Speaker 1: This is mesters in Business with Very renaults on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This weekend on the podcast, I have yet another special guest.
Speaker 1: Extra special guest, Samarica Cohne is the chief investment officer
Speaker 1: at Black Rocks, where she manages E t f s
Speaker 1: and index investing. Black Rock is ten trillion dollars their
Speaker 1: E t F businesses over three trillion their index businesses
Speaker 1: also over three trillion UH. Samara is consistently on everybody's
Speaker 1: list of most influential women in finance. But that's not
Speaker 1: why you want to listen to this. You want to
Speaker 1: listen to this because there really are very few people
Speaker 1: in the world more knowledgeable about managing e t f s,
Speaker 1: managing indexes. What passive really means, how people should be
Speaker 1: thinking about the actual engineering of products if you want
Speaker 1: to have broad market exposure or specific types of beta. Really,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop talking and just say, with no further ado,
Speaker 1: my conversation with Samaricane, this is mesters in Business with
Speaker 1: Very Results on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this
Speaker 1: week is Samaricane. She is Black Rocks chief investment officer
Speaker 1: for E t F s and index investments. Black Rock
Speaker 1: manages about ten trillion dollars. The E t F business
Speaker 1: is about three point to seven trillion. Uh. Samaricane, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. Thank you so much, Barry. I'm happy to
Speaker 1: be here. I'm happy to have you here. I have
Speaker 1: so many questions to ask you, but I have to
Speaker 1: start out with your education, which we usually skimp over.
Speaker 1: So you graduated you pen with a b us in
Speaker 1: economics and finance at Wharton, but you also had a
Speaker 1: b a in theater arts. How has theater training helped
Speaker 1: in your financial career? First, Barry, when you hear theater,
Speaker 1: a lot of people might think that I was an actor,
Speaker 1: So I feel like I need to start with the
Speaker 1: fact that I was decidedly a backstage kid. My love
Speaker 1: of theater was very much on the production design, directing, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, behind the scenes side, and that has definitely
Speaker 1: helped me um across the course of my career. But
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, I came to the University
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania to be a theater major, and I left
Speaker 1: with the dual degree in finance and theater. So finance
Speaker 1: was something I discovered because I knew I was good
Speaker 1: at math. In fact, when I started college, I didn't
Speaker 1: really need to take any math classes because I had
Speaker 1: all of this credit and I missed it, And so
Speaker 1: I discovered markets and economics and it felt like math
Speaker 1: with a purpose. So and I got to combine the
Speaker 1: fin angel degree with the theater degree, which made my
Speaker 1: parents much more comfortable with the fact that I was
Speaker 1: spending all of my summers working for regional theater companies basically,
Speaker 1: but it was a big part of learning who I
Speaker 1: am and today in my role, I often remember being
Speaker 1: told that um casting is of directing and putting the
Speaker 1: right person in the right seat is a lot about
Speaker 1: leading any business. So it definitely has played a part throughout.
Speaker 1: Really interesting, So you you end up in turning your
Speaker 1: Goldman sacks on the trading floor pretty early in your career.
Speaker 1: Tell us what that was like and how theatrical was that. Well,
Speaker 1: actually I came to Goldman out of business school. I well,
Speaker 1: my first job was actually a black Rock. That's where
Speaker 1: I came out of college. I was a black Rock
Speaker 1: for four years, went to business school, and part of
Speaker 1: why I went back to school after black Rock was
Speaker 1: in my head I thought maybe I could further combine
Speaker 1: this love of finance and love of theater and how
Speaker 1: might I do it? And I loved the idea of
Speaker 1: going back to school. I'm kind of a voracious learner
Speaker 1: and I'd worked hard, and I liked the idea of
Speaker 1: meeting other people and seeing what was out there after
Speaker 1: four years of working. And in that summer and actually
Speaker 1: in the process of figuring out where I wanted to
Speaker 1: work for the summer, I visited a trading floor and
Speaker 1: I walked onto the trading floor and I thought, this
Speaker 1: is it. It's a lot like theater. It's a lot
Speaker 1: like that, like multitasking, high energy, collaborative environment where lots
Speaker 1: of things are happening at the same time, and I
Speaker 1: thrive in that. And so actually the theater, the trading
Speaker 1: floor I found pretty theatrical and that really worked for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a buzz, there's an electricity on a
Speaker 1: big trading floor, which I think is one of the
Speaker 1: things that's lost from old Wall Street. You can replace
Speaker 1: it with more efficient algorithms and technology, but man, when
Speaker 1: you walk onto a big floor, you just feel that
Speaker 1: there's nothing like that, and ever have a des ire
Speaker 1: to become a trader? Was that did that ever appealed
Speaker 1: to you until I walked onto the trading floor. Um,
Speaker 1: the idea really scared me. And you know what, I
Speaker 1: actually I don't think I've ever told anybody this. I
Speaker 1: did not proactively send my resume to the securities division.
Speaker 1: They reached out to me as part of a diversity
Speaker 1: hiring effort to get more women onto the trading floor.
Speaker 1: And the reason I didn't send my resume was it
Speaker 1: sounded really intimidating to me. And so I think that's
Speaker 1: just an important thing to note, is that sometimes if
Speaker 1: something's interesting, even if it's intimidating, it's worth checking out.
Speaker 1: Because I knew, and yes, there weren't a lot of
Speaker 1: women on the floor when I walked out there, but
Speaker 1: it was really clear to me that I would. You know,
Speaker 1: once I got my bearings and learned to speak the language.
Speaker 1: It can be an intimidating place at first, but but
Speaker 1: I knew it would be a great fit for me.
Speaker 1: So let me make sure I understand the chronology of
Speaker 1: your career. So you intern at black Rock, then you
Speaker 1: work at Goldman for like sixteen years something like that,
Speaker 1: and then you boomerang back it's a black Rock. Did
Speaker 1: I did I get that right, Yeah, pretty much. I
Speaker 1: went to black Rock out of college, and then business
Speaker 1: school from black Rock, and then Goldman from business school,
Speaker 1: and then back to black Rock. M that's really really interesting.
Speaker 1: I heard the phrase black Rock boomerangs. Is this a thing?
Speaker 1: Do people like work at black Rock leave and then
Speaker 1: you know, magnetically get drawn back? What's that about? In
Speaker 1: my case, it was definitely a thing. I don't know
Speaker 1: the like what the total stats are, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: true for other people. I mean, people's careers are marathons
Speaker 1: and and not sprints and and you know, part of
Speaker 1: my marathon, an important part of my marathon actually was
Speaker 1: that sixteen years in Goldman. I think had it not
Speaker 1: been for that, I wouldn't have the seat I currently
Speaker 1: occupy a black Rock. So I'm pretty grateful for it, um.
Speaker 1: But also I think my my history with black Rock
Speaker 1: and my passion for the firm and its purpose did
Speaker 1: draw me back as well. So let's talk about that
Speaker 1: seat you have at black Rock. You recently were promoted
Speaker 1: to chief Investment Officer of E t F s and
Speaker 1: Index Investments. That sounds like a pretty serious job, especially
Speaker 1: when we consider at black Rock. You know, it's well
Speaker 1: over three trillion dollars in assets. Tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about your new job responsibilities. I'm really excited about
Speaker 1: the new job and and even more than than me
Speaker 1: being in the job, I'm excited about the fact that
Speaker 1: we have a chief investment officer role for E t
Speaker 1: F S and index and it actually is broader than
Speaker 1: the e t F book. It's our whole indexing book
Speaker 1: and in the and what it means in short, is
Speaker 1: that I'm accountable for for investment performance in our E
Speaker 1: t F and index book, which I love telling people
Speaker 1: because sometimes they look at me and they say, well,
Speaker 1: I don't really understand that is an investment performance the
Speaker 1: out performance of the benchmark. And aren't you Smarrow at
Speaker 1: E t F and index person the benchmark? So what
Speaker 1: is investment performance? And we done a lot of work,
Speaker 1: um really in partnership with our clients and articulating what
Speaker 1: that is. And in the case of E t F
Speaker 1: S and index, it's two things. It's first what we
Speaker 1: call market quality. What do you expect in an E
Speaker 1: t F That's how it trades in the market, secondary
Speaker 1: market volumes, market quality in stressed scenarios, premium discount behavior.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of metrics that we monitor with respect
Speaker 1: to E t F market quality. Part of my job
Speaker 1: is to be accountable for performing on those and the
Speaker 1: other part is delivering on those index outcomes, which in
Speaker 1: a world where what we can index is evolving as
Speaker 1: more markets and more strategies are indexed. UM is also
Speaker 1: important that we deliver to investors what they have signed
Speaker 1: on for with that index objective. And so that's what
Speaker 1: it means to be the CIO of an E t
Speaker 1: F and index book. So you mentioned UM market quality
Speaker 1: and performing within the market. You know, was only m
Speaker 1: less than two years ago. We had the big COVID
Speaker 1: sell off in March, and people were concerned that e
Speaker 1: t f s were not going to be able to
Speaker 1: manage the pressure. They wouldn't be able to deal with
Speaker 1: all of the stress, you know, all the usual criticisms
Speaker 1: of indexing plus additional criticisms of e t F s.
Speaker 1: How did ETFs perform during that collapse from February to April.
Speaker 1: The people who were concerned before the COVID bout of
Speaker 1: volatility had a huge and rich set of data to
Speaker 1: draw from. UH when we emerged from those volatile markets.
Speaker 1: That showed that actually ets have really supported stressed markets,
Speaker 1: added liquidity, added transparency, and that was on a full
Speaker 1: display over the COVID volatility period, particularly in the bond market,
Speaker 1: where if you think about what was happening across the world,
Speaker 1: there were traders who were, you know, setting up their
Speaker 1: their home desks there at their home, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of that one trading floor that we
Speaker 1: talked about became thousands and thousands of home office trading floors.
Speaker 1: And the bond market in particular still has largely operated
Speaker 1: in an over the counter bilateral basis, and the bond
Speaker 1: market for for that reason and a whole lot of
Speaker 1: other reasons, you know, in the treasury market in particular,
Speaker 1: became very hard to access, while e t s you
Speaker 1: could see on your phone, they were transparent, they were trading.
Speaker 1: One of the stats that I love to quote that
Speaker 1: I think is quite indicative of what was happening over
Speaker 1: that period is, you know, we had an investment grade
Speaker 1: ETF that traded on one of those volatile days in
Speaker 1: March March nine thousand times on exchange, and of course,
Speaker 1: every time something prints on an exchange is price formation.
Speaker 1: Whereas it's underlying bonds. The top holdings of that underlying
Speaker 1: bond portfolio traded on average thirty times, so N versus thirty.
Speaker 1: There just wasn't um price formation happening in the bond market,
Speaker 1: but it was happening in the E t F market
Speaker 1: with buyers and sellers meeting on exchange, which meant that
Speaker 1: there wasn't a whole lot that needed to happen in
Speaker 1: the underlying bond market to to support that. And so
Speaker 1: really uh and what's interesting is you can see a
Speaker 1: whole lot has been written by policymakers around the world
Speaker 1: about this supportive role that ets have effectively played in
Speaker 1: in stressed markets. The you know, SEC has written about it,
Speaker 1: the BOE aiasco UM. So it's been exciting to have
Speaker 1: this really rich data set to drawn looking back at
Speaker 1: that period, the bond discussion is really interesting. And I
Speaker 1: was referring to equities, but we'll circle back to that.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of people have complains that bond
Speaker 1: markets are thin. You know, you have a few thousand stocks,
Speaker 1: but there are just countless, countless numbers of bonds, many
Speaker 1: many more times of bonds, and there are stocks. It's
Speaker 1: seems like the bondy t F universe handled the crash
Speaker 1: or plunge maybe use a more accurate word because we're
Speaker 1: so short, handled it pretty well. Everybody. We saw a
Speaker 1: lot of money rotate out of stocks into bonds as
Speaker 1: a safe harbor. Didn't seem like there were a lot
Speaker 1: of dislocations or wild price anomalies or an inability to
Speaker 1: get an execution. The bondy t F universe seemed to
Speaker 1: behave really well. The bondy t F universe behaved well,
Speaker 1: and as a result, the bond market behaved better. And
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that I get really excited
Speaker 1: about because the fact is I'm really a lifelong um
Speaker 1: markets reformer. That's a passion that I have. I've spent
Speaker 1: my entire career in the markets, and and my desire
Speaker 1: at this point is to contribute to making them better,
Speaker 1: making them safer, more efficient, more transparent. And we can
Speaker 1: measure how bondy tfs actually did that in the bond market.
Speaker 1: And in fact, interestingly, as a result of the demand
Speaker 1: and for bondy t fs that came out of the
Speaker 1: COVID period, we have seen the bond market uh start
Speaker 1: to trade uh more electronically big pieces of the bond
Speaker 1: market portfolios. In the bond market, bond dealers have started
Speaker 1: to really invest in algorithmic pricing, which creates more transparency,
Speaker 1: more trading, and more liquidity. So we've written about and
Speaker 1: we've observed this what we call a real virtuous cycle
Speaker 1: of how e t f s have been integrated into
Speaker 1: the fabric of of capital markets across the board. And
Speaker 1: we can definitely talk about equities, but how in the
Speaker 1: bond market it has been good for bondy tfs and
Speaker 1: also good for bonds. So when we had the Great
Speaker 1: Financial Crisis into oh eight oh nine, I thought that
Speaker 1: was pretty much the end of the argument that indexing
Speaker 1: is problematic for markets or ETFs aren't going to be
Speaker 1: able to handle pressure, that that should have been the
Speaker 1: last word in that. I was kind of surprised to
Speaker 1: see those same arguments still hanging around. And then March
Speaker 1: uh the execution seemed to go off without a problem.
Speaker 1: There were a handful of individual stocks that sort of
Speaker 1: their pricing get a little wacky. But is this the
Speaker 1: end of the passive is destroying the markets and E
Speaker 1: t F or dangerous argument? Or is there are they
Speaker 1: just going to trot this out every time there's um
Speaker 1: something else to complain about. I'd love your thoughts on that,
Speaker 1: Barry Um. I would hope that it's uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: closer to the end where we where we can kind
Speaker 1: of look forward to two numerous things that can improve
Speaker 1: the markets. But look, you make an excellent point. I mean,
Speaker 1: to be fair, In two thousand and eight, I was
Speaker 1: I was on the bond trading floor actually at Goldman
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what an e t F was
Speaker 1: like in two thousand eight, you know, in the fixed
Speaker 1: income markets, you didn't you know, we weren't talking about
Speaker 1: what e t f s were. But to your point,
Speaker 1: it is true if we look back at the data
Speaker 1: during those weeks and months when what was so value
Speaker 1: by investors was transparency and it was so feared was
Speaker 1: the lack of transparency when all this information was coming
Speaker 1: out about bank balance sheets and what was on balance sheets.
Speaker 1: We did see a real pick up in volume and
Speaker 1: velocity of et F trading in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: and in two thousand nine, and we have repeated stressed
Speaker 1: market events like the big energy sell off that happened
Speaker 1: at the end of twenty fifteen, the you know what
Speaker 1: we call the vulpocalypse that happened in February of eighteen,
Speaker 1: where we have repeatedly seen E t F performed well
Speaker 1: under pressure and actually adds support to high velocity markets.
Speaker 1: And yet this still you know, comes out from time
Speaker 1: to time, which feels like kind of the language that
Speaker 1: comes out around any sort of disruptive technology. But I
Speaker 1: do think, like we talked about, the data is pretty clear,
Speaker 1: you are definitely responsible for a lot of capital. And
Speaker 1: that leads me to a quote of yours that I
Speaker 1: need an explanation on. At Black Rocks. Is absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: passive about index investing, explain. I am on a mission
Speaker 1: Ferry to replace the word passive with the word index
Speaker 1: when people talk about E T S and index investing,
Speaker 1: because how we manage our portfolios is extremely active. And
Speaker 1: it goes back to that conversation we had about what
Speaker 1: investment performance is in the context of an E T
Speaker 1: F and index investment book, it is delivering the index outcomes,
Speaker 1: which the reason E T s and and index monthes
Speaker 1: exist is that indexes aren't often easily investible. They could
Speaker 1: have thousands and thousands of securities in them, and so
Speaker 1: depending on how much you you you know, are investing.
Speaker 1: You can't perfectly replicate the index, and so you need
Speaker 1: to optimize to deliver that index outcome with as little
Speaker 1: friction as possible. So that's delivering the index outcomes. And
Speaker 1: then there is that huge dimension of eat e F
Speaker 1: market quality ensuring that the e t f s tracked
Speaker 1: the underlying portfolios with you know, we call it premium
Speaker 1: discount behavior, ensuring that they're strong secondary market quality, transparency
Speaker 1: and liquidity in the e t F s. So we
Speaker 1: have teams of people, not robots, but actual people and
Speaker 1: a lot of them, by the way, or women around
Speaker 1: the world, who are actively managing our market quality and
Speaker 1: investment performance in our et F and index book. So
Speaker 1: that's why there is absolutely nothing passive about it. Huh.
Speaker 1: Really interesting. We've gone through these periods where there are
Speaker 1: these spasms of anti indexing um sentiment, and it goes
Speaker 1: all the way back to Jack Bogel and the early
Speaker 1: days of indexing in the nineties seventies. Indexing is an
Speaker 1: American it's we've heard people call it Marxist. It's going
Speaker 1: to lead to market crashes. Um. What what's your perspective
Speaker 1: when you hear these things crop up. By the way,
Speaker 1: the latest one is it's anti competitive and it's going
Speaker 1: to lead to price fixing and a lack of lack
Speaker 1: of competition due to all this ownership. How do you
Speaker 1: respond to those sort of backwater law review silliness? I
Speaker 1: begin with and we've written on this uh this year
Speaker 1: in in something we call the Investor Progress Report, But
Speaker 1: we estimate that there's about a hundred and twenty million
Speaker 1: people around the world who are accessing our e t
Speaker 1: F and index capabilities. UM. There are more people accessing
Speaker 1: the markets and investing in the markets and participating in
Speaker 1: economic growth on their terms than ever before in history.
Speaker 1: And from my perspective, there's really nothing that's more American
Speaker 1: than that. UM. So that's how I think about it.
Speaker 1: I think ETF spring markets. They bring market out access,
Speaker 1: they bring transparency, and increasingly they bring choice to lots
Speaker 1: of individual investors who are saving for retirement and thinking
Speaker 1: about their financial futures with the help of ets in
Speaker 1: ways that they couldn't before. And a lot of the
Speaker 1: you know, one of the pieces that we that we
Speaker 1: put out recently points out to the fact that a
Speaker 1: lot of the households who own e t s in
Speaker 1: the United States have have media and incomes of AD dollars.
Speaker 1: So you're talking about investors who simply didn't have market
Speaker 1: access before, who, as a result of e t f
Speaker 1: s and indexation can can get diversified strategies so manage
Speaker 1: their risks the way more sophisticated institutional investors have and
Speaker 1: participate in the markets. So let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about product engineering. What tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: what that means. What sort of projects are these teams
Speaker 1: working on. It's one of those phrases that definitely resonates.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that it resonates. It's something that we've been
Speaker 1: using for for a few years now. And that team,
Speaker 1: which is global UM. There are product engineers in really
Speaker 1: every major region in the world, and they do two things. First,
Speaker 1: they helped design the operating models and the investment process
Speaker 1: for for new e t F s. UM how will
Speaker 1: creation redemption work, What are the characteristics of the index
Speaker 1: what you know? How will the index rebalance those types
Speaker 1: of things when it comes to new E t s.
Speaker 1: And the second piece of what they do, which is
Speaker 1: actually really critical, is they continue to manage the structure
Speaker 1: of the product over its lifetime. So sometimes we will
Speaker 1: identify something in one of those market quality statistics that
Speaker 1: you know, let's say it seems to be trading a
Speaker 1: little bit wide in the secondary market, and we'll go
Speaker 1: out and we'll talk to market makers and ask what's happening,
Speaker 1: and they'll say, well, it's a little tricky to hedge
Speaker 1: because of X, Y and z. And sometimes we can
Speaker 1: change something structurally and how the market interacts with the
Speaker 1: e t F to improve its investment performance and market quality.
Speaker 1: And that's the purview of our product engineering groups. So
Speaker 1: I tell all of our teams, you know, I want
Speaker 1: all of our teams to be able to explain how
Speaker 1: they contribute to the active management of our e t
Speaker 1: F and index book. And that's how the product engineering
Speaker 1: does by by identifying the operating model and by continuously
Speaker 1: assessing and improving it. So let's talk about the rest
Speaker 1: of your team. You have portfolio engineers, risk managers, platform architects,
Speaker 1: market structure developers, and products operating model designers. That sounds
Speaker 1: like some very intriguing job descriptions. Tell us about what
Speaker 1: a market structure developer does or some of those other
Speaker 1: really interesting titles. I think they're all exciting jobs, and
Speaker 1: I do have to make a plug for for anybody
Speaker 1: who is is considering going into investing. It's never a
Speaker 1: dumb question to ask what is the job? Because there
Speaker 1: are so many different jobs. And I remember when I
Speaker 1: was in college, I was almost scared to ask that.
Speaker 1: But but as you just pointed out, and it's it's,
Speaker 1: you know, fun for me to kind of hear you
Speaker 1: walk through it. There are so many different types of
Speaker 1: ways to be an investor and to participate in an
Speaker 1: investment platform. So really we do three things. Number one,
Speaker 1: we manage day in and day out. We are responsible
Speaker 1: for the investment performance of our funds, how we're managing
Speaker 1: the portfolios through rebalances, through corporate actions UM, and how
Speaker 1: we're managing et F market quality. That's number one. Number
Speaker 1: two is we are continuously improving our platform and the
Speaker 1: Aladdin technology that we use to manage our portfolios to
Speaker 1: make things that can be lower touch, lower touch, to
Speaker 1: give us capath city to spend more time on you know,
Speaker 1: new markets and new strategies. So that platform architecture piece
Speaker 1: how we create scale. That's kind of bucket too of
Speaker 1: what we do. And the third part is ecosystem leadership,
Speaker 1: and you talked about um. You know, we talked about
Speaker 1: how we engage with liquidity providers with stock exchanges. Earlier
Speaker 1: you talked about the COVID volatility, and I think it's
Speaker 1: really important and with a really interesting case study in
Speaker 1: the US that a lot of the volatility guard rails
Speaker 1: that had been put in place by the u S
Speaker 1: stock exchanges over the five years preceding March twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: market wide circuit breakers limit up, limit down, like the
Speaker 1: whole limit up limit down framework was really only ten
Speaker 1: years old, had been tested a few times and had
Speaker 1: its biggest test in March of We engage very deeply
Speaker 1: with stock exchanges. Remember in the u S. E t
Speaker 1: f are between thirty and forty percent of daily trading
Speaker 1: ball ume. So those volatility guard rails really matter from
Speaker 1: a market quality perspective. So focusing on the external environment
Speaker 1: for our ets, that's what we mean by ecosystem developer.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Aladdin. I just finished a couple of months
Speaker 1: ago the book Trillions by Robin Wigglesworth, and he describes
Speaker 1: the Aladdin system really as the technological backbone of black
Speaker 1: Rock from the very beginning and the secret source to
Speaker 1: that successful scaling. Tell us a little bit about for
Speaker 1: for a person who maybe not familiar with Aladdin, tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about that. Aladdin is how we
Speaker 1: we arm our investment managers, both Black Rocks investment managers
Speaker 1: and the investment managers who are who are Aladdin clients
Speaker 1: outside of Black Rock with best in class Rook management tools.
Speaker 1: And it is the DNA of the firm. And I
Speaker 1: can say that actually because as I've shared with you,
Speaker 1: I was at the firm pretty much. It's at the
Speaker 1: beginn thing black Rock was started in and I started there.
Speaker 1: And the reason black Rock was founded really was a
Speaker 1: group of UM fixed income market specifically mortgage backed security
Speaker 1: experts who said, we can take this technology that's been
Speaker 1: built on the cell side and deliver it directly to
Speaker 1: clients as a fiduciary to help them create better outcomes.
Speaker 1: So giving putting better risk management tools directly in the
Speaker 1: hands of clients was really black Rocks founding mission, and
Speaker 1: that's what Aladdin has grown in today. Black first it
Speaker 1: was the system that all of black Rocks portfolio managers used,
Speaker 1: and then it became a system that UM that other
Speaker 1: asset managers wanted to to access as well. And it
Speaker 1: is really the backbone of how we we look at
Speaker 1: risk and we run our portfolios. Really intriguing. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about E. S. G UH generally
Speaker 1: and then we'll we'll dig down a little more specifically. UM.
Speaker 1: Your boss, Larry Thing famously pens a letter each year
Speaker 1: to Corporate America's tell us a little bit about UM,
Speaker 1: why we do that and and what's the thinking behind that.
Speaker 1: Larry writes a letter to start a conversation UM, and
Speaker 1: it's really a conversation with our clients who are owners
Speaker 1: in all of these companies across Corporate America, and what
Speaker 1: we think are the top of mind themes for the
Speaker 1: year ahead. And it's a good integration of everything we've
Speaker 1: heard from clients and how we're thinking about the markets
Speaker 1: and how we're thinking about risk. And it becomes really
Speaker 1: a point of of bringing people together, us inside the
Speaker 1: firm and us with our clients to to take a
Speaker 1: look at the world and what we've learned over the
Speaker 1: past year and what we want to bring to to
Speaker 1: the year in front of us. Very interesting. Let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about corporate governance. How do you think
Speaker 1: about that in terms of affecting risk. The conversation about
Speaker 1: corporate governance is one we've spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: thinking about because as as you know, but it probably
Speaker 1: bears um, you know, speaking too explicitly. In a lot
Speaker 1: of cases, we vote the shares on behalf of the
Speaker 1: clients whose money we managed, and the question is, um,
Speaker 1: do those clients want to vote the shares themselves. And
Speaker 1: something we did in December and it's actually gone live
Speaker 1: this month or it went live at the beginning of
Speaker 1: two UM was work to give our institutional clients and
Speaker 1: some of our co mingled fund clients, but a good
Speaker 1: portion of our assets the option whether they want to
Speaker 1: vote their shares or not. So it's early to say
Speaker 1: are they going to take it us up on it
Speaker 1: or not, But that will be very instructive to us
Speaker 1: because our job is to help them create better financial futures,
Speaker 1: create better portfolio outcomes. In some cases they may want
Speaker 1: to participate in the corporate governance process themselves. In other
Speaker 1: cases they may want to intentionally delegate it to us.
Speaker 1: And we have a very big what we call investment
Speaker 1: stewardship function where we you know, we're very transparent. We
Speaker 1: publish the criteria in terms of what we think is
Speaker 1: important when we engage with companies. But some investors feel
Speaker 1: like well, that that engagement with companies is part of
Speaker 1: the value proposition that I hire my asset manager for.
Speaker 1: And some investors may feel Nope, I'd like them to
Speaker 1: manage my assets, but I want the votes, and we
Speaker 1: are really hopeful of increasingly being able to give those
Speaker 1: investors choice. Let's talk a little bit about E s
Speaker 1: G generally. You know, for a long time it's captured
Speaker 1: a lot of mind share. People have talked about it,
Speaker 1: especially with climate change in the focus on the environment,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem like E s G is captured
Speaker 1: as many inflows as it has, you know, a sort
Speaker 1: of mind share. What what are your thoughts on that.
Speaker 1: Is this going to be a persistent um gap or
Speaker 1: are we seeing more people, especially uh younger generations, more
Speaker 1: interested in E s G investing. I think flows are
Speaker 1: actually the tip of the E s G iceberg, And
Speaker 1: what you don't see below the surface is the integration
Speaker 1: and evaluation of E s G risk across portfolios, and
Speaker 1: that has captured a huge amount of time and attention
Speaker 1: from investors and and certainly from us, and it's actually
Speaker 1: really exciting from from an investor perspective. That reminds me
Speaker 1: again dating myself here, but when I started at black Rock,
Speaker 1: I uh, it was in in and I think in
Speaker 1: the five years since black Rock was founded, interest rates
Speaker 1: had dropped something like three d basis points right like
Speaker 1: late eighties, call it ten percent on the bond to
Speaker 1: seven percent. And one of the big topics of risk
Speaker 1: in the fixed income market with mortgage pre payments and
Speaker 1: so figuring out how to model that, articulate that make
Speaker 1: that transparent um better than anybody else. Again a big
Speaker 1: part of black Rocks value prop that it was bringing
Speaker 1: to investors. And we are doing the same thing today
Speaker 1: with climate risk and with E s G integration, and
Speaker 1: we have integrated E s G metrics across our portfolios
Speaker 1: and transition risk metrics, so we can assess what sort
Speaker 1: of risks are there UM. And that's the really the
Speaker 1: first step. It's measurement and transparency and then decisions around
Speaker 1: capital commitment and risk taking. So, so I want to
Speaker 1: restate a little bit of what you're saying. I've traditionally
Speaker 1: heard E s G described as I want to invest
Speaker 1: in a way that parallels my personal values. But you
Speaker 1: really describing E s G as a risk management tool
Speaker 1: as a way to screen out potentially problematic UM concerned
Speaker 1: sectors companies? Whatever? Am I? Am I overstating that? Or
Speaker 1: is that a fair translation? Both statements are actually true.
Speaker 1: It's a spectrum. So what we need to do is
Speaker 1: give our clients choice and and clarity and help them articulate,
Speaker 1: because often they're not even sure where they want to
Speaker 1: be in that spectrum. But I would say the um
Speaker 1: majority of the conversations that we have right now are
Speaker 1: much more understanding. Looking at my portfolio today, what are
Speaker 1: my E s G risks? Broadly? What are my climate risks?
Speaker 1: What are my risks to a net zero transition? And
Speaker 1: then the second question is how do I want to
Speaker 1: manage those? Really really really intriguing. Let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about no carbon and low carbon. That was kind
Speaker 1: of a topic a couple of years ago. I've always
Speaker 1: been a little perplexed by that because if you back
Speaker 1: out the big carbon producers in the SMP five, everybody
Speaker 1: else who's left our giant carbon consumers? Um, how should
Speaker 1: we think about something like carbon? Is that the most
Speaker 1: attractive approach to dealing with I'm concerned about climate change
Speaker 1: or or or global warming. It depends on what your
Speaker 1: goal is. And again I think a big part of
Speaker 1: what our work has been is to offer a spectrum
Speaker 1: um for investors who are trying to do different things,
Speaker 1: and even more importantly, and this has been meaningful to
Speaker 1: me as a personal investor, offer transparency around what it
Speaker 1: all means. So something we did in December is we
Speaker 1: published a metric for all of our public index and
Speaker 1: all of our ets called the I t R metric
Speaker 1: Implied Temperature Rise. And the beauty of the metric is
Speaker 1: it's really easy to understand. You can pull up anything
Speaker 1: on our website. You can see the I t R
Speaker 1: metric UM and you can see is it paris aligned
Speaker 1: or not, meaning is it you know, one point five
Speaker 1: degrees or lower or is it higher? And we show
Speaker 1: the spectrum of of bands and ranges and um and
Speaker 1: what you can see is you know, nine to your
Speaker 1: point of companies in in ms C I equally are
Speaker 1: not paras aligned. But step number one is getting transparency
Speaker 1: in terms of your book and then deciding do you
Speaker 1: want to take the first step and move to something
Speaker 1: that is a screened version of that index or go
Speaker 1: much further and take more targeted exposures. And what we
Speaker 1: hear from clients is, you know, they want different things.
Speaker 1: So putting out that spectrum and putting out those measurements really,
Speaker 1: you know, looking to be champions of transparency in this world,
Speaker 1: which as it emerges, can kind of become a tower
Speaker 1: of babble in terms of the different languages and different metrics.
Speaker 1: So arming investors, both institutional and personal investors with the
Speaker 1: tools to understand what does this mean for me um
Speaker 1: that's really been the priority. That's really interesting. The old
Speaker 1: Peter drug aligne is if you can't measure it, you
Speaker 1: can't manage it, and having metrics is sounds like a great,
Speaker 1: great start. So let's talk a little bit about what
Speaker 1: it's been like the past a couple of years with
Speaker 1: the pandemic and then last summer delta it felt like
Speaker 1: it was ending and then O Macron hit, I keep
Speaker 1: hearing all these farms are trying to get their staffers
Speaker 1: back into the office and on the trading desks. Tell
Speaker 1: us what what you guys are doing are are you
Speaker 1: gonna have everybody back in the office, You're gonna be
Speaker 1: remote you're gonna be hybrid. What what you're thinking about
Speaker 1: the world going forward. We are going to pilot a
Speaker 1: hybrid model, and we actually started piloting it in certain
Speaker 1: parts of the world, including New York City prior to
Speaker 1: oh macron. And what it was was, you are welcome
Speaker 1: to back to come back to the office for five
Speaker 1: days if you would like to take two remote days.
Speaker 1: Take two remote days and and we'll see how that
Speaker 1: plays out. And then omicron kron happened and we um
Speaker 1: uh kind of you know uh pulled back on the
Speaker 1: pilot and we'll put it back in hopefully in a
Speaker 1: few weeks. I'm I'm in the office right now. I
Speaker 1: like being in the office, and I think we've had
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of learnings. I mean, of course, our
Speaker 1: number one priority is making sure that people are safe
Speaker 1: and that people are healthy. Um. But healthy doesn't just
Speaker 1: mean you know, being safe from the from from the virus.
Speaker 1: It means being mentally healthy. And one of the things
Speaker 1: we've learned is is a lot of us really missed
Speaker 1: the connection with other people. So creating an environment where
Speaker 1: you can have those moments of human connection in the office.
Speaker 1: And of course there were moments of human connection that people,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly with kids of different ages, were we're
Speaker 1: having at home that they didn't have before. So trying
Speaker 1: to take the learnings from the pandemic and employ them
Speaker 1: in a way that make people healthier physically and healthier mentally.
Speaker 1: That's what the goal is. But I imagine we will
Speaker 1: be experimenting for a while, both based as conditions in
Speaker 1: the world change and uh and as we see how
Speaker 1: it works in our offices. Yeah, the the challenge has
Speaker 1: been how do you manage corporate culture over zoom or remotely,
Speaker 1: and black Rock has a very specific corporate culture. Lots
Speaker 1: of other farms are trying to maintain that. Finding that
Speaker 1: right balances seems to be a work in progress that
Speaker 1: we're all going to be dealing with over the next
Speaker 1: couple of quarters or years for all we know. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about the rising demand
Speaker 1: for e t F. It seems that lots of institutional
Speaker 1: traders are driving E t F demand. Can can you
Speaker 1: talk to that a little bit? I'm curious as to
Speaker 1: your perspectives. What might surprise you to hear is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest adopters of of ETS has been other
Speaker 1: asset managers, so institutional asset managers, you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: Black Rock zone asset managers outside of the index business
Speaker 1: who are integrating e t s into their own pursuit
Speaker 1: of alpha. Generally to you know, use e t s
Speaker 1: as a cash equitization tool to look at e t
Speaker 1: s alongside other sources of market data like um futures
Speaker 1: contracts or swap contracts to look at options on e
Speaker 1: t s. Often we've seen and this was actually a
Speaker 1: very interesting story going into the Brexit referendum. There weren't
Speaker 1: a lot of volatility plays out there, but there were
Speaker 1: some UK We had a UK equity market e t
Speaker 1: F and with options when options ecosystem around it and
Speaker 1: options open interest went up eighteen hundred percents into the
Speaker 1: referendum because it was a way to play volatility. And
Speaker 1: sometimes that would be an asset managers first experience ants
Speaker 1: of an e t F because they were looking for
Speaker 1: some sort of nonlinear payout, and then they would become
Speaker 1: more interested in integrating e t f s as another rapper,
Speaker 1: another tool in their overall toolkit in in making money.
Speaker 1: So that has been one of the largest sources of
Speaker 1: adoption to BTS. I have a very vivid recollection I
Speaker 1: want to say, fifteen or twenty years ago hearing certain
Speaker 1: institutions say, or institutional fund managers say, Look, we want
Speaker 1: to get exposure either to broad equity market or to
Speaker 1: this specific sector. But our due diligence and our research
Speaker 1: process takes so long that by the time we pick
Speaker 1: a particular company, a particular manager, a particular investment, the
Speaker 1: move is half over. I could just use the t
Speaker 1: F and get instant exposure to X. Do you still
Speaker 1: see that sort of behavior or am I going too
Speaker 1: far back in history? Nope, we absolutely see that behavior often.
Speaker 1: You know, people will use the e t F as
Speaker 1: a place holder um as they do that research and
Speaker 1: figure out where they want that exposure to be specifically,
Speaker 1: So sometimes they have longer term horizons, sometimes they have
Speaker 1: shorter term horizons. But again, this is actually a key
Speaker 1: reason why we see that increase in et F trading
Speaker 1: during high velocity markets is they are very convenient and
Speaker 1: transparent way to manage risk and pivot exposures during fast
Speaker 1: moving markets, so you can make quick changes to adapt
Speaker 1: your risk profile and work into what your longer term
Speaker 1: target state might be. And we do continue to see
Speaker 1: that really interesting. Let's talk about thematic ETFs. They seem
Speaker 1: to have exploded in popularity UH the past couple of years.
Speaker 1: How exciting is that for you guys to work on
Speaker 1: and what do you see coming down the pipe? What
Speaker 1: what's new and interesting? It's so exciting that we can
Speaker 1: increasingly index new types of strategies and access new type
Speaker 1: of markets and and that's really what we're about, bringing
Speaker 1: the markets to investors on their terms. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that really brought it home for
Speaker 1: me with some of our climate focused e t f
Speaker 1: s was being able to find something that my kids
Speaker 1: connected to. My daughter is a big environmentalist. She's a
Speaker 1: part of her school's environmental Action committee, and I think
Speaker 1: she never thought that e t f s were or
Speaker 1: investing was particularly relevant to her, and talking to her
Speaker 1: about UH, climate focused e t s, it was a conversation.
Speaker 1: So part of how we are bringing more people into
Speaker 1: the markets is helping them connect to the themes that
Speaker 1: are important to them and then helping them use those
Speaker 1: as a way to start to construct the portfolios that
Speaker 1: will deliver the outcomes they're looking for. So one of
Speaker 1: the big things that we've seen has been the rise
Speaker 1: of direct indexing. What are your thoughts on that? Is
Speaker 1: this a challenge to E T F and we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of big institutions by direct indexing shop, UH,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about your thoughts with that.
Speaker 1: Direct indexing is a is a very important part of
Speaker 1: the index and E T F ecosystem. About half of
Speaker 1: our book actually is direct indexing versus E T S. Increasingly, actually,
Speaker 1: there's also been attention to UH to smaller direct indexing
Speaker 1: opportunities more for individual investors where UM we UH we
Speaker 1: acquired a perio to offer that service as well. So
Speaker 1: I think direct indexing for individuals for institutions UM fits
Speaker 1: nicely into that overall ecosystem. When you come to those
Speaker 1: things we talked about around UH, what value the E
Speaker 1: T F rapper brings that secondary market liquidity, the transparency. UM,
Speaker 1: that's the role of the ETS play. But there's certainly
Speaker 1: a role for a very important role for direct indexing.
Speaker 1: To really intriguing your bio mentions that you're an ad
Speaker 1: a kid for employee networks, can you speak a little
Speaker 1: bit towards that. I know this is like a total
Speaker 1: subject change, but I don't want to not get to
Speaker 1: this question. Tell us a little bit about employee networks
Speaker 1: and what are they and what role do you play
Speaker 1: with those. I've been a big beneficiary over the course
Speaker 1: of my career of the networking and visibility that comes
Speaker 1: from being part of, you know, in my case, women's networks.
Speaker 1: It's an opportunity to meet and connect with people you
Speaker 1: wouldn't otherwise know, um and an opportunity to to think
Speaker 1: more intentionally and strategically about your career and maybe expand
Speaker 1: your universe of role models. So that's how I've participated
Speaker 1: in employee networks and a black rock. One of the
Speaker 1: things I love about being a senior advocate for for
Speaker 1: many of the networks is I really believe that you
Speaker 1: can't do your best work unless you can talk about
Speaker 1: your challenges, both inside and outside the office. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times these networks create safe spaces for people
Speaker 1: to talk about what they've struggled with, how they've overcomed it,
Speaker 1: and and and I find that really inspiring um and
Speaker 1: and it helps me recruit great people. So so it's
Speaker 1: something that's very important to me. So let's stay with
Speaker 1: that topic. Finances notorious for not having a lot of
Speaker 1: diversity or inclusion. I know Black Rock has a couple
Speaker 1: of initiatives in that space. UM, tell us about them.
Speaker 1: I've spent my career, uh, you know, being asked the
Speaker 1: question of of, well, what's it like being a woman
Speaker 1: in finance, and and we could talk about this for
Speaker 1: for a really long time. What's it like being a woman,
Speaker 1: what's it like being a mother, what's it like being
Speaker 1: a parent? Um? And and it's always hard when you
Speaker 1: feel different, no matter what, UM, no matter what the
Speaker 1: source of the difference is. I think it can be
Speaker 1: very hard to to feel safe and to feel secure
Speaker 1: um amid differences. And that is what we try to
Speaker 1: sell for whether it's with employee networks, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: creating mentorships and role models. Although I'll have to say
Speaker 1: a lot of my my most memorable mentors weren't necessarily women.
Speaker 1: But again, thinking about those challenges which are different for
Speaker 1: for different people, UM, talking about them and making people
Speaker 1: feel safe in raising what they are. UM, that's what
Speaker 1: we tried to focus on the most, and and probably
Speaker 1: I think that's what's changed the most over the course
Speaker 1: of my career. I think early in my career, I
Speaker 1: felt the imperative was too you know, not not address
Speaker 1: the fact that there were differences and just get out
Speaker 1: there and and try to act like everybody else. And
Speaker 1: and that didn't necessarily work for me, but you know,
Speaker 1: it was sometimes hard to talk about that, and so
Speaker 1: talking about it, um uh like and having transparency to
Speaker 1: those things is you know, has really been the first
Speaker 1: step and and one that we have to take again
Speaker 1: and again. I think it's, uh, it's not an old conversation,
Speaker 1: it's not a dated conversation. I am incredibly proud Berry
Speaker 1: that the leadership team of the E T F and
Speaker 1: Index platform is majority female. UM and we talk all
Speaker 1: the time about how to increase our diversity, diversity of thought,
Speaker 1: recial diversity, geographic diversity, because we think if we bring
Speaker 1: our differences to the table, we'll perform better. So let
Speaker 1: me throw you a curve ball. You're sort of bicoastal
Speaker 1: New York and Boca. How do you split your time?
Speaker 1: And given what we've learned about working from home, can
Speaker 1: you operate from anywhere you have an Internet connection? I
Speaker 1: I live in New York, Berry, I live in New York.
Speaker 1: I'm in the New York City office right now. I
Speaker 1: have a home in Florida, and I'll tell you a
Speaker 1: funny story. My my husband loves Florida, so we've always
Speaker 1: we've had a home in Florida for a while. He Um,
Speaker 1: he's a he's a an investment manager, a triathlete, he
Speaker 1: cycles a lot, he plays a lot of golf. He
Speaker 1: uh you know, does some work from down there. But
Speaker 1: I was always in Florida for vacations and weekends until
Speaker 1: the pandemic when during that spring lockdown, I spent about
Speaker 1: six weeks there and and liked it more than than
Speaker 1: than I had uh So, but now Florida is uh
Speaker 1: is really weekends and vacations for me. But last night,
Speaker 1: you like the story, my daughter texted my husband and said, Hey, Dad,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering are you coming home tonight or are you
Speaker 1: going to be in New York City? And by the way,
Speaker 1: my husband and I were at a restaurant in New
Speaker 1: York City. So the kids like to joke that my
Speaker 1: husband lives in Florida, but um, but actually we are.
Speaker 1: I am mostly here and between May and November, he
Speaker 1: is mostly in New York City as well. Really really interesting, um,
Speaker 1: So I know I only have you for so much time.
Speaker 1: Let me jump to my favorite questions that we ask
Speaker 1: all of our guests, starting with tell us what your
Speaker 1: stream in these days? What have been keeping you entertained
Speaker 1: when everybody has been stuck at home? I have three
Speaker 1: categories of of things I stream, and I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: heard this before, Barry. The things I watched with my husband,
Speaker 1: the things I get my kids to sit down and
Speaker 1: watch with me, and UH, and the stuff I watched
Speaker 1: for myself. So so in each category, my husband and
Speaker 1: I we loved ted Lasso, um that was one of
Speaker 1: our favorite things of the pandemic. And we also loved Yellowstone. Um. My,
Speaker 1: my kids will not sit down to watch the same
Speaker 1: shows together no matter how much I try. So with
Speaker 1: my son, we're watching Boba Fette and The Mandalorian with
Speaker 1: my daughter. It's been Emily in Paris. They are fifteen
Speaker 1: and thirteen. And you know, I'll tell you from myself.
Speaker 1: I finished the UH, the sequel to Sex in the City,
Speaker 1: and just like that, and I loved it. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, women around my age talking about dealing with
Speaker 1: their teenage kids and finding meaning in their lives. And
Speaker 1: I know the reviews were any mixed, but I really
Speaker 1: loved it. We talked briefly, but you didn't give us
Speaker 1: any names about some of the mentors who helped shape
Speaker 1: your career. Tell us about those folks. I have had
Speaker 1: great mentors and sponsors, and I think it's important to
Speaker 1: talk about both. I don't think until more recently in
Speaker 1: my career I understood what a sponsor was. A sponsor
Speaker 1: being somebody who will actually work intentionally to to move
Speaker 1: your career forward. But the uh Um Goldman facts. I
Speaker 1: had the privilege of working with John Rodgers who asked
Speaker 1: me to testify to Congress in front of the House
Speaker 1: Banking Committee on to represent Goldman, which was the scariest
Speaker 1: thing I had ever done. And what John told me,
Speaker 1: which I will never forget, it's it's the scariest things
Speaker 1: that once you do, you are the proudest of of
Speaker 1: having done. Um. Marty Chavez, who I also worked for
Speaker 1: a Goldman, was a tremendous mentor, and I think importantly,
Speaker 1: as I said, I've had I've had some great female
Speaker 1: role models, but I've had some awesome male mentors. UM.
Speaker 1: I think my high school calculus teacher, Judy Konan, probably
Speaker 1: changed the course of my career. So those three are
Speaker 1: my biggest mentors at Black Rock. My uh my boss
Speaker 1: Selim rom G are ahead of hr Minish Meta, who
Speaker 1: was the you know, had this job before me. They've
Speaker 1: been great sponsors, and I think being intentional about providing
Speaker 1: sponsorship as well as mentorship is something we think about
Speaker 1: a lot. Really interesting. I know you read a lot.
Speaker 1: Tell us some of your favorite books, and what are
Speaker 1: you reading right now? I am. I'm sure uh you
Speaker 1: are as well. I'm a voracious reader and I'm usually
Speaker 1: reading multiple books at the time, So the two I
Speaker 1: am reading right now, I kind of usually have something fiction,
Speaker 1: something nonfiction. The nonfiction book I'm reading is Digital Body Language,
Speaker 1: which in the you know, uh situation that we're in
Speaker 1: right now, it's fascinating how how how we create a
Speaker 1: digital body language, how people respond to it, and what
Speaker 1: you need to think about it. That's my nonfiction book
Speaker 1: right now, and my fiction book I'm I'm a few
Speaker 1: chapters in and I'm loving it. It's called um The
Speaker 1: Louding Voice, and it's about a young woman, a young
Speaker 1: teenager in a rural Nigerian village who gets married very
Speaker 1: young um and and is thirsting for an education because
Speaker 1: she wants to find her louding voice. And that's probably
Speaker 1: a theme and everything I read about women people in general,
Speaker 1: but often women finding their voices and using them. And
Speaker 1: one of the books I read recently that that had
Speaker 1: a big impact on the colleague of mine actually gave
Speaker 1: it to me when I was promoted to ce I. Oh.
Speaker 1: It was um uh intronewees memoir My Life in Full
Speaker 1: and I absolutely loved that book. She started out by saying,
Speaker 1: I intended to write a book about my career as
Speaker 1: CEO of PepsiCo and not write about my life as
Speaker 1: a mother and a wife. I didn't want to write
Speaker 1: that book. And what I ended up writing is exactly
Speaker 1: that book, because when you're a mom or a parent
Speaker 1: and a wife, and and how you show up with
Speaker 1: that to the office, you know, as a CEO. Weaving
Speaker 1: all of that together, she did brilliantly and it was
Speaker 1: really moving, really interesting. I have a book recommendation for
Speaker 1: your daughter. There's a fascinating book called Windfall, The Booming
Speaker 1: Business of Global Warming by Mackenzie Funk that describe since
Speaker 1: your daughter is interested in E. S. G. And it
Speaker 1: describes how the entire world of finance slowly started recognizing
Speaker 1: investment opportunities both at you know, the individual company level,
Speaker 1: the s G level, but also at the venture capital
Speaker 1: and startup level. And how Wall Street has arms into
Speaker 1: all these industries that are working on either climate change
Speaker 1: or you know, electric cars, and and and that book
Speaker 1: is already about five years old, so when they talk
Speaker 1: about firms like Tesla, they're still fairly nascent. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: seven years old. But if she's interested in that, it's
Speaker 1: a really well written book, and it's really fascinating, she
Speaker 1: may really, uh, really enjoy it. Let's go on to
Speaker 1: our next question, speaking of um, younger people, what sort
Speaker 1: of advice would you give to a recent college grad
Speaker 1: who was interested in a career in either finance or
Speaker 1: investment management. Ask all of your questions, find people, ask
Speaker 1: your questions. There are no dumb questions, and uh and
Speaker 1: if it sounds interesting to you, it's worth having a
Speaker 1: conversation about it. I wish I had done that more.
Speaker 1: In a lot of ways, I feel like I I
Speaker 1: got lucky. I I told you I was the product
Speaker 1: of actually a diversity recruiting effort that led me to
Speaker 1: the to the trading floric Goldman. But if it sounds interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: it's worth doing the exploration and networking and finding friends
Speaker 1: and just saying hey, can I spend ten minutes and
Speaker 1: ask you about your job? Doing that a lot, I
Speaker 1: think is an awesome idea, really interesting. In our final question,
Speaker 1: what do you know about the world of investing today?
Speaker 1: You wish you knew years ago when you were first
Speaker 1: getting started. If you asked me thirty years ago what
Speaker 1: I thought about the world of investing, I probably would
Speaker 1: have said, Gordon Gecko. I mean I was really thinking
Speaker 1: Wall Street and even you know, when I was in college,
Speaker 1: that was the that was the vision that I had.
Speaker 1: That's what you had to look like to be to
Speaker 1: be an investor. Uh. Now what I know is excellence
Speaker 1: looks like uh, lots of different things in the world
Speaker 1: of investing. And you know, if you're a woman, if
Speaker 1: you're a person of color, it's uh, you can be excellent.
Speaker 1: And in fact, if you're a theater major, you can
Speaker 1: find a path. I think there is a superpower in
Speaker 1: being different. Um, and my mother always suggested that to
Speaker 1: me thirty years ago. So so maybe I should say
Speaker 1: that's what I wish i'd believed thirty years ago when
Speaker 1: I was told, um, now I know it's true. Really interesting, Samara,
Speaker 1: thank you for being so generous with your time. We
Speaker 1: have been speaking with Samaricane. She is the chief investment
Speaker 1: officer for E T F s and Index Investments at
Speaker 1: black Rock. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and
Speaker 1: check out any of the previous several hundred we've done
Speaker 1: over the past eight years. You can find that at iTunes, Spotify, Google, Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: wherever you feed your podcast fix. Check out my daily
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Speaker 1: rid Halts. I would be remiss if I did not
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