Well,

look, St. Louis, first of all, it's got its issues.

All cities, businesses, people, everyone has their issues.

We, you know, we enjoy the city.

What I would say to you, oh, by the way, I don't know if you know this, Jimmy Z and I were college roommates.

Oh, no. Wow.

Yeah, I'll tell you some stories.

I'm going to take my son, who is a golf fan, on Sunday, and this is the Charity Classic coming up at Norwood.

Would you agree that parts of the AI complex are in a bubble right now?

I, you know, I, I, I wouldn't say that because they're, right now they're growing so fast.

I mean, what, what we have is almost a tale of two economies.

And look at it, Brian.

You, you have the Mag Seven that are growing.

They can afford, uh, these interest rates.

They're, it's like, uh, a, um, an homeowner that's got an asset and he's doing, taking out a home equity line, and they're growing faster than interest rates.

So how high does Ron Kruszewski think the 10-year yield here is going? Are we going to five and a half? Are we going to 6%?

When you look at AI now, and specifically AI's future for financial services, Do the possibilities energize you, or does a part of you feel hesitation, caution, worry, or dare I say even fear about what AI could be, not only for financial services, but just for you and I sitting here on a daily basis?

Well, you know what? It's a great question.

I think you have to separate them.

All right.

You have to let's talk about the business side of it.

And even how my thinking has evolved this year.

I mean, this year, remember in January, if you would have said meet those or mythos in People said, what? They didn't know.

Yes.

We have, we have a lot more stuff going on in your wheelhouse these days, don't we?

Well, we absolutely do.

I mean, look at the quarter that just ended, especially the large firms, which, you know, uh, had almost all the things hitting, uh, M&A, uh, the big IPO of SpaceX, volatility in the market drove sales and trading.

So it was really good.

And I, I actually think, uh, you know, we're, we're not at the top of that market.

I wouldn't necessarily annualize every line item for the, uh, large firms, but, uh, it was a good quarter, and I don't see that necessarily slowing down.

As it relates to Stifel, what happens at the big firms, in the big companies- Will tend to tr- trickle down, if you will-

I don't know if you, if you're thinking about that or if that would be really impactful.

I wonder if you have anything similar, like, is there anything about the work that you do that you would look at the next 20, 30 years, whatever it is like that you wish would be slightly different?

Yeah, you know, Michaela, I think I love the way you put that in terms of if you look back and had you taken another fork in the road, OK, what would happen? I can tell you in your case and knowing you, whatever fork in the road you would have taken, if you would have gone to be a scientist, well, then you would have developed one of the incredible cures of something today.

Because you're very passionate about what you do.

So I don't often look back and say, oh, you know, what else could I have done? I feel that with my passion and what I do, I would have made a difference in whatever I did.

And I think that's the same with you.

That said, if I ever regret, it is that when you're passionate about something and you put your all into it, there are things that do not forks in the road, but there's parallel things in your life that do get sacrificed.

And in my case, you know, I worked really hard and I've been CEO for 29 years.

And how early would you start to teach a kid about money?

So that's why I'm a little bit curious kind of what the read is on the broader economy.

Well, the read is, is that, uh, 10 stocks make up almost half of the S&P 500 today.

You've seen some of these names that are just exploding.

It's all AI.

But if you take that out, the general businesses or the general economy's just kind of muddling around along.

Uh, if you take out AI and energy, I'm not sure we have any real returns.

So, um, th- but this is an exciting time.

... with the firm to lean against this or lean into these opportunities? I mean, you, you guys have to wake up and make these decisions every day about capital.

Um, how would you describe Stifel's exposure and the way that you're thinking through the ripple effects that these defaults, whatever they will ultimately shake out to be, will have across the financial system?

Well, I'll deal with it two ways.

One, we normally, Kelly, when I see cracks in the financial system, I see these kind of things, I, I, I'll go home, I'll grab our balance sheet, I'll look at our loan book, I'll do a number of things, and if there are issues, normally I'll see it in a corner or two at Stifel.

And here I, here I just don't.

Okay? So, um, a lot of...

We're a bank, and a lot of the private credit has been pushed outside the banks, primarily to the BDCs, outside of the banking system, and we don't have a lot of exposure to that layer of business.

So from my perspective-You know, credit cycles, uh, are indiscriminate when they occur.

So I think maybe some of these firms now had a little bit of a playbook to work from.

Do you care about the dollar, about gold, silver?

Well, that's two different subjects in some ways, or the same one if you want to combine them.

You know, Kelly, the move in gold and silver relative to the S&P 500, it's very rare that you'll see the commodities up that much and equities up that much.

And in fact, we just wrote a report that speaks to the level of gold relative to the S&P 500.

And it's very high.

Gold's 5,200 an ounce.

The S&P is 7,000.

I mean, that's what's driven a lot of these stocks to the levels that they're at right now.

You know, the crazy things are going to happen.

I'm not saying that.

Look, and I remember, Kelly, I was saying buy equities when everyone was panicking on tariff.

I said, this is not the new normal.

I was on your show and said, have me back.

But you did have me back, so thank you.

But look, I think you have to look at where we are.

right? Where would you say, if this was like a mini Beige Book, what are the strongest and weakest parts of the economy, whether it's by industry, geography,

Really? You think so?

Well, look, at the beginning of the year, we had the lowest S&P forecast of any firm on the street.

We were at 5,500.

We said then that valuations were high and there was going to be turmoil in the market, primarily the threat of tariffs that we thought would be inflationary, tie the Fed's hands.

And we just thought the market was priced to perfection then.

Now, what has happened here has happened very fast, so much faster than we thought.

But the basis that this was going to kind of happen, I mean, President Trump ran on this.

But this is going to be a reshaping of a year, it sounds like.