Markets, Ukraine, and the Economy

You know, here Bloomberg we make a big big deal about it because the markets really care. What are you thinking about? What do you expect to hear from this Fed? It's good to be back in good morning. I expect to see a little bit of the same when it comes to the FED. I think the market continues to think that we have it all figured out, and the FED enjoys showing us that we don't. I expect us to see another raid hike. I think the markets are going to see a choppy day today. I think we're

going to see some more volatility. I don't think the FED is done yet. I think they have resilience that we have yet to experience. Well, they share better not be done because they have five and a quarter percent as the terminal rate on the dot plot. So if they finish at four, that's a big miss. I could imagine though, that they don't go much higher than five, because I think they're a little more hawkish on the dot plot than they expect to be in real life. Plus,

to be fair, a lot has changed, right Michael. I mean, we've seen inflation come down pretty substantially. We are seeing inflation come down. We are seeing the American consumers pocket dinner. We're seeing people pulling out of we we saw Vanguard published a report that the people are having hardship withdrawals out of their personal retirement accounts at a level that we haven't seen before. And so the consumer is different.

Their ability to spend has dramatically decreased, and they don't have the same deposits they used to the way how does that affect How does that affect your investments at Yield Street, because you have I think a very unique situation in that UM, if I understand it correctly, you're you allow UM kind of retail investors to get in on something that until now had been really the revere of institutional clients or the ultra wealthy. Right you you

let people into private credit. Correct, the old Street has been making access to alternative investments available for retail investors and credit investors. And what we have been a big proponent of is helping people build a better and more modern portfolio that includes private assets, so private credit, private equity, real estate, and a host of other investments that were usually and historically reserved for the ultra wealthy and the

institutional investor and had been incredibly popular. I mean, everybody Paul and I talked to in two was like, Man, these markets are are too crazy. We're going to run for the hills. The only thing we like is either credit. So how's that turning out? How does that look this year? It still continues to look really great. I'll talk to you a little bit about some of the challenges you

could expect in private markets. But for the most part, the private markets are holding their own and people continue to invest in and continue to see net inflows month over month. People want more stability, They want to get

away from the volatility in the public markets. They trust the public markets for life, and it has to deliver the returns for them that they want it or the stability, whereas in the private market, for example, in private credit or in real estate debt, you are often able to invest in a sofa based or in a floater I know that's a trigger word for you your last time,

I think you pulled the Caddy shock reference. But um, if if you're invested in a floating rate product, then you're going to continue to earn more as the ft increases the rate. And so for the most part, the alternative investment lands it has held its own and people

continue to invest more nuanced. Where you're seeing a shift over the last twelve months is historically people were really excited over the last number of years about private equity, about venture about being growth opportunities, so I think of longer duration and limited cash flow but a bigger return in the future. Over the last number of months, investors have shifted that appetite into shorter duration, cash flowing assets, more credit based, less long term equity, and they were

able to distill access those investments through our platform. And so we've shifted some of the demand as to where we're investing more heavily to cater to what people really want. Hey, Matt, you know, to the extent we do get a recession in how concerning you about the private credit business as you think about credit quality, how does that change maybe how you think about that business. I'm very bullish on the private credit business as it relates to credit quality. Obviously,

that's much more specific to the strategy. Within private credit. We've mostly been focused on teen year secured or on bridge lending UM that's imagining, but on a lower loan to value basis. So when you look at our portfolio or when you look at the partners that we do business with, we feel really good about it. I think where the recession starts to hit UM in a more impactful way. Some of the private investments, for example, take

of real estate equity. So a lot of the investments they have senior debt that could be on a floating rate. And so for folks that don't have recaps, that becomes a real issue because their cost of debt just skyrocketed. Our portfolio has recaps, but they're gonna roll in twenty four, l twenty three or early twenty four. And so if you look at the forward curve today, you feel comfortable saying Hey, by that time, you're going to be in

a better place and you'll be fine. People who are dealing with expiring recaps now are going to have a lot of trouble because the cost of that dead is going to be way too expensive. All right, Michael, great stuff. Always appreciate checking in with you. Michael Weiss's founder and president of Yield Street talking about the credit markets. Lots of eco data, lots of earnings, but also geopolitical issues

out there for the markets to take into accouncil. Let's bring on Angela Stent, she's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Angela. Before we get to kind of Russia Ukraine and what that means for just geopolitical tensions, you know. The kind of the story that's just kind of hitting the tape right now is the Justice Department at President Biden's home in Rohoboth Beach, Delaware looking for

more documents. What's going on with these documents for a lot of these senior level folks, Well, I think it shows that we need a better system. When people leave office and I guess it's the last days and everyone's hwying around and packing things up, that clearly mistakes were

made us. So I think as a result of all of this, and I guess, uh, they've now asked the Justice Department has asked the you know, all of the former presidents and vice presidents to make sure that they don't have classified documents, that they'll have to have a better way of dealing with it, because clearly the system hasn't worked. How is the system working now? I mean, the first documents were found November two, just before an election.

Fortunately for the Democrats, they didn't tell anybody until after the mid terms. But it's been quite a while. They're just searching his beach house now. Why, well, I guess you know, it takes time for them, you know, their procedures to uh, you know, to to get to all the different places you know, where the presidents life is happening. Yeah, they were scheduled. Yeah, I mean, everything's you know, it takes time. But clearly, as I said, the system isn't

working properly and we need a better system. It's been three months, by the way, three months. It's I think, I don't know what's going on there. I guess the government is busy, busy, busy, And let's switch gears and get to the big issue that we want to discuss with you, that's just kind of Ukraine and Russia. Can you give us your thoughts. I mean, we're a year into this, so much suffering by the folks of Ukraine. Can you tell us kind of where we are and

how this might play out? So we're really, i would say, at the moment, in a stalemate. The Ukrainians had made some games in September and October, the Russians have pushedback. There's fierce fighting going on still in the town called bah Mood. If you look at pictures of it, it's completely destroyed Um and we expect a new Russian offensive

sometime in the spring. We don't know when it's going to be um And therefore, you know, the Ukrainians have really been asking for more military assistance from the West. So now you have the Germans, after a long debate, saying that they will supply them with Leopard tanks, and other European countries that have these German tanks, which top of the line, will also supply by Ukraine. The Biden and Registration has said we will send Abram's thanks to Ukraine,

but they may not get there. Till at least the end of this year, um so. And now, of course the Ukrainians are asking for more fighter jets, so there's a big debate going on. So I think at this point the Ukrainians need all the military assistance they can get to push back against this new Russian offenses coming along sometime in the next few months. But this could

go on, you know, for a very long time. There is no uh sign at the moment that either side is ready to sit down and talk about a peace negotiation. I mean it could be if you look at what's happened in Afghanistan and Vietnam, this could be something they're engaged in for years, if not decades. Um is it risky with a leader like Putin? I mean, he seems like he has nothing to lose, either wins or he dies.

So this what's the concern about esca lation. And of course the minute that the announcement was made about the tanks for Russians threatened counter moves. On the other hand, what they're trying to do is just intimidate everybody, the Ukrainians and on all of their supporters to doing nothing so that Russia can continue this war and essentially change the government in Key of which they still want to

do and take over Ukraine. So I think we shouldn't allow ourselves to be too intimidated by Putin, but I think we have to recognize our risks there um, and we have to warn the Russians as we're doing, of the consequences of escalating this any further. Angela, do you have a sense of the level of support that Mr. Putin has within Russia itself of the people for this war. Sure? So. The public opinion data that we have from the only independent polling place is that about seventy of the people

who are in Russia support this war. Let's keep decent of them, uh, support it more enthusiastically, the other maybe less so. So the supporter is still there. As many as a million Russians have left Russia, including a couple of hundred thousands of young men who didn't want to be mobilized. So those people don't support the war, but they're ones who remained they do, or they're indifferent to it.

On the other hand, of the Russians also say that there should be negotiations, but Putin has managed to persuade people, particularly those people who only have access to state run media that this is you know, the United States is threatening Russia. This is a Russia a war of Russia against the West, and Russia is going to defeat them. Angela. You know, we see stories of Putin letting inmates out of prison and putting them on the front lines. I mean,

it looks like they're just they have nothing left. How long can they continue to go here? Well, I mean the Russians can still continue to go on for some time. So the the Mercenary Group Wagner, which isn't the regular Ministry of Defense troops, they've been recruiting prisoners, murderers, rapists, etcetera, and sending them to the front and many of those people are getting killed, but they are you know, they still have quite a lot of people that they can mobilize. Um,

they do have ammunition. They're getting stuff from the North Koreans, They're getting drones from the Iranians. So the Russians can continue going. They have a history of enduring uh these things. And I think Putent's calculation is that in the end the West will cave, that we will we won't have the enthusiasm anymore for supporting Ukraine and that Russia will be able to prevail Angela. I mean, I mean we're speaking with Angela's a Stent, a senior fellow at the

Brooklyn Institute. Andrew you literally wrote the book on Mr. Putin entitled Putin's World, Russia against the West and with the Rest, and that want to Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Prize for the best book on US Russian relations. So how you know Mr Putin's well as anyone? How did he miscalculate so badly? So? I think he was only being given information that his intelligence services knew he wanted to hear. So he was misinformed about the situation

in Ukraine. He thought the Ukrainians wouldn't fight back. He was misinformed about the state of the Russian armed forces, which of course have performed much worse than he thought they would. And he was misinformed about the West. He thought that the US wouldn't react. He looked at what happened at the withdrawal from Afghanistan um and I think he had two years of COVID isolation where he really

didn't meet any foreign leaders. And you know, he just talked to a small group of people who reinforced all of his ideas, all of his beliefs in paranoia. So it's been a huge miscalculation. Um, and I think it's just that he really wasn't given the information that he needed. I mean, you're also a national intelligence officer for Russia

and your Asia at the National Intelligence Council. You were a member of the senior advisory panel for James Traviti's Admiral Astrivities, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe UM, as well as others. What's your take on the relationship between Russia and especially Germany. You know, I lived in Berlin

for the last five years. You've written a book about the West German relationship with Russia with the Soviet Union before the fall um angela miracle, and the Germans decided to put all their eggs in Vladimir Putin's basket, even though the US administration asked them time and time again to reconsider their reliance on that natural guess why do you think they did that? And? Um, you know, what's

what's the relationship going to look like now? So they had a strong belief for about fifty years that you know, if you traded, if you had better economic relations with first of all the Soviet Union and then post Soviet Russia. If you imported that gass, that would somehow translate into better political relationships too. And in fact, you know, fifty years ago the Germans used this kind of economic relationship incentives with the Soviet Union because you know, to try

and improve the situation with the East Germans. So that was their belief. And then there's all of this historical baggage that comes with it, the feelings of responsibility and guilt for what happened in World War Two. Twenty seven million Soviet citizens died, but of course those are Ukrainians as well as Russians. Um. And there was a lot of pressure from the business community on Angela Merkel for instance,

to continue these natural gas deals. Um. And they have finally woke up on every four last year and realized that all of these assumptions were wrong. And that's why you had the speech from Chancellor Soaultz just a couple of days after the invasion. UM. And I think German policy has changed, you can see that of the provision of the but there's still a lot of debate in Germany about this. There's still a lot of Germans, all the Germans who still think that Germany has this responsible

ability towards Russia. All right, Angela, great stuff. We wish we had more time with you, but will certainly have you back as the news warrants. Angela Stent, senior Fellow of the Brookings Institute, giving us the latest on geopolitical issues. Matt, we're talking about the FED. It's FED Day. But you know what, you and I we don't know anything. So sometimes we try to talk to smart people like Vince Signarella because he talks to traders and things like that,

and that is very, very helpful. Well, let's just go right to the Vince talk to traders about what they want the FED to do. Yes, a lot, but let's talk maybe more than what they think the FED is actually going to do. But let's talk to somebody who actually does it. Who actually is in the market. Georgia joining us here in Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studios. Kat Trombone Trombone, ka Bone, ketrim Bone. He's a CEO and head of America's Trading at DWS Group. So George, you're in the market,

You're in the front lines. What do you here? What are your traders telling you. What are your clients telling you about what this FEDER reserve is going to do? Well? I think they need to speak hawkish today. Quite frankly, it needs to be some sort of a power of pushback because the broader market is not believing what the Fed is saying. Nuts, right, I mean, look at financial conditions easing, your own financial conditions index and there's a

plug yourself, go on. The Bloomberg terminal is actually showing easing. I mean, look at dollar weakness, look at multiples extending towards eighteen and beyond, so that those easy conditions POW is going to need to push back against. I can't believe that the market is actually talking about our pricing and two rate cuts this year, and I think that that's that has to be a concern. He told you are the market. I mean, I look at you, and you are the market. You're out there, you're buying and

selling all day on behalf of your your clients. What do you think that a trillion dollars and assets under management that ws that's a lot of that's a lot of money. That's a lot of money that that's more than like the lotto. That's a lot of money. What do you do? Like, so, what do you think the FED? What's disconnect between the Fed we're gonna be hawkish and the market that you trade in every day. That's saying maybe some rate cuts momentum is hard to fight, is

what it tells you. And it's also painful, uh, staying in cash and watching the market begrudgingly participate. I mean, I think the early part of this year, especially in fixed income, there's not been the amount of new issuance that you've seen before. That's keeping or forcing spreads to sort of stay in there and get reinvested again. And I think that's gonna be a difficult balancing act for the for the FED and for PAL. This is not

the time, you know, to support easy. You talk about this at Jackson Hole especially, and this is the moment he's going to have to building it in and have a backbone. You know, we haven't talked about for a while now. We're so focused on the terminal rate because the market is pricing less, far less than the feds um dot plot shows, and like you said, the markets pricing and cuts in three. We haven't talked about QT for a long time, and it feels like there's already

a liquidity issue out there. Is QT working. I mean, we do see inflation coming down. It's working, but at a at a I think where you're coming from, what eight or nine trillions on the balance sheet itself, So it's working, it's working at a lag. They're not actively

selling either, They're letting the balance sheet roll off. So until I see mortgages actually being sold, I think it continues to exist in the background, and maybe as financial conditions do get tighter, or at least we hope or this Powell hopes from here, how could they possibly get tighter there one year? I guess high is the right word to put it. You know, they haven't been this loose and over twelve months. Correct, They're gonna need to

get higher otherwise we're going to have a problem. And I'm not sure that the market is actually ready for that CPI to either plateau and or creep up a little bit. And I think that's when you start to get back to the narrative a few months ago about a terminal rate existing you know, well into five, call it five and a half, or some economists even calling for six. And I think that that will be something

to watch. By the way, we've already called out basically three Bloomberg functions, right worp w I, r P go and then fed space ball go, which shows you the balance sheet. It's really cool. What do you screen for? What do you look when you get to work in the morning at DWS and you log in your name, absolutely what you have to what do you what do you look at? What's your dashboard look like? Well, I can export my jump pad to you, I think my launch pad and you're welcome to take a look at it.

But yeah, I mean it's those and it's it's a bunch of other functions around currency. I mean the dollar weakness that you've seen recently is meaningful and also adding to that, we need some financial conditions, and obviously we're a global asset manager, so certainly where European markets are, it's crazy to see the foot see not one not too far off of all time highs when you think about where we were just six months ago and potentially a cold winter and shortages and things alike, and that

to see those equity markets off is surprising. So it's try to call them outperforming. I mean the CAC and the decks, are up nine percent, the IBEX in Madrid is up ten and a half percent. Those are NASDAC numbers correct, and one wonders if there's that much more room to go there, um from here, But you know, it's a long year, and I would definitely exercise patient. It does seem like everything that everyone forecast to happen in three has already happened. By FED first, I think

we're already at your retargets. So what do you think I mean these this first month of the year. Is that a is this a technical snap back in some of these asset classes, or is this the beginning of a turnaround. I've been wondering the same thing about equities because we've seen um, you know tech, we've seen consumer discretionary, we've seen telecoms. They've been the best performers. Meanwhile, the defensive UH industries, utilities and real estate, UM, they've been

the worst performers. So either this market has some real UH bullish conviction or there's a lot of short covering going on from all the tax haven selling that happened at the end of last year. And you know a lot about that, right um, And then get back in this year, UM, I think it's a combination of, like you said, tax law selling, r S I s being incredibly stretched and technical levels being oversold. You look at any indicator, bull bear indices, you could look lame half

a dozen. Everything was just incredibly barish and negative. And you know, coming in this this year to start, um, you know you're seeing systematic ct A demand. For sure, you're seeing short covering, a declining VIX, lower than expecting new issue activity and credit and all, and and quite frankly, the move index or the rates index, there's another Bloomberg function for you, um, you know, easing quite a bit and also not helpful to the FED by the way.

And you know within that that narrative, it is creating a good updraft here. And I believe very much on a technical basis, as you start where you're going to condext in equities eighteen x nineteen x. And this is in a year where you know, earning his estimates earning his growth are flat, quite frankly, from from here out, and that's not even you know, that's including energy take energy out. The picture gets much more oblique. So you're really paying a premium right now. So we have three

more hours right until the Fed. Um, let's wrap it up. What are expect from Jerome Powell today? To walk a tight rope but still after lean hawkish? If you're the Fed, this is not what you want to see right now, um at all? And easing of financial conditions with more more room to go as far as disinflation, so they have more work to do. They cannot afford to give show any weakness right now. So what are your traders on your desk at DWS. You're down at fifty second Street,

third Avenue. Come visit us? Yeah? Absolutely, well you can come visit us because you're so close. What do they do on a day like today? They? What did they just calm down until two o'clock? The positioning is light going into this, yeah, right, So you don't want to front run this too much because of expected surprises or or something that can come out of left fields. Get some more coffee, throwing a fat lip, and just chill until two. It's almost as if you have cameras on

our desk. That's exactly. Hey, you guys are our global firm, as you mentioned thirty seconds, what do you mean what do you take away from China reopening? How does that play into what what you guys are looking at. Sure it's gonna be net positive to both em and global growth, and i'd expect pent up demand at least initially to really come to the four. So it is an opportunity.

I think everyone's underweight this country. If you look back six months ago to what we're discussing earlier, everyone said get out right now you're seeing a kind of rush back in, and I would just sort of be careful. The property sector is still an issue there as well, so you you want to you want to certainly consider it, but not push all in. Yep, alright, good stuff. George

countrom Bone, catrom Bone CEO. That did pretty well. Then catrom Bone, you just say it like it's spelled bone CEO and head of America's trading at DWS, which stands for Deutsche Very Papiers Bettylisten, all right, it's the asset management business of Deutsche Bank. They got like almost a trillion dollars assets under management. Georgia's it's a few blocks away from us here on Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan. Here's a really really interesting conversation. It's something it's a

topic I think about a lot which is water. You think there's a lot of it around, but there really isn't and so I love thinking about it, talking about the the concept of water, the as an asset or resource and as a business opportunity. Alexander Leukopolis he has a partner a Science Water and Science Capital Management. He joins us here in a Bloomberg Interactive Brooker Studio. Alexander talked to us about water. How do you guys look at water? What is it? What? What are you? What

are you doing? Sir, well, thank you for having me in a great question And I get asked that all the time because water, in my view is literally everywhere but nowhere. Right. You can talk about water from the drought, from too much water to little water, to blue water to greenwater to yellow water. So it's literally very confusing

to make sense of it. Um. And on top of that, water fits into everything that we do, from the clothes we wear, to what we eat, to what we drink, to the fact that we're s water, we're surrounded by it. So um, the way we view water is uh to be focused on it and to frankly be focused on it and try to actually solve some of the problems because when something seen is to be so confusing, it's oftentimes very hard to actually solve it. And we currently no water is a big problem. Certainly no water is

a big problem in the US. So the way we view it is, let's focus on trying to solve some of the big water issues in the US today, starting with the infrastructure. How can you do that as a you want to make money at the same time, Right, you're not a charity or an NGO uh in in

the sense that you don't want to profit. How do you invest in a way that I mean, you want to do good for the world, but you want to make money for your clients absolutely, And I think that's what's interesting about what we do is that we are a private sector needs to play a more important role in infrastructure, needs to play a more important role in industries like water that are very confusing for UH most for many shareholders to solve on their own, And I

think private equity in particularly what we do actually brings a lot of that together, a lot of those different constituents and actually is a very big problem solver. So we're able to make UH strong returns for our investors and at the same time have impact in a sector that is so desperately needed for that to happen. What are the big businesses in that sector? Are we talking about waste management? Um? Are we talking about sewage? Are

we talking about purification? What's so in our case, we're talking a few of those. Number one is utilities. In the US, we have eighty five thousand plus utilities. Many of them are actually private and small, which many people don't understand, and it's a staggering statistics. In the UK, as an example, you have close to thirty and most of European countries, you have less than a hundred in

each of those countries. In the US and I repeat, more than eighty five thousand, most of which are private. So one of our strategies is rolling up small consolidated water systems and giving these individuals better, cleaner water at the right price, um. And that is both profitable and impactful at the same time. So you're using scale to improve the businesses of this incredibly fragmented industry. Right. So, fragmentation and scale and operationally excellence across the board and

impact alright. So as a so that's kind of like a business ownership framework. Market structure issue. Are there more fundamental? What what is kind of the fundamental water problem in the US? Don't have enough of it, don't have it in the right places? Great question, and that's not one you can answer because water is a very local issue. Right We we sit here in New York City. We

have one of the oldest water treatment plants. It's municipally run, it's probably got one of the largest tax spaces in the world for a water system, and people in New York get could clean water. The problem in New York, as an example, is the is delicious. Is the aging infrastructure? Right? The pipes. There's a pipe that how many pipes have broken on les and fifty nine Street in the last year? Right? That causes destruction. The piping infrastructure is old and degraded.

When you go and talk to our friends in l A, they have a very different issue. They don't have enough water because the water is not coming from like meat, and it's dropping every day. So the issues with water are very much local and made up of different markets, so is oftentimes very hard to generalize, which again leads me to the thing, which is it's very hard to

actually focus on problem. All right. Let me ask a, really, as I've owned real estate in California for a long time, and you sit there and talk about the drought every day. In my twenty some odd years, there's only been a couple of years when it hasn't been an official drought. UM. And you stand there and I look out at the ocean, I'm like, can't we isn't there a solution there somewhere? Desalination is too hard and costly. Well, desalination in the US,

and it's specifically in California, is very costly. People have done it, they've tried to do it, but it's not desalination. I mean the reality is recycled water. UM. In the US we recycle close to ten percent of our water UM. Many many parts that need it desperately. Singapore, as an example, is toilet to tap recycled water. They recycle Israel close to ninety plus horc. That is, that is an expression

that in Singapore is sort of utilized. So recycling your water UM, maybe not for consumption sort of drinking, but for irrigation, for otherwise not I mean it sounds bad, but at the end of the day, you just need H two oh right, so you can pull that out of whatever you have and you clean it and you clean it better. And now with new technologies have been around for a while. This isn't a technology game. We don't need somebody to you know, it's not like sending

somebody to Mars here. These are solutions that have existed technologically. It's really putting the puzzle together. Um. And this is a great example in California. Yes, you can look at the desalination didn't work. Too expensive. You know, you need something that's more uh meaningful. Recycled reuse is another one of those, which is why one of other platforms is focusing on recycled reuse, mostly on the West Coast, where the issue is the degrading infrastructure. It's the lack of water.

But recycled reuse helped solve that. When when when you look at a city like I don't know, Phoenix for example, Vegas in the middle of a desert, does that frustrate you to see so much building infrastructure going into places where there is no water and it just makes the maybe the situation worse in general for the country. Frustrate you. That's an opportunity for you money. Maybe at this point everything excites me in water because there's so many there's

so many pockets of inefficiency. You mentioned another one. So when you look at something like Phoenix, that's why you need to up great systems. You need more infrastructure, you need better infrastructure, you need more digital infrastructure, you need more recycled reuse infrastructure. So I think um situations like that present opportunities, and they present opportunities for people they

can put the puzzle pieces together. And again, starting with your first conversation, why are we as a private capital firm investing this is because we see our value add in being able to pull that all together. It's not going to be one technology that solves all the water issues. It's not going to be one politician that waves a trillion dollars into it, which they don't have, nor would that even begin to solve it. Nor is it an academic engineer. It's going to be a combination of all

of the above. And as a private participant, what's exciting is to be able to bring all that together, but do it actionably at a local level. So in the U S, So, how has your performance been. I mean you went to George and went to M I. T. H. Then took that to JP Morgan where you learned M and A the M and A business. Now you're putting it to use to make money. How have you done so? Yeah, it wasn't certainly not a straight line. UM. Put it's

a good use. Because we started at Science Capital, we've been doing mid market investing for a long time UM, so we learned sort of how to work with middle market companies, which in the water space, as we know, it's mostly middle market companies UM, including the recent merger of the two of the largest players UM just last week.

But it's made up of middle market players. So utilize that skill set plus the skill set of real asset investing, where we invest sort of in between infrastructure and private equity, utilities, recycled reuse plants. So utilize that framework to then apply it to one singular sector, which was water. And the interesting thing about water was it took us many years

of research to begin to make actionable investments. And I think once you have a combination of all that UM, I think the opportunity set and the returns are there. Because the market is so inefficient and fragmented, and our value add becomes your local you're just a couple bucks away. That means we're getting this guy back, because I got him a million more questions here, both on just kind of the water issue, how to make money, who are

investors are? All that kind of good stuff. Alexander Locopolis, he's a partner at Science Water and Science its capital management. Uh, talking about a topic that you know, we don't talk about a lot, but water issues in this country and in a global basis really really big issues going forward. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews of Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter

at Matt Miller three. On Fall Sweeney, I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio