Episode 21 | A Conversation with John Roberts About Unexpected Investment Opportunities

In Episode 21 of “Market News with Rodney Lake,” Rodney Lake, Director of the GW Investment Institute, sits down with GW Investment Institute Advisory Board Member and Partner & Senior Portfolio Manager at Corient, John Roberts, to explore the less glamorous corners of the market where young analysts can uncover hidden opportunities. Roberts shares valuable insights on identifying investment potential in out-of-the-way sectors that may offer attractive returns and long-term stability. Whether you’re an aspiring analyst or a seasoned investor, this episode provides fresh strategies for building your investment acumen. Tune in to learn more!

Transcript

Rodney Lake  
Thank you for joining Market News with Rodney Lake. This is a regular program of the GW Investment Institute where we talk about timely market topics. I'm Rodney Lake, the Director of the GW Investment Institute. Let's get started. Welcome back to Market News with Rodney Lake. I'm your host, Rodney Lake. Today we have a very special guest, one of our own GW Investment Institute Advisory Board Members, Mr. John Roberts.

Rodney Lake  
Mr. Roberts, thank you for being on Market News with Rodney Lake. Very much appreciated.

John Roberts  
Always good to be back on campus where I started this thing.

Rodney Lake  
Exactly. Well, I mentioned you're an alumnus, from the Business School in particular. And I want to start out with a thank you. So you actually spoke at commencement, earlier this year in May to our undergrad business school students in part of some great wisdom, which I know they all remember at this point already. But I want to just say thank you for doing that.

Rodney Lake  
That's a big responsibility to take on. And we're appreciative that you stepped into that role and did that. So thank you.

John Roberts  
For doing well. It was a huge honor. And, you know, as I've said many a time, you know, it's just, we all have to give back, and it's been great to spend some time here on campus and, and, you know, see the school, see how well it's doing. And, I always get kind of invigorated talking to the students and seeing the younger generation and, you know, coming out of business school and seeing their successes, and it's great.

Rodney Lake  
Great. Well, thank you. And then also, thanks for doing a guest lecture later today. So let's maybe get into your background a little bit. So right now I'm going to give where you are now. But can you start us out? Maybe if the origin story at GW and work our way to the present. So right now you're a senior portfolio manager at Corient.

Rodney Lake  
Corient manages about 185 billion as of 930 2024. So a very substantial big firm, asset manager, you're a portfolio manager there, but let's start with GW. So you're at GW, what are you studying? And let us know a little bit about your origin story.

John Roberts  
Sure. You know, my origin. You know, I was a Navy brat. So I grew up all over the world. Kind of colors my my view of things. Born in Japan, grew up mostly in Southeast Asia. Ended up in Northern California. Middle school, high school. But moved out to DC for college. You know, it's 3000 miles away.

John Roberts  
It was, you know, a nice road trip. But, you know, really, you know, I fell in love with the business school and finance and had some different internships while I was here, accounting for a government contractor, which was fascinating. And, when I graduated, I followed a lot of, you know, the path of a lot of people and went on to Wall Street working for an investment bank.

John Roberts  
Paint Webber at the time, which was subsequently acquired by UBS, did that for a number of years. Thought I wanted to become a lawyer. So I went to law school. Didn't end up becoming a lawyer. Passed the bar, went ahead and finished and, and went right back into the investment management business.

John Roberts  
Started with a firm called Denver, investments, at a Denver's, institutional Ria. And we grew it, merged with another firm out of Chicago, CEO Brian Hamel, in about 2018. And a few years later, we did the transaction where we sold the Korean. So, I've been lucky in that every firm I've ever worked at, has been acquired.

John Roberts  
Nine. So, one of the morals of the story is to have equity.

Rodney Lake  
Well, I think that's a good lesson.

John Roberts  
And so that's, but the last, you know, since I started at, predecessor firm Denver Investments in 96 at a law school, worn a lot of hats, and, done everything from, launching, one of the nation's first, ETFs that, focused on, workplace equality, creating the index around that.

John Roberts  
So know about ETF structure? I've been a co portfolio manager on open ended mutual funds. That the firm, ran so and and managed portfolios for foundations, families, individuals, endowments, and you know, more recently with the, merger we did with CEO Brian Hammill, got, access to and invested in private equity that we, we manage our own private equity, private label, private equity funds.

John Roberts  
So seeing a lot of different areas, you know, obviously managing money for large families and, and individual wealthy individuals, municipal bonds are a big portion of that, starting from my get go in California. So no municipal bond trading pretty well, trading desks. So I've seen a lot of the industry, and, you know, master of Nothing, but, but but I've seen a lot and, a lot of like to do that.

John Roberts  
Yeah. So and so that's kind of where I am now.

Rodney Lake  
Excellent. All right. So I want to put a pin in where we are now when we come back to that, and you might want to add some disclaimers as we go along here, before we start talking about some current market information. But before we get there, let's back up at the GW. Can you give us any stories or a story about a class or, you know, anything that really stood out from your time at GW?

John Roberts  
Lots of things. You know, again, the business school at the time was housed in the Hall of Government, ironically, but had some great professors, in the fall of 1987, taking a portfolio management class, Black Monday and. All right. So, you know, it was a good, good, you know, kind of teaching moment. And the teacher, we were discussing Burton molecules, a random walk down Wall Street, which was one of the assigned readings.

John Roberts  
And, you know, Gasser comes in, says markets are crashing. Well, what do you do? And he said nothing.

Rodney Lake  
That's good advice, right?

John Roberts  
You know, and if you're a long term investor by and so you, you file that one back there, and, and you know, between, you know, classes like that again, heavy, on the accounting side, which gave me some great internships, doing some accounting, and then, yeah, one of my favorite professors, Bill Hahndorf, who's still here?

John Roberts  
We just celebrated him, yeah.

Rodney Lake  
Anniversary.

John Roberts  
Here. Anniversary? Yeah. Recently, it was great to be part of that, it taught me how to use a taught everyone in the class how to use a Packard 12 c I think.

Rodney Lake  
A pretty cool device.

John Roberts  
Yeah, I think at the time he said with this calculator or you'll flunk the class. In so many words. And so what? When I got to Wall Street, I knew how to make numbers spin on that thing. Right. We learned that calculator inside now. And so it was a way for me to quickly calculate bond prices, discounts, premiums.

John Roberts  
What yield should be, on securities and really, you got to think, remember, this is Pre-computer days, right? No one had a.

Rodney Lake  
Cell, right?

John Roberts  
We didn't. Yeah. I mean, Excel was out there. We used it a little bit and.

Rodney Lake  
But not in the same way.

John Roberts  
It is not the same way today. It was very, very rudimentary.

Rodney Lake  
Probably. Yeah. Versus Lotus.

John Roberts  
Lotus, Lotus one, two, three was actually the better spreadsheet.

Rodney Lake  
At the time.

John Roberts  
But so I was able to come up with numbers very quickly. Yeah. That the people ahead of me, my bosses could actually use. Nice. And so that kind of, you know, as I was one of my, you know, tips that I always tell younger people, find a way to make your boss look good to their boss, right?

John Roberts  
Become an invaluable member of your team. And that's a great key to success. So, you know, thank you, Professor Hahndorf for that. And, I still use my same 12. See, that night in college tells you how well they used to make stuff.

Rodney Lake  
Yeah, that's pretty good. Maybe a different battery, but that's it. Well, I think that's a great story. That's great advice. Have some tangible skills. Make yourself stand out. Make sure that you can make your bosses and their bosses look good. That those are all fantastic lessons. Now, maybe you put a disclaimer in here before we get into some market data, but maybe give us some views on the current markets right now and your thoughts on that.

Rodney Lake  
Yeah.

John Roberts  
Well, first of all, you know, as they always say, past performance is no indicator of future returns, no guarantee. All the views here are, my own personal views. I am not representing CEO Brian Hamel asset management. Corient. My is, So, this is, you know, in no way or reflection of our firm's views.

John Roberts  
This is my personal view. Excellent.

Rodney Lake  
Well, they claim it. And with that out there. Yeah. You know, obviously the markets have been good year to date so far. So we're in early November. What are your thoughts on where we are right now with the markets broadly.

John Roberts  
Yeah. Best election year returns ever.

Rodney Lake  
Nice.

John Roberts  
Yeah I know that. Markets. Yeah. Best, best election year returns. Interesting history of the equity markets in this country. So, and anytime you see best returns that always, you know, you know, clearly if you look at any, you know, kind of evaluation metric, you know, PE ratios, you know, for E ratios, the S&P 500, stocks are expensive.

John Roberts  
I mean, you know, it's kind of hard to, you know, make a case that, that they're not I mean, obviously.com bubble you saw, you know, P's, you know, in the north, the, into the 20s, 20 times earnings. And right now, I think S&P 500 forward earnings, you know, 20, 2220, you know, in that area are still expensive, right.

John Roberts  
And so, you know, one thing I've learned in my 35 years of doing this is that, you know, the laws of gravity, you know, still exert themselves. Yeah. Especially, you know, the gravity may be higher interest rates. Yeah. Right. Because, you know, we've had 40 years of falling interest rates in this country. And I like to say that 40 years of falling interest rates, sued over a myriad of financial sins, right?

John Roberts  
Because you could just simply refinance your debt if you bought too big a house and your mortgage payments were too big, you just refi.

Rodney Lake  
Right?

John Roberts  
And, you know, same thing for corporate America. And, and that's changed. We're facing a world of higher interest rates no longer, you know, continuously declining interest rates. And it's benefited a lot of segments of the market. You know, propped up asset values, some may say artificially with. Right, you know, the Federal Reserve, ballooning its balance sheet, which, you know, begs the question, how do they undo it?

John Roberts  
Yeah, probably.

Rodney Lake  
Can't the so-called quantitative easing.

John Roberts  
Quantitative easing. Yeah. It's, you know, artificially lowering interest rates by buying longer dated securities. And we're not the only central bank.

Rodney Lake  
Who does this sort of.

John Roberts  
You know, the Japanese kind of pioneered it. And, the effectiveness of it remains in question.

Rodney Lake  
Right? It certainly seems to work in the short to medium term for the desired outcome.

John Roberts  
Absolutely.

Rodney Lake  
Long term impacts.

John Roberts  
And it you know, if you're an owner of assets, look, we've all benefited my career on Wall Street. You know started with a you know ten year treasury yielding above 10% and right, right. And it got down to essentially zero.

Rodney Lake  
Yeah. That's a good run.

John Roberts  
That's a great run if you own assets. But if you don't own assets, yeah, it's not so great. And we've seen that with like, you know, if you look at, you know, kind of annual average wage growth was fairly anemic for decades, until pandemic and you saw wage growth spike and, and when unemployment, you know, collapsed and we don't have enough workers.

John Roberts  
So, you know, there are questions about, all right, what's the feasibility of removing millions of workers when we don't have enough workers? And, what does that do? And so, you know, there might, you know, can the Federal Reserve, are they going to lower rates? And what do they do if is this another repeat of 80, 82, where you had the fed raise rates to combat inflation?

John Roberts  
When Volcker got appointed and really raised rates right.

Rodney Lake  
And very aggressive. Nothing like that. Simply.

John Roberts  
You know, you know, I remember, hearing a speech years ago, from a, somebody who worked at the, New York Fed and he talked about, you know, he went out to lunch, and he came back and they had one of those little felt boards of the plastic numbers that had the fed funds rate and the fed funds rate had gone up a point and a half over lunch.

Rodney Lake  
I mean, expensive lunch. Yeah.

John Roberts  
Yeah. I mean, but and, you know, that's, that's kind.

Rodney Lake  
Of how quickly things are.

John Roberts  
Changing. Aggressive monetary, you know, you know, policy. But the question is sort of is the Fed going to be guilty of that same thing where the Fed raised rates in the 80 induced recession? They started lowering rates. Yeah. Inflation came roaring back. Right. And they had to raise rates even faster and harder. And they induced a second recession that double dip 8082 recession.

John Roberts  
And if you look at the fed notes, they, they, they talk about that and they've mentioned it quite a bit. But you know, given, you know, you know what some of the policy pronouncements on both candidates have been, yes, many of them are very inflationary. And so it does beg the question, is the Fed kind of looking forward now?

John Roberts  
I think, you know, one of the things that, you know, we've seen and lots of people will talk about the Fed doing a great job and especially in 2008, Ben, you know, helicopter Ben Bernanke just yeah, you know, want to jump in money.

Rodney Lake  
Yeah.

John Roberts  
Drop money and and and at the time, it seemed like the way to put off a depression. But, you know, you have to reverse that and, and, you know, if we have higher inflation and the Fed turns around and has to start raising rates, that's, you know, no one wants that. And the fed doesn't want to, but it almost seems like they're setting themselves up for that.

Rodney Lake  
And without making a grand prediction, what is your outlook on inflation? Do you think it's under wraps? Do you think it's something that we just need to monitor? Or do you think it's in alarm territory or where are we?

John Roberts  
Look, predictions are especially hard, especially when they're about the future. And so with that caveat, I mean, it's, you know, it's hard to see how we do away with inflation, you know, I mean, inflation is coming from a lot of places. And it seems like, you know, inflation has come back down quite a bit. But you know, there are headwinds.

John Roberts  
And you know, as recently in Europe, it's been a few weeks in Europe on vacation and meeting with some friends in Switzerland and, and, you know, they ask about the election and again, you know, I my caveat is Wall Street doesn't care about DC.

Rodney Lake  
Right?

John Roberts  
You know, Wall Street cares about profits, right?

Rodney Lake  
They care about Wall Street.

John Roberts  
Yeah, they care about Wall Street. And I've been doing this long enough. I've seen great returns from Democratic administrations, great returns from Republican administration, lousy returns from Republican and Democratic administrations. So Wall Street cares about profits. And but you ask these friends, you know, people in Europe talking to him and and a lot of the comments were it doesn't matter who wins.

Rodney Lake  
Interesting.

John Roberts  
Which is, you know, yeah. Yeah. Often have to look from another prison, right. You know, back at yourself and, and and he said it doesn't matter because America under either candidate will withdraw from the world. Yeah. We're kind of, you know, undergoing one of these impulses where we become more protectionist. And if we start enacting more trade barriers, then that tends to be inflationary, right?

John Roberts  
Historically. So time will tell. But it's kind of hard to say. Well, inflation's.

Rodney Lake  
Through the system. Why not?

John Roberts  
We. Yeah. Yeah we'll see.

Rodney Lake  
Got it. So there's another topic that everyone's talking about right now. It's artificial intelligence. And I'm sure you have some views on that. Would you mind sharing some views around you know, what do you think about, you know, artificial intelligence and impact on the market, impact on jobs, you know, and broadly, you know, maybe something that we're not thinking about that's relevant.

John Roberts  
Yeah, I'm a bit of a Luddite. And while I grew up and had a computer, I had the first Macintosh when I went off to college, you know, you know, I think it's like a suitcase, but, you know, I had Excel. And so, you know, I went to middle school and high school in Silicon Valley.

John Roberts  
So our high school in, you know, early 80s had a computer lab, a nice, networked computer lab donated by one of the parents who was, like, the manufacturing chief at Apple. So we have, you know, all these Apple do computers, we all learn.

Rodney Lake  
That's fantastic. Yeah.

John Roberts  
So I, you know, kind of at the cusp of the computer generation and I consider myself or, you know, somebody who's 58, fairly, techno technologically savvy, but one of the things that that, you know, shocks me is the time at which decisions are made. It used to be, you know, when I started in this business, companies would release earnings, it would take the market a few days to digest it.

John Roberts  
Research reports got written, you know, investors Business Daily and Wall Street Journal the next day reported it. But you know, it would take time for the stocks to react. And today. You know it's usually an overreaction, right.

Rodney Lake  
One way or the second.

John Roberts  
It happens. And and a lot of that is algorithm trading. A lot of it's, you know, you know, shoot first, ask questions later. Right. And so I think there is something to be said about thinking about it. Right, right.

Rodney Lake  
Slow your thinking. Be more deliberate out there.

John Roberts  
Be deliberative. Think about it. Don't just act because your investment time horizon is not measured in milliseconds or days or minutes or presidential election cycles. Right? Right. It's measured if you're an asset manager for an institution, you know, you have liabilities out there. If it's a nonprofit that essentially your time frame is perpetuity, right?

John Roberts  
So it doesn't matter if you buy the stock today, tomorrow or next week. I mean, if you've done your homework, your time horizon is a lot longer. And so not not succumbing to knee jerk reactions, I think is a really important thing. And unfortunately, I think, as we become more reliant on AI and, you know, there are some fantastic applications of it, obviously.

John Roberts  
But like any new technology, I look back to the.com bubble and, you know, it was going to change everything. And, you know, there will be winners and losers. But you go back to, you know, some of those stocks that were the leaders in 1998 and 99 and a lot of them aren't even in business anymore.

John Roberts  
Mean gone bankrupt, or gotten acquired and, you know, merged out of existence. So there's always going to be winners and losers and trying to predict the winners and losers is devilishly impossible, right. And so, yes, I is, you know, large language learning models are only as good as what you put into them. And so if they're scraping the entire internet, what's that on?

Rodney Lake  
There is a lot of stuff.

John Roberts  
I'll just ask that question what's out there. Right. And so we always talk about models, garbage in, garbage out. Right. And we'll see. Yeah. Yeah, I think there are some great applications of it. I think there's also a lot of hype. Yeah. And with every new technology, new, you know, investment craze and, and you know, Wall Street is fantastically good at creating new vehicles to earn BS.

Rodney Lake  
Yeah.

John Roberts  
And sell to the general public. We'll see.

Rodney Lake  
Got it. Well, before we move on from the market segment here, could you maybe just wrap us up any outlook on the overall equity or fixed income markets. You know, let's take a long term time horizon. You know, what's the outlook for you for the next let's say 5-10, you know, and beyond years and as investors, you know, how should we think about you know, the world is should we be optimistic, should we be pessimistic?

Rodney Lake  
Should we just be doing our work and really trying to understand a certain element of the market, just curious, your thoughts there.

John Roberts  
In my 5-10 year outlook is retirement. So it's pretty rosy. Yeah. You know, I think there are always good companies that are undervalued. There are always bad companies that are overvalued. And so really, you know, doing the work. Yeah. You know, there is no substitute for hard work. There's no substitute for understanding what it is you're, you're owning.

John Roberts  
Yeah. And, you know, I would like to say, you know, we can, you know, we can't we can't do a good job predicting, you know, interest rates or, you know, when a business cycle changes or, you know, earnings quarter to quarter. But, you know, if you find good companies that are managed by, you know, competent management teams, that have a, a good moat around their, their product or their services, that whatever they're selling, you know, you want to, you know, put your it's your horse to that way.

John Roberts  
And, and, and you know, I think the last few decades have shown us, you know, that even the best of companies, if they're mismanaged, if you're an owner of the stock, you're in trouble. Right? So, you know, the time I don't have the specific data in front of me, but the time companies spend in the S&P 500 has been shrinking.

John Roberts  
Yeah, right. And so it's that, you know, the creative destruction that is so, so much a theme of, of, of capitalism, right. You know, Tocqueville decried that, you know, they, you know, in America, they let companies go out of business, you know, hundreds of years ago, you know, you know, it's still true, right?

John Roberts  
You know, there's no substitute for failure. Now, in this country, we kind of celebrate that we, you know, look, you tried, right? Right. In a lot of cultures, failure is, you know, unacceptable to fall on the sword. Right? But, you know, look, you get back up, you try again. And so you just don't want to be an investor in that company.

Rodney Lake  
You may have missed that. Do you want to?

John Roberts  
To miss that? And so, you know, long term. Yeah. I think you have to be an optimist to be in this business. Yeah. Because if you're a pessimist, you're either a dedicated hundred percent short seller or you're just going to pull your hair out. Yeah. Even though I don't have any hair, I haven't spent my career buying my hair.

John Roberts  
I've been mostly an optimist. And you kind of have to be an optimist. Look, if you look at it at, the reserve flow of funds, data us is performing well. Yeah. It's a place where people feel confident putting their money in our equity markets. Yeah. So I think there's, you know, they always say demographics is destiny.

John Roberts  
But, you know, I once heard Henry Kissinger speak and he said, you know, judge a country, you know, not by the headlines, but by our people leaving other countries to immigrate there. Right, right. Judge the strength of a country by that metric. And by that metric, the US is probably still the number one destination for people and capital.

Rodney Lake  
Right. So, well, the last question on the market here is around concentration. So in the public markets the market has gotten much more concentrated, likely than it's ever been, I guess depending on how you measure that. And when you look at the S&P 500 as an example, do you think that that's an issue? Do you think that that's an opportunity?

Rodney Lake  
Do you think that there's anything wrong with this? Is this just the natural order of business or what are your thoughts there?

John Roberts  
You know, as fiduciaries, you know, it's constantly on our mind. Yeah, right. The last time we saw a huge run up in concentration in the S&P 500, you know, if you look at the weight of the top ten stocks, it was that.com bubble right where I think you know you know late 90s you saw the weight of the top ten stocks in the S&P 500 go from, you know high to mid teens, high teens 20-98.

John Roberts  
By 2000 it was in the, you know, kind of high 20% range. And then you know those vaunted names that don't no longer exist. And I can see Sun Microsystems Lucent right now. You know, these are the companies you had to own. And, they don't exist, you know, and the whole you know, we saw we saw that correction.

John Roberts  
Well, now we sit here at the end of last quarter, with the top ten names in the S&P 500 accounting for over a third of the weight. Right. Right. You know, the other 490 stocks be damned. Right. And so it does beg some questions from a fiduciary standpoint about, you know, diversification because, you know, if you look at all the legal, you know, you know, kind of framework, it's the restatement of trust.

John Roberts  
If it's, you know, prudent investor rule, you know, uniform, prudent Investment Management of Institutional Funds Act, you know, if, all these different tools, codification and laws around how fiduciary should handle money, right? Talk, preach diversification hasn't worked. Yeah, right. And so and it's not working. And one might say, you know, well, you know, indexing just the big companies get bigger and, and, and, you know, I talk about, you know, 1987 reading Bert and Molecules, random Walk on Wall Street.  

John Roberts  
But remember he wrote that in 73? Yeah, he essentially predicted in 73 the index craze. Yeah. Right.  

Rodney Lake  
Right, right. Sort of flow of funds into that.  

John Roberts  
And, and and. Okay. It does beg the question of where is the price discovery because there is no price discovery in an index if you're indexing.  

Rodney Lake  
Right. Exactly.  

John Roberts  
If everyone's indexing, everyone gets the same, you know, there's no differentiation. So I think, you know, short sellers and, and fundamental, you know, research, you know, play a part in that, that, that price discovery. And there's less and less of that which it begs the question, okay, where is the price discovery happening?  

Rodney Lake  
And the follow up question is, does that make active management for those who are willing to tackle this and do the work, as you mentioned, more attractive?  

John Roberts  
I think they're both different ways to, you know, it's multiple ways to slice the pie. Yeah. Right. And and I think, you know, active management is valuable. Passive investing is deep. And it's an easy way for people to get broad market exposure. I've created equity indices. So, you know, I, I've lived in both worlds. But I think, you know, too much of a good thing is still too much.  

John Roberts  
Yeah. And so, you know, time will tell. But, you know, I think you, you need to, to look at both. But the concentration of the S&P 500, clearly, and, and of the Nasdaq and of the large, indices, it, you know, it does beg some questions about, okay, are we diversified? Right. And the answer is maybe not right.  

Rodney Lake 
Not as much as we thought. It's not as.  

John Roberts  
Much as we thought. Yeah. That's an important question to consider and think about. Now we're going to move on to the next segment here. Just want to touch on you're giving a guest lecture today. Thank you for doing that. You've been doing that regularly for years. Now you're on the GW Investment Institute advisory Board. Thank you for serving on that, body.  

Rodney Lake  
We're very appreciative. Could you maybe talk about some of the life lessons learned that you give to students when you're giving a guest lecture? So, you know, when they're thinking about, okay, I'm here in class, I'm listening to a seasoned person from the, you know, Wall Street business world. You know, what kind of advice are you giving our students?  

John Roberts  
Sure. Yeah, I, I, I mentioned my first tip for robbers. Robbers? Five tips. You know, make your bosses look better.  

Rodney Lake  
Yeah.  

John Roberts  
You know, conventional wisdom of the crowd is often wrong. Yeah. And so, you know, it's okay to think outside the box. You know, when to buy cheap. Investment officers once said, well, you know, we want to find young analysts who are very curious. Yeah, right. You know, but, you know, I want to find curious people, because I think curiosity is an important trait.  

John Roberts  
You want to learn. You want a sponge? Sponge for information? Yes. But it's okay to challenge that. That, you know, popular narrative. I think years ago, Merrill Lynch, back in the 70s, 80s, they had, you know, and commercials with all these bulls running. And it was like, you know, don't don't run with a crowd, right. Do something a little different.  

John Roberts  
And, it might have been, I can't remember. But, they're just the bulls. And and so, you know, it's okay to challenge that, that conventional wisdom. Now, with the caveat, I think it was, John Maynard Keynes once said, markets can remain irrational. Far longer than you can remain solvent. Right. So know who's on the other side.  

Rodney Lake  
Yeah. That transaction.  

John Roberts  
Yeah. That transaction. So that's another one, you know, and I'm big on mentoring, mentor at our firm. I've mentored, you know, I've had some great mentors. So find a mentor early in your career, right? You know, really, there's no substitute for human to human interaction, especially since we're all on screens and it's just, you know, find a mentor, someone you can have coffee with.  

John Roberts  
And. And I preach this to my kids who were starting their careers. I preach it to kids in the, to graduating seniors and, and, but find a mentor and, and conversely, if you're successful, then share that success. Pay it forward. Right. You know, give back, and become a mentor. Right. You know, what is the definition of mentorship?  

John Roberts  
It's it's imparting wisdom. Yeah. Right. You know it. You're imparting hard earned wisdom. Yeah. And some of the wisdom is very hard earned and. Right.  

Rodney Lake  
If high tuition for it.  

John Roberts 
Yeah. Yeah. In the market. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. You've paid a high price for it and, and but you know, and a lot of it is learned by failure. Yeah. And so let me. Yeah. Don't make that same mistake I made. Right. You know, let me teach you something and learn something from my failures so you don't have to.  

John Roberts  
You'll have your own failures, right? Right. That's part of part of learning. And then, you know, I mean, lastly, you know, everything will work out, so don't sweat the small stuff. It won't work out how you thought it would.  

Rodney Lake  
Yeah.  

John Roberts  
You know, if I look at my career trajectory, you know, is it all worked out? Not the way I thought it would. I when I was here back in the late 80s.  

Rodney Lake  
Right, right. You know, not predictable at that point.  

John Roberts  
Yeah, yeah. Not predictable. But it'll all work out. So try and enjoy the small things in life. You look especially in, in, in our industry, people take themselves way too seriously. Yeah, right. So lighten up a little bit. Have a little fun. You know, work hard. Yes. We we, you know, I put in the 12, 15 hour days just like everyone else starting off.  

John Roberts  
And that's what you got to do and understand that, you know, you're going to you're going to benefit from all that work. And, yes, it's like slave labor. I mean, you know, you're working.  

Rodney Lake  
A lot of.  

John Roberts  
Hours, you're working a lot of hours. You're taking the work home. You are logging a lot of hours. And when I started, there was no, you know, these laptops that didn't exist. And so you were in the office from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. and, you know, I mean, it was you there all the time. And, you know that.  

John Roberts  

But my time to relax, de-stress, and have some outside passions. Yeah. Get some exercise. And, you know, just it'll all work out, you know?  

Rodney Lake  

Yeah. Well, I think that's great parting wisdom, but is there anything else, that you would like to say? Or maybe a question that I should have asked you that I didn't ask, to leave us with today?  

John Roberts  

You know, I don't think so. I mean, you know, look for it, look for some. You know, I'm told this to every class, you know, it's a very competitive industry, right? We live in and work in. But, you know, there are always little niche opportunities out there. And, you know, we manage a lot of municipal bonds for our clients, which tend to be either, you know, very high net worth institutions, or their, or high net worth individuals, their trust.  

John Roberts  

And, and so municipal bonds are a double tax exempt income, right. With a very, very low, not zero, but pretty close to a default rate. Yeah. Right.  

John Roberts  

You know, it's a corner of Wall Street, which is just kind of sleepy and no one but necessary. Yeah, right. That's how that's how in this country.  

Rodney Lake  

Projects get done, right?  

John Roberts  

It's how we finance a lot of, you know, schools and airports and power.  

Rodney Lake  
Water infrastructure. Yeah.  

John Roberts  
Sewer, libraries, jails, roads. And there will always be a demand for, for that, that product. Right. And so, you know, instead of putting your career on the product, you're.  

Rodney Lake
Yeah

John Roberts  
Right. And, you know, look at something that's.  

Rodney Lake  
A little bit out of the way.  

John Roberts  
Little out of the way. Sometimes those are opportunities for, for young analysts and, and, and, and ones that maybe aren't as glamorous.  

Rodney Lake  
Right. Could be even more attractive.  

John Roberts  
But could make for a long career.  

Rodney Lake  
Excellent. Well, I think that's great advice. To end on, I want to say thank you, Mister Roberts, for joining us today. My pleasure and pleasure. And we look to have you back. Absolutely. On another episode. So thank you very much. That's a wrap for market news at Rodney Lake. We'll see you back next time. Thank you.  

Rodney Lake  
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