On this bonus episode of “On The Tape,” Guy and Dan are joined by Peter Boockvar of The Boock Report to discuss the U.S. on a collision course with a recession (0:01:23), how Peter is playing his economic bearish view (0:11:44), and how the markets is playing a high stakes game of chicken with the Federal Reserve (0:15:07). Later, Peter goes “Off The Tape” with Doug Cifu, CEO of Virtu Financial, and they talk about his career (21:35), Virtu as a business (24:42), competition in the space (33:28), execution technology (37:29), cryptocurrencies (43:25), and being co-owner of the NHL’s Florida Panthers (46:56).
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00:33 Welcome to a bonus episode of On the Tape.
00:36 With us today, Dan Nathan, and I am fired up, Peter Buchvar, the Chief Investment Officer
00:41 of Bleakley Financial Group.
00:43 You know Peter from the book report.
00:45 You know him from his many CNBC appearances.
00:49 You know him because both Dan and I think he's a badass rock star.
00:54 I think I can say that here.
00:56 Peter, welcome to On the Tape.
00:58 Thank you, Guy.
00:59 By the way, you're doing a great interview.
01:02 Looking forward to it with Doug Sifu, the CEO of Virtu Financial.
01:07 So we have a lot going on here.
01:09 We're on the eve of Jackson Hole.
01:11 Lot to talk about.
01:12 Germany, by the way, is melting down.
01:15 Germany, the fifth largest economy, last I looked, on the planet.
01:18 So if you don't think it's consequential, think again.
01:22 Welcome aboard, Peter.
01:23 Thank you, Guy.
01:24 It's a pleasure.
01:25 All right, Peter, you were on Fast Money earlier in the week.
01:29 I think it was probably Tuesday.
01:31 And the headline, the producers love to tease out a big headline from your pregame show
01:36 notes was that the US is on a collision course.
01:39 I think something like that with the recession.
01:41 Now, we've been talking about the potential for a recession for months and months.
01:45 And I guess what Guy and I try to figure out here, and I think you do too for Bleakley
01:50 customers, is what does a recession mean for financial assets, right?
01:54 What does it mean for markets?
01:55 So whatever you think the definition of a recession is, you know, two negative quarters
01:59 of GDP growth, we kind of have that.
02:01 That's been explained away a little bit.
02:03 Talk to us a little bit about what a recession means.
02:06 Like, what are some of the indicators that you're looking at that would mean that we'd
02:10 see a meaningful contraction in economic activity that would weigh on financial assets, on risk
02:16 assets, on the stock market?
02:18 So the US economy is not just this light switch where you flick back and forth between expansion
02:24 and contraction.
02:25 There's a lot of stuff that goes on in between.
02:27 And I'm more focused on the trajectory of economic growth, rather than the semantics
02:33 of what we're going to call it.
02:35 And when you think about the rise in interest rates, what did it first impact?
02:40 It first impacted the interest rate sensitive parts of the economy, housing and autos.
02:46 Housing essentially is in a recession.
02:48 And if you take housing all in, including remodeling, new builds, broker fees and so
02:54 on, that's about 15 to 18 percent of US GDP.
03:00 We saw a pretty awful New York manufacturing number for August and barely a positive one
03:05 for Philly.
03:06 So you could argue that manufacturing is on the door of we're slightly in a recession.
03:11 We're seeing auto sales that are getting now negatively impacted by very high prices and
03:17 the higher cost of funding.
03:18 That is also another chunk of the US economy.
03:21 So to me, the direction is clear.
03:24 And again, whether we call it that or not, it doesn't really matter.
03:28 Then, of course, what all this means for corporate earnings and, as you said, how it ties into
03:34 into the markets.
03:35 And because I believe in a bear market, you study bear markets.
03:38 They're usually three phases of one.
03:40 The first phase is a multiple reset where you take a lot of the initial froth out of
03:46 the market.
03:47 Then the next is the economic consequences of a slowdown, what that means for earnings.
03:52 And I feel like we're just on the cusp of that part two of this bear market.
03:57 Peter, let me ask you a question, and this is not meant to be glib in any way.
04:01 One of the first questions I've get over the last few months from people is, are we in
04:07 a recession?
04:08 I got it last night on a Twitter spaces.
04:10 And quite frankly, one, I don't know how to answer that question.
04:14 But I think more importantly, two, what difference does it make if my answer to those people
04:19 is yes, we are.
04:20 They're going to go buy spam and ammunition and get into a bunker like I don't understand
04:25 what changes if then it becomes an official thing, because quite frankly, for many people,
04:31 I say it all the time, I would say for 12% of the country, forget about recession.
04:35 They're looking at 1930 stuff going on.
04:37 So why does that title, official title matter?
04:41 Well, to your point, first answer the first part and how I answer it is I say it's a recession
04:47 for some, not so much right now for others, for those that are on the lower income spectrum,
04:54 that are obviously being suffocated by this jump in the cost of living relative to their
04:59 wage gains.
05:00 Certainly, if you're a home builder, you're beginning to feel the beginnings of a recession.
05:06 And others when you go off for dinner to a nice restaurant, there's no necessary recession
05:11 feel there.
05:12 I think right now it's sort of bifurcated.
05:14 I think what will make that recession sort of metastasize to the upper income spectrum
05:21 will be where stock prices go.
05:23 The S&P 500, if it goes to 3000, I'm not saying it will, but if it does, you can call it a
05:28 recession for the upper income part of the population.
05:32 So again, to your point about whether you call this or not, the trajectory of economic
05:36 growth is slowing.
05:38 That is what is most important here.
05:39 Yeah, and I would say one really important point there, Peter, you mentioned S&P earnings.
05:44 So when S&P earnings are trending lower and companies have visibility about it, it's their
05:49 actions that they take to kind of defend margins, defend market share, and that really has this
05:55 potential for it to snowball lower.
05:57 So the idea, if it's planted all over the financial media, but it makes its way to Main
06:03 Street and that causes consumer behavior to pull back, then that's when corporate spending
06:08 slows down.
06:09 And then you have this earnings recession, and then you have to start thinking about
06:12 valuations.
06:13 And so I guess the negative wealth effect, you just mentioned housing rolling over, the
06:19 stock market right now, if you look at the S&P 500, down 10% on the year, given everything
06:25 that we know that's gone on over the last couple of years and the Fed raising right
06:29 now doesn't seem to encapsulate what we think the risks are, the three of us, that is, collectively.
06:35 But I want to point out to some of the data.
06:37 So Ryan Dietrich, he's a prolific tweeter about financial data.
06:41 He said the S&P 500 recovered half of its bear market losses.
06:44 It's a very good sign as stocks have never moved back to new lows after this happened.
06:50 In fact, a year later, higher every time and up 19.3% on average as well.
06:57 Amanda will throw that in the show notes.
06:58 And I guess I bring that point up is that Guy and I had been sort of steadfast for months
07:04 that the S&P should hit 3,400 because we were assigning basically a multiple on the S&P
07:10 and where we thought S&P earnings would be at some point mid-year for 2022.
07:15 Well, the S&P got to 3,600.
07:18 We haven't seen major earnings revisions down to those levels.
07:21 We're seeing the multiple somewhere in the 17, 18 times.
07:25 So we're still waiting on the earnings part of this equation to happen.
07:30 So my question, Peter, now, will we see a retest?
07:34 You just said, could we see the S&P 500 at 3,000?
07:37 The pre-pandemic high was 3,400 in February of 2020 here.
07:43 Talk to me about all of that and the data when you see a data set like Ryan just put
07:48 forth.
07:49 So Ryan, I know he's an amazing data miner and is very good at looking at seasonals and
07:55 historical relationships between this data point and markets.
08:00 My pushback to that right now is up until 10 years ago and 4,000 years of financial
08:04 history, never had negative interest rates.
08:07 Had QE starting with Japan a while back, but never before have we seen it like we've seen
08:12 it.
08:13 And we've seen QT once and that was the fourth quarter of 2018.
08:17 And we're now in the second iteration of QT.
08:20 So this is somewhat unprecedented.
08:22 So to think that an historical market relationship is somehow going to hold in this new world
08:29 of things that we've really have never seen, I'm not going to draw that.
08:32 To me, that's dangerous.
08:34 In terms of earnings, when you look at the very short increase in cost pressures that
08:39 a lot of companies have felt over the past couple of years, whether it was labor, raw
08:44 materials, transportation costs, and so on, it takes some time to get that loss margin
08:49 back.
08:50 But if we get to a point where they can no longer raise prices and they've cut costs,
08:56 cut labor costs to where they can, then you start getting into cutting labor costs.
09:01 Then that starts to negatively impact the labor market.
09:04 And if they can recapture that loss margin, then you start to see a degradation in overall
09:09 profit margins.
09:10 And that's what's going to weigh on earnings.
09:13 At the same time, if the trajectory of economic growth still continues to deteriorate, then
09:18 you have to start questioning that top line because inflation has been the biggest booster
09:23 to revenue.
09:24 If inflation starts to slow down, then revenue growth starts to slow down.
09:29 And if companies are dealing with very high labor costs, they're not going to be able
09:32 to recapture that margin.
09:34 And then you get both profit margin declines and revenue slowdown, and then possibly a
09:39 more notable decline in earnings estimates.
09:41 My question was somewhat rhetorical about recessions, but not really.
09:45 I think I sort of understand it.
09:47 And Dan talked about behavioral finance, behavioral economics.
09:51 So what's interesting to me, and I absolutely believe this, the answer to that question
09:56 that I asked is people could be going along their lives, going on trips, going to restaurants,
10:01 and then they pick up the newspaper to the extent that people do that, or they watch
10:05 the news and hear, "We are in a recession."
10:08 Then they look at their spouse, they look at their partner and say, "Oh my God, we're
10:11 in a recession.
10:12 Maybe we shouldn't go on a trip."
10:13 Nothing changed in their life.
10:16 However, their mindset changed.
10:18 And that starts to feed on itself.
10:20 And as we know, 60-something percent of this economy is driven by people buying stuff or
10:25 doing things.
10:27 So when that behavior changes based on a title that really doesn't affect them one way or
10:32 another, that's when this thing starts to spiral.
10:34 And I think that's where we are.
10:36 So when the consumer starts to ratchet back, by the way, credit card debt now north of
10:40 $1 trillion, this becomes extraordinarily problematic, which is why I think they're
10:46 so hell-bent on not putting that title out.
10:48 Does that make sense?
10:49 It does.
10:50 Like I said, there's a recession for some, maybe not for others.
10:54 And we're kind of in this bizarro world too with the labor market.
10:57 You have tech companies, tech-related companies that are limited hiring, they're trimming.
11:02 But then you have the airline industry that can't find enough people.
11:05 You have a hotel that just can't find enough people.
11:08 So there's sort of this weird paradox within the economy itself that also separates out
11:15 a recession from not.
11:17 But if you're a business that's doing business globally and you see what's going on in Europe
11:21 and you see the second biggest economy in Asia that's slowing, it's hard to avoid a
11:25 recession.
11:26 And you have the most aggressive monetary tightening in 40 years on an economy that
11:31 was fed cheap money, which helped to create this dependence that now we're seeing the
11:37 reverse of.
11:38 So I don't see how we avoid recession, but just as night follows day, a recession follows
11:42 an expansion.
11:43 So it's not like it's crazy talk to think we're going to have one at some point.
11:46 So Peter, the other night when you were on Fast Money, Melissa said, how are you playing
11:50 your sort of bearish economic view in the markets?
11:53 And when I say playing, how are you lining up, I guess, for defensive sort of sectors?
11:57 You said value, you talked about energy, you've been a big proponent of energy.
12:00 We know that you like the gold complex in general.
12:03 After you got off, guy knows this, once Mel goodbyes the guest, there is no bringing it
12:08 back.
12:09 So I always try to be very respectful if I have someone like yourself that I love your
12:13 work and love your point of view, but sometimes disagree.
12:17 And sometimes I think about things very simply.
12:19 I think the stuff that worked, this is what I said, it's going to be the growth that leads
12:24 us on the way out.
12:25 I don't trade or invest defensively.
12:27 Like that's not my game.
12:28 You're in a different business at Bleak League.
12:30 You're trying to help people maintain their wealth in difficult periods and then grow
12:34 it in good periods.
12:35 For me, I kind of look at things sometimes in zero.
12:38 So my point is, the things that I were buying were like the growthier things over the course
12:41 of the summer that had nice little runs.
12:44 And I think on the way out, when we come out of this bear market period, however long it
12:48 takes, I think some of the prior leaders, whether it be Apple and Microsoft and Amazon,
12:52 will be the leaders again.
12:53 So talk to us a little bit how positioning right now for clients and how you might start
12:59 to position when you can see the light at the end of the tunnel as far as coming out
13:03 of a recessionary period and the next bull run.
13:06 I did hear your comments after and I didn't disagree.
13:09 I mean, I think we looked at it through the same lens, whether it's a growth company that
13:13 became a value company just because the stock fell.
13:16 To me, if a stock's down 70%, 80% and they still have very long-term positive fundamentals,
13:23 that's an attraction to me.
13:24 And whether it's PayPal or Snap or it's CVS Drugstore, that's not a tech growth story,
13:30 but you can throw it into that value bucket.
13:33 Cheap is cheap, however the growth prospects are.
13:36 And that's the one thing about a bear market.
13:38 It creates amazing opportunities.
13:41 And when a stock is down a lot and you believe in its fundamentals and that really the correction
13:46 was more of a multiple situation rather than a big change in the company's outlook, well,
13:52 those are the things you want to buy.
13:53 And just my nature is to look at the investing world through a value lens.
13:58 So I'm attracted to things that are beaten up.
14:00 Again, whether that was a previous high-flying tech stock or it's a boring, dull company,
14:05 like I was buying Madison Square Garden Entertainment or even Manchester United before all this
14:11 takeover stuff came about.
14:12 I'm looking for cheap stuff that have a very attractive tailwinds to their business and
14:17 an attractive outlook, regardless of what industry they're in.
14:21 And that's the one thing about a bear market is it takes the biggest knife to those stocks
14:26 that are most expensive.
14:28 Those stocks are already cheap.
14:29 They have low expectations already embedded in them.
14:32 So there's less risk in them.
14:33 At the end of the day, though, you still need the fundamentals to be good.
14:37 You still need a growing business.
14:38 You don't want to buy a melting ice cube just because it's a value stock.
14:42 Those things you have to avoid.
14:44 And also time horizon is a really important thing for us.
14:47 Like when I am buying something, I am buying a stock that I plan to hold for many years
14:52 and that it helps me cut away the noise of short-term movements related to earnings,
14:57 the economy or what the Fed is doing.
15:00 And if I still believe in a long-term runway to this business and if I'm buying what I
15:04 think is the right price and it'll never be the bottom, then I'm going to just ride through
15:08 whatever comes my way.
15:09 Hey, Peter, I can't let you go before just commenting quickly on this Federal Reserve.
15:13 As Dan, as everybody knows, I'm an unabashed hater of the group.
15:19 I'm sure the individuals are lovely, although I've never met them personally, but it was
15:23 really interesting.
15:25 There was a journal article last week talking about how the market was playing a high stakes
15:31 game of chicken with the Federal Reserve.
15:35 And what I've been saying for a while is, you know what?
15:38 Market participants, people just buying stocks because they think this Federal Reserve is
15:42 going to flinch or going to pause or pivot, whatever word you want to use.
15:46 And I've said a number of times, I don't know what you're listening to, but they've trotted
15:50 out just about everybody that's ever been associated with the Federal Reserve to say
15:53 exactly the opposite.
15:55 Is this Fed going to flinch?
15:56 There are two things.
15:59 They're not going to flinch in the sense that they're going to continue to hike rates to
16:03 a level that will for sure put us into a recession.
16:07 And their pivot and reversal is going to be different than what we're used to.
16:12 We're used to the Fed tightening into recession and then immediately cutting rates and easing.
16:17 This time around, because inflation is as high as it is, even though it's going to be
16:21 falling, the stickiness of it is going to limit their ability to respond to an economic
16:27 downturn.
16:28 But I think the market psychology is what they were trained to do since QE1.
16:33 Every market correction of note coincided with the end of QE, the initiation of QT and
16:41 rate hikes.
16:42 And you can market.
16:43 The market fell either 10 to 20 percent during each of those time periods.
16:46 And the second the Fed backed off, the markets then rallied and eventually went to new highs.
16:52 So the market right now is just taking out the playbook that worked since 2010.
16:57 Of course, this time is not the same in terms of inflation being at 40 year highs and the
17:03 pace of aggressiveness of the tightening is at 40 year highs.
17:06 So this is not like the last 12 years.
17:10 But that's the mentality that people are opening up in terms of their playbook.
17:14 Unfortunately, though, I don't think that playbook is going to work this time around.
17:18 We covered a lot of ground there.
17:19 Markets may be a little what the Fed may or may not indicate.
17:23 Before we get out of here and before our listener gets to hear your conversation with Doug Sifu,
17:27 one of the things, you know, Danny Moses, our co-host on the tape, we've been doing
17:31 this podcast since January of 2021.
17:35 And we started with this kind of meme stock thing.
17:38 Remember that January, February, March of 2021.
17:40 Danny has been very clearly critical of a lot of the trading mechanisms that exist that
17:46 he thinks kind of allows for this sort of behavior and really harms retail traders.
17:50 And a lot of that is I think you could encapsulate in this payment for order flow and some of
17:55 these models that exist to do that that might have been taken advantage of a little bit
17:59 by those looking to kind of get some of these things going in a way.
18:02 I'm just curious, what are your thoughts going into this conversation with Doug and on the
18:07 way out about Virtue's business model in general?
18:11 The first thing with regards to the meme stocks, we've been seeing episodes like that since
18:15 the history of markets.
18:17 You can go back a few hundred years, you can go back to the tulip situation and bubble.
18:23 And there are always times when you have this craze.
18:25 And obviously, recently, we saw in the late 90s, and you just see moments of euphoria.
18:30 I mean, I have my book here, Mania's Panics and Crashes by Charles Kindleberger.
18:35 He was writing about this in the late 70s.
18:37 So it's just human nature never changes.
18:40 It just sort of takes on a different form.
18:42 And Virtue's business really just replaced the specialist industry on the floor of the
18:47 New York Stock Exchange.
18:49 So instead of calling down to the floor, and somebody answering the phone and taking the
18:53 order, and then passing it on to a broker who then ran out to the post, and you had
18:58 a specialist that sold them whatever stock they wanted to buy.
19:01 Obviously that is all automated.
19:03 So to me, Virtue, Citadel, these businesses are electronic market makers that have replaced
19:09 the specialist system.
19:10 And we all grew up when it was quarter spreads in stocks, then it went to eighths, then it's
19:17 decimals.
19:18 And now you have sub penny spreads between bid and offers, and the retail customer pays
19:23 zero commission.
19:24 To me, there's no better progress than that in terms of making trading affordable to the
19:29 average person, whereas 20 years ago, maybe it cost them $200 to place one trade.
19:34 Now what they do with that in terms of their speculation or what they want to do with the
19:39 craps table, well, that's up to them.
19:42 But that's human nature, and that was going to happen anyway, in whatever form it might
19:46 have taken.
19:47 So I think Doug does a good job of laying out his business.
19:50 Upon our return, Peter's conversation with the CEO of Virtue Financial.
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21:11 Hi, I'm Peter Bookvore.
21:16 Welcome to the first podcast of the Book Report CEO Podcast.
21:21 Our first guest is Doug Sifu.
21:24 He is the CEO and co-founder of Virtu Financial.
21:27 He's also the co-owner and vice chairman of the Florida Panthers of the National Hockey
21:33 League.
21:34 Doug, welcome.
21:35 I appreciate you being my first guest.
21:36 Wow.
21:37 I'm honored, Peter.
21:38 Happy to be here.
21:39 So before we get into the details of your business, I want the listener to understand
21:43 how you got to where you are.
21:45 You were a corporate lawyer for almost 20 years, and now you're running a global market-making
21:52 and execution firm.
21:54 What was it that introduced you to Vinny Viola?
21:57 What gave you guys the idea to start this business?
22:00 Yeah, great question, and thanks very much for having me.
22:02 I mean, it's a little bit of sort of equal parts hard work, being in the right place
22:05 at the right time, and I do believe in sort of a higher power that kind of brings people
22:09 together.
22:10 So my background, very quickly, was as a lawyer, as you mentioned.
22:13 I was at a law firm called Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison, big New York law firm.
22:17 I specialized in mergers and acquisitions, private equity.
22:21 One of my clients was a private equity firm that was making, in the late 1990s and early
22:25 2000s, Peter, a lot of investments in market structure companies.
22:29 It was a firm called General Atlantic, and their basic thesis was that markets, exchanges,
22:35 data providers, retail brokers were going to evolve through technology to become more
22:40 efficient.
22:41 Trading was going to become 24 hours.
22:42 It was going to be more ubiquitous across asset classes and geographies.
22:46 And so, as a result, I had a number of experiences as a lawyer investing in exchanges in Brazil
22:52 and in India and in the United States and options and equities.
22:56 One of the investments that they made pre-IPO was in, and you know this company very well,
23:01 now part of the CME, but the New York Mercantile Exchange, which was our exchange in lower
23:06 Manhattan.
23:07 The fellow who was the chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange in 2001 through 2005
23:14 was a guy by the name of Vinny Viola.
23:16 So I was the lawyer for General Atlantic.
23:18 Vinny, the chairman of the Nomex, was effectively on the other side of the table, if you will,
23:23 when GA was making that investment.
23:25 And so I got to know Vinny because he was effectively on the opposite side.
23:29 So one of the great lessons of my life was don't be a schmuck, right?
23:33 If I had been a real schmuck and arrogant and pounded my fist on the table, Vinny would
23:37 have dismissed me.
23:39 I did a good job representing my client.
23:40 Deal closes, and I'll make this up.
23:42 Two, three months later, my phone rings, and it's Vinny, who I vaguely knew was like this
23:46 chairman larger than life futures trader.
23:49 And he says, "Hey, you know, I remember you.
23:51 You did a great job, blah, blah, blah.
23:52 I need a lawyer for X, Y, and Z."
23:55 And so that's how I met Vinny.
23:56 I had been just a practicing lawyer.
23:58 I started to represent him in a number of matters that he needed help with as a corporate
24:03 lawyer.
24:04 And after a few years of doing that, Peter, he turned to me and said, "You know, you're
24:08 a great lawyer, but you have a great business sense.
24:11 I have this idea to start," and what he then described Virtu, and I'll describe it as a
24:16 technologically enabled, scaled, global firm that wants to be the best bid and the best
24:22 offer in every electronic market, in every asset class, in every regulated country around
24:28 the world.
24:29 So he had broad ambitions for what Virtu was going to be.
24:32 And he says, "I want to do it with you because we have a good combination of skill sets."
24:36 At the time, I didn't know a bid from an offer.
24:38 I was an M&A lawyer.
24:39 I read the Wall Street Journal.
24:40 I looked at stock prices, but I didn't know anything about the plumbing of Wall Street,
24:44 anything really about trading.
24:46 And he said, "You're a smart guy.
24:47 You'll figure it out."
24:48 And here I am 15 years later.
24:49 I don't know if I figured it out or not, but here we are.
24:51 So that's the story.
24:53 It's impressive the world that we're in right now when it comes to trading of anything,
24:58 relative to even just the '90s when you had the NASDAQ, it really was created to be an
25:03 electronic system with both bid and offers.
25:07 But the New York Stock Exchange was very old school with people running around with their
25:11 heads cut off on the floor, running from the phones to the specialist booth.
25:16 And the way that I look at your business is you essentially have replaced the human being
25:21 specialist system.
25:24 And you are the buyer to every seller, the seller to every buyer, and not just equities
25:29 that trade on the New York Stock Exchange, but you guys are trading in markets in over
25:33 50 different countries in a variety of different markets.
25:36 Yeah.
25:37 And that was the basic idea that financial intermediation, matching buyers and sellers,
25:42 is a business that is as old as markets and at time, right?
25:45 It goes back hundreds and hundreds of years.
25:47 So it was a business that was going to evolve.
25:49 It wasn't going to go away.
25:50 You always need that market maker to sort of match buyers and sellers.
25:53 What has happened through scale, hard work, and technology, as you indicated, is that
25:59 that function has become, and we were one of the main driving forces, and there were
26:03 a lot of other firms that compete with us, but that function has become a lot more efficient,
26:08 a lot more scaled, and a lot more global.
26:11 And the end result is, as you mentioned, that the bid offer has collapsed because of efficiency,
26:17 right?
26:18 We've taken a lot of the human process out of it, a lot of the inefficiency out of it.
26:21 And as well, because of that efficiency, commission rates, and you well know this, right, because
26:26 you've been in the business a long time, have gone from $300 for a full price broker to
26:30 effectively zero commission using an iPhone, where you could get access to real-time liquidity
26:36 in 8,000, this is the United States, 8,000 reg NMS stocks, both companies and ETFs, instantaneously
26:42 at a price better than any institutional investor can get if you're a retail investor in this
26:46 country.
26:47 So I'm very proud of the role we have played in that.
26:50 And in the 15 years we've been doing this, I've seen a collapse of bid offer spreads.
26:54 I've seen commission rates go from 895 to 495 to zero.
26:58 So competition, technology, and a lot of automation, a lot of really talented, good people at Virtuan
27:04 and at dozens of companies around the world have really made markets a heck of a lot more
27:09 efficient and I would argue a heck of a lot better.
27:12 And on the institutional side as well, when you think about an institutional order, an
27:17 institutional order being from hedge fund, a mutual fund, a pension fund, whatever, and
27:21 they're buying multimillion dollars worth of stock, where in the '90s, there was a quarter
27:26 spread and a quarter of a lot of money is a lot of money.
27:32 And that went to an eighth.
27:34 And then as you said, decimals.
27:36 And I was even looking at Virtu stock today and it was a penny spread.
27:42 And we know that there are a lot of stocks that are sub-penny.
27:44 So it's an incredible efficiency that this technology has built in.
27:48 And as you mentioned, a zero commission rate.
27:50 So that then begs the question when you hear Gary Gensler, who has obviously gotten involved
27:58 in this business, is what problem is he trying to solve?
28:01 If they're looking out for the consumer and the consumer now has penny spreads and at
28:06 the retail level paying no commission, I don't understand.
28:09 To be honest, I really am confused about what problem is trying to be fixed here.
28:13 I'm going to try to be somewhat polite.
28:15 I'm typically not real polite about this, about him and about what he's trying to accomplish.
28:19 I mean, really at the end of the day, Peter, it really is just a political, he's really
28:23 more of a political activist as a SEC chair than a regulator.
28:28 It's really kind of a new type of SEC chairman that we have.
28:32 Historically, the chairs have been, they get their direction from Congress.
28:35 They're worried about enforcement actions.
28:36 They want to protect the marketplaces.
28:38 But Gensler really has a political agenda.
28:40 They don't, and the progressives, I'll say this broadly, do not like self-directed trading.
28:46 They don't like what happened with Robin Hood and the meme stock phenomena.
28:49 They think it's, you know, the hordes are sort of trading too much, this gamification.
28:54 And layer on top of that, our biggest competitor is a firm called Citadel Securities, great
28:57 firm run by a brilliant once in a generation kind of talent, guy named Ken Griffith.
29:02 And Ken is a very, very successful, but very Republican and a very large donor.
29:08 So he's not well liked in Washington.
29:10 So you add up all those facts and I would argue, and I've said this publicly and I'm
29:13 saying it again publicly, that Gensler is on a political witch hunt.
29:17 What he is doing and the suggestions he have made are simply not supported by the facts
29:23 and not supported by any data that any reasonable person could look at.
29:27 The marketplace has solved and created through competition, this incredibly efficient ecosystem,
29:34 where as you say, a retail investor can buy up to 10,000 shares with a mouse click or
29:39 a push of an iPhone at a price that is at or better than the national best offer that
29:44 any institutional investor would pay.
29:46 It's a remarkable system at zero commission.
29:48 So that is something as a proud card carrying American, we should all be very proud of and
29:53 wave our flag because as you said, we trade in dozens and dozens of marketplaces around
29:58 the world where there is retail participation in Japan, in Europe, in Canada, in Brazil.
30:03 There is not a marketplace that is as efficient and as robust for a retail investor as is
30:07 the United States.
30:08 So sadly and unfortunately, and I have to waste a lot of time on this, Gensler is on
30:13 a little bit of a political jihad that is not backed by the facts and the data.
30:17 And we will continue to be very front footed, transparent and vocal in opposing what he's
30:21 trying to do.
30:22 When people look at the US and they see the big tech companies and Google and Microsoft
30:27 and they say that, wow, the US is dominant in these big tech companies.
30:30 I think people should also understand that when it comes to the global capital markets,
30:34 there is nothing like the US.
30:36 There is nothing like our capital markets, whether it's from a fundraising standpoint,
30:41 a fixed income capital raising standpoint.
30:44 And certainly when it comes to making markets, I don't think people appreciate that a bid
30:48 offer spread of just a penny or below that is quite unbelievable.
30:51 And you can look at any other market around the world and while spreads have definitely
30:56 collapsed, there's nothing like those spreads here.
30:59 The importance of that is what it means for capital formation and growing businesses,
31:03 right?
31:04 The biggest offer is if you're an issuer, and I know this because I run a public company,
31:09 the better execution price and better quality you'll get when you try to raise capital.
31:13 So our efficient markets allow for real robust, efficient capital formation, which creates
31:18 jobs and grows our economy.
31:20 So that's why so many foreign issuers want to come to a marketplace.
31:24 And yes, there should be robust rules about that.
31:26 Obviously not in favor of scams and frauds and things like that, but we should be celebrating
31:30 this market.
31:31 It's one of the core strengths and something that we have.
31:33 I use the word dominated because we trade in so many different marketplaces.
31:36 The US equities market and the US capital markets are so overwhelmingly more efficient
31:41 and scaled than any other place in the world.
31:44 They should be celebrated.
31:45 And unfortunately we're in a political world right now where Wall Street and efficiency
31:50 and trading and capital markets are not nearly as celebrated and valued as they should be.
31:54 Absolutely.
31:55 And you guys are making markets and equities and options and fixed income and ETFs and
32:02 even crypto, which I want to touch upon.
32:04 And FX and commodities.
32:05 Yeah.
32:06 And everything.
32:07 And FX trading $7 trillion a day.
32:08 I think FX trades globally.
32:09 It could be even more than that now, but also doing it globally.
32:12 So the whole world is essentially feeling your technology, not really understanding
32:18 it because when they're buying and selling, it's like when you go out for dinner, you're
32:21 not necessarily thinking about what goes on in the kitchen in order to provide that food.
32:25 They're having access to liquidity with tight spreads, not understanding that firms like
32:30 yourself that are creating those better opportunities for these people to be buying and selling
32:34 things.
32:35 Yeah.
32:36 It's not even in the kitchen.
32:37 Like where the guy's actually like planting the kernel of corn that becomes a corner that
32:40 then gets sent to the kitchen.
32:42 We are the plumbing of the capital markets around the world because we are at the point
32:47 determining what fair value is for every instrument at every moment in time.
32:51 Without that level of investment and precision around pricing and being able to price as
32:57 tightly as we can, everything kind of ripples from that, Peter, to continue your farming
33:01 food analogy, which means that then you're going to have larger commissions, you're going
33:04 to have wider bid offer spreads, et cetera.
33:06 It sort of ripples through.
33:08 So the billions and billions of dollars that we have invested in the last 15 years to create
33:13 this really robust trading infrastructure that we have that is scaled, that is low latency,
33:19 but more importantly is agnostic across asset classes and geographies, right?
33:25 Really kind of tying together an asset class, whether it's an ETF, it's a future, it's a
33:30 spot and that level of precision and investment just inures ultimately to the benefit of the
33:36 end user, as you've indicated.
33:38 So you mentioned Citadel as being a main competitor.
33:41 So just trying to give an example, let's just say I put in a buy order to buy a thousand
33:44 shares of GM, for example.
33:47 And you're Peter, you're a retail investor.
33:48 Yeah.
33:49 So we're a retail investor.
33:50 I'm going through Schwab or Fidelity, whatever.
33:53 And is it Virtu that's on the other side?
33:54 Is it Citadel?
33:55 Were you guys competing for that offer?
33:58 Is it?
33:59 Yeah.
34:00 So retail brokers and there are hundreds of them, right?
34:01 And you've named obviously it's one of the bigger ones.
34:03 And we have 250 retail broker customers, everybody from Ameritrade to Zeco trade and everybody
34:08 in between.
34:09 So we love all of our clients.
34:10 When you look at your phone or you have your PC and you see a price, you push the button,
34:15 that order, which is a market order, right?
34:16 So it just says, you know, get me a thousand shares of G or whatever the market price is.
34:20 And you kind of see a market price there.
34:22 Fidelity, Schwab, et cetera, they have a choice.
34:26 They can send that order to an exchange.
34:27 They can send that order to a dark pool, an ATS, or they can send that to what we call
34:31 a wholesaler or a market maker.
34:32 So that would be Virtu, Citadel, Susquehanna.
34:35 There's about seven or eight of us that do this, UBS, right?
34:38 That's a highly competitive business.
34:40 And we're competing for Peter's order based on price.
34:44 So how much are we able to price improve off of the NBBO, the display price on an exchange,
34:50 that order, right?
34:52 So if the market is like nine bid at 10, are we going to be able to do it at non-spot
34:55 nine, nine spot eight, whatever it is over a period of time.
34:59 And so Fidelity, Schwab, in your example, will have a wheel where it has predetermined,
35:04 okay, my number one market center for a thousand shares is going to be Virtu.
35:09 So they'll get one out of every three orders.
35:11 Citadel will get one out of every four, et cetera.
35:14 And so it'll be sort of round robin.
35:15 So oftentimes, you're right, that order gets sent to us as the market center.
35:19 When it gets sent to us and hits our environment, you're done, you're filled.
35:24 Whether I take it into inventory or whether I access liquidity, because I don't want that
35:28 order, I don't want the risk, I'm over my risk of patch, whatever, that's my issue.
35:32 You are done.
35:33 You get a price at that microsecond in time, that is going to be better than you can get
35:37 on a national securities exchange.
35:38 And this is all monitored by the retail broker.
35:40 They're scoring us on this hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, in a very robust fashion.
35:46 So from the retail broker's perspective, they then take that fill and send it back to the
35:50 client.
35:51 At the price improved, it'll be a four decimal execution.
35:53 It immediately gets printed onto the tape, the TRF, right?
35:56 The trade reporting facility.
35:58 So the entire world sees that Peter sent a thousand shares of GE or GM, whatever it is
36:02 you said, the price was sub penny execution.
36:05 So you know it was a retail price and the entire world knows it.
36:09 You get your confirm and you're done.
36:11 That's how it works.
36:12 Very competitive, robust environment.
36:14 We get literally millions of those orders a day.
36:17 Citadel represents somewhere between 35 to 40% of the retail market.
36:21 We represent around 30%.
36:23 So we're number two.
36:24 And then there's Susquehanna, Jane Street, and there's a number of other competitive
36:27 firms that try to do the same thing.
36:29 The key takeaway is because of the market dynamics and, you know, Fidelity is playing
36:33 us off against each other, right?
36:35 We're providing this customer service, this outsourced routing solution, but it's also
36:39 a principal solution.
36:40 So we're taking real risk on those orders.
36:43 Sometimes Peter's order ends up being a loser for us and we lose money.
36:46 Hopefully more often than not, we can make money on these smaller non-correlated market
36:51 orders.
36:52 But some days we don't, some days we do.
36:53 And that also seems to be a point that Gensler doesn't understand either is that you guys
36:57 are competing to offer the best price.
36:59 Yeah, he's got Citadel on the brain because of a political dynamic and it's a mouse click
37:04 business.
37:05 There's no long-term contract here.
37:07 If we mess up, Fidelity is going to shut us off for the day.
37:10 If they don't like our prices, they're going to take us from 30% down to 15% with a mouse
37:15 click.
37:16 It happens intraday, it happens day to day.
37:18 So it's a very competitive, monitored business where the retail brokers have a ton of market
37:22 power.
37:23 It's not the Citadels and the Virtus.
37:24 I want to transition.
37:25 Tell me if I'm wrong, market making is what about 70% of your top line and execution is
37:30 the balance predominantly?
37:31 Yeah.
37:32 I mean, obviously it depends year to year is when there's more volatility, market making,
37:35 you know, bid offers will expand, but roughly you're correct.
37:39 Yep.
37:40 I mean, I'm in the execution business and from back in the day in the nineties, if I
37:43 called down to the floor of the exchange to buy 20,000, 50,000 shares, a hundred thousand
37:49 shares of something, it would be person on the other side.
37:52 They would call the runner that would have to then run over to the specialist, execute
37:56 the order.
37:57 They would run back and I would literally have to write down every single transaction,
38:01 which can be 50 of them.
38:03 And you were probably paying a nickel a share or something like that, right?
38:05 Paying a nickel, six cents and widespread.
38:08 So your execution desk can literally take that 50,000 share buy order.
38:14 And with the technology that you guys have developed, execute that instantaneously.
38:20 Not all the time, but more often than not.
38:22 The answer is yes, but more to the point.
38:25 So you said it right.
38:26 Like 70% of our business, we're acting as a principal, as a market maker, 30% of our
38:29 business we're acting as an agent, right?
38:31 So our clients are large institutional pension funds around the world.
38:35 It's a who's who.
38:36 We have 1,400 institutional clients that trust us.
38:39 And really the theory, Peter was, we're really good at understanding markets.
38:42 We're really good at routing orders.
38:43 We're really great at providing liquidity and accessing liquidity.
38:46 So can we apply those activities that we do as a principal and empower our clients by
38:51 offering that same understanding of the markets and our technology to institutions and act
38:56 as an agent?
38:57 And as you said, sadly, no longer get a nickel.
38:59 It's about half a penny for a low touch order and maybe a penny or two for a high touch
39:03 order.
39:04 So what we've done is we've created in the US and in markets all around the world, Europe
39:07 and in Asia, an algo suite where clients have their own trading desk to their own buy side
39:12 firm.
39:13 So in your example, you would have been outfitted with a suite of algos, Virtu algos and other,
39:17 you could use Goldman and other folks and you're an experienced trader.
39:21 So you might want to just say, all right, I'm just going to VWAP or I'm just going to
39:23 remove liquidity because this is a small order.
39:25 Or maybe I want a liquidity seeking order.
39:26 I want to be a little more patient.
39:27 I don't want to impact the marketplace.
39:29 Whatever it is, we have this suite of algos.
39:31 You then can parametize that and use it on your desktop.
39:35 It's going to go through our pipes.
39:36 We're responsible for it.
39:37 We're the broker, but we're empowering you as a trader.
39:40 That's one option.
39:41 So more self-directed trading by really experienced buy side traders.
39:44 Of course, we have a full service desk as well that will do the same thing where we're
39:47 going to charge a little bit more for more of a high touch order, where we're going to
39:50 work it during the day, more of a traditional kind of brokerage model.
39:53 The world is moving more towards the former than the latter, again, because of efficiency
39:58 and scale.
39:59 You follow the industry.
40:00 So if you're an institutional asset management fund, you're under pressure.
40:04 You want to reduce your costs.
40:06 Mutual funds are challenged these days.
40:08 So your cost of execution, your brokerage cost is going to be a big deal.
40:12 We're a lower cost, if you will, but really excellent execution only type of firm.
40:18 We don't offer any research.
40:20 We don't offer any prime.
40:22 We don't offer any IPO calendar.
40:23 So the only way we get business from a who's who of institutional clients is through superior
40:30 execution quality and obviously customer service.
40:33 And that's demonstrably measurable based on analytics that either we can provide or third
40:38 parties can provide.
40:40 So when you look at taking that over the next three, five, 10 years, the growth drivers
40:44 of the business, is it just continuously being ahead of the competition in terms of delivering
40:49 this technology?
40:51 Is it in addition to finding new markets and more securities to trade and just get deeper
40:57 within the capital markets throughout the world?
41:00 The answer is yes.
41:01 Right.
41:02 Obviously we want market share and there's always the 80/20 rule or really like 90/10
41:05 rule.
41:06 I mean, there's going to be a handful of behemoth kind of asset managers, pension funds that
41:09 really we're competing for, but we offer a multitude of products.
41:13 So we have an execution management system called Triton that sits on the desktop.
41:18 We have an analytics business.
41:19 We have high touch and low touch.
41:21 So what we have found is, and the reason we can continue to grow is when clients buy,
41:26 this is kind of sales 101, Peter, and I was literally just looking at these metrics yesterday.
41:30 When clients use two or more of our services or three or more of our services, we're going
41:35 to make a lot more money in aggregate, but also they're more attached to the firm.
41:39 So using our technology to actually give people the pipes, if you will, that they can access
41:44 the market and access other brokers, right?
41:46 We call that our EMS or execution management system, along with our old ITG net, where
41:51 we actually offer connectivity and then putting the broke or algos on that desktop and then
41:57 providing an analytics business so that they can actually do their own TCA, really empowering
42:03 the large asset managers, pension funds around the world to be more self-sufficient, leveraging
42:09 the technology that we built for our own market-making side.
42:13 The last part, which is really keenly strategic, particularly in the U.S. is because we are
42:17 a large market maker and because we have this large central risk book, if you will, of our
42:22 own prop orders and retail orders, clients that choose to opt in get access to that.
42:27 So think about that.
42:28 If you're a large institutional investor and some of our clients are just amazed by the
42:32 size of the fills that they can get, from my perspective, I'm more than happy to have
42:36 my institutional client pay me a commission, be happy and execute it midpoint against some
42:42 large retail orders that I happen to have in inventory because that allows me to be
42:46 more aggressive in pricing to my retail customers.
42:49 So I become more of the market center.
42:51 So that's one of the strategic growth areas for our firm, effectively internalizing within
42:57 Virtu liquidity provisioning.
42:59 Right.
43:00 You're deepening the liquidity at the same time improving the price as well.
43:03 Correct.
43:04 Correct.
43:05 And providing 100% transparency and post-trade reporting and all of that.
43:08 Right.
43:09 Which is the ideal combination, this one-stop shop.
43:12 Exactly.
43:13 And sophisticated high-end large global asset managers love that, right?
43:16 Because they get access to real liquidity, they got transparency and they can show their
43:20 best X committee, "Hey, look at all these data.
43:22 It shows that we executed better.
43:24 We got larger fills."
43:26 And the only reason we have market share, right?
43:28 Because why the hell else would you use Virtu as opposed to using Goldman or Morgan Stanley
43:33 or JP Morgan, one of the large guys that offer you calendar, that offer you prime brokerage
43:38 and leverage if you're a hedge fund, that offer you corporate access.
43:41 We have nothing, right?
43:42 We don't even have tchotchkes and hats that we give out.
43:44 All we have is execution quality.
43:46 So crypto, you have the ETFs and crypto, you have the futures.
43:51 I know Canada has spot ETFs, obviously we have futures ETFs.
43:55 Is there also a cash market that you guys are trading?
43:58 And like if I have an account at Coinbase and I'm buying Bitcoin, is it Virtu that is
44:02 providing liquidity or it's done in a different way?
44:05 It's done in the same way.
44:06 So I kind of look at crypto a little bit like the FX market, Pete, right?
44:11 Because there's no centralized clearing.
44:13 There's not really like a central club anywhere, right?
44:16 Obviously there's no NBBO, right?
44:18 There's no, so it's a little bit like FX where you have spot venues, banks or actual venues,
44:23 you have futures and you even have some ETFs, right?
44:26 So we look at this as it's a widget to us.
44:28 I don't have any fundamental view on Bitcoin or anything else, just in the same way that
44:33 you're smarter than me in terms of where's the Euro dollar going to go.
44:36 I really don't care.
44:37 I'm worried about the next tick, not what's going to happen in six months.
44:41 So we look at Bitcoin and these other coins that are, you know, have enough volume as
44:45 just widgets.
44:46 And so we are connected to, you know, the big guys, the Binance, the FTXs, the Coinbase,
44:50 Gemini's.
44:51 So there's like seven, eight, nine, 10 cash spot venues where we can act as a market maker.
44:57 But it's more challenging, right?
44:59 Because it's not really prime brokers in a traditional sense.
45:01 There's no centralized clearings.
45:02 There's not as much leverage.
45:04 It's an operational pain in the tush, right?
45:05 Because you've got to move coins and cash, but it's a great business for us and a growing
45:09 business for us because again, think about it.
45:11 You have all these different coins and all these different venues, but they're also going
45:14 to be denominated in different types of currencies.
45:16 I mean, there are people that want to buy Bitcoin on some venue in Turkish lira and
45:22 we can do that, right?
45:23 Because we provide two sided liquidity in Turkish lira.
45:26 So we can do Bitcoin tri against Bitcoin dollar.
45:28 Anyhow, so that's why it's an exciting business for us.
45:31 As a quick editorial, we should have a spot ETF in the United States.
45:34 This is another one of the Genslerisms.
45:36 It makes no sense.
45:37 All he's doing is harming retail investors.
45:39 There's a whole bunch of letters and litigation that Grayscale brought and Great Law Firm,
45:45 Davis Polk is involved in it.
45:46 And if you read their letter on this, they're a hundred percent right on this.
45:49 This is another one of Gensler's political dogmas.
45:52 All he's doing is hurting retail investors because there is a future based ETF, which
45:57 has to roll periodically.
45:58 So it's a lot less efficient.
46:00 And you get slippage.
46:01 Yeah, there's a lot more slippage.
46:03 So that's why we're involved in crypto and we will continue to be involved in crypto.
46:06 You also have a side business and that's called co-owner of the Florida Panthers, which happened
46:11 to have the best record and the most points in hockey last year, but obviously it was
46:15 disappointing playoff end.
46:18 How's it looking for the upcoming season, which starts before you know it?
46:21 You're very, very generous by calling it a business.
46:24 I call it a very, very expensive hobby.
46:26 A fun one, I'm sure though.
46:28 Hope springs eternal.
46:29 This is our ninth season.
46:30 Vinny is the majority and controlling partner.
46:32 I'm just a little partner, but I do enjoy it.
46:34 It's fun.
46:35 Every year I think we're going to win the Stanley Cup and I've been wrong eight times
46:38 in a row, so you shouldn't listen to me about that.
46:40 But I think we did make the team better in the off season.
46:43 We made a very, very controversial trade.
46:45 It was a painful one because we traded a guy named Jonathan Huberdeau, who has just been
46:50 a wonderful long-term, our longest tenured Panther.
46:53 And the guy came off a hundred point season and he comes from a great family.
46:57 I know the mother, I know the father, I know his brother.
46:59 His sister sings the national anthem when we play the Canadians.
47:02 So it was a painful trade to make, but we got back one of these rare players, a guy
47:06 named Matt Kachuk, who is a great scorer, but he's also got like a physical side to
47:12 his game.
47:13 He's got a lot of grit.
47:14 I think in Bill, I trust, Bill Zito is our GM.
47:17 He's made some amazing moves.
47:19 He's really turned over the franchise in the last three years.
47:24 And so I know people will think we got worse because we traded Johnny for Matt and all
47:29 that kind of stuff.
47:30 I think we'll be a better post-season team.
47:32 I'm very optimistic we'll make the post-season.
47:34 As you said, we won the president's trophy last year, which is like kind of touching
47:38 the Stanley cup.
47:39 Everybody that wins it doesn't win the Stanley cup.
47:41 So I'd be really happy if we had 99 points or whatever it was, made the playoffs and
47:45 then won the Stanley cup.
47:46 We won our first round since 1996.
47:49 Last year we beat the Capitals in a very tight four to two series.
47:53 And then Tampa just showed us what a championship caliber playoff team can do.
47:57 I mean, they swept us in four games.
47:59 I mean, that was on paper, we were a better team, but on the ice they beat us for nothing.
48:04 So we had to make a change.
48:05 Well between you and Tampa, you've put Florida on the map of hockey.
48:10 I mean, Florida is now the dominant hockey state.
48:12 Quite interesting when these teams didn't exist not too long ago.
48:15 Yeah.
48:16 You got to give Gary Bettman a lot of credit.
48:17 I mean, he had some chutzpah by deciding he was going to take hockey South of the Mason
48:21 to non-traditional markets.
48:22 I'll say San Jose and Carolina and Dallas and Sunrise, Florida and Tampa and all these
48:29 great locations where hockey was not traditional.
48:32 You know, hockey is like religion in Montreal and Toronto and even New York, you know, the
48:37 Rangers obviously in Chicago, the original six, Detroit, Boston.
48:42 Those are great markets.
48:43 Nashville, to me, is like one of the best places to go to watch a game.
48:46 Now look at Vegas, give him a lot of credit.
48:48 He's really done a remarkable job growing the game.
48:51 We're happy to be part of that.
48:53 I love the South Florida market.
48:54 We've got a great fan base.
48:55 And the sport's never been more popular.
48:57 Yeah.
48:58 It's a great sport.
48:59 It's the best live sport, I think, but I'm biased.
49:01 And playoff hockey, nothing like it.
49:03 Nothing like it.
49:04 Well, Doug, I really appreciate the time.
49:06 This was great.
49:07 And I hope the listeners got a good sense of how your business is done.
49:11 And again, I thank you so much.
49:12 My pleasure.
49:13 I really enjoyed it and best of luck with this podcast going forward.
49:16 I appreciate it.
49:17 Nothing in this broadcast should be construed as investment advice, nor a recommendation
49:22 to buy or sell securities.
49:23 The discussion is for informational purposes only and past performance is not indicative
49:28 of future results.
49:30 The specific securities discussed may be held by Peter Bookvar personally and/or purchased,
49:35 sold or recommended to Bleakley clients.
50:04 On the Tape is a risk reversal media production.
50:06 This podcast is for informational purposes only.
50:09 All opinions expressed by me, Dan Nathan, Guy Adami, Danny Moses and any other participants
50:14 are solely our opinions and should not be relied upon for specific investment decisions.
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