Citi Wealth Chief Investment Officer Kate Moore on Macro Investing

Barry speaks with Kate Moore, chief investment officer at Citi Wealth. They discuss Kate's extensive and diverse career which saw her as Head of Thematic Strategy and a portfolio manager for the Global Allocation Fund at BlackRock, and includes stops at JP Morgan, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Moore Capital and Morgan Stanley in senior investment positions. She also holds a degree in political and social thought from the University of Virginia. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  At KKR, we've spent 50 years understanding what matters to our clients and companies. From pioneering private equity to investing across credit, real assets, insurance and sports, KKR has built the experience to navigate complexity, the judgment to recognize opportunity, and the conviction to create lasting value. Because when people and institutions are counting on us, understanding what matters isn't just important, it's everything. KKR, understanding what matters. Visit kkr.com/whatmatters.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs, and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw, innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting

• 1:13Speaker 01

  and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company, and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates, quote, "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at ChatGPT.com.

• 1:54Barry Ritholtz?

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• 2:36Barry Ritholtz?

  This week on the podcast, yet another extra special guest. Wow, what a fascinating career Kate Moore is having. Her background is everything from Morgan Stanley to Moore Capital, to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, to JP Morgan, to BlackRock. She is now Chief Investment Officer of Citibank's Citi Wealth, which runs, you know, something like a trillion dollars. The breadth and depth of her experience makes her uniquely situated to be a Chief Investment Officer. She's had, you know, just about every job on the buy side and sell side, including portfolio manager, consultant to LBOs and M&As. She's just done so much

• 3:21Barry Ritholtz?

  stuff. It's so interesting that she really brings just this unique set of experiences to Citi. I thought this conversation was really interesting, and I think you will also. With no further ado, my conversation with Citi's Kate Moore.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  Thanks so much, Barry. I'm psyched to be having this conversation with you today.

• 3:41Barry Ritholtz?

  Long overdue. We've been like ships in the night. I'm so glad I finally got you here. Let's start a little bit with your academic background, which is, kind of surprised me. Bachelor's in political and social thought from the University of Virginia, a master's in political economy from University of Chicago. What was the...

• 4:03Barry Ritholtz?

  Original career plan?

• 4:05Speaker 04

  I mean, I think Barry, underlying your question was like, Kate, you sound kind of nerdy, but not as nerdy as some of the folks who have like triple degrees in statistics. But so where did this political and social thought and political economy stuff come from? So at University of Virginia, this PST program is interdisciplinary and that was really attractive. You also apply during your second year. So you have a chance to like kind of sample some different disciplines before you do it. And it's an incredible seminar program. So you're working with some really amazing professors throughout the way. I loved being able to take classes in economics, in politics, in theory, in philosophy. I also took a lot of studio art classes and stuff as an undergrad, but I was able

• 4:50Speaker 04

  to combine all of this stuff together. So I loved that. And then I worked for a couple of years and I decided, you know, hey, what I really am good at and what I love is academics and I want to be a professor. This was my, my idea. I'm going to go back to school and get my PhD and be a professor. I had this whole vision for myself that involved like, you know, writing books. In the summer, I would be doing cool research. I have a pack of golden retrievers and you know, I'd like rock climb on the side. This whole vision of my academic life. So I applied to PhD programs and I went to University of Chicago for political economy. So this intersection of policy and politics, you know, international theory and you know,

• 5:33Speaker 04

  economics. And I found once I was there, honestly, that many people in my program are taking eight to 10 years to get through their PhD and becoming so specialized in very arcane topics. And it was like not appealing to me since I'd already worked and everything. So I left after my masters, but I did my work on.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  You know, this intersection of economics and policy with a focus on emerging markets and China. So I was ahead of my time.

• 6:00Barry Ritholtz?

  It's so interesting that you talk about how specialized some people become. It's pretty clear, at least historically, many of the greatest investors in history had a very broad set of interests and a broad set of skills. Few of them were an inch wide and a mile deep. They weren't a mile wide and an inch deep, but they were broad enough that they were able to pull in things from other fields that applied to investing. Did you find something similar when you're studying political science and economics? How did that shape your investing philosophy?

• 6:36Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I think, you know, the best macro investors are able to pull in, you know, different inputs from policy and politics. It's also really helpful, I think, to understand human behavior. So if you're taking an interdisciplinary approach to your academics and your investing life, I think you're well set up. So in this, I mean, I took a bunch of courses on game theory and stuff as in my graduate work and understanding payoffs and incentives, doing some work on behavioral economics, all of that combines really well. And my experience, too, was that the best investors that I worked for over the course of my career also took in all of these different inputs and were constantly

• 7:17Speaker 04

  trying to solve a puzzle, right? It wasn't just, you know, a two-variable puzzle. It was a multi-variable puzzle, understanding that every day you wake up and you have to do it anew.

• 7:28Barry Ritholtz?

  Yeah, no doubt about it. It's so funny you mention incentives. Whenever I see a situation that I find completely perplexing and can't figure it out, what usually leads to the answer is, what are the incentives that led to this situation? And once you could work backwards from that. So let's talk a little bit about the strategy and consulting side. You begin your career, Mitchell Madison and Silver Oak Partners, is that right?

• 7:54Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 7:54Barry Ritholtz?

  Those two shops? Tell us a little bit about what you did for them and the sort of work and problem solving you did for those firms.

• 8:01Speaker 04

  Okay, so both Mitchell Madison and Silver Oak no longer exist, for the record. Mitchell Madison was formed out of a spinoff of a bunch of McKinsey Partners, and it was taking kind of a new way, a new approach, frankly, to some of the similar types of clients as McKinsey had. And, but it had this very entrepreneurial...

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Kind of environment because it was a break off, but it was still really large and global. I did a bunch of like strategy consulting projects, things you would expect, including some cool stuff in the media space, just at the time where the internet was becoming popular and some of these websites like Amazon that we take for granted were getting launched. So I learned a lot about media and e-commerce in those early stages at Mitchell Madison. But Mitchell Madison, for those of you who may recognize it, went through a merger with US Web CKS, which was a technology consulting firm. It all, the combined entity got rebranded as March 1st, which was the day that the

• 9:03Speaker 04

  deal was inked, kind of a weird marketing decision on that part. But you know, the, the business started to change and a number of the partners like broke off and started Silver Oak, which focused on leveraged buyout firms. Now here is what was really cool. I wasn't doing work for, let's say, the LBO in master form, but rather like a collection of the companies in the portfolio at the same time, trying to find synergies. There were things that are traditional around sourcing, but things that were maybe less traditional around finding strategic combinations. And I had a great opportunity to get exposed to a lot of different industries, you know, from traditional manufacturers to telecom companies, financial services and everything in between.

• 9:48Speaker 04

  And I have to say, Barry, that experience, you know, working for these kind of small and mid-sized LBO owned companies really set me up well for understanding and investing in a broad array of equities.

• 10:00Barry Ritholtz?

  So let's talk about the investing side. Your next stop is Morgan Stanley, obviously a legendary and giant sell-side firm. Tell us your, about your experiences at Morgan Stanley.

• 10:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, so how I got to Morgan Stanley Investment Management is perhaps kind of interesting. So we were just talking about my academic background and I was doing this, you know, political economy degree at University of Chicago and I had had this sort of moment where I realized I wasn't going to pursue the PhD. So I, you know, made an appointment with my advisor and I said, you know, Professor Haragold, I'm not sure I want to do the PhD. And he starts laughing and we're sitting in his office. He said, Kate, I've been waiting for this conversation for six months.

• 10:42Barry Ritholtz?

  Wow.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  I said, oh, my gosh, like, do you, you know, do you think I'm screwing up here? He said, no, you're top of the class. What I do recognize, though, is because you've worked before for a number of years before coming into a PhD program, you have a different skill set and you're approaching this differently. He's like, I think you can finish your PhD later and, you know, do the masters and whatever. So I had this in my mind and I, so I started to put out a couple feelers. But I wasn't really committed to what I would do post, you know, getting my masters.

• 11:10Barry Ritholtz?

  And this is out of Chicago, right?

• 11:11Speaker 04

  It's in Chicago. And then a strange thing happened. I was back on the East Coast visiting my parents. And I got a call from the career services people at University of Chicago. I was still, you know, enrolled in school there, just getting my thesis graded. And they said, hey, we got an incoming call from the chief investment officer of Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Guy's name is Joe McElinden. Joe is looking to add to his macro investing team on the buy side. And specifically is looking for candidates that are not MBAs. He wanted people who had this understanding of politics and economics and everything in between. And I said, hey, guys, I'm not interested in going back into that form of finance. I'm going to do something different.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  They said, do us this favor and go on the interview.

• 12:00Barry Ritholtz?

  Just, just meet with them.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, like, let's put up a good candidate. You kind of meet the criteria. If it's not your bag, it's not your bag. And I went and met this team at Morgan Stanley Investment Management of people who had economics and history and philosophy degrees, but were macro investors. And I was like, okay, A, these people are cool. And B, I love how they're solving the problems. Two weeks later, I accepted an offer. I fell into investing very.

• 12:23Barry Ritholtz?

  Wow, that's, that's really fascinating. And, and you've had a breadth of experiences beyond Morgan Stanley. You were at Moore Capital, a well-regarded hedge fund, Bank America Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan. You spent a lot of time at BlackRock. Tell us what was fun. What did you learn at these other shops?

• 12:43Speaker 04

  So I've had a really cool career in the sense that I've done, you know, a variety of different buy-side, more traditional mutual funds. But even when I was at Msim, we launched the first internal hedge fund. This is before Morgan Stanley bought Frontpoint. And I worked at a big macro hedge fund through the financial crisis, as you mentioned, at Moore Capital. That was an adventure. I did a few years on the sell-side at B of A Merrill as Global Equity and Emerging Market Strategist. And then I went to JP Morgan, managed the discretionary multi-asset portfolios for the private bank. Then I spent a long time at BlackRock, most of it as a portfolio manager for global allocation, kind of the flagship multi-asset fund. I have to say, I love the fact that I have experienced

• 13:26Speaker 04

  all sides of the investing business. And it makes me understand what makes investors tick a lot more than people who just stayed in their lane. Like, I get the retail side, the institutional side, what fast money does, what traders do, what fundamental investors do. And I interpret all this sort of sentiment and flow data as part of my process as a result of having this exposure to different parts of the investment management business.

• 13:51Barry Ritholtz?

  Huh, sounds really, really interesting. So, from all of these different backgrounds, what finally brought you to Citi?

• 13:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I was at a bit of an interesting inflection point, I would say, in my career. Here I am. I've loved being at BlackRock. I really enjoyed the work. But I also recognized I was kind of ready to take the next big step. And I could continue to be a portfolio manager at BlackRock, and it's an amazing firm. But I was kind of wondering what it would, sort of, what I should do to take this next step. And I looked around and said, where are the areas of growth in the business? And traditional mutual funds, we know, are not a huge growth area for the business. Even if your performance is exceptional, you

• 14:38Speaker 04

  know, keeping your assets can be a challenge. And I saw wealth as an area of consistent growth. I think most people would agree on that front.

• 14:48Barry Ritholtz?

  For sure.

• 14:48Speaker 04

  And, you know, there's some growth in alternatives, but it felt like just a different flavor of the stuff I was doing. So I was sort of intrigued by this idea of working in wealth, especially because I've done a lot of asset allocation and the multi-asset discipline I come from. And I love the challenge of helping people grow their money over time.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  But I hadn't, I didn't have like a great idea in my head of what I was gonna do. This was just sort of something that was a seed that was planted and not yet out of the soil, if it were.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  And in August of 2024, Andy Sieg, who I'd known in the business for like 15 years or so, never worked together directly, but you know, we'd met a number of times, been on panels together, had good cordial relationship. He called me and said, Kate, I have an idea for you. And he had been at Citi for a year then as, you know, CEO of Wealth. And I thought, okay, this is interesting, but I need to turn it over in my head a little bit. Is this gonna be the right pivot? And ultimately, I got so excited, Barry, because Citi was already in this massive transformation.

• 16:00Speaker 04

  Andy is a really inspirational leader. I'm not just saying that because he's my boss, but I think most people on the street will agree. He has a vision, he executes. And this was a new challenge for me. I'd be flexing different muscles. And I thought to myself, for this next big push in my career, I want to be someplace where I can be entrepreneurial, where I'm gonna be supported by the overall platform, where, you know, I can continue to grow out my experience as an investor. And so ultimately, I made the tough decision to leave a firm that I loved for a new and exciting challenge.

• 16:33Barry Ritholtz?

  Safe to say that this shift in career was the biggest inflection point?

• 16:40Speaker 04

  It feels like it's the biggest inflection point in my career, but it also feels cumulative. I don't know if that makes sense, but-

• 16:46Barry Ritholtz?

  Perfect sense. I understand exactly what you're saying. All of these different elements come together almost like a perfect storm. And suddenly, now we're off to the, to the whole nother level.

• 16:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've been building up these experiences over the course of my career and kind of setting me up to take on this new challenge. It does feel the largest, in part because I've been so concentrated on being an investor over the course of my career. And this is a combination of strategy and business leadership and investing. And so, as I said, I'm flexing, flexing a bunch of different muscles.

• 17:19Barry Ritholtz?

  So let's put some numbers- Some flesh on the bone. So the groups you lead, the wealth group at at Citi, what's the assets they're investing? And typically, who are the clients? Are they mom and pop investors? Are they institutional, a little of both?

• 17:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I'll give you some numbers as of end of 2024. Because everything else, of course, is in flux in the first part.

• 17:40Barry Ritholtz?

  We know how that works.

• 17:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm in the middle of studying for Series 65, what will be like my 39th millionth.

• 17:47Barry Ritholtz?

  Yeah, but that one you could do in your sleep. It's not like the seven, which is or the options.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:52Barry Ritholtz?

  I forgot which one was the options. That was a giant, like, wait, I need to learn about gamma.

• 17:57Speaker 04

  Totally. I've taken the options one, too. What I will tell you is

• 18:00Barry Ritholtz?

  20 years ago.

• 18:01Speaker 04

  The one thing that's a little bit annoying on the economic section of the Series 65 is that, you know, I don't always agree.

• 18:06Barry Ritholtz?

  I was gonna say, the answers are wrong. Other, once you get past that, the test is really easy.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  For example, it was like, you know, are payrolls a leading, lagging, or coincidental indicator?

• 18:17Barry Ritholtz?

  Of course it's lagging. How is it anything but lagging? Because it's two months old.

• 18:21Speaker 04

  Totally. And like plus or minus 150.

• 18:24Barry Ritholtz?

  Coincidental, right?

• 18:25Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 18:26Barry Ritholtz?

  Yeah, it's just there. I remember having an, this is, by the way, 30 something years ago, 20 something years ago. I remember calling up and yelling at somebody like, just so you know, I didn't get any of these answers wrong. And the three you marked wrong, you're wrong, and let me explain why.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 18:43Barry Ritholtz?

  How can payrolls, which are a model that uses one, two, three month old data, be anything other than a lagging?

• 18:52Speaker 04

  And that get totally restated every two years and the error bands.

• 18:57Barry Ritholtz?

  But the subsequent monthly revisions, I mean, by the time you get to the actual number, it's like half a decade old. It's nonsense.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  100%. And yet, of course, the market moves a lot on payroll's days and we have to pretend it matters in the moment. But, you know.

• 19:11Barry Ritholtz?

  We have to pretend.

• 19:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, we have to pretend. Okay, where were we going before?

• 19:15Barry Ritholtz?

  I have no idea, but I just love the fact that you're studying for the 65s.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  I know.

• 19:19Barry Ritholtz?

  Studying in air quotes.

• 19:20Speaker 04

  Studying in air quotes. I get to whiz through the equity and hedge fund and everything sort of sections of it, but I have to memorize their answers for economics.

• 19:27Barry Ritholtz?

  If it wasn't embarrassing to fail, I would say, you can wing it and you'll do just fine. I think 70 is a passing. You'll get like 80 just off the top of your head. But no one wants to go in and fail because it's embarrassing.

• 19:41Speaker 04

  Like, I I've made my career off of. Being a perfectionist, you know, in my analysis and, um, you know, I do not accept a barely passing grade. I do not expect, I accept, you know, index-like performance. I'm always seeking alpha and I'm doing my best to do that in the most risk-adjusted way.

• 20:02Barry Ritholtz?

  Even in an examination that's pass/fail, and we know objectively, logically, anything over a 71 is wasted effort, um, but I know exactly where you're coming from.

• 20:13Speaker 04

  I can't sleep at night. I can't sleep at night if it's just good enough. And that's also how I want to approach things for my clients. Okay, we're talking about Citi here. And so Citi, um, has about a trillion, Citi Wealth has a trillion dollars in assets. Um, close to like 600, uh, you know, billion of that is in investments. Um, and there's other parts in deposits and loans and things like that. And there are three main segments, right? There's the traditional kind of private bank, ultra-high net worth service. There's Citi Gold, which is mass affluent. Um, and then there is Wealth at Work, which targets like very specific segments, um, like the law firm, population, et cetera.

• 20:51Barry Ritholtz?

  Makes a lot, makes a ton of sense.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  What I will say is, Citi as a bank has so many global customers and clients and people with longstanding relationships, um, that haven't been tapped. You know, there's, there is an enormous amount of potential to grow the wealth business just from existing Citi, uh, customers. And I think, as you probably know, um, half of our business is outside of the US and it is a, it is a-

• 21:17Barry Ritholtz?

  Is it 50%? It's fully half? Wow, that's amazing.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  Yeah. And the Asia business for us, and particularly our legacy in China and surrounding areas is incredibly strong. And that was something that was also very attractive to me, to be honest with you, as someone who has been, you know, emerging markets investor at times and a student of China, you know, the ability to get really deep in to the opportunity to grow wealth in multiple different areas was exciting.

• 21:42Barry Ritholtz?

  Huh, really, really fascinating.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  At KKR, we've spent 50 years understanding what matters to our clients and companies. From pioneering private equity to investing across credit, real assets, insurance and sports, KKR has built the experience to navigate complexity, the judgment to recognize opportunity, and the conviction to create lasting value. Because when people and institutions are counting on us, understanding what matters isn't just important, it's everything. KKR, understanding what matters. Visit kkr.com/whatmatters.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting

• 22:58Speaker 01

  and hiring practices, but according to recruiters, advisors, and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company. And Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates quote "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at chatgpt.com.

• 23:39Barry Ritholtz?

  So before we talk about Citi, let's start a little bit with your time at BlackRock. You joined them almost a decade ago in 2016. You were chief equity strategist. Tell us a little bit about your initial role and how that played off of what you had been doing previously.

• 23:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I joined BlackRock to be part of the BlackRock Investment Institute, which is kind of the internal macro think tank. And the institute has a couple of different functions. There is a segment that is client-facing, but there's also a big function around bringing together the investors across all the platforms in BlackRock and convening for, you know...

• 24:19Speaker 04

  Forums and symposiums around specific topics. And although I was called Chief Equity Strategist, I actually sat on the Equity Platform with all the Equity PMs. And my job was to be basically embedded in all of the equity portfolios. As the macro, my team was the macro resource for them. And it was great. And you know, I always knew that I would do that for a little while. They basically said, can you do this and help to sort of change some of the equity culture into have some macro inputs? And then you can kind of figure out where you want to sit. And ultimately, you know, moving back to a multi asset fund made the most sense for me. Because here's my joke, Barry, like I think of myself as being a macro equity investor. You know, combining macro stuff into equities.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  But the macro people will say I'm equity and the equity people will say I'm macro.

• 25:08Barry Ritholtz?

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 25:08Speaker 04

  So a multi asset fund is a, is a good home for me.

• 25:11Barry Ritholtz?

  So 2019, you start working with the Thematic Strategy and Portfolio Manager Group.

• 25:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:17Barry Ritholtz?

  Tell us a little bit about Thematics. That's become sort of an alternative to beta in a lot of shops, BlackRock especially.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, let me say this. I actually started my career, you know, at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. And the hedge fund that my team launched at M Sim was a global thematic hedge fund. This is way back, like over 23 years ago at this point, so we were ahead of our times, right?

• 25:47Speaker 04

  So I've actually had this thematic approach, frankly, in my investment approach throughout my entire career. And it's just now becoming really popular to call everything a thematic. So let me say this, I think there are three ways at this time to approach thematics. Three different flavors, if you will. The first is this kind of like long duration, slow bleed thematic. Like eventually we are going to have reduced the amount of plastics in all of our goods. And so we want to lean into companies that are investing in that transition.

• 26:22Barry Ritholtz?

  You don't think microplastics accumulating in your lungs and bloodstream is a bad thing?

• 26:27Speaker 04

  It is definitely a bad thing. I wonder if I'm a little bit cooked when it comes to that already. But this is kind of a set it and forget it strategy, right? Where you identify companies that are making these changes or facilitating the changes. And you buy a basket of them and you, or an ETF that invests in them, and then you just set it. The second type of thematics is what I would call like discontinuous change catalyst driven thematics and these are more tactical like, you know, it could be a couple quarters. It could be up to a year or two or even longer, but this is kind of a more actively managed way to approach thematics, right? Where you identify the idea, you identify the catalysts,

• 27:08Speaker 04

  you identify the players and actually there's more of a rotation in the names and the sizing of that expression in the thematic. That's really exciting. It's also hard because sometimes you look around and say, I don't see a ton of catalysts here. There's nothing really jumping out.

• 27:23Barry Ritholtz?

  You gotta get the theme right, the asset class right and the timing right.

• 27:26Speaker 04

  And the sizing, you know, within that, right? And so that's not like buy 40 companies that are thinking about microplastics. It is like four to eight names, a more concentrated expression around a theme. You're taking some idiosyncratic risk and you are continuing to, to invest around that. And then the third type of thematic investing, I would say is really business cycle thematic. And a lot of people talk about this, you know, today. There's a, you know, where are we in the cycle? What are the companies, sectors or qualities that perform well in that part of the cycle? I'm thematically investing in inflation beneficiaries, et cetera. And I've always liked to do those two, kind of number two and number three together,

• 28:09Speaker 04

  which is the catalyst driven and the business cycle. And I think that together makes a nice portfolio.

• 28:15Barry Ritholtz?

  You know, I recall back in the day when we were talking about sort of thematic cycle investing, business cycle investing, it was, used to go by the name sector rotation.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:27Barry Ritholtz?

  I don't know if anybody still does that sort of stuff anymore. It seems like-

• 28:31Speaker 04

  Or the investment clock. Do you remember the investment clock?

• 28:33Barry Ritholtz?

  Sure, sure.

• 28:34Speaker 04

  Everyone had an investment clock, which was like this two dimensional representation of which sectors or which maybe style factors, once that became part of our lexicon, performed well in different macro environments.

• 28:48Barry Ritholtz?

  It was always sort of a sine wave and here's where we are in this sector here and the sector there.

• 28:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:53Barry Ritholtz?

  If it only were, were that easy.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. I uh, I won't call out names, but I know some folks that like to chart where we are, which quadrant we're in, you know, on a regular basis. And instead of this nice round circle or an oval, you know, it's very sort of spastic, point to point to point to point, because the macro data is moving so quickly. And the positioning data, which also indicates, you know, investor risk appetite changes so rapidly that we jump from one quadrant to the other, sometimes month to month.

• 29:26Barry Ritholtz?

  So, so you mentioned removing plastic from the food supply or wherever. What other trends have you looked at? Deglobalization, decarbonization, AI. What gets you excited these days?

• 29:39Speaker 04

  Oh, wait, you just said a hot button word for me, which is deglobalization. And let me just say, I don't believe in deglobalization.

• 29:45Barry Ritholtz?

  I'm with you, but I want to hear your reasons why.

• 29:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't believe in deglobalization. Because even if, let's say hypothetically, the US and China continue to separate, and by hypothetical, I was making a joke for all the listeners, of course, the US and China are going to continue to separate. That doesn't mean the relationships between each of these countries and other trading partners or allies is not going to deepen. Maybe we call it reglobalization instead of deglobalization, but a shifting of some other relationships. But I have spent a lot of my time, like a lot of folks, frankly, looking at themes in and around technology. I mentioned the microplastic. It's actually not a theme I've invested in. There are only a couple of companies I've really seen who are geared towards that are private. And so it's harder to access.

• 30:31Speaker 04

  But around technology, you know, a few areas I've been pretty excited about for a good considerable amount of time has been, you know, have been in software. And one of those areas is cybersecurity. This was a major theme for me in the portfolio at Global Allocation at BlackRock. And basically, every time I was thinking that I want to either shift out of the theme or reduce it, there was another event on the horizon or something happening that led to increased spend in the space. I've now come to believe that investment in security software is existential. For companies.

• 31:06Barry Ritholtz?

  Right.

• 31:07Speaker 04

  And while there's room to rotate, you know, names based on capabilities, et cetera. I believe it's a it's a core part of a portfolio.

• 31:16Barry Ritholtz?

  Long standing secular trend that's going to be ongoing.

• 31:18Speaker 04

  Absolutely. But I first put on this investment in January of 2020. Okay. When I was at BlackRock and that was before the pandemic. And it was basically based on geopolitical risk. And of course, the pandemic that increased the risk from all this data for many different companies. So we saw a big uptick in spends. They said it was a it's been a rolling series of catalysts over the last five and a half years and makes it more of a secular theme than a shorter term catalyst driven theme.

• 31:46Barry Ritholtz?

  So so let's drill down a little bit to your core investment philosophy. You've mentioned thematics, you've mentioned pursuing alpha. Tell us, what is Kate Moore's investment philosophy?

• 31:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think it's really important to have three pillars to your decision making. And one pillar that's off to the side that's controversial. So I think you have to start with a macro view. I think you need to understand politics, policy, the major economic data. You need to understand government behaviors because so much of that dictates the environment for different industries. And some people just sort of brush it off. By the way, I love my equity colleagues and friends, but nothing makes the hair on the back of my neck go up more and kind of me bristle than to hear, I don't pay attention to macro because I just pick good companies. Well, good, you'll be out of business. You don't have a choice.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  In this environment, you can't set it and forget it for the next three years and not focus on what's happening in the business cycle and policy. And how that may impact the interest and desire to own your asset class. So I think macro is critical and a good starting point. I also like to get into the fundamentals of things, right? Like, where are the fundamental thematically? Like, who's growing? What technology has come out? Where do we think about, you know, changes in consumer behavior? Changes in supply chains? And where are the real kind of fundamental opportunities? What are the companies doing well? I think that's not controversial either. But the third stage, and it's really important to me. I mean, it's grown in importance over the course of my career, is the positioning, sentiment and technicals.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  And this has become really, really, really important for your for defining your entry and exit points, even if you are a long term investor. Because markets move really quickly and you need to be really thoughtful about how you enter and exit. So I pay attention to flows, hedge fund, mutual fund positioning, introduction of new instruments, you know, a million things we kind of look at at our dashboard. And then, this is the one I was saying the pillar off to the side, valuation is a nice to know, but it is not a driving force of my investment process. And people might kind of cringe when I say that.

• 34:01Barry Ritholtz?

  You know, let me jump in here and I won't explore that because I don't disagree with any of that. People kind of forget that bull markets that run 10, 20 years, valuations tend to start on the lower end and they tend to end on the higher end. But if you decide, oh, we're above the average valuation of the past cycle, you're missing a lot of upside, aren't you?

• 34:26Speaker 04

  Ton of upside. Well, there's also this assumption that that underpins this view on valuations, that there is some sort of mean reversion.

• 34:34Barry Ritholtz?

  Right. Tomorrow, we're going to snap that. Look at the Cape is my favorite example of that. The Schiller cyclically adjusted P ratio, you would have been out like 90% since 1990, if you followed that. It's kind of wild.

• 34:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure. You would absolutely have not taken advantage of an incredible run in equities. Like, just to make this point and underscore it, I say if valuation is a starting point for your investment decision, what you're screening for in entry and exit points, you would never own US tech and you would be long Russia. You know, and anyone who wants to take that trade, God bless, but you'll be out of business.

• 35:11Barry Ritholtz?

  Right. Russia's been cheap, but some stocks are cheap for a reason.

• 35:15Speaker 04

  They are. European banks, cheap for a reason. And we know that kind of over the medium term, this I'll define as kind of three years, you know, stocks can stay quote unquote expensive, or the way I like to say it, be valued at a higher end of the market range because they are superior businesses and they can stay at those levels for multiple years, sometimes much longer and continue to re-rate. And stuff can look like it's a discount to the rest of the market, but be structurally impaired and therefore deserve the discount. The other problem I have when people do these kind of like mean reversion, you know, valuation trades, is they say like, oh, we need to go back to some historical period

• 35:59Speaker 04

  where S and P was at 14 times. Why? I mean, the market composition from a sector perspective, completely different. The balance sheets of these companies, completely different. The cash profiles and free cash generation of these companies, completely different. The regulatory environment, the politics, the behavior, the market technicals. I can go on and on and on. It is literally the laziest piece of analysis I have ever seen.

• 36:25Barry Ritholtz?

  When you look at last century companies like US Steel or even General Motors, you know, the expression was men in material. They need tons of capital, giant factories. Today, two people with a laptop and Amazon web servers,

• 36:43Barry Ritholtz?

  you could, you could do as much business as any startup from any decade previously.

• 36:48Speaker 04

  Totally. I mean, another example I like to use, like near and dear to our hearts in terms of the investment landscape is, you know, how many analysts do I really need to cover all different sorts of sectors? You know, and it, there was a time where I needed everyone to be an expert in a different industry or a different sector and to be very siloed and deeply specialized. But right now, I can be in a meeting, sitting across the table from a CEO or CFO, and they may be talking about a business that I only know 50% about, right? And I, in real time, I can use my AI tools. I can pull up what their competitors have said in recent earnings calls or, you know, in the social media. I can look up terminology. I can pull up data.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  I am 100 times more informed. I don't need to be briefed for three hours from an analyst before I walk into that meeting. You know, just by understanding the types of questions to ask and having this data at my fingertips, I'm a faster and better investor.

• 37:46Barry Ritholtz?

  So here's the challenge, and we could talk about AI as a theme in a little bit, but the challenge is you've gone through that whole process over the past 10, 20 years, where you've, you know, Done the reps, put in the heavy lifting.

• 38:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:02Barry Ritholtz?

  How is the next generation going to become the Kate Moore in 25 years? If they don't get to go through that process and AI seems to, the phrase I heard recently was removing the bottom rung on the career ladder. Is this, is this a genuine concern?

• 38:20Speaker 04

  It is somewhat of a concern. I think it's more of a concern for, for kids who are going through school and are incredibly specialized about what they're studying. And this is kind of a flag. Frankly, I would say to people, you don't want to just take courses in one discipline. Your job as an undergrad, and I would also argue even in grad school, even in MBA program, is to learn how to think and learn how to ask questions, to get exposed to as many different disciplines as possible. So I tell like young folks, like you ought to study philosophy. You should also study things like art history because there's context behind it. You should study things like, you know, hard sciences because, you know, it gives you a discipline in terms of the way that you're thinking.

• 39:05Speaker 04

  You should take a music theory class. I mean, do all of this, you want your brain to be flexible, compliant. You want to be able to approach the problem by using these tools in unique ways. And people who are only point and shoot, only have one specific way of approaching an investment problem are often wrong.

• 39:25Barry Ritholtz?

  Huh. Really, really, really interesting. So you were brought to Citi specifically to focus on the wealth business there. What's your strategy for breathing life into that space?

• 39:39Speaker 04

  So I think there are a couple of things. We have a lot of amazing raw material at, at Citi in terms of human capital. And of course our clients, but thinking about how to invest.

• 39:51Speaker 04

  In a different way than perhaps my other wealth competitors invest is is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities. And here's what I will say, you know, I want to examine the way that we're approaching discretionary multi-asset class asset allocation products, right? Just to sort of set it and forget it, here's your stocks, bonds, cash. I'm not sure is going to be the right path moving forward. I mean, we want to think about what is the right combination of both asset class and factor exposures for for clients in different risk profiles? And how do we implement in an interesting way in that space?

• 40:33Speaker 04

  So it's not just like, hey, we have a, you know, large cap stock fund or we have a, you know, mid duration bond fund, and this is what we're kind of combining together. This is really about, you know, what are the best expressions of each of those things? How much of it should be beta? How much of it should be alpha seeking, whether it's, you know, sector specific or thematic? What is the best implementation and alternatives? And particularly as we get more liquid alternatives available, you know, that sort of diversification in a portfolio is going to be kind of democratized. And we're going to see more and more of our clients across risk spectrum be able to access that.

• 41:11Barry Ritholtz?

  So let's talk about the opportunities in the wealth business. What's driving the growth here? Is it just the amount of capital that's sloshing around? How big are demographics? The move towards alternatives? There are so many different cross currents going on that make that space so attractive. What do you see as the key drivers?

• 41:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a bunch of different drivers, Barry. I'd say, you know, first of all, there's been an enormous amount of wealth created, we know, over the last, you know, 10 years. It's longer than that, but let's just say in the last 10 years.

• 41:44Barry Ritholtz?

  Post-financial crisis.

• 41:45Speaker 04

  Post-financial crisis.

• 41:46Barry Ritholtz?

  Great 15-year run.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And big concentrations of wealth. And frankly, a lot of very wealthy families have held a lot of these this wealth in cash, you know, or in cash equivalents, or have reinvested. Their business. I think there's now an understanding that they want to diversify. So the investment opportunity set for all this wealth creation is huge. I'd say there's another trend, and I'm sure people have talked about this before with you, which is like the transfer of wealth that's going to happen from the boomer generation to my generation and then ultimately to our, you know, younger generation. And the values and the interests on the investing side change from generation to generation.

• 42:29Speaker 04

  You know, the types of risk clients want to take, the types of like bespoke opportunities and private stuff that they want to do. Maybe it's around, you know, environmental, social governance stuff. Maybe it's around specific geographies, mission aligned. I mean, I think that the flavor of investing is changing, which also makes us super exciting. And then finally, I would say, can you know, the breadth of investment instruments that are available to individual investors and into wealthy families is actually really exciting because you can do cooler things than just a 6040 portfolio, which was kind of the way wealth businesses ran in the past.

• 43:07Barry Ritholtz?

  So you had mentioned the role of behavioral finance in some of your education and background. You were at University of Chicago, which has become a hotbed of behavioral finance. Dick Thaler, recent recipient of the Nobel. Tell us how you think about behavioral economics in your day job. How do you help clients steer through some of, this year is a perfect example, a lot of volatility, a lot of sturm und drang, and here we are, above where we were before Liberation Day. How do you guide people through that?

• 43:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is such a tough one, Barry, because, you know, this is where understanding kind of the positioning, the technicals and the biases really differentiate a good investor from maybe a less good investor. One of the things I try and pay close attention to are all of these sentiment indicators. And like, you know, the dashboard for sentiment indicators continues to change, right? Sometimes we look at, you know, historic filings, but we know that mutual funds and hedge funds change their positions really quickly. Sometimes we look at the volume and the flow. I like to pay attention to more kind of third party and, you know, coincident things, like what's being discussed in different social media or on different.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Message boards or whatever.

• 44:29Barry Ritholtz?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:29Speaker 04

  And to try and understand what's capturing the intention and energy from different client segments. But I also pay really close attention to frankly, how the market responds to different types of news. And that gives you a good sense. You've got to have your finger on that pulse. You know, I, I learned this from someone named Ben Hunt, who you may be familiar with.

• 44:52Barry Ritholtz?

  Of course. Absalon theory.

• 44:53Speaker 04

  Absalon theory. So I learned this from Ben years ago. But he said, you know, number one, the first order to getting things right is like having a good forecast. Right? Let's just say you have a forecast for a stock earnings. The second order is to understand what consensus thinks. Right? And comparing your number against that.

• 45:13Barry Ritholtz?

  Right.

• 45:14Speaker 04

  But to get it really right in the market, you need to understand what consensus thinks consensus thinks.

• 45:20Barry Ritholtz?

  It's a Kane's beauty contest.

• 45:23Speaker 04

  Absolutely. And, but, but kind of instilling that in my team is really important because it's like, great, I'm so glad you think we're going to have $263 of S and P earnings this year. If consensus actually thinks it's 267, we should know that too. But if the printed number is 267, but everyone's just dragging their feet on cutting the numbers and they're actually at 255, that makes a difference in terms of how people take risk and respond to different news. And so, you know, kind of putting all these pieces together, doing the work, understanding what like written or published consensus is, and then getting all these kind of sentiment inputs to really evaluate what is the whisper real number versus what's published.

• 46:07Barry Ritholtz?

  So let me push back slightly on sentiment because I want to get your take on this. So my experience generally has been most day to day sentiment is kind of noisy and it really matters when it hits an extreme. At least that's a trader's perspective. But the thing I really want to push back on has been the University of Michigan.

• 46:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:29Barry Ritholtz?

  Consumer sentiment data, which over the past couple of years, it's been worse than the financial crisis, worse than the Beginning of the pandemic, worse than the 2001 September 11th attacks or the dot com implosion, worse than the 87 crash. How do we figure out what's going on in sentiment where it seems to have just detached from consumer behavior? Hey, everything is terrible, but we're going out and spending.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  Totally. We're still going out to restaurants, even though we think the world is ending.

• 47:02Barry Ritholtz?

  Right.

• 47:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. So any single sentiment indicator or survey needs to be discounted, right? We need to combine all these things and look at it kind of on a moving average of a number of prints. Another one that kind of flagged for me was the Conference Board Confidence, which hit the lowest levels from like September of 2011, you know, last month. And that was a crazy number, right? Because September of 2011, we had just gone through this debt fiasco. We were going into Operation Twist, you know, there was like-

• 47:32Barry Ritholtz?

  Post flash crash, it had gotten even crazier.

• 47:35Speaker 04

  Absolutely. So, you know, that that seemed really disconnected from reality. So sometimes you have to discount all of these things. But your point is well taken. There has been a generalized sentiment deterioration. Another one I look at is the, what is now the Richmond Fed, but historically had been the Duke Fuqua CFO Survey. And you've seen over the past couple of years, this massive decoupling between expectations for own company over the next six months, where the CFOs are going like, things are pretty good, actually. And expectations for the economy where they're like, the economy's in trouble.

• 48:07Barry Ritholtz?

  It's so funny you bring that up because, well, first I had Tom Barkin and not too long ago. But second, we see that everywhere. My congressman's okay, but the rest of Congress stinks. My financial circumstances seem to be pretty good, but we think the economy is going lower. Like that exact sort of sentiment split, what do you imagine is driving people to think, hey, things aren't that bad for me, but everywhere else it stinks?

• 48:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. I, this is- Tough one, but I honestly think the news flow, how media portrays recent events, the echo chamber on social media, the fact that people are not getting a broad-based view. Do you see all these, you know, traditional news programs now that are trying to dedicate one night a week or whatever the heck it is to the good news, right?

• 48:57Barry Ritholtz?

  Is that true?

• 48:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's like

• 48:59Barry Ritholtz?

  That's funny.

• 49:00Speaker 04

  There's a, there's a local channel I've watched that will do one good story after they've just reported a bunch of like murders and, you know, everything for the previous 25 minutes. The last story is like, they're trying to leave you on a positive note. I'm thinking like, okay, but the skew is definitely really negative.

• 49:16Barry Ritholtz?

  If it, if it bleeds, it leads. That's always been the news thing.

• 49:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, but now people are consuming more of that.

• 49:22Barry Ritholtz?

  I think, I think you're definitely on to something.

• 49:25Speaker 04

  But so we, we do maybe need to Z score the sentiment right now. Let's just put it that way. We, we have to adjust for this declining overall sentiment. But when I'm talking about sentiment, I also like, I'm trying to infer sentiment from price reactions to different news. Right? And that might be a better gauge in some of these surveys where people can say, you know, the sky is falling, but then just book a Carnival cruise, right? Like, you know, the, and, you know, if a stock puts up pretty good numbers in terms of earnings, but doesn't beat by a huge margin and falls 15%, you can tell that like people are at the edge, right? And so, you know, you have to kind of correct your own equity exposure for that type of behavior. But your point's well taken on you, Mish, and on, you know, all of these other surveys.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  There's been a generalized decline. We have to correct for that.

• 50:13Barry Ritholtz?

  Really interesting.

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• 52:32Barry Ritholtz?

  So let's talk a little bit about today's market environment. 2025 has been kind of a volatile, wacky year. What's your current macro view on the global economy? What's going on in markets? The Fed, yield, inflation, tariffs? It all seems to be kind of tumbling together at once.

• 52:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I have to say 2025 has been a tough year for anyone. And it's also been a tough year, candidly, for me to start a new job. I like to say that every time I start a new job, there's some big volatility event. This one might be the biggest. And frankly, totally self-induced as opposed to some kind of exogenous or external shock. So it's been really difficult to navigate through this market. And yet, you know, there are some things we can still anchor to. I'm paying attention to what companies are saying about their businesses, this kind of sort of sentiment stuff we were talking about a moment ago. Looking at the long-term trends, this all leads us to say like, okay, we can still be invested.

• 53:35Speaker 04

  But I am deeply worried, Barry, about what's going to happen to the economy over the summer and into the beginning of 2026. We know that companies have been operating more or less BAU, business as usual, despite all of the shocks on headlines around tariffs. And consumers, you know, may have pulled forward some demand, but they're also kind of operating BAU for the most part. There's not been a significant change. And yet, we know that the introduction of these tariffs and the risk aversion

• 54:08Speaker 04

  that's a result of these tariffs and changes in policy and changes in expectations for global supply chains is going to lead to some weakness in activity. The thing I just want to point out is like going into the end of 2024 and the beginning of 25, I was also like a little worried, frankly, that the economy was slowing. Not catastrophically, not recession style, but there were enough cracks across the consumer and enough indications from companies to basically suggest like this was not going to be an accelerating year even before these policy shocks. And now I think despite some adjustments, you know, immediately after the tariff announcements, companies don't have an incentive to do a bunch of different things, and that is engage in real CapEx.

• 54:52Speaker 04

  They'll spend what they need to to stay in business or to maintain or things that are absolutely necessary, but they're going to prioritize. Expansionary CapEx and acquisitions, I think, are off the table. Number two, on the labor market, we've heard a lot of people talk about it being frozen. Yes, there's still some hiring, but when you look at kind of the composition of the hiring, it's not as exciting as it might have otherwise been in a, you know, policy risk-free economy. And I think companies have an incentive to kind of keep their labor force where it is. Without really expanding because they don't know if that's going to make sense for margins and stuff going forward. And then the third thing I would say is, you know, companies need to ask themselves,

• 55:34Speaker 04

  what should my supply chain, what should my corporate relationships look like? Over the course of, you know, the next couple of years, because the truth of the matter is, if they have to realign them, it will be a significant cost. It will take a ton of time and take a ton of energy. And yet, if there might be a policy shift, either at the midterms or under a new administration, the incentive to make these multi-year investments is low. So I get the sort of paralysis that's playing out in terms of the market, in terms of corporate behavior. And so I'm a little, I wouldn't say worried about a recession, but concerned about much slower activity in the second half of the year.

• 56:14Barry Ritholtz?

  So that raises so many different issues. We keep hearing from CFOs, CEOs, about the lack of clarity. If you don't know what the policy is going to be, how do you relocate manufacturing plan, a headquarter? How do you plan to do any sort of expansionary hiring? So I'm completely with you that, hey, this seems to be the self-inflicted wound that's preventing the economy from accelerating. And yet, despite all that, the economy seems to be incredibly resilient and not taking too big of a hit from all of these on-again, off-again tariffs.

• 56:55Barry Ritholtz?

  Does that just mean that this administration inherited a really robust economy?

• 57:01Speaker 04

  Yes, and I think there's another element to it. I do think this administration, you know, inherited a resilient economy, one that was perhaps underappreciated over the last couple of years, because not everyone was feeling that resilience in the same way, or wealth creation wasn't as broad as some would have liked. Okay, but I think there's another element to this too. And this goes a little bit into kind of corporate behavior and how investors react to corporate decisions. Which is, you know, if a company pulls back prematurely, let's say they shed a bunch of workforce, or they cut a lot of CapEx, and they really hunker down for a bad economic environment. And that doesn't actually show up for multiple quarters.

• 57:46Barry Ritholtz?

  Kind of like the past few years, everybody forecasting recessions that never came.

• 57:50Speaker 04

  And they lag their peer group, and they look weak relative to the rest of the industry. Wow, that, that makes people lose confidence in that management team. So there's almost an incentive for management teams to maybe have contingency plans, to talk about that with their board and the rest of their leadership, but not necessarily communicate that with the investment community and keep operating with only a tiny bit of defensive action, because there's going to be a penalty on their stock price and frankly in the confidence people have in the management team if it looks like they're being too emotional and reactionary.

• 58:26Barry Ritholtz?

  This sounds like the game theory work you did at UFC is coming into the fore.

• 58:31Speaker 04

  A hundred percent. It plays a huge part in the way I think about this. So, you know, no company has an incentive to talk about how concerned they actually are publicly, because the first one that does it will be penalized.

• 58:43Barry Ritholtz?

  That's interesting. And, and since you work at a giant bank, we've seen bank earnings that are pretty strong across the board.

• 58:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:53Barry Ritholtz?

  That's kind of unexpected. Tell us a little bit about, what does that mean in light of this environment, relatively high rates, really just more normalized than what we've seen in the prior two decades? What's going on in the banking sector?

• 59:09Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I can talk a little bit about Citi, because we've had some pretty awesome operating performance. And there are a couple of things really driving that, of course. You know, there's been a real focus in terms of cost and expense. This is not just Citi, this is across the board at major financial institutions. And frankly, investment, investors really love this. They want to see that discipline continue. Number two- Like the mix shift has actually contributed to earnings. And I think, as you well know, you know, wealth has been a huge driver for many of the diversified financial services companies. I expect it will continue, and I'm looking forward to wealth being an even bigger driver for Citi over the next couple of years. And then I think there's another element too, which is that the speed and sort of the

• 59:54Speaker 04

  facility that management has in toggling between different types of business for different parts of the cycle has significantly improved relative to how people think about banks 15 years ago. So we were talking about valuations earlier and, you know, financial services and kind of banks more specifically, kind of dragged down overall market multiples when they were a huge part of the market cap for the US large cap indices in the past.

• 1:00:18Barry Ritholtz?

  So let's talk a little bit about soft data. It's kind of been negative when we're talking about sentiment and things like that. This really hasn't translated into the hard data yet. Tell us what you're looking at in that space.

• 1:00:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course. I mean, I'm shaking my head as you say that because it's absolutely right. The soft data into hard data in a normal period, you know, gets translated in over inconsistent time periods. So there's not like a map that says like, hey, the soft data does X and then three quarters later or one month later, it translates into something in the market or some other hard data and economic activity. So it's always a bit of an art interpreting the soft data into the hard data. And yet, it's really important to pay attention because it may impact the marginal decision. Right now, the soft data has went from catastrophic post the April 2nd tariff announcements to really awful

• 1:01:14Speaker 04

  to maybe a hair better, but still pretty bombed out. And as we've talked about, the economic data has stayed somewhat resilient. That doesn't mean that economic data will never show weakness. And again, I'm expecting some soft pockets throughout the second half of the year. Not recessionary, but kind of like sub 2%, sub 1.5% growth. I think we should buckle down for, and that's where I expect more durable earnings stories, secular growth stories will outperform the rest of the market.

• 1:01:45Barry Ritholtz?

  So it sounds like there are a couple of catalysts in the pipeline and you're just waiting to see which direction the majority of these go. Tell us a little bit about what you see as upside and downside catalysts.

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  Okay. So around tariffs, any given day that we'd be having this discussion, there would be, there's a new set of news. One thing I do know is that we have a series of deadlines over the course of the summer where people are hoping for some level of resolution. And the way I say, talk about this, Barry, is this, is that we may be past peak tariff shock, but we are nowhere close to peak tariff pain. We don't really know how bad it's going to be quite yet. And this is why, of course, companies have been reluctant to significantly change their guidance and their earnings revision ratios have looked, you know, better than some people expected. Here's what I will say. Even if the reciprocal tariffs don't hold up and they end up going to the Supreme Court,

• 1:02:39Speaker 04

  and that's a decision, the sectoral tariffs, which take longer to implement, are much stickier and frankly have much longer.

• 1:02:47Barry Ritholtz?

  When you say sectoral, like North America, Canada?

• 1:02:50Speaker 04

  No, like semis.

• 1:02:52Barry Ritholtz?

  Oh, okay, gotcha.

• 1:02:53Speaker 04

  Pharma, copper, steel, all of these sectoral tariffs are much stickier and have much greater potential impact than the country to country bilateral reciprocal tariffs.

• 1:03:06Barry Ritholtz?

  It's so interesting. You mentioned that someone was from a biomedical device company was having a conversation with me. It's like, I don't understand, an iPhone is exempt from China tariffs, but the pacemakers we make that save people's lives are not, and if we have to relocate this to wherever, to Taiwan, to Vietnam, to Canada.

• 1:03:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:03:30Barry Ritholtz?

  The FDA process. Starts over and it'll be eight years. So for about half a decade or so, as the the Chinese manufactured pacemakers sell off, but before the new ones come online, there's not going to be enough pacemakers.

• 1:03:45Speaker 04

  Right. There we have a real risk of some of these important raw materials and these important consumer goods and these important medical goods, you know, um, not being adequately supplied. And so we have to really watch this. So I, so I will say this, that the tariff side is not going to be resolved over the course of the summer. And because it's going to bleed out for longer, we may have slower growth, but not catastrophic. But eventually we'll have some really big sectoral consumer and business impacts.

• 1:04:15Barry Ritholtz?

  Huh. Really, really interesting. You mentioned some of the news stories and how things are affecting sentiment. Uh, how do you see the role of narratives driving market responses? It seems like there are different stories for different asset classes every other week.

• 1:04:32Speaker 04

  Absolutely. The narrative changes. Uh, it sometimes it feels like on 30 minute increments. You know, it used to be you'd have a couple of weeks of a narrative taking hold. Um, I know many people think about this, but uh, the market can really only focus on one thing at a time. One major narrative at a time, you know, and that's where you end up seeing the bulk of the price movement. For example, is it around tariffs? Is it around inflation data? Is it around Fed expectations? Is it around the technology conflict between the U S and China? Is it around some geopolitical shock? You know, it's, but it's not going to be all those things at once, even though I would argue all of those things are happening concurrently. And I think the market has become even more short attention span if we can, you know,

• 1:05:17Speaker 04

  personify it here. Um, and as a result, the narratives are shifting very quickly. This is why it's really important that when you're thinking about portfolio construction, to anchor on the right asset class and factor exposures, to layer it with more sort of medium term thematic alpha generating ideas, and then offer some ballast to the portfolio, either in less correlated assets or in expressions of the asset class. Or factor that that has a different duration.

• 1:05:46Barry Ritholtz?

  So so let's talk about some of the quote unquote less correlated asset classes. There has been a giant move into alternatives, most especially private credit, private equity. What do you see in that space? How is that evolving over the next five to 10 years?

• 1:06:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, let me answer that second part first. I think the evolution of this this broad bucket of alternatives is going to be towards more liquid expressions.

• 1:06:12Barry Ritholtz?

  More liquid?

• 1:06:13Speaker 04

  Yes, or at least more vehicles that allow for individual investors and, you know, family offices and things like that to invest in these types of vehicles. Right? You don't have to set it and forget it for like 10 years. I think there's going to be a lot of demand, just as we've seen, say, traditional mutual fund, transfer into ETFs, active ETFs, but be more kind of combined vehicles. The challenge, I think, is that there's been so much money and we know this, we've got great data on this, chasing this like a small number of deals. And it has become so popular to think about alternatives as an asset class that the returns that some of these strategies have been able to achieve in the past,

• 1:06:57Speaker 04

  I think are much more challenged in the future.

• 1:07:00Barry Ritholtz?

  Haven't we seen that in sort of venture capital land back in the 80s and 90s? VC numbers were spectacular and post.com implosion. Not only you have more companies staying private for longer, it just seems like a ton of low hanging fruit were picked, you know, decades ago.

• 1:07:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, the narrative is like 85% of US companies are actually still private. And so it's really important to have all these vehicles to access them on the equity on the credit side. I hear that, but there are certain major differences, of course. If you're a private company, you may continue to need different types of funding. You don't have to disclose to your shareholders on a regular basis. Of course, that you don't have to deal with the the stock price fluctuation and and all of that, what that might mean for your employees who are paid and shares. But it also creates a complicated environment where when you don't have to disclose, when you don't have to report.

• 1:07:58Speaker 04

  You know, you may make a different set of decisions. Some of that might be good for the long term and some of it may be just like a poor allocation of capital because no one's calling you out on it because the capital's already locked in. So it's, I would say this 85% of companies that are still private that the alternative managers are excited about giving you exposure to, not all of them are the same quality as the, you know, publicly available, you know, large cap, mega cap companies.

• 1:08:24Barry Ritholtz?

  Makes a lot of sense. I want to get to my favorite questions, but before I do that, I gotta throw you at least one curve ball. You're on the Resource Council for the Grand Teton National Park Foundation?

• 1:08:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Barry Ritholtz?

  Tell us about that.

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  Does that sound random to you Barry?

• 1:08:38Barry Ritholtz?

  Yeah, it sounds totally random. I know you're a former ski bum.

• 1:08:43Speaker 04

  I am.

• 1:08:43Barry Ritholtz?

  So maybe there's some relationship with that?

• 1:08:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I actually split my time between New York City and Jackson Hole. So I spend a lot of time in the Jackson community. I'm super passionate about the conservation and nature programs at Grand Teton National Park and I've been on the Resource Council now for about three years. It is a kind of sub-board of the, of the board of Grand Teton National Park Foundation. And we do some really amazing things. One of the things I'm most passionate about are some of these wildlife programs and the money that we raise specifically for research that benefits some of the biologists in the park and also that, you know, all of the visitors to the park can take advantage of. My favorite thing to do every summer Barry is the wolf watch, which we do some, some

• 1:09:31Speaker 04

  days during August. We'll go up with a biologist to this bluff and we will watch a pack that lives in Grand Teton National Park and learn all about wolf habitats, behaviors, and changes in their patterns.

• 1:09:42Barry Ritholtz?

  So, so this is part of the national park system, but yet there's a private foundation that helps raise assets and manage resources for the park? Tell us a little bit about that structure.

• 1:09:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, actually, almost all of the national parks have friends groups and this Grand Teton National Park Foundation is the friends group for Grand Teton National Park. We are a very large and successful one and we've really helped to partner with the park on everything from like visitor centers to, you know, accessible options to their, to rivers, to redoing the trail system, to sponsoring some of the biologists, et cetera. The park is run by the park, but the superintendent and the CEO of Grand Teton National Park Foundation are close partners and I like to think, yeah, we're the best friends group out there.

• 1:10:26Barry Ritholtz?

  Huh, really, really quite fascinating.

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• 1:12:45Barry Ritholtz?

  Let's jump to our favorite questions because I only, I know I only have you for a few more moments. We'll, we'll make this our speed round, starting with what's keeping you entertained these days? What are you watching or listening to?

• 1:12:58Speaker 04

  Okay, so, um, I don't watch television.

• 1:13:01Barry Ritholtz?

  At all?

• 1:13:02Speaker 04

  Very infrequently.

• 1:13:03Barry Ritholtz?

  No Netflix, no Prime, no Apple TV, none of that?

• 1:13:06Speaker 04

  It's not really my jam.

• 1:13:07Barry Ritholtz?

  Wow, that's really interesting.

• 1:13:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's not really my jam. I do watch like things, sometimes a news magazine or whatever, but for the most part, I'm just an avid reader.

• 1:13:16Barry Ritholtz?

  Uh huh.

• 1:13:17Speaker 04

  And I like to spend my time when I'm not working, reading, playing sports, listening to music, and, um, I'm an amateur artist. So, uh, but watching screens after being in front of screens all day long is unappealing to me.

• 1:13:31Barry Ritholtz?

  Can I tell you, that sounds shockingly healthy.

• 1:13:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I try to be shockingly healthy. I also try to put my devices down and be focused on other things because, um, I get enough screen time during the day.

• 1:13:42Barry Ritholtz?

  I totally get it. Uh, tell us about your mentors who helped shape your career.

• 1:13:46Speaker 04

  I don't know that I had a lot of official mentors. I will tell you, I had more, um, peer mentors, if that makes sense. You know, growing up in the business, I was often the only woman in the room or the only woman on the investment committee. And, um, I built really strong peer relationships with other investors of similar levels around the street. And there are a lot of people who've helped to influence my way of thinking or have challenged me. Um, but yeah, I mean, I try and be a mentor to as many, especially young women as I can in the business, since I didn't have that available to me at the time. But I wish I had a long list of mentors, but I would say it's more my peer group that's I've really linked arms with and grown with, that, um, I think of as kind of playing that

• 1:14:31Speaker 04

  role for me in my career.

• 1:14:33Barry Ritholtz?

  Interesting. So you mentioned you read a lot. Let's talk about books.

• 1:14:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:38Barry Ritholtz?

  What are some of your favorites? What are you reading right now?

• 1:14:40Speaker 04

  Okay, I'm a giant sci-fi and fantasy nerd.

• 1:14:43Barry Ritholtz?

  Oh, boy, well, you're talking to the right person.

• 1:14:45Speaker 04

  I mean, so, on this theme of not watching screens after I work, I like to really escape, like deep in escape after a long day of stay. arrogant numbers and analyzing, you know, economics. So here's what I will say. I'm in an amazing series right now, the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. I know it's been made into a series. I will not watch it because it will ruin the entire.

• 1:15:10Barry Ritholtz?

  It's on Apple TV. It's gotten mixed reviews so far, so far, but I have that in my queue, the first Murderbot.

• 1:15:17Speaker 04

  Oh, it's so good. It's amazing. And, you know, thinking about this intersection between bots and AI and the future. And there's a lot of inner dialogue in there that I don't think will translate well into a series. But anyway, neither here nor there. So I love to read that. Before I, I'm on book six now. Before I started that, I read the latest from Town of French, which is called The Searcher and The Hunters, two books together. It takes place in Ireland. She's one of my favorite contemporary fiction authors. It's like, these are mysteries. And so I love that. And yeah, I pretty much gobble up anything that will make it onto the Hugo or Nebula shortlist. And try and geek out as much as possible.

• 1:16:01Barry Ritholtz?

  I had no idea you were a geek. Any nonfiction that crosses your transom?

• 1:16:06Speaker 04

  Well, the one that's really kind of stood out to me, and it was recommended by a former colleague of mine from Blackrock, is 4,000 Weeks.

• 1:16:13Barry Ritholtz?

  So good.

• 1:16:13Speaker 04

  So good. And as someone who's tried to optimize my life many times in the past, but have had a couple of health setbacks and things like that, this was a great reminder that getting through the to do list is not the goal.

• 1:16:27Barry Ritholtz?

  Right. Oliver Burke, something like that? The line that I remember from that book was 4,000 weeks is about 80 years is human lifespan. Human life is insultingly brief. And that phrase just stood out.

• 1:16:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. And this idea that we are all every day approaching our death is actually empowering. Instead of discouraging. If you know that you don't have infinite time, you make better decisions, frankly.

• 1:16:58Barry Ritholtz?

  Scarcity is an important economic thesis.

• 1:17:00Speaker 04

  Absolutely. But you cut out the stuff that's not important and you focus on the things. The people and the experiences that are. And anyway, I love this book.

• 1:17:10Barry Ritholtz?

  Yeah, no, I totally agree. Final two questions.

• 1:17:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:17:14Barry Ritholtz?

  What sort of advice would you give to a recent college grad interested in a career of, normally I would say whatever the person's specific specialty is, but you've done so much across consulting and strategy and buy side and sell side and hedge funds and portfolio management and now chief investment strategy, someone interested in just finance or wealth management?

• 1:17:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I would say the most important thing is to keep an open mind. One of the most frustrating things, you know, young graduates and even young graduates from business school or other graduate programs is that they have like a path in mind, you know, in three or five years, I expect to be here in 10 years. And I say, keep an open mind because there's so much disruption and so much change across these industries. You can't have a mapped out plan. Your goal is to be a sponge and to learn and learn and learn. And also to be patient, honestly, Barry, I'd say this a lot because, you know, you've got some like really smart 23, 24, 28 year old who, you know, wants to find out what's over the next hill. And I want to remind them, you know, if the actuarial

• 1:18:21Speaker 04

  tables are even somewhat right, they have 70 more years of life ahead of them.

• 1:18:25Barry Ritholtz?

  That's right.

• 1:18:25Speaker 04

  And they don't need to rush. They can enjoy the moment of learning, enjoy the experience and understanding that not just they'll have the opportunity to pivot, they'll have the mandate to pivot as, you know, industries get disrupted and technology evolves.

• 1:18:39Barry Ritholtz?

  Fascinating. And our final question.

• 1:18:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:41Barry Ritholtz?

  What is it that you know about the world of investing today you wish you knew 25, 30 years ago when you were first getting started?

• 1:18:50Speaker 04

  I thought there was a more systematic way to approach investing when I first started, you know, close to three decades ago. And now I understand that true investing is both art and science. Maybe that's the reason why I think I'll stay in this business for the rest of my life because I'm constantly intellectually challenged. To not get frustrated if a model doesn't work out. In fact, sometimes the process of going through creating a model or a piece of analysis. Or going down a rabbit hole in research that doesn't yield anything this year may actually be really helpful for me in three years or help to reframe my thought process. So understanding that it's not perfect and that it's art and science.

• 1:19:29Barry Ritholtz?

  Huh, really, really interesting. Thanks, Kate, for being so generous with your time. We have been speaking with Kate Moore. She is the Chief Investment Officer at Citi Wealth, helping to oversee over a trillion dollars in assets. If you enjoy this conversation, well, check out any of the 540 or so we've done over the past 11 years. You can find those at iTunes, Spotify, Bloomberg, YouTube, wherever you find your favorite podcasts. And be sure and check out my new book, How Not to Invest: The Ideas, Numbers, and Behaviors That Destroy Wealth and How to Avoid Them. How Not to Invest, wherever you find your favorite books.

• 1:20:14Barry Ritholtz?

  I would be remiss if I did not thank the crack team that helps put these conversations together each week. Steve Gonzalez is my audio engineer. Anna Luke is my producer. Sean Russo is my researcher. Sage Baumann is the head of podcasts here at Bloomberg. I'm Barry Ritholtz. You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.

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