Why don't you bring us up to speed, if you don't mind?

Well, the big thing, of course, is that we have these sanctions placed on Iran, and they started firing at the Strait of Hormuz again, or attempting to fire, actually, to try to replace undersea mines using missiles.

We stopped their ability to do that, but then we struck them pretty hard, destroying a bunch of missile launching capabilities and radar outfits that they had.

And then they responded by firing some missiles or drones at either or at both our base in Jordan and our base in the UAE.

But they didn't get very far with that.

And so President Trump has said we can do much more and we will.

The sanctions will continue and we're not going to bother even talking with them because agreements made with the Iranian regime are not worth the paper they're written on.

Can both things be true at the same time?

Uh-huh

... uh, with only a one in three chance price, it, it'll be a bit of a surprise.

And, and so, uh, think the market sell off on that.

But I, I, I think at the end of the day, uh, when it comes down to it, the, the ... what drives stocks is earnings, and we're having another great earning season.

Uh, and really what's impressive is the median stock is up 17% year over year.

So, um, as much as, you know, the AI stocks, uh, the, the AI infrastructure sho- stocks are running out of steam a little bit, um, we're actually seeing really good performance, uh, breadth across, uh, across the market.

How do you think about that if we were to see a slowdown, if we were to see CapEx come back a little bit?

Yeah.

But other than this one, what cities did you enjoy living in and being a professional in?

Yeah, I mean, I get that question a lot 'cause I've been to a lot of places.

Um, you know, if you're looking at it solely from a, a city aspect and not the football side of it, I think New York was really cool.

Um, you know, not, city living not really necessarily for me, but, you know, being there for, for a little bit of time and, you know, being close to New York City and the food they have out there is phenomenal and, and, you know, you can get a meal of whatever kind of, of, of genre of food per se wherever you want.

I mean, they have, they have some of the best food.

Um-

How do you think your career would've gone these days? W- how would you have handled things if differently or whatever?

Yeah.

Um, your thoughts on that and how underweight?

Yeah, look, I think when you, when you, uh, most people own the S&P 500, they get very little exposure to underlying commodities.

Uh, you know, 3% exposure to energy, very little to, to metals and mining.

And, uh, you know, our, our view is that in this regime where inflation is a, is a risk, that the, the, the average investor, you know, who owns a stock-bond portfolio could, it- it's helpful to diversify by owning some more of that, of that energy or owning some more of that metals and mining.

Is there anything that he can do to unlock the housing market that I'm not thinking of?

I don't, I don't think so.

I mean, it, to your point, he does wanna bring the balance sheet down.

I think he will be very careful with that and in coordination with the, with the Treasury, so I don't think that that's gonna lead to a big spike in yields.

So I'm just curious where that feeds into, again, a view that I, I think you have that's pretty sanguine, at least in some of the near-term risks.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, with private credit, you know, I'm, I'm a macro guy, so I'm not looking at, at all these, uh, the, the story individually.

But I think the key with private credit is that, um, okay, there's price discovery here now.

There's, there's, uh, in- a tightening of, of financial conditions.

There's, you know, we're, we're, we're looking at covenants and there's, there's ...

So there's, there's a little bit more tightening there.

Has the pendulum moved too far, um, for some sectors? Where are you seeing the opportunity?

What do you know about it? What can you tell the listeners about what you know and how you fit in?

Yeah, no, I think, you know, outside looking in, you know, you can only learn so much up until you actually get into the room and see the, you know, the techniques that you're doing, the true scheme behind, you know, the game plan for each game.

You know, each game is going to have its own little quirks and stuff, but you like to see what the identity of the room is, and, you know, I'll learn that when I get in there.

So I'm excited for it.

All right, Evan, impressions of D'Amico Ryans, your new head coach.

Yeah, no, it's been, got to talk to him for a couple minutes in the lunchroom.

The man just brings a whole bunch of energy, and you see that on the sidelines.

So what was that like, that recruiting process for you and your decision to go be a Mustang?

It's okay.

No, look, I mean, I think what we're seeing right now is really encouraging in that it's not everyone throwing all this money at the wall at the AI wall.

We're seeing more discerning price action.

We're seeing a little bit more like a decline in correlations between these names.

And so for the market that's been talking about a bubble and this and that, I think what we're seeing is quite healthy.

We've seen the hyperscalers, their correlation has gone from 80 percent three months ago down to 20 percent.

Why? because we're seeing some in the Gemini ecosystem, that doing a little bit better, and you're seeing in the ChatGPT ecosystem a little bit worse.

Evan, real quick, where's the consumer? Are you allocating and are you thinking about places in retail and discretionary, which there's argument on both sides of the fence here?

You are looking for other ways, though, to play the AI theme, and you're saying to look at China, which is interesting.

Yes, definitely.

So, I mean, China is just, A, it's a lot cheaper way to play a theme, less crowded.

But also it's a different kind of approach to AI where here in the U.S. we're trying to build the greatest model possible and reach super intelligence and all this.

Whereas in China, it's, you know, whether it's by choice or just limitations in terms of not having the same access to the chips.

They're focused on efficiency, and they're more focused on, okay, what are the immediate applications right here? And I think there's something to be said for that.

So

But right now, doesn't there seem to be a big divide between what the market is willing to suggest productivity is going to be and then this job opening situation?

So was Friday the beginning of a growth scare in your view?

I mean, it was jarring to see $150,000 three-month moving average drop to $35,000.

We've been of the view, I think everyone's been of the view that there's going to be a soft patch and we're in it.

But if you're slowing that quickly, that raises the potential that something breaks.

There's some kind of shock.

and then you get a bunch of layoffs.

We're not seeing that in the data right now, but we're getting dangerously close.

Those roads still continue to lead to gold.

But at what point does it, if any?

Yeah, so the dollar dynamics have been really fascinating this year, to your point.

I mean, we saw the dollar go down when stocks were going down.

We saw the dollar go down when stocks were going up.

I think what that reflects is global investors who have become probably over-allocated to U.S. assets are realizing that they don't want to sell the underlying U.S. assets themselves.

They don't want to sell the S&P.

They don't want to sell Treasuries, still deep liquid markets.

Is there a shift, though, within these sectors to mid and small cap, recognizing a rotation that seems to be underway here, a search for lower-valued companies relative to the S&P 500?