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As I mentioned, we are covering all angles of what Donald Trump returning to the White House means, what it means for the markets, the courts, for trade, for international alliances, and of course for the climate too. Mark Gongloff, an editor at Bloomberg Opinion who writes about climate change, does not have great news, at least in his opinion. He writes that quote for the climate, the best we can hope for is that the aftermath of the twenty twenty
four election will remain just short of catastrophic. Mark joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive at Brokers Studio. So, Mark, where do we begin with the climate and a second Trump administration? And because I think we can kind of look to what he did in his first administration and what comments he's made since then, not necessarily a priority for him.
You could say that, to say the least it is not a priority for him. In fact, he was actively hostile to it in his first term, And as far as we can tell, we have two things to go by.
We have his first term where he was actively hostile to it, pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accord, gutted environmental regulations, tried to put a bunch of climate deniers in the government, on and on the Project twenty twenty five, this blueprint that the Heritage Foundation put together that he disavowed, but then it has been written by a lot of his former advisors, calls for doing that on steroids and privatizing the National Weather Service, and doing
a whole bunch of other stuff, drilling for oil, and a whole bunch of stuff like that. So none of it looks great. On the other hand, there are some reasons for hope.
You've also written about how Americans clearly care about climate change. But then the second time, in three different presidential elections, you've seen someone come in that's elected, that obviously has a different opposition towards that. What's the conundrum there? Why is there a divergence?
Yeah, it's crazy. Consistently people say we really care about climate change, we really want to do something about it, and then they turn around to vote against that. It's weird dichotomy that you've seen in this election of many others.
People.
You know, inflation is an enormous problem, and that that is something that affects people's daily lives. Climate is affecting their daily lives if there's a big hurricane, if there's a drought, if there's a wildfire. But that's not a constant drumbeat. How do I feed my kids? So I understand that if you're going to go to the polls and be mad about inflation, you're going to vote about inflation or the economy. The difficult thing we need to
message is that this is an economic issue. Climate change is going to raise prices in the future and cause economic loss in the future, but it's it's and it's causing those losses as we speak, you know, insurance, insurance exactly, building costs are going up. All these things are problems and in the now, and so we have to express
that message better. And that's one of the things about Trump taking over again and cutting off the US government sort of activism in climate is that we have to sort of take up that mantle ourselves.
Well, you mentioned it's not hopeless, and I wonder about the people that he has around him right now, and that could change. We know how he was in his first term and what some of those folks are saying now about the former president and president elect. But what about someone like Elon Musk being so close to him because he's I think it's fair to say, done a lot for the transition to cars run on by electricity.
It's such a weird thing. Yes, I mean, he made his fortune is based on Tesla, and one of the weird things those that if you cut off the IRA, cut off the Inflation Reduction Act and in subsidies for other electric car makers, suddenly Tesla is king of the hill without that many competitors. So there are some competing interests there. It is possible though that he could kind of bend Trump's on that, but I don't know if we can rely on that at this point. We may
have to rely on state and local governments. You know, Washington kept alive a carbon tax, a cap and trade scheme that they have there to help sort of like make carbon more expensive. That's a huge thing to help keep fossil fuel use down. Other state and local governments are doing that. And the other thing, the ironic thing is that you know, Trump is called climate change in
Chinese hoax. If we stop subsidizing green tech production in the US, a lot of that business is going to go overseas, and a lot of it is going to be dominated by nobody, none other than China. It already is to some extent. They're making super cheap evs or making super cheap solar panels, and they're spreading them around the world, and we risk missing the US when I say we, the US risks missing out on that business.
And you know that ability that manufacturing in those jobs that the IRA did start was starting to provide, and that's another reason to hope. A lot of those jobs are being created in Republican districts, and so a lot of Republican lawmakers are already saying, hey, maybe keep your hands off of this.
Please, so project twenty twenty five because there's a lot of discussion about this. It's unclear about everything that's in it. But how does climate change end up fitting into this specifically?
Well, they really talk about the NAA, which runs the National Weather Service, and a bunch of other things. They talk about taking that, breaking it up, stripping it down. The National Weather Service, which provides you know, all tons and tons of data climate data, they want to sort of they don't privatize that, but they want to commercialize it so that it sells all that stuff, sells all of its data to like Acuweather, for example, which is
like a private company. Acuweather says it doesn't want any part of this, but it's of course saying that now because it wants to stay out of that. Who knows what's going to happen. But if it wants to take pull climate change out of the science that the National Weather Service and THENAA perform, and that will be a huge loss for scientists here and all around the world. They'll have to scramble for other data sources. And it's just, you know, we all need to be rowing in the
same direction. We've got four years in order to really close the window. We've got a window of four years to cut fossil fuel emissions down enough to keep warming to the window that we've all said we want like two degrees celsius or less. You know, everybody needs to be growing in the same direction to make that happen. If the US pulls its data out of that fight. It's powers out of that fight, and it doesn't help anybody.
I'm wondering where markets come in here, Mark, because you know, we mentioned the rising costs of insurance and I don't know if you've been on since I found this out about a friend of mine, but apparently he can't sell his condo in Florida because it keeps flooding their insurance issues. And to me, that sounds like the market is kind of taken.
Care of this.
Yeah, it's anecdotal, but you are seeing some issues, especially with some other regulations in Florida related to the collapse of that building and surfside a few years ago, that are making it really difficult to sell real estate in certain areas.
Donald Trump's a real estate guy. Yeah, Like, is that message and in Florida?
Like, is that message going to get to him that Okay, this is an issue because it is affecting the cost of housing and he wants to bring that down.
I don't know what messages will get to him, but I do think because who knows what, but messages will get to politicians in Florida. I mean, they already see that the real estate market is having problems, especially in the coastal areas. Insurance rates are going up, so that is going to be a big market and you can see that in other parts of California, wildfire prone areas
in California, flood prone places in Louisiana and Texas. It's going to be an issue all around the country, not just in Florida, and it will be an economic issue. On the other hand, I guess if you pull away government support and subsidies for clean tech, then that becomes another sort of the countervailing market thing. We're already seeing hedge funds making a bunch of money by betting a glimpse against clean tech this week.
Is that going to.
Keep going if the government? If the US government pulls it stops away, will VC's keep put money into that stuff? So that's another market wrinkle that we have to think about.
We've talked a lot broadly about the US government, but what about when it comes to local government and what they can do for those types of policies or initiatives when it comes to climate change.
Yeah, there's so much that they can do. Nashville and Columbus, Ohio both past mass transit bills this week and others. Two states that voted for Trump, Yeah, exactly, Ohio and Tennessee. Those are deep red states, but there are local governments in these two towns, past mass transit bills, Washington, as I mentioned, past this cap and trade bill. So there
are lots of things going on. But then at the same time, again it's difficult because I think with South Dakota voted against a pipeline that would pipe carbon dioxide. So you have these carbon capture Another big thing we're going to need maybe is carbon capture and storage, which we'd gone on about how effective that is. But if you have that, you want to pipe that carbon to other places. South Dakota said no, we don't want that pipeline in our backyard. And so it is a fight.
But local governments can do a lot. California State of California has done so much to affect the US audio, the entire US auto industry with its environmental regulations, and so states can have that kind of power.
I'm gonna throw a curveball at you, Mark. But we talked to Elon Musk, what about someone like RFK Junior who has a history of in environmentalism.
Yeah, again, I don't know our FK Junior Elon Musk, Donald Trump. These are people who have brains that are more complicated than I fully understand, So I don't know maybe how those three will work together.
They It is possible that he could.
Also have some sort of an influence onto He already has had some an influence on Trump, helped Trump get elected. Trump feels like maybe he owes him something and so he may be more willing to listen to an environmental pitch from him who knows. It does sound like his focus has been less about the environment in the last few years, much more about health.
Yeah, health and FDA and Moer vaccines. Yeah.
Well, we certainly do live in interesting times. Mark on Luff, we are grateful to have you writing a it. Mark is an editor at Bloomberg Opinion. He writes about climate change. Check out his columns and more on the Bloomberg Terminal opin Go and at Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion.
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Well, the Associated Press reporting this afternoon at the shoe company Steve Madden is set to cut imports from China by as much as forty five percent. This is a result of this week's election of Donald Trump. The ATHV reporting that Steve Madden has been building a factory network in Cambodia, Vietnam, Mexico, and Brazil. So those jobs not necessarily coming to the US, but certainly the supply chain
being changed. I would imagine that c suites all over the US are scrambling right now to figure out what they're going to do to prepare for the next Trump administration. And that's why we've got Nina Trattman with us. We know she's all over this. She's Bloomberg News senior editor who writes the Bloomberg CFO Briefing newsletter. You can ascribed to it by going to Bloomberg dot com slash CFO Briefing. She joins us here in the Bloomberg BusinessWeek studio. We're
also joined by Mandy Fields. She's CFO at elf Beauty. She joins us from Oakland, California. Nina, why was Mandy a good person to talk to? You this week after the victory by Donald Trump.
Yeah, thanks for having me again, and thanks Mandy for joining. I think, well, of course, we are looking for companies who can tell us how this will influence their planning strategy and their finances. And I think ELF is an interesting company because, and we'll talk to Mandy more about this in a second, they import a lot from China. They have a sort of price point customer that is sort of basically one that is sort of exposed potentially to inflation.
So like the average product.
I think Mandy told me before is sort of paying six dollars fifty and so of course there's a sensitivity to potential inflation and increases in prices. So yeah, why don't we turn to you, right, Mendy talk to us a little bit about how you navigated the first round of tariffs under Trump's first administration and how that could could help as a playbook for this time round.
Well, thank you so much for having me this afternoon. We are certainly familiar with tariffs. We were impacted by tariffs back in twenty nineteen, and we experienced them at about a twenty five percent level on the majority of our product that we import. From China, and at that time, we had a couple different tools in our toolkit to help offset the impact of tariffs. We had call savings
and concessions with our suppliers. We saw the foreign exchange rate between the US and the Chinese Wan move into our favor. I mean, we also had pricing. We took pricing on about a third of our portfolio at that time to help mitigate the impact of tariffs. I would say, now continue, yeah, I would just say now that you know, back in twenty nineteen, I would say maybe ninety nine percent of our product what's coming out of China. We've made a lot of progress now about eighty percent coming
out of China. But we also have diversification in our back pocket, and so we have identified suppliers in other parts of Asia outside of China, and then also working with suppliers here in the US and in Europe also
helping to produce our products. And we also have further diversification from a top line standpoint with in this latest quarter, we just reported twenty one percent of our net sales coming out of other countries outside of the US that when we import into those countries are also not subject to tariffs, so that also will help us mitigate any incremental tariffs that we might face.
What about how this hits the bottom line of the company and sort of where it's absorbed the changes. Are they absorbed through price increases or would traff be absorbed through price increases or do you just get this hit on this with the bottom line.
Well, in the twenty nineteen instance of tear, we actually were able to expand our gross margins during that time because we did take pricing, we had the cost savings, we had FX move into our favor. Now, some of those things like FX, we're not in control of, so that was just an additional help that we had during
that time period. So I guess I would say it's too early to tell what this next round of tariffs may look like, but certainly we had the playbook from twenty nineteen when we got the twenty five percent level.
So what kind of preparations could you potentially do in in advance of this, especially when you're thinking about what shareholders are looking toward when it comes to these types of potential issues.
Well, I think many companies are just scenario planning. You know, what can you potentially expect to see on the road ahead and certainly leveraging the history that you have in
this area. You know, we treat our pricing very seriously, and we actually have only taken pricing in response to kind of macro things, the tariffs back in twenty nineteen and the twenty twenty one twenty twenty two period in response to the container cost increases that we were seeing just with travel on ocean, and so we really take that very seriously. As Nita mentioned, our average price point at six dollars and fifty cents, and so we're very much a value price point and we want to maintain
that value. And so even in twenty nineteen when we took pricing on a third of our portfolio, we were not the only ones that took pricing. I mean there was pricing across the board. As we know, we went through a period of inflation posts that time, and so certainly want to take that very seriously and minimize what we'd have to do from a pricing standpoint.
Mandy, how do you think about inflation and the impact on consumer confidence. We talked about this when we spoke earlier this week that you said, of course tariffs can drive inflation and of course, this country has just gone through a massive wave of inflation. Like, how do you think your consumers would potentially react to that?
Yeah, So I do think that there is broadly, not just in beauty and not just with ELF, but just a broader fatigue from inflation. I think you're seeing that with many companies talking about value being of utmost importance to consumers. And even when you look at the beauty category, category overall is down five percent, but ELF, you know, we just delivered a forty percent quarter, continue to resonate with consumers, and I do believe our value proposition is
as a key differentiator for us in the market. And so I think consumers are fatigued on price increases and all those things and are going to be seeking value in an inflationary period.
Yeah.
I think that for a lot of people who are looking at sort of a post mortem of the election, they would certainly agree with that. And voters certainly voted expressing that. It seems like I'm wondering about other policies that within the Newtrump administration that you've got your eye on, apart from tariff. So, I mean, what does a second Trump administration mean for ealth beauty.
Well, I think irrespective of who is in office, you know, we're really focused on what we can control, and we know that our investors, our employees, everyone is focused on what we're able to do from a net sales growth standpoint, what we're able to do from an EBITDA expansion standpoint, and really continuing to build market share in this environment. Those are the things that we can control and are focused on at this time.
We only have about thirty seconds left. But how do you view the trajectory when it comes to the debate around what could happen with corporate taxes?
Yeah, you know, I would say that, you know, we have been more focused on the tariff impact because we do know that that is a bigger potential for us to have to scenario plan against. From a corporate tax standpoint, I think a little bit of a less of an issue for us. We're pretty vanilla when it comes from a tax a tax basis, and so not have not been as focused or see that as much of an issue for us as we look out.
All Right, Mandyfield's the CFO at elf Beauty joining us from Oakland, California.
Also here.
Bloomberg News Senior Editor Nina Trettman. She writes the Bloomberg CFO Briefing newsletter. You can sign up for that at Bloomberg dot com slash CFO Briefing.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
For so much discussion, especially on the back of that Federal Reserve decision as widely expected obviously yesterday where the Fed did cutreads by a quarter point here, but some other bright spots that we might look more broadly in
the economy. The worst period of stress for underlying credit for credit borrow is actually behind investors, and the beginnings of a more constructive credit cycle are showing signs of becoming clear, according to Kroll bond Ratings agency, who ended up analyzing the three most recent years of data for
fifteen hundred companies. But of course I have to point out that there's still a problem even as interest rates have fallen in recent months, because many Americans are still feeling the strain of higher borrowing costs from everything for
mortgages to credit card rates. So who better to walk us through the dynamics Here Bill Cox, global head of Corporate, Financial and Government Ratings at the bond rating firm k b r A, joining us from Bucks County, Pennsylvania to discuss why rate cuts will help most but not all borrowers. You know what, Bill, I was actually looking at the
latest Freddie McData. When you're looking at fixed mortgage rates, whether you're looking at the thirty or the fifteen year, I mean the thirty year right now, it's around six point eight percent in the latest weeks of data. The fifteen years around six percent. I know, we saw it come down just marginally in recent months, but now they're
back higher. Kind of set the scene here on the back of the Federal Reserve decision and sort of the conundrum here we're seeing more broadly when it comes to borrowing costs from mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, and all of the things above.
Yeah, and that's right.
I mean, the ten year Treasury is obviously the most important factor when it comes to mortgage and other consumer borrowing costs, and that has moved up a little bit, and we've also seen in your forward curve with regard to base rates for corporate borrowers, the so for forward
curve that that's also bumped up a little bit. Where a few months ago when we were researching this report, we were seeing a terminal rat at around three hundred basis points on the base rate, we're seeing that bump up to close to three point fifty nowt So certainly some shakeout still going on with regard to interest rates, but overall, as you said in your summary, just the period we're entering right now is more constructive for middle
market borrowers as the period where they were dealing with high inflation, rapidly rising interest costs, and other things like slowing economy in some sectors is really coming to an end, and we're seeing some financial metrics significantly improve.
I'm wondering if your assessment changes at all with the election of Donald Trump, because some of his policies have been criticized as being inflationary tariffs, for example, and also the concern about less government revenue as a result of tax cuts perhaps on tips, tax cuts on social secure or no taxes on social security promises that he made on his campaign, which we don't know if he'll be able to get through, but you know, certainly economists we're sounding the alarm bells about those.
Yeah, I think that's right, Tim. I think that that last part you said is most important. We don't know what we'll get through and what of these policies will be in the short run versus the longer run. Right now, the focus is on how are our interest rates moving? And as I said, the base rates look at SOFUR, which is what most of the private credit industry is borrowing against, that has continued to come down along with the FED cuts, and it's expected to continue to come
down by another hundred and fifty basis points. And then in addition to that, what's really interesting in the private credit landscape right now is that.
Spreads are coming in.
So the re emergence of the BSL market and competition amongst lenders has led to spreads coming down from six fifty six to seventy five a year and a half ago to we're seeing some spreads at four seventy five. So certainly a more constructive borrowing environment for middle market credit.
And I alluded to the latest report that you were looking at when it comes to private credit research, Why do you think the worst period of stretch for underlying credit, especially for borrowers is actually behind us? And what do you see things ahead here? You do go into twenty twenty five with a lot of question marks about where things could be headed on some of the policy decisions in Washington.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean putting that aside, which is a big thing to put aside right now, because we don't know what things will be constructive for certain industries versus others. Certainly there are some winners already as the markets are suggesting, but broadly speaking, based upon the data that we have, which is a significant amount of data that's derived from the fact that we rate hundreds of transactions that are either feeder notes into private credit strategies, or credit facilities
into private credit, or colos from private credit. What we do when we rate those transactions is we gather financial information on the underlying borrowers in the portfolios of those respective transactions, we sign credit scores, and then we monitor the credit performance of those companies over time. We've done this about three thousand, five hundred or so times in
the past two years alone. And as you pointed out in the intro, we've looked at close to fifteen hundred unique companies so far this year, and that portfolio of fifteen hundred is a pretty good reflection of the broader landscape.
It includes companies in size that revenues are above seven hundred million all the way down to companies that are sixty million and below those the upper and lower quartile, and it's also a pretty diverse group from the perspective of industries, which is very similar to what we understand
the broader landscape of private credit to be. And what we're seeing in that portfolio in the research that we did just launched this week was first we were trying to figure out why we are seeing so many fewer defaults than we would have expected, given the rapid rise in rates and the other headwinds that especially highly leveraged
borrowers were facing. And what we discovered was surprising. I think you all have reported, and we've all read, and we've seen in the portfolio an increase instance of interest deferrals and other sorts of restructurings and accommodations that some lenders and sponsors have made for some companies under stress.
But what we found is that the drivers of the relatively lower default rates are actually revenue growth, which has been really robust, In fact, nineteen percent compounded annually in the past three periods, and ebit dog growth in this portfolio of thirty three percent annually. That is tremendous growth, and it speaks to the resilience of these companies in
the business models on average. Again, there are exceptions out there, and we could talk about them in a second, but what we found particularly remarkable is that forty percent of the companies actually saw their interest coverage ratios improved despite the rapid rise in interest costs.
We are out of time, but you've got to come back and join us to talk about some of those companies. Bill Cox, Global head of Corporate, financial and Government Ratings at the bond rating firm KBR.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
M Brother Marco.
Journal.
How about you let me drive.
Oh no, no, no, no, who's to drive home?
Alright? Please, I'll do the travels. I want to drive.
It's a good question. Try this is the drive to the clothes Dot music.
We'll buy up Hilda.
On Bloomberg Radio.
Jess Matton, Timstinovik here the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. We have a little less than twenty minutes to go ahead of the closing. But of course, as we've been mentioning the S and P five hundred as well as NASTAC one hundred on pace for their best weeks of the year. Obviously a busy week when you had the US presidential election, obviously business decision that looming thirteen f deadline, of course,
another flurry of corporate earnings. But to walk us through sort of the week that was, who better to have with us Jim Worden, CEO at the Wealth Consultant Group here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker's Studio with us. I have to get your take after such a big, busy week with such a lot of different things on the calendar here and now that we're past that, how have
you been talking to your clients? What are some of their top questions, and how are you suggesting to them to position into year in now that we're past some of these big events.
Great question. Great to be with you here, by the way, this this is fantastic. So, you know, not a whole lot has changed for us, like we we kind of we're talking about you know, we're we're looking at the FED cutting two to four times, you know, getting getting closer to the year. You know that was prior to the fifty basis point cut. So we're right on track that the narrative for us hasn't really changed a whole
lot in terms of what we're looking at. We still think that the consumer is really strong, there's a lot of cash on hand, you know, those are those are some of the things that we're looking at. And you know that we actually earlier this year we thought that we could hit six thousand, and so this is like a good day of today's the day. But we're actually thinking, you know, looking forward, that we could have seven thousand
for the S and P. Five hundred is what we're saying. Well, it's going to be next year, it's not gonna be right.
Now, it's really a thousand point games.
Yeah, we think so and like really for us, it's it's looking at margins. Lower rates is going to translate into better margins. Lower inflation translates into better margins. You get what's happening with AI integration, and that's that's going to help with margins. Then you get earnings s and P five hundred. Unless analysts really downgrade there, we should see seventeen percent fifteen to seventeen percent from mid to small sized companies, twenty seven percent earnings growth. So those
are good numbers. Obviously we could, you know, see some analyst downgrades there, but those are good numbers. And then you see just you know, the six and a half trillion dollars of cash, you got one trillion potential in buybacks going into next year. And then there's the healthy, healthy consumer and cammer markets by the way too, because when volatility comes down, a lot of these systematic trading strategies start getting back in.
Okay, that said, you also argue that there should be some caution due to what you're seeing in the bond market.
So we're looking at that and like we think it's going to be a little bit range bound until the markets really figure out what are we going to do with Trump, and you know what, where is this going to go with tariffs? Where is it going to go with immigration? There is some concerns I would say, for sure with the bond market about inflation or reflation, and so that that's something we're looking at.
It Are those fears warranted?
I think partially they are. But at the same time, I'm talking to bond managers, large bond managers that are saying, hey, if it gets to this rate, we're going to start buy more. So I think there's you you certainly have some headwinds, but you also have some tailwinds that would make rates go higher or lower.
So with the yield story, at what point does that put a lid on potential gains? More broadly, in the US docks. If you just look at the ten year where it was trading mid September, round three six, right now it's around four to three, had reached above actually four to four, So I mean right now it's over seventy bases point move in such a short amount of time. Obviously there's a lot of factors that went into that.
But at what point if we see the high of this year around four to seven, could that be something that could put a little games more broadly for stocks.
I think, yeah, it's the closer we get to five that is not going to be good for stocks, especially small cap stocks, and we've kind of been saying that. I think what really changed here is that you had all this concern about a recession, and you know, are we going to have one? And rates came rates came down. A lot of the people, a lot of the bond
managers were saying, it's it's it's a hard landing. We've been saying for a while it's likely going to be a soft landing, and now I think we're still going
to see that. But you know, there's some people now that may be saying like, oh, well, you know, FED fund futures are factoring in too many rate cuts, And honestly, I don't I don't have a crystal ball, but I would say that it's not out of the woods for the Fed to say, hey, look we've cut a little bit, let's pause, and then we can cut some more if needed.
What would you say to folk out there who say, wow, stocks look pretty expensive by historical standards right now?
Yeah, they do, they do.
So how I win new money to work?
Well, no, we are. We think there's we think there's some good names out there, but like some names are are expensive. And this is not a twenty twenty one market where everything goes up and that got really really frothy, you know. There, we have to be a lot more selective here.
I want to ask you more about that because when you're looking more specifically at valuations in the terminal, you can look at the blended forecasts for the S and P five hundred and Trump first took office during his inauguration day in early twenty seventeen. If you looked at that forecast for the valuations for the S and P five hundred, what's around seventeen right now? It's close to
about twenty two to twenty three. And obviously the economy is very different, inflation's very different than it was at that time. How do you position for that and do when you have the S and P five hundred up
over fifty percent over the past two years. If you think back to what the markets were doing in twenty fifteen early twenty sixteen, which obviously wed Brexit in the middle of that year, how do you position on that when you had a big rally the last couple of years, and during that point, the economy, the stock market was in a very different place.
Sure, there's fantastic questions, and so for us, we still like technology. We've paired back because things were getting a little bit too stretched, but we see that there's opportunities and industrials and financials, real estate, some of these were really beaten up in twenty twenty two and part of twenty twenty three. Consumer staples is one area that we like, and so I think our focus really right now is
finding quality. It's and it's quality growth. So if we find companies that are growing thirty forty fifty percent and maybe they have a high valuation, we're okay with that, but obviously we want to know, like where's their growth going to be the year after next and the year after that.
Where do you want to stay away from?
Sore. There's more that we like than that we don't like. But I would say it's it's the commercial office, real estate, small regional banks. We're we're steering clear of those for now. And I know, I know some of these have kind of gotten a bounce here, but those are areas we just don't you know, We're not trying to time some of those positions. We we want to we want to find the intersection of good quality and if possible, value and momentum.
All right, Jim, appreciate you joining us today. I'm just trying to absolutely what the regional banks are doing today. Jim Warden, cio at the Wealth Consulting Group, joining us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio.
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Mm hmm