Investor Roundtable 2022

While some sectors have leveled off after making huge gains in 2021, investors see growth opportunity in sectors like telehealth, education, and the supply chain.

Investor Roundtable 2022: Markets will transition “from recovery to resilience”

Finance

Investors see growth opportunity in sectors like telehealth, education, and the supply chain.

2022 markets will transition “from recovery to resilience”

let's talk a little bit about this kind of transitional moment that we're in in the markets, we've been through this incredible rebound year with stocks and corporate earnings and the economy all recovering from pandemic lows. But now we're starting to see more different headwinds, whether it's inflation, labor and supply chain problems at the end of government stimulus and there's this possibility for slowing growth. It's 2022 a year where you see equities in general pulling off this one's all skate. Anyone who wants to jump in. I'd love to hear from you. I'll pick that up and jump off for us. Sure. So obviously we've had tremendous returns in equity market for 2021. Um and I guess big picture, the way that that we're thinking about this is that while 2021 was an incredible year of recovery for equity market When we look out to 2022, we think it's going to be more characterized as the Europe resilience. And so we do think that our expectation is that returns will be more muted and we're going to have to be highly selective against that backdrop. And so in terms of resilience areas we're looking to invest would include the reassuring of supply chains, which we all have discovered the fear that they need to be more resilient digitalization of businesses. So we like the company's driving the digitalization and also those being digitalized. Um We like the idea of innovation happening in health care to deliver better healthcare outcomes and then finally resilience for the planet and investing in the transition to a more sustainable planet. So that's the kind of how we're thinking about it is that we're transitioning from recovery that more resilient. Yeah, that's great. There's a lot to impact their um, let's start with the digitalization topic. Um I know that certainly early in the pandemic, a lot of the benefits of digitalization seemed to flow mostly to the biggest of technology companies. Certainly they saw a huge run up in their stock prices. Um is there a sense that those companies are going to continue to dominate in the transformation or are we seeing some of that wealth flow to, you know, lesser known names or more under the radar names, dan. I know this is something that you've been thinking about if you want to jump in. Yeah, I mean, I think the massive acceleration in the adoption of technology is really very broad spread and um, in some ways, you know, it was a forced experiment for a lot of old economy companies. Um, but the experience, I think by and large has been very positive. And so, um, I believe digital transformation is going to continue uh within the economy. And I think we have a lot of the old world company. So for example, restaurants, right, The most hard hit industry and other than maybe airlines. Um, and yet um forced to close so many pivoted to uh delivery and of course online ordering And the success is really um, you know, quite amazing. Uh for many of them, they're saying that even as we reopen their digital efforts and their delivery efforts are actually holding up quite a bit better uh than they were. You know, they're above levels that they were in say 2019 and 2018 before COVID. And I think that transformation, um it's just an example across the very old industry where the benefits if you will of this uh you know, very difficult time to force adaptation um is going to continue to benefit them in the future. And there's of course many examples within tech and industrial healthcare and other industries building on that point. Yeah, I think that in times of great disruption comes, great opportunity and human behavior actually hasn't settled down at all. We had a major disruption and how we live and work and play and do everything last year with everybody kind of going uh online to do everything schools closing, but we're still in the middle of that disruption, like behavior hasn't settled into what the new normal will be. So I think that we're still seeing a ton of opportunity into entrance back and kind of capitalize how people are gonna, are gonna live their lives and perform their work going towards. So my money is quite literally on the entrance, even though the major players, you know, where the, where the early beneficiaries of all of that going on Wednesday, they already had all the products ready to be invested in. I think the next generation of change is going to go come from the entrance Leslie you, as you point out, you're investing in these companies at the earliest of stages. Are you starting to already see, can you name a couple of examples of companies that you're starting to see that are that are responding to these changes in the way that we live and work. I think a great example to really great examples that were perhaps not the most popular for venture capitalists before the pandemic has become a lot more mainstream in terms of who is investing in them one education. Right, So I think a lot of these things are very cautious of the education industry before the pandemic and now, you know, when we realize that there's so many different ways of delivering education, we're starting to see record investing into the education space. So um I felt personally I'm invested in a couple of companies in the space, one is leg up, which helps parents connect with early childhood education suppliers and the other staff education, which is re skilling for the rest of America. What kind of delivering up skilling and re skilling programs through community colleges in the middle of America. The other space that I'm really excited about in terms of how much transformation we found a very short period of time is the delivery of health care. I think a lot of innovation around models for delivering healthcare differently. You know, connecting positions, connecting different types of healthcare, healthcare suppliers to patients and consumers would not normally take time out of their day to perhaps see a nutritionist, to perhaps see a dermatologist with that combination of insurance covers a lot more telehealth, it's a lot more widely acceptable now, you know, you can really just yeah, book an appointment and get on with your day. Um plus all of the thoughtfulness, the extra thoughtfulness that people have uh for better or worse, had around our personal health, through the pandemic, right? Like it's been there, front and center of creating all of these opportunities for four spaces that that venture capital has never touched before. So I'm looking at companies now in the um clinical nutrition space, looking at a lot of uh culturally competent telehealth, um companies that that are connecting populations that don't have doctors who understand them, don't have therapists to understand that a lot of innovation around maternal health, women's health. So really, really excited about those faces. I don't think that we would be seeing this much traction if it weren't for the great disruption of our lives over the past couple of years

T. Row Price’s David Giroux thinks inflation could level off a bit, but may take a few years to reach pre-pandemic levels.

Investor Roundtable 2022: A $40 billion fund manager thinks moderate inflation could last 3-5 years

Investor Roundtable 2022: Inflation concerns

David, I'm thinking of you because you have a role that's explicitly multi asset. How is inflation changing your thinking right now or the outlook for inflation changing your thinking right now about where investors should be concentrating or they might what they might want to be moving away from and moving towards. Sure. I think what's important to think about this, when we think about inflation, We need to think a little bit about 2021 is really the perfect storm. And the inflation we're seeing today is there's a sickly component to it and there's a structural component to it. So when you see what the civil component to it, like last year we said we have easy come. So last year things like hotel prices fell dramatically, airline tickets fell dramatically and this has recovered just normal recovery. So we were always going to see above a normal inflation this year. But then there was a situation where we had this massive stimulus in the economy By the federal government and we also have people had a tremendous amount of money saved in 2020. and essentially what's happening in 2021, if you are spending that and what you're seeing really unprecedented level of demand for consumer durables, Uh, maybe 20% above trend line. Just never have seen it ever in the data before. You know, appliances, exercise equipment, air conditioning, computers, iPads is well above demand. And essentially what happened is it broke the supply chain. The supply chain was just not built produced X plus or 1.2 times X if you will. Right, well, that's just not how you build your your company's right supply chain, you know, driver shortages, uh, civic security issues at all driving inflation Right now. Now the good news about that is is that that stimulus is kind of kind of wane a little bit as we think about the second half, 2022 Into 2023 I think demand for appliances and home and all this other stuff will probably return to back a little bit too normal. So some of the supply chain cyclically driven inflation is likely to be transitory, probably go away as we kind of think about, you know, going to 2023. But we've alluded to this before there is some structural things that would probably result in inflation being a little bit higher than it was in the five years prior to Covid. And then we talked about a little bit about that. It's really the, let's say the the worker who doesn't have a college education and essentially what we're seeing here is demand for those people is going up pretty strong, pretty, pretty strongly. Uh and they have more options than ever. Whether it be amazon whether it be gig jobs that offer tremendous amount of flexibility and honestly, demographically that population is really not growing very fast. So essentially what we have to have happen is we need to have wages rise fast enough over time today if you take people who are not working and encourage them to work and that, that's going to take time or it's just gonna take time. So I, what I think what you're going to see is We're probably not, we're not going to go to four and a 1/2% inflation forever. That's just very, very unlikely to happen. But I think the next 3 to 5 years you could see inflation be moderately higher than we saw on the pre pandemic level because of these demographic issues that are impacting the economy. So how does that impact investors behavior or I should say how ought it shape and investor strategy and behavior. Well, let's, let's talk about anything that has any name, any stock is kind of an inflation place already done really, really well. So I don't think investors should go and kind of chase that theme, especially that theme will probably be accelerated, right? You want to go to where, not where the puck is today, where the puck is going to be in a year from now. Uh, and then a year from now we're gonna be talking for much slower inflation we are today. So I don't think anyone should go out there and I want to buy, coming to that purchasing power. I want to buy materials companies run by energy companies. I think that would be a mistake if there's already already run dramatically. I think there's probably better value in other parts of the market. What about outside of equities about in fixed income or things like that? You know, one of things that, you know, again, I run a large multi asset strategy and I think one of the asset classes that I think about it being really attractive relative to all the other options is kind of leveraged loans. So, you know, you know, I own, you know, $8 or $9 billion dollars of leveraged loans of my strategy today, that was the attention of the portfolio. Uh that was 1% a couple of years ago. And I think leverage loans really offer a really attractive risk reward in the marketplace today. You kind of get your top of the capital structure, you're floating rate in nature. If rates rise, you benefit from that. So you don't really lose anything from that. If rates able to get a 4% return And you know, if rates drop, which I don't think they're gonna drop dramatically from right here, you're probably not gonna hurt that much at all. So it's just the risk reward looks really attractive and contrasted with all the other markets we can invest in equities trading, it you know, 22 times the median company, the markets now at the same multiple was back in 98 99 kind of the dot com bubble. You know. Treasuries are very expensive with a yield of 1.5 when inflation is probably like I said, a little bit above trend or will be a little bit above trend next over years, uh, you know, investment grade bonds almost that attractive. And so I don't think leverage loans. Yeah. The idea of earning four With one third of the volatility equity market for most investors, most risk adverse, risk aware investors makes a lot of sense. And that's, again, that's where we were really, uh, like I said, added about $70 billion dollars to the portfolio. Little loans made attempts of the portfolio in the last, uh, last couple years.

Goldman Sachs' Katie Koch: "Social media, in a way" turns experiences into a material item. 

Investor Roundtable 2022: Millennials and gen z choose physical (and digital) experiences over possessions

New generations choose experiences over possessions

Investor Roundtable 2022: New generations choose physical (and digital) experiences over possessions

I think one assumption that all of us share all of you share and I share is one that fortunately at least in the United States and europe, we seem to have passed the worst of Covid help them not jinxing anything by saying this, but there's a confidence that some elements of the, of the economy are headed towards real normalization perhaps especially uh consumer experiences that are happening in person, whether it's uh live entertainment or as dan was referencing earlier, people going back to restaurants, shopping in person, travel, coming back somewhat um, from everybody in the panel. What kind of opportunities you're seeing uh in that world dan. I'll start with you because I know you've given us a lot of thought were very focused on, on that reopening opportunity. Experiences is a big trend actually within that, which is a lot of consumers uh, for for decades have been sort of replacing material things with experiences. So when we say experiences, we mean things like travel, uh concerts. So actually live nation as a company we like a lot. I mean this is amazon proof and brick and mortar proof. If you want to go see your favorite musician, uh, you know, nothing replaces seeing them live and people do like the audience is there just as much as they like going to see the NFL live, not on tv every time. And these are the kinds of things that if you think about demographics, you have interestingly not only baby boomers who are, you know, in the prime of their lives with you all enjoying things and probably differ some of this. They had to during Covid, but you also have the rise of the millennials. I mean, this is the most experiential base uh youthful group that we've ever had. They are they are not as focused on, for example, you know, job, home car have kids, they're much more focused on travel experiences, concerts and of course I should name, I should, I do want to do just one thing and it's sort of interesting non material things but seems to be an emerging trend again, which is the metaverse. I mean, we are finding that this generation is really adopting just like they adopted mobile first and then social media first. Uh they seem to be very aggressively and very uh enthusiastically adopting sort of the idea of experiencing things through the metaverse. I don't think it's gonna replace real world experiences. I think it's a compliment to the lives of many, many of the younger millennials, you know, the older half of millennials are probably more like the baby boomers if you will, but the younger half is quite interesting as well because they're actually an extremely large population there actually, they they have equipped inside the baby boomers who of course, in terms of numbers are beginning to decline. So I'll pick up there because they, and then we're in agreement again here on this. Um, but on millennials in general. Um, also we have to play small cap it to stick with millennials for a second. Um We are very, very big believers in the enduring power of the preference for experience over things for that generation. Just two things I would add to an 85% of the world's millennials actually live in emerging markets. So a lot of these trends around live experiences traveled great outdoors is something that we try and own globally and in particular in places um in in Asia and latin America in addition to what we own in the US. Um the other point I would make about it, which I think sometimes gets lost on people, but we, one of the reasons that they can take experiences over things is that social media has enabled um Millennial and Gen Z consumers and I was born in 1980s. So I'm a geriatric millennials. So I have uh, I'm told by my piece a bit of perspective on this, you can take your pictures of your experiences that you're having and post them to social media and that in a way it transforms it into a thing. So instead of showing off luxury goods um which people previously did and there's still some of that, but not definitely not as much of that from this generation, they can actually take experiences and do the same thing through social media and kind of translate it in some ways and Sabina into being a thing. Um and then the final comment um I would make about this generation is uh we talked about traveling, talked about travel related names. I've mentioned it earlier but want to emphasize this idea of being in the great outdoors that we have been heavily invested in. There's a lot of ways to access that in small cap, whether it's yeti whether it's cool companies, whether its owning the RV companies because people are buying that boat ownership um now hiring millennials and other generations. So there's a lot that you can get into there, that's about experiences and also being outside and I'll leave it to dance comments on the metaverse because I'm I'm liking forms there the same very much same we want to talk about. I mean I think the universe is really interesting. It's also tied to the Cryptocurrency uh trend. It's not really tied to it directly, but I view it as like very uh sort of parallel track, but what we're seeing is a rapid adoption of brand, for example, hosting events, you know, in the metaverse. Now, I mean maybe to simplify what you just sort of virtual reality, right? But they're gamifying creating environments that can be visually experienced. Obviously, better visual experience if you use something like an octopus, like a VR headset. But the idea, you know, is um that a lot of them letters are gonna transfer sort of what they've been doing on social media into this more three dimensional, more experiential environment and we've seen some really interesting things like um I think it was Gucci created like a one of a kind digital that's the digital, not a real bag. And I think they have managed to sell it for thousands of dollars. I don't remember. This is the same thing like non fungible tokens, N. F. T. Tom brady for example has got an N. F. T. You know, it's a digital, it's basically a digital football card. You know, it's a like a trading card. Um uh Some people have told me that just seems really crazy and I said, well just remember, you know one day, thousands of years ago somebody showed up at the marketplace and instead of bringing sheeps and pigs to trade for chickens and corn, you know, it brought something called a coin and you know, probably the other vendors looked at him and said, I don't want that piece of metal. Where's my chicken? You know, if you want my corn, I want my chicken. Um so I think, you know, a lot of these things digital literally digital are uh at least a very big and important trend to watch. And it's certainly um you know, the big experience of adoption of new things uh in our ages at the time to 50% penetration has rapidly accelerated Um consistently over many, many decades afterwards. It took, you know, 100 years to get 50% of America with the telephone. It took half that time to get them with these. And I think you know, Facebook got adopted by 50%, you know, in probably like less than two years and we're just seeing rapid rapid adoption and that is a phenomenon of our time. But I think you know all investors need to be kind of focused on. So I I just note that the metaverse sidestepped, I don't have any particular investments to, I mean I can name some like roadblocks and unity and of course facebook itself now called meta to watch what we do. An interesting outcome. Is there going to be some traditional company? So for example, to power the metaverse, the amount of computing power needed is going to be amazing. So there are companies like AMC and NVIDIA, um, you know in semiconductors, they're going to be needed to power this stuff. Yeah, chips and servers and the whole works. Lori I apologize, I cut you off. Please please go ahead. Oh no, I just wanted to add one further point on the millennials that we were discussing. I think one thing to really highlight is they're really approaching their peak earning years when you think about coming up to that 45-55 year earnings cycle for millennials. And one of the areas certainly uh services are going to be a big area but I think one of their biggest purchases are gonna be on home and financing their homes but also investing their homes, repairing their homes And so we see, you know, a big opportunity to play into that theme in terms of the really the longevity of spending money on your home's over really the next decade by millennials. And you know, I'd highlight one quick example would be a company like Angie, Angie's is the dominant platform provider of On online home services contracting services, a $900 billion dollar market, uh that they operate across. And we think, you know, there's a very significant opportunity for further penetration and millennials really going to be much more inclined to identify contractors that can come into the home online versus historically, what we all did. Um pulling something out of yellow pages or uh some other route of doing that. We think there's really almost a catch up trade here in the sunset, you know, they've they've not benefited during the pandemic because there was A lack of contractors available and you know, some other brand repositioning issues, but we think, you know, that's a great example of one that has a really asymmetric risk reward as we look at 2022. Yeah, absolutely Leslie you are you are, I was just gonna ask you to chime in please. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny. I haven't spent this much time thinking about millennials and a while because I think in metric are like, I think a lot about the edge, the two edges of the population of one is um baby boomers like the caring economy and and how to create technologies that can be um for that population, but more importantly, is gen z. So I actually spent a lot of time trying to figure out what gen z is doing. These are, you know, the first digital natives, completely different attitude to life, question everything, you know, and they take a very different approach to uh community to to really everything to how they relate to one another. So I'm not a huge investor in uh, crypto and members and like those, those edge technologies and edge behaviors. But I do think that they are coming. Um, I think it's important for investors to pay attention to start learning about it because I think 5, 10 years on the road, this is gonna be a lot of what we talk about them in day to day, we're gonna be talking about not just trading securities and trading points, but also trading fractional ownership of digital goods, fractional ownership of physical goods in a digital token form. Um, and I do think that it's really important for people to really start paying attention to what is happening in those, like edge parts of the economy right now. It looks a lot like claim. I mean, it looks very speculative, right, Like certainly should not be investing anything that you're not prepared to lose, but it is uh, learning. So I have a, I have an investment company that I think is doing something really interesting investigate uh called Macara and what McAra does is creating investment basket essentially their E. S. T. S. Made up of cryptocurrencies that the retail investor canonical and investment. So it's kind of packaging all of this up in a way that uh you know, geriatric millennials and and gen expert. Uh I understand and get behind and not have to be quite so like worried about like you know um Yeah, she's like like what's open sea and why should I buy it? You know, care for a animal. That looks really weird, like you know, why is that on people sort of problems? So don't worry about all that. Start paying attention to what is happening in those cases the economy. I think you know more people need to be involved. I um I saw a tweet this morning, I wish that I had come up with it, but I did not. Uh but I do want to share it that you know, I really wish that um more science fiction literature was read as cautionary guide and not a how to manual, but I actually think that a lot of what is happening is that Edge World is approaching things like ready cleared one, approaching things that you know like the movies like somebody has to come up with it before it can be also invested. So pay attention, Start taking a look at what is happening in cryptocurrencies and FTS in um it's like digital ownership, digital community, digital investment world because I think it's gonna be a big part of the conversation five or 10 years down the line. One thing that really strikes me with everybody's comments I just wanted to bring up in terms of how to inform oneself about this space. Um, so roadblocks down by the way the company were invested into. And I just, we talk about diversity a lot in this industry and I think it's very, very important for crowd on our team that half the assets are run by fortunately managers that happen to be women. We talk about a lot around gender and race and we should. But the other thing is also demographic diversity on your own investing team. And certainly for us, I would say having younger investors has been very helpful for understanding these trends, like when you're trying to figure out why someone wants to buy a burrito from Chipotle through roadblocks in the metaverse, Like you need young people on the team, at least I do to help us understand that. So that's important for us. And I say for people watching this at home to have young kids and their family. I totally agree with those comments that you want to educate yourself about it, you want to understand and use cases and you probably can get pretty far in doing that by speaking to the digital natives in your life, particularly. Um, uh, gen z

Experts believe crypto is an area of opportunity moving forward.

Investor Roundtable 2022: Best and worst investments for 2022

Investor Roundtable 2022: Best/worst investments for 2022

So David over the next 12 months, what do you see as the greatest risks facing investors and the greatest opportunities facing them try? I think the biggest risk is what's really interesting to me is we did $164 that we have in our earnings in two of the 19. We're going to do two or 52 of seven. We're well above trend earnings growth here in the s. 500. And you know, some of that earnings is kind of what I call low quality like bank reserve releases. There's been a lot of margin expansion has basically been driven by, you are not doing business travel. Energy prices are high, probably come lower next year. And so and then we also have tax reform that will probably impact earnings by 2, 3% next year as well. So The long term last 10 year kind of learning stripped of the market Kind of x recessions have kind of been like seven and so you're kind of building in seven next year. But you have a lot of headwinds that are probably gonna, you know, Making your next year in the 500 a little bit lower than what it normally would be because of these reserves releases. All these other things are kind of one time in nature. So the only point I would make is Evaluations are, you know, really kind of 25 year highs and large cap equities. Uh multiples, multiples are high, you have earnings growth probably slowing down usually that's not a great combination for the market. That may be different, small caps, maybe different emerging markets, but in large gaps, it's usually not a great combination, but what we do, like if you're going from an environment where growth is plentiful to a place where growth is maybe a little bit more muted. I think stable growth companies, they're kind of more consistent growers. We'll probably go back in favor as we kind of think about 2022 and 2023 more garvey kind of companies. That's where we were patient large bets. Thanks. David Lori Let me pose the same question to you over the next 12 months. Where do you see the greatest risks for investors and the greatest opportunities? Sure. I'll start on the risk side. First, I think, you know, what we see is We look out the biggest risk for corporate earnings in 2022 is, is really around the shortage of labor, which I think it makes it much more challenging for companies to innovate and ultimately grow. And uh, this is not just a supply chain issue, but also a labor issue. And certainly when you look at non farm payroll at, yeah, They've risen by 17 million since the trust Drop of April 2020, but they're still down five million from its pre pandemic level in February of 2020. So providing a safe, inclusive, great workplace. I think that's table stakes today for companies to be able to attract and motivate and retain their talent base. And I think it's also important to note, you know, companies that have a really strong corporate purpose mission are going to be a very significant competitive advantage to attract, engage their employees And then shifting to the opportunities, I would say, as we hopefully return to a new normal and 22, even as the pandemic continues versus around much of the world, I think the best opportunities in 22 will be in selected, high quality stocks that have improving fundamentals That have reasonable valuations and yet have been often overlooked by investors during, throughout, throughout much of the 21 period. So as a long term investor, I'm really focused on those high quality, socially responsible companies, improving earnings growth have durable modes, management teams that are really thinking about, you know, the long term interests of the companies and aligned with long term shareholders And of course reasonable valuations. So these are the opportunities that I see that have the greatest source of upside and after generation during 2022. Thanks Lori Dan, How about you? Where do you see the greatest opportunities and the greatest risks for the next 12 months for investors? Sure, I think the greatest opportunities, I continue to see actually in sort of innovative growth companies. I think we're in a period that covid accentuated and as I've noted accelerated and for some companies in industry accelerated their decline. I think so I think the opportunities are really around, focus on one of the most innovative companies, most innovative sectors, who are the company's leading that those trends. Um and you know, making sure that as an investor you have enough exposure to to innovation and growth. Uh we also like high quality sort of steady grower compound, but I do think that a lot of investors, you know, especially after a multi decade, um uh basically bonds in full market are probably over allocated to uh maybe not David, David, you know, leverage loans to more traditional bomb proposed that will not perform well in rising rate, rising inflation environment and they're under allocated, I believe many to sort of uh you know, the more innovative growth ends of the market and I have highlanders, I think small cap is an opportunity. I agree with many of the commentators that I think the recovery action will come later in international and emerging markets, but therefore those markets, I think actually offer a lot of opportunity. Again, I would not be playing those traditional cyclicals and commodities in those areas that probably will get a lift at the initial stage. But I would look for the high quality true growth companies in the because I think if Katie highlighted there are some leaders globally who are ahead of us, for example, in Fintech that exist in china and India and china of course has had a lot of issues. My greatest concerns for the market's really is that inflation, I think, you know, the consensus view of inflation is transitory will settle back down. Interest rates, you know, extremely low on the tenure uh still historically. So that that seems to be the, you know, really the broadly accepted consensus, but I am a little concerned that we could get higher inflation than the markets expect. Um You know, we've had decades of Falling inflation, falling interest rate. It's uh you know, we sort of thought after the Great Financial Crisis 2008, uh that the efforts there might re stimulate, you know, some of that we never really got back to that as you all know. And then covid of course caused a tremendous shift downward. So, and which we still haven't recovered from. I mean, let's just remember interest rates were basically between two and 3% pre covid, we're at 16 on the 10, 15 and six and the 10 years. So I'm not concerned about 2% no one should be, but I am concerned that um there's a structural forces in terms of, you know, how much has benefited, for example, white collar label, but not blue collar laborers, right? And we're seeing them gain some of that back. And I think that's actually good for our society, but higher wages at the at the at the blue collar jobs that are so necessary for actual real life. Um you know, I think that does tend to translate into higher inflation potentially over time. And it is coming as as many of the commentators have noticed at a time when demographically there are fewer people to fulfill those, those those roles than there once were. So. Um, and then there's a commodity inflation and oil is at $83. We haven't seen $83 since a pretty great financial crisis. Um that was driven by the rise of china today. We have an interesting phenomenon and it's difficult for me because uh, I am an environmentalist. I sit on the board of the Nature Conservancy, I welcome the transition to renewables and sustainable wind and solar and others. But we could have a difficult period where because of discipline and reduce capital spending in the oil and gas industry and the future, the outlook for renewables. We could see sustained very high oil and natural gas prices for years. It might even be the natural outcome if you want the market to force the transition, that's the best way for it to happen. But there could be a very unpleasant middle there um When you think about, you know, energy prices in particular for, you know, ordinary americans, uh heating bills, fuel and how that filters through. So I am worried about what higher inflation would mean. And and then it's a huge risk of course, also because I look at the market says, how are investors positioned over the last few decades? Most investors, I think have become too comfortable in sort of playing vanilla bond portfolios, um, and not enough exposed to, for example, growth equities, small cap equities, emerging market equities, et cetera. And so, um, you know, large parts of the bond market will not perform that well in that kind of environment. And then the other risk I have is more um, geopolitical. It's really about, uh, will there be a policy or political mistake, uh, with either china Russia or others where, you know, we're coming out of covid in a very strange world, uh, you know, what, what is the american relationship with our former allies and with the powers that exist in, in, in Russia and china? And as you all know, it's, uh, it seems to be highly um, indeterminant. In other words, we thought we had one kind of relationship, then we went another way. And now I think, uh, in many ways many people are uncertain what relationship, if any, we have with these. And it's, um, you know, I just worry about the risk of, uh, a political or policy mistake uh, that of course would be, um, well, it could be, it could be tragic, Katie all ask the question to you. Where do you see the greatest risks and the greatest opportunities for investors over the next 12 months when we look out to 2022 on the risk side, I would talk about labor, but I think Lori's already done a great job of that, but we still have the lowest labor force participation rate. This country's had post World war two is a very big problem and we need to find the ways to pull those people back into the labor force for a variety of reasons. And then the other risk would be so we are worried about the supply chain. Yes, the supply chain constraints really lasting well into 2022 an area that we have a particular focus on would be the chip famine that we're all facing. So just so people have context right now we have a record high 22 week lead time for when a chip has ordered to when it is delivered. Um, texas instruments have come out more recently to say that they're starting to see some improvement on that, but that is a very bad, bad leg and it's very relevant because a lot of what we've talked about today is the need for more technological disruption and innovation. Well chips are foundational to all of that technology that leads me to my second point, which is where are the opportunities which are often found in addressing the risks that are out there. And we continue to think of major opportunity in 2022 beyond a building supply chain resiliency. We like the companies that have supply chain resiliency and have already been thoughtful about that and we're very big believers in the companies that will be beneficiaries of that as more and more people build supply chain resiliency and stick on, stick on semi's for a moment. We are expecting both china and the US to make massive investments on being able to design but also fab their chips in those home market or more approximate market to both china and the US. And so we love as an example of semi equipment manufacturers. Uh, allergy would be an example of one in china and M. K. S. Instruments would be an example of something that we like and the U. S. And Leslie, I'm going to come back to you take the last bite at the apple of this question, which is over the next 12 months, where do you see the greatest risks and the greatest opportunities for investors? Um, so this is a really hard question for me to answer for two reasons. First is, uh, I think that among this panel, um, I work in a space, but it's the most forward looking. So it's almost like it's hard for me to think about opportunities and risks in one year chunks rather than in like that. So it's like really, really, really far ahead into the future. Uh, and the second is I actually think that most of the risks I see are the same as the opportunities, like, you know, it's two sides of the same point. So like, I don't know if it's answers the risk, part of what you asked for the opportunity, part of what you have, but they are pretty much the same thing. And so what I would say is, you know, uh, several of my colleagues here have talked about capital, looking for growth opportunities for like small cap or venture emerging markets. And I do think that more and more money is coming into the space because it has never been easier through a company, it has never been easier to Scale of company. And when you look at the rate of growth of companies in the rate of transformation of the public markets, right? Like we're looking at a complete recycling of the public markets in the next 50-200 years, right? Like every company that's on the 9:00 might might not be there by the time my kids are are caged. Um, and I think that a lot of investors trying to see that a lot of investors starting to see that the outcomes adventure the outcomes in early stage are getting bigger and they're happening faster and there is more of them to be had. So that's certainly an opportunity. Now, the challenge is that like early stage is not a place where you can very efficiently invest large amount of capital. In fact, the opposite have, is like the more money thrown at early stage companies, unless they learn how to build substantial businesses and be efficient with their capital as they grow and then you see like tons of big correction. So, so what I see is the risk is, you know, here there's so much capital chasing after the early stage, all these corporations starting their own corporate VC funds, all these family offices, starting their own kind of angel investing practice. And like if you don't have, um, a way to kind of ensure that you're staying true to reasonable valuations even at the earliest stages and you're just kind of throwing money to see what happens. That ends up being bad for the company and ends up being that. So I think for the, for the retail investor, look for funds, look for emerging managers, look for funds that can kind of diversified capital across a number of different companies rather than trying to put all of your couple basic financial, is not saying anything that shocks everyone out. Um, the other thing we did, we didn't talk a lot about this, but I think we would be remitted uh, to not talk about, um, the, you know, the giant need an opportunity to bring more people to work and to bring more people into the side of investing and wealth creation. Right? So before the pandemic, um, I remember the World Economic Forum has said that it was going to take something like 160 years for women and men to reach economic economic gender parody. Uh, and after the pandemic, it's actually almost 300 years. We have lost So many, so many women are no longer working. They're not participating. They're not investing really. Even in our profession, less than 1% of all uh assets worldwide are managed by women. I think that that's an enormous opportunity to bring more people into the economy by making the economy more equitable. Uh we could spend an entire hour talking about what that means, but we'd be remiss to not at least say, hey, things are a lot more unequal than they were a year and a half ago. And it's not like we started from a very good place And I don't think that'll be fixed a year from now either. It is a lifetime's work, but it's a really important theme. It won't be fixed a year from now. But the flip side of that is I'm going to end on a positive note is that it's also not going to be six and 300 because that same, that same increasingly fast cycle of wealth generation of company creation of like growth um creates huge opportunities for people to participate and build wealth in ways that were really kind of in expectable to masses before. So, I, you know, I think that more of us can participate. There's really interesting have models out there that are bringing more and new people more new thinking more new capital into the investing economy. Actually break headed to see what that what that brings. Thank you Leslie that's a great note to end on, and I think we will end it there. Thank you all so much for your time and your insight and your expertise, And that concludes the fortune investor roundtable for 2022.

Investor Roundtable 2022

Investor Roundtable 2022: Markets will transition “from recovery to resilience”

Latest video

While some sectors have leveled off after making huge gains in 2021, investors see growth opportunity in sectors like telehealth, education, and the supply chain.

Videos (4 videos)

Investor Roundtable 2022: Markets will transition “from recovery to resilience”

Investor Roundtable 2022: A $40 billion fund manager thinks moderate inflation could last 3-5 years

Investor Roundtable 2022: Millennials and gen z choose physical (and digital) experiences over possessions

Investor Roundtable 2022: Best and worst investments for 2022