Okay, as I was just told we are now getting to the good stuff according to Mr. Hult. We have set this up in segments and we certainly have an enjoyable time as we get to the fixed income electronic platform. It's my pleasure to introduce Billy Hult, the CEO of Tradeweb. Billy took over this year, but he's by no means a, you know, he's a pioneer of fixed income electronic. Is it 23 something years? Too long. Too long. You know, when we talk about where the theme of the conference is, you know, a celebration of electronic trading, this is an asset class that's still converting and still has a ways and still has promise and potential in my mind. Anyway, thank you, Billy, for participating. Thank you. He will participate in the panel as well. First question, maybe if you just give a backdrop. You know, we started off the year with certainly higher rates, less Fed, perspectively less Fed intervention, fixed income being a true asset class again. Now the bank crisis might have had some impact, but I guess for you Bill, if you can just give- Yeah. Billy, give us a view of the outlook on fixed income trading. Yeah, for sure. Go on. Thanks for having me, Rich, here. I don't think I'm the only one that's wondering if that fire is real. Yeah. It's about 100 degrees, especially like in the back of this, in the back of that room. you know, Yeah, you're spot on. Does this work? A little reverb back there. We started the year, you know, I was using the expression kind of natural cadence of the market. You know, we sometimes underestimate really how unprecedented, you know, 2022 really was. As we kind a hit January and February, you know, I was, you know, very conscious of kind of using the expression that it felt like the market was back into a very natural cadence. That all got kind of thrown out the window by the sort of 1st week, 2nd week in March, I remember very distinctly when I saw you in Florida, we were going through unprecedented- We were working in Florida. When we were working as hard as we were in Florida. We were, you know, really at a very unprecedented move in the marketplace when you think about what happened, you know, in the treasury markets and what was happening in the credit markets. You know, I think the reality is, from my perspective, Tradeweb's business performed exceptionally well at that moment in time. Specifically speaking, we set record upon record upon record in our rates markets, probably in a way that everyone here would have expected us to. I think what happened on the other side of that is pretty well known, but I think very interesting for everyone, which is I think the market shifted into much more of a risk-off marketplace as a consequence of what happened in March. I think April always has a little bit of what I would describe to everyone as a little bit of an idiosyncratic kind of tone to it. The good news, I would say, is that May absolutely was back into a little bit more of a risk-on moment in time in the marketplace. Our business have done exceptionally well. I'm sort of really looking forward to kind of getting back to this moment where we talk about the sort of like the new equilibrium of where we're at in the marketplace. From my perspective, you know, as CEO of Tradeweb super excited about where we're positioned and kind of where the trends on our businesses are going across the board. We'll talk more about this, you know, in this half hour. I'm sure it will come up a little bit in the panel. I think there's something about the sort of one-stop shopping around what Tradeweb offers its client base. If you really think about the fact that we're in as successful and as we are in the rates business, the absolute success that we've had in credit, picking up market share, our commitment to be in the ETF space, and while we've done all of those things, we've also built out a full-throttled market structure picture, as we've developed a retail business and a wholesale professional business. That's a lot. From my perspective, what that does is it gives us a lot of optionality as these markets continue to develop. A very exciting time, you know, in our world. Yeah. You highlight, Billy, the multi-asset, you know, different product and the different channels, the retail, wholesale. Yeah ... institutional. I purposely, as you mentioned, new CEO, I purposely went out of order of the question- Yeah Just to keep you on your toes. Threw me for a curve. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm gonna miss you, by the way. Say what? I'm gonna miss you. I will miss you too, Bill. We do have a question about the new CEO role. You know, you're experienced, you know, and done the job and, you know, spoke at conferences before taking over at the beginning of this year. What new things, you know, what roles have you sort of given to Tom Pluta the new CEO? What things have you given off, delegated, and what things do you spend more of your time on as now? Yeah the leader, deservingly so. Yeah, I think that's a great- It's a great question. I'll answer the question, I think, super bluntly, which I know a lot of people here know me, and I'll answer it super bluntly. I got great advice, early on. ... which was, as you become CEO of a company, be yourself. I decided very clearly that I was going to take that advice and be myself. I wasn't gonna go into a phone booth and come out a different person. What that meant from my perspective, and I'll say this in a, in a very straightforward way, was an exceptionally strong commitment to being external. That might be how I interact with investors, that might be how I interact with analysts, that might also be, for sure, 100%, how I interact with, you know, the biggest and most important clients of the company. I was going to set a tone for the company in terms of how I operated, that I made sure everyone realized was a priority. We're in the service business. We're a financial technology company, but we live and breathe in the service business, so I wanted to make sure I led with that, and that's something that I feel very, very strongly about. Obviously, there do need to be adjustments. I think, you know, in an interesting way, I'll describe it for you this way for a second, Rich, I think it takes some getting used to around putting yourself in a position where you are slightly less comfortable with something. Lee and I had had a very strong partnership for a very long time, as you know very well. I hadn't spent as much time, for example, on the technology side of the business, spending time with the technologists, spending time with our CTO, who is excellent. I really wanted to get out of my way early on in my tenure around spending time on things that I had not spent time with before. Tom was an excellent hire for us. I feel great about his landing at Tradeweb 20-odd years, running rates businesses at J.P. Morgan f irst language, real understanding of the markets that we live and breathe in. Sara Furber, who you know very well, our CFO, also off to a great start. From my perspective, one of the things as CEO that you really want to get right is, you know, the senior management team at the highest level, you really want to recreate and have that partnership and I'm feeling quite good about how our team is set up. I would say, Billy, that your willingness I don't think this, you had to put it at risk. Your willingness to communicate with investors has remained at stronger. I, you know, I learned early on in the process of Tradeweb going public, when you and I kind of, like, first met way back when, that, and I hope this is true, that the, you know, the investors and the community appreciates candor and bluntness. I was pretty willing early to kind a lead with that, which is you don't always get everything right, and so you have to be willing to talk about things that aren't working, as well as kind of just going into sort of infomercial world. I think the, the community around a company like Tradeweb is sophisticated. They know that rarely are there moments in time where everything is working, and so let's talk about things, you know, that aren't working as well. You know, you and I have had conversations about that. I think when you lead that way, I think, you know, hopefully, people do appreciate that. I think they do. Here's my example, and these guys are gonna whatever. My example is, right out here, we're gonna have a panel of was the Presidents' panel now it's the CEO panel. Mm-hmm. You don't see CEOs get up and debate, not that we're gonna debate. I think partly it's the personality meshes that work as well. There was no hesitation on Billy, as well as Chris Concannon and Mike Sobel from Trumid, to again do now a CEO panel rather than a president. That's true. You know, I think, for a second, if I can say this maybe as part of your comment, Rich, everyone is, you know, in my world, there has to be a level of very strong competitiveness. We'll be friendly, and we know each other well on the panel coming up. Afterwards, we'll go out and we'll try to, if not kill each other we'll try to, you know, compete for business. The headline, I think, is actually sort of different, and in some ways more important than that, which is. I've said this loudly, and you've heard me say this, the real competitor is still, from my perspective, in all of these businesses that Tradeweb lives in, is the old-fashioned way of doing business. It's the telephone, and it's still this sort of relentless need to change human behavior from acting like it's 1993 when it's 2023. That allows a little bit of, I think, some of the rapport that exists, because I think deep down, there's a like-mindedness that there is room in the space, and that there is a, one single real competitor out there, and that's the old way of doing business, and there's opportunity still around getting after and getting that business and that's where the real, the winner stakes are. The theme of the conference is a celebration of electronic trading and fixed income is still an opportunity that you. It's- -highlighted and talked about and- You know. -operated. Tradeweb, first market that we were in, everyone here knows very well US government bonds, right? The voice market share in government bonds is still fairly and really robust, right? The question, the obvious question is why, right? What I would describe to this room is that there are still different types of trades at moments in time that still revert back to the phone right? That might be super large market-moving, real capital R risk trades. It might be something where there is a expectation that there's a level of negotiation, you know? We'll spend a ton of time on really problem-solving and creating workflows to solve for that. I think one of the big shifts over the last few years, for sure, and you've heard us talk about this a lot, Rich, is really this kind of one-way train around what I would describe to the room is around kind of algorithmic trading or what we call a Tradeweb AiEX. Which is really the ability for the client base to consume and bring data into their search for liquidity on the system. A lot of times what that does is breaks down these big large market-moving trades that forever and ever have always been done on the phone where I can hear someone's voice on the other side into smaller trades more digestible trades and the client base is absolutely accelerating in that direction. From my perspective, that is an absolute advantage that we have as a company and a very smart move that we put in place a bunch of years ago to get behind all of that. It takes a little bit of guts would be a stretch, but it takes a little bit of confidence around a willingness to allow your client base to access your liquidity or your network in a less conventional way. It becomes much less about logging into Tradeweb and clicking that mouse and relying on the liquidity that exists as part of your network, and the biggest and most sophisticated clients are kind a running hard in that direction. I want to give you a chance to w e've already started specific on Tradeweb, but more the product opportunities and the growth. You talked about the algorithmic trading I know that's an area of growth but maybe interest rate swaps or other growth opportunities that you see? Yeah. To highlight to the investment. A couple of things, you know, good question. A couple of things I would say on that, Rich, really quickly. I mentioned the concept that in a very clear and strong way the arc of Tradeweb has always been about, I think, really understanding market structure and a commitment to build out, I think, a multipronged approach around market structure. What the heck does that mean? That basically means we were never just satisfied living in the client-dealer space and competing with Bloomberg. We early on felt that there were other opportunities for us as a company, what that meant was we were going to build out side-by-side businesses in the wholesale marketplace, where we felt like we could compete with our friend who I know is gonna be here later, Howard. It also meant a very strong move from our perspective, to get into the retail trading business. The reason why we did that was that we felt like we could compete in those businesses but the more important reason why we did that was that we felt like there would be absolute blending over time of these market structures. By making a decision to be in those markets, we would be essentially in a unique position. When I look at the world going forward, and I see some changes that have happened for example, obvious changes that I've had, for example, in credit, where the market structure has shifted and changed pretty dramatically over the years, through things like all-to-all trading, which we talk about a lot. I look at for example some headlines out there back to government bonds where there is as everyone knows here well, most likely impending regulation around all-to-all trading, but more importantly, I would say a absolute receding of certain types of perennial market makers in the space. From my, from my perspective, what that means is the opportunity for further blending of market structure, for example, in government bonds. When I look at the pieces that a company like Tradeweb has to offer around that, I am excited, and I see tremendous opportunity around execution there, right? Today, I am PIMCO and I go on Tradeweb, and maybe I access it the old-fashioned way with logging in and using a mouse but maybe I access it a little bit more in the way that I was describing before around something like AiEX. At the end of the day I have, you know, four or five dealers that I will send an inquiry to. My instinct is, and I would say strong instinct is that there's going to be a point in the future where that becomes, quote, unquote, like, not enough. Right? On PIMCO, I want broader access to liquidity. And by the way I want that access to include wholesale order books and I want it integrated. I don't want to have to get on an order book and have to fight it out with everyone else. I want it integrated into my workflow, and I want to be able to click and trade on it. That to me super interesting by the way, and I'm not I can kind of say this not totally guessing that that's what they want kind of knowing that that's what they want. I feel like there's, like, a tremendously interesting, you know, opportunity around that. Like, being in, being in the change business is fun. It's interesting, and things wind up developing truthfully, differently, a lot of times than you think they will. The change piece of it is always there. All you have to do is look at again, you know, a couple of examples. You just have to look at how the credit market has significantly changed very recently. And the government bond market has changed, dramatically. When you think about the role of the PTFs as real liquidity providers, to the banks, and you really kind of game theory where that business is going huge amounts of opportunity. Bill, you mentioned something. I know other companies say this, sort of rings home a bit to me when you say I know what they want. Like, I think one of the hallmarks of Tradeweb, both with you as well as with Lee, is that you listen to, if I've heard that once, I've heard it ten X from you. Yeah. It's, you know, I get the question asked a bit. I think no one in the room that I can see has kind of asked me this, but I get the question asked, which is a little bit of: Has the low-hanging fruit of all of this stuff been picked? I get the question a lot. It's a good question, and it's an interesting question. I have a very kind of strong emotional reaction sometimes to that question, which is like, if you were kind of in these shoes all the way through, you would really have an understanding that it was absolutely never low-hanging fruit. Like, absolutely never low-hanging because yes you had to go out and listen to customers, right? You had to really understand what they were saying and what they wanted. The meetings could be quick if you weren't picking up what they wanted. You had to be pretty on the screws around all of that stuff. As everybody here knows, we live in this amazingly interesting sort of balance between, you know, what the PIMCOs of the world wants, what the BlackRocks of the world want, what the Goldman Sachses and the J.P. Morgans of the world wants. These are trading businesses with significant outcomes around how you sort of create these rules of the road. You really have to be able to understand the balance of it all really well. Otherwise, you're going to tip it in one direction and it's absolutely not going to work. It is to your point and I appreciate the way you described it, Rich, there is a little bit of a I think an important kind of listening skill, but it's also a little bit of a where's the what am I listening to and how do I create this balance out there that I need to create? Because I am not going to be able to do everything that you want all the time. That's kind of... That's also interesting. I remember, I mean, we could talk now or sometime over, about 1,000 beers. You know, some cold rooms over the years. You know, we want to make. You know, Tradeweb wants to make the interest rate swap, you know, market electronic, you know, at a moment in time in the, you know, 2006, 2007, you know, when the mortgage market had gone electronic or the, and the government bond market had gone electronic. Like, wow, that's a bad idea. Like, I, you know, I might not call security like, right this second, but I'm considering it, right? Like, this is a voice market that we want to stay as a voice market. It takes a little bit of, you know, relentlessness to kind of hang in there on these ideas. You know, interestingly, around swaps what I would say is, it's a, it's a headline story around, you know, being early into something being in some ways wrong around the timing of it all, ultimately being exceptionally right because of the force of regulation that came through, as a consequence of the crisis. That's a big... That's a mouthful of stuff, kind of there. You know, in a great way, that's, you know, our biggest business now, the global swaps business, and it's an incredibly important business for us. That was like, you know, capital R, you know, resistance back in the day. Interesting. We have, the wedding crasher. He's been a consistent crasher of you. I, you know. The peer CEO. Yeah. Learn something. Yeah. Stay there, we'll teach you. No, I'm kidding. We have definitely veered off. I know your IR people are going to have this. Yeah. We veered off the... This is, I think the content is... Yeah more important. The conclusion we want to, you know, get, I don't know how many years we've known each other, plus 10, 15? Yeah. You've been 23 years at it or so. What are the things? What do you think? You've watched this behavior. You just talked about how you listen to clients, and it's a again, I think it's a skill of yours in Tradeweb. We don't know about, we'll learn whether it's a peer skill or not. The question, what new behaviors? You know, what surprised you most over the past five years as far as behaviors moving to electronics? What will investors be surprised at going forward, but that you would predict, you know, in the coming five years, what might change? We, in an interesting way talked about off script. We talked about the concept of, like, this real resistance that existed out there. Why was there resistance, right? The resistance was coming from the most obvious place in the world, which is, as these markets move electronically, it's harder for me to make money. Transparency is the enemy of, you know, my profit, right? I think one of the absolute shifts over the past few years, and Chris would 100% agree with me on this, is the sort of puncturing of that myth. As these markets have gotten significantly more electronic, and we can talk about maybe drawing the sort of entry point around the pandemic, the momentum was kind of clearly already there. I think that the way that the, you know, the client base of ours the very very important client base of ours, kind of truthfully sort of printed money in our space, is a significant story and a, and a deviation from this long-standing resistance thing. As I look into the future, the good news is, I think, you know, the attitudes and the sentiment around all of this have dramatically changed and there are facts and reasons as to why. I think that's maybe a little bit of a, it's not quite as an understood story, as it should be. What the Citadels of the world have been able to do which is essentially say, I am going to enter into this significantly competitive marketplace of US government bonds, or European government bonds, or global swaps. I am going to be able to compete with the J.P. Morgans, and the Goldman Sachses, and the Morgan Stanleys of the world. I am going to do that not through hiring and I love salespeople, but not through hiring 60 sales people. I'm going to do that through sophisticated technology. That's a big deal. Like, they're smart guys, right? Now they're gonna be looking, obviously, at credit. They're gonna be looking at other marketplaces, then you're gonna start having the sort of copycat kind of waves around that. That's, that's where we're headed. That's perfect. You gave us a view of what to look forward going to. I would wrap up and just say, you know, Billy's gonna be on the next panel, which will dive into more of these topics. As I retire, one of my regrets is to seeing we have fixed income electronics advances and more importantly how you do as a leader, which I know you'll do positively at Tradeweb. I have Chris knows this, standing in the back. I've been a very strong proponent that you can have friends in this business. I had for sure, you know, mixed emotions when you called me and tell me you were retiring. I thought I knew it couldn't wasn't because of me that you were retiring. I thought it might have been because of Chris. It could, yeah, it could have been. You've been excellent. Thank you. ... all the way through, so we appreciate- Thank you. your support a lot. Thank you. Thanks. We will follow up right next with the fixed income electronic panel, with Billy, as well as Chris Concannon, of MarketAxess, and Mike Sobel of Trumid. Thank you for joining us. You would think after all these years, he would get this down. Can we start on time? This is part of the program where I need to be on my toes, so to speak. Well your toes aren't touching. I know. You make it up. 15 years and no respect here. No, this is the panel I'll be blunt, I have the most fun at without question. Good. I also have to acknowledge that These CEOs now, it was the presidents' panel. You don't see us doing the CEOs of the exchanges together, the CEOs of the e-brokers. These guys are willing to come up and sort of talk about the issues and have fun and be a little bit sarcastic. You got in early. You set up this format years ago. Yeah. We saw it coming. We just up the ranks. We were lucky to get promoted, actually. Yeah. Drag each other up. We're just. We were gonna try to sit by rank, but we decided just to mix you up. Yeah. Who got promoted early, but anyway. That... you're hitting on the first question. Just, I think Billy, it was January first; Chris, April fourth, I believe? Third. Third. Okay, I'll give you the extra day. Mike, it's been a year. About a year, yeah. First question is, and this is a highly technical question but what's it like to be king now? What's it like to be leading the firm? We got into it a little bit, Billy, you know what's different? You know, what are your impressions of leading the firm and what's different? Billy? King would be. To say it's a massive stretch might not kind a get at the exact way to describe that. How are people treating you differently now that you're, I don't wanna say king again but CEO? I did notice something different. What did you notice? Everyone laughs at your jokes. Like, even the bad ones, and you see, you test people, and you see. There's a lot of bad ones. Yeah. Sorry, Billy. I think you're right. What I was gonna say is, like, if, you know, if people start really truthfully treating you differently, then you have some kind of real, you know, issue. What I would say is, I know you guys feel very similarly. Chemistry is not a willingness to agree. Chemistry is really a willingness to, like, disagree, right? I will have plenty of meetings, which is a version of what you're saying, Chris, around the kind of laughter of it. I'll have plenty of meetings where if I feel like there's too much agreement of what I'm saying, or ideas that I have, or opinions that I have, something's wrong. I absolutely, you know, day one, wanna make sure that I am setting a culture of, Please express your opinion, and please feel free to disagree with me. The mistake around it all is not hearing other views. It's an easy... No matter what office you wind up sitting in when you've been doing it for a while it's easy to be if not arrogant, to be dismissive. You really have to go out of your way to make sure that you are setting up a structure that allows for difference of opinions and people feeling really comfortable challenging you. That's, you know, that's something I think like, at a, at a high level, is, like, massively important, just in terms of, you know, making sure you get stuff right. You know, I think, we've got a relatively flat structure, and we work hard to keep it that way, and I think that is, you know, consistent with what Billy's saying. I think, you know, probably in the new role as king, which I agree, doesn't feel like that every day. It's probably the, you know, the newer folks in our organization, maybe probably 25-ish% of the headcount has probably joined since we, you know, shifted titles around a little bit since my big promotion, trying to make it clear to those folks that this is still a an environment that supports open disagreement, and if you've got something to say, just reach out kind of directly. You know, anyone who thinks that, there's some formal process for getting on my calendar or that, you know, my first cut at something is predisposed to be the right one, I think we actually have to make an effort to get through that in order to stay kind of agile, nimble, and just recognize the reality that the good ideas don't necessarily come from the top, and in fact, you know, most often probably come from someone who's, you know, got a different viewpoint or is newer to the subject or something like that. The other thing I would say is with respect to, you know, the king idea, the king idea or being kind of anointed, I think, and I'm sure, you know, you guys enjoy this as well. I think the credibility as a market operator, and this is institutionally, as a trustworthy market operator, provider of liquidity, technology partner, is more important than ever. We'll get into the market condition thing. You know, we ask our client base to invest their time and energy in what we're doing to lift a finger to connect to the new thing or give something a try, and that kind of demonstrated track record in the current kind of economic environment, I think is really more important than ever. If you were trying to go from nothing to critical mass today that's a lot whole lot harder than it was when, you know, when we all respectively were doing it in the past. Go ahead. Improve upon that. No, I can't. I mean, the candor is definitely key. I just think we all have stakeholders that we have to. You can't be king to, right? Whether it's your board, whether it's your founders of the company, we have that. More importantly, we operate in an environment where you have massive dealers and massive investor clients that really tell you what they want and how the market structure should work, and so we're constantly catering to the needs of our clients, and it just doesn't feel like you're ever king. You're really running around trying to build things for people globally. The transition is not what most people would think. I hope when you go home, you can still be king. No way. That's... That's the worst place you can be. You know, I joke about it, but the three have been open to communications, I think that's a little bit of an indication of the open communications at your company that you're encouraging. I think we totally get the founder, and the other stakeholder aspect of it as well. Let's get beyond the king thing. I think the most questions we get, or the primary question is: Well, you know, what's the market outlook? Billy, we talked about a little bit. Mm-hmm. I guess maybe a little bit different, is there any other environments? You know, you're experienced guys, whether it be in this asset class or not, what, you know, give us the outlook on the environment. Is this similar to any other environments that you can draw some parallels or analogies or, and so forth? Because it seems like everybody, the investment community is searching and trying to get their arm and a good understanding of what the outlook is for volumes and the healthier businesses. I mean, I'm shocked at when you look at the economic environment and you hear from CEOs, outside of financial services, talking about layoffs and challenges ahead, and we still have a banking crisis. There's still $8 billion leaving regional banks a day. We're not headed into a great place. Yet you have the VIX is sitting at 14 today. So I just think the market is trying to read the environment, and they're not sure. We had that a little bit, not a near death, but Washington wasn't helping with the debt ceiling crisis, and the Fed's sending signals that are confusing right now. I just think, certainly, the clients that I've talked to, there's no investment conviction right now. There's a lot of people waiting to see what's the next shoe to drop. Yeah, I think the credit market environment, the environment for corporate bonds is, you know, maybe surprisingly so, is kind a decent in that, particularly, yields are hundreds of basis points higher than they were a few years ago. I think we do see that in, you know, alternative investors, investor types including outside of the US, looking at US fixed income and it's about as attractive as it's been in, you know, in quite some time. In the, call it intermediate term, I think that is a positive for overall interest in and participation in the asset class. That's good. You know, it is difficult to reconcile with a uncertain economic outlook. When we're thinking about, you know, building and running businesses, and again, getting our clients sell side by side to invest with us and do the bits of work that it does take to evolve protocols and technology, that is a real challenge. Budgets are constrained headcount is constrained. You know, we are, while the VIX and the S&P, really, no asset class would suggest this, we're kind of living in, operating in a quasi-recessionary environment. That is definitely tricky. I think it just means it's super important to kind a be credible and deliver for clients and get closer to your clients. At some point, we kind of come out of this and, you know, we'll benefit from the hard work that was done when things don't feel so great. That's right. I think if, I thought to myself: What's like a, what's like a bad environment? What's an environment that's, like, not good for kind a, you know, anyone here up on the stage? I would probably say, an environment where there is kind of Fed policy in the mix that keeps rates at essentially 0. I would probably say, do it in a way where the Fed is large and a little bit clogging the base paths of the liquidity in the markets that we kind of exist in. I would say, probably put some regulation in the mix that kind a reduces the ability for our clients to kind of warehouse risk. That's how I would think of, like, a bad environment. The good news is, we're a long way from that, right? In significant ways, we're way past all of that. When you ask a good question, which I think is really good, around, like, what does this environment feel like? I'm not really sure. I can't really quite pinpoint it. There's a little bit of. You know, we've been around doing this for long enough. There's a little bit of, like, 1994, 1995, if you think about the way that the Fed hiked rates last year, that feels very similar to some of the things that happened in 1994, 1995. Lower base rate now even more acceleration, a little bit of that, and that was obviously the headline, kind of like Kidder Peabody news, and then interesting things that happened, you know, around banking, like, way back then. The reality is, we talked about this a little bit before, we're getting to this, like, new point around, like, where's the equilibrium gonna kind a land in? I use the expression, kind of natural cadence. We're getting back to this natural cadence again. This environment is a really good environment for our businesses now, kind of across the board. Now that we're all kind of breathing again, and we feel like we're back into that, a little bit more of that equilibrium, that's good. This is an excellent environment for our business. I think that's a good point to contrast, Billy, is that, you know, it may not be right at the moment, as strong as right at the beginning because you have the debt ceiling. Yeah. -the bank rate. Compare it to the zero rate environment, the interventionist Fed, you know, you guys are coming in with the tailwinds behind you, so to speak. Yeah, I've recently spent the last four months going out to see clients. The theme coming back from the clients was clearly short-term concern, long-term bullishness. Like, when it comes to the bond market, bonds are definitely cool again. People feel t he big investors that held massive positions in bond funds are obviously quite excited what's to come but very challenged by the current environment. You can see that in the numbers. You know, actually, to that point, it is likely, and I think we're seeing this the tourists for lack of a better term in the bond market, which is just in the credit market, which is just to say the investors that choose globally which asset class to be in, that right now are, as they should be, compelled by interested in US fixed income. Oftentimes, those will be the drivers of kind of evolution because they are aware of the cool things that one can do the ways you leverage data, the ways that you engage in and make trading decisions in other asset classes. They are a tailwind, I think, to kind of the evolution that we're all driving. I think that probably continues for the next couple of years. Back to your first question around kind of the transition to becoming a CEO. It's one of the things has to be about what are the right messages that you deliver to your company. I think part of that message has to be around control, what you can control, and kind of leave other stuff in the rearview mirror a little bit. No one in this room can control market environments. We can control how we react, how we build, how we innovate, how we make sure that we are on the right side of change. That's a little bit about what you're describing. It's you have to be on the right side of these kind of changes that are occurring. No one is building a business today in the markets that we operate in around hiring tons of bodies. That's like the old way of transacting in the market. At a minimum what we have to talk about and think about is, you know, 100% being committed to being on the absolute right side of this one-way train. You know, with all of the opportunity, and I was mentioning this when Chris walked in, you know, before, with all of the opportunity to get after the number one competitor that still exists in our world, which is the phone and the old way of doing business and the types of trades that still get done, phone-based. That's like tremendous, you know, opportunity. I don't have anything. I agree. This is, well, like the tension you talked about, the agreement, the friction. We're all on the same side. Yeah. If I got this right, the outlook is more positive. You're finally at the cool kids table- Yeah. -after all the- All these years. Exactly. -scratching at the table. So- I would say, Sorry, we're still on, like, your first question. We should just run this panel ourselves. You've tried to do that in the past. Get ready for next year. No, if you look at the Q1, it has very interesting attributes, particularly around velocity of trading. The Q1, absent the March calamity, felt like a very bullish bond market. All the things that we just talked about, it was real in the Q1. We're now in a short-term holding pattern, given some of the challenges. I do feel that coming back that velocity in the market coming back. That excites me with even cash moving into the bond market, as Mike mentioned, that's just going to continue. You've seen, maybe in the last six to 12 months, the market really change. You know, you had a little high yield run. You had the beginning of the year was strong. We were at record levels, and then you had the banking crisis. You each have strengths and certain protocols. I think that's the next question that I get asked most by investors, after the outlook is, you know, what protocol, what's working these days? What will work in sort of the short to medium term future? You know, you got all-to-all strengths. You got portfolio trading strengths you got block trading strengths. What's working and what might take a little more of the return to normal market environment to get back to scale? Well, the phone clearly works. It's annoying. Well. Certainly, you know, the one thing we probably all saw even in the, in the rate space, was the phone was active during the banking crisis. That was the default, going back to the phone. Yeah, definitely. There was a default back to the phone, particularly around trading Credit Suisse bonds. Anything distressed tends to go to the phone. I think we're still at the beginning and Billy really talked about it during his fireside chat. Like, it's all evolving pretty rapidly. I don't think there's one protocol for these markets. Think about how diverse the products that we all trade and the liquidity curve is quite steep in those products from the most liquid to some that don't trade. So each protocol is going to serve the different product liquidity and then end client demand. What we're seeing is diversity of protocols is at an all-time high, meaning RFQ is going to continue to be the dominant electronic solution, but RFM, request for market, streaming prices, it's different than RFM. All of this is coming a true order book, like, that's all gonna play out in the fixed income market. It's different for each product. Treasuries already has order book, it has streaming prices, it has RFQ. It's all kind of changing and evolving. Yeah, I agree with that. Honestly, I think all the protocols are working. RFQ is, you know, has been the kind of the law of the land for quite some time. Two-thirds of all electronic trades or so are RFQ. That probably isn't gonna change materially. Other protocols are growing, will continue to grow. You know, look, obviously, we're just announced we are doing RFQ as well, so we're excited about it. I think there are growth prospects. I think there's some really logical reasons and evidence that bigger-sized trades are, you know, becoming increasingly comfortable to do via RFQ. You know, I think the reason when asked that, investors, market participants continue to pick up the phone is large trades and a sense that information is somehow better handled and managed over the phone. I don't think either of those are kind of permanent states of affairs. Those are both, you know, I would argue, like, untrue statements. You know, improvements in the protocols, better handling of information and data that certainly technology is well equipped to provide, will, you know, I think, continue to expand the use case of electronic trading generally. Totally agree with Chris. It's that, you know, it's the ecosystem of protocols and the ability to move between them and have them, actually kind of cross-pollinate each other. Information coming in through one way, you know, enhances your ability to do kind of something else. That's kind of the key to the future from our perspective. Very quickly, picking up what Mike said, completely agree. Ecosystem of protocols, like, these are complicated products, complicated protocols. Have to get them all right. Half a step back, from my perspective, it's a absolute combination of everything we just described around that diversity of protocols. Again, half a step back, from my perspective, it is also about this sort of, like, ability to deliver to your client base, like, this massive diversity of product offerings, right? Jokingly, one of the reasons why this group can get along so well is because I'm gonna have an elbow contest with our friend, Howard, later this afternoon, because I compete directly with his business all the time. I love how Tradeweb is set up from a diversity of product offerings, right? To be as strong as we are in the rates business, to be able to figure out a way to compete with my friends in credit, to build a global swaps business, to get into the ETF business. This massive diversity of products, I think, is really important. At the same time, obviously, building out the scale that I mentioned before around wholesale and retail, I think is interesting and important. Got it. We are getting close on time, but there's actually two things I want to get... If we can keep your thoughtful, well-spoken questions to a concise, but anyway, market share. Just like that question. [crosstalk] It took a long meeting. It took longer to get out than the question. Yeah, we're out of time. Just give me a yes or no. Quickly, market share, what's good about it? What's bad about it? You know, what does it tell about the business, in 30 seconds? Market share is good. More market share is good. Yeah, reporting of market share, good, bad? Is it? Reporting of it or- Yeah. You know what I mean. Like, should investors pay attention to market share changes? What does it really tell you about the platforms? I think it's more important to look at trend lines, not short-term market share movement in all of our businesses. Good. There's so many, so much noise. Good. Sorry, I was loud. We are proud of market share. I agree, it's a barometer. It's not the be-all, end-all. We spend a lot of time thinking and talking about the kind of activation of the network, what type of liquidity is there, diversity of liquidity. I don't think. His is much longer than mine. I don't think clients should or do care about, do you have X%, Y market share, Y%? It's like, can I get a trade done, and who am I trading with? More information, generally better than less. I get all that. I do agree with, you know, both of you that sometimes it feels like there's just a little bit too much static and scrutiny on moments in time. There are times, and you know this better than anyone, Rich, where we'll be doing our version of an earnings call, and it seems like, you know, the first four questions are always about, you know, a half percent move in high yield, et cetera. I get it. I like it, and I understand why everyone is focusing on that. My instinct is if we could get to the bigger picture of it all and see where these trends are going, it ultimately is a better conversation because, again, are you on the right side of all of this change or not? To me, that's, like, the most important thing. Fair point. Last question. when do we hit the, we have it, the capitulation, the move towards automation, the inflection point? Is it something that... we've got to be short and concise, but is this something we, investors, the community, the investment community should be watching? Well, we are cutting into my fireside chat. I know. I just want to point out. [crosstalk] I'm trying to fight for your time. Let's just roll right into it. Just hang out up here for your fireside chat. No, I did invite you guys. Look, If you look at other asset classes that went through this, absent of a regulatory market structure change, you don't know the point of capitulation when you're in it. You only know it from looking back in history and go, "That must have been the point of capitulation. Good point. You know, I've heard this said a number of times, leaders of both buy side and sell side institutions on the trading side, that the, you know, the credit trader of the future is obviously tech-aware, data-aware. I think it's happening. This asset class will evolve differently than others. It's going to be a hybrid of humans and technology. You know, intelligence doesn't need to be artificial intelligence. It's just intelligence through data, with humans playing a very important role. You know, I don't know that there is a point of capitulation. It's a steady and pretty fast trend. Why is there certain types of business that still gets done in 2023 like it's 1993? Why? Focus on the why. Focus on the types of trades that are still done the old-fashioned way, and ask us and get fine-tuned around how we are building protocols and getting after that kind of business. I think from all of our perspective, that's a massive opportunity. The larger sized trades? Yes. Okay. Unfortunately, we could do this panel for longer, put it that way, but we'd cut into Chris's time. That's. Yeah. That's probably- We don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. I want to thank. These three are open to debating and talking about the issues as a panel, you don't see that in other industries or other asset classes. Thank you. Again, my regret is that I won't see how this develops over the next year and the leadership skills of this. I'm sure you'll be- This time next year, you'll be... Set your calendar.