Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House. Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSC an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism, right here, right now at the NYSC and at ISIS exchanges and clearinghouses around the world. Now, welcome Inside the ICE House.
Peter Asch:
Since 2022, each spring, the Inside the ICE House team has packed up its equipment and taken the show on the road. In this case, the road is Interstate 15 to Las Vegas for ICE experience. The annual conference is the preeminent place to make the connection between ICE mortgages products and the industry it serves. Each year, thousands of mortgage lenders, servicers, regulators, and the growing universe of technology and data providers who support the sector meet to exchange ideas, discuss the issues facing the industry, and learn about the newest innovations changing the business. ICE Experience 2024 is no different, with dozens of companies represented and speakers consisting of names like Ice President, Ben Jackson, FHFA director, Sandra Thompson, former Treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran, and many others. Among the businesses road tripping to Nevada this year is the team from CoreLogic, a leading property information, analytics and solutions provider who are also the platinum sponsors of this gathering.
Located in Irvine, California, a picturesque four-hour drive along that Interstate 15 from Vegas through Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve, CoreLogic's public contributory and proprietary data includes over 4.5 billion records spanning more than 50 years. Leading the company's economics team responsible for analyzing, interpreting, and forecasting housing and economic trends in real estate, mortgages and insurance is today's guest, CoreLogic's Chief Economist, Selma Hepp. In today's episode, we'll explore her journey in the industry and examine the invaluable insights gained from her extensive experience, which now inform her current role. We'll also dive into CoreLogic's mission to prioritize people and discuss emerging market trends along with her outlook for the remainder of 2024. Our conversation with Selma, Chief Economist for CoreLogic is coming up right after this.
Speaker 3:
When you think of investment risk, do you consider climate risk? Changing weather patterns are impacting the way we live and the value of businesses, large and small. This can mean disruption to supply chains, changing demand for products and shifting regulation. What does this mean for your business, your clients and your investments? ICE offers data and markets that can provide critical insight. Manage your climate risk with ICE.
Peter Asch:
Welcome back Inside the ICE House, remember to subscribe wherever you listen, and rate and review us on Apple Podcasts so that others know where to find us. Our guest today, Selma Hepp is the chief economist for CoreLogic. She joined the company in March 2020 before assuming her current role in January 2023. Prior to CoreLogic, she spent time at Pacific Union International, Trulia, the California Association of Realtors, the National Association of Realtors, and was a special research assistant at the US department of Housing and Urban Development. Thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House here at Ice Experience.
Selma Hepp:
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me, Pete.
Peter Asch:
We're about halfway through the conference, amazingly already, and tomorrow you'll be speaking to Barbara Corcoran at the Executive Women's Networking Lunch. What's stood out so far? What are the topics of conversations in the hallways and in the rooms?
Selma Hepp:
Well, I think still at this moment, people are wondering what's going to happen in 2024. I think the mantra over the last couple of months that I heard in the mortgage industry is, just wait it out and things are going to take off later in the year, 2025 in particular. I mean, when you look at mortgage origination activity, we think about what happened with refi-activity, we are along the lowest levels that we've been in a really, really, really long time, and so that's impacting, it's people's jobs and people's pocketbook, and so everybody wants to know what's next, when does the market take off? The interesting thing about the conference right now is, we have the Fed meeting coming up tomorrow, and I think we are all in anticipation of what's going to be said. We kind of know it's not going to be anything new and much different than it's been, but hopefully some signal of something happening, that we can sort of hang our hat on.
Peter Asch:
I started the conversation talking about the drive... I don't know if you drove or flew from where your offices are, but when you're coming to Vegas, I personally actually have some family in the area so I've been coming here for over 20 years. You could just see the growth. Can you give our listeners the 10,000-foot view of what's happening here in Vegas, and really across the entire west coast?
Selma Hepp:
Yeah, I mean, Vegas is a very, very interesting market and I actually have, not this time, but I have previously driven from, I live in Los Angeles, so I have driven from LA to Vegas, and every time I've done so, I see the city growing and growing. It's been one of the fastest growing cities over the last few years, especially during the pandemic. What's interesting about the area is that it hasn't been hit as hard by high mortgage rates as some of the other west coast cities. When you think about Bay Area and California or Northwest, Washington State, this is some areas that have been really, really hard hit. Or for example, other western US markets like Idaho, Utah, you have markets that are still struggling to come back to the levels, at least in terms of home prices, where they were at the peak in summer of 2022.
While Las Vegas had a bit of a setback, it rebounded really rapidly, it recovered most of those price losses and population keeps growing and the market keeps seeing very, very strong demand. What's another advantage of Las Vegas in comparison to last time, when you think about Vegas, you think about what happened during the Great Recession and it was very hard hit, it was one of the epicenters of foreclosures.
It's nothing like that because the economy has diversified in many ways. You don't have only that leisure and hospitality type of economy, but you have other types of jobs, so it's not reacting to what just one single trend is in the economy in terms of the job gains and job losses. We've seen job creation. I mean, a lot of it is positive. Now, why? You may ask. It is still one of the more affordable markets in the western part of the US when you compare it to the Bay Area or maybe markets which is more comparable to Sacramento, like Riverside, maybe Phoenix, it does remain a relatively more affordable market, so I think that's really the story of this market and we do see it continue to see strong demand and increase in home prices going forward.
Peter Asch:
Talk about the business out here outside of leisure and the casinos we're at right now, it's this idea of we're going to have sports teams out here, we have businesses, remote working. When you're thinking about that, sort of the whole nature of homeownership has changed, and if you go back 20 years ago when you got your start with Century 21, which is, you'll learn on this podcast, we like to highlight our NYC listed companies, part of anywhere real estate, which trades on a ticker, H-O-U-S for house, very good ticker for them. What sparked your interest in real estate and your decision to pursue a career originally as a realtor, and then we'll get into what you're doing now?
Selma Hepp:
Yeah, it's interesting how I ended up here today. I don't have one of those careers that I can say this is exactly how I planned it to be. I'm very grateful for where I am today, but it was a winding road. Basically, I had a lot of interest in economics and I was good at it because I'm good in math. I wish I was good at maybe other things, but so be it. I'm good at math, so I ended up doing economics. I say that because what I really love is design and built environment. I come from Croatia and I came here when I was 17, but I grew up in Croatia. It was all about architecture, it was all about spending time outside. Public squares were a main place where people gathered and socialized, and so when I came to the US I found it interesting that there's not a lot of those places of socialization.
Now, we socialize on social media, but in person is always better. Anyway, I sort of combined that interest in economics and urban environment. When I was working on my PhD, I used the two to understand what drives people's decision to buy in certain areas. In that moment in particular, I was studying the impact of distance to business centers, to transit, to job centers, mortgage default, as a function of distance to this. How much people were willing to pay more to be in close proximity to these type of places of community. That's kind of how my career evolved out of that question of-
Peter Asch:
Well, in many ways that combines that because you think about it, the distance you're willing to go from whatever the epicenter is, right? You're basically trying to find the American Town Square. I'm not a math person, but there is an architecture to data and things like that. What did you find back then? We can get into it now, but did you find that maybe there is a kind of a hidden town square in American developments? I mean, I'm in Jersey, every other community has what's literally called the Town Square, which is basically a strip mall.
Selma Hepp:
Right. Well, at the time then, this was in early 2000s and people were coming back to the urban centers, they were coming back to downtowns, and that was the revitalization of downtown activity, which basically was going strong all the way until the pandemic. My dissertation basically looked at that and found that after many years of de-urbanization or what we call urban flight, we were re-urbanizing centers, downtown centers again. Yeah, that was sort of the point of my dissertation at the time.
Peter Asch:
Yeah, no, it's fascinating. Your career, and I assume some of that core research about basically community has taken you to the public sector, the private sector, you've worked for professional organizations. How did all that experience working for both the National Association of Realtors as well as the federal government, as well as private companies shape your view of mortgages and the role that data played in understanding mortgages?
Selma Hepp:
Right. Well, what I found along the way is that everybody wants to know basically what is the trend, what is going to happen in the near future? More often the not near future than far future, but what's going to happen, and what is currently going on in the market or in the economy? There's oftentimes very confusing signals, and people who are not trained economists or spent hours on out looking at real estate data, they don't necessarily know. Everybody is interested in a story, whether that be a consumer mortgage lender, real estate agent, a government agency, everybody wants to know where they can help or be of influence, and that's where the data comes in. Nowadays, maybe more so than when I was at school, the decisions were data driven. Now, they're data driven, so really the advantage of being here today is the potential of unlocking that data and telling the story with the data, and so that's kind of where I fit in. That's really what I do for work.
Peter Asch:
Yeah, no, I want to dive into it. We were speaking outside before we got into this room, a little bit about the podcast you've been on. You have to basically take what you just said, you're taking these data stories and you're trying to explain it to an audience who don't have the background. What is your process? Let's say you're looking at this large macro trend, what's your process for taking something that may have thousands of data points and breaking into a 20-minute story you're either going to tell on a podcast or tell it to an investor or tell it to just even your own co-workers?
Selma Hepp:
Right. Well, oftentimes it starts as very confusing, all over the place kind of a narrative, and then as I start telling it, I realize oftentimes, well, this needs a better outline, so I tend to then outline it. But the idea is, you start with a problem. What is the problem? I'll tell you most recently what's, for example, been on my mind, is this climate event, it's this catastrophic, very expensive climate events that are impacting people and their homes and their shelter.
With our climate analytics data, I've been trying to understand how to tell that story to the extent to where people can then make decisions based on this story, and basically what does that mean long-term for the housing market, because we do know that there is this increase trend towards population of areas that are very prone to natural disasters. One should be concerned or aware of what they're getting themselves into. My concern here is, how do we tell this story that people can relate to, because not everybody believes in climate change, for example, they think this is just maybe a coincidence we have. It doesn't matter what it is, that's not what I'm trying to prove here. It's really about, hey, how can this impact you and what should you be thinking about? Yeah, this will be like an example of that-
Peter Asch:
It's an important example, and you think about these ideas of not quite everyone understand what's going on. You actually joined CoreLogic on March 17th, 2020, which everyone listening to this podcast knows it was a very interesting, literally to the date, interesting moment in our country's history. Can you talk about that? Was that your first experience with remote work? What was that like? You're leading teams remotely, how has that transitioned for you and how has that changed how CoreLogic operates?
Selma Hepp:
Yeah, I didn't actually, that was not my first time working from home. Actually, Pacific Union was based out of San Francisco and I had to move back to LA at the time. I take care of my elderly parents, and my father was sick, so anyways, I came back to LA and I continued working for Pacific Union from home, and I had a couple team members that were in Bay Area and they were working from home. Actually, it was four years prior to the pandemic that I was already working from home, so I got really used to it. When it happened, it was almost, I will be honest, a relief because I was so used to it that the idea of commuting... I guess commuting was really my biggest pain point. I didn't have to do that anymore.
What was unique during the pandemic is that I couldn't go into the office and meet all the other employees of CoreLogic, so it actually took me a little while to get to know people who work at CoreLogic. Sometimes I feel like I don't even know a lot of them still today, four years later, because we are now still spread out all over the country. A lot of people do work from home at CoreLogic. We have offices too, but I think it was really the flexibility that CoreLogic provided its employees that turned out to be a very beneficial factor for keeping folks interested in all the ideas that we had at CoreLogic in advancing those innovations. You have to work where people are, if that's where they are. My team is remote as well, and I think sometimes we get frustrated, sometimes we don't. A lot of them have young children, so they appreciate being able to have that flexibility, but it's a give and take, no matter how your work environment is, I feel like there's always give and take.
Peter Asch:
Definitely. I think one of the things that came out of COVID is the increased tools to do remote work. You're not [inaudible 00:17:52] anymore. Speaking of how companies operated in early 2022, Patrick Dodd took on the role of CEO for CoreLogic. From your perspective, how has his leadership influenced the company's growth and how does it sort of affect your ability to lead your team?
Selma Hepp:
Well, I think Pat was one of those people that was really a promoter of meeting people where they are. CoreLogic now has a mission to make property industry faster, smarter, and people-centric. We are a very people-centric organization, and I think that's really been an interesting development in CoreLogic that I really, really appreciate. It's about people. If you make people happy, they will make clients happy. Bottom line, right? It's been great development. I really think that CoreLogic is poised to greatness.
Peter Asch:
Well, speaking of developments, January 2023, you were named to your current role as a chief economist. I'm going to quote you to yourself right now.
Selma Hepp:
Okay.
Peter Asch:
At the time, you said, "depth, wealth and consistency position the company to provide clear and actionable views of the property ecosystem and bring value to our clients and broader markets." In theory, I know what a chief economist does, but what does a chief economist do to make all of that happen?
Selma Hepp:
The role of a chief economist or any economist is telling this economic story in a particular industry, whatever that industry may be. The advantage for a housing economist of being at CoreLogic is that we have the depth, wealth and consistency of the data that allows us to really keep a finger on a pulse, as they say, of the housing market. That's been my favorite thing about CoreLogic. But what do I do at CoreLogic? I take the data, I create the housing story, I analyze, not just housing data, I analyze economic trends, I analyze demographic trends.
Increasingly, these days we've been spending time on thinking about demographic trends like, what happens with baby boomers now as they're aging out? That's one popular topic right now. For a long time we talked about millennials, so demographics are very important. Job or economy is very important for housing market because if people are employed, they can buy homes, they stay in their homes, they don't default on their mortgage loans. Understanding what's happening in the economy. Basically, I take all of that and I try to predict. We do a lot of predicting as economists, so I try to predict housing trends, prices, and these other trends that would impact housing markets.
Peter Asch:
Yeah, I kind of want to get the weeds of that. You mentioned earlier you're interested in the climate impact. Something like this, you and your team get together and you're following this story. Are you then going to your data people asking, hey, can you get more data on this? Or are they coming to you with, here's the data we have, find the story? How is that sort of process working?
Selma Hepp:
Usually, it's me digging for data. Yeah, it's usually me hearing things or reading things that spur more questions, and then I think, well, hey, can I tell the story with our data, or does our data have a different angle that I can tell on this story? It's really me bugging my data people to find the data that I can then analyze.
Peter Asch:
Yeah, I kind of want to get the market dynamics behind the data. I think sort of one of the first questions I had is that in the equity space, which I work in, the New York Stock Exchange is a lot more we're at. What we're seeing is, there's been, in many ways, sort of a disconnection between what the data is saying and what the market is doing, and so when you're thinking about the unpredictability of between 2020, 2022, 2023, with COVID, interest rates, government spending, in 2023, which we just actually getting a little further down the road now, but coming out of 2023, do you feel like the actual market performance aligned with what you were seeing in the data, or do you think there was a disconnect?
Selma Hepp:
That's a great question. Well, the disconnect was in our perception of what the impact of higher mortgage rates is going to be on the economy. I think this was where the disconnect came from and created the divergence in the story. Let me explain that. Basically, in previous cycles when we had such strong tightening cycles, what we would see is contraction in economic activity, we would see people being impacted by higher mortgage rates or interest rates, which would prevent them from buying more homes or autos or other durable items that are impacted by interest rates, and they draw down on their savings and so on and so forth. What happened this time is that we had such excess savings, such accumulation of savings due to programs, government programs during the pandemic that people were actually, it took much longer for that story to unravel in terms of drawing out the excess saving. Right?
The other thing, what we learned is that if you don't have to buy a home or a car, you are really not impacted by high mortgage rates, right? Inflation was high, but we all saved during the pandemic. The other thing is we are learning that because a lot of people refied, they had little extra cash because people moved from more expensive location to more affordable location, that also provided them extra cash. In fact, what we underestimated was the power of US consumer or the strength of US consumer, and so that really is what played out in 2023. We saw strong US consumer who really wasn't that fazed with higher mortgage rates or interest rates or the inflation for that matter to that... Yes, on the margin, I don't want to underappreciate some people that struggled during this, but on the overall, as a overall picture, we are fared really, really well in light of all that financial tightening.
The question is now where we go from here? The question is, how does one have confidence in doing future predictions? Because we were, I wouldn't say we were wrong, we just, you go with trends. In economics, a lot of times you base your future predictions on trends that you saw happen in the past events. Economy is changing, culture is changing, a lot of things are changing, so we maybe need to be more on top of that as economists, but this is where I think data helps a lot because we were able to track all of this almost real time and we were able to tell, okay, well actually housing market is not tanking. I mean, home prices went up five, 6% over the course of 2023, and that's not something a lot of people were predicting. We were able to adjust our forecast as we saw that real time data happen.
Peter Asch:
Speaking of house prices, one of the big things behind that has been home construction, which deals a lot with the inventory. I think we all remember a time when lumber was going for literally a thousand times when it gone to pre-pandemic and the strain had been put on new projects. Where do you see new home construction trending? I mean, here in Vegas there's a lot of houses on our construction currently.
Selma Hepp:
Yeah, I mean that's the wonderful thing of markets like Vegas or Phoenix, or a lot of markets actually in Southeast and South is that it's easier to build, it's more less costly to build, and so as a result of that, housing markets are not as constrained. But on flip side, you have these markets like California for example, or Northeast where it's so difficult to build, and as a result you have a market that is completely frozen in many ways.
In terms of new construction, I think certainly lower mortgage rates will help build home builder confidence, add to the home builder confidence, but the other thing that builders are, I think, aware of very much so lately is the amount of pent-up demand. We haven't built enough for a couple of decades at least, and then people are not moving on the existing side of the housing market because they're locked in in the super low mortgages, so that means that really where are people going to be buying but new homes? I think that really helps the outlook for the new construction market, and you can see that also in builder confidence improving month after month because they see that pent-up demand unlocking.
Peter Asch:
You mentioned people not wanting to move. At the State of the Union, President Biden actually called for a $10,000 tax credit for people who sell their homes or build and renovate more than two million homes. Do you think this plan, if it passes, it just was announced, would create an uptick in the existing inventory? Is money just enough to get people to start moving that inventory?
Selma Hepp:
Well, I mean anything helps. I would say, let's not exclude anything. Let's just take anything we can at this point. But I don't know that that would be as significant of an addition to supply as we really need. I mean, earlier in the session they talked about the size of a shortage, housing market shortage, housing unit shortage, four, five, six million, pick your number. These are in millions. I think it's really a matter of doing more to incentivize new construction, in my opinion, because even if people who are in homes right now sell their home, they are by default usually a buyer again, so it's not like on the net they would be adding inventory to the market. Right?
I think the idea here is to maybe unlock some of the second homes that people have, with President Biden's proposal, because people are, as a result of these really low mortgages during the pandemic, are holding onto more than one home because it's gotten cheaper to do so and they can rent it out. That's a whole different dynamic, but still, I would say that on the net we need to add more homes, new homes rather than just make one person leave a home for another home. I mean, that doesn't really resolve the problem.
Peter Asch:
Yeah. I mean, this week, The Daily from the New York Times did a story on, I think, it was called 33 Misery, but basically this population that's been sort of stuck between issues in the economy and financial crisis. Actually, this morning on the main stage, Tim Bowler and former secretary Lawrence Summers were talking about what they call the plight facing young families who are looking for a home to call their own to raise children in, but they can't buy that home to then have children. Particularly, Secretary Summers was worried about the impact of that on even future population growth. You talk about taking data, telling the stories, what is the current story for those new home buyers, net new, facing as they walk into this economy?
Selma Hepp:
Well, first of all, because of undersupply, they're likely to be facing high prices. I mean, the affordability is a huge problem in our country and it's just getting increasingly worse by the fact that we don't build enough. It's very difficult for a new buyer. I mean, you have to come up with a down payment, for one, even if there are mortgage products that you don't have to come up with a full 20%, but still for many families, especially if there is not that intergenerational wealth transfer that some benefit from, you have to come up with a down payment, and that's a lot. Mortgage payment is a lot. On top of that, now you have these homeowner insurance concerns with rising cost of insurance, rising taxes, property taxes in particular. It's just overall much more expensive to be a homeowner than it used to be.
People, as a result of that are feeling stuck. They stay maybe in their grandparents, that 33 generation maybe staying stuck in their parents' basement. Long-term too, I mean it is a concern for population because we are seeing our population growth slowing, and the only reason why we may see some uptick is due to immigration, which we do desperately need more labor force so immigration adds to that, that's positive, but we need also our own population growth coming from our own residents. People get scared, where am I going to live? How am I going to afford school or kindergarten? There's the whole issue of how much kindergartens cost now, daycare costs now, and inability to even get daycare because they're so overcrowded and so on and so forth. Yeah, there are some problems.
Peter Asch:
Yeah, no, definitely. One of the problems is that the cost of money has gone up with interest rates. Earlier this year, Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell had sort of hinted there'd be rate cuts, but recent inflation and other data points led actually... Secretary Summers on states today predict we won't see any cuts for a very long time. What should we anticipate with mortgage rates, which are directly tied to that, but there are some variants leading to this period? Is there hope that the mortgage rates can drop without maybe the Fed doing a major cut?
Selma Hepp:
That would be very difficult. I think the main problem is, and also was discussed earlier today, there is lack of investors right now in mortgage-backed security with Federal Reserve stepping back, and that's really whom we'd need to step in at this point for a more significant drop in mortgage rates, and we don't have that, so yes, I think we are in for a longer period of higher mortgage rates, and that is just the reality of today's market.
Peter Asch:
As we start to head toward wrapping up our conversation, a couple more questions to go, but let's turn that pessimism into optimism. As we head through 2024, what are the green shoots? What are you excited about as looking up for the market?
Selma Hepp:
Yeah, I think one major thing that excites me is increased in existing inventory. Most recent data is showing increases in some market. Like I said earlier, I think that has been the major constraint for the market, so having more inventory will help velocity in the market. We will help open up some of that inventory and seemingly does appear based on the data that it's more affordable inventory that's becoming available, so there goes that opportunities for some homebuyer or young buyers to enter into homeownership, so that's a good thing. The other positive is that I think it is when you look at the economy right now and the resilience of it, it does help long-term because what happened coming out of the Great Recession, it took us so long for the housing market to recover because the consumer was so damaged. This time around, the consumer is really not damaged. They are employed, they generally have still savings. The saving rate is still the same as it was pre-pandemic now, so that gives me optimism that once when things get going, we will see housing market rebound pretty fast.
Peter Asch:
You think about that's a very complex story. You have some things are the same as a trend, some things that are different. What will CoreLogic's role be in understanding that data, and what are you most excited about in the data that you're starting to see?
Selma Hepp:
We are always trying to find ways of helping our clients, which are generally lenders, agents, all the industry participants to help to connect with their clients and to have elevated and innovative ways of communicating their clients and telling their stories. We're always looking for ways of enabling them, to giving them the tools to do so. As a result of all of these trends, we are looking at more streamlined products that are going to be... Consumers always like when they only enter information once, not multiple times. The other thing is, people do want to know more about what's happening with climate. I keep going back to that, but climate is important, or at least impact of weather events on your wealth, really.
I think that's where people can relate, especially when, for a lot of people, homes are where most of their wealth is tied up, and so ensuring that they don't lose that wealth, and so that's where we try to develop new climate analytics products or new analytics. Also, fraud detection, for example, is another thing we're working on to ensure, because we've heard a lot about that through 2023, and there's nothing worse for a consumer than losing, say, your identity or somebody, or losing, or somebody draining out your accounts, and things of that nature. There's just, generally, industry-wise, like risk management tools and such. We're really always trying to stay on top of it, and I think it's going to be an interesting year.
Peter Asch:
Well, it's an interesting year, we'll have to have you back next year to see how it went. Thank you so much, Selma, for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Selma Hepp:
Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.
Peter Asch:
It was our pleasure. That's our conversation for this week, our guest was Selma Hepp, chief Economist for CoreLogic. If you like what you heard, please rate us on Apple Podcasts so other folks know where to find us. Got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, make sure to leave a review. Email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @ICEHousePodcast. Our show is produced by Lance Glinn with production assistance, editing and engineering from Ken Abel. I'm Peter Asch, your host, signing off from Las Vegas Nevada. Thanks for listening, talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor, approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein, constitution offered to sell a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of [inaudible 00:37:39] clarity.