Simple, but Not Easy

International Stocks – A Portfolio’s Missing Piece?

Episode Summary

As of late May, the US ranks 39th out of 44 global stock markets—firmly in the bottom 15%. Meanwhile, international markets are gaining momentum, with 7 of the top 10 performing countries located in Europe. This performance gap appears to be supported by improving fundamentals, favorable currency trends, and rising earnings expectations across the region. Can it continue? In this episode of Simple, But Not Easy, host Nick VanDerSchie is joined by Morningstar’s Paul Tait and international equity portfolio manager Nabil Salem to explore why now may be the right time to take a fresh look at international diversification.

Episode Transcription

Nicholas VanDerSchie: U.S investors have been spoiled. In 2023 and 2024 we experienced back-to-back years of more than 20% returns for US stocks, the last time that happened was in the late 1990s. For investors price can drive sentiment and after a run like that its easy to understand why some investors might not bother looking elsewhere. But here’s a reality check, through late May theUS ranks 39th out of 44 global stock markets this year, placing it in the bottom 15% of country's stock market returns. And while the US takes a back seat, many other regions appear to be breaking out. One example is Europe, home to the top six country equity markets year to date.

As we think through the long-term investing case for equities outside of the US, there are a few factors that we can point to. One, valuations are compelling. Two, fundamentals are improving. And three, the dollar has been weakening, all of which could continue to make the non-US markets an attractive destination for investors. In today's episode, we'll unpack the case for international diversification and discuss why looking beyond the US could potentially help strengthen a portfolio. 

Hello and welcome to Simple but, Not Easy, a podcast from Morningstar's Wealth Group, where we turn complicated financial developments into actionable ideas. I'm Nick VanDerSchie, head of strategy and execution for Morningstar Wealth, and I'm delighted to be joined by Paul Tait, a portfolio specialist here at Morningstar, as well as Nabil Salem, a portfolio manager responsible for managing Morningstar's international equity investment portfolio. 

Now, before we get into the conversation, if you'd like to learn more about how we support advisors, we welcome you to email us at simple@morningstar.com or me directly at nicholas.vanderschie@morningstar.com. Now, let's get started. Paul, Nabil, welcome to Simple but, Not Easy. 

Paul Tait: Thanks. 

Nabil Salem: Thanks for having us. 

VanDerSchie: So, Paul, I should say welcome back. This is your second time on the show. I believe you were last on in early 2024 talking about opportunities in US equities. And I'm just looking here. I believe that was episode 112 for listeners who want to go back and hear more from you. Nabil, welcome. This is your first time back. Since I took over hosting duties for Simple but, Not Easy, you are the portfolio manager on Morningstar's international equity portfolio, and we'll certainly talk about that strategy more in a few more minutes. Guys, look, it's really exciting to have you on the show. We're glad you're here. But before we jump into the investing discussion, I have to ask, certainly with the weather warming up in Chicago, what are you most looking forward to this summer? 

Tait: Sure. I'll start. I'm looking forward to enjoying everything Chicago has to offer. Summertime in Chicago, the city really comes alive. I'll definitely be at some Cubs games. You'll find me on the beach. But I also have a couple trips planned. I'll be in Europe for a little bit this summer too. So looking forward to all of that. 

Salem: That's great. I have a new daughter. So I'm just going to get to redo all the things I enjoyed as a kid with her. So really looking forward to it. 

VanDerSchie: Well, congrats, Nabil. Sounds like you guys both have a lot of action-packed activities planned for the summer ahead. Okay, so let's set the stage for our listeners. And entering this year, we had just come off back-to-back 20% plus returns for US stocks. The last time that happened was over 25 years ago. And after returns that strong, it's easy to understand why many investors might ask, why bother with anything else? So Paul, I know you talk to a lot of advisors and keep close tabs on asset flows. What's your read on investor appetite for non-US stocks right now? 

Tait: Yeah, I think pace is definitely picking up. One of the things that we look at is the Bank of American Merrill Lynch Fund Manager Survey, that's surveying institutional mutual fund, hedge fund managers. And it's been interesting to see a pretty strong swing in US versus international from the start of this year to some of the more recent surveys. So we know more of the kind of professional investor crowd has taken notice of non-US stocks right now. Anecdotally, I've been hearing a lot more interest from advisors as well. And no doubt, some of that comes from just trying to diagnose why international is having such a strong year in the face of things like geopolitics, like tariffs, and things like that. But also, I think it's just kind of hard for a lot of clients to ignore international when you're seeing this kind of disparity in returns. 

So interest is definitely there, but you also have to kind of balance expectations a little bit when we're having these conversations. Performance is strong, yes, but this is also part of a larger conversation around portfolio construction and understanding, well, what is a fair allocation to international? International as a whole, it's been pretty unloved for a while. So a lot of these conversations are us kind of hitting the reset button a little bit with clients and talking about what implementing an international allocation looks like in the context of a broader portfolio. 

VanDerSchie: And Paul, while we're on the topic of allocations to international, best you can tell, how do you perceive actual allocations to non-US stocks across the advisors you work with? 

Tait: Yeah, I mean, a lot of people are very open to the story and the conversations have been very constructive. We've been seeing some pretty serious allocation shifts that way for a lot of our clients, but there is still kind of a cohort of advisors that still struggle with pulling the trigger. On net, I think investors are still largely under allocated towards international stocks. Part of that might just be fatigue around the asset class. We've heard the valuation story for a very long time now, and it's just part of the behavioral side of investing to want to see immediate results and to dismiss it if you don't really see them in the short term. So it seems like some investors are kind of in proven mode, meaning they want to see some degree of outperformance before they believe the hype. And I always kind of caution against that kind of thinking. It's that kind of thinking that can help you kind of fall into those behavioral traps of performance chasing and that can get you into trouble. I'd suggest more thinking about it just from the standpoint of a contrarian investor. And you know, contrarian investors, they don't, they understand that things don't always happen overnight. It requires some patience sometimes. 

VanDerSchie: Nabil, anything to add from where you sit? 

Salem: Well, yeah, interest has been shifting this year based on a lot of the factors that Paul discussed. I think for a minute, we just think about the broader context of what's going on. The past 15 years were the best 15 year period for US stocks since 1970. And so what I would say is our clients should not use this past 15 years to set forward expectations. This is also not the first time that we've seen a market that becomes very highly concentrated and where investors are focused on one particular market. So for example, in the late 1980s, Japan was actually more than 40% of the MSCI World Index. If you think back about what was going on there, PEs were highly elevated after a period of really low interest rates and easy credit. And more importantly, there was this narrative that Japanese stocks had very attractive growth prospects, which was, you know, they were growing, but that doesn't mean they're going to grow to the sky. And those growth prospects never were realized. Japan's market collapsed in the 90s and it took years to recover while other countries outpaced it. 

So that's just one example of what can occur. And it's just a reminder that country concentration and popularity can become kind of extreme, but it can also quickly unwind. If you think about the longer term returns, US and non-US stocks have gone through these periods of long periods of over and under performance. And if you look at the broader set of returns, actually the returns for non-US stocks and US stocks tends to be pretty similar. So, I would just encourage our advisors to think about that broader set of returns, not just what's happened most recently, and maintain diversification, especially when the market's becoming more concentrated. 

So, yeah, it's been a rough stretch. But the other, final thing I'll say is I think the lack of attention to non-US stocks leaves greener pastures for active managers. So, for example, Fidelity has published some research which shows that active management tend to generate higher alpha outside the US than within it. And that's actually where hit rates tend to be highest. So, that's, you know, the percentage of stocks that work for portfolio managers. So, and within our own Morningstar Select Equity platform, our most alpha-generating portfolio over the past five years has been the international equity portfolio. So, hopefully there has been greener pastures. Hopefully that continues. 

VanDerSchie: And Nabil, you're obviously a portfolio manager and evaluating things at the company level. I'm interested to hearing what type of discrepancies, whether they're valuation gaps, company quality, other factors that you're seeing between US stocks and international stocks right now. 

Salem: So, like you said, the way we approach investing on our equities team is primarily through bottoms-up analysis. There are times when country-level discounts widen. Over the long run, we believe that the total return of a stock to investors will be reflected by the company-level drivers and fundamentals. But stocks in Europe or other countries go through these periods where sometimes they trade at a discount solely because of where they're domiciled. So, one example might be like a Lloyd's Bank, which is one of the portfolio holdings. Lloyd's has a relatively simple business model for a bank. They're primarily focused on issuing residential mortgages. They have 20% of the UK's deposit share. And I'd say they'd be somewhat comparable to a regional bank in the United States, except they have just much greater scale than you'd see those regional banks having. 

Over the past five years, regional banks in the US have traded the large ones around 1.3 to 1.5 times book value, while Lloyd's over the past five years has traded for a price to book of around 0.7. So, that's a 50%-ish discount, despite the fact that Lloyd's has greater share. So, you might ask, like, why would that be? Well, Lloyd's has a little bit lower profitability, but I'd argue that that gap has been disproportionate. You know, one of the counterpoints that we'll hear advisors say is, hey, like, valuations have been cheaper outside the US for a while. And, you know, that's true. And this is where I think active management comes into play in our approach. A major part of our process is that is focused on identifying which of these optically cheap companies might be improving their capital allocation practices to address the large discount that their stock might be trading at. And that could be by investing in the right areas of their business that were previously underperforming or that they needed to invest in, like, digital technologies, or increasing shareholder returns via buybacks and dividends when growth prospects are lower. 

VanDerSchie: I'm not sure you guys are familiar with this piece, but there was a recent Wall Street Journal article contrasting the US and European tech sectors. And there was one stat that really stood out to me. And it was over the past 50 years, the US has created 241 companies from scratch worth $10 billion or more. And if you look to Europe, that count drops to 14, only 14. Nabil, what is your take on that gap? Is it something structural, cultural, something else? 

Salem: Yeah, it's an amazing stat. There is certainly less growth outside the US I think it's hard to identify one single factor. The US is a huge market with scale that doesn't exist in most other countries. It's possible that risk taking may be viewed differently here than elsewhere. We have very strong rule of law, investor protections. And historically, maybe we've attracted some of the best and brightest minds from around the world to this country. That doesn't mean that growth doesn't exist outside the United States. So if I were to show you the income statement of a company like Hermes, the luxury goods company, and not tell you what company it is and ask someone to identify it, I would actually bet that a lot of people would mistake it for a tech stock with high gross margins and really high growth.

Revenue growth is just one of several factors that drives total return. And we're also thinking about the price we're paying for what we're getting and other drivers of earnings per share, which might include margin expansion and improving operations. So there are several companies, many companies in Europe, I would argue that have those attributes. And finally, in Asia, there are high growth companies like Taiwan Semiconductor, which allow you to get US tech and market exposure at a substantial discount. So Taiwan Semiconductor manufactures 90% of the world's most advanced chips. Their key customers include Apple and NVIDIA. But Taiwan Semiconductor trades at 13.5 times earnings, which is a substantial discount to typical US growth stock. 

VanDerSchie: Paul, we talk a lot about diversification here at Morningstar, and I'm sure many of the advisors listening are doing the exact same thing with their clients. One big difference between US and international markets is sector mix, especially technology. What kind of diversification benefit can investors get by looking beyond US borders here? 

Tait: Yeah, I mean, this year so far is a pretty good reason why we're seeing diversification pay off. I mean, from a sector standpoint, international companies tend to be a little bit less tech heavy. We just kind of talked about that. From a composition standpoint, you see a lot of things like financials, industrials, some consumer names. Well, keep in mind, when you're investing in the S&P 500, about a third of the S&P 500 is tech. There's a case to make that there's a relatively high amount of concentration in one sector and part of being a broadly diversified portfolio and implementing an international allocation just by a sector standpoint can help broaden that sector diversification out a little bit more. But there's also more layers of diversification outside of sectors. There's geographic diversification. When one economy may be contracting, and other may be expanding. Some economies may be seeing a little bit more restrictive policy. Others might be stimulating their economy. We're seeing a little bit of that with Europe right now. That can help with diversification. There's also currency diversification, diversifying away from the dollar. There's actually a few different layers of diversification when you implement an international allocation. 

VanDerSchie: Guys, before we move on, I do want to touch on this important concept of home country bias. It does seem to be real and can be persistent at times. Nabil, what are some of the more extreme examples you've seen of investors leaning too heavily into their home market? 

Salem: Yeah. First off, I just agree with Paul and would emphasize that we think about the long-term diversification benefits of owning non-US stocks. If you look back in 2022, US growth stocks were down more than 20% versus a low single digit negative return for non-US stocks. The start of this year has woken up some investors when US stocks have been down and non-US stocks are up. Over the past five years, I think this speaks to the home country bias, our international equity ADR portfolio is one of the highest returning strategies we offer from an absolute return perspective. The lack of focus on non-US stocks may have created opportunities for active managers like us. 

VanDerSchie: That makes sense. Paul, I know there's no correct answer here, but how should investors think about the right size for non-US exposure inside a portfolio today? 

Tait: We've already talked about how people are under-allocated international and there's all those behavioral forces at play. It's potentially the lack of performance. Sometimes I hear from advisors that they just don't feel comfortable bringing up international investments with their client because of things like political reasons. Sometimes I think we just miss a point about what solid portfolio construction looks like. One of the exercises we'll walk through with those clients is the importance of just setting a fair benchmark because at the end of the day, it's okay to be overweight and underweight certain asset classes, but you should know how much overweight and underweight you are and be comfortable with that amount. 

Let's just look at an equity sleeve, for example. If I were to look at a global equity index and set that as my benchmark, I might look at the all-country world index, the ACWI. Then I can get a sense of how much of the global market cap is US versus international. The ACWI has about, let's call it 65% to 70% US, and then the rest is international, about 30% to 35%. If I'm saying the ACWI is going to be my fair equity sleeve benchmark, I'll ask clients, how much do you think you should have towards international based on that 30% to 35% range? Yes, maybe clients will still bake in some of that home country bias, but at least it gets the conversation going. It shifts the conversation from things like performance and clients' perception of the asset class towards just good solid fundamental portfolio construction. Most of the time, the realization is that they do have a pretty sizable underweight that they didn't originally anticipate. 

VanDerSchie: That's helpful perspective, Paul. Thank you for that. Okay, so I'd like to dig in a little deeper and talk about some of the tailwinds that potentially support an initial allocation or potentially a larger allocation to non-US stocks. And Paul, I'll start with you. Morningstar's investment philosophy does have a contrarian bent to it. When you think about the contrarian investor checklist, how do things look outside of the US? 

Tait: Yeah, well, this has been a really fun exercise recently. So we put together a contrarian checklist based on just a few different metrics when we look at different asset classes, different stocks, different parts of the portfolio. And I think when you look at international, it really has the makings to be a really interesting contrarian setup. The first part of the checklist that we look at is are investors extrapolating medium-term returns and fundamentals. So essentially, are people investing according to the status quo that we've gotten accustomed to the past few years without respect to any potentially changing market dynamics? Now, we know from a return standpoint, returns have favored the US over international. 

Fundamental-wise, international has not been as bad a shape as some may guess. Just from a, we look at things like earnings and then total shareholder yield. Total shareholder yield is things like dividends and buybacks. And so it's actually been relatively close US and international, just kind of looking at the fundamentals. Now, a lot of the outperformance that we've seen in things like US versus international, we can attribute to things like multiple expansion or rather the premium investors are willing to pay widening. And so that's been a big tailwind for US that international hasn't really enjoyed. And when it comes to multiple expansion, we can't necessarily expect that to continue into perpetuity. So that's the first checklist. Are investors extrapolating medium-term returns and fundamentals. The second checklist item is are investors underweight and is sentiment negative. 

Now, I don't think we have to look very far to find this answer. We've already talked about how much investors are under allocated to international as a whole. And sentiment-wise, I'm not sure we could have gotten much worse heading into this year. There's things like the AI race and the performance of the MAG7 that we're confirming a lot of beliefs that investors have that the best companies are located in the US I'm not here to argue against where the best companies are located, but I will say that there are a lot of high quality and innovative companies internationally. And Nabil's already brought up a couple. I think Nabil could spend a whole podcast talking about his portfolio holdings and why they're great companies. One stat I thought was really interesting though that I saw recently was that since 2002, an average of 33 of the top 50 performing stocks in the All Country World Index were located internationally. So even if international as a whole may have had performance struggles, a good stock picker could find plenty of value out there despite negative sentiment on the asset class as a whole. 

And I mean, no better guess to have than Nabil here. And he mentioned earlier just the really solid performance from his portfolio. So the third one here on the checklist is are valuation spreads wide relative to history. And yes, we know that there is a wide valuation spread. We know that that spread is much higher than average when it comes to US international. But it's also worth bringing up that this isn't structural, that US valuations are always more expensive than international valuations. These things tend to move in cycles. So we don't have to look very far to see that international valuations are sometimes higher than US So just kind of keeping that in mind through a contrarian lens, you can see that a large valuation spread that can spell a pretty compelling long term opportunity for those who are willing to wait it out. 

VanDerSchie: So staying on the topic of valuations for a minute, Paul, you just mentioned this and Nabil, you kind of reinforced the point earlier. International looks cheap compared to the US, but I think our listeners know that valuations can't always be used as short term timing tools. So Nabil, how do valuations shape your investment process when looking at companies? 

Salem: Yeah, I mean valuations have seemed cheap, like you were saying for a decade plus outside the US We take a long term approach to investing on our team. And the bottom line is low entry points do increase or have historically increased the odds of a better than average forward looking return. But you're right, you have to avoid value traps. The way that we do this on our team and in the international equity portfolio is by paying very close attention to the management team and to how capital is being allocated, the company's capital. We believe the company's earnings, free cash flow, assets on the balance sheet are the property of shareholders and we'd like to invest alongside management teams that carry that view. And so if you believe that a company is going to have a difficult time finding profitable growth investments, which outside the US we have, as we've discussed, indicated that growth tends to be lower. 

When we see those lesser profitable growth opportunities, we want our companies to be returning capital to shareholders. And if their stock is cheap, we want them to be returning that capital to shareholders via share repurchases. If we identify a company that is trading at a low multiple or looks cheap because it's operationally mismanaged, actually that can kind of be an opportunity sometimes if we see that a management team can come in and improve the business, which should drive higher earnings and higher multiples. So we're really focused on management team alignment. We look at their compensation, we look at their track record, and we think about how the company might change. So you want to really be forward-looking. 

VanDerSchie: And even more recently, looking beyond valuations, corporate earnings have started to get more and more attention. Nabil, what's your view on the earnings outlook? Do you see any signs of a potential inflection point here? 

Salem: Well, I think about earnings outlook on an individual stock basis, because that's what's going to be the large driver of my portfolio's return. The more important is what's in my portfolio rather than what's going on more broadly within Europe. But I will say within the European companies that we own, overall though this year, earning revisions, which is an indicator for investor expectations, have been rising in Europe, broadly speaking, while they've been declining in the US and in emerging markets. 

VanDerSchie: So we've touched on valuations. We've talked about earnings. I also want to go to policy, because I think policy divergence could be viewed by some as another catalyst here. And if you look at the US, it seems to be tightening its fiscal belt while Europe is, I would say, more loosening it. Nabil, is there any reason to believe that a divergence in policy paths could influence capital flows toward international markets? 

Salem: Okay. Well, you're asking this question to a stock picker. So first off, I'm going to say it's a very macro-based question. My answer is possibly yes. The way that I think about investments is from a bottoms up perspective. And actually historically, I've viewed macro-based trading as a creator of opportunity for long-term valuation focused investors. So that actually typically means when investors are selling something because they're worried about macro, sometimes they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And my process is oriented on saying, like, hey, well, long-term a company's stock return is going to be driven by what that company can generate from an earnings and free cash flow perspective. I would also just want to think about, if I were going to answer that question, about how policy can flow down to drive profitable earnings growth in the long term. So it's kind of hard to say in the long run. 

VanDerSchie: Got it. So I do want to touch on currency. And one thing that stands out to me when looking at global equity market performance over the past decade is how much of a drag currencies have been on non-US stock returns. So I guess two questions, Nabil. One, how do currencies impact equity returns? And two, how do you account for that in your investment process? 

Salem: Yeah. So changes in currency can absolutely directly impact the earnings of a multinational company. For instance, when a company earns revenue in a foreign currency, fluctuation in the exchange rate can either increase or decrease the value of those earnings when it's converted back into the company's home currency. So we have to be aware of that. You also have to think about, and this is kind of where it plays the biggest role when we're doing the company analysis, is the denomination of the company's debt. For example, if a company pays its debt in US dollars. You also have to think about the denomination of a company's debt. And that's a very important part of our process. For example, if a company is paying its debt in US dollars, but its earnings are largely in Mexican pesos, a devaluation of the peso will effectively increase the debt burden of the company. And that's what we've seen in prior periods within some of the Mexican companies where if the peso becomes weak, the stocks kind of sell off because the debt burden has risen. How do we account for that in our investment process? 

It's actually a little bit complicated. So a few things about currency exposure. First off, many of our companies hedge and manage their own currency exposure, which can make managing currency exposure at the portfolio level a little bit more challenging. The second thing I would say is over long periods, most of a stock's return is driven by its earnings and fundamental performance. So currency can be important, but over the long period, it tends to be a smaller driver. And the third thing I would say is that currency hedging is expensive. So overall, how do we incorporate into our process? We're aware of a company's currency exposures. We pay particular attention when the company's domiciled in an emerging market and maybe has a debt structure that they're paying in hard currencies. Overall, we'd like to buy cheap, high quality stocks with cheap currency because that can augment your return. But our focus and edge is primarily in the company fundamentals. 

VanDerSchie: Okay, lots of great info so far. The last thing I want to touch on, as we like to do here on the podcast, is the practical application. And so we at Morningstar, along with many of our listeners, manage portfolios with non-US investment exposure. Paul, specific to Morningstar's multi-asset portfolios, would you mind providing context on the investment team's allocation to non-US stocks? If you could, tell us about position sizing and how they think about that compared to US stocks. 

Tait: Yeah, so for our multi-asset portfolios, again, kind of think of these as core diversified portfolios. Our benchmark is about 70% US and 30% international for our equity sleeve. Now, right now, we're slightly overweight international. We actually reduce that overweight slightly in early April, a bit opportunistically, kind of at the peak of the early April volatility. So that's been a positive contributor to our portfolios so far this year, is the international overweight and then that kind of opportunistic rebalance. We also will look at the individual country exposures in our multi-asset portfolios and really think about what does the shape of our international exposure look like and make sure that matches what our conviction levels are on an individual country basis. So in other words, there might be some countries that we like and we really want to reflect our overweight more, and then vice versa, countries that we don't like and then we want to underweight, despite maybe being overweight international as a whole. So we're very conscious about kind of shaping our exposures around our convictions. 

VanDerSchie: And can you talk a little bit about the types of investment vehicles we're using to express these views? 

Tait: Yep, so the multi-asset portfolios, we really have three series. We've got a mutual fund, we have an ETF, and then we have an active passive combining the two. In the ETF models, it's simple. It's a combination of broad-based ETFs that we'll use for developed market exposure, for emerging market exposure, but then like I mentioned earlier, some individual country ETFs in the models as well. What's nice about the ETF models is that we're not beholden to any one ETF company. We're simply just looking for the right ETF for the given exposure. So when we're assessing different ETFs, we'll look at things like index construction, expense ratio, liquidity. Again, we're just trying to choose what is the right ETF for this exposure that we're looking for, and then doing right bar clients, finding the right one that serves them best. Now in the mutual fund and active passive models, we have third-party managers that we've chosen based on their area of expertise. You can imagine that's leveraging a lot of what Morningstar research, what we're known for on the manager research side, and you'll see some pretty well-known names in there. So T. Rowe Price, for example, is one of the active managers inside of the mutual funds. Lazard, Harding Loevner, those are allocated to inside of the mutual funds for those mutual fund and active passive models. 

VanDerSchie: Nabil, similar question. Can you provide context specifically on the International Equity ADR portfolio that you manage? Same thing that I mentioned to Paul, but with a different spin. Can you tell us about position sizing and what the regional diversification looks like? 

Salem: Sure. So the International Equity ADR portfolio is our non-US equity portfolio. It has about 50 stocks in it. That range can vary a little bit over time, depending on our opportunities set. We like to focus on our best ideas while managing the overall portfolio exposures and being diversified across end market exposure. So you asked about regional diversification. I would say that the actual end market exposure is more important than the domicile. The portfolio tends to have 30% to 40% of its weighting in at the top 10 holdings. And overall, one thing, I will say about regional diversification is we tend to be underweight emerging markets. And that is a function of the risk reward opportunity set. And in emerging markets, rule of law tends to be lower. So that means that we need a higher return prospect in order to invest in those companies. And when we do, we pay extra attention to investing alongside very trusted management teams in those countries. 

VanDerSchie: Makes good sense. Paul, before we close, for advisors who are interested in accessing Morningstar managed portfolios, including Nabil's International Equity Strategy, where can they go to learn more? 

Tait: So for all the advisors out there, we're available on all of the large platforms that includes Envestnet, AssetMark, LPL advisors out there, Orion, among others. We're available on those large platforms. But I mean, if you have any questions, if you'd like to just inquire about availability or learn a little bit more how the sausage is made, just reach out to your local Morningstar representative. You can also just email us the podcast email and we're happy to discuss with you. 

VanDerSchie: And there you have it, another episode of Simple but, Not Easy. As always, we thank our guests for their time and engagement. And once again, if you'd like to know more about how Morningstar can support you, please drop us a note at simple@morningstar.com or me directly at nicholas.vanderschie@morningstar.com. That wraps up this week's episode. Before we depart, if you enjoy hearing the insights on our podcast, please consider leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Until next time, thanks for listening. 

(Disclaimer: This podcast is produced and issued by Morningstar Investment Management LLC, a registered investment advisor and subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. The content is intended for US audiences only. Individuals featured in this podcast are employed by Morningstar, Inc. and its subsidiaries. This includes but is not limited to Morningstar Investment Management LLC and Morningstar Research Services LLC. Morningstar Investment Management and Morningstar Research Services are registered with and governed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. Opinions expressed are as of the date of publication. Such opinions are subject to change. No Morningstar entity, including Morningstar Investment Management and Morningstar Research Services shall be responsible for any trading decisions, damages or other losses resulting from or related to the content presented. Morningstar makes no representation as of the completeness or accuracy of the information presented. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. All investments are subject to investment risk, including possible loss of principal. Individuals should seriously consider if an investment is suitable for them by referencing their own financial position, investment objectives and risk profile before making any investment decision. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Does not constitute investment advice and references to specific securities or other investment options mentioned are not an offer to buy or sell that specific investment.)