Ted Weisberg on Navigating "Difficult" Market, Key Volatile & Big Pharma Stocks

back to Opening Bell. Time now for the very latest here on the trading floor at the New York Stock Exchange. Ted Weisberg is with me, founder president, Seaport Securities. And I'm so glad you're here. You're back. And you noted that the market has been a little difficult and you've had a lot of years in this market. What makes it more difficult now and how do you navigate that? Well, that is a terrific question. And the answer is difficultly because the volatility that has sort of been the unintended consequences of all the rule changes, Nicole, that have been put in place now going back probably 20 years, starting with regulation NMS. But it seems like everything the government has done, and to a certain extent, the industry is they've taken away all the old, what I would call traditional guardrails when it comes to trading stocks. Now, trading stocks is always a stupid, difficult, risky business. We understand that. But now it's sort of out of control. They took away the short sale rule. They're talking about 24 hour trading. They changed all the rules for day trading for day traders, which makes it easier for day traders to operate. And now the SEC has said they're going to eliminate the concept of best execution which I find unbelievable. Which means stocks will be trading everywhere. And the whole concept of getting the best price for your customer is going to go out the window. So we can't really do anything to prevent these things from happening, because they happen for reasons that are well beyond your control or the average investor's control. So what should we do? Maybe we should find a way to take advantage of this volatility, because it is day to day, you know, individual stocks that can be up 25, 30% in one day, down 25 or 30% the next day. I mean, these are lifetime moves that are now happening in one trading session. So there's a couple of names that I think are interesting. The obvious name is one of the exchanges like Ice Intercontinental Exchange. You know Ice is in a way the casino. It's the throat of the funnel. The order flow comes in the order. You know, you go in as a buy a buyer, you come out, you come out with stocks, you go in as a seller, you come out with money, but you know, you want to basically own the house. So ice in a way is, is the casino another way to take advantage of it and maybe even a better way is a company like Virtu VIRT. I mean, Virtu is nothing but a giant market maker. And it's a public version of a citadel or a Cisco, a Susquehanna or a Jane Street, which are not public companies. But Virtu is a public company, trades down here. I think it's around a 58, $59 stock, but Virtu is the pipes. They have the pipes. They're making markets, I don't know, in 5 or 10,000 different stocks. They're not betting you know, they're not fundamental investors betting for or betting against. They're basically in the middle routing client orders. And where they can, they scalp a little bit here and they scalp a little bit there. It's like owning a piece of the house. They're the dealer. And I think it's a great way, a great way to take advantage of the of the day to day volatility. So those are two concepts for, for folks that want to take a different point of view when it comes to the markets. And you've picked ice in the past. And then we saw it run up, went up to a high of 189. It since pulled back and now it's at around 150. I'm sure some people would take issue with saying it's like a casino. There are certain regulations, etc. to protect investors. I understand what you're saying. At the same time, you know, when someone's watching, you don't want them to think that you think that it's a game which you do not know. Oh, it's far from a game. And, and in the case of ice, listen, we we have a big position in Ice stock and we've had it for many, many years. Because when the stock exchange, the memberships from the Stock exchange, when the stock exchange went public, we ended up with shares in a public company. And those shares happened to be Ice. So yeah, I mean, in a way, I'm kind of talking my book, but beyond that, beyond that and and it's, well, well, that's okay because that's where your money, you put your money, where your mouth is, right? You're working on, on now moving things forward. Do you have a few other ideas? Big Pharma has always been something that you liked. You've liked names like Merck and Bristol-Myers and Pfizer. Those have been names that you liked, and you had some others, such as X, Laura Luxottica, the eyeglasses, Elan and Zoetis. Let's talk about some of the out of favor favorites first, right? Yeah. Because, you know, we always talk about these names and, and they always kind of look like winners when we talk about them, but they're not all winners. You know, nobody's right all the time, including me. And I've probably been wrong a lot more times than I've been. Right. But but three names that, that we particularly like that have been dramatically underperforming have been the number one would be this Essilor. You know, Essilor was a 180, $190 stock maybe 18 months ago. And you recommended it long before then when it was $100. Let's say that's true until it went up. And so now it has come down. Yes, that's right. But it's still the same company when it went way up with a couple of actually positive additions at the end of the day, as Luxottica has 25% share of the of the eyewear industry. It's a spectacular company. It's a French-Italian company based in Paris. And they also happen to make the Ray-Ban meta what do you call them? IP sunglasses. You know, for the computers, you know, which which is a relatively new product for them. And they've been punished because of that product because they were first with it. But now there's competition. Well, that doesn't really bother me. A little competition never hurt, but at the end of the day, it's still a great company and it's not 180. It happens to be in the 90s. And I think, relatively speaking, it's a very attractive stock at current levels. Let's get to some of the pharma names. You have Merck, Bristol-Myers which is in the deal. Pfizer. You didn't put Eli Lilly in there. Tell me about some of these names. Pfizer. Merck is the one that's really has an impressive because right off the 52 week high why Merck and not Eli Lilly for example. Well first of all you can't kiss all the girls even though you'd like to. And I would say that's a missing Eli Lilly for me personally was a glaring miss. But it's too far gone as far as I'm concerned. I would have problems. It's great company, great product, but I would have problems buying the stock at current levels. But I'm more of a value kind of fellow and I prefer Merck. I prefer Bristol, and Bristol has been rumored to be kind of in talks with AstraZeneca. Maybe that happens, maybe it doesn't happen. Kind of the kind of the the biggest underperformer of those three names of the big Pharma is Pfizer, which has been, quite frankly, dead money as long as I can remember. And we've owned it as long as I can remember. But all three pay very generous. But you're still holding on to it. All right, well, okay, we got to go. But I understand you're trying to hold on to that one, but thank you. We love that you came on and interesting strategy that you brought to us today, something different than what you've brought in the past. I mean, obviously you have many years of experience, but now you're really trying to trade and work that volatility that is now really evident in the markets. Ted Weisberg always great to have you o