NARRVOL (Guest: Sam Rines)

(upbeat music) Hit it. It's Friday, March 27th, 2026, episode 288. I'm Kevin Muart. This week it's an interview only episode as Patrick is traveling. Pay attention to your feed 'cause my intrepid partners trying to do a live Sunday show from the home of a well-known Hadoll alum. Stay tuned. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and enjoy my interview with wisdom trees macro strategists Sam Rines. We have a fascinating discussion about the Iran War. Why he thinks it might be closer to over than the market realizes, how to play the outcome, and then from there we cover a wide range of topics ranging from Japan to the new reality for defense stocks. You don't wanna miss this discussion, especially since this guest brings his own beer. Let's jump into it. Here's my discussion with Sam Rines. All right, it's our great pleasure to welcome to the show Sam Rines, the macro strategist for wisdom tree. Sam, thanks for making time for us. - Oh, of course, this is gonna be fun. - It is gonna be fun. And not only are you an enthusiastic guest, you also brought your own beer. You went out of your way to get your beer. Tell people what beer you're drinking and the lengths you went to go grab it. - So this is the Saint Arnold Ronmauer. It's a Pills, it's Maiden Husson, where I live. And the lengths that I went to get it are this is being recorded March 27th. I flew out of I.A.H. and then flew back into I.A.H. at a ridiculous time on both ends and walked into a cellar of beer at 815 this morning to buy it on my way home from the airport so that I would be prepared for it. - Did you feel like in that, you're scurrying the line between recreation and alcoholic and a full-time alcoholic? - The number of looks that I got while I was doing it were, they were special, but I was like, it's for a podcast. It's for a podcast. - Sure, sure. - Everybody's just like, okay. - Yep. That's funny. Well, you know what's funny is that I just open mind this I have a hum digger or something like that. And my cat is literally licking the top of it. I think I have an alcoholic cat. Okay, enough with the beer. Let's get to know you a little bit. You're the macrostradition wisdom tree, but we were chatting before the show. You were telling me about your background. And first of all, you grew up in a state very close to me as a Canadian. I went and visited many times. New Hampshire, tell me about your upbringing. Like, did you always know you were gonna go into finance? - Oh, I never actually thought I was going to go into finance. - No. - No, no. I would say it was probably late in high school that I thought it was an option or something that was interesting. I grew up on a farm in Southern New Hampshire, right on the border with Maine about three and a half hours from Montreal. I can discuss how I know exactly how long it is to Montreal. But grew up on a farm. We grew hay. At some points we had horses. At some points we had pigs. At some points we had other animals. And my grandfather's farm was next door. And my other grandfather's farm was on the other side of town. So it was not exactly the upbringing of Sam. Do you think the Fed is going to raise 25 or 50 basis points this week? It was very much an upbringing of, did you feed the pigs? And if you didn't feed the pigs, what are you doing? Go do that before we drive you to school. Cleaning out, you know, working around the farm, et cetera. But I was lucky enough to run into a few people who, you know, I went to great schools. Thank you, mom, dad for paying those bills. But went some great schools in New Hampshire and really not necessarily fell in love with investing, fell in love with that side of the world. But really fell in love with being able to get paid to learn. Like somebody told, there was a, there was a, there was a great guy, his name's Kerry Pope. He worked for Fidelity for a while. He recently retired. He was my best friend's dad. And he said, Sam, I get paid to learn. Isn't that cool? And when you're in high school, it doesn't necessarily sound that cool. Once you fall in love with learning, though, call it late in high school or early college, all of a sudden that sounds really cool. You get paid to, you know, just read and learn and be knowledgeable. And that to me became something that was really, really intriguing. And over time, I fell in love with investing. I've never done anything else as a career. But it was, it was really, really something that it wasn't necessarily, hey, you can make two in 20. It was, you can just get paid to learn and apply that over time. I thought that was something that you couldn't find anywhere else. Wow. Now, for those who don't know, you got an undergrad in economics. And you also went back for your master. So you are very much schooled in it. And before we talk about that, you know, before we move off of New Hampshire, I just got to know, did you go to Tecroman's like on the reg? I went to Tecroman's a few times. I wouldn't say on the regular. But my grandfather did ski, my great grandfather actually skied Tecroman's ravine into his 80s. Wow. And for those who don't know, Tecroman's ravine is on Mount Washington, which is the highest elevation in the east. And it's this place where everyone hikes up. It's like a ride a passage where you go up, bring way too much beer and climb up and ski down. And it's something that everyone, every young person should do. Oh, and it's spectacular. And you can do it in the spring. So you start off in its gorgeous weather. And then you get up there and it's 70 mile per hour winds. And you're wondering why did I do this? Yeah. It's a pretty cool spot. All right. So will you graduate from your degree in Masters of Economics for University in New Hampshire? What-- do you go to Wall Street? Like, what's your path to where you are now? So I've never worked in New York. Well, I guess technically I'd now do. But-- no, so I never worked in New York when it was recruited down to Houston, Texas to a small startup hedge fund by two people that were founding it. Functioned pretty much every hat, whether it was compliance, whether it was trading, whether it was operations, analysts, et cetera, learned a lot very, very quickly. And a lot of what I learned really, really quickly was dear God, how do I get out of this? But it was a lot of fun. Looking back on it, I probably should have appreciated it a little bit more. But it was recruited down to Texas for the hedge fund side of things. It got to me in a lot of really interesting people very, very quickly and early in my career. Then the founder of the hedge fund and the main money behind it said, my nephew has-- and it was basically a son-- has a company called Chilton Capital Management. Do you want to go work for them? And you can work for us still. But do you want to go work for them? They have a-- it was about a $600 million at the time, growth fund. And growth equity, long only. And do you want to go work for them? Be an analyst and apply yourself there. Said, sure. That sounds great. Did that. And that's really where I fell in love and really developed, I would say, the fundamental underlying philosophy of my investment world going forward. It was allowed to do it with some really, really smart people that didn't necessarily care that I was quote unquote young. And maybe coming for their jobs, they were older and ready to teach. And it was a really, really cool environment where nobody was being protective of their little silos. I got to do everything from-- I was in charge in this is 2011. I was in charge of social media. So that is at the time Twitter linked in Facebook. And on the other side, I was also doing-- can't make this up. I was also doing financials and industrials. You've got the picture of both sides and beverages, by the way. So I've shut out to the beverage side. But you've got this really interesting, very, very broad view of how to invest in that it wasn't the same across sector. It wasn't the same across equity. It really was something that was idiosyncratic. And again, I was too young to appreciate how much that actually meant. But when you're 25, 26 years old, been getting that type of experience and having that type of ability to put on risk, I don't, I think it's very difficult to actually realize what you're actually being handed. Oh, I understand that very much. So I was a young guy at a bank in my late 20s. And I was in charge of the equity derivative book. And I look at the shit I was doing and I was like, I would have never let me do that. Oh, I look, I look back at some of the things I did. And it's like, why did they let me do that? That's how I feel as well. Okay, a lot of them worked out well. That's right. A few of them though. Yeah. So did you do that all the way to the point where you eventually moved to wisdom tree or resist something in between? Oh, so after that, there was an amicable separation where I decided I wanted to try something different. And I went to a company called Avalon where you had, it was a, it was, I would say a multi-family office ultra-high net worth firm. And it was a chief economist there for five years and they sold. Oh, I see. And it was a, that was, that was a very good moment for many, many people. But then I went cell side. Oh, you did. I was like, what was the, what was the move from the by side to the cell side like for you? Well, it was always one of those things where I wanted to flex that muscle, right? This is a different muscle for sure. You did, there's the, there's the, I'm pulling the trigger and unlistening to these idiots. And then you've got to go be the idiot. Yeah. And, you know, because that's the way, you know, I always thought of it as a, you know, a PM or, yeah, that's how all you buy side thinks about the cell side. Okay. I understand that. You've got to go, you've got to go, the, be able to figure out what that other, what that other side is thinking and you've got to be able to do it and you've got to be able to do it well. So I went to Corbue for two years and Corbue specialized in geopolitics and the intersection with defense and markets. It was a pretty good time. Honestly, you had the invasion of Ukraine. You had a whole series of things that allowed for both learning, but also opportunity. Got to talk some really, really smart people and got to know them very well. That I would say is something that is invaluable. Right. It's also, I've been writing my entire career. I've been writing those clients. I've been writing daily note that was internal and external to people who wanted it. All of a sudden it was this real refinement of thought, right? Because when you're, when you're forced to write, you have to be, you know, here's the takeaway. Here's the three bullet points and then here's the stuff if you actually want to read. And the vast majority of people are just going to be like, oh, there's the thought and there's three bullet points and all that other stuff is crap, at least in my experience. And that taught, you know, that taught and really refined a thought process of, you know, you have to be very intentional about the way that you're delivering material and the way that you're, you know, applying it to portfolios because people really don't care about you, you know, and your, well, I found this in the 10 K from three years ago. And I think this is going to cost a $50 billion firm, $5 million. Nobody is going to care. That's not the way it works. You really have to be more, you know, broader thinking and that really opened me up. Okay. And so from there you go to wisdom tree. And so you're the macro strategist. Why don't you tell people a little bit about what you do there? And then let's get into some of your ideas. Sure. So I do everything from developed product. So a lot of our, uh, call it thematic, uh, and new, uh, new launches are some, are things that I have worked on and things that I'm passionate about. Uh, also sit on the investment committee for the model portfolios, uh, help shape the macro, thinking alongside, uh, Kevin Flynn again, uh, are great, uh, fixed income, strategist and the end, by the way, and in Jeff, our equity strategist, I don't want to forget him. He will kill me. Uh, so, uh, sit alongside them in terms of this is our outlook. This is the way we're thinking about the world. This is how we're thinking about the world. And this is why, uh, so frame that up, uh, and then you have the, what are we going to do next? Where are we looking at next? And that to me is always the most exciting part, right? You always have, you always have your babies in terms of, you know, the products you've launched, and the thoughts you've had and all this other thing in all these other things. But really the most interesting part to me is the internal talks about what's coming next, how the world is evolving. How do we want to be positioned? What do we want to be launching in the future, uh, etc? Okay. So one of the concepts you had that I was reading a piece that you had spoken about. And I think you coined a terrific term. You called it narval and it was narrative volatility. And it's something that I've definitely experienced and, and think that we keep, uh, the, the cycles to me are, are speeding up. I don't know if you feel this way, but I've been talking a long time about the series of rolling mini bubbles that you'll get these situations. We're all sudden something I'll take off and it'll be like a year and everyone will focus on that. And it'll become the main thing and never, you know, it'll go through the typical cycle and it flips. Is that what you meant with narval? Like the, the, the, this increased volatility of these, of these, uh, narratives? It was. And it was that you're going to jump from one to one to one to one. And it was, it was, I think it was one of the easiest things I've ever written. If you kind of think about this year, right, you enter into this year, you know, the narrative is, is this AI spending actually going to play out? Then all of a sudden is, ooh, what is this? What is this? What is this terrifying mean? Oh, what does my name is oil? I mean, ooh, what does it run mean? I, I don't know how quickly and how many narratives we can actually have in a given year. Like, you know, I would prefer that it slow down slightly. It's, it's hard for me to keep up. I mean, you try to get a, like, at least for me, right? I'm a geopolitical strategist, macro strategist. So you try to get a presentation through compliance with something about Greenland. And by the time Greenland is over, you literally have the best presentation anybody has ever seen on Greenland. And it's implications for the global economy and where to position. And all of a sudden, it's like, nobody gives a shit. Sam, because we're talking about Venezuela. And if you're not quick enough, we're on to Iran. You're, you're like, you're already, you're already like three events later. And I'm sitting there like, well, I've got this really cool presentation. So to me, what that's the essence of narrative of novel, right, is in, you know, in, I think, you know, you and I talked about it earlier, the reason, you know, one of the reasons that it's so intriguing is, as you have these things go up and down, you have opportunities to position in very intriguing ways. Right. Like if, if you saw Venezuela happening at the beginning of the year, right, and didn't have any context to what was going on after that, you probably would have thought, ooh, oil prices, oil prices are going to go, oil prices are going to go higher. And then you see what happened in Venezuela and oil prices don't budge. And then I tell you that the US and Israel are going to bomb the living daylights out of Iran. The straight of hormones will be largely closed. And you're going to have two total days of WTI pricing above a hundred bucks. Maybe like your nuts, right. And, and I think that's, yeah, they happened. That's, that's the reason that I really do think that it's a lot of narrative volatility. And as you look forward, it's where does the next volatility come from? Because the, the current administration in particular does not exactly love to have a lack of volatility on the narrative from. Right. And there can never be a lot. Right. You're absolutely right. For the zone, as we know, by the way, when you wrote that piece, I had to look up the narwhale. It's the unicorn of the sea. And I was just going to ask you, do you know what they do with that tusk? They do. They, they, I do. They poke a hole in the ice. So they can agree. Well, according to the thing I list documentary, I watched, they actually don't do that because it can get infected. And they use it to sense the alkalinity, the temperature, and all these things of the ocean. But then the other part that I thought was interesting, they do Tuskeying where they get together and they rub tusk them. So I want you to work that into your neck. Donald Tusk is now in Poland. That's right. I want you to work that into your next presentation about the Narval, the the Tuskeying. Okay, so let's talk about some of these these narratives. What do you think is the best? Like what do you want to start with? Defense stocks, tariffs, oil prices, you pick. I mean, I would pick, I love to start with a framework. Right? Sure. Let's do that then. Let's start with that. And I always like to start with a framework and I like to start with a framework that isn't date dependent and all that fun stuff, right? Just a mental framework to work with. I think there's two major ones to think about with this administration when it comes to geopolitics and when it comes to the major ball in markets. The first one is tariffs, right? You start with this giant board of cardboard that has ridiculously high rates and market sell off and then you three weeks later have the actual kind of underlying idea of where tariffs actually want to land, which is like 10 to 15 percent, right? Then you have Greenland. And you start with the US is going to take over Greenland. It's going to be hours and it, you know, Denmark, you're screwed. What you actually ended up with was something that the US actually wanted, which was, you know, more ability to put incremental troops there and all this other stuff that didn't really matter. But didn't they already have that? They did. I mean, you go back through that history. It's so much fun. Like you go back through the history. The US bought the US Virgin Islands. From Denmark. You traded it. It was like basically they got the Virgin Islands and then Denmark got the Greenland. Well, the US bought the US US VI for 25 million in gold and then recognized Denmark's right to Greenland. Then when this is fun, when Greenland and was, you know, a very important part of World War II and Denmark fell to the Nazis. The US was like, yeah, we're taking over Denmark and just completely took it over. Like we just took it from them. Greenland, you mean not Denmark? Yeah, Greenland. We just took over Greenland from Denmark when Denmark got taken over by the Nazis. There was the Nazis were running Denmark. So it didn't matter. Yeah, the enemy was running it. Yes. So we just took it over and we were like, yeah, we'll give it back to you, baby. And then we eventually slowly gave it back. And the last time we gave them a part of Denmark back, was in the 2000s. Like this is not something that is like, you know, you know, a long time we got this is something that's pretty close. The US basically got exactly what they wanted. And by the way, half of Greenland is already military bases for the US. It's not like, but what's the point of that though? Like they already had. Like I don't think that they would like, what did they get that they didn't have before? So what's the point? Greenland will say don't put more people here. We don't want, we don't want that. We don't want to be, we don't want to be militarized, etc. That was the point of that. You think that there's actually that much thought going into Trump's plan and he's not just actually trying to get Greenland because he thought that they would be better for Kevin Warch's father-in-law to, you know, I would say there's at least a monochrome of thought. All right, so go on about the narratives. Okay, so you're telling me about the framework the pond which you're talking about all these geopolitical events. Yeah, so the framework is go big. Yeah, moderate town and then actually get what you want. And where that doesn't work out well is in war. Okay. So, okay, well, all of the Trump administration be start here, go here, and here, that's a little bit of a problem at the moment. Okay, so let's talk about that. Let's talk about the war and your, I guess what's implied in terms of what you think happened is that they tried hit the typical Trump go big, ask for everything, and then get what you really want. And that's not what's happening. Why don't you explain to people why that's a problem in war and how he's going to extricate himself from this predicament? Well, so it's different in war or at least in current conflict because normally you start negotiating with somebody like Donald Tusk. And you say, here's what we, you know, here's what we want. And they're like, yeah, we're probably not going to give that to you. And it's like, well, we're going to do, we're going to leave NATO. Then, you know, whatever. And then you get the, well, we maybe we won't leave NATO, but we need this. And then Donald's like, oh, yeah, let's negotiate on that front. Then the, you know, you suddenly end up here. What happens in war is the person that you would have negotiated with dies. And then you have the problem of who do I negotiate with next to you kind of begin to deescalate the way that I've always is deescalated and been fairly successful in terms of deescalation. That is part of the problem now is it's much, much more difficult to negotiate something from here, which is Iran, we want you to no longer be a, you know, we want to decapitate. And then we want, you to be a democracy to all of a sudden it's, we just don't want you to have ballistic missiles, the ability to launch them and a Navy and a, an Air Force. But when you go from there to there, and then you try to say, okay, now we'll, now we're kind of willing to stop. Who do we talk to? It's, it's really hard because nobody internally all of a sudden has the ability to stop, has the ability to really negotiate. That takes time and that takes energy. So I would say it's, it's much different to negotiate the end to a conflict than it is to end the war to negotiate the end of tariffs. Okay, fair enough, I understand that argument. Does that, does that mean he started something that will be difficult for him to stop and will it could it potentially snowball out of control? Ooh, do potentially snowball out of control. I put it 10. Okay. Take percent. Yeah. What I would say is you're much more likely to see the US just leave. Okay, I buy that argument. Okay. But then, but then are you and just seed control of the streets of Hormuz to, to Iran and say that's your problem, not ours? I would say seed it to Iran slash Oman slash UAE slash Saudi and say, this is your issue. It's not ours. This is going to cost China. This is going to cost other folks. It's not going to cost us. And if it does begin to cost us, you know, we have enough energy, we have enough refining capacity, we can, we can do our own thing. It's your own problem. I would say that that is a non-trivial outcome. Okay. What percentage, if I, if I forced you to put a number on that one in three, six, six, oh, that high. Okay, fair enough. And, and what point do you think that would happen? And is that like this weekend within a week or two? And then finally, if it does happen, what more importantly, what do markets do? I would say it's one the polling for Rubio and Vance get low enough. Why Rubio? Oh, because they're the ones worried about getting reelected. Okay. All right. And so they're, they're there. They're pushing Trump to do it. Yes. So Trump is not exposed to the next election. He's not exposed to this conflict, basically at all. If anything, it's probably a tailwind to him, at least in the mindset going forward. But it is a big problem if your Marco Rubio and your scene as one of the leading figures on the negotiating front on the foreign affairs front, it's an unpopular, particularly within independence as popular on GOP, obviously it's popular and GOP is negative on DEMS. It's relatively unpopular on the independent front. If you're, if you're Vance at this point, you're thinking, "Oh, don't love this. If you're Rubio, you're thinking, "Oh, don't love this. Vance can't really leave Rubio-Cam." So it's really a, I would say on the 10th gentle front, it's, "What does the politics look like for my legacy if you're Trump?" Right? You don't want to be thought of as the person that caused the GOP to lose to the DEMS in 2028, 26 is pretty much already, already shipped. Right. But that is really the limiter in my mind. And how, so yes, when it gets bad enough for Vance and Rubio, they're going to push Trump to cut tail and run. What does that number look like? And how far do you think we are from that? Oh, not far. Like, not far. We've been in front of Rubio-Cam. And I would say we're probably getting pretty close to Rubio's breaking point, at least. Okay, so, and he's going to push Trump to do this. And then so your argument is that within a week, is it that kind of, that kind of timeline? I would say the administration would prefer for it to be done now. Oh, that's, they wanted it over a week ago. So, it's any moment you're arguing. It's like that this will happen. Any moment I'm arguing it, they would prefer it to happen. The problem is, Iran doesn't prefer to happen. Right. They want to try out. They want boots on the ground, almost have a fight. Yes. And you know, the other thing is that you can always put or pretend or threaten to put boots on the ground. And then back out, theoretically, back out with a deal. And bullsides can claim victory. Look, we threaten this. You know, from the US side, we threaten this. Look, they back down from Iran, from Iran side, they can tell their populace, hey, look, they were, they thought they could invade. And they can't. Right. Okay. So, it's, I think it's building credibility within the populace that's going to be important here. Okay. So now you've assigned a 60% chance. I respect the fact that you're just willing to say it. Good for you. What do you think the market does if it happens? Let's just imagine this weekend, we get a deal. And the deal is that US is leaving the find some way to claim victory. But that in reality, the Iran is going to, Iran and those countries are still going to be transportation in the streets won't be open. What do, what does market do? Oh, transportation in the street not open. In that case, well, at the very least, Iran, Iran is still controlling it and deciding who goes through. Oh, in that case, I actually think markets rip because I do think China and Russia will say, hey, no, you're going to let our ships through. And Iran does not want to have China be mad at them. Even though there was a Costco, Costco, COS, CO without the tea, Costco, Costco, a ship that ships that return back recently. I don't think Iran really wants the pressure from China and the US and Israel. They, I would say, China is not going to be a huge fan of this type of thing going longer term. Then under that scenario, is it Europe, Europe, that in Australia that suffer the most? Because they'll still be limited transportation in the street or at the very least, though, you'll be paying a lot more to get it through. It would be, Europe would take a day. Certainly Australia is the one that wins. Why does Australia win? Because they export LNG. Okay, but they still need oil, though. Like they're running out of oil as it means now. I mean, they just are paying up for it. You're saying, okay, yeah. So it's, well, the key is that LNG rips a lot more. Then okay, yeah. So it would be, I would say it's probably a 25% offset from an economic perspective, not from a consumer perspective. That's a whole different thing. But nobody cares about the Australian consumer. Does anyone care about any consumer? The lower end consumer. Okay. So you say the markets rip. Do you think that oil is instantly down like 15, 20 bucks and S&P's up 10% within a couple of days? Is that the kind of rip you're talking about? Oh, no. I think you're probably at like 85, 90 dollar WTI. Okay. And the stock market, though, you think does this, I think the stock market does rip. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And your argument there is just that it reduces all sorts of uncertainty in the markets. Uncertainty in the markets, but also you've put a medium term geopolitical, call it kicker onto the vast majority of oil out of the Middle East for the foreseeable future. This is not something that is going to be back to 60 really fast. You're going to have folks say, wait a minute, no. Like at any moment, we could have Iran decide, you know, because now they're semi destabilized. We could have Iran launch a missile into Saudi Arabia and it's going to be a problem. Right. Like, so I would say you've got that kind of kicker on top of it. When it comes to, but on, so that's kind of like a Brent type statement. When it comes to WTI, I would say you're probably, last I checked, we were like Brent was 12 over WTI or 10 over WTI. That probably narrows to about five. Okay. So WTI does fall more. But I had a couple of my subscribers reach out to me and say, okay, if if if Trump does find a way to proclaim victory and kind of just turns around in essence, the argument that you're making, what would be the trade with the most bang for the mock like, what would be the best way to express that trade? Gold. Oh, interesting. Because that is one of the subscribers that reached to me. That's what he had decided as well. Why don't you explain to me why you feel that way? For a couple of reasons. One, gold was the love child of Wall Street for the last 18 months. Felt out of favor when all of a sudden you had oil, ripping, inflation, expectations, ripping. If all of a sudden you have oil begin to fall back. If you have the conflict, just disappear off the map. And in September, you and I are talking about $250 gasoline and mirin talking 250 on Fed funds. All of a sudden you're looking at a gold number that is going back towards all time highs. You're you're not looking at potential rate hikes. You're not looking at all of the things that are taking the shine off gold. So to me, if you want the most bang for that buck, I mean, you also have if this continues, you've got more downside. So, buyer beware. But if you have that type of environment into the back half the year and I'm not going to discreet them, I kind of see it. Gold could be an absolute ripper. Okay. I would push back and say that if the market rolls over and oil stays high and central banks mistakenly tighten into it, gold could also, although it would be under short term pressure, eventually be a big winner as well. Because on the other side of that, if we got a situation where they roll it into recession, it will be the leader out of that area. And not only that. I'm that's that's how I look at it. And I feel like bonds are somewhat similar now that were kind of there. They're I understand why both gold and bonds sold off during these past few weeks. But to me this last week, if they've traded a little bit differently. And for the first time, they weren't trading tick for tick as oil went up. They went down and they started to trade a little better. And I think that that's a sign that they're returning a little bit to their safe haven kind of aspect or quality because I think that the market is starting to worry about recession. Do you worry about recession? Not really. No. Why do you tell me why do you feel like you that was pretty quick? You didn't even think about that. Why do you feel so comfortable that there's no that recessions not something to worry about? So let's let's kind of let's kind of play it out. So you now have gas and I was looking in New York. I've been New York. I've been Houston this week. New York outside of the airports was like four bucks a gallon here in Houston. It's 350. The bottom side of the bottom consumer and the lower part of the K has has been under pressure for a long time. This is not something new. They haven't really been a driver whatsoever. So I'm just not sure I should care from an economic perspective. Like I care from a personal perspective. Okay. From an economic perspective. They just don't matter for the economy. They just don't matter for consumer spending, same store sales, etc. 25 to $40 extra week going into my wife's gas tank is not going to change how much she spends in a given week. It is going to change how much goes into our savings account by approximately $40. Okay. It just doesn't matter for the upper middle, middle even and upper income consumer that's driving the economy anyway. But they don't even care. And a lot of them are positively exposed to higher-energy prices. Well, you've got all of Texas. Okay. You've got all of middle America, not all of middle America, but a significant amount of North Dakota. You've got Texas. You've got a whole bunch of jobs that we're getting shed because oil prices were so low. That's a good point. There's actually on the lower K. There's a lot of jobs there. Yeah. We are literally the world's largest energy producer. So we are in by energy. You know, there's oil, there's gas, there's condosate, there's a whole bunch of stuff there. But we're the world's largest energy producer on a daily basis. It doesn't hurt us unless it persists and we don't get the offset from job creation and wage growth. Okay. One of the you mentioned job creation. The job creation has been extremely like tap it, let's say, over the last little while. There's been very little of it. Is that AI and do you worry about AI and is that maybe oil doesn't push us over but could it be that just consumer, sorry, business owners are shoving their hands in their pockets and I'm not going to hire anyone because I don't know what's going to happen with AI and could that be something that drives us into recession? It could be what the contestsion that I would have is you had incredible corporate creation. So when you look at the filings for new businesses, you had huge creation during COVID and we broke that in the last three months for an all-time high. So what is AI really doing? I would say it's creating an awful lot of opportunity for people to start businesses at a much lower rate of capital intensity. That's kind of the way it actually looks like from a parsing it out perspective. Do I think it's going to have a real profound perfect effect on a number of different industries that probably were a little fat in terms of their overall spending, overall employment levels? Yes. Do I think it's going to kill the US economy? No. I'm actually really excited about what we find out from AI, what new businesses we see. I'd liken it to if you look at a draft room, not draft beer, but draft room. Is that because I'm Canadian? You had to tell me that. That wasn't your idea. I'm not the figure. I'm not the figure. So if you look at a draft room for architectural drawings back in the 1950s, '70s, '80s, etc. You had a tremendous number of very highly paid, very highly educated individuals sitting there sketching out exactly how you were going to build this building. Then all of a sudden you had an AutoCAD. I can remember AutoCAD coming into my dad was in construction for a little while. I actually still is. But I remember AutoCAD coming in and my dad being like, this is the greatest thing ever because at least now I can tell them where they're wrong and point to it. But the key there is you had 70 people working on a single thing. Now all of a sudden after that, you had one person. We did not think of that as some sort of software replace a ton of jobs. We're not at some sort of all-time low on employment. We're near all-time highs on employment. I get kind of excited about what's the next AutoCAD? What's the next thing that is going to make us better? At the fundamental level, I'm an equity analyst, so I should be terrified. Okay, before we leave the war and stuff, let's talk a little bit about oil prices. Let's imagine for a second that we have a situation where oil persists higher, which I think is actually your base case. It stays up here. It doesn't go down. Inflation throughout the world ends up being higher just by virtue that oil is a huge component of that. My question to you is, so far, the front end of yield curves throughout the world has priced in either taking out cuts in the case of the US or priced in hikes in the case of Canada, Australia, Europe, UK. Do you think, first of all, that they're going to do that? Do you think it's a mistake in what will be the economic and market ramifications if they do do that potential mistake? Oh boy. Let's go with UK and Europe. Yeah, I think they'll make that mistake. They're not known for making the best of all possible decisions when it comes to military policy. ECB has a long record of doing this, right? It does. It's a oh, I'm spacing out his name. There's this great chart. It was true. Yes. Thank you. You see the chart and it's like, yeah, you got fired. I would say they are going, those two are going to be hawkish going forward and making green. For example, we came out this week at the BOE saying she was hawkish. Those two banks are going to be hawkish relative to the rest. The US has is rather interesting at this point. For better or worse. Before we move on to the US, they're going to be hawkish. Does that throw them into a recession? No. No. Okay. So you think that it won't be enough to derail the global recession? I mean, the global expansion and although they might be a little bit weaker, it's not going to do anything. Well, the weird part is somehow Ukraine, Russia, didn't really derail Europe, broadly speaking. There were incremental recessions, depending on where you looked. But if you have that type of disruption and now you're talking about rather minor one relative to that for their economy, I struggle on that front. I struggle on that one. Now let's move on to the US and talk about what their policy response will be. And before you go on about it, it is, I would say though. One of the things that I found interesting at this last F-Thome C meeting was that the market had kind of priced out one or two at that point. And then it looked like, sorry, Bernack, you're showing my age, Powell confirmed the market hawkishness. What I found most interesting was the fact that Waller and Bowman took out their descent. And to me, that's them basically confirming the move higher in front end rates. Sorry, the move higher in implied front end rates. In implied, yes. Because it's not obviously we're not going higher, we're just taking out cuts. We're taking out cuts. And then you had both of them kind of backtrack a little bit in their speeches. When you. Oh, I didn't see that. Is that what they did? That's kind of the way it looked to me when Waller said, "I still see the possibility of a couple of cuts in the back half of the year." Right. They're trying to put the narval into the back half of the year. And again, I think that's really important because you do have that in the back half. It's not. Markets aren't going to say, in the next three months, we're not getting a cut. In the next six months, we're not getting a cut. Okay, let's sell off. They're going to say, "Oh, wait a minute. Job creation is zero." Give or take on that. Ininflation is largely due to oil. Wait a minute. These idiots are going to have to cut. And they're going to start pricing those two to two and a half, three cuts back in. I'm in the summer. And you're going to happen. Face rip. Okay. And you think that will. Oh, yeah. Oh, on those expectations. But do you think the stock market will take that well? Oh, the stock market's going to take that as purifier. Okay. Like just throwing gasoline on it. Okay. So your argument is that even if inflation ends up being higher, they will not actually go hawkish and that they will put the cuts back in. So you're arguing in essence that even if inflation, like let me just pull up what the inflation is set to be. I'm just going to pull up the curve. One second, stay with me here. And we'll just pull it up and we'll see where that is for the fall. So I'm looking at the settings. I see that this next one April is $3.35. The next month is $3.75. Then it's $3.85. And then by summer, by September, we're back at $3.5. Okay. So let's just assume that the market's correct. We're $3.5. You think that the Fed could be back cutting at $3.5, even though like that's, you know, 150 basis points from their target. I think the newly constructed Fed would be very interested in cutting at that level. Yes. Okay. And you don't. You that. Like I don't know there's different opinions out there on how much actual monetary policy affects inflation expectations and stuff. I'd be curious about your views. Do you think that that potentially is sowing the seeds for a return of inflation in the coming years? Nope. Not even a little. Okay. Can you explain why? Yeah. So what you saw in. I'm more than happy to dig into it, but what you saw in the wake of COVID, for example, was a number of companies kind of taking a giant ding in terms of revenues in terms of margins. And then all of a sudden, you began to have them spiral in price sites. Companies determine when they're going to try to push price. And the consumer is all done with pushing price. Like they don't care. Like they won't pivot to something that is cheaper. You're just not going to see it happen. Like it's all over on that front. Like you lays potato chips and can't push 10 to 15% price on a year-to-year basis. Like nobody is. nobody is going to put up that crap. That is really what allowed. Right. So if you look at where the actual inflation came from in the COVID period, the COVID period was really led by companies saying we have higher costs. We are going to maintain our margin. We're going to see what we can do. And they found out and they found out they could push a lot. Now they have already found their elasticity. You're not going to get a second chance with the consumer. The consumer has figured out that Costco chips taste just as good as lays potato chips for a reason. Not the COS CO. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. But then aren't you arguing the monetary policy is an effect like not driving the economic bus? It's driving the economic bus from the perspective of it does put a lot more risk on the table. Right. It frees up a lot more of my merging capacity. So if you're talking about the stock market, it frees up a lot. So it does matter on the stock market, it does matter on the equity front, it matters on rates, it matters across the board. It doesn't matter overall for my outlook on the US economy. Not really. Okay. And so are you dangerously close to an MMT? No, I'm dangerously close to somebody who thinks that when it comes to MMT, if you articulated MMT correctly, what you would find out is that monetary policy has never been done differently and neither has fiscal policy. Oh, that's true. It's like MMT is like sure. Yeah. No, that's exactly what we do. We just do it by a different name. Like cool. Tell me something new. Okay, so let's go through some other trades here. tariffs. You told me that they you think they're incredibly underappreciated. Explain why you say that. I think they're incredibly underappreciated in the companies that suffered from them are incredibly underappreciated. The overall of the i.e. peteris should have been the biggest in was a catalyst until all of a sudden you had other headlines for industrials, consumer discretionary, etc. Those companies have spent the better part of a year and a half restructuring everything from their supply chains to their overall cost structures. Like these companies have done incredible things. And all of a sudden they're really not tariffed all that much. Like these companies have structurally higher margins because of tariffs. Like tariffs is actually kind of the best thing that ever happened to a John Deere or a craft, a Heinz or a Polaris industries or a Harley Davidson. Like you go down through the list of these weird cyclical companies that nobody cares about and everybody hates. So tariffs are the best thing that ever happened to them because it forced them to think about their cost structure and margins, etc. If you have a lack of incremental tariffs going forward, these are companies to really pay attention to because they don't care if you have 2% top-line growth, 5%, 10%, I mean that would be a gift. But their margin structures are so much better than they were prior to all of this. I'm really excited about the digging under the hood of the big tariff issue companies and figuring out who exactly did the best job on margin expansion. Like these companies could be absolute rippers going forward. And it's somewhat, it's almost somewhat of a, it's a difficult conversation to have with clients by the way because they're like, why would I ever want to buy something that you know, wasn't American to begin with? And it's like, who was American to begin with? Now the argument that they had to increase prices because of tariffs and now the tariffs are gone and so the margins are going to increase or is it more than that? They're saying. They didn't raise price. So the vast majority of companies didn't raise a whole lot of price. So you're talking to maybe 3% type pricing across the group. So they ate margins and so you're saying that they got more efficient because they were forced to get more efficient and now the tariffs are gone and that's going to still, they're not putting prices down and yet they become more efficient. Is that the argument? Exactly. I got it. Okay, great. And you name some names. Do you have any more? Like are those all the kind of like you could almost make a basket of those and and yeah, maybe we have. But you can you can look at it as something. Let's see, named a few. Look at Stanley Black and Dr. on top of that UPS. A whole bunch of names under that are just they're either getting huge refunds or they're now a beneficiary Toyota Honda like a lot of the international names as well. Okay. One of the things that you mentioned there is there was a difficult conversation to have with clients. One of your parts of your job is you go around and you talked to a lot of advisors, people that are investing in your funds. I would love to know, you know, what are people talking about? What's the mood out there? What are you seeing? What surprised you the most about it? Speaking to folks. Oh, I would say on the latest trip and the latest trip being yesterday. Yeah. Okay. The latest trip, the most surprising thing was where do we go next and not in terms of geopolitics, not in terms of, you know, who's going to you know, who's going to invade who what's going to blow up next. It was how and where do we actually put money here? Because a lot of people were very attentive coming into the year apparently and I didn't know that and all of a sudden you're getting a lot of interesting conversations about, well, wait a minute, where do I want to be in September? Where do I want to be in December? And how do I position now for what's going to come? One of the things that you mentioned there is that you went around the talk to some different clients and they were not fully invested, I guess, as the implication there at the beginning of the year. You said that you were surprised. I'm also surprised by that because to me, it felt very much sentiment wise, a lot of people were all in firm, you know, at the beginning of the year. And now for the first time we're seeing some fear. Do you, how do you reconcile that and do you feel the same as me or do I misinterpret it? Oh, so the way that I would think about it is they were fully invested, but they weren't necessarily invested in the way that they wanted to be. So whether that was being overweight, call it your growthier side of the equation or being overweight duration, for example, you know, there were ways to reallocate that weren't painful from either a, you know, an advisor perspective or from an allocation and text perspective. Okay. So wasn't that they were sitting in cash, it's just that they weren't in their optimal portfolio and now they're very keen to invest in things that they feel like they might have missed earlier. Exactly. Exactly. And not necessarily missed earlier, it's beginning to pick up a lot of the stuff that wasn't as interesting six months ago. And all of a sudden is now very interesting to them. And it's not, and by the way, that is not saying they're buying energy because that's not that's not what they're doing or buying something that's ultra, you know, high beta in this type of environment, it's picking up a lot of things kind of on the dip that folks wanted, but always were like, did I miss it, etc. That's where they're beginning to step in now. And what would examples of that? Would that part of that be maybe the rest of the world trade that had kind of taken off and run? And by the way, for those who don't know, I'll say it right now, wisdom tree is known for money of their international funds. So go check out wisdom tree. But is that part of one of the trades that they missed that they might be buying now? So a little bit, I would say it's much more of a I want to have a shopping list type of thing. It's not necessarily I'm going to buy today and just hit the bid. It's much more of the mentality of where are the dislocations that don't make sense. At least, you know, if you don't have $100 oil for the next year, where are the dislocations that don't make sense and how do I take advantage of that? Some of that is in places like Europe, for example, folks are beginning to look at Europe, but much more is Japan, Korea, India, those three. They're the ones that have very high leverage to energy. So in a negative way, by the way. In a negative way. Yeah. They, you know, India, Japan and Korea don't really have a domestic energy source. They don't have oil getting pumped out of the ground. So when you have higher energy prices, you're going to have those three generally be the places they could sold off. Japan realized this a long time ago, by the way. It's kind of shocking that people don't get this. But coming out of World War II, they were kind of like, wait a minute. We need a lot of oil because, you know, when the US cuts us off, you know, we wear kind of screwed. So they have about nine months give or take between seven and nine depending on what you look at in terms of just straight up capacity. They're like, yeah, we got we got plenty. So if Japan doesn't get another barrel, they're okay for seven and nine months. Korea, India, they're different, but they're also India in particular is a lot more friendly with places like Iran and places like Russia. They take a lot of Russian oil. So I would suggest that where we're seeing a lot of interest on the margin is in places that have been sold off hard on oil that probably shouldn't have been. Japan number one, India number two, broad E.M. Asia number three, including Korea, but also some of the other names. Let's stick on Japan for a little bit because I think that you like Japan for more than just the fact that the market's missing how exposed the art to energy. Can you lay out your both thesis for Japan? I'd love to hear. Sure. So the both thesis on Japan and I don't really think it's a both thesis. I just think it's a kind of a thesis. It's kind of one of those weird things where I think that downside is like how many turns are you going to take off Japan too and you're going to call it 12 and a half cool. Like call that downside and call me uncle. By the way, when Sam says turns, he means PE like points, right? I just want it for people to understand that. Okay. Yeah. So you're talking, you know, two and a half, maybe two PE points, you know, could be taken off. I just don't care about two of those when you haven't had Japan's PE move in the last decade. And if you were if you were a hedge Japanese investor, you have performed the S&P 500. Oh, I didn't realize that. Yeah. If there was only a fun that had the the Nikkei with the all-head straight. Yeah. If only that if only that was Sam. But my point being, if you if you look at it and you hedged out the, you know, if you're domestic investor in Japan in your own index, you crush the S&P. I had no idea. That is wild, isn't it? Yeah. That to me is one of those moments where you're like, wait a minute, the S&P is trading at 21, 22 depending on what day you look at it. And you've got the Japanese market trading at 14 and a half, 15. And it really hasn't moved. Like you've just had steady Eddie. That means that those companies make more money. It means they have revenues. It means they expand margin. It means they drop it to the bottom line. I love that stuff. Like that's what is exciting. Yeah. I just pulled up if there was such a product that was a hedged index of the Japan. It might have an annual, you know, return of 23.7% over the last five years. Whereas the S&P has been 11, almost 12%. It's shocking. I had no clue. I knew it was good, but I didn't realize it's that much better. That is shocking. So now you don't worry. And as you mentioned, I guess, P's have expanded a little bit. I don't think they've been completely static during that point. Have they? It's been like, it's been like a one, it's been like one turn. Okay. Okay. So here I'll play. I'm a big Japan bull, but I'm going to play the bear just just just just for fun. They got so much debt out there. Their currency is going to collapse. Everybody's old. They're completely screwed. Why would you invest in a country that's so screwed, Sam? Because you're not buying the country. You're buying the companies. I mean, so does Suzuki care how many motorcycles they sell in Osaka? No. They have this 55-60% of their revenues come from India. Does Toyota care how many people they can hire in Tokyo? No. They care about how many people they can hire in Georgetown, Kentucky, to make their cars and sell them in the US. Honda, that would be Georgia and how many cars can they sell in the US? Sampo, an insurance company, boring company. Nobody's ever heard of who they partner with. They partnered with Palantir before Palantir was, you know, what it is now. That was like 2017-2018 and ended up owning some low double digit number of Palantir. Come on, I didn't know that. Yeah, that is hilarious. And Sampo is an insurance company and the reason they partnered with Palantir was, hey, help us get better at helping old people. Like, and now you've got this whole thing. By the way, Sampo is a 50/50 owner in Palantir, Japan. So where I like to, what I like to say is you're not investing in Japan. You're investing in companies that figured out a long time ago. And before it was cool that demographics suck and demographics are going to be a problem. And Japan was the first place that it hit and it hit their corporate market very, very early. They got ahead of it. And now if you're a company in the US, if you're a company in Europe, if you're a company in China, China has horrible demographics going forward. Who do you need to learn from? Japan. Because Japan doesn't really care about at least the equity market and the companies. They don't care what's going on in Japan. They care about, is India growing at a nominal 12%? Yes. Okay, great. Is the US not in a recession? Awesome. Let's do that. They're basically a levered play on the global economy and global innovation. And they're by far the best at it. That's great. Okay. So we're going to have two final topics here. So I'm going to let you pick the two. Not I'll let you pick the two. I'll give you the two. You tell me which one you want to talk about first. Defense stocks and the November election. Which one do we hit? Which one do we tackle first? That's hard. It's hard because I like defense stocks and we'll do both. We're going to do them both. You just pick which one we'll go first. Okay. Okay. Let's do let's do defense stocks because it spirals and then we'll spiral in. Sounds good. Yeah. So defense stocks. I would say the most interesting part about what we've seen in Ukraine, what we've seen in the Gulf is not a whole bunch of interceptors being incredibly effective. It's that we've seen a whole bunch of 20 million dollar interceptors be really effective against $20,000 drones. The interesting part about defense going forward, particularly in Asia, particularly in Europe, less so in the US because the US is behind on this is the European and Asian defense companies and defense spending increases are going towards things that are saying, hey, let's hit this $20,000 drone with something that is $20,000 as well. Let's not waste money. The US has and hopefully will continue to have, don't give me a wrong on that front, the greatest military in the world, greatest hardware, etc. The reason we have it is because we spend a ton of money on individual things. The world has changed. It is drones, drone detection, and drone deterrent, right? Being able to shun down. Whether that's net missiles, and microwaves, laser, whatever. I would say the scary part about the current environment is that Europe and Asia might actually front run the US in terms of that technology going forward because they're going to dump a lot of money into developing those technologies and the US is going to be sitting there like, we have the F-35 though. That's a scary part. You have a huge legacy project where trillions of dollars are being spent. All of a sudden, you end up with Ukraine being like, we have this $2,000 drone that can intercept one of the missiles coming from Russia and the US is like, oh, that's cool. We'll take XYZ number of the. They're like, oh, by the way, it can also intercept yours and the US is like, say what? That's really where this type of spending gets weird, right? So your previous investment is now. It's a lot like. I don't want to get into that rabbit hole, but it's a lot like the threat of, you know, in the recent way, a lot of investors are scared of AI, right? What if this is all a zero? A lot of the legacy spending is going to be. Yeah. And for those who are not just listening and not watching, yeah, Sam said a zero. And that is true. Like, I hear you. That's a great point. So how do you take advantage of this? European defense stocks? I wouldn't say it's just. Yes, European defense stocks. I would also say it's Asian defense stocks. There's two countries in Asia that have had a long history of wanting to know when somebody was going to hit them. Japan is one, but Korea. Right, we all know there's South Korea, the one we like, North Korea, the one we don't get along with, all that well. You have to have really, really quick detection if you're South Korea in order to be able to intercept the North Korean attack. Right. You have developed incredible capabilities within radar, within the ability to detect. So I'm actually thinking the next 20 years are going to be much more about that, right? They're going to be about the defense side of defense in not the offensive side of defense. I really think if you can say, watch all you want at me, nothing's going to hit me, you're going to be really, really interesting as a global power going forward. I'm not sure the. I'm not sure how much money the US is going to spend on that, but I'm guessing it's going to be a small fortune, and it's not going to be all with US defense contractors, because we specialize in blowing stuff up, not knocking stuff out of the air. Right. We're all going to have our own little iron domes. Okay, last thing here, November election. Leibdank Trump is what you've argued. You said you're excited about it. Ridlock is back. Tell me why what you think is going to happen. For everybody listening, I'm not excited about it from a political perspective. I'm excited from a market perspective. Just be clear on that. That's one way to end my question. You can't be saying that you're excited about that. I was like, I am putting words in his mouth. He's not excited about it. He is just talking about the economic and market realities of it. The market reality is when you have an election in November, and it's very likely to be a Congress that is blue. It's 50/50 at the moment on whether the Senate is blue. I would actually prefer to be pretty much a 50/50 Senate because that is beautiful. You have President Red, Senate, called Purple. Then you have a Congress blue. It makes it very difficult to do things as a lame duck. It makes it very easy for Congress to make it very difficult and to mess up what is a decent backdrop. It's to me, if you have an impeachment announcement every three minutes, you're not going to get them impeached. It's the beautiful thing about American politics. You can announce an impeachment every 10 minutes. You're not going to get an impeachment. It's just not going to happen, but it's going to be distracting enough that you're not going to do something that is detrimental to the US economy. And it's also probably going to limit you in terms of what you want to do vis-a-vis your legacy, right? You want something as you exit to be a legacy. I'm not sure that it's going to be something Trump is overly concerned about relative to history, but he's going to be reminded by the people around him that there is a legacy. You don't want to be known as the president that spent the last two years battling Congress, maybe work with them. And if the Trump administration decides to work on things like farm or other things for the lower part of the K, all of a sudden you could, you know, your worst case scenario is that the bottom half of the K gets a lot of benefits relative to the top. Okay, and then this is also going to create at the very least gridlock. And so I think you mentioned the fact that the one beautiful bill is going to, you know, be a tailwind and on the whole. In essence, is the argument that they're not going to be able to mess anything up going forward? Correct. I mean, it's just that simple. Like one big beautiful bill is there. Congress can say we don't love this, we don't love that, and Trump can just be like, "Feed to." And it's all over. So although some might be upset about the potential gridlock or the change in a government, you will argue that from a market perspective at the very least, it might be the best thing you could ask for. Yes. And I think Dennis Garmin used to say that. He used to say that, yeah, that was one of his famous lines that gridlock is great for markets. Putting me in the same bucket as Gartlin. Well, I know I'm sorry about that. Oh God. As long as you're not pricing it again, go on the terms again. Well, I might have to rethink my position now. Yeah. We we we've had edits on either wonderful man. And he's a spoken fun at you, Dennis. Although I'm not sure he listens. Okay. So I'm going to leave with one last question for you. I've asked you a lot of different things. If you were interviewing yourself, what would you ask that I missed? Oh, like what do you feel like I might have, you know, we're talking about all these different things. There's something that's on your mind about markets that was just kind of we didn't touch on. Where's the where's the downside nobody else is seeing? Okay. That's great. Let's go for it. Oh, I have to answer that. Yeah. You have to answer. I'm just kidding. I had a feeling we were going there. The biggest risk to the downside. I'd say the biggest risk to the downside is you don't have November go the way markets think November is going to go. And the reason and where you get to buy Congress and it's a lame duck for the next two years. I think that is part of the reason, along with other things like, you know, oil prices, not going to 150. I think that's part of the reason you haven't had a very significant sell-off right now. Got it. That you don't have the market thinking that this is a longer term thing. You have markets believing this is a much, much shorter term timeframe. I think if you begin to see pulling on politics move towards a continuation of what we have right now, you're going to have Democrats again and I'm going to be standing in the line at IH again for two hours and 45 minutes to get to New York for a few meetings. That's a problem. That is a type of dysfunction that creates productivity losses. It creates all sorts of things. That's and that's only one example. Right. If you have that type of dysfunction and you can't just get stuff done, yeah, markets aren't going to like it. Markets are going to like something where it's a little more predictable with all the tailwinds of tax cuts, regulation, etc. You get all the good front loaded and you've got no repeal and/or bad side back loaded. Okay, so now let's end with our Desert Island Trader Edition. For those who don't know this game, there's a BBC show called Desert Island where they ask celebrities like Sam. They're top 10 albums that they want to be stranded on Desert Island with. We're going to do the Trader Edition. Trader Edition is three albums or three bands. You can pick whatever ones you want and one trader from any point in history. Let's go with the three bands or three albums. All right. So three bands, Nirvana, K. Sound Garden. Oh God. What are you? Let me guess. I'm born 1970. I'm going to bet you're born 1980. Seven. 87. Yeah. Oh, you're even younger than I thought. Wow. Okay. I'm sorry. I apologize. I was just going by the music. You're actually that's a little old for you, isn't it? My wrong? Because it doesn't Nirvana late 90s and isn't that then mean you were like 12 when you started to like Nirvana? Yes. I also told you that I grew up on a farm and we didn't have a TV. Okay. I interrupted. I'm sorry to interrupt you this again. Nirvana, so sound garden and drum roll, please for the last one. Oh, that's that's actually a tough one. Probably Metallica. Well, you're showing me the farm. The farm kids coming out here. Yeah. Yeah. And on the Trader front, it's probably going to be the hunt brothers. Wow. Now there's an out of the box choice that I've never expected. Why? Why? Yeah. Because they almost pulled it off. And I want to know what they thought when they didn't. I want to know how they thought about it. I want to be I want to be at the bar with them when they thought this was a good idea. And then I want to be at the bar with them when they were like and it's over. That is the that you win Sam for the best choice of the Trader to be with. That is well done, buddy. Well done. That is awesome. I appreciate that. Okay. So let's learn more about you and your firm. And by the way, I'm going to say this because Sam's got all sorts of compliance things, but a lot of the things that we're talking about. If you go look at his firm, they might have baskets and positions and trades for you to help help is to do those trades. So make sure you go to wisdom tree because many of these themes there will be products for. Okay. Go ahead, Sam. Tell us about your firm. Oh, wisdom tree. We've been around for the better part of 20 years. We're celebrating it this summer. We specialize in international and currency hedge specifically, thematics and being thoughtful around dividends and shareholder yields. And we're not going to be your beta firm. We're going to be your alpha firm. Oh, that's a good line. Somebody in marketing years earning their kuda their money there. Believe it or not, I made it up on the spot. Did you really? I did. Honestly, you got to talk to him about that, buddy. I know. I know. Holy smokes. You're going to TM that you really should. That is awesome. Okay. Well, Sam, this pleasure getting to know you a little bit better and I appreciate you coming and spending some time with us. Thank you, Kevin.