First Trust ROI Podcast

Ep 55 | Dave McGarel | Reassessing the Reality of a Re-Rating Rally. | ROI Podcast

• First Trust Portfolios • Season 1 • Episode 55

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Dave McGarel discusses potential winners and losers in the equity market as the Federal Reserve embarks on a new interest rate cutting cycle.

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Speaker 2:

Hi, welcome to this episode of the First Trust ROI podcast. I'm Ryan Isakainen, etf strategist at First Trust. Today, I'm joined by Dave McGarrel, chief Investment Officer at First Trust. Equities are relatively expensive today. Dave and I are going to look under the hood at the US equity markets to find pockets of opportunity amidst the risk. We're also going to talk about opportunities amongst factors, sectors and international markets. Thanks for joining us. All right, dave McGarrel, we are at the beginning of fall. I can't believe the summer is already over of fall. I can't believe the summer is already over, but I wanted to get some updates on you, on your perspective, maybe through the rest of this year, 2025, and heading into next year. So one of the things that you wrote about recently was you talked about valuations in the overall market and maybe areas of opportunity as a result of overvalued stocks versus undervalued. What's your take right now? I mean, obviously the S&P 500 is pretty expensive. Would you agree with that statement?

Speaker 1:

first off, oh sure, there's no question about it. We're a standard deviation or so above that, 17 times over the last 25 years or so. So at 22 times the next 12 months, you could talk about a market that maybe not overvalued but certainly fully valued, but again with consideration that it is a market cap weighted index and you have 10 stocks at the top of that index that are highly priced and comprise a big percentage of the weight of the index.

Speaker 2:

Well, and there's a lot of stocks in that large cap basket, in the S&P 500, that are still pretty cheap. Those value stocks are pretty cheap, but the question is, will they get more expensive?

Speaker 1:

Sure, and we've seen actually some of that. We've seen some broadening out this year after two incredibly narrow years where less than 25% of the S&P 500 stocks outperformed the index both in 23 and in 2024. And even go back to 1998 and 1999, a very narrow market we did not see that kind of narrowness this year. We're close to 44%. The longer-term average is about 46% of the stocks in the index outperform the index in any particular year. So we've gotten closer to the average this year and you can see that just in the sector, exposures, technology and communication services are still near the top, but so are utilities and industrials and financials, with double-digit returns in the first eight months of the year. So you definitely have seen the market start to broaden out a little bit and those stocks have broadened out because they've had some earnings but also because we have started to assign some higher multiples to the rest of the basket, not just the top 10 stocks in the S&P 500.

Speaker 2:

Why do you think that is? Why are we all of a sudden starting to see some multiple expansion in the rest of the market?

Speaker 1:

Sure To your first point overvalued market. Well, let's call it fully valued, especially the MAG7 type of names, and those stocks clearly have benefited from significant multiple expansion from really deep lows in 2022.

Speaker 1:

But when the S&P is up 75% in 32 months and a lot of that's coming from the big seven stocks at the top we've seen that multiple expand quite a bit. This is the first time the market is starting to consider the Fed cutting rates, and if the Fed does cut interest rates, then you've got to question who's the beneficiary of that. Well, I don't think it really matters to Apple or Nvidia or a lot of the other names that are cash rich, that don't need debt, that actually are in a net positive position when it comes to interest income or interest expense, which is unbelievable when you really think about it, because they carry a lot of debt but they have so much cash on their balance sheets.

Speaker 1:

But the rest of the market as we move through the S&P 500 into mid-cap territory, where capital is more expensive or they might have floating rate capital and the Fed decides they're going to cut interest rates to spur economic development. That's got to be beneficial to a lot of the cyclical stocks which make up the latter half, if you will, the other 250 stocks at the bottom of the index that comprise a very small weight in the index but have a much better valuation state than the top of the index.

Speaker 2:

So maybe some rotation out of the largest stocks into the rest of the index. You think that's taking place? Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I think there has been some rotation the last year or so, last 12 months or so, but it's really just been going away from the MAG-7 a little bit, especially this year, but into the best names in the world, whether that's JP Morgan look at their returns Costco, walmart phenomenal, best-in-class businesses. But we've taken those multiples of those top 50 to 100 stocks, the biggest names in the index, to multiples that are historically high compared to any time you looked at them in the past. A Costco is trading closer to 50 times their average over the last decade is closer to 35 times. Is it the best retailer in the world? It's one of the top three Amazon, walmart and Costco but keep in mind it's always been there.

Speaker 1:

So why are we paying so much more? And I think it's just investors saying, well, I want the best names. It might not be the best returns going forward, especially if there's beneficiaries of interest rate cuts that are not in the top 50 to 100 stocks.

Speaker 2:

So earlier this year there were some companies that maybe suspended guidance or pulled guidance as a result of the uncertainty related to tariffs. Is that certainty coming back to some of those companies, you think?

Speaker 1:

I'm not sure. If there's certainty, it's an excuse for some companies when they miss their numbers, but there's certainly their numbers.

Speaker 1:

But there's certainly, there's less it's not as new right so it's not right on top, just become accustomed to it. Yes, and the market has navigated it so far. Most companies have not hasn't been broad A reckoning of. Tariffs are hurting profits across the entire index. The index earnings profile for this year is not very different from where it started the year, so it hasn't had that kind of an effect. The market is getting a little bit neutral towards it and waiting to see evidence that the tariffs are actually hurting both revenues and profit margins.

Speaker 2:

So I know you're not a policy analyst necessarily, but you do have to pay attention to some of these things like tariffs. Recently there was a ruling by the court that said that some of the tariffs were actually maybe illegal and then maybe you would have to go to the Supreme Court. I just wonder, with that sort of back and forth legal, illegal, certainty, uncertainty it just seems like it's a really difficult environment to understand what earnings are going to do and how do you deal with that as an analyst?

Speaker 1:

Sure, I mean. First of all, you get signals from the market. The market has, after April 2nd through April 8th when we lost 18 or 19 percent on the S&P 500, has reconciled that President Trump likes the stock market. He wants the economy to thrive. We have midterms coming next year, so anything he does is not going to be to impede that economic development.

Speaker 1:

So the market has kind of put that on the back burner and effectively, in our view, said if we don't see direct evidence that this is going to affect earnings going forward, we're not going to put that in the stock prices. Now maybe that's a little bit too Pollyanna that President Trump can come to the rescue every single time something goes the wrong way and respond to the market where the market says thank you, but so far that's been the case and there's no reason to get in front of that trade in the market's view right now or in our view because that's what's happened every single time.

Speaker 1:

The market has been confused, uncertain. They've said okay, we know the intentions of this administration. At least they think they know that it wants a thriving economy and a thriving stock market.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, and the other part, I guess, of valuations and figuring out what something's worth is, what the discount rate is, what Fed policy is, and the administration has really not been shy in trying to nudge the Fed, if that's the right word, to lower rates. Where do you think we end up by the end of the year? Are we going to see a couple cuts?

Speaker 1:

Well, almost certainly in September 1. You know you could expect maybe one more by the end of the year. There's Fed governors various coming out and saying maybe three or four or five through the middle of next year or throughout next year. We've already seen a 100-basis point cut from the highs, 550 to 450. So another 100 basis points to get us to three and a half. And again, in our view, the biggest beneficiaries are going to be companies that benefit most from lower interest rates on their bottom line and their access to capital at a cheaper cost. And that's as we get into mid caps and small caps and smaller large caps, not really the companies that are so strong at the very top of the index but priced at a valuation level that really doesn't we call it hitting their heads on the ceiling. How much more can we pay for those companies that are the best in class when we already have them at historic highs compared to their earnings and their outlooks?

Speaker 2:

compared to their earnings and their outlooks. So the differential between the growth of those biggest companies that really grew pretty well over the last couple of years compared to the smaller mid-cap stocks and even some of the value stocks in the market, it seems like that differential in growth is going to, or at least is expected to, decline over the next couple of years. Is that still your expectation?

Speaker 1:

That's true the expectation for 2025, only a couple months left, but it's narrowed between the haves and have-nots when it comes to earnings growth, and this year for 2025 is still very extreme. Cyclical is growing 2% or 3%, tech Plus growing 22%. But next year, as you look at cyclicals, 13% growth. And then you look at tech plus 18% growth. So much tighter. And then when you think about 26, I'm sorry, 27, you're tight as well. So much less disparity in earnings growth between cyclical stocks and tech plus stocks. But the valuation gap is 29 times for that tech stack and closer to 18 or 19 times for the cyclical. So financials and energy and industrials those kind of companies showing much better growth expected next year. Same thing as we move down in size whether that's mid or small caps after basically nothing to show for growth this year, starting to see small caps have expectations of faster growth in 2026. And that valuation gap is just so extreme. That's why you feel that you could broaden out and see those come closer to each other.

Speaker 2:

Are there any specific sectors in the US markets that you look at and say, okay, the earnings growth is going to be there, but it's still trading at a pretty reasonable valuation? I'm sure you have certain other things that you look at besides that, but are there any sectors that you think are particularly attractive?

Speaker 1:

Sure. Again, it does go back to that cyclical story. So financials are one, especially when you get into maybe not the top banks. They're still relatively modest compared to the market. Even the best bank in the world trades at 16 times and the market's at 22 times, but financials always traded at a lower multiple than the entire S&P 500.

Speaker 1:

But the value stocks in the market as you move down through a lot of those industrials, some of those energy companies, again with really nice balance sheets, and now, if they do show that kind of growth going forward, a lot of these companies in the bottom 250 of the S&P 500, in that industrials, in the financials, regional banks, very cheap still, Perhaps some M&A activity in that space, Certainly better regulation and again, if that curve steepens, a little bit beneficial to those banks as well as we move forward. So the financials industrials, maybe even some of the energy companies. That's always dependent on OPEC. But the nice part about energy today is the quality of the balance sheets has never been what they are and the technology to get energy out of the ground, whether that's oil or natural gas, continues to make them a lot more beneficial to their margins and a lot more productive in getting those assets out of the ground.

Speaker 2:

So there's been a lot talked about the CapEx cycle for those tech plus companies, especially the hyperscalers, who are investing tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in their data centers. Do you think there's a sort of downstream effect on the rest of the economy because of that spending, maybe in some industrials or the financials that are? I guess financials aren't necessarily financing that. A lot of these companies have a ton of cash that they're able to spend, but what's the downstream impact on the rest of the economy?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Sure, I think it's been massive the last 12 months or so.

Speaker 1:

We're talking about $350 billion from four companies in capital expenditures, a lot of that going to AI and infrastructure, and that's everything from air conditioning units to electrical components, building supplies I mean these are massive, massive data centers supplies.

Speaker 1:

I mean these are massive, massive data centers. So that data center that Amedda is building in Louisiana will be the same size as Boeing's main production facility in Everett, washington over 4 million square feet. Well, that takes all kinds of different industries to participate in building a building of that size and then retrofitting that building with all the steel and robotics and everything else that will come into play there, and so that benefit has really come through the rest of the market. Those companies don't have the best margins compared to the tech companies, so you're not talking about businesses that have changed forever, and that's where I think you got to be a little bit worried. If that spending slows down, we're going to see that infiltrate a lot of the companies that have done so well, both at the very top but also in the second derivative, if you will, of this massive, unprecedented spend that's primarily directed at AI and AI infrastructure.

Speaker 2:

So the project that you referred to in Louisiana from Meta, the $10 billion or something they're spending have you seen how they're going to power that?

Speaker 1:

They haven't seen how they're going to power it. Well, what they said?

Speaker 2:

the reason they chose Louisiana instead of choosing Silicon Valley or something like that, is because they're building three natural gas fired power plants in Louisiana, and, of course, louisiana has got plenty of natural gas and the infrastructure is there. So do you think? My take is that we'll probably see more of that with trying to figure out how to power these data centers. What do you think about that?

Speaker 1:

I think that's true. I mean, obviously, power is the issue with these data centers. They can build them all day long. They do have those cash flows. They can use all their cash flows. Those four hyperscalers are probably using 75% of their cash flow this year on capital expenditures, which is typically they use about 30%, and they understand that if you're going to build this kind of infrastructure, you need to power it and right now the market is most curious about where all this power is going to come from. So finding solutions. I know Amazon signed a deal with a utility company, so they're not naive. They believe that this is a path forward. We'll see if this spend actually has the economics attached to it on the other side of it, but clearly they're thinking about everything right now as far as building and then powering these massive facilities in the latter part of this decade that should open up.

Speaker 2:

I just was reviewing some data from the Energy Department about power production, where it's planned, you know, planned capacity over the next five years and, believe it or not, there was only one line. That was nuclear power, one project. It seems to me that at least what people are talking about is an expansion of nuclear power. Maybe it's just because I was looking at the next five years and you know, and year six and following it's going to be nuclear. What do you think? Is that likely to happen?

Speaker 1:

I think that is likely to happen. I'm no expert on nuclear. I do know that that's been certainly discussed. It seems to be getting trending, if you will. It seems to be getting a lot more notice and the viability of that, even through much smaller nuclear facilities, which is what's expected. That may be the way forward for a lot of these companies. So I would not discount that in any way, shape or form.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you mentioned something a second ago that is a big question on my mind as well, and that is who benefits from some of the efficiency gains and the productivity gains from all these CapEx investments, all the money that's pouring into AI? Who's actually going to be able to extract some value and maybe improve profit margins or productivity or something like that? Any thoughts there? Any particular sector or industry that you think will benefit? Yeah, I think at the end of the day.

Speaker 1:

AI, I think everybody believes, will be spectacular in so many ways help improve all of our lives and productivity. There's little doubt about that in most minds. The question is, does it have the same sort of? There's been iterations here of questions about the profitability and where it sits at the end of the day, and the hyperscalers think if they build these big warehouses they'll get all the profitability. And yet we saw the deep seek news in January where NVIDIA fell 17% and company in China said we have solutions for AI and the utility of it that don't require this kind of capital spend. And then there's a recent MIT paper I'll let everybody read it that says hey, so far we haven't seen anybody really benefiting from AI and the productivity.

Speaker 1:

And there's other research reports saying well, ai is different because there's no networking capabilities around AI like you would have with Facebook, where everybody has to get on Facebook to communicate with each other.

Speaker 1:

But AI might be disparate and all kinds of different companies might benefit from AI and my hope is that what AI really does is not just send profits at the top of the infrastructure of AI, but down into the businesses that can actually be much more productive not necessarily by lowering their headcount dramatically, but expanding their business because they're getting so much efficiencies to do what they do and doing things better, whether that's in the healthcare space, the financial space, the energy space, and that's where, if you really think about going forward four, five, six years out, it appears that there could be some solutions there that will be incredibly valuable to society and to those businesses.

Speaker 1:

You know we discount everything that's happened because of something that's exciting going forward. But think about all the technology and the improvements are subtle. But you know I have kids who drive. They never get lost because they have a map on their phone. So there's less gas used, they're not in any danger, they're not confused, they're not late for an appointment. We take that for granted. But think about how fantastic that's been for a route that will take a truck driver less time to get there, to deliver on time or to save fuel to deliver on time or to save fuel. So little pieces of this show up everywhere and it's really hard to forecast exactly when we will see a full picture. It'll be little iterations over time, just like every other technology that improve our lives, and when we look back we're like, oh, it wasn't always like that, was it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, little changes that you don't notice. And then you wake up and say I'm not getting lost in my car anymore, because I've got GPS.

Speaker 1:

Yes, and 30 years ago, when I was driving, I got lost constantly. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's you know. I think that's how innovation generally works. It makes you more efficient, more productive in something that you or maybe repetitive tasks that you don't want to focus on and frees up creativity and innovation to be able to do things that we haven't even thought of yet.

Speaker 1:

That's every piece of technology we've ever used in our research group and our business is being able to analyze more instead of just trying to continually import data, sort that data and understand the data. Make sure we have the right data. So if we can continue to improve on that, we can be way more productive in selecting portfolios and understanding companies without having to do so much legwork ahead of time before we get to the analysis stage.

Speaker 2:

Okay, so one of the things that our research group at First Trust pays a lot of attention to is factors, and factors being things like momentum, or we've talked a little bit about value or yield or quality. As you think about some of the different factors that we pay attention to at First Trust, are there any things that stand out to you, anything that looks particularly attractive?

Speaker 1:

Sure, one of the reasons that we've had a massive rally in the last 32 months 75% of the index is because the quality factor was at the steepest discount it's been since 1995. Quality typically trades so companies with high ROEs, great balance sheets. Those companies typically traded a slight premium to the S&P 500, about 2%, and they got to a 12% discount at the end of 2022. A lot of big tech companies with high returns on their equity. 22 was just 30% lower on growth stocks. So that quality factor was almost a free lunch. If you look back, we got to buy quality stocks, the best stocks in the world at a massive discount. In fact, the S&P was at 15.5 times. So you want to know why the S&P is up 75% in two years and eight months? It's because it was really cheap. So today, at 22 times, it's not so cheap. But what is cheap are those factors that are not quality. So lighten, rebalance and lighten a little bit of the weight and quality. You can still own them, but when it's such a big, big part of that top-end market cap, look at a value factor Now.

Speaker 1:

Value traded at a premium to its long-term discount to the index for a dozen years in early aughts, the mid-aughts, all the way through 2012, 2014.

Speaker 1:

And then it started going to a discount and it's at this big discount to where it typically trades versus the S&P 500. That's some of those cyclical stocks that we talked about. So value is probably the factor that has the most upside potential Dividends same, not quite the discount that you see in the value side of it. And then size smaller size, midsize. That's at a discount to where it typically trades when you compare it to the S&P 500. So if you had to take three factors and say size, value and dividends, get more exposure to those factors, because what happens is the market. Long before you see the whites of the eyes of a change in the market, what you see is a rally, a re-rating in areas that look attractive from a valuation standpoint, trade below their historical averages and if evidence starts to show up that they're going to be the beneficiary, say, of rate cuts, of an earnings profile that looks much tighter than it's been the last couple of years, you'll miss a big part of that rally if you don't get involved in that sooner rather than later.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a really important point that you can't wait until you see the improvements already, because everyone else in the market is paying close attention and the better valuations that you hoped for will go away before you have an opportunity to actually enter that trade. Exactly, right, yeah, there's no doubt. So cheap stocks are cheap right now is what I heard you say. The typical discount for value stocks is what.

Speaker 1:

It's about 18% to 20% from the S&P 500. So it's a pretty big discount. Today we're closer to 40, 35 to 40.

Speaker 2:

Wow. So if you think about what determines your returns for any investment, it's what you buy it for, what you sell it for and any income you collect along the way. So that first part's really important.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. Look again. You know people can look back over the last 32 months, say it's speculative. Some of these companies whether it's hype or hope or even some evidence that they're going to benefit from AI. But most of that return was forecast when we traded at 15.5 times earnings at the end of 2022. Now the market thought that we might have a recession.

Speaker 1:

The Fed raised rates in 2022, early 2023, 550 basis points Quickly, yes, in 13 months. So the market said we're going to have a recession. We took all the stocks down quality stocks, everything else. In fact, if I look at every 100-stock bucket of the S&P 500, the last 400 stocks all traded at about 15 or 16 times earnings. Now they're closer to 16 or 17 times. They've grown earnings but we put multiples back on as if we won't have a recession.

Speaker 1:

That's not our forecast, that we're going to say have a recession imminently. In fact, the Fed might even get ahead of it with some rate cuts. But the valuation story never gets notoriety, never is the catalyst, but always shows up when you look backward and say how did I get such good returns here? And it's from that starting point and unfortunately, today we're in an S&P 500, we're buying just the top of the index, the best stocks in the world in our view, won't afford you our performance of the index. It's looking at the rest of the index that will respond to a Fed that's accommodative and a valuation story and an earning story that is tight on the earning story and still very, very wide on the valuation story. So an opportunity there there's always a reason why things are cheap.

Speaker 2:

There's just no doubt about that. And one other area that's been cheap at least from a relative standpoint for the last I don't know decade and a half has been the international equity markets. Finally, this year we've seen somewhat of a return of the international stock market. I think some of that's probably been just the dollar weakening relative to the euro and some other currencies in the basket. What's your take on international? Do you think that's an opportunity today?

Speaker 1:

Sure, there's no question that the dollar weakness has been a big factor in those fantastic returns in the international space, particularly in Europe. I think there's a little bit more there. The valuation gap is massive. Typically trade maybe 18 or 19 percent in the US versus the international. We're at a premium in the US. Technology explains a lot of that.

Speaker 1:

I think it can be wider than that long-term average of 18%, simply because we have such a phenomenal technology footprint which deserve to trade at higher multiples. But we got to about 40 or 42% discount, which is two and a half standard deviations below that 18% discount for the international versus the US. And yet what we saw this year, along with the dollar supporting that trade, was that discount declined to maybe I don't know 38%, 39%. It's still massively. It's still two times what it typically is. So you can see when you re-rate an area in the market how much return you can get in such a short period of time, long before anybody says, oh, now I might want to get in Because the difficulty is OK. We don't see a better footprint in Europe than we see in the US.

Speaker 1:

They don't have a better economy than we do. They have had the ECB's cut rates I don't know seven or eight times, so if that's a lag, they're going to start seeing the benefits of that. I think what we're doing here in the US, saying we're going to focus on us, the US, and be more competitive against the rest of the world, is waking the rest of the world up to saying we need to step up our game. And the third thing I would say about international, especially Europe, is if you don't have a banking system, you don't have anything. You need capital Now.

Speaker 1:

The European banks are nowhere near as good as US banks. Our banking system is a gem of the world. It's the envy of the whole world. It starts at JP Morgan and goes all the way through the regional banks. Europe, at least, is not in the same spot they've been in the last decade plus, which is a banking system that has no transparency, not enough capital, no growth and way too many other initiatives other than growing their earnings.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's been true in their energy space, in their industrial space. And now I think, as you see a lot of these CEOs speak, they're saying, look, we can still do some things that in our view, or Europeans' view, is beneficial to the world. But we need to grow our profits and we need to make more money and we need to reward our shareholders and compete with the rest of the world. So even just a little bit of that can take that from 38% to say, to 30. Now you're talking about another massive increase in the value of your underlying security. So I think it's definitely time to have some international exposure.

Speaker 2:

So, coming out of the financial crisis, it seems like a lot of the Europeans embraced more of an austerity approach. I mean, they're trying to balance budgets, things like maybe we would want to do here but it seems at least some of the rhetoric that has come out of places like Germany has been more focused on okay, we need to spend, we need to invest in defense and all these other areas. Do you think that plays a role in the long term, or at least maybe the near term for some of these companies?

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, I think just what's coming out of the US administration is you need to do more for yourselves. We're not going to do as much as we did in the past. We're not going to provide all that security and the financing of all that security. And I think they're getting that message, whether it's Germany, whether it's the rest of Europe, and if they rally around that cry and say, okay, we need to produce energy, we need to produce industrial goods, and we need to do this and make profits so that we can then protect ourselves by spending more money on defense, then I think that can lift that whole basket and investors see just a slightly brighter outlook. I don't even know that you need to see green shoots throughout European economies. It just needs to go in the right direction. And that rate of change going from stagnation or going the wrong way and moving in the right direction I think can really benefit stock prices much further than they've come already this year.

Speaker 2:

One last question for you, Dave Book recommendations. Is there anything that you have read recently or that you would recommend to the viewers of the ROI podcast?

Speaker 1:

Actually. I mean, there's so much political wrangling everywhere in the world, if you will, and certainly in the US. Mitch Daniels was the governor of Indiana for 10 years. He served in some previous administrations. He had private sector experience at Eli Lilly he's probably closer to 80 years old today but then he became the president of Purdue University and basically starting to address some of the issues of schools not delivering, especially a school like Purdue, a phenomenal engineering school on delivering students with the talents to drive us forward in STEM, and he really that.

Speaker 1:

So he was the president of Purdue for 10 years, so he's written several books. He's incredibly smart, incredibly talented. Probably would have been a great president, frankly, in my view, and because he's able to basically bring people together from both sides of the aisle. But what he's really done is never compromise his principles and he's written all kinds of articles, columns at times for different newspapers and and given all kinds of speeches and they all are positive, optimistic, again, ivy, educated but drives a motorcycle around and he stays at people's houses throughout Indiana during his eight years of governor in Indiana.

Speaker 1:

And then at Purdue really turned the school, turned Indiana around from deficits to budget surpluses, grew that economy really revered by the citizens of Indiana. And then at Purdue for 10 years didn't raise tuition for 10 years in a row. So he was and really got both the students, the administrators, the teachers to buy into his philosophy of let's teach these kids STEM. And again, just a great American and a lot of wisdom along with a lot of wit in what he wrote. I think the book's called Boiler Up, but it really addresses a lot of his time both as the governor and at Purdue University. So I think of him as just a great American. Anytime you read something from great Americans, I think you're a beneficiary of it.

Speaker 2:

Well, that is a great recommendation. Thanks for that. I'll add that to the reading list and thanks for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, Thank you.

Speaker 2:

Ryan, have you again, hopefully really soon.

Speaker 1:

Sounds great Thanks.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, and thanks to all of you for joining us on this episode of the First Trust ROI Podcast. We'll see you next time.

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Ryan O. Issakainen, CFA | Senior Vice President | ETF Strategist

Host
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David McGarel, CFA, CPA

Guest