Downtown Josh Brown

I mean, think of all the things that have gone wrong over the last five years and the equity market is 70% higher.

So this is the trick, I think, of investing that when you study history, like you understand all the risks, all the headlines, like all the problems that can go wrong and your downside risk is, well, what if they don't go wrong in the way that you think that they will?

then you give up on average returns of 8% a year, which is one of the few asset classes that can actually keep pace with inflation.

So I think that's the tug of the riddle with equity investing.

Oh, it always goes back and forth.

But the problem is the data.

I think that that's what's helpful, right?

If you say, like, consumer confidence is at all-time lows, like, is that a problem?

And you go, well, wait a minute.

You'd actually rather be buying equities when consumer confidence is low relative to high.

Right?

I mean, but same thing with uncertainty.

Like, we got this with tariffs originally, you know, last year when people were like – and I had a lot of diversified portfolio managers come to me and say –

Denise, this is a very uncertain environment.

In an uncertain environment, corporate America is not going to spend.

If they don't spend, jobs aren't going to grow.

And you say, okay, well, we can measure all of those things and we can see if that's true.

And the interesting part is when you quartile out uncertainty, the more uncertain the environment, the higher the odds of the stock market advancing.

And the higher the odds that corporate America hires and the higher the odds that there's capital spending.

Nobody.