Tomorrow - Episode 21: Joe Weisenthal Visits Josh and you Won’t Believe What Happens Next

Episode Date: August 30, 2015

Joe Weisenthal dreamed of a career in musical theatre but promptly trashed his lifelong ambitions after his first rejection letter. Instead he became a new media superstar, and one of the sharpest minds covering the global financial markets. Joe sits down with Josh to discuss how studying the market will give you insight into the very heart and soul of mankind, explain the current global financial crisis, and compare notes about the exquisite art of creating an irresistible headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey and welcome to tomorrow on your host, Josh with Toposki. My guest today is a new old friend of mine, a great man, a hyperactive man, a man who does not sleep. My guest is Joe Weisenthal. Joe, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Does it defend you? Did it just offend you that I called you hyperactive?

No, I don't mind that. I'm more annoyed by all the focus on my lack of sleep. Like it just always comes up. But you don't sleep. I don't sleep that much. But every time, you know, I like meet one of my wife's friends or something, they're like, oh, you're the one who doesn't sleep.

And I'm like, yeah, but you're the guy. I don't, you know, there's other stuff that I do. You know, I do TV. I cover the markets. But it's always like, oh, you're the guy who doesn't sleep. We're going to get to that. We're going to get to that. So I'm just going to say, let me just, I want to start by saying that there always like, I'm the guy who doesn't get to that. We're gonna get to that. So I'm just gonna say, let me just,

I wanna start by saying that there are people who are listening to this who may not know. I'm gonna have two things I wanna preface this podcast with today. The first is, you may notice that I sound really echoates because I'm recording in my new office in my house, which is very empty right now and very echoey. So I apologize if an echo bothers you,

if you feel like you're in a large cavern listening to me, that I'm very sorry, you and you Joe and also the listener. The second thing that I wanna say is that, you know, I don't remember the second thing, but I think it was about basically about the fact that we need to do a little bit of establishing who you are and what you do.

Sure. Because there are some people who are listening to this who may not know Joe Wise and Thal, or they may know you and they think that your last name is pronounced Weasen Thal. A lot of people think that. Did you say the majority of people that you think your last name is pronounced Weasen Thal?

For whatever reason that tends to be the first thing a lot of people call me and it used to be awkward on TV and I would go on and people would say, with us is Joe Weasen Thal and I've never totally sure whether to correct them or not because not that big of a deal. But it's wrong. But yes, many people assume that's what it is. So Joe and I met when he came to work at Bloomberg. We worked at Bloomberg together. And everybody before Joe started at Bloomberg, everybody was like, Weezie's coming. Get ready for Weezie.

That was a nickname that was given to you. I don't remember who did it to you. I didn't know that. They were like, oh, Weezie. And then when I met you, I was like, how's it pronounced? And you said, well, I said, well, I had to correct a lot of people. I spent actually several weeks telling people that they couldn't call you Weezie

because it doesn't make sense, because that's not how your name is pronounced. I don't think it stopped everybody. But at any rate, so Joe, can you tell us a little bit of your history? Joe came to Bloomberg from Business Insider where he basically created a whole new style of reporting on business news. But can you talk a little bit about your history?

Tell us where you were. I mean, I'll just give you the quick version of the long story. So basically, I moved, you know, I went to college at University of Texas. I studied international relations. I wasn't studying economics for markets at all. When I graduated, I actually wanted to get into theater. My friend and I, my best friend at the time we wrote two musicals together that we put on in Austin. They were sort of, I would say big

regional hits. They were very popular, I would say big regional hits. They were very popular and people came to see them and we had several sold out shows. And we wanted to take them to New York City and enter into a festival and the idea was like, all right, we're gonna take our shows to New York. We're gonna be the hit of the festival. We're gonna get an off-broadway showing

and that will make our career as musical theater and precarious or whatever. And then we got rejected from the Fringe Festival. We put together this great application. I still don't understand what happened, but we got rejected from the Fringe Festival. And we plot. Do you think it could have been anti-Semitism? No, I would say that's very unlikely.

And I just, I just just I was so demoralized by that by that and I was so stunned. So you just to be clear, I just want to pause here for a second. So you were planning on becoming a a creator of musicals. Yes, that's what I wanted to do after. That was your that was your career. That career path. You were gonna write musicals. And that, yeah. And we were written to, and I was so sure we were gonna get in. And then as soon as we got that rejection letter, I just quit my dreams instantly. I, no perseverance whatsoever. I just said that's it.

Wow. I said, okay, the instantly opened that letter, I was like, I'm done. I just so stunned. You wouldn't have made it. You wouldn't have made any organ trail. It was a real, no, no, I think it's a good lesson. Like sometimes you should just give up on your dreams really fast. Fail fast. Wow. And so then I was at the time, my actual pain job was working

in a deli at a natural foods co-op in Austin, making sandwiches, serving serving people homeless, stuff like that. I was getting a little tired of that because I was making like 5.50 an hour. Then I had had an interest in markets for a while and I came to New York and I worked for a small company for one year that was run by a friend. Fortunately, I had a connection and I worked as a market analyst for one year, basically just looking at stocks and helping the company value them. That was great, but then they moved out of the city and I didn't feel like moving because my girlfriend at so I didn't think I could say go to work on Wall Street. I didn't have any other real-world skills, so it wasn't obvious what kind of job I could get. So I didn't really work at all. I started blogging. I started a blog called the stalwart.com. Basically, because I thought blogs were really cool, it was 2005, they were still like all the cool people had them.

And I wanted to have a place to basically keep track of what I had been paying attention to in my job, take notes mostly for myself, just so I could stay on the news, stay on the market, stay on the economy. And people started reading it, not a ton, but I started getting more and more readers. And I actually harbor this fantasy of one day turning that into a professional thing and having the stalwart.com become this big sort of market, you know, market new

site that could be a business. But I ended up just taking writing jobs. I wrote for this site, techdirt.com, which still exists. It's a tech site. Then I worked for paid content.org. It doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist, but it was one of the early, really influential digital media sites that really covered the internet as an industry intensely. Then starting in October 2008, I joined what was then Silicon Valley insider became business insider to cover Wall Street and financial markets and that was perfect timing because October

2008 was when everything completely collapsed the economy the market and so I really learned a lot because there's a great learning experience Reporting on what was going on was like stepping up to a buffet every day There were more stories than we knew what to do with, because when the world is collapsing, that's very good for- That's good for business. It's good for business. It's good for journalism.

And that was also an exciting time because it was a time of great change in the media industry. In 2008, you didn't have BuzzFeeds and Voxes and Huffington Post was still very small. So all these new media brands that are major players today, those were the very early years of them. Actually Buzzfeed did exist at that time, but it wasn't like a news operation. It wasn't the Buzzfeed that we know of now. Right. So that was in addition to being a good time for market journalism.

It was also an amazing moment for, I would say, the professionalization of new media, 2005, obviously, with early 2000s, a lot of people got into blogging, and then it was the next few years afterwards that a lot of people sort of took those techniques and tried to scale them up to create major commercial media enterprises. Right. Which has now happened. I mean, which is what was going on. And now it's totally happening. I mean, all these, yeah, it's absolutely right.

So all these tiny startups back then are major players that are making real money and have huge global newsrooms. When I started at BI, we were basically a new, I think the newsroom was like six people, including May. And we were really tiny. I think I'm not sure exactly. I left late 2014, but I think it's probably around 150.

They have an office in London. There's a California office. They have a sort of affiliated business inside Australia that is sort of its own thing Is there business in Australia? Do they do business there? There's quite a lot of commerce in Australia. Is there a stock market in Australia?

There definitely is a stock market in Australia. You know, Australia is a fascinating market in its own right because they're one of these economies that's gone decades without a bust, and possibly in large part due to the ongoing rise of China, they sell China a lot of commodities. And so Australia is one of the more fascinating economies to watch, especially as China slows down, but I guess we can get to that later. We're going to, yes, we're going to get to that.

So I just want to let me just say so that I don't get too many angry emails. Sure. I know that Australia has a market. And I know that there's business done in Australia. I just want to say, because I'm sure there's right now there's an angry Australian who began, he started appending an email as he was, he or she was listening to this. And of course, you can never be too safe

with walking back or sarcasm. No, you can't. I'm going to walk back everything I say today, actually. And of course, if you do have hate mail that you'd like to send me, you can send it to Magnus, a tomorrow podcast. Magnus is, of course, my Swedish producer, who will be responsible for handling whatever it is, Joe and I produce today. So let me two questions. Yeah.

Well, one question, because I think I forgot the second one, which is the second time that's happened. Why the stalwart, where does that come from? What is that? Well, that's the funny thing. So, yeah, that was the name of my blog. That's also my Twitter handle now. It actually means nothing to me. And, like, it literally means nothing to me.

So, what was happening was my friend and I who had the blog, the stalwart.com. I, we wrote it together. And we were trying to think of names for a finance blog. And all the names we first were thinking of are really generic, like market line and just these really generic names that sounded like a million other things. And then suddenly we were like, let's forget the idea of having anything market or finance in the headline. Let's just come up with something that sounds like it could be the name of an old newspaper or an old magazine.

And just sounds like something that would be timeless. And so we're like, let's call it the stalwart.com. And that was available. And it literally means nothing. That's a big, that's a funny thing. So my handle, my name, I have no connection to it. I don't really care what it means. It was just sort of an attempt to make a joke or kind of like pretend we were this old serious thing when we came up with the blog name. And then in the early days of Twitter, like I think of Twitter we're launching now. I might go with at Wizenthal or something like that. But at the time, even by 2008, pseudonyms were still much bigger on the internet than they were now. Yeah, handles. Handles, right. Yeah.

Even like back then, like when Twitter really got going, it was less of a culture of using your real name all the time on everything. Do you think that's- Do you think that's- Do I think that's good? No, no, I guess I do think that's the Facebook influence, Mark Zuckerberg's influence. I mean, his whole trip was like- I think-

Well, I think it's probably a big part of Facebook. I also think it's about professionalization. I mean, also when I joined Twitter, I guess that was 2009 I joined. He didn't, I thought it was just this fun thing. I didn't think that it would be basically the primary way I get my news and distribute my news and talk to the people that I really respect.

Twitter has obviously been a huge part of my career and I owe a lot to it, but at the time, I didn't think it would be, and so I think it's about professionalization. Now a lot of people, their careers are in many ways on the internet and distribute through social media. And so it just makes more sense if your career is that than you used to be on that. You didn't take it, I mean, you didn't take it that seriously when you started using it. And so, you know, it just makes more sense if your career is that than you really know.

You didn't take it, I mean, you didn't take it that seriously when you started using it. You were, uh, no, I just, you know, I was like, I'll, you know, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna just don't worry. I'm gonna just don't worry. You know, they're like down to South West tweeting about tacos, so I thought that's what I would do too.

Right. Is that, that's when you started, is you were in, uh, you were in South. So I think Twitter, well, yeah, Twitter, I think really, it was, Mark, it was the 2008 South by Southwest, where really first got going. Yeah. But I joined at the two, during the 2009 South by Southwest, was when I got on it. So okay, so you started using it as a joke and how it's become the handle, which everybody

knows you as. Yeah. No, but nobody can call you Weezy because of the pronunciation of your last name, so it's a real problem. Correct. So anyhow, so can call you weasie because it's the pronunciation of your last name. So it's a real problem. Correct. So anyhow, so you know, we've talked about sleep at the beginning and you're kind of like annoyed with the fact that people think that you don't sleep or that people bring it up But there was an article written about you. It was was the New York Times magazine that did it? Who did it? The New York Times magazine? New York Times magazine did a profile of you like in 2010, 2011. What year was it?

Do you remember the year? It was, I think it might have been early 2012. And the photo, correct me if I'm wrong. This is me just, I'm just riffing from memory here, but the photo, the main photo that was in the article was like a picture of you in bed. Is this right? I mean, imagining this, you in bed on your laptop.

The main photo is me and Ben on my laptop and my wife sleeping next to me. And the photo is staged. We didn't, that's not a situation that happened. They didn't set up a camera on a timer in your bedroom. No, that's never happened. I mean, maybe once I've like got my laptop back. So wait, so that whole scenario

where you're in bed with your laptop and your wife is sleeping and the lights are out It's like the blue screen is like like this is my memory Well, yeah, you know, it's a very important The photo is a is a staged photo there were a number of photos in it like they they had a photographer go around Basically what happened was they had a photographer follow me around Starting at 4 a.m. One day, you know, look working me working at home Then me riding the subway then me working in the office then going out to dinner and all this stuff and then going home

And then I think it was like seven or eight at night and the photographer Got a call from the editor and said like oh Could we get a photo of him in bed and stuff like that? It was only eight o'clock. I wasn't gonna go to sleep yet and Right so then like all right. Let's just let's just let's just make this you know We'll stage this photo and that was the end of the day. There's a little bit a little bit No, I don't know. So you wife had your wife had to agree to that. Yeah, she was fine With it. I should have mine she thought it was fun

I should she didn't mind how false it was all Seeming at the time how it was a stay completely stage since situation. Do you regret? Do you regret taking that photo? No, I mean, I think it was funny. I don't I actually it didn't occur to me That at the time that people would think that was a real photo. I can't believe like like I just thought it was like, obviously like a funny sort of like, a funny portrait basically. Yeah, yeah. And that was obviously this sort of over, over dramatized portrait to demonstrate that I'm this crazy workaholic,

which was sort of how they positioned the article. Right, exactly. So that's like a funny staging. But then the number of people have come is like, oh, I can't believe they took a photo while your wife is sleeping. And I was like, oh, you thought that was a real photo. Like it just didn't occur to me that anyone

would have thought that. So, but you know, the New York Times, I think maybe people don't expect to see a stage. Maybe that was it. Yeah, it's the New York Times. Were there any other components of the article that weren't completely true to life? It was all factually correct. The story was all, you know, I hit like the story kind of made me seem like this insane, manic, workaholic without friends and without a life.

And it had some details, like for example, and I don't, you know, these are factual. It's like, head of detail, like about how I had a bunch of stuff in boxes in my apartment. Right. Or something like that, like to sort of insinuate that like I lived in this like ramshackle place, the or maybe I could even, you could even unpack. Yeah, but it was like, I don't, and I don't really know like that detail like,

whatever it was meant to convey, I don't think. Yeah. I thought it was kind of a weird detail. Also, it has this infinite, it's line that other people told me about, about how I go to, went to the bathroom a lot during the day that the reporter followed me. But part of that, to be honest, was like,

it was kind of weird having a reporter right behind me all day. And so I decided to just step out a few times because that was, you know, that was just a nice way. Did the report insinuate, it was a number one or number two situation. Like you were going to the bathroom, you were taking lots of shits or you were just you're a lot. You know what, Josh, I don't think it got that detailed, to be honest.

Okay. Was there a suggestion that maybe you were going to the bathroom to do cocaine? Do you think that was part of it? Like I said, I don't think I got that detailed. It was just a line that said like I went to the bathroom a lot. And people have like, it was just, you know, what, it was not factually wrong. Yeah, well, let me tell you something.

I just, what I read it. Let me just, I've worked with you. I spent a lot of time around you. And you really didn't go to the bathroom that much. So, okay, this is really important. I'm going to, when this is posted, I'm going to clip this part. I mean, I'm going to tell you, I actually think I'm a guy who goes

to the bathroom a lot frankly. This is a crucial, expulpatory detail for any time someone brings up and I have a character. And I don't think anything. There was anything, anything abnormal about how often you visit the bathroom. I'm glad you didn't just say the opposite. That's like, you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about it and frankly studying your bathroom behavior. So I think I can say that with some level of expertise. So I wanna talk about the mark. Can we talk about money?

Can we talk about what's going on in the world right now? I wanna talk about money moving. So here's the deal. I of course, I work at Bloomberg though. I'm not like a market, like I'm not into the market really. You know, I mean, I follow major moves in the market, obviously, like any person should. But I'm not like, I don't live and breathe what's going on in the stock market. On the other hand, you, I mean, not just the stock market, but sort of all markets.

But all market, financial markets, currencies, you on the other hand seem to, you're like, I guess if I can compare this to, because a lot of people listen, this are probably like really into technology and gadgets, right? And so like, if you can imagine somebody who's like an Apple fan, but some who's like obsessed with Apple that like follows all of their events,

that like goes to, you know, tries to go to every one of their announcements, you know, maybe like somebody who covers Apple for like an Apple blog or whatever, that's what you're like, except it's about like money, essentially, about the movement of money in the world. Where does that come from? Where does that obsession with the movement of money come from? What about it is attractive to you?

What is appealing to you about it? It's just the best story because it really is the core of human behavior. Fear and greed are essentially what markets, which markets swing back and forth between all the time. And it's about our, you know, like the often markets are in greed mode and people buy when things are going up. And they want to make more and more money and they want to look for opportunities to squeeze every penny out of every transaction that they can, and that's like one natural human impulse. And then they panic. And they run, they flee at a sign of when things are getting bad, they hoard all of their money, they rush into cash, they rush into gold, they rush into

safe things. And it's a constant back and forth pendulum between these two things. And of course, it's not constant because some people are fearful while there's a greedy and some people are greedy, while there's a fearful, and you can never really tell what's driving anything. But to me, the market is our closest read to the heartbeat, the pulse of humanity. And it's from, you know, it starts in Sunday afternoon, New York time, trading of currencies begins in Wellington, New Zealand. And so from Sunday afternoon, New York time, till Friday afternoon, New York time, it's this real time pause of how humanity feels

and involves politics because political events always affect the markets, involves economics. Obviously, it involves just sheer human behavior. And so I can't think of another story that essentially takes the temperature of humanity, nonstop, every second, all around the world, our markets and everything, everywhere. They're all quoted. You can see what's going on. And I just can't think of any other better way to really measure what humans are doing, feeling, thinking, caring about, worrying about,

than looking at financial work. Well, it's in one way that's a very dark and depressing estimation of what's going on with humanity. I mean, it's fascinating. I think I do agree that other things happen and other things are important to watch. Well, what's beautiful about markets is the real-time sensitivity.

Something happens in Russia. So maybe there's an explosion. People don't know if it's a terrorist attack or maybe it's just an explosion. And people you instantly see marker reactions because people are that instantly gauge how people are digesting this news and then how that gets computed into changing the different attitudes of fear of greed.

Or there's an or someone new is elected and maybe a radical leftist is elected in Greece as we saw earlier this year and instantly the political climate changes and then it gets you know computed into the sort of numerical expression of how people feel about what just happened. He's resigned now. Not a well, yeah, but it's a temporary technical resignation ahead of new elections that are happening. But I mean, he's not going to make it.

He's not going to make another round, right? No, he's in that. He's in favor. Yeah, he is what it's a tough range. Really? Why even do it? What's the point? Because what's happened in Greece is his party,

it's the sort of radical leftist party, has splintered kind of into two segments, which is the radical leftists and the radical radical leftists. And he's just the radical leftist who wants to work with the rest of the Eurozone on this bailout deal. And the more radical left wing of his party doesn't want to have anything to do with it

And in a parliamentary system when your party starts to deteriorate you basically have to call Do elections and so yeah, we're having the second in a few weeks. There'll be the second election this year That's interesting. I wonder if that's actually in some way more efficient and more helpful So there's some merit to that kind of system I mean if you think like say go back to 2011 after the in the US when we had the big dead ceiling fight and it seemed like we had this impossible standoff. Obviously they got to resolve.

But in a parliamentary system, if you had this standoff where you just couldn't get anything passed, they would just call a new election and let the voters decide which way it would go. And so in a way, there's a flexibility to parliamentary systems that our system doesn't have. Obviously, our system has advantages too, but they're benefits to both. All right. So I want to take a quick break for an advertisement, and then we're going to be back, and I have some serious questions to ask you.

back and I have some serious questions to ask you. Alright, let's type a fantasy football for a minute. Because I think fantasy is superior to reality in just about every way. I want to type a fandall. Fandall week one games are almost here. Now, you may know this about me. I'm not a huge sports fan, but Magnus, my producer, basically moved to America so he could watch American football. He is an obsessive sports fan. In fact, it's a little alarming how much he enjoys sports. Anyhow, Magnus is really

looking forward to the Steelers from Mirons September 1st against the Patriots, which he tells me is a game that's going to happen. And Preseason apparently has been weak for the Steelers thus far, but superstitious magnacies, that is a good sign, which may be troubling. I don't know if you follow the sport. Here's why you need to get on FanDuel. It's the leader in one week fantasy football with more winners and more pouts than any other site. They're paying out over $75 million dollars a week this football season, which is insane.

They have a salary cap format. You can pick any players you want for just one week and Entry Feast started just a dollar, so anyone can play. Now obviously Magnus is playing Fandool. Last year he did really poorly apparently, but the more American Magnus becomes, the better he's getting at these types of games.

And he thinks that this year he tells me that everything is gonna click The more American Magnus becomes the better he's getting at these types of games. And he thinks that this year he tells me that everything is going to click for Panthers quarterback, Cam Newton, and that the Jets, Belal, Powell has dark horse potential, which I'm told if you follow sports is very meaningful and insightful stuff. Anyhow, so Magnus is gearing up, obviously, for a big season. Do you love Fandals as much as Magnus? Tweet at me and tell me about it. My Twitter handle is of course Josh Wittepulski

at Josh Wittepulski. Magnus is hiding on Twitter, but you can email him. You can email him at Magnus at tomorrowpodcast.com. You can talk to him about Fandule. I'm sure you guys can have a great conversation. Anyhow, you can go to Fandule.com right now and click on the microphone in the upper right-hand corner. Use the code tomorrow and sign up now.

There's a special offer for new users for every dollar you deposit. Fandrule will match it with up to $200 that gets earned as you play. That's a bonus of up to $200. This offer is only good for the first 50 people that use the code tomorrow. So don't forget, use tomorrow.

Fandrule.com, where every day is a new season. That's F-A-N-D-U-L.com. Sign up today. All right. I'm back with Joe Weisenthal. Okay. I want to talk about what's going on in the market right now. We've just had two completely insane weeks. So let me just preface this by saying, I agree with you that, well, I mean, I agree at least partially with what you just said about fear and greed. I mean, to me, having watched, you know,

certainly being a Bloomberg gives you some insight into how markets work in a way you, you get insight, you would not get in most places. Right. And, but just generally speaking, having lived my life, watching the way markets work, and particularly the market in America, I mean, maybe this is true of the entire world,

I guess I only have them in the American perspective, but it does seem that the main motivator for almost all of the decision-making that happens is fear, really more than anything. I mean, obviously greed is the underlying motivation for all markets to exist. I mean, there's not like, I don't think there's a lot of people who are who dealing in major movements of money and goods and commodities or whatever, in thinking like, this is going to benefit the world.

You know, I think most people are like, how much am I gonna make off this transaction? But like the fear, the fear based thinking is kind of out of control in my opinion. I mean, we have our markets fluctuate so wildly. So can you talk about what just happened over the past few weeks? Because we basically had, we had this, I guess at the beginning of this week,

is it this week or last week? It's really, we basically have like, the really crazy day was the 24th. That was one of the craziest days ever. So it was really this week, but I mean, but a lot of what we had essentially like rumbling last week for sure, but we had essentially like a near or like a crash, a mark the crash for the day on Monday, the NASDAQ opened down 10%. That, which is very bad.

No, nothing was done 8% sorry 8% in the Dow open down about a thousand points. It was one of the most extraordinary opens I've ever seen. Right. Okay, so can you talk about how do we arrive at? And now we've kind of recovered from that. I mean, from what I understand, yeah, there's been a lot of recovery. So let's just, let's say, first we need to go back a bit, which is that we've had an extraordinary

historic stock market rally since the bottom of things in March 2009. And one of the longest, biggest, most durable, least volatile stock market rallies in history. If you had money in market in March 2009, you've done extraordinarily well. There's been a lot of view that, okay, the market has gotten somewhat overvalued is a common thing based on historical metrics. For the first time, so that's making people nervous. For the first time since the

financial crisis, it appears that the first federate hike is truly in view. So the Fed has not only had interest rates basically at zero since the financial crisis. It's also done all these extraordinary measures like quantitative easing, going out in the market and buying treasuries, other unusual measures, but it appears for the first time that we're going to get a rate hike before too long. And can you have this combination? Wait, hold on a second. Can you just for the listeners who may not know what that means? Can you explain what a rate hike means and why that's why people are concerned about it?

Yes, the Fed determines the cost of short term borrowing. So basically, the market determines the cost of money. So if I want to get a loan from you, Josh, I say, I want to borrow this money from 10 years, you'll send me a pricey back. OK, I'll lend you this money, but I'm going to turn it to you. I won't do that deal. I won't loan that to you.

OK. You know, I'm not lending it. I'm not lending it, I think. I don't turn you. I won't do that deal. I won't lend that to you. Okay. You know, I'm the lendy guy, I think. That's not true. I don't trust you. I'll pay back. Let's say someone who you trusted wanted to borrow money from you. Okay. I don't know if that person's out there, but let's just say that there is somebody like

that. Yeah. You might say, okay, I'll lend you this money at 10% per year, something like that. It's not bad. The fake control, you know, and that's the market, maybe like in other times, when things are, maybe the person who wants a borrow money is not very trustworthy, so maybe you want 20% per year.

Like you really want to get paid back for the risk of all time. Like if I were borrowing, you would be like 20%. Yeah. The Fed controls the cost of very short term borrowing through what is called the Fed funds rate. And so there are a lot of interest rates that are set by the market, but the Fed controls the Fed funds rate. And so, you know, there are a lot of interest rates that are set by the market,

but the Fed controls the short term one. And the idea is that the Fed thinks that if it can, when it cuts the cost of money, if it reduces, yeah, the cost of short term borrowing rate, then it can stimulate lending. And so, when the economy is weak, it wants to stimulate lending, it wants to stimulate credit activity, it wants to stimulate lending, it wants to stimulate credit

activity, it wants to stimulate investment, and so it cuts interest rates. Because it's a one-to-one, it's the last time it cut interest rates. Well, it cut interest rates all in leading up to the crisis until basically it got to zero and like late 2008, early 2009. So and then it's hard to cut rates beyond zero, although it's not impossible, but let's get into that another time. I just had a curiosity.

I just had a curiosity what happens if you cut rates? What if you cut rates beyond zero? What then occurs? So here's the quick. You give people some extra money. No, here's the problem with cutting rates negative below zero, is that if you have money in a bank account and interest rates negative below zero, is that if you have money in a bank account

and interest rates are below zero, then you're actually not gonna get interest on your payment. You're actually gonna, you know, most people get a little bit of interest on their savings accounts. You're actually gonna have to pay a little bit. And so what you're gonna do if you have money in the bank, you might just say, I don't wanna pay this,

I'm gonna take my cash out of the bank and put it underneath my bed. And that's when that's when the stock market that's not that's not the base of killing themselves. That's not an ideal financial situation. So the Fed really doesn't want to go into negative interest rates. I like I said, there is a lot of theoretical discussion about how it could be done. And some people think it could be done. And but it's not, they would prefer not to it. This one. Right. It's not but it's not, they would prefer not to it this one. Right. It's not something that's advice.

Money has been priced very cheap with the idea of if money is cheap, then people will lend, people will borrow, and people will invest. And that's been the major way the economy has attempted to recover since the financial crisis by pricing money essentially at its cheapest levels in history. Now, you don't want to keep money too cheap forever because you could get overactivity in the economy, which leads to inflation. And so in other words, people are investing so much,

you could have bubbles, you could have, you know, let's say you had tons of new businesses springing up, you could have a shortage of workers, you could have a shortage of raw materials, and that sends prices surging. So that's inflation and that's sort of the negative side, the dark side of a very hyperactive economy. So what the Fed ultimately tries to do is it wants to keep the economy strong, but not so strong that you end up having shortages of everything and searching prices.

And so when the economy starts to really gather steam, it starts to raise the cost of money a little bit, basically with the idea of tapping on the brakes a little bit. And the view is, and the view is that we're basically there now, unemployment has fallen to the low 5% numbers. The view is that the Fed could probably start to tap the break. And have they not, has the Fed not intimated that it is going to raise? It is.

Oh, it's definitely, it's definitely given a strong suggestion. It's never said in exact date, it's never said any details, but there's been clear signals that the Fed sees the point in the relatively near future, which it can begin raising. Okay, so we should say that now we've got a good idea of what that would mean for the economy and why people might be interested in that. Okay, so now let's go back. Let's talk about the last couple of weeks and explain how that plays into it.

So you have this really over, you have this over value, you have this incredible rally in the stock market. It's lasted six years. People have made extraordinary gains. There's this view that stocks are expensive. And you have this view, so A, the market is vulnerable just on the fact that the bull market is sort of getting longer the tooth.

And then you have this fear that the era of cheap money, which is kind of good for everyone, makes people want to invest, maybe coming to an end. So you already have a context of a little bit of fragility here, reasons for people to be nervous. Now, the most important thing I want to say straight off is that anyone who tells you a definitive story of why markets tumble, why they crash or anything is lying to you. No one ever knows the answer.

The best we can do is make educated guesses. That's the very best we could do. Because the markets are so complex and the most complex machines in the world, so the idea that we could say, oh, this happened and that's why markets fell is 99% of the time. Or very good.

So when I read the story, it says like, you know, Apple, Apple stumbles, GE, some struggles like the market tanks because of it or whatever the, whatever the random thing is that people are pointing to, that's really not the, that's really not an explanation of what's going on. I mean, it's, it's usually what you're reading is the best guess that anyone can make. Right. And so often there are some things that seem fairly straightforward, but no one could ever know for sure what drives, what really made Drowa market move.

But writers, many writers who cover the market will find, will find, try to find connective. Yeah, and that's between, and good reporters, things that occur. And absolutely, and good reporters try to find these patterns and try to make smart comments about the connection between market moves and economic events and so forth. So in light of that, we have this fragile situation, and you've probably heard a lot, people

are very concerned about what's happening with China. China is obviously a massive economy. It has, it's historically, it's been a massive consumer of commodities, oil, steel, iron ore, tungsten, zinc, nickel, anything because they've built so many factories and they do so much manufacturing and they've built so much infrastructure, railways and highways and everything like that, amid this extraordinary period of growth. So much of the world is essentially been banking on China being able to grow forever, or just China being a voracious consumer of everything. And it's...

I mean, because of China, because of China, we're too, I don't want to jump the gun, but I mean, you think about just in relationship to some of the people really know really well, which is Apple, right? Like if China were, if something really detrimental were to happen in China markets, Apple's ability to tap in to China to produce goods at the cost that it produces them and at the speed that it produces them at, it would be massively affected by that.

Is that right? Well, I mean, you look at analysts talking about Apple and they say, where's the growth going to come from? Everyone in the US has an iPhone. And people say, yeah, but there's this huge untapped market still in China. And that's true, to some extent. But if China were to really slow down significantly, if people were to feel less wealthy, less secure,

maybe they won't buy the newest iPhone. Maybe they'll... What about the manufacturing of the iPhone? Would it have any impact on that in terms of the ability for Chinese companies to manufacture it quickly? I mean, look. I think you would take a major serious unrest or disruption to make it so that Chinese companies couldn't manufacture the iPhone. But there is actually- But I mean, like, at the cost and the speed with the data they do.

Well, yeah, that's actually- That is another factor. So as China has matured and as the economy has grown, there isn't as much cheap labor. I mean, one of the other big stories with the China story has been that in addition to all this commodity demand, which lifted the world China had seemingly had an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor that allowed it to have an extraordinary

manufacturing boom, but even that has coming to an end That's the mark people are getting more much. It's the economy is getting more mature So even the suppliers of Apple, you know the the Fox cons of the world have to deal with the fact that they don't have an Inexhaustable supply of relatively low-cost workers anymore, and so they've got sort of a rise to this They're rising middle class. Yeah, exactly and so even the premise that Apple could manufacture so many goods in China very cheaply That's come under strain in recent years. So China. It's impossible. So basically China is a big deal So China, it's impossible. So basically China is a big deal. It's a big deal for a lot of players. It's a big deal for US-based exporters.

It's a huge deal for luxury goods makers. European luxury goods makers are wildly, their growth is all about China. If you look at a company like Louis Vuitton, so much of their sales and so much of their growth is based on China. And so China, a lot of things are happening right now, but one, they're in the midst of what appears to be a real economic slowdown, an inability perhaps to hit their growth targets. The government wants 7% annualized growth. It looks like that will be extremely difficult to achieve. The stock market, which

had been surging for a long time, has been crashing over the last couple of months. So that is having a negative wealth shock that causes people to feel poorer, make fewer consumption related purchases. It's causing even people to perhaps lose faith in the government because the view was well the government. People in China. People in China. Yeah. Because the view was that the government was omnipotent and could control markets and could

essentially dictate the economy to whatever they wanted. Well now that's coming into question. And so a lot of, there are a lot of negative things going on in China. Now there's one other factor that's extremely important. China manages its currency. It doesn't really trade in a market like normal currency does, and it's essentially pegged to the US dollar. And so the exchange rate between the US dollar

and the Chinese UN, their currency, is very stable. Now, setting the context. So we've talked about this big slowdown that's happening in commodities this year because China isn't consuming as much. There's this big big slowdown in this big decline this year in emerging market currencies. So if you look at currencies in Brazil and Russia and Vietnam and Malaysia, their currencies have been declining a lot this year. Now why this matters is that while their currencies, when your currency declines, your goods become more competitive on a global stage.

Because if I'm buying something from someone in Malaysia for a thousand-ring it and the value of a thousand-ring it just went down in dollars Suddenly, I want to buy more stuff from people in Malaysia. Right. This is sort of the birth of China. This is China's as a manufacturing being met. I mean, essentially, is because we were like, hey, wait a second, we can get really, you know, American companies were like, we can get really cheap labor and they can produce really quickly because our, you know, basically our money is so much more value,

their currency is so much more valuable than that. Right. And so this has been one of the big stories of the last year has been the decline of emerging market currencies. But China's currency is pegged to the dollar. So it's one of the few emerging market currencies that hasn't fallen against the dollar. Is that a recent? Is that a recent occurrence? No, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been,

it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been,

it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been, it's been China devalued its currency by 2%. And this was a big surprise. And there are a lot of theories for why they did it. But the obvious one is that the economy is slowing.

They see other manufacturing economies, their currency is weakening. Thus, China was losing their relative competitive position against them. And so, China weakening its currency was a way for, you know, to make it to exports a little more competitive again and hopefully boost its economy, the hit its growth targets. And this seems to have been the moment that freaked out the world. Like ever since then, you know, people are already sort of worried about China, they were

paying attention to the slow down, they were paying attention to the stock market crash. But it was this moment when they devalued the currency that really heightened people's attention. And that was about two and a half weeks ago. Yeah. Let me ask you something. Let me stop right there. Is there a reason?

I just, this is what I really want to know about the fucking market. Is there a reason when China devalued its currency to, you know, let's say that your theory here, I'm sure that other people have the same theory, is to stay competitive against emerging markets. Is there actually some danger that that signal to the market?

Was there actually something that them devaluing their currency sent, a signal that it sent to the market that would actually create? So here's a problem, maybe. with the flow of money around the world, or was it just people reacting like huge babies to a change in the, to a slight devaluation of China's currency? So this is a great question, because I think on the one hand, there is, I think it's very, I think there's a good case to be made that this was our lizard brains,

the fear part of our brain kicking in, like, uh-oh, something weird happened in China. We've made all this money, let's protect our money, let's sell everything. And I do think that is part of it. There are, there are arguments that there are real economic ramifications and they basically go like this.

If China weakens its currency, then that will encourage more countries to weaken their currency because now they want to stay competitive against China. Then what you have is a Western companies that export to China do worse and worse because they're selling into an economy where their currency is worth less, and be the value of the dollar rises in these situations when everyone else is cheapening their currencies, and the rising dollar is not particularly great for the U.S. economy because it hurts our exporters. And it's a- It's hard for us to sell things other people, I'm sorry.

It's hard for us to compete. So there are real ramifications to having the, for having the US dollar surge too quickly. Already the US dollar has been on a pretty nice run over the last couple of years. But what if it got disorderly? And so what if the remorid evaluations, the dollar got stronger? What if China really fell out of bed? And so I think that the currency devaluation out of China really set off these alarm bells in people's that look already the US dollar strong,

what if it gets much stronger, our manufacturer is screwed. Also, if China is cutting its currency, our things are much worse there than people realize, could we have it through hard landing where the economy really collapses? That would have all kinds of spillover to other economies.

And then that's when you've seen this like rumbling where the economy really collapses, that would have all kinds of spillover to other economies. And then that's when you've seen this rumbling sell off what we've really seen over the last two and a half. Right. So what happened? So what happened when we hit this? So we ended on a Friday, we had a pretty big drop. I think the last Friday, or something.

Yeah, last Friday, we had a real, it was like the first good, like real sell off. This would have been, what was the date? Because this is going to go out on Monday. Yeah would have been, what was the date? Because this is gonna go out on Monday, so. Yeah, so I guess that was the 21st of whatever month. That was August 21st, Friday, August 21st. August 21st, yeah. Yeah.

Then China crashed again hard on Sunday. And what we really experienced were these extraordinary dislocations on Monday. And I truly believe that for many years to come, the market action that we saw on Monday morning, particularly in the opening minutes of trading on Monday, people are going to go back and be examining what really happened at that time. Because obviously there was a lot of fear, the 500 point decline on Friday, freak people out, the China crash, freak people out. But something else that was still,

that doesn't really explain why we crashed so hard in the early moments of Monday. If you look at the weird things that happened. So in the early moments of Monday trading, the shares of GE, General Electric, this is one of the most stable, blue chip, boring companies in the entire world. It's stocked briefly fell 20%. Oh my god. That is insane. It bounced back almost right

away, and then I, you know, it probably fell down a few percent. Apple was down like 13% at one point. This is the biggest company in the world losing billions upon billions in market cap in a matter of seconds. Furthermore, we saw this is this is you're going to do you know why this is. No, I mean, it was this mo it's this you have a theory. Honestly, I don't have a theory. I accept that there was this is bots Joe. It's bots as well. Well, it does seem to be the increased role of computers in trading is something

that people are paying more and more attention to. And so that there's you know like no Hugh it's very unlikely that a human say like hey, I bought GE on Friday now. I'm gonna sell it 20% lower when there was no development But a computer I mean we basically put a computer algorithm that's forced into liquidation mode Might just start firing off a lot of cell orders because some algorithm that's telling it to sell and get into cash and get safety, it's a very strange thing. We don't know yet. I mean, basically, we've programmed these systems essentially around our fear-based decision-making. I actually tweeted a joke about this, but I've been thinking a lot about it, which is

that we've presumably programmed these essentially AI trading systems and not AI, but they are able to trade without human interaction or without much human interaction. We've basically programmed to react like human beings in some cases, but we don't know what we don't know what an algorithm will do on like a wild day fluctuation. We don't really know because you can't test it until the days happen. Well, a lot of these things in finance are based

on expected ranges. And so there'll be standard deviations. And they'll say like we expect that 99% of the time, or 99.9% of the time, or 99.9% of the time, we can be sure that we won't lose this much money. But these things tend to break, we keep seeing these incidents or we have moves that by traditional metric

shouldn't even be happening once in a thousand years. So there are just a lot of weird things happen in markets and it's the combination of human panic and computerized trading. And so I really, it wasn't even like outside of the stock market on Monday, there were extraordinary things that happened in the currency markets.

One person said that what happened in trading of the dollar versus the yen hadn't been that crazy since the week that layman brothers collapsed. I mean, it was just all around the world extraordinary things have been happening. And then there have been like any earthquake, there have been aftershocks. And so yesterday we had this wild surge in the price of oil yesterday being the 27th just to make people...

I know what is that? That's like people thinking that we're gonna Go back to some sort of like we're gonna go into some sort of Mad Max apocalyptic No, I mean I think you need a hoard you need a hoard oil. I think that's more just people thinking that it got over Done the sell-off in commodities I mean I like people imagine that we're gonna be living in like a scorched earth situation. Ford barrels of oil, but I think it was more that people felt that the market slash commodity cell office over done. Do you think, do you think it's possible that at some point a rogue trader, a very wealthy

rogue trader had his brain somehow uploaded into the markets and his like AI brain is doing some doing some manipulations to the stock market. Is that possible? No. I think it seems pretty unlikely. Make a pretty good movie. I'll make a great movie. I'm sure. That sounds like something I would be into.

No, I like the our old colleague, Aaron Rukoff mentioned this week that someone should do a night crawler for markets about a crazed market reporter who then tries to induce market crashes so that he can do with your sheet of reporter. Was that idea based on your existence? Uh, any chance? No, I would never even think about anything like that, but I do think that way. No, but we have, we did, it was a kind of a running joke

at the Bloomberg office that you would, you know, we would come up with headlines. I actually don't wanna talk about headlines for in a second, but coming up with like the most spanic inducing headlines you could think of for people. Because the thing is, like, it is true that like, literally Bloomberg or Business Insider or Wall Street Journal or even the New York Times

could write a story that's like market destroyed in one day of trading and people would lose their shit. I mean, people can read that headline and go, oh my God, I gotta get out of this. No, it is true. And you know, in markets trading, I think there's a responsibility to not overdo it. And I think that because you don't wanna induce panic

or it's not deserved or you could, there's all kinds of problems you could create with over Aaron headlines or slightly inaccurate headline. But this is also really big stuff. And it's very interesting and it's very exciting. And so there is a finding that balance where you capture the appropriate level of excitement and enthusiasm without being irresponsible is tough. But it's an interesting challenge. So let's talk about that, Lo. But you basically pioneered a type of headline style. I mean, it's sort of a riff on, you know,

it's a riff on classic, sort of tabloid headlines almost, or like the New York Post style headlines, which really, really really like you see it And you're like, I've got to read this. I've got to see what the story is. I mean, it's kind of classic, you know Classic headline writing, but you definitely changed it altered it for the internet age And I would say that like one of the one of the hallmarks of Business inside I think most people associate this with business inside or headlines and I and I feel strongly and correct If I'm wrong, then you had a lot to deal with. Yeah, I think me and Henry Blodgett,

we have lots of conversations about that. And Henry Blodgett was very influential. I think, look, the basic idea is be direct. And the headline, and so it's like, when stocks are smashed, say stocks are smashed. And, wait, it's not, but it's not right. It's not just direct. It's not just direct.

It's also adding like a certain level of a drama. Oh, it's not, but it's not right. It's not just direct. It's not just direct. It's also adding like a certain level of a drama. Oh, it's gonna be colorful, right? So as an example, as an example, the thing is like it is dramatic. Like people, like the real world, like a, you know, going back, these are human stories we're talking about. People are freaking out when the, when this stuff is having. People's lives are changing.

Some people are getting wildly rich. Some people are going from being rich to not being rich. Some people are throwing themselves out of a window. Some people are losing their children's college fund. So these are human stories. I mean that you know, it goes back to the beginning. And so I think they weren't writing and talk and discussion and headlines. They reflect the full splendor of humanity. As an example, it's like a Bloomberg, a standard Bloomberg headline. We've altered the way you see headlines on Bloomberg. Now, you've certainly had a lot of impact on that.

But a standard Bloomberg, let's say a Wall Street Journal headline on the market crash might be Dow drops a thousand points as market stutters or something like that, right? It's a random, soft, but it's here's the facts, right Was it was a Dow dropped a thousand is that right or no? Now it's that no there's the the Dow fell a thousand and at one day open But now I don't know what the business that our headline was or what you might have done or maybe you had this embalon Brick and I missed it, but it would have been something like Nasdaq crash or Nasdaq wiped out or yeah, I mean what would you what was your headline? Nasdaq crash or Nasdaq wiped out or what was your headlight? I don't remember what it was.

Crush, markets, crushed, markets, crushed. Yeah, I don't remember what exactly anyone's headline was this Monday. But I do think that like, I suspect the business insider headline was more intense and more colorful than the Bloomberg one. But I do think overall every business news outlets several years ago probably have been more reserved than they are today, basically across the board. Right. I mean, there is a drama. I mean, when this stuff is happening, there is a certain drama.

I mean, we certainly had debates in the office about the level. I mean, you're sort of like the all caps headline guy. I mean, literally you like doing it. Oh, yes. You know, like, I think that if you, if you can't put new, if you're not, you're sort of like the all caps headline guy. I mean, literally you like doing headlines in all caps. I think that if you can't put new, if you can't put the headlines in all caps, then you shouldn't have even written the story. No, I don't totally believe that.

But to some extent, I believe like, you know, why, what was this story even worth writing if it wasn't worth screaming about? The thing that you and I used to get in is I always wanted to go to war on the front page of Bloomberg.com, which is have one huge story that just says, bam, this is going on. Right. You would go to the war story.

I would go to the war story on like the falling price of corn. And I once got into a fight with the front page. Right. Which is, do you think, but do you think that's a good use of the war story? Do you think that's an appropriate use of the war story, the falling price of corn? I mean, let's put it this way. In the heat of the, in the heat of the moment,

let's put it this way. In the context of what we do at most news outlets, no. But in my dream news outlet where we just slam one story hard, that would then, yes. But I don't think that, even how long it seems to outlets, weight different stories, it would be hard to justify doing that with corn, let's put that way. I, well, I mean with corn, but okay,

so let me ask you a question, what's your favorite headline that you've ever written? Do you remember it? You know what, I honestly don't, I don't know. Do you remember your favorite headline that you've ever read? You know what my favorite headline that I ever, oh, favorite, I don't know. I hate it.

You know what I like, you know, a business insider, we used to, any time there was a day when the market was basically slow and nothing happened, we used to have a recurring headline, stocks go nowhere on day when nothing happens. Which I really like to use the same, you use that same headline over and over again. Yeah, we probably use that like 50 times, but I really like to use the same headline over and over again.

We probably use that like 50 times, but I really liked it. And so it's just like, don't read this, nothing happened, move on with your lives. I'm trying to figure out, we did, I wanna say, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to find it, we did, and I could be wrong, I could get this totally wrong, but at the verge, we did a headline.

It was sort of at the peak of, you won't believe what happens next, which I always hated anybody riffing on that, you know, making a joke about you won't believe what happens next, did you not, business decided in doing, you won't believe that. No, we didn't do that garbage. No, but we did a headline, which is like,

you have to click on this, but you don't know why. I think that was, I don't wanna say we didn't do any of that garbage because then the first thing someone's gonna do is search for you won't believe on Google and business insider if I'm that way. You know, I don't want to say we didn't do any of that garbage because then the first thing someone's going to do is search for you won't believe on Google and business insider if I'm like 20. So I'm sure it did happen, but I don't think that was like, that was not one of our calling cards.

Really? So I'm just trying to find this verge head. I'm literally typing right now, which started as a joke. Oh, yeah, here it is. May 28, 2014. You're going to click on this, but you don't know why, which to me is, um, I think that might have been, I think that might have been my headline. I think it's a kind of an amazing, I mean, you have to admit, when I tell you that

headline, you feel compelled to click on it, don't you? Yeah. I mean, there's a mystery. Was it about, was it about like, what was it about? Let me tell you, I don't even know. I'm looking at it right now. I'm going there's a mystery. Was it about mystery itself? Oh, what was it about? Let me tell you, I don't even know. I'm looking at it right now. I'm gonna share this information. This is happening live. Of course, when you listen to this,

this will not be happening live. It was about a website called emoji zone, which was something writer RIPs did. I think it's essentially like, I think it, do you know the Zoom quilt? Are you familiar with the zoom quilt? None of these words mean anything to me. Okay, can you just write it down?

Are you in front of a computer where you can access the internet? Can you Google zoom quilt and then click on the first hit and just watch it for a second? Zoom quilt, zoom quilt dot org, the infinite zoom image. Yeah, can you just click into that? I'm already I'm already getting sick. Yeah. Okay, so this is just yeah, so the zoom quote I recommend and maybe I've talked about it

on the podcast before, but I recommend that all people of all of all walks of life all races all genders Just find the zoom quilt and check it out because it's one of the biggest things there Been done in the world. It's been on the internet since the days of E-bombs world. It's not like a new thing. It's old. I mean, I think it's a flash. It might be a flash file. Anyway, I think that the emoji zone is the thing that we were writing about

and it's something like a Zoom Quill for emojis. But the point is, it was not an important story and I think we thought this would be fun to just throw away, do a throw away headline on. But headline writing is interesting. I mean, I agree with your essential like what your essential point on headline writing, which is, yeah, you know, go big, but there is a fine line between bullshit and not bullshit, you know? No, I agree. I agree. The most important thing, this is the, here's the simple rule to writing

a headline. And headline writing is not complicated. Well, I think it's very complicated. No, I don't think so. Something happens. Like, you write a story, Josh, and let's say I'm your editor. And you have the story, and I say, what happened? And you say, oh, stocks tumbled and blah, blah, blah. Or Bank of England just made this wild decision to send the pound falling. That's the headline.

Like, whatever your first inclinations tell your friend, the headline is, what you tell your friend is about. And so like when people want it, you know, like you go out for drinks with people who may not know finance or whatever, but they come and they say, what did you do today? And what did you write about? And what you tell them in that first sentence

is the headline and that's it. I have to say a place where we strongly agree and agree is there is something interesting about when you're trying to figure out how to share a story with somebody, how to tell somebody about a story. And you end up in, editor is often end up in these conversations where you go, oh, you know, this thing and that thing and you're like,

no, no, no, just tell me what happened. And you go, oh, well, the bottom dropped out of this because it backs. And then you're like, oh yeah, just that simple. And straight forward. It's not like you're trying to craft a language. Right. And so like whenever like someone wants to say like have a story promoted somewhere on

social or front page and maybe the headline, the existing headline is not great. And I say, what's the story about? And they just tell me in plain English, then that's the headline and that's the lesson. I have to go soon. Yeah, I know you do. And I, you know what, I can't believe it. We burn through an hour here. Just flew by.

All right, I know you have to go because you're actually in a Bloomberg meeting room right now. There's probably somebody standing outside of it. There's literally two people giving me ominous looks. They're, who are they? Do I know them? One's Michael Shane. Okay, well, to hell with him.

To hell with Michael Shane. But who's the other person? But I also have another thing I have to do. There's the other person. I'm not sure. You don't know them. The stranger Bloomberg. This sounds like a two bee continued.

All right, listen, you have to come back on because we have a lot more to talk about. I love to, this was a fantastic, I had a great time. I'm just saying thank you very much for having me on. Can I just say that you're a explanation of this crash that just happened is the only one that I've heard that makes any sense.

I really appreciate that. And you're a wonderful storyteller. All right, Joe, thank you for coming on. You'll be back and that makes any sense. I really appreciate that. And you're a wonderful storyteller. All right, Joe, thank you for coming on. You'll be back, and that's the show. We'll be back with more tomorrow next week, of course. And as always, I wish you and your family the very best, despite the terrible financial crisis that is about to befall them. you you