Episode 43: Ryan Tolkin - CEO and CIO of Schonfeld Strategic Advisors

This week, on generating alpha, I sat down with Ryan Tolkien, a transformative leader in the hedge fund industry and a key figure in the evolution of the global multi-strat model. As the chief executive officer and chief investment officer of Shownfell strategic advisors, Ryan has been instrumental in the firm's evolution from a US-centric family office into a global multi-strategy powerhouse. He's known for spearheading the firm's transition to an RIA and leading its expansive international growth across Europe, the Middle East, in Asia. A former high school intern at Shownfell, who later spent five years on the corporate credit rating desk at Goldman, Ryan rejoined the firm in 2013 and rapidly ascended the ranks, becoming chief investment officer at the age of 27. His leadership philosophy emphasizes empowering a vast network of highly skilled portfolio managers, driving innovation and quantitative investing, and successfully integrating new strategies like discretionary macro and fixed income. In our conversation, we spoke about his unique path from a young intern to the firm's leader. How Shownfell manages a large and diverse set of investment teams under a single platform, the importance of culture and collaboration in a high stakes trading environment, and his outlook on volatility and opportunity in today's global markets. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the podcast and rate it at 5 stars out of Spotify, subscribe on YouTube and share it to anyone who you think might find it valuable. I really enjoyed recording this with Ryan and I hope you guys enjoyed listening. Thank you. Awesome. Happy to be here, Mayor. Let's do it. Well, I want to start where I always do at the beginning. So we'd love to start with a little bit of background about your early childhood and upbringing and tell me a little bit about the environment you grew up in. What was it like? And where were your early interests? Sure. So I grew up about 25 miles east of New York City in a town called Jericho on Long Island. I am the oldest of three boys in three years. So we were all in high school at the same time, 12th grade, 10th grade, and 9th grade. And so I would say my house was very, very competitive as my mom would describe it. She spent the majority of her day breaking up different arguments around who was winning different sports games or perhaps other things as it relates to social interactions as we grew up. But it was a dynamic environment. It was one in which I would say a combination of academics and sports were always at the center of our discussions. My dad was in the travel business. So part of the perks of him being in the travel business was we had an opportunity to experience a lot of different cultures. And as he was hosting conferences for travel agents around the world, get to experience and go to a bunch of different destinations, which I think gave me an opportunity to fully appreciate different people from different backgrounds, different cultures, travel the world at a relatively young age. And really kind of understand that the bubble that to some extent was the sort of the 25 mile area surrounding New York City and all four directions was not necessarily what the rest of the world looked like or felt like. And so I think that was a unique experience at a relatively young age, you know, to help shape who I am. And around that time you got your first exposure to investing. If I'm correct in a stockpicking game in New Year's Day, tell me about that experience and how it evolved into getting your Series 7 in high school and then ultimately trading securities that shown fell as a high school. Sure. Yep. So New Year's Day, which was the local paper on the island. You know, ran a stockpicking competition, I think for middle schoolers, you know, at the time. And so my first exposure to stockpicking really came from the the New's Day stockpicking competition. And the reason why I got hooked on it was New's Day had a great local sports section. And so I spent the early part of my childhood where I was really fascinated in sports. And most importantly, not just the actual watching of sports, but the analytics and statistics around what made teams good, what made individual players on teams good, how did people perform in one game or throughout the course of the season? How is that predictive of how they would do in the future? And so just being exposed to New's Day analytics and sports ultimately gave me this exposure to the New's Day stockpicking competition. And then I became a bit obsessed at that point, you know, the the the New's papers were publishing, you know, how how stocks performed, you know, every day there was no sort of Bloomberg terminal or kind of internet to go on, you know, at that point to sort of, you know, be able to get any stockpick, you know, in real time. And so you look in the paper and you look and they would publish how the stocks did, you know, each day and prices at that point were published, you know, in fractions, not festivals. And so you'd see Apple stock is up by a quarter of a point today and you'd really on a daily basis get to track how your individual portfolio was doing. And so that was my first exposure to stockpicking. In my mind, it was like very similar to the way I thought about sports analytics in that there was a daily report card. There was a scoreboard. You could easily see the scoreboard. You knew how you were doing and you knew how you were doing relative to the competition. And so I think that that was fascinating. It sort of gave me a metaphor of, you know, how the stock market in some ways, you know, tested similar skill sets, you know, I'm characteristics to being in the sports analytic field and that sort of drove it in interest in it. And, you know, from there at Jericho High School, we had an opportunity to do a work study program, you know, in lieu of taking certain classes. And so it was a firm, you know, that had significant presence, you know, in Jericho, which was called Shonefold Securities at the time. It was a short-term trading oriented firm run by Steven Shonefold. And you know, I applied to do a work study program, you know, at Shonefold where really the job was quite similar to the way in which I thought about sports analytics, which was I would develop the port cards for each of the different traders around things that they did well, things that they did less well. And then I would try to provide the traders insights and analytics on ways in which they can improve their performance. And that led to me developing certain insights as it relates to patterns, pattern recognition, you know, amongst this group of traders, which then, you know, I had an opportunity to present and share with Steven Shonefold, they're the namesake, you know, of the organization who was obviously responsible, you know, for developing and providing capital to this group of traders. He was interested in what I presented. And, you know, from there he gave me an opportunity to ultimately clerk for some of those traders. And eventually, as you just suggested, you know, take my Serie 7 and actually begin to start to trade a portfolio. And so I did that. Once I got into college, you know, I had the opportunity to have a little bit more free time in my life. And so I took the Serie 7 training class as a senior in high school, eventually passed the Serie 7, you know, and then got the opportunity to trade, you know, as part of the Shonefold Security's trading team, you know, throughout my college career on and off at several different points. And that really obviously drove meaningful interest in asset selection, stock selection, and short-term trading. And you were trading at Shonefold during college when you were at Duke. And then before your turn to Shonefold, you began a credit trade or goman sacks for a couple of years. I'm very interested in, you rose to the ranks of Shonefold relatively fast, became CIO at age 27. What do you think I experienced at Goldman or the experience between gave you that an insight in that you wouldn't otherwise have? Yeah, so an interesting question. And maybe I'll sort of go back to college for one second. We were just to talk a little bit about it. You know, I interned at Shonefold after my sophomore year in college. And that was a great experience. And then I got to like full time dedicate myself toward, you know, seeing how the traders operated every day all day throughout the course of the summer. Obviously, I developed certain relationships from my first internship, a work study program at Shonefold in high school. But then just getting to be a part of the action, you know, all summer long was really rewarding. And I thought like at that point, I was pretty young, though, that I was just going to go to Shonefold straight out of school. You know, I developed relationships. I was doing all the things that sort of mentors in my life, you know, had told me to do. And I was pretty set on that path. You know, and then I had the opportunity to go study abroad. And, you know, and through that study abroad experience, I had the chance to meet several other people who, you know, through certain conversations with them, just, you know, sure with me the advice of like maybe I should go on and get a little bit of a little bit more of a well-rounded perspective on how the business world operates and how the markets operate before being sort of dead set in terms of going back to Sean Feld. And so I decided to apply for summer internships at some of the Bolshevik firms in trading-oriented roles. I was fortunate enough to land an internship at Goldman Sachs. And I decided that after my junior year in college, I was going to take that opportunity and then compare sort of that opportunity to the opportunity to work at Sean Feld and think through sort of what was a better path for me. I ultimately chose to go to Goldman and I think that was a really good choice in that being a part of an internship class of at that point, probably 300 individuals and then a first-year analyst class of roughly the same. You know, provided me this unique opportunity to, you know, be part of an additional network that I think would be able to stick with me throughout the rest of my life. And as somebody who's kind of always focused on building networks or having sort of common experiences that you can then relate back to at different points in life, I think that that was just an awesome opportunity and many of the relationships I developed from that summer internship experience at Goldman and then working at Goldman throughout the first few years after my college experience. You know, we're really, really leverageable throughout my experience now over the last 13 plus years at Sean Feld. So if I said to you first and foremost, how did the Goldman experience prepare me for Sean Feld? The number one thing I would point to first and foremost is relationship building. You know, and relationship building such that, you know, you have common ground or common experiences with, with set individuals that you could then rely on or relate back to throughout the course of your life. And frankly, my Duke experience has been, you know, really the same. I'm here, you know, recording today from Durham, North Carolina. And, you know, and the reason why I'm here in Durham, North Carolina is really twofold. Number one, Duke at a basketball game last night against the University of Florida, which we won by one point. But, you know, Duke is a special university because not only is it a great academic university, but the tie-in of Duke basketball brings people back to this common interest or this common ground throughout the course of one's life that sort of emboldens your embodies like this further sense of school spirit, further sense of the power of a network that's pretty unique for, you know, a really, really well-rounded lower academic institution. And so that's been another rewarding network in my life. Secondly, I'm here because I'm now on the board of the Duke Endowment. And through being on the board of the Duke Endowment, I now have an opportunity to develop an additional network of people who are in the investing world, who are running several other large investing organizations, who we gather together to help give advice to the Duke Endowment on how to deploy capital, how to think about risk management, how to manage the assets of the university to develop a consistent return stream, you know, for the university over time. And so we unite over a common ground as it relates to how to do that. And I've had the opportunity to learn from this network in other ways that certainly helped my show and felt experience. So sort of the power of networks and and developing networks would be the the number one way in which sort of Goldman, you know, helped prepare me, you know, for for my time at Shulho. Secondly, culture. I learned a lot about how or what a well functioning culture looks like from my experience at Goldman. Goldman did an amazing job in terms of giving people an opportunity to be successful at a young age if one was able to deliver outcomes. And so they created this environment that helped propel, you know, successful people to want to win, want to compete and want to challenge oneself to be the kind of the best version of themself. And they did that by putting you side by side on the desk with other really, really smart people, all of whom wanted to continue to figure out how to win, but do it in an environment where you were united behind, you know, common outcomes or common objectives. And so while each of us were responsible for running risk or running books, you know, in different sectors or in different industry groups, like we were there together to maximize the P&L, the desk that we were working on. And so, you know, working in the credit business, you know, we were there to maximize the credit P&L of the Goldman Sachs trading desk, albeit we were each responsible for a different set of names or a different set of credits to do that. And so I think like being on that in that trading desk environment, you know, having that will to win, having that will to compete, having that will to be the best version of myself, I think certainly helped for me create an environment that I knew that I wanted to take, you know, to Sean Fowell, if I eventually found myself, you know, in a more leadership oriented position. Third, you know, thing that I would take away from my Goldman experience is the notion that like crisis and/or challenges are the best learning opportunities. And so I got lucky, I got thrown into a situation, you know, at Goldman where early on was the GFC or the financial crisis. And so stress levels were high, anxiety was high, risk was high, you know, and we had to navigate through that. And so at such a young age being exposed, you know, to what many would describe as maybe a once in a decade or once in a multi-decade type experience, you know, to really learn through crisis, certainly helped me think about, you know, how to develop skill sets that would ultimately be able to again be leveraged upon as we navigate crises, you know, here at Sean Fowell. And then the last, the last lesson that I would say, I took from the Goldman experience was sort of the opportunity to escalate risk or the opportunity to speak up, you know, when you felt like you needed to, needed to share a perspective that might not be being easily surfaced amongst a group of people for ABC, you know, or XYZ reason. And so I was presented with an opportunity to speak up, you know, and/or challenge, you know, one of the one of the things in which somebody I was working for was doing, you know, and it was it was a difficult thing to do because I was directly reporting, you know, to that individual, but by speaking up and escalating a risk that I saw developing in a book, you know, to, you know, to other people in the organization, you know, I was presented with a lot of praise and a lot of endorsement as it relates to having the courage, you know, to challenge the norm to speak up, you know, to present information, you know, in a way that ultimately would help the organization make the best long-term decision. And I think from that experience, I took, you know, to show them the notion that we needed to create a culture at the organization where people were given the form to be able to share their perspectives and speak up, whether you were the most junior person at the organization, a mid-level person at the organization or a senior person at the organization, because by having that type of environment, we are going to long-term make the best decisions as an organization. And Goldman's famously this meritocracy as our couple of other things like, like, Bear, like Bear Sirens used to be or like even some in Brazil, like, Gaurantia, but I'm interested in these two aspects that really interest me is kind of your love and passion for statistics, and then also what you describe is like network building. I'm interested in how you kind of parlayed those into becoming CIO at a show and felt that age 27, and ultimately at age 29, you convinced one of the greatest traders all time to take outside capital, telling about a little bit about how that became possible, 27, and then ultimately what that was like in 29, being able to convince and what it made me kind of went into the making that decision. Sure, so actually the two things you mentioned, there are ultimately what convinced Steven to give me the opportunity to become the CIO. I think the leveraging of statistics, analytics and insights, you know, to help identify patterns was something that, you know, I had an opportunity to showcase to Steven, you know, at a young age, and then secondly, by doing that and then continuing to develop that relationship with Steven from that early experience, allowed me that allowed me throughout my golden days to maintain that type of connectivity, to ultimately be given an opportunity to come into Shonfeld and help shape the future of the organization as Steven was looking to evolve his role in the organization. And so throughout my time period at Goldman, Steven and I would go out for dinner once a quarter, if not more frequently, and I would share my perspectives on what was going on on the credit desk at Goldman. You know, what was I learning about Goldman Sachs that I thought the Shonfeld organization could incorporate into its organization as it was developing its business. And so I gave Steven some great ideas as it relates to the importance of leveraging data of technology, analytics, building a best in class platform, how to create competitive edge and not only create but then be able to sustain competitive edge in certain areas as you're building a business. How do identify areas to create modes around some of the revenue streams that you're building? And I thought we did that uniquely at Goldman Sachs because of the strength of our strut organization and the strength of our technology as compared to some of the other banks throughout the course of the financial crisis. I'll share one story with you. During the GFC in the days before, Lehman ultimately filed for bankruptcy. We were brought into the trading desk on a weekend to have a weekend session where we alongside many of the other Boltz-Bracad banks would conduct a weekend trading session that would allow us to do certain trades such that if Lehman were to file for bankruptcy by XYZ time, these trades would go into effect such that we would have reduced counterparty risk to Lehman on our credit default portfolio throughout the aftermath of Lehman filing for bankruptcy. What was particularly unique about the setup at Goldman Sachs during that trading session is we understood our risk and the way in which our risk would shift if in the end the day Lehman filed for bankruptcy in a way that was so dramatically different than the way in which any other bank understood its risk. That gave us as a trading desk a significant competitive edge not just during that weekend trading session, but the aftermath of Lehman filing for bankruptcy to be able to price risk, identify risk and identify opportunity in a very meaningful way that allowed us to have an unbelievable trading quarter in the fourth quarter of 2008 and even into the first quarter of 2009 in a way where many of the other banks spent a lot of the time just trying to figure out the risk because they hadn't invested the time, effort and resource in developing the right systems, developing the right processes to be able to visibly serious and stressed how risk made change if certain scenarios play out. We at Schoenfeld, frankly even before I got there, tried to identify what it meant to have best in class technology in systems and some of the asset classes that we wanted to trade or wanted to be invested in. I think that through sharing some of those experiences with Steven and by ultimately sharing with Steven that where my passion lies is not just investing, but the combination of building a business and investing that ultimately sort of created the opportunity for Steven to take a chance on me to be a part of the next generation of leadership at Schoenfeld. That was kind of the convincing of Steven to bring me in as CIO, the organization. As it relates to the second part of your question on sort of convincing him to take third party capital, that was much more nuanced and a much more challenging and difficult conversation. But I think ultimately the convincing arguments became the opportunity to do at a larger scale across a more meaningful pool of capital, what we were doing for him and his family for the last several years and frankly even for the years before I joined the organization. Why was it important to do it at sort of larger scale? One, that would give us the opportunity to have more capital to invest in the technology, the infrastructure and data to be able to maintain a competitive edge on a go forward basis. Two, we would be able to build a better portfolio by investing some of that capital and building out infrastructure overseas to be able to port some of the strategies we were investing in in the US into some overseas markets. So in the aftermath of taking third party capital, we expanded into Asia, into Europe. And certainly over the last few years into many different emerging markets investing in some of the strategies that had been a part of our portfolio in the US for quite a while. And then lastly, the strategy was really about how through time could we attract, develop and retain the best talent. And the view was that talented risk takers ultimately want to challenge themselves by having the opportunity to manage larger pools of capital and do it in a way in which they could responsibly grow each of their businesses. And while the Shownfall family had significant capital to invest, we ultimately had a view that having third party capital in the business would give us the opportunity to attract better talent and ultimately retain a better talent in the organization. And sitting here, roughly a decade, almost to the month, from when we took in our first third party capital, I would say that each of those three parameters has largely played out in the way in which we expected it to play out roughly a decade ago. What's been different, I would say, has been just the scale of the infrastructure that we've built over the course of the decade to support going from what was a family office managing the assets of a single family to today running roughly a $17 billion hedge fund. That's investing across many different global markets across lots of different asset classes. And so we joked around at the time that by bringing in third party capital, we probably need maybe three or four additional people in the organization. And I would say what we got wrong was that we underestimated that by several hundreds. Before we go back to the episode, I want to take a short break to talk about my sponsor, Ro. The generating alpha podcast is presented by Ro, the all-in-one banking platform for startups. Thousands of startups like their Plexi, product tons, and more use Ro. You get everything you need to manage your startups cash, fast banking setup, cards with a 2% cashback, and yield that turns company cash into extra runway. All super important in the early days of launching. But the thing founders really love about Ro is their team. They're obsessed with helping founders disrupt the status quo and will go to the end of the earth's health and the do so. And exclusively for generating alpha podcast listeners and viewers, you'll get a $1,500 statement credit plus a ton of exclusive perks when you manage your company cash with Ro. Terms in condition supply. To learn more, visit rho.co/generatingalpha. Ro is a fintech, not a bank. Checking and card services provided by Webster Bank, member of FDIC. See your award terms for details. Thank you and back to the episode. You spoke about this idea of pattern recognition and then also statistical edge to an extent. I'm also interested in a lot of the better traders in the world in this podcast and able to spend time with incredible people. There's a lot of people that can pattern recognize or can dive deep into the analytics. But the best traders, at least what I've observed sets apart the best traders is anecdotal insight. And the ability to really express their views and also use the insights that they get, consume a lot of information, and use that in their trading. So I'm interested in what you think kind of between those two factors makes a great trader. And then also how much of being a great trader is innate versus taught. Because for you, it seems someone innate in the sense of you have that statistical, that love for statistics very early. And it doesn't seem like for a lot of the best traders in the world that it's that it's taught. So I think there is some element of it being innate. And I think every trader is different. So I don't want to speak on behalf of many of the other great traders that you've spoken to or certainly that exists out there. But having watched many traders develop a shown foe over the course of the 13 years that I've been at shown foe, I do think it's a combination of both. I think there is a certain element of how much raw skill set does an individual have, how much drive, ambition, and passion, do certain individuals have people throughout the course of their life demonstrated a consistent ability to win. And I do think that that is a predictor of future success as a trader or as a portfolio manager managing a pool of capital. That said, I think there is many things that can be taught by having good mentors. And by investing in good and repeatable process that I think can also meaningfully change the probabilities or the odds of one being able to experience long-term success as a risk caker or as a portfolio manager. I think as I have gone about building, you know, our business. business at Shonefold. I start by trying to have consistent and repeatable processes that allow me, as you suggested, to process significant amounts of information rather quickly and then be able to store that information through my own brain or through a team that I rely on to then help me make better long-term decisions. I think it's a combination of continuing to develop good process, good repeatable process, develop a team that can then help you be intellectually honest around that process and challenge you around the way in which you leverage that process to make decisions. And then also having good raw natuabilities to be able to see things one, two, three steps before other people are able to identify those things. And Shonefold in a space was a lot of giant in a sense of the likes of Citadel and Millennium 0.72 and even ones that have been growing relatively recently like BAM in which the Metri came from Shonefold. Despite having lower even than a lot of these large competitors, I'm interested in how you describe what it takes to win in this industry. Sure, so look all great firms and I won't comment specifically on any of them, but all of them have talented leaders and all of them have developed over multiple decades, a great ability to figure out how to win quite similarly to what we've been able to do at Shonefold. I think it starts with number one, being able to attract great people into the organization. Number two, at least for me, being humble enough to recognize what you do well, but also where are the areas that you need to complement yourself with really, really strong people that can help create leverage and help create scale for you to continue to be able to focus on the areas that you do well. I think three, being unemotional about the way in which you make decisions, it is quite easy to get caught up in the passion of what we do. That said, I think good decision-making comes from an ability to distance yourself from an emotional perspective relative to what the data analytics and/or intuition is kind of pointing you in a certain direction. And I think that that's a third way that each of the leaders you identified through time has been able to develop in winning cultures and winning organizations. And then lastly, I think it takes navigating through challenges and being able to develop resilience through having a team that has had lived experience navigating through a variety of different experiences that ultimately really can refine the way in which you go about making good long-term decisions. And so for me as an individual, as I touched on earlier, the financial crisis helped shape my early experiences as a trader and as a risk manager. Then we had the European sovereign debt crisis where I continued to sit on the Credit Desk at Goldman. And then certainly in getting to Schoenfeld, there was the first quarter of 2016, which was sort of the first episode of kind of factor volatility where many people became obsessed with how individual factors were driving volatility with an individual portfolios. And then certainly there was the COVID pandemic and having to navigate through some of the challenges associated with hopefully what will be once in a century, if not even less frequent than that type of health pandemic and the havoc that that reached on business and society. And then there was the GameStop challenges of 2021 and what it meant to have concentrated short portfolios and how that could create risks within one's book. And then for Schoenfeld, we've had our own individual andadiocene credit challenges that we've had to navigate. But I think challenge has presented opportunities for us to become better as an organization and ultimately for us to continue to develop that winning culture that you identified. And before I move on to a little bit of advice and one kind of question, but inside I'm interested in you mentioned attracting talent. And attracting talent is very hard in this in this multi-manager industry, but not only is attracting talent hard, retaining it on top of it is even harder. And you guys have consistently maintained one of the lowest PM turnover kind of percentages in the industry for years. And you've also been loyal to the same firm you worked at as a teenager. I'm interested in what does loyalty mean to you and how do you think about retaining the best talent in the industry? Look, this is going to sound simpler than it should, but it's do the simple things right. If you do the simple things right, the ability to retain talent becomes significantly easier. Don't get me wrong, it's super competitive out there. Not just the firms you mentioned, but many, many more that we compete with across lots of the different strategies. We run a big Quant Trading business. We've got our own competitors that are quant specific firms. We've got a big macro business. There are many hedge funds that we compete with for talent that are macro dedicated. Then there are multi-strat peers. Then we compete with the banks for talent. We compete now, you know, in what is an AI-dominated world with many large cap tech companies as it relates to recruiting engineers and other infrastructure personnel to help sort of drive our AI efforts forward. So it's highly, highly competitive. We depend upon as an organization doing the simple things right and creating a culture where people are proud to wear the Schoenfeld jersey. I repeat that frequently that we want to have waving fans of our business whether that be the most junior-oriented individuals in the organization or our leadership team. We want people to be great brand ambassadors because our brand ambassadors are ultimately what helps us attract the next generation of talent into the organization. Then to go back to one of the things you said, our long-term talent retention strategy is our talent attraction strategy. So through time being able to retain talent has then, you know, how to secure this reference of being able to then attract talent to the organization because or the organization that people want to come to not just to build a business but hopefully to develop enterprise value throughout the course of their career. And a little bit before you mentioned being able to kind of consume as much information as possible and process it. And I'm interested in kind of your life as as the CEO of a large multi-manager. What does it mean your life looks like in terms of information intake? Like when you wake up, what are you reading? And like throughout the day, what's the kind of information flowing in your brain look like? The first thing I do when I wake up is I say to myself, expect the unexpected. Because by putting myself in the right mental framework and the right mindset, I think that allows me to adapt to the many different curve balls that get thrown at me. Not just in my life as a CEO and CEO, but I also have four young kids ages 9, 7, 5 and 3. And they throw many curve balls you know, at me as well. But I need to to navigate and balance in the course of balancing my professional and personal life. So I think it starts with mindset. You know, but then the second phase is you know, I wake up. We run a business that has 40 to 45% of our risk overseas. You know, so the day has started well before my alarm clock goes off in the morning. And so, you know, I spend the first part of my day getting caught up on what's happened before the sun is risen on the east coast. And that's a combination of what's happened that shownfold as well as what's happened in markets. You know, I then tried to again continue to emphasize my mindset. So I do work out most mornings at some ungodly hour. You know, to be able to put myself in the right mental mindset to navigate the day's challenges. You know, and then I get to the office relatively early because I'm an early riser and I'm certainly a morning person. And you know, I want to be prepared for the day at hand. And so, you know, I've spent considerable amount of time reviewing for any meeting that I've had. the team that works for me, anchored by a great chief of staff, prepare me for my meeting, such that I walk into any meeting, and whether it's with, again, a senior leader at Shonefold, a team of mid-level junior people at Shonefold, or many different folks that I navigate, or communicate with externally. And I want to be the most prepared person in that meeting. And so I want everybody in that meeting to know that I have properly prepared for that meeting. I'm ready, because by being ready and being a good example, hopefully I can perpetuate what I think being prepared for a meeting looks like for everyone else that's attending that meeting. And so I think by me being prepared, I create a good example for many other people across the organization. But again, back to that early quote, the day will throw many curveballs at me. The market will throw many curveballs at me. And so I've got my best laid plans. But then I need to prepare to get punched in the face. And when you get punched in the face, you then need to be able to react and respond appropriately. And so I think I've gotten better at it through time. I'm far from perfect as it relates to it. But we've gotten better, and I've gotten better. And so I'm being able to shift rather quickly, where my time is going to be spent at the course of any given bet. I love that. Expect the unexpected. And before I move on to the question I asked every guest at the end of every episode. I'm interested in, and it's recently listening to this podcast. I don't know if you heard of him, and best like the best. But he was interviewing Steve Mendel from Lund Pine. And Steve said, then this, I think it was in the 70s or 80s when he was at Goldman, you could call the SEC and get quarterly reports before anyone else just by calling them. And that's all to make the point that information over time has become so, so much more accessible. And kind of data and research are increasingly commoditized. And they have been over the past decades. So I'm interested to that point. What do you see as a new frontier of edge? Yeah, I think actually being able to effectively differentiate or separate. What is signal versus what is noise? I think is critically important and where in the end of the day, we develop edge and hopefully, you know, we can, we can sustain edge or will sustain edge, you know, through time. As you said, there is so much data and so much information that is being thrown at us consistently. I think having a really good process for being able to identify what data matters and what data doesn't is critical. And obviously leveraging AI or many other different techniques, I think can give people, you know, important and critical ways of being able to go about doing that, be able to create more efficiency from a process perspective. I mean, we've got tons of people today that, you know, used to spend a lot of time organizing data that, you know, now in the end of the day, if programmed effectively, you know, can be done in a fraction of the time. And so we need to and I need to continue to invest in ways to become more efficient as it relates to how to separate signal from noise. And I want to finish off from the last question I asked every guest. I'm 16 years old right now. If you were to give one piece of advice to a 16 year old today, it can be career advice, life advice, social advice. This one always cracks people up, but even romantic advice, I would it be. Go to Duke. It's it's it's it's the best combination of a well-rounded academic experience with a great social experience. And, you know, where again, personally biased, the power of the network is amongst amongst the strongest out there. And certainly for me has been incredibly valuable throughout the course of my personal and professional life. Well, it was great to have you on Ryan really appreciate it and thanks for taking the time. I promised you I'd pitch you Duke at some point. So there you go. All right.