Okay thank you everyone, for your patience. Again good morning, good afternoon, depending on, on where you're dialing in from. Welcome to our Q, our quarterly client call, that we host here at AssetMark for individual investors, financial advisors, obviously their clients. Looking forward to, to partnering again with Kezia Samuel, Vice President, at AssetMark Investment Consulting. Kezia does a great job of walking through all of our investments and, and has the unique ability to break down complex, complex topics into simple, into simple ways of understanding it, and nice analogies and, and different ways to understand what's going on in the markets at, at different times. My name is Anthony Garrido. I am the Eastern Sales Divisional Leader here at AssetMark. A little bit of a background on AssetMark for those of you that may be joining for the first time. AssetMark is a, is a leading provider of extensive wealth management and technology solutions. We partner with independent financial advisors and their clients. We have, As the end of June of this year, we had over $100 billion of assets under management, and we really look forward to, to working with our advisors and, and serving our advisors and their clients. Couple housekeeping notes for the call today. Kezia and, and I facilitating just a high level, what's going on in the market, some different themes that Kezia and her team has seen throughout the quarter. Any individual questions you might have about your portfolio or specific questions, those should be directed towards your financial advisor, and they can help you specifically for any client questions. Any questions you have about the market or topics that we're talking about today, please put them in the question and answer section in the bottom. We will try our best to get to those questions today. If not, we should answer them throughout the presentation, but if not, we will have someone follow back up to make sure that those questions are answered. In the Events Resources tab, you will see all of the slides from today, so you can download those as well if you'd like. The presentation's gonna go probably about 25-30 minutes of commentary. I'll, I'll plug in some questions here and there that I see, but we will have ample time at the end of the presentation for questions and answers, and I will wrap up as we go today. As I mentioned, Kezia Samuel is our main presenter today. Gonna walk through really what we've seen in from a 2nd quarter perspective this year. There's been a lot of a lot of things going on. We've talked about AI there's been Recession Obsession, right? There's been surprising markets, and really it seems like it's never-ending of kind of the, the news and the information that's coming out. With that Kezia, I'm gonna turn it over to you, and we can get into some talks about the Recession Obsession, what's going on, and what you're seeing and your team's seeing in the markets. Thank you Anthony, and thank you to all of you that have joined this afternoon or morning, wherever you are. I know that time is one of the most precious resources, so again, a big thank you for joining today. I'm gonna start with hopefully everyone has stayed cool. I know it's been a hot summer, and my father, who had been visiting, here in Colorado, which is where I live, we took a train ride. In the train ride, if you haven't, by the way, taken a train ride out through Colorado Mountains, I would highly recommend it. In the journey, you have to go through multiple mountain passes, and in that mountain pass, you're in a tunnel, and it's pitch black. My father, as we were going through this journey in one of the longer tunnels, looked over to me and said, "Is this going to end?" I used that. It made me think of the markets and where we've come from in 2022. It felt like we were in a tunnel for a very long time with the potential to never see daylight. Here we are in 2023, in many ways surprising us in how the markets have started off this year, despite the many challenges that we have faced throughout this year. We've seen the banking turmoil. We've seen the debt ceiling debate. All of this certainly has caused some nervousness, but besides that, despite that, in fact, stocks and bonds have had a banner start to the year. On the screen here, we're looking at a variety of different investments. I would like you to take your eye right into the middle, where it says Global 60/40. Think of this as a moderate risk client that has 60% in global stocks and 40% in global bonds. The portfolio for the year to date in green bar was up 9.1%, a sharp contrast to where things were had we been at this time period in 2022. Stocks and bonds were down last year. This year, we're seeing stocks and bonds rise simultaneously. With that said, though, what's driving this moderate risk portfolio to do well? On the left-hand side, you'll see global equities. It's up 14.3%. Global stocks are made up of stocks in the US, stocks in Europe and Japan, and then the third part is stocks in emerging countries like India and China. If we were to X-ray that global equity market, you would find that the US stock market is leading the charge. It's up roughly 17%, followed by stocks in Europe and Japan. Remember, in Europe, there is an ongoing war, and they actually had inflation in the double digits. Despite that, European stocks, second best in the markets, up 12%, and then finally, in that stack, the third best market is emerging markets. Emerging markets, while positive, up 5%, not seen on the screen, I'm just kind of giving you a look through on what those returns are coming from. Emerging markets were positive 5%, held back by a softer start in China. Everyone was hoping that the economic reopening would be a boon to the Chinese economy, but we have seen softer than expected data, causing the Chinese stock market to go back, and thus, the positive, but albeit, the third in the rank. That's global equities. I want you to take your eye now scale to the right-hand side. You'll see global bonds. They're up positive. They've made some recovery, but not quite to compensate for the losses that we saw in 2022. Finally, if you take your eye to commodities, these are things such as food, energy. In 2022, outside of cash and commodities, those were the only two positive. In 2023, what were winners last year are now the worst performers. Commodities down for the year as energy prices have fallen, and thus pulling broad commodity complex down. The key takeaway here is the following: Sometimes when you're in that tunnel, going through your life's journey, it may feel like it'll never end, but it does, and stocks and bonds often are forward-looking, and we've seen 2023 be a surprising market despite all of the challenges we've seen. Now, while I've said that the stock market in the US is the leading amongst the three areas, what you don't see is when you look at the stock market in the U.S., you'll find that not all stocks participated in this strong return in the first half of this year. Artificial intelligence, which made its boom in the first half of this year, had a outstanding impact on the stock market returns. In fact, what you're seeing on the screen here is 8 stocks that are related to artificial intelligence in some way. Think Nvidia, the chip maker that advances artificial intelligence computing. Apple, which is also related. Same thing with Microsoft. These stocks, eight stocks that are related in some way to artificial intelligence, out of the 17%, captured nearly 86% of the total returns, while the other 495. If you're doing the math, you may say, "Isn't it S&P 500?" Actually, there are more than 500 stocks. The other 495 did a measly 2%. What does this mean for you? What this means for you is that if you had a portfolio of dividend stocks let's say, you may even see negative returns in the first half because those stocks fell out of favor in 2023 when they were completely in favor in 2022. We've seen the markets, while the U.S. has led the charge, it's come from a very handful of stocks that are all related to artificial intelligence, leaving many of the stocks behind in returns in comparison. That's a quick recap on how the markets have done in the first half of 2023. Kezia, t hank you. I, I know we've got the, the next section, which is on a lot of, of investors' and advisors' mind, quite frankly, about inflation, recession. Before we, before we get into that, if we can put a little bit of a bow on, on the stock market. You know, I think we've all heard that the stock market oftentimes looks ahead and can anticipate maybe what's next for the economy. Based on what we're seeing from 2023, do you think the economy is going to be okay, or should investors expect. Like, what should the investors expect from a market perspective going forward? Yeah, often that's asked, is the stock market seeing something different in the economy to what it's presenting? First, remember where we've come from. Remember the tunnel analogy that I referenced to. 2022 was a very harsh year for both stocks and bonds, stocks are coming off the bottom in 2022, lifting up. The other thing to remember is in 2023, if you look at where in the economy, companies had the sharpest hit. Technology-related companies did the biggest layoffs. Many of these stock prices are looking past the cuts that they have made in anticipation of future profits. Again, markets are looking past some of the challenging starts that we had in 2023, specifically in this technology area. The other 495 stocks, which have shown sort of a mixed bag of returns, they're telling us something interesting, and this is where I think we need to see what's next for inflation and where the economy is headed. Let me head into that. If you look at - l et's just start with inflation. On the left-hand side is big picture inflation. This is stuff that we buy on our day-to-day living. As an example, the jacket I'm wearing, the house I'm living in, the houses you're living in, the cars we're all driving. Anything and everything we touch in our day-to-day living is included in this inflation number. Notice that it peaked in, at 9.1% in June of 2022, and since then has come down. In fact, this number is slightly stale. Since we did this presentation, we've had one more inflation reading, which shows that inflation is now at 3% growth relative to June of 2022. It's coming down, right? The first part of the note is that inflation is falling. When I look at inflation, though, it is telling me where is inflation falling. Now I want us to take our eye to the right-hand side chart. Imagine if we were to think about all the different prices of the stuff we buy in our day-to-day living, where is inflation falling the most? Take your eye to the colored line chart on the right-hand side, go all the way to May and find yourself looking at the green component, which is energy prices. Again, going back to the Colorado gal, we did a summer drive last year, and I remember being shocked. Gas prices being at $7 a gallon. Today, gas prices in Colorado is around $4 a gallon, especially in the mountains. So we've seen falling energy prices has been driving down inflation, one of the key contributors to why inflation has been falling. If I look at things like food, going out to restaurants, certainly travel, you'll see that those things are still, prices are rising, but the pace of increase in those prices are falling slightly. This is what the Federal Reserve looks at. The Federal Reserve looks to see, are prices falling across and/or is it rising more slowly in comparison to where we were last year? Undoubtedly, food prices are expensive. Going out to eat is expensive, but it is less expensive than where it was a year ago. That is what the Federal Reserve is looking for. As a result, you will see the Fed has raised interest rates just this week, once more, taking interest rates to 5.5% on the upper end. As a result, because we don't see inflation coming down to 2% in 2023, we think it's much more of a 2024 target. Recall that the Fed targets 2% inflation. We're at three. Us, for us to get to 2%, we don't think we make it there in this year. We do see that getting us in 2024, we expect the Fed to keep interest rates higher. Well, what does all this mean to the economy? I think now the question is, we've had higher interest rates, inflation is coming down. What does this mean for the economy? Now, we know the economy to date is fairly healthy. We've seen job growth continue, albeit slowing, but job growth continues. What's next? How do we take a window, not where we are today, but where is the economy headed? I'm going to show you something on the screen here called the Leading Economic Index, LEI, in short. It may not be something that all of you look at on a daily basis, but this index, which consists of 10 different things, gives us a window into the future where the economy is headed. I've color-coded it in simple terms. Red is not good, yellow is slowing down, green is good. Take your eye, let's start with the good news. You'll notice there are two good things on the screen here. One is stock prices. Stock prices, clearly, as we showed you earlier, have risen from the lows of last year. Why does this matter? When you look at your statements and you see higher account balances, you feel good, you wanna go spend, and thus, the economy is supported. That's why stock prices are supportive of the economy. The other surprising thing has been home builders permit. Given ultra-low supply, home builders have been asking for additional permits to build new homes. We know that that is also supportive of the economy. Outside of this, if you look at the balance, higher interest rates are costing more in terms of credit lending standards, and businesses are pulling back and things are starting to slow, which tells me that the economy is slowing down. The question is, does it slow down to the point of a recession? Here's where we've got an interesting factoid. You take this index, this Leading Economic Index, indicator index, you look at it from a six month change. When this index falls to -4%, historically, 12-15 or 18 months or so later, we do have a recession. We fell to that -4% at roughly the start of this year, historically, we would have a recession some point at the end of this year to the start of 2024. That's what this indicator historically has shown. Is it a guarantee that we get a recession? Not necessarily, the probability certainly has increased given the implications of higher interest rates tends to be lagging in results of slowing our behavior. Having said that, I've used the recession word now several times, which often leads to potentially everyone wanting to go get a Pepto-Bismol. However, when we look at why this recession, if we have one, may be potentially vastly different, let's start with this. When we think about this probably is the most anticipated recession. We've talked about this recession for such a long time, that we've been waiting, preparing, and I want us to look at this, how companies and individuals are faring and preparing for this potential slowdown. This is a bit of a complicated chart, but it's fairly simple if you sort of look through it. What do I see here? Let's look at the green line. The green line shows, as that green line goes up, companies have more money on their balance sheet to pay the interest cost that they have. The higher the green line, the more the company's ability to pay the debts on their balance sheet. You can see today, it sits at a fairly high record. When you compare that green line back to 2007, 2007 companies were not in the same shape, meaning that's why we experienced such a deep recession. Similarly, if we were to look at how are individuals prepared. Individuals are represented by the blue line and it goes in the opposite direction. As the blue line falls, the amount of debt individuals have are lower, and you can see today, individuals have much lower debt in comparison to 2007, where their debt on their total balance sheet was much higher, making it challenging for individuals to be prepared for the economic slowdown. What we've seen is perhaps speaking about this recession endlessly has caused both companies and individuals to be better prepared. In addition, I think this is my last slide in this segment. What may be surprising to many is that we have seen stealth levels of stimulus continue to support a softening economy. What are we seeing on the screen here? What we're seeing on the screen here is manufacturing spending since 2008 over to the current present-day time. The CHIPS Act that was passed. As a result of the CHIPS Act being passed, there's been some resurgence in manufacturing spending, specifically related to semiconductor chips for the artificial intelligence, as well as supporting electron, EV, electric vehicles. We're seeing this big surge in high-end jobs being created, and this also acts as the stealth stimulus, again, softening the impact of a potential slowdown in the economy. Net debt and inflation, we're seeing the worst is behind us. We don't get to 2% this year. Nonetheless, the economy has taken an impact and is slowing down. We do not see a 2008 or 2020-like environment laying ahead, even if we were to see a recession ahead. Thanks, Kezia. I appreciate it. As we get into the next section, you know, section of the presentation, investment implications, I know a lot of investors, a lot of advisors, you know, we, we get all this information. What does it mean for a portfolio? What does it mean as we think about building out an allocation? But before you get into that, you know, you mentioned homebuilders, you talked about interest rates a little bit. I, I know I, I'm here in the Boston area, and we've seen a slowdown for sure, and I think a lot of it is on the higher interest rates from the cost of borrowing. Do you think that that higher, higher interest rate could cause a mortgage or housing crisis like we've seen in 2008, or are we okay from that perspective? I'm going to start with a very interesting factoid. I'm glad you asked that question, you know. We have seen to date, of all the outstanding mortgages, less than 2% of the outstanding mortgages are sitting higher than today's 30-year mortgage rate, which is roughly at 6.5%. Less than 2% of new mortgages or mortgages out there today are higher than that. What that tells me is many of us took advantage of the decades-long time period when interest rates were near zero and got their mortgages refinanced to lower rates. That's the first part. As mortgage rates are lower, even though current interest rates are higher, many of us that are lucky enough to own our own homes are sitting on much lower interest costs and thus being able to support their balance sheet. The second is supply. Supply still remains. There is a 18-month delay between the demand versus supply. We see supply is much less than demand, and we know economics 101. If demand is higher than supply, and the ability for those that have refinanced, we're just kind of creating a conundrum in the marketplace, meaning no one wants to sell and get out of their existing mortgages. We do not see a 2007 or a 2008-like crisis when many houses were upside down, and when interest rates ticked up, they did not have the ability to refinance at that point, given their houses were upside down in value relative to the mortgage. Those are what we see today. We just don't see a 2008-like housing crisis on the horizon. Why? Because many of us are sitting and refinanced, and the value of our homes have appreciated, and the lack of supply also creates an existing demand. It certainly makes it more challenging. Without a doubt, for anyone new looking to enter the market, this is not exactly a helpful market, given higher costs and lack of supply. Thanks, Kezia. I appreciate it. Let's get into kind of the investment implications, if we can, and what, you know, our financial advisors, their clients can be thinking about as they gather this information that you shared, the recession looming, interest rates where they are, the, the Fed adjusting this week as well. What, what should they be thinking about, you know, from, from a equity to fixed income perspective in their portfolios? Yeah, let's start there. Let's start with: what do we see as an opportunity that continues to remain? First, I don't know about all of you, I've been stating this, for all those that are savers, we have been punished as interest rates have been near zero for such a long time. Those days are behind us. We can see that bond yields or fixed income investments are now offering attractive starting entry points. Look at the yields across a variety of different investments within the fixed income market, offering 4%-5% starting investment yields without having to go all the way to the bottom of the barrel with some low-quality bonds. Bonds are attractive. I'll do make one note in here. For many of us, we found that money markets were an attractive place to park and get, you know, 4%, 5% returns in the, in the near term. However, as the Federal Reserve reaches its end of interest rate hikes, money markets, which are extremely short in its investments, does not get to see the price appreciation from bonds when interest rates start to fall. In order to see the starting yield plus bond price appreciation, you need to think of adding to regular bonds, as we see on here, if you have an excess amount saved in money market funds. just some consideration as we think about what has worked in the past to what's likely to work for us looking ahead. What about for stocks? You know, I think we talked about the artificial intelligence earlier. I want us to go back to 2007. What happened in 2007? 2007 was when the iPhone came into play. When the iPhone came into play, and you went to the iPhone apps, there were a few dozen apps. Today, there's 1 million apps potentially available within your iPhone. Similar, we have seen ChatGPT. I don't know if any of you have utilized ChatGPT or have gone on to see what it's about. It gathered 1 million users in just 5 days. ChatGPT has a similar capacity to be transformative as the iPhone did back in 2007. It can do a variety of different things, and you can see the velocity at which technology is changing our lives. Look at how long it took Netflix to get to 1 million users, 3.5 years. Instagram sped it up to 2.5 months. ChatGPT, this artificial intelligence-deployed search engine, has done so in five days. Now, does that mean that this is going to potentially, the stocks that the gains that we've seen, is it justified? This is where I think a bit of warrant, a caution is warranted. Let me talk about that in regards to the stock markets. When we think about what's happened to the stock markets in 2023, take your eye to the left-hand side chart. The green line represents stock prices, and you can see it just shot up. Then there's the blue line, which is stock prices should rise if companies are able to generate enough earnings to support those prices. I know sometimes we think that the stock market is a casino, but it's not. It is driven by our companies making money, and so we reward those companies that are making more money, and not reward the others. What we're seeing is this disconnect. We are seeing that the prices on these narrow stocks that have risen may be a little bit on the exuberant side. It's not a question about we don't have them in our portfolios, but we ask for caution, we ask for maintaining discipline and diversification as we figure out what is the true impact of artificial intelligence, and can it support and sustain companies' futures profits? What are companies' profits tied to? Take your eye on the right-hand side. Companies' profits are tied to, are they investing for things that are going to drive future growth? A way to see that is by looking at new orders. You'll see companies' profits in blue relative to the ability on what they're investing for the future in new orders. Both are falling. This gives us. It doesn't mean that the stock market is going to crash, but it tells me that perhaps some parts of the market, this narrow rally, is a bit too exuberant and we ought to be disciplined. With that, hopefully, bonds are attractive. Artificial intelligence clearly is changing the velocity at which how stock markets have responded. We do think that here, given how fast stock prices have gone, maybe a bit of caution is warranted. Kezia, thank you. I found that slide on the artificial intelligence about the race to a million, amazing. Just how the time and the velocity and the trends that we've seen in, in, in the, in the different sectors. We're gonna wrap up a little bit. Remember, any questions, please put them in the, in the question and answer section on the bottom, we will try and get to them. I will try and summarize some of the questions. You know, I'm, I'm gonna share some key takeaways, and then, Kezia I've got a couple questions I'll tee up and, you know, we can, we can kind of put a bow on this. The title of the, of the call and the webinar today was Recession Obsession: AI Boom and Surprising Markets. Right? I think after 2022, I know we had a ton of questions on 60/40 portfolios. Is that dead? How do I think of balance, right? We've seen a nice, a nice rebound from in the first half of 2023 for balanced portfolios and traditional type, portfolio investing. Obviously, as Kezia mentioned, artificial intelligence really driving, U.S. stocks. To some, some surprise, I think, for some of us, to see that bull market in, Q2 of this year. Inflation, right? That, that, that has come up a lot as far as what the Fed is doing, where we're going, the rapid interest rate hikes, raising the risk for a recession, but where are we from that perspective? Again, the consumer continues to be a strength for the, the U.S. economy. Corporate balance sheets are strong, you know, as we think about what's going on in the economy. Finally, I think always one of the most important topics or section of this quarterly webinar we host is how - look forward, how should portfolios be positioned? What do we think about from a portfolio? You know, we've, we've always talked about being on offense. You know, Kezia mentioned being defensive finally paid off. Short-term treasuries, attractive yields. I know we get a lot of questions on the treasury portfolios and, and cash and what to be doing with that, and really thoughtful investing on, on some of those assets that we may not have thought about in the past. Obviously, there's challenges, there's road bumps, there's potholes, speed bumps along the way, for investors and, and all of us in this market. Stay disciplined, stay diversified. You know, I, I guess Kezia, one of the first questions I'll ask and, and kind of seeing from here, why does staying invested matter? You know, I talk about staying disciplined, staying diversified, but as an investor, why is it important to stay invested, kind of ride the course, stay the course, all those different analogies that we've used, but why is that important? You know, I'm gonna start with, there's always something in the environment, some headline that tells us it's not a great time to invest. Now historically, if you look at 2022 as an example, and/or I'm going to pick up two historical time points when, had we been in those time periods, you would have not felt like in-investing, let alone staying invested. Let's go back to 1941, December 7th. This is Pearl Harbor has taken place. Had you been in that spot, if we'd taken ourselves to a historical look back, no one would have wanted to stay invested. If I had gone in at that point, over the next 10 years, your annualized return would have been 16% per year. Let's fast-forward to September 15th, 2008. Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy. Again, a year where no one in their right mind would have wanted to invest. Had you done so and put $10,000 into the, just the S&P 500, that would have gone to $30,000 in just a matter of 10 years. We know at any given time, today feels different, but never - there's always something that keeps us from wanting to invest. That's the first part. The second is, one of the reasons it is impossible to know when things, as just as 2023 has been surprising, on market timing, when to get in and when to get out. You got to do it right twice. You know when to get out and then when to get back in. If you look at any statistics on staying invested versus trying to time the markets, we find this consistently over and over to be the case. If I look from the last 10 years, again, I did nothing, and I went through debt ceiling challenges, potential wars are on the horizon, and a whole host of other things, including COVID, which shut down the global economy. If I just stayed invested, I would have come out from $10,000 to nearly $30,000. If I had taken out just 10 of the best days, I would have reduced my portfolio's return by nearly 45%. This is over the last 10 years. We extrapolate this, and we apply it no matter what time period we do this. Again, market timing is very challenging as it requires the investor to know two things and get both of those things right: when to get out and when to get back in. Instead, a better plan is build a plan that can address the good, the bad, and the ugly. That's what a good plan will do. This is where working with financial advisors is likely to build a plan that addresses not only the great days and great moments in the markets, but also the worst. I know it's a long-winded answer. Anthony, I think this is a really important question as we talk about this impending recession that we've all been waiting for, that we not utilize these market moments to make dramatic decisions within our portfolio. Thank you, Kezia. Yeah, I've always found it interesting when we review, and we do it periodically, about missing the best days in the market and the impact it can have. I think we've all talked about it, but when you see it and you hear it from you today, it's really impactful and goes to, again, each individual investor can be a little bit different, but just hearing what we should be doing, why we should stay invested. Kind of to that theme, you know, one of the things that I've been hearing from advisors during our meetings are around cash. Clients that are sitting on cash or have cash. You know, with the recession potentially on a horizon, you talked a little bit about that obsession around the recession. We saw some of the key metrics. What should investors with cash on hand be thinking about considering for, for their investments? We talked a little bit about treasuries, but just different ways that they could be thinking about cash as an asset class and a way to start investing and putting it to work for them. Again, cash has served you well, unless you were sitting in a banking, a bank, a saving or checking account. However, if I look ahead in regards to if this cash is in excess to what you really need, then you could look at the first starting place is bonds. Anthony, we talked about bonds being an attractive spot, especially after 2022, taking its moment out of its glory. As the Fed comes to a close on its interest rate hikes, as you're likely going to see bond yields, bond interest rates start to recede, and that historically, when bond yields fall, bond prices rise. This historically has been a boon time for bonds. The other point with bonds is that the starting yield on bonds, so if a bond pays you, if it's a five-year bond and it's paying you something like 4%, as an example, that 4% is a good representation of what you can expect in total returns over that time period. Again, if you don't want the stomach, the stock market volatility, or lean all the way in, you can consider bonds as a starting point. Again, being able to take advantage of, should interest rates start to fall with the Fed coming to an end on its interest rate hike cycle. That's one. The other is, while we've seen eight stocks take the markets higher, the others are still relatively more reasonable in terms of they're not that expensive. Whether it's dividend stocks or depending on your time horizon as well as your needs, there are pockets in the US stock markets that aren't as expensive. The last thing I'll say is, let's take a broader scope. I know we love traveling to Europe for a vacation, but there's also opportunities. You just have to be selective in the stock market there as well, and having an active portfolio manager that's gonna make those decisions for you, helps make this conversation a little easier. Starting with bonds as a potential step in, you don't want the stock market volatility within the US. Be selective with those that haven't really seen their prices jump as high. Last but not least, you know, Europe is not just for potentially taking a holiday and/or other regions. Do consider active management as you look outside, because those stocks are much cheaper in comparison to the U.S. stock market. Thanks, Kezia. I appreciate the insight. You know, we're, we're gonna switch gears a little bit. I know we've focused a lot on what's going on here domestically. One of the questions we, we have in the chat, and it's been a little bit of a theme from some of the, from some of the attendees here, are geopolitical events, global isolationism here. How are global events affecting investments, what we should be thinking about in portfolios? How should we be thinking toward globally as about our portfolio, not just domestically, and how it's affecting us here? Yeah. Let me just start with, I, I'm glad the questions are coming in about global investing, 'cause often as a US investor, we tend to be very myopic. You know, we tend to have a US focus within our portfolios. Investing is a global entity. The U.S., If you look at the global stock market, 60% of that global stock market is made up of US, and 40% is international. Over the last 15 years, U.S. stocks have outperformed or beaten out its international stock peers. It often comes back to the, you know, why do I even own these stocks abroad? When you apply that top lens, it may not tell you the full picture. However, when I look at the top 50 stocks, this is where it's surprising, Anthony. The top 50 stocks each year, two-thirds of it comes from outside the U.S. There are opportunities. You just need to be selective in how you invest abroad. That's one point. The second is, if you're looking for yield, if you're looking for dividend yield, the, the stock market, as it's risen in the U.S., the dividend yield has fallen. However, when I look at international stocks, they do offer dividend yields somewhere in the 3%-5%, depending on where you're looking at. Again, there are opportunities to enter the international markets at a cheaper valuation. Now, you may say: Aren't there challenges in Europe with the war going on? Aren't there challenges in China with their economy slowing? Yes, just as there are regional challenges in the U.S., there exists challenges abroad as well. Well, this is where that point of perhaps instead of just buying a cheap ETF, that gives us the exposure into the stock market here. In the international markets, I think selectivity is paramount in being able to navigate some of the challenges that those geographical regions have. That's, again, perhaps a bit of a pulled out answer in how we look at some of those global challenges, how it impacts our portfolios, and where we really do see opportunities. It just requires a little bit of harder work than you would of just plopping it and buying perhaps an index fund or an ETF. Kezia, thank you. May - maybe one, maybe two more questions, but definitely, this, this might be the last as I'm, I'm looking at some of them. We talked about AI, artificial intelligence. We're seeing a lot of that lately in the news and in all streams of the news, right? Whether it's, you know, financial sector or wherever it is. As, as far as AI on the economy, is it good? Is it bad? How should investors, advisors, how should we be thinking about artificial intelligence? And maybe there's, there's a combination of some good and bad for impact on the economy. As with all things, we wish it was a all good or all bad. I, I think it's in the same camp of there are... Artificial intelligence is going to be disruptive, and as part of that disruption, will come improved productivity. Somewhere, when we look at some of the economists that we work and partner with, the expectation is for the global economy to increase productivity, to add somewhere in the range of $5 trillion-$7 trillion in additional growth. Now, that's a significant number. Now, it's gonna come at the cost of potentially some jobs disappearing, right? Those two things go hand in hand. I always go with the, whenever we're at the crux of a significant shift in the economy, I go back to the manufacturing renaissance. At that time, similarly, it felt like clearly this is going to be bad for the economy. We've seen, as productivity improved, the jobs that got created were on the higher end, and the economy shifted for the better in the long run. Similarly, the net-net numbers that we're seeing is that artificial is likely going to improve productivity at the cost of increasing global growth, but it will come at a cost of replacing some jobs, undoubtedly. I think the one thing that we're all looking for is how do we regulate something that is so new, as we are all learning and adapting? Those are all going to be learning points, net-net, we see more positive impact than negative, but it's not one without the other either. Kezia, thank you. And, and, one more question. I know, you know, you've been busy answering and, and sharing insights, so if we can get you for 1 more question. A little bit of theme around commercial real estate and, you know, the impact, couple things, I think interest rates, how does that affect commercial real estate, combined with workers being more remote after the pandemic? I know we've seen some, you know, firms calling workers back, but especially in Boston, I've seen some empty office space, more commercial real estate. What, what does that have? This could be a default mortgages. Does it have an effect on the economy? Have we already seen that kind of baked in a little bit? Just the, the impact, we spend a lot on time on residential, but just from a commercial real estate perspective and, and the potential outlook. Yeah, great question as well, and y eah, happy to answer. First, commercial real estate gets painted with often a too narrow, broad brush stroke. In fact, it's, you need to paint it with a much broader brush stroke. That is, commercial real estate is encompassing, it's going to be things like office space, it's going to be things like malls, it's going to be things like storage space. It, it's a variety of different things. In that, we have seen certainly an impact on offices, and this is something that we have seen. Offices are likely to struggle, especially in certain cities that we have seen continues to be the case. Occupancy rates are lower than they where they were pre-pandemic, and this has been reflected in the prices. However, on the contra side, as we're seeing, storage spaces are being utilized as we have gone from physical stores to e-commerce stores. Again, commercial real estate is not entirely just offices. We are seeing some struggles, and we expect that to be continuing. Likely, this is where, again, many of the REITs that we look to work with, you need to be very selective on where you're invested and ensuring that the exposure or how much office space you have within your portfolio needs to be understood, and the location, the region, all of those things are going to be key drivers. Again, not one big monolith. Different things are functioning at different levels. Storage doing really well as an example, versus offices not doing so well. Yes, we have seen defaults rise. This is something that we continue to watch very closely for. Is it going to topple the entire economy? Not quite. Again, maturities don't all happen in a single year. much of it has been priced into the markets, but again, we do think that this does warrant caution and something that we're watching and keeping a close eye on. Kezia, thank you. I appreciate it. There, there will be a survey at the end of this, at the end of this. Please feel free to, to put comments. That's how we continue to improve these. There'll be some eye chart slides here to test your eyesight as we go through some of our disclosures. I wanna thank everyone for attending our Q2 wrap-up today. Kezia thank you for your time, as always, and your insight. For those of you that have attended, you will see a recording of this will be sent out. Actually, it's gonna go out to everyone who registered as well. If you weren't able to make it or you made a partial, only were able to make part of the call, everyone will get who registered for this call, and I think we had almost over 1,000 people register, will receive the, the link. Again, I mentioned in the Documents page, Resources, you will see the slide deck as well. Again, thank you all. Appreciate your time on a Friday afternoon or, or mid-morning, depending on where you are. Kezia, I hope you have a great weekend out in Colorado. Again, always appreciate your insight and your objectives. Thank you. Stay cool, everyone.