Latest Interviews

The New Tech Investing Landscape

Brook Dane, Brooke, Liz

Investors are increasingly targeting underexposed US mid-cap and international technology sectors, leveraging recent market pullbacks to build positions in transformational companies at attractive valuations. Key growth themes include the structural shift to digital payments, the rapid expansion of e-commerce models in emerging markets, and the democratization of innovation through cloud infrastructure and mobile device proliferation. Despite risks from geopolitical tensions and regulatory scrutiny, the firm maintains a bullish long-term outlook, urging portfolio diversification into dynamic players within artificial intelligence, machine learning, and advanced semiconductors to capture the disruptive acceleration expected over the next decade.

Israel’s election: what next for Netanyahu?

Netanyahu, Anchelle Pfeffer, Greg Karlstrom

Facing indictments for bribery and fraud, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called his fourth election in less than two years as a strategy to secure immunity legislation and avoid a trial that could strip him of executive power. While polls suggest his Likud party is unlikely to reach his target of 40 seats, the outcome hinges on small right-wing parties like Naftali Bennett's, whose kingmaker status could either extend Netanyahu's centralized, presidential-style governance or force a fragile opposition coalition led by Yair Lapid. Regardless of the winner, structural barriers to Palestinian statehood remain intact, though a new administration might improve relations with the U.S. Democratic leadership compared to the current strained bilateral ties.

The Beginning of a Structural Bull Market for Commodities

Damien Courvalin, Liz

Goldman Sachs Research has revised its 12-month commodity index return forecast to 15.5% based on a structural bull market driven by post-vaccination demand recovery, expansive green infrastructure spending, and constrained producer supply. The firm attributes this shift to simultaneous global fiscal stimulus and capital discipline that limit oil and mine output while redirecting investment toward transition metals like copper. Consequently, analysts have upgraded price targets for copper, oil, and grains, positioning commodities as a hedge against sustained inflationary pressures and a diversification tool against equity valuation risks.

Sherry Turkle, MIT Professor and Author of "The Empathy Diaries"

Sherry Turkle

Sociologist Sherry Turkle reflects on how childhood family secrets and a transformative moment of peer empathy at Harvard shaped her lifelong dedication to truth and her distinctive view of leadership as active, open-ended listening. She details her early, isolated research in the late 1970s where she challenged MIT's engineering establishment to recognize computers as intimate "second selves," a thesis later validated by the modern emotional role of technology. Drawing on her pandemic experience and career advice to study what she loves, Turkle argues that the capacity for solitude and the pursuit of intrinsic passion provide essential resilience against professional and personal upheaval.

The Semiconductor Shortage of 2021

Tammy Kiely, Liz

Originating from pandemic-driven demand shocks rather than geopolitical tensions, the current semiconductor supply crunch has pushed industry lead times beyond the 14-week danger zone, severely constraining production of microcontrollers and power devices on older 28nm and 40nm nodes. Manufacturers face structural hurdles in expanding capacity due to limited incentives to invest in fully depreciated equipment and a two-year timeline required to construct new facilities, a situation exemplified by Toyota's resilience through pre-established resource planning. As the shortage persists through year-end with rising prices and order overshoot fueled by inventory stockpiling, the market risks a volatile transition where a V-shaped demand recovery could eventually be complicated by future oversupply conditions.

Charles Phillips, Co-Chair of the Black Economic Alliance and Co-Founder of Recognize

Charles Phillips

Charles Phillips, co-founder of Recognize, leverages his background in computer science and corporate leadership to launch "110," a private initiative designed to create one million jobs for Black people by aggregating nonprofit training networks and securing commitments from dozens of major corporations. Beyond employment, the program emphasizes targeted economic levers such as increasing Black homeownership through "rent-to-own" models and supports parallel efforts to address wealth gaps facing Black women in entrepreneurship. Drawing on his experience driving cloud adoption at Recognize, Phillips argues that specialized third-party providers offer the scalable infrastructure necessary to sustain these high-impact social and technological advancements.

Investing in High Yield Bonds and Bank Loans

Lori Pomerantz, Liz

Goldman Sachs Asset Management analyzes the high-yield and bank loan markets by contrasting 2020's central bank-supported resilience with 2021's profit-taking outflows and anticipated rate hike sensitivity. The firm forecasts annual returns of 4% to 5% for U.S. high yield and 4.5% to 5.5% for bank loans, driven by coupon carry, sector migration from fallen angels to rising stars, and the structural stability of collateralized loan obligations. Strategic allocation shifts toward investment-grade issuers downgraded in the energy sector and active security selection aim to navigate elevated leverage ratios while capitalizing on expected second-half 2021 economic recovery.

The End is Near: Understanding the Transition from LIBOR

Jason Granet, Liz

U.S. regulators finalized a timeline confirming that non-U.S. dollar LIBOR rates will cease at year-end while dollar rates remain published until June 30, 2023, to facilitate a controlled wind-down of legacy contracts. This transition replaces the benchmark with SOFR, a secured overnight rate backed by a Federal Reserve partnership, while industry groups work to align averaging methodologies between loan and derivatives markets to mitigate basis risks. Global coordination and ongoing legislative efforts aim to standardize the adoption of risk-free rate alternatives across jurisdictions and eliminate residual legal uncertainties.

How to crunch covid-19 data

Leveraging unprecedented data volumes, The Economist's data team exposed divergent global lockdown strategies through real-time mobility tracking that rapidly convinced Google to release public datasets and prompted immediate adoption in government briefings. Concurrently, the organization's simplified "flatten the curve" visualization, refined by editor Sasha Mostow and academic Drew Harris, established a critical communication standard for illustrating social distancing impacts on healthcare capacity. These efforts collectively transformed raw data into actionable policy tools, fundamentally shaping the global response to the pandemic.

Antoine Flamarion and Mathieu Chabran, Co-Founders of Tikehau Capital

Antoine Flamarion, Mathieu Chabran, Alison

TKO Capital co-founders Antoine Fulmarian and Mathieu Chabron are leveraging private markets, SPACs, and a €1 billion Energy Transition Fund to drive industrial growth and decarbonization efforts. The firm combines a "skin in the game" balance sheet strategy with contrarian thinking to target infrastructure, European private equity, and real SMEs while maintaining offices across the US, Europe, and Asia. By prioritizing creation over competition and advising investors to act with offensive ambition, TKO aims to capitalize on global structural shifts following the post-pandemic economic reset.

The Future of Auto Tech

Chris Buddin, Liz

Goldman Sachs has launched a joint venture merging its software and industrial divisions to capitalize on what it terms the "greatest industrial revolution of our time," a multi-decade shift toward electrified, software-integrated, and autonomous mobility. The firm anticipates this transition will face supply-side constraints driven by global battery manufacturing capacity while leveraging Special Purpose Acquisition Companies to fund capital-intensive ventures across a landscape of mature technologies and emerging startups. Investment strategies will prioritize long-term horizons of up to fifteen years to navigate the sector's unique challenges, aiming to deliver significant reductions in carbon emissions and substantial improvements in global health.

Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary-General of NATO

Jens Stoltenberg, Nick Schifrin

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg identifies climate change as a critical security threat that forces military adaptation while describing Russia as an assertive adversary and China as a systemic challenge to the alliance's liberal democratic values. To counter these evolving risks, the organization has implemented its largest collective defense reinforcement since the Cold War, including new battle groups in Eastern Europe, even as it maintains operational readiness during the pandemic and prepares for the planned troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Through the "NATO 2030" initiative, the alliance aims to preserve its consensus-based unity and global dominance by adapting its command structures, reducing fossil fuel dependence, and addressing hybrid threats like disinformation campaigns.

How Hedge Funds are Navigating a Volatile Market

Diana Dieckman, Freddie Parker, Jake Seward, Diana Dykman

Goldman Sachs surveyed nearly 450 allocators representing $1 trillion in assets, revealing that the hedge fund industry generated record AUM of $3.6 trillion in 2020 driven entirely by performance rather than new capital flows. While the sector recovered strongly from early-year losses with average returns exceeding 20%, the outlook for 2021 anticipates $35 billion in net inflows and a strategic pivot toward discretionary macro managers and Asian exposure, particularly China. This shift coincides with a reversal in fee compression, as rising performance prompted average management and performance fees to increase for the first time since 2012.

Christina Swarns, Executive Director of the Innocence Project

Christina Swarns, Huwe Burton

Christina Swarnes and exoneree Hugh Burton highlight critical structural failures in the criminal justice system, citing racial disparities in wrongful convictions and the absence of accountability for officials who secure false confessions. Their discussion emphasizes specific cases like *Buck v. Davis* and Burton's own 19-year incarceration to illustrate the urgent need for mandatory interrogation recording and systemic reforms driven by the post-George Floyd reckoning. Together, they argue that true safety requires local community accountability and robust support structures to assist individuals reintegrating after being wrongly convicted.

Rising Yields, Inflation and Risk Assets

Mike Swell, Liz

Fixed income global portfolio managers oversee more than $700 billion in assets while analyzing rising treasury yields as a temporary repricing of long-term supply driven by new fiscal stimulus rather than a sustained inflationary crisis. The speaker contrasts current market dynamics with the 2013 "taper tantrum," emphasizing that the Federal Reserve intends to maintain an accommodative stance through 2022 to achieve full employment without raising rates until 2023. Consequently, investors are advised to view yields of 2% to 2.25% on the 10-year bond as a buying opportunity and to increase allocations to credit and municipal bonds as bonds resume their historical role as portfolio ballast against equity volatility.