Kathy Kellert

Certainly, we are monitoring very closely the conflict in Iran currently.

And we have looked, worked with our colleagues in our research group to help investors make sense of what this could mean for their portfolio and what we've found.

So my colleagues in the research teams looked back at geopolitical events going back to the 1960s.

And

After each sell-off, they start looking at how have equity markets performed following those sell-offs.

And what they found is that within six and 12 months, if you look at history, we've gotten back to positive returns.

So we like to zoom out and help people understand, yes, we can't predict exactly where we're going to be six or 12 months, but

History tells us that being patient, sticking with your strategy and not getting distracted by the short-term events will help you with your long-term goals.

I think that indexing has continued to be a proven strategy and that we have seen investors, millions of investors benefit from indexing and that low cost diversification over time.

But that being said, I believe there's a role for active in portfolios as well, and the two can complement each other very well.

The key, though, and you were going there because Vanguard, as you said, were big proponents of low fees.

When we're talking about how you think about active managers, we're very focused on making sure that not only do we believe the manager has that

edge or really has that manager skill they can deliver over time, but also that they have very manageable low-cost fees.

Because as you and I know, every dollar you pay in fees, that's a dollar away from your return.

And even small costs in your portfolio can really compound and add up over time.

So my view is active and passive and complement, but the fees have to make sense.

Yeah, we often see one of two strategies.

Either you could use these low-cost index funds as a total portfolio solution where your whole portfolio is made up of index funds.

We also see what you mentioned as a core satellite strategy.

And that's where you're using the index fund to get that broad market exposure to make sure you're very well diversified.