Celebrating Women's History Month with Lindsey Bell and Debbie Taylor (Ep. 128)

In this special episode of Facts vs. Feelings, Ryan Detrick, Chief Market Strategist, and Sonu Varghese, VP, Global Macro Strategist, welcome Lindsey Bell, Chief Market Strategist at Clearonomics, and Debbie Taylor, Managing Partner and Chief Tax Strategist at Carson Wealth, for a special Women’s History Month Livestream. Together, they discuss their careers, recent market trends, and how investors can navigate today's economic landscape.

Key Takeaways:

Market Insights & Volatility – Are recent corrections normal? We take a look at the stock market’s history following recent corrections.
The Role of Women in Finance – Lindsey and Debbie share their career journeys, the challenges they faced along the way, and lessons from their time in the financial industry.
Tax Strategies & Planning – Debbie discusses tax efficiency, investment strategies, and financial planning for long-term success.
Economic Trends & Consumer Behavior – What do earnings growth, job markets, and tariffs mean for investors?

Connect with Ryan: 

• LinkedIn: Ryan Detrick
• X: Ryan Detrick

Connect with Sonu: 

• LinkedIn: Sonu Varghese
• X: Sonu Varghese

Connect with Lindsey:

• LinkedIn: Lindsey Bell
• X: @justLBell

Connect with Debbie:

• LinkedIn: Debbie Taylor

Questions about the show? We’d love to hear from you! factsvsfeelings@carsongroup.com

Transcript

0:40

And hello. We are here. This is a special livestream edition of facts versus feelings, Ryan and Sonu. Sonu, we're gonna have a lot of fun today. I know we got a special intro music for Lindsay, and we wanna get right to it. But welcome to women's history month, the special facts versus feelings, building community for women in finance. And we've got a busy day with a lot of awesome guests. So let's go ahead, Tori, and play Lindsay's music and get her in here. We're there. Hi. Hello. Hey, Lindsay. How are you doing? Good. I mean, I was expecting a little more upbeat music there. Well, you know, it's it's markets are rough. You know? It's March. It's March. And, you know, it's still cold in Chicago at least. So Yeah. I know. Where are you, Lindsay? So well, this week, I'm actually in New York City, but I'm based out of Charlotte. So, yeah, I'm with the team in New York today. Awesome. Well, that's what we're gonna talk about. We're gonna get right into this. Again, Women's History Month, the special facts versus feelings live. We've we've talked to Lindsay. We've talked to you a couple times. Right? Different different places, different ways. Excited to have you on the podcast. This is the first time that you've been on facts versus feelings, I think. Right? I think so. This is my first time. Alright. Welcome. Go easy on me. Okay? You only got you only got twenty five minutes. You know? So we'll get into it. And that's what we wanna start with. I and, like, we we live in a world of compliance. We like names and titles. So give your name and title, but you just changed jobs. Tell us about that. That's, that's I'm looking forward to hearing about this. Yeah. So I'm chief market strategist at ClearNomics, and ClearNomics is what we are is we're a platform for insights and, information and charts and communications for advisers. We talk about, the macro, and we talk about markets, and we make it a lot easier for advisers to do that by providing them with the tools and the information. And we arm them with the data and the charts that they need to do that very simply and seamlessly. So I'll let you jump in one second, Sonu. So I met James, I mean, I don't know, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, right, when he was starting your company, his company, I should say. And and I was always, a fan, right, watching what he was doing building. And and when I saw you were going there, like, within ten seconds, I was like, that's perfect. Like, that's an awesome, awesome fit for what they've done, and now you can go out and do the strategy side of things and lay on and work with advisors like you have. I thought it was an amazing fit. So congrats to you and James, I think, on what looks like a a great hire and, hopefully, a great move for your for your career. I was pumped for you. But Sonu, we've got, you know, less than twenty five minutes now. I don't know what the clock is. Let's let's start let's start firing away. Let let's actually, we'll take it from there. Like, Ryan and I do a lot of this. We it feels like our day job, even night job, maybe more night job is to make charts and and get a handle on the data. We're busy during the day. Busy. Yeah. It's a night job. Yeah. So, like, why are charts and stories important? I mean, the stories come out of the charts, obviously. But from your perspective, like I mean, that's what you all do. Right? That's what you give advisers. Curious. Like, why is that creating that narrative using charts important? Yeah. I mean, I think it's I think every you both would agree that it's using charts is really a visualization of making a story come to life, and it's all about our business is all about storytelling. Right? If if your clients can't understand what's happening in the market, it really may give it makes it more difficult for them to trust you. Right? So, so I think that being able to tell a clear, concise, crisp story with charts, some people are more visual, others are are less so. But either way, just being able to see the trends over longer periods of time because that's what we're that's what we're promoting, right, as long term investing here. It it it really kinda helps I think it helps clients really zoom out to understand what's happening in the world. A lot of perspective is great. Absolutely. I've, I've made a career making charts and telling stories. So, clearly, I agree on everything we just said there. I listened to you with Joe Fahmy. I don't know when that was. I just listened to it the other day. That was an amazing podcast. Definitely check that out, later if you guys want to to learn a little bit more about Lindsay and Joe's podcast is awesome. I love this story of your career because, obviously, this is women in this is women history month. As a female in the industry, you kinda you know, you had an interesting career. Trust me. Here's where I'm going with this. I've been fired. I've been laid off. I've had an interesting career. People see us on TV. They go, oh, that was an easy ride. No. Like, I was broke. I was unemployed. No. It was anything but easy to get where I am. And just talk a little bit about a woman in finance, but also just your career kinda bouncing around because I think it's important to remind everybody, it doesn't always go the way you think it's gonna go. Yeah. I would say I definitely did not have a straight line path from college to being chief market strategist to clearnomics. You didn't? Yeah. And not only that, it wasn't like directly or clearly planned out either. I kind of had to go with the flow, at certain points in time, but I was also very, like, you know, when I saw opportunity, I jumped on it. Or if I knew it was time to make a change, I did that. So I've done a couple of different things throughout my career, in financial services. I'll highlight one. I think one pivotal change for me happened when I was in my late twenties. I had this opportunity to go from working with institutional clients in investment banking and sell side research to work with Jim Cramer at TheStreet dot com. So I was making this pivot from institutional speaking that language to speaking to retail investors, And I was working on his charitable trust to help manage his small cap and, mid cap charitable funds. But it was at the street dot com, which is was a small media company at the time, and it was gonna be a major pay cut for me. But I thought the opportunity is really interesting. And I didn't know it at the time, but it was very critical and pivotal in my career because with that opportunity working with Jim and the other folks there, that's when I really got into doing media. That was the first opportunity I had to start doing videos and talking with people through different mediums like this. And I don't think that if if I didn't do that, I wouldn't have the opportunities that came after that that got me to the seat that I sit in today. And so that was very important. However, I did get laid off from that job. Exactly. It happens. So it happens. And, I mean, it would like, now I feel like you get laid off, and it's like no big deal. Everybody's used to getting laid off. But back then, it was still kind of a big deal. They were down the company was downsizing. It didn't feel good at the time. But, anyway, it's just I think too, like, this this type of career is a collection of meeting folks like you, Ryan, and Sonu. I've got to know you a little bit better, in more recent periods. I think it's just, you know, you build a community throughout your career journey, and I think that that the the longer you're in the game, it helps to kinda shape you as a person, but also shape shape your career too. And I think for me, every step of the way was getting me closer to working with the people that I really enjoy working with and doing the things that I honing in on doing the things things that I really enjoy. So we we actually reached out to Stephanie Link also. She's on spring break, and I know you worked with Stephanie at the street too. Right? Yeah. She was there, and so I would interview her and Jim Kramer on camera. It was, like, the most I was, like, in my twenties. Okay? I mean I was kind of nerve wracking. Jim's the greatest talker ever. Stephanie's the most prepared person I've ever seen for anything. Like, you cannot fool her. Not that you try to fool her, but she is if you're with her, you better bring your a game. So, anyway, that's awesome. Well, go ahead, Sonu. That's that's a great, great great reminders of listeners of careers. Don't always go the way you think they're gonna go. I would say, serendipity in this business is underrated because you you wanna meet as many people as you do, and you never know what comes out of that. Right? It may be five years down the down the road that that person you met five years ago, that plays a big role in your next big career move or whatever it is. Right? So let's tell young people. I mean, believe in serendipity. I mean, you may not appreciate it now, but at some point, you will. Yeah. I know. I always say, like, always people are always watching. So you a lot of young people will think that it's like you need to network with the people in direct proximity to you, whether it's on your team or, you know, your surrounding team. But it's everybody around you is watching what you're doing. And, you know, you have to put your a game out there at all times even even when you think nobody's looking because somebody is, and you don't know. Like, you just said so Oh, nobody's hovering. Right. And that and that could turn into an opportunity. Like, you said five years down the road. Like, you might have forgot that you interacted with this person, but they didn't forget you. You mentioned something dear to our hearts. I'm joking. But mid and small caps. You're managing mid and small caps. Oh, gosh. We have to. Spend twenty minutes talking about that, but we won't. But let's just start with markets. We've had a little bit of volatility, ten percent correction, and we've rallied today. I mean, the Fed's going to meet, you know, in a couple of hours. Just this will be on the podcast as well, so we are recording this at, you know, midmorning, March nineteenth for everyone listening. So this is before the Fed news and all of that. We've had some votes, Salady. Do you think kind of like a I mean, it's not a trick question. You can answer it any way you want. Do you think the lows are in for the year, or is there more to come? You know? Condition. I know there's not a perfect answer. This is the easiest question I wanna ask you too, by the way. What a hard question. Let me get my crystal ball out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's you know, it's hard to say, but, you know, Ryan, I know you do a lot of analysis on this. Like, the average decline in any given year is fourteen percent. So or the average correction is. And so that like, what we've just went through is it was swifter than we've seen in the past, and it felt really uncomfortable. But it's actually a normal part of investing. It's it's it's a feature, not a bug. Right? It it was that the bottom? I'm not entirely sure, but what I like to look at as you guys know, I'm a fundamental analyst at heart. That is my background. And when I look at the fundamentals that have supported the stock market up until the start of this year, they're still really intact. I think I think what what got investors, shaken up was obviously the tariff narrative, you know, ramping up and escalating over time. And the longer that it has done that has really changed the narrative from tariffs are you know, could potentially impact inflation to, oh my gosh, is this going to be a slowing growth story? But when I look at the fundamentals, we've still got earnings growth that's double digits for the year. And I know a lot of folks will come on, and you guys know I spent some part of my career, like, really in the weeds of earnings numbers, and I still do lean on earnings growth because it is, as Larry Kudlow says, the mother's milk. Yes. That's what drives returns especially over the long term. Right? Probably. Exactly. Well and so we're looking for double digit earnings growth. It's come down. But guess what, guys? That's what happens in the first quarters. Earnings expectations get reduced because analysts are overoptimistic usually coming into the new year in most years, and so they need to kind of correct their expectations, but they don't do that until after they hear outlook and guidance from the companies that they're covering. Right? So it takes a little bit of time to filter through the system, and usually it's the first quarter where we see the largest drop in earnings expectations. And so this is a normal course of business. You know? Of course, we need to see what happens with tariffs. There's a lot of uncertainty about how that filters through the system. We saw in twenty twenty eighteen and we saw with the pandemic that rising prices were pushed onto the consumer. This time might be a little bit of a different story. That's not the only way you deal with higher prices. Right? If they even go into effect or what level they go into effect, they can be absorbed by the supplier. They can be absorbed by the corporation. So I think there's a lot of moving parts, but you know what? I'm sticking with earnings growth is still positive. People still have jobs. There's opportunity for them to switch jobs, and wages are growing. And if wages are growing, people are gonna spend, and we heard that from Bank of America this morning. Oh, well, great. Did you go to the University of Pittsburgh? Where where did you go to college? Was that Yeah. I went to University of Pittsburgh. I grew up in Pittsburgh. So I stayed local. And then Did they make the tournament or not? I don't honest about did did they make the tournament or no? I don't think so. Basketball tournament. I don't think so. I don't I don't think they did. See, I'm a Xavier guy. I got my Xavier pin, so I gotta give Xavier a shout out. But, good luck to all the March Madness brackets out there. I would have adventure, I guess. You know, one thing, Lindsey, just I was playing with numbers is what I do. Like, only twice, still, this last seventy five years is the s p five hundred peaked the month of February. We did peak on February nineteenth. We had the ten percent correction. I guess our base case would be kinda it'd be rare, I guess, if that was the peak for the year. I still think there's some better times, coming. You know, one thing we like to talk about a lot, and I know you did, with Joe and talked about it. The productivity that we've been seeing is a positive development. Kinda layer in inflation and productivity. How you see those two things? Those are things we talk about a lot on this podcast that I I think I'd love your take on. Yeah. So productivity has been on the rise. I know the late latest reading was slightly softer than the above two percent range that we saw. But, but I think that there's opportunity for that to increase, obviously, with the developments of technology and AI. And and I think that what we saw at different periods of time in history is that productivity has played an important role in in earnings growth and economic growth in particular. And what we did see is, you know, in the nineties in particular, I've been looking back at the nineties in comparison to to the period that we're in. We saw we saw productivity. It was above two percent in the the decade of the nineties, but it really took off in the second half of the decade as technology changes really sort of kind of became ingrained into the everyday day lives of of individuals and in businesses and things like that. And so I think what we're seeing now is we're seeing good increases in productivity, again, above two percent. But there's a potential if we see that tick even higher in the latter part of the year. The important thing about productivity gains is, hopefully, those are passed on to to, consumers in the in the term of wages. Right? And wage growth, like I already talked about, there's significant correlation between wage growth and spending consumer spending. And so if wages are growing, especially above inflation in a real real wage, growth environment, we can really see significant economic growth. Because as you guys know, the consumer Mhmm. Is two thirds of the economy and very important aspect of the economy that we're keeping a close eye on in the in the near term. Yeah. No. We've been in the camp that, you know, productivity growth is running above trend. And with that, you get up to your point. Right? Strong wage growth, but with, crucially, with low inflation. And some of the no. Companies never pass all the productivity gains onto workers. But but between some of it also going into margin expansion, and that matters for earnings going back to something you were saying connecting it back to that. But, you know, to that point, I was just looking at you you know, last night, I sent out some data to our advisers and our team about industrial production, right, coming to the productivity piece. High-tech equipment spending was up, you know, actually, high-tech equipment production, not spending, production. So they're baking all the stuff, semiconductor chips, things like that. EV batteries. That was up twenty six percent annualized over the last three months. It's running well above trend. Right? So that's the stuff you want to see for that productivity piece to continue above trend. I'm curious what data you're looking at right now to determine I mean, it sounds like you're in the same capital as we don't think there's a recession. You mentioned layoffs and lower things like that. I'm curious what you look at, to see, you know, where we are in terms of economic growth. Yeah. So, I mean, I look at I mentioned a handful of them. I always start with earnings because that's just my upbringing, I guess. But then I go into the labor market, and I know that payrolls, and I know that, you know, payroll and unemployment can be a lagging indicator and has historically been viewed that way. But still, you can't deny that unemployment is at four point one percent. It's, you know, historically low levels. I also believe that for from a consumer perspective, you gotta look at the job openings report, and what you're seeing there is seven point seven million jobs available. The consumer when the consumer has job opportunity, they they it makes them a little more optimistic. I know the consumer has been very pessimistic as of late according to some surveys. But in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three too. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I'm always looking at the consumer. But, you know, I also I look at wages. Again, I talked through that already. Some of the other things too is I I like to look at the bond market too. What's the bond market telling us about the economic outlook? Because those are those are folks that, you know, we're the optimists in the room, you know, following the equity market primarily. But the the bond the bond investors, fixed income investors, they get paid to worry. Right? So they're always the ones looking for for around the corner, looking for what what shoes gonna drop next. And when I like, inflation has been a major key for for the a major driver for the market over the last several years and, obviously, driving Fed monetary policy, which we're gonna learn a lot more about tonight. But when I look at in the inflation indicators, the breakevens, the five years, the ten year forward looking indicators in the bond market, inflation expectations have fallen since January. And that compares to, like, consumer expectations are are taking off, which is point. Is concerning. So there's that that difference there, and I think the difference is that the consumer really is telling us they can't really withstand more price increases without greater wage increases. And so I think that's the sentiment that we're seeing. But, also, further looking at bond spreads, I know they ticked up a little bit, but they're still very low versus historical averages. And then, also, if we have this major growth scare, if we think that there there's really gonna be a massive slowdown, how come the expectation for rate cuts hasn't really I mean, we were at one point, there was, like, an expectation for one cut. The Fed's been at two. I kinda don't think they're gonna change their their, their stance on that too. Policy is still meaningfully restrictive. Even if they cut two times, it's still presumably still restrictive. Exactly. So that's that's kind of where I'm looking. And, of course, I look at some of the leading indicators too. There's a handful of them that are still in positive territory versus, like, you mentioned industrial production, some of the manufacturing stuff. It's questionable. There's been some pull forward there. But what we have been seeing before the tariff stuff started happening is you were seeing, like, you know, this is supposed to be the year that manufacturing was supposed to heal and start improving. Right? No. I asked Ryan this question yesterday, so I'll I'll ask you the same thing. Scale of one zero to ten. Zero being you're not worried at all. Ten me, Ryan, you wanted to ten is Harry Dent level of Harry Dent Harry Dent level worry is level ten. That's our joke. How worried are you? Economy, markets, you could take it. You know? You could separate it if you want, put it together. It's up to you. So I'm, like like, a a six because so a little little over neutral, and not, like, super optimistic. Here's the thing. I do worry about the consumer because, you know, the when you look at the consumer I I just talked to, they are really worried about prices. Right? And they are seeing wage growth, and there are job opportunities. The flip side to that is companies haven't been hiring either. Right? Mhmm. They say there are all these worker shortages, but they're also not hiring. So there's there's there's a little bit of uncertainty there. And so I think we do need to be mindful of that because the longer this this uncertainty about tariffs and where where prices are actually going to go lingers, the consumer could become more anchored to higher inflation. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Right? So I that's so I do look at that. But, that's really the main place where my concern is offsetting that, though. The reason I come down, I'm not further up the scale in in in terms of worry, is because look. One one of the things what could go right is the question we need to ask ourselves. Right? There you go. There's so much worry and uncertainty in the market about tariffs and the negative impacts of tariffs, but it's almost like we've forgotten. I mean, you see the market pop on days, like, the days in the past where Trump has, like, kind of, pulled back his rhetoric, and his stance on on tariffs. You see the market pop then. So to me, it tells me that that side of the coin hasn't really been baked into the markets. Also, we can't forget there still are pro growth policies that are key components of the Trump administration. The focus has obviously been on the the harder side of things, which has has been tariffs and immigration and things like this border patrol. But, but there's there the, the tax cuts and job act is currently working its way through the system. You know, for whatever you think about Doge, they are working on deregulation. I think we should be hearing a little more about that in the coming weeks. And so week or month or something like that. So there are other things. Like, these policies have not been completely forgotten, and they're not gonna be, like, not addressed. So, you know, I just I just think we need clarity, and I think you just gotta stick to the the facts. You know, facts versus feelings. Let's get all off the feelings and into the facts. It is amazing how quick this goes. We've got only a couple minutes. I've got one job to make sure we stay on time. It's like our friend, Neil Dutta, Renmax said. He's like, you know, when president Trump won, we expected deregulation, taxes, and tariffs in that order. It hasn't been in that order, so it's kind of upset the apple cart a little bit. You know, is is James around? Is like, can you wave and get him on the screen, or is James not in the same room as you? Where is he? No. Slack him. See if he'll come in here. Say slap him. He can say hi for a second. So we we do have to it's just stopping, you know, a couple minutes. I mean, for for a, you know, let's say a little girl. You know, thirteen year old girl who likes stock market. What can she do in the world of finance you think to be, to be successful like yourself, Lindsey? And maybe James will come say hi too. I you know what? I think you just gotta you gotta read as much as you can and and try to, you know, learn as much as you can, but then also meet people in the industry and talk to them because you know what? There's like, we both agree that there's not always a straight line. Come on in, James. There's not always a straight line path. And One second, James. I want you to say hi in a second. Let Lindsey answer this. We'll get a final. Yeah. Yeah. So, no. I did there's just not always a straight line path, so I think it's it's all about, meeting people, learning about the different opportunities that are in the industry because it's not always what what you think or see or for her. There's a lot of different things you can do in this industry. Love it. Well, this is awesome. James still there? Is he still there? James, you got thirty seconds. Tell us why someone should listen to what Lindsay's up to, what you're up to over at Clearanomics. We do have to end this, but good to see say hi, my friend. What what's up with Clearanomics? Yeah. Great to see you, Ryan. Yeah. Great to see you everyone at Credit One second or so, James. I'm cutting you off, man. So let's hear it. The elevator pitch. Let's hear it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Lindsay is one of the best in the industry as you guys know. I mean, she joins a fantastic group here on this panel. You know, we're just here to help advisers, talk about what's happening in the markets, to complement a lot of, the fantastic research that you put out at Carson. So whatever we can do to help, we're here. Mhmm. Awesome. Fantastic. That was that was great. Well, thanks, James. I said it was a great hire, and I think you guys are gonna do awesome together and build the team. So, Lindsay, thank you so much for joining us. You set the bar very high. We've got three more guests coming here over the course of two hours on facts versus feelings. You know what I have, Ryan? History month. Oh, so we got a milkshake. I need to order a milkshake. I got my milkshake. When we do live streams, we get milkshakes. I'm I'm behind on that. But, Lindsay, any any final words, and then we're gonna go to a commercial. No. Thank you for doing this. This is so fun. You you're raising women's voices in the industry, and I love that. I'm glad that you thought of me. Yeah. It was fun. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks, Lindsay. Best of luck with everything. Reach out if we can help. We're fans, and, good luck with the new, new new gig as they say. But, Tory, we are done. We got a five minute break. Let's go to the commercials. Take care, Lindsay. Thank you. Bye, Lindsay. See you. Thank you. Should we keep it on time? Oh, we're we're we're back already. We've got a little extra time with Debbie. That's that's great. A perfect person to have some extra time with. Yes. You you you made it, Debbie. How are you doing? I'm great. How are you guys doing? Good. Good. Nice to see you, Debbie. So far, so good. The first one down with Lindsay, and now we're really excited, Debbie, because we started a tad early, which is awesome. We've got a little extra time. We got about twenty eight minutes, and it's a hard twenty eight minutes, so we get in trouble. So you know how this works. First off, who do you have in March madness? Do you get into March madness, Debbie? I mean, what what what do we think of? I'm sorry. Before I hop into March mad it's sort of interesting that you're talking to me about March madness. But before I hop into March mass, I wanna do a call out to ClearNomics, and then, and James. So we've been using ClearNomics for a while here in our office, and we are huge fans. I've written a bunch of articles on ClearNomics. Nice. We have their chart book coming in every single morning to the office. We use their videos. So they they've done some really, some really nice work. And so, anyway, I just wanna do a shout out to them. Fantastic. No. That that that that is awesome. That's great. Yeah. I've known James for a long time, so I was excited when Lindsay joined up. Alright. So let's start having some fun. Debbie, you know how it is. We like titles around here and everything, but let's go with your title. You you kinda have a new job, but, you know, maybe a new boss. I don't know. You know you know what I mean? Maybe a new boss. Talk talk to you about that Burt White guy? Yeah. Burt White guy. You're gonna be nice to him. I think he might be watching. We'd we'd be nice. I don't know. Although, I think you can say what you can probably say whatever you want to Bert. We have to say yes, sir. You probably can push back a little more. I think that he's sitting here after all this time. Yeah. You know, you you know, anyway, so so talk to us a little bit about your career and kinda how you're you've always been with Carson, but what you're up to now to help advisers. And we're gonna get into all the other stuff. But this is we're just excited you're here, Debbie. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, real quick because I feel like some of that stuff's boring, but I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I've been doing this now for almost thirty years, and, I became wholly owned with Carson as of January first. So I built the practice. We have ten people here in Franklin Lakes. And, you know, we're basically four hundred million dollars, although the market's hurt that a little bit over the last couple weeks. And then, you know, I became wholly owned. And as of January first, then, also chief tax strategist, and I'm also, you know, a CPA and a retired attorney. Wow. That's great. That's all? So we you know, you've it's it's been amazing listening to you just over the last, you know, few months since you've taken on this role at Carson and talk about taxes, and I think our investment team especially, I feel like again, you know, I'm biased. Right? I'd like to think we think a lot about taxes too, and so it's really exciting to have you, you know, leading this effort at Carson. And talking about tax alpha. Right? Tax alpha is different from the alpha, say, Ryan and me and, you know, Barry and Brad. So do. We have an intro for Debbie. We didn't use it. We didn't. We screw let's use we wanna use your intro. Sorry. We get so excited to talk. Tory, I'm sorry. Let's just play the intro today. I want I want Debbie to have the proper intro we should have given her. We screwed up already. Here's your intro, Debbie. Sorry. Sorry. Maybe. Maybe not. Oh, the intro already went. Oh, it did. Oh. It did. We were paying attention. We're just screwed up all over the place then. Alright. Never mind. Sorry. Anyway. So where were we? I'm sorry. I don't feel tax alpha. Debbie, why do you think tax alpha is important? How do you think the what do you think advisers can do to generate tax alpha, which is different from investment alpha the way we think about it? Right? Yeah. I mean, there's so much, Sonia. Like, that's a total loaded question. Right? And, ironically, I just got off the phone with the guys from AQR, which, you know, do just Good friends. Yeah. I mean, there's just so much opportunity there, and that's just that's just one little sliver. Right? So Mhmm. I think taking a step back, right, is, you know, when we think about wealth, I think about wealth as a three lane highway. Okay? And even Bert, by the way, now is talking about the three lane highway. So he's starting to steal my stuff. Ryan, does he steal your stuff? Because he stole my stuff. I mean, you know, the best tonight there. Yeah. I know. There's an old saying I've always used. If you take it from one person, it's called stealing. But if you take it from everyone, it's called research. I think Bert Bert does a lot of research. I hope he does offer to me. Sorry. Sorry. Is this gonna this is gonna be twenty five minutes of, what do they call it when you, like, talk trash about somebody in front of them? Roast. Roast. Roast. Roast. It's been twenty five minute roast on Burt. Wait. So, anyway, it's it's the basically, the way I think about wealth is the three lane highway. The first lane is investment management, which is the area that you guys really focus on and do such a great job in. And it's not to say that you're not thinking about other areas. Right? But your main focus is investment management. Sure. Then the middle lane or the second lane is financial planning. And, you know, we know people who are, you know, working in planning. Right? You know, and I think of planning, by the way, just aside, in two ways, is accumulation and distribution. Right? And I think the planning profession has not done a good job in talking about the distribution part of it. They've done a good job in the accumulation part of it. Right? So one of the things I'm trying to bring attention to is the distribution part, which, of course, a lot of taxes play in there. Right? And then the third lane is family tax planning. And I call it family tax planning because it looks different for everybody. And so even if Sonu and Ryan had the same exact balance sheets, your family tax plan would look different. Even if your investment tolerance was the same Mhmm. And we put you in certain cars and models or whatever, like, you know, Sonu and I don't know much about your personal situation. Right? But Sonu's married. He's got four kids, and he wants I I have twins. I have eight year old twins. That's it. Boys are four. Two. So someone's like, well, let me tell you about my personal situation. Right? So Sonu I I get a financial plan right here. Right? Yeah. Exactly. It's a five minute plan. It's a five minute plan. Alright. So Sony's like, hey. I need to take care of, like, my wife and kids. But Ryan Ryan's a player. Right? He's out there. He's got a lot of girlfriends. He's got a lot of stuff going on. Right? So Ryan's Ryan's tax plan. Wish. Yeah. Ryan's tax plan you know, hopefully, Bert and your wife are not listening to this. Right? But, you know, Ryan's tax plan is gonna look completely different. And so I call it family tax plan because it's highly customized. It's not really easily scalable, but that's what makes you so valuable to the client. Right? Because it's not so plug and play. So, anyway, so taxes then, you know, really come into play the distribution planning part, but really that third lane, that family tax planning lane. I think that's so important, the distribution piece. But to your point, I don't think a lot of people think about that because when they first got like, we are in the investment side. Right? We are thinking about accumulation by the nature of it. By definition, we think about accumulating. How can we grow your portfolio? Right? But at some point, people have to take out money, and then when you take out money, you have to pay the your pay Uncle Sam. Right? And I feel like what you're doing is how do we keep more of that? Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting, Sonu, because for most of our clients, their largest expense in retirement will be taxes. Wow. Right? And if you go like, when you sit in during the planning process, they'll say, oh, I wanna take a trip to Europe every other year. Can you, like, bake that in? Oh, I wanna buy a new car every seven years. Can you bake that in? Right? Nobody's like, hey. Taxes are gonna be my largest expense in retirement. Like, what are you gonna do about that? But that's that's the truth. Absent, like, chronic, like, illness or long term care expense, you know, absent something like that, taxes are gonna be your largest expense. So why aren't we being proactive and trying to cut that bill down by millions of dollars? Right. I have never heard that. That's that's that hits that's eating home, right, as we as I speak. That's like Well, particularly, Sonu, if you've got a large retirement account, which so many people have these days. Right? Because here's what's happened. They've Like an IRA or a four zero one k. Right? Right. They've done such a good job with the investment management part. Right? So you guys have done your job in the first lane. And what you've done is built these huge balances with the market that's cooperating. And by the way, with people living longer than ever before, they've got these huge balances. And you gotta like you're saying, you gotta eventually spend down that balance one way or another or try to leave it to the next generation. And whenever you try to do anything like that, then taxes come into play, and it's becoming more important today than ever before, particularly with this bull market and these huge balances that people have accumulated that even even ten years ago, you didn't see. Right. Right? It's a good problem to have. You have a large balance of pro problem but there is a problem in terms of distribution and take money. Absolutely problem. And that's by the way, I know Ryan's, like, chopping at the bit to get to the next thing, but Sonia and I started to nerd out a little bit on this. But, but and that's also, Sonia, the interesting part about it is that when we walk in the room, when a Carson adviser walks in the room, for some of these clients or prospects, this is the first time that anybody's had this conversation with them. Yeah. Well, I'll say this. We have a divided country. We know that. Right? We just talked with Lindsay a little bit ago about some of the inflation data. If you, you know, kinda lean a little left, do you think inflation will be higher, lean a little right, maybe not as high? It's it's the world we live in. But I think one place everyone agrees is we don't wanna pay a bunch of taxes if we can help it. Right. That's where no matter what happens in Washington, I think the conversation we're having is important. And one more thing, little personal note, my dog, Mabel, she's a hundred and three, I think, pounds. She, you know, she lost somebody, gained some weight. Great Dane, she's had pneumonia for, like, over a month. Last night, she got really, really sick, and my wife and I, Emily and I were like, we better take her to, like, a twenty four hour vet. We did. She is at the vet now getting all this medicine. This pneumonia won't go away. Twenty seven hundred bucks. You talk about an unexpected charge. I mean, I I know what happens is life, but it's like, oh my goodness. I need, like, dog insurance. I even think Carson offers that. I probably should have bought that. But, anyway, so these things happen like that, and that's important. Listening here. So that that Yeah. I don't I'm more ranting. There's not even I don't even question really. I'm just ranting about this, but, hopefully, my doggy is okay. Yeah. Let's talk a little more about that. How do you help clients, or how can you help clients with those unexpected bills? I mean, do you do you say, let's save a certain amount or or do something every month? I mean, because he's and I know twenty seven hundred bucks, you know, believe me, it's a poke in the eye, but there's bigger bills that people have than just my brother. He he got cancer last year. Trust me. They're dealing with incredible bills they didn't see coming. How can he help someone with things like that? Yeah. And so, so it's interesting because I believe that there should be five key components of a retirement plan. And component number three, item three, is you've gotta be, prepared for large expenses. Some of them are planned and some of them are unplanned. Right? So planned expenses are a daughter's wedding in a year, or try to buy a second home. Right? But then there's unplanned large expenses and then Daughter's wedding tomorrow. Yeah. Sometime. Right? But that could be, unfortunately, a natural disaster. That could be a sickness. Right? So you have unplanned large expenses and planned large expenses. And what you need then is a liquidity bucket, a plan b is what I call it, and everybody should have a plan b, and maybe several plan b's. So that's how you that's how you address it, Ryan. Okay. Update on that. Uh-uh. Like, every like, I I usually don't talk about finance and investments when I'm at, you know, with friends and things like that because, you know, like, it's too I can get into jargon and spreads and things like that, but nobody wants to listen to me on that stuff. Right? And but I think there's a general assumption that, oh, Sunu's an investment, so there's no need of like, he can do its financial plan. But I actually have an adviser who has been you know, like, ever since I came to Carson, that's when I've had an adviser. And shout out to Grant Neland, who's my, you know, me and my wife, you know, we work with them closely. And it's been, you know, huge. It's been massive. Even though we usually don't talk about it's weird when we get to the investment piece because, you know, all all of our money, my wife and I, our money is in the models Ryan and I manage. So we don't talk about that, but that's, like, a small piece of the conversation. And just getting my wife and I on the same page has been, like, I think, a game changer, to be honest. And I feel like that's what that's the value you all bring as advisers to the table, right, in addition to taxes and thinking about everything you're just saying. Yeah. Yes. So I was gonna ask if do you have an adviser? I was gonna cheekily ask. Or do you do your own? That's a good one. So just as a side, by the way, you know, we're right outside the New York, you know, New York City. We have clients that work on Wall Street, and they are liaison portfolio managers. They're hedge fund managers. Right. Right. They have MBAs from Chicago, but, you know, they might know one sliver of finance or the investment universe. Right? So Sonu, like, you know more than a sliver, of course. Right? But you know all of this, but then there's all of this that you're not aware of, and also then there's an accountability component. Right? You talk about you and your wife being on the same page. There's a whole behavioral finance aspect to it. Right? It's holding you accountable, making sure that you and your wife are on the same page. And you could have, you know, all the PhDs in the world and your wife could, but that accountability component or helping you with areas that you're not an expert in, that can be priceless. So, yeah, like, we have clients that work on Wall Street, and we are hugely valued, for some of the work that we do for them. But that's a long way of trying to avoid no. I do not have a financial, adviser, but no. I don't. You know, I do work with my husband, and so there is a lot of accountability there going back and forth between the two of us. But yeah. That was just a cheeky question. You know? So but go to markets, you know, a little bit. Like, we've had a lot of volatility, and you sent out this really cool note to advisers about, like, what can be done sort of adjacent to market volatility, what they can do without, like, selling everything and going home and just sitting in cash. Right? Because that's tends to be an instinct for a lot of people when things get scary. But you're like, wait a minute. There are so many other things that you can do when you're faced with market volatility. Talk about that. I love that. So I call it making lemon lemonade out of the lemons, and how I also describe it to people, and you, Sonia, will appreciate this and Ryan, is I say capital doesn't evaporate. It just gets redistributed. Right? Yeah. And then the other thing I say to them is let's do what the smart people do. There's always a way to make money. We just need to figure out what it is through every market crisis. Right? There are always people that were able to capitalize it and profit from it. And so I wanna give clients an opportunity to sort of take back control, not feel like victims, not feel like all of this is happening to them. So when they see the markets going down, I'm like, there are opportunities here, and let's talk about those opportunities. So the piece was, nine strategies for a volatile market. So we talk about tax loss trading. We talk about funding trusts, right, or doing gifting. Right? So the best time to have your business valuation, if you're thinking about, you know, putting your business into a slot, right, or an LLC, is when the market's down, when the business has gotten devalued a little bit, and I'll let you guys in on a little bit secret and our listeners, is I had my business appraised in the middle of two thousand twenty two. Okay. Okay? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Okay? You know, there's an opportunity. And when you do these things, Roth conversions so you you guys will appreciate this. We did Roth conversions, listen to these dates, in June of two thousand twenty two k. In October of two thousand twenty two, and in January of two thousand twenty three when we had a new calendar year, okay, and if you remember in two thousand twenty three in January, they were calling technology as being dead. Remember that? They're saying out of technology, into dividend, technology is over. We did not agree with them. My husband has a technology background. He was a developer, software sales, and and in in in technology. So we did not agree with them. That was not our house view. I know that was not your house view. So in January of two thousand twenty three, breaking all of the rules of thumb because you're not supposed to do Roth conversions in the beginning of the year. Right? Like, all those stupid rules of thumb. In January, we went back after doing conversions in two thousand twenty two, and we said we wanna convert before the market bounces back because we were bullish just like you guys were. And so in January of two thousand twenty through, boom, new year, new calendar year, new tax year, and we went back and did conversions for these clients even though we were doing conversions in December of two thousand twenty two, year end conversions, and in October, went back in January. Those accounts are up double and triple digits. Right? Our clients think we're geniuses. And they're growing tax free because they're lost now. Yeah. And and we targeted the technology. So now those stocks, those technology stocks are in their Roth IRAs from three years ago. So this is where, you know, the clients then are so appreciative of us being proactive, us being creative, and looking, you know, not all nine strategies you're gonna use for every client, every pullback, but you're like, hey, Sonu. You know, we were talking about, you know, you possibly selling your business. This could be a time to do the gifting. This could be a time to set up your LLC. This could be a time to get the business appraisal. Like, the Roth conversions, you've got this two million dollar IRA. And you can even do it like somebody's working. They're in a high tax bracket. Right? You're like, hey, Debbie. I'm in a high tax bracket. Well, I did analysis. If you do Roth conversions, even if someone's in a higher tax bracket and the market's down ten or twenty percent, the market bounces back just to break even. You're basically doing those Roth conversions at a discounted tax rate. Sure. Right? And that's even just market breaking to even, which it did very quickly and then has gone double digit digits and triple digits beyond that. So that's just some example of it. Don't give everything away. They have to come to Carson first. That's what we're gonna do. We wanna write Debbie's secrets. Yeah. We've got about ten minutes. I was wanting to talk a little bit about that. Well, with ten minutes ago, this is Women's History Month, building community for women in finance, a live stream of facts versus feelings. So, Debbie, again, we have about ten minutes or so. How are some ways that Carson has helped empower you? Yeah. So I was thinking about that, this morning. And so first of all, you know, I believe that a fish, you know, a fish is healthy from the head down. Okay? With Bert as the CEO building this amazing executive management team, with a lot of very strong, very capable women. So that has been super exciting because when you read all the studies, about women, you know, women in business, just women trying to make it in the professional world, whether it's finance or something else, you know, they talk about mentorship, they talk about allyship, and at the end of the day at the end of the day, if you don't have women in leadership roles, you know, the world is not gonna change. You're not gonna feel supported as a woman, you know, as part of the team. You're just you're just not. You want somebody to emulate. You want somebody who's up there as an example. And so number one, we're seeing women coming to Carson in leadership positions that I admire, I respect, and even including myself being chief tax strategist. So that's one thing that I love to see. There is a women study group. I actually joined it, I think, a week or two ago, and so that's great to see the community of women. There's, you know, women's newsletter, and then there's the women's conference. I'm going to it next month, and it's called the represent, and so that's really exciting. And so you see some things that are sort of, like, on paper, and you're like, oh, yeah. Like, yes. They're checking the box there. They're checking the box there. Right. But I would I will tell you beyond that. I I feel like the community there is a very merit based community, and women who are strong and women who wanna be great advisers or great, you know, great part of Carson are going to absolutely have that opportunity, and I I know that. So those are some thoughts. Yeah. And and that that's an aspect to, like, women have a lot more wealth now than in the past, and they're making decisions about their wealth. Right? So and I imagine there is some affinity too. Like, people want to talk to people like them. Right? You know, however it is. It it is what it is. Right? I'm curious how you think about that stuff as well. Yeah. So fifty one trillion dollars is going to be inherited by women over the next two decades. Right? Fifty one trillion dollars. And they're growing their wealth at twice the rate of men, but they're still investing less than men. Less of them are showing up to adviser meetings than the men. Like, there is data behind all of that. And so, one of the things they talk about is having an office that has women advisers in it so that when you are reaching out to your women clients, you know, they are meeting maybe with a woman as part of the team. And so, again, it's sometimes it's just so simple as that. Like, we can have fancy newsletters and things that have pink all over them. Right? But at the end of the day, you know, having a woman adviser, or having a woman, like, on the team, as part of your advisory team, that speaks volumes. And so, I think there is a huge demographic shift going on here. We know that. All the data is there. And, again, I love that Carson's out there in front being super supportive of of that, but it's real. I mean, we have women more and more that are hiring us because we are women led, specifically. They are like, we want a woman. Our, branch here is seventy percent women, which is very unusual. Those numbers are basically backwards of what you'd see in any other, any other traditional office and, of course, a woman founder. And so what what we do is different. So our communications, I tell you, I think are exceptionally strong. Women's history month, we have a lot of celebration for Women's History Month and a lot of work we're doing now. And then also in October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we have women wellness events. Like, there's a lot of ways that we are trying to communicate differently and support women on their journeys. Well, I wanna give a shout out to, Terry Shepherd, our president here at Carson. I know she's, stepping away soon to do some things with her family, but she's been the president of Carson for a long, long time. And Terry's awesome. So congrats on a great career and just making Carson better, but our entire industry better, to Terry. So we've got a couple to Terry. Yeah. We've got a few more minutes. Yeah. We kinda you kinda went this route. I wanna go a little more, though. We have a lot of financial advisors that listen to this livestream, that will listen to this podcast, you know, when it plays a little bit later. Why would you've been around. You've seen a lot of places. I'm sure a lot of places tried to recruit you before you became a fully honed a fully owned office, so I'm trying to say. Why Carson? Why should a financial adviser out there come to Carson? Now this is male or female. We're just opening the whole spigot now. You know? Why should anybody come to Carson to be part of our community? By the way, they're still trying to recruit me, Ryan. I got something this morning. Well Okay. Okay. Who do you got? Well, that you're you're you're you're loved. What can you say? There you go. I am totally not checking LinkedIn. Right? Okay. Yeah. So I I want to I wanna pretend that I'm interested in going elsewhere because I need Bert to listen to this and get nervous. Okay? So, but the truth of it is why should any adviser come to Carson? First of all, and I know I keep talking about this, I don't think there's a better CEO in the industry. Okay? I truly believe that. Okay? I think Bert White is such a visionary. There's nobody smarter in the room. He gets it. He has got a vision. I I can't even I can't even put into words. He everybody's playing checkers. He's playing chess. He's ten steps ahead. And so, you know, I do believe having a strong leadership team, but having a strong leader with a vision is so critical. So I think that's super important. And I think what we're doing here in the investment department with you guys and then what we have going on with tax and sort of wealth strategies overall, We are building something that is literally going to be best of breed in the industry, and we're not gonna stop until it is. And so, you know, we have bird support. We have the executive management team support. I love how all of us are working together because it's not just the first lane, you, Sonu and Ryan doing investments, and then me over here doing tax. Right? It's all of this working together, and that's what we're doing over at Carson, and it is wildly exciting, and it is best best of breed. So if you say, Debbie, what are two good reasons? I would tell you the best leadership team in the industry, and I would tell you the way that we are building out tax planning and investments, again, is and will be industry leading and will make you, the advisers, tons of money. We'll help you close larger clients. We'll help you build wallet share. We'll help you service clients in the way they want to be serviced, but they're not getting serviced. And we're doing we're doing all of that. Yeah. To that point, this evening, I think we have a meeting together to talk about, you know, like, the folks from Plaid Investments and Debbie too to talk about, you know, how we can present something to a big large prospect. Yeah. Exactly to what Debbie just spoke about. How much time do we have, Ryan? Yeah. About two minutes. Yeah. Not not much. It goes fast. I I have one question. It's a you brought this up. That's what got me thinking about it. Why are women I I I don't even know this is true, but it seems like, why are women more conservative with investments? And maybe that's not a bad thing because maybe they panic less than men. That could be the case. Maybe like, oh, no. This is happening. Let's sell. We have to act. Sometimes it's better not to act, but I'm curious why if you have any thoughts. So no. I do. I mean, I have a ton of thoughts on women in investing, women in the industry because I've I've lived this for almost thirty years now. Right? And I will tell you, I know we have less than two minutes, but really quick is, you know, from a very young age, women women are not educated, and our culture does not encourage women to be involved in money, to be involved in finance at a very young age. You even think about little Timmy and little Susie. You know, Timmy, what do you wanna be when you grow up? I wanna make a ton of money, and I wanna run a big company. Susie, what do you wanna be when you grow up? I wanna make a ton of money. I wanna run a big company. And you're like, Susie, like, the you know, that's like, you're a little embarrassed that Susie's talking like that. And so, ironically, from a very young age, boys becoming men are encouraged to think, hey. Money, math, finance, you know, getting a job, and girls are sent mixed messages. Okay? Even if they have the capability, they're sent very mixed messages from society. And I do believe that that's a big part of it. And then you fast forward, and you've got men doing the meetings with the financial advisor who happens to be a guy in eighty to ninety percent. And the woman says, you know, Jim's got it handled. My husband's got it handled. And so it becomes this sort of ecosystem self reinforcing, and it's a shame because we also know that ninety percent of women will be managing their own wealth someday. Ninety percent. So we should be training every little girl to take ownership of her life, to feel comfortable with math, to feel comfortable with finance, even if she's gonna be a stay at home mom. Okay? But we should, you know, we should encourage these young girls and young women to to take agency because they're gonna be managing their money someday. Eventually, they all will be. So it is actually sad, and it's one of the reasons you hear me out there so aggressively having these conversations, writing these articles. I will say I have two daughters. One of them is an investment banker. It's got her master's in finance, from Hopkins, and the other one works here in the business with me, and you guys have met her. So at least with my two girls, I feel like I started off okay, but I'd love us to spread this to all women out there. Right? Love it. Love it. That's so awesome. Absolutely. Well, Debbie Taylor, the chief tax strategist at Carson Group. This was an excellent, awesome conversation. And by the way, you reached out to us, I don't know, six weeks ago and said, hey. Let's do something for It's hoping it came out of that. Whole thing came from one email from you. So thank you for, you know, pushing us to do it. And believe me, we jumped all over. We love doing stuff like this. So I think it's just another small way of showing the way Carson works. Someone says, let's do something. We just do it. Right? And not always gonna work, but we're willing to take chances, willing to take risks to make our financial advisers and our partners help them grow, help their clients. And as I think that'd be one of the best, I don't know, ninety second commercials ever for why if you're a financial adviser, you might wanna come over and join us and learn a little bit more. But we have to go. Debbie, thank you so much. Have fun talking to Sonu in a couple hours, I guess, and I hope to see you very soon. Debbie. Maybe, I guess, what? Omaha maybe in May at partner summit probably. So looking forward to that. But with all of that, Tory, we're done. Let's play the commercials. Thanks, everybody. We'll be back with, Jess Minton very, very soon from Bloomberg. At Carson, we're always innovating and iterating to make our offering more complete and help advisers find their freedom. And one of the new enhancements we're most excited about is our wealth management platform, which has evolved to help our advisors deliver a more personalized investment and planning experience to their clients at scale. Our investment platform and research team have grown significantly, and we're providing advisors with more flexibility to manage their investment program on their terms. We have intentionally built a wide ranging but highly curated mix of equity, fixed income, and alternative products and managed portfolios, along with the tools, content to power your management style and story. And we've expanded our planning offering to help our partners cover tax planning, estate planning, trusts, insurance, group retirement plans, and more. And that's just some of the ways Carson helps advisors find their freedom. Learn more at carson group dot com. And we are back. We've reached a halfway point, Sonu. It's going fast, but we are so excited to be joined by, our good friend, Jeff Minton. Jeff? Where did it come from? Jeff. I am sorry. I don't know where that came from. It's been a long few weeks. Right? It's been an hour now. I felt like two weeks ago every day felt like Friday, but anyway, Jess Minton, apologies. Live from I guess you're live from Bloomberg. Right? Which room are you in there? If I've been in that room, where are you? At my desk right now. We have a lot of fancy rooms, but, I couldn't figure out how to get this to zoom in any closer. So I look a little far away, but, hopefully, you could hear me so it all works out. Yeah. And and we see some Bloomberg stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Office in the background too. In case we didn't people didn't believe you really guys. In case we didn't believe you really worked at Bloomberg, it it's really there. This this is neat. So, Jess, we're we're excited. You know, we we've already had, conversations about the markets. We just talked about taxes, and I love, you know, what you do. You talk about markets, but also you live in the world of media. And I do a lot of media, and so there's a lot of media. So I thought this would be a really fun conversation for the next twenty five minutes or so. But let's just start. You know, we live in a world of compliance. We like titles and things. What's your title over Bloomberg, and what kind of do you do all day? Because I know you do a ton, but what do you do all day? So I do have a few different roles. So I'm the deputy team leader for the US equities team, and so that basically means I'm helping manage the coverage that comes off the US stocks desk. And then I'm also a senior reporter for the same team. So that means I'm also doing more of the enterprise, kind of big feature reporting, sort of the bigger takeaways from what's happening when you connect the dots across, the equity market, whether you're looking at, obviously, technicals. Like, I know you watch very closely, Orion, as well as positioning, derivatives, what's going on with macro, micro, and then pretty much everything in between. And then basically telling kind of these are the bigger stories of the week as well as if when we get toward the end of the quarter or annually. So it kinda just depends on the size and scope. And, obviously, there's always big moments in the market, but, clearly, we're at an a crucial inflection point right now. No. I'm curious. I see the Bloomberg terminal keyboard in front of you. Yes. What is what was the last chart you looked at? I'm sure the Bloomberg terminal is like it's in front of you. What was the I have a right. So we are lucky as reporters. We have this g function where we could go and save a lot of our charts, and I could go and kinda quickly and update different things. I was actually just looking at the cost of hedging for the SPY. So obviously, the ETF that tracks the S and P five hundred. And so that can tell you a lot of, like, the hedging demand, like, how many and you could do it on different time frames. So you can do it a month out, two months out, three months out. But what's interesting about that, even though we saw it spike a bit, obviously, once we came up with the highs for the S and P five hundred a few weeks ago on February nineteenth and after we saw a number of the sell offs, you saw the cost of hedging climbing, but still now it's come down a little bit. So it's not nearly as much as it would have been, say, during right after the December meeting, for the Federal Reserve that was on December eighteenth. And then, obviously, when the yen carry trade was unwinding in early August. So you're you're seeing the cost of hedging come in a bit, and a lot of that just has to do whenever I'm talking to sources like Danny Kurz over at Piper as well as other people who work in the Durham space. A lot of their clients were already degrossing and had hedges on before what happened with the correction, so that's why you're not really seeing a spike in that yet. As well as the VIX, of course, it's closer to twenty now, but intraday trading, earlier this month, we saw it get closer to thirty. And usually when I'm talking to people in the the derivative space, it gets more costly to put on puts or protection above that. And so sometimes thirty could be that kinda line in the sand and a bit of a ceiling there. No. Love it. You know, I just realized I'm on Bloomberg Radio in a couple hours for to close today. So it's a small small small and Tim. So Yeah. Carol and Tim. Exactly. Carol and Tim. So, shout out to them. Always enjoy there. So, you know, I love the idea. We'll talk markets too. We've got time. But I love the idea of careers. Right? I know you and I met I guess, I met you was it USA Today? Right? That's where you were? So, actually, I think you met in your career. Was at the Wall Street Journal. Right? So I worked at Okay. National Business Times. I was covering equities, markets, macro. I pretty much always covered equities, macro, and everything in between. And then I was at the Wall Street Journal for a long time. Then I was at USA Today, did the same role. Got it. Got it. And then you get recruited to come to Bloomberg. So it all worked out. But so we've known each other for probably at least ten years. It's it's been it's been a minute, but I always enjoy getting to talk with you and and everything you've, you've done to help kinda my career, and I love, chatting with you on market. So that's that's great. Now with Bloomberg, you you do some radio, you do some TV, you do some writing. I mean, it feels like you're everywhere, which is awesome. You know? For someone just from a media point of view, is that normal to do everything like that? Because it feels like you're everywhere, which I'm I'm really proud of you when I see you all over the place. Well, thank you. A lot of it has to do because underneath the the Bloomberg umbrella, there are so many different platforms. So predominantly, I'm I'm a print reporter and I'm writing, but because you also have Bloomberg TV under this umbrella and this radio, it's literally on the same floor that I work on. So I can just kinda run over. You were mentioning, Carol Masser, Tim Stenovic, who you're gonna be on Bloomberg Radio, on Bloomberg Businessweek later this afternoon. But there's a lot of times that if they're on vacation, they'll pull me in to fill it with them. Or a lot of times, like, tomorrow morning, for instance, I have a weekly hit with Tom Keane, that I'll do on Thursday mornings. And then, occasionally, I'll step in an anchor with him if Paul Sweeney's gone. I think I'm with him, with Tom Keane next Friday too. So it's it's fun because I get to they really bring me in because they value the reporting that I'm doing and the writing and the conversations I'm having, whether it's with hedge fund managers, people that are maybe on the retail side, portfolio managers, and then strategists, and then anything going on with derivatives and technicals. They really wanna hear about what are my conversations like, what are people how are they positioning specifically, Because it kinda can help them get some insight into what's going on in the equity markets. Now one I I was looking at a recent piece that you did, maybe the last piece you did. I don't know. Unless it's a new one today. You were writing about profits, and profits are what ultimately matter to markets. Right? We're talking about, you know, market volatility and tariffs and things like that. How much is the profit outlook changing? Or and if so, by how much? And I'm just out of curiosity, how much is it being impacted by, say, tariffs? What's interesting about this, and I know that y'all cover this so closely too, and, of course, Gina Martin Adams, as Ryan knows very well too, she's on the CMT Association board, and she heads up our sell side research at Bloomberg Intelligence. And so her team along with Michael Casper, Wendy Song, they they monitor this very closely. So what they do on the Bloomberg Intelligence dashboard, so anyone who uses the terminal can go in, like, b I go and go to equities and see what they're looking at. But, basically, they pull in the sell side consensus estimates. And what's interesting about this despite what's been going on the last few weeks on the S and P five hundred, was briefly in a correction. Obviously, the Nasdaq one hundred is still in a correction. But you're if you look at the profit outlook for twenty twenty five as well as twenty twenty six, it's still very strong. So it's coming just slightly for this year. It's around ten percent growth compared to thirteen percent at the start of the year, but, typically, investors are looking further out. Right? So they're looking to twenty twenty six, and that's still at fourteen percent. That's unchanged, from what we would have been at at the start of the year. What's interesting is is the point we're at because we already got past fourth quarter earning season for the most part. And at fourteen percent earnings growth year over year for that period, I mean, that was the best quarterly stretch since the final three months of twenty twenty one. Obviously, that was the time period where the world was starting to reopen, and we saw some massive profit growth when people especially companies were hoarding those cash boards and putting it back through buybacks and things like that. So what we were looking at more closely was earnings estimate revisions because that can give you a little bit more of a real time estimate of as far as what sell side was looking twelve months out for EPS growth. So they've been marking them down for about twenty two of the last twenty three weeks. But, of course, we still have I mean, earning season really doesn't kick off until April eleventh when JPMorgan reports as well as other banks. And a lot of things could happen between now and then as well as, you know, you have that April second reciprocal tariff deadline. And I think a lot of on the sell side strategies, they aren't they can't really move the needle a lot. And a lot of companies even these that we sold Delta, bring down some of their earnings forecast. I think a lot of companies, especially different industries, are affected in different ways, like the Mag seven, for instance. A lot of them don't have that exposure towards Canada or Mexico. It's more so when you're looking at an Asia or China specifically. But then if you're an automaker like Stellantis, you have plants in Mexico that could be more impacted. So I think a lot of these companies are really waiting toward after that deadline to figure out how to guide lower. But then you could also see the song and dance where companies move those estimates and lower the bar to more easily beat those expectations. So it's a good thing to be an under. Right? If they were you going to use this as an opportunity for a little bit of sandbagging? Yeah. And and anyone who may have underestimated those types of impacts, a lot of, whether they're portfolio managers or other strategist, they're saying, well, if if something happens like that and companies end up needing to guide lower ahead of before they put their results out, you could easily see them do that. And then once the reports actually do come out in a couple of months, they'll then you'll see the stock higher even though you might initially see that lower. So it might not be as, I mean, in twenty eighteen, even though the height of what was going on with the trade war, there were massive buybacks because of the tax overhaul that got passed in at the end of twenty seventeen. And then, of course, there was that big sell off in the final quarter of twenty eighteen, especially that December, but it was just a very different fed and a different cycle when it came to hiking compared to what the economy was doing. And, really, you didn't see it show up in earnings growth until a year later. So you saw close to fifteen percent year over year earnings growth for the S and P five hundred in twenty eighteen. It was a little over one percent in twenty nineteen. So it this could take a multiple quarters, but then also the economy is much stronger right now than coming out of COVID than it was during that time. So that's another struggle to where you might still see earnings estimates be more robust than people would be assuming. Oh, that was great. Again, this is a live stream of facts versus feelings with Ryan and Sonu. It is Women's History Month, building community for women in finance. Again, joining by Jess Minton over at Bloomberg. So I know you and I were kicking around the idea of Wednesday being strong. I know you wanted to maybe point it out. I've I've been talking about it a lot. For whatever reason, Wednesday is wildly strong, and then the problem, it's the other four days. Although we had a pretty strong Friday and Monday recently. Why in the world you talk to a lot of smart people. Not that I'm one of them because I I really don't know why, but why in the world is Wednesday why in the world is Wednesday so strong this year? You know, it's funny because I saw you y'all had put out kind of this annual outlook that you were looking at for key charts, but this chart wasn't in there. This was something else I noticed, that I had covered in recent years because it was the opposite. So sometimes you see things change whenever the markets are more volatile. But what I thought was interesting, because last year, you typically saw the dip by Mondays and Fridays, and now it's the opposite. It's on Wednesdays to your point. And a lot of that has to do with a lot of traders didn't wanna go long into the weekend. So whether it was tariff related news out of Washington or, say, deep seek that we saw, toward the end of January. So you had kind of a multiplier of different events that were going on to where you're starting to see that just happen more so on Wednesdays, maybe even Tuesdays sometimes as well or Thursdays. And you're even seeing it more stark when it comes to more of the retail traders, because I know a lot of people like to use that as contrary indicators if you're looking at what are hedge funds doing, institutions versus what retail is doing. And you're still seeing strong buying in in retail right now, whereas hedge funds were the ones that were dumping coming into this year, and especially stocks like Tesla. A lot of retail traders are still going in and buying that on the dips. I was you know, Ryan does so much of great work on seasonality. And my pet theory I I don't even know if this is true. For season why seasonality exists, a lot of it you know, I started my career in the options market, so there's a little bit of bias there, options modeling, volatility modeling, basically. And my pet theory with seasonality is a lot of it has to do with options, even things like never shorting dull markets or the strong seasonality from, say, November to January because of all the holidays and option time needing to catch up with calendar time. I won't get into any more details beyond that. Right? But I'm curious. I I know you look at this stuff. And how much do the options market drive activity or movements in the overall market like the S and P five hundred, for example? I think it can be crucial, especially with positioning and where we're at the calendar. I know that Ryan watches very closely the presidential cycle and, typically, the quarter that we're now coming off of the election year, you do tend to see some weakness just because you do see tend to see historical, especially the last two months of a year once there's certainty about who's coming into office and as well as what gridlock or not gridlock will look like in congress. And so you're you saw a similar dynamic over the last especially since the US election in November. But specifically when it comes to the option space, we'll have triple witching this Friday. Of course, it's been one of those things the last few years where sometimes people are making things go out of it. Right, it's triple which so when you look at the, expiration, when it comes to specific single stocks, indexes as well as ETFs, but sometimes you don't really see a lot of movement on the headline surface for an index. It's more micro and specific stocks related as well as companies that'll be, added to the S and P five hundred before trading next Monday. So DoorDash is one of those as well as Williams to know it. So you'll see a few things like that, but then also sometimes people will point to triple witching, but then when it doesn't end up being a big event, it's it's usually a reason if there is a lot of volatility. But then if there's not, people will say, well, that wasn't anything. But something specifically I would say toward the end of every quarter is the JPMorgan collar trade. So the ticker symbol on that is j h e q x for those on the terminal or where else they wanna look at. And the reason I bring that up is because basically, JPMorgan has this basket of stocks in the S and P five hundred with options on the index, and it also resets and hedges once a quarter. So it'll be March thirty first. It'll be a Monday this year. So the closer Everybody knows when that is. Right? Right. Exactly. And the reason I bring it up is because there is typically strike prices that are at the call level, which is we've been paying more attention to over the last few quarters just because of the nonstop rally the last two years in the S and P five hundred, but then there's a put price. And I was I did a story about this last week because fifty five sixty five was the put level for this particular trade when you're looking at the color trade for JPMorgan. And usually during intraday a few times last week, like Monday and Tuesday, for instance, you'd see the S and P five hundred briefly break below that then trade back above. And the reason is the closer it is to those levels, like, say, if you are basically trying to you have to stay neutral as, like, an options dealer, you might be forced to have to step in and then start buying. Whereas, like, if you get too far below that price on the S and P five hundred, like, we would have seen maybe on Thursday or the middle of last week. Then you see kind of the S and P exacerbated lower, closer to fifty five hundred, but there's not a ton of puts below the fifty five hundred level. So it's almost like it kinda serve as a a floor in a way, but those levels might be more crucial the closer we get to March thirty first. But that's something that's come up. Because, of course, I know Ryan watches the tech deals very closely as well. But from the option side of it, there's also other levels there too that options dealers are watching pretty closely. So that fifty five, sixty five level has been important. Explains why round numbers tend to be important too, which is Explains why round numbers tend to be important too, which is probably seems weird. Like, why should a round number be important? But that's where some of these strike prices are for the options market. And just to clarify, this is for compliance reasons. Any of the tickers just mentioned or any of us mentioned, this is not a recommendation to buy or sell any of the stuff. So More educational. Educational. Right. So so I love the media aspect of this because that's why I wanna pick your brain a little bit. Working in the media like you have for for most of your career, I I assume. Who are some mentors and maybe some on camera personality at Bloomberg? It's just kinda funny off the camera if you feel like sharing something. Just some some some some some stories here on who you learned from over the years. Yeah. I've been lucky that I've had a lot of good mentors over the years. I think specifically during my time at Bloomberg, because I since I cover technicals pretty closely, I go to a lot of the CMT Association events that Orion frequents as well. And so I feel like Gina Martin Adams has always been a really good resource. So I feel like because she's a CFA as well as CMT, she's very good and probably one of the best to do it when you start threading together what's happening on both sides as far as her team and what they're watching. And then also on the media side, I would have to say Carol Masser, Tim Stenovich, as well as Alex Steele, and a number of others on the media side who've anytime I have any questions. And, of course, you get freaking Tom Keene, right, who's been here for decades, and any any and then Paul Sweeney as well. So anytime I've been able to anchor with them, cohost anything, they're always very they wanna hear about what I'm reporting on, but then they've done this for decades. So I'm always able to pick their brain and get any advice. So I always feel like, especially Tom Keene in the mornings, he's it's funny because before we'll anchor together, he always tells me, you know, it just let's just have fun. So he obviously values and he wants people to be sharp with the market knowledge, but he also wants people, and especially the audience, to have a good time and really take something a well way and learn something from what we're talking about. Tom Tom's obviously a legend. I think my first one of my first, like, live interviews was with Pim Fox probably twenty years ago. Pim's Pim's not at Bloomberg anymore. Right? Or is he? Or or No. He went over to Fox, and I think he might still be there. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but he was he was a big fixture here at Bloomberg for a while. Oh, yeah. We were going up to floor six and being so nervous and worried. Not worried, but just nervous. And then, like, I'm literally on TV yesterday, and I wear this Saint Patrick's Day hat on TV. It's like I'm almost too relaxed now. You know? It's a Yeah. Fine the fine line there. So go go ahead. Yeah. Go go ahead, Sonu. Jump in. No. No. Just think it if you like to have fun, it Oh, yeah. We look good on the The market's a serious business. I mean, you know, at some point, you try to tell yourself, don't take take yourself too seriously here. You get Right. But I I actually, I'm looking at my screen, then I see green on the screen, which is nice and pleasant to see after the battle of volatility we've had. And, are people let's talk sentiment. Sentiment's been actually, sentiment's shifted, you know, up and down a lot. Right? Right now, I think it's generally negative. But are people you talk to, are they buying the dip here? It's so retail traders tend to still be doing it, maybe not as aggressively as they were at the start of the year, but what because we've talked about the AAII survey so much in the past, and I know that y'all watch this very closely, especially the bull bear spread number of weeks now. It's been an excessive, negative territory, especially even beyond if you were looking at the date since twenty twenty two, if you pull it back even further. It's, kind of astounding. It's almost like at levels since two thousand nine, which both of those in twenty twenty two and two thousand nine kinda co stuck corresponded with Lowe's in the S and P five hundred, but also something beyond that. I always look at the fund manager survey from Bank of America that comes out in the middle of each month. So what was interesting to me and we we got a sense of this yesterday. So Michael Hartnett from Bank of America puts this out, and he's one of their chief strategist there. So investors were cutting their holdings of US equities by the most on record. And then also the cash levels, they had the biggest jump in cash allocation since March of twenty twenty. So, obviously, during the height of COVID, and a lot of times, those can be more contrary indicators. You saw cash levels around highs, say, back when the S and P five hundred was making its lows for the bull market or the bear market rather in the fall of twenty twenty two before the bull run over the last two years began. So we're starting to see different signals where they're reaching extremes, but a lot of either technicians or people in the auction space, and I'm sure y'all can weigh in as well, as far as certain signals stacking up. But like, it's almost like the conditions made sense to see a bounce back, but they're not necessarily seeing all of the signals just yet. But I would point out that Goldman Sachs, they they get CTA data. So basically these are commodity trader traders that, trading advisors. So basically, they look at the underlying markets and they look at the momentum. And basically, Brian Garrett, who's over at Goldman Sachs, was telling some of his clients that basically, the selling was so far advanced that the shift would be more focused to the upside, but you'd have to see a bigger day there. So that's that's a corner of the market that I'm one I'm keeping an eye on to see whether or not they end up stepping up their buying just because we saw such a stark drawdown in the S and P. Well, I'll say this. I'm a huge fan of Ed Giardini. Right? Also, Tom Lee for that matter. I remember Tom Lee in March of well, two years ago, March of twenty three got pretty defensive. Right? There's always always bullish Tom Lee, and he he he wasn't necessarily then. And Yardeni just cut his forecast, and then Trump put his caput. I'm thinking to myself, wow. The bowl some of the biggest bowls are kinda saying, I'm not so sure. Maybe that's the flush out. You know? That's kinda that's one it's anecdotal. I get it, but that's something that's caught my attention. You know, we are doing this before the Fed. And, you know, this this people listen to it live, obviously, live. People listen to it exactly one week from now, so let's just put a big asterisk on there. We don't know what the Fed's going to do, but you obviously follow the Fed closely. How have you how have you thought the Fed's been doing? What's your take on the Fed and how what you heard from people out there? Well, basically so I covered, obviously, Powell during, president Trump's first term as well during that trade war and what was going on with the tax overhaul. I would say specifically for more today, the when it comes to those dot plots since their quarterly, the median projection at during the December, because it's the last time we got the dot plots, was around three nine for the end of this year. So, obviously, they're looking to see how that potentially could adjust whether or not growth forecast move lower and the inflation forecast move higher. But a lot of my sources are thinking that how could come back and hedge that saying, hey. If this is adjusted somehow, this could be adjusted again depending on how the economy moves. But then beyond even just the rate cutting picture, they're looking at what they're scoring to signal about the balance sheet because that's always a big story that goes on in the background that sometimes people might overlook here, and that was something in twenty eighteen. Especially the end of twenty eighteen, they were pairing back the balance sheet, and then they ended up stopping, just because of what was going on with the liquidity in the markets and the sell off. So that's something my sources are watching to hear. What exactly is Powell going to say more about that balance sheet runoff in addition to rate cuts? Do you think they move in a little bit of a and I wanna be careful here because when I say the word in a stagflationary direction direction as opposed to predicting stagflation by moving their growth expectations lower and their inflation expectations higher. I think that that would be a lot of people may take that when you first get the dots right at two o'clock, but I think that's why a lot of it hinges at two thirty, What he ends up saying about his rhetoric because I think he will use that as a way to explain how they're viewing where the economy is at at this point, but then, of course, he always stays pretty tight lipped and, and and basically emphasizes how the Fed's going to be data dependent. And I would point out to you because I know Ryan was talking about when you're looking at more on the sell side research and what the perma bulls are doing versus the perma bears. I mean, Eddie Ardeni, of course, he he brought down that target from for this year from seven thousand to sixty four hundred. Right. But even I talked to Jeremy Siegel, who's a well known, buy the dip kinda stock bull. And, I mean, he would still argue for buying the dip, but I talked to him a few weeks ago before we were in a correction. And he was already kind of calling for a ten percent correction as well. So that's rare that you would hear somebody like himself say that too. Just speaking for our models, I mean but you you'd mentioned, like, managers at degrowth maybe even before this. We've done the same thing on our side. Not necessarily we kept our equity overweight, but we moved into more, like, low volatility stocks. We reduced some high beta stuff in the portfolio. So Mhmm. But I was curious about, you know, how what you're hearing from all these different parts of the market and market actors and investors. It doesn't seem like the signals are clear whether you wanna be more bearish or whether you wanna be much more bullish. Right? Either way, it's just like all the signals really haven't lined up on either side. They haven't. What's interesting since the S and P made that more recent low on March thirteenth, you're seeing the more riskier corners of the market taking off. So, like, nonprofitable tech up nearly eight percent since then, the Russell two thousand at more than three percent in that span. Most short stocks also up close to four percent. And then obviously in that span, the S and P five hundred is only up around close to two percent. So but but it would make sense because those were the more beaten down names. So if you zoom out and see how much they got pummeled, you're starting to see that more risk on in the near term. Whether or not that holds after a pal speaks remains to be seen, so we'll have to wait and see if the more riskier corners pick up even more so or not after he speaks. That was great. What do you have going on this afternoon with the pal stuff? You on TV, on radio, writing? What all what all what what do you do to help the industry? Writing. Right. Usually usually, you don't see me on fed days on, radio TV because I'm typing away. So then I'll be doing all that, and then, I'll figure out I won't be on the Tom King tomorrow morning at either eight fifty or nine fifty. It remains to be seen depending on how the lineup's gonna work Got it. With the show, but I'll be busy, typing today. Well, that's great. We've got, like, about a minute and a half to go here. I know you've got a hard schedule. We do as well. Jess, we're honored that you took some time to, speak with us here at this special livestream to honor women's history month. I called you Jeff to start it, obviously. Sorry. I still feel bad. But, you know, like, going out, let's have a fun one. You're on air a lot, and you've heard rumors. Are you seeing people on air? What's, like, one of the biggest mistakes maybe you've made on air? This you know, not the end of the world, but you call someone Jeff and the name is Jess. Have you done anything like that where you put your foot in your mouth? Because trust me, we have a podcast. We've done a hundred and twenty seven of these. I do it every week, so I'm not judging. Any any funny story here on air? Oh, man. And I'm trying to think of a more recent one on, on Bloomberg or not. Luckily, I'm not at Bloomberg yet. I'm trying to think of some stuff I did when I was younger, but I think everyone does it. Right? Like, it's it's more of, like, just how you move on. Mhmm. You make a sort of blunder. So I feel like it's the recovery matters, a lot more. Because even the best of the best. Right? Like, I see them sometimes stumble just because they've been on air for a long time. So I think you just gotta keep going. And so don't worry. I don't take offense for being called a Jeff. So a lot of people call me Jen on accident. It happens. And whoever Jeff Minton is, I'm sure there's one out there. Hello. How are you doing, Jeff Minton? Connect. There we go. Well well, Jess Minton over at Bloomberg, thank you so much for joining us. I think we've hit the end of our twenty five minutes here. This was awesome. Thank you for everything you do in our industry and all the amazing work. I always love reading your name and seeing seeing you all over the place. It's, makes me feel good to see that good things happen to good people. And just keep doing your thing, and if the Carson team can help, we're here for you. So with all that, thank you, Jess. And, yeah, Tory, we're good to go. Let's go to commercial. We're down to the last one. Kate Hall over at the Carson team Alright. Coming up next. See you, Jess. Thank you. Before I say that, I do wanna preface my comment, by saying that I've been truly blessed to be surrounded by amazing leaders here at Carson, both male and female. A great example of this is on our current executive team. Right now, our team has three female executives and seven male executives. And an obstacle I feel I face is the balance between being assertive but not too assertive that others think I'm bossy or maybe it's the balance between showing empathy but not too much empathy that people feel I'm weak. And I think women are more naturally in tune with their awareness and they are constantly making sure they are coming across, in the right professional manner. And I'm not sure if men feel the same way or think as much about it, but I certainly know, personally speaking, is that I do spend probably more time than most just making sure that I'm I'm coming across in the right manner. We can start with our own. So we can create career paths, for our females. We can ensure every voice is heard at the table. We can be intentional with mentorship and sponsorship, and we can invest in their development. You know, we kind of re upped our professional development, advancement development, allocations for our people here. And then there are opportunities outside of Carson. We can partner with groups like Rock the Street Wall Street and provide education and opportunities for female high school students so they can see that path into our industry. We can create partnerships with universities and support the underrepresented minorities such as females, again to, you know, get their foot into the financial space. There are so many things we can do and we just need to be intentional and consistent with those efforts. All of their support has given me guidance when I needed it or a boost of confidence when I was lacking my own or a different perspective that I haven't thought of. With mentorship, that's what's so special about women is we always want to help others to have the other person see, what they can see in you. And again, I'm very fortunate to be surrounded by women who truly want me to be the best version of myself. So if you see someone that you admire or want to emulate your leadership towards, ask if they will be your mentor or simply have a cup of coffee. Not only will this flatter this person, but they will learn and develop from the interaction as well. And I think people would be, surprised to know that other women are just they want to be supportive of others. So my advice is just say, hey, will you be my mentor? Or, hey, can I can I take you for a cup of coffee? And we are back. Last but certainly not least, Kate Hall is a great, great commercial there with, Kelsey. Thanks, thanks, Tori and the team for putting that together. I do wanna also say as we're winding down, thank you to Tory, our producer, for making sure we stay on task as well. So did I just talk. We never pay attention to what's going on. We just talk. You know? A little lot of hard work that goes into all of this, and it's not lost on us. So thank you. So Kate Hall on our team is here. Kate, you know my favorite people in finance. I ship with us. You know, you you you know, we like titles around here. Give us your title, Kate, and a little bit about what you do to help the Carson community. Sure. So, Kate Hall By the way, thank you for having me, Jay. This is a great honor to be on the show. So I'm the vice president of alternative due diligence for the firm, and my main role is to, you know, build I've built the platform of options for our advisers across, you know, the various flavors of, private investments, maybe some alternatives at some point. We'll get into that in a bit. Mhmm. But I do all of the kind of hiring decisions, bring them to the committee for vote. We did one this morning. And and I do all the ongoing analysis to make sure that the, opportunities that we have on the platform are performing as we as we hope they would and and that things are, you know, all on the up and up. I put, like, I would say Kate's popular because people reach out to me because they see me out there. Say, hey. You wanna do something with Alts? I don't know. Go talk to Kate. I don't have an opinion here. I don't even know what you're talking about. So, you know, that let's start there, Kate. When someone hears the word alts, I'm not saying it means something different to everybody. But when you hear alts, what does it mean to you, and how do you describe that kinda to somebody who honestly listened to this podcast? We haven't really talked about alts all that often, at least the specific ones we're going to today. So what does that mean? And I'll piggyback on that, though. While the ads are, like, what do we what do you think people hear when they hear the word alt, and what do you think they should hear if they All great all great questions. Autism at this point is a very generic term, and I'll get into why. But I think that And all to all senators, by the way. So Yeah. I think that, you know, folks who are not necessarily educated on the space think scary. They think long term capital. They think I'm gonna lose all my money. They think illiquidity, lack of transparency, all these kinds of things. And, when I think about alternatives, I think about, anything other than stocks and bonds, things that provide portfolio, opportunities that provide portfolios with different sources of return. And so in in that in that capacity, I really focus on the private side of alternatives, which is private credit, private real estate, and private equity. Alternatives also encompass things like, hedge funds and, you know, different types of, trading strategies and merger arb and long short equity and things like that, which are also considered alternatives. And then even things like commodities, managed futures, etcetera, those are alternatives as well because they provide a different, source of return in client portfolios. But what I really think about when I hear the word alternatives and and private, investments are fun due diligence projects. Nobody likes a fun complex due diligence project like I do. It's a great way to, utilize a process that I developed a long time ago and, you know, put some new inputs into it and and and hopefully come up with a good answer. No. I think that's great. You made a nice distinction there, I think, between alternatives and private. Right? Like, usually, when you think alternatives, like, gold can be an alternative. And and, like Sure. Brian and I, we manage Carson Housing Models along with Barry and Grant, and you have gold in the portfolios, and that's a public, you know, publicly available ETF. Right? I will mention. Whereas, alternatives, technically, when I think about it, I think of stuff that doesn't zig or zag. You don't know what direction they're going to do what what they're going to do depending on what stocks and bonds do. Like, not that we can completely predict what that you know, what that is, but, you know, they're non correlated assets. But a lot of your focus is on the private side of it, right, where there may be additional opportunities to diversify portfolios be be both from the side of returns but also risk. Right? Oh, definitely. So in terms of diversification from, those three big buckets, if you think about private equity, you're getting return sources from things that may happen like, the company being sold, which is is or or going public, which at this point is is not happening as much because the the IPO market is is somewhat closed. On within private credit, you're getting return streams from, typically, floating rate loans. So that's, you know, a different source of return relative to traditional fixed income. And then with, real estate, you're it's sort of a hybrid of both income from, you know, rents that are charged and capital appreciation of the underlying assets, whatever that may be, multifamily, industrial, data centers, what have you. Right. And on the private equity side, I mean, I I think generally when things private equity is a very large umbrella there. Yes. There's different things under it. Like, maybe just to like, again, none of this is simple, but if you can simplify, like, what's the difference, just say, between venture and private equity? So venture is a sub asset class of private equity. Mhmm. It's the earliest stage. It's right ahead of, like, giving, you know, friends and fools who give money to early stage venture. Right? That that that that the type of the the types of venture that we're in are sort of the later stage that are about to, you know, move into the the the earlier stages of private equity. So so, yeah, they are they are the same. Some other just or they're one in the same. Some other distinctions that you might make is, you know, there are private equity investments that are in, you know, long lock vehicles where you put your money in for ten years, and you're not gonna see you may not see any distribution during that period. You you you're probably gonna see depressed returns at the beginning as the manager moves through the j curve cycle, and and and typically very large minimums and, you know, suitability is for clients who have at least five million in investable assets. This is this is compared to, we're seeing a proliferation of semiliquid investments and, clients can can invest in, across all of the privates. And in those strategies, you have a a semiliquid situation where you, you know, you could the potential is to take out five percent every quarter. But those strategies, I call them private equity light because they're typically invested in things like secondary. So you're it it's not like going into, the type of fund that I just described with, you know, a long block you're getting into. There there it's basically a great opportunity at this point because you can get into private equity investments that need the their LPs and GPs that need liquidity. And, you know, with the IPO market basically shut and now with the new administration making things a little more difficult, this is a great way to get exposure to the asset class, at potentially a discount. The discounts are slim. But the but it's what's really great to see is that the the returns that you're getting out of the secondaries are really generated by rolling up your sleeves and generating growth and cash flow, capital appreciation versus just getting a return that feels kind of like, did I really get this just because of a secondary markup? Right. So that was that's interesting. I mean, this is I'm learning a lot. Just listen here. This is great. What are some of the risks, though? Like, I've always heard, and, again, this is, you know, what I've heard. Sometimes you want your money back. You can't get your money back as soon. Liquidity can be a risk. What what are some of the risks when we talk about privates? So a lot of people focus on illiquidity, and there's a blessing and a curse with that. K. The curse is that with clients who may not be prepared for having their money locked up, it's scary. Right? You may have an unexpected event come up and you need the cash, which you're probably not gonna get. The the blessing is that, that managers have time to execute their strategy. They have confidence that they're gonna have capital in their strategy to to, you know, do what they need to do. And so, you know, from that standpoint, illiquidity is a good thing. It's also a good thing if you are in a fund where you have a mindset that is longer term and you are comfortable with the strategy. And let's say, we saw this happen a couple years ago with one of the real estate funds that I won't mention, and there were a bunch of, redemptions all at the same time. Mhmm. If you're not ready to exit that strategy and, your neighbor is ready to exit that strategy, your your investment may be adversely affected by folks who wanna get out for whatever reason. And so you wanna be invested know, keep their capital invested for the long term, not get scared because of, you know, one reason or another and want to want to redeem. So safe to say this is probably isn't for everyone then. Do you kinda mention like minded people? Is this for everyone, you think? I think it's so, I think, clearly, there are suitable suitability issues or requirements to get into alternatives. So that's sort of the low bar. I think if you have a long term, you know, medium to long term mindset for how you want to allocate your portfolio and you are well educated by your adviser about what you're buying, these are great you know, they're nice diversifiers for, a public market portfolio that's gonna have more gyrations in your I call it the statement reading experience. You're gonna have a little bit easier time, with a lot of, you know, private market stuff on a on a shorter term basis, and we can get into the, valuation. Valuation is another risk. You know? You you need to really understand how your positions are being marked. Like, on a public, you know, if you invested in public equity markets or even ETFs, whatever, you know, you can look at your screen and see what the valuation of. What what is the net asset value? What's the price? Right? Private markets, you can't see that. That's what you mean. Right? Right. Well, so with the semi liquid strategies, you know, you're you can see, you know, more timely valuation marks than with if you're in a, you know, a a lock up LP kind of structure. But I'd like I think we're seeing this year I mean, obviously, the markets have been very volatile, and having having some diversification in your portfolio clearly has helped returns. Yeah. But but private markets are not the end all and be all. Like, portfolio, there is a place for public and private, diversification and and and roles that, the client should have exposure to. At the margin, do you think it improves? I say this very cautiously. Improves investor behavior because, you know, if you're getting assuming everyone's in the on the same page with respect to who's investing in a particular alternative fund or vehicle, whatever it is. But it is a long term investments, and when Ryan and I are always talking to advisers, clients, even like, yes. Your investments sent to me long term. Don't act based on, you know, what markets are doing today or tomorrow. And I think about, like, private markets, you don't see it. So maybe the like, I don't know. I'd love to get your perspective. Does that make you, at the margin, a better investor? Because, you know, it's long term. You already accepted it. You're not gonna pull your money out maybe because you cannot pull your money out. Right. I mean, that's kind of also part of the the blessing of illiquidity. You can't make those knee jerk reactions. Right? And so, like, if you know that like, even if you put yourself into a ten year lock with maybe a two or three or five year extension, like, you know like, you, like, you may be allocating that capital for your heirs. Okay? So you don't care about the the interim volatility, or it may be an investor who has run his own his or, his or her own business, and they understand, you know, like, they're not interested in the public market, you know, gyrations and reporting and such. Like, they they've they've done this themselves, so they're comfortable with, lockups. Right. And a large part of what you do is education. And like you mentioned, advisors have to educate their clients, but I feel like, you know, a lot of advisors are not familiar with alternatives. Yep. And but you are. Like, some of us on the team learn a lot from you as well. And speaking for myself, you know, every time I talk to you, how big is that education piece and, you know, what do you and because of you, Carson bring to the table in terms of educating our advisers about So, the education process is every day just like it is on the public side. Like, I've been doing this for a long time, and and I think this is a great, like, piece of advice for folks who are getting into the business today is to continue that education process. It's not and even for advisors, it's not just, you know, allocating to a strategy or two and kinda walking away from it. You really need to, be you need to stay in touch with what's going on so that you can educate yourself and your clients because you will get questions. I mean, they all investments have bumps along the road. Right? Sure. And so, like, keeping up with, education, there are all kinds of, resources for that. We have the content hub at Carson, where I post all kinds of, things about the individual strategies and markets and, you know, kind of what everything from what are our alternatives to how to prepare for a meeting, discussing alternatives, things like that. LinkedIn is actually a really great tool. There are a lot of, folks that you can follow with good information. I do it myself. The big the big managers, Blackstone has one of the best education programs I've seen that advisors can go through their modules and, you know, really learn the basics if if they're new to the space. So you mentioned some managers. I think it seems to me like a good a decent part of your day can be talking to managers. Right? That everybody reaches out and says, we've got the best thing ever. I hear it all time. Sony hears it all time. You almost have to have, hopefully, I can say, like a BS detector because you've done this for a long time. Yeah. How do you know which manager means it? How do you know which manager maybe there's an issue there? I mean, of course, the Bernie Madoff example. Yeah. It was a big scam the whole time. How can you kinda read through that, Kate? And what are what are some clues you've learned that people aren't maybe telling you the truth sometimes? I've been doing this a long time, and, like, my that meter in my head is very sharp. How's it how are we doing the last twenty minutes in your head? We doing okay with the last twenty minutes? You're doing okay. You're doing okay. Okay. Good. Good. I'll say, alright. That's that's good. You're looking better. Alright. So, that's a great segue into preparing for meetings. I mean, I go through I go through stacks of paper to prepare for, like, especially on the private side and even in on the head in the hedge fund world. A lot of times you get an hour to speak with these folks. Mhmm. And so you gotta be really prepared and you have to That's not a lot of time. Right? No. It's it's kinda yeah. I mean, you can always have follow-up questions and such, but you like, I I spent a lot of time, putting agendas together. What are the key questions both before managers are hired and afterwards that need to be addressed? Because, like, the days of sitting in a manager's office all day long are are gone way gone. But in terms of, like, I get emails all day long with potential new investments, and you can like, I at this point, in the semi liquid space, I really prefer the big guys because they have, really talented people. The transparency is better. And, you know, you also want trustworthy people. And, like, I just know when I hear something that sounds ridiculous or I or, like, the what I really don't like is the really hard and fast sales pitch. People who talk really fast. Like, no. Not so much. Like, I don't like, I I know what you're trying to say, but just tell me in English and tell me, like, you know, slowly. You don't wanna run a foul of Kate calls, process then. Yeah. I know. In my in my prior life, I was called, a bulldog because I I one of my other favorite things about this business is coming up with really good questions. And You do. You do. I I've been on calls with you, and I will attest to that. So And that's my my second piece of advice for the young folks. Never go to a meeting thinking I'll wing it. I'll just get through the minute. Mhmm. You always like, I over, over, over I probably over prepare too much, but the overprep that I do always ends up being a trick in my back pocket for a call, you know, the next day or the next week or what have you. So it is you always want to make sure that you've got your your your facts straight and you've gone through all the diligence stuff that you need to to do and come up with really good questions that, are not just, like, check the box kind of things, but, like, really trying to, you know, connect the dots and what you're hearing from a manager. So being over prepared is not the worst weakness, I think. It reminds me of the Michael Scott in the office. What's your biggest weakness? I care too much. I try too hard. It means too much doing it. You know, something like that. Yeah. We've got a couple minutes. It's amazing how fast this goes. I do wanna talk a little about your career and kinda Carson and kinda weave some of this together. You kinda started hitting at it. You know, what are some ways that you see getting work with financial advisors every day and talk to really smart managers that Carson's kinda opening the door, for female, female advisors, you know, females in the in the industry. And what are some reasons that you like working at Carson as a female as well? Take that however you want, but I think it's, something I think a lot of listeners wanna hear. Sure. I mean, I've been in a man's world, I think, since I was born. I've been doing this, my whole life. And I I really quickly became comfortable with, talking to men significantly older than I am at or at the time older than me, because I was prepared. And once I opened my mouth, they were like, okay. You're allowed in my office. Or or, you know, having a, a voice, not just a seat, but a voice at the table. At Carson, one of my first experiences was a dinner meeting on the sixth floor with, the crowd of of executives up there and an outside manager. I was the only female, and it was a blast. But because they, like, welcomed me as one you know, I was just one of the people at the table, and I spoke and they listened, and it was great. I think at Carson, it's very welcoming. I don't have I mean, maybe it's because of my background, but I don't I don't even think about, men versus women. I think about we're all in this together. Yeah. And we have a mission to serve our advisors and serve our clients so that they reach their financial goals and dreams and and what have you. And so, you know, for me, it's just been a great opportunity. That's awesome. Love it. On that topic of, like, the process. Right? And and, you know, everything you bring to the table, like, on the public side, a lot of the stuff we do is, obviously, on the public side. Like, let's say I want exposure to the S and P five hundred, easy enough. Right? Or to the market, I can go buy an SPY ETF. Right? SPY and ETF. Not a recommendation, by the way. Right? But that's right. But on the public on the private side, it's harder. Right? Like, you know, oh, I want private equity, but you can't just go with private equity. Right? You have to pick and choose and select. And I feel like the most important thing it's important even on the other side too. It's people. Right? You you have really about transparency and trustworthiness. Yeah. The two t's, but people. I I feel like Oh, I love it. It's smart. Important thing, and that's what your ultimately, your BS detector is, you know, detecting. Detecting. So, like, so on the BS detector, like, if if you go into a a manager meeting and they're struggling, like, their their performance is is is gone and fall, and they can't really explain to you or won't explain to you why they're having trouble and what they're doing to correct you know, to change you know, like, tweak their process or, like, make it better, like, learn from the mistake and admit that the mistake happened. That's a problem. And Is it a problem when, like, sometimes performance may be too good to be true as well? And Yes. And, like, it it like, perform like, digging through performance and really figuring out how it was generated and asking, questions like that, you really you find out who the like, what the manager's makeup really is, which is what I spend a lot of time trying to understand what makes people tick. So yeah. Yeah. No. It seems like the people part is so important. Right? I think this is and I I mean, this is a, you know, commercial for our team too. I think one one thing we do well, obviously, Ryan and I always talk about markets and, you know, the calls we got, we make, and things like that. Right? But, across our team, I I feel like we have so many of us have done due diligence for such a long time. And one thing that comes out of that, including when you and I talk. Right? We talk often enough, and you're telling me about the last meeting you had. And that teaches us, you know, like, what good managers do and what bad bad bad managers do and how to, you know everyone makes mistakes, but you don't wanna make mistakes. No. Exactly. You do due diligence. You see so much of this happening. And I feel like at the end of the day, it makes us a better investment team all around because of that aspect of it. Yeah. I mean, all managers comment. But Yeah. All managers make mistakes. You just wanna see that they admit up to them, learn from them, and, you know, move on down the road. That's well said, Sonu. You know, our team, we're fifteen, sixteen strong, and we've got a lot of, strengths. Of course, there's always some weaknesses, but I think, you know, we don't look at it like, oh, this is your job or my job. Our job as a team is to get the job done, make sure our Carson partners are happy, and at the end of the day, keep their clients happy as well. And it's, it's challenging at times. That's just because the market's challenging, but we always have a lot of fun doing it. You know, one thing I was thinking here, like, Warren Buffett. Okay? If you talk most people listen to this facts versus feelings podcast, Warren Buffett. Oh, yeah. He's a stocks guy. He's an icon. Who's like an icon in the private side of things that maybe we've heard of, but I didn't quite realize they're they're big in your world, Kate? Well, like, the the the the big guys at Blackstone or the big guys at a pot like, you know, the big shops are the ones Mhmm. Mhmm. You know, the guys at a pot, blew out. The the ones that you see in the news are, you know, kind of people that I mean, definitely, Blackstone, you know, is sort of a leader in in in the private market space. And so I to me, like, they have been really, successful in, scoping out trends in in in investments that they can capitalize on. And that that's a really special skill set that not a lot of people have. And they also have, you know, obviously, massive resources to execute on what they do. But, you know, people like people like them are, you know, who I definitely pay attention to. We've got a couple more minutes left with Kate Hall on our team. This is the Women's History Month special livestream of facts versus feelings, building community for women in finance. Sonu, we've been doing this for almost two hours. Honest to goodness, it's just gone really, really fast. I guess, one more from you, one more one more from you, one more from me, and then Kate's off the hot seat. I'll I'll pick up on exactly what you just said about, like, the big players. Right? Is, I mean, with this stuff, yes, all everyone's always looking for. I want this niche thing that nobody's found yet and things like that. But because of what we talked about, transparency, trust, education, all these things, being as important as it is to, you know, a space that you're generally most people are not familiar with, is bigger better? Definitely in the private credit space. I think one of the roots out there today I didn't talk about earlier is you're seeing a lot of new entrants come into the space who are, not crossing their t's and dotting their i's as they should on the underwriting. Right. They we will see who's swimming naked at some point. And There's a Warren Buffett quote. There we go. And, and the big guys who I prefer to be with who have the resources and expertise and balance sheet will be the the players who can scoop up, you know, deals at pennies on the dollar that the guys who don't really know what they're doing are doing today. And so that's one thing that we're I mean, it's it's a it's a blessing and a curse. It worries me about all of the new guys getting in and gals getting into private credit. Stick with the big guys there. Guys and gals. And gals. I'm sorry. I'm used to being in a guy's world. No. No. You said I thought you said it, and that's why I was just picking up on that. I know. This this this was great. This is again Kate Hall on the Carson Investment Research team. I mean, this is hopefully another example of all the different things that our investment research team does. They kinda see Sona and I out there and different people, but there's people really smart people like Kate that have done this for a while that know their stuff to continue to help our Carson partners. At the end of the day, grow and grow faster than the industry average is what we're trying to do, and that's what we've been doing for a long time. Kate, we've got, like, I don't know, ninety seconds or so. So I'll just kinda give you a real nice lob, and you can take it however you want. Let's say there's a little girl listening out there. She wants to get in the financing. She wants to, kinda do something that you're doing. Well, you already gave some advice working hard, being overprepared. What's some other advice you can give for somebody out there who wants to get into the finance world, maybe kinda from the, female point of view? So, honestly, I majored in English and Spanish, so I did not have a finance background. I like tacos. I can say taco. Yeah. But I think it's really helped me because my my, strength I mean, I can do the quantitative stuff, to a point not quite like Sonu, but, the quantitative stuff is what can really get you in trouble with with, hedge funds and, you know, private investments. And so that's kind of where my strength is. I would say, you know, focusing on that kind of stuff. Obviously, the education, finding a mentor as Kelsey talked about on the on the commercial. And guess what? If once you get through being or having a mentor, be a mentor. I love mentoring a a person or two on our teams. I love, like, like, sharing what I know. And then the the last piece of advice I would say is always raise the bar. Don't stay stagnant in your work product. Always try and do it better, bigger maybe not necessarily bigger, but, like, always, you know, figure out ways to, improve and, you know, put out the best product you can each time you work on something. Oh, no. You do that every day. So I try I try really hard. Oh, that that was awesome. If you're listening to the livestream, please don't log off yet. But if you're listening to the weekly podcast of facts versus feelings, this was awesome. This this entire recent two weeks that we've just done and shared some of these, these, women's history month podcast that we've done live stream. This is amazing. Kate, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. I know our Carson partners appreciate it, and their clients appreciate it. I mean, they don't realize it, but the work that you do really does help move the needle to make our team truly and my we buy we're biased, but with the best investment research team that's out there. So with all of that, this is we're gonna sign off on, the live stream. You get one more guest coming if you're listening to the live stream. But thank you, everybody. Appreciate it. We're gonna bring on a special guest right now. Thanks, Kate. Appreciate it. Thanks, Kate. Alright. I think we're almost ready. We have it. Okay. So I I have to do a little thank you for the the recorded podcast versus the live stream. So I do wanna thank, we've got we've got Blake here in a second. I've heard we had thousands of people have listened to this livestream so far over the past two hours. We're really excited about that. We're gonna keep doing livestreams if it makes sense, and we I know we love doing them. So Sonu, we've got a we've got a we've got someone else on the screen. Let's talk to him. Yeah. Extra special guest from who I've known ever since my time here at Carson from it'll be six years for me in June of twenty, yeah, twenty twenty five. Right? Yep. You know, in June of, twenty nineteen. And Blake, who you will probably see on screen yeah. There he is. Blake's been here longer than I have. He's like one of the veterans now. So Only by about a month, Sonya. Just about a month of seniority on you. Yeah. That's Well, Sonya's six months older than me, and I always point out he's the old guy. So I don't know. Okay. So, you know, Blake, obviously, this is women's history month. And last I checked, you're not you're not necessarily a woman, but you've done some really awesome work to help, women in our industry and some things you push the envelope on here at at at Carson's. Tell us a little bit about yourself, but kinda why you're joining right now on a women's history month podcast livestream. Absolutely. Ryan and Sonu, thanks so much for hosting me and for hosting this special livestream. My name is Blake Anderson. I work as an associate portfolio manager here at Carson Group. I run a few of our internal equity SMAs, including a large cap growth mandate, technology and AI focus mandate. But what we're here today to talk about is our women's CEO strategy. It's really focused on investing in this women and leadership team and pushing the industry forward. Here on Carson's investment research team, we knew we could do more to help advance this conversation than just talk about it. We really wanted to provide an avenue for forward thinking advisers wanting to lean into this team, an avenue to walk the walk as well. Debbie talked about it for a moment, but how underrepresented women are in finance, we really wanted to provide an avenue to help bridge that underrepresentation. We developed our Carson's Women's CEO strategy to help out with this. Our Carson's Women's CEO strategy invests in some of the largest S and P five hundred companies with a female CEO. We believe we're one of the first firms in the industry to offer such a targeted solution like this. As we looked around at other offerings, we didn't wanna just do something cheaper. We wanted to do something different. We researched other offerings and really saw that some of the inclusion guidelines for some of their public ETFs might have been a little loose per se or maybe not thematically pure enough to really help move this conversation forward. We saw an opportunity to launch our strategy with a clear value proposition, invest in women who have broken that glass ceiling, and help them tell their story in an effort to bridge this underrepresentation. That's awesome. What has been that? Like and that's one again, we were just talking with Kate about, you know, again, from we are biased. Why we think we're the best investment research team in the business, and it's it could for folks like you. Right? Even though it's, like, Brian and I in front, etcetera, all the time. But, you know, it's folks like yourself, and this is the advantage of having somebody who really knows the bottom up equity space as well as you do. And every time I have a question on AI and technology, like, you're my go to person. Right? Yep. But what's been the impact of this, and how important has this women's c I CEO strategy, you know, been for our advisers and especially to connect with clients? Yeah. Yeah. Two really, two avenues of impact that I see that I'll talk about. One from the bottom up stories of the companies, but as well as the advisor client relationship impact. I think owning a strategy like this that owns individual equities can really help highlight the women CEOs, the innovations that they're bringing, and the companies that are really moving forward in the index. And I'd like to highlight two stories that give really great examples of this. The strategy owns one of the largest biotech firms in the world, which under the leadership of their female CEO has developed a first of kind non opioid pain reliever. Now that's a lot of jargon to say, that this treatment is really seen as a breakthrough in the medical industry. It's helping deliver better care sooner to patients and is really seen as an example of a female CEO who's been willing to push the boundaries and I think ties in to so many of the conversations that we've heard today. Another company, in the strategy is one of the world's largest semiconductor design firms. Under the leadership of their female CEO, brought back the company from the brink of insolvency, took on one of the industry's largest competitors, and has really planted their flag in the industry. I think both of these stories and other stories of the female led companies in the strategy serve as powerful examples of how women in leadership are transforming the world around us. Debbie talked about it for a moment as well, but there's an unfortunate stereotype of women in finance that they might just be caring with a c. Maybe they help foster teamwork or collaboration, but that it might be the end of their leadership roles there. I think highlighting stories like this in the strategy also help show that women in leadership can be daring with a d, daring to push new products forward and can be just impactful as their male counterparts. So really telling the stories of these women CEOs, I see it as impactful, to align your investments with your values. And maybe on the broader client advisor relationship point, our partners tell us that this investment strategy helps strengthen their connection with households and is a unique avenue to engage with female business owners. Debbie Taylor also brought the stat that nearly fifty trillion dollars of household wealth could be passed along to female heads of households, Getting them engaged in financial wealth planning conversations earlier will certainly be impactful, and we think this is a differentiated way to do it. Well, I think it's just another way of showing that the way Carson thinks, maybe a little different. Like I said, we're pretty sure we're, like, the first place to do this. Maybe if there was somebody before us, I don't know, but we're we're doing things like this. And and the other thing is And and, hopefully, do it in a much better way. I'm I'm Well, the other thing to point out, we've seen the data. The data's public. CEO run companies, you know what happens with their stock prices? They tend to do a little bit better than mail run stock prices. So we're just gonna leave it there. So, I mean, I mean, the mic drop on that, but there's also some really neat things that, again, that that you're doing, Blake, to help, you know, our Carson partners and pushing pushing things like this. So at this point, Blake, we're gonna say goodbye to you, and Sonia and I are gonna sign everything off. But thank you, Blake, for joining and talking about how you're helping our Carson partners. Yeah. So Blake can leave, Tory, and then Sonia and I will kinda do a little roundup. There we go. Perfect. Alright, man. I'm starving. I'm starving, by the way. I was gonna have lunch. Eight hundred milkshake. How was the milkshake? It was great. I I took it took me, like, an hour and a half to finish it. By the time I got we got to gate, it was done. There you go. But I I I'm not that hungry. I might go get one now. Maybe I'll go get a milkshake now. But listen. We need to wrap this up. Sonu, this is an amazing two hours. Give your thoughts, and I'll kinda bring us home. I think Blake mentioned like, I love that he ended with the stories, and we started the the whole thing talking to Lindsay about charts and stories and narratives, creating that narrative and seeing sometimes you wanna create charts and, you know, look at the data to see what the market narrative is as well, right, and how your narrative is different from that. And maybe there's a disconnect. And, you know, if you're managing portfolios like us, you take you try to take advantage of it. I'm not saying we always use it. But then that also gets to some of the mistakes that you make and, you know, you learn from the best people and including the folks Kate talks to. Mhmm. And, also, it's not just about investments. Right? It's about, you know, everything that Carson, for example, brings to the table, including planning and taxes, especially. Right? This is something that we are doing in a big way. So really pumped about that, and, you know, Debbie's been amazing in that front. And, you know, like I said, it's about creating a better story for our advisers and our clients. Mhmm. Well said. So, again, we're gonna wrap up here our two hour special livestream, to celebrate Women's History Month, the facts versus feelings. Definitely big shout out to Tori, our producer, who helps us every step of the way on this. I know compliance is gonna help a lot. Other members of marketing are gonna help with all this, to put these together. Not necessarily easy. They're a lot of fun to do, but not always easy. So thank you to everybody helping us there. And just thanks to all listeners, and we've had, again, thousands of people, so far today have jumped in and out and watched, these fun discussions with some true titans and leaders in the in the industry, female leaders in our industry. And Sona and I are just honored that we got a chance to talk with them today, and, hopefully, everyone enjoyed this livestream. It's March Madness. The brackets are coming. I have one more shout out. There's my x pen. I want the date and to watch Xavier. Nine ten eastern tonight, a true channel. I don't know if you get the true channel, but it's the NCAA tournament. We snuck snuck in, so let's let's hope we get a win, for my Xavier Musketeers. With all that, everyone, thank you again for taking a lot of time out, with the Carson team today. We enjoyed doing this. Hopefully, you enjoyed it, and we'll keep doing them. If you keep doing them if you keep coming, we'll keep doing them. But enjoy March madness, everybody. Official sign off. I'm gonna get some food. Take care, everybody.