Jonathan Gray

The other thing I'd say around inflation is that our data is pretty encouraging in certain areas.

Rental housing, the biggest component in CPI.

Our data says it's running about half of the 3.6%, what the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces, and that should be helpful for the Fed.

Also, we've seen a cooling in the labor market.

If you look at hourly wages at our portfolio companies, they're down around 3% from north of 4% a year ago.

So I think that should allow the Fed to continue to lower rates.

That's a positive.

So I think some settlement of the tariffs, continued good data on CPI and rates coming down should be helpful.

And overall, that environment does feel pretty good.

Obviously, there can be risks along the way.

We're in the midst of a government shutdown that can slow things like IPOs in the short term.

But when we look out over the horizon, it feels pretty good for deals.

Well, it's hard to look at stocks day to day.

We focus on the long term for our shareholders.

I think our total return is something like three and a half times over the last five years, double the stock market.

So shareholders have been rewarded for investing with Blackstone.

We, of course, are very aligned with them as the largest shareholders of the company.

I think in markets, when people are nervous about what's happening, there have been a lot of these stories around private credit, which I'm happy to talk about.

That may have created concern.

Maybe people have been focused on the government shutdown and the IPO market slowing or the tariffs causing that.