Untitled episode

Bert Mel welcome to the show thank you very much glad to be here your book is actually it's pretty funny it's a it's a little Saucy sometimes your book I mean you say you say no one in finance can can really forecast the future or or at least they can't do it successfully consistently you know I think you use the Gen the word genius in quotation

marks and you give it to uh Ponzi schemers and whatnot right now are there any actual individual Geniuses on Wall Street you know real human Geniuses maybe maybe AI is a genius we've been all waiting for can you identify any current Geniuses on Wall Street right now well as you know uh I put genius in quotes because I'm not sure there are geniuses uh in the

market uh and I've always said I would much rather be lucky than smart are there some hedge fund people who have uh in fact uh made a lot of money uh George Soros bet against the uh uh the British pound and made a lot of money uh there were people who sold short uh in 2000 and made a lot of money but I am not willing

to say that they were Geniuses uh I want to say that they were lucky because for every one of them there was a hedge fund uh that in fact lost money no I don't think there are geniuses I think there are a lot of very smart people in Wall Street but it is not possible to predict the future and you know it's kind of very interesting

how you talk about AI uh I recently had to give a presentation on the economic Outlook and uh I thought you know Just for kicks uh I will go to chat GTP and I will ask asked can you give me an outline of what I should say and actually chat GTP gave me a wonderful answer it was a one- sentence answer I cannot predict the future

it might not necessarily qualify as genius but you're able to write about Wall Street with Clarity which is really unusual because Wall Street and I suffer from this myself you know you speak to Wall Street Executives and they absolutely fetishize complexity why does Wall Street like to make things sound so complicated is there is there something sinister or something has to do whether it's Sinister but

this is a very highly paid profession uh and someone like me who says uh listen don't listen to anybody just buy a simple uh index fund and keep on investing period after period if I'm charging you 2% a year to manage your money uh I want you to think you can't do it yourself so sure you've got a vested uh interest this is a very highly

paid profession uh and uh uh these guys uh do very very well uh is that Sinister you know I don't know you call it Sinister anything you want but is there an incentive to make it seem like it's very complicated that ordinary people can't do it themselves I think that's absolutely right the honest truth is it's not necessarily that I think that the the aura of

this country because the very wealthiest people in America have have such giant portfolios that when the stock market goes up inequality goes up too is there anything that can be done to change that in the future uh one of the things that's impressed me throughout my life uh is uh really how capable so many uh people are uh and I think to the extent that we

uh can uh eliminate discrimination I mean for example opening up uh our jobs our economic opportunities to women has been a very good thing and I think has been generally uh helpful for women I think it's the same sort of thing in terms of racial discrimination I uh am absolutely convinced uh that rather than there being just a small codery of geniuses uh that intelligence is

very widely distributed uh uh in our population and so my own sense uh uh would be the more we can do with education uh the better why is it that we need Geniuses or or really just the concept of Genius is it is it like the way we need Heroes and heroism you know to help just explain the world and and justify I think we need

innovators and I'm not saying that uh uh Innovation isn't good uh we absolutely do but I'm not going to call them Geniuses and uh Jack Bogle would certainly have never have called himself uh a genius but I think we do need innovators uh there will undoubtedly be uh Financial products that are actually uh good for one you know I'm not a fan uh of Bitcoin I

I don't think uh uh I don't recommend that any investor buy it but will there be improvements uh in the payment system in the future and will there be digital currencies in the future that are stable and that are useful uh as opposed to something that goes up $1,000 are down $1,000 in a day absolutely uh and there's room for much more innovation in finance so

I think there will be Innovation there should be Innovation I just wouldn't call it genius that was great Bert maio thank you so much thank you so much I really enjoyed our conversation watch the business week show Thursday nights 10:30 Eastern on Bloomberg television or 8:30 on bloomberg.com or the Bloomberg app on connected TVs