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The Bloomberg business Week Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
All Right, everybody, welcome to Bloomberg Business Week. You have been looking at BusinessWeek. We're live at the Bloomberg invest Summit.
The idea of a cautious market moving forward is certainly something that is top of mind for us and for the guests here today on at Bloomberg business Week and at Bloomberg Invest. We're going to have a chat about the cautious path for ray cuts. A little later, we're going to hear from John Williams, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Well, it's going to talk about AI and tech. We're going to do that with the chief AI officer over at Dell Computer. So looking forward to what John Rose has to say. In the meantime, let's talk about the Marcus because it is top of mind in our invest conference. Year is very timely. Mina Flynn is with us co head of Global Private wealth Management at gold Min sax Here at Bloomberg invest Hello, Hello, You've been very patient.
There's a lot coming out investors today. How do you make sense of this environment?
I think the number one thing that we have to remember is that when it comes to individuals, the first thing you focus on is portfolio construction. Portfolio construction drives ninety percent of a client's returns and it's something that we talk about upfront and then on an ongoing basis
with them. And the reason why this is so important is in times of volatility such as we've had this week that we've had today, and what you don't want is you don't want investors to be taking so much risk that they become uncomfortable and they sell, they crystallize
a loss versus staying put or buying. But on the flip side, we want to make sure that we encourage clients to take enough risks so that they offset inflation on an after tax, after spending basis, so our portfolios are really constructed with investment, great high quality fixed income and then a good amount of equities and alternatives.
Let's talk about the equities first in terms of geographic exposure for those equities. What has it traditionally been? And look, we know it's not a monolith. Every client is certainly different. But in general, how do you think about US equities versus equities outside of the US?
Sure, so we prefer US equities, and we prefer that both in both public markets as well as private markets. Big picture, we have roughly about a forty percent allocation to public equities. The largest allocation of that is to US equities, and then outside of that developed international equities, we do have a small percentage to emerging markets. But then also I would say we have recently increased our allocation to private markets and to private equity, and specifically
as it relates to buyout and growth. And the reason why is because these are two subsectors of alternatives where you see a significant amount of alpha relative to public market markets, and also the distributions of returns is much more narrow than other subasset classes within alternatives.
In terms of private equity, are you upbeat about the ability exit to see start seeing exits which is something that has been really difficult over the last few years.
It has been difficult as it relates to public markets. I'm upbeat as it relates to private equity on two things. One is, I do think to the extent that you have opportunities right now in public markets to be able to take companies private. I think that's an attractive opportunity
for private equity companies. Second, I do think that there's a lot of opportunities for private equity companies in the private markets, so they don't necessarily have to only think about taking a company public or M and A as their only alternative to liquidity. So a lot of secondary
private exits, a lot of continuation funds. The other thing I would note, although, is if you look at growth valuations and in private equity, what you have seen is you have seen a normalization of valuations between public and private markets. And the reason is because you've had really strong performance with these portfolio companies and it's allowed these companies to grow into the target exit valuations that these
gps were looking for. So I do think once you have a little bit more stabilization in the markets, you're going to see more deal activity, both as relates to IPO as well as M and A.
Okay, so let's talk about potential stabilization in the markets. Just in the last couple of weeks, we've certainly seen things change quite a bit. As Carol mentioned, at one point today the S and P five hundred had given up all its gains since that November fifth election. Tariff concerns, concerns about the economy.
What's your outlook?
So I would just say the thing that I'm really thinking about is the sequencing of policies. And so if you look at the Trump administration, it is a pro business administration. But what we're seeing right now is some of the negative hits to growth come first, whether that's immigration or whether that's tariffs. Before in the second half of the year we're probably going to see some sort of tax reform as well as deregulation, and so I think what we've got to be mindful of is a
little bit of that curve. Generally, the number one driver of US equity returns is a growing economy. Even with the tariff rates that we're talking about right now, we still do anticipate that we're going to have positive GDP in the US, and so from here we still do see equity market upside in the US.
So Meanie, you guys don't think about recession because it does feel like all of a sudden, the narratives change a little bit. We've seen weaker consumer spending numbers, consumer sentiment numbers, manufacturing data, so no concern GDP now data which we know from the land EFFED can be very volatile, but recession off the table completely.
For this, It's definitely, it's definitely not off the table, and we absolutely are looking at the data, whether that's consumer spending.
The jobs report this Friday is going to.
Be important, but you're also looking at a growth of over two percent, you know, two and a half percent, and so we have the odds of a recession even with these tariffs relatively low, call it fifteen to twenty percent. I do think it's important to take a step back and just look at we've got an SMP that's down roughly one percent year to date. Right, We've had a lot of volatility, but we've got an sp that's down
one percent year to date. Okay. Where you've really seen that underperformance is in the consumer to the macro points that you were talking about, as well as in technology, just because you've had some of the growth decrease in earnings outperformance versus called the rest of the four ninety three r but outside of consumer technology, all of the other sectors are positive. And so what I'm really focused on is the earnings path for the other four ninety three.
I think the max seven is going to be fine, but what we're going to see versus twenty four is likely a lot more earnings growth. So call it three percent and twenty four roughly eight nine percent this year. And so, and just your point as it relates to tariffs, we anticipate that every one percent increase in the effective tear rate decreases growth by roughly ten bases points and increases inflation by ten bases points.
So it is manageable.
I mean, it's going to depend on what happens, how long those tariffs are in place, if they're rolling or not. I think if they're rolling, tariffs is going to be much more hard from an inflation perspective.
Do you think that's up in the air based on just kind of the mood the mode that we've gotten from the White House in the last twenty four to forty eight hours, do you think that these are going to be lasting tariffs that stick around for a long time. Will there be more possibly or do you think that things could change in a week and a month.
I think things could absolutely change overnight and a week and a month. And I do think that there's going to be incrementally more tariffs that we see on things like autos, and I do think that there's the opportunity to also make a deal with you know, Mexica Canada in the near term and actually, you know, have those tariffs reduced. And so I think the ultimate is we don't know what's going to happen, and we just the main thing we're focused on is that economic data.
Do you think the tariffs on Mexico and Canada are more damaging than tariffs on China, because it does seem like the Mexico and Canada tear there is this off ramp when it comes to you know, what the President and his team have called essentially the border crisis and the drug war. Yeah, I mean, I think we don't necessarily see that off ramp.
Yeah, when you look at twenty five percent tariffs that you're talking about with Canada and Mexico, it's much more substantial than the tariffs that you've actually seen on China. And so when you think about that effective tariff tariff rate right now, it's roughly about eight percent. If things stay as they have been announced, an eight percent tariff rate would actually hit growth by roughly call it, you know, eighty basis points, and would increase inflation by roughly eighty
basis points. That being said, we already had inflation coming down from where it is right now, and so we probably get to roughly a three percent level if that's the case. Again, it's not our estimate or our perspective that tariffs stay at these levels, but if that's the case, you still have an opportunity for the FED to be able to react if you have inflation even at that three percent level. And so what we saw in twenty
nineteen is the FED cut as an insurance cut. And could we see that again today or you know, call it May, June, December. Absolutely, and I think the market's pricing more of that today. That's exactly what traders are pricing in three rate cuts. What kind of blows my mind is though, as you say, things could change quickly overnight, in a week, in a day, and that's kind of the environment that we've seen and we've seen it play
out in terms of the rate environment. One thing I want to ask you, because I think there's been an assumption when it comes to President Trump his tolerance of, you know, market volatility, that he was watching the equity markets.
It was kind of interesting to see. I feel like over the last few days where the markets had certainly the equity markets had some problems, and we just had this assumption that President Trump would do something, say something. I'm curious, how like, what's the conversation you guys all have around that.
I mean, definitely there, I'll put whatever you want to Yeah, I mean there's definitely their perspective that there was going to be a deal done, which is why you know, the markets are reacting like they are. And you do have a president that has really focused on pro business policies. But at the end of the day, he's very focused on bringing manufacturing and jobs back to the US. And the question is can we withstand that volatility? Can the
consumer withstand that volatility? Can CEOs withstand that volatility and continue to invest in their businesses.
One thing I want to ask you, John Williams is coming up. He's going to talk with our Michael McKee. If you're sitting down with him, I mean or what do you hope that Mike asks him? Because I'm curious. I think Mike probably a week ago had different set of questions, and he probably does today. But what would you want to hear from John Williams or what would you want to hear him talk about.
I guess I would want to know as it relates to on the tenure, what's his thoughts as it relates to the tenure. We have a Treasury Secretary who's suggested that he's watching that right, and so what is the absolute level of the tenure, Why is it moving, how fast is it moving? And how does that play into their overall picture of kind of risk tolerance? And how does that then affect if they cut rates? They don't cut rates? And do they do that? Can they do
that even with inflation? Call it three if inflation does tick up to call it three percent or so.
We're going to be hearing from John Williams in just a minute, so we'll see what Mike asks him before we let you go. Mina crypto is it part of the alternatives in a portfolio for your ultra high networth clients?
It's not part of our client's portfolios. And the main reason that is is because we don't see it as a store of value. It's very hard to actually value.
Oh please for the crypto folks in the back. Yeah, so you don't see it as a store of value, is what you said.
We don't see the store of value and Tiley volatile asset and it's hard under what valuation metrics do you actually value it? So no, we don't have it as a part of our core asset allocation.
All right, don't throw anything at Miana crypto people when you see her around, because she said what a lot of people think.
I think it's fair to say.
Absolutely, thank you so much, so appreciate it of course. Mina Flin, co head of Global Private Wealth Management at GOLDMNSAX. Here at Bloomberg invest.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
Safe to say, every day we are seeing tons of headlines on AI, so we just kind of want to jump in in top of our next guy.
Yeah, we got with us Dell Technologies, Global CTO and chief AI officer John Rose here with us at Bloomberg invest He participated in a panel already on strategies for
enhancing a company value. John, Look, before we get going, I just want to get an update from you on IT spending through the pandemic if anything today and like today's volatility that we saw in the markets, although it's kind of coming back in the equity markets, are you watching that at all in the context of IT spend, well, well.
There's two answers in terms of AI spend. Clearly that's a gigantic growth theory. I think we've seen the TAM double in the last year. There's no doubt that you know, we're on a track right now, and definitely in the global enterprise market that probably the majority of IT spend in the long term is to build and implement the systems necessary to power the AI transformation of businesses. So pretty bullish on there the consequences. In order to do that,
we have to make the older systems more efficient. So there's actually a spend profile there of trying to densify environments and aggregate legacy systems. So the whole space is pretty active and looks to be a pretty positive environment because without it, without that infrastructure, there is no AI future too.
We're like, what over two years in at least that the market, the world, you know, as you always remind us, AI nothing new. We do the same thing, but certainly the narrative and the discussion changed more than two years ago. How has it evolved here in twenty twenty five? What's top of mind?
Yeah, I mean, so we're in year three.
Year one was experimentation with some tools that people couldn't really use for enterprise. Year two was the do it yourself here that if you wanted to do it, it was a big technical effort. Year three we've now seen lots of ISVs, lots of turn key on offering. The most importantly companies like de sivvs, independent software vendors people which sell you stuff so instead of do it yourself, you can actually buy stuff to do AI, which is incredibly important.
The two things that we need for enterprise adoption are one the ability to consume it as a technology as opposed to a do it yourself project, which that's actually happening now, and the other is a feeling that you're not the first mover and because some of us big companies have moved first and have gotten to the other side of productivity. Now there's archetypes to follow, So so I'm pretty bullish about this is a good year in terms of expanded enterprise adoption.
We haven't gone to talk to you since the deep Seek news on January twenty seventh that really wiped hundreds of billions of dollars from in Vidia's market tap. We're down in Vidia about a little over twenty percent since the January highs for that company. Are you seeing any pullback in this space right now?
No, in a word, yeah, And the reason for it is, Look, you know, deepsek was just another of you know, forty years of disruptions that have progressively moved AI forward. You know, I was a theory forty years ago, and then we invented things and created new technologies and bent the curve multiple times to ultimately get to where we are today today. There's only two levers that make AI better. One is
the mips per want of the compute environment. Okay, every time in Vidia delivers a new GPU that gets better, and the other is algorithmic improvements, which are things like deep Seek, and they just they just allow us to do things more efficiently.
So you buy what we know about Deep Seek, Like, are you skeptical that they were able to do what they did with the resources they had?
Look, I wasn't.
I didn't have a front row seat to exactly what they did. I look at it as interesting engineering. It does look like some novel approaches using some existing technologies. Great, we need that and what we've learned from it because as an open model is Yeah, there's some interesting techniques that other people are going to adopt and guess what it's going to make the whole AI industry more efficient. If there wasn't kind of insatiable demand in front of us,
I'd be nervous, But there is. We have barely touched the processes of the enterprises in the world, and we have millions of them to go after.
But I do wonder to Tim's point, that does Deep Seek make us ref the models or the narrative about how the buildout has to happen, the energy needs, this cost, whatever it is.
Yes, just like every other iteration, we're in a world Welcome to the AI club. The AI club is a pre is an environment where there's constant disruption happening, moving the industry forward, and so the novel approaches in Deepseak allow us to rethink, Hey, maybe I can do training a little more efficiently, Maybe I can do inferencing a little more costly. Maybe I can develop a different way
of thinking about a model. Great, let's adopt that, let's build on it, and the next one might be bigger disruption, but it'll still move the industry forward.
Got to ask you about Elon Musk and the government, and the goal is to make it more efficient. And there's of course a lot of news and a lot of headlines around what's going on in terms of what we've seen so far. What are your expectations that it becomes a more technologically advanced run government.
Well, well, I think you know.
I mean we should point out that Dell supplying servers to Elon's XAI.
The government and everybody else in the world. We're very present.
Yeah, you know.
Here here's the punchline, elons and technologists. He clearly understands the technology stack. The way you improve things, the way you get productivity, you do things better, is both the improvement of your processes and the application of technology to make those processes work more efficiently. Both of those are going to happen. I can't tell you exactly what's going to happen in the government. I can't tell you what
play they're going to make. But what I can guarantee you as the end state, there will be more technology powering our government and our public sector, and it will probably make them more efficient and more effective. How it works out above that but by pay grade, but it is inevitable. The one thing I can guarantee you, there won't be less technology in the government when we move into the next year or the next two years.
Listen, I'm asking you this as a technologists somebody who's a front row seat on the technology side. Critics have said their concerns about security and privacy when it comes to what Doje and what Elon Musk are doing.
Should they be concerned?
I don't know that's their opinion about Maybe you should always be concerned. You should always look at the risk give technology. Here's a good example. We're maybe outspoken that for the real critical AI activities you should do them in a private environment. Some people disagree with us. The reason we say that is because that's the lowest risk path.
It also happens to be the lowest cost path. Every technology decision you make is a technology in a vacuum until you apply it to a real world scenario, and that's where the risk.
So essentially, what you're saying is if the Department of Government efficiency employees are or using AI tools to help with their jobs, they should be doing that in an environment that is secure, you bet.
And what that means to them they should figure out. But what you shouldn't do is go into an environment when you're using technology without contemplating the risk of it.
I have full confidence that any good technologist, including the folks doing that work in the government, are absolutely thinking about not just the technology in a vacuum, but the fact that when it gets into the real world there are security considerations, There are other activities that need to be controlled, and you always build a security model into
your technology architecture. Even lms have security models, agents have security models because that's necessary to make them work in something like an enterprise.
How should we be talking about here we are in year three, as you said, in terms of this stage of AI. Is it a general purpose technology or is it going to replace everything? And I don't I'm trying to be like lammatory or anything.
But should we think neither.
It is general purpose in the sense that we're going to see pervasive AI. It's gonna be very hard five years from now to find any element of society that does not have AI as a partner, a coworker, an enabler.
That is inevitable. But is it going to replace everything? Absolutely not.
We've already seen this when there's this new technology called agents that people are hearing about, right, and what is this? Well, the chip between a chat bot, the first generation stuff, and an agent is that the chat bot, the human was in the loop.
You were part of the process. In an agent, you're still there.
But you're on the loop, meaning you tell it what to do, you decide if it did the right thing. You're the boss. There's still a role for a human. It's a very important role, and the agents can't work without it. But our role in relation to these technologies is just naturally going to evolve because the technologies can do more of the underlying work.
John, you know what we want to know? Do we have a job going forward? That's what we really want to do, John Roth, thank you so much. I'm so glad we could catch up with you Global Chief Technology Officer Chief AI Officer at Dell Technologies.
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Many industris and analysts were made cautious, expecting further market volatility and potential corrections, with some predicting a deep correction this year.
Yeah, we'll see what our next guest has to say. We have a perfect voice to talk to to really understand this environment. Ryan Tolkien is the CEO and CIO of the multi strategy hedge fund firm, Huge fun firm. Is that what you're meant to say, huge hedge fund. It's been one of those kind of days. It's they've got what billion dollars in assets under management? Stonefeld Strategic Advisors is the firm. It's a little wacky, as you know, the news flow. Nice to have you here with us.
Let's talk the market environment. Interesting to see that stocks have bounced back. So how do you make sense of a day like this right.
I've been away from the screens for the last hour. Shots. Admittedly this is breaking news to me that stocks have fully bounced back, But I think let's take a step
back for a second. You know, we are forty days into a new administration in Washington, and you know, as many have discussed, I think this new administration has clearly brought uncertainty across a variety of different issues, and whether we're talking about several different wars that are happening, you know, certainly most notably what's going on in Russia and Ukraine, or the tire of situation where we've seemed to be creating a bunch of economic warfare with with with partners
in Canada and Mexico and certainly you know, China. Combine that with some of the further uncertainty around, you know, around around the economy and interest rates, and it's setting up for an environment where certainly the base level of volatility is higher, and with the base level of volatility higher, ultimately we're going to see more frequent periods where we get large sell offs, whether that those be sell offs overnight or sell offs in the early morning, and where
intra day volatility increases. This is now the second consecutive day where if you would look at the high point of futures relative to the low point of futures, you're seeing some very very meaningful moves, and so I expect that to continue. I expect that to continue.
Suggest moves or is it something more fundamentally like, are we getting certainty?
I think it's uncertainty. And when uncertainty exists, ultimately, consumers are telling you we're not spending as much. We saw that in the retail sales data, we saw that the University of Michigan confidence data, and also corporates are telling you the uncertainty exists. Some of the big tech companies are starting to talk back how much they may do in cap x spend. And when you start to see
those things, the market starts to jitter a bit. And when the market starts to jitter a bit and you start with an elevated level of gross exposure and an elevated level of net exposure, I think you're going to start to see more and more of these days where we trade in two or two and a half percent equity ranges as compared to what we saw for the majority of twenty twenty four.
You said the market's starting to have some jitters. Are you starting to have some jitters?
So as a firm, these kind of markets actually start to set up really well for us, and that's because we deploy a multi strategy approach where we have certain strategies across our business that benefit from the range expansion of stocks, that benefit from an elevated level of volatility, that ultimately can take advantage of some of the dislocations
that we're starting to see form. And whether that be our macro fixed income business which tends to trade from a positively convex long viol standpoint, or our quantitative trading business that tends to do better when we start to see an increased range in stocks, or even you know, parts of our short term trading business businesses that we've been running for thirty five years, where are both our discretionary and systematic iterations of those strategies tend to benefit
when we start to see the increases in volatility. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to lean more into the strategies that ultimately benefit from higher baseline level of volatility and where we need to square our portfolio in some of the areas that benefited a
lot from the environment that we lived in. You know, between let's call it January of twenty twenty four through Inauguration day of twenty twenty five, you know, we're working to reposition those portfolios, and I think we're going to have to continue to work to reposition those portfolios because I don't think what we're starting to see happen over the last forty days is an accident. It's not a surprise, and it's probably something that's going to persist for some period of time.
So the opportunity for you, Ryan, is just in the actual movement and the volatility, or is it a certain asset class that is I don't know, going to actually do well opportunitistic in this volatility?
What is it? Well? Our strategies focused on identifying relative value opportunities, and so for us, what we're going to look for across asset classes is ultimately where the risk premia is most dislocated, and then where that risk premium is most dislocated we are going to lean into in terms of our risk deployment. And so, you know, the benefit of trading across lots of different asset classes and
having lots of different strategies. Is in certain time periods that could be in fixed income, that could be in interest rates, that could be in currencies at other times, that could be in credit at other times, that could be in equities. And so we're starting to see some
of those cracks form in the equities market. And so you know, that's where I would say our focus has been, you know, in the very near term, you know, but that can shift really quickly, and if FX volatility picks up, or we start to see credit spreads widen, you know, we will move risk to ultimately where that risk premium becomes most dislocated.
Is it hard to make bets?
Though?
In terms of an administration that some that we've had on today say, well, you know what, we're going to wait on these tariffs because who knows in twenty four hours or in a week.
I think that's the uncertainty that's leading to to the jitters that we talked about, because you know, I think, you know, one day you'll hear one thing, the next day you might hear the opposite. Are these negotiation tactics or is he being real? You know? I think these are the things that all investors are considering, and I think the market's telling you, I don't like that uncertainty.
Well, but I think we learned today that he's being real given what we saw with implemented with Canada and Canada and Mexico, so that certainly that jury is not out there. Is there an environment that's better or worse for your firm, like given that you're multi strat and you can kind of thrive in any environment, Like, what's a bad environment for you?
Massive correlation is a bad environment for us. We benefit from dispersion. And so when a larger part of the moves and individual asset classes can be explained by the idiosyncratic components of what makes a stock a stock rather than what makes the market the market, those are the environments we benefit from. And so ultimately, when all stocks are moving because interest rates are moving higher or the dollar is moving lower, those are the more challenging and
more difficult environments. Now, through the years, we've tried to layer on certain strategies that actually benefit from those environments to try to make our portfolio more you know, all weather proof and more battle tested. And so through time, I think we've gotten better at being able to navigate those environments. But certainly, when I take a step back and look at our portfolio, we want environments where dispersion is high.
Data is so important to try and figuring out kind of what the environment is where it goes. And I'm curious about the kind of data metrics or data sets that you guys find are really interesting right now.
Well, I think the benefit of our organizations. We've been around for thirty six years, and so the most few cycles, yeah, we've seen a few cycles, and the most valuable data sets are ultimately the internal data sets that we've created through thirty six years of trading in the markets. And
they're valuable for two reasons. One they're full of information. Two, they're the one type of data set that ultimately cannot be replicated or sold to any of our peers or competitors who are trying, you know, to to make or to compete for alpha in similar spaces as us, and
so we try to leverage that. But but we ultimately need to acquire other data sets and build and build other data sets that ultimately are going to be components to our strategies, and so we invest a lot of money, time, effort, and resource in our data platform uh in terms of both our data ingestion efforts, our data cleaning efforts, and
then ultimately what do we do with that data? How do we how do we how do we better put the data in the hands of our portfolio managers that can actually then make better behavioral decisions because they're being informed with reliable data. Is AI part of that equation?
I interviewed Ben w Rehn of sig Tech earlier today, the startup that was spun out of Brevin Howard a few years ago, and he creates a product that's that's meant to really help quants do their jobs very quickly.
So I'll say I'll say two things on sort of where we're leveraging AI. Number One, we've been running quantitative trading strategies for multiple decks. Kids We've been implementing different techniques as it relates to machine learning for many many years. Right now, the models are consistently getting better, and so we are leveraging AI to ultimately make our models better, which is ultimately going to make our quant trading strategies better.
Now everybody is doing that or a lot of people are doing that, and so we got to do that better than other people. And so that's where ultimately having the right talent I think is the name of the game. And so yes, AI is changing the way that we do things, but it will not be a replacement for
having really talented quants and really talented people. The second thing that I would say is, you know, we are leveraging AI ultimately to make sure that we are maximizing the amount of time that the valuable people that we have are focused on the last mile or the most IP sensitive components, toward our trading strategies and toward our
investment strategies. And so if we can take all the parts of the investment process that can be commoditized and we can do those things more quickly and more easily for our talent, then ultimately we could put ourselves in a position where we're spending the maximum amount of time in the most IP sensitive areas.
All right, so what new asset classes or new markets look interesting?
Yeah, So I would say the three core focuses for us are expanding our volatility strategies, which we've been trying to do over over over the last couple of years, where we've been able to acquire some some good talent. Recently, I would say number two is expanding and developing our Delta one business. This is a business that's existed for many, many years inside seal side institutions. Some of that talent
has started to migrate towards the buyside. We think we are a first mover in acquiring some of that talent building out businesses as it relates to those strategies. The benefit there is it's a great opportunity to see where risk premia is most dislocated across a variety of different asset classes. And we've built a great team globally to be able to do that across you know, probably twenty or thirty different markets at this point. And so that's
a second area of expansion for us. And then lastly, it's it's quant trading. And why quant trading is so important to us is ultimately the barriers to entry are the highest because of the cost of running quant trading businesses, because of the amount of capex that needs to continuously be poured into quantrating businesses. You know, it is not an easy thing to replicate, and so for us, we
have a first mover advantage. We've been investing in it over multiple decades, and so we want to continue to lean into our strengths.
I want to get back to the macro and more of what we've heard from Washington. We do expect the President tonight in his joints, in his address to Congress to probably talk about the economy a lot. I'm guessing we don't know what he's going to say at this point.
We know he likes part of the uncertainty. That's sort that is part of the uncertainty and molatility to But if you think about the you know, what many would describe as pro growth policies coming from this president at least his agenda, would you say that those, if they are enacted outweigh the uncertainty of tariffs.
It's a good question, and I think that's what the market's trying to debate. And the reason we're probably not down more as it relates to the broader market indices is because I think people are having that debate, you know, in their investment committees and in their boardrooms. And I think there's a lot of value behind some of the
deregulation policies that are ultimately coming out of Washington. We have a president where he wakes up in the morning and the first thing he does is he looks at equity futures, and I think a big part of his mood is ultimately informed by what are equity future is doing.
And so to some extent, I think it's fair to say that we have a put that is sitting below the market, given how much the president utilizes the market as a gauge of how the country is doing, and so given that, I think when you start to see the equity market respond in the way in which it has, I do think that through time, you will start to see the narrative shift from the president toward more pro growth policies, toward policies he thinks will ultimately promote the
long term sustainability of the US economy. But he balances those things and he doesn't like to find himself, you know, too far left or too far right, you know, as it relates to that. And so I think we're going to continue to see a lot of noise, and I think that noise is going to create Also, I mentioned a floor or maybe a put that exists, but I also think that probably creates a cap on where equity prices can move in the near term.
So do you think the first half of the year is going to be very different from the second half of the year because of everything that's coming out washed.
The first half of the year is going to be really bumpy. I think what the market is already telling us is we're tired. We're tired of executive action, we're tired of executive orders, we're tired of hearing about tiraffs in all of these different countries. And I think with that, you know, I think we're going to see a market
where we're seeing more volatility. And then I think it's going to be how does the economy ultimately expand we have to balance some of the challenges of stagflation with some of the challenges of how do we continue to make sure that we're maintaining growth throughout the first half of the year, And so the market in the second half of the year is going to be highly highly dependent on how well ad job we do at balancing those two factors.
Hey, just a little bit of time left and wanted to touch on crypto. Speaking of volatility, how do you do crypto at the sure.
So we are in the digital currency space, we do
trade crypto. We don't have a directional view on where crypto is going, but there are certain types of opportunities that have come about by the creation of new crypto products, whether that be some of the new ETFs, the ability to trade futures, the expanding ability to trade futures across a larger amount of digital currencies creates opportunities for us, and so we have started to deploy capital and some of the basis trades that I think have been written
about a fair bit. We have worked closely and partnered with the banks as it relates to how we can deploy our balance sheet around some of those strategies. We are thinking through how we can expand our digital currency
trading strategies more broadly. Today it's still a relatively small percent of our risk capital, but it's something that if you ask me over the next two or three years, based off of a combination of what I think we'll see from a regulatory policy perspective with a combination of what I think we'll see from a market structure of market participant perspective, will likely become a greater percent of the risk of the portfolio than it is today, but
it will still be one of many strategies we deploy a chunfold pair.
Amount of volatility there too.
Certainly, but again I think that's part of what creates the opportunity. Brian, thank you so much.
Ryan Tolkien of shone Felt CEO and CIO.
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