Aoifinn Devitt: This series is kindly supported by GCM Grosvenor. GCM Grosvenor is a global alternative asset management firm with a longstanding commitment to supporting small, emerging, and diverse investment managers. For over 30 years, the firm has developed expertise in funding and guiding these managers as part of its broader activity across alternative investments. With over $20 billion in AUM dedicated to small and emerging managers, and $16 billion in AUM dedicated to diverse managers, GCM Grosvenor leverages its experienced team, broad network, and proprietary sourcing capabilities to support their success. Through the Small, Emerging, and Diverse Manager Program, the firm creates opportunities for investors to access a wide range of talent while seeking to drive strong returns and impact. For more information, visit www.gcmgrovenor.com.
Ilya: My dad was a big influence on me in terms of the way I think. He used to always say, “What do you know for sure?” or take things back to formula. So if you had a question about how something worked, dissect it back to what do I really know for sure here? We tend to avoid looking at difficult problems and assuming around them. And so he was very good at just not doing that. And I think, you know, you find that a lot of the answers you’re looking for are right in front of you. You just don’t want to look there.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces Podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people. And their stories. I’m joined today by Ilya Zaidis, CIO and founder of 14b. He started his career as a lawyer, eventually transitioning to an allocator role within two leading hedge fund allocators. He then made a switch into fund management, founding the fund 15 years ago. Welcome, Ilya. Thanks for joining me today.
Ilya: Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, let’s start with your background and career journey. Can you start with where you grew up, some of your early interests, and how you came to enter the world of law initially?
Ilya: Okay, well, a lot of that was frankly by accident. So I was born in the former Soviet Union and my family immigrated to the United States in 1975. We moved to Orange County in California, which was where I grew up. And at that time, that was kind of a backwater. It was halfway between LA and San Diego, mostly known for its orange groves. My parents were trained as scientists under the old Soviet system, and my mom is a chemist, my dad was a physicist. But neither of them had any true passion for those fields. And it took them a long time to sort of figure out what they were doing work-wise. And I grew up sort of in a quintessential immigrant family where it was expected that I get an education that was aimed towards a career goal. So I looked around me and saw that all the successful people that I knew in our town were either doctors or lawyers. So I decided I’d be a lawyer. I was probably around 11 or 12 at that time, and kind of off I went. I ended up in law school in New York at NYU, and the first week of law school, I realized I had made a really big mistake. But with sort of my immigrant mentality, I just sort of kept at it for the next 10 years. So that’s kind of how I ended up as a lawyer. And, you know, I practiced for quite a long time, and it really In a lot of ways, you know, the finance was something I sort of discovered, I would say, sometime in college. I distinctly remember reading The Economist article on George Soros and how he broke the Bank of England. And I remember where I was reading that article, and it just sort of set off a light in my head. I didn’t know what to do about it, but it made me feel like there was something out there that I needed to learn more about. And so I spent a lot of time just reading anything I could get my hands on in terms of the finance world.
Aoifinn Devitt: Just love to ask a little bit more. I think we mentioned when we chatted before the podcast that I did spend time in Russia later than when your family left, obviously. But what was instilled in you in terms of values besides that kind of hunger, the hard work that comes from the immigrant experience? Any kind of family narrative from the former Soviet Union that race, your family, that you internalized?
Ilya: Well, so a couple of thoughts there. When I left the Soviet Union, I was 2 years old, so I didn’t get to experience it all firsthand in the same way that my parents and grandparents lived through it. But it obviously was very impactful in the way that I was raised and the way that they thought and the things that went on inside the house. So I’d say that the first thing was a real core belief in that, you know, there was a lot of just— I don’t know how else to put it— fear in the former Soviet Union. And the one way that I think that people equalized for that fear or rationalized their lives for that fear was really to work hard at some kind of task, to be good at something. And whether it took their minds off of the fear that they experienced in their daily lives or whether or not it was truly a method of survival during periods of time when people’s lives really weren’t valued highly by that society. So I think there was a real emphasis on learning something valuable and doing it well. And that translated down to me, I think. And that plus just the general, I would say, immigrant experience is always one I would would I say, of an outsider, where you feel very much that you have to prove yourself, prove your worth. And I think that goes for all immigrants regardless of where they come from, besides the fact that generally speaking, they’re coming from a place where wherever it is that they immigrate to, they’re seeking a better life, right? So there’s a lot that goes along with it, but I think that the general immigrant experience is always one of striving to achieve and really defining especially their early lives by career goals.
Aoifinn Devitt: And speaking of career goals, then, before we move on to what you ultimately pursued, why did you think being a lawyer was not for you? What was it about it in the first year that turned you off?
Ilya: It’s a good question. I remember the moment really well, but what it was specifically, I couldn’t tell you. I would say this: it felt like I was thinking about other people’s issues and not my own. And that I had always felt that there’s a basic concept in, certainly in American legal scholarship and in the legal system that, you know, everyone deserves representation and that you advocate for your client’s interests. And I agree with the idea, but it felt very difficult to me personally I like to believe in something and pursue that something. And it was very difficult to sort of play devil’s advocate all the time, arguing for a specific point regardless of whether or not I believed it was a good one. And the process of that, by the time I got to law school, it was no longer academic. It felt very real and it just didn’t feel right is all I can tell you.
Aoifinn Devitt: And moving then, so you made the move into finance. Finally, all that reading and that passion translated into application. And what then caused you to pivot again to found your own firm? And just in the origins 15 years ago of the fund manager and 14b.
Ilya: Sure. So, so I practiced law for almost 7 years and it got to the point where, and I was a tax lawyer, so I was very familiar with accounting and it kind of got to the point where a lot of the work I was doing for my clients, you know, it sort of started off in the frame of, I don’t really know what’s going on. I’m given a certain task, I can do the task, but the broader picture was sort of elusive. Over the years, I developed a sense of the broader picture. And what also started to develop was a sense that, well, okay, the people for whom I’m working, whether it was, you know, the bankers or other finance professionals, they didn’t see it particularly clearly either. They were also sort of doing their work and doing their task. That sort of stayed with me. By the time I started to realize that bigger picture, that, well, for lack of a better sense, I knew just as much as the guy next to me, right? I, I was working on the same transaction. I’d been doing that for years and years. By the time I got that sense, okay, I sort of had this feeling I can do this too. There’s nothing magical to it. There’s nothing particularly complicated or elusive about it that I can’t participate in. So in order to get into the finance field, I sort of had to take a step back. So, you know, I had had, call it 10 years of experience out of college, 3 years in school and almost 7 years in legal practice. And I took a step back and I was working with people who had maybe 2 years of experience out of college or 3. I was approaching 30 and they were in their early 20s and they had more energy than me and they were okay with working 80, 90 hours a week again. And I was sort of at the point where I was like, well, I’d like to end that part of my life and move on to a you more, know, normal career path. So in a sense, it was just a matter of proving myself in the new field. So after a couple of years, I think that that was done, and I didn’t particularly want to get onto a career path in finance. I didn’t see that as the goal. I thought that the real interesting thing was identifying investment ideas and being able to pursue them, and that required a certain degree of freedom in order to do. There was just simply no way around it. And so that’s really the genesis and why I decided to pursue it on my own. It’s not that I didn’t feel that there was anything left to learn, although to some degree I did feel that way, that the learning had happened, the majority of the learning had happened. And so really it was a matter of finding a spot to sort of develop. And I didn’t think that developing in a large organization was the right move for me, frankly. Or even necessary.
Aoifinn Devitt: And then what’s at the forefront of your mind today? Can you talk a little bit about the strategy in the firm?
Ilya: Well, most of the work we do relates to specific companies, right? So it’s really a bottoms-up approach. But at a high level, I think, you know, we’ve seen some pretty big changes in consumption patterns across a wide range of companies. I’d sort of branded as stimulated excess. A lot of it comes from the decade of zero rate policy. But I think that the pandemic really added fuel to the fire. A statistic I often cite is, you know, during the 2020 to 2023 period, government spending added about 7% per year to GDP while, you know, the money supply grew by about 40%. So I don’t know if all of that was necessary or not. Given the circumstances at the time. But there’s no doubt that that stimulus drove a massive increase in consumption. And I think that it’s hard to imagine that there’s not going to be a very large and significant hangover that’s roughly equivalent to the party that took place. And I think that we’re just at the beginning of that, both in terms of the scale, the magnitude, and the time that it’s going to take And one of the things that concerns me the most about that is that that excess spending has become to some degree habitualized. So now it looks like consumers, you know, especially younger consumers, have taken on a large amount of debt to keep up their consumption habits that they’ve grown acclimated to over the previous sort of, you know, 5 or 6 years. And I just don’t see that ending well. And I worry a lot about the younger generation’s ability to service their debt loads over time, and especially how that affects their ability to make good life choices. I mean, I think that one of the lucky things that I experienced was because of my immigrant background, I was frugal. And when I was in my 30s and still young enough and dumb enough to you make, know, risky changes, I was not financially strapped to the point where I couldn’t do that, or it was just irrational for me to try. And I think that that has been stripped from a lot of people in this younger generation. I don’t see that as a good thing at all, and I think that it’s not likely to end well. It’s likely to end in an exacerbation of social imbalances and general strife that can’t be easily corrected. It’s going to take decades to wean that out of the system. So that’s kind of the thing I’m thinking about from a big picture perspective.
Aoifinn Devitt: And how does that translate then into a portfolio? How do you express that concern of big picture looming strife, I And, suppose? You know, how do you kind of counter that with the short-term exuberance that we’re all feeling?
Ilya: Yeah, well, I mean, that’s the challenge. I think that, One of the big challenges I find in investing is not to allow your personal view of things to cloud your ability to make decisions from an investment perspective, especially over, say, the medium term. Since I was a child in the early ’80s, right, when we had the Reagan-Thatcher revolution, people have been calling for, you know, an end to the debt cycle, right? Maybe because that’s really when the big debt cycle got going. And if you waited on your hands for the last— I don’t know, what has it been now, 40 years? I you think, know, you’ve suffered by sitting still and doing nothing. So it’s a challenge not to take all the big picture considerations into account when making investment decisions. But that said, I do think there are pockets of opportunity that have been created from what we’ve seen in the last few years. I think one of my favorite examples of the speculative excess is in SPACs, which are special purpose acquisition companies. They’ve been sort of a backwater in finance for quite a long time now. Nobody’s really talked about them until fairly recently. Over, say, the 5 years before 2020, you had about $5 billion a year on average in SPAC issuance. And then in 2021, 2022, over that 2-year period, you had $250 billion done. So call it 50 times the average over that previous 5 years. In sum, right, that $250 billion was more than all of the SPAC issuance that was ever done in all history of SPACs. And I would say the vast majority of these companies have absolutely no business being in the public markets. Most of them have little or no revenue. I would say that the vast, vast majority have ridiculous business models, business models that really you can’t hope to achieve any sense of sustainable profitability. Over any reasonable company lifetime. And then there’s frauds, outright frauds. So there is a huge pool of these companies, and typically it takes them about 3 to 4 years to burn off the capital that they’ve raised. So you’re about halfway through that process and that cycle, and I think it’s a ripe place for finding short ideas. So that’s one thing that sort of comes to mind from that speculative excess that’s actionable. I also think that the excesses have sort of a ringing effect in the sense that the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater from time to time. And I’m not talking about just SPACs, but generally that sort of happens with speculative excess. It swings hot and it swings cold. Those are more bespoke opportunities, but they’re still available. And so there is value to be found, but it’s more kind of one-offs, baby getting thrown out with the bathwater type of situations.
Aoifinn Devitt: What is it that you think is creating these excesses over and over again is causing memories to be so short and letting— we see this with governance as well— the same mistakes to basically repeat every cycle? How do you think the excesses aren’t detected?
Ilya: Well, that’s a good question. I do think that it is human nature. A friend of mine likes to joke. He says, you know, we live and we learn, but we don’t. We live and we make the same mistakes over and over and over again. We’re prone to making the same mistakes. I think that’s human nature to a large degree. So I’m not sure that they can be wrung out of the system entirely. I do think that once we started off on a debt cycle, that to a large degree, the road was laid. It’s very difficult, I think, for a society to pull back on consumption, on debt. Those things typically end in either massive inflation, austerity, which is very difficult, and ultimately, probably some forms of civil unrest. I don’t know that that’s really preventable. I think it’s really the human experience. And we’re lucky to have lived in a time of general stability. And if we’re lucky, the period of general stability will last a lot longer than we expect. But I do think that those types of excesses, they’ve been laid, that road has been laid, and there’s not a lot of ways around it. Productivity would help. Great invention, right? Thoughtful spending of capital that drives return. I don’t just mean financial spending, but, you know, innovation and development. Those things will help. But ultimately, I think that the next, call it 30, 40 years, are unlikely to be as calm and peaceful financially as the past 30, 40. I just don’t see that.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, before we go to fourth turning in this conversation, let’s go back to the business and the experience you’ve had with clients and how their needs are changing, as well as the fundraising experience, obviously 15 years now on your own in some form. How has that experience on the fundraising side been? How do you find that the clients’ needs are evolving?
Ilya: So in a sense, I’m lucky that we’ve been in business since really the end of 2008, early 2009. And we’ve curated a client base that knows us fairly well, and what they expect from us is returns performance. And I think we’ve been pretty successful in delivering that. So I think that is first and foremost in our clients’ minds. I had in, in 14b is really a spin-out of, of my former firm, which is KG. KG, I had a business partner and he and I separated at the end of 2021. And so that was a splitting off, some of our clients left and we’ve been sort of rebuilding ever since. But I would say that for the new clients that we’re speaking to, you know, they have very different sort of issues. They, they certainly look to us and our performance as something that they’re interested in, but they also have particular issues that they’re dealing with. So for example, one of the big ones that I’m sure everybody’s heard about at this point is the overallocation to private equity. And so whether or not that works out okay or not, I’m not here to tell you. But what I would say is that, you know, the illiquidity in people’s books as it’s allocated to equity is a real issue for them. And so that’s something that they’re dealing with that really doesn’t have much to do with us specifically, but it’s difficult for them to reallocate to say public equity, which is what we are known for when they’re so deeply embedded with the privates. Also, I think that the fact that we now have an interest rate, know, you I think Jim Grant put it really well. He was like, well, finally I have an interest rate to observe, right? That changes the dynamic for a lot of investors and their allocations, right? You can make a reasonably good return now in credit and in fixed income. And so I think that that takes up a lot of people’s attention and rightly so. Some of the clients that we talked to over the years have expressed a broader interest in sort of an educational capacity, right? They want to get more information from their investment managers. We’re happy to do what we can in that degree, but it’s really not how we’re set up as a small firm Right? We have our hands full with investing and just making the returns, and we’re happy to explain to people what we’re doing and how we’re thinking. But a lot of them seem to have gone to the larger firms, which they use for educational purposes. So that, I think, is a big theme that we’re seeing.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s really interesting. And then you’re speaking earlier about the immigrant experience and the feeling of an outsider. And one of the focuses of this podcast series is around the financial services industry, investment in particular. How inclusive it is and how it deals with outsiders and includes them and embraces them. What would you say, just your assessment of the industry, given how long you’ve been in it and you started out in law, which is not dissimilar, how would you assess the inclusivity, the diversity of the industry today?
Ilya: Well, it’s interesting. I would say as compared to the legal profession, the finance profession is terrible at inclusivity. I’ll just give you an example. So today, I think the majority, I think a slight majority, but a majority of graduates from law school are women. And so the legal industry has been, and this has been a consistent theme that’s basically emerged since the 1970s. And so the legal industry has taken that reality into account and it has changed its ways of operating in a way that accommodates women better. Because again, the majority of their professionals are either women or going to be women in the next decade or so. There are meaningful differences that I’ve noticed between the legal profession and the finance profession, even though we’re so closely linked. One obvious example is how the legal profession treats maternity leave, which I think is probably the biggest single matter as it affects women’s careers. I know My wife has experienced that directly where you go on maternity leave and you sort of take a step back and you’re viewed as a part-time professional or you’re viewed as having two jobs or something, something of this nature. Whereas with men, it’s not been the same. And it’s a big divide, I think, between the legal profession and the finance profession. And honestly, it’s ridiculous because all that the financial profession has done is limit its pool of talent. Whereas in the legal world, which is by no means a less demanding field than finance, it’s simply, I think, done a better job. So I actually think they’re quite different if you peel back the onion. And I don’t have easy fixes, but I would say that the notion of maternity leave, both for men and for women, paternity leave, we really don’t have a concept of paternity leave in the United States. We do have minor maternity leave, but I think it really needs to get better embedded in society if you want to take advantage of the broader workforce.
Aoifinn Devitt: So, no, it’s a good point and a good, I suppose, point of differentiation between some European work practices and the US. I suppose not every European country is Scandinavian in its approach. But there’s certainly quite a bit of difference, and I suppose a different level. And I think it probably takes a generation to change attitudes, but maybe the hybrid working COVID has done something, as well as some high-profile tech executives taking— and government officials taking paternity leave. So I suppose it’s about role modeling, which is again getting back to the purpose of this podcast, is role modeling, inspiring people with different approaches and backgrounds. So In that vein, I’d love to move to some reflections now. And we’ve spoken a bit about your background and upbringing. Looking back at your career so far, would you say there were any highs and lows in there that you can tell us about?
Ilya: Sure. Well, I mean, I think one of the biggest challenges I faced certainly recently is the sort of separation from my former firm and partner and rebuilding the new firm. It’s been both very challenging and also gratifying. I think that the best part about it, frankly, is being able to reconstruct an investment firm that I think works for the future. It does incorporate a lot more hybrid work that serves, frankly, everybody. And look, what do we do for a living as finance professionals? We meet people. We can do that effectively either on Zoom, or we can travel. Nothing prevents us from meeting face to face. But the vast majority of the meetings that we do these days are really over Zoom. And honestly, that’s not that much different than what we used to do by phone. But the ability to work from home, I think, is a major change because, I mean, let’s be frank, what do we do? We read and we push buttons for a living. We can do that in almost any location. And I think one of the big arguments that I used to hear was something along the lines of, well, if you’re not watching them, then how do you know they’re working? And my answer to that was, if you’re afraid that they’re not working when you’re not watching them, you really did hire the wrong person. That’s, if your job is to watch people work, I mean, that’s a pretty bad job, frankly. So that’s been both a challenge and frankly a really great opportunity. And it’s been quite rewarding because I think we’ve been pretty successful. We run a, at this point, a completely virtual work environment. And one of our partners, she had a baby within the last 12 months and she was able to work at her pace through that period. And I think frankly, we got much more out of her allowing her to work at her pace than requiring her to commute in, show face time, and work in some kind of framework that served everyone and no one at the same time. It sounds very communist to me.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s the beauty of a small firm, I suppose. I mean, the beauty and the challenge of a small firm in that wide-scale maternity and paternity leave could not be maybe sustainable. In a small firm, but equally the flexibility, the tailoring of approaches to individual personalities, and ultimately, as you said, hiring the right people and getting it right from the beginning is something that you can ensure in a small firm.
Ilya: Yeah, and I also think it requires a certain level of seniority for it to work because for younger people, they need sort of a forum in which they to some degree need people to look over their shoulder to give them course corrections. Otherwise they spend a lot of time flailing, I would say, you know, working on things that they’re not sure if it’s productive or not because they’re really just sort of learning the ropes. So it’s, it’s much more effective, I think, with a more senior team. But your point is well taken. It’s, it’s also probably much, much more difficult in a larger environment.
Aoifinn Devitt: And then in a similar vein, thinking about setbacks and challenges that you experienced and lessons learned, I suppose, maybe more in the kind of the wisdom of the years now, what have you taken from some of those setbacks and The reason we include this section is because I think that we’re not all going to have the same setbacks. So it’s important to learn from others so we don’t have to step in the same puddle twice.
Ilya: Well, I think that the major life lesson I learned that applies to business and life equally, but certainly in business, is what really matters is the people you surround yourself with and who you’re working with. Your people are most certainly your greatest asset and potentially your greatest liability. So that choice as to who you work with is crucial, absolutely crucial. I have plenty of specific investment lessons, but when it comes to business in general, that lesson is, gosh, it’s like, you know, the 80% rule. You know, if you pick the right people to work with, you’re going to do fine. Now, what constitutes the right people? That, that, that’s a hard question. And different people for different roles, obviously. But at the end of the day, a level of trustworthiness, work ethic, that’s probably 80% of the way there. If you find a trustworthy, hardworking person, the rest kind of does take care of itself over time. I think that would be my biggest, frankly, life lesson in business.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that’s actually gets to my next question, which is around any particular person that was a mentor or influence on you? And that could be in your personal or your professional.
Ilya: I try to learn something from everybody I work with. I really think that that is important. I do think that, you know, everybody has something to teach you, good or bad. I will tell you one person who always stands out to me was my grandmother, frankly. Her amazing ability to sort of not focus her attention on trying to figure out what it was that was driving another person. In other words, not to try to figure out what their intentions were, what their motives were, why they were doing what it was that they were doing, but rather shift your attention to surrounding yourself and working with people who you trusted, who you felt that were additive to you, and simply not to spend too much time dissecting problems. That was my grandmother. She taught me that. My former business partner was very good at seeing what I would call things as good enough. He had a great notion for that where, you know, the idea that the great or the perfect is the enemy of the good. So he had a great sense of that. My dad was a big influence on me in terms of the way I think. He used to always say, what do you know for sure? Or take things back to formula. So if you had a question about how something worked, dissect it back to what do I really know for sure here? Usually the problem is fairly simple. It’s just you don’t want to look at it. We tend to avoid looking at difficult problems and assuming around them. And so he was very good at just not doing that. And I think, you know, you find that a lot of the answers you’re looking for are right in front of you. You just don’t want to look there.
Aoifinn Devitt: I love that. I also am somebody who embraces complexity, and I think that taking it back to formula, and before this podcast is over, I want to see if you can remember how your father would’ve said that in Russian, because I do, I have spoken some Russian and I’d love to know what that expression is because.
Ilya: It’S a— Yeah, he would say it in English actually. He would say it in English with a very thick Russian accent. So it would come do out, what you think for sure?
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s wonderful. And I suppose that maybe that gets to the last question, which is usually around creed or motto or advice for your younger self or other words of wisdom you can leave us with. And I think each of those individuals has really endowed their own wisdom, but anything you can leave us with as the last thought?
Ilya: I’ll give you two of them, I guess, or maybe even three. How about three? So there’s a great quote from Henry David Thoreau, and I’ll summarize it. I won’t get the quote exactly right, but he said, ultimately, we only hit the targets we aim for. So aim high. And I think that that’s a great— certainly in investing and in life in general, great advice. I would say again, probably 80% of the mistakes you make in investing have to do with really just not setting your standards high enough. So I think that’s a really good one. I like the Japanese concept of kaizen, which, you know, it basically translates to roughly, you know, continuous improvement. I think that a lot of good work is done simply through continuing to improve. If I were to give my younger self, you know, a piece of advice, I would say stick with it. If you find something that you enjoy or it really holds your attention and you’re interested in, stick with it. Focus on continuously improving your task. The path to success isn’t usually straight or linear. There are usually many, many deviations, and the ability to constantly improve will get you there over time. That’s two good ones I think I try to live with. My fifth grade teacher actually gave me a really good piece of advice that I, I quote to people a lot, and this one I remember verbatim. She said to me, the world doesn’t care about all the adventures you have at sea, but whether or not you brought your ship to port. And I thought that one has stuck with me ever since I was 11. And I think that way too much time is wasted trying to explain the mistake that was made rather than spending that time trying to improve or fix it. You And, know, I think that that’s a hugely important concept. The world really doesn’t care.
Aoifinn Devitt: I love that. And I think I, I listen to a lot of podcasts about entrepreneurs who don’t look backwards, they look forwards. And I think that’s not the same as not learning from that mistake., but it’s about not dwelling on that mistake and I suppose not ruminating and letting it cloud them. So thank you so much, Ilya. This story looking backwards and forwards has been fascinating in terms of your own origins and how that shaped you. And equally, your perspective on finance is refreshingly modern, I’d say. So thank you for coming here and being one of the few to express it that way. Thank you for sharing your insights with us.
Ilya: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been absolutely my pleasure.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors and their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.
Aoifinn Devitt: This series is kindly supported by GCM Grosvenor. GCM Grosvenor is a global alternative asset management firm with a longstanding commitment to supporting small, emerging, and diverse investment managers. For over 30 years, the firm has developed expertise in funding and guiding these managers as part of its broader activity across alternative investments. With over $20 billion in AUM dedicated to small and emerging managers, and $16 billion in AUM dedicated to diverse managers, GCM Grosvenor leverages its experienced team, broad network, and proprietary sourcing capabilities to support their success. Through the Small, Emerging, and Diverse Manager Program, the firm creates opportunities for investors to access a wide range of talent while seeking to drive strong returns and impact. For more information, visit www.gcmgrovenor.com.
Ilya: My dad was a big influence on me in terms of the way I think. He used to always say, “What do you know for sure?” or take things back to formula. So if you had a question about how something worked, dissect it back to what do I really know for sure here? We tend to avoid looking at difficult problems and assuming around them. And so he was very good at just not doing that. And I think, you know, you find that a lot of the answers you’re looking for are right in front of you. You just don’t want to look there.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces Podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people. And their stories. I’m joined today by Ilya Zaidis, CIO and founder of 14b. He started his career as a lawyer, eventually transitioning to an allocator role within two leading hedge fund allocators. He then made a switch into fund management, founding the fund 15 years ago. Welcome, Ilya. Thanks for joining me today.
Ilya: Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, let’s start with your background and career journey. Can you start with where you grew up, some of your early interests, and how you came to enter the world of law initially?
Ilya: Okay, well, a lot of that was frankly by accident. So I was born in the former Soviet Union and my family immigrated to the United States in 1975. We moved to Orange County in California, which was where I grew up. And at that time, that was kind of a backwater. It was halfway between LA and San Diego, mostly known for its orange groves. My parents were trained as scientists under the old Soviet system, and my mom is a chemist, my dad was a physicist. But neither of them had any true passion for those fields. And it took them a long time to sort of figure out what they were doing work-wise. And I grew up sort of in a quintessential immigrant family where it was expected that I get an education that was aimed towards a career goal. So I looked around me and saw that all the successful people that I knew in our town were either doctors or lawyers. So I decided I’d be a lawyer. I was probably around 11 or 12 at that time, and kind of off I went. I ended up in law school in New York at NYU, and the first week of law school, I realized I had made a really big mistake. But with sort of my immigrant mentality, I just sort of kept at it for the next 10 years. So that’s kind of how I ended up as a lawyer. And, you know, I practiced for quite a long time, and it really In a lot of ways, you know, the finance was something I sort of discovered, I would say, sometime in college. I distinctly remember reading The Economist article on George Soros and how he broke the Bank of England. And I remember where I was reading that article, and it just sort of set off a light in my head. I didn’t know what to do about it, but it made me feel like there was something out there that I needed to learn more about. And so I spent a lot of time just reading anything I could get my hands on in terms of the finance world.
Aoifinn Devitt: Just love to ask a little bit more. I think we mentioned when we chatted before the podcast that I did spend time in Russia later than when your family left, obviously. But what was instilled in you in terms of values besides that kind of hunger, the hard work that comes from the immigrant experience? Any kind of family narrative from the former Soviet Union that race, your family, that you internalized?
Ilya: Well, so a couple of thoughts there. When I left the Soviet Union, I was 2 years old, so I didn’t get to experience it all firsthand in the same way that my parents and grandparents lived through it. But it obviously was very impactful in the way that I was raised and the way that they thought and the things that went on inside the house. So I’d say that the first thing was a real core belief in that, you know, there was a lot of just— I don’t know how else to put it— fear in the former Soviet Union. And the one way that I think that people equalized for that fear or rationalized their lives for that fear was really to work hard at some kind of task, to be good at something. And whether it took their minds off of the fear that they experienced in their daily lives or whether or not it was truly a method of survival during periods of time when people’s lives really weren’t valued highly by that society. So I think there was a real emphasis on learning something valuable and doing it well. And that translated down to me, I think. And that plus just the general, I would say, immigrant experience is always one I would would I say, of an outsider, where you feel very much that you have to prove yourself, prove your worth. And I think that goes for all immigrants regardless of where they come from, besides the fact that generally speaking, they’re coming from a place where wherever it is that they immigrate to, they’re seeking a better life, right? So there’s a lot that goes along with it, but I think that the general immigrant experience is always one of striving to achieve and really defining especially their early lives by career goals.
Aoifinn Devitt: And speaking of career goals, then, before we move on to what you ultimately pursued, why did you think being a lawyer was not for you? What was it about it in the first year that turned you off?
Ilya: It’s a good question. I remember the moment really well, but what it was specifically, I couldn’t tell you. I would say this: it felt like I was thinking about other people’s issues and not my own. And that I had always felt that there’s a basic concept in, certainly in American legal scholarship and in the legal system that, you know, everyone deserves representation and that you advocate for your client’s interests. And I agree with the idea, but it felt very difficult to me personally I like to believe in something and pursue that something. And it was very difficult to sort of play devil’s advocate all the time, arguing for a specific point regardless of whether or not I believed it was a good one. And the process of that, by the time I got to law school, it was no longer academic. It felt very real and it just didn’t feel right is all I can tell you.
Aoifinn Devitt: And moving then, so you made the move into finance. Finally, all that reading and that passion translated into application. And what then caused you to pivot again to found your own firm? And just in the origins 15 years ago of the fund manager and 14b.
Ilya: Sure. So, so I practiced law for almost 7 years and it got to the point where, and I was a tax lawyer, so I was very familiar with accounting and it kind of got to the point where a lot of the work I was doing for my clients, you know, it sort of started off in the frame of, I don’t really know what’s going on. I’m given a certain task, I can do the task, but the broader picture was sort of elusive. Over the years, I developed a sense of the broader picture. And what also started to develop was a sense that, well, okay, the people for whom I’m working, whether it was, you know, the bankers or other finance professionals, they didn’t see it particularly clearly either. They were also sort of doing their work and doing their task. That sort of stayed with me. By the time I started to realize that bigger picture, that, well, for lack of a better sense, I knew just as much as the guy next to me, right? I, I was working on the same transaction. I’d been doing that for years and years. By the time I got that sense, okay, I sort of had this feeling I can do this too. There’s nothing magical to it. There’s nothing particularly complicated or elusive about it that I can’t participate in. So in order to get into the finance field, I sort of had to take a step back. So, you know, I had had, call it 10 years of experience out of college, 3 years in school and almost 7 years in legal practice. And I took a step back and I was working with people who had maybe 2 years of experience out of college or 3. I was approaching 30 and they were in their early 20s and they had more energy than me and they were okay with working 80, 90 hours a week again. And I was sort of at the point where I was like, well, I’d like to end that part of my life and move on to a you more, know, normal career path. So in a sense, it was just a matter of proving myself in the new field. So after a couple of years, I think that that was done, and I didn’t particularly want to get onto a career path in finance. I didn’t see that as the goal. I thought that the real interesting thing was identifying investment ideas and being able to pursue them, and that required a certain degree of freedom in order to do. There was just simply no way around it. And so that’s really the genesis and why I decided to pursue it on my own. It’s not that I didn’t feel that there was anything left to learn, although to some degree I did feel that way, that the learning had happened, the majority of the learning had happened. And so really it was a matter of finding a spot to sort of develop. And I didn’t think that developing in a large organization was the right move for me, frankly. Or even necessary.
Aoifinn Devitt: And then what’s at the forefront of your mind today? Can you talk a little bit about the strategy in the firm?
Ilya: Well, most of the work we do relates to specific companies, right? So it’s really a bottoms-up approach. But at a high level, I think, you know, we’ve seen some pretty big changes in consumption patterns across a wide range of companies. I’d sort of branded as stimulated excess. A lot of it comes from the decade of zero rate policy. But I think that the pandemic really added fuel to the fire. A statistic I often cite is, you know, during the 2020 to 2023 period, government spending added about 7% per year to GDP while, you know, the money supply grew by about 40%. So I don’t know if all of that was necessary or not. Given the circumstances at the time. But there’s no doubt that that stimulus drove a massive increase in consumption. And I think that it’s hard to imagine that there’s not going to be a very large and significant hangover that’s roughly equivalent to the party that took place. And I think that we’re just at the beginning of that, both in terms of the scale, the magnitude, and the time that it’s going to take And one of the things that concerns me the most about that is that that excess spending has become to some degree habitualized. So now it looks like consumers, you know, especially younger consumers, have taken on a large amount of debt to keep up their consumption habits that they’ve grown acclimated to over the previous sort of, you know, 5 or 6 years. And I just don’t see that ending well. And I worry a lot about the younger generation’s ability to service their debt loads over time, and especially how that affects their ability to make good life choices. I mean, I think that one of the lucky things that I experienced was because of my immigrant background, I was frugal. And when I was in my 30s and still young enough and dumb enough to you make, know, risky changes, I was not financially strapped to the point where I couldn’t do that, or it was just irrational for me to try. And I think that that has been stripped from a lot of people in this younger generation. I don’t see that as a good thing at all, and I think that it’s not likely to end well. It’s likely to end in an exacerbation of social imbalances and general strife that can’t be easily corrected. It’s going to take decades to wean that out of the system. So that’s kind of the thing I’m thinking about from a big picture perspective.
Aoifinn Devitt: And how does that translate then into a portfolio? How do you express that concern of big picture looming strife, I And, suppose? You know, how do you kind of counter that with the short-term exuberance that we’re all feeling?
Ilya: Yeah, well, I mean, that’s the challenge. I think that, One of the big challenges I find in investing is not to allow your personal view of things to cloud your ability to make decisions from an investment perspective, especially over, say, the medium term. Since I was a child in the early ’80s, right, when we had the Reagan-Thatcher revolution, people have been calling for, you know, an end to the debt cycle, right? Maybe because that’s really when the big debt cycle got going. And if you waited on your hands for the last— I don’t know, what has it been now, 40 years? I you think, know, you’ve suffered by sitting still and doing nothing. So it’s a challenge not to take all the big picture considerations into account when making investment decisions. But that said, I do think there are pockets of opportunity that have been created from what we’ve seen in the last few years. I think one of my favorite examples of the speculative excess is in SPACs, which are special purpose acquisition companies. They’ve been sort of a backwater in finance for quite a long time now. Nobody’s really talked about them until fairly recently. Over, say, the 5 years before 2020, you had about $5 billion a year on average in SPAC issuance. And then in 2021, 2022, over that 2-year period, you had $250 billion done. So call it 50 times the average over that previous 5 years. In sum, right, that $250 billion was more than all of the SPAC issuance that was ever done in all history of SPACs. And I would say the vast majority of these companies have absolutely no business being in the public markets. Most of them have little or no revenue. I would say that the vast, vast majority have ridiculous business models, business models that really you can’t hope to achieve any sense of sustainable profitability. Over any reasonable company lifetime. And then there’s frauds, outright frauds. So there is a huge pool of these companies, and typically it takes them about 3 to 4 years to burn off the capital that they’ve raised. So you’re about halfway through that process and that cycle, and I think it’s a ripe place for finding short ideas. So that’s one thing that sort of comes to mind from that speculative excess that’s actionable. I also think that the excesses have sort of a ringing effect in the sense that the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater from time to time. And I’m not talking about just SPACs, but generally that sort of happens with speculative excess. It swings hot and it swings cold. Those are more bespoke opportunities, but they’re still available. And so there is value to be found, but it’s more kind of one-offs, baby getting thrown out with the bathwater type of situations.
Aoifinn Devitt: What is it that you think is creating these excesses over and over again is causing memories to be so short and letting— we see this with governance as well— the same mistakes to basically repeat every cycle? How do you think the excesses aren’t detected?
Ilya: Well, that’s a good question. I do think that it is human nature. A friend of mine likes to joke. He says, you know, we live and we learn, but we don’t. We live and we make the same mistakes over and over and over again. We’re prone to making the same mistakes. I think that’s human nature to a large degree. So I’m not sure that they can be wrung out of the system entirely. I do think that once we started off on a debt cycle, that to a large degree, the road was laid. It’s very difficult, I think, for a society to pull back on consumption, on debt. Those things typically end in either massive inflation, austerity, which is very difficult, and ultimately, probably some forms of civil unrest. I don’t know that that’s really preventable. I think it’s really the human experience. And we’re lucky to have lived in a time of general stability. And if we’re lucky, the period of general stability will last a lot longer than we expect. But I do think that those types of excesses, they’ve been laid, that road has been laid, and there’s not a lot of ways around it. Productivity would help. Great invention, right? Thoughtful spending of capital that drives return. I don’t just mean financial spending, but, you know, innovation and development. Those things will help. But ultimately, I think that the next, call it 30, 40 years, are unlikely to be as calm and peaceful financially as the past 30, 40. I just don’t see that.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, before we go to fourth turning in this conversation, let’s go back to the business and the experience you’ve had with clients and how their needs are changing, as well as the fundraising experience, obviously 15 years now on your own in some form. How has that experience on the fundraising side been? How do you find that the clients’ needs are evolving?
Ilya: So in a sense, I’m lucky that we’ve been in business since really the end of 2008, early 2009. And we’ve curated a client base that knows us fairly well, and what they expect from us is returns performance. And I think we’ve been pretty successful in delivering that. So I think that is first and foremost in our clients’ minds. I had in, in 14b is really a spin-out of, of my former firm, which is KG. KG, I had a business partner and he and I separated at the end of 2021. And so that was a splitting off, some of our clients left and we’ve been sort of rebuilding ever since. But I would say that for the new clients that we’re speaking to, you know, they have very different sort of issues. They, they certainly look to us and our performance as something that they’re interested in, but they also have particular issues that they’re dealing with. So for example, one of the big ones that I’m sure everybody’s heard about at this point is the overallocation to private equity. And so whether or not that works out okay or not, I’m not here to tell you. But what I would say is that, you know, the illiquidity in people’s books as it’s allocated to equity is a real issue for them. And so that’s something that they’re dealing with that really doesn’t have much to do with us specifically, but it’s difficult for them to reallocate to say public equity, which is what we are known for when they’re so deeply embedded with the privates. Also, I think that the fact that we now have an interest rate, know, you I think Jim Grant put it really well. He was like, well, finally I have an interest rate to observe, right? That changes the dynamic for a lot of investors and their allocations, right? You can make a reasonably good return now in credit and in fixed income. And so I think that that takes up a lot of people’s attention and rightly so. Some of the clients that we talked to over the years have expressed a broader interest in sort of an educational capacity, right? They want to get more information from their investment managers. We’re happy to do what we can in that degree, but it’s really not how we’re set up as a small firm Right? We have our hands full with investing and just making the returns, and we’re happy to explain to people what we’re doing and how we’re thinking. But a lot of them seem to have gone to the larger firms, which they use for educational purposes. So that, I think, is a big theme that we’re seeing.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s really interesting. And then you’re speaking earlier about the immigrant experience and the feeling of an outsider. And one of the focuses of this podcast series is around the financial services industry, investment in particular. How inclusive it is and how it deals with outsiders and includes them and embraces them. What would you say, just your assessment of the industry, given how long you’ve been in it and you started out in law, which is not dissimilar, how would you assess the inclusivity, the diversity of the industry today?
Ilya: Well, it’s interesting. I would say as compared to the legal profession, the finance profession is terrible at inclusivity. I’ll just give you an example. So today, I think the majority, I think a slight majority, but a majority of graduates from law school are women. And so the legal industry has been, and this has been a consistent theme that’s basically emerged since the 1970s. And so the legal industry has taken that reality into account and it has changed its ways of operating in a way that accommodates women better. Because again, the majority of their professionals are either women or going to be women in the next decade or so. There are meaningful differences that I’ve noticed between the legal profession and the finance profession, even though we’re so closely linked. One obvious example is how the legal profession treats maternity leave, which I think is probably the biggest single matter as it affects women’s careers. I know My wife has experienced that directly where you go on maternity leave and you sort of take a step back and you’re viewed as a part-time professional or you’re viewed as having two jobs or something, something of this nature. Whereas with men, it’s not been the same. And it’s a big divide, I think, between the legal profession and the finance profession. And honestly, it’s ridiculous because all that the financial profession has done is limit its pool of talent. Whereas in the legal world, which is by no means a less demanding field than finance, it’s simply, I think, done a better job. So I actually think they’re quite different if you peel back the onion. And I don’t have easy fixes, but I would say that the notion of maternity leave, both for men and for women, paternity leave, we really don’t have a concept of paternity leave in the United States. We do have minor maternity leave, but I think it really needs to get better embedded in society if you want to take advantage of the broader workforce.
Aoifinn Devitt: So, no, it’s a good point and a good, I suppose, point of differentiation between some European work practices and the US. I suppose not every European country is Scandinavian in its approach. But there’s certainly quite a bit of difference, and I suppose a different level. And I think it probably takes a generation to change attitudes, but maybe the hybrid working COVID has done something, as well as some high-profile tech executives taking— and government officials taking paternity leave. So I suppose it’s about role modeling, which is again getting back to the purpose of this podcast, is role modeling, inspiring people with different approaches and backgrounds. So In that vein, I’d love to move to some reflections now. And we’ve spoken a bit about your background and upbringing. Looking back at your career so far, would you say there were any highs and lows in there that you can tell us about?
Ilya: Sure. Well, I mean, I think one of the biggest challenges I faced certainly recently is the sort of separation from my former firm and partner and rebuilding the new firm. It’s been both very challenging and also gratifying. I think that the best part about it, frankly, is being able to reconstruct an investment firm that I think works for the future. It does incorporate a lot more hybrid work that serves, frankly, everybody. And look, what do we do for a living as finance professionals? We meet people. We can do that effectively either on Zoom, or we can travel. Nothing prevents us from meeting face to face. But the vast majority of the meetings that we do these days are really over Zoom. And honestly, that’s not that much different than what we used to do by phone. But the ability to work from home, I think, is a major change because, I mean, let’s be frank, what do we do? We read and we push buttons for a living. We can do that in almost any location. And I think one of the big arguments that I used to hear was something along the lines of, well, if you’re not watching them, then how do you know they’re working? And my answer to that was, if you’re afraid that they’re not working when you’re not watching them, you really did hire the wrong person. That’s, if your job is to watch people work, I mean, that’s a pretty bad job, frankly. So that’s been both a challenge and frankly a really great opportunity. And it’s been quite rewarding because I think we’ve been pretty successful. We run a, at this point, a completely virtual work environment. And one of our partners, she had a baby within the last 12 months and she was able to work at her pace through that period. And I think frankly, we got much more out of her allowing her to work at her pace than requiring her to commute in, show face time, and work in some kind of framework that served everyone and no one at the same time. It sounds very communist to me.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s the beauty of a small firm, I suppose. I mean, the beauty and the challenge of a small firm in that wide-scale maternity and paternity leave could not be maybe sustainable. In a small firm, but equally the flexibility, the tailoring of approaches to individual personalities, and ultimately, as you said, hiring the right people and getting it right from the beginning is something that you can ensure in a small firm.
Ilya: Yeah, and I also think it requires a certain level of seniority for it to work because for younger people, they need sort of a forum in which they to some degree need people to look over their shoulder to give them course corrections. Otherwise they spend a lot of time flailing, I would say, you know, working on things that they’re not sure if it’s productive or not because they’re really just sort of learning the ropes. So it’s, it’s much more effective, I think, with a more senior team. But your point is well taken. It’s, it’s also probably much, much more difficult in a larger environment.
Aoifinn Devitt: And then in a similar vein, thinking about setbacks and challenges that you experienced and lessons learned, I suppose, maybe more in the kind of the wisdom of the years now, what have you taken from some of those setbacks and The reason we include this section is because I think that we’re not all going to have the same setbacks. So it’s important to learn from others so we don’t have to step in the same puddle twice.
Ilya: Well, I think that the major life lesson I learned that applies to business and life equally, but certainly in business, is what really matters is the people you surround yourself with and who you’re working with. Your people are most certainly your greatest asset and potentially your greatest liability. So that choice as to who you work with is crucial, absolutely crucial. I have plenty of specific investment lessons, but when it comes to business in general, that lesson is, gosh, it’s like, you know, the 80% rule. You know, if you pick the right people to work with, you’re going to do fine. Now, what constitutes the right people? That, that, that’s a hard question. And different people for different roles, obviously. But at the end of the day, a level of trustworthiness, work ethic, that’s probably 80% of the way there. If you find a trustworthy, hardworking person, the rest kind of does take care of itself over time. I think that would be my biggest, frankly, life lesson in business.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that’s actually gets to my next question, which is around any particular person that was a mentor or influence on you? And that could be in your personal or your professional.
Ilya: I try to learn something from everybody I work with. I really think that that is important. I do think that, you know, everybody has something to teach you, good or bad. I will tell you one person who always stands out to me was my grandmother, frankly. Her amazing ability to sort of not focus her attention on trying to figure out what it was that was driving another person. In other words, not to try to figure out what their intentions were, what their motives were, why they were doing what it was that they were doing, but rather shift your attention to surrounding yourself and working with people who you trusted, who you felt that were additive to you, and simply not to spend too much time dissecting problems. That was my grandmother. She taught me that. My former business partner was very good at seeing what I would call things as good enough. He had a great notion for that where, you know, the idea that the great or the perfect is the enemy of the good. So he had a great sense of that. My dad was a big influence on me in terms of the way I think. He used to always say, what do you know for sure? Or take things back to formula. So if you had a question about how something worked, dissect it back to what do I really know for sure here? Usually the problem is fairly simple. It’s just you don’t want to look at it. We tend to avoid looking at difficult problems and assuming around them. And so he was very good at just not doing that. And I think, you know, you find that a lot of the answers you’re looking for are right in front of you. You just don’t want to look there.
Aoifinn Devitt: I love that. I also am somebody who embraces complexity, and I think that taking it back to formula, and before this podcast is over, I want to see if you can remember how your father would’ve said that in Russian, because I do, I have spoken some Russian and I’d love to know what that expression is because.
Ilya: It’S a— Yeah, he would say it in English actually. He would say it in English with a very thick Russian accent. So it would come do out, what you think for sure?
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s wonderful. And I suppose that maybe that gets to the last question, which is usually around creed or motto or advice for your younger self or other words of wisdom you can leave us with. And I think each of those individuals has really endowed their own wisdom, but anything you can leave us with as the last thought?
Ilya: I’ll give you two of them, I guess, or maybe even three. How about three? So there’s a great quote from Henry David Thoreau, and I’ll summarize it. I won’t get the quote exactly right, but he said, ultimately, we only hit the targets we aim for. So aim high. And I think that that’s a great— certainly in investing and in life in general, great advice. I would say again, probably 80% of the mistakes you make in investing have to do with really just not setting your standards high enough. So I think that’s a really good one. I like the Japanese concept of kaizen, which, you know, it basically translates to roughly, you know, continuous improvement. I think that a lot of good work is done simply through continuing to improve. If I were to give my younger self, you know, a piece of advice, I would say stick with it. If you find something that you enjoy or it really holds your attention and you’re interested in, stick with it. Focus on continuously improving your task. The path to success isn’t usually straight or linear. There are usually many, many deviations, and the ability to constantly improve will get you there over time. That’s two good ones I think I try to live with. My fifth grade teacher actually gave me a really good piece of advice that I, I quote to people a lot, and this one I remember verbatim. She said to me, the world doesn’t care about all the adventures you have at sea, but whether or not you brought your ship to port. And I thought that one has stuck with me ever since I was 11. And I think that way too much time is wasted trying to explain the mistake that was made rather than spending that time trying to improve or fix it. You And, know, I think that that’s a hugely important concept. The world really doesn’t care.
Aoifinn Devitt: I love that. And I think I, I listen to a lot of podcasts about entrepreneurs who don’t look backwards, they look forwards. And I think that’s not the same as not learning from that mistake., but it’s about not dwelling on that mistake and I suppose not ruminating and letting it cloud them. So thank you so much, Ilya. This story looking backwards and forwards has been fascinating in terms of your own origins and how that shaped you. And equally, your perspective on finance is refreshingly modern, I’d say. So thank you for coming here and being one of the few to express it that way. Thank you for sharing your insights with us.
Ilya: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been absolutely my pleasure.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors and their personal journeys, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.
