Michael: If you just held U.S. stocks last decade, you've done very, very well. I don't think that's going to be the case for the next ten years. When we look back ten years from now, we'd be like, Oh, my guys. U.S. markets have outperformed by double. I don't think that's going to happen.
Announcer: Welcome to TDAM talks, where we bring you expert insights from tedious management senior investment leaders hosted by Ingrid MacIntosh. Each episode explores key market trends investment strategies and opportunities to help you navigate today's ever evolving landscape with confidence.
Ingrid: Today on TDAM Talks, we welcome back audience favorites Michael Craig and Anna Castro to break down the biggest issues shaping financial markets right now. Michael is head of asset allocation here at TD Asset Management. And Anna, along with her team, oversee more than a hundred billion in client solutions, from inflation to interest rates to the shifting landscape of Canada-U.S. trade.
Ingrid: We're going to be exploring what's driving the market movements and what investors should be watching for. And we all know that saving investing is a long term proposition. But with so much noise in the markets as we're heading into the RSP season, investors may be tempted to hold back. So we're going to dive into why waiting on the sidelines in cash might not be the best strategy.
We're gonna talk about the role of multi-asset investing, and we're going to look at how investors can build resilient portfolios for the future. Michael And welcome back to the podcast.
Anna: Hi, thanks for having us.
Michael: Morning, Ingrid. Thanks for having us.
Ingrid: Okay. So let's dig in. Let's look at the current landscape for our listeners. We are recording this right at the end of January. Michael, what's your take on where the markets are right now?
Michael: Well, actually, it's been a strong start to the year. Most markets have rallied. What's interesting is, as you have seen some for the near-term leadership change. Europe is actually outperforming the U.S. right now within the U.S., the broad market is is outperforming the narrow winners that were the winners of last year. So there has been a bit of rotation.
Michael: Broadly speaking, our view would be that we should see an okay year in the markets. I don't think it will be as strong as 2023 or 2024, but nevertheless, a strong year in both fixed income and equities. But, you know, there is some obviously some some idiosyncratic risks that we're going to have to work through given the administration and the rapidly changing geopolitics.
So our expectation is good year. But but there are some some probably some hiccups along the way that we'll we'll we'll have to work through.
Ingrid: And maybe a little bit more broadly based than than the last couple of years. Before we move on, is going to talk a little bit on you know, inflation and interest rates. We had the Bank of Canada yesterday drop our overnight rate to 3%. The Fed had held steady that tapering investor sentiment.
Michael: So first off, last year there was a quite a bit of cutting both in the Bank of Canada, Fed, ECB that will wash into this year into stronger growth. So we've already have some stimulative energy in the markets from previous cuts. Canada is still on pace for another two cuts this year to bring us down to 50. And the U.S. has two in the in that are expected, which will bring their rates down to two instead of 4%.
So that is a very positive because it's going to lead to easier financing conditions and it would be quite similar for the economy. So on the growth side of the story, it's actually okay on inflation. We're still the probably the nearing the end in the process of a disinflationary environment, still have a bit more to go in the US.
So our expectation for this year is that inflation will be somewhat benign and come down a little lower. But certainly from a strategic three or five year perspective, inflation volatility is still a tremendous risk and something we think will materialize. Again, I don't think it'll be a story for 2025, but is something that we're spending a lot of energy on in terms of how we set up for for future years.
Ingrid: And just put a little bit more in that thread. When we think about the change in the rate environment, does that have an impact on specific sectors? I know you and I were talking a little bit about the center from a sector performance standpoint. Does the the interest rate environment play into that?
Anna: Yes, it does. And so you've seen as well you have like interest rate sensitive sectors do better. In the past few months, you've seen a broadening as well. Like while technological developments has led to Mike seven outperforming or more high growth technology stocks outperforming, you're seeing the benefits of lower rates and the perception of lower rates in the future.
Impact financials, even smaller or mid-cap companies. You've also seen the not just on the rate side, you have two themes. It's interest rates. That's you know, you've had global synchronized easing. You have more global central banks cutting than hiking. And so that's flowing in through the system. But you've also had at the same timeframe, a lot of technological developments that are not just staying within the technological companies, but also that say industrial companies, etc..
So we're seeing a lot of different, I would say, broadening of sector performance on the equity side as well as on the fixed income.
Ingrid: We're recording this podcast just days before tariff eve, if you will, and we know that trade between Canada and the U.S. plays a pretty crucial role in shaping our economic growth. How are we thinking about the current trade dynamics and the potential impact on markets and investors?
Michael: So I might sound a bit flippant, but I think that the the tariff threats between the US and Canada is really going to be a nothing burger. This is all about, you know, we have to think about, you know, you think about these things in terms of trade, but this is really about trade and things that the Americans want, which are increased border security, both Mexico and Canada, and for in Canada's sake, more spend on military.
And that's and the stick is they are using or trade. If you actually break down the trading relationship between the U.S. and Canada first, we are running a surplus. But for every dollar that we buy, we're and for every dollar we sell, we are buying $0.80 of U.S. goods. Now, it's not as much of a of a size to the US economy.
So the Americans aren't as reliant on this. But nevertheless, it's much more of a balanced trade relationship. Secondly, one third of our goods sent to the US are commodity based. So you know, you're not going to replace that with domestic production in the U.S. They need oil, they need goal. They need rare earth, etc., etc.. So if you actually remove that, we're actually trade deficit with Americans.
And third, much of the trade that the Americans have been really focused on has been on air areas or industries, and they're trying to develop national champions are we are not exporting goods to the US where they are necessarily going to be better, but production. So look, I'm not saying it could happen. You know, I think worst case is you might see a 5% tariff come next week as a starting point in order to extract those concessions on border and military.
The bigger issue will be once they've kind of moved on from North America and start approaching Asia, China and Europe, where the trade relationship is much more unbalanced. And there are certainly some challenges that need to be worked out through there. So I think that the market has gotten itself quite worked up. Canadian dollar was very, very weak, by the way.
The Canadian dollar sold off 20% versus 2021 versus U.S. dollar. So we've already had a huge tailwind in terms of trade. If we see any tariffs coming through, we're going to see more weakness in the dollar. But I think we are starting to we're getting to kind of generational lows where we're likely not to see. I don't think the Canadian dollar is going to be on a six handle in five years time.
I think we're much higher. And so so I think there's a lot of angst right now, but I don't think it's it's nearly is going to be as far as much fireworks as people are worried about.
Ingrid: And again, scratch a little bit deeper on that and this sort of cross border narrative with this type of angst. What are the sectors that are getting hit the most out of the concern? Like, how do we think about that?
Michael: Well, the irony about this is that is if there is tariffs, it's very bad for Canadian growth. But a lot of Canadian industrials have large operations in the US and they're just going to shift production south. So I actually don't think is nearly is the end of the world for the Canadian stock market. It's very bad for the accounting economy.
It'd be very bad for jobs in particular in Ontario and Quebec. But in terms of actual production or companies, I think what you'll see is you'll see a just a shift of production to the U.S. It's going to create some inflationary pressures in the U.S. for sure. But I think that's kind of where I would see things versus and certainly smaller companies that are public could see some real stress.
But again, I think this is really a an economic story, not a market story.
Anna: So maybe I'll add to that. So there's a lot of fluid things that's going to happen in policy and there's going to be a lot of headline risk. So if we go back to the prior Trump presidency, like in a given year, he hope he would have a thousand tweets. And so being unpredictable is what you can predict at this moment.
But then when we think about how we analyze the situation, we're assessing the situation. There could be announcements of tariffs to bring people to the table to negotiate. But it depends really depends on the implementation magnitude and timing. So there's a lot of moving parts. And so while we remain vigilant on that, I also want to highlight some positives on the Canadian side.
So in the U.S., it's very evident for and he wants the leadership, the presidency there wants to make sure that you have strong U.S. economic growth. His constituents are happy in Canada. We do have some positive drivers to help us, like in the sense that you have a divergence in central bank policy because of we have had slowness in Canada.
We have less worries about inflation because demand has softened, which means that our central bank is more committed and it's more as more aggressive in cutting rates that would be very positive for Canadian bonds, especially kind of young government bonds. So we have those in the portfolio that could actually aggressive cutting of rates could also address the risks of our recession, risk at the tail as well, and address any economic shock.
So there are some levers there. It really depends on how timing, magnitude and action could be, because in a way, what I'm highlighting is that while it feels very uncomfortable right now, there could be contrarian opportunities out there depending on the sequence of events and actions. Out.
Ingrid: Yeah, I think you're really sort of hitting on the the opportunistic side of the story, like when the market has that noise, if you got the ability to do the research, take it down. That's actually creating the dislocation, creates the opportunities, right? It's a great lead into sort of a narrative around diversification and, you know, the last couple of years, the diversification, you know, either broad market with the MAG seven within the U.S. or even more broadly across asset classes.
It wasn't necessarily your friend in the short run, but we know that it is in the long run. Can we talk a little bit about the criticality of diversification in a time like now?
Anna: So maybe to start off like even taking a step back in years before when we started to evolve our investment strategies, we really wanted to have all the tools and investment strategies available for a world war, and there's increased volatility on the levels and sources of growth and inflation. And the reason for that is because there are technological developments that can change things, demographics and also the rising geopolitics.
I can I will not be forecasting how equity markets will end this year, but what I am certain is that we have a strong theme of globalization compared to what has happened to our prior decade. And because of that, it is very important that we diversify sources of investment, return growth, income and capital preservation. So that's why we are looking at not just where asset, it's not just about equity versus fixed income, but it's about different countries, sectors, types of companies, what business models are they're at even in private and public type of assets.
And that's why we've also incorporated through the past few years growing private alternative. So these are investments on the real estate infrastructure, public alternative such as commodities and those that are more active and derivatives in the gold is not. You just put different things in the portfolio for diversification sake, but really the goal is how do you infused portfolio despite all these macroeconomic external moves as the environment changes, how do you make sure that you have sources of returns in the portfolio that we'll have in the longer term drive growth, capital preservation and, you know, like the income and inflation protection as well.
Michael: And maybe just to, you know, animate some really important points about diversification. What I do think is important with what's happening right now is what changes will threats of tariffs enact on countries that are facing them. So in Canada, we still have trade barriers between provinces, which is insane. In Canada, we might want to think about how do we increase aggregate demand to start to start demanding Canadian produced goods?
Do we start thinking about more energy production and delivering natural gas to Asia to replace coal, where we're going to be forced to think about new markets, new customers? Because quite frankly, our largest got our world to comfortable and our largest customer might not be as reliable as we once thought. Same will happen in Asia, same will happen in Europe.
And ultimately, if you have start having policies that are a bit more pro-growth and countries are a little bit less reliant on aggregate U.S. demand, which is imbalance, there is an issue here not saying American policy is wrong. I'm just saying there is going to be an interesting shift in thinking in terms of how countries think about growth is if you think about, you know, GDP, we have two more levers.
You can either use consumption or investments to make up for lost exports. That will that really means tax cuts to ensure consumption or investment to to to drive growth. These are all being a necessary positive for those markets. And so this is why diversification needs to be very, very interesting. We are, I think, going to go away. We've had a if you just held U.S. stocks last decade, you've done very, very well.
I don't think that's going to be the case for the next ten years. When we look back ten years from now, we'd be like, Oh, my guys, U.S. markets have outperformed by double. I don't think it's going to happen. And so this is where it's really important to think about more broadly, about where the options are outside of just North America and around and in the world.
Anna: And maybe just to add to that, it also highlights the value of having an active and disciplined team with a bench strength. So like we we benefit from having over 400 individuals both on the investment and risk team all over the world doing their work every day, like, look, meeting companies, talking to, you know, government leaders, you know, different types of research, resource expertise going to the ground just from the clients, their assets, you know, their competition, etc., doing all these analysis to not just rely on headlines or an economic release or whatever the wind is blowing for us to make a decision for the long term.
And it's a lot of blocking, tackling, digging into that. And then so that active management, that ability to to do this, that skill, that discipline, that rigor as well as overlaying technologic tools. So for example, like over the past three years in our team, we've invested in different scientific methodologies to help us do analytical scenario OHS, to help the portfolio perform better as well as to look for ideas in the future, as well as address any risks that's coming out there.
So while Michael talked about certain scenarios and probabilities, we're definitely not dismissive of these headlines, but what we want to make sure so we're not reactionary.
Ingrid: Yeah, and I think it's great call out. And especially as we're entering, you know, the the peak hours peak season right now, the thing that keeps me awake often is when we start to see headlines that are a little concerning or the road gets bumpy at this time of year when people are making their decisions about how much of their money they're going to put away to pay their future selves and build the life that they want, you can pull them back a little bit and maybe you'll do a little sidestep here just because it's timely.
Ingrid: Earlier this week, you know, deep secret the the headlines that we saw real volatility in the market that tends to rattle people. Can you talk a little bit about that and just how people think about these moments where a single company, a single headline can be so profoundly impactful on the market?
Anna: It's really challenging expectation, assumption. So it's about a Chinese artificial intelligence company coming up with a like almost a version of a chat chip that's open sourced, that is developed cheaper. So in the end, as well as its reasoning seems better and does it faster, so when you think about that, it questions what is being expected in terms of the investment in CapEx for artificial intelligence and the But on the positive side, that's on the negative side.
But on the positive side, it could actually potentially accelerate adoption. So there's pros and cons to this and it's still so early stages and then and there's so many new information coming up. What we're seeing is that, you know, like if you are in technology by itself, continue to innovate. And like when you go back in time, there's all this obsolescence risk or competition.
And so that's why it's so important when we're analyzing companies, whether it's in technology or how people are making decisions to really anticipate what risks can come up on the on the left field and determine how the implications could be. Right now, you have a big reason why it made people very nervous, too. It's also challenging valuations or the high expectations for multiple years of growth for certain companies.
But for us, I'm saying that we are we have a team that's actually digging into that like actually one of our just colleagues is actually now having more calls, more meetings, like making sure we're looking at all angles of this story to make sure that we understand what the downstream implications could be. Again, not overreacting, being very thoughtful, but also not being very dismissive about it.
Michael: Yeah, And it's important, like there's the company specific risk. This isn't necessarily a negative economic shock. It's a very positive economic shock, because what is telling you is the adoption of AI could actually be done far cheaper and quicker than we would have otherwise thought. So certainly those companies that might have thought they had a moat and they were, you know, I was going to go through them.
There is a risk there. But this is this is very much positive for productivity. So the.
Ingrid: Benefits also which.
Michael: Well, benefits and benefits, benefits far more companies that are being affected negatively. So I would use the analogy, I'm not it's this is what investors need to come to kind of uncover conclusion is this the railroads car fiber optic cable moment where you had over, you know, railroads were a transformational development, but railroad investing was actually horrible. Cars have totally changed how we are transportation, but the returns from Ford since inception actually not very good.
Michael: And then on fiber optics, you know, we were laying cables all across the Atlantic 25 years ago that has led to the ability to have the bandwidth for for our modern day Internet and whatnot. But a lot of those companies didn't make it through because they over there's overcapacity. This is what the market needs to think about now.
So this is very much a security issue. But from a big picture, it is unquestionably positive for productivity growth and that we're able to see advances in done on a far more cost effective manner.
Anna: So in that segment, you can really see how, why, how and why selection matters that due diligence matters because there are winners and losers and seeing how it plays out does matter because, for example, a greater adoption and cheaper way to have incorporate artificial intelligence in a broader type of industry could actually mean really, really positive things and profit margin and earnings growth and for the consumer.
Anna: So there are different things playing out here that could be overall positive for your investment for depending on, again, selection and the rigor that's gone through it.
Michael: Not so good for passive, though. What's interesting is if you look at this last week, the market's kind of in an up and down a few days. On days when the market's been down, more than two thirds of actual companies been up and one days the market's been up, it's really been very narrow. And that tells you that there is in the U.S. market, there's too much concentration of the handful companies right now.
Is long term positive to see that come down. But if you're running to surpass a market cap based investment, probably the more risk in that right now just because of the the dominance of a handful of companies.
Anna: And the dominance of those handful of companies has grown to almost at, say, 30 or 40% off of a passive index just on the U.S. side. And even MSA world, which is the the global equity index, the U.S. weight has increased in the past decade for all to up to 75%. So when you think seven, you know, coming from a lower base.
So so when you think through what's going to happen, if you just buy a a broad index, what you're actually buying more and more of the winners that that has worked out for the past few years. So when you have a big shift like that that challenges that.
Michael: Set up, by definition, you have become a momentum investor which can work. But when it doesn't work, it's quite pack. Yeah, it gets quite painful when momentum unwinds.
Ingrid: And similarly, it's not just the the power, the diversification in the solutions, the demand for clients, it's also the tools that you have in the toolbox that maybe are not readily available to the individual investor or somebody trying to go on their own. You talk a little bit about alts, commodities, etc., some of those elements and what they do in part, yes.
Michael: So we are for our clients. We try where we can to have an allocation to both private alternatives that would include infrastructure and infrastructure. The type we buy. It tends to be very platform based. We we own a company that has all kinds of various plants and power generation ports, etc. So we all like the entire kind of complex per investment.
On the real estate side, we're heavy investors in Canadian real estate, commercial, multi rise office office is starting to make a bit of a comeback as as companies start to, you know, encourage or if not demand workers come back 4 to 5 days a week which is quite bias positive for the sector and this also because a tremendously different risk profile than a stock or a bond and then we also use commercial mortgages which have been, you know, within our fixed income side, very, very attractive asset class, good levels of yield.
Ironically, you get more yield from these investments with less risk versus any kind of investment grade index. So a great source of return. And then on the call, that liquid alternative or hedge fund side, that's where we've been using commodities and some multi-strategy where really it's not that they they tend to do well, but they tend to do well.
Other things aren't working. It's important. Always have something that's that's providing return. We always want to manage things that are providing return. But this is where we we realize, you know, returns are really important, but the path is also important. You've talked about clients investing in and building a return stream where, you know, you might see something horrible on TV and then you check your statement and there's nothing, you know, nothing to see.
And that's kind of what we're to try to be a bit boring in the returns. We don't like excitement just because it ensures that, you know, clients can build more confidence and with more confidence, you know, investing is a is really is about confidence. And and that's ultimately what success looks like is if you're able to continue to invest over time, you're setting yourself up for a great financial position in the future.
And that's that's really important.
Anna: And to add to the purpose of these particular investments. So, for example, a theme that we talked about is globalization and all of these things that that could possible headwinds. But the nice thing about these asset classes is how our team has selected which ones to have more of. So, for example, Canadian real estate, yes, our headwinds in office, but this actually is a big chunk of it is in Multi-unit Residential, which is a theme on population growth in the gap of like where the rental income for these properties are versus market rent.
So that would be the steady source of income growth in that portfolio as an example. And then for an infrastructure, you also have beneficiaries in that theme for inflation protection as well as secular themes such as they've started adding ports. And these are actually beneficiaries. When you think of a globe, that's the globalizing in the value of having diversified supply chains.
You also have a batteries storage assets there. So when you think about the themes of, you know, energy transition, so this is not exactly related to, you know, just about the headlines.
Ingrid: It's a little bit immune to some of the things that are making people nervous. And you know, what I love about this conversation is, you know, for our listeners, some are listening and they're you know, few may be feverishly taking notes on what is your view on this sector or that or where it's going to be. Others are listening and going, Oh, I'm trusting my money to really smart people who are doing the work, who are looking under every rock.
And when I read a headline and I get nervous and I you know, and you talk about the monsters under the bed, it is we're not thinking about it. We're absolutely thinking about we're tearing it apart every day to make sure as stewards of their futures, we're managing it. And it does take me to sort of another theme, which is at this moment and what we've actually seen over the last two and a half, three years, you know, coming out of 2022 was a really hard year for markets.
Correlations all went the wrong way at a time when there was a really attractive for the moment alternative indices and stepping out of the fear and going to a safe harbor for a moment, how has that played out for investors.
Michael: As I see rates or as the interest rates went higher, you could see the move to dry season. And look, there are times when jokes make a ton of sense but or purposes.
Ingrid: But yeah.
Michael: Sure as rates have come lower and if you are sitting on these, you're going to see a materially lower rate offered. That's a while. We're at 3% now. We'll continue to drop. Jesse's do do provide a pretty poor after tax return when you're paying that last tax rate. But what kind of hurts us is when we see over the last three years the difference between market you know, even our conservative products, which would be all juicy kind of alternatives for us to our aggressive products, you know, there's been like double digit increases in these versus disease at a better tax rate.
And so you can actually think about I can actually say this is probably adding a year, 18 months, two years to someone's expected retirement date because I've got to work that much longer to hit whatever they need to live in retirement.
Ingrid: So that's way more tangible than a rate on a piece of paper.
Michael: Well, we get oh, you know, this is the hard thing about investing is that there's this time dimension and we are know humans are wired to act in the here and now the risks you see right in front of you. And it's not easy to imagine, you know, being 20 or 30 years older and not having enough to live off, which is a disaster.
And so we're always there trying to help our clients visualize that to do to get them to make what we think are the wise decisions today about their future. And that, you know, I understand you've got to balance it sometimes, but this is really about taking advantage of the capital you have today. So you have a lifestyle in the future that that that you want.
Anna: I was just looking at our returns, like in the past five years, for example, And, you know, everything almost has happened in the past five years.
Ingrid: Well, circle moment. Yes.
Anna: You know, you think of like we even had a trade war in 2019 when we had a pandemic and you had unprecedented rates falling down. And then you have inflation in. Then you had, unfortunately, two wars. So almost everything that you would think through can happen like two decades happened in five years. And in that here's really when I look at how our disciplined process has provided and we have returns that are in the high single digit returns for our let's see are typical like middle risk profile balanced portfolio, even for our especially for our retirees especially, these are like competitive even to the returns of institutional pension.
Michael: Fund and that's annualized is but clearly that's every.
Ingrid: Year now and I love where you're going with it because, you know, we say things here like managed solutions and portfolios and portfolio solutions. The fact is we have a variety of them which are specifically engineered for life stage or retirement stage, whether you're in the accumulating stage of your journey where the noise doesn't matter as much because you're sort of growing the thing.
But there is a day that many people turn that switch and they stop saving and investing and they're in that accumulation stage and, you know, their risk appetite or the ability to sustain, you know, market shocks is different. And we engineer portfolios for that, which is and again, why that conversation that somebody has with their advisor but their needs, where they're on the journey, becomes so critically important, I guess because there's choice as well.
You've just been, both of you at a roadshow talking to 100 advisors over the last couple of months. What is the sentiment out there? What are they worried about? What are their clients worried about?
Michael: Well, first, the backdrop is important, as you know, the transfer of of of folks moving from working to retirement that will kind of play over the next eight years is is nothing we've seen in the history and nothing we'll see again just because of the demographics of the baby boom coming to a point when you're not working anymore and you've got to have a pool of money.
It's a really challenging and intimidating part of your life because you need to figure out how long you know, how long you think you're going to live. What does inflation look like? What do you have to live off? What's your spending profile? Are you helping your children? Are you helping your parents? Are you downsizing or upsizing? Do you plan to travel?
Ingrid: It's a none of that has to do with what the market does. Yes.
Michael: These are these are all life decisions where you're at. And for wealth professionals, I think this is where this is one of the areas where they have they're actually the most valuable in terms of helping people through this period of time. We've you know, we don't have this the silver bullet, if you will. We have ingredients or our various tools for certain parts of that, whether it's your your you're in the next five years or, you know, money that you're not going to you're going to pass on or gift it, legacy, etc..
But it takes that kind of pricing out altogether on the in the and on the wealth professional side and to create that bespoke solution for clients. But this is where this is going to be one of the most demanding areas of need from society because of that demographic shift and the amount of savings. A lot of these you know, a lot of people have made, you know, saved a lot of money over the last and four years because markets have been quite good then thinking about how they're going to work with that.
But from ours, we will focus on ensuring that we're able to create a return stream that has less volatility because our understanding people are drawing down but outperforms alternatives such as GICs or Bonds. And we do use bonds, but we try to to actually provide a higher expected return using other things like alternatives and, and equity. So for us, it's it is the hardest investment solution to engineer in investing.
You know, we call the endowment problem. There have been Nobel laureates who've written volumes on this and still don't have the perfect answer, but something we continue to strive to, to improve as we as we go forward.
Anna: Our team is very focused in offering pension style investing and make it accessible.
Ingrid: To the masses Now. Yes. And I think what you just painted so beautifully, both of you, is this magic partnership between asset management, which is navigating the activity of the markets and financial advice, which is managing the moments in people's lives and how they think about, you know, how they they approach that money is such a great conversation.
Anna: And that's why I really believe it, that financial well-being, we know it's an emotional aspect and not just the news and stuff, but your your assets, your wealth. And that's why having that type of advice and support and having a plan really, really matters and making sure we assure people that we do have the capabilities, the team and that the process to deliver on that long term.
Ingrid: Holding our clients through the moments when it looks a little bit scary and making sure they're continuing to do those right things and stay the course in moments like this. Any final thoughts for for our listeners as we head into the season?
Anna: I think because you have a U.S. president who's very unpredictable, as much as you can disconnect and focus on your plan and what matters to you and what you can control.
Michael: Yeah, you kind of have to. It's easy for us to say, but you do kind of have to look to the noise a little bit and think about, you know, the world is going to change, you know, the way we've kind of wired things post World War Two is going through. A fundamental shift only happens a few times a lifetime.
So I think it's important not to get to optimistic or pessimistic about it. Either way, it changes change and that creates positive outcomes to creates negative outcomes. Broadly speaking, we always hear the negative. And so I think it's easy for us to say because we spent a lot of time kind of working through this and talking with each other and we have each other to kind of work through these things, but try and be balanced in your thinking about where things that we're evolving to factually.
Global poverty is at the lowest rates in the history of humanity. We're living longer. People's quality of living is better than it was 25 years ago. I is going to offer and open up all kinds of innovations that will make people's lives better. And so there's a lot of good things happening. It's important to have that balance and realize that, yes, there is negatives, of course, but but there's a lot of good things happening, too.
Michael: And ultimately that that I think the thing that sets you in a better mindspace, particularly if you come into the investment problem where it's actually not all bad. There are some good things and have that that backdrop. When thinking about investing and thinking about life.
Ingrid: I think you've just like teed us up for another podcast on longevity and the importance of saving with all the great news here. Thank you both. Our investors are in terrific hands. Listeners, as you read the headlines, you know, take a deep breath. We've got you. Thanks to all our listeners. Take care. Have a great day.
Announcer: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform and share it with friends and colleagues who love staying informed. A big thank you to our team behind the scenes Marko Vidovich for producing the podcast. Bianca Samson for keeping the conversation going online. George Subotic for making sure the podcast reaches you and Ana Bita for crafting the copy that brings it all together.
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