaker 5: to come after this. Bloomberg Money, welcome to all of
[12:13] Speaker 5: you on personal finance, on wealth management, on retirement as well.
[12:17] Speaker 5: It is good to speak to someone, particularly as we
[12:19] Speaker 5: come up close to these elections.
[12:21] Speaker 1: Who has chosen to run for office and all.
[12:23] Speaker 5: We'll talk to Whitney Tilson about that with his latest
[12:26] Speaker 5: run for mayor here in New York City, but far
[12:28] Speaker 5: more his work across investment.
[12:31] Speaker 1: And in hedge funds where he's editor of Stansberry Research.
[12:34] Speaker 5: Whitney, I want to really get to this with the
[12:36] Speaker 5: regret and the emotion that's out there at this time
[12:40] Speaker 5: on the 12 stocks that everybody either owns or doesn't own.
[12:44] Speaker 5: Here is a statement from Whitney Tilson buried in a
[12:47] Speaker 5: research note. Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta, three stocks as core
[12:50] Speaker 5: holdings April 17th of 2019.
[12:54] Speaker 1: Since then, with Whitney Tilson, they're up 168, 449, and 297%.
[13:00] Speaker 5: An average of 305% on an arc of six years,
[13:03] Speaker 5: call it. Double the 164 of the S & P 500.
[13:07] Speaker 1: That's not bad.
[13:08] Speaker 5: We've got three groups, Whitney, in the game right now.
[13:11] Speaker 5: They owned them and they kept them like you. They
[13:14] Speaker 5: never owned them. But I want you to talk about
[13:16] Speaker 5: the regret that's out there in the industry of people
[13:19] Speaker 5: that own those stocks. And then they got smart and
[13:22] Speaker 5: they got rid of them.
[13:23] Speaker 3: Yeah, well, those have been fabulously performing stocks, as you note.
[13:28] Speaker 3: And I think the key to successful long-term investing is
[13:32] Speaker 3: find a handful of great companies and then own them
[13:35] Speaker 3: for a long period of time. The market is so
[13:38] Speaker 3: short-term oriented, I think the only way you can beat
[13:40] Speaker 3: it as an active investor is to play an opposite game,
[13:44] Speaker 3: long-term buy and hold of quality companies, like what Warren
[13:47] Speaker 3: Buffett's been preaching.
[13:48] Speaker 5: Like Warren Buffett, I know that was really important to
[13:50] Speaker 5: you within your value investing. Except now, as we talk
[13:54] Speaker 5: to Joe Weisenthal, there's a fire hose of noise, distraction.
[13:58] Speaker 1: Yes.
[13:58] Speaker 5: My morning program, Scarlett's morning program. There's too much information.
[14:02] Speaker 5: How do you process it and yet hold on to
[14:05] Speaker 5: a given Amazon?
[14:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's interesting.
[14:07] Speaker 3: When I started my investing career more than a quarter
[14:09] Speaker 3: century ago, one of the challenges was getting access to information,
[14:15] Speaker 3: literally getting companies' annual reports. Took effort. Today, it's the opposite.
[14:19] Speaker 3: As you point out, it's filtering. It's like drinking from
[14:22] Speaker 3: a fire hose and filtering the signal from the noise.
[14:25] Speaker 3: So that's a real challenge. One of the ways I
[14:29] Speaker 3: handle it is I invest with a long term perspective,
[14:33] Speaker 3: try and give long term advice, ignore the short term
[14:36] Speaker 3: noise of, you know, whatever Trump's tweeting today or, you know,
[14:39] Speaker 3: what's happening to oil prices in the Gulf of Hormuz
[14:42] Speaker 3: and just try and identify quality companies that I think
[14:45] Speaker 3: their earnings will be double what they are today in
[14:47] Speaker 3: five years. And those stocks are going up.
[14:49] Speaker 2: OK, so stay slow and steady when it comes to
[14:52] Speaker 2: your investments. I want to go back to what Tom
[14:54] Speaker 2: was saying and your political ambitions. You ran for New
[14:57] Speaker 2: York City mayor back in 2025 as a Democrat. Affordability
[15:01] Speaker 2: is the number one issue for voters this election cycle.
[15:04] Speaker 2: The Democrats slammed President Trump's policy decisions, saying that it's
[15:07] Speaker 2: led to much higher prices. What's your response to criticism
[15:11] Speaker 2: that your Democrats have not offered up any kind of
[15:14] Speaker 2: direct solution to the affordability crisis beyond piling on Donald Trump?
[15:19] Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I guess I would say that your point
[15:26] Speaker 3: is well taken, that it's been more criticizing Trump's tariffs,
[15:30] Speaker 3: the war in Iran, both of which have jacked prices
[15:34] Speaker 3: up for consumers. Democrats have, I think, struggled to define
[15:40] Speaker 3: a clear message. I think that's a fair critique of
[15:41] Speaker 3: the Democratic Party. I don't think it's unreasonable to just
[15:46] Speaker 3: say we're not going to do these crazy things Trump
[15:48] Speaker 3: is doing. You know, being being less bad is, I think,
[15:53] Speaker 3: sometimes in politics, that's how you vote. I do wish
[15:58] Speaker 3: Democrats made a more positive case. And that's what I
[16:01] Speaker 3: tried to do as a candidate, you know, talking about
[16:03] Speaker 3: economic growth and, you know, You know, we Democrats, I think,
[16:07] Speaker 3: have become the party of regulation and so forth, which has,
[16:10] Speaker 3: for example, constrained housing. Big issue. Housing affordability. And I
[16:15] Speaker 3: do think there are elements of the Democratic Party that are,
[16:19] Speaker 3: you know, trying to fix that and, you know, ease
[16:22] Speaker 3: regulations in cities like New York, in states like California,
[16:27] Speaker 3: where housing's become, you know, impossibly unaffordable.
[16:30] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[16:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, housing is top of mind for a lot of people.
[16:33] Speaker 2: There's also the wealth tax that people are talking about
[16:35] Speaker 2: as well. United CEO Scott Kirby saying that he supports
[16:38] Speaker 2: a national wealth tax. I believe you're a member of
[16:40] Speaker 2: the Patriotic Millionaires Group. So you believe in restructuring the
[16:43] Speaker 2: tax system so that the wealthy pay a greater share
[16:46] Speaker 2: of their income in taxes. What do you think of
[16:49] Speaker 2: a national wealth tax? Is that something you are on
[16:51] Speaker 2: board with?
[16:52] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[16:53] Speaker 3: What I supported probably 15 years ago, I went down
[16:57] Speaker 3: to the White House with Obama, was the so-called Buffett rule,
[16:59] Speaker 3: which was not a wealth tax, but it was simply saying,
[17:03] Speaker 3: we've got to make... It was a group of us.
[17:07] Speaker 3: I stood next to my secretary and pointed out that
[17:09] Speaker 3: as a millionaire hedge fund manager, I was paying a
[17:13] Speaker 3: lower tax rate than my secretary. And So it was
[17:18] Speaker 3: a call for a minimum tax on the uber wealthy.
[17:23] Speaker 3: And I still believe that's the case. I think California's
[17:26] Speaker 3: wealth tax, for example, is a bad idea. If one
[17:28] Speaker 3: state does it, you just drive out, drive people out. Right.
[17:32] Speaker 3: And you already see that happening. A national wealth tax properly,
[17:37] Speaker 3: properly constructed. The devil's in the details, I think, could
[17:41] Speaker 3: work as well.
[17:42] Speaker 1: Oh, good luck with that.
[17:43] Speaker 5: I got to ask you this with the heritage of
[17:44] Speaker 5: your family, the arc of your service to New York
[17:47] Speaker 5: City and running for office really with a strong effort.
[17:52] Speaker 1: The Democratic Party experiment.
[17:54] Speaker 5: Maybe comes from 1972 and George McGovern, or it comes
[17:58] Speaker 5: from a more conservative Democratic experiment that bounces off Obama
[18:02] Speaker 5: and Clinton.
[18:03] Speaker 1: Back to JFK.
[18:04] Speaker 5: I mean, you live the JFK model with Teach America,
[18:07] Speaker 5: with the Peace Corps, and all that. How does a
[18:10] Speaker 5: Democratic Party extract itself from maybe 18% popularity in America,
[18:16] Speaker 5: I think that from Dave Wasserman at Cook Political Report,
[18:20] Speaker 5: and get back to the Democratic Party popularity that JFK
[18:24] Speaker 5: and that crew.
[18:25] Speaker 1: LBJ, knew. Yeah.
[18:27] Speaker 3: Well, look, one of the reasons I ran for mayor
[18:30] Speaker 3: is I saw a party that had swung too far
[18:33] Speaker 3: to the left. And in fact, it was my worst
[18:36] Speaker 3: fears were sort of manifested when a far left Democratic
[18:39] Speaker 3: socialist was elected as mayor. I will give credit to
[18:42] Speaker 3: Mamdani that he has sort of tacked to the center,
[18:45] Speaker 3: actually now being the dog that caught the car. He's like, oh,
[18:48] Speaker 3: maybe I better not fire Jessica Tisch and have crime
[18:51] Speaker 3: spike in the city. And one area we agree is,
[18:54] Speaker 3: is he's taken steps to construct more housing and ease
[18:58] Speaker 3: the housing shortage in the city.
[18:59] Speaker 1: So, yeah.
[19:01] Speaker 3: I have decided basically as a lifelong Democrat that I'm
[19:05] Speaker 3: going to focus on dragging my party back to the
[19:07] Speaker 3: center and trying to stop Trump and Trumpism so that
[19:10] Speaker 3: most of my efforts have been trying to flip the
[19:12] Speaker 3: House and the Senate back to Democrats as a check
[19:15] Speaker 3: on the last two years of Trump and mostly biting
[19:20] Speaker 3: my tongue and hoping for the sake of my city
[19:22] Speaker 3: that Mamdani is successful as mayor.
[19:25] Speaker 2: You think we'll flip it? Not will.
[19:26] Speaker 4: Democrats?
[19:27] Speaker 2: You're Democrats?
[19:28] Speaker 3: I think the odds on the betting sites right now
[19:30] Speaker 3: of almost certain to flip the House and maybe two
[19:33] Speaker 3: to one odds to flip the Senate are probably about correct.
[19:36] Speaker 2: Whitney, your role at this newsletter prevents you from buying
[19:39] Speaker 2: the individual stocks that you recommend. But I know you
[19:41] Speaker 2: like some of the big tech names. How do you
[19:43] Speaker 2: invest in the names that you like, but you're not
[19:45] Speaker 2: allowed to buy directly?
[19:47] Speaker 3: I buy index funds. So the default, you know, I everybody,
[19:50] Speaker 3: the vast majority of people should do what my daughters
[19:53] Speaker 3: and my sister and my parents do, which is have
[19:57] Speaker 3: money held back from your paycheck into an IRA or 401k,
[20:01] Speaker 3: something like that, and then just have it default automatically
[20:03] Speaker 3: put in the S & P 500, SPY. I don't
[20:08] Speaker 3: manage outside money, but I do tell my daughters and
[20:10] Speaker 3: my sister and my parents, I advise them. on what
[20:14] Speaker 3: they should do with their retirement accounts. And I've recently
[20:16] Speaker 3: recommended that they shift from SPY, which is market cap weighted,
[20:21] Speaker 3: which means 40% of what you're buying is the top
[20:24] Speaker 3: 10 stocks, mostly tech stocks, which is an all-time high.
[20:28] Speaker 3: I worry that it's sort of getting top heavy. And
[20:31] Speaker 3: so I've recommended that they shift part of that into RSP,
[20:35] Speaker 3: which is an equal market cap weighted stock. S &
[20:38] Speaker 3: P 500 index and a bit of an index fund
[20:43] Speaker 3: called VXUS. It's a Vanguard XUS. So it's just an
[20:46] Speaker 3: international index fund. So I've just diversified a little out
[20:51] Speaker 3: of the SPY.
[20:52] Speaker 2: All right. Good stuff. Whitney, thank you so much for
[20:54] Speaker 2: sharing that. Whitney Tilson is editor at Stansbury Research, former
[20:57] Speaker 2: hedge funder as well. Coming up, a conversation with Stephanie Guild,
[21:01] Speaker 2: CIO of Robinhood, with a focus on personal finance, retirement
[21:05] Speaker 2: and wealth management. This is Bloomberg Money.
[21:09] Speaker 5: You're listening to Bloomberg Money. Stay with us with more
[21:12] Speaker 5: to come after this. Bloomberg Money, thank you for being
[21:18] Speaker 5: with us. It's on personal finances, and I'm never going
[21:21] Speaker 5: to retire, and also wealth management as well. I thought
[21:24] Speaker 5: Whitney Tilson was great there.
[21:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, he was really interesting.
[21:26] Speaker 1: Just the optimism about the system.
[21:28] Speaker 2: And the idea that he is not going to make
[21:30] Speaker 2: any changes to the individual stocks, but he's going to
[21:32] Speaker 2: kind of tweak things to go equal-weighted towards.
[21:35] Speaker 1: The S & P 500.
[21:35] Speaker 5: I mean, the world's coming to an end 12 hours ago,
[21:37] Speaker 5: and we've had a pretty good week once again across
[21:40] Speaker 5: the arc of this bull market.
[21:42] Speaker 1: OMG, a bid.
[21:43] Speaker 2: There is a bid. The Nasdaq is positive right now
[21:46] Speaker 2: compared to what it was yesterday, certainly. The Dow, however,
[21:49] Speaker 2: is still negative, and that's really because of Caterpillar and
[21:52] Speaker 2: American Express. The S & P 500 looks like it's
[21:54] Speaker 2: going to end the week on the downside, currently off
[21:57] Speaker 2: by about a quarter of 1%. And there's your VIX
[21:59] Speaker 2: almost at 20.
[22:00] Speaker 1: It was a 20 and it's come in a little bit,
[22:02] Speaker 1: but it's not 30. It's just as simple as that.
[22:04] Speaker 2: 20 is a new 30? That's what you said?
[22:06] Speaker 1: Cross-ass it. I've got to look.
[22:07] Speaker 5: That's American oil down at the bottom, $ 103. Six cents
[22:11] Speaker 5: a barrel. That's up sprightly 3.6%. Brent is up 117.
[22:16] Speaker 5: That speaks volumes into a fractious weekend for the Middle
[22:20] Speaker 5: East and maybe with a tinge of Europe in there.
[22:23] Speaker 1: All right.
[22:24] Speaker 2: Let's take a look at what our money team here
[22:27] Speaker 2: have been working on. And one article that caught my
[22:29] Speaker 2: eye is on how different generations are approaching the upcoming
[22:33] Speaker 2: midterm elections and how they're investing around it. 27 percent
[22:37] Speaker 2: of Gen Z investors have consulted a financial advisor about
[22:40] Speaker 2: election related risks. That is more than double that of
[22:43] Speaker 2: baby boomers, which are at 12 percent. This is all
[22:45] Speaker 2: according to a recent survey from the Nationwide Retirement Institute.
[22:49] Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Zijia Song wrote this story, and she joins us now. So, Zijia,
[22:52] Speaker 2: they're concerned, Gen Z is, about this election. Affordability, obviously,
[22:57] Speaker 2: top of mind for them. Are they making changes to
[22:59] Speaker 2: their investments?
[23:00] Speaker 3: They are.
[23:01] Speaker 4: Actually, this recent survey shows that 72% of Gen Z
[23:04] Speaker 4: investors are making changes or considering doing so. And that's
[23:08] Speaker 4: more than four times the rate of baby boomers. And
[23:10] Speaker 4: part of that reason is because Their anxiety is spilling
[23:14] Speaker 4: into actions. And unlike baby boomers, they haven't gone through
[23:17] Speaker 4: like the dot-com bubble or financial crisis.
[23:20] Speaker 2: So they don't really know how to deal with this anxiety.
[23:23] Speaker 4: And that's why they're making more actions. Like 24% are
[23:27] Speaker 4: actually moving to lower risk conservative investments and some more
[23:31] Speaker 4: are diversifying into other assets.
[23:33] Speaker 2: Interesting. So what are strategists that you talk to saying
[23:36] Speaker 2: about how boomers versus Gen Z versus Gen X dealing
[23:40] Speaker 2: with pre-election anxiety?
[23:42] Speaker 4: Yeah, I actually talked to a lot of financial advisors
[23:45] Speaker 4: about how you can trade election or how to position
[23:48] Speaker 4: yourself before the midterms. And a lot of boomers have
[23:51] Speaker 4: worked with financial advisors a lot. So they are more
[23:55] Speaker 4: inclined to stay the course, which is what majority of
[23:58] Speaker 4: financial advisors advise to do. It's just to do nothing.
[24:01] Speaker 4: And historically, we've seen that S & P 500 actually
[24:04] Speaker 4: had positive returns in the following 12 months following every
[24:08] Speaker 4: midterm election since 1950.
[24:11] Speaker 1: This is great. I feel ancient sitting next to you.
[24:14] Speaker 1: You're killing me here.
[24:15] Speaker 5: If we go down 35%, which does occur, how will
[24:19] Speaker 5: the young troops respond?
[24:21] Speaker 4: Well, you have to keep in mind that the younger folks,
[24:24] Speaker 4: they also have a longer investment horizon. Really?
[24:27] Speaker 10: Yeah.
[24:28] Speaker 4: So if you stay in the market, the long-term return
[24:32] Speaker 4: of S & P, of the broader markets, is always positive.
[24:35] Speaker 4: They'll bounce back. But that anxiety is real. And that's
[24:38] Speaker 4: why a lot of Gen Zs are more inclined to
[24:40] Speaker 4: even trade elections or... try to seize on the moment nowadays.
[24:45] Speaker 2: Sometimes taking action may not be the best course of action.
[24:47] Speaker 2: All right, Bloomberg's Suja Song, thank you so much. You can,
[24:50] Speaker 2: of course, read her work on Bloomberg.com.
[24:53] Speaker 5: Joining us now, highly anticipated, Stephanie Gould is with us.
[24:57] Speaker 1: With her years at J.P.
[24:58] Speaker 5: Morgan, she had the huge challenge of going home, going
[25:01] Speaker 5: over to the youngsters. Robin Hood is their chief investment
[25:05] Speaker 5: officer and has done all sorts of fabulous work there
[25:07] Speaker 5: on a huge brokerage. experiment as well. I want to
[25:11] Speaker 5: get to an MMR in a minute, but I've got
[25:13] Speaker 5: to first, Stephanie, just say the last couple of days,
[25:16] Speaker 5: what have you observed at this unique experiment, Robin Hood?
[25:20] Speaker 10: We've been seeing customers actually take advantage of the pullback
[25:24] Speaker 10: in certain names in the AI space. They actually have
[25:27] Speaker 10: been selling Tesla and buying SpaceX in place of that.
[25:30] Speaker 3: Interesting.
[25:31] Speaker 10: But also buying names like Micron, Intel, and then selling
[25:35] Speaker 10: actually some of the more consumer-oriented names, Nikes and iPhones.
[25:41] Speaker 5: I featured General Mills this morning for the first time
[25:44] Speaker 5: in 15 years. Let's get to the Bloomberg Money must
[25:47] Speaker 5: read here because it's fabulous from Stephanie about the real
[25:50] Speaker 5: world out there.
[25:52] Speaker 1: Robinhood, they launched AI. Is it agentic? Nailed it.
[25:57] Speaker 5: Agentic trading accounts, allowing retail customers to direct AI to
[26:02] Speaker 5: build and manage a portfolio on their behalf with funds
[26:06] Speaker 5: ring fenced from their main account.
[26:08] Speaker 1: I've never said that in my life. That is original.
[26:11] Speaker 1: What's it actually mean?
[26:13] Speaker 10: I mean, it means that you can set up a
[26:14] Speaker 10: separate account and you can plug in your agent using
[26:19] Speaker 10: a variety of different agentic providers. And then we also
[26:23] Speaker 10: are providing different MCPs. So what's an MCP? I'm bad
[26:29] Speaker 10: with this like something protocol, but essentially it connects you
[26:32] Speaker 10: to different data points that can get you data that
[26:36] Speaker 10: you need. And we're providing that at a subscription model.
[26:38] Speaker 10: So you can sort of all in the app, you
[26:41] Speaker 10: can connect to outside data and help your agent make decisions.
[26:44] Speaker 2: What's the take-up of that among young people and among
[26:47] Speaker 2: Tom's cohort?
[26:48] Speaker 10: I mean, we just launched it, so it's still relatively new,
[26:50] Speaker 10: and you're having a lot of people open accounts and
[26:52] Speaker 10: play around with it, but it's still kind of a
[26:55] Speaker 10: thing that people are getting used to.
[26:56] Speaker 5: What is your model portfolio turnover rate? To me, that
[26:59] Speaker 5: would be the first place to go. The kids want 100%. 200% churn.
[27:03] Speaker 5: What do you see?
[27:04] Speaker 10: You're going to have that no matter whether it's an
[27:07] Speaker 10: agentic count or not. I mean, you're seeing like the
[27:09] Speaker 10: active traders are staying very active in this market because
[27:12] Speaker 10: there's a lot of moving parts underneath, despite the fact
[27:14] Speaker 10: that VIX has been relatively calm. And you have, you know,
[27:18] Speaker 10: I think a lot of people figuring out what agentic
[27:21] Speaker 10: will mean for them. We still see from our surveys
[27:23] Speaker 10: that people want to use agentic for when they need it,
[27:27] Speaker 10: but they still care about getting long-term advice when the
[27:31] Speaker 10: big decisions matter, and that's not necessarily what they're using,
[27:33] Speaker 10: you know, AI for.
[27:35] Speaker 2: Okay, so you saw a lot of people buy the
[27:37] Speaker 2: dip this week, which is encouraging for those who are
[27:40] Speaker 2: along the market, which is basically everyone at this point.
[27:42] Speaker 2: There's almost $ 8 trillion available sitting in money market funds,
[27:46] Speaker 2: I believe the number $ 7. 94 trillion. Does that ever get deployed, Stephanie?
[27:51] Speaker 2: Or do the account holders consider that money stasher as
[27:54] Speaker 2: already put to use? You know, it's kind of on
[27:56] Speaker 2: standby mode.
[27:57] Speaker 10: I mean, I do think it's different than we've seen
[27:59] Speaker 10: over the last couple of decades, simply because cash is
[28:03] Speaker 10: an asset class now, and that wasn't the case up
[28:05] Speaker 10: until 2021. four or five when 2025, when rates started
[28:10] Speaker 10: going up. So I do think it could end up
[28:13] Speaker 10: being there for longer than you may have seen in
[28:14] Speaker 10: the past. But, you know, savings rates aren't super high,
[28:19] Speaker 10: historically speaking, because things are cost more. So I think
[28:22] Speaker 10: if you have some cash on the side, it probably
[28:24] Speaker 10: allows you to invest. And that's what we've been telling
[28:27] Speaker 10: our customer bases that have cash on the side to invest.
[28:30] Speaker 5: You are more qualified than anyone I know on the
[28:33] Speaker 5: Zeitgeist shift from a major bank over to all that
[28:37] Speaker 5: Robinhood stands for.
[28:39] Speaker 1: The pressure is they all want to get rich fast. Well,
[28:42] Speaker 1: how do you observe.
[28:43] Speaker 5: Within the Robinhood community I got to get rich fast.
[28:47] Speaker 5: Like I'm thinking 2029.
[28:48] Speaker 2: Everyone's obsessed with how do.
[28:50] Speaker 1: You deal with that day to day?
[28:52] Speaker 10: I actually don't know if that's the case. I think
[28:55] Speaker 10: you may start out wanting to make money quick. But
[28:59] Speaker 10: I do think that we've witnessed a kind of. I
[29:02] Speaker 10: don't know if it's maturity or if it's just knowledge,
[29:04] Speaker 10: but we've seen our customer base kind of shift where
[29:06] Speaker 10: they still keep their bucket, but maybe that's where you
[29:09] Speaker 10: can hit it big. But they do have long-term assets.
[29:12] Speaker 10: We've got 10% of our asset base, like over $ 34
[29:15] Speaker 10: billion in retirement accounts that are more long-term oriented. We've
[29:20] Speaker 10: got Robin Hood Strategies where we're managing the money for
[29:22] Speaker 10: you and that's at two billion. It's been around for
[29:24] Speaker 10: a year and a half. So we do actually have
[29:27] Speaker 10: like buckets of money that people are kind of investing.
[29:31] Speaker 5: I think, Scarlett, the behavioral idea from my grandparents and
[29:35] Speaker 5: my parents' depression babies over to this bull market boom
[29:39] Speaker 5: and a generation that has never enjoyed down 35%, yet
[29:44] Speaker 5: they've had COVID, they've had the great financial crisis.
[29:47] Speaker 1: The behavior day-to-day is within retirement and wealth management, the
[29:51] Speaker 1: behavior's changed radically.
[29:53] Speaker 2: It has changed a lot. So how do they proceed
[29:55] Speaker 2: moving forward? Do they assume the inflation that we see
[29:57] Speaker 2: right now is always going to be at this rate
[29:59] Speaker 2: and therefore they need to make double digit, see double
[30:02] Speaker 2: digit returns to kind of stay afloat? Yeah, I mean,
[30:04] Speaker 2: I think so.
[30:05] Speaker 10: I think like they they are very skeptical of the
[30:07] Speaker 10: way things have kind of happened over the last.
[30:10] Speaker 2: They are aware of the history. And so I do
[30:12] Speaker 2: think that they.
[30:13] Speaker 10: Want to not necessarily have to work a corporate job
[30:16] Speaker 10: for the rest of their lives. I do think that
[30:18] Speaker 10: we do know people who have learned how to invest,
[30:21] Speaker 10: and that is they're one of a couple, and that's
[30:24] Speaker 10: what they do. They invest long-term for their family, and
[30:27] Speaker 10: maybe someone else in the family Right.
[30:29] Speaker 2: Does work a regular job.
[30:30] Speaker 5: Are Nikki Walters with us early in the show talking
[30:32] Speaker 5: about this portfolio concentration, which I would suggest there's a
[30:36] Speaker 5: lot of research on is almost normal within the boom
[30:39] Speaker 5: and bust cycles of capitalism. Are you worried that there
[30:42] Speaker 5: is too much of a concentration?
[30:45] Speaker 1: Within accounts?
[30:46] Speaker 4: I am.
[30:47] Speaker 2: Not necessarily maybe in accounts.
[30:49] Speaker 10: I mean, when you look at our Robinhood Investor Index,
[30:51] Speaker 10: we're actually, a lot of the names haven't changed so much.
[30:54] Speaker 10: It's a lot of the Mag7 and some of the
[30:56] Speaker 10: smaller position sizes change a little bit more. But I
[31:00] Speaker 10: think broadly, the market-wise, I am still worried about the
[31:03] Speaker 10: concentration and actually the uptake of margin across the market
[31:07] Speaker 10: that has mostly been invested in the AI trade that
[31:10] Speaker 10: probably still has a little bit of unwinding to do.
[31:13] Speaker 1: Have you ever bought a meme stock?
[31:17] Speaker 10: I mean, yes, because, you know, sometimes a mean stock
[31:20] Speaker 10: is real. You can call it a meme. But what
[31:22] Speaker 10: does that mean? It just means that there's investor enthusiasm
[31:25] Speaker 10: behind it. And it doesn't mean that the company itself
[31:27] Speaker 10: is a bad investment.
[31:28] Speaker 1: She finessed that beautifully. That was compliance approved.
[31:31] Speaker 2: I'm sure it was. Have people started to take a
[31:34] Speaker 2: bigger interest in treasuries given where yields are?
[31:37] Speaker 10: They do on the, and just not so much in
[31:39] Speaker 10: long-term treasuries. I know that that has been a thing that,
[31:42] Speaker 10: you know, and sure, if you bought at 525 and
[31:44] Speaker 10: maybe you sell today, you've made a profit.
[31:48] Speaker 2: More in the short-term space.
[31:49] Speaker 1: I mean, we have, we offer. Yeah, exactly.
[31:54] Speaker 10: We have a decent APY for our sweep program and that,
[31:57] Speaker 10: you know, we've seen a lot of people using that,
[31:59] Speaker 10: which is equated to, you know, Fed funds rates.
[32:03] Speaker 2: I think we're getting a picture of what's happening here.
[32:06] Speaker 1: It's just fascinating. I am numb.
[32:07] Speaker 5: I mean, that silence, that's the Bloomberg money silence you
[32:10] Speaker 5: just heard. And that silence is, it's Friday, and my
[32:14] Speaker 5: brain is fried.
[32:15] Speaker 1: From the sequence of events of the week. It's just
[32:18] Speaker 1: been absolutely nuts.
[32:20] Speaker 2: I know. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us today.
[32:22] Speaker 2: Stephanie Guild is CIO of Robinhood. Bloomberg Money is your
[32:26] Speaker 2: new destination for our personal finance. This is a cross-platform
[32:29] Speaker 2: effort that extends beyond your television screen. Check out our
[32:32] Speaker 2: new digital hub at Bloomberg.com slash money. And Tom, this week,
[32:36] Speaker 2: there's a story on how the annual cost of a U.S.
[32:38] Speaker 2: family's employer-provided health care plan has reached an average $ 28, 303
[32:42] Speaker 2: this year. I looked up three years in a row, roughly,
[32:48] Speaker 2: Eight percent, eight percent, eight percent.
[32:50] Speaker 1: I think that's like a 25 percent.
[32:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely versus previous years. And the numbers bear that out.
[32:57] Speaker 2: Bloomberg's U.S. health deputy team leader, John Tazi, joins us
[33:00] Speaker 2: now with more. So this is U.S. employers making employees
[33:04] Speaker 2: contribute more to their health insurance through higher premiums and
[33:08] Speaker 2: higher deductibles as well.
[33:09] Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, this is a trend we've seen going
[33:11] Speaker 11: on for a long time. The latest numbers out from
[33:14] Speaker 11: KFF this week say the cost of a family premium
[33:17] Speaker 11: tops $ 28, 000 a year.
[33:20] Speaker 1: What's interesting, too, is the share of that.
[33:23] Speaker 11: So that's split between what the employer contributes and what
[33:25] Speaker 11: the workers contribute.
[33:27] Speaker 1: But the share of workers.
[33:28] Speaker 11: Contribution is going up even faster than the employers. I
[33:31] Speaker 11: think that was about 9 percent this year.
[33:34] Speaker 2: Which is easily double the rate of inflation. And small
[33:38] Speaker 2: businesses are doing this more than some of the big employers.
[33:41] Speaker 2: And most of this country is made up of small businesses.
[33:44] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[33:44] Speaker 11: I mean, small employers always have a little bit kind
[33:48] Speaker 11: of harder time providing health care for their workers. They
[33:51] Speaker 11: don't have the scale and buying leverage and sophistication that
[33:56] Speaker 11: a big company does.
[33:58] Speaker 3: So it's always affordability.
[33:59] Speaker 5: John, I remember the day Marlboro Cigarettes raised the price
[34:02] Speaker 5: seven cents or whatever, and they reached a tip point
[34:05] Speaker 5: where America said no. Are we anywhere near from 16,000
[34:09] Speaker 5: and Uwe Reinhart in Princeton years ago, out to, you know,
[34:12] Speaker 5: from your Columbia, the great work at Columbia University and others,
[34:15] Speaker 5: are we anywhere near like if we top 30,000 where
[34:19] Speaker 5: America says enough and there's literally a revolt?
[34:22] Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know.
[34:23] Speaker 11: I mean, I think when you look at this, this
[34:24] Speaker 11: is sort of the employer space where, you know, 160
[34:28] Speaker 11: odd million Americans get their coverage from employers.
[34:33] Speaker 1: It's part of their compensation.
[34:34] Speaker 3: Right.
[34:34] Speaker 11: So, you know, relatively tight job market. You know, this
[34:38] Speaker 11: is how this is part of how companies are paying
[34:41] Speaker 11: their workers. What it means is that there's less less
[34:43] Speaker 11: cash in people's paychecks because more and more of that
[34:46] Speaker 11: money is going to the health benefit.
[34:48] Speaker 2: And a lot of employers are also opting not to
[34:50] Speaker 2: even participate in a group health insurance plan. They're just
[34:52] Speaker 2: giving money over to the employee and say, manage it yourself.
[34:55] Speaker 5: And I think it was last week, Tom Purcelli at
[34:57] Speaker 5: Wells Fargo saying the benefit wages mix is in real
[35:00] Speaker 5: time changing. John, I look at this and I go
[35:04] Speaker 5: back to what I hear from people, which is fury
[35:07] Speaker 5: over higher deductibles.
[35:09] Speaker 1: Where are we?
[35:10] Speaker 5: If it's $ 28, 000, what's the average deductible that people will see?
[35:14] Speaker 11: Yeah, so the average deductible right now for a family
[35:17] Speaker 11: plan is around $ 4, 000.
[35:18] Speaker 4: Cash?
[35:19] Speaker 1: Yeah. After tax?
[35:22] Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, that's what you would be paying out
[35:25] Speaker 11: before your health plan starts kind of picking up the
[35:27] Speaker 11: tab for the care. that you need. Now, some things
[35:30] Speaker 11: are covered before the deductible, right? Preventive care should be covered.
[35:33] Speaker 1: But it is a lot of money.
[35:35] Speaker 11: And when you think about low-income households, you think about
[35:37] Speaker 11: households that don't have a lot of savings.
[35:40] Speaker 3: That is a big.
[35:40] Speaker 1: Like, Scarlett, my math in my head is six grand pre-tax. Yeah, easily.
[35:44] Speaker 1: This is like we've hit a tip point.
[35:48] Speaker 2: We've been heading towards this point for a while now. Well,
[35:51] Speaker 2: in any case, this is something that we'll continue monitoring.
[35:53] Speaker 2: And I know your team is on top of all that. John,
[35:56] Speaker 2: thank you so much. John Tozzi, Bloomberg's U.S. Health Deputy
[35:59] Speaker 2: Team Leader.
[36:00] Speaker 1: Books.
[36:01] Speaker 5: We had some interesting book discussions. We planned out weeks
[36:04] Speaker 5: ahead of books here. And Scar got this going with
[36:07] Speaker 5: your book. And it's one of my favorite people. He
[36:09] Speaker 5: was my book of the year years ago. This is Galloway, right?
[36:12] Speaker 2: Scott Galloway, the famed NYU Stern School of Business professor,
[36:17] Speaker 2: he's now in the UK, but he's talking about young men.
[36:19] Speaker 2: And this book notes on being a man. It's part memoir,
[36:22] Speaker 2: part compilation of his weekly newsletter where he shares practical lessons.
[36:25] Speaker 2: It's almost like a self-improvement thing. They're all aimed at
[36:29] Speaker 2: addressing the loneliness epidemic plaguing young men. That makes them
[36:32] Speaker 2: vulnerable to online subcultures, isolation. And of course, this is
[36:37] Speaker 2: relevant right now as we head towards the midterms because
[36:39] Speaker 2: young men have kind of checked out. They were such
[36:41] Speaker 2: a big role, such a big player, such a big
[36:44] Speaker 2: influence in the 2024 election. But this time around, they
[36:47] Speaker 2: feel like there have been a lot of unfulfilled promises
[36:50] Speaker 2: and they've taken the black pill and dropped out of
[36:51] Speaker 2: the political system.
[36:52] Speaker 5: We had that story earlier this week on this black pill.
[36:55] Speaker 5: But what's great about the arc of this is you
[36:57] Speaker 5: can look at it seven different ways. I make, you know, six, seven...
[37:01] Speaker 5: different ways here. To me, so much of it is
[37:04] Speaker 5: the digital culture, which we use differently than they use.
[37:07] Speaker 2: Well, they grew up in it, a lot of the
[37:09] Speaker 2: young people. If you're in your early 20s, right, all
[37:11] Speaker 2: you know about is the internet from day one. You know,
[37:14] Speaker 2: we're still old school about the way we do things.
[37:16] Speaker 5: My old school is I actually read the book cover
[37:17] Speaker 5: to cover. I haven't talked much about it yet, but
[37:20] Speaker 5: this is my book. And instead of being on boys,
[37:22] Speaker 5: it's wonderfully on a magical girl of 1790. Gina Smiley
[37:29] Speaker 5: wrote this up, The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth. And
[37:32] Speaker 5: it's shocking the way Gina takes you back to 1780, 1790, England, Ireland,
[37:39] Speaker 5: and the loneliness of women and daughters. And I'll be honest,
[37:44] Speaker 5: with all I've read, I've never felt the loneliness that
[37:48] Speaker 5: daughters felt then.
[37:50] Speaker 1: And as you know, within the literature today, we're still
[37:52] Speaker 1: talking about it.
[37:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, different world back then, but some themes do persist
[37:55] Speaker 2: and carry over across time.
[37:58] Speaker 1: To me, this is a huge deal with the kids.
[38:02] Speaker 2: And hopefully one day Gina Smilak can talk to us
[38:04] Speaker 2: a little bit more about that. We're looking forward to it.
[38:06] Speaker 1: Well, I'm talking to her people. I mean, she's in Brussels,
[38:08] Speaker 1: and she's hard to get.
[38:09] Speaker 2: Gina Smilak, by the way, a friend of Bloomberg. She
[38:12] Speaker 2: was a reporter here for many years.
[38:14] Speaker 1: French. She was my intern years ago, you know, I mean.
[38:17] Speaker 2: Now she's your mentor.
[38:20] Speaker 1: Gina, the book is selling. When's the movie?
[38:23] Speaker 2: Gina, you got to come on now after seeing this.
[38:25] Speaker 2: All right. For the latest reviews and recommendations from Bloomberg,
[38:28] Speaker 2: be sure to subscribe to the On Books newsletter. You
[38:31] Speaker 2: can check it out there on Bloomberg.com as well. Coming up,
[38:34] Speaker 2: the first foldable iPhone is out now. The most expensive
[38:37] Speaker 2: iPhone ever that didn't really stop anyone from lining up
[38:40] Speaker 2: to get it. That feels very, you.
[38:42] Speaker 1: Know, 2015. John Tosi, are you going to buy the Duo?
[38:45] Speaker 1: Come on.
[38:46] Speaker 11: My iPhone is from the year 2020. There you go.
[38:50] Speaker 11: So I'm probably not.
[38:52] Speaker 1: It still works. The technology of Bloomberg. That's impressive.
[38:55] Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Money.
[38:58] Speaker 5: You're listening to Bloomberg Money. Stay with us with more
[39:02] Speaker 5: to come after this.
[39:03] Speaker 2: Bloomberg Money.
[39:10] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Money. Personal finance, retirement, wealth management.
[39:13] Speaker 5: What it means is, well, it means you spend all
[39:15] Speaker 5: your money on an iPhone.
[39:16] Speaker 1: I do the monthly plan.
[39:17] Speaker 5: I've got the new jewel here. I went out, I
[39:20] Speaker 5: really like the chips. Like this has the new whiz-banging chip.
[39:23] Speaker 3: Yeah?
[39:24] Speaker 2: How fast is it?
[39:25] Speaker 5: It's wicked fast and the battery's great and I like it.
[39:28] Speaker 5: And the monthly plan is not too painful so you
[39:31] Speaker 5: did the lease yeah i do the lease thing oh
[39:33] Speaker 5: interesting that was how many stop stop the show because
[39:36] Speaker 5: mateo i know doesn't how many phones are you paying
[39:39] Speaker 5: for right now uh four five five i'm at five Okay,
[39:44] Speaker 5: we got a top tick six.
[39:46] Speaker 1: It's nuts. Why are we paying for our children's iPhones?
[39:49] Speaker 2: Oh, we'll be paying for those forever, Tom.
[39:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that.
[39:51] Speaker 2: There's got to be an age cutoff. I'm paying for
[39:53] Speaker 2: my mom's. There's no age cutoff.
[39:57] Speaker 5: Okay, why don't you bring in our esteemed guest here
[39:59] Speaker 5: who wasn't lined up at Apple over.
[40:01] Speaker 1: In Fifth Avenue.
[40:01] Speaker 2: Lisa Mateo, co-host of Bloomberg this weekend. I know you're
[40:05] Speaker 2: all about the Apple duo right now. They went on
[40:08] Speaker 2: sale overnight in Asia. And there were lines. Lines overnight,
[40:11] Speaker 2: even here in New York City.
[40:12] Speaker 12: If you're driving by at 5 a.m., the line was
[40:15] Speaker 12: down the block.
[40:16] Speaker 3: It went forever and ever.
[40:17] Speaker 12: People who lined up, they're excited about it, even though
[40:19] Speaker 12: it's expensive, right? Between $ 2, 000 and like $ 3, 000, the top grand.
[40:22] Speaker 2: Wait, up to $ 3, 000.
[40:24] Speaker 12: About $ 3, 100 for that top, top of the line, you know,
[40:26] Speaker 12: if you want all the speed and all the things.
[40:28] Speaker 2: That's what you're going to pay. Tom's fancy chips.
[40:29] Speaker 12: Tom's fancy chips, exactly, to make the battery last a
[40:32] Speaker 12: little bit longer.
[40:34] Speaker 1: But people want it.
[40:35] Speaker 12: It's something new you haven't seen, you know, from Apple before.
[40:38] Speaker 1: So it's a different look.
[40:39] Speaker 12: Some people want to buy it, resell it on the
[40:40] Speaker 12: market because you can make a lot of money that way, too.
[40:43] Speaker 1: And then what?
[40:44] Speaker 12: The supply was not there.
[40:46] Speaker 1: That's the problem.
[40:47] Speaker 6: And then what?
[40:47] Speaker 1: After they resell it, after the supply, where is the due, say,
[40:51] Speaker 1: June of next year?
[40:54] Speaker 3: Gosh, that's a good question for all these people who
[40:57] Speaker 3: are waiting.
[40:57] Speaker 2: Do you not buy an iPad if you get the Duo? Like,
[41:00] Speaker 2: does it take over the iPad?
[41:01] Speaker 12: It kind of does in a way. I mean, it's
[41:03] Speaker 12: a little bit smaller than the iPad, but they said
[41:05] Speaker 12: it's seamless. Like, you can't even tell because that's what
[41:07] Speaker 12: they're saying. A lot of the kids, that's what they're
[41:09] Speaker 12: watching now.
[41:10] Speaker 1: They're watching that. Put that, because see, that's like the
[41:12] Speaker 1: big non-duo. It's light, but it's big. Like, Mrs. King
[41:17] Speaker 1: can't use that. It's too big.
[41:19] Speaker 5: And Nicole Nguyen over at the Wall Street Journal says
[41:21] Speaker 5: the duo is unusable.
[41:23] Speaker 1: Well, it's wider.
[41:25] Speaker 12: Like, you can't fit it in your pocket just right.
[41:27] Speaker 2: You need another case.
[41:28] Speaker 1: How do you get the case? Can you get it
[41:29] Speaker 1: in your Kelly bag? I mean, the main question is,
[41:31] Speaker 1: can you get the duo in the girls' little bags?
[41:33] Speaker 1: You have to be able to.
[41:36] Speaker 2: But the problem is, can you get one even?
[41:37] Speaker 12: Because if you're on the website today and you're trying
[41:39] Speaker 12: to order, you won't get it until like January.
[41:41] Speaker 2: So much for the holidays.
[41:42] Speaker 12: Yeah, so there's a limited supply. So yes, it won't
[41:45] Speaker 12: be in the Christmas stocking then, I guess. But I
[41:48] Speaker 12: know a lot of people are talking about it and
[41:50] Speaker 12: they want it.
[41:51] Speaker 5: Can we point out that the stock refuses to go down?
[41:54] Speaker 2: Well, it's seen as kind of the anti-AI play now, right?
[41:57] Speaker 2: Because it's not as up to speed on the other guys.
[42:00] Speaker 5: Bloomberg Money ProTip, personal finance, retirement wealth management. Go back
[42:04] Speaker 5: and look at the Bloomberg News, New York Times, and
[42:07] Speaker 5: FT articles in April of the trade upset and tariff.
[42:11] Speaker 5: And everybody had decided Tim Cook was a failure. Apple
[42:15] Speaker 5: was a failure in China. Apple wasn't going to come
[42:18] Speaker 5: out with this toy or that toy or the others.
[42:21] Speaker 5: And then look at the stock. And the stock did
[42:23] Speaker 5: the exact opposite.
[42:25] Speaker 1: Of all those articles.
[42:26] Speaker 2: Well, Tim Cook figured it out and he'll continue to
[42:29] Speaker 2: kind of lead the way. He's the chief liaison between
[42:33] Speaker 2: Apple and the government. He's a policy guy right now.
[42:36] Speaker 1: How many phones are you paying for?
[42:37] Speaker 12: I'm paying for four, but I was wondering about the
[42:39] Speaker 12: age cutoff. I've got a 24-year-old. Can he start paying
[42:41] Speaker 12: for his phone?
[42:42] Speaker 1: No, no, not yet, not yet. Why are we doing this?
[42:46] Speaker 1: It is cheaper the family way.
[42:47] Speaker 2: It forces them to talk to you.
[42:49] Speaker 1: No, they only talk to me when they want me.
[42:51] Speaker 2: They need money.
[42:52] Speaker 1: When they need money.
[42:52] Speaker 2: That's true. I know.
[42:55] Speaker 1: It's like.
[42:57] Speaker 2: They call and you try to have a long conversation
[43:00] Speaker 2: before the inevitable ask comes.
[43:02] Speaker 12: Oh, see, can I have some money?
[43:03] Speaker 1: Afterthought. I'd love a duo. Oh, great. That's good to know.
[43:07] Speaker 2: Afterthought is a child, by the way. Lisa McHale, thank
[43:09] Speaker 2: you so much. Lisa, of course, you host Bloomberg this weekend,
[43:12] Speaker 2: every Saturday and Sunday morning, starting at 7 a.m. Eastern time.
[43:16] Speaker 2: That does it for Bloomberg Money from Tom and myself.
[43:18] Speaker 2: Have a great weekend, everyone.
[43:22] Speaker 5: This is the Bloomberg Money Podcast, bringing you a smart
[43:25] Speaker 5: look at the forces shaping your financial life. I'm Tom
[43:29] Speaker 5: Keen with Scarlet Fu. You can watch the show live
[43:33] Speaker 5: on Bloomberg TV every Friday at noon Wall Street time.
[43:37] Speaker 5: Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
[43:41] Speaker 5: And as always, on the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg
[43:45] Speaker 5: Business app.
[43:50] Speaker 1: Thank you.

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