Lots More on What's Going On in Iran's Markets

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Joe Weisenthal (0:08)

Maciej Wojtal.

Maciej Wojtal (0:10)

Yes, that's good.

Tracy Alloway (0:11)

Anyway.

Maciej Wojtal (0:11)

It's a typical Polish name, and it's a difficult one, and there was no English equivalent.

Joe Weisenthal (0:16)

My mother speaks like nine languages, and she was a linguist, and she said she found Polish to be the hardest. And she even like speaks like some, she learned like some Russian and some Malay and all this.

Tracy Alloway (0:28)

Russian's supposed to be the hardest.

Joe Weisenthal (0:29)

And she said from a pronunciation standpoint, she found Polish to be the hardest. Anyway, Maciej Wojtal.

Maciej Wojtal (0:35)

Yeah.

Joe Weisenthal (0:38)

I did a deadlift.

Tracy Alloway (0:39)

I am both the most popular trader and most successful trader at Citadel.

Joe Weisenthal (0:44)

Fed is going viral.

Tracy Alloway (0:45)

Barges.

Joe Weisenthal (0:46)

This is an after school special, except.

Tracy Alloway (0:48)

I've decided I'm going to base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US.

Joe Weisenthal (0:54)

Black gold.

Tracy Alloway (0:55)

These are the important questions. Is it robots taking over the world?

Joe Weisenthal (0:58)

No, I think that like in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the Odd Lots podcast. One day, that person will have the mandate of heaven.

Tracy Alloway (1:07)

How do I get more popular and successful?

Joe Weisenthal (1:10)

We do have the perfect guest. Welcome to Lots More, where we catch up with friends about what's going on right now.

Tracy Alloway (1:17)

Because even when Odd Lots is over, there's always lots more.

Joe Weisenthal (1:21)

And we really do have the perfect guest.

Tracy Alloway (1:27)

One thing we have learned in all our episodes looking at the Iranian stock market, and there have been a couple.

Joe Weisenthal (1:33)

Yes.

Tracy Alloway (1:33)

But one thing we've learned is that Iran is actually the 37th biggest economy in the world by nominal GDP. Can you guess like another economy that is roughly that size?

Joe Weisenthal (1:46)

Oh, that's a really... So what is roughly similar to the Iranian? I don't know. Go on.

SPEAKER_1 (1:53)

Okay.

Tracy Alloway (1:53)

Well, one of them is Denmark. So that's pretty big. But then when you start looking at things like geographical size, Iran is, I think, the 17th biggest country in the world by geographical size. It has a lot of people as well. So, you know, similar to Turkey in terms of population.

Joe Weisenthal (2:10)

I know the population now. Oh, do you? Yeah, because Ted Cruz got stumped on it when he went on Tucker Carlson's show. So we all know that Iran has a population of around 90 million. No one is ever going to make that mistake again in public.

Tracy Alloway (2:25)

That's right. That should have been my first question.

Joe Weisenthal (2:27)

Can I say something? When there's geopolitical events happening in the world on a weekend when nothing is trading. So one that you can look at what crypto is doing. But every once in a while, when I'm in true market sicko mood, like I'll actually check, like, oh, what is the Saudi market doing on a Saturday? Or what is the Tel Aviv market doing on a Sunday?

Tracy Alloway (2:46)

That's not sicko mode. That's just being international.

Joe Weisenthal (2:49)

Well, you're supposed to have the weekends to not be looking up, but most of the time, they're not, point is, everyone's in a while, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna check in and see how Tel Aviv is trading on a Sunday or something like that. That's how you know something is happening.

Tracy Alloway (3:02)

Yeah, but the one market that you can't really look up is Iran's stock market and the Tehran Stock Exchange specifically, which again, as we know from previous episodes, has more than 600 companies and is worth, I think it was almost $100 billion. I don't know if it's still that much, but I'm always really-

Maciej Wojtal (3:21)

It's around $150 billion.

Tracy Alloway (3:23)

$150? Oh, wow. Okay. We're speaking with Maciej Wojtal. He is CEO and CIO of Antelon Capital, which is an Amsterdam-based fund manager, which specializes in Iranian stocks. He's been on the show a couple of times before, and we thought we would talk to him again just to try to get a sense of what's going on in terms of Iran's economy and its stock market.

Joe Weisenthal (3:45)

What is going on?

Maciej Wojtal (3:46)

If I can just comment on one thing, because the way you introduced Iran is the perfect way to show the country. It's the size of Turkey in terms of population and actually geographical size as well. But if you compare the economy of Turkey and Iran, it's around five times smaller. So Iran is around five times smaller. And if you look at the composition of the economy, Turkey has no natural resources, so they have to import the whole energy commodities they consume and so on. Iran has a similar size of potential non-commodity GDP that it could grow to, so from the current, let's say 250 billion to 1.1 trillion GDP that Turkey has. But also on top of this, has resources that are actually, if you combine gas and oil, they're bigger than Saudi Arabia's. And Saudi Arabia is another 1.3 trillion dollar economy. So this is a good way to just frame Iran as to show Iran as, you know, it's a big country, that should really be having much bigger economy because of sanctions, various reasons and so on. It's been underdeveloped, but the scale of this underdevelopment is like 10X. Wow.