I'd love you to catch me up with how you're thinking about the investment landscape.

A lot has happened over the years.

We started HiVesta in 2004.

We went through the GFC.

There's nothing like today.

It is the most unique environment that I have ever seen.

It's the most exciting investment environment that I've ever seen.

We'd love to get your sense of if you're able to capture some of these exciting movements, what are the challenges that you're facing and have to overcome to make that work?

So where have you found some of these in practice? So I think

it's a matter of degree.

I think the China equity market is a very inefficient market.

It's a huge retail presence in that market.

It's dominated by retail investors still.

It's vast, but within it, you have hundreds and hundreds of quality firms that actually a skilled person set up to do research in that area, who's very connected there, can find great growth companies and do pretty well.

And we absolutely believe that, and we understand the inefficiency.

I'm curious what your thoughts are about risk today.

Where are you seeing

opportunities? So let's understand why it's hard.

It's hard because the world's competitive.

It's also hard because the world doesn't stand still.

And so the industry is always evolving.

If you have a good idea, the odds are high.

Others have that same idea.

So if you step back from the biotech investing, the small cap banks, small cap activism, the banks, what does your overall asset allocation look like today? And does it jive with sort of how much time do you spend at that level as opposed to really looking at the underneath the corners to execute as well as you can?

Seems to me that the world has only gotten more competitive, right? I mean, tell me what you think of that concept.

So Julie, it's great to be here.

Thank you.

For sure, it's more competitive.

Um, if you look at the money today in the hands of very sophisticated investors, hedge funds, private equity firms, private credit, venture capital, all these areas, you've got trillions and trillions in the hands of very sophisticated people, um, who know what they're doing, and they're doing a pretty decent job for the most part.

Uh, their clients are super sophisticated.

How many...

Mm

[coughs]

AI on jobs, it's eviscerating jobs.

It's creating jobs.

It's eviscerating firms.

It's creating firms at a pace we've never seen.

Um, war, defense.

Look at fiscal deficits, completely out of control.

How do you perceive the mega bond deals and the demand for them?

What are your thoughts on how portfolio theory has changed since then? Do you still consider it practical?

So portfolio theory is ridiculously practical.

How many people do you know in the investment business who don't? Every third word is correlation, right? And the idea of correlation is if two things don't move together, they have a low correlation.

That's called diversification.

And so conceptually, intuitively, as a framework for managing money, it's so deeply profound.

I was listening in the last session.

I think, Nancy, you said probably 150 times that you tell your clients to stay diversified.

What were some of your favorite cases?