>> wednesday, the 10th. 30 minutes into the trading day. from london, i am guy johnson. alix steel in new york. the s&p says another high. can we color and inflation trade? alix: i think it is the inflation debate. it definitely going to be friends center for jay powell. another record high for the s&p, but where is that inflation. we had that move higher in bond yields last few weeks, but that also seems to have stalled out. 113 is where we sit for the 10 year. the dollar not going anywhere except lower. you have the cable rate up at 138. a pretty high print for the day. volatility also completely going

nowhere. it is like you really want something to happen. we are waiting for news, but it is not the case. i wonder if we are going to have to wait for jay powell or that check that will come out of d.c.. guy: the news gods have yet to deliver today. i'm sure they will at some point. alix: two hours. normally, we would be talking at the house a little bit later. wholesale inventories higher. a little take up in terms of the inventory. wholesale trade sales much stronger. 1.2. the previous number revised up from .2 2.3. in some ways, that number is interesting, but they cpi number today is where the real deal is. alix: that's right. from our, let's break it down with michael mckee. looking for inflation, where is it? michael: we are looking for the

economy to run hot and it is not. wholesale is pretty much trade and imports. the fact that the inventories did not rise as fast as sales may be good news for imports going forward. we have had a problem getting imports into the country back up. that may raise prices, but right now, we are not seeing it. we see cpi for the month of december or january come in at .3%. that is on the forecast. at 1.4% for the year, but the core rate is the surprise. it is flat. it did not go up. that drops from 1.6% in december to 1.4% this year. gasoline, the one thing that went up a lot. 7.4% for the month. it does show you what is happening with the economy and why we are going to see inflation go up. in the past, last spring, we saw a big drop in cpi deflation as the economy shut down because of

the virus. those numbers are going to start dropping out. they are going to start dropping out of the calculations and we are going to get a higher inflation. 2.7% by the end of the second quarter. today, jay powell comes before the nation to talk to the economic club of new york to say don't worry about it. we know it is just temporary and base effects. there are a few other effects that may figure into it. supply shortages if the economy opens up but there is no restaurant to go to so the ones that are open raise prices. we are not going to see a long-term inflation problem. we don't want to get another tapered tantrum. they don't want people thinking the fed is going to immediately react and start typing policy. guy: christine lagarde doing something similar early on. a long way away from having to worry about inflation. we will look through short-term pickups in prices.

let's carry on the conversation and talk about this from a market perspective. the market isn't -- expecting inflation. the fed is expecting it not to last long. presumably, if this rally is to carry on, we needed to be more than that. >> i think that's true and i think mike made a good point when you start to annualize the dropbox and growth that we saw in march and april, these numbers are going to look explosively higher. right now, we are at the doorstep of what will be looked at as an annualized basis. corridor numbers will explode. i think the market is right in the moves we have seen are reflecting better economic activity, but it is really back end loaded. we are still struggling to get back to a more normalized economic growth. alix: it makes me wonder, what

do you do with duration, the utility names and growth names? the biggest risk is probably the market's premature release. it is easy for markets to get a little bit too optimistic and then you have bill dudley saying that higher inflation expectations can feed into actual higher inflation. you have this push-pull. >> speaking to why we need inflation, it is those that drive economic activity that drive consumer demand and move forward with what we expect to see. in terms of duration, i think you bring up a very good point. when you look at what we have seen over the cap -- course of the last 12 months in terms of a sponsorship like utilities and things it reads to a certain extent, you get concern about malted the -- multiples and dividend yields in the group because they have been overbought. i would be cautious in terms of

looking at that space as a yield or bond surrogate because i think you're going to see a bit of an unwind. stables are trading at multiyear highs and throwing off a low dividends. that trade does not take much to unwind. you certainly see a lot of damage in that space. while we have seen the yields on a ten-year double through the middle of last year, we are still only sitting at 1.13, 1.14. i don't think this is something to scare us until we get up to 1.75. guy: it does happen in the fourth quarter. the fed sounds like it really is not concerned and really does not see inflation as being a problem. it is not something we are going to have to deal with. we are going to look through it. i have heard fed speaker after fed speaker talk about this. is the fed trying to put itself in a position where it does not make the same mistake as last

time where it front ran a paper in the market priced it instantly? is the fed going to wait until right at the last minute before it starts talking about the need for changing policy? and is actively dynamic for the market to deal with this time around? >> it is 100% different dynamic for the market to deal with as the fed has change the parameters around how they view inflation. they want to see their 2% target, but they see that is asymmetric. they will let the inflation target be exceeded for an extended period of time because we have spent so much time below target. their mandate is really a single mandate and that is to get people back to work. we still have half of the people that have lost their jobs because of the pandemic not back in the workforce. they are going to let the inflation run north of 2%. we will likely see and extend a period of time when the fed does not focus on inflation and focuses on unemployment. i think that is probably the

right thing to do and i think next year is when they start slowing down in the monthly purchases of fixed income assets. alix: in the equity market, it doesn't really care. take a look at earnings estimates over the next 12 months, that has definitely been a v-shaped recovery versus the actual s&p which has just been on a straight arrow up. how do you find things to buy? >> that is the interesting thing and such a good question. when you think about what has happened in the markets, it is always hard to explain away the fact that the market has done so much better than the real economy. what the market is really pricing in is a resurgence of economic activity in the back half of this year that has manifested itself in things that are economically sensitive. if you look at the rally in the performance of things like the russell 2000, again, and

outperform are on the s&p 400. i think you are seeing a rationalization of valuations. they have all underperformed. the russell 2 has underperformed the s&p for the last eight years. i think the sponsorship is going to be sending in things like energy and industrial materials whereas the hyper growth will have normalized returns, not the explosive returns we have seen over the last couple of years. alix: really good to see you. thank you very much. some breaking news, robinhood capital and citadel are expected to testify for the house. also, executives are going to appear at the house panel on gamestop. that's not jumping in session highs about 15%. here comes the continued investigation into what happened with that stock. guy: i'm sure we will be listening into some of those hearings. alix: it is like a wall-to-wall thing. guy: some of them i don't look

forward to, this when i think will generally be worth paying attention to. also, news coming up from the world health organization. a bunch of countries do not have medical boards that are approving vaccinations. what the who is trying to do is basically provide some sort of global vaccination coverage for these countries to go ahead. at this time, they are talking about the astrazeneca vaccine, basically issuing an interim recommendation to allow these countries that don't have those medical facilities to be able to do that. the astrazeneca shot, one of the main vaccines they are talking about. they are talking about the fact they will be other similar recommendations being made for other vaccinations coming up over the next few weeks. basically, a series of these recommendations coming through. what are we going to talk about next? general motors certainly in the spotlight right now along with

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alix: live from new york, i am alix steel. guy johnson in london. gm slightly lower today. strong results are thanks to demand for trucks and vehicles. the automaker has a current chip squeeze, something the company ceo addressed with david westin. >> we are going to have a very positive year in 2021, not only from a financial perspective, but also the continued

acceleration of our ev and av business. we are excited that shortly, we are launching the chevrolet euv, that is days away. later this mayor, -- year, we will be serving the market with a gmc hummer and the cadillac comes right after that. as well as tremendous progress being made from an autonomous perspective as well. we are excited about the year and growth opportunities we have in front of us. it is a year of execution. the issues with chips is a short-term issue and we will work through it. david: is general motors basically in the same boat as everyone else? mary: i think in general, this is an industry issue. we are working every single day with a cross functional team to look for opportunities of how do we minimize the impact. we will continue to do that. we did provide the guidance with

a fairly wide range and we will work it every day and provide updates as we go forward. david: as you say, you have a lot of ev models coming out. you are investing $27 billion, part of a multiyear plan. as a practical matter, what are the difficulties and particularly, i want to talk about supply chain. some of the lithium issues. do you anticipate possible problems with supply chains into your battery operation? mary: we are one of only two automakers that are doing cell manufacturing in this country. we also are doing a tremendous amount of development on our own as well as partnering with startups and our joint venture with lg that is development as well as production. we are working hard to make sure we have all of the sales we need. we work through the supply base to make sure we do because as we

have talked about, we are accelerating our ev's with 30 by 2025 and covering the home market. we continue to work it, but we think we have a very strong plan. guy: that is gm ceo mary barra baking with david westin. this is a problem because as we switch over to ev, these car companies are dealing with brand-new supply chains. i'm wondering how anywhere bumps along the road we are going to see and how big of an impact we can see on profitability as we work through the teething troubles of making these new supply chains work. david: i think we will see quite a bit. one of the things mary barra said is that profitability can reach parity end of this decade. looking at closer to 23rd. what happens with the promise of general motors and other

companies depends on how quickly the market switches over to those vehicles and also how quickly they can get the cost down. one thing gm has talked about is reducing the cost of battery packs from 60% to the cost of the current chevy bolt. it is still a struggle to get to proper parity with vehicles that we drive every day now. as far as bumps in the road, look at some of the places we get these men are -- materials. political instability, trade issues, geopolitics, all of that comes into play and we are having bumps in the road with stuff like semiconductors right now. imagine what will happen when you're dealing with something complex like battery elements. alix: hire and everybody else trying to deal with battery storage in some kind of way,

there are a couple of issues to unpack. if you are going to have the made in america label president biden wants when all the stuff that is going to green your country is in essence made in china, that is going to be a big issue. i wonder how a company like gm does that. david: they have got a lot of different levers to pull. one thing they are doing in the u.s. is localizing products here . that will supply the batteries here. stuff like that is frankly too heavy and too costly to ship. they are going to have to build locally and source a lot of this locally. how they go about getting the things that go into those batteries, that is going to rely on future trade deals. we didn't really get one from the trump administration. it is still kind of an open

issue and we will see what the bible and the administration does and future administrations because this is a very long road getting from vehicles that run on engines with gas tanks to ones that run with electric motors and big batteries. guy: how easy is it to roll out products at this point? under the skin, how similar are these new ev's? mary was talking about a whole list of new vehicles she is going to be producing. when you break those down, how similar are those component parts? is it just a question of reordering them and having a top of the vehicle -- top-level vehicle that looks different? david: that is a big piece of this and it does help them in terms of profitability. i did a story a couple of months ago on developing the hummer ev.

you have this sort of skateboard and then motors between the wheels. it is not quite as simple as putting a top hat or vehicle configuration body on top of it. pretty close to it. the way most vehicles are built now is the frame and body are all integrated into one big steel structure. you have this internal combustion engine transmission that gets them stalled in there. that integrated body and frame is what makes it difficult to build many different vehicles and one factory. you look at what gm is doing with factory zero steel, they are going to make multiple tracks on the same line. i think it could end up being many different vehicles off of that same assembly line and kind of using the skateboard idea where you have sort of a lowered down different vehicle on top of it. it could reduce cost and make the design of vehicles a lot

easier going forward. alix: thank you so much. coming up, wall street's $23 billion payday. hedge funds are getting payouts unlike anything wall street has seen before. ♪

ritika: electric car stocks are backed by amazon and ford. automotive is looking to go public as soon as september. review on is seeking evaluation of $50 billion. they have a deal to provide 100,000 delivery vans. bloomberg has learned the u.s. has forced a sale and has been delayed indefinitely. president biden will review donald trump's efforts to address security risks from

chinese tech companies. emily chang sat down with an exclusive interview. >> you need to have a business model that really is aligned with the world doing well. i think that is what is being litigated. there are certain categories of products where the unintended consequences of the growth in that category or lack of competition in it creates issues. that is what i think people are looking at and saying what is the fix for that. i don't thing big by itself is bad. opposition is good. every business, in particular, businesses that are large and have high scale, the unintended consequences of your scale cannot be dealt after the fact. they need to be dealt while you are scaling. ritika: you can catch his exclusive interview on "studio to --1.0."

alix: huge wall street payouts. all the numbers really highlight the disconnect between wall street and main street. the question of course is, how did they do in the last six weeks? ; the last six weeks has been turbulent. specifically, if we were looking at -- if we look at the end of last year, this was one of the best years for hedge funds in a really long time. we saw double digit gains we have not seen in years. that is what has led to really incredible gains. we have 11 of the 15 people on our list who have taken home more than $1 billion. last time we did the study the

year before, only five people taking home more than $1 billion. alix: what was the good bet that won. >> long-term equity hedge funds. they specifically focus on picking stocks. this environment of increased liquidity from the fed has really held back for this kind of strategy. we have seen a lot of these funds do really well. also, a lot of quantitative strategies struggle because they have not been able to adapt quickly to these new and unseen market environments. alix: exactly. they q so much. coming, we are going to talk about destruction credit. destruction credit.

guy: live from london, i am guy johnson. alix steel is over in new york.

less than a year ago, the market on the cusp of a reckoning. clo's are definitely back. >> you can see it in the numbers. remember the rally we saw in every other asset class. when you take a look, those double bees are almost back. so are the triple bees. aaa's are trading up already. you are seeing the prices rebounded in an area where regulators were worried about systemic risk for years. when you talk to managers across the industry, you are hearing a lot of demand for more supplies. what is driving that? the number one thing is ratings upgrade. you are seeing industries increase relative to downgrades. it looks pretty significant.

clear economic picture. good for pricing. i want to drive you to another indicator. this will give you and i -- an indication of the pipeline. these are the bonds that will start his feet into your demand moving forward. while we have seen a major increase in other types of loans, we have not seen a major increase when it comes to leverage loans. the minute this starts ticking forward, you are going to start seeing more clo's. alix: great setups. that is really even -- let's go deeper into the market. it is good to get your perspective. before we get into what happens next, i think it is important to take a second and talk about what didn't happen. what did not happen in the last year was we did not get any sort of distress that the clo managers were looking for and counting on.

i wonder if that continues. >> good morning. thanks for having me on. i would not say the distress did not happen. we did see distress and loan defaults pick up an underlying portfolios of clo's. initially, that was met with fundamentals and technical's pricing clo capital structures lower, but the recovery is what has taken the market by surprise. 20/20 was a great testament to the structure. i think it did what it was supposed to do as we had unprecedented credit stress. the clo structure protected senior tranches at the expense

of mezzanine tranches. the market resurgence has led to recovery and prices across the board. i would not say there was no stress in the market. guy: what is clear is that recovery rates are going to be pretty low. anecdotally, talking to people, you hear about what is going out the door and it is pretty light in terms of the covenants around it. what is your assessment of the default rates that we would need to see to see principal losses in some of the mezzanine levels? what are we looking at compared with where we are now? how big of a pickup we we need to see? >> i think people often forget that clo structures offer two forms of protection. they offer hard subordination to credit losses that structure into the deal, but as losses

pick up, these structures morph and waterfalls change. there is excess subordination that comes in the form of excess threat. in benign environments, this leads to the clo equity order. as downgrades pickup, it gets trapped within the structures for the benefit of both mezzanine and advances. the losses that we need for the principal are to take losses on the principle of mezzanine tranches is extremely high. north of 12% to 15%. it needs to happen instantaneously. as you trapped more access into these deals, the threshold for losses increases. alix: is there too much liquidity in the system, in the

clo market. that has all been increasing. prices are really high. what is your assessment of the market? >> if you take a step back and talk about last year, initially, indices downgraded a lot of loans. with the government response and fed coming in and is liquidity improved in the capital markets, a lot of the weaker issuers were either able to refinance their obligations or get some kind of bridge loan financing or bailout which has resulted in prices going higher. dlo structures are managed.

over time, it is not just that loans have gotten upgrades and indices within portfolios have gone down, but also that clo managers have been able to use the volatility in the market to trade out of the stress loans and make clo portfolios better. guy: i am curious as to who is buying the various staunch is at the moment. just to get an idea of where the risk is going. you mentioned in the current benign environment, a job sounds -- it drops down levels. i'm curious as to where you see the best value right now in the structure. >> in a cycle of what has happened over the last few months, there are various stages

of the investment opportunity. i think initially, last year, it was about providing liquidity to the market as well as being along the high-yield market data. that quickly morphed into using analytics for security selection and identifying structural assets within these and that includes equity. as we move forward in 2021, we don't believe the investment opportunity is over. we think the real value is to monetize mispriced options embedded within clo structures or equity. those options are few, but just to name a few, clo equity has the option as low -- loan prices rise to monetize the value of those assets.

alternatively, if clo liabilities are trickling down, you could reassure the capital structure. alix: how much of that is also a consumer play? in what areas do you like? >> the consumer credit market is obviously different. the bulk of consumer and small businesses were at the epicenter of this recent crisis. the government response was unprecedented and critical. in both the size and velocity. we talk about stimulus checks putting cash back into the pockets of the consumer and providing bridge financing to small businesses. the credit markets that back

asset backed securities were priced across 2020 to take a credit losses in these pre-covid originated loan pools that did not materialize. specifically for the government response, but also as the economy shut down, i think the savings rate spiked. i think you had that chart a little bit earlier. guy: thanks for your time today. come back again. coming up, we are going to talk sales inching back. james quincy is about to be

joining us next. alix: just want to bring this to your attention. take a look at the s&p. there was a rollover in the market chatter. it don't really know why that happened. hearing may be volume coming back. this goes to show that sometimes we just create stories to move the market. there is the necessary narrative and that is the movement. guy: we always come in nice and late to give a retrospective narrative that seems to fit. alix: if you don't know it, you claim the goes -- algo's.

ritika: coming up today, suzanne got. this is bloomberg.

alix: live from new york. this is bloomberg markets. coca-cola sales -- joining us now from atlanta is james quincy, coca-cola chairman and ceo. analysts are mostly positive and like the fact that we got 2020 out of the way. give me some clarity as to what regions of the world you see recovering fastest and what that means for sales. we see places like china little further ahead in the recovery given the containment of the virus and lower level of lockdowns. clearly, as we see 2021, we have set ourselves a quarter of growth and believe we can grow within it. although there is some near-term

uncertainty as to when exactly the lockdowns will come off and how getting back out and about will take off. i think we will clearly see developed countries a start to move to a better place. the developing markets will be more of a mixed experience as we go through the year. what we believe is ultimately this combination will allow us to get back to growth and emerge from the crisis and get back. guy: how closely do you think your performance is going to be correlated with vaccine rollout? do you get up in the morning and look at what is happening and think, we are probably one day closer to bars and restaurants being open again. as you look at what is happening in terms of your performance, people's confidence as well, do you see those two things being linked and how closely?

>> particularly for our away from home businesses, the level of lockdown is a very important factor. the degree to which the vaccination programs allow less lockdown is going to be a driver of sales. clearly, one extra day or extra wii's vaccination does not get it there. we need to reach enough of a critical mass where the government still able to's start relaxing the information. we need them to run for a while in the expectation of the lockdown restrictions will start eventually coming down. i'm fully expecting them to be stairstep in their reduction rather than they are there one day and restrictions are gone the next day. i think there will be a move toward the summer to less restrictions and therefore, a growth particularly in the away from home channels and it will

be an important factor for our business. alix: getting to that point is critical for all companies. as we recalibrate what vaccines mean for reopening and it feels like the market and economists are recalibrating for a more staggered open, do you anticipate having to rethink layoffs or reductions in the coming months? what is the time where you are like i have to go back to the drawing board and think about this? clearly, i think the environment of the vaccine is that we are going to come to a point of seeing it as more endemic and living with that for some period of time and the sustained vaccination and booster program going into the future. in terms of setting up our business for that perspective, we took a lot of very difficult directions.

we made the tough decisions on setting the organization that for the future growth, but it is both adapted for growth and consists with the view the -- guy: how many coke bottles are produced in the world and do you think 20% is enough? >> that is a 20% reduction. we are almost there.

our goal is to make sure we can collect back one bottle for every bottle we sell. if we can get there, we can get to a secular economy that will even accelerate our ability to use less material whether that be plastic or glass or aluminum. we will actually get a -- get to a world where we can drive the collection rates. it is absently doable and the 20% reduction is a big step on the way to a world without waste. alix: how do you do that and recycle all that plastic? >> say that again? alix: how do you scale that up and get that up and get the faster? what would you need? >> the quickest way to do is improve collection rates. there are countries in the world where we get back over 90% of

the models in the technology exists to easily remake them into food and beverage great packaging. we have countries out in the world where 100% of the materials we use for the bottles are made from recycled. the principal thing that needs to change is the rate of collection. that is very important in the united states. we need to drive up the collection rates. all the bottles and the cans and all of the technology to then create a secular economy already exists and it is collection rates. that is the number one driver. guy: one more question on this from me. my understanding is that you are 50% by 2030.

why that number and why the lower number? >> there are some companies with brands that have decided on one of the brands in their portfolio that they will use 100%. we are talking about our entire portfolio at 50% recycled plastic. the simple fact remains that the recycled plastic is also a commodity that people compete to buy. there are many other uses of recycled pp. people use it weather for sports clothes or carpets or lots of other things. often, it is our ability to acquire those materials at competitive prices. that is what reduces our ability to use 100% of it back. if we got all of our bottles back into not have to compete with everyone else to use that recycled pt, we have course

would be able to use 100%. alix: one more question from me. we have a question from a viewer that talks about emerging markets and how collection rates are this really hard to near impossible. how do you fix that problem in emerging markets? i can see how it would be a much easier tackle. >> it is actually not that way around. it is much easier, in a way, to drive up the collection rate in the emerging markets for the very simple fact that sadly speaking, labor is cheaper. rates of collection, whether we are talking about china or south africa or mexico, are much higher than the u.s. marketplace. in the developed countries, it tends to require a much more formal infrastructure often done with local authorities in order to drive collection rates up. the principal challenge in terms of getting collection rates up is that the u.s. market will be top of my list because many of

these emerging markets, the informal markets already provide a market base. the reason it does is because those packages have economic value. a pt bottle or aluminum can has a resale value. therefore, in the emerging markets, there is a big industry where we effectively collect them and sell them back to the marketplace whether to us or other users of recycled pt or aluminum. guy: pretty surprised by that. interesting stuff. let's talk about about sku's, which brands you are going to keep and which ones you are not. a lot of the countries we have been talk -- companies we have been talking about how talked about slimming down their portfolios. are you going to continue to do the same thing and are there any names you are looking to cut as we go forward? >> we made our decisions last year on the portfolio rationalization.

we believe we have done an excellent job of focusing and on which of the brands where the best long-term potential. over time, we will find brands and products that are fulfilling the aspirations we have for them. i think it is part of the decisions we made to get ready for growth and the future and we have done the work we needed to do to set ourselves up with the brand portfolio. guy: always a pleasure, thanks for your time. greatly appreciate it. let's take a quick look at where we are with markets. we have seen this downdraft in equities. we are now down by .7% on the

nasdaq. european equities is certainly turning back to the red. the european close is coming up shortly and we are going to be talking about what is happening with results and with the rates market as well. s well.

guy: big day from central banks. up next, governor bailey and chair powell. coming up, image and will be joining us to give us perspective on where banks are going. going.

guy: from london, i'm guy johnson. alix steel in new york. we are counting you down to the european close. -- says that solidarity is still the best strategy. the first dose of the pfizer landtag dose delivers -- the wto clearing this today. it is going to be a while before we have to worry about inflation. christine lagarde says the ecb of -- ecb will look through any shortage in prices. chair bile -- chair powell and governor bailey speak later today. we're all trying to figure out why the stoxx 600 is now down by .1%.