Well, greetings everyone, and welcome to our 2022 outlook webinar. I'm Michael O'Keeffe, Stifel's Chief Investment Officer. Today, I'm joined by Brian Gardner, Stifel's Chief Washington Policy Strategist. Hello, Brian. Good afternoon, Michael. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you, and Happy New Year to everyone that's joining today. We're really excited to come to you and talk about our 2022 outlook. We entitled the report this year Balancing Acts. We kinda think of it as all kinds of balancing acts going on all around the country, all around the world. Things like the Fed having to figure out where to set policy given levels of inflation and other things like that. We think of it as companies having to deal with inflation. Where should they set pricing given costs are moving around on them? Hey, we have the Omicron variant spreading like wildfire, really, as it relates to people getting this, thankfully slightly lighter version of COVID, but spreading very quickly. What does that mean for governments? How are they gonna balance, and other authorities, balance sort of slowing down activity or closing some activity or whatever against obviously the economic and human cost of that. So Balancing Acts all around. For those that have seen it, you know that the report is really a series of articles. We're gonna walk through some of these topics today and end towards the end of the session, maybe 25, 30 minutes into it, with our outlook for 2022. I'll also mention the slides for today's session, as well as a link to the report itself and another video are available on stifel.com on the individuals page. If you just hit the link inviting you to join the webinar, you'll see an updated invitation that includes links to these slides as well as the report and the associated video as well. Welcome. Let's jump in. You know, we always start our sort of outlook by taking a look back. You know, when we look back at 2021, there are a few things I'd mention high level, and then we'll dig into some of these numbers. The first is we anticipated a lot of volatility in the market, and honestly, by historic measures, we really didn't see it, right? It was a relatively calm year, and even though the year ended with a little bit of volatility, long story short, a very strong equity market in 2021. You know, we were sort of evaluating and all of us together wrestling with the pandemic, COVID-19, trying to understand what's happening with fiscal and monetary policy, and then all of that, as an influence on the markets. You can see some of the key data here on the first slide. Consumers were very active last year, a little bit because of stimulus check support, but a rise in spending above normal levels of spending, above normal levels of savings, interestingly. 6 million jobs created in 2021. GDP estimated to come in at 5.6%. That looming thing that we've talked about, and there are a variety of measures we track, but core PCE being one of the inflation measures, estimated to come in at 4.4%. I would describe it as a strong year for the economy, a strong year for the markets. We sort of end the year, though, with some uncertainty, and we're gonna get into it. We also end the year with elevated inflation, and that's gonna become an important theme as we go along here. Now, another article in the report is, and we typically do a couple special articles. This one was about how the pandemic has changed our world, and where do we see some of those changes kind of sticking, as we look forward. Here on page three, basically we acknowledge things like an elevated use of e-commerce. I think we're all that much more comfortable sitting on our browsers, sitting on our phones, ordering things, for delivery and having things show up very quickly. The idea that we're just that much more comfortable using e-commerce and other types of services were just sort of magnified and accelerated by the pandemic. Another great example is telehealth. Probably like many of you, I, of all the medical appointments I had, wellness appointments I'd have over the last year and a half or so, a number of them were telehealth appointments. Super convenient, right? You basically jump on, see your doctor, talk about things. If you have to go in for something, great, but a real sort of boost in efficiency and safety and certainly as it relates to the pandemic. We see that sticking around as well, maybe more selectively, but still, an important sort of advance and acceleration of a capability. Another thing that we're seeing are the early stages of extended reality. We're hearing the term metaverse and all that. I think the spirit of that is, you know, when the pandemic came around, some industries, take entertainment, for example, really had to pivot and try to figure out ways to deliver their services through to us in a more virtual way. Streaming became much more popular. You know, theater, obviously, attendance was way down. What we're really in what I would describe as the early innings of a shift where we're gonna see virtual reality and sort of a blended real and virtual reality, kinda come into play, everything from it influencing shopping to entertainment and, dare I say it, eventually business. Just be ready for that. Again, what's super interesting about it is the technology's there, right? The computing power and deep learning and all the things that are necessary to really kind of strengthen this idea of virtual reality becoming increasingly usable and real and more intuitive is right there and with us today. Now, a different lens in this article that we look through is the idea that some industries have been disrupted. Take, for example, labor markets. Obviously, we had the massive layoffs as a result of the shutdowns from the pandemic. Fortunately, quite a number of those jobs have been recovered, but there are also some other subtle things that have changed. We had a lot of people who maybe were on the bubble as to whether they would work or maybe stay home with kids or whatever, where especially with enhanced unemployment, et cetera, they got kinda used to not working. Think of that as sort of those people on that edge of that decision choosing to stay home. Another cohort was basically people right on the verge of retiring, who took the event as a motivation to go ahead and pull that trigger. That all results in just a slight shift in the labor market, and essentially that's important when it comes to trying to evaluate where we are going from an economic perspective. In any event, you know, again, we'll see, our forecast is for a strong economy still in 2022, but that labor market's important. Another factor is supply chains. Obviously, as it relates to shutdowns and factories and ports being more controlled, et cetera, there's been this real friction as it relates to supply chain and things getting delivered. You know, so on one hand, you know, we're trying to work our way through that, but on another hand, you're gonna hear the term increasingly of localized supply chains. That means businesses taking a look at where they get what they get to build their products and services, and maybe trying to come more local, and certain producers of those inputs, if you will, coming closer to their clients. A shift ultimately in how supply chains lay out with a little bit of a leaning more towards local availability. Finally, semiconductors. Basically, when we talk about computing, we talk about, you know, e-commerce, telehealth, everybody's got a phone, everybody's on the computer, the Internet's just sort of humming, cars that are smarter, et cetera, et cetera. Basically, at the heart of that, are semiconductors. Part of the supply chain friction was the fact that it was harder to get semiconductors and, you know, we basically need more produced. That means, again, that there are efforts going on, almost government-sponsored, let's say here in the U.S. or over in China, where they're looking at ways to try to strengthen local semiconductor production, and that's a change, you know. Essentially, we're gonna see more locally sourced capabilities. Think of it as a set of themes, topics, practices that were changed from the pandemic that are sticking, and in many cases, improving the way we live our lives. Now, another article that we get into is around geopolitics, geopolitical tension. Recall a few years ago, we produced what we call our geopolitical dashboard. It's almost this mental exercise of trying to frame out a number of risks or events that either kind of are happening or may happen, assign sort of a likelihood of it happening, and then its influence on the market. So here on page four, you know, things like D.C. gridlock. We, you know, saw the Democrats ultimately sweep Congress and the presidency, but there's still a little bit of gridlock because within the party, there's sort of that progressive versus moderate tension. Brian will get into that in a second. But you also see things like, you know, post-Brexit tension. Even though the EU and the U.K. have separated, they're still working through what that means in terms of living together next to each other, and you know, it's an ongoing sort of discussion, debate, and set of tensions that they're working through. You know, another obvious one is where the pandemic goes from here. Obviously, we're in a bit of a wave as it relates to Omicron, and you know, long story short is I think people are watching that carefully, but also worried about you know, other forms, you know, essentially, coming out that might be more severe. Those are the kinds of risks that we're tracking. In any event, you know, a dimension to this across a few of these different ideas is the idea of the U.S. and our relationships with other countries or regions. Take, for example, China. Take, for example, Russia. You know, long story short, it's an evolving thing. There's tension. Sometimes there's cooperation. Notably, Brian, I think was on one of the news shows this week to talk about that. Brian, let's use that as a way to kind of get you into the conversation here. I'd be interested in hearing from you when it comes to the Biden administration, kind of what they're thinking about in terms of foreign relations and what they're seeing in focus in the coming weeks and months. Welcome. Thanks, Michael. It's interesting because, you know, every president comes into office with a domestic agenda. Somewhere along the way, foreign policy intervenes. We've already seen it really this year or in 2021 with the situation out in Afghanistan. It's reassert that principle of foreign policy disrupting a president's agenda is kind of reasserting itself a little bit right now with the situation with Russia and Ukraine. Clearly, the Biden administration is still trying to push its Build Back Better agenda through and has domestic issues trying to get it through. The Russia situation comes along. It's been percolating for a while. It didn't just pop up. Actually, in some ways, it presents an opportunity for the administration, any administration, because an administration that can successfully navigate a foreign policy situation tends to see its approval numbers go up. That can translate into more political muscle to pursue a domestic agenda. It remains to be seen how that all plays out, but that certainly is playing into President Biden's domestic agenda. Excellent. Before we move on from this slide, what about China? I'll put you on the spot a little bit, but in terms of the relationship, how, you know, obviously, President Trump had a more aggressive approach with them, and we still have some of those sort of notions that came from him in place. But what do you think in terms of Biden, how he is or should or may be handling China? Let's back up a year ago, when the new administration was coming in. You know, there was a lot of questions about what would happen with the Trump era tariffs. My take at the beginning was they're not gonna go away, at least not immediately, and any changes will be on the edges. A year later, they're still in place, and there's no real momentum to change them. The business community is certainly looking for carve-outs and exemptions and take them down altogether. For domestic political reasons, the Biden administration is unlikely to do that. The tariffs, even though they come from a Republican administration, are pretty popular in Democratic circles. I think in the coming months, the administration may tweak some of the tariffs, but again, I think they get extended and kept in place in general measure for the foreseeable future. Got it. Okay. Appreciate that, and we'll keep an eye on that together. I wanna turn now to the article that you were kind enough to author in our report, really taking a step back and more broadly to Washington policy. You talked a bit about this shift from fiscal to more regulatory focus, and maybe you can walk us through what you're thinking. I'm particularly interested in you sharing with our viewers what's up with Build Back Better. It seems like we've been talking about Build Back Better for quite some time, and we're probably gonna talk about it for a few more months. It's kind of at make or break point now. We're in the early month, the first month of an election year in a closely divided Congress. It's kind of now or never. We ended the year with Senator Manchin basically saying that he was not supporting the iteration of Build Back Better that was on the table that had been passed by the House. That begs the question, okay, what do you do next? His main criticism of the bill was that there was a mismatch between revenues and spending. There's 10 years of revenue increase in the bill that pay for only 2-4 years on the program side. When those programs expire, they're popular, they'll be extended, but there's no new revenue coming in to back them up. That's the Manchin critique. He didn't explicitly call out the actual revenue proposals. I think he would have gone in a different direction, but that's not his main critique. I think investors have to look at this and you have two questions. One, is it gonna pass or not? Two, if it passes, what does it look like? Well, I've been growing more skeptical on whether it will pass. I had always thought that, to be honest, that Democrats would pass something in the end, because it's in their political interest to do so. Those odds are clearly diminishing. If something does pass, expect the tax side to look pretty much like it does now. There'll be some nibbling around the edges, but I don't think there are gonna be wholesale changes. You know, don't completely dismiss Build Back Better, and if it passes, kind of pay attention to what's in there. Some things still have to be filled out. The SALT deduction is an issue that has bedeviled Democrats for months. They haven't figured it out yet. They want something in there, but it's not there. They're not in agreement yet. Got it. Yeah, I mean, for a number of our clients, both the tax topics and related, the SALT topic is in keen focus. In any event, let's switch. You know, one of the things we've talked a lot about more broadly, and we'll get into the Fed policy in a moment, but is the idea that fiscal policy that we're sort of through the bulk of this historic support that the government has put forward to help with this recovery. What we mean by that is, hey, in 2022, as you pointed out in your article, you know, don't expect a lot more on the fiscal side, especially as it relates to big spending. Instead, the administration alternative, the agencies that it leads really with shifts in regulations that they control, to try to influence and implement some of its policies. Maybe you could take us through a few of those examples that you're seeing in 2022. Sure. Before I get to the regulatory side, just on the spending side, just let me flesh that out just a little bit. I mean, when we talk about COVID relief, if there's another round, and I don't think there will be, but there's very little chance that there's another round of checks coming. When we talk about the deceleration of fiscal stimulus, this is what we're talking about. There's no new round of checks. Even whatever Congress would pass in another round of COVID spending is gonna be minuscule compared to what we've seen in the past. The numbers that I've seen are definitely under $100 billion, and they're really targeted towards restaurant, leisure, health and fitness, gym owners. That's what it might look like if it goes forward. You know, no new checks, no new rounds for state and local governments. There's unspent money out there, don't get me wrong. It's not going to zero, but there's no new round coming through, big round. Let's pivot over to the regulatory side because the legislative agenda is gonna be a little quiet. The debate ongoing about voting rights and the filibuster and all that, but that's not really market-moving. After that, there will be some talk about antitrust legislation, and there is some bipartisan agreement on moving antitrust laws, new laws that are geared mostly at tech and social media, but still a long way before they get to the finish line and get something passed. That's probably for the summer, right before Labor Day at best. That doesn't mean that the Biden administration doesn't have tools at its disposal. They already have the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. They have the bank regulatory agencies. They have a whole host of agencies that they are still working on implementing their regulatory agenda. Certainly on tech and social media, most of that is probably gonna be geared in two ways. One is just on general public policy in terms of child protection and child access. The other is antitrust, which it affects a broad number of industries that the administration is looking at. In terms of new mergers being approved, the potential breakup, which I think is a low probability, but it's something that I always have my eye on. I mean, we've broken up large monopolies before. AT&T is one of them. Could it happen again? I suspect there is a growing view within the administration that it's time to use existing antitrust laws and at the same time update them for the digital age. Cryptocurrency, I think, is gonna be a fascinating area. It always is, but growing on the regulatory side, in a myriad of ways. Within the next couple of weeks, the Fed is gonna come out with a report on digital currencies, central bank digital currencies. Chairman Powell was testifying on the Hill this morning. I don't think it's gonna produce a set of recommendations. It's gonna be more asking questions of the public about what a central bank digital currency should look like. The SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the CFTC are both looking at the regulation of the exchanges, stablecoins as exchanges. Then you have the whole issue of Bitcoin ETFs. Bitcoin ETF futures have been approved. There's nothing for the spot market yet. Probably still a little bit away from that, but clearly an area that is growing in interest for the regulators. I mentioned, I think you have the bullet there that we put in about supply chains, and you mentioned that earlier. I think the talk in Washington is gonna be just that, talk about supply chains. I don't see a lot of action. I just don't see where the regulatory agreement is, and I think Congress's tools are pretty limited on what they can and cannot do on supply chain issues. I think most of the adjustments in supply chains are going to come from the private sector itself. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. I mean, I know that it's been in focus, but to your point, it's almost like they have bigger fish to fry and things to focus on in terms of their world. Hey, let's shift to the election. You know, we got it together on a session like this before this last election, and now here it's, like, blink, and here we are in 2022 staring down midterms. Why don't you give us your take both on the Senate and the House as you see this unfolding? I'll start with the House 'cause it's a lot easier. The chances of the House flipping to Republicans is very high. They only need five seats to flip the House. You know, based on historical trends, on how the party out of power has done in midterm elections, it's really easy to see those five seats flipping. President Biden's approval numbers are weak. They're in a territory that usually suggests a large swing to the opposition party. It's easy to see Republicans winning the House. Clearly the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey, even though Democrats kept New Jersey, you can see a large swing using those two states as bellwethers for next year. I should also point out we've just gone through the, or we're about to finish up, the redrawing of congressional districts. There's still a couple of questions. Democrats actually have done probably better in redistricting than a lot of people would have thought three, four, five months ago. Still the tailwinds behind Republicans are gonna be quite strong, so you're probably gonna see a big Republican year in the House. That doesn't translate into big gains in the Senate. Why? Because the Senate terms are staggered. They're six years. Only a third of the Senate is up at any given time. It's not a national election like the House is, where you have all 435 running. The Senate's only gonna be 34 seats this year. When you look at the map, where those states are, they're pretty good Biden territory. You know, I'll just throw out one state as an example, Illinois. Illinois is up this year. Not gonna see Illinois flip. Republicans have to have more seats to defend, too. It's just this is the class of 2016, where Republicans had a good year. They are up for re-election this year. Republicans are defending more seats, and that means they have fewer pickup opportunities. When I look at who's running, where the open seats are, how it all plays out, it's way too early to tell on how the Senate's going to play out. I can narrow it down to Democrats actually picking up two seats to Republicans gaining two seats. I think it's within that four-seat range. I just, you know, just to reiterate my point or enhance my point, I just go back, you know what, three years ago from now into the 2018 midterm elections, great year for Democrats, right? They retook the House, big gains. They lost seats in the Senate. There's historical precedent that the House and the Senate don't always go in lockstep. Yeah. Makes sense. I wanna come back to your views for 2022 in just a couple of minutes. I wanna move into a couple of the topical articles that we had in the report, just to sort of frame it out for our viewers, and then we'll get into the 2022 outlook. The first sort of topical piece was "how we invest," just to kind of remind everyone the work that we do on behalf of our financial advisors, and ultimately, you, our clients, is a body of work really around macroeconomic analysis, what's going on with the environment, what's going on with markets, how it's influencing them. Yet we take both a long and a medium and short-term view. A long-term view in the sense of developing what in the industry are called capital market assumptions. Think of it as very long-term forecast for the markets, both risk and return, and that will sort of be used in our financial planning, our asset allocation guidance, et cetera. We do a lot of work really bottom-up. It is a combination of sometimes investing directly in securities. We profile, for example, our approach to stock analysis and stock selection in the article, but also managed products. Think mutual funds, ETFs, or separately managed accounts. A great team that basically does a bunch of manager research to help us find what we believe to be the best at that, and that informs some of our recommendations and some of our discretionary management. I mentioned a little bit ago, we have, as we do all this work, we develop these major investment themes. We've listed here the bottom of page seven, those that we have in focus right now. Managing through economic recovery is what we've been dealing with since the pandemic. I mentioned shifting demographics, so the idea of a virtual world, that's part of what's called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Just think of it as us sort of framing out how we think about what's going on in the world, try to translate it to market and sometimes individual company and security behavior, as we do the work that we do. Now, another topical piece really relates to behavioral finance. An article around sort of the most common biases that investors face. The spirit of it is to say, you know, we're all sort of subject to things that may otherwise, in a theoretical sense, be irrational. You take, for example, loss aversion, a simple concept that people enjoy gains, but the symmetrical level of losses, they dislike a lot more than they like the gains. Or another would be herd mentality. Once you see somebody doing something, it's common to wanna go ahead and do that right alongside, and sometimes that results in sort of irrational demand for a particular investment or practice. In any event, we have a capability called the Financial ID. It's a questionnaire that you can take that will help you understand your own behavioral preferences. And that, you know, is a step one can take to kind of avoid being subject to some of these biases. A quick article on that. Now, let's get into the outlook. I actually wanna jump ahead, and then I'm gonna come back to page nine. On page ten, let me just lay out what we're seeing for 2022. We laid it out next to what has happened in 2021. First, when it comes to the anchor of the economy, right? GDP, real GDP, is estimated to be up 5.6% in 2021. We see above trend growth in 2022, but lower. 3.5%-4% is the forecast that we've put out for the year. We also are of the view that, while inflation may stay elevated for the first part of the year, we see it tempering some in the second half. Think of it as landing somewhere between 2.5%-3%. Now, that's above the Fed's 2% target. The Fed has said that they're gonna act here to raise rates, and we think that ultimately inflation will come down a little bit and stay under control. Now, the Fed has signaled three rate hikes in 2022. We think that that's probably about right. There's some speculation there could be 4, but I had a conversation with colleagues earlier today. It's an interesting thing because, you know, long story short, if they hike too quickly, then that slows everything down, which sort of mitigates the need to hike. Again, right now our forecast is for 3 Fed rate hikes, a quarter point each through the year. In any event, turning to the markets. Now, I'm gonna spend just a minute on the S&P 500. We tend to think in total return terms, right? The market was up 28.7%, defined by the S&P 500 index last year. We're basically forecasting a total return of 7%, which is actually that long-term capital market assumption I mentioned. We think it's gonna be about a typical year in terms of performance, which is pretty good, right? In terms of the index level, that translates to closing just above 5,000 at the end of the year. Importantly, we see in 2022 increased volatility this year. Imagine the possibility of a sort of a peak-to-trough during the year down 5% or even 10%, which is what would be called a correction. There really are a couple of reasons for that. One is the unknowns of the pandemic. We're facing Omicron. It's a big wave that we're all wrestling with. We know some self-selected, some mandated. There's been a decrease a little bit in activity, but it's also expected that this wave is going to be pretty quick, right? We'll be through it pretty quick. But there's gonna be uncertainty about that. That's gonna lead to volatility in the first part of the year, and we've already experienced that candidly. As we head towards the midterms, when you look at history, it's well proven that especially midterm elections in the months leading into and through the midterms end up being more volatile than the typical year. The reason really relates to sort of a recognition of the unknown of what might unfold based on who wins and how that affects policy and activity in Washington. Just as a historic pattern, we see volatility higher in midterm years, especially in the second half of the year. In any event, moving on to the other factors here, 10-year Treasury rate is a benchmark interest rate. We saw that going up a quarter to a half a percent. Interestingly, over the first few days, you know, 10 days or so of 2022, we're at 1.75%, basically. We blew above that over the last few trading days. Again, that's sort of a muted rise in rates. You know, in our view, it's related a little bit to the idea that even as we came to the end of the year, some expectation of that Fed increase was baked into the market rates. Again, a forecast of interest rates a little bit higher, but not dramatically so. I mentioned volatility being up. That's one way to gauge that is to watch how often we publish the Market Pulse publication. We do that any day the S&P 500 is up or down 2% or more. We did eight of those in 2021. We think we'll probably add 50% to that, 12 of them in 2022. We'll see how that unfolds. Then the final thing is we track what are called spreads, both the investment-grade bond market and high yield market. By sort of risk levels, spreads have been what are called tight, meaning low, which means that the market hasn't been too nervous in that incremental sort of pay that an investor gets or earning that you get to invest in something that isn't Treasury bonds, something more risky than that, has been on the lower end of history. We see those spreads widening out just a touch. Now, to turn back then to page nine, we evaluate, I mentioned those capital market assumptions, and develop long-term asset allocation guidance. Think of it as here's how we think a certain kind of client can invest. You kind of stick to it, rebalance to it. But we have a number of clients that say, I don't want just long-term thinking. I want medium and short-term thinking. We call that dynamic asset allocation. Given the environment, let me walk you through the leanings that we have to start the year. The first is when we look at the U.S. and non-U.S., we are underweight the U.S. and overweight non-U.S. with the idea that the non-U.S. market is gonna catch up a little bit relative to the strong performance here in the U.S. in 2021. Again, and that's related too to kind of the strength of the reopening going more global as we get further through the pandemic. Within the U.S., we are overweight value stocks, again, as a play towards recovery. Then within the large versus small space, we're overweight small cap, underweight large, overweight small, but with a subtlety of saying we think that's best implemented as it relates to active management. Meaning it's a, you know, fertile ground for a talented manager to find good value in the small cap space. Then on the fixed income side, we used to be overweight inflation protection securities in anticipation of higher inflation. We've gone back to neutral on that exposure and believing that inflation is gonna calm down a little bit. Then within fixed income more purely, we're underweight investment grade, incrementally overweight high yield. Again, for those investors that choose to implement that with active management. Same idea. In this kind of environment, a pretty fertile environment for high yield experts to go and find value in terms of managing money. Now, one of the things that I always talk about in our outlook is the idea that we know there's a reasonable chance we're going to be wrong. I always get a kick out of people making one point estimate, because as a statistician, you kind of know, yeah, chances are not going to be quite right. The way we frame that out is in two alternative scenarios, a bear scenario and a bull scenario. This year, we kind of frame that really across three topics that we think are going to influence the outcome. Listed here, first, the coronavirus pandemic, kind of an obvious one, right? The idea that we're learning how to live with the virus. Honestly, I think we'll get through this fast-paced Omicron spread pretty quickly. if that happens even more quickly than we think, that could be a bullish kind of event. On the bear side, it could be, well, maybe another variant comes along that's more troublesome. It's a lot about how we react to it, how governments and authorities react to it. I got the question in the system here as we are talking, well, what about innovation, let's say, with boosters. The idea, for example, that Pfizer will have an Omicron targeted booster. We do think the market responds to that, meaning every time we have an innovation, whether it's a vaccine or therapeutic, becomes more readily available, it has the effect, obviously on one hand, of improving things from a health perspective, but there's also a psyche effect, right? People just incrementally becoming more confident in what ultimately will be the future of being back well towards normal. It'll be rough getting there, but every innovation, in our view, has an impact. It's within that scenario analysis that we'll be evaluating things like innovation with vaccines and therapeutics. Anyway, the second sort of anchor for our view in terms of scenarios is inflation. It does relate to policy, which I'll get to in a second, but the bottom line is there's been sort of two camps. Inflation jumped up a lot attributed to frictions in supply chain, maybe a lot more money in people's hands and a bid up of demand. You know, the bottom line is the Fed's gonna have to be very careful on how it manages things. You know, our base case is that we'll see, you know, heightened inflation for a little bit longer and then it'll calm down. The bear case unfolds if it doesn't calm down, especially even given Fed action. The bull case in turn is it calms down more quickly than we think, right? Inflation is in focus. It's influencing people's behavior and emotion, and that's a key anchor. The third then is policy, and what we always wanna be careful about is policy misstep on the fiscal and monetary side. Imagine that Congress getting coordinated, and they actually push through a massive spending bill. You know, long story short, that's probably an inflationary effect, and that could have an influence. Another way we look at it is both sides, monetary and fiscal, are pulling back. The support is kind of being pulled back. We're all needing to learn to stand on our own as businesses and individuals, et cetera. The bottom line is, are we really ready for that? That's another lens that we're looking through. You know, you can also see, just to end on a positive here, a bull case where everybody gets it just right, you know. A scenario unfolds where it wasn't too much, and we work our way through the support that's been provided, and the markets and the economy just kinda keep humming. Brian, I want to turn back to you for one final question, and then we'll finish it up here. You know, obviously the end of the calendar year, it's always the time to take a fresh look forward. You mentioned the midterms and the likelihood, for example, that the House will go Democratic. Obviously, one of the influences of that is kind of the administration wrestling with trying to get Build Back Better done and some friction within the party. The question to you is, when we look forward into 2022, I assume the answer is yes. There'll be a focused effort by the administration to try to put some stakes in the ground and anchors to showing some progress. Is there a chance that the administration will materially improve its approval rating, for example, before the midterms? Will that, if they do, have an influence on the election? I think it goes to trying to energize the base. You know, in terms of trying to improve their prospects for at least holding down losses or you know, winning as many seats as possible, they probably wanna energize the base. That does lead them to the strategy of trying to get Build Back Better passed. They may have to break it up into smaller bills in order to do that. It may not pass. It's not going to pass in its current form, but certainly some effort to get it through. At this point, you know, I think the odds are kind of against them. Certainly, there is an eye on energizing the progressive Democratic base that is increasingly unhappy with what it sees as inaction by the Biden administration. I think their view is kind of misplaced, shortsighted, but that part of the party, which is gonna be critical to drive them to the polls and help Democrats, certainly there's going to be some kind of effort to convince them to stay on board. That kind of leads to one more effort, at least on Build Back Better. Got it. All right. Well, Brian, let me say, thank you very much for joining us today. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate the invitation. It's good to be with all of you. To our viewers, thanks so much for joining. Know that the team is hard at work on your behalf. Again, if you check out stifel.com, the individuals page, and go to the webinar link, there are links to our report, our video, this deck, and soon enough, a replay of this webinar. Thanks so much for joining.