Loads of Vultures: Funds, Agents, Bets

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i have another piece of information that can't be used on the podcast i'll say it in front of the microphone

there's a dead possum in my backyard and i'm trying to pretend that i haven't noticed it so that i don't have to mad that gets worse by the hour.

I know.

The thing is.

Wait, we can't put this in the pod?

Well, because then my wife would hear it.

Does she listen?

Sometimes.

That's cute.

So one day I noticed a dead squirrel in my yard, and I was like,

and then like I forgot about it, and I came back the next day and it was gone.

There's like a fair number of birds of prey in my vicinity, and I was like, huh, good job, birds of prey.

So you're just hoping one of them gets the job done?

But this possum is now past his his expiration date for him.

By birds of prey, you most only mean vultures because I don't think like a hawk would eat.

Okay.

There's loads of vultures in my neighborhood.

Right.

But no, we see bald eagles a fair amount and the bald eagle famously a scavenger.

You know, I feel like I did know that actually.

But I have.

It's like Ben Franklin's whole thing.

Like he wanted the national bird of America to be the turkey because the turkey is a noble bird and the bald eagle is a scavenger.

It kind of reminds me of when my cat vomits in my apartment, and I pretend not to notice it until my husband does, and then he cleans it up.

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 Greifeld, a reporter for Bloomberg News and an anchor for Bloomberg Television.

Speaking of dead things,

The death of a multi-strat.

Yeah.

So yeah, there's a big story this week about Edward Eisler's multi-strategy hedge fund, which is called something like Eisler Multi-Strategy Hedge Fund.

Something along those lines.

Is winding down because it's hard out there for a multi-strategy hedge fund that is not one of the big four multi-strategy hedge funds.

Yeah, this is a great scoop from Bloomberg.

I did enjoy also the post-mortem written by Sarah Butcher over at e-Financial Careers, which spoke to a bunch of people who had worked there or were familiar with it.

And I don't know, you add the two articles together.

It seems like a lot of this just comes down to costs.

Also, returns weren't great.

Yeah.

The hedge fund market has gotten so much more efficient in like my time.

It used to be that if you wanted to start a hedge fund, you started a hedge fund and you got capital based on your track record, but also your ability to appeal to LPs and what was in style and what institutional investors were looking for.

And now increasingly, the hedge fund business is dominated by these big multi-strategy funds like Millennium and Citadel and 0.72.

And if you are a person who wants to run money, you probably end up going to work for those guys rather than going off on your own.

And to run money for those guys, you don't have to be good at LPs.

You don't have to be necessarily in style.

You're just doing a job at a big firm.

And so as the market gets more efficient, like the people who are good at those firms get handed huge piles of capital to trade, and it's just harder and harder to work outside of those institutions.

And in particular, it seems really hard to run a multi-strategy fund.

Yeah.

I feel like just the story of ISILR in general is a sign of the times in two different ways because it didn't start as a multi-strategy.

It started as just a single manager fund, then it pivoted to become a multi-strat in like 2021.

And now it's winding down because it's not Millennium or Citadel to oversimplify it.

Right.

One of my readers emailed to be like, his mistake was pivoting to being a multi-strategy fund.

Like when you're a single manager fund, you have his own skill, which is what allowed him to launch a hedge fund.

And you have much more ability to evaluate the people you're hiring because you're kind of hiring them to assist you in making calls that you have a good understanding of rather than hiring them to stand up an entirely new business under your umbrella.

My headline about this was something like hedge funds have to be big.

And that's not really true, right?

There's still a market niche for like people running single manager specialized hedge funds, but it's probably true that multi-strategy hedge funds have to be big, right?

So if you're going to pivot from being a single manager fund to being a platform for a lot of portfolio managers, you have to be a big platform because otherwise they'll go to somewhere that can give them more capital and more money.

I don't know why he pivoted, right?

And clearly, like, there is some pressure to pivot.

Even if you run a single manager fund that has a good track record and is really

good at its specialty, you're still going to feel kind of like squeezed by the big multi-strategy funds that have more resources and are like an easier check for big allocators to write.

It's harder to compete with them.

And so you might think, well, the best way to compete with them is to be a multi-manager fund myself.

But that's the big bet.

You have to become a giant multi-strategy fund to really compete.

Instead of getting even better at your thing, you spread out across all the things.

Plus, by the way, all the people who run the big multi-strategy funds

did kind of start as

hedge fund managers and then they became managers of hedge fund managers, right?

So there is a path, right?

It's just it's likely how many people can follow it anymore.

Yeah.

I don't know if I would pivot my hedge funds that I run to become a multi-manager fund in this day and age.

I do want to talk about fees because that's a recurring theme here is that the pass-through expenses at Eisler were really high and they were trying to bring them down.

And are pass-through fees unique to the multi-strategy dynamic?

Yeah, the modern multi-strategy funds are somewhere between

a hedge fund and a fund of funds.

They're kind of like their business is to hire portfolio managers, allocate capital to them, and sort of pay them like hedge fund managers and then collect fees from the ultimate investors.

And so yeah, the pass-through fees are traditionally a hallmark of of modern pod shops because what a pass-through fee is, I mean, it's like paying for rent and Bloomberg terminals and stuff.

But really, what it is, is paying performance fees to the individual portfolio managers, regardless of the performance of the overall fund.

So when you're hiring portfolio managers, you can pay them incentive compensation on their own performance.

And I think in the current market, you pay them like accelerated

performance compensation on their own performance.

So you pay them like a bigger chunk.

If the going rate is they get 20% of their profits, like you might pay them 30% for their first year so that they like have an incentive to join you because it's like a really hot market for hedge fund talent.

And if you're doing that and you run a big fund, you have some economies of scale and you have some offsetting.

you have the ability to like aggregate a lot of good portfolio managers into something with like high and uncorrelated returns but you have a big expense base.

And if you are a smaller fund, it is harder to spread that expense base over a lot of winning bets.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, you think about some of the figures that Nishankumar wrote about.

So the firm charged clients $244 million in pass-through fees in 2023.

It was about $200 million in 2022.

They had a restructuring earlier this year and were trying to bring their pass-through fees down to 2022 levels.

But then you pair that with the Sour Butcher article, and there are are some snarky quotes from people who used to work there about how a lot of their real risk takers had left, like their hotshots.

And they just had, this is a direct quote, they had far too many junior people who didn't know how to take risks.

So it seems like their costs were really high for at least what's being described in this article as subpar talent.

Well, this is just like the efficiency of the market, right?

Like this is what Cappy Palaeologo said to us on the podcast, like that the funds that he works at are CIVs for talent, right?

Like you have the big funds are pretty good at identifying talent, pretty good at firing people who they don't think are talented.

And so they end up with a lot of the good portfolio managers.

And if you're a good portfolio manager at a multi-strategy fund, your name's not on the door, you're

kind of doing it for the money, right?

Like if someone is like, we'll allocate you more money and give you more of your performance as a fee,

you end up at the bigger places that can allocate you more money.

And if the bigger places are really good at identifying talent, that's how the talent save works.

And that makes it really hard for someone who runs a smaller place to keep the best talent.

There was something in the article about how a lot of the meeting rooms after this letter went out were filled with people calling headhunters, etc.

Apparently, some insiders know that Eisler's more mediocre portfolio managers will now simply fan out across the industry and dilute returns elsewhere.

That's just so bad.

I don't know why that would be true.

I mean, well, I don't know.

You think they're going to leave altogether?

I wish the best to all mediocre portfolio managers, but

it's the talent sieve, right?

Yeah.

Like,

no one's like, ooh, let's scoop up the mediocre portfolio managers, right?

They're trying to find the people who have good returns.

Hi, Hi, I'm Kelly Cavanaro, Managing Director, Head of North America Institutional Distribution.

At Janice Henderson Investors, we believe working together is the way to work better.

Like combining your portfolio plans and our in-depth strategy, your valued assets, and our valuable insights, your mission, and our vision.

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A lot of these Eisler employees were calling headhunters at the start of the week.

They could have been calling actually their new agent.

Okay, so there's this most of your journal story about this guy, Ryan Walsh, who is, I think, has styled himself as the first talent agent for hedge fund managers or portfolio managers.

I've certainly never heard of one before.

Haven't you though?

Because you've heard of recruiters.

I've heard of recruiters.

I've heard of recruiters.

Are they different?

They're a little bit different in terms of who's paying.

Yeah, okay.

I said it.

Yeah.

All right.

Do you think they're not different?

Do you think they're different?

I think they're a little bit different.

Yeah, they're a little bit different.

You could call a headhunter.

The head hunter will,

one,

try to find you a job at a hedge fund and two,

try to get you the best possible compensation package package because

probably they get the cut of it you know true now but that cut isn't coming from your pay yeah right it's coming from the hedge fund which is so so right a traditional headhunter is

probably more aligned with the employer whereas an agent is more aligned with the employee they should be they should be but both of them are mostly interested in brokering a deal rather than like we're all trying to eat you know yeah so i don't know what we find is that like a hedge fund agent is not so different from a hedge fund recruiter, but it's a little different.

There's nuance.

There's nuance.

And this guy is apparently the first hedge fund agent, but possibly the first one to have

a work of art featuring Ari Gold, the agent from Entourage on his walls.

Yeah.

You know, you like watch, like, you know, some number of people are like watching Entourage, like, ooh, I could be an agent for hedge funds.

I don't understand.

But so

this is what I think about hedge fund agents.

Like, you think about like agents classically it's like sports

actors

television anchors for sure things of this nature it's like traditionally people whose day job

is

not

financial negotiation and like possibly somewhat unworldly right like you think about like a quarterback is not like a business person they're like you know they're throwing a football they're not like talking about business all day

it's funny to have an agent for like a hedge fund manager who like

I would think that if you're a portfolio manager at a hedge fund, you actually do have a pretty good sense of the market for portfolio managers at hedge funds in a way that

you know a novelist might not.

That's true.

Just sort of like as a matter of temperament and personality, you'd pay attention to those things and you'd like be able to discuss the value of getting a higher percentage of your profit sources in upfront.

You know, like you'd think about related topics all day and you'd be keenly interested in this.

So, you would probably have less need for an agent.

But as the guy points out, like, you do have a demanding day job, and so you probably aren't closely tracking the market for portfolio managers.

And, like, the market is not super transparent.

So, like, you're relying on rumor and anecdote to know what people are getting paid elsewhere.

And so, if there's an agent who collates all of that information, he's going to provide value to you.

Also, the idea of someone negotiating on your behalf.

And, like, someone's going to be- Again,

yes, I agree.

I would want someone to negotiate on my behalf.

It's possible that a lot of Hedgehog portfolio managers are happy to negotiate.

I don't know, maybe.

If you're like a distressed guy, you're like, yeah,

I'll curse at my boss.

Maybe you just want to sit in front of your Bloomberg terminal or whatever and think your big thoughts.

No, I agree.

I think there's a range of people, and there are certainly a lot of people who have killer instinct as like electronic traders, but don't want to negotiate with their boss for more money.

Yeah.

And so they can hire an agent.

Reading this article, I also thought about like, you know who really should have agents?

Tell me.

AI researchers?

AI researchers.

Like check all the boxes.

First of all, they get paid like an order of magnitude more than hedge fund portfolio managers, which is crazy.

Second, they are like stereotypically kind of unworldly.

And like there's been like articles about like, oh, like these 23-year-old AI researchers are

consulting with their friends

to see whether they should take a $250 million offer from Market Decker.

They should have an agent.

Yeah.

I should be it.

I mean, I shouldn't be because I'm terrible at all aspects of that job.

Yeah, but you'd probably be slightly better than that 23-year-old.

I'm not sure that's right.

Because ultimately, the job is to appeal to Mark Zuckerberg.

That's true.

Maybe he likes the 23-year-old.

That's true.

More than he'd like an agent.

It's not even cold calling.

Your only call is to Mark Zuckerberg and trying to

degenerate market.

It's not like,

it's not like, oh, this is what all the rates are.

It's like, nope, this is Mark.

It is funny that the Wall Street Journal article mentioned that their business is dependent on the scale and proliferation of multi-manager hedge funds and could dry up if funds suffer a run of poor performance or redemptions.

And of course, we're talking about the death spiral of Eisler.

And

it's almost similar to the AI researcher.

You know, you're calling up Mark Zuckerberg or you're calling up Izzy Englander or Ken Griffin.

It's a slightly bigger pool, obviously.

It's an interesting question.

Like this world that we live in of these multi-strategy pod shops paying a lot of money and sort of dominating the hedge fund space is a relatively new world.

And right, it's possible that it's a blip and all of this will dry up and something new will replace it.

But it does kind of feel like this is the

correct organizing model for the hedge fund world where you have like these big institutions that can allocate a lot of capital to

investors and measure their skill really carefully and maximize the fees they can charge their limited partners.

It feels like it's a sort of correct and efficient organization of the hedge fund industry.

And in that correct and efficient world, like agents will thrive, right?

If like all these multi-manager funds blew up and we went back to a world of like single manager funds with the manager's name on the door, then you wouldn't need an agent, right?

Like you'd be a different thing.

Like you'd be these hedge fund managers would need capital introduction, right?

They'd need like to meet with LPs, but they wouldn't need to get hired by big firms.

But I think the world we live in now, where the big firms hire the portfolio managers, it feels kind of robust.

It's not like just an accident that it's organized that way.

Yeah.

No, it feels like it's a ripe space for

agents to be in.

And I'm kind of surprised that this is the first time.

There have been recruiters.

Yeah, that's true.

Well, it's cool that, you know, he struck out on his own and styled himself as an agent versus just another headhunter.

Yeah.

I mean, you see the appeal of a headhunter, which is the headhunter cold calls you at your current job.

It's like, I'd like to get you a new job where you get more money, and I will take 0% of it.

And this guy calls you and's like, I'll take a single-digit percent of it.

Yeah.

Well, apparently he's doing well.

Yeah, well,

the pitch of I will take a single digit percent when the number is very large is actually pretty appealing, right?

It's like, I'll negotiate on your behalf.

I'll work for you, not for the hedge fund.

Like, I don't know.

That's an appealing pitch if the numbers are large enough.

Yeah.

Also,

single-digit, not bad.

Yeah.

So, he founded this shop, according to LinkedIn, and this article a year ago, October 2024.

He's helped 12 clients land jobs in deals worth a combined $180 million since launching.

So, it's pretty much the top of the top end where, like, individual deals are $50 or $100 million, but like pretty good.

Pretty good.

It's like a $50 million average to $10.

And maybe those people will, you know, their next jobs will be bigger.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good on you, Ryan Walsh.

Hi, I'm Kelly Cavanaro, Managing Director, Head of North America Institutional Distribution.

At Janice Henderson Investors, we believe working together is the way to work better, like combining your portfolio plans and our in-depth strategy.

your valued assets and our valuable insights, your mission, and our vision.

Working in harmony to seek the right investment opportunities.

Janice Henderson Investors, Investing in a Brighter Future Together.

You're thoughtful about where your money goes.

You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic options plays on the side.

The point is, you're engaged with your investments, and Public gets that.

That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously.

On Public, you can put together a a multi-asset portfolio for the long haul.

Stocks, bonds, options, crypto, it's all there.

Plus an industry-leading 3.8% APY high-yield cash account.

Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously.

Go to public.com and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio.

That's public.com.

Paid for by Public Investing.

All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal.

Brokerage services for U.S.-listed registered securities, options, and bonds in a self-directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc., member Finrun SIPC.

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I love

football.

And so do folks on the prediction market that is Kelchie.

I do love that Kelchie, which is simultaneously a sports book and not a sports book.

They advertise like.

You need to throw in a wink there.

Simultaneously, a sports book and not a sports book.

Yeah, they like advertise on Instagram, like, you know, the only legal sports gambling in all 50 states.

And then they're like, we don't do gambling.

This has nothing to do with gambling.

Yeah.

The other thing that makes them unlike a sports book is that they don't license like the NFL's trademarks.

So like you can bet on the Super Bowl, but it's called the Pro Football Championship.

It's a big game.

You can't call it the big game.

The big game is controversial.

I think at some point the NFL tried to trademark the biggest.

Awesome.

Yeah, it's great.

In any case, Calci will allow you to bet on the pro football competitions.

And the latest news in Calci is that they are now offering same-game parlays.

We talked about this on the Mailbag episode.

Prediction markets come out of this high-minded idea of like, we're going to have these prediction markets that produce information about geopolitically important events, right?

We're going to allow people to predict events, and it's going to provide more information for the market, and it's going to be great.

And it's going to allow people to hedge the results of elections, right?

Yeah.

And it turns out that the demand for that is, yeah, you know, like every four years, you want to bet on a presidential election, but otherwise it's just not that hot.

It's like the Olympics.

Yeah.

You care about track and field once every four years and then you move on.

Unless you're Kitty Greyfeld.

But

all dressage on track and field that you're asking.

Yeah, esoteric sports.

But

it turns out that when you have a prediction market, one thing people like to predict is sporting events.

And those happen all the time.

And people are really addicted gamblers who put a lot of money into predicting sporting events.

And so if you can have your prediction market predict sporting events, then that's a big business.

And everybody thought all of the time until this January that that would be crazy.

And that obviously you couldn't have sports gambling in your prediction market.

But now you can.

Yeah.

So now Calci does.

And we've talked about like the regulatory drama where the states all try to stop them from doing this, but Calci has so far succeeded in telling the states to buzz off.

But anyway, so now they're offering same-game parlays, which everyone who talks about this sounds insane, right?

So like Robin Hood is like, we're democratizing access to

emerging asset classes, like sports predictions.

But it's like the emerging asset class here is same-game parlays, which is just like

a

product for gamblers.

Yeah.

Like no socially beneficial information is created by people betting on like the joint odds of like a football team winning and hitting the over and like someone scoring a touchdown.

To self-certify these contracts to like allow Kelchie to do this, they don't have to get approval from the CFTC, but they have to like file a form with the CFTC being like, we're doing this.

And with the form, they have to say what the purpose of it is, like what the hedging or like price discovery purpose of it is.

They don't have to publish that.

So they've confidentially told the CFTC, like,

someone somewhere is hedging some economic risk by betting same game parlays in a football game, but seems like a pretty marginal use.

There's like certain people in the world that I want to sit down with and like give them Truth Serum and ask them specific questions.

And one of those people is probably Vlad Tenov.

And I want him under Truth Serum to tell me, like, what do you truly see

in this prediction market that's different from just sports gambling or the founders of Calci?

Those are questions that I would like to ask.

Calci people at any time.

I know, but we can't give them Truth Serum.

I think they'd be pretty honest about it.

But I want to know if they truly, truly believe that there is a real substantial difference between a prediction market where you can offer single-game parlays versus just sports betting.

Okay.

One, no.

Yeah.

Two, but I know that you think that.

Two.

I think that what people have historically said about this

is that there's a big difference between

sports books and prediction markets.

And that difference is that a sports book is on the other side of the bet from you.

Right.

And a prediction market is just a platform where people can bet against each other.

It's not a faceless, emotionless.

No, no, it's not faceless, emotionless.

It's a peer-to-peer platform.

It's a place where I want to to predict that the Bills will win.

You want to predict that the Patriots will win.

We bet against each other.

The Bills.

Kelsey brings us together.

They provide a platform for us to bet, but they're not the bookmaker.

They're not setting the odds.

They're not taking the other side of it.

They don't want you to lose.

They don't care.

They're just like intermediating between people on one side and people on the other side.

They don't want anyone to lose.

They're not trying to trick anyone.

They're not trying to limit winning betters.

They're just bringing people together.

Whereas a sports book is betting against you.

So they want you to lose.

They want you to bet a lot of money and lose.

And if you bet and win, they will limit you so that you can't win too much money from them because they're taking the other side of every bet.

I've always found this distinction overstated because like the way, for instance, Robinhood works when you trade stocks is nominally like you can buy or sell stocks.

Robinhood is not on the other side of you.

But like practically, your orders are going to a market maker, right?

Like modern markets have market makers who are taking the other side of you, and they want, loosely speaking, to win, right?

Right.

And in prediction markets, it's a mixed bag.

Like, it is clearly the case that like

small dollar prediction markets on like local elections, like

Jane Street is not taking the other side of your bet on that, right?

Like they're clearly, they really are peer-to-peer, right?

Like some people are more professional than others.

Some people have more capital than others.

But like ultimately, the prediction market is a, is just a platform for people to bet against each other.

With sports, it's not clear that's true, right?

Like you have like some of the big market makers, Susquehanna has a big sports betting business now.

The big market makers will like support sports books or trade on sports books.

And like

it seems clear that some big market makers, you know, if there's a big enough demand to trade sports bets on prediction markets, they'll be on the other side of the sports bets.

Right.

So again, there's a market.

You can take either side, but like a market maker will sit in between and try to take the winning side of the bet, right?

And this is especially true with parlays because like the way a parlay works is like there's no natural person on the other side.

Like if I pick like, here are the six things that I think will happen in this football game.

And if I hit all of them correct, I win a lot of money.

And if I miss even one, I get nothing.

Like no one, no person is taking the other side of that.

No individual retail gambler is like.

I want to predict that one of these six things will not come true.

And if they all come true, I'll pay a lot of money.

And if none of them come true, then I'll make a little money.

Like that's not a retail gambling bet.

The person on the other side of the parlay has to be a market maker.

And it's like not entirely clear exactly what the mechanics are, but like it seems like the mechanics are like there's a market maker with a pricing model.

And if you pick a parlay, you can get it sent to the market maker who will fill it for you at like a price that the market maker sets.

And so that's different from everything else on Kelchie, right?

It's different from the story of like, we're just a neutral platform where people can trade.

This is clearly a story of like, you are trading with a market maker.

It's not Calci.

Calci isn't directly betting against you, but someone is directly betting against you who is partnered with Calci to provide this service, right?

Yeah.

Or maybe more than one somebody, right?

Maybe a bunch of market makers who are providing the prices.

But that's like pretty different and like much, much, much, much, much closer, not only in the product, but in like the structure to traditional sports betting.

So I see how, obviously, from the perspective of Calci,

that is a a really substantial and meaningful difference.

I'm saying they're getting rid of that difference by doing the parlays.

Well, I was going to say, like, if I'm an investor or a better, a trader on Calci versus a gambler on FanDuel, like, is my experience any different?

Uh,

probably not.

Well, it's different in various ways.

The news this week of Calci offering parlays like caused the big drop in the stocks of the traditional sports books.

They both went down like 10%, like FanDuel and Flutter.

But Kalci is still like a teeny, tiny fraction of the size of them because, like, they offer more bets and a better user experience and everything.

But, like, that's

converging.

But is your experience different?

Yeah, like, I mean, like, the buttons you push and like the sort of layout of the thing is different.

But, like,

I don't know how big a difference it is that they're a platform and other places are sports books.

Because I do think that, like, in either case, you're kind of facing ultimately some

algorithmic price setter, some professional who sets the prices and tries to

tries to set the prices so that the market is, just like any other market maker,

you want to have a relatively balanced book, right?

You don't want to be facing a huge risk of, you know, you don't want to be betting all on one side so that if you lose, you lose a lot of money.

But like you take some risk.

You're not looking for a perfectly balanced book, right?

You're looking to have some bets where you think the odds are in your favor.

Yeah.

The fact that you did have those shares drop meant that sell side analysts had to react to the news.

And there was an article by the Wall Street Journal quoting this benchmark analyst, Mike Hickey, who made the same point that this is small.

Until it scales or becomes more robust, it doesn't appear competitive.

And it seems like DraftKings and fan duels still have an edge.

He also mentioned that the strategy by Calci to make themselves look just like a sports book certainly comes with some risks, which is interesting.

I mean, you made the point that there's all this legal drama, but then the calendar flipped and it was January of this year.

And now you're in Trump's America.

Yeah, I don't think they think it comes with that much risk.

Yeah.

There's risk.

Their court cases are still on appeal.

Like there's still some risk that it will turn out that they're subject to state gaming regulation.

And then basically this kind of goes away.

Yeah.

Like not entirely, but it kind of goes away.

But

I think they are very strongly betting on in Trump's CFTC.

they can do whatever they want and no one will stop them.

It's funny because DraftKings, the CEO apparently, has specifically cited Kelchie's legal troubles as part of the reason why they've steered clear of prediction markets.

But I think they should fight back.

They should launch their own prediction markets and go for it.

Or they should offer stock trading.

Why not?

Offering stock trading is actually a separate set of questions for whether prediction markets are gambling.

I think if Kelchie ultimately

ends up a really big competitor to FanDuel

and DraftKings and

the legal stuff is all resolved in favor of like you can offer whatever bets you want on a prediction market, then Calci has a huge advantage.

They're legal in 50 states and

it's not free from debt, but they seem to get a better tax treatment.

And so there, yeah, I think FanDuel and DraftKings flip into finding a prediction market, right?

I think it's hard, right?

They have to like register with the CFTC, but it's like, yeah, there's a path to doing it.

FanDuel did it, and apparently.

Sort of.

They partnered with CME for like...

Yeah.

But yeah.

I've written.

Go on.

And this will be of interest to you.

That within the next two years, we're going to see a football bat ETF.

You're right.

Yeah.

And that was the Money Stuff podcast.

I'm Matt Levine.

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