In short: Named only as a competitor — Corgi's test of success is when investors assume "Corgi's got a China fund… cheaper than iShares".
39:43If somebody says, "Oh, I want a China fund. What's the iShares China fund?" Which is what I think a lot of people do. That we would succeed if they said, "I bet you Corgi's got a China fund. I bet you it's cheaper than iShares." Corgi China. Oh, there it is. That would be success for the business.
In short: Firms like BlackRock must balance 3bp index funds against ~90bp "enhanced indexing" — "there's not much profit margin in the index itself"; the cheap product is the access point for selling higher-fee ones (and the ESG wave was partly a fee play).
BlackRock runs iShares, among the largest index-fund businesses in the world. Green notes that plain index funds charge almost nothing (around 0.03% a year), so there is little profit in them. The money is made by using that huge customer base to sell pricier products, such as "enhanced indexing" at around 0.90%.
He ties ESG funds partly to that incentive: they justified higher fees. An observation about the industry's business model rather than a view on BlackRock shares.
7:13Firms like Black Rockck, for example, are constantly forced to balance very low income ETFs or index funds against higher fee alternatives, which is really where they're making their money. If you charge 90 basis points for enhanced indexing and three basis points for indexing, you can see that there's not much profit margin in the index itself.
In short: Named via the Carl Icahn–Larry Fink spat over bond ETFs: a "hyperliquid vehicle" wrapped around credit that "does not trade that much" looked like a mismatch that "is going to be lethal." His verdict, against his own expectations: "I did not expect this myself" — fixed-income ETFs are "if not solving that at least ameliorating some of these liquidity issues," a flywheel for electronic, portfolio and systematic bond trading. The drift toward an equity-like credit market is "fascinating and a little bit scary." A market-structure view, not a company call.
An ETF is a fund that trades on the stock exchange all day. BlackRock (through iShares) runs the largest bond ETFs. The long-standing worry — which Carl Icahn aimed directly at Larry Fink — was that corporate bonds barely trade, so wrapping them in something that can be sold in seconds would create a trap: in a panic, ETF sellers would force fire-sales of bonds nobody wants to buy.
Wigglesworth, who wrote the history of index funds (Trillions), says the opposite has happened, and that he did not predict it. Bond ETFs have become a "flywheel" for newer ways of trading bonds — electronically, in whole baskets at once, and by computer-driven strategies — which makes large parts of the credit market more liquid, not less. Banks are rebuilding their trading desks around it.
His one reservation is where this leads: a bond market that trades more and more like the stock market. That is good for liquidity, but it also means credit may start to move with the speed and mood swings of equities — "fascinating and a little bit scary."
31:44and fixed income ETFs. I mentioned that they were growing. But what I think is fascinating is how they're starting to rewire the machine, the fixed income machine, especially in corporate bond markets where ETFs, we were worried that they were going to be toxic. It's a different market.
In short: Gromen — a historical exhibit, not a company view. Retelling a Jim Rickards book anecdote: "Treasury's got a direct line into BlackRock, per the consigliere of one of the top execs… in a crisis, Treasury can pick up the phone, make one call and lock down 5 trillion of capital. That's it. No sales. And the rest of the market would follow." He dates the arrangement to "20 years ago nearly." Nothing is implied about the stock — it is cited as evidence that the exit can be closed administratively.
23:13But the point of it was this. Treasury's got a direct line into BlackRock, per the consigliere of one of the top execs at BlackRock, according to Jim Rickards. And Rickards goes on to say that in a crisis, Treasury can pick up the phone, make one call and lock down 5 trillion of capital now, which is BlackRock. That's it. No sales.
In short: Raised by the host as the champion of real-world-asset tokenization ("Larry Fink… says it's the next generation of markets"). Stöferle is unconvinced that tokenized gold is the next big driver — the parallel he draws is tokenized real estate and tokenized Van Gogh paintings, neither of which became a trend.
1:07:22But let's focus on vector 6, digitalization, because it's very interesting in terms of tokenized gold because one of the issues with access to gold has been people don't want to store it. There are issues with the hassle of buying gold and yes that is overcome potentially via a gold ETF. We're seeing this trend of real world assets and putting everything on chain, something that Larry Fink of BlackRock has been championing.
In short: Referenced through Larry Fink, again by the host — "Larry Fink said we're going to create these AI securities… Are you doubting Larry Fink's ability to raise money? I'm not." Gromen's rejoinder is the interesting part and is about the source of the money rather than the firm: "he's probably over in Saudi Arabia getting money. And I would say, from who? What money do the Middle East have to invest now?"
1:09:44I think that to use railroads, the track has been laid for NVIDIA to make $300 billion in operating profits. No accounting nonsense. Pure operating profit because of $500 billion of — Larry Fink said we're going to create these AI securities.
In short: Named via Larry Fink's "AI securities" remark, which Wigglesworth reads as compute becoming a tradable asset class — plausible in the end ("I can see us getting compute futures"), but "just because you say something is an asset class doesn't make it so," and the SEC gets a view. Also one of the signatories to the NVIDIA financing MOU he discounts: "take press releases with a pinch, maybe a fistful of salt."
10:31— Yes. What do you think that these AI securities are going to look like? Larry Fink literally said — I don't know if he was on vacation — these AI securities. What's an AI security? Well, I think it's just compute and I think that's quite an interesting thing, and I think this story is throwing in a lot of different things, but it's the transformation of compute — you can buy, lease a certain amount of GPUs I guess, or how you structure it, that can be turned into an asset class. I think there is a
In short: Named in the $500B Nvidia compute-financing consortium. That "the five guys at the table" flew in from the Hamptons in mid-August tells him how urgent the financing gap is — the AI thesis "has now run out of financing."
33:56slower growth in the AI sector. Take a look at this story that was released just two days ago. Nvidia and AI compute $500 billion of third party capital. Nvidia today announced strategic partnerships to establish independent compute financing platforms with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR to mobilize over $500 billion of third party capital for the buildout of AI infrastructure over time.
In short: An MOU signatory in the $500B NVIDIA compute-financing partnership. No committee stance.
In short: Named via its Global Infrastructure Partners unit as a member of the reported $500B NVIDIA AI-financing consortium. No committee stance.
In short: Terranova: "I like BlackRock" — a strong asset-price environment is good for the asset managers, and it's "only up 2% year to date," so like JPMorgan it's "at the initial stages to build momentum."
BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, and its fees rise as the value of the assets it oversees rises. With markets strong, Joe Terranova likes it — and notes it's only up 2% this year, so it's just at "the initial stages to build momentum," the same setup he saw in JPMorgan before its run.
In short: Lebenthal's final trade: "we see what happened to asset prices in the second quarter — that will show up in earnings." Reports this week (Wednesday).
BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, and its fees rise with the value of the assets it manages. Jim Lebenthal's final trade: because financial-market prices climbed in the second quarter, the assets BlackRock oversees are worth more, which should flow straight through to higher earnings when it reports (this Wednesday).
In short: A member of the stablecoin consortium launching a Circle rival — its inclusion, alongside Visa and Mastercard, signals the institutional weight behind the new entrant.
3:12Circle was down 17.5% that day because a consortion of companies including Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, and Black Rockck unveiled their own stable coin and stable coin ecosystem. The importance of having Visa and Mastercard as part of this consortium cannot be overstated. For a deeper dive, take a look at our episode on January 26, 2026 with Ken Sahausski, the payments analyst at Autonomous Research.
In short: Private-credit stress tell: capped redemptions from its HPS corporate-lending fund at 5% after investors sought to pull 13% — up from 9.3% sought in Q1.
3:36Take the stock I've recommended, Meritage. I recommended it in the low 70s in January. The war and higher rates caused it to decline to $62. It's now 74 and valued at 1.0 times tangible book value. Recent M&A transactions have taken place at 1.25 to 1.3 times tangible book value. In private credit news, BlackRock capped redemptions from its HPS corporate lending fund at 5% after investors sought to pull 13% of their shares. And that is higher than the 9.3% they sought to redeem in the first quarter.
In short: Made a rare "hard pivot" — abandoned 60/40 for real assets (gold/copper/uranium/energy). The street shifting confirms we're only in the 2nd–3rd inning of the hard-asset move.
BlackRock is the world's biggest asset manager. The notable thing is its rare "hard pivot": it abandoned the classic 60% stocks / 40% bonds mix in favor of real assets — gold, copper, uranium, energy. He reads the fact that the mainstream is finally shifting as confirmation his hard-asset move is still early (only the "2nd or 3rd inning").
35:45in a low inflation regime. — Right. Um and again, this is something that you've been advising for a while, this rotation into what you call hard assets uh including uh commodities and companies that make real real things. Uh and BlackRock is now making what many are calling a hard pivot, only the third time in 50 years that it's moving away from long duration US government bonds and towards real assets.
In short: Its Bitcoin ETF "democratized" the holder base (vs ~18 families owning 60% of BTC) — part of why he's comfortable owning IBIT.
BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager and the firm behind the IBIT Bitcoin ETF.
Here he mentions it positively in passing: its Bitcoin ETF helped spread ownership of Bitcoin across many investors (instead of ~18 families controlling 60% of it). That broader ownership base is part of why he's comfortable buying Bitcoin now — a supporting point rather than a view on BlackRock the stock.
27:00Now there's only 5 years of data, but historically when that ratio gets into the mid to low teens, you want to sell some gold and buy some Bitcoin. The second thing is, think of BlackRock, think of the ETFs. They've democratized the investor base somewhat.
In short: Gated its $26B HPS corporate-lending fund (met only 54% of Q1 redemptions) — the canary for a "run on the bank" in private credit. Also a passive concentrator.
BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager. The flashpoint here is one of its funds: a $26B "private credit" fund (HPS) that lends money directly to companies. Such funds promised investors they could pull their money out each quarter — but the underlying loans are extremely hard to sell quickly.
When too many investors asked for their money back, BlackRock could only meet about 54% of the requests — it "gated" the fund (limited withdrawals). McDonald sees this as the warning shot of a slow-motion bank run in private credit: once people lose trust, everyone rushes for the exit at once. He's also wary of BlackRock as one of the giant index-fund firms concentrating ownership of the whole market.
4:58Black Rockck is limited withdrawals from one of its flagship private credit funds following a surge in redemptions um as investor retreat investors retreat from the asset class and questions about credit quality intensify. The asset manager's $26 billion uh HPS corporate lending fund which it acquired as part of its 20 a1 $12 billion takeover of private credit specialist HPS investment partners last year approved 54% of redemption request in the first quarter according to a letter sent to investors in the vehicle. Is this normal behavior
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.