Nvidia's Leadership Crisis, US Retirement Gets a C+ & Anthropic's Big Debut Next Week

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Tom Keene (0:12)

This is the Bloomberg Money Podcast. I'm Tom Keene with Scarlet Fu.

Join us each week for a smart look at the forces shaping your financial life on personal finance, on retirement, and wealth management. We will explore how people are earning, investing, and building wealth. We are live Fridays at noon Eastern on Bloomberg Television. Subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen, and as always on the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business App.

Good noon, everyone. Bloomberg Money. What a week it has been today on personal finance and retirement, on wealth management. Scarlett Phu and Tom Keene. Scarlett Phu looked at the week and she said, I'm not doing this. I think she called in like, talk about work from home. Scarlett Phu worked from home today. We'll have her here next week with all of her great work. We say again, good noon and some wonderful conversations coming up today. We have a special treat. Edward Morse will join us from Hartree Partners. Absolutely definitive worldwide on hydrocarbons, on energy and their international relations. This is a true treat as oil has come down recently. We nailed a lower oil price not too long ago.

And important, it is a blistering power point from Marsh. Christine Mahoney on the failure of the American retirement system. There's no other way to put it. Carol Marissa and I were talking earlier. We're never going to retire. So let's do this. This has been a hellacious week. We had like 15, 20 people to talk to. And here are the three chosen few. Sarah Friar is with us. Of course, driving all of our technology covers definitively on Instagram. We could do the whole conversation with her. But Carol Marissa said, no, I want in as well with the blur of your week, with your programming in the afternoon. And Eric Beltunas, his book agent, called up and said, you got to give them airtime. Beltunas out with a new book. Let me go right to that, Eric, to start with. It's a celebration of a new book, but it's not ETFs, right?

Eric Balchunas (2:29)

No, it's my third book. I wrote about ETFs and then Bogle and Vanguard and then Bitcoin Crypto.

The Bitcoin ETFs, they're kind of struggling lately, but they were the most successful launch. And I felt that the ETF was kind of in between these two worlds. The ETF bridged the DeFi world and the TradFi world. And the ETF kind of is in the middle of the sort of merger of these two worlds, whether it's Bitcoin as a store of value or tokenization as a sort of new financial rails. This is an interesting, fascinating topic. The price action, not the greatest to launch a book, so have a book come out, I will admit. But honestly, it's better now than it was $125,000.

Tom Keene (3:06)

OK, but let me cut to the chase. For Bloomberg Money, somebody in a retirement plan or whatever, with all your work and your excellence on ETFs, is Bitcoin an investment or a speculation?

Eric Balchunas (3:18)

It's a little of both. We really, we come down, we call it teenager gold.

It has all the properties of gold.

Carol Massar (3:24)

What could go wrong with a name like that?

Eric Balchunas (3:25)

I know, right? Well, it's 18 years old. I don't know. I have a 15-year-old. He's very volatile.

You're unpredictable, but it has all the traits of gold, and it's been through seven 50% drawdowns. That alone, I think you have to respect as an asset. We don't have to invest in it. We have to give you both sides, but just the resilience of this thing, I think you have to be like, it's a tool in the toolbox if you want it.

Tom Keene (3:47)

We're doing everything I can not to talk about in video. We'll get to fry in a moment. Speaking of teenage gold, are teenagers, are they just too young to wear Cartier? What do you think? I mean, Rishwan, what do you do when the daughter comes home and says, you know, Suzy has a Cartier bracelet?

Carol Massar (4:04)

Go get a job, honey. No, I mean, mine is a 23-year-old. She is at working. She's learning the value of money. And man, does she know how to save it? Like when I'm like, well, you know, if you need to buy something, she's like, well, can you get it? Or if she's going to spend her money, she's like, no, I think I'll save my money.

Tom Keene (4:17)

And you're nuts weak. What stands out here in technology?