Break Free From Daily Burnout

You can also listen to our radio show at two pm Eastern Time on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. Well, we love to do regular check ins when it comes to crypto. It's certainly something that we talk about each and every day on Quick take Stock. Katie Greidfeld, who's joining me right now, We concre that each day at noon Eastern time. You can watch that at Bloomberg dot com slash qt. Someone who joins us all the time on Quick take Stock

is Judika Chow. She's head of OTC options trading at Kraken. She joins us on Bloomberg Business Week Radio this afternoon from New York City. Ju Think, how are you hey? Guys, good, how are you We're doing getting ready for this three day weekend, But before we get there, we got to do a deep dive into bitcoin and what's been happening with crypto Bitcoin down about one point five really testing that mark up. We ask you all the time, do

you think to explain the volatility here? Why are we seeing this recent sell off when we are testing forty four dollars recently? Well, I think the crypto markets, in bitcoin in particular, have been seeing a little bit of a lack of conviction as it relates to UM to bitcoin.

You know, a lot of the longholders are already long UM, and I think the some of the bears have paired their positions, and so a lot of people are on the sidelines, and that's kind of resulting in Bitcoin just moving with the broader markets UM but sort of following the trends of the NAZAC and what's going on globally UM without some of the more Bitcoin specific factors at play. And so I think that's kind of what's driving it

right now. We're definitely seeing more interest in other kinds of trading like options and relatives and yield plates, but I would say, in terms of the spot flows that we're seeing on the OTC desk, it's actually more money on the sidelines and not a lot of conviction in the spot stays right now. Well, Jessicau, that's what I want to talk about, is that you know you are

seeing a lot of interest in trading. I mean, if you look at the NASZAC one hundred, like you said, if you look at options and derivatives, there's a lot of activity there. Not a ton when it comes to crypto though. I mean, if you look across exchanges right now, crypto exchanges that ends, you have seen trading volumes drop.

And I'm curious. So if this is this sort of malaise is to continue where you know we're sort of range bound, sort of trading sideways, is that ultimately bad news for crypto because I mean, at least when it comes to uh some of the people I follow on Twitter, it seems like the volatility is part of the fun. I mean, there's no question that volumes are inversely proportional

to volatility. So if you looked at when we have the bull run, it wasn't just the fact that bigoin was going up, but the volatility was realized was north of a hundred, and that was sustained for months at a time, and that was definitely good for volumes and activity and kind of building momentum. And I think, like real economic momentum, um and momentum goes both ways, kind of like inertia, so things sort of stop moving and people stop talking about it, and I think that definitely

comes into plan. We're seeing that with bitcoin sitting at a sixties seventy ball um. The other aspect is that it usually is relative to what the other opportunities are and so to the extent there is UH volatility or relative volatility in the stock market, then capital might be deployed there instead. The one thing I will say is

that on the option side, we do see um. We're seeing very healthy flows and activity, and I think part of the reason there is because with options there's a wider range of more nuanced positions and bets that people can put on different kinds of yield place so it's not as simple as just buying or selling. But yeah, there's no question that overall, all, you know, as we want damp and volatility as a sign of maturity um when it comes to trading, volume and activity, it has

the sort of quieting effect. And something I think about a lot is that there seems like there's no shortage of enthusiasm in the broadbrush crypto space if you think about all the enthusiasm around Web three, around Defy, around the metaverse, but it seems like that isn't translating into the price of bitcoin at all. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether we're sort of seeing I don't know, maybe a bifurcation in the space, maybe something

not as strong as that. But again, it just seems like there is a lot of enthusiasm and things to get excited about in the broader cryptocurrency universe, but not necessarily when it comes to the prices of the coins. Definitely, and this is something we've seen over the years. The price of the coins is often driven by whales um by very large healthy accumulation, unhealthy accumulation um It's really the price action can deviate sometimes from what we're seeing

in terms of like the fundamentals on the ground. And I think if I look back to like that happened in maybe more of a negative way, which is that price was appreciating extremely rapidly, much more than some of the actual progress that we were making in terms of building out use cases and protocol development. Now one could

argue it's perhaps the opposite. There's prices a little bit of lackluster given some inflation concerns, but there's more going on in terms of building, investment in space, hiring in the space UM from traditional finance and tech, and so I think a lot of these things will see play out over the course of years as UM companies are built in use cases are built, and it's not necessarily reflected in price because those dynamics are a little bit different.

Do you think that we only have about forty seconds left with you? But I'm wondering, when you think about the crypto universe, what is it we should be focused on. What's it our that our investor audience should be focused on in terms of catalysts move forward? Well, I think right now there's definitely a pay attention to the macro environment, mostly in terms of UM, in terms of volatility, but

also in terms of inflation. You know, I think with the three of us have talked a lot about whether or not crypto is an inflation hedge, and at some point the tides will turn in. It actually will become an inflation hedge, and I think being positioned right at that time. The question is when the question is when. I mean, we've had plenty of hot inflation, Prince haven't really seen too much of it into crypto lately. But

to Jessica's point, it seems like a tech sock. Juso, head of OTC Options trading at crack and joining us on the phone from New York City. I want to bring in James Army, who's an arts columnist for Bloomberg business Week. James joins us on the phone from New York City. James, I saw this story crossed this morning, and I immediately said we have to get James Tarmy on Bloomberg business Week radio to explain what exactly is happening and talk about it. Um DuPont Airis is sued

by museum that alleges she took antiques. What's going on here? It's quite a story, and the long and short of it is that, uh, this woman named Sabrina DuPont Wangenegger, whose father was William K. DuPont Um, was uh gifted, she says, um a serious of objects in twenty nineteen. Well, her father died uh in, and it turned out that there was a coddessil to his will that said that some of these objects were supposed to go to, uh this museum called Winter Okay, wait, I just want to

I just want to jump in yes. So, so basically just think of it as like a little amendment to his will that says, by the way, I want X number of objects to go to this museum. And the museum is actually a museum that was founded by a member of the DuPont family. This is a sprawling, very wealthy, very old family um and they had a long history of giving um objects to Winter churchs UM, an independent institution, but the family had been very involved in it. Long

story short. Uh, She realizes, oh, wait, you know I should back up. If the objects in the will are sold or given or gifted, great, no one is under any obligation to give them back. It's just if these things are still part of my estate, they can go to the museum. So father dies, she informs the museum that there's one thing less um in the will. It rather in the estate that was in this kind of coddissol and the museum says, great, thank you, takes the thing,

takes the objects. That's that until there's a major auction um of this guy's estate and the daughter had included some of the objects she'd been gifted. The museum says, wait a second, youth, that these weren't part of the estate. Now you're selling them, we want them back. It's there's a lot of twists and turns, but what the real takeaway is get your affairs in order, because there's no way for the daughter to really prove that she received

the gifts to his father to a daughter. Yeah, it's it's sorry, I'm I'm I'm talking a lot about It's well, you need to because it's a really complicated story that involves cottils and wills and antiques. That's a new word for me. I love to reading this. And there's a you know, there's a whole part about the codicil in the story. And I mean, James, do we know what objects that we're arguing over? Because okay, so the lawsuit says that you know, she attempted to sell five antiques

valued at roughly two d thousand dollars. What what what are these antiques? Do we know? So? Yeah, you know, they're they're pieces of kind of American decorative arts. So there are various pieces of nature, but then there's also some documents that had historical significance. The thing to remember about this, though, is that it represents a very small fraction of the overall estate. So the option of this

man's belongings brought in close to seven million dollars. What they're arguing about represents maybe three of the overall estate. And I spoke with her um after we kind of discovered this suite, and she said that the entire process was utterly absurd because it represented such a tiny part of the estate. That and she told the museum about the existence of the will. She didn't really have to

tell them if she was trying to defraud them. So she's sort of outraged about this, and rather than settled with them, she is actually fighting because she feels like this is a sort of slap in the face given her family has given many millions of dollars to the museum over over the years. So that's what I wanted to talk to you about, because you know, she told you in an interview that she's very saddened by this

whole situation. Quote, I will absolutely defend my integrity, which I feel has been called into question, and I will absolutely defend my father's wishes. So it's not about the actual stuff for her, right, quite quite right, actually, But is it about that for the museum? Sorry, go ahead, James, you know this, I have, so I don't. The short answer is for the museum, I don't know. They issued

a statement and wouldn't comment on the record. But there are court documents that you have you can go through that are part of this suit at the museum filed in Delaware court UM. And in that these documents you can actually see correspondence from them, and they are very very careful in their correspondent with the estate and with the daughter to say, listen, we're not calling your integrity into question. We are not calling you a liar. We're

not saying that you sold these things. However, we as an institution have a fiduciary duty to ensure that we are UM following up on this because this was gifted to us and we can't just walk away from it

because you say it's yours. So it's actually UM in a certain respects not really about the money from an outside of perspective, It doesn't seem like it's about the money from either side, because of course Winter Term Museum has around nineties thousand objects in this exquisite hundred and seventy five room mansion on a thousand acres of manager of gardens. It's really exquisite. This is in this is

in Delaware. Um. But but I think neither party is particularly avaricious from the and this is from an outside perspective, neither seems desperate for the money. Instead, they both seem to be at least on the outside looking me and pursuing it. On principle, James, what is your best guess about how this ends? I mean, is this museum going to end up with these objects at the end of the day. You know, I really can't say, Um, what I could can say, you know, I mean, I'm I'm

I'm not a legal expert on the street law. What what I what I can say is that, um, both sides appear to have equally compelling claimed Um. You know, in the sense that, uh, there there is ample documentation on the daughter's side to demonstrate that these were a gift. But it's not rock salt a documentation, So it's not like she has a smoking gun. And if she did have a smoking gun where she could produce it, the museum wouldn't have brought the lawsuit in the first place.

So you you have, on the daughter's side a long history of the father giving her gifts, and you have the father actually having revised. And this is where it gets even thorn here. The father then revised um what he wanted to give to the museum three years later, and then entered into a separate promised gift contract where he included some of the stuff he was going to give but not other stuff, which the daughter says demonstrates that he had changed his mind and wanted to give

her these gifts in the first place. But there are a lot of twists and turns, as I said earlier, but I think that it actually has um much broader resonance for those of us who are not members of a sprawling billionaire family, and those of us who do not run museums, which is that um. You know, oftentimes there can be informal interact some transactions between family members, but if family members have obligations to other institutions, when that dies, you have to issue some level of accounting

for the things that you have. And this is not just a question that is facing the very wealthy or even the moderately wealthy. Um. This is something that faces or that that many people who will be receiving things in their parents or spouses. UM. States. Um, you need to actually keep in mind. And that's why I think that this is such a kind of compelling case, even though the actual states in terms of dollar amounts are

actually quite small. Yeah. That's a really good point, James, because that's something that we hear a lot about, especially with the wealth transfer that's happening between generations and the historic wealth transfer that that's set to happen. Um. As you know, the greatest generation ages out, and indeed baby

boomers do as well. Uh, James, before we go, forgive me because I know that you're the arts columnist, and I'm wondering how often you cover stories like this, Um, just in the context of of Katie asked, what's you know, what's next? How it ends? I want to know how long it could take, because these things can be tied up for a long time, right. Oh. Absolutely, unless there's some settlements, this could easily take years. And UM, it's it's it really depends on how um malleable or or

how willing to reach a compromise either party is. And UM, I think at least you know, again, I didn't actually speak to the museum on the records, so I can't I can't actually speak to this. But from the daughter's side, she's in budging because she feels like she is in the moral and legal right. UM. And so there's a strong possibility that this ends up is going to do court. So James, UM, what what comes next in the process here? What are you going to be looking out for you

continue to follow the story? Well, is going to be discovery. So they will actually both sides will actually keep adding documentation to the case. There will be UM, yet another affidavit from the UM from the daughter, the museum will continue to add UM. The museum will continue to add documentation in what's in a kind of process of exploration, and then UM, if necessary, will go to trial. UM. And that's that's sort of what I'm waiting on and

what we'll be watched. And James, the the woman at the center of the Sabrina DuPont lnon Egger, UM, can you talk a little bit about the way that her dad's estate kind of change from being overseen by his family office earlier in his life, but then towards the

end of his life he didn't have that same infrastructure. Yeah, so, UM, I can't speak too much to it, but I what I what I can't say is that she basically talked about him kind of scaling back his business activities and um, as a result, he had less of a need for a very kind of a large office to manage his affairs. So they had family advisors still, including a family lawyer and a family accountant, but not people who were kind

of permanently on the pay roll. UM. And so you know, he was a person her father was a person who fought and sold and traded antiques as a hobby constantly. UM. And you know, he collected one of the pre eminent collections of Chippendale furniture and then sold it all in the nineties when he um sold most of it in the nineties when he became interested by something else. And she told me that, you know, he had a very fluid idea of collecting, which is that he didn't just

want to buy it and hold it. He was always on the lookout for something better. Than what he had ad and when he found that he wouldn't keep the old thing, he would sell it, he would move on UM. And so you know that is he was a man

of substantial means UM and that was totally possible. But it meant that when he died, because he didn't have this family office infrastructure in place anymore, it meant that she was in charge of dealing with this pretty vast amount of objects that she told me that there were at least fifteen hundred maybe more. He had a gentleman's farm in Delaware, UM, and it was a monumental undertaking because she was basically UM, she told me, doing it

on her own. And this again once again gets back to this idea UM, that this has resonance for a broader audience because it's really about UM trying to make sure that there is some level of uh, not only documentation, but accounting of of objects. And you know, frankly, I don't think I know a single person who has inventory lists of their belongings. It's just not how most people I know, even people who have lots of stuff or

lots of questables, are at works really work. And I think that it can be a weak up call when you actually hear about this. Well, James, it's it's it's not just kind of you know, you don't want to make that call get in touch with a lawyer, but you'd also people I don't think want to think about mortality right and how things yea, how things go at the end, Um, James, this was a really fantastic deep dive into a story I had no idea about. We really appreciate you taking the time and giving us all

the details on it. James Tommy is arts calumnist for Bloomberg Business Week. You got to check this story out. It's available online and on the Bloomberg terminal. Well, I've been really looking forward this week to speaking to our next guest. She's got a really, really interesting back ground. She's an entrepreneur, she's a best selling author, she's a keynote speaker. But before this, she was a refugee UH from the former Soviet Union, coming to the United States

at just the age of thirteen. She's also worked at places like McKinsey and Company and Microsoft, UH and more. Her new book is called The Awesome Human Project. Break Free from Daily Burnout, struggle Less and Thrive more in work and life. Natalie Cogan joins us now she's the founder of Happier Inc. As well. She joins us on the phone from Boston. Natalie, how are you so thrilled to be here? Thank you, Well, we're thrilled to have you.

Before we talked about the book, I just want you to take us back to that moment that you realized you wanted to sort of make this change in your life, because you have these experiences that I think, uh, a lot of our audience has working for large firms, working in the consulting business. Uh, what was happening in your life at that point. Yeah, it's a great question, you know, coming here as a refugee, I have the American dream. You know my parents and I my parents sacrificed everything

to bring me here. So I had the American dream. And here I was. I didn't speak English when we came, and here I was at mckensey and I was in venture capital at the age of five. There's fewer than six percent women in VC. I was, you know, doing uh, really meaningful work, but uh, always at the expense of myself. I really believe that emotions have nothing to do with work. I kind of followed that old school, a dodge of

leave emotions at the door. Um. No one ever talked to me about that, and so UM I had achieved a tremendous amount of success, but inside I was really struggling. UM just overwhelmed and exhausted. And as a leader I in all these companies, I always thought my job was to pretend that everything was amazing, no matter how I how I felt. And it got to a point where

I couldn't. I couldn't hold it all in anymore. And I several years ago, went through a really severe burnout, which is something I know a lot of folks relate to right now. And that got me to a place where I couldn't just will myself through anymore. I couldn't just push it. I couldn't grit my way through. I was really good at GRID, but I had to, for the first time in my life, recognize that it's not enough to care about your work. It's not enough to

care about your team or your organization. You can't give what you don't have. You have to cultivate your own emotional and mental health in order to really show up. And so I went searching a determinous amount of research and UM just to help myself heal and ended up developing a method that UM I now get to teach to others, which is UM a great honor. Well, let's talk about that method, because I mean, personally speaking, I would love to know how do I break free from burnout?

How do you how do you prevent it from happening? And if it's already happened, I mean, how do you bounce back from that? Yeah, it's a great question, UM that I'll try to answer as as short as possible. So just to get to the second part first, if you are really feeling UM on empty, UM, one of the some of the signs that burnout are feeling really depleted of all energy, starting to resent work that you otherwise UM like, withdrawing from social interactions. These are all

things I'd experienced. UM, you're probably in that place. And so if you're in that place, the thing I want you to please here is that you can't just ignore it and make it through. You have to pause and think about how do you make your emotional fitness your well being? How do you make that your daily priority? And it doesn't require you resigning, It doesn't require you throwing everything out the door. It requires things like, Okay, when do I do something that fuels my energy? How

do I take a break? How do I do something that fuels me as a person unrelated to my work? And so if you're in that place, you really have to make that a priority to not get stuck in that cycle of daily burn out, to not get there. Um, it's a connected answer, but the first thing to recognize is there. You and your job are two separate entities in a relationship with its other. And just like we know for any healthy relationship with another person, each person

really needs to fuel themselves to show up fully. You can't over rely, you know, even if your job is really meaningful, that doesn't mean it can give you everything you need, including rests, because you're a human being and energy. And so just that construct to think about this question that I've been offering to people is how would I describe my relationship with my job? Because one of the misconceptions about burnout is, um, it happens when we have

too much work. Having too much work is just one of the many, many factors and others. Natalie, I just want to jump in here with a couple of things. One, we are a waiting President Biden, so we will be going to him. When we do. He does start to speak to give us an update on the situation on the border of Russia and Ukraine. But now they want

to talk about the pandemic. Because the idea of burnout really I think shifted a lot over the last couple of years as people have been many have been stuck at home, many people now working from home or you know, attempting to work from home. Um, how does how does that shift the idea of burnout? And what are the types of breaks that you can take if you roll out of bed in the morning and you jump on zoom and you're doing that until dinner time. Yeah, the

boundaries of all blurred. Um for all of us who I've said lucky enough to work from home. And there's even a couple of tips that I just want to offer really concretely. So it is really important to get disciplined about taking breaks, and it is we we we do have the capacity. Microsoft just released a study where they looked at just taking five minute breaks between meetings dramatically reduce the stress and um emotional exhaustion. So having

the discipline that Okay, I'm done with this meeting. I'm gonna get up out of my chair. I'm gonna even if you have to walk around the room or go to another room in the house. If you cannot, all take a walk outside. So taking those shower breaks, it's really essential. It helps the brain reset. The other thing that I really recommend is to create these discipline both

emotional and physical boundaries. So instead of jumping on zoom as you rule out of bed, take a moment, and one of the emotional fitness skills I teach us gratitude. Take a moment, write down three things you are grateful for. What it helps you do is it uh practice and gratitude reduce the stress. It helps you um not ignore the good things in your life, which otherwise your negativity bias ignored. And it's a way to center yourself and fuel yourself before you you know, the work takes over.

So beginning your day with gratitude at the end of your work day, to have some kind of a little tiny ritual to transition from work too, I'm now going to focus on my family, or myself or my friends. So for example, something as simple as closing down your computer turning the lights off in the room where you're working and walking outside maybe to get some fresh air,

or uh, leaving your phone and closing the door. Our brain responds to these kind of physical cues, and creating some of those boundaries really helps the brain to disconnect and have have those separations so we don't continually just think about work and just get in that cycle and nat only something that caught my eye in the notes you centers before the show is that you know you

should shift from harsh self talk to self compassion. And that caught my eye because I mean, that's something that you know I struggle with too, So I would love to hear some tips on how how you do shift that that kind of that self talk, that inner monologue

into something that's a little bit more positive. Well, first of all, I just want to say I love that you brought this up, because when we think of burnout, we think of external things, and actually things like the way we talk to ourselves, the way we look at the world dramatically impact a risk of burnout. So a couple of really concrete tips. So a practice that I use is when you notice that you're talking to yourself in a harsh way. We all know that in our

critic chatter. Take a pause and then imagine that you are talking to someone you really care about, a partner, a child. I usually imagine my seventeen year old daughter Mia for this, and then rephrase what you just said is if you're talking to them. And research shows that when we talk to ourselves in a supportive way, it improves motivation, it improves focus. That has the same positive benefits as one of friends is talking to us in a supportive way, and the opposite is true. Talking to

ourselves in a critical way dramatically increases stress. So again it's this practice of recognizing when you're being harsh and then imagining you're talking to someone you care about, because we naturally are more compassionate towards people we care about than ourselves, and reframing what you just said to yourself as if you're talking to that person. It's a really

really powerful practice. Um. But as I always say, the goodness is in the practice, So it's not about doing it once and then the self critic has gone away. I was going to say, easier said than done, right, because old habits die hard, Yes, And so this is why I talk about all these as skills. A skill. You improve a skill by practicing write, any skill, writing, running right. The more you practice so that are you become.

But if you stop practicing, it's not so great. So I think for me, after I burnt out, it was actually very powering to recognize that these emotional fitness skills, some of which we've talked about, like I can practice them. Um, I have some control and they help. And so the same you know to your question, the more you practice, the easier it does become. It becomes more intuitive you have access to that practice easier. But yes, I don't want to I'm not going to sugarcoat it will have

us die hard I was when I started to practice. Hey, if you're just joining us, we're speaking to Natalie Coogan, founder of Happier, Inc. Also the author of the Awesome Human Project to break free from daily burnout, struggle less, and thrive more in work in life. Should also note that we are continuing to await President Biden. We are expecting expecting him to speak any moment now from the Roosevelt Room at the White House. We'll bring you those

comments live when he does start to speak. Natalie, what are the small moves that we can make. You know, we talked about this, this idea of incremental changes, right, what are those small moves that we can make that we can start doing now to help us get to that place where we actually do get closer to becoming you know, more of an awesome human things. And the first thing I just want to say, um, both parts

are important. It's awesome and human. So we all have this capacity to do great stuff, to do meaningful work, to be a positive impact. But we're human. That means we need rest and we need to take care of ourselves, and we're not going to do it perfectly. So it's both of those. It's really embracing both of those. But a couple of things. The first is to recognize that

you can't give what you don't have. Um, I spend so much of my career as a leader, in my life, as a mom, as a martyr, really believing as I mentioned that it didn't matter how I felt, that I could just continue to positively impact my team. You can't give what you don't have. So just understanding that that fueling your emotional, mental and physical energy is your responsibility

and then making that a priority. So when you make your to do list for the day, put one thing on your to do list that you can do to fuel your emotional, mental, and physical energy, which is, by the way, how I define self care, to put one thing every day on that UM on that list. The second is recognized that your brain is not here to make you thrive. It doesn't care about your happiness. Your

brain is here to survive. So we have to course correct some of the unhelpful thoughts that our brain gives us. We just talked about endless self criticism and how we ship that, but there's this practice of just editing our thoughts,

recognizing that you are the editor of your thoughts. So your brain is telling you that this is never going to happen, or this is not going to work out, or ruminating on worst case scenario, which has been very common in the pandemic because uncertainty is very hard for the human brain. Being the editor of that thought and asking yourself, well, is this thought true? And does believing this thought is that helpful? And doing that on ongoing basis.

And one last thing is to remember to practice your joy um. I think we live in a world that's kind of taken them oomph out of joy. It's becomes something that's a luxury. But joy is not luxury. It is our life fuel. So making it a priority to do something outside of work that brings you joy because not only does it make you feel better, but it's contagious. Emotions are contagious. Human emotions are contagious. So when you fuel yourself, when you do something that brings you joy,

you actually spread that to everyone around you. And Natalie, I think a lot of people would say, you know, I want to do that. I want to practice self care. I want to inject some more joy into my life. But you know, I don't think my boss would be on board that. You know, even if I tried to set boundaries, they might not be respective. I mean, what would you say to those people? It's a great question. And you know, so much of my work is um with companies. I work with companies on teams and this

comes up a lot. And the first thing I would I would suggest is have the conversation. Don't assume that your boss knows how you're feeling, or that they understand where the boundaries need to be. Have the courage to have the conversation and have it from the point of listen, here are some things that would be really helpful to me. For example, to not have this meeting scheduled every day back to back, um, to not get last minute to do is on a Friday after noon and I'm not

sure when the deadline is. It would be helpful to me because it would make me better at what I do. So have that conversation from that elevated place of recognizing that your boss is not an evil human. They just may not have any awareness that these are the boundaries you need. Um Um. I own up to this in my book. I always really cared about my teams when I was a leader, but I had no awareness of any of these things, and so I didn't I didn't

honor their boundaries. Um. And so that's the first thing I would suggest is have that conversation. It's actually a practice. I leave a lot of teams on to have a conversation about boundaries, and it turns out, Um, it's usually not huge things. It's usually simple things like listen, if you send me an email Friday afternoon with to do,

can you tell me when you really need it? Or I would love to not have calls before nine am is that possible, and uh, it's really empowering to have those conversations with your boss and your team, if your leader to lead those Natalie work. Katie and I got started with this interview. As we were preparing for it, we were talking to each other about the different ways that we kind of deal with separating work and life and talk. We both are big proponents of physical exercise,

Like Katie runs every day oftentimes. Actually I'll be talking to her at night and she's running through Central Park. Uh, I super fast, super fast of course, um, of course. And and then you know, and I try to, you know, get on the stationary bike and do a lot of cycling and get out there. And I'm wondering how physical activity fits into this because at least for both of us,

and it's such an essential park of balance. It's really important. Um, you know, we we have mental energy, physical energy, emotional energy, and so it's really important. Um. And you both know. But doing something physical releases and doorphins that gives you a sense of progress actually, like doing a little work out.

There's interesting research about weightlifting, and lifting weights turns out to have these this interesting mental benefit of it gives you confidence that you can achieve hard things because your brain is like, oh, look I lifted weights, my muscles grew. Oh I can do this also in my regular life. So physical activity is really important. And the thing I would encourage um, everyone listening is to recognize that it doesn't mean you need to go run every day. Stocks

really bouncing around today. Katie s down about six tenths of one percent right now. The nazacked down just about one percent right now. Interestingly enough, the SP five hundred briefly did turn positive this afternoon, but is again lower. Let's try to make sense of it with Aaron Kennon, co founder and CEO of Clear Harbor Asset Management. Clear Harbor Asset Management has more than one billion dollars in assets under management. Aaron joins us on the phone from Stanford, Connecticut. Aeron,

how are you doing? Just great? Tim, Thanks for having me help us make sense of what we're doing. Well, we're doing. We're we have, you know, kind of some good vibes ahead of the holiday weekend. I gotta be honest, UM's great, but market not really feeling it. Uh, what's

been happening here? Because I think a lot of our listener as a lot of investors trying to figure out, okay, um, when is this choppiness kind of done and we start to move back towards those highs that we saw in November, Right, Yeah, I mean that that we've been really trending sideways to

downward um since since November. And I think that the real story of the equity market is just general weakness even beneath the headlines, which are are weak in themselves if you look at you know, whether it's the tech sector, which is you know, seeing significant weakness across the board curricularly sort of small cap, MidCap, but you know, at the end of the day, we we really attribute this to the understanding that the market has, which is this

sort of record level of liquidity is finally departing the scene, and that's coming from both the FED, which is poised to start tightening next month, and of course the fiscal side, which is well for the last two years, the fiscal stimulus was the size of the combined economies of the state of California, Florida, Texas combined, and that's essentially gone now, and so you have heightened volatility and you have less liquidity. That that tends to mean that price and earnings multiples

are poised or at least at risk for contraction. That's what we've seen this year where the SMP PE multiple is actually contracted two and a half times two and a half points, now trading at about nineteen times anticipated

two thousand and twenty two earnings. So while we do expect earnings to grow this year, that that higher level of volatility, Tim and Katie is going to certainly bring pause to investors and Aaron with that type of setup where you are seeing PE multiples start to come down a little bit, I mean, do you view that as an opportunity at this stage or do you think there's still more of sort of a revaluation to go. Well, I think the technical backdrop frankly is still weak, but

that doesn't always guide what we do. We believe in sort of disciplined in our cost averaging depending on the types of clients that we have um but but we're also very mindful of of valuations across them ket place, and there are certainly areas of real opportunity that we see even within the equity markets, but it's hard to try to catch that falling knife. No one ever does that perfectly. As they say, only monkeys can pick tops and bottoms, and we sort of embrace that mantra and

maintain our discipline across all asset classes for our clients. Okay, so let's say a new client comes to you, or perhaps a current client that you have has some sort of exit. What's the strategy of introducing those assets into the market. Well, we think about the long term. Most of our clients are busy professionals. They're trying to simplify

their financial life. They're trying to make um you know, they have they have sort of different buckets of assets sometimes located all over their place, and it's part of our job to sort of bring some sense to the madness.

And so, you know, we're really thinking about, you know, long term anticipated returns of major asset classes, in the mix of those asset classes, in the anticipated volatility of each one of those asset classes is to to allow for them to achieve their long term goals while also being able to sort of sleep well at night. And so this current market sort of speed bump that we're going through right now, we do think it has a

heightened opportunity to last for for a while. But it doesn't really change the sort of asset allocation process that we go through on behalf of our clients and Aaron, let's let's get more specific here, so being being disciplined the the asset allocation process. When you look across asset classes from fixed income to equities, what are those different allocations look like? You know, where are you overweight? Where

are you underweight? Sure? Well, I think fixed thing comes interesting here because, of course, the anticipation right now is the Fed's going to raise rates six times this year and call it to maybe three times next year, and the curve is quite flat. Um. You know, we we have a hard time believing that, particularly when even this week and last week there's been evidence that the economy is slowing down, that the inflationary peaks that we have

been noticing over the last few months maybe waning. Um, the supply chain picture looks like it's at least on the margin improving. Shipping costs have been thawing, business costs generally have been subsiding, and so we think the Fed may end up proving to be at least relatively consensus a bit more dubbish over the next six to twelve months and you know that has an opportunity in some sense for for us to maintain some exposure in the

front end of of of the fixed income market. But we were guided by the benchmark, which is the Bloomberg Barkley's Aggregate bond Index, and so we need to always know where we're making our bets on credit exposure, on duration, and how that correlates with other asset classes in the portfolio. I mean, Aaron, you said that you weren't in the business of catching knives, but when it comes to the front end of the yield curve, a little bit of

a falling knife here, yeah, I mean, certainly. Um, you know, it's it's been an interesting market and while we are sometimes on the margin tactical, we want to be mindful of where where our bets are. And we think at one right now and the t your treasury with a market anticipating six rate hikes that to your treasury is pricing in almost chance that that consensus is going to be correct. You know, our view is that that may

be just a bit too aggressive. Hearon, just in the last minute that we have with you, we got to talk to your politics here and help us understand help our listeners and viewers understand Russia and Ukraine and the impact that it's going to have on markets. Well, it's just another veil variable that certainly doesn't reduce volatility, it only increases it. Putin is a bad guy, you know.

He seems to have aspirations to expand the Russian Empire and this could have a rather significant consequence to the overall market. I think in a couple of different ways. Ways. One clearly volatility, But on the energy side, UM, that's that's a huge question around UH, you know, nord Stream two is it Is it going to be dead or or not? Um. Europe needs natural gas to uh to

provide electricity to the population. They've reduced their nuclear capabilities significantly in the midst of having the Russian news around their neck for the last several years. So it's it's certainly a conundrum for for Europe right now, and it's and it's a real challenge for the world and for investors. Aaron Kennon, we love it when you join us. Have a great three day weekend. Thank you so much for

taking the time. That's Aaron Kennon, co founder and CEO at Clear Harbor Asset Management, over a billion dollars in assets under management. Thanks for listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, or Bloomberg dot com, and you can also listen to our radio so at two pm Eastern on Bloomberg Radio or watch us on YouTube. Search to Bloomberg Global News