Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision in global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution for global growth for more than 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and seven clearing houses around the world. Now here's your host, Josh King, head of communications at Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
The ICE House, despite its name, is a darn sight warmer than the Jeongseon Alpine Center in Pyeongchang, South Korea, where the skiing events at the 23rd Olympic Winter Games wrapped up earlier this week. It was a triumphant fortnight in our home where my kids aged 13 and 10 and both avid ski racers were exactly the right age to lap up every moment of NBC's coverage that they could stay awake for. When big events occurred while they slumbered, they simply went to of the NBC sports app when they woke up to catch the exploits of Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin. As a nervous dad, I hold my breath as the kids watch in awe as Shaun White and Chloe Kim arch skyward in the halfpipe hoping against hope that they won't trade in their skis for snowboards. For NBC Universal, the Comcast unit that broadcast the games through all of these devices back in the US, projections forecast about $940 million in advertising revenue up from about 800 million for the games in Sochi, Russia four years ago. That despite a small slippage in ratings.
Josh King:
But there was no slippage in my household. The kids have now memorized the ads from the names like Visa, Dow, and Toyota, all companies listed here on the New York Stock Exchange. It is an advertiser's dream. But what is it like to be part of the reporting team in Korea? The world's greatest athletes assembling against a backdrop of global nuclear tensions and in a country that has built itself into an economic powerhouse since the armistice was signed in Panmunjom in 1953. Oh yeah, what's it like to work at a company that just this week launched a $31 billion bid for Sky TV, throwing a wrench into Rupert Murdoch's dreams. One member of the NBC Universal broadcast team just back from Pyeongchang is here with us in the ICE House today to answer both those questions. Folks, he didn't have to go far from his usual shop floor which is in fact the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Carl Quintanilla the host of Squawk on the Street on CNBC, which broadcasts every day from Post 9 right in front of the bell podium, moonlights every two years as an Olympic broadcaster. He joins us right after this.
Speaker 1:
Inside the ICE House is presented this week by the Secure Financial Transaction Infrastructure or the SFTI network. SFTI is the backbone of the ICE platform providing high security, high speed, direct market access, and trade execution capabilities to over 150 global markets. SFTI connects data and analytics from more than 600 proprietary and third party market sources. More on SFTI later in the show.
Josh King:
Next to the bell podium at the New York Stock Exchange, the most recognizable spot on the floor is Post 9, the gleaming set of CNBC's Squawk on the Street, Squawk Alley and Closing Bell where CNBC broadcasts live around the world throughout the trading day in the US. From 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM five days a week, Post 9 also constitutes the office for our guest today Carl Quintanilla host of Squawk on the Street. Exactly six years to the day of this taping CNBC unveiled its Post 9 set for the first time. The first permanent studio on the trading floor with Carl, then as today, in the anchor chair. CNBC and the NYSE are in modern memory synonymous. The network has been broadcasting there since Maria Bartiromo first waded into the crowd brokers screaming out their trades in August, 1995. CNBC has been there ever since. Carl, welcome back from Korea.
Carl Quintanilla:
No thanks. It's great to be here, Josh.
Josh King:
You left in the midst of the Dow losing the most points in a single session ever. By the time the Olympics were over, most of the loss has been regained. Thanks for leaving. Why'd you come back so soon?
Carl Quintanilla:
Should I go back for further gains? It was funny. I mean, the Olympics are a huge story, but for our purposes it needs to fit into a broader context, which is the markets. We flew there rather uncertain about how much we would get on the air. I mean, it's one thing to have, you have Lindsey Vonn live. That means very little if the Dow's down 1,000. We managed to thread the needle quite a bit. The sell off was, as we now know so far, contained and now recovered for the most part and so we were grateful. But it was an odd time to launch such a major assignment.
Josh King:
The US markets are open while you're trying to get some sleep over there. But for you focused on job one, were you waking up every 15 minutes and seeing how the markets were recovering based on the US trading debt?
Carl Quintanilla:
Yeah. Well, of course you're on a 14-hour you're ahead, so your day is spent waiting for East Coast to wake up. It's funny because I would have a great tweet written and then like, "Am I going to tweet it now or wait and have it go wasted while people are sleeping in the States?" But yeah, I mean, a lot of it was, and of course at our live shot you may be talking about sports but our feed is running with the ticker. We were always hyper aware of how the markets were trending and what that might mean for us.
Josh King:
Just to get the elephant out of the library as it were right off the bat. What's your MO when you roll out of bed in the morning and see that your parent company has put up a $31 billion bid for Sky TV within the Comcast umbrella?
Carl Quintanilla:
Having been under their ownership for a while now, not incredible surprise. I mean, as we said on the show today-
Josh King:
You spent a long time at the top of the show on that.
Carl Quintanilla:
Yes, we did. The whole A Block was about the bid and the point was made by Faber specifically about Brian Roberts and his aggressive nature when it comes to M&A. This is a part of a piece of that, certainly. It didn't surprise me the timing. I think obviously they wanted the Olympics to be a clean run. You had closing ceremonies this weekend, Monday, Tuesday. I think this was very much a part of how they operate, aggressive, but within disciplines, in this case the way it was communicated and the way it was timed.
Josh King:
You're seeing it on your feed. Then are you interested enough actually to dial in and listen to Brian's conference call or try and get secondary reporting and see how other people are reading it?
Carl Quintanilla:
Yeah, I mean, I think the call was 4:00 AM East Coast because it was London call, so I didn't get to hear it itself. Usually in the mornings we're reading in on everything from Powell to Macy's earnings. A conference call is a luxury I don't often get. Cramer's very good at getting transcripts and he's able to highlight them quickly and we rely on him for that. But that would be a luxury to actually get to listen to the call. But you also are looking for certainly the react and the way it's read. That could be a fun manager like we had from Larry Haverty in the top of the 10:00 AM this morning or even, quite frankly, Bloomberg Gadfly's response and what they think it might mean. You try to hear from as many pings as you can.
Josh King:
Is Cramer's transcripting method print out the paper and actually get a highlighter or does he do it electronically?
Carl Quintanilla:
No, no, no. It's all hard copy. In fact, if you ever see him walking away or walking after the 9:00 AM hour, he has a giant clear, plastic Philadelphia Eagles tote bag which is, I would say, has five or six inches of paper. That is everything from sell side research to conference call transcripts. Today he had the entire slide deck from JP Morgan's investor day. It'd be one thing to joke that it was unread, but it's all been read.
Josh King:
You had a funny tweet that you said being 14 hours ahead was the only way you could actually get ahead of Cramer.
Carl Quintanilla:
It's true. I don't know how well you know him but I mean the guy trains, and I mean workout trains, at 3:30, 4:30 in the morning. By the time I wake up here he's already read in and then everything else for him is just gravy. Being able to drill deeper, being able to prep for his 6:00 PM show. I've always said people, the first question at an airport if they recognize me, first question is always, "What is it like working with Jim Cramer?" And the answer is it is like going to college every day. There's at least two or three hardcore takeaways that I get just from sitting next to him. That could be something he says on the air. It just as likely is something he tosses off during a commercial break. It's amazing.
Josh King:
You must have been offering some Cramer withdrawal when you were in Pyeongchang. But shifting now to your experience in Korea, how did the Pyeongchang experience compare to Sochi and the Rio games that you've covered? I don't know what number of games this represents for you.
Carl Quintanilla:
This was my fifth. I had done Beijing, London, Sochi, Rio, and now Pyeongchang. It depends on if you're going to grade Olympics on a curve. Because the last two games, Rio and Sochi, you went in, it was uncertain whether the operators, the local Olympic committees, would be ready. I remember Sochi had all this drama about facilities. Rio, all this drama about security, and logistics, and crime, and traffic. Those were all legitimate concerns going in. Rio was like, is the water going to be safe for the rowers? But given all that, what struck me about these games was the lack of drama. I mean, the Koreans are so detail-oriented, unfailingly polite, everything was... I remember we arrived at the village where we were going to be staying and not only was it a smart lock, but they gave you a wearable, in case you wanted to open your door with your wearable and you wouldn't have to dig for your key. That to me said a lot about the Koreans. The venues were ready well in advance of the games. I mean, so if you were going to grade on a curve-
Josh King:
These guys were ready.
Carl Quintanilla:
Yeah. They were ready.
Josh King:
You tweeted at one point I think a tweet from one of your colleagues, Lou Dubois halfway through the games that at the NBC Olympics had live streamed I think 1.3 billion minutes of coverage. How much of that did you watch?
Carl Quintanilla:
There's less watching of the events, live or streaming, than you would think when you cover these games. Most of your time is spent traveling from shoot to shoot. But it was amazing. Those metrics were incredible. Lots of-
Josh King:
We actually did watch a lot of it in our house through the app.
Carl Quintanilla:
There's been some stories today about the linear ratings for NBCU and past winter games. Obviously, I mean, there's an erosion in the way people watch linear television and that got reflected in the numbers. But I think we hit the streaming record. We surpassed Sochi like halfway through the games. It was just a blowout. It's very difficult to comprehend the number of minutes of programming. It's like having a series of small Super Bowl every day on multiple disciplines, multiple sports. I mean, maybe it's an extreme thing to argue, but it's almost as if the Olympics were built to test the bounds of streaming technology.
Josh King:
On the app you go from event to event if you're watching with a kid, and there's no way to get around the advertising. The advertisers really got to deliver their message to whoever was in front of those screens.
Carl Quintanilla:
Yeah. I mean, and they pay up whether they're global sponsors or whether they have domestic rights. But you cannot escape whether you're watching on a device or even if you're in the park. I mean, it really allows them to have a monopoly on attention and access for a sustained period of time. It's not like the super bowl where it's a one day hit. They might eke a couple days on either side because of social. I mean, they're getting two solid weeks of global attention.
Josh King:
Another tweet you sent out talked about the fact that the last time South Korea had hosted the games in 1988, the GDP for all of Korea was 197 billion, and in 2016 it was 1.4 trillion. You talked about sort of the wrist bands that you get. But how else is that manifested when you arrive at the airport and you go to the venues that this is a country that has skyrocketed in the last 20 years?
Carl Quintanilla:
Yeah, it was my first visit to South Korea. I don't have a bar to measure it against, but I mean, certainly you can look at the phenomenon of these family owned now enormous conglomerates like Samsung, which is like a fifth of their trade. Those have run into problems because of corruption and fraud and their judicial system has addressed those. But they've become an enormous exporter. A lot of it obviously electronics and appliances, but... I think you can sense a country maturing, moving into a role of maturation when it comes to global trade. They probably have, they're looking at other economies as models that they would like to copy and be like. But I think theirs was a huge step. I mean, the Olympics are always considered a test for a country, you're on the global stage. In Rio it ended up being not conclusive,. I mean the economy post games maybe didn't live up to aspirations prior. But I think for South Korea it was a big test that they, at least at this early stage, appear to have passed.
Josh King:
Let's talk about the unique aspect of the Quintanilla assignment in the games because it is one of those gigs that you would love to have. You met at a restaurant with David Chang, the founder and chef of Momofuku. Before I have you recount some of the highlights of your time in Korea, let's hear a little bit from that interview.
David Chang:
Restaurants now are anchor tenants in buildings. That's a joke.
Carl Quintanilla:
Because it used to be what, department stores?
David Chang:
Yes. We opened up 2004. I remember trying to find leases and people were like, "No, we don't want a restaurant in our building. It's going to decrease the value because of problems with smells or whatever." Now everyone wants a restaurant. The problem is there are too many restaurants. Interesting times. I think for us the right thing is to figure out how to say no and to make sure it's right. Is it some thing we can execute?
Josh King:
That was your conversation with David Chang. These kinds of stories you found throughout the games.
Carl Quintanilla:
Chang's a great story. He's a Korean American, went back there to help contribute to NBC Sports. As part of this enormously interesting business of restaurants and food, he's got a new Netflix show so we had plenty of hooks to get into-
Josh King:
Not to mention that huge spread that you guys had in front of you.
Carl Quintanilla:
Yes. We did go to a traditional Korean lunch. But yeah, I mean, the great part about an interview like that is, sure you're in Korea at the Olympics and you can talk about the country and the sport. But it's a great avenue back home. I mean, back to your home base of business. I mean, talking about commercial real estate. I mean, what he said about that is amazing. I mean, there's all sorts of strings out of that, what it means for retail, and department stores, and millennials, and the value of experiences over things. To hear him say it out loud, "We couldn't get a lease before but now everybody wants us." His problem now is cutting out what is either unnecessary or not feasible to do at scale. That's a nice problem to have, especially in a low margin, sometimes cash, business like food.
Josh King:
You mentioned that you hadn't been to South Korea before. Another trip that you went on when you were there was up to the DMZ, literally feet away from the official border of North Korea. What was that like for you?
Carl Quintanilla:
It was, A, it's bucket list for sure. I mean, who wouldn't want to go see that? It was one of the draws. Remember, six months ago we thought who knew what the national security profile would be for the games. My wife was nervous and I guess I was nervous. I mean, it was never in doubt that I would go. But the reason I was not in doubt is the draw of going and seeing something like that. We managed to get a military tour through the joint operation run by South Korean and US military. It was very intense. People were, because you're on this bus going in and this South Korean guard with no sense of humor is telling you can only point your camera one way. If you see a north Korean guard across whatever it is, 50 yards, 40 yards do not wave at them, do not try to get their attention.
Carl Quintanilla:
They may think you are mocking them. I mean, this is the locus of all. If there's a national security crisis in the foreign policy crisis in the world, this is it. So everyone, and we were with a few other international reporters, no one wanted to... people were shooting TV standups like I was and there was some print. Nobody wanted to raise their voice or be very loud. It seemed fraught. But beyond it felt historic, it felt historic. Even despite the sort of freaky detente that the North was trying to layer on top of these games.
Josh King:
Right. I want to get your thoughts on that freaky detente because your colleague, Lester Holt sat down with Fred Warmbier, the father of Otto Warmbier who died after his incarceration in North Korea. I want to hear a little bit of Lester's interview with Mr. Warmbier, but then I want you to contrast that with what you saw in the stands and you were tweeting out the pictures of the North Korean cheerleaders, certainly witnessed Kim's sister in the stands keeping her distance, or Vice President Pence keeping his distance from her. Let's hear how Lester brought that story home.
Fred Warmbier:
Visit South Korea to experience the spirit of the Olympics. It's close to where Otto's life was basically changed forever, and so that has meaning too. When we heard North Korea was going to be here we felt compelled to show up here at the Olympics.
Lester Holt:
Was it difficult to look and see the sister of Kim Jong-un waving and enjoying the moment?
Fred Warmbier:
No she's in the Kim family. We have to put this in context in the spirit of the Olympics. Their athletes are not exchanging ideas with other athletes in the Olympic Village or really participating. That's a political statement and this is not political for me.
Lester Holt:
Otto was with a tour group-
Josh King:
How are you trying to have both stories reflected on the various platforms of NBC, and CNBC, and the NBC sports app? There's definitely political tensions that are right there in front of you, and then there are kids who are joining up on a hockey team.
Carl Quintanilla:
Yeah. I don't think this story is... I think there is one story and that is the ruthlessness of the regime. I don't think there's any, really there's no debate about that. If there's another story it's this very, I think, transparent effort to appear something other than ruthless. We went to, I forget, it must have been speed skating and we didn't realize where we were sitting. All of a sudden these 40, 50 women stand up in front of us and start doing coordinated cheers led by, I should point out, a drum major of sorts conducting their efforts. We realized, oh my God, these are the North Korean cheerleaders who then made a huge splash, got tons of attention around the world. But I think people, when they saw footage of it, assumed we were somehow celebrating this warm display of athletic appreciation.
Carl Quintanilla:
I saw it as something quite dangerous and disturbing. My thought, one thing I wondered, was these cheer leaders are stepping out of North Korea probably maybe for the first time in their lives. They're probably part of an extremely elite class in their country. What must it be like to be here in this stadium with people from free countries all around the world? That must have been enormously heady and maybe they're so brainwashed that they think we are the strange ones. But I just, I thought Lester's interview right there says much more than any footage of the cheerleaders doing their chant.
Josh King:
Right. Switching to the actual performances of the athletes, in particular some of the standout performances of the US athletes. We had, at the stock exchange just a couple days ago to ring the bell, Chris Mazdzer, who won the silver medal in luge. He's also, as you've told us, a pretty shrewd financial planner. He made some pretty good investments on Bitcoin.
Carl Quintanilla:
He does. He has plans post Olympic to be, he said a financial advisor. But I think he meant by that life coach where you take stock of everything in your life, finances included. But is there a cooler guy on the planet than Chris Mazdzer? A, he looks like a movie star. He just won a silver medal in the Winter Olympics and it's a very dangerous sport and he knows his way around a balance sheet. I was really impressed by him and just how what a warm... sometimes you get, and I don't mean this as a knock, but sometimes the athletes are so focused, which I assume you have to be, but they're so focused that they have very difficult time expressing themselves to the outside world. Chris, I mean, he is like a guy you saw two bar stools down the way at the bar. Very warm human being.
Josh King:
Other performances and athletes that really touched your soul as you were watching them either live and in the stands or through the coverage?
Carl Quintanilla:
I mean, I assume you saw women's cross country.
Josh King:
Absolutely.
Carl Quintanilla:
I mean, the-
Josh King:
They're going to be at the Exchange ringing the bell in the coming days.
Carl Quintanilla:
I'm getting chills now thinking about how you come from behind at the last second, you win an historic medal in the sport for your country. On top of that, the grueling physicality of that particular event where the lactic acid in your legs must be killing you. But it's mushed up with the incredible satisfaction and joy of winning. To me I thought that and the women's hockey goal shootout were my two favorite moments.
Josh King:
Watching the cross country my first thought was, for all the money that Visa and Toyota are putting into this games, hooray for L.L.Bean putting their name on those hats.
Carl Quintanilla:
There's the others. Tiny corners of marketing that you can tuck into at the Olympics. North Face, of all companies, had domestic marketing rights. In other words, if you were at Olympic Park, there was a big North Face venue and they were selling their gorgeous jackets. But I don't know if that was seen stateside. But yeah, there's a way to... you don't have to spend a $1 billion to be a global sponsor to get some attention at the Olympics.
Josh King:
Best gear that you brought back from Pyeongchang?
Carl Quintanilla:
Best gear. I didn't do a lot of... well for my kids. I mean, I got a Olympic hoodie. They're twins who are eight years old, and it has the South Korean mascot. They lost their minds. Yeah.
Josh King:
Back with Carl Quintanilla after this break,
Speaker 1:
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Josh King:
Back now with Carl Quintanilla, host of CNBC's Squawk on the Street broadcast every weekday from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Let's go back, Carl, to February 27th, 2012, and listen to the world's first broadcast from Post 9.
Speaker 7:
Good morning and welcome to Squawk on the Street. What an historic day it is for both CNBC and the New York Stock Exchange. For the first time we are broadcasting from our new home Trading Post number nine here on the floor of the big board just beneath the iconic bell podium.
Speaker 8:
Can you imagine, it all started back in May of 1792 with 24 stock brokers under a buttonwood tree just outside these doors on Wall Street. More than two centuries later, CNBC was first to report live from the floor of the NYSE with our colleague Maria Bartiromo. Today we are proud to be part of the NYSE's evolution as we welcome you to Post 9.
Josh King:
Famous days six years ago.
Carl Quintanilla:
Never let it be said we don't have a flare for drama, right?
Josh King:
In case you wanted to know, for all that drama and that fanfare the Dow was down 1.44 points that day closing at 12,981, about half of where it is today in that span.
Carl Quintanilla:
Amazing. I mean, I remember being, it was a fairly large investment for my bosses to take the post and turn it into essentially a small television studio. I remember just not wanting to mess it up. I mean, get out of the gate strong, establish your new presence, and then get into what we generally do.
Josh King:
At the lineup on that picture of the ribbon cutting for Post 9, you're on one side and there's David Faber and Jim Cramer on the other side, the gang that's still very much representing Squawk on the Street. Mark Hoffman cutting the ribbon. Duncan Niederauer, then the president of NYSE, helping the ribbon cutting. You were previously at Squawk Box I think at that moment. What were the months getting ready to occupy Post 9 and create this new show, how did that band get put together?
Carl Quintanilla:
Well, I was in the early mornings with Becky Quick and Joe Kernen for five years, I think until Mark Haines who anchored with Erin Burnett from the balcony, our balcony here at the NYSE, passed away. His passing created a bit of a domino effect, a reshuffling of anchors in the morning. We had already been established here at the NYSE and Maria of course planted an enormous flag for us so many years ago. Just the look of her shot. You remember that one shot camera coming from above-
Josh King:
Brokers.
Carl Quintanilla:
Brokers bumping
Josh King:
Getting her shoulder.
Carl Quintanilla:
Getting jostled by traders. Really to her credit, democratizing the distribution of sell side research. At the time if you had a call like an upgrade of whatever, Coke, it was hard to see. It wasn't just tweeted out and just splashed onto social media every morning. Those were extreme market making decisions and she managed to make it real currency for retail investors, so that was huge. But in terms of our own purposes here, I think it was a huge difference being on the floor. We thought this might be the case but it ended up being more so than even we realized the proximity to other posts and being able to talk to a Costa, or a Polcari, or Cashin, or any of these guys quickly, especially on a dramatic day, ended up being, it just fed the flow of information much better to our viewers.
Josh King:
Another measure of consistency in those six years from then today. On that very first day you were touting a three hour conversation between Becky Quick and Warren Buffet. This week you're doing exactly the same, as Warren Buffet goes so goes the nation.
Carl Quintanilla:
Buffet is they've become... we should have a name for what she's done with Buffet because she does it every year with the annual letter. Every year they deliver something new, something real value. It's often stock-specific, but in some cases I think he added something to the debate about corporate America and gun policy. Obviously this new partnership on healthcare with Berkshire, I mean, with Amazon and JP Morgan gave us a lot more detail than we had. They say Tuesdays with Morrie. Mondays with Warren they've come to be extremely valuable to our viewers and anybody who listens to him.
Josh King:
Another milestone this week compared to six years ago. Six years ago was three Fed chairs ago, Ben Bernanke had his term, and then Janet Yellen for four years, and this week, Jay Powell with his first Humphrey-Hawkins testimony on the Hill. How did the market react to a new Fed chair in the seat before Congress testifying?
Carl Quintanilla:
Early days. We've spoken at length about the degree to which markets will 'test' him. We just came off the air and the hearing I assume is now ended. But we were talking after the show about the way in which his language is different from Yellen's I guess. He's an attorney and a banker and not a labor economist from a university. I think he probably, he got hammered with a lot of questions about black unemployment and race, social issues that I certainly didn't expect. That'll probably change when he faces the Senate on Thursday. But this is not his first rodeo, this is his 50th rodeo. I think for his first time out, the fact that we didn't see any crazy wild swings or misspeaking as we saw with Yellen in her first few testimonies. That's probably an arrow in his quiver.
Josh King:
At least you could actually hear his words compared to Alan Greenspan.
Carl Quintanilla:
Yes. Although I think there's something quietly hypnotic about Greenspan's cadence. It just puts you to sleep, but in a good way.
Josh King:
Carl Quintanilla, you originally came out of Boulder, Colorado, a print journalist. I think you've been asked in previous interviews about what newspaper you go to first and you're a Wall Street Journal guy. I followed you closely when you were in the Olympics, and I feel like there's a writer waiting to get out. Do you ever miss the actual putting words together in paragraphs and sentences and seeing an article or a book come to life?
Carl Quintanilla:
I will say there's nothing... being on television for whatever show, Today show, Nightly, whatever, there's nothing like seeing your name in the paper. I mean, whether it maybe crass to admit it, but it's a huge thrill to see your name on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. I'm sure it is for a journalist there today. The thing that I loved about print was, based on your story, you're either a hero or a goat. You either come back with the goods and it's a great story or it's not. It's very much an individual... it's a meritocracy based on you and what you can provide. TV, as I learned, as I got nudged into it, is so collaborative, everybody. You're constantly interacting with sound technicians, and producers, and executive producers, and cameramen, and editors. That credit is more disparate. But if you enjoy the family-like atmosphere of working with a bunch of people, TV is where you want to be. I think that and the immediacy of what's happening at this exact moment for me now makes TV a little more enjoyable.
Josh King:
We've talked about your gigs actually following the markets and in business, also your moonlighting following sports. You also do a little bit of work with Real Sports or have done with Bryant Gumbel in the past. But some of your most treasured moments as a journalist on TV have come, I think, when you were embedded with troops in Iraq and even covering Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. How important is it to flex other muscles of your journalistic engine?
Carl Quintanilla:
It depends on what your career strategy is I guess. Some refine their on-air personality to a point where you're identified with politics and you are a great political journalist. Same with sports. In cable news you can be seen as being this pit bull interviewer who holds people accountable, and that's very effective. If you can establish that kind of identity you can have huge success. My general strategy over time has been to be more of a jack of all trades. Keep them guessing, demonstrate your familiarity with sports, and film, and art, and business. I mean, if you have a wide spectrum of interest express that.
Josh King:
Which, if you follow you, Carl Quintanilla on Twitter you get the full gamut of that.
Carl Quintanilla:
Hopefully. I mean, hopefully. I would just hate to be... if you're on CNBC, I probably am pigeonholed to some degree as a business guy, fine. But I would like to smooth that out as much as I can.
Josh King:
You once said at one point in your life wanted to be a DJ. If it wasn't for doing business journalism or journalism at all and put curling aside, what would Carl Quintanilla want to be doing
Carl Quintanilla:
Well, DJs barely exist anymore because everything's automated, so that's probably out the window. I'd love to be a great jazz pianist. Yeah, that would be great to make a living doing jazz piano at night in some club. That might be something I'd trade this in for.
Josh King:
You grew up, I think, attending 10 schools in 12 years. Did all of the diversity of places that you experienced train you to be a better analyst of what was going or a better question asker?
Carl Quintanilla:
I think for most of my, from first through 12th grade, I was almost always the new kid or one of the new kids. Just the fact that my dad who worked for Dow, we were constantly moving and he was in finance and got transferred around a lot. Having to make friends quickly to ingratiate yourself in a new environment, a new construct, I think is helpful. If you're trying to develop sources, create relationships with people in business or in this case media. Yeah, it came as a help I think. I think it's odd. I don't know if you have this experience, but your childhood tends to become a bit of an inverse of what you give your kids. Like now my kids have never gone to anything but one school and I hope it stays that way because for whatever reason I've decided I don't want to do that to them what my dad did to me.
Josh King:
Yeah. I mean, I stayed in one house my whole life growing up. Although we've been mostly Northeast in New York City they've had three different apartments. It's one city, a lot of different places. As we ramp up, Carl, thinking about your kids, I think you said you had twin girls. You see so much of the world from Post 9, the good, the bad, and the ugly of the global economy. Today on the floor of the Exchange, Canada Goose, NYSE ticker symbol GOOS, rang the opening bell in honor of International Polar Bear Day. You worry that the engines of capitalism, the thing that we celebrate every day in the Exchange, will put greater strain on the environment for your daughters or my kids. Or do you think that the, as we look ahead, the spirit of innovation and the things that are coming out whether it's about the environment and healthcare will address some of the more critical issues that we face. Are you an optimist or pessimist about where global business brings our world?
Carl Quintanilla:
Honestly, I would defy anyone to sit where I sit in the morning and watch these creators ring the bell. I always say, it's hard to imagine capital being created in front of your eyes, which is what you're seeing-
Josh King:
As it happens with every IPO.
Josh King:
Yeah. I don't see how you can sit through that repeatedly and be a pessimist about anything. I mean, at one point Canada Goose was not an idea yet, and here it is this established brand. I don't know if you own any, but it's an amazing product. The fact that they were here today celebrating their own entry into the public markets, I'm sorry, maybe it's Pollyanna but it's reaffirming. It's reaffirming that ideas turn into social goods and I get paid to sit there. But even if I didn't, it'd be fun to do it.
Josh King:
Carl Quintanilla, thank you so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Carl Quintanilla:
Thanks Josh.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Carl Quintanilla fresh off his stint at the 2018 Winter Olympics and celebrating his sixth anniversary of reporting right here from Post 9 CNBC at the New York Stock Exchange. If you like what you heard today or on our previous four episodes, one thing we do ask, please take a minute, look at your phone, and rate us on iTunes so that other folks can know where to find us. If you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, tweet of us at NYSE. Our show is produced by Pete Ash and Ian Wolf with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven Portner. I'm Josh king your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
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