What are the market implications for How should I be positioned? with Jon Cheigh (Cohen & Steers) and Jason Draho (UB?

Traders should monitor USD/EUR price action closely, specifically levels around 1.075, as fluctuations may indicate underlying sentiment towards geopolitical risks. Additionally, shifts in central bank rhetoric could provide further signals on asset positioning.

What are the risks to this view on How should I be positioned? with Jon Cheigh (Cohen & Steers) and Jason Draho (UB?

Any significant escalation in geopolitical conflict could heighten market volatility, prompting a reassessment of growth expectations and potentially reversing the current bullish stance towards USD. Likewise, an unexpected dovish shift from central banks may lead to renewed bearish sentiment and impact currency valuations.

How should I be positioned? with Jon Cheigh (Cohen & Steers) and Jason Draho (UBS CIO)

Q: What's takeaway 1 on How should I be positioned? with Jon Cheigh (Cohen & Steers) and Jason Draho (UB?

Geopolitical tensions have led to a more cautious investment outlook.

Q: What's takeaway 2 on How should I be positioned? with Jon Cheigh (Cohen & Steers) and Jason Draho (UB?

Long-term growth expectations remain unchanged amid short-term risks.

Hi, everyone, Dan Cassidy here. Welcome back to How Should I Be Positioned on the UBS Market Moves podcast channel. As you know, on this podcast, we do like to exchange thoughts on the market and macro environment with our industry colleagues, thought leaders, along with share views when it comes to asset allocation.

With that, joining us today here at our 1285 podcast studio in New York, I'm glad to welcome his first appearance with us, John Chay, President and Chief Investment Officer of Cohen & Steers. Sitting next to me, Jason Draho, Head of Asset Allocation for the Americas from the UBS Chief Investment Office. With that, Jason, John, thank you both for dropping by, spending some time with our listeners and clients.

Great to be with you both. Thank you so much for having me here at 1285. I love it.

It's great to have you, John. I hope for the first of many appearances. Well, of course.

Definitely. I know there's a lot we want to cover over the next 40 minutes, but have to acknowledge at the start how the geopolitical environment remains quite fluid as we're making our way through the fourth week of the U.S.-Iran war. I'm curious, John, to what extent and how have geopolitics impacted your investment outlook?

Okay. Well, look, that's a great question. Ironically, I would say it hasn't changed our five-year view of where the world is going to be going and what that means for asset allocation and different opportunities and risks, and I can talk about the three or four big ideas that we have that we think are important for the next three to five years.

That being said, it has caused us to be more cautious about 2026. We came into 2026 thinking growth was going to be stronger than last year, that growth was going to be broader than last year, and that meant that participation of all different kinds of asset classes was going to be a lot broader, and we saw that for the first, really, two months of the year. Obviously, it depends a lot on whether what is happening in the Middle East is a four-week event, an eight-week event, or more, but clearly it's created more of a slower growth and higher inflation environment, and of course, that's going to have 2026 asset implications, but again, like I said, it's not really changing where I think things are going to be over the next three to five years.

With that, Jason, I know earlier this week on the Snapshot, we talked about this as well, and it coincided with the release of the latest UBS House view, though. How has the fluid geopolitical environment influenced CIO's broader market outlook? Well, I can echo what John said, and I probably should say that we're recording this on Thursday, March 26th, at 11 a.m., because things are very fluid, so in 24 hours, they can change.

We saw that happen earlier in the week, and because of that, I think that kind of exemplifies the view that we had was relatively constructive, I think, as John laid out, that we expected kind of a global sort of growth acceleration, central banks would be cutting, it would be a positive environment for risk assets, sort of broadening out of performance, and a lot of that did play out for the first, let's say, six weeks or so of the year. What has changed? Well, obviously, just much more uncertainty, so the conviction level that we can have on how this would play out over the next six months, I think that's all.

I think any investor would have to say that if you're not, then you're probably not being honest. What we try to do then is sort of say, well, given the thesis we had, given the assumptions we were making for growth, inflation, and so on and so forth, how is this being altered under different scenarios for how the conflict could play out? And obviously, a lot of that hinges ultimately on oil.

When does oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz? When do prices sort of stabilize, come down, and you have conviction that this is a sustainable ceasefire? And that's kind of ultimately what hinges on.

If we say it's likely to wrap up in a few weeks, like by early mid-April, which is the initial sort of time frame, then ultimately, we think that the core thesis we had is still in place, but that's kind of the open question. So I think I want to follow up on your point of like on a three to five-year view, things haven't necessarily really changed, but there's clearly some things have changed. I know we've talked in the past, and one of the reasons I wanted you to join the podcast is like a lot of focus you guys have on real assets.

Before this happened, there was already concerns about could inflation be sustainably higher? How do you manage that? And so nothing has changed.

I think that sort of can amplify that. You said you had kind of four themes, and I guess in the course of answering, we'll probably unveil those, maybe bit by bit, a little bit of teasing to the audience. But the first thing, because of oil, because of infrastructure, I know we've had these conversations in the past, how are you then maybe thinking about just oil and energy as an asset class?

And is this a game changer and a tweaking or like how, you know, or not, or maybe not? Well, rather than waiting for the big reveal later on the four themes, maybe I could talk a bit about it. And of course, they're all very interrelated, and some are not new.

I'd say the first just relates this idea of geopolitical fracturing, multi-polarity. You know, a lot of people talk about this. And all that means for us is, of course, you know, we had a peace dividend after the Cold War.

We had globalization, and that was all good. You know, we built supply chains in China, emerging markets, and things like that. But of course, some of that's coming undone.

So what does that mean? It means we need to build supply chains all across the world. We need to build industrial resiliency all across the world.

There's competition. AI is part of that. So related to that theme, there's just a big industrial investment that's happening.

You know, I kind of joke that, you know, for the last 10 years, we've been in this softwareization of the world, and now we're kind of going to this hardwareization in the world. You know, people said software eats the world. You know, this is about pipes.

This is about natural gas turbines, okay? And so it's not about just building out a supply chain in China, in Vietnam. All countries are worried about that, okay?

And so when I say, you know, what happened in Venezuela or what's going on in the Middle East, it still gets at this idea that we have a scarce amount of resources. Everyone's worried about where that resource is coming from, and every country is going to think about basically resiliency, right? I mean, that was one of the post-pandemic lessons of where are my antibiotics coming from?

Where are these chips coming from? Wow, we all need to make sure that they come from a variety of different places. So I think this geopolitical fracturing has big implications for on the amount of really a big investment cycle that I think is going to happen, and of course, whether that's natural resource equities, whether that's infrastructure companies, in some cases, it's real estate companies, it's a big tailwind for anything related to, I would call this, reindustrialization.

So just picking up on, or kind of maybe following up on this question, so when you think of this geopolitical fracturing and sort of the investment implications, like there's a lot of ways you can take it, but are you kind of thinking, well, this ultimate sort of boils down to, you know, security, security of supply chain, security of access to resources, energy, where is, you know, things of that sort, is that sort of distilled down? It's not like financial markets, just like fragmenting things of that sort? Well, of course, whenever there's big changes, risks are higher, right?

And because, you know, it's easy to live in one regime and kind of know the way things are going to work. Of course, we still have to go back to, we all have to be diversified, you know, even if we thought something was going to happen in 2026, we shouldn't have gone all in one way or all in the other way. So directionally, I think this is more about a big investment cycle and some of the things you're, you know, you're talking about supply chains, resources, hard assets.

But it certainly could lead to tail risk outcomes and that's why, you know, whether it's what's the right amount of illiquidity in one's portfolio, whether it's looking for true diversifiers and, you know, we can kind of come back to that, you know, whenever you look at listed and private and compare asset performance, there are things that I would say are on paper diversifying and then there are other things that are truly diversifying over long periods. But even it's things like gold, which again, it hasn't behaved exactly maybe as some wanted the last month or so but, you know, it's certainly been a diversifier over the last 18 months. So that was one of your four big themes and so maybe I'll let you kind of lay out the other ones and we'll dig into the details.

Look, you know, the second just relates to, you know, technology and AI and, you know, we can talk about that. Of course, that has some implications on things like data centers and utilities in my world. I'd say the last two just have to do with, you know, inflation.

I keep saying it's a two-way street, you know, meaning in the last decade, of course, we always undershot on inflation. We're actually now at a period where for the last four years, we've always overshot on inflation. So, I think, you know, in 2022, a lot of people saw inflation happen.

They looked at what happened with commodities and natural resources and they said, oh, I missed it, but I think we're going to head back to a more normal environment, 2%, 2.5%. I think after four years of really overshooting inflation, and again, I think what's happening in the Middle East is just another example. I think investors are more like, this inflation thing, it's not really going away.

I need to build it in as a part of my portfolio and then I'd say the last just relates to interest rates. Even though lots of real estate people want interest rates to be two, I'd say, you know, the death of low rates, you know, this kind of 4% to 5% I think is the new normal. Again, much as many developers or the treasury would like it to be two, unlikely to happen.

I just don't want to continue on this interesting argument, but in four central banks, you know, obviously, this is kind of throwing a wrench, you know, what's happened with the oil price of oil going higher. I wrote a note earlier in the week, I kind of said, like, what's going on right now is you can say it's interest rates and an inflation shock. It has not been a growth shock, at least the way the markets thus far, they can kind of price in it.

I'm struck by how much the market pricing for, say, Fed rate cuts into pricing hikes this year, but even more so in Europe, where now I think like, you know, the Bank of England, they're pricing close to three for ECB too. So the idea of lower rates, you know, the 2% feels further away unless you actually get a recession, which is another bad problem. This could all sort of, again, sort of blow over to some extent fairly quickly, but how do you think this is, you know, this very near-term shock could outlinger and sort of alter, at least in the next one to two years, how you're actually thinking about real estate of the opportunities?

Yeah. So, you know, like we said, and the time and date that we're recording this, I think, you know, a lot depends on the duration and, you know, whether this conflict lasts four weeks or four months, we'll have big differences. That being said, you know, I would say the Fed cuts coming out of the market makes sense to me.

You know, while it's a supply-side shock, and usually the Fed can't do a lot about offsetting a supply-side shock, it doesn't want to be a part of contributing to stimulating the economy into already a supply-side shock. So I would say cuts coming out of Fed fund futures make sense to me, given the dual mandate. And unfortunately, hikes coming in to other central banks where they have a different mandate or maybe their starting point, like in the case of the U.K., was even worse from an inflation standpoint.

So again, we had a positive outlook coming in to 2026 that both fiscal and monetary might be contributors to growth and, you know, higher oil as a tax, it's like saying taking away the fiscal part, and it's also taking away some of the gasoline, literally, that can happen on a monetary side, so, you know, that's what's made us more cautious, not negative, but just more cautious for 2026. More cautious, but suppose, for example, like, you know, the market was pricing 2.4 cuts back on February 27th, like the Friday before this all began. Now it's, you know, that's completely out of the market.

Suppose the Fed does not, you know, cut, and we're still saying we're still on the camp of two cuts, September, December, you know, whether it's December, January, like I'm not sure that matters that much, but you're given more cautious, does it actually alter, you know, like the interest rate dynamics, like alter when you think about investing, particularly maybe in real estate or other interest rate-sensitive asset classes? Yeah, so look, I would say in real estate, even though interest rates get the focus almost all the time, I would say that it's a factor, an important factor, the long end, but it's definitely not the only factor, meaning it's about earnings growth, which is about rental growth, which is a function of supply and demand. So when you look back over the last four years, you know, some people might say, well, in 2001, interest rates were so low, that was great for real estate.

It wasn't just great for real estate, it was great for real estate developers. That's what brought on a lot of capacity. That's why we had a lot of new housing being built in the U.S. sunbelt, new warehouses being built, frankly, everywhere globally.

So low interest rates plants the seed, plants the seeds for future overcapacity, okay, which creates rental deflation. So this idea that, you know, low rates is always good, in the short run, it helps multiples of or valuations, but in the long run, it creates rental deflation. So you know, why am I saying that?

Look, I think the fact that cuts have come out of the curve and the 10 years gone from slightly below four to, you know, let's just say four, three, four, four, that's not wildly changing the game as it relates to how I think about real estate and how it's going to play out the next couple of years. What's more important is supply is down, because again, high interest rates the last few years, you know, it's like talking about the regional banking issues a few years ago. There wasn't a lot of new lending to new real estate.

So if that happened in March of 2023, we're three years later. New supply is not happening because of that constriction of supply. The general trend is we are seeing fundamentals improving and rental growth beginning to happen depending upon the sector, depending upon the market.

So to me, that's more the dominant story. This gets at, if it's a recession, then we lost the demand side of the story. So thinking about interest, you mentioned like interest rates very, very low in 2020-21, there was a surge of supply, especially in maybe the southeast of the U.S., for example.

When you look at the inflation data, as everyone's focused on higher oil prices, the shelter piece has actually been coming down quite a bit. And depending on which kind of private sector metric you look at, you can see some rental rates really kind of going lower. So kind of to your point of like a lot of supply, now you're getting the consequences.

The lack of supply production, you know, in development the past couple of years, that should start to weigh up. So we can take all these factors into account, and without trying to like be overly acute on interest rates, as you say it's a factor, do you think, maybe this is both for residential but also commercial, like real estate, how you guys think about it, have we kind of troughed? Are we kind of, you know, and if things do stabilize, you know, with the crisis, the war and things kind of move in the direction, again, that's more positive, do you think you see kind of things inflecting higher from here?

Yeah, so look, we had a meaningful correction in real estate values in 2022-2023. We've been bouncing along the bottom over the course of 2024, and I'd say the first half of 2025. I'd say the second derivative has definitely started to move up to a recovery phase.

That being said, you know, we've had a big correction, normally you have a huge recovery. I'm not sure we're going to have a huge recovery, and by huge recovery I mean 20%, 25%, because the interest rate reset is permanent. We didn't go from 2 to 4 back down to 2, okay, and we aren't in a, we don't have the same early cycle dynamics.

That being said, I think valuations for real estate when we compare it to things like whether it's the equity market, the credit market, treasuries, things like that, real estate looks relatively attractive in a world, in a financial market where most things look expensive versus their own history. That's why, you know, we're not saying we think these are 15 to 20% kind of return market ahead for real estate, but this recovery is more like it's a 10 plus or minus, you know, depending upon where you're invested, how you're invested, things like that, which again doesn't seem exciting by historical standards, but I think we all know where valuations for a lot of other things are at. You said where you're invested and how you're invested, so I kind of want to kind of get into the topic of like there's public real estate, like, you know, you can access through public securities, but also, you know, proper real estate, which has certainly grown significantly over time and become sort of the accessibilities become sort of, you know, broader and we'll get into maybe the broader private markets versus public, but how do you, how have you kind of thought about the evolution of these and, you know, like there is a sort of a lead lag.

I mean, when we go back to 22 public markets, they can reprice quicker, it looks like they move faster, private markets a little bit slower, you know, then the cycle, you know, kind of change. So how do you think about maybe the opportunity set, but also kind of stages of cycle if there's sort of a difference between public and private real estate at this time? Yeah, so look, I'd say as a starting point, you know, whenever one compares public and private, you know, of any category, you know, there's an expectation that, well, there's some illiquidity premium, right, in private and that's been the case in corporate private equity and venture, you know, in private credit.

I'd say in real estate, the long-term track record of that is much more mixed, meaning when we look at the data over 10, 20, 30, 40 years, in fact, the REIT index has done better than many institutional real estate indices. So that's the first starting point that the listed versus private question is a little bit different maybe than the, well, private always does better in some of these other categories. So that's first.

You know, the second thing is that, look, they're going to offer both different sector exposures as well as, you know, a different kind of volatility and income stream. By sector exposures, you know, the listed market tends to have more so-called next generation real estate. So that's cell towers, data centers, you know, senior housing and healthcare.

A lot of times people think about real estate, they think about, you know, the office building they drive by, but maybe don't go into anymore, the shopping center, which actually increasingly they're going back to. Big wood gins, yeah, I hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, so, you know, they think about these, you know, traditional forms of real estate, but, you know, the reality is like, you know, just like any part of the economy or the equity market, you know, real estate is looking a lot different the next five or 10 years than what it was in, you know, the 80s or 90s. So you're getting different sector exposure. But you're right, you've seen more of a recovery in listed markets than you have in private and that's totally normal.

You know, it went down first because it's pricing lots of higher credit, slowdown in fundamentals and it's going to recover first because it's kind of sniffs out. Things are starting to get better, you know, and so that's why really listed markets bottomed about two years ago. So if I kind of maybe take, you know, recap what you're saying, between public and private part of it's like different opportunities set to some extent like this complementary assets and for different reasons, whatever it is.

But your point about the track record of public versus private and the private market, private real estate, and also having a premium in the way historically the data would say that for private equity, it's outperformed on average the public markets by 3%, 4%, maybe even more if you go back longer. And in that case, like there's a sort of intuitive argument saying, well, you're just using leverage in these companies, you're buying smaller companies that tend to have historically outperformed. You know, maybe you can kind of restructure them in some way and get kind of better value, you know, they all would play a role.

Why do you think that, you know, the public versus private, you know, performance or listed versus private has been more mixed? Is there, you know, is it just the unique differences of what they tend to own or there's something else maybe going on? So I would say the sector differences is definitely been one of the biggest differences that the listed market historically has been more embracing of these so-called alternative property types.

So meaning something like self-storage, which in the institutional market has become more accepted the last 10 years. I think the first listed self-storage company maybe was 1993 or 1994, you know, data center REITs have been around since maybe one is maybe was IPO in 2000, one was IPO in 2004. So these kinds of companies have been around for a long time because it hasn't, you know, sometimes the orthodoxy, if you will, of what is real estate can be backwards looking and so sometimes the traditional real estate teams or departments or groups say, well, I don't really understand data centers and that's what they would have said in 2005.

That's a tech investment. I don't understand that. It's not like office.

It's not like industrial. So they didn't invest in it. And of course, because they didn't invest in it, there was a much higher risk premium because there was uncertainty about, you know, there's not a lot of data, what's the history?

But, you know, the public markets generally were much more embracing of these new emerging property types and of course, these new emerging property types, they came at discounts because they had, you know, again, they were trading at coming in at lower multiples because the masses hadn't discovered them and so they've enjoyed this tailwind of being discovered. Do you think right now there's part of broad ask like real estate that you think is sort of analogous to like people don't kind of think of it as real estate but like in 10 years or 20 years, we'll look back and say that this was obviously real estate? I would say there's less of it that's going on.

I mean, there's still some of that happening in data centers. I would say, you know, senior housing is actually an area that we really like. It's become a very big part of the listed market.

It's very hard sometimes on the private side to aggregate portfolios for different reasons and it's very operating intensive and historically, private players haven't had great success for different reasons in senior housing. And again, this is this idea that, you know, what are some of the big so-called mega trends that are going on in the world? Of course, you know, for better or for worse, we'll all be older at the end of this podcast than when we started.

So, you know, the silver tsunami is a big tailwind for medical office and senior housing. So, you know, those are certainly areas that are big kind of alpha generators for listed. You mentioned, you know, data centers and earlier you mentioned AI.

This is obviously one of the biggest themes that's, I mean, you could say it was the biggest theme going on in the markets this year up until, you know, the RAM conflict and, you know, let's hope that settles down and then AI will again be kind of front and center. And there's, particularly in February, it was the big thing, it was like kind of disrupted everything because it was a little bit like, could AI eat the world to some extent? You talked earlier about like software, you know, even the world now it's kind of AI.

We saw different industries, you know, kind of, you know, being challenged. So I'll have two kind of questions and the first would be, as you think about, like, how are you thinking about AI as an opportunity set? Is it primarily data centers?

Is there other aspects that's, again, thinking of like, well, there's ways in which you can get access to it. That's not just buying, you know, the tech companies, for example, because it has, it might be like broad macro implications that will continue to play out. So how do you kind of think about direct or maybe indirect, you know, investing in AI?

Yeah, so look, we've had a big build out so far. We expect there to continue to be a big build out. It's probably different than the fiber build out in the sense that the fiber build out was like people talk about, you know, building the highways.

Imagine building the highways and you need to replace them every five years. It's a lot closer to having to build the highways on a recurring basis. And this is part of the reason why hardware so-called eats the world.

I mean, this is why the chip companies continue to do a lot better because you need to keep buying the picks and shovels on a recurring basis. So what does that mean for us? Some of it is about the data center companies on the real estate side.

They've generally done less development in these more tertiary markets. So they haven't been the biggest beneficiaries of some of that new development. But ultimately, the more we use AI, the more we use inference, they're going to be a beneficiary over time.

And so that, you know, as we go from training to inference, you're starting to see them become bigger beneficiaries of that. Obviously, a lot of concerns about AI, you know, bubble, you know, that could be individual tech stocks. But from then, maybe this real estate angle or other aspects, how kind of worried are you about it?

Do you feel like it is the nature of if it's more picks and shovels, you have to build hardware. It does a replacement cycle short. The demand is going to grow.

That's, you know, that part is sort of less exposed. I wouldn't say immune because nothing could ever really be immune. But, you know, I guess how worried are you about sort of AI bubbles cascading through these other asset classes?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a bubble in people telling us what they're going to do.

OK. So, of course, if the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that people say they're going to do happens, I'd be concerned. But the reality is, is there's a lot of constraints on that, you know, whether it's power, whether it's water, whether it's things like zoning or entitlement.

You can't just it's not about getting the money or the capital. If that's what it was about, I'd be worried about it because there's a lot of that. It's about these physical constraints that are acting as barriers.

And so I feel whether it's the next four or five or six years, very comfortable that we are not going to overproduce, you know, compute capacity. I think once we get beyond that, I don't think the hyperscalers know. I don't think anyone really knows, you know.

And, you know, and that's part of the reason why the listed data center companies haven't done some of the more outlying areas because, look, they know, you know, there's demand for it for the next five or ten years, but the contracts aren't forever. And so they're worried about that so-called terminal value. So yeah.

So demand for computes, I mean, from us, my seat, your seat, you know, we're trying to make investment decisions. We analyze data, take information. We are very much trying to, like, you know, look at these tools and things are evolving very rapidly.

How do you incorporate them in your investment process? So I'd be curious, like, how, you know, you're looking at for all of CoinSeer's, like, how are you thinking about it? How are you trying to get, you know, your team to use it?

Where do you actually think it actually so far is helpful versus, like, more hype than reality? Yeah. Yeah.

So, look, as a starting point, you know, whenever I or any PM or any analyst has a question, they should first ask AI, you know, and I think it's just a good starting point. And someone somewhere on the globe is contemplating usually that question. And it's not a question about a specific stock.

It's a question about, you know, what are the factors to consider about, I don't know, data centers in space? You know, there's probably 500 white papers that have been written. It's a good starting point.

You don't need to go find all 500, maybe it's not 500, but some number, okay? More than you want to read. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. More than one wants to read.

It's a good starting point to know what is already out there and has been synthesized. That's one area. The other area is that, you know, when we have stock or investment pitches, we have been running those pitches through different models to critique them.

And this is actually an area we're spending more and more time on. You know, I always say, you know, we think investing is a math problem. It's like 50% of behavioral finance problem, I think, right?

You know, it's all about inputs, which us humans are making. It's all about reaching conclusions based on those outputs, which again, it's humans. And so we have a lot of biases in the things we do.

So we want to make sure that our stock pitches and recommendations that, you know, they're free from or more free from confirmation bias or, you know, things like that. And so I think the first one, you know, being able to kind of get a good first answer, it's very good at. I think the second one kind of being the devil's advocate, it's better today than three months ago.

It'll probably be very, very good in six months. So you anticipate, you know, increasingly it will become part of a tool that investors, your analysts have to use, right? In the same way we've used software tools, Excel, whatever, to do analysis.

This is just table stakes to make this analysis. For sure. For sure.

And look, I'm sure, you know, every investor has a different investment process. We're not, you know, natural language processing, you know, the pause that Jay Powell said in his speech and then trade Fed fund futures a millisecond later, right? Like that's just not our form of investing to the extent someone was making high frequency systematic trading.

Of course, there's going to be much more applications to it, but, you know, we're trying to identify what we think are one, two, three year inflections and valuation. So, you know, what are the things that have that kind of, you know, half-life? I know we're coming up on time here.

We've covered a lot from kind of the consequences of the war in Iran, real estate, now AI. Is there something that we maybe haven't talked about as in terms of maybe a risk near term or some sort of change? Something that you think that is relevant, obviously a lot of focus on private credit and systemic risks.

Something else that is, or it's not what we've discussed, but also maybe the market is not maybe focused on as a negative, but also perhaps like there's a positive story that you see that people aren't also appreciating. Yeah, look, I think, you know, we talked about that there were certain trends that started the year, you know, first six or seven weeks or so. And you know, whether it was, you know, natural resource equities up 15 to 20%, whether it was infrastructure up, you know, 11 or 12% or even REITs up 10%, we think there's still this general trend towards hard assets, some income, and we're frankly a lot of money hasn't crowded into over the last several years or so.

You know, I talked earlier about gold and, you know, I frankly, you know, I like gold, but the reality is when everyone's talking about it and everyone's going there, of course things tend to go the other way. So we believe the reason why we saw that early performance and we expect it continues, they're just not crowded trades, you know, and there's a lot of crowded trades in the world. And so, you know, not being a crowded trade, having a good valuation is a good starting point.

We are, I guess, actually as of last night, opening day of baseball season. So using a baseball analogy, what inning do you think we are in terms of this hard asset shift? Is this still like second, third or, I mean, it's hard to know, right, in the long run, but like early?

We're in the second inning. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, we're in the second inning. I mean, there's slight nuances, whether it's real estate infrastructure or natural resources, but we're so early. We're really so early and, you know, we, you know, it's, you know, and, you know, we've all been doing this long enough, you know, in 2010, you know, everyone said, you know, emerging markets, China commodities, you know, that because everyone was looking at the last 10 years, you know, and then of course, you know, 10, 15 years later, you know, those are hated words and we all talk about, you know, oh, is, you know, is real estate dead?

No one ever needs real estate and, you know, the metaverse, I mean, think about it, you know, we're talking metaverse, you know, a few years ago, you know, we're not talking a lot about the metaverse anymore, right? So there's a big shift, you know, towards this reindustrialization, supply chains, resources. It's a big shift.

I hope you're not a Mets fan because early in the season, you could have optimism that ultimately crashed. Hopefully, you know, a team that will continue to have more success. But thank you very much.

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