Small Caps Are About to Have Their Moment | Jeff Weniger

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Tobias Carlisle (1:00)

We are live.

This is Value After Hours. I'm Tobias Carlisle joined as always by my co-host Jake Taylor. Our special guest today is Jeff Weniger of Corgi. We're interested to hear what that's about. How are you, Jeff?

Jeff Weniger (1:14)

Doing great. Doing great. Thanks, guys.

Tobias Carlisle (1:16)

Tell us a little about Corgi and what you're doing there. Sorry, Jeff.

Jeff Weniger (1:20)

Sure. Sure. I joined Corgi about two months ago at this point. It's an ETF firm. I think in the ETF lead tables, we're like number 134 Are you in? You got like BlackRock over here with iShares. That's number one. And then I think Vanguard's at number two. And down there, number 134, there's Corgi. But we're going to try to change that. It's the new firm. We're less than one year in existence on the ETF side. It's known for the quote unquote spaghetti cannon of ETFs.

I think we came up with the number 207 ETS. It changes with each passing day. And it's bigger than that 30 second intro, but it's exciting. So I was at Wisdom Tree for 10 years before this and came over recently. And I'm the chief strategist. And we'll see if we can get this thing rolling.

Tobias Carlisle (2:10)

Yeah. So from your perch as chief strategist, give us a little survey of what's happening in the markets.

Jeff Weniger (2:18)

Sure. Does that survey have anything to do with that big yellow rectangle to the front of your... That's subtle.

Tobias Carlisle (2:25)

That's subtle suggestion on my shoulder.

Jake Taylor (2:28)

Yeah.

Jeff Weniger (2:30)

Well, I don't know that we're going to have a crash as that byline says, but I've been fascinated to hear the synopsis on that one as well.

Look, if you want to talk crash scenarios, we can game that out too. I mean, there is some number out there on a 10-year T-note or a 30-year bond where the stock market decidedly decides it really doesn't like it.

I just don't know what that number is. Is it six on a 10-year? Is it seven? Or is it right? Where are we now? Like 5.3? Is it right now? Do you turn tail on it? I mean, it's becoming the situation where the bond market is the decider, if you will, remember that one, the decider from George Wood. The bond market has become the decider.

Tobias Carlisle (3:19)

There's one argument that there's already this very broad-based crash going on underneath the surface of the indexes because there's, I saw some statistic yesterday, there's like 54% of Russell 3000, which is the largest 3000, is in a drawdown of 20% or more. And then the chart shows just the absolute carnage across different industries. And it's that very narrow band of AI, CAPEX, beneficiaries and hyperscalers and semis that have sort of avoided it, but everybody else is in some level of drawdown. And then there are these individual stock charts out there, Nike probably being the most sort of shocking one that they're like off 80% or more, like over five years for Nike.

But what do you think? Is it just a replay of 2000, something like that, like 1990s?

Jeff Weniger (4:15)

Well, I mean, you never know. But Nike is a good example of just the fickle nature of apparel, fashion trends. I mean, that one was so fascinating because I'm going to take a wild guess here that that thing was like unstoppable for a good 15 years. That's what it feels like. That's the highly scientific feels like 15 years. And then just totally ice cold. I don't know what the top to bottom draw is on that 60 or 70 percent.