Jeremy Stretch, CIBC Head of G10 FX Strategy, breaks down the European Central Bank's decision to leave interest rates unchanged. Lindsey Piegza, Stifel Chief Economist, discusses the US economy's fast-paced growth in the last quarter. Ed Mills, Raymond James Washington Policy Analyst, says the US won't face a government shutdown in November after Congress elected a House Speaker. Mandeep Singh, Bloomberg Intelligence Sr. Technology Analyst, says AI will be a key focus for Big Tech going forward. Michael Nathanson, MoffettNathanson Sr. Research Analyst, says 2024 will be a year of consolidation in the streaming market.

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Full Transcript:

This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keene, along with Jonathan Farrow and Lisa Abramowitz. Join us each day for insight from the best and economics, geopolitics, finance and investment. Subscribe to Bloomberg Surveillance on demand on Apple, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts, and always on Bloomberg dot Com, the Bloomberg Terminal, and the Bloomberg Business App. Jeremy Stretch of CIBC as he considers these headlines, not much movement in the market. I've got ero one oh five forty, Jeremy. A key question to me is simple, and that is the idea of what two percent means. These are different economies, different nations. Do you look at it as two point zero percent? Is the ECB Bundesbank hope two point two percent while the FEDS two percent is two point eight percent? Well, of course, the Eurozone is a difficult beast to manage, and I think President Leguard is very mindful of that because, as we've touched upon, there is a very different degree of performance and activity in a number of the different economies across the zone. Now, the Eurozone and ECB is aiming to get back inflation to that two percent target threshold over the medium term. I think it was notable that obviously inflation in September did fall a little fast and the ECB had been expecting. And as I say, I think the next meeting in December will prove to be particularly instructive as we get forecasts out to twenty twenty six for the first time, but also looking at those longer run inflation expectations and if those are back towards the two percent threshold in aggregate across the whole of the zone, and that of course is the difficulty. We will still get divergence in the individual nations, but as an aggregate measure, the ECB is going to be aiming to get back to that two percent target threshold over the course of the next two years. Jeremy, I'm going to go to a wonderful moment I had with the August and here from Leon Jean Claude Trichet, and he talked to me about transmission, the diffusement of an economy across borders. Europe doesn't have the transmission mechanisms of America, do they. Well, there is obviously one of the inadequacies of the Eurozone project is the you know, the difficulties on the fiscal side on a relative basis that the US obviously has because the US has the you know, the federal system, and we do get that disperse into federal funds across the fiscal dynamics. So we are in a situation where the plumbing, if you like, in terms of the Eurozone economy, in terms of monetary and fiscal policy is very diverse because of course fiscal dynamics, and that's still much more at the behest of national governments. But I think the other interesting dynamic to consider as we move into twenty twenty four is that the Eurozone is thinking about bringing back those fiscal thresholds that were put on or suspending during the COVID period, and that will be an interesting dynasm to add to the rinkle about fragmentation risk, and that of course is one of the big concerns that the ECB has to be mindfulwed even if prisident, Legard will try and downplay any concerns at this particular Poet, Jeremy Stretch, thank you so much. October thirty, Apple to announce new MacBook pros I should say Lindsay Piaggs is pleased with that because as she ran her Excel spreadsheet on the American economy at burn Up or MacBook a couple days ago, Doctor piags it joins us now from Stifel as well. How hard is it to put together an Excel spreadsheet with the mysteries of this American economy. Well, it's typically difficult, but it's become increasingly difficult with all of these ancillary factors that are coming in that are virtually impossible to model. We do have a lot of international factors that are impacting the market's expectations. We do have now unprecedented fiscal variables that we're trying to account for. But I think right now the market is very much discounting that third quarter number, focusing onstead on the latest central bank decisions the BOC the ECB as a proxy for what to expect from the Fed next week, suggesting that developed central banks around the world, despite still elevated inflation, are starting to pull back in anticipation of a slower level of longer term growth. So the market very much anticipating the Fed maybe moving to the sideline for certainly a prolonged period of time, but maybe indefinitely at this point. So, lindsay, just to crystallize what you're saying, are you saying that the Fed can kind of look through what we're getting out of this blowout GDP print, or at least that's the market's expectation. No, that's the market's expectation. But remember the market has been preemptively calling an end to FED rate hikes for the past two years and wrongly pricing in rate cuts. The Fed, however, has been very clear beating drum of higher for longer, very consistent in their message, and I think when we look at some of the underlying data in the Q three report, the resilience of businesses, the resilience of the consumer, and yes, to Lisa's point, we have seen a little bit of an uptick in claims, particularly continuing claims, but broadly speaking, the labor market is still extremely tight. So the FED is looking at all of these data juxtaposed with inflation that's still too high. I think the Committee is going to have a very difficult time selling a prolonged period of a pause. I think there is still more work to be done before they reach a sufficiently restrictive level to ensure that we remain on a disinflationary trend back to two percent. Well, Linda, you're getting of what I've been wondering about. Of course, this is a very binary question, and we live in a shades of gray world. But when you think about the just raft of numbers that we got this morning, you take a look at to blow out GDP print, but then you look at initial jobless claims a little bit higher. What's the stronger signal there? Which one should we be focusing on? Oh, the consumer, certainly, And I understand that this is backward looking, but remember claims are extremely volatile, and we don't want to look at one data point, but rather the underlying trend in claims, which is still extremely low, still signaling that tight labor market or tight labor market conditions, which is going to continue to perpetuate the ability for upward pressure on wages, extending that to further purchasing power for the consumer in the marketplace, suggesting again the backbone of the economy, the underlying support of the economy, i e. The consumer remains resilient. There's been a real angst to underpinning some of the recent sell off in the bond market. The longer end that hasn't been tied to the Fed at all. It's been tied to a widening deficit and likely increasing spending. How much is the FED going to find itself increasingly at odds with fiscal spending because you talk about the need potentially for the Feds do more. How much is the strength that we're seeing in the gd preprint tied directly to that government spending. Oh? Absolutely, this is one of the problems when monetary policy and fiscal policy are moving in opposite directions, that's going to force the Fed's hand to take an even firmer position to counteract that expansion of government outlays. Now, we do know that federal stimulus has largely concluded, but there's other fiscal stimulus that's coming down the pipeline as a result of legislation that was passed over the last twelve to eighteen months, be that infrastructure spending, the IRA, the Chips Act, and other spatterings of state and local stimulus that is still being spent on constituents. So there is still a lot of purchasing power, a lot of borrowing and investment power out in the marketplace that the FED is desperately trying to drain out of the system. But again, the more that we see monetary and fiscal policy moving in opposite directions, the more that becomes a barrier for the FED to achieve its goal of price stability. Lindsay. A lot of people are writing in. They're saying that I didn't really have a right to be confused because it's core PCE. When you look at the actual inflation, yes, you're seeing growth, but it is disinflation stare you are seeing a reduced pace of growth when you strip out energy and food. How much credence do you give the idea that we got in this gdpreprint a core PCE read two point four percent. Is that the sort of number to hinge off. It's certainly encouraging, But again, when we look at some of the other data metrics, when we look at headline pc when we look at the headline CPI, we're not seeing this clear downward trend of disinflation. Now, of course, monetary policy is not based on headline price pressures. We strip out those volatile food and energy composedonents. Lindsay piigs a stiff very near her good conversation with US year Edward Mills. Hugely experienced. He is at Raymond James with far more has legit committee, an individual congresspeople's skills in Washington, particularly working with Maloney of New York ed Mills. This new speaker the uproar that I hear, and yet your research note says he can drive to the center. How does the gentleman from Louisiana move the Republicans to a doable center. I think it's going to be a tough task. I think Tom the thing that I am most focused on with the news speaker is how quickly at the end it happens. In DC things appear impossible right up until the moment it's inevitable. So having a unified Republican caucus is not something we would have thought. But the big question in my mind is this is a speaker who has not been vetted, and as he is vetted, how does he come out of that vet? What type of narrative about his leadership? And I think what we're talking about is for him to keep that, for him to keep the seat, for him to be able to govern. Do you need to find the middle, because what we've seen is that the fringe does not support many legislative packages, and that's paralysis. Help me with the sequence here. Course before Kart is November seventeenth and a government shut down prior to the defense allocations you mentioned, the first task of Senate House House Senate is well war funding if you will. Is that going to be before November seventeen? I think it's kind of a toss up between the two. I think to start with the November seventeenth deadline, Tom, we're not going to have a government shut down. It looks like we are going to punt government funding either into January or maybe as far as April. But in doing that there will be the conversation about defense funding. The President has sent up to Congress a robust supplemental package, and what we're hearing is the Senate will want to have a strong, by hardistan vote on that, trying to put pressure on the House, not differentiating aid for Ukraine from Israel or Taiwan. So how do you understand the fact that Mike Johnson has made a real important issue of his cutting the deficit, and yet there are all of these requests to finance some pretty big military expenditures. How much is that going to be a sticking point that makes it uncertain whether we get this aid across. We were speaking earlier with John Lieber of Eurasia and he was saying, we're going to get it passed. Are you as confident? I am confident that will get something passed. I think that the big question is timing in the scale of this, Lisa. When you go back to some of the other pushes to become speaker, this was probably most out in the focus during the push for Jim Jordan. The only way some of the defense hawks within the Republican Caucus who were willing to support him and the expectation is the only reason why they're willing to sport Johnson was that they needed to get a guarantee on a robust defense bill extra defense funding in the Defense Authorization Act before the end of the year. That group is far greater than the ord needed to keep that speakership. So if he wants to keep that speakership, he's been against that Defense aid in the past, and especially voted against Ukraine aid, but the geopolitical environment's very different now in his political position is completely changed and ed to do all that. You made the point that Johnson really needs to find the middle here. But if he doesn't, I was speaking to Henrietta Treys Yester and she made the point that the Senate is still functional. That's the saving grace because at the end of the day, the House will do what the Senate tells it to do. You agree with that logic largely. I think when you see the Senate, if they pass something with eighty ninety votes, it's not a politically tenable position not to even have a vote on that in the House. And if you were to have a vote on something that ascid with eighty or ninety of one hundred votes in the Senate, in the House is near guaranteed to have a majority go to the president's desk. And I do think Johnson has a little bit of leeway here where he doesn't have the baggage of some of the previous ones. So some of the first fights, which will be government funding and defense funding, he's not necessarily going to get blamed for the position that Republicans are in because he's new to the job. Hey, you know, Ed Mills, I look at this. I was taking ann Rey hoard in three to zero two, which is advanced Civics lessons inside the Beltleigh, and I guess every speaker has a lot of power. Is he going to blow up the leadership of the Republican Party or is he going to attach himself to, say the hockey player from Minnesota and the others. Well, I think he's going to attach himself to the majority leader. I think i'd go back to the last time we had a speaker that no one really had heard of, which was Speaker Hasser. And you have the most empowered majority leader of in decades with Tom Delay when you saw him have the press constraints and there was some booze by Virginia Fox. What I was watching is Steve Scalise, the majority leader from his state of Louisiana, was standing right behind him and told him exactly what he said. He said, next question, let's talk about policy. Then Mike Johnson said, next question. So he is a lockstep with the current majority. And that is the Edmills perspectives. It's so valuable with Raymond James, Edmills, thank you so much. Meta shares not diverging from the rest of the complex, shares falling after the company warned a quote uncertain revenue outlook for next year. This was the dominant narrative, even though the tech giant beat expectations on third quarter revenue. All of this dashing hopes for a long term recovery in the company's advertising business. It's spending, though aggressively in other areas and artificial intelligence and virtual reality. It raises this question, you know, what are people hinging onto just this hope of uncertainty or expectation of uncertainty that we all know just Instagram? You know, it's just Instagram. It's it's what Storm's doing over at Instagram plus six classics, mandeep sexy technology analytics through Instagram and Go. That's a short Bloomberg Intelligence joining us. Now, Mandy, what does it tell you that they came out with really good earnings at least on the fundamental basis that they say that there's uncertainty and that they share sell off. Well, so I think they gave a pretty broad guidance thirteen to twenty four percent for next quarter. When you see that sort of white guidance, you know, you know the company is not sure and they didn't have that sort of uncertain guidance on the expense side, So they said reality labs losses would mount, and I think fear that company is really feeling the investors is not giving them markers around what they're actually doing. I mean, losing fifteen billion dollars a year on reality labs and not telling what you are investing in. Because we know Apple has a new virtual reality headset. It didn't take them fifteen billion dollars to make that headset. So clearly they are investing in something that nobody knows, and I think that's the uncertain How is AI different for Zuckerberg than AI is different for Google where AI is different for Microsoft, So there is an overlap between Google and Meta's version of AI versus Microsoft's and microsofce corporate. I got to get a job done. Let's go Yeah, and what's Meta's AI is? You are consuming Instagram feeds, Facebook feeds, I mean the average user is, and so how can AI enhance that experience both for the consumer as well as for the creator who's creating content for the feed? And AI can offer you a lot of tools to generate images based on text description. So there's a lot that AI can do in messaging, think of customer service, you know WhatsApp, so this AI and Instagram. I don't buy it AI and Amazon this afternoon. What is Josie going to spin on AI? Amazon? I mean amazonal story hardboard box is about compute training the models. Everyone wants these GPUs to train their large language model. They're buying AI from Microsoft. I saw that ten days ago or so, right, Yeah, well they are upgrading their three sixty five on Prime version to Microsoft. So completely lost. And so that's the thing about the generative AI wave that it is quite broad and every company can use it in different ways. Some companies are focusing on training models, some are focused on inferencing use cases. And you don't even know what this is, Cady. It feels like a Morcan mindy skip. You know, Robin Williams is going no, no, no, no. I just everybody's got a different definition of AI or I guess they're trying to play for a different part of this large pie that everyone sees with generator. Save me. Let's talk about something we all know. Let's talk about the cloud business at Amazon. Of course AWS. You saw sales growth there slow to a record low in the second quarter. We know that the cloud business was why Alphabet had such a bad day yesterday. What are we going to see out of the cloud business at Amazon? I mean, the good thing is expectations are lower for Amazon, and we're talking about mid teen's growth for AWS, and yes, it has the largest base in cloud, but everyone perceives them to be behind with generative AI workloads. That may not be the case, and so there is room for an upside as long as they prove to the street that you know, they are catching up with Jenai and offering the compute that everyone needs to train their models and not to go back in time. But you think about what happened at Alphabet, I mean, I'm just stuck on the share price move yesterday down almost ten percent, worst day since March twenty twenty. Is that an overreaction? Was it that bad with Alphabet? It definitely feels felt like an overreaction, simply because the search business actually did remarkably well, and unlike Meta, which continues to see ad pricing declined, Alphabet saw an ad pricing increase, which is a positive sign. It's an auction mechanism, so advertisers are bidding up for your ads. And there was talk about uncertainty yesterday around the Middle East war and everything that will draw down the advertisers spending. But clearly Alphabet had a positive print on the search side and the cloud side. Really the expectations were too high, So I think that's where Amazon may have an advantage going into the print. I want to try to understand the psychology of the investor base in some of these tech names, because it's been shifting over time and we've seen that. What are we learning about what the key triggers are going to be to buy and what the key triggers are going to be to sell after the games that we've seen so far this year. I mean, look, the cost of capital is going up, and so I think the days of spending fifteen billion dollars a year on moonshots are probably gone even for larger companies, as long as they keep deliver bring you know, twenty percent plus growth meta for Meta. Everyone is okay with them spending on reality labs. The moment that growth decelerates, that's when that fifteen billion dollar loss really becomes a sticking point for free cash flow. Is that the reason why you expect things for Amazon to be positive because they have that infrastructure AWS, which is the major player in the cloud space, they have that revenue coming in, they have Tom Keynes offspring buying lots of boxes. How much is that really going to play into a positive that could offset some of the negativity that we're hearing from the likes of ups this morning. Clearly, I think everyone believes that, you know, digital transformation, generative AI. These are secular trends, and right now, I think for Meta to spend thirty billion dollars in capex and not have a cloud business or something equivalent is also sticking out because that could have been a key source of diversification for them. This is an arch question. Do you and Anna rod Rana see the cloud business? I have no idea what I'm saying when you see the cloud business? Is it a classicdopoly or triopoly or can there be a set you know, number five sixty seven players. I just don't buy it. I mean, right now it's a triopoly and Oracle actually is investing a lot in building it's cloud investing. But do you believe people can grab share and come down and make a fundamental free cash flow generation or is it going to squeeze into a triapoly? No? I think you can, because right now the compute. Nature of compute is changing, so it's not CPUs consumed on the cloud anymore, it's GPUs, different types of accelerators, different types of databases, and that's where if you don't have a legacy business, which Microsoft does, I think Google has an advantage. Amazon has an advantage that they don't have a legacy business, and that's where they can keep building that Joining us right now, John Fair on assignment, Kavin Greifeld with us this morning. Michael Nathanson joins. This is senior research analyst at Mofatt Nathanson on a pluthor of things. Lisa, why don't you drag in Nathanson here on Facebook because you know the story better than I do? All right, Michael, thank you for joining us. I want to start with the one note of caution that really drove all of the price action. They came out and said, we don't know what's going to happen. What else is new advertising? Who knows? Oh my goodness, the stock fell. How realistic is this or instructive of what we can expect in the year to come. Yeah, I was disappointed by that fact that the market took that comment around with him. These guys just put up twenty three percent AGROTH in a quarter and a year ago. People were thinking this business was dead, right, all the momentum is behind them. They called out a little bit of choppiness because what's happening in the Middle East. But I don't think it was that big of a deal. I mean, their guidance is still pretty strong, So I think this is This is an amazing story in terms of Tom and T Mobile. This could be. This could be the second story. People have just underestimated the strength of a business model. The recover it has been amazing. There's been a lot of There's been a lot of questions though around just in general the online advertising business, especially at a time where all of the content creators are facing off with consumers that really don't like advertising and are willing to spend to avoid it. How much are we seeing with respect to consolidation of market share at the likes of Meta at a time when Google also saw an increase in ads bend despite their cloud issues. What does that tell us about the overall market versus just consolidation with the leaders? Okay, big picture, those two companies, the growth rates of Meta and Alphabet are back to where they were in early twenty two. So if you remember the past couple of quarters, there's all kinds of worries about e commerce slowing. It's getting better about changes to Apple's IDFA system that's been fixed. So it says to you like the market's actually really healthy and that you're seeing kind of the structural tailwinds and online gaming discontinue. Right. We had a very tough compare in twenty twenty two that's now behind you. So I felt pretty good about the health of this business with the scale. Prayers for a snap for a Twitter go luck to you. It's not going to happen, you know. Michael math is a congratulations. Netflix has done a double. It's off Mark Mahaney. What's he know? He's going up another one hundred dollars on Netflix review for us, the winner of streaming is Netflix and a Microsoft equivalent, even at thirty eight times earnings. It's a good question, Tom. It's different than Microsoft because you don't have the operating leverage you know, longer term, right, so you have to keep investing in content. The great thing about software models is that incremental margins are massive. Once you build it, you get the benefit of scale. In media for the most part. In the streaming model, you have to keep an investing in content, so they'll have margin leverage, but nowhere near the same margin leverage of what we saw last night with Meadow or Microsoft. So but in streaming there a winner. It's because it's such a tough business for everyone that's not in Netflix right now. So it's really there's one winner. There's Disney, and then there's everyone. Disney's not even a winner yet, and they're going to just churning cash flow to get your attention. Yeah, I mean, you know, I just brought up the Disney chart. You know, I just do we do this for Michael Nathanson, folks to give him, give him a little bit of angst here on a Thursday morning, Michael Nathans and Disney is back to twenty fourteen pricing. Help yeap, When does it turn You've been wrong, wrong, wrong. It's been like the New York Yankees. It's a disaster. I say, when does thank you? When does Disney Chern? Can? I say? Upgraded? When Bob Eyer came back in ninety bucks And it's just been painful to me. So thank you Tom for reminding me it's good, so we do about it. It's got exactly and sell and sell houses in the suburbs. So here's what here's what I think is going to happen. Twenty twenty four is a year of they have to consolidate Hulu and Disney plus margins and streaming or negative netflixes are in the twenties. To me, it's about streaming profitability in twenty twenty four, and they have to get who in house, which is going to happen by hopefully the end of the year. So I've a lost hope in Disney. I think that is again, I think this is your meta in twenty four. I mean a year ago people were killing the stock, and I think that Disney could be a great stock in twenty four, but you need to get streaming margins up to a level that people start caring about, which is gonna take some time. Well, Michael, it's really interesting to hear this conversation because you're still a buy on Disney. Okay, it could be a great stock in twenty twenty four, But to meditate a little bit longer on your Netflix comments, you're still neutral on the stock. What would bump you up to a buy bump m to buy would be to have earnings numbers because evaluation to Thomas point to me is it's pretty full. Look at it versus Google, Alphabet or Meta. To me, it's having faith and numbers that are above consensus. And I think we all have the same numbers now we pretty much a model with the companies told us there's no way to doubt it at this point, So you know, pretty much we're just debating multiple at this point. I don't think people have a real edge on earnings. And our numbers pretty much were consensus. We're at Meta and other names. We've been above consensus and that's been our call. You know. We we have conviction that numbers are wrong. To the upside, we will get very aggressive about the buy rating. And when it comes to Netflix and the streaming business in general, how does Netflix maintain market share here? Does that really all just come back to the content slate? Well, it's interesting. You know, when they built their business, they borrowed other people's content, and we were writing for many years and that was a dumb idea. So they would rent the office, they would rent friends. Given the state of media, you're starting to see evidence that they could go back to renting other people's content, which is a very cost effective way to build a business. So what can happen longer term is that they could blend from making all these originals, which is a much tougher business, to renting people's movies and TV shows and given and again the state of media companies, that can happen. You know, I don't think Disney will do that, but you know, Warners, Paramount, you know, NBC Universal talked about licensing more content. Michael, what do you expected to hear after the bell when we get Amazon earnings, particularly around the acquisition of content having to do with sports. NFL the last sort of death now for cable, Right, So Mike Morton covers Amazon for us. He's very bullish on next year's margin opportunity. They're going to be looking at the NBA. Right, So the NFL has gone well for them, The ratings are up in a really strong amount this year, and the NBA is the next big package for grabs, and there's a good chance that they can get a slate of games, you know, getting out Tuesday or Thursday night games. So I think they're going to tell you that, Look, it's going well you see this as a chance, to your point to really distance remediate cable networks thein thing. They're going to go for it. So you know, Amazon to us is is really in the second or third position behind ESPN for getting the next set of big rights. Here for Sports Award winning Michael Nathanson was just decades of good good news is here. Subscribe to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live every weekday starting at seven am Eastern. I'm Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can watch us live on Bloomberg Television and always I'm the Bloomberg Terminal. Thanks for listening. I'm Tom Keen, and this is Bloomberg

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