Jon Quast

I'm zooming out.

And when investment banking is humming, the economy is strong, look, for good businesses, that's a good thing.

There's nothing to complain about with that.

But there are some incentive structures that push

more things in this space, and so bad things can slip through.

As one example, I'm a little bit suspicious of IPOs right now.

I think that there are good companies that can come public right now, but there are also some bad companies, perhaps, that are seeing a window of opportunity and saying, hey, let's go ahead and get through now while the getting is good.

For example, a lot of special purpose acquisition companies have come public in recent months

That's a blank check, not really a business there.

Who knows what that's going to be?

I think a company like Fermi, this is a data center play, but without data centers yet.

It's looking way out into a decade into the future.

Can it work out?

Certainly can.

But is it

a little bit more risky than perhaps we would see in other times.

I think it is.

I think that discretion is a very important quality for investors to have, particularly with IPOs when investment banking is strong.

Similarly, I'm suspicious of merger and acquisition deals.

Good companies can pull these off.