We

continue to be resilient. I think I've talked a lot about this. If you look at the backdrop, we still have a lot of cash the sidelines when we got that 50 basis point rate cut. A lot of that cash is now looking and considering reinvestment risk and putting it into whether it's parts of the fixed income market or into the equity market. I think we also have two things happening within the market today, both earnings resiliency. We have record profitability within the U.S. equity market right now. And I also think the last part is with that backdrop of rates coming down, disinflationary forces, could we have some volatility within the data and argue over some of the prints? Certainly. But I think for all of those reasons, we're seeing the market continue to grind higher. And I do think there's an element today of some election odds in terms of maybe more of a Trump favor when you look at financials and other parts of the market. But I think it continues to be positive.

Okay, let's just hit on that for a second, the election, because the market has, for the most part, not been paying attention, right? Although there are some out there now who say, well, this move up is trying to anticipate whether Trump's going to win or not. Loeb, Daniel Loeb of Third Point, put out his most recent investor letter today, in which I'm going to quote from, where he says, we believe that the likelihood of a Republican victory in the White House has increased, which would have a positive impact on certain sectors and the market overall. Accordingly, we have increased certain positions that could benefit from such a scenario via both stock and option purchases. We continue to shift our portfolio away from companies that will not. No evidence of recession, says Loeb in this letter. Goes on to say, quote, we believe healthy consumer spending and active levels of individual investing should provide a liquidity backdrop to sustain market levels. We think this setup is a particularly good one for event-driven investing. He obviously is referencing a Republican in the White House, meaning you have an easier path for deal-making and the events that he is trying to look forward to and the way that he sees this market and how it may go in the months ahead. On that note alone, because he's obviously pretty positive on the backdrop, you say what? So let's assume that Dan is correct and that President Trump wins

the election. The first question for me as a steward of capital is, does he carry Congress and Senate with him? Because in that case, then you're talking about impactful legislation that could potentially be implemented. Beyond that, look, whoever wins on November 5th is being handed a very good economy to work with. Let's be clear on that. So the question is, do you fumble a good economy or do you accelerate the growth that we're seeing right now and expand upon that? The areas of the market that I think would benefit most, if in fact you see the Republicans have a sweep, are the areas of the market that are rallying right now. So the market is beginning to price in the potential of a Republican majority. In addition to that, I think you're looking at much lower energy prices, and I think that energy would be utilized almost as a weapon against some of the bad actors in the world who are so reliant on the high price of oil.

I mean, Jason, let's just take the environment as it is today. Just take the election out of it. Economy, good. Consumer, good. I mean, you got retail sales today. And the Fed's cutting rates. And

you want to be negative against that? Yeah, 100 percent, Scott. So it's hard to fight the tape in that environment. Right. Philly Fed was really solid today. Retail sales are strong. Claims came in lighter than expected. Good news is good news. And to your point, Scott, the Fed is very much engaged in policy. We have Bostic and Waller. We heard the commentary from them. They're on the other side of the tape in terms of what they potentially want to do with rates. But 91 percent chance that we're going to lower rates again in November. So when you look at that and to Chris's point, when you look at profitability and earnings thus far, it's a positive tape. It's hard to fight this.

Let's just assume, Chris, that the Fed is not as aggressive in cutting as we once thought. You know, we still think we're going to get two cuts between now and the end of the year. Even if we were only to get one, it's because the Fed would believe that it has the luxury of a strong economy.

Being in a strong economy.

Inflation coming down. They have the luxury of kind of doing what they want right now. This

is why I think the market isn't paying as much attention to the Fed right now. When we look at what's driving the market, it is earnings. It is election odds. The Fed, if we get one 25 basis point, two 25 basis point cuts, ultimately, they're looking at that balance of whether policy is still restrictive. And when you look at the prevailing rate versus inflation, there is some room to come down. How quickly they do that, people may be over-anticipating that, but I don't think that's going to drive the ultimate trajectory for equity markets right now. It really is about fundamentals, earnings, and then to Joe's point of, is the market starting to price on the potential of a red sweep and what that could mean in terms of reflationary trades that we even saw in the 10-year today, which you could say, is that positive economic data or is that actually a red sweep? You could argue both.

I mean, then on top of the economy and the consumer and rate cuts, you have a belief like what, you know, Todd Boley told me during our exclusive interview out in Beverly Hills. I think we have that soundbite on M&A. I mean, I mentioned, you know, Loeb talking about event-driven investing. If you have a market that's going to be reopened, and for all intents and purposes, that's what it would be, because dealmaking has been so difficult that that would be helpful to the environment too. Listen. I

think we're in the process of having lots of M&A get started. I think we're seeing more and more activity. I think we're seeing people want to transact. People have to kind of get back to the transaction business. So across our portfolio, we're seeing lots of merger and consolidation discussions going on. I think some of them are in their earlier days, but I think the animal spirits are coming back and people want to get back to it. I

mean, you want to put that on top of everything else?

First of all, phenomenal interview. Todd is exactly right. The animal spirits are coming back and they will intensify further with the Republican sweep for sure. A tremendous amount of M&A is kind of sitting there.

You don't even need a Republican sweep. I mean, if you have the president under control by the Republicans, you don't need a sweep to have a change in the FTC or other areas of the market where you can actually get, you know, deals done. That's the view. No,

you don't need a whole sweep of Congress. You're correct on that. But. Add upon that, the potential for a lower corporate tax rate, the removal of the tax on buybacks and collectively, that's an environment where you're going to see corporate activity, the behavior of corporate activity increase.

anticipatory kind of gridlock market, where even if you have, you know, if former President Trump wins the current election, but then you have gridlock in Congress, you maybe don't have the degree of spending that the former president's talking about in terms of tax cuts upon tax cuts upon tax cuts upon tax cuts when we're, you know, still hearing about the deficit and interest rates, especially on the long end of trying to finance the deficit in and of itself. Markets like gridlock, we know that. I've got people still chasing targets like Goldman, their trading desk. Scott Rubner a couple of weeks ago said that 6,000 might be low. So he goes to 6270, which he thinks could happen year end. Yeah.

No, Scott. So I mean, for me, when we talk about private equity and what's going on in capital markets, listen, we've been talking about this troughing for some time. If we look at, as an example, Goldman Sachs, their report, blowout report, IB revenue was up 20% year over year, right? Again, off of terrible numbers, but going into 25 directionally and we know what's going on with rates, obviously it's stimulative to the economy and it's a sound environment for private

equity and deal making. So I like that opportunity. So we're at we're at 5850. We'll call it that, Chris, on the S&P as we have this conversation. 6270 is where this gentleman thinks we can go to. I mean, the highest target before that. Now, this is not an official strategist target, but nonetheless, it's out there. Brian Belsky's got 6,100. What seems reasonable in your mind?