00:23:43 · Jan Van Eck, Anthony Pompliano
[00:23:43] S1: It's it's so funny. You know, q three ended, and we do these q three business reviews, and our web track... Traffic around the world is is stagnant or falling. And then people just wanna flip the page. I'm like, don't you see what's happening? Right? It's AI. Right? And so you just have to maximize the the feeding of information to agents. We just tried something with, one of our RIA clients is we gave them an MCP connection to all the data, in our webs... On our website in all our documents. So that's our first experiment, and our salespeople are a little nervous. But that's... That would be the one example. But I also believe... I wanna just put on the record. I think that people are gonna want to give their agents access to accounts with money in it. I mean, when you get... When I have the auto renew for my cable bill, that's the same thing. Right? It's effectively an agent. It's just the the... That company's software that's, you know, triggering that payment. They they basically own access to my bank account. It's not a big step, I think, to give agents that kind of [00:24:46] S2: Explain this pilot that you're running with the RIA. So you create an MCP connection. They can now get access to VanEck information data, etcetera. Right. And the idea is that they can talk internally at the RIA to their agent and the agent can more easily access VanEck information to give them better answers. [00:25:06] S1: Right. Instead of calling a salesperson.
00:25:06 · Jan Van Eck, Anthony Pompliano
[00:25:06] S1: Right. Instead of calling a salesperson. [00:25:10] S2: And the salespeople using Google. Yeah. And salespeople are worried because they're saying, hey, is that the first step of automating away my job? [00:25:18] S1: Yeah. I I don't think so. I'm just saying people... It's it's a change. You asked about how we're doing it. I guess, I've I've heard BlackRock is doing that as well. So it's just changing. That's why Google's earnings were interesting, right, with their their potential decline in in, ad based search revenue. I think that that makes sense. That's gonna be a different way. For those of you who don't really know what I'm talking about, right, just very simply, AI itself doesn't have access to data. So we... You have to add connections and and related skills, but connections to the different databases at VanEck. So at VanEck, we have a connection to our custodian at State Street. So RPMs can write all kinds of crazy reports because they see everything that's held through that database at State Street. And they... That kill... It just really kills a huge part of the IT department. [00:26:11] S2: Let's have a little bit of fun. Have you vibe coded anything? [00:26:14] S1: I have not. [00:26:15] S2: No? Are you sure? [00:26:17] S1: Yeah. Okay. [00:26:21] S2: If we come and do this again five years from now, what are the biggest changes to the ETF industry?
00:26:21 · Anthony Pompliano, Jan Van Eck
[00:26:21] S2: If we come and do this again five years from now, what are the biggest changes to the ETF industry? [00:26:27] S1: To the ETF industry. So I think the biggest change is going to be, and you're playing right into it, which is more of the business will come from individual investors. So right now, we get the... You know, our biggest clients are financial advisors, And I just think that more individuals, but also individuals with a greater percentage of their wallet, will just be buying directly through low cost broker dealers. So I think that will go... I don't know. I don't know. People don't publish those numbers, but I'm gonna say from a quarter to a half of our [00:27:03] S2: business. Interesting. So 25... [00:27:06] S1: I don't even know, but... [00:27:08] S2: Yeah. Somewhat like a material increase in direct to consumer essentially Yeah. Distribution. [00:27:13] S1: Yep. [00:27:14] S2: Okay. What are you doing to accelerate that or be better positioned to be the recipient of those funds?
00:27:14 · Anthony Pompliano, Jan Van Eck
[00:27:14] S2: Okay. What are you doing to accelerate that or be better positioned to be the recipient of those funds? [00:27:21] S1: We just do a lot of content. I mean, me being out there, you know, webinars, you know, a lot of individuals participate in the content that we provide. I think the content game... I mean, if you look at yourself, right, you're a content creator, the Rithold's company. No. No. But but it's a... You know, Andreessen Horowitz started... You know, pioneered it for the venture capital business. It's how you communicate with people. People wanna hear sincere opinions. Right? They don't want to hear product pitches. And you have to earn their trust. Right? And that's that's hard. But that's the that's the playing field that we're on, I think. [00:27:59] S2: Alright. Last question. Are you the one tweeting from the intern account? [00:28:03] S1: I can't tell you that. You'd have to torture me. [00:28:08] S2: Amazing. Jan Van Eck, everybody. [00:28:10] S1: Thank you.