Episode summary
Horse Pilates: A Mailbag Episode | Money Stuff: The Podcast
Money Stuff The Podcast
· · 29 min · Hosts: Matt Levine, Katie Greifeld
Summary
The mailbag episode ranges across market structure, incentives, and a few oddly specific corners of finance. The hosts explain why sell-side analysts ask questions on earnings calls even though everyone hears the answer, arguing that the point is partly informational and partly promotional: good public questions build reputation, attract clients, and improve access to companies. They then turn to hedge funds and the claim that puzzle-solving, not money hunger, often motivates the best investors, while also acknowledging that the same weirdness can coexist with fraud and blowups.
A second cluster of questions covers proxy advisers, ETF mechanics, and meme-stock-style dynamics. The hosts say ISS and Glass Lewis are influential, but mostly on low-stakes voting matters, and that their power is more persuasive than controlling. On ETFs, they argue that direct issuer trading would turn the product into a mutual fund and would sacrifice the tax and structural advantages that make ETFs work; the arbitrage mechanism is what keeps prices aligned with NAV and limits the chance of a true “meme ETF.”
They also discuss prediction markets and sports betting, suggesting sports books could evolve into retail-facing intermediaries that lay off risk in public markets. The episode closes with a practical explanation of company buybacks and 10b5-1 plans, and a lighter answer about horse dancing, which Katie Greifeld describes as a demanding performance sport rather than pure adrenaline seeking.
Key takeaways
- The hosts argue that earnings-call questions are a marketing tool for sell-side analysts as much as an information-gathering exercise.
- Matt Levine says the best hedge-fund people are often puzzle solvers, but that the same culture can produce fraud and blowups.
- The hosts say ISS and Glass Lewis matter most in low-stakes proxy votes and have influence because they are persuasive, not because they have authority.
- They explain that ETF structure depends on exchange trading and in-kind creations/redemptions, so turning every trade into an issuer trade would make it a mutual fund.
- On buybacks, the hosts say companies often use 10b5-1 plans or bankers to execute repurchases, rather than timing trades manually.
- Katie Greifeld says horse dancing is more like horse Pilates than a pure adrenaline sport, because the hard part is being on for a brief performance.
Notable quotes
“by asking good questions on the earnings call is reasonably productive”
“being a research analyst is in some sense a marketing job, right”
“There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money”
“The trick of ETFs is that they never trade for cash”
“And so that's why there's no mef because you can't sustainably trade above fair value”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. — Here we are, Friday, January 2nd. Yeah. — 2026. — Recording this live. — Recording this live. — Recording this on I don't know, December 17th, my friend says. Wow. It's been It's been an eventful two weeks.
I know. — Between when we recorded this and when you're listening to it. — Ominous. Very ominous. — Yeah. I'm going to regret this so much — Probably just given the pace of everything that's happening all at once. But hopefully our answers to these questions won't have changed too much in two weeks.
Hopefully. — Yeah, unless something amazing happens. — Hello and welcome to the Money Stuff Podcast, your weekly podcast where we talk about stuff related to money. I'm Matt Lavine and I write the Money Stuff column for Bloomberg Opinion. — And I'm Katie Grfeld, a reporter for Bloomberg News and an anchor for Bloomberg Television. I'm going to stop pretending to sing the mailbag thing, but today is a mailbag episode.
Yeah, mailbag. — Thank you, Katie. — Mailbag. — Mailbag. — Yeah, let's get into it. — We got some good ones. Uh, we're starting off strong with a question from Christopher who asks, "Why do analysts ask questions on earnings calls? I get why they ask them in private meetings with the company. They then get exclusive access to body language information, but on public earnings calls, they get their information only to have it simultaneously shared with everyone else. What do they get out of that?"
It's a good question. So basically all the questions on earnings calls are asked by sellside analysts whose job is not to buy stocks that will then go up but rather to publish research reports for their customers saying what stocks will go up.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- earnings calls
- hedge funds
- proxy advisers
- etf mechanics
- 10b5-1 plans
Watch the episode
Watch “Horse Pilates: A Mailbag Episode | Money Stuff: The Podcast” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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