Public Breakups: Polymarket, Taxes, SMCI

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Hello, and welcome to the Money Stuff Podcast, your weekly podcast where we talk about stuff related to money.

I'm Matt Levine, and I write the Money Stuff column for Bloomberg Opinion.

And I'm Katie Greifold, a reporter for Bloomberg News and an anchor for Bloomberg Television.

What are we talking about today, Katie?

Well, first of all, I think we should acknowledge that it's Halloween and we are both phoning it in right now.

In the literal sense and the

metaphorical sense.

Matt's at home.

I'm at my parents' house.

Neither of us.

Neither was her.

Yeah, but

wouldn't it be good if we're just her

just sitting here?

None of our listeners would see it, but we could have just lied, I guess.

I took my daughter to get bagels today at like 6 a.m., and she was wearing her costume, which is, she's Wednesday from the TV show.

And she was like, Is it weird that I'm wearing my costume this early?

It was like dark out, and this guy walked by in a wears Waldo costume.

I was like, No, that guy is too.

Perfect.

Perfect.

It's weirder if people weren't wearing their costumes.

I meant to bring catters to the office, but I forgot.

You've worn catters on television previously, right?

Probably.

No,

you were like, Should I wear these on television on Halloween?

And I was like, Yes.

And then you didn't do it.

I almost certainly did not actually do that, but I always slip in a lot of Halloween puns.

I talk about a monster rally, a spooky setup for stocks, things like that.

If you listen to all two hours of the show, I'm sure it was overwhelming.

Well, I hope you'll continue that during this part.

Yeah.

Speaking of overwhelming, what we're talking about today, we're going to talk about...

Speaking of spooky things, we're going to talk about Hollymarket and what's going on in prediction markets.

Something spooky.

Yeah, manipulation, I don't know.

We're going to talk about tax-aware long-short strategies.

Matt, you're going to explain that to me.

And then we are also going to talk about Supermicro and Ernst ⁇ Young.

Okay, cool.

Jumping into the first one, Polymarket.

This was a fun one.

And I don't think you've written about this.

I feel like I had to really twist your arm to talk about this today.

Yeah, you like texted me, should we talk about polymarket?

And I was like, no.

And then

you like kept texting me until I got mad.

And then I was like, well, I'm mad enough about this.

We can talk about it.

Yeah.

And I was like, this is the seeds for a great discussion, given that it's 7.30 in the morning and we're so passionate.

So polymarket, it's not based in the U.S.

U.S.

investors or debtors can't

or okay, it's not based in the U.S.

It's not based in the U.S.

Yeah, so the big news was basically that there was one person who was pushing up the Trump odds.

His username, I assume it's a man, was Freddie9999.

And Polymarket's investigation found that, I don't know, he spent like $45 million and just pushed up Trump's odds.

But it seems like financial markets question mark ran with that.

Yeah, there's also news today where like some blockchain analysis company was like, a third of trades on Polymarket are washed trades.

Yeah, I did see that actually.

So I don't know.

Why is this interesting?

So the reason I wanted to talk about this is because, so I am on television every day for two hours, and there's been this weird vibe shift in the markets and among investors and analysts talking about Trump's odds going up, even though polls have been 50-50 basically since Kamala entered the race.

You have seen a Trump trade, at least that's what people have been calling it, unfold in markets.

You've seen long-end treasury yields kind of skyrocket.

And the U.S.

dollar has had a great month.

And there's disagreement.

Some people say it's just the fact that economic data has been really strong.

Other people say this is because Trump's odds have been going up in the prediction markets.

So I find that interesting because the polymarket experience has revealed that, you know, what we're looking at is sort of real-time chances of which candidate is going to win the election, it can be swayed pretty easily.

I mean, $45 million is certainly not nothing, but it's certainly not a lot of money.

So all these stories about polymarket being like easy to manipulate just feel to me like wishful thinking in a couple of ways.

And like, I sympathize because I share the wishes, but like, I just don't think I share the thinking.

Many people would rather not think that Trump has a 67% chance of winning.

And if they could say, no, no, this is fake, it's really 58% or 50%,

then that would make them happier, which I don't really understand because like

you'll never know what the a priori odds were.

And in a week, you'll know what happened.

So it's like being like, oh, this market is fake is just doesn't really do anything for you.

But then the other thing is like, Polymarket is a very crypto-based prediction market.

By the way, like...

all of the other like non-crypto markets have kind of followed polymarket's odds.

But anyway, and like people love the idea that crypto markets are being manipulated and are full of wash trading.

There's a lot of wash trading in crypto markets.

But

if you thought polymarket is like a little bit more Trump skewed because it's crypto people and crypto people are more Trump skewed, like that makes sense, you know?

Like if you think that like polymarkets prices are too high, you have to do something about that, which means going to trade on polymarket and like, you know,

That's kind of a pain.

You have to like go buy some crypto.

You have to pretend to not be based in the U.S.

And so like, yeah, there's like some hurdles to jump through.

And it's possible that the people who want to bet on Kamala Harris wouldn't want to go through those steps.

But this notion that you're going to like find a secret trick that actually polymarket is fake, it doesn't really do anything for me.

No one's found that secret trick.

The other thing I'd say is like, you're like, people are making enormous bets in the treasury market based on like their assessment of Trump's odds.

It's not like...

treasury traders are idiotically following the polymarket.

No, no.

The follow-on trades in like real financial markets are confirmatory, right?

They're not like, oh, like polymarket has tricked everyone.

It's like whatever, you know, the vibes are that have shifted on polymarket have shifted in like broader markets as well.

And so that gives you reason to believe that the polymarket odds are correct, not in the sense of like

correct about reality, but in the sense of like correct about reflecting sort of like roughly the market's view of the probabilities.

Yeah.

So a couple points there to your point about like how does this compare with other

prediction markets?

You look at Predictit, for example, which, you know, that's been around for longer than Polymarket, at least in my consciousness.

Odds of Trump winning were 60%,

at least at one point this week.

So that's not too out of line with what Polymarket is showing right now on Halloween, showing like 55%.

But I think.

I don't know, there's like a chicken and the egg thing here, which is, is polymarket reflecting and like tracking the odds in the broader market, or is the broader market, I'm talking about the treasury market following polymarket to that latter scenario.

I mean, you do have part of the sell side community actually taking polymarket into account.

JP Morgan has these baskets, these long, short baskets that are sort of putting together stocks that are expected to rise in whatever outcome.

And part of that model looks at moves that align with polymarket probabilities.

So, I mean, people in the actual real markets are using polymarket as a tool.

So I think that's interesting.

I'm not even saying like

polymarkets being manipulated.

I'm just saying like it would be easy to affect pricing.

Yeah, I guess.

But if you're saying like everyone in like the real markets is paying a lot of attention to polymarket prices and they're easy to manipulate, like that suggests they're easy to manipulate on both sides, right?

Like if you want to be like long treasuries, you can go buy some polymarket contracts and move the market significantly, right?

If, like, if the story here is true, that like real investors are sort of reflexively pricing based on polymarket odds, and that polymarket odds are relatively easy to manipulate, which I just like, I don't really believe either of those stories entirely.

I don't know.

It is kind of a fun thought experiment, though.

The thought experiment that I love is like, so, like, never mind, treasuries, the stock of DJT, Trump Media,

is kind of a proxy for Trump's odds of winning, and like kind of a bigger one than the polymarket markets.

And so like people constantly email me like, could you make money by manipulating polymarket odds and then selling DJT on the back of that?

And I don't know the answer, but like that's a fun little trade.

Like DJT is such a stranger proxy for Trump's odds than the polymarket markets are and

definitely one where there is like real money to be made.

DJT has been

frustrating to talk about on air every morning I go to like my most function on the Bloomberg terminal.

This is at like 6.30 in the morning.

And I look at what the biggest moves are.

It's been DJT this week, obviously.

And then I look at the biggest volume and it's also DJT.

So it's not even that it's just a couple of Yahoos trading DJT.

Like there is serious turnover in DJT, which is pretty wild.

Yeah, it's like a good way to express an opinion on his election, which is weird because Polymarket is a way to express an opinion on his election outcomes because like there's a contract that pays off zero or one depending on whether he wins the election.

DJT is nothing like that and yet it sort of functions as that, which is in itself a fascinating fact about modern financial markets.

Like why is DJT a referendum in his election?

I'd say, eh, it just seems like it should be, so it is.

It has Trump in the name, you know, and Trump is running for president.

So I don't think it's like.

I mean, that's like a electronic if he wins, it'll go down if he loses, right?

So like it's a correct thesis.

It's just like, why?

Yeah.

We had Nick Kolas from Data Trek on TV this week.

And one of the things that he emailed over to the team was on the topic of offshore gambling odds.

He said that everyone thinks this is an untainted prediction market.

Maybe, but these odds are also affecting financial markets.

You look at the peso, you look at bank stocks, you look at yields.

Could savvy traders move the gambling odds and trade financial assets for profit, just like we're talking about?

You could spend $45 million

to move Trump's odds and then also pair that with a short on like 10-year treasuries.

That could have been interesting like three weeks ago.

And maybe that's what that French national was doing.

I don't know.

I hope that's true.

One thing about this like this market is easy to manipulate argument is like, that's true on both sides, right?

Like I always talk about this with LIBOR manipulation.

Like with LIBOR manipulation, you could just like make up a number and that would affect the value of like trillions of dollars of derivatives.

And so people would just make up a number because they were like long these derivatives and they wanted them to go up.

And so they would like make up a high number.

And empirically, it turned out that people were doing the same thing on the other side.

And so, like, Libra was like kind of made up, but it's also kind of accurate because, like, everyone was doing the same thing and they were trying to manipulate the market on both sides.

There's a little of that here, too, where it's like you could buy a million dollars of Trump contracts and like sell a billion dollars of treasuries and make some money, like, maybe.

That doesn't tell you which way that bet is being made.

And it could easily be made both ways, right?

It's not like the like real financial markets are moving like that dramatically in response to a 5% shift in the polymarket odds.

Maybe that trade is worth it, but it seems like a risky trade to do.

Well, we'll find out in a couple of days.

Or we won't.

We'll never know the correct odds, but we'll know the outcome.

Yeah, we'll know how close to reality the polymarket odds were, depending on how they shift in the next couple of days, I guess.

I don't think we'll ever know how close to reality they were.

Either he'll win or he won't.

But at no point will we know that he was like 65% likely to win.

Yeah.

The market will resolve to 100 or 0.

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Taxes.

Taxes.

I need you to just explain this to me.

I've read it, I've listened to it, and I feel like I still am not grasping it.

Yes.

Robot told me all about it.

The trick is that you get to decide, for the most part, when you get taxable gains or losses, right?

So if you have stock and it goes up, you just hold on to it and like you wait.

And eventually, 20 years from now, you sell the stock and then you pay taxes on the gains.

Or by the way,

100 years from now, you die and it passes on to your heirs and they never pay taxes on the gains because of like basis step up, right?

If you have stocks that go down, you sell them right now and you have a taxable loss, capital loss, and that can be used to offset capital gains elsewhere in your portfolio.

So if you're like, you have capital gains, you also have some stocks that have gone down, you sell the stocks that have gone down and use them to offset your gains.

Obviously, you'd rather buy stocks that go up, right?

and like not have any taxable losses.

But like sometimes you want taxable losses because like you have gains elsewhere and you would prefer not to pay taxes on them, but you don't want to just like lose money for no reason.

And the conceptual trick is conceptually, let's say you have $100, right?

You go long like $500 of the SP and you go short like $400 of the SP.

So your net exposure is $100, right?

So it's like you've made the investment you wanted to make, but now you're long a lot and short a lot to offset it, but you're still net long.

And then either the market goes up or down.

If it goes up, you make money on your $500 long and you lose money on your $400 short.

And then what you do is

nothing with your long.

You just keep it on so you don't pay any taxes on the gains.

And you close out your short and you get a big tax loss on your short and you can use that to offset your gains elsewhere.

And then you put on another $400 short and you do it again.

And so every year you can like generate tax losses without any real economic losses because your long and your short positions are offsetting each other, right?

So like net, you're just long $100 of stock, but you have losses every year.

Did you go away?

So, Katie, I just explained taxiwear long short in a beautiful way that crashed your internet.

Yeah.

Caused you to go lie down for a while.

It's too bad that I didn't hear that because that explanation was something that I needed.

In brief, you buy like $200 of the SP, you're short $100 of the SP, net you're long $100 of the S ⁇ P.

But no matter what happens, you have tax losses.

You realize the tax losses each year and you use them to offset your gains elsewhere in the portfolio, like if you've, you know, sold the business or whatever.

And then you go put on the short again and you do it all over again.

That's like conceptually the trade, but in reality, that's not the trade at all because you're not really just allowed to do that.

You're not allowed to just buy a thing and go short the same thing and take the losses and not take the gains.

Those are called like the straddle rules and the wash sale rules.

And so the trick is to do this in a way where you're not long and short, the same thing, and also where when you close out the position and then you go put on the position again, you're putting on different positions.

So like, you know, if you have like some losses, you sell those stocks and you buy different stocks so that you continue to have the same exposure, but you can realize your losses on the stuff that you got rid of.

That's where the secret sauce comes in, but it's not that secret because there are a lot of stocks in in the world and you can sort of create a bunch of different diversified portfolios that give you the exposures you want.

And ideally, you know, you go long stocks that are good and you go short stocks that are bad.

And like maybe you don't have as many losses and you just have a lot of gains, but it's sort of like that's just gravy.

What you really want is to have a long, short portfolio where like your net exposure is the net exposure you want and where

if you lose money on one side of the trade, you get to deduct it from your taxes.

So your column in this conversation is inspired by a great article by Justina Lee of Bloomberg News last week.

And I feel like we're learning about a lot of different methods, if you're a really wealthy person, to sort of...

defer taxes.

The question I had reading this article, Justina describes an example of this brilliant Apple engineer.

He has a million dollars worth of Apple shares.

He has years of gains.

So basically he does this strategy, you know, maybe goes 130% long, 30% short to do this trade.

But why wouldn't he just do a swap fund in that scenario, which we just talked about like two weeks ago?

Swap funds have like their own administrative complexities.

If you're doing this, you're sort of permanently generating tax deductions.

Like you can keep generating tax deductions every year.

Like the swap fund is a way to diversify out of your

appreciated asset without immediately paying taxes on it, but you're not like generating any additional tax losses.

SWAP funds are kind of weird.

You're not getting the same diversification as you would by like buying an S P fund because you're sort of like in a SWAP fund with other people who have also contributed to the SWAP fund, generally.

That makes sense.

You know, Randy wrote this, people have been emailing me with a lot of like other ways that people defer taxes.

This is just like a sort of juiced up version of tax loss harvesting, which any financial advisor and most robo advisors at this point will do, where like just at the end of the year, you like sell your stocks stocks that have gone down so you can take tax losses and then you know you go buy some different stocks and

one thing that people have found is that

people often don't really want to buy different stocks because different stocks would give them a different risk profile

and so ideally they would go sell their stocks take their losses and then go buy the same stocks but you can't do that because the irs has rules against watch sales where you sell a stock take the losses and then immediately buy the back and so

people get arbitrarily close to that in ways that make people mad.

And so the classic is like, if you are invested in ETFs and you have an ETF that is down at the end of the year, you sell that ETF and you buy back a different ETF with the same like theme, right?

So,

you know, it could even be like you sell an S ⁇ P ETF and you buy back a different S ⁇ P ETF, whatever theme you had, like there's probably 10 ETFs that sort of serve that basic purpose and you sell one and buy back the other.

And the underlying holdings might be the same and the basic idea might be the same but you can say no no I didn't do a wash sale I sold one ETF and bought back a completely different ETF

and people who email me are like that's not really allowed and the rules on this are like a little bit unclear like if you read the rules they seem to be quite broad in saying that you can't do this stuff right you can't take tax losses when you're sort of hedged the whole time but if you look at sort of actual enforcement the rules are kind of enforced more narrowly where like if you sell one thing and buy back a very similar thing, you seem to not get in trouble for it.

So there's a lot of stuff going on here that people are like, yeah, it seems to work.

I mean, it's kind of poetic that like the origin story of the ETF rapper was just a way to defer and dodge taxes.

So, you know, it's fitting with the spirit.

Anyway, I can't see your face and I don't like that, but something else that I wanted to talk about from Justina's article.

Did you see the quote that she had in there from David Schizer?

He's the professor at Columbia Law School.

He said that basically, this whole business of the tax aware long short, it feeds off the complexity of the current rules.

And in his view, far too much time and energy is being expended by these sophisticated players to pursue a lower effective tax rate.

And I just thought that was funny.

You know, like, what if like Cliff Asnes was directing all of this mental energy and this brain power at bettering society, for example.

That seems to be at least what this professor is suggesting here.

I sympathize, but I also used to be a derivative structure.

And I tell you that in the abstract, it is hard to go to a client and say, here is a brilliant product for you.

Because like

the brilliant product comes down to like, I get you some variation on market returns and you pay me 1%, right?

And like over time, the expectation is that 1% really adds up.

So it's really really helpful to go to the client and say, the way I'm going to make money for you is not with my special brilliance, but by like just taking it from the IRS.

There's just a rule that says we can take this money from the IRS and give it to you and we'll take half of it.

And the client is like, yeah, that's a good deal.

When I was a derivative structure at a bank, if you go to a client and you're like, oh, you know, like we have a thing where you can manage your risk, it's like not that exciting, right?

But if you go to a client and you're like, here's a thing where the IRS will just pay you to do the trade, then like, that's great.

You know, they want that.

And so, on the one hand, being like, oh, these people doing these tax arbs should be doing something else for society.

Like, I get it.

But on the other hand, like, I don't know, if you're a financial engineer, the thing where it's like the IRS gives you free money is a great product compared to the thing where you're like, I have found a way to beat the market.

It's hard to beat the market.

It's not that hard to figure out a way to generate tax deductions and like defer tax gains.

Yeah.

It's not easy.

Smart people get paid a lot of money to do it, but it's like more reliable.

It's not entirely reliable, right?

You read about these things.

There's always someone being like, This is not really allowed, like, this is going to get someone in trouble.

Like, this might not, you know, the rules might change.

So, it's not like entirely reliable, but it is a good pitch in a way that like will beat the market.

It's not, yeah, that's true.

There is a whole community of people who would say, like, the government needs your tax dollars, but that's a different story.

Well, those people probably aren't doing this trade, I would imagine not.

I mean, you know, like I actually did hear from a reader who was like, I got pitched this, and it felt bad for me to save this much on my taxes.

So I said, no, that's a that's a reasonable approach.

That sounds like a really good, conscientious person.

I don't think a lot of people.

Yeah, but it's also, it's like, you know, because you're like, oh, like, there's a little bit of uncertainty here and it's really complicated and like it's, you know, like not everyone who has pitched on a complicated financial product wants to do it.

And like

it's not I would prefer to pay higher taxes.

It's this seems like a lot of brain power to go through to save some money on my taxes.

But if you really want to save money on your taxes, then like no amount of brain power is too much to spend on saving money on taxes.

That's true.

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You want to get to the fun stuff?

Okay.

Super micro.

Super micro.

So I feel like it's bad.

It's just not a good look when your auditor resigns.

When your auditor resigns in like a real huff, you know?

Yeah.

Super Micro's auditors at UI, the former Ernst ⁇ Young, resigned with a nasty letter being like, we can't trust you anymore.

Yeah.

Seems bad.

I saw a version of that letter make its rounds on social media.

I was pretty short, too.

I feel like it was like a paragraph or two.

Maybe you've seen a letter that I haven't seen.

It could have been a fake letter, to be totally honest.

But anyway, a huff.

So Super SuperMicra filed a disclosure saying that their auditor, EY, had resigned because they had sent SuperMicro a letter saying that we can no longer rely on the representations that management makes or trust the audit committee, which is wild, right?

Sometimes there are accounting scandals where the corporate managers are doing bad stuff.

And then like the board finds out and there's a scandal.

And the board is shocked and like works with the auditors to find the problems, right?

Because the board doesn't really have incentives to do accounting fraud, right?

They're just there to get paid a yearly fee and get sued when things go wrong.

Like they don't want to do accounting fraud.

But this is a somewhat unusual case where EY is like, not only do we not trust management, but like we don't really want to talk to the audit committee anymore either, which is a pretty smooth move right there.

This is such a salient story because.

Hindenburg put out a short report on Supermicro, you know, like a month ago, saying that they were probably getting up to some accounting fraud.

When that happens, it's like the very natural like limit on how seriously to worry about it is like, well, their auditor hasn't resigned.

The auditor is still auditing their financial statement.

So how bad can their accounting really be?

And then the auditor resigns.

They're like, oh, there's no limit.

It could be anything, you know?

I feel like this checks.

two boxes for you, at least two boxes.

One on your campaign to make auditors be cool again.

I feel like this does a lot of lifting for you.

And then also.

It's very cool to do this.

Yeah.

Sort of, right?

Like, I'm like, this is very cool.

Like, I would love to resign in a huff like this.

And like, you know, because like you resign in a huff like this and you, you're really like, you're getting your revenge, right?

Like the stock tanked.

It's really a bad look for the company.

And so EUI can just be like, nope, we're going to resign.

See you later.

And have like a really negative effect on the company.

That said,

you could have a different interpretation of this, which is EUI has not like had the most amazing run ever in terms of like being criticized for its audit quality.

And

you could say, well, they are doing this out of an abundance of caution because like they can't be caught standing close to a company with any accounting problems because they've had some criticism of their audit work.

And in particular, you know, it reminds me of, I think last week, EY

was in the news for firing people who are watching like two training videos at the same time.

Right.

So like their auditors have like continuing education requirements and they have to watch videos on their computers to check off the boxes and some people are watching two videos at the same time so they could check off twice as many hours before getting back to better things i get that temptation no comment that ui fired them which seems very harsh until you remember that ui has been like fined a lot of money by regulators for things like having its accountants cheat on continuing education exams and so you can't really do that anymore and so there's this whole thing where like they are very much in a compliance culture because it's kind of like risky out there for them to be doing what they're doing.

And so they don't have a lot of tolerance for nonsense right now.

Yeah, that's a fair point.

The other box that I was thinking about for you is that, you know, it seems like you could be cast as sympathetic to the short seller community, which has taken a lot of heat over the past couple years.

And here's an example.

of a short seller potentially doing good for society and the health of markets.

Potentially, yeah.

Yeah.

It's a little, like, this is like a a little bit of an over-determined case because, like, the things that are going on here is like, one, Hindenburg is putting out a comprehensive report saying this company's accounting is bad.

Two, an employee has apparently gone to like the authorities to like blow the whistle and is like talking to the Justice Department, which is investigating because an employee has, you know, independently of Hindenburg come out to say that the accounting is bad.

And then three, like,

I don't know exactly what's motivating EY, but it's not necessarily they read the Hindenburg report and they're like, oh, wow, this accounting is bad, right?

Like, they might have independently disagreed with the accounting.

So, I mean, the timing is a little odd.

There are definitely some cases where it's like the short sellers were the market's only line of defense against problematic accounting.

And here it's not so clear that that's true, but like it is potentially confirmatory of what Hindenburg has been saying.

I guess we can't say for certain had Hindenburg not published its short report on August 27th, whether we would have seen EY resign as their auditor in late October.

But I don't know.

It's a good question, right?

There is pressure on them not to be near anything that gets any suspicion, but like, did they independently decide there were problems or were they like, oh, this is too high profile for us.

We got to get out of this, right?

Like, did Hindenburg put the pressure on them?

And by the way, like, one possibility here is that this company is like pure as the driven snow and Hindenburg is wrong.

And EY read the Hindenburg report and we're like, this is too hairy for us.

We got to get out of here.

And like, in fact, this is like a very destructive thing that has happened where EY,

rather than being a stalwart, independent auditor, has like felt the public pressure to renounce its client.

Like, that's a story you could tell.

Yeah.

If that plays out, we'll talk about it on this podcast.

Probably.

I'm not going to mark my calendar for it, but it's like a thing that could happen.

It's a watch this space sort of thing.

Something that I did want to talk about is that Supermicro's star has risen or had risen so quickly.

This company was only just added to the SP 500 in March, which was kind of a controversial thing.

You know, even though index inclusion is based on rules, there is some discretion on the part of the index committee.

And there was like this really brief moment in time, just the way that the timing worked out, where Supermicro was, I believe, in the small cap index while simultaneously being in the SP 500.

So, I don't know, it's just like this funny quirk that I don't know if Supermicro is really in the pain locker and it's been dragging one of many things dragging on the benchmark that it was only just recently added to.

This is definitely a thing that short sellers point to.

Like companies often get added to indices because of like short-term price moves that are sometimes, you know, bubbly or based on bad accounting or otherwise not sustainable.

And then like they're in the index and it's particularly embarrassing when the problems are found.

There could be some element of that here.

Yeah.

Well, we'll see also if it stays at least like in the NASDAQ 100 and the S ⁇ P 500.

I mean, it's still a big company.

The other thing I like about it is like the EY letter to Supermicro resigning is not publicly filed, although Supermicra quotes it a little bit.

But Supermicro's disclosure about it is like very sad, and it includes the lines, although the company recognizes EY's decision as final, it disagrees with EY's decision to resign as the company's independent registered public accounting firm.

Someone was like, it's like a sad breakup, right?

Like it's like, we know we can't do anything about it, but we're really sad about it.

But then the other thing that is crazy is that when you put out a statement like this, EY gets like a sort of right of response or like a right of fact-checking, where the statement that Supermicro filed comes with a little exhibit.

that is a letter from EY

to the SEC

saying, we have read Micro's disclosure and we agree with the statements contained in the first paragraph, the first sentence of the second paragraph, the third paragraph, the first three sentences of the fourth paragraph, the fifth paragraph, the seventh paragraph, and the eighth paragraph.

We have no basis to agree or disagree with the other statements, which is like, first of all, it's just like an incredibly like fun and embarrassing thing to have.

But secondly, like the things they don't agree or disagree with include like Super Macro is like, we don't think this will affect any of our financial statements.

Like we don't have to restate any of our financial statements.

EY is like, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know.

Good luck with that.

It's like really kind of like adding one more kick on the way out the door to send this letter saying that they don't agree with everything in the letter, in the disclosure.

I mean, public breakups are really hard.

They're really messy.

I almost have the like pop culture reference here, but I don't.

There's someone who can make another Ben Affleck J-Lo uh reference, but I can't.

Is there another one?

There's there's like a podcast host, right?

Her name is Chicken something.

Oh my god, Brianna Chicken Fry?

I can't believe that that's in your head.

That is like so firmly in my world.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, Zach Bryan dumped her on Instagram.

Well, they had broken up.

It's basically the same thing as Zach Brian dumping Brianna Chicken Fry on Instagram.

Yeah, in a really public way.

Yeah, that's amazing.

We should just cut the podcast off here.

You know what else has been pretty messy and hard is recording this podcast

remotely.

This has been a little bit of a nightmare, but I think we got through it.

We can end there.

Goodbye.

A happy Halloween.

This was super spooky.

And that was the Money Stuff Podcast.

I'm Matt Levium.

And I'm Katie Greyfeld.

You can find my work by subscribing to the Money Stuff newsletter on Bloomberg.com.

And you can find me on Bloomberg TV every day on Open Interest between 9 to 11 a.m.

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We'd love to hear from you.

You can send an email to moneypot at bloomberg.net.

Ask us a question and we might answer it on air.

You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right now and leave leave us a review.

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The Money Stuff Podcast is produced by Anna Mazarakis and Moses Andan.

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And Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.

Thanks for listening to the Money Stuff Podcast.

We'll be back next week with more stuff.

This was a nightmare, a Halloween nightmare.

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