sonali: bloomberg markets, i am sonali basak. we have green on the screen to end of the week into a long holiday. s&p 500 about three fourths of 1%. the philadelphia semiconductor index feeling love this week. of almost 2% on the day. every stock in the index is in the group -- in the green on the

day. moving closer to the 5% level, essentially flat on the day, but you have had a ride higher this week. shares of roth soaring for its forecast, first quarter comparable sales were roughly in line with expectations. analysts praising the company's strategy to add more recognizable brands in the lineup. ross stores up almost 10%. investors are weary of a weak short-term outlook. the company expects greater turn for price sensitive subscribers on the turbotax platform and says the ceo of the credit, business will retire by the end of the year. intuit is down. my favorite beat, the wall street beat. a once niche stock trade known as dispersion has ballooned into one of the biggest option strategies on wall street and his stirring fears that it will be crushed by its own popularity.

christina lee is all over this industry and joins us from london on her story. one of the most read on the bloomberg terminal raising the question on what the biggest worry is about this trade. >> i think it is a classic wall street cycle in that it did really well around 2022. anecdotally a lot of money went into via multi-manager hedge funds. now people are really worried. if you look at the charts it shows the cost of entering the trade is the highest since 2011. it is making money for now, but if you get into the trade at this moment you are really counting on this pattern continuing. sonali: maybe it is worth taking a step back and explaining this trade. you have written assets have nearly tripled by some measures. what is it doing exactly for investors? justina: that's a great question. i always feel bad when i go on tv and talk about options because it's very technical but

i will do my best to simplify. you are buying single stock options and selling index volatility, index options.the reason that is supposed to work is there are a lot of people who want to buy index options from you as a hedge. at the same time, because stocks move around and cancel each other out, meaning there is some correlation between them. single stock vol ends up higher than index vol and that is the basic reasoning of the trade. sonali: does that imply you are short volatility here? in the last year, that has generally worked out for you. in the last five years it has directionally worked out for you. we're headed into an election cycle and into other potential things that could start to shake things up under the surface. with the vix at 12 being short feels fine, but what about the rest of the year? justina: that is a great point. that is why this trait has been

so successful.we have had these big moves at the single stock level. tesla, nvidia. on an index level, volatility has been really low. we haven't had a lot of demand for hedging. even in 2022 when the s&p ground down. we haven't had any big macro shocks. you have made a lot of money on your stock portfolio, stock hedging is now pretty cheap. we have an election coming up and it's a pretty good time to start hedging your portfolio again. that could be a problem for the dispersion strategy. sonali: do you think it also shelters or covers up the real volatility under the surface? if you're looking at the vix and you see it hanging out around 12 you are saying that maybe things are calm under the hood, but if all of the activity is in options is everything being fully reflected? justina: that is a big question.

i think it is a big debate in the options world because there is one argument that all of this -- index, option, selling -- dispersion is part of that. it creates a self-fulfilling cycle where a lot of people are selling vol so the price of vol goes down and you think, why is the vix so low? this can't sustain itself and that if we do get an economic shock or big surprise in markets, ultimately volatility has to spike. it is probably true that all of this index vol selling has effect as long as things remain relatively calm. sonali: thank you for your reporting and your time. it is late in london and a long weekend ahead. also catch this story on the terminal. there is another big story on the terminal. the founder of segantii capital

marking the end of a 16 year run from one of the largest and most successful hedge funds in asia with strong ties to the banks. the decision, felt abrupt, came three weeks after hong kong authorities charged him, segantii, and a former trader with insider trading. can you give us the story on how we got here? >> a lot of u.s. investors and finance professionals may not necessarily have heard about segantii, but it had established itself as one of the biggest hedge funds in asia. started by simon seidler in 2007 with $26 million. by the end of 2021, it commanded over $6.2 billion. that is a pretty sizable hedge fund that part of the world. mostly for percent equity markets and relative value trades on companies listed on various exchanges. it's real strength was in the block trade market.

when asia bankers need to offload secondary offerings, special block trades that hit the market, or an initial public offerings, they would turn to segantii. segantii would be one of their first calls. going back to recent events and the hong kong action you mentioned, three weeks ago they were tied to insider dealing related to a block trade from a few years ago. once that came out, became public, and we heard about the legal action, clients started asking for their money back. prime brokers started turning the screws. when you go down that path it's very hard to see a viable path forward. sonali: there is amazing color in the story about segantii. simon seidler and how he ran the firm. even having a feng shui master come to the office and advise on how to optimize the space for good thought. -- good luck. tell us why the closure of segantii is

significant. was it expected? >> only expected from the point of view that you see the legal action. you can't foresee a scenario where investors won't ask questions. yes, they are saying that they will mount a vigorous defense. or at least that is our understanding. but perception is half the battle. people tend to withdraw. simon sadler is an interesting character. we talk about his alliance on feng shui, but ultimately his luck ran out. sonali: between this story and everything that you've done we thank you so much for keeping an eye on some of the toughest stories in this market today. coming up, we are talking about the sec paving the way for easter etf's. a question remains around protocols for the popular crypto token. this is bloomberg. ♪ illiant?

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sonali: this is bloomberg markets. i am sonali basak. it is time for the stock of the hour. watching shares of coinbase because the sec paves the way for the eventual launch of the first etf investing directly in the ether token. this is how shares have performed since the approval of the bitcoin etf in january. despite the worries from investors. we will discuss the business implications with james about what ether could mean for coinbase. does it disrupt the business at the end of the day? >> coinbase is the custodian of

choice for most of these etf's we already have. they're likely to be the number one custodian if things change with the theory him etf's we are expecting full approval on. as far as disrupting the business, i don't think so. i think that coinbase is in a litigation battle with the sec, the sec is saying they are illegal securities brokers in the way that they are dealing with tokens traded on the platform. it hurts the sec. they approve these as commodity-based trust shares which says the sec is accepting ethereum as an asset, as in itself, as a commodity likely to give ammunition to coinbase in its fight over whether some of these tokens are securities or not. sonali: something that is relevant to ethereum that

doesn't matter so much for bitcoin is the issue of staking. we know that there is a stake in the business as it pertains to coinbase staking to something the sec has been concerned about and pivotal to the future of ether. how might that play out through this? james: usually there are a bunch of things that these issuers and exchanges have to go through at the sec and the sec says yes or no. you can or cannot do that. one thing we never thought would happen, these etf's got approved on a 180 degree political shift, we never expected them to allow staking. the sec has been vocal against any form of staking. they don't like staking in underlying assets. one of my theories is i never really thought the sec would go full and say that ethereum is a security itself, but they will say staking is a service. ethereum that is a stake could

be a security in the sec's eyes. that is yet to be decided. ethereum itself, it is basically settled, as far as i am concerned, the sec is concerned, ethereum is a commodity. that was most of the rest of the government's stance on ethereum, but here is the sec doing it in their approval order yesterday. sonali: how do you feel about the demand story for ethereum as it is relative to bitcoin. does the broader american public no ethereum to the fact that issuers me tied to that as well? james: there will be less issuers. there is likely to be eight ethereum issuers. we don't know when that will happen. if you look at the relative market sizes, ethereum is 30% the size of bitcoin.

it is easier to describe what it is. it is digital gold, the second amendment of money. when you talk about a theory him it is hard to come up with a one-liner for what it is. maybe digital oil. there are a bunch of options, but it is more complex and the way that it works. it is more ingrained into the nature of the web. that is where it really gets its money from. bitcoin has taken $13 billion. we think because they won't allow staking and there is more utility the demand will be less than the market cap ratio i talked about. we are still talking about potentially billions of dollars coming into these new etf's and we have a grayscale that is part of this. $11 billion in assets they will convert to an etf.

there will be serious capital at play when these get approved by the sec, which we view as a matter of when, not if. sonali: looking forward to following the ethenistics. happy long weekend to you. we will speak about economics professor -- as she pushes back on larry fink's assumption that americans will need to retire later in life than usual in order to avoid poverty. my conversation with her is next. this is bloomberg. this is bloomberg. ♪

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>> the acute problem in the united states is we still have 57 million americans who don't have any savings or retirement plan. social security is a fantastic foundation for retirement, but if that is all you have when you

retire you will be living in poverty, below the poverty line. it is supplemental but not meant to be the totality of what you have in retirement. sonali: that was blackrock's larry fink in march. that same week he sent a letter to investors saying, "i do think it's a bit crazy that our anchor idea for the right retirement age, 65 years old, originates from the time of the ottoman empire." he believes americans will need to retire later in life. in the latest edition of bloomberg magazine, she says that fink could be the solution to the upcoming retirement crisis but is wrong about some things, including the retirement age.i spoke with her about her new book, "work, retire, repeat." >> if i were in a room with larry fink, i would say, what you do at blackrock is a solution. you are managing money, managing

wealth for all americans to say for their retirement and americans need to build more wealth for retirement, but if you think, mr. fink, that people working longer, maybe one year or two years longer, will mean that people won't go into their old age without being downwardly mobile into poverty from being a middle-class worker, or you think that working longer will maintain people's living standards, you will be wrong for eight reasons. the first reason is, he and everyone else may think that it makes sense to work longer because people are living longer. that's not true. not everyone is living longer. there is a slice of the population that have had good health care, have had the kinds of jobs that enhance their health and well-being and

skills, and they are living longer. white men are definitely living longer than they have before. there are some parts of our economy, of our america, where the longevity is going down. deaths of despair, suicides, opioids, addiction, even the jobs that people have are foreshortening their lives. the inequality of longevity and healthy longevity is disproportionately distributed. they can't work longer. i have six others. sonali: let's harp on that. a lot of people on wall street believe working longer is a solution because of how health care has gotten better. let's get more specific on who it doesn't work for and how large is that population not being addressed if this is the solution? teresa: i have been in these rooms for about 40 years. ever since i started, social security was being cut and

pensions were going on the wayside, and there were more 401k's and do-it-yourself type of systems. we knew people wouldn't have enough given that we didn't have a good pension system. people thought, for the small group of people who are blue-collar workers, bricklayers, they will be able to be disabled earlier. for everyone else, the work will get easier. in 40 years that has not happened. think about it for a while. a lot of jobs that aren't blue-collar work have become pink color. pink collar jobs are jobs that women do in the service sector. taking care of older people. taking care of children. that requires a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of stooping and bending, a lot of physical activity, and those jobs break bodies down. there are also a lot of light blue color jobs or semi-pink

collar jobs that require a lot of engagement with the computer. the computer has made some aspects of jobs easier, easier on the knees, but the requirements for intense concentration, keen eyesight, and be able to speed up your work because of increased surveillance, has actually made those jobs harder. when you add up all of the complexities involved in jobs that older people have, those jobs can raise cortisol levels, increase inflammation, and cause more metabolic disorders and early death. a lot of the jobs that people have and are expected to have an old age are the kinds of jobs that will break bodies down and are accelerating sickness. sonali: that is the impact on the individual. it seems the retirement burden

has shifted from employers to the individual. at the same time, there is a question of whether a lot of these jobs will be supported at that age level. how do you see that conundrum working out? teresa: some businesses are hoping there will be a big supply of desperate older workers ready to work. those are in home health care and personal care. we have one of the biggest industries. everybody is in this personal care. they are destined to add over one million jobs in an economy where we will only add about 11 million jobs over the past 10 years. a good 10% of the new labor force will be in that one occupation. the business services, janitorial work, a disproportionate amount of older workers. i think those businesses like the fact that these workers are very cheap and very desperate. the fact that the jobs are

breaking down their bodies isn't of a concern of the employer's. part of the crisis is the lucky ones will be able to get those jobs. the part of the crisis that i think many experts, including larry fink, don't understand is that most people cannot decide when they retire. they are retired, they don't retire. the verve and the agent is on the wrong person. 52% of people who say that they are retired say that they were forced to retire. either because of their knees or their metabolic disorders or the stress of the job they couldn't take, or they had to take care of their spouse, but also because they were pushed out or laid off. the idea that workers can just decide to work longer is also a myth because most people cannot decide whether to work or not. sonali: certainly a relevant

conversation is more money managers way the retirement crisis and their role in it. that doesn't for bloomberg markets. i am sonali basak. have a great long weekend. i hope you get rest before a busy week ahead. ♪ feel more confident with stock ratings from j.p. morgan analysts in the chase app. when you've got a decision to make... the answer is j.p. morgan wealth management.

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>> from the world of politics to the world of business, this is "balance of power."