Circle is the latest IPO to spark optimism on Wall Street, soaring in its nice debut on Thursday. Mark, let's continue to discuss the IPO market because I know that there is so much hopeum about this kind of release of deal making. What is it going to take for that to really start to happen?

Well, we're seeing some of it, right? We need stocks to work. And the IPO names that have gone public in 2025 have outperformed the stock market. That's the first thing. The second thing is I think they need to broaden out and um, a lot of people think of the IPO market as the tech market. It's not just the tech market. Um, the insurance market, which we've been thankful citizens to be part of another deal launched on the IPO, uh, as on the IPO road show this week. And so there's going to be more of that and I think there's going to be a widening of the marketplace. But deals have to work. I like I said, I've been doing this a while. Uh, you rarely hear the buyers of those IPOs say we want more. Usually they're like, slow it down. They're saying they want more. I like I said in the last segment, I think that people who played the magnificent seven have done really, really well the last five years. It's particularly the last few years. That's probably not going to be the answer for the next five years. And this market's going to widen out and if it widens out they need new names. And some of the benefit of that will come to the IPO window. And I think it will widen out. We're seeing that at citizens.

But even that is a fascinating point. The idea that you're basically saying we need more names added to the S&P because there's not really a second best choice to the Mag 7. We need new meat to get that second best choice.

Yes, I mean the last few years you had to get the mag 7 right and some of them within the mag 7, right? If you played meta, um, if you were a waiting much higher than the S&P and meta, you won. Same thing with Nvidia. Same thing, um, if you underweighted some of the names that really weren't participants, that was the one, that was how you won the last five years. I don't think that's the case for the next few years. The market will have to widen out. You're going to have all these new cyber names, all these new AI names, all these new crypto names that are going to be a bigger part of the S&P and the bigger part of the waiting and getting those right. Um, and one thing I I you know, Warren Buffet, who retired as you know recently, um, said very eloquently, which is he didn't get them all right. You know, if you look at the outperformance of what he got right, it was a couple of three five names. and of course he said it very modestly, he said for the course of my years, I got a lot wrong but I got a few right. And of course that's not true. He got a few right. But the ones he got right, he got really, really right. And that's really what the markets, as a portfolio manager, as somebody who invests, you do not have to get them all right. You have to cap your losers, but you got to pick a few names and get them right and outperform.

I love that framework because it also makes investing feel a little bit more approachable for folks that you don't have to be, you know, this incredible genius necessarily. You just got to get a few right. I do want to get your take on MNA activity more broadly here. We have Qualcomm buying Alphawave, uh the Qualcomm stock continuing to move to the upside, I believe, off the back of that deal, the street being happy with it. To what extent do you think that is a signal about increased deal making?

the public companies making big acquisitions is a big deal. Last week we had Blueprint, uh, biotech being taken out for a 30% premium. I think it's an important catalyst for the markets. I think this normalcy, which we talked about again, I hadn't heard the word normal for a very long time, is what the market wants. I think that will be a catalyst for M&A. Um, I do think the back half, um, will benefit from this normalization of the marketplace. And um, I I I think it's really important that the public companies see that kind of value even at these premiums. They see that as their catalyst for growth and I think that's an important statement by them and it's that's good for the overall market.

And you're in California. You're talking about AI all the time. To what extent are you hearing from folks that there still is concern about deep seek? Is that still coming up in conversations?

Yeah, it definitely does. I I think less so. Um, I think I I I Wonder why, why that why have we moved past? Because we you know, there's an old Mark Twain line, 90% of the things I worry about never happened. Um, and I think that's part of it. Um, uh, I don't think it's slowed down the investment dollars, um, and there's just the amount of money that is being raised in the private side has not slowed down. And I think that's a really important, um, statement that people still see that. We've also started to see some of the people who are a little long and they went overweight in private. Um, we've seen that with some of the universities and endowments that are really want to get more liquid and there's a market for that too. And you're going to see that in the next couple quarters and years. I think people who feel like their exposure is too high, there's plenty people who price that properly, they're going to make a lot of money when they buy those. And that's happening too.

That's a helpful. Uh, I'm going to keep that in mind for upcoming story. So thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for the context, Mark.