Mary Ann Bartels: Bullish on Stocks, Bonds, Bitcoin in 2024

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Hello and welcome to Barron's The Way Forward. I'm Greg Bartellis, and my guest today is Marianne Bartels, Chief Investment Strategist of Sanctuary Wealth. Today she will share her investment outlook for 2024. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here today.

Well, I'm at least as excited as you are because this is just a subject that's really, really going to resonate with the audience and you are an ideal person to be sharing their outlook. So tell us if you want a little about your background, we can jump in as soon as you want.

So I can't believe I'm gonna say this. I've been in the industry for 40 years. I've reinvented myself many, many times, but most of my career was at Merrill Lynch and Bank of America. I was in research, and what I'm known for is I ran the technical department where I was a ranked analyst, but then I went over to Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and I worked in the CIO office for a number of years. I retired in 2020, but came back, and I'm now working for Sanctuary Wealth as their Chief Investment Strategist.

Let's talk about the markets. What's your crystal ball showing?

So my crystal ball is calling 2024 the bucking bill for stocks and bonds. So we think stocks stay in a bull market next year and that bonds join the party, but investors are gonna be bucking those trends. Not everyone's gonna really believe that the bull is really here.

Okay, so let's, there's a lot to unpack. Let's first begin with a little discussion of where we are. And just for you listening, this is today's November 30th. There's gonna be a little delay, but all the prices, targets, et cetera, are as of that date. So as I speak, the NASDAQ is up about 37% year to date. S&P 500's up about 19%. The Dow's up 7%, 8%, even though I think it hit a high on the year today. Next year, do you have any thoughts about, you know, which parts of the market may do well and also perhaps in terms of magnitude or to the extent you can or want to get granular?

Well, I like to get granular because that's the only way you can really help investors. So our target range for the S&P 500 sometime next year, not necessarily by year end, is 5,200 to 5,400. We think that mega-cap growth stocks continue to lead. In other words, technology is still the leadership. We think semiconductors continue to lead. AI is real. It's here. Even when you look at the Magnificent Seven in terms of earnings, they've produced most of the earnings this year. And I know the 493 stocks may look cheap, but they just haven't produced the earnings yet. There's also philosophy that growth stocks outperform when you have scarcity of earnings. And we're in an environment right now where earnings are scarce. And what that means is, is that investors want to own the company with earnings, but there's just a smaller limited selection. So those P/E multiples get bid up. And I still think we're going to stay growth. I don't think we'll shift to value. With that said, you have value pockets like financials, particularly the banks and the regional banks. You have small caps. I think they can rally and have substantial rallies. I just don't think they're the leadership of the market. I think technology does stay leaders.

I wanted to, on that point, mention that I just read yesterday in a newsletter that covers Vanguard, I'm forgetting the exact name, but they mentioned that Vanguard's growth index fund was up 41% year to date, 41%, whereas its value index was up a mere 3%, right? Which is kind of remarkable. But there is, right now, there's almost a little bit of a, I'll say backlash, but it's like, oh, the Magnificent Seven is expensive and all, but you know, It may well be, but historically, it's often a handful of stocks or relatively few that will carry gains. And it's not a rare thing to have concentrated leadership. Now, you could slice it and dice it and say it's an overconcentration, but you also have to look at the financial firepower of the company. They're not all created equally.

Yeah, these are real companies. This is not the internet in 2000 where you have companies with terrible balance sheets and valuations in the stratosphere. These are real companies, real balance sheets, and many of them have cash on the balance sheet. And I understand concentration risk. I think we always go back and think of the Nifty 50, and eventually they did peak in, you know, the '73-'74. But it's a condition. It's not a timing tool. And I found P/E ratios, yes, they're important and they're important to look at, but they're not a timing tool. And markets can be expensive, but markets can also get more expensive. Who's to say that markets can't get more expensive when you're in a secular bull market? Meaning the markets are trending higher over time, P multiples actually expand. And when I do, 'cause I did spend some time doing quantitative work in one of my roles, and we use something called the Z-score. And when we look at it over a 10-year rolling period, and we look at the P multiple of the S&P 500, and when you do that, the S&P is actually cheap, not expensive.

You mentioned financials, banks, and small caps could do well next year. What would be the catalyst for small caps? I'm curious because they've underperformed large caps for quite a long time. And I know you still overall still think large-cap growth is the place to be. I've been recently reading about how the valuation disconnect or difference between small caps and large is quite extreme. Does there need to be a catalyst or is it more just a market perhaps over time just saying, oh gee, this is a little bit out of whack. Like, let's start bidding these up and closing it. Or what? I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

Well, you have to have a catalyst for markets to go up. What happens if interest rates have peaked? What happens if we don't go into a recession and we don't think we're going to be in a recession for 2024? What happens if manufacturing growth comes back?

Right. And these are not being factored in.

I don't think they're being factored in. I think people are still afraid of of a recession. Some people are still calling for a recession. I do think the Fed wants to keep interest rates as high as long as possible. When they say higher for longer, I believe them. But inflation— if inflation continues to come down, there's going to be pressure on them to lower interest rates. Or let's put it this way, the market will lower rates for them. And the S&P 500 has been very correlated to the 10-year Treasury yield. And if the 10-year Treasury— it's actually dropped dramatically from 5%. Today we're standing about 4.3%. We're very oversold in rates. We can certainly back up. But what happens if rates fall to 3.8% sometime next year? That could be a catalyst for equities to go higher. And I do think people are sensitive to valuation and they're going to want to own things that appear inexpensive. So I think small cap from their lows can rally 20%. I think banks, particularly the regionals, off their lows can go up 30%. I just don't believe that they're the long-term leadership of the marketplace.

Gotcha. Gotcha. I mean, yeah, so much right now is really keying off rates. That's kind of the tail wagging the dog, it seems. The 10-year is around 4.3. It was just brushing around near 5% in October. And this past month was the best month for bonds since apparently the 1980s. So I do think that if bonds should go lower, that can only help risk assets, especially, you know, certain growth tech stocks, small caps, things like that, much be more sensitive to it. Obviously bonds would rally, obviously REITs would do well. But that's a big question, right?

Like, I don't know. And if that happens, the breadth of the market is going to expand. So a lot of criticism has been that it has been a very narrow market. Well, what happens now if we get a broader participation that will show that the strength of the market is actually improving?

Right. And we are, for what it's worth, in a seasonal, seasonal strong period. And then you're going to get perhaps the January effect, maybe even kicking in sooner or what have you. So a couple of potential tailwinds.

And then you have the presidential election next year.

I was going to ask about that. How does that calculate into this, especially vis-à-vis the Fed and the real politic of maybe what it can or should or might or not, etc., will do?

Well, there's always politics, right?

Yeah.

And but when we look at cycle work and we look at the presidential election cycle and when you have an incumbent running, never before has the market ever been down. And Biden issued 3 major pieces of legislation: the Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Protection Act, and the CHIPS Act. And part of that stimulus will really start kicking in in 2024. And will continue through 2026. And I think that's another reason why markets can go up is that you still have all this stimulus that's hitting and we've never before in history had all this stimulus hitting when we weren't in a recession. I personally think it's possible in 2024 that we get what's called, or what I used to call, a lookback recession where it gets called that yes, pockets of the economy did have a recession and we're now out of it because I'm starting to see things like ISM manufacturing, the OECD leading indicator, all bottom out and start turning up. And today we had the Chicago ISM manufacturing number and it was above 50%. It was 55%. It was actually a blowout number. So I think there are pockets of strength that are in the economy. Now, that would be a risk. The Fed, if that continues, the Fed's not going to want to cut interest rates. So we can get a lot of volatility like we did this year. The market this year thought that the Fed would cut rates and they haven't.. And every time they didn't see it cut rates, you got a correction, but you didn't have a bear market. And there's one other thing that I think is very important to analyze, and that's how many corrections we've had over the last 5 years. Normally, historically, you have a bear market, meaning S&P down 20% or more, every 3 to 4 years. We've had 3 bear markets in 5 years. You had a bear market, meaning down 20%, and I'm doing intraday high, intraday low, not closes.

Got it.

Okay.

So in 2018, Then you had the COVID bear market, 34%, fastest bear market in history.

Yeah. And then you had a bear market in '22. And then we just had a 10% correction this year. That's an enormous amount of price adjustment that's happened to the markets that I don't think investors give enough credit to.

And one other thing now, let's talk about rates and real estate. So on the one hand, prices are holding up very well, partly because there's very limited supply. People are not selling. And the reason they're not selling is because so many have locked in rates at, you know, 3, 4%, a massive number. So that's obviously bad if you're looking to buy and could be problematic if you're looking to sell and buy elsewhere. But I think it was Wall Street Journal recently wrote a story basically saying that higher rates are having less of an aggregate impact on the economy than in decades past, partly because so many people have locked in these rates so that the higher rates are affecting fewer people in the aggregate than they had in previous years. So that the high rates certainly are negative, but it's having more of an acute impact on a smaller group and again, is beneficial in many ways for a great many as well. So I think that's like a headline skewing negative, but it's the underneath the surface. It's perhaps not as negative or damaging, if you will.

And the other thing is, is our economy used to be very heavily manufactured-based, which is very sensitive to interest rates. Now we're really run by the consumer, and the consumer was flush with cash, and the higher rates didn't affect them for the reasons that you have just pointed out. But if you look prior to COVID, we were still very short enough housing for the population. It was about 4 million homes that we were short. We didn't build during COVID so we're, we're at least 5 million-plus homes short. So I think housing stays in a bull market. Now, that's an aggregate for all of the United States. There could be pockets of weakness, but I'm actually— if I look at homebuilders as a proxy for the housing market, they actually look very attractive.

Yeah, well, a lot of money is going there now. A lot of people are like, well, I can't buy homes on the market. No one's selling. Going to go to the homebuilders.

Yeah. And so it's interesting because things that we're used to in terms of modeling the economy kind of feel like they've broken down because historically, especially when I entered the industry back in the '80s, if the Fed ever took rates from 0 to 5% and we went to 5.25% in less than a year, we would have been thrown in a massive recession with a lot of unemployment. And that did not happen this cycle. And I think part of that is because of all the monetary stimulus that we have had. 100%. Yeah. Right. Between generational low interest rates, basically zero, to the Fed building a balance sheet that at its peak was at $9 trillion. Right. And now you have fiscal stimulus that's being added again at a time when we're not in a recession. And I do believe over time this will be inflationary. But for the near term, it looks like inflation has peaked and that will allow rates to go down. But I think from a secular standpoint, meaning over the next 10, 10, 15, 20 years, inflation can track higher and interest rates can track higher.

Do you think the 2% target of the Fed is realistic? Will that be reached or will they just say maybe it'll be more 3% or what's your take on that?

So let's talk about what people are not talking about. What happens if you have a CPI print a negative number? So when I look at CPI year to year, and this is using headline, not core, and I look at patterns and repeated patterns, this looks very similar to the 1950s where inflation spiked up around 9%. Inflation came down over a period of time, over a couple of years, and actually went negative. But that 1950 was an important low. Where inflation actually tracked and didn't peak until basically 1980. And then if you use interest rates and use historical interest rates, you had zero interest rates in the 1930s on cash. You had zero interest rates between '20 and '21. We had new lows in the 10-year, which we did not have in, in the 1930s. And from the 1930s to the 1980s, there was a secular uptrend in interest rates. So I think we've shifted. I don't think higher rates, if they happen over a shorter period of time, not very fast, an economy and the consumer can adjust. But I do think somewhere down in history we'll see 10% interest rates again. But that may be 10 years from now, could be 15 years from now. But I think this is important for fixed income investors because something that we're not used to is called laddering, where when you build out a fixed income portfolio, you have multiple different years. So you always have something maturing so you can reinvest in a higher interest rate. And I think that will be the key to success for a fixed income investor or a fixed income portfolio. Okay.

And I want to ask you now, so you mentioned 10% is possible sometime down the road without putting any timeline on it. But if we can agree that you're suggesting that rates directionally will be higher for longer, is that fair?

Right.

That's fair.

Okay.

So then how should an investor skew their holdings for the long term? Would you, you know, add a little to stocks or do you lean a little into commodities? I mean, crypto or whatever. I'm just curious, what's your take on that?

So if we are going into a higher inflationary environment over time with higher interest rates, equities are actually a hedge against inflation. If gold can break out and go to an all-time new high, which it has not done yet, it's possible that commodities will be part of a hedge in a portfolio. And generally, gold has historically been a hedge. But I'm also a very big fan of the crypto space. And I'm a big fan of Bitcoin. And I view Bitcoin as a store of value. It is a scarce, scarce currency, if you will, if you want to call it that, because it will only create 21 million. The other thing is we have the halving next year where the miners get less Bitcoin and we don't— we haven't had Bitcoin around for a long time. But if history repeats, Bitcoin generally goes up after the halving. It goes, it can go up before the halving and significantly after the halving.

I want to dig into Bitcoin for a little. It's around $37,000, $38,000. It's been in existence for 14 years, I think. Many, many, many, many of the smartest minds have called it all kinds of terrible things. And to date, which is all we have, they've been dead wrong. It doesn't mean they won't be vindicated eventually, but at this point they've been They've been wrong. And a lot of people who actually want to dance on its grave now will say, hey, it was over 65,000, it's fallen a lot. Well, that's true, but those people are only comparing it to an all-time high, not, you know, for most of its history, it's still far above. So the scarcity, you mentioned 21, I think actually the actual number will be more like 19 million or far less because a lot of these, some people have died, some passwords are forgotten, right? So the actual supply is lower. What, you know, but point taken. Address to skeptics who say this has no intrinsic value, it's literally nothing, etc. I just want— I'm curious. I want to hear what— marshal the best argument to address the skeptics. I'm curious.

Well, the first thing is when the SEC approved a future, I think it was validated because then why did they approve a future? And the future has to be based off of spot. So I think it's inevitable at some point we will have an ETF on Bitcoin.

Yeah, that's the market's assuming that now. That's part of the big rise this year.

Yeah, exactly. So from a regulatory standpoint, I think it's already been validated. Bitcoin's intention is to be like the, think of it as the cash of the internet, a transaction mechanism. And you're never going to say it's exactly the same. But how do you value art? Yep. Yes, you have something tangible, right? Bitcoin is not tangible. A lot of times it's what we value something at. One person will look at it and find a lot of value. Another person may look at that piece of artwork and think it's not worth anything.

Exactly. And that holds for antiques, rare baseball cards, paintings, you name it. There's no intrinsic value, no cash flow, no dividend. It's simply The market, it works supply and demand.

And that's what I think Bitcoin, it will be what the market views it as.

Mm-hmm. How, one thing though I noticed with it is that, and this is not unique to Bitcoin, it's really with any financial asset though, is like when the prices get high, the ebullience and excitement peaks, and then when it's low, everyone's like, it's dead. You know, if a spot ETF is approved, what do you think will be the impact? Because a lot of people, the bulls tend to believe that this is gonna open a new world for advisors. A lot of money will be You know, it's a game changer that the bulls will argue in terms of access even.

Yes, it is a game changer because the way you have to access it now is there's risks and this can get very detailed. If you want to own it, let's say through a Coinbase, that's called a hot wallet. And I was just even talking to somebody and they said, I'm afraid to own a hot wallet because there's been hacks and people have lost their money and there's no recovery. Well, you can own it through what's called a cold wallet. And basically that cold wallet is like a little USB port and it doesn't hold your crypto there. It holds the password. And if you lose that little thing with your password, you'll never access it.

We've heard the horror stories like the dumpster diving and all that.

Yeah. So there's a lot of fear because it's not easily accessible. Whereas if you create a, a vehicle like an exchange-traded fund, because there are trusts now that you can invest in, there are ways that you can get it. But I think the market is saying is if you can get an ETF and get it on an exchange and have regulation around it, there's going to be a much higher confidence level for the consumer to want to own it. And that demand will increase. And I do agree with that. I do believe that demand will increase if an ETF is launched. What's going to be interesting is there are now a number of companies that have listed for an ETF. So it's who gets the ETF listing and how many ETF listings, right?

I mean, I think a dozen or so firms have applied for the—

Correct. And I don't think these firms are applying if they don't think it's real.

Yeah, yeah.

These are not stupid people.

Yeah. See money to be made. Yeah. And then I guess a lot of the price obviously will be really important in that context.

Correct. So I think if that happens, you're going to see a rush to go through the door. And I think, could you hit an all-time new high? You could. Then we'll probably peak out because you're going to get all this euphoria. It'll get very overbought. It'll pull back. But I do think it will set a new investment trend in portfolios.

In terms of use cases, the promise of it for financial transactions has not really materialized much, even though I will add that it's interesting, there are certain companies that sell coins and precious metals that will accept payment in credit card, personal checks, and crypto. You actually can pay them. And what's interesting is they, I guess, will quickly sell it, convert it to dollars or what have you. Longer term, I mean, what do you think is the fundamental driver, because I know, like you mentioned, it's like, it's like internet money, it's borderless, you know, for people in America may help less than people who might live under oppression or may not, who may be bankless, right? So there are other scenarios too.

That's another bigger use case, which we haven't talked about for, for those individuals that live in countries where they don't trust the government. Mm-hmm. They have shifted to, to, or they want to shift to a more blockchain solution. This is really what's called a blockchain solution, which is very transparent, as you said, borderless, and has a record of who the buyer and seller is. And so you have 7 billion people in the world, even if you took 1 or 2 billion based on the limited supply, it becomes a medium of exchange. I think some people will look at it as a medium of savings. But look at it simply, you can buy Bitcoin on PayPal, on PayPal, which means over time you're going to be able to pay for things with Bitcoin on PayPal. So it will be a medium of exchange and some people will use it as a hedge. I think it's going to have a number of use cases depending on where you live and why you're putting it either on your PayPal or in your investment portfolio.

Right. And what's interesting too, as a global currency, I mean, again, with fiat, you have basically unlimited supply, right? And that is, I think, an interesting component to this is that fixed supply. And also, it at least certainly has been resilient because in China they banned Bitcoin mining, if I'm not mistaken. You are correct. And, you know, it's like, well, okay.

It did nothing.

It did nothing. So, you know, so the late, great Charlie Munger laments that America permits it. Well, that's a separate discussion. Wherever you fall on that, the point is, even if America were to ban it, it's resilient and it's global. So that would have an impact, I presume. But because it's peer-to-peer, right, it kind of has a life of its own to some extent.

Well, the bigger, broader macro umbrella that I'm using is that we're moving into a digital world. And it's not just about Bitcoin. Our whole world, our whole world of technology is changing. And AI is that next generation. The blockchain is the next generation. What a lot of investors are not even aware of is they're in the process of taking stocks and putting them on-chain, right? We will eventually transact on-chain. There's a lot going on behind the scenes that, behind the scenes that investors are not seeing. And AI is that next generation. There's a slide that I use many times in my presentation. And I go back to the 1500s. And if you look at what the technology was, it was a sundial. We were agriculturally based. And the sundial was your technology. Our economy did not change until the steam engine was created in the 1700s. And I believe with the invention of technology, particularly the internet, and I mark it as 2000, the internet was developed before 2000, but that's a nice easy number to start with. We went digital. And, you know, it's even hard for me because I didn't grow up with technology. My technology was a telephone and a TV. Getting a longer cord on my telephone was a huge improvement so my parents could not hear my conversation. I remember black and white televisions. Technology enhancement was color. The generation growing up now, like my kids, get frustrated with me because I can't move fast enough on my phone, right? And they can find things quickly and I can't. So there's a huge— in many ways, there's a generational gap because we are shifting into a different paradigm of technology and uses of technology. And just because you don't understand it or it's different, doesn't mean that it's not going to exist or grow. There are many investors that did not understand technology and chose not to invest because they didn't understand it. That did not stop technology shares from not going up.

Let me ask you about CBDCs, central bank digital currencies, their emergence. I think you have that in China, a few other countries, and reports suggest that the U.S. is ever more closely looking at that. Tell me after what that means for crypto, if anything. I'm just curious if you have any high-level thoughts.

Yes. So my high-level thought is there will be a day that there is no paper currency or coins. Everything will be digital.

That's—

and if you go to China, my understanding is, because I have not been there in a while, that everything is already digital. So I think we wind up with a coinless, paperless world. And so, yes, stablecoins or a central bank digital currency And we may have multiple around the world. Okay.

Now what's the impact of that? What does that mean?

I don't think we fully know yet. I think that's a great question. And one of the great unknowns, how does that get controlled? Can the Fed print money? Can the Fed not print money or, or the ECB? Um, I think we're learning as we're going.

Well, one, if I may ask, uh, mention on, I mean, CBDCs, what's really interesting is I think the the central banks would be far more empowered, so they could take rates to a negative place if they wanted to. I mean, I'm just using a—

Well, they already have. They did that in Europe already.

Okay, you're right, right, right. But it's more of a flexible lever, if you will, to adjust or manipulate what you want the consumer to do. It gives them arguably a little more latitude. And if it falls— and well, we could also talk about a potential lack of privacy. Right. Where if the spending is— if it's not with the money, you have privacy, right? With cash. I mean, now we all lost a ton of privacy with credit cards, right? Everything is kind of there.

But once everything is digitized, there is no privacy anymore. And you've learned that because you have seen with the events that have taken place with FTX and with Binance that they can track because everything is on-chain. So Although it's very transparent and there's pluses and negatives. But yes, you can follow the trail, as they say. And I, I'm not sure we truly know what the true impact is. But what we do know is everything is instantaneous. Right. And everything is global, instantaneous.

And those are attributes of crypto.

Yes.

Yes. So back to the more— sorry, I didn't mean to go so far astray, but going back more to the asset allocation, then let's use Bitcoin as a proxy for crypto. Depending on the age, I know it all— the numbers will vary. But what does this mean for your average investor portfolio? And I know timelines matter. Is it like you say, 1% allocation, 2%, 3%?

I mean, so we don't have an official allocation, but, you know, I'll tell you, the younger generation already has it. It's, it's already in there. However they manage their portfolio, they, they already own it. They're in it already. It's a matter of will the baby boomers put it in their portfolio? Right. Because that's, that's the major asset class that we have. And how much would a baby boomer be willing to put in? And this is where I talk about that generational gap. They can't mentally get their arms wrapped around it. So I think this is a younger generation investment. Than necessarily a baby boomer investment.

And you mentioned with Bitcoin scarcity, store of value, and that's kind of a similar argument for gold, if you will. Does this have any impact more on gold, for example? Like, do net investment dollars flow away or is it like they can coexist and both do well?

I mean, I think they can coexist. But it's interesting because even with all the concern and negative press that Bitcoin has had, it's performed better than gold. And we've had periods of inflation now where gold did okay, but Bitcoin did better. So I think we're learning as we're going. It's too new. We don't have enough history. But I do believe that they can coexist. Gold's not going anywhere.

Yeah. I mean, it's been around 5,000 years. Central banks across the world have tons of it.

And let me tell you, I love wearing it too. Yeah. And I think you just made a very good point. The true buyers of gold right now have been foreign central banks.

Yep. Yep. Absolutely. And it's funny because the common caricature is like, you know, there's the gold bug, you know, oh, the, you know, tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, you know, okay. There's some of that, but central banks across the world have tons of it for good reason. And they have a slightly different investment profile. So what, what else in the market?

So I want investors to stay optimistic and not pessimistic. And, to invest for the longer term and not for the shorter term. You know, study after study and academic study after academic study shows that the investor that stays invested wins. And you, you might want to revisit your asset allocation model with your financial advisor, maybe on a quarterly basis, just to maybe manage it, because if stocks go up, maybe you're too overweight equity. Being invested in fixed income, you know, they talk about the 60/40 portfolio is dead. I don't think it's dead. I think it's alive. I just think we have to learn how to manage that portfolio. And the good news is, oh, baby boomer, you're going to have another way of generating income in your portfolio that we haven't had for 15 or 16 years. But how we manage that will be very critical and important. I still think technology is the leader. I think emerging leadership is in energy stocks, but I just don't think they're going to lead. I do like industrial stocks, but they're not leaders. So at the end of the day, you want a balanced portfolio. You want to be diversified because there are different market cycles and you want to generate that balance. And if you're an investor that needs income, you now have multiple ways. Tina, Tina is no longer just Tina. Which was there was no alternative. We now have alternatives and we didn't even touch upon alternative investments. And that's probably one of the fastest growing pockets of the wealth management industry, the pension funds allocated to, to the private markets. And I think the biggest asset allocation move that's occurring now is bringing alternatives because they've been democratized. So they have the flexibility in terms of liquidity to actually go into an individual portfolio. And again, And sometimes you have to have a certain profile to be able to access those investments. You have to have a certain level of risk tolerance. But if you can meet that, I think you're going to see a lot of growth in, in the alternative space.

Well, thank you very much for joining me. It was an incredible deep dive, and I learned a lot. Thank you so much.

Oh, thank you. I really enjoyed our conversation today.

Wonderful. My guest was Maryann Bartels. For more advisor-specific podcasts, please check out barons.com/podcast. For The Way Forward, I'm Greg Bartalis.

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