First Trust ROI Podcast
On the ROI podcast, we discuss some of the most important questions facing investment professionals today, ranging from macroeconomic views, to perspectives on the equity and fixed income markets, to insights on practice management. We aim to cut through the noise, examine the data, and provide fresh insights to investment professionals as they help their clients find better ways to invest…seeking to generate attractive returns on their investments.
First Trust ROI Podcast
ROI Podcast | Episode 20 | Will the Stock Market Continue to Defy Expectations? | May 6, 2024
In this episode, Dave McGarel, Chief Investment Officer at First Trust shares his perspective on the risks and opportunities that may lie ahead for equities. Dave shares why First Trust believes low volatility stocks are growing more attractive, why the technology sector has been the secular growth story of our lifetimes, and which data points investment professional should pay close attention to for the rest of 2024.
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Hi, welcome to this episode of the First Trust ROI podcast. I'm Ryan Isakainen, etf strategist at First Trust. Equity markets have been really challenging to forecast. Certain areas have done much better than expected, while others have lagged behind. One of the laggards has been the segment of the market that is more defensive, focused on less volatile stocks, and that's one of the things we're going to talk about today with Dave McGarrel, chief Investment Officer at First Trust. Dave and I will break down the low volatility trade. We're also going to talk about what's happening in banks, where the opportunity might lie in artificial intelligence, as well as discussion about international markets and maybe where some opportunities lie ahead. All of this and more on this episode of the First Trust ROI Podcast. So, dave, thank you for coming on the podcast again. Your first episode was very well received, so I'm glad we were able to convince you to make another appearance.
Speaker 2:Great, I'm happy to be back.
Speaker 1:So the stock market has been really, really challenging to predict. I think most of us, when we looked at the performance of the equity market in 2022, coming into last year no one would have guessed that it would be up 26% or whatever it was for the S&P last year so far this year we're at the beginning of May I think there's been a little bit of outperformance relative to many people's expectations. We've had a little bit of a pullback more recently, but one of the areas that hasn't done as well have been those more defensive, low volatility stocks, and I think there's a lot of people that are wondering. Done as well have been those more defensive, low volatility stocks, and I think there's a lot of people that are wondering if well, first off, why are they underperforming and is there a case to be made to include them or add them to a portfolio today?
Speaker 2:Sure, certainly low vol has underperformed dramatically in the last year. Last year was the worst factor of all the factors that we follow, clearly the worst factor and year to date. Especially through the end of March it continued to be the worst factor. It picked up a little bit better in April, but the outperformance of the S&P 500 versus low vol is something on the order of 10 times. The S&P might be up 33% in the last 16 months and low vol is up about 3%. So it has been no love at all for the low vol trade.
Speaker 2:And low vol is all about a defensive posture low volatility, of course, and also more defensive utilities consumer staples, health care and also more defensive Utilities consumer staples, healthcare are big quotients of what is inside the low vol basket when you look at the sectors and the stocks, and those are defensive characteristic stocks and they've performed poorly. Obviously, along with that low vol factor, the low vol also is a bond proxy typically, and we needed a bond proxy until the Fed started hiking rates because rates have been low for a decade. Plus, we used less volatile equities to get some of the income.
Speaker 1:So that's why it's a bond proxy, because they tend to have higher yields. So they're similar for the purpose you're using them, exactly Utilities is usually one of the highest-yielding sectors.
Speaker 2:Consistent increases, a lot of dividend aristocrats in those sectors are consumer staples, so they've consistently been used in order to drive some income and to be defensive, which we know. Historically, those companies have held up better in a correction.
Speaker 2:And we haven't had a correction or a severe correction. When we do have one, I think. Where we're positioned now in low vol and the valuation of low vol similar to where it was. The last time it was similar to the valuation today was during the great financial crisis in the aftermath of that, so so valuation is finally back to where low vol. In our opinion, low vol stocks should be valued, and so not having exposure to them today is very different from not having their exposure to them when we were in a massive bull market. So I would advocate some exposure to low vol here for sure.
Speaker 1:It was interesting over the last decade to watch the stocks that are considered low volatility stocks because they went from, like you're describing, a cheaper valuation set of stocks because they don't have as much growth. But then, as volatility picked up and you saw some, there was the swoon at the end of 2018 where we saw the market sell off and then all of a sudden we start to see those low vol stocks get pretty expensive. How much of that do you think? I mean? I look at the performance of low volatility stocks and it seems like a lot of it is just because people are favoring high growth, but do you think the higher valuations and low volatility stocks had a lot to do with the underperformance over the last three, four years?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think there was a hard case to make to go into low vol when we could get risk-free yields somewhere else, which is why everybody used those stocks. And then when you looked and say, well, maybe there's an opportunity here, absent that income stream, and it wasn't to be found, there wasn't faster growth in consumer staples or utilities or health care compared to the rest of the market.
Speaker 2:The market was growing rapidly with all the stimulus and people favored high-growth stocks, higher beta stocks. So, yeah, certainly there was not a trade there that looked compelling from a risk return perspective. So, for the first time in a long time, I think we're back to where low vol trades where it should and absent. Having that in your portfolio and if you're much more aggressive inside your portfolio, without any exposure or very little exposure to low vol, which are not big sectors, by the way, it's not a huge contingent of stocks in the low vol basket. The entire utility sector is smaller than Apple or Microsoft. At this point, I think you're missing the opportunity today to diversify in what we would expect is going to be a more muted equity return as we move through the rest of this decade.
Speaker 1:So maybe balancing out some of the riskier portions of an equity portfolio with some of the less risky or low volatility stocks.
Speaker 2:Sure, if we're all crowded on one side of the boat, whenever anyone wants to leave that side of the boat you say, okay, where can I go? And clearly we've seen massive outflows in low volatility products on the ETF and mutual fund side. So once everybody's done exiting and I believe most are especially those who use them for income and move just into fixed income then the next iteration is when do you want to get back into that?
Speaker 2:And if you fear a correction if you look at pricing and valuation across the S&P 500, and you don't see as many opportunities. You're more apt to spread the money out and low vol doesn't need a lot of money being poured into it because of the scale and size of it to see a trade take place there.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned before that some of those stocks are historically have been used as bond proxies and we're at a point in time where it seems like opinions in the market what's priced into the market have shifted with respect to what interest rates are going to do, at least what the Fed policy is going to do. We started the year with something like six rate cuts priced in. I think today there's something like one rate cut priced in. So how, I guess how dependent is the low vol trade on what interest rates do, what the Fed does? And I guess the second part of that is what do you think the Fed is going to do?
Speaker 2:Certainly. That's what the confusion about the 6% or 7% increase in the first four months of the equity markets is. The highest forecast that we followed was 5,200 for the year and in mid-March we went past 5,200. We're obviously below that at this point, but the equity markets have risen despite the rationale for the highest forecast not coming true at all. The Fed is not cutting rates six times. Nobody believes that anymore.
Speaker 2:The 10-year Treasury started the year at $3.88. Now it's $4.62. So we're way higher on the 10-year Treasury. Oil prices are not accommodative, just like interest rates aren't. Everything still has more restriction than accommodation and the year we're supposed to be about the market starting to appreciate the accommodation that was going to be delivered primarily by the Fed and those interest rate cuts.
Speaker 2:So dividend paying stocks are all throughout the low vol trade. When the Fed does cut and that's still our base case that we'll see one cut, maybe two cuts, cuts this year. Even if there's no cuts, we don't believe the Fed is going to raise rates this year, particularly in front of an election year and so and we also believe that the market is going to be more volatile as we move throughout the year. So there's going to be some more positioning in the low vol trade. We believe as you move throughout the year there's going to be some more positioning in the low vol trade, we believe as you move throughout the year, and any cuts in rates are going to have some investors say, okay, now I need to get into that dividend trade before everybody else tries to pour into it, even if the yield isn't attractive, as attractive as some of the risk-free trades inside the treasury universe or some of the less risky fixed income opportunities.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned the fact that it is an election year and that may have an impact on how the Fed conducts its monetary policy. I'm always curious to try to figure out. If there's a way to figure out how much of an impact the upcoming elections have on markets Do you have a view on. Are the results either way beginning to be priced in? If not, when do you think they will get priced in for the eventual winner, whoever that ends up being?
Speaker 2:I think in its entirety it's completely overrated.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:We have had great markets when we've had all-Democratic representation, all-republican representation, split representation, and if you look at the markets it really truly doesn't follow who's in the White House, the Senate makeup and the House of Representatives. I think we would all appreciate, and the market would appreciate, some slowdown in the deficits and that would be in the biggest case and I think either party, if they dominate the three bodies of government or if we're split. We're past the point of running deficits at the kind of levels that we are and again, directional and the rate of change moving in a certain direction is a powerful tool, even if we're still going to be running significant deficits. So I think that's the biggest thing the market is worried about is are we going to continue this fiscal response which is just so massive that it's been able to overwhelm?
Speaker 1:what the Fed is doing.
Speaker 2:I mean truly. In many ways it's the government that's fighting the Fed. The Fed is trying to slow things down and the government keeps pouring more gasoline on the fire with the massive amount of stimulus that they continue to pour into the economy. But as far as who wins or loses, I think it's always not been easy to forecast, and the market is able to absorb lots of different policies on each side of the aisle that might not be perfect for their industry or sector but can find a way to go through.
Speaker 1:So the fiscal spending and the theory that the government will, in various outcomes, become more responsible, is that kind of like they'll spend less. I don't know that I would be more responsible.
Speaker 2:I would love to believe that Less irresponsible. But I think just because of the budget and just because of the massive amount of spend and excess spend over the revenue that the government is taking in, it almost can't go any higher as far as the percentage of the deficit and the actual dollar amount of the deficit, from some just crazy numbers years after the pandemic and when we have an unemployment rate that is south of 4%.
Speaker 1:So is that when the government ostensibly reduces the level of spending or spending increases, is that a bad thing for stocks or a good thing for stocks?
Speaker 2:It's a good thing for stocks. The stock market is looking far out to future cash flows and the last thing the stock market wants is for the government to take money away from the private sector and to use it in the best interest of everybody. We know what works and why we have American exceptionalism and it's because our private sector is able to find solutions to problems and make our lives more productive, and that's why we have a country that has a small piece of the world's population four and a half percent or so and yet somehow we generate 24 percent of the world's GDP. And we've had many regulatory regimes and deficit spending administrations and they haven't been able to really dent that because of the ingenuity and the wherewithal of American business people.
Speaker 1:One industry that seems like in maybe the last 15 years, maybe has been as impacted as any other, maybe more so, has been the financial, especially the bank industry, you know, and there's all sorts of issues that we dealt with last year, the economy dealt with last year, from Silicon Valley Bank to some other bank failures. What's your outlook going forward? Is the federal government and its influence on that sector of the economy, that industry, going to continue to have a negative impact, maybe on the equity prices? Or do you think that those banks, as the yield curve normalizes, maybe you're going to be able to start actually operating and earning profits in a way that banks typically have?
Speaker 2:The banking industry is still particularly profitable. Financials is really the second or third best sector year to date, maybe the third or fourth best sector, up 7% or 8% outperforming the S&P 500. There is certainly issues.
Speaker 2:There's massive concern, obviously, in commercial real estate and dominated by regional banks and the regional banks in their communities that have financed a lot of these buildings that are seeing their valuations really crushed. There's no question about it. I started my career as an accountant and I audited smaller banks and I remember the last asset on the balance sheet was typically I didn't know when I started called Oreo, which is other real estate owned, and that was basically real estate that the bank had taken in collateral, that the bank had a bad loan and they took in the collateral and then they wanted to dispose of it as quickly as possible. They don't like non-earning assets to the extent that they have them on their books, but the Oreo category was one that we would always audit and make sure about the valuations there. So all banks have Oreo on their books, but the Oreo category was one that we would always audit and make sure about the valuations there. So all banks have Oreo on their books today because of what's happened in that sector.
Speaker 2:But this is not a tsunami that's going to hit overnight and everybody's going to be shocked and unprepared for it. The last I read, there's $18 billion or so perhaps of commercial real estate coming due in the next 12 months. Some 70% of it may not be refinanceable through normal means. That means 25% or 26% can be refinanced and it's probably fine. And then the rest of it certainly is not a $12 or $13 million loss. It's just a basket of assets that may not be worth what they had been worth in the past. So that'll be some that write downs for a lot of these banks.
Speaker 2:But again, this is not a problem that is not being able to be forecast. If things get materially worse in the economy, that will accelerate some of the issues in that basket. But again, if you know something's coming and you have lots of time to prepare for it and you're able to make a lot of capital and keep a lot of that capital on your books, there's going to be some other banks that fail, I have no doubt. But I do believe that the Fed has a pretty good eye on who is in the most trouble, and it's not 100 banks or 200 banks. It's a much smaller number of some smaller regional banks. So I think we can mitigate that piece of it, especially if areas like multifamily housing and some of the other real estate loans on the books are basically money good.
Speaker 1:So does the yield curve need to normalize for those banks? I mean, obviously they have many different ways that they can earn, but the traditional model is your depositors you're paying them less than you're earning from your loans in the longer term. Sure, it makes it more difficult when you although I guess maybe they haven't paid depositors rates that are really high, so maybe that's helping net interest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no question. The term lately has been money sorting.
Speaker 2:Consumers are sorting their money differently now that they have an opportunity to get a risk-free money market over 5% with effectively little to no risk they're moving money out of the banks or, if they're keeping the money inside the banks, they want some level of CD or savings rate that may not be the same as a three or six-month treasury bill over 5% today, but in the 3% 4% range or so, and the ease of keeping their money there. The other thing to remember about banking is there's a lot of money that moves in and out and slashes out of the banks every single day. Everybody has a direct deposit not everybody, but many, many customers of the banks and that is everyday money. And those balances sit on the bank's books and they're not material enough at a point in time for each individual to actually move the money for the short term and then move it back when the mortgage is due or the car payment is due. So there's a lot of cash that sits on the bank's books that isn't really looking for yield, just the ease of transacting through a checking account or a wire or whatever it may be for everyday expenses, and there's a lot of that in regional banks and the big money center banks.
Speaker 2:What the Fed does cut rates and actually will be beneficial to banks, I believe, because in a bucket called held to maturity securities securities that they can put in a bucket it does not count against their capital, they don't have to look at any gains or losses against their income statement on a quarterly basis. But they can't touch that basket and there are big losses in in loans, inside those baskets of held immaturity securities. But when rates do come down, those held immaturity losses go lower because obviously the competitive rate that's available now is not as great as it was before that rate cut and that's I, I think, really important to see. In addition, even though most people don't want to give up a 2.5 mortgage or 3% mortgage and that's what's sitting on a lot of these held-in-maturity baskets many do because it's time to move. We need a bigger house. We hate to leave the 3% mortgage.
Speaker 2:And then you get a paydown of the mortgage and that's really attractive for the banks. They don't want that 30 mortgage at three percent, and so there's just natural evolution in a large economy like the us where a lot of that money is coming back. In addition, if it is mortgages, you have to pay your mortgage every single month. So the bank does get some interest back. Maybe not what they could earn if they could touch that money and not leave it in that basket, but they also get principal back that they can take and put in a different basket and earn on that.
Speaker 2:So the accounting convention held the maturity is a massive advantage for banks right now.
Speaker 1:So, as the audience for the ROI podcast is mainly investment advisors, there's some others that watch it as well or listen to it, but those listening to us right now, this conversation, some, are probably wondering you know what they should be paying attention to as they allocate capital. What are some of the indicators that you pay attention to that you would recommend people should also be paying attention to?
Speaker 2:Sure, there's no question, it's inflation. Look, we think it would be highly unusual if the Fed went and raised rates this year. I know everybody says that's a tail risk, but the Fed will clearly have to say they were wrong. There's no question. I don't know how anybody could articulate anything different if the Fed stopped raising rates in July of last year, where in May of this year inflation is still around, that they could articulate that they stopped too soon. So I don't expect the Fed to do that because even if inflation is slightly higher than normal, it's over the course of the year where you see this number of 3%, 3.5%, whatever the number is, where you see this number of 3%, 3.5%, whatever the number is. And waiting a few more months probably isn't going to reignite inflation, especially when we see the economy showing some signs of slowing. You can see that in some of the earnings reports, especially at the consumer side, that have come out in April here to report first quarter earnings. There's no question there's some consumers pulling back. So inflation is certainly one of those key indicators.
Speaker 2:Unemployment, you know, if it ticks up a little bit. I don't think that's going to be. I don't think the Fed's going to be upset about that. They won't say that, but that would be an indicator that finally it's starting to work a little bit more like they wanted to. The lag is long. The fiscal stimulus was so massive that it's starting to work a little bit more like they wanted to. The lag is long. The fiscal stimulus was so massive that it's taken a long time. Having a job allows you an income coming in and some wage growth has allowed lots of consumers, even those at the lower end, to absorb these higher prices. But we're starting to see that ebb and the economy slow down there. So certainly inflation, unemployment.
Speaker 1:That's where it's all at right now that's kind of counterintuitive to what many people might think. If the employment it's looser, people start getting fired or let go from their employment, that that could actually be better for the markets if it causes the Fed to feel more comfortable lowering rates.
Speaker 2:And they can assume that this is going to help in the inflation fight as well.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then they can lower rates at some point as the next move and take the threat of higher rates off the table. There's no question that that would be beneficial to the markets, as long as we move away from the idea that we might raise rates and the next remember directionally is incredibly important. If the Fed raises rates, I do not think the market will do well. Others may disagree, but I do not think that will be a good sign.
Speaker 1:The.
Speaker 2:Fed can't raise rates and a month later start cutting rates.
Speaker 2:If we were at 5% instead of 5.5% of the Fed funds rate, I think we'd be having the same argument.
Speaker 2:25 or 50 basis points either way is not an indicator for the market to say, oh, now companies will be way more profitable.
Speaker 2:It's not enough. What the power of the Fed has today if inflation is fading, is how much could they cut 550 basis points? When was the last time the Fed had the ability now again absent inflation continuing to rise higher or sit here and just not budge to cut 100 basis points and still have a meaningful Fed funds rate of four and a half? It's been a very, very long time with abnormal low interest rates, and the Fed does have something in their arsenal today that they've longed to have if things went south, that they can actually have an effect significantly indicating we're going to cut fast just like we raised fast, and that is going to spur the market to take off long before again the effects of those rate cuts if they're substantial have on the economy. So the Fed is not in a perfect spot, but the Fed fund rate today allows them to be able to do a heavy dose of rate cuts and still have a substantial interest rate that exists across the market.
Speaker 1:You know I was listening to you talking about the labor market and unemployment and one of the things that one of the new technologies everyone's been discussing is AI and how that could have an impact on the labor markets. By you know, even white collar jobs, which typically automation hasn't touched, ai could take some of those jobs and perhaps that would have an impact on the labor markets. I don't think that that's really near at hand. Do you agree with that? And I'm curious on your thoughts on AI in general.
Speaker 2:I think technology has always created more productivity and increased jobs in our country and in the world. Technology there's unintended consequences and there's unintended benefits in the short run. There's unintended consequences and there's unintended benefits in the short run. And if you're directly affected by technology that eliminates a particular job, it hurts.
Speaker 2:There's no question about it, and you can blame technology on it, but the truth is, technology has always made our lives better and more productive. I don't think it will be any different here. I think it will add to employment. At the end of the day, ai in particular is obviously nascent. It's very new. We're still trying to figure out. It will take a long time. We'll get over our skis in it. Perhaps we are you.
Speaker 2:Listen to some of the earnings reports in the first quarter here and what you're seeing are consultants and companies that sell into these consultants and the IT budgets saying we have a lot of things to do apps and AI.
Speaker 2:This has been great to take a look at it, but we don't have the wherewithal or the knowledge of how to implement this at this point in time. And some of the AI type of companies are saying this is just too fast for these companies to absorb and assign budgets to just AI at the expense of what their everyday business has to do, and you've seen that lament coming out. So this is going to be more elongated. I know it's a race to spend as much money as you can with some of the big, big companies out there and their spend. The market hasn't exactly awarded that when they hear about that kind of a spend. And it does have some similarities to all the cable fiber optic cable that we laid when the Internet was coming and all the other things that were coming out and everybody using the same story, and then we had massive overcapacity because we didn't know how to use all that fiber and most of it never got lit.
Speaker 2:So, I'm not saying it's the same thing, but we always get far ahead and if it's an elixir to get your stock price moving, ai is in every single conference call and the massive benefits that we're enjoying from it, and I think it's probably a little bit less than that today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it seems like every conference call, every earnings call, no-transcript and I wonder if that'll be some similarities to AI. And obviously the internet has been, you know, wonderful over the last couple of decades added productivity and efficiency and crazy profits. And the same thing will probably happen with with ai, right?
Speaker 2:that's my guess. I think ai will be a powerful tool. We'll learn more about it. We'll learn to use it safely and effectively. It will improve our lives and improve uh. Hopefully it improves margins for companies along the way and allows a lot of the the work that nobody wants to do uh to be done, you know, in a different manner. So I think it will be a powerful tool, but it will take a long time to affect an economy the size of the US 24% of the world's GDP. But it will have an effect, but it will be over a long period of time when we start to see that take place.
Speaker 1:Okay, dave, international equities have underperformed in general for the last several years, but that's not always been the case. There's been periods of time where we have outperformance, periods of time where we have underperformance, but it hasn't been a great story recently. So do you think that that is going to change? What's your outlook on international stocks?
Speaker 2:Sure, I think you're maybe too kind. It certainly hasn't been a great story.
Speaker 2:I would say more like a terrible story. Typically, there's a discount, a decent discount, from the rest of the world versus the US. The US trades at a premium to the rest of the world's stocks and today we're talking about a couple standard deviations away from that typical. Well, let's call it 18% discount or so. So we're at a massive valuation gap in the US versus, effectively, the rest of the world. But it's for a simple reason the US is the dominant technology country in the world. I know we're in first place. I think we're in second place and third place and fourth place.
Speaker 2:Nobody has the footprint in technology that we do at the public and the private level, and that's the secular story of our lifetimes. Technology is changing our lives every single day and it's moving fast and we have the benefit of having so many unique companies and solutions across the space, whether it's cloud or cyber or all kinds of software solutions to make our lives better. But it also must mean, if we have that big of a tech footprint, that the rest of the world is much more cyclical and defensive, and that's absolutely true. Our tech footprint when we think about Tech Plus and the S&P 500, is about 40%. So we take the technology sector at 28% and then some of those big mega caps, names that feel like technology to all of us Google and Meta and Amazon and Tesla that are not in the tech sector but Netflix those names make up that 40% and the rest of the world doesn't have it close to 40% when you think about their tech plus footprint, when you think about their tech plus footprint.
Speaker 2:So if you can get a cheaper basket of cyclical and defensive stocks, then you can even get here where they're not overvalued in our opinion, and off of a decade of terrible underperformance at a valuation gap that's historically wide. I think that's probably a pretty good opportunity to start legging into some international equities, because you are going to get a basket of value defensive cyclical names at a very deep discount and I don't think that discount is going to widen. So at a minimum you can move along aside the US with that international trade. So I think it's a pretty unique opportunity today and definitely worthwhile.
Speaker 1:Are there any catalysts that you think could cause maybe a reversal? A reversal meaning international and certain parts of the international markets to outperform US stocks?
Speaker 2:Sure, there's an expectation that in many quarters that some of the foreign countries are going to start cutting rates sooner than the.
Speaker 2:US. They never really came out of the 08 or 09 great financial crisis. I think their banking system has gotten better over the years. It took a lot longer than the US and but I think that you're definitely. I wouldn't call it green shoots, but there's definitely. If you see rate cuts start happening over there, I think that would be beneficial to a re-rating, at least to get that massive discount a little bit higher at the end of October, where, in our opinion at least, they got re-rated and you see a higher multiple prior to seeing an increase in earnings in the small cap space. I think that might be happened in Europe and throughout on some of the Asian economies.
Speaker 1:Okay, All right, one more question for you, dave, and this is something that I try to finish all the podcast episodes with what is on the Dave McGarrel reading list, anything that you've either come across recently or is on the horizon that you're planning to read?
Speaker 2:Sure, elon Musk, whatever you think of him, is a fascinating character, so I have his book written by, I think, walter.
Speaker 1:Isaacson yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I certainly. It's a big book and we have busy lives.
Speaker 1:Audiobooks Dave.
Speaker 2:Audiobooks. Oh yeah, you know you're younger than me, ryan, this is for sure. That's an accurate statement, and so I still like that book in my hand, although I do, obviously, have a Kindle and the book by Ray Dalio. I want to see that. You know I have multiple thoughts on both, but I think the book themselves of those two American businessmen will be fascinating, to get a little bit more introspection of what you know, who they really are, because we all have our opinions after seeing them, but in kind of limited fashion.
Speaker 2:So, those are two that I definitely have on my reading list.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thank you for the reading recommendations and thank you for all your insight and commentary. It's always appreciated. Thanks for coming on the podcast and thanks to all of you for joining us on this episode of the First Trust ROI Podcast. We'll see you next time.
