Does it change the thinking, John, at all around the valuation, beyond the chairman role, the CEO role as well? I mean, you always had the Buffett premium in there.

Well, I think the Buffett premium will naturally start to be less and less as time goes on.

And I know that that's human nature.

As Warren said, time passes, people get older, and so the market won't be...

They realize he's not in the game full-time, and so that Buffett premium over time could probably dissipate.

But again, he's done such a great job putting in the right board, the right management leadership.

I still think there'll still be somewhat of a premium

Has it made it more powerful or harder to figure out?

It's one of my favorite aspects, actually, of our work.

Yeah, I think that's the beauty of the art on the data model side.

The art of the data model on that side is that it's finding that balance between the analytically relevant, but while it remains, like you said, it's truthy, so it represents truth, but it is also slanted to the way that we think about it and the parts of it that matter analytically.

whether we're talking about planes, trains, and automobiles, or we're talking about, you know, executables.

And so I think that's the, that's the, that's why it takes so much work.

I think there is to basically find that balance really to make that useful for those when you're like, oh, well, this is a new thing that's not explicitly supported, but we can still use the platform to do that.

Right.

what have you seen people report after being brand new to it using for a little while?

Now let's talk about what gave you the conviction to do so and give up being a professional athlete.

This legendary coach that I played for, Pete Carrillo, made it clear that I didn't have a future in basketball.

He said he was keeping me on the team because I worked so hard and played hard.

But I had this passion for the markets.

And back in 1983, there were not very many small cap value managers.

And being a small value manager with a Warren Buffett approach of making sure you only invested in high quality companies in a very concentrated portfolio, that made us also kind of relatively unique back then.

So the idea of being able to set up a firm with a unique investment strategy I thought was something that was a special opportunity for us.

Can you talk to us a little bit more about that in your process for identifying value and unique opportunities ahead of consensus?

What do you think of the markets more broadly right now?

I think the broad, broad market is expensive, driven by the AI craze.

I was watching Bill Nygren earlier, and us value investors have been suffering as these hot companies just go booming higher and higher and higher.

So I do think that the AI craze will end the same way things ended at the end of the century when the internet bubble finally burst.

and i still feel very strongly about that because everyone's coming up to you now all they want to do is talk to you about ai and as bill said everyone thinks it's easy to get rich quickly in this new market

He says, no, we don't like

him.

I saw him last week at the opening of the Obama Center.

How does Sphere factor in?

Well, Sphere was spun out into a separate company several years ago.

And you talked about the Dolan discount.

The stock got extremely cheap.

People thought that they had spent way over budget to build the Sphere.

It cost over $2 billion.

I mean, it was only supposed to cost $1.3 billion.

Is that something that you're thinking about as you see these really stellar runs that some of these stocks are going on?

Um, just talk about your general thoughts as you observe this transition from, from Warren as CEO to Greg Abel and, and I guess what you might want articulated or clarified today.

Well, you know, I think that sometimes in basketball people think about whether Michael Jordan's the greatest of all time or LeBron James.

There's no doubt that Warren Buffett's the greatest investor of all time, and the greatest communicator of his investment ideas of all time.

So it's huge shoes to, for Greg to fill.

What I'd like to find out today is whether he's optimistic about the markets or not.

It's been a difficult market.

It's been really complicated by the war and everything else, and I'm wondering if his confidence is still there.

I mean, is that something that you think about in terms of, you know, the enduring value of the company?

Where do you see some mispricing within the market where you think that that presents some opportunities for investors?

I think right now the financial services companies are what I think have gotten to be extremely cheap.

They've gotten very, very worrisome about what's happening with private credit, as we all know, and you guys are reporting on and talking about all the time.

But I think it's overdone.

I saw David Rubenstein speak last week.

He was interviewed by our chairman, Charlie Bobrinskoy.

Yeah.

But I think we still don't know a lot yet.

But I am curious as to what additional value you find there.

Everywhere we go, we talk to as many experts as we can as part of our regular research and due diligence.

And everyone is saying, you know, post-COVID, it really is sticking that the next generation of citizens here, particularly in America, love experiences here.

They want to go out and be together to watch a ball game, watch a movie, go to a concert, go to an outdoor stadium to see music.

It's something that is really, I think, here to stay.

The momentum is continuing to hold.

And so places like the Sphere that have this magical IP, people want to come and experience it together.

Now that that deal is done, now that David Ellison has laid out his vision for what he wants to do with that company, I am curious as to whether you think that it can be not just profitable, but also a growth story again.