All right. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our 2025 Mid-Year Outlook webinar. It's officially summer, and we're just a few days, you know, from the midpoint of the year. I hope everyone is having a very good 2025. My name is Dana Vosburgh. I'm the Managing Director of Advisory Services here at Manning & Napier. I'm happy to be joined by two great colleagues. First, Chris Petrosino is the Head of Investments for Wealth Management and Managing Director of the Investment Policy Group at Manning & Napier. He leads the team responsible for designing the investment solution set and setting strategic asset allocation guidelines for wealth management clients. I'm also joined by Jeff McCormack, a Senior Financial Consultant at Manning & Napier, based in our home office here in Rochester. In his role, Jeff is responsible for managing all aspects of client relationships, including investment-specific discussions and comprehensive financial planning. Thank you, Chris and Jeff, for taking part in the webinar today. Thank you. I am going to encourage you to ask questions along the way. If a question does come to mind, please feel free to submit it using the Q&A function that you'll see on the screen. We will spend time at the end of the webinar answering as many questions as possible. If we do not answer your question here live, just know that we or someone on the team will be sure to follow up to answer your question. Thanks to those who did send a question in already. We received a number of pre-submitted questions, and they are really good, and they hit on many of the things we will be covering. It will be good to cover that. It has been a busy year. Through the first five and a half months of the year, certainly a lot has happened. We could say that about really any year, but especially in the first year of a new administration that's motivated to make significant policy decisions. There's a lot that can happen. The headlines that you see here on the screen represent really a small sample of the news we've seen so far, not to mention the very recent events in the Middle East and sort of the geopolitics that also could be added here. In our Outlook webinar to start the year, we talked about the likelihood of volatility. We saw some of that driven by the tariff decisions in early April. But also with the sunsetting of most tax provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of this year, or at least the scheduled sunsetting, we're seeing progress now on a new bill, new tax bill that will extend many of those provisions and then some. You know, in general, a very eventful first half. Chris, can you please expand on that a bit as far as from a market and economic, just what we've experienced, you know, year to date and what we've seen there? Can you just kind of talk about that, please? Sure. No, and certainly it felt like, you know, we've packed at least a full year, if not two or three years' worth of headlines and policy decisions and market-moving news into what's been just under six months. For all of that, for all the market gyrations, all of the instability, uncertainty that we've experienced, markets domestically are largely back to where they started the year, up a little bit through yesterday. For example, the S&P is up just a hair over 3%. You know, bond yields, again, had some pretty violent moves over the course of 2025 to date. Again, you know, yields are actually slightly lower than where they started the year. If we're talking about the 10-year Treasury, if we're talking about bonds broadly, you know, investors have gained about the same as they have in the S&P, about 3% and change year to date. It has certainly been an interesting time where if, you know, I said in a couple of other settings, if you went to sleep on December 31 and woke up today, you'd think, you know, pretty boring market environment. Certainly, you know, reality has been different. If we click onto the next exhibit here, you know, I think to put what we experienced, particularly back in April, you know, into perspective, this is the VIX volatility index for the S&P 500 going back to 2000. It is a measure of the implied volatility based on the options market for the S&P. As the measure would suggest, higher is more volatile. You have to go back to early March 2020 with the onset of the pandemic and prior to that, the global financial crisis to see levels of market volatility anything near what we experienced back in early April. By all accounts, the announced tariff policies were far in excess of what I think even the most aggressive assumptions that we or anyone else had seen proved to be. The good news certainly, as April faded into May and now into June, is we have seen some more cards turn over. I think we can talk more about this later. As the market's worst fears were allayed, you know, we've seen, you know, not only volatility come down, but really, you know, more importantly for all of us, you know, asset prices recover and, you know, in then some put us back into positive territory year to date. Yeah. I think, back to what you just mentioned as far as early April and sort of the Liberation Day and sort of the reaction that the market had, where I think the S&P 500 after the first, well, after the initial announcement was down 10%, I think it was 5% over each of the first two days after that. Certainly a big reaction. I guess we're curious about that. We're going to bring up a poll here to see what people thought about that when it was happening. What was your reaction? Here's what the poll says. What was your reaction to April's market downturn following the Liberation Day tariff announcement? Choices are kind of the range of panic, uncomfortable but knew it would pass, indifferent because I have a plan, or unsure. I'll give you a few seconds here to provide an answer, and then we'll move on and kind of touch on that a little bit more. A few seconds. Here we go. All right. Nice range of results here. We had a little bit of panic. Most results were kind of in the uncomfortable, but knew it would pass, or indifferent because I have a plan, which is nice to see too. Yeah, that's a good way, Jeff, to bring you in here. You know, if we think about volatility and just when you're talking with your clients, having those conversations of just a range of reactions, what are you talking to your clients about? Yeah, I want to talk to the majority of people that knew it was going to pass, you know, kind of understand the psyche of the administration and how things were going to evolve. It would have been great to have that level of foresight. No, but all joking aside, right? I mean, 10% drawdowns are unnerving. While they might not lead to panic, which we all have a small group of people described as being panicked over those last couple of days, they're unnerving because no matter where you are in your savings story, drawdowns in portfolio value have repercussions if you need distributions or if you're just saving for some goal into the future. And that's why planning is so important because at the core, planning is a cash flow analysis. How much income is coming in, either from your portfolios or from your salary, how much of that is going out in terms of how much you're spending, and how long do you need that spending to continue, how long do you need to support that with the account values that you have. The analysis that we go through during planning is diagnosing those needs and then stress testing it, right? We run a thousand scenarios, which include substantial drawdowns in portfolio value, to see how well your plan holds up. I think, you know, looking at the graphic on the right-hand side, one of the components that has made planning even more important over the last couple of decades is the number of households that are participating in the market. This probably has, you know, kind of multi-layered why more households own stocks. Definitely one is to do with baby boomers and, you know, the growth in their retirement portfolios over the last couple of decades. Another factor is the prevalence of discount brokerage and how cheap it has become to trade stocks. Even recently with the advent of Robinhood, the gamification of stock market investing. I do not know if I can call Robinhood trading investing, but trading. Those sorts of things in that environment, stocks are inherently a more volatile asset class. When we have these drawdowns like we had post-Liberation Day, it can lead to angst, worry, in some cases panic. If you have a plan in place, you know that there is, you know, some safety net that you are supported by to provide comfort during that period of volatility. Yeah. I think it's so important to have that context where, you know, when you have a plan, you may have something in mind where you would see, you know, maybe a drawdown of 10%, say, and then somebody in their mind thinks that that means it's like, I'm not going to be able to retire. It's going to make it a lot harder for me. Having that context is so helpful to see the results. Actually, you just stick with your plan. It may not actually really, you know, have any sort of impact whatsoever on the long-term planning that you want to try to accomplish. That's so important. I think. Not trying to, you know, kind of diminish how unnerving it can be, but it's something for us to reference in a conversation about, you know, you're okay, right? Your situation is okay, and here's why. You know, just it provides that framework. We had earlier, we had a couple of charts that was just year to date, S&P 500 and Treasuries, you know, looking at another asset class here, just something to those at least that was, hey, there was a drawdown, and then we're back up to basically where we started, maybe a little bit higher. Here's an area of international stocks where it's actually having one of the better years year to date that we've seen in a while. So Jeff, maybe can you maybe touch on that and what that might mean or how to think about that? Yeah. For those of you that do not know, I was an analyst here at Manning & Napier for 11 years. We were trained to look at the market globally and identify markets globally, you know, try to find those values regardless of geographical boundaries. That has led to periods of time where Manning & Napier analysts are finding more opportunities internationally than they are domestically. I think over the last couple of years, they have. Manning & Napier portfolios are always diversified, you know, across geographies, in some cases concentrated in certain geographies where there is frankly more value that our analysts are finding. In terms of year to date performance and specifically post-Liberation Day, I'm going to defer to Chris to kind of provide some insights on why international markets are kind of leading the charge, albeit, you know, by a couple hundred basis points on domestic markets. Yeah. So I mean, if we, you know, sort of break the year down into two parts, sort of the, you know, January up until April 2nd, right, international markets led out of the gates. And a chunk of that was a good starting point. It's something we've talked about before, which was when we look around the world, you know, evaluations outside of the U.S. are, you know, considerably, you know, lower, closer to historical average, if not a bit below, depending on the market. And so, you know, certainly from a price standpoint, it was good. And then also an environment where many markets outside the U.S. were at a different point in their economic cycle, whether, you know, in recession or coming out of recession, where there's sort of more of a coiled spring behind them. You know, that was starting to play out, you know, going into April. After that, you know, the shock with the tariffs following April 2nd, you know, the ensuing rally, again, as Jeff mentioned, you know, the non-U.S. markets, you know, really led coming out of that. You know, this was, you know, both the, you know, relief as far as, you know, we were not going to go from free trade to virtual trade embargoes overnight, but also the fact that for a long time, you know, on a global basis, the U.S. has been the place where you wanted to invest. If you were a company, an individual, a sovereign wealth fund, and you had excess capital allocating to the United States, it has been a pretty good place to put capital to work, you know, whether it is in public markets or private markets. You know, after the April 2nd announcements, I think countries, companies started to maybe reevaluate over the long term, should we put all of our eggs in one big U.S. basket. What we have started to see, I think, is as you reassess, well, maybe we have underinvested domestically, and that starts to open up opportunities. You know, that is a tailwind that is likely not going to fade regardless of where tariffs end up, just as, you know, we can look at markets that have been, you know, if the U.S. struggles as a country from, you know, chronically undersaving and overspending, we can point to other markets around the world where the opposite is true, where arguably they save too much. More domestic investment is going to, you know, we think continue to unlock opportunities on a global basis. Even despite, you know, what leaves us now with the, you know, global markets up about 14%, it varies by market, but, you know, 10+% globally, we still think there's lots of opportunities. We look in the portfolios, and the analysts continue to uncover opportunities there. We think this is a theme that, you know, likely, you know, has legs and helps illustrate particularly, you know, the first five months, five and a half months of the year, the benefits of that diversification that Jeff was just speaking about. That is, you know, we touched on it several times now, early April tariffs and Liberation Day. We see a few questions that were hitting on that as well. Let's dig into it a little bit more. This was, I mean, this was actually our question, was word that came in. How does the evolving, you know, uncertain tariff policy impact investment decisions? People are asking about that. It's probably the most common question we're getting right now. You know, Chris, can you just touch on that and how that's impacting decisions? Yeah. I think maybe we can start with just the tariff policy itself and build out from there. It's not often you get a chart with 200 years of data, but here we are, tariff rates in the U.S. over the years. And, you know, from our perspective, you know, where we are likely to shake out on tariffs is probably something, you know, around the ballpark, you know, where we find ourselves today, which is sort of, you know, capturing some of the initial tariffs the administration put on, sort of the 10% broad-based tariff, which, you know, largely accounts for a lot of the jump that we've seen in that tariff rate over the past, you know, handful of months. You know, April, those days immediately after April 2nd in the financial markets, I think sent a powerful message that the markets really could not stand those, the so-called reciprocal tariffs and some of the most aggressive policies. Those are, you know, never say never, but seemingly likely off the table. Even though we are approaching the end of the first 90-day pause, we expect you are likely to see continued kicking the can down the road. More uncertainty, but, you know, when you think about what it takes to actually get trade deals done, they are not the type of thing you work up on the back of a napkin over a drink or two. It takes months, quarters at times, depending on the deal, a year plus of negotiation. It's likely going to be uncertainty that we're going to continue to live with. You know, what's this mean for, you know, the economy and, you know, and then in turn, you know, markets and portfolios? You know, we've seen economic data really diverge, right? Anything that's been sentiment-driven has taken a hit, particularly if we're talking about businesses or consumers, as they just don't know, right? We're at a point now where, you know, some of the small businesses that we get to talk to, some of the medium-sized businesses that went and were able to pre-buy inventory, you know, we've got anecdotes where, you know, you're starting to burn through that. Now that those next inputs that you might need are going to come in at a, you know, at a higher cost due to tariffs. There is, you know, some uncertainty, some concern there. You know, we will see as the summer plays out, you know, to what degree, you know, those realities are fully captured by the market or not. So far, you know, given what we have seen on the volatility, it seems like the market is pretty comfortable with it. You know, I think there is an underlying assumption that, you know, this is going to be a, you know, a non-issue, which is something that we are, you know, tracking really closely. In the portfolio, one of the things that we did was use that volatility back in early April to position into some companies that we, you know, think have, you know, superior pricing power where even if some of the higher tariffs were to come to light, you know, they are in a position to put, if not all of it, the vast majority of it to their end customers. You know, things like that are looking for folks with supply chains that were more advantageously positioned were, you know, a couple of the ways that we were able to step into that volatility. Again, I think, you know, tariffs are going to be something that, you know, is a material change. I mean, even if, you know, you were to say it shakes out at, let's say, a 6% effective rate, I mean, you're looking back, you know, literally, you know, 50 plus years into the early 1970s or late 1960s to find anything similar. And so, you know, at the end of the day, it likely functions as a tax on overall economic activity. So, you know, we think it's an environment where you want to be really choosy. You want to look for those investments that may be unfairly impacted by concerns or, you know, in some cases, find those that, you know, this may be a, this may be a tailwind for. Yeah. And Dana, I'll just, you know, in client discussions, you know, I've had a couple of clients that are kind of worried about volatility coming up with July 7th, given the 90-day pause. And, you know, in my response, you know, it's, you know, don't treat that as a hard deadline. You know, I kind of use TikTok, the TikTok negotiations as a proxy here, you know, that we keep kind of moving the goal line on when a TikTok deal might get done. And any deal, it takes two sides to make a deal, right? In the TikTok deal, it's a buyer and a seller. And I think the seller isn't willing to negotiate right now. We have plenty of buyers here in the States that are willing to pony up and buy TikTok. But it's the same thing with the trade deals. It is why Chris said they take a long time. The U.K. deal is an anomaly. The framework of the China deal came together kind of quickly, but it is just a framework. Even our Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has said that, you know, that July 7th is kind of a murky deadline for anybody that we are in good faith negotiations with, which is the majority of countries that are a party to the reciprocal tariffs. Not to say do not be worried at all, but take the July 7th deadline with a grain of salt right now. No, that's a good point. It's a good thing, you know, in Washington, when you run out of road, you build more road. That's not about debt ceilings of prior years or go back to the sequestering of, you know, spending, you know, in conjunction with that back in the early, you know, 2010s. That tends to be what happens. You know, I think it's likely spot on that we're just going to, you know, have just a world that we're going to live in for a while and just look for opportunities as they show. Right. Speaking of deadlines, we have another policy that I think is on people's minds. Certainly, it's been in the news. It's been tax reform. They've got the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for individuals. You know, those provisions are scheduled to sunset at the end of this year. Congress has been working on new tax legislation there with the one big beautiful bill. Jeff, can you just kind of summarize where things stand there and sort of maybe some considerations? Yeah, yeah. Kind of, Dana, as you pointed out, post-election, this administration has been extraordinarily busy. And frankly, one of the things the market thought the administration was going to take up almost immediately was tax policy, was the extension of the 2017 tax cuts. We're finally there, right? And the president's kind of there. The House is there. Now the bill is with the Senate. And it's going through the normal process of markups in the Senate to make an amicable bill that all three layers of the government can approve on. I think one thing is pretty clear, even at this stage, even though we don't have an approval on the overall structure of the bill, is that the individual tax rates are going to be maintained for at least the length of time that this administration is in power, which provides families that are planning either estate planning or in the process of doing Roth conversions more time to execute those strategies. Beyond the, you know, the length of time that this administration is in power, very likely that tax policy will change yet again. It's just the nature of government that taxes are always being negotiated. Appropriate tax rates are always being negotiated. Flip a coin, red or blue, what happens in four years is going to be, there's going to be changes to tax policy. For now, we've got runway. We've got additional runway to enact or start or continue preferential track, you know, beneficial tax strategies. Yeah. It looks like we're, if it plays out as things are drafted here, which likely will be the case, there won't be scrambling to make, you know, massive changes to their plan because, you know, it looks like many of those very favorable, historically favorable tax rates and rules will just be extended a little bit longer, right? Yeah. On the business side, I mean, Chris brought it up with the small and medium-sized businesses. Obviously, one of the things, the provisions that they're looking at is the accelerated depreciation. And, you know, what that could do to spending if it makes its way through to the ultimate, to the end goal. Again, some moving parts, it's still kind of written in pencil, you know, that some things are going, it's obvious things are going to change in the Senate. What is ultimately going to change? Still be still TBD at this point. Yeah. Yeah. That is something also that we make an effort certainly to summarize those and communicate that to our clients. We will have that content available when we have more clarity there and make sure that we are proactive to share that with, based on, you know, highlights and also, you know, important if there are any important strategies, we want to make sure we communicate that as well. Absolutely. If we just summarize, I guess we talked about, you know, where the market is and where, you know, the process year to date or where it's been year to date, you know, tariffs and other policy. Jeff, I'm going to start with you. Can you just kind of summarize what you think for the rest of the year as you're talking with your clients? What would you like to highlight? Yeah. So, you know, going into the year, Manning & Napier was outlining a market with increased volatility, increased, you know, a little bit of concern about valuations, you know, two years of 20% returns in the S&P 500, kind of historic. That conditions were very likely to change. They have. We're now in a, you know, a kind of a street fight market where, you know, we're going to chop for a little while, which is going to create opportunities for active managers like Manning & Napier, but it also provides additional opportunities for discussions with clients. The discussions I'm having with clients now are, what does the portfolio dynamics look like? What is the appropriate asset allocation for you with this new reality where we really have a true balance between what we expect in equity returns and what we expect in fixed income returns, you know, kind of moving forward. Yeah, it's, listen, if you haven't met with your financial consultant year to date and you have questions about your current situation, your plan, I encourage you to do so because we don't know what's going on if you don't share it with us. We want to hear from you. We want to talk to you. We want to make sure that, you know, you're in a good place. That's kind of the discussions I'm having right now. Yeah. Chris, so how about you as a way to summarize, you know, just looking ahead to the rest of the year and things to kind of be aware of and keep in mind? Yeah. No, I mean, I'd actually go back to the tagline that we used in the promotional materials for today, the idea of stability over speculation. I think, you know, we're going to continue to be in an environment where it's going to be tempting to speculate on the outcome of, you know, various events, whether it's, you know, policy driven domestically or, you know, geopolitically internationally. I think what we've seen over time is it's far better rather than trying to, you know, spend time prognosticating which way something's going to go. Instead, just be prepared. You know, we were preparing earlier, Jeff mentioned the idea of this blocking and tackling type of market. I think that's completely true. This is one where it is, if we're talking domestically, stocks as a whole really aren't particularly cheap. That doesn't mean there's not good values out there, but you've got to work a little harder to find them. Our folks are. Also, again, the, you know, that value of international diversification that, you know, we continue to, we continue to find opportunities. We're going to keep looking for that. I think given that we're sort of back to where we started the year in terms of not only the indexes, but, you know, different levels of, you know, sentiment, volatility, things like that, I think it's going to be, you know, likely to be bumpy as we continue to go from here. Portfolios are generally positioned, you know, sort of towards their midpoint and, you know, sort of that stock-bond mix for those that are, you know, invested in one of our multi-asset class portfolios, which, you know, reflects both the idea that there are opportunities, you know, in stocks as well as on the fixed income side and acknowledging, you know, that from a risk perspective, it's an environment where, you know, a healthy dose of exposure to stocks makes sense, but, you know, wanting to save some dry powder so that if we do get a more meaningful, you know, material dust up in equity prices, we're prepared for it to own more of those things that, you know, that we like today. Hopefully there's some other names that are on our farther drill list that looks at stocks that we love to own that come, you know, come into our wheelhouse from a pricing perspective. You know, that's where we are. Certainly, you know, thank everyone for putting their trust in, you know, us and the firm to manage, you know, your hard-earned assets. Right. That is a good way to end our prepared portions here. Jeff and Chris, thank you for your insights. As we move to open Q&A, again, we'd like to highlight that any questions after the fact, just feel free to reach out, speak with your financial consultant, or if you do not currently work with one at Manning & Napier, contact us and we will be sure to have someone reach out to you. With that, let's get to some of the questions that have come in. One that came in earlier was, what's the effect of massive increasing debt and deficit on equities and bonds over the next few years? I guess just, you know, kind of our thoughts on kind of the impact there. Yeah. I think this is a, you know, probably one of the most frequently asked questions throughout the years that I've been doing this from. You know, I think it illustrates, you know, the magnitude of deficits, particularly here in the United States, but also the fact that it is a very slow-moving phenomenon. There is not a magic number in the sand in terms of, you know, debt to GDP or nominal dollars of debt that reliably will trigger some adverse outcome. However, I think what we will deal with as we go forward is the potential with higher deficits to pose a limit to some extent on what we can do from a fiscal perspective, trying to stimulate economies in economic downturns. You go back, part of the reason why we were able to effectively shut down the, you know, domestic and, you know, indeed global economy during COVID, those early months was because we went in and, you know, propped up the consumer, propped up businesses with a magnitude of spending that on an inflation-adjusted basis actually outstripped everything that went on during the New Deal. That requires a lot of debt and that is, you know, countercyclical spending. That is typically what, you know, the economists, Keynesians anyways, will tell you you should do, stimulate countercyclically. When things are good, rein in those deficits. We are, you know, really not doing that. There is a risk, you know, we get into an environment where you need massive fiscal again and the bond markets might not let you do that. I think, you know, you start to lose some optionality going forward, but it's also important to note that, you know, currencies and bonds are very much a relative game. When you think about it, it's not, you don't own dollars or treasuries in a vacuum. You own that against, you know, do I want to own euros? Do I want to own JGBs, Japanese government bonds? You know, it's a lot of comparison. When you look at other markets too, they're also not in particularly, you know, great shape, which is, you know, in some ways, you know, do you have a good house on a bad block? That's one analysis I've seen some folks put forth, but it also suggests that you're unlikely to see rapid moves away from the dollar, away from treasuries. It may happen at the margin. We've seen a little bit of that, but there is not a clear alternative out there that offers the, you know, the yields, the stability that U.S. assets offer, you know, with, you know, vastly superior, you know, fundamental profiles and things like that. It is something that's out there. It is something that, you know, a lot of folks are worried about. It's usually not for them. It's for their grandchildren, you know, or their grandchildren's children. You know, we completely understand it, but it's something that it does, you know, move slowly in real time. We're likely, again, it's going to be, you know, potentially a tax on growth at the margin as opposed to some, you know, cataclysm that brings everything down overnight. Yeah. Dana, I'm just going to really quickly, we're kind of seeing a microcosm of what might happen because, you know, with the cost projections of the one big beautiful bill, you know, they're looking for offsets, spending offsets. One of the items that was brought up in the House bill is cuts to Medicaid spending. One of the things that differentiates Manning & Napier is our ability to own healthcare or not own healthcare, depending on the knock-on effects of what a decrease in government support of healthcare services might be. You know, if that materially impacts nursing homes or materially impacts rural hospitals, we do not have to own those. We can make investment decisions depending on where those dollars are flowing. When they're not flowing in that direction, we can take our money away from there. Needless to say, there's likely to be some changes in government spending. It needs to be addressed when it will, is anybody's guess. We're kind of seeing that being played out with this bill. What makes it through the Senate, we'll see because Medicaid cuts have been a contention with the Senate. I just wanted to put that out there as, you know, our ability to be nimble when conditions change. Great. Great. There are several questions that came in about asking about the Fed and Fed decisions, either, you know, maybe the impact that the Fed could have on markets this year based on, you know, whether or not to make a decision to cut rates. Also just, you know, I think policy, Fed policy thoughts. I guess, you know, I just kind of wanted to group them together here just because just kind of cover the Fed and maybe thoughts on how certain decisions may impact the markets. Sure. So for the majority of this year, right, the Fed has been in a holding pattern in terms of the Fed funds rate as they've wanted to balance, you know, what we've seen in, you know, some slowing in, you know, certain areas of the economy. I think housing, you know, being one, you know, that continues to cool nationwide, particularly in some of the hottest markets. Some signs there, you know, slowing wage growth, you know, some signs that, you know, perhaps there is scope to lower rates against, you know, what we have seen is a rapidly evolving landscape on tariffs. The Fed, you know, their objectives, right, it's we want price stability, i.e., you know, inflation under control, and we want full employment. We've been in a market where employment's been more or less, you know, full. Unemployment rate's pretty low. It's so that's been healthy. And so that's given them, I think, more scope maybe than otherwise to, you know, be a little more, you know, discerning's the word or just a little more careful on the inflation front. In some ways, right, it's fighting the last battle, right? The last battle was the, you know, transitory inflation coming out of the, you know, the pandemic lockdowns. And no, don't worry, this will pass in a month or two. It stuck around for quite a while. I think there's a, you know, a tendency in, you know, in most to want to, okay, we're not going to make that mistake again. You know, I think we've got about two cuts or so priced in based on the futures market into year-end. You know, we continue to, you know, see some things soften. Now, ultimately, you know, when we think about, well, what does, you know, the pricing in of a couple cuts means? Well, that's not every market participant is saying it's two cuts. It's you've got some that are zero and some that are four, right? So there's, you know, it's likely to remain, you know, sort of path dependent, to use the Fed's word from there, right? You know, things continue to cool. I think there's scope to, you know, to see those rate hikes. I would say that, you know, these next couple months, I think are, you know, going to be critical from on that sort of tariff-induced inflation front, right? As we start to see those goods that have left the foreign markets on ships for the U.S. have now, you know, entered port and are, you know, being loaded off of rail cars onto, you know, tractor trailers and finding their ways into, you know, stores and production facilities, you're starting to see some of the tariff impact filter through. If we get a few more months in and it's, you know, largely been absorbed, not passed on, that'll be a, you know, a win on the inflation front. If instead it, you know, spurs some additional price increases, you know, the Fed may be justified in waiting a little bit longer. Certainly by the time we get together to do one of these again or do some of our upcoming client receptions, we'll have some more data points on that front for folks. Just the other thing I'd add too, or we think about interest rates, right? There is the Fed funds rate that, you know, obviously as the name implies under the purview of the Fed, but then we think about the interest rates that, you know, influence a lot of, you know, capital allocation decisions for both companies as well as individuals, i.e., mortgage rates. And that is largely anchors off of the, you know, the longer dated maturities. So the 10-year Treasury, which, you know, the Fed has considerably less, you know, less control over. It's, you know, I think it's been put out there by some that, well, if the Fed just cuts rates, mortgages will fall, maybe, but not, you know, not necessarily, right? That's sort of a market-driven price. That's just something to keep in mind as well. Yeah. There was a couple questions that were asking about how the market might react to a Fed chair change if Powell was replaced, which is so, you know, obviously hard to know what that would be, but that's obviously on people's minds as well. I think, you know, a couple elements here. One is, is it, you know, replaced in the normal scope of, you know, his term is up and we bring in a new chair, certainly bringing in someone that is, you know, perceived by the market to be dovish, i.e., in favor of looser monetary policy, lower Fed funds rates. That'll be cheered by the markets. You know, now whether that's a short-term, you know, sugar high or not, you know, remains to be seen. I think that's very different than an environment where we fire the Fed chair tomorrow and all of a sudden, you know, throw the notion of an independent central bank into question, right? That could be very, very disruptive. I think it's the, you know, it's as much who as it is how that will determine the reaction that we see. Yeah. There's one that came in ahead of time that I just wanted to pre-submit that I wanted to touch on. It's just sometimes you get these questions with times of volatility. What do you suggest I do with cash that's sitting on the sidelines right now? It's a good question. Yeah. So going back into the, you know, kind of that planning discussion, it's what are your needs, right? So, you know, do you need that cash in the next three to six months? If so, probably keep it where it is. If you don't, then, you know, when are you going to need it? And then we can discuss what an appropriate allocation is. Having it sit in a checking account, if it's beyond six months where you need that money, is pretty unproductive. Even investing in a short-term money market fund, you know, you could be, you know, earning 4% on it if you're, you know, skittish about investing it in the stock market. If you do not need it for a couple of years, then, you know, discussing what your outlook and needs look like can help us frame how to appropriately put that money to work. Yeah, cash in the checking account is a discussion that I have common with clients. It is hard to change habits. You know, people like to see big balances in their bank account. You do the math in terms of how much interest they could be earning elsewhere, and they kind of change their minds a little bit. Right. Just aware of time too, and we're going to continue to answer questions that come in. I understand if you're busy and you want to jump off, that's fine too, but we'll continue to answer questions here along the way. One that I think, just back to the tariff topic, I guess the question was, you mentioned that the portfolio invested in some companies that could weather tariffs and had strong supply chains. Do you have some examples of those? Is there maybe some areas that we could sort of touch on and more specifics? Yeah. So it's always, you know, big challenges in this setting just given folks have different portfolios. Maybe we talk a little more specifically thematically, and, you know, we can follow up with some particular names that would apply to your portfolio. One area in particular that we were able to sort of upgrade into was in some portions of the luxury goods market. You think about tiers of luxury goods, you know, there's everything from, you know, luxury goods that sort of have mass appeal, those that have, you know, a far, you know, a thinner market maybe appealing, you know, to the top 2%. Then there is a strata that is, you know, in the fractions of the top percentile. You know, this has been an opportunity where we were able to allocate to a couple of those types of companies where there are waiting lists for their products. It is the type of thing where if you are on the waiting list and your name comes up, then you say, "No, I'm going to pass," you might not get on that waiting list again, or you might, you know, go back to the bottom of the list, right? These are the types of things we are talking about, you know, folks with discretionary levels of income that if the price of the good is up an extra 10% or 20%, they are still going to take it, right? Because it's, you know, it's not, you know, the value of that good is as much the, you know, sort of, you know, intangibles and brand associated with it as it is, you know, whatever the, you know, the cost of those inputs are. Those are a couple examples where, you know, we were able to sort of high grade the portfolio and sort of take our luxury theme up another notch. Like I said, we can get back with some, you know, specific examples relative to your particular portfolio. Yeah. Dean, you know, kind of going back into my analyst background, pricing power is a key condition in our profile strategy. And a number of companies in the luxury good market with, frankly, infinite pricing power, they could increase their prices and pass through their supply, their increase in input costs, and consumers would still pay it. They were on sale post the tariff hikes or the tariff announcement. When you can buy strong companies with nearly infinite pricing power on discount, yeah, sign me up. I'll take that every day. Good. Yeah. Another one that came in ahead of time is pre-submitted, but it's a question that comes up a lot, is just our viewpoint on Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. Maybe just both of you, I know we're talking ahead of time that there's some thoughts on that, certainly. If you could weigh in there. Sure. Yeah. I mean, increasing conversations with clients about alternative assets in general, right? And what is the appropriate allocation of investable assets towards alternatives? Depending on conditions, it could be anywhere from 0-20% or more, you know, if you're running a large endowment and have super long time horizons. For standard high net worth individuals, you know, kind of 0-20% is the range that we're discussing. Crypto or digital currencies are an alternative asset. They fit in that, you know, 0-20%. You know, having, you know, dialogue with multiple clients about the appropriateness of digital currencies, the volatility, the pros and cons of putting an asset like that in a portfolio alongside a traditional stock and bond portfolio, what attributes it adds to the portfolio. Actively engaged in those discussions today. I, you know, I know I didn't give you a, you know, pound the table buy on Bitcoin or a sell, sell, sell. But, you know, we're talking about that in terms of appropriateness for client portfolios. Chris, I'm sure you've got stuff for the ad there. Yeah. No, a couple thoughts. One is just, you know, an observation of how the conversation within the research team has evolved over the, you know, past several years around, you know, crypto assets, Bitcoin in particular. I think there's, you know, there's been a lot of, you know, thoughtful conversations, you know, on both sides. It is certainly an asset that's, you know, been through some, you know, a couple difficult markets, which is generally good just from a sort of, you know, stress testing, you know, type of thing. You know, you generally do not want to, you know, be in something that's never been, you know, put under duress before. I think, you know, that's, you know, that's been good to see. You know, from the conversations that I'm having with folks that think about it from an allocation perspective is, you know, it's sizing that matters, right? This is an asset that, you know, on the one hand has, you know, performed many-fold what the stock market has done over the past few years, but its volatility is also multiples higher. And any, you know, if you have a volatility of 50, which is about what Bitcoin does last I checked, that means any outcome plus or minus 50% of where you are today should happen about two-thirds of the time, statistically speaking. And so just, you know, being prepared for that type of volatility is important and, you know, thinking about, you know, how much of something like that should be in one's portfolio. That's where folks like, you know, Jeff, Dana, you know, their colleagues, I can get involved too, just help illustrate some, you know, examples for folks that, you know, are interested in Bitcoin and want that as part of their allocation, but really just to help with that sizing discussion. Yeah. Risk appetite and does it add or detract from diversification of the overall portfolio? Those are the primary elements that we're going to be discussing when talking about adding any alternative asset to portfolios, including cryptocurrencies. Good question came in. Let's see. About healthcare, sir, and some of the changes at HHS. Would you stay away from the healthcare segment right now? Do you think there's the. I think that is the most volatile sub-industry given all the shakeup at HHS. I don't know if thoughts on just kind of the healthcare and the current administration, right? It's that's something to kind of be aware of with some of, you know, some of the viewpoints coming out of HHS. Did they go out as a former healthcare analyst? No, go ahead. Go ahead, Chris. No, I was going to say I was going to just sort of speak real broadly and then invite you to dive in a little deeper. Earlier, I'd marked that looking at the U.S. market, it's generally, you know, on the expensive side historically, not necessarily noticeably level expensive, but expensive. Healthcare is one of the areas that there are a lot of companies that are trading at historically low valuations. Now sometimes, many times things are cheap for a reason. It may be, you know, you know, there is not everything that, you know, trades at a P of eight times is something that you want to own because that is the market's way of saying, "I do not think today's earnings are going to sustain into the future." I will say it is an area that our, you know, our healthcare analysts are, you know, we are finding opportunities and looking for those areas that are less exposed to the, you know, any changes at HHS, you know, FDA, anything like that. These environments tend to give you opportunities where, you know, the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater because I think that reaction is very, it makes a lot of sense. Healthcare, that is under a lot of fire, let's just fire and forget. Let's not have anything to do with it. Let's not take the risk. Generally, when the market adopts that mindset, fire and forget, you create some good values. Yeah. That is largely because the pace of change in healthcare is glacial because the regulatory market dictates that it is so. It takes so long for innovations to make their way through the pipeline that there is not a high level of disruption in healthcare. I think the big policy announcements that need to be, you know, so they have talked about price controls on pharmaceutical drugs. You know, that would be bad for pharma, but I think every administration going back all the way through my time as an analyst, and I started as a healthcare analyst in 2003, has talked about price controls on U.S. pharmaceuticals. Will the Trump administration get it enacted? Maybe. You know, I would have to defer to Sahil on his thoughts, our healthcare analyst. But, you know, that is the big one in terms of impact on the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. I kind of talked a little bit about Medicaid. It would have a marginal impact on the investable health hospital companies, negligible impact on insurance companies, but potentially massive impact on nursing homes. Yeah, there could be some impact. Again, we have the ability to be nimble, identify opportunities when others are just kind of throwing a wide net and, you know, saying, "Oh, bad, run away." No, those are where the best opportunities are typically found. Okay. Time for a couple more here. We'll see. This one is, what is your current attitude toward long-term treasuries at this point in time? I guess investing in long-term treasuries. Sure. So we think that you're being compensated for the duration risk that you're taking, that interest rate sensitivity. You know, we look in the portfolios, we have, you know, many of the portfolios will have some long-term treasuries, but it's as part of your overall fixed income exposure. You know, it's not an environment where we want to be, you know, massively overweight long-term treasuries because they're still, you know, we think while you're being fairly compensated, excuse me, it's not necessarily a, you know, back up the truck moment on it either. Again, we talk about diversification, spend a lot of time on the equity side, right, in terms of sectors, in terms of geographies. The same applies in fixed income, right? When we think about, you know, well, what can we own? You know, we can own treasuries. What maturity treasuries do we want to own? We can own corporate credit. We can own agencies. We can own asset-backed securities. And so it's really, you know, achieving that same level of diversification. You know, really where we sit today, you know, I think it's, you know, fairly valued on the treasury side. Corporate credit remains, you know, exceedingly, you know, we'll say well-bid, which is to say that the, you know, credit spread, that additional premium you get for lending to, you know, investment-grade and high-yield corporates is, you know, backed down to fairly, you know, fairly low levels. So when we look in portfolios, you know, you'll see, you know, where we have the ability to vary those exposures. We're on the, we're on the light side and intentionally so waiting for, you know, some better valuations there. There is a question, this is international related, but does the firm have a point of view of investments in BRIC countries? The ARC or Russia, I think that it's still a no-fly zone by, you know, some government executive orders. We, you know, we'll honor those as, you know, we must with any directive like that. I think, you know, the, you know, India, China, Brazil, we have exposure to, you know, those markets in our portfolio. Again, it is, you know, it tends to be less of a, we want to go all in on country X, Y, or Z and much more, you know, looking for those, looking for, you know, companies that are favorably exposed to either trends playing out in those particular countries or, you know, what we often see is a, you know, just because a company's incorporated in one particular market, a lot of times their revenue will be derived on a global basis. You know, there is, you know, no sort of bias for or against any of those, you know, countries when we think about looking for opportunities. It's, again, it's largely a function of applying those investment strategies that Jeff had, you know, referenced earlier. You know, if we find companies that tick those boxes and are, you know, valued such that we think we're compensated for owning it, we're going to own those. Okay. I think we're going to end there for today. Thank you again, Chris and Jeff. I want to thank everyone for taking the time out of their day to be here with us. We'd greatly appreciate it if you could take a few seconds to fill out a survey that we have linked in the chat section so we can have some feedback on this webinar. Also, if you're interested in learning more about Manning & Napier, please visit our website to schedule a call or subscribe to our content. We're also happy to provide a free consultation where you can, you know, you can really outline your financial situation and talk about your goals and what you have in mind for your finances. We can prepare a financial plan that will serve as a great way to outline next steps for you to ensure that you stay on track. Please feel free to take advantage of that. On behalf of my colleagues, Chris and Jeff, at Manning & Napier, thank you again and have a great day. Thank you.