YouSaid · the spoken record

Jan van Eck

lines on the record: 98
first: 2020-03-06
most recent: 2020-03-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And it sounds like Yeah, that took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. But law school was the backup, so it did eventually punch that ticket.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What we found with our ETFs is that buyers around the world were using it. I mean, it was amazing, like GDFs, like literally people from 100 different countries were buying and trading US ETFs. It's a really great invention, and we're lucky to be part of it. And so one we saw that, of course, we wanted to chase our clients, expanding internationally is not as easy as I thought it might be. But because we had clients in Europe and Australia, we thought, hey, let's provide local opportunities for them. And because our industry is regulated and taxes are different, we basically had to set up shop in those countries.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, I'd hate to oversimplify. What is the central bank in China doing? So two years ago, they were slamming on the brakes because they were worried about debt, but they have since taken their foot off the brake. They're not gassing it, but they are giving enough oxygen to the economy that I don't think we really need to worry about global growth. And that does assume that the coronavirus doesn't go crazy, but that's what the markets are assuming.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you can look through. I think the markets have looked through the coronavirus. So what I like to say is, I wouldn't say we live in China's world, but we are in the same life raft together. And to answer your question, if China's economy goes through a super hard landing, every aspect of our financial markets will get affected. I mean, obviously commodities, but commodities flies through affects high yield as well because energy bonds have a lot of issuance. It'll affect U.S. equities as well. Right now, I'd say both Chinese equities and U.S. equities are saying this coronavirus will work itself out. Chinese equities are right where they were a month or two ago.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fight for the Fed. And look at China. That's my thing that I think a lot of people don't look at. You have to look at what's going on in China and the narrative in China is also right now mildly stimulative. So I can go into that if you'd like.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Companies are so it's natural. Companies are optimizing. They're saying, listen, I can keep my borrowing costs down if I just keep stay a little bit above junk. And then in a low interest rate environment, I've got all this money at 2%. What's not to love?”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have several high yield funds. You want to make sure there's enough liquidity in that. So for our high yield Muni fund, we made sure a slug was in triple B's so that there would be enough liquidity in our view throughout a market cycle for that product. Also sticking with fixed income, again, this is the Van Deck philosophy, right? Look at the macro trends and market structure in the industry. So what's happened over the last 10 years has been the growth of BBBs as a percent of the overall investment grade market, right? So the lowest level of rating for investment grade is now 50% of all investment grade and triple B's today are greater in issuance than all of investment grade debt 10 years ago.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like to call it handcrafted beers. Every one of our ETFs, we really try to think about the underlying structure of the asset class and the market and how to construct an exchange of traded vehicle to take advantage of that. So for fixed income, if I could talk about that for...”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you're implying? Yeah, I would say a proprietary version of GARP. They would not like that, but I think that's fair.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Overpaying for that because that I think is a real value that doesn't exist in all ETFs, which is that valuation discipline of kicking out companies if they just become too expensive.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. Well, I think, as I was implying before, I think there are these things that people observe in the markets and then they kind of go away after a while for whatever reason. Maybe they're arbitraged away or for whatever. And I do think that in the new economy, I'm not saying growth will outperform value forever. I'm not saying you should tilt your portfolio that way, but I definitely don't think you have to look at the measures these days. The one that we have as a firm that we like is the wide moat philosophy, which is look at the earnings on a forward-looking basis. Okay, so it's not just looking at all the statistics on Yahoo Finance or Bloomberg, and that's produced by Morningstar Equity Research. And then, so that'll estimate the profitability. So even if a company like Facebook is not making money, which it wasn't at a point in time, we know the potential is there, then we include it. And then the second step is to make sure that you're not.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they're cheap, and therefore mean reversion. The statisticians say, oh, that's great value. My perspective on the world is that of a historian. The world is changing so much all the time. So let me just take emerging markets. Emerging market index is so different today. China dominates it. Asia is 80% of that index. There's basically everything else you can ignore. 15 years ago in emerging markets index had Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea. Remember, like Brazil, Mexico, it's just not even the same thing to take that statistic and say, I'm going to do a study and give you an investment recommendation. Look, that's a school of thought. I'm in what I call a historian school of thought, which is there's so much change. Look at all the change that's happening.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's worked historically, it's giving you some kind of added return over the market return. And then it doesn't work and then it doesn't work and it hasn't worked for 10 years. I like to point out how little we know really I feel like we're in the caveman era of investing Barry. I know there's been a lot of innovation, but there's so little we know. What is there? Is there an academic theory that says growth versus value? No, no one can time growth versus value. It's an ongoing debate, yet there's trillions of dollars at very prestigious firms that have this value tilt that have now been underperforming. So anyway, so that's kind of my perspective that you just can't use these mathematical tests and a mathematician said, that's insulting. You really have to call them statisticians, whatever that means. But basically, you can't just use mathematical ratios to say, therefore, there is an investment opportunity. And the current one that's floating.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, anyone that's not just doing a market cap exposure fund tends to have some kind of bias and they look to do asset allocation as well based on that kind of bias. And I think there's been a lot of work done and a lot of the investors, let's take value investing, for example, right? A study comes out says value is the way to go. I've done, you know, I look at the fundamentals of a company and those with the cheaper price to book, that's going to work. Right”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, it's not first person singular. There were a lot of people, it was a team, one of whom was my brother who passed away 10 years ago, but he was part of it. But there were a lot of other colleagues as well. And it was building up other mutual funds. And then really before I was what I called ETF guy in 2006, for 10 years, we had a hedge fund business. And we had two hedge funds that we rose about $4 billion and so had some good strategies there for a while.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it got to 2 billion And right at the peak, so right in 1980, and then Paul Voker comes in and breaks the book. That was that. Break deflation. Gold went down to $200 an ounce in early 2000s”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He should have been in gold. And he went on Merv Griffin. I mean, it was such a big deal back then. It was popular culture, right? I mean, interest rates were going into the teens. I remember nervously at home watching my job. Like, please don't embarrass us.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah, gold was less. I think the companies were okay. I haven't looked at the performance over that time period. But the industry was so small, Barry, right? The industry exploded in the late 70s because of money market funds when the rate you could get on banks was regulated. So it was a cottage industry. And what ended up happening, though, because of the performance.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my god, the fund was teeny. Yeah, how big was the fundy? Oh, I mean, it was way less than $100 million. Okay. 80% of which goes into no one wanted international investments in the 1960s. It's kind of like today. Right. I mean, you don't want to even talk about it.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so he had an international equity fund and he went to Cheryl as he said, I'm doing this. 80 plus percent of the fund and bought gold mining shares. Now, you couldn't buy gold. So he was a little bit to your point before. He was forced into buying the shares.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, for almost 200 years of our history, gold had been fixed. You said this paradigm is going to break. And that's really the philosophy of our foreign, which is you can't just look at the four corners of the financial markets. You have to look at technology trends, political trends, and major economic trends. And several years later, so he did have a lot of patience that broke.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And one of his professors was an Austrian economist called Ludwig von Mises. And if you know anything, I mean, he's famous, right? But Austrians were never really accepted into academia in the United States. They're a little strict. So he actually was not a full professor. He was just sort of an adjunct. But anyway, my father, they are sort of hardcore monetarists and they really focus on money supply. Hard money, you know, and it was basically, look, guns and butter were happening in the 1960s. money supply was exploding and eventually that was going to break into inflation and the way to make money off of that was to invest in gold now as you said i really think it's an amazing the risk he took at that point in time because gold had always been fixed against the us dollar for the entirety of history so almost by government”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my father starred the firm in 55. He actually started it later in life. And so in the 60s, he had just gotten married. He was just over 50 years old, and he was getting a degree at night at NYU in economics.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of these assets have their pros and cons, right? I just say buy a basket because if there is a big scare to the system, what's going to go, all we care about, what goes up more, we don't know. Bitcoin could go up way more than gold shares or gold bullion. So if you can solve the custody issue for yourself, then I think I don't care about your concern.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Custody is a major issue. There are a couple of issues around Bitcoin, custody, I think, is being solved because you do have major institutions like Fidelity, the New York Stock Exchange getting involved in offering Bitcoin access, having taken that custody issue away from you. As far as some, what they call Wales or people owning a lot of Bitcoin or it being lost or whatever, and then the background in the mining community, our point, and we've got a lot of slides on our website to show it, is the diversification of ownership, trading, and mining is so much these days. I don't think it's a practical concern to say that this is one just manipulated market by one entity or something like that. I'm not saying it's...”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah. So that is the. Alternative asset for the younger generation. I mean, Coinbase has between 30 and 40 million U.S. American customers. How do you do?”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The manufacturing cost, so energy was growing, so that was an input to mine that was a bigger factor. You have to dig way more dirt per ounce of whatever you're pulling out, whether it's gold or copper or whatever. So there's just a lot of different factors. So the last cycle, there wasn't as much return leverage, which is what you were asking about, as in the 1970s. So now where are we today? Gold is hitting all-time highs except in the US dollar. And I would agree with you. If you want a hedge against sort of the current monetary system and you're a little bit nervous about central bankers flying around in capes trying to fix every problem, including the coronavirus, then you probably want several different hedges. You want gold mining shares. You probably want gold bullion, but you also want to look at Bitcoin.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Right, but now in this last cycle and the oughts, that was not the case. The costs of manufacturing for a variety of different reasons, the cost would go up as well. High inflation falling dollar.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but let me give you some more historical context, right? So we've had two big commodity booms in my lifetime. In the 1970s and then in the aughts. And they were very, very different for the operating companies. Because in the 1970s, commodities gold went from $35 to $800, oil went up, all that stuff. But the cost of manufacturing, all those commodities did not change. So the companies were like options. I mean, all the revenue would go up and the cost would really not go up. And so, I mean, the stocks were fabulous. So when the price is at all fund that we had in that decade, would we go up like 100, 150% a year?”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're starting to. I mean, our fund's not huge. I think what people sometimes say is, I want perfection in my, I'll call it values-based or ESG investment. And perfection doesn't exist. There are trade-offs in life. So the issue is, okay, I get at it, the environment's getting better, but I may not like the issuer. It's a China government entity or it's a polluter or has some other kind of practices I might not like. In the US, we have several environmental funds and I think you have to stack those values. And so we say, okay, if you care about the environment more than the other factors, then this is a good allocation for you.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's not luckily, it's not us making this the determination. There's a third party that certifies these green bonds. And it's a big source of financing. It's grown.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give us an example of bond by bond decision. It's not a company decision. So the dirtiest commodity company in the world could issue a green bond if it was improving its processing to reduce the use of water, for example.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so green bond is very simple. It is money raised by a company or a government that is supposed to go to improve operations that have a better effect on the environment.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kids expression are making five million bucks for winning one of these things. Amazing. All the owners of professional sports teams own esports teams as well. Makes sense. So, you know, life is a racket, right? It's a lateral next trend and having an ETF just allows the rest of us normal people to participate in the trend. The other thing that's really worth noting is Asia is a huge cultural thing in Asia, right? Not just in China, but in South Korea and Japan. And it's just big culturally. A lot of stuff is being, the life is being lived online.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is already, and I think the only thing that we don't know the story that hasn't been written is the monetization of all that traffic in crowds. So we know that people are doing it. Way more people watch these esports world championships than right?”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So the entertainment world, just going through that revolution, first of all, as we get wealthier as a society, more people enjoy sports, entertainment, betting, that's a growth industry, but it's also transforming from the traditional professional football, basketball, hockey into online gaming and the creation of teams competing against each other. And that's just that could just continue to grow and the dimensions now, right? not just the playing of the game there's the watching of the game and and there's the replaying of those things on youtube and people watching games and now audience participation barry is likely to happen right where you're watching a game and as a spectator you can vote on the teams or advise them i don't i don't do that”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, there's always a solution. Once the AUM is in the door. But I try to take a five or ten year view. And one of the things that's happening now, so we've had the smartphone for 10 years is the virtualization of life. Virtually.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On micro themes. I mean, lots of things healthcare industry, for example, has been sliced and diced into cancer drugs and this and that. So really narrow or even like 5G. I mean, it's an interesting thesis, but what happens when 6G comes out? Then they'll change”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, what we try to do is look from a longer-term perspective. We don't want to just chase fads, right? There's a lot of ETFs on micro themes.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was going to be Right, and cheaper valuations as well. We've heard that before. Still to this day. Again. Right. So that was really the story. And so our perspective has always been international. Also, he later flipped that fund into a gold fund and resources investing is very international as well, whether at the time of South Africa, Australia, Canada, you're always a majority of our prospective and assets were not in the US.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In food service, like so there was something about wanting to do stuff to make money that was definitely early, early on for me.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's kind of interesting. I was never a portfolio manager, and I wasn't the guy to buy shares. But, you know, when I look back in high school, I would buy Coca-Cola from distributors and resell them by the bottle. I worked, probably didn't have to.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a psychological thing I can't go through, but I'll tell you two things. The door was always open. So, my father and my father always said, do what you want to do because your happiness is more important than whether this business is there or not. So how those things add up, let for third parties to decide. But my father was very no-pressure to come into the business.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the Senate campaign, and it was a losing Senate campaign. But I learned a lot. And most importantly, I met some entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley who I just love the attitude of I try something. It doesn't work. I try something else. It went public. I'm doing all these different things. Just that creativity, I didn't perceive, even though I grew up in the New York City area, looking at the banks and going up the rung of management, I did not perceive that level of creativity. So that's when I fell in love with business and then decided to go back to that region for law school. I was lucky enough to get into Stanford. But that's a...”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I realized I did not want to get into PhD in economics. Academia was not free on. And so I put my stuff in a car and drove cross country and volunteered on a political campaign. What you don't need to go into”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Answer you a question. Yes. Right. I didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated. And this great podcast, I haven't read the book on the book Range, right? And just experiment as much as you can when you're young. I did an internship at the Washington Post Metro desk. While I was in law school, I worked for a prosecutor one summer in the eastern district of New York. I worked for a corporate law firm doing M&A deals. I interned in Germany one summer at a bank. I mean, just tried as many different things. But the thing that triggered my love of business was actually working in Silicon Valley.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's free. You know, you sit in for a course for an hour or two during college, and you've already paid the tuition. So the professors love to have more students there, at least in a smaller school.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not I did the minimum to get my degree in econ, and I really enjoyed liberal arts. I took as many classes and I did something that I think a lot of people should do and is not done enough, which is audit classes. I mean, there's so much great stuff at a college like William. So, you know, art history, photography, philosophy, lots of things.”
2020-03-06 · Masters in Business · Jan van Eck on Successful Thematic Investing · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source