In the constantly changing and often unpredictable industry that is wealth management, is it possible to systematize an asset allocation approach? Might you even apply trend following to the problem? On this episode of The Derivative, Jon Robinson, the CEO and co-founder of Blueprint Investment Partners (@Blueprint_IP), draws upon his unique experience on both sides of the trend-following fence: proprietor and customer. He reflects on his early days working on the New York Stock Exchange floor and delves into the intricate process of shifting from traditional research methods to systematic investment.
Join us as we explore the subtleties of trend following, its evolution over time (Jon’s evolution over time), and the strategies that Jon and his team at Blueprint Investment Partners employ. Our conversation sheds light on the fundamental principles of maintaining strong advisor-client relationships, the changing landscape of portfolio management, and what the future of the investment advisor space might look like. Tune in for an engaging discussion on the effectiveness of trend following not as an investment in its own right, but as a filter on other investments— SEND IT!
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From the episode:
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Check out our Trend Following guide!
Check out the complete Transcript from this week’s podcast below:
Trend Following Asset Allocations with Jon Robinson of Blueprint
Jeff Malec 00:07
Welcome to The Derivative by RCM Alternatives, where we dive into what makes alternative investments go analyze the strategies of unique hedge fund managers and chat with interesting guests from across the investment world. Hello there. Sorry we missed you. Last week, I was peeping the fall colors in Wisconsin, or in town and doing hours and hours of portfolio work. Take your pick, draw your own picture. Anyway, we’re back with this fun episode talking to Jon Robinson, who I knew from way back when, when he had a bit more hair and ran his own CTA program. He’s since graduated out of the sort of commodity space into a bonafide Investment Advisor Now, and we dig into what that unique perspective having been on both sides of the game getting allocated to and choosing whom to allocate to plus what it’s like educating clients these days and how he thinks about trend following asset allocation decisions and exposures. Something I dabble in personally send it the substance brought to you by our sands clearing and execution group, which helps ETFs like the ones John group mentioned, and invest in efficiently access and trade exchange traded futures and derivatives markets. Visit RCMalts.com to learn more. Now back to the show. All right, we’re here with John. John. How are you?
Jon Robinson 01:34
Jeff, I’m doing well. Thank you.
Jeff Malec 01:37
So we gotta give the listeners a quick little background that we used to know each other. We were just trying to off off camera decide whether it was 1020. Some somewhere between 10 and 20 years ago?
Jon Robinson 01:49
Yeah. Yeah. I’m thinking 10 to 15 years ago, and we you kindly identify that back then I had here. Really nice of you.
Jeff Malec 02:00
You look good without the hair. You wear it well,
Jon Robinson 02:02
thank you. Thanks. I have no choice. So I sort of have to do that.
Jeff Malec 02:07
And where in the world are you? Are you still down in southeast somewhere? Yep.
Jon Robinson 02:12
North Carolina, Greensboro is Blueprints, HQ,
Jeff Malec 02:16
perfect Greensboro and that’s grown probably as much as you’ve lost hair that’s grown an equivalent amount, right. In this area.
Jon Robinson 02:25
It’s a one correlation. Yeah.
Jeff Malec 02:31
And what is all that just general industry or specific industries?
Jon Robinson 02:35
Yeah, I mean, it’s, I would say more general. I mean, we’ve had a lot of companies. We haven’t had it in North Carolina as much as Texas in Florida half. But there’s been a pretty large migration to the, to the south southeast. And a lot of company headquarters, Honda jets has moved into Greensboro and manufactures jets from here. So that added, you know, a lot to the local economy. It’s sir certainly helped bolster real estate prices. Yeah. Toyota is building a battery factory here. So yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s grown but not too much, which is why I like it.
Jeff Malec 03:15
And who’s your who’s your college team in Greensboro? You’re sort of a little west of all that a Tobacco Road, right? Yeah, we’re a
Jon Robinson 03:22
little West. I mean, I pull for Carolina. I went to UNC Greensboro, but I grew up a Tar Heel fan. So I still maintain that allegiance.
Jeff Malec 03:31
There. Yeah, they’re pretty good this year. Right. And football quarterback might get drafted.
Jon Robinson 03:36
Yeah, yeah. May as the quarterback. They’re pretty good. I mean, Mack Brown, coached in the in the 90s. Right in early 2000s. Left for a long time. He went to Texas went to ESPN, and then he came back as coach and he’s rejuvenated the program to the extent it needed to be rejuvenated. He’s
Jeff Malec 03:55
what Wednesday ad? He’s got to be up there.
Jon Robinson 03:58
He’s definitely up there. Yeah. And then I got to
Jeff Malec 04:01
ask because I can just barely read it with my rapidly decreasing vision. Behind you, Man in the Arena. What what does it say?
Jon Robinson 04:10
Yeah, so Man in the Arena is is a basically a quote from a Teddy Roosevelt speech. My wife gave me that. And to be honest with you, I didn’t intentionally put it in the way of the camera just in that room, that it’s there, but I do like the message.
Jeff Malec 04:29
And I don’t know if right, that’s been a little co opted by Charmouth who did all the scam Spax and whatnot. And he was saying, Hey, leave me alone. I know. I lost you billions of dollars, but I’m in the arena. I’m doing it. But I think I like Teddy Roosevelt’s version better.
Jon Robinson 04:44
Yeah, I think I do too. And I think we’ve seen a lot in the past five years, how many things can actually get co opted?
Jeff Malec 04:53
Yeah, that’s for damn sure. Moving on, we touched on a little bit but so you’re in a previous life blueprint now you’re an RA but in a previous life you were a CTA, which is near and dear to our hearts. So tell us you can start even before that how you kind of became when you were young got through college first started out in the business world became a CTA, give us a little quick backstory there.
Jon Robinson 05:22
Sure, yeah. Well, you know, I’m from the south. So giving a quick
Jeff Malec 05:27
for me, quick, quick for a southerner. Yeah,
Jon Robinson 05:30
yeah, quick for a Southerner, I’ll do my best. So yeah, when I graduated college in 2003, I started working for Bear Stearns, and their floor trading operations on the New York Stock Exchange. So we it was a subsidiary, bear Wagner and I basically, you know, two weeks after I graduated, started work there. As a market maker, when I did that for, you know, a tour of duty there, and, you know, my thinking was, okay, I want to be a portfolio manager. So I want to try to get as much experience, you know, as well rounded and experience as I can. So I left the floor and got into equity research, covering infrastructure software for Prudential equity group, which is, you know, going from a sprint to a marathon, and that really doesn’t even cover half of it, you know, nine to four on the floor, and you really don’t take anything except some emotional wounds home. And then you know, equity research, you’re sleeping under your desk. So it was very different. But along the way, Brandon Langley, who’s one of the cofounders of blueprint and is the Langley and Robinson Langley, he and I met in college, and we were doing trading and started to get into system design. For a lot of reasons, but mainly because, you know, I inequity research started to see the disconnect between fundamental analysis and actual stock prices. So I just started to ask the question of, okay, why, you know, what, wait a minute, what’s going on here? First of all, why is the market ignoring what we’re saying that the where the stock price should be? What are the drivers behind that? And probably, more importantly, what are the most successful investors in the world doing? So, probably, as a lot of stories go, I ended up stumbling upon Market Wizards. And a lot of Jack Schwager is writing and was really, I see it as, you know, a Damascus road type moment where the scales fell off my eyes. And you know, I can sort of see clearly and, for me, it was the things I started to see clearly were being systematic, and employing a trend following process, really ignoring the fundamentals or just assuming that they’re baked in and following price. So we started designing, specifically designing trend following systems. And then in 2006, I moved back to North Carolina and we started Robinson Langley, which was a CTA. Now, you know, as the story goes, and evolves, and we being trend followers trading, you know, every market that we could, you know, we had no Rolodex at all. I don’t even know if people say that anymore. Rolodex, yeah,
Jeff Malec 08:27
I do. I tell people, they’re like, should I start a fund? And like, if you have a golden Rolodex, yes, start a fund, you can call people. And if you don’t, you gotta go the Manage count route and go through brokers and talk to people and try and get counts.
Jon Robinson 08:39
Yeah, exactly. So we did both. But we did start a fund. And we started it with 60,000 under management day one. And, you know, you know, as well as anybody when you’re trying to trade a lot of markets, that leaves you with two choices, don’t trade a lot of markets or do with a lot of leverage. And I’m convinced we could not do that today. Yeah, but you know, just with compliance costs where they are, you know, all the hard costs are, are 10x what they were, but you know, we started with 60,000, day one. And we had a great oh seven, because I believe that’s the first time a little went above 100. And if you’re doing it with a lot of leverage, like we were, then it kind of doesn’t matter where you bought oil as long as you buy it and write it, write it up. So we had a great oh seven, and then we had an even better Oh, wait, because again, dutiful trend followers, lot of leverage, you know, we’re long and short the right things. But back in that, oh, 708 period, there weren’t a lot of great 40 Act options for accessing managed futures. So, a few RAS came to us and said, Hey, look, we want this exposure, but we don’t like what we see in the public arena. What We start our own limited partnership, you run it, and we split the fees, which again, I’m not even sure you could do today with creo, eight generated compliance. So we did that. And after oh eight, you know, two of these firms came to us and said, Look, you’re the only thing that made money in the portfolio. But we’re only putting qualified investors in this fund. So that’s like 5% of 5% of their best, it’s not worth our time. And not to mention, you’re in the wild west of futures. And it’s really hard to explain to our clients what it is that you’re doing and why they can’t keep their money at Schwab. Remember,
Jeff Malec 10:40
we’re spending we say we’re spending 30% of our time explaining something that’s going to be 5% of the portfolio. That’s bad math for an RA.
Jon Robinson 10:47
Exactly. Yeah. So they were upside Pareto principle, you know, it was just down. And, but they said, luck, if you can domesticate what you’re doing, to things that people actually hold in, in a Schwab or TD or fidelity account. And you can prove that to us that and largely keep your principles and the fundamentals by which you’re managing the assets the same, we would consider outsourcing our whole book to you. And then as an IA and a planner, you know, we’ll go do the things that we’re good at, and that actually make us money like prospecting and certain clients. So for us, that was somewhat of a godfather offer at the time, because in the space we were operating in and futures, it still seemed like it was day over day performance driven. You know, if somebody was putting a managed account with us, and let’s say they wanted, you know, they were nationalizing it, you know, three 4x. In some cases, daily performance really mattered to them, and it didn’t matter as much. It only mattered to us, to the extent it mattered to them, right, we’re thinking 1020 years, and they’re thinking 1020 minutes. So we started developing those systems in oh nine, and after about 18 months of, you know, just making the r&d process, which really isn’t that thick, but just making sure we were taking into account the practical realities of managing client assets for an RIA, we started managing those assets on a white label basis. So we’re managing, we’re executing, we’re doing all of reporting, and they’re just putting their brand on top. And then demand for what we were doing in that respect, kept, continued to grow. And so we started blueprint and 13 to take advantage of those opportunities we were getting, and we made the original relationships, sub advisory relationships, and they still are today.
Jeff Malec 12:53
Perfect. The a few background questions. So what did you study in college that led you down that systematic path where you engineer or something like that, or it just made sense to you?
Jon Robinson 13:03
Well, it made sense to me, I studied, I got a degree in finance, and I got a degree in economics. And I largely credit, Brandon with the economics degree because I sat beside him, and he studied and I didn’t. But yeah, I’d always had an interest in markets. You know, my family is very entrepreneurial. You know, not to some, no one’s going public, but they’ve always run their own business. And so I was attract, I saw that and just thought it was normal, you know. And so I always knew, at least I thought, I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. The market interests sort of evolved over time. And then, you know, it’s ACOTA has this thing about, you know, finding a system that you’re emotionally compatible with. And so when I found systematic, and something that was rules based, and really, you know, once once you have the rules, and they, you know, they evolve over time, as well, really, the discipline to stick with the process over time that that resonated with me the most,
Jeff Malec 14:09
the and then an interesting time to go into equity research and to be right, you went to the place that was almost anti entrepreneur, right, big Wall Street bank, but at the same time, that was oh, three is right. after.com and all the research had been faked, essentially, right. To to make sure the IPOs got a good reaction. And so were you right in the midst of that of like, Hey, you this research has to be real. Right about the Chinese walls and all that stuff up like research is separate.
Jon Robinson 14:40
Yes, yes. 100% Yeah, that was I think Worldcom had just gone down. In Ron have, you know, was, of course propped up by some some analysts as well. So yeah, that was right. after.com And right before we found out that the bond ratings agencies were doing this Same thing.
Jeff Malec 15:00
Yes. Right for mortgages. And that was that hard to be like, Okay, this is my job. But my passion is systematic, right? Because the equity research is totally 180 degrees opposite of systematic. You could care less what the fundamental research says it’s either buying, because it made new highs I’m selling because it made me lose.
Jon Robinson 15:22
Well, I was the guy that carried around. Well, maybe I was the nerd that carried around, you know, the Intelligent Investor. Yeah, a lot of value books. And you know, I still Buffett and Munger, still some of my investing heroes. You know, I just I love the rationality, any discussion around rationality? Is, is one I typically enjoy. But the the switch for me was pretty easy, honestly. I mean, look, I had to become an entrepreneur, because I’m the world’s worst employee. That that was not, that was easy. And then, once I, I was skeptical of the of the data that I was seeing between, you know, mostly anecdotal evidence on the fundamental side, and then, you know, hard evidence on the systematic side. So once I started getting into that, and validating some of the data, and also looking at the track records of a lot of systematic managers, thanks to Michael Koval and his work and his research. At the beginning, it wasn’t hard for me to migrate over to the dark side, so to speak,
Jeff Malec 16:37
right? Which is, which is technically on this podcast, the light side, right? Let’s go the those equity guys or the dark side. So then started blueprint with Brandon and said, Hey, let’s take this to the masses with this public facing equity. So dig into that a little bit more, it was a little confusing of, you’re putting your trend following models on top of things they could trade in their Schwab account. So that was like sector ETFs? Or what what did that look like?
Jon Robinson 17:12
Yeah, mainly, at the beginning was a lot of sector ETFs. Again, that’s, that’s those portfolios have evolved as well. We still at the very, very beginning of managing, let’s say, assets at Schwab, for somebody’s, you know, Roth, or to, you know, one of their more mainstream accounts, we still had our CTA hats on, when we first started. So we had commodity ETFs, we had, you know, and it was a portfolio of 40 different ETFs. And we would use inverse exposure, you know, when we would get a short signal in stocks. And that was a painful lesson for us to learn. And I’m not saying that, you know, if people choose to do that, that they’re doing the wrong thing, I’m just saying for us, what we realized was that how much behavior investor behavior really mattered for the end client. And so what we really focused on from from the get go, and blueprint is trying to trying to make and preserve and enhance the relationship between the advisor and their client. Because as, as an asset manager, you know, we see are the the advisor and the client or the star of the show. And we our infrastructure, to help them get to where they want to go to, and that’s either the advisors business and or where the client wants to get to, from a goal perspective. So we don’t have any, you know, preconceived notions or hubris about, you know, we’re the star because they can pick any asset manager, they don’t have to pick a blueprint, nobody has to pick blueprint, right? So we wanted to win more on the basis of okay, let’s, let’s design systems and therefore deliver strategies that keep the investors in their seats during the hard times. And for us, that means avoiding those periods where their bad behavior is likely to show up the most and that’s in large drawdowns.
Jeff Malec 19:27
You stole my question I had written down here how much of your job is picking out great investments versus how much just trying to keep the investors discipline? So you just answered it, right. It’s 90% keeping them discipline. But to do that, you need the other piece, which is the great investments that allow you to do that.
Jon Robinson 19:45
Yes, yeah, exactly. And we, in our portfolios, we don’t really use anything that’s esoteric. You know, we try to keep it the portfolio simple. We try to keep it Pretty common sensical by thinking about that interaction between the advisor and the client. So what what is, you know, it’s like, using the inversion principle, we don’t say, you know, what could enhance that relationship, we say what could kill that relationship? Right and tough conversations about costs, tough conversations about taxes, about turnover, you know, all those things make for a tough conversation for the advisor and the client. So we try to design things to just avoid those.
Jeff Malec 20:29
And so what did that look like over time? So it was, initially you had your CTA add on a little bit. And maybe we’re having a lot of those tough conversations of why are we in this high cost inverse ETF that has lost 90%? Over time? Right. I remember a blog post I did of the thing, it was 2x. Net gas ETF in the inverse minus 2x. Net gas ETF. They both lost 94 96% Overtime, right? They were they were supposed to be the exact opposite thing. But because of the rebalancing, and leverage, right, they were killing themselves with the leverage cost. So all that to say, so you had that CTA add on, you had all those commodity focus. So compare and contrast what that was like then versus five years later versus now?
Jon Robinson 21:19
Yeah, so the tough conversations we were having, then were, what we realized, is the house short and investors memory is relative on a relative performance basis. So I guess what I mean, is specifically in 2011. That was, I believe, the first debt ceiling, you know, or in recent memory, that was the in the Gulf, almost the government almost shut down. It was that whole debate that they seem to have in every photo? Yes, there’s perpetually. So we, the trend following models that were employing had us scaling out of equities, let’s say June, July of 11. And using inverse, you know, we got net short, some of those in some accounts, which was fantastic. Because the s&p had a 19% drawdown roughly, you know, during that period of time. Yeah. That’s what we thought, right? You know, when you’re not getting any calls, you’re probably doing okay, as a as a money manager. So no one was calling. But then you see this bounce, which inevitably happens, and there’s a lack, you know, we have to before we cover the short or increase exposure, the trend following models have to catch up. So we didn’t end up, you know, the s&p closes, I think down a little bit for the year calendar year of 11. And we’re basically our performance was about right with it, because of the big bounce back in November, December. But we did so with far less risk. So we thought, hey, this is great. But the only feedback we got from advisors and clients at the time was Why didn’t you read reengage stocks earlier? And, you know, why is it taking this long to, like we missed out on the run from mid October forward without paying attention to the the bypassing of a lot of downside risk. So, you know, after we sort of let our egos get caught up in that feedback that we disagreed with, we took it seriously. And we started looking at okay, what’s, what are the things that are most appreciated about what we do? And what are some things that we can never or are less likely to overcome? In human nature? Because we, we think we’re pretty good, but we’re not good enough to overcome human nature, right? Human nature is undefeated. So, you know, one of those was to institute some fairly passive long only exposure and our strategies. So first, get rid of the inverse stuff. Yeah. Because you are 100 I think it’s fair to say, let’s, I don’t know if I can say 100 Let’s say 99% of the time, if you’re short, you’re going to have some really bad days because volatility begets volatility it clusters and as the markets moving down it’s gonna you know, move up by the same rate and you’re gonna have some days where you underperform a lot even if you’re outperforming all around it.
Jeff Malec 24:39
There’s not a lot of dedicated short hedge funds still around.
Jon Robinson 24:43
Exactly. Yeah, we could have just known that not done it to begin with, but you know, we had to be, you know, go through the process and the pain of learning it in real time. So, we we just realized that Okay, no more inverse. Now We’re not going to just become an you know, asset allocation you know, efficient market cap, boom, type type shop and set you up with a 6040. And
Jeff Malec 25:13
then model portfolio everybody. Yeah, yeah,
Jon Robinson 25:16
I mean, first of all, you can, you can get that for virtually nothing, right? And that’s probably still overpriced. So, we, we took the stance of Okay, our first principle is to use to use trend following not only for a potential risk reducer, by avoiding large drops, but also, you know, one that allows us to do that shift our allocation systematically. So from that point, the portfolio’s pretty much evolved from let’s say, 30 to 40, ETFs, down to about 15. And we started to do some research on okay. What are these endowments? Like Yale, for example, when David Swensen was running Yale, they have unlimited resources, virtually unlimited resources. So what did they do? You know, just asking these questions, trying to think laterally and laterally. And after reading a lot of their research and David Swensons books, we realized that, you know, he set up a, a trust that effectively invests in the eight major asset classes in low cost ETFs. So when he passes, you know, when he when he
Jeff Malec 26:38
hears him whenever I do personally, yeah, yeah. Versus for the, for the university.
Jon Robinson 26:43
Yeah, because I want to know, you know, what they do personally, is what, probably what they really believe in, then everything else is PR,
Jeff Malec 26:51
and or what they can access with less than a billion dollars, right? Yeah,
Jon Robinson 26:55
exactly. So that was the next piece when we came up with this construct of, okay, we want to have access, we want to have exposure to these eight asset classes, but we want to do it in a in a systematic way. The next question was, okay, well, how do they outperform? And you nailed it they outperform because they can basically close a fund before it opens with an allocation. Right? So to the extent that the manager can generate alpha, and that’s how they outperformed to scale. Well, we didn’t have that. So that’s where the trend following piece comes in. So we feel like trend following gives us that edge, but it does so without a two and 20.
Jeff Malec 27:38
Yeah. A lot to unpack there. First, I want to ask what the eight asset classes aren’t? Yeah, so put you on the spot if you know those off top your head.
Jon Robinson 27:47
Hopefully I don’t have a Rick Perry moment here. Yeah, exactly. One. You’ve got US equities, foreign developed equities, emerging markets, real estate. Then on the fixed income side, you’ve got, you know, global fixed income, US fixed income, and then alternatives.
Jeff Malec 28:11
Okay. I didn’t count on but it sounded been around a bit.
28:18
It’s close enough. Yeah. And then.
Jeff Malec 28:22
And then another piece of what you said was great with basically, you were providing a better Sharpe ratio or better Mar ratio to the clients, and they had less drawdown and more, but they’re like, I can’t eat a Sharpe ratio, right? Is that all night? So they were kind of saying great, but I don’t care, which I’ve always laughed at. Right? If you do an efficient frontier, like look, and I just got some unnamed mutual fund, I won’t bring them up. But they their PR was your return went from like 8.4% to 8.45%. And your volatility went from like, 6.8% to 6.6% or something, right in your sharp jump, and I’m like, but still who’s gonna move for that? Right? Nobody’s gonna move off the like, I’m gonna sell 20% put 20% into this alternative mutual fund to get this point 00 2%. Gain. So those are some of those conversations like great, but it’s hard for me to understand and it’s not really enough to move the needle.
Jon Robinson 29:20
Yeah, and inertia. Every, especially in this business is, you know, your, I guess if you’re on the outside looking in, it’s your worst enemy. And if you’re on the inside, it’s your best friend. Right? Because movement is less likely, both ways.
Jeff Malec 29:37
Do you think it was easier for you to come from that ults world down to that understanding, versus it seems like the right most advisors doing the opposite, coming from the traditional, model based approach to trying to understand alt, so it’s almost easier it seems to me to be like, cool, I understand the altarpiece. Now I’m going to basically remove a bunch of those bells and whistles that people don’t really care all that much about to incorporate into the traditional stuff?
Jon Robinson 30:03
That’s right on. I mean, for us, it was easier in everything, but the marketing, I can come back to that, but starting from the more complex space, and then again, it’s all about grieving your ego. You know, because we had the moat, we tried to develop the most complex systems. Now we were keeping an eye on, you know, of course, you know, parameter sensitivity, and you know, all this stuff you’re supposed to do as systems designers. But when you compare what we do now to what we did, then, I mean, it’s night and day difference. Yes, it’s based on trend following principles, but the implementation is nowhere near as complex now as it was then. So we have spent 15 years simplifying it. Confidence, you know, that, okay, no, all the physicists that say keep things simple. They’re actually right. It’s, you know,
Jeff Malec 31:06
it’s crazy to think all these billion dollar shops are getting more complex, more quantity, right? They’re adding more AI and machine learning all this stuff. And you’re like, hey, timeout, let’s take it the other way. Yeah, and build a business, which is super cool. It’s like the old creative. I’m gonna forget the acronym right. But there was like, reverse merge. There were all these things to do with like, okay, rollerblades? I won’t remember all of them right now. But so. And then my third point on all that was, it seems in this journey, inherent in that is like, Okay, I want to simplify, I need these couple of ETFs. It almost creates the need for very specific ETFs to meet your needs. Right of like, okay, oh, I’m having to pull these three out. If I had one that did with those three dead? That would be great. Right? Or if I had one that gave this unique type of exposure, I’m missing that would be great. Which is my segue into your partnership with Jerry Parker, well known in the trend following World Chesapeake. So dig into that a little bit of did that come out of that need for a specific type of strategy inside of the model?
Jon Robinson 32:19
We definitely wanted it. No question. It was their idea. But we have a, an alternatives, allocation, and pretty much everything we do on the on the SMA side of of the of the asset management business. And we’ve used various funds. One of those was a Chesapeake’s mutual fund, we use that for a long time. But yeah, I think, for us, it filled a need that we had, which was to include that ETF and in our allocations, and do so with a long track record, with Jerry at the helm. You know, going back to something you mentioned earlier, which is, you know, the selection of the ETFs. And this promise, it will take long for me to dovetail these two ideas, but no one, we like index funds in that respect, because they’re legally bound to have no tracking error. You know, I mean, they have to deliver, it doesn’t mean we always like what they deliver, but they have to deliver what they say they’re going to do. Right. So we will use index funds to express as much as we can from US stocks, or foreign stocks, or emerging or real estate or what have you. And you can do that at a very low cost, which is going back to the relationship between the advisor and the client, you know, usually a very easy conversation. To the extent we don’t use something that’s that we’re actively managing, but it’s passive, like this partnership with with Chesapeake. We want to make sure that whoever we partner with or in the fund that we select, they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do. Right, you’ve heard Jerry say, or I’ve heard Jerry say many times, you know, I’m going to be the last guy like if trend following ever dies. I’m going to be the last guy on the ship.
Jeff Malec 34:21
Yeah, he’s he’s going to be on top of the hill with the flag with the enemies all around him.
Jon Robinson 34:27
Exactly. And I believe him when he says that, and you know, not only his his, the, his opinion about things or his public messaging about them, but he he has a 30 year track record of, of honoring that commitment. So that’s really important for us because we do believe that look if you can get to a spot where you’re comfortable implementing simple systems. Then, on the investment side, your only job day to day roughly is implementing those systems over and over and over. Right? So Jerry systems are more complex than the ones we use a blueprint by necessity to a large degree because they’re using derivatives, you know, and we’re not. But I do trust that he’s going to be disciplined. He does what he says he’s going to do. He’s got a lot of skin in the game. And he has for years. And just all of those things. Not to mention, they’re great people. But yeah, we couldn’t be more excited about that partnership.
Jeff Malec 35:35
Quick aside, have you heard I keep hearing people say it does what it says on the tin, which I’ve never heard that expression. But I guess that means like, it tastes it’s a coffee tin. I don’t get what he’s trying to say. You know, that expression?
Jon Robinson 35:50
Roughly, roughly right,
Jeff Malec 35:53
I think. But I think he does what what he says on the tin under percent. Yeah, I can, if I can butcher that a little bit. I’m cool. And we’ll put in the show notes. We did a pilot, we’ve done a couple podcasts with Jerry Parker, and one a couple weeks ago that was talking about this new program that he’s running. So we’ll put that in the show notes where people go listen to but for you, that just helps round out the portfolio, round out what you’re doing. Each year clients so they get to pick and choose, they get to take their own lane or is most all inside this, right? Because that’s gotta be hard for an RA if you’d let every single client have unlimited, I want to be 90%. In this I want to be negative 20% is like how do you manage that process? Have you said the client the advisor the most important? How do you keep them inside a structure?
Jon Robinson 36:48
It’s a good good question. What we’ve done is we’ve designed a spectrum of strategies. And we we are pretty agnostic to where they go on that spectrum. Now we do stuff off the spectrum, you know, one offs occasionally, particularly for larger relationships, you know, institutional relationships, we’ll, we’ll change some things up. But by and large, we have three different vectors, you know, to access the strategies, we call them strategic, dynamic and tactical. And basically, the portfolios look nearly identical. The speed in which the trend following shifts asset allocation is exactly the same. It’s only the degree of how much trend following has over the allocation that changes. By its name, the tactical strategies have trend following has more influence over the tactical strategies than the strategic strategies, for example. Because, you know, our stance is we don’t, the advisor has the relationship with the client. And there’s, you know, we’ll help them develop suitability to try to get at, okay, a more accurate reading of where they should be on that continuum. But at the end of the day, we elect we allow the advisor to choose where they need to go on that spectrum.
Jeff Malec 38:17
But the goal being there in the stay rich business instead of get rich business, for the most part, these clients are there’s like, what’s the appetite for growth versus protection?
Jon Robinson 38:28
Yeah, good. So what we often see is, again, as a general statement, yeah, somebody’s nearing retirement or in retirement, particularly if they’re taking a distribution, they’ll go for our more tactical strategies, because that has the tighter you know, the higher capital preservation stance, if they’re younger essentially
Jeff Malec 38:48
means they don’t get out of long equities quicker. So you’re not waiting for a two year drawdown to signal the trend, Hey, we should lighten up on equities.
Jon Robinson 38:58
And when we move we move by more than the other strategy. So they that not only do they, they go defensive, in the case of equities falling so if the trend signals a downtrend, they’ll all react at the same time, but the tactical strategies will move a lot more to the sidelines. So that’s a, you know, the tactical strategies. They don’t necessarily have to be like this because we have a tactical growth strategy, for example, that when it’s fully engaged with equities is if it’s, you know, benchmark is in at 20. It’ll be more aggressive than they may be 20 because we have a brake pedal in the passive investment does it but for someone that is their withdrawal rate is extremely important to them and it factors into their livelihood. They may go not only in a conservatively postured strategy, but one that has more tactics. Now if they’re in the accumulation phase, and they’re younger, and they don’t want the In some cases, the headwind of the risk management to kick in. And behaviorally, they can handle a little bit larger drawdown. They’ll go into our more aggressive strategic strategies, which, again, the same tactics, but they when they move, it’s more around the edges.
Jeff Malec 40:19
And then I’ve got a quant technical, wonky question. So the trend following of the asset allocation is based on the stock market. Right? Because or I’ll ask it a different way. Have you messed around with kind of trend following trend following? Right, and I’ve gotten into that with some with Jerry and some others over the years of like, very hard to do, right? Because if you could avoid those, right, everyone hates the extended drawdown periods and trend, why can’t you trend follow it and step aside on those?
Jon Robinson 40:49
It’s pretty easy to trend follow a trend follower,
Jeff Malec 40:51
right. But but in a way, you’re trying to kind of do the same thing. But you’re saying no, we’re trying to trend follow the broad asset allocations?
Jon Robinson 40:59
Yeah, so each of those eight asset classes is trend followed. Now because of in our alternative allocation, because we allocate to a trend following ETF that’s held statically. And we allow the trend following to occur inside of that fun. But anything that we hold passively, we are going to try and follow it. And we’re going to use multiple timeframes to try and follow it to reduce our dependency and, you know, change speeds, so to speak.
Jeff Malec 41:28
And that so that’s on the bonds, too. So is that been helpful over the last couple of years? Right? As bonds have? Nobody wanted to be in bonds, but you sort of had to be in bonds?
Jon Robinson 41:37
Yeah, it’s helped tremendously. I mean, we, the gearing for our fixed income is pretty high on the duration scale, because we liked the hedging properties of well, the historical hedging properties of government bonds relative to stocks. But again, you know, for us, it’s about managing risk. So we’re not just going to statically hold anything, really. So we starting in about, I don’t know, August 21. What are what occurs inside our model is okay, we want to hold the default setting is longer duration bonds. But as we get a downtrend, and those we’re just going to follow the yield curve down. As we get down trends, we’re just going to keep reducing duration reducing duration. So we’ve been at, you know, less than a year duration for a long time, less than 30 days for probably as long. So boring.
Jeff Malec 42:34
Yeah. It’s good. Yeah. That cache line item has been rented a Tebow rate is pretty attractive these days. No doubt. So let’s switch gears for a second and talk a little bit about you’ve been on all sides of this privates. And what are the clients that you’ve come across? feel about like private hedge funds and CTAs versus ETFs versus mutual funds? Are you saying they don’t really care as long as they get what they want, and there’s easy conversation.
Jon Robinson 43:04
I think that people say that, but they actually do care. I think if it leaves their custodian, I think getting somebody to invest in you know, a client to invest in something where the assets have to leave Schwab or TD or whatever, is, is a hard thing to do. And look, private funds, certainly can add value. But I think that the hurdle for that specifically for an advisor to recommend a private phone to a client, where they may even lose the ability to fee on that. And I’m not saying that’s a driver, but it’s a practical reality. I mean, you have to take a look at this and say, Okay, from a business perspective, I may spend five additional units of labor to move that to do all the paperwork, facilitate all of that even facilitate transparency to the thing and reporting to the private fund. They’re going to look at that and say, Okay, well for to your point earlier about the incremental return on that efficient frontier, you know, let’s say, Okay, I’m going to carve out 5% to go over here, for what, you know, so the bar is super high.
Jeff Malec 44:17
Yeah, they I’ll put in a pitch for a team portfolio advisors, our company, which helps advisors do all that, like, Hey, you can get access to the private fund at Schwab still shows above the line and get your fee on it. Everyone’s happy with electronic forms as well. So no paperwork. But um, yeah, but that was a barrier to get done, right, like years of work to get to that point where you can even figure that out. But so that’s more advisor driven than client driven. It sounds like so the client writers clients, like I must be an ETF or will switch a little bit of mutual funds versus ETFs. Are you seeing that fee pressure to clients only want the ETFs or is that advisor driven?
Jon Robinson 44:58
I think it’s still advisor driven I think there are some clients that have an opinion. But I think all the client really wants is they want a, you know, we’ve actually noticed that clients have a little more. It’s counterintuitive, but they have a little bit more reasonable expectations than advisors do. Yeah. So, you know, the clients want a reasonable return. You know, they’re shooting for one that matches the goal in their financial plan, right to meet their goals for how many ever years out to have the number they need to safely that they feel will allow them to safely retire. So the implementation of you know, the boots on the ground of what’s actually in their account, as long as it remains fairly mainstream and not esoteric. I don’t think many at least the feedback we’ve gotten is that not many people care whether that’s delivered through a mutual fund or an ETF? Not to mention most, at least in our experience, most 401k platforms are still in mutual fund form. Yeah. So How bad would they be if that’s the only thing they could get? This is the thinking at least. Some care about cost some advisors highlight costs more than others. So to those that do an ETF portfolio is probably more appropriate. But I mean, you know, the data says, If you’re buying one, total stock market index, in an ETF form, or a mutual fund form, the lines are just gonna sit on top of each other with the only difference being the difference in the expense ratio.
Jeff Malec 46:40
And then my next question will be for a specific listener, I have for the podcast, what about an interval mutual fund? Right, like a little different, this is getting into the weeds, but allows you to do a lot more alternatives inside of it. The trade off being you might not be able to get your money out for three to six months. who dislikes that the most?
Jon Robinson 47:03
I’m glad you’re asking me this and not our trading team. Maybe they would have more entertaining answer. I think it’s really in our experience. The clients don’t really know that to interval thought. And they don’t find out typically, it’s it’s a short vol trade for an advisor. Yeah, because the client doesn’t find out. It’s an interval fun until they want cash and can’t get it.
Jeff Malec 47:32
And then there have to have the conversation and explain it. Yeah, exactly.
Jon Robinson 47:37
And performance can, you know, put a salve on that? That wound in some respects. But typically, if you can’t get your money out, it’s not because things are going particularly well. Yeah. You know, we’ve seen that with a lot of real estate interval funds. You know, they’re like, look, you can get 60% of your money back 20% of the time, right? And so it’s like, Alright, where do you end up selling the thing over to them. And I’m not challenging the efficacy of those funds and their strategies, and whether they make money or not, has nothing to do with that. It’s just, you know, a client’s expectation, whether they’re told us 1000 times or zero times is when I want my money, I can get it. And it presents a unique set of constraints for the advisor.
Jeff Malec 48:37
So we’ve kind of touched on all the different pieces of the IRA, business clients, advisors, what’s your view of the future? Right, are we do we keep going the RA world? 20 years ago, right, they were stockbrokers? And do we go full on is there no more fee basis or no more commission based there no more mutual fund buyers? Buy advisors? Like what? What’s your view of the future of the advisory space?
Jon Robinson 49:00
Well, I hope that it’s really good. We do think about this a lot. I mean, I think it depends on your timeframe for the future.
Jeff Malec 49:13
We’ll say 10 years, and then give me 100 years,
Jon Robinson 49:17
you know, I think in in 10 years, you are still going to see this migration from I think, from the hybrid world over to the IA world. I think you’re just going to see that for a lot of reasons. I don’t think a lot is going to change other than that. Now, you’re gonna see a lot of turnover in terms of I mean, I think I saw a stat recently that 40% of financial advisors are going to retire in the next 10 years. So succession is going to is a huge deal.
Jeff Malec 49:51
Yeah, and a lot. A lot of the successful firms I know are rolling up shops, bringing guys in that are going to retire things of that nature versus getting new clients. The old fashioned way?
Jon Robinson 50:01
Yep. Yep. I mean, you’re seeing that in, you’re seeing that show up in a lot of places, you know, the roll up strategy, you know, you’re seeing valuations for firms go up, you’ve seen private equity enter in a huge way over the past, you know, five or 10 years to fund those deals. And it makes sense because they look attractive, and performance, that, you know, they look really attractive. Of course, every pro forma looks attractive at the outset, but I think in 100 years, it will look very different. I think some of that is going to be driven by, you know, Blockchain, I think some of its going to be driven by AI, in terms of how advice is delivered. And how digital advice is trusted. I think that’s going to take a while. But I think the tools and the the software, they, they could probably be there largely now or within the next five years, but adoption of that by, you know, I think about my dad, going to some, you know, a chat GPT and getting financial advice is a joke. Yeah, there’s no way he’s going to do that. And it doesn’t it there’s nothing anybody can say that would cause him to trust that he wants to person to person interaction. Right. So, but I
Jeff Malec 51:28
do many, many young people these days, don’t want like actually don’t want the personal interaction. They feel uncomfortable, and they want wanted on the phone or wanting in an email.
Jon Robinson 51:37
Yeah, I think two forces. Well, one, one major force, I’ve noticed changes that behavior somewhat, which is the behavior around only wanting digital advice, you know, what recommendations, guidance, whatever. And that’s bear markets. Yeah, right. bear markets, downside volatility causes things that happen in our nervous systems where
Jeff Malec 52:05
you need a psychologist, right, your your adviser job becomes psychologist,
Jon Robinson 52:09
and I think it’s half of that anyway. Yeah, yeah. Or even in the good times? Yeah. So I think bear markets, which most people, you know, let’s say anybody that that had no money prior to Oh, eight and now has money. 22 was a glimpse, but you know, it’s not Oh, eight or a one or any of the past bear markets. They live through an environment where they’re passive, ETF.
Jeff Malec 52:39
57% Yeah, exactly.
Jon Robinson 52:42
I think betting on human nature, in that respect means that that person to person advice and counseling and you know, arm chairs, being an armchair psychologist, is unlikely to go away at any point. But it may become a more hybrid model where day to day, an advisor a human advisor relies on AI tools to help push out in a broader way, guidance or advice, but it’s still available for for hand holding. I don’t mean that pejoratively. I just Yeah, psychological piece,
Jeff Malec 53:16
one of the themes versus 10 or 20 years ago that we’ve already moved a lot towards that way, right of in the old days, that guy you’ve dealt with and liked and trusted also picked out the investments. And it seems that what what’s your opinion, like? What percent of advisors are still acting like that they’re actually doing the work and researching a stock and telling them to buy this and that, versus, hey, I’m, I’m the guy you trust your golfing buddy, the guy you can call, I’m gonna give you this psychological help. This non pejorative handholding? Yeah, but all the heavy lifting is done by the investment team, which is smart knows how to do that stuff. I’m a good golfer. I’m your buddy. Right? So it’s like, what percent do you think of IRAs are the golf plus investment advice versus the golf and that separate but the Investment Committee
Jon Robinson 54:04
mean, there are a lot fewer firms now that put out their put their ability to pick stocks? You know, at the fork?
Jeff Malec 54:16
Yeah. Yeah, on the masthead. Yeah. 10 years ago, it
Jon Robinson 54:20
was probably 5050. And now it’s maybe 10 15%. And you’re seeing that not only in the data around outsourcing the investment piece, but I think one thing that’s that a lot of people are paying attention to a lot of advisor you’re paying attention to is the fact that a lot of the data that shows that those that outsource the most grow the most, and the advisory. So you know, and you just think about that on a day to day. They they don’t an advisor practically doesn’t get paid any more or less for shoot picking stocks, or you know feed in on a fee basis. It’s the preservation of the relationship. It’s the service. It’s anything from a surprise and delight, you know, gift or round a golf or a pie, you know?
Jeff Malec 55:14
Yeah. That’s some southern stuff there. I’ve never had an advisor, give me a pie.
Jon Robinson 55:19
Well, I know some advisors that that would absolutely would show up at your door with a pie around Thanksgiving. Done. I’m
Jeff Malec 55:25
signing up. Yeah, yeah, we
Jon Robinson 55:27
had an advisor, who’s a great friend of mine build his practice, one of the things he used to build his practice was delivering pies. And, you know, it says a lot about him. He’s an entrepreneur, and he, you know, he’s just like, Look, I’ve seen data and other industries that that really promote this being a good idea. And he did it. And it’s a great idea. And he’s got a firm that’s, you know, 100 50 million now. Yeah. But it was based on stuff like that. And, you know, we manage money for his firm. And it took him a year of biweekly coffees to be convinced a trend follower. And, you know, one of the reasons I love him is that he is skeptical, right, he challenges everything. But once he saw, okay, the data that, you know, everything he had, that maybe Warren Buffett is a little bit more trend following, then people would like to believe, you know, just all of these, the tapes playing in in his head of the things that he’d heard were right. And I’m not saying they’re wrong, I’m just saying we think that, you know, trend following is just a more optimal approach in many ways. So, yeah, I think they are going back to advisors and in their ability to go to a client and say, Okay, here’s what we do really, really well. And here’s why you want to do business with us. And by the way, we can’t do everything, top notch. So we’ve hired a blueprint or another firm to come along, and we see them as part of our team. They’re outsourced, but we see them as part of our team. So they’re just as as available to you and to us as they would be if they were down the hall. You know, there’s a lot of leverage in that relationship. And that’s, that’s what we’ve experienced. Plus, you
Jeff Malec 57:26
get some tasty pie, as well. Exactly. I want someone any listeners out there, I want pumpkin pie as we’re coming into the season, but with a graham cracker crust. Anyone ever tried that? That seems like it’d be a better idea. I hate I love pumpkin pie, I hate the crust. And my second non sequitur is my brother is a realtor out in Boulder, Colorado. And he this time of year, loads up his truck with pumpkins and goes around everyone who’s bought a house from him or sold a house with him and says, Hey, here’s your pumpkin, right? How many want 123? Because what like, when you have little kids, that’s great. You go out to the pumpkin patch, when you’re older, I don’t want to go lug those things home and send them up. So go go deliver pumpkins or pies to get want to finish with what? What’s harder getting a ra client or getting a private fund? CTA client since you’ve been on both sides of the fence?
Jon Robinson 58:31
I would say it’s by a factor of 50. Getting a private fun client
Jeff Malec 58:38
factor of 50. Maybe more? And because of the structure because of explaining the model all of the above. Yes, the access, right? Yep, just go the k one, right? Just go down the west. Exactly.
Jon Robinson 58:55
I mean, all of those things. And again, you know, we loved running our private fund. And we may do that again one day. So I’m not, you know, talking my book, so to speak, because most of the money we manage is in one of the major custodians, but it’s so much easier to get if you just think about an individual to get an individual to they likely already have a custodial account somewhere. So they’ve done it. So it’s not scary, right? They maintain control. You’re adding something and advisor is adding something to that relationship, when you’re going to them with Hey, we have this thing over here. And we need you to wire the money to this bank and sign this, you know, tome of documents right i mean it and then you get in some cases you get daily daily, you know reports but usually it’s monthly and made It’s quarterly. And that doesn’t even match up with the liquidity schedule of a lot of funds anyway. You can you know, you it’s just, it’s night and day.
Jeff Malec 1:00:13
As you mentioned the reporting there and my and you mentioned private equity earlier it is private equity a part of your models. No, because it’s private fun doesn’t fit well into there. Right. And then what are your thoughts on like Cliff Asness and its volatility laundering? I don’t know if you’ve seen any of that. Right. But I just as a trend follower, as a former CTA, like, we have to mark the market every day. The position, the performance, the clients seeing the performance every day, like you said, private equity figured out way better, like, Hey, we’re going to tell you what this is worth, maybe monthly, but maybe quarterly. And if it’s really against us, we’re gonna mark to our model, and just everyone’s happy, right? And it’s kinda like, big investors, the pensions and demonstrating No, it’s not real, but it keeps the volatility low. They don’t have these big draw downs, they’re happy. The managers are happy. It’s like a win win.
Jon Robinson 1:01:07
Yeah, the the, they’re, in some cases, I envy that. Right, exactly. Because it’s, I’m not saying it’s easier, but certainly your your day to day experience is easier.
Jeff Malec 1:01:21
One, it’s a it’s a different way to do what you’re saying of like, help the investors behavior. Yeah, protect them from themselves, right. I’m like, Hey, you’re only gonna see this infrequently. And when you see it, it’s typically going to go up.
Jon Robinson 1:01:33
I think if you could ensure that there was a 0% chance that the individual wouldn’t need any liquidity for that pocket, you know, that bucket of capital for 10 years, or whatever the term of that particular fund is because they’re typically very long. It’s probably will certainly behaviorally, it’s a better experience. And, but actually doing that, you know, being able to say there’s a 0% chance that I’ll yeah, that’s, that’s, yeah.
Jeff Malec 1:02:10
Well, and that’s the underlying theme there, and what Cliff, everyone’s hammering on of like, hey, what if you’re marking it, but that keeps going down, keeps going down? And there’s bankruptcies? And then there’s all of a sudden it’s this? And it’s like, Well, alright, we had to take a loss on that. Sorry. All those past marks weren’t, weren’t all that real.
Jon Robinson 1:02:27
Yeah, a lot of those, you know, I tend to look at things in terms of their, their profile, a lot of private equity. I don’t know what percentage but from what we’ve seen, right, because we get a window into a lot of this stuff, when we’re trying to help an advisor, either convert a business, or an advisor gets a big client in and they’ve got four LPS that they’re trying to unwind or need, you know, advice on will analyze it. They a lot of them do have that short, vol option writing profile to them. Yeah, the motion of a hit of the cliff. And they they look like that? And the answer can’t be we’ll just give it more time. But that happens to be the answer. In almost every case where they they’re stuck with an asset that they can’t move, or if they move it, they have to, to mark and then they admit to it being 80% of its value, or whatever. So, you know, you can’t get rid of the volatility. It’s there. It’s either under the surface or it’s above the surface where you can see it and feel it. And I personally would rather have volatility, a little bit of volatility every day that I could that feel versus no volatility, and then the mother of all volatilities at some point in the future. I would just rather experience it day to day and, you know, learn to cope.
Jeff Malec 1:03:54
Right. And so bringing it back to your models, right, if we’re basically saying you can’t, right volatility is transmuted, is that the word you can’t like, destroy it, it’s just going to move to different pockets. So when your trend following these different asset classes, you’re sort of destroying it, right? You’re sort of getting out of the way when that volatility hits. But if we follow that theory, where’s it? Where’s it going to in that example?
Jon Robinson 1:04:19
Yeah, well, hopefully away from us. Yeah.
Jeff Malec 1:04:23
Yeah, I guess, right, I guess volatility can’t be removed. It’s just could be put to someone else. Like, I’m getting it off my plate. It’s on your plate now.
Jon Robinson 1:04:32
That’s right. And that risk, you know, that risk transfer is you know, the, in some cases, I think it shows up, you know, theoretically at least as the economic rent by value investors to buy things that are are going down. Right. So, from an ecological perspective, you know, they should be rewarded for absorbing volatility from volatility sellers and their volatility buyers in that case, and trend follower inherently are going to do that when trends turn. Yeah. Just like there’s some theories about trend following particularly in the commodity markets or making money based on hedgers. Right, I think,
Jeff Malec 1:05:12
yeah, non economic activity. Right.
Jon Robinson 1:05:16
You know, what willing buyers are not unwilling buyers and sellers in some cases. But yeah, for us as trend followers, when we exit or reduce our exposure to US equities, somebody’s stepping up to buy that. And if you think about your win rate, so to speak, I think that’s part of and we try to develop systems that are longer term in nature, for a lot of reasons, but the when we’re selling and somebody else is buying, they’re going to get rewarded more often than we are for doing that. But for every time they don’t get rewarded, they get penalized by some factor. Right. So that’s okay with us.
Jeff Malec 1:06:01
Right. So that’s the back to their, they might have a higher Sharpe, they might have a higher total return, but they’re taking on more risk to do so. Exactly. Yeah. And then you’re you’re not getting those bad calls. Like you said. I’ll leave it with you have Duke colors behind. You said you’re a Carolina fan, but you got that right. It’s kind of dark blue, black.
Jon Robinson 1:06:24
I really don’t appreciate you mentioning that, Jeff. But no, this is more of like a turquoise.
Jeff Malec 1:06:30
Okay, Mike, my camera’s not picking it up. Yeah. This has been fun. John, what else? Anything else you want to leave people with?
Jon Robinson 1:06:40
No, I mean, you can find more about blueprint at blueprint. ip.com. This has been fun. Like you mentioned at the beginning, you know, we haven’t talked in in several years. I do listen to your podcasts more than the ones that are just Jerry’s on so I enjoy what you’re doing. I think you’re doing a great job.
Jeff Malec 1:06:57
Thank you. It’s fun catching up. I’ll look it up next time or down that way. That’d be fun. Definitely. And when you’re back in Chicago ever. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much.
Jon Robinson 1:07:10
Yep, thank you.
Jeff Malec 1:07:15
Okay, that’s it for the show. Thanks, John. Thanks to blueprint thanks to RCM for sponsoring thanks Jeff burger for producing we’ll see you hopefully next week working on a guest if not the week after. Happy fall. See you soon. Peace.
RCM Alternatives 1:07:29
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