Insightful Investor Podcast interviewed Katie Koch on Apr. 1, 2025

Welcome to the insightful investor podcast, a weekly series that seeks to share industry, investment, and market insights. We define insights as concepts that are counterintuitive, widely misunderstood, or underappreciated. In other words, unique ideas that you probably won't hear elsewhere. I'm Alex Shihidi, the host of the podcast and co-CEIO of the book advisors at leading investment advisory firm. Learn more about our show at insightfulinvestner.org.
歡迎收聽《洞見投資者》播客，這是一個每週系列節目，旨在分享產業、投資與市場的深刻見解。我們將「洞見」定義為反直覺、普遍被誤解或未受重視的概念——換言之，那些您在其他地方可能聽不到的獨特觀點。我是主持人艾力克斯·希希迪，同時也是領先投資顧問公司「書本顧問」的聯合首席執行投資官。更多節目資訊請造訪 insightfulinvestner.org。

[MUSIC] I'm so pleased to welcome Katie Cox to the podcast. Katie is the president and CEO of TCW, a global asset management firm that oversees $195 billion across fixed income equities and alternatives. That's as of December 2024. Before joining TCW two years ago, Katie spent 20 years at Goldman Sachs in the asset management division and most recently served as CIO of its $300 billion public equity business. Katie, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me, Alex. Let's start with your background. I think it's always helpful to hear more about who you are, how you think, and how you grew up.
[音樂] 非常榮幸邀請凱蒂·考克斯來到節目中。凱蒂現任 TCW 總裁暨執行長，這家全球資產管理公司截至 2024 年 12 月掌管著 1950 億美元資金，涵蓋固定收益、股票與另類投資領域。在兩年前加入 TCW 之前，凱蒂於高盛資產管理部門任職長達 20 年，最近期職務是掌管 3000 億美元公開股票業務的投資長。凱蒂，非常感謝您今天參與我們的節目。謝謝邀請，艾力克斯。讓我們先從您的背景談起，聽眾們總希望能更了解您是誰、如何思考，以及成長歷程。

Could you discuss the life principles, your parents, instilled in you, and how they've influenced your leadership and management staff? Thank you so much for asking me about my parents who are incredibly important to my life. If I've achieved any modicum of success, it is because of them. They both taught me something very different. My mom really pushed us around taking risks and trying new things. And she's asked us this question that was very inspiring to me. And I still go back to and I think about a lot. And I push other people on this question, which is, what choice would you make if you knew you wouldn't fail?
你能談談父母灌輸給你的生活原則，以及這些原則如何影響你的領導和管理風格嗎？非常感謝你問起我的父母，他們對我的人生極其重要。如果我取得了一點點成就，那都是因為他們。他們各自教會了我截然不同的東西。我媽媽真的鼓勵我們冒險和嘗試新事物。她曾問過我一個非常激勵人心的問題，至今我仍時常回想，並用這個問題激勵他人，那就是：如果你知道自己不會失敗，你會做出什麼選擇？

And that was an important way for me to frame decisions because for a long time I was a naturally risk-averse person. I only wanted to select into activities or experiences where I thought I could win or succeed. It's really pushed me to try new things and to not be afraid of failure and to reframe the decision-making in a positive way. And so that's been very inspiring to me and I've taken that forward in life. And my dad is a person who is very focused on doing the right thing. And that was a motto in our family and this family. We do the right thing, not the expedient thing, not the easy thing, just do the right thing. And that serve me well too because as you grow up in life and you have your own family and you take senior roles in business. And now of course I have the privilege of running a company.
這對我來說是決策時的重要思考框架，因為長期以來我天生就是個厭惡風險的人。過去我只願意選擇那些我認為自己能贏或成功的活動與經歷。這段經歷確實推動我去嘗試新事物、不再害怕失敗，並以積極的方式重塑決策思維。這對我啟發極大，我也將此信念貫徹於人生中。我父親是個非常堅持做正確之事的人，「做對的事」是我們家族代代相傳的家訓——不做權宜之計，不挑輕鬆捷徑，只做正確選擇。這個信念也讓我終身受用，無論是人生成長階段、組建自己家庭時，或擔任企業高階主管期間。如今有幸經營一家公司，這個原則依然指引著我。

You run into a lot of decisions. You make a lot of decisions every day and they impact people's lives. And instead of getting mired in the complexity of that, just the ability to frame things around that question of what's the right thing to do here has helped me very much. So I would say those two principles have really supported me in life. And the final observation I would make, which is kind of relevant to something my family is going through now, is that they both work people, we do a lot of successful people growing up. And my parents both had observed to me that some of the most successful people you know in life actually have been through a lot of struggles.
你會遇到很多決策。每天都要做出許多決定，這些決定會影響人們的生活。與其陷入其中的複雜性，僅僅能夠圍繞「在這裡做什麼才是正確的事」這個問題來思考，就對我幫助很大。所以我會說，這兩項原則在我的生活中給予了極大的支持。最後我想分享一個觀察，這與我家人目前正在經歷的事情有些相關，那就是他們都是勤奮工作的人，我們在成長過程中見證了許多成功人士。我的父母都曾向我指出，你所知道的一些人生中最成功的人，實際上經歷過許多掙扎。

And they have been through a lot of setbacks. My parents included and it builds resilience and that reserve of resilience is so important for long-term durable success. And so that was something they were very focused on cultivating in their children. And my husband and I talk about that a lot as it relates to our kids. We have four kids ages four, six, eight and ten. And they have you know, they have more than I had even I had growing up. I was on a previous podcast about a year ago. And I talked about the idea of making sure that we insert a little friction in their life because you don't want everything to be so easy for them. Because you know that doesn't set kids up for success because it turns out like it's hard and a lot of things go wrong. And you have to be able to deal with that.
他們經歷了許多挫折。包括我的父母在內，這培養了韌性，而這種韌性的儲備對於長期持久的成功至關重要。因此，這是他們非常注重在孩子身上培養的特質。我和我丈夫也經常談論這一點，尤其是在我們的孩子身上。我們有四個孩子，年齡分別是四歲、六歲、八歲和十歲。他們擁有的比我成長時還要多。大約一年前，我曾上過另一個播客節目，當時我談到了在他們的生活中適度增加一些摩擦的想法，因為你不希望一切都對他們來說太過容易。畢竟，這樣並不能為孩子們的成功奠定基礎，因為現實是艱難的，很多事情會出錯，而他們必須學會應對這些情況。

And you and I spoke about this when we had breakfast but unfortunately like many people in Los Angeles, we lost our home in the Palacades fire. And my kids lost that they're obviously their community. We were very fortunate to have lived in the Pacific Palacades and have so many great friendships and a great community. Their school was also impacted. And that's been really tough. No of course I wouldn't wish this experience on anybody. But my husband when it gets difficult and it does, it was difficult to go through and it's not something anyone recovers from immediately. He reminds me that this is one of those experiences, one of those setbacks that they're going to watch us navigate, that they're going to watch their community navigate and they're going to realize that you can go through really difficult things that you can come together with other people and that you can overcome them. And so again, why wouldn't I wish it on anybody? I am hoping that's one of the five products of this challenging experience. And I'm glad that my parents really instilled in me the importance of resilience. And so I can focus on giving that gift to my children. Well you started your career at Goldman Sachs. What do you feel enabled your ascension from entry level all the way to leading the $300 billion public equity business as CIO? I had such an extraordinary experience at Goldman and I'm guess the easy answer to that would be I work very hard, which I did.
你和我吃早餐時談過這件事，但不幸的是，和洛杉磯許多人一樣，我們在帕拉卡德斯火災中失去了家園。我的孩子們顯然也失去了他們的社區。我們很幸運曾經住在太平洋帕拉卡德斯，擁有許多美好的友誼和一個很棒的社區。他們的學校也受到了影響。這確實非常艱難。當然，我不希望任何人經歷這樣的事。但當情況變得困難時——確實如此，經歷這一切並不容易，也不是任何人能立即恢復的——我丈夫會提醒我，這是他們將目睹我們如何應對的挫折之一，他們將看到他們的社區如何應對，並意識到你可以度過非常艱難的時刻，可以與他人團結一致，最終克服困難。所以，雖然我不希望任何人經歷這些，但我希望這是這段挑戰性經歷帶來的五個收穫之一。我很感激我的父母真正灌輸給我韌性的重要性，因此我能專注於將這份禮物傳遞給我的孩子們。 你從高盛開始職業生涯，是什麼讓你從基層一路晉升到掌管 3000 億美元公開股票業務的投資長？我在高盛有非常特別的經歷，我想最簡單的答案是我非常努力工作，確實如此。

So hard work helps a lot. But I also going back to kind of the things my parents taught me while I worked at the same place for 20 years. One observation I wanted to make about it is that I ran a lot of different businesses there. So while I was there for 20 years, this extraordinary organization, which as an aside, I think is the best place in the planet to get trained as an executive. And that's the greatest gift I got from Goldman was just the ability to learn how to run and manage businesses. I did move around, which not everybody does because some people want to get into a business BDX bird and rise to the top of it. I just like learning new things and new parts of the market and new businesses.
所以努力很有幫助。但回顧父母在我任職同一家公司 20 年間的教誨，我想提出一個觀察：我在那裡經營過許多不同業務。雖然待了 20 年，這間卓越的機構——順帶一提，我認為是全球培養高階主管的最佳場所——而高盛給我最棒的禮物，就是學會如何經營管理事業。我確實輪調過不同單位，這並非每個人都會經歷，因為有些人想專精某個領域並攀上頂峰。我只是喜歡學習新事物、探索市場新領域和不同業務。

So I do think one of the reasons I was able to get senior there is that I was willing to move countries. So at one point I moved from the U.S. and I lived in London for 10 years. I moved cities around the U.S. I moved businesses from being in equities to the multi-asset class business at one point. I work for the chief economist to back into the fundamental equities business to learning quant. So I moved around a lot, offices, countries, cities and businesses. And that did two things. The first is that I got the opportunity repeatedly to be the least experienced person at something. And that's actually a good place to be because it makes you hungry and it makes you open to learning and you're just constantly broadening your skillset and capability. And it gives you confidence that you can come in as the new person and apply some of the previous learnings and have success in whatever business that you go to lead. And so that first part about being the least experienced person and building confidence is an important part of what I think helped me become a partner and lead a big business.
所以我確實認為，我之所以能夠在那裡晉升高層，原因之一是我願意跨國調動。曾經有段時間，我從美國搬到倫敦住了 10 年。我在美國境內搬遷過城市，也曾從股票業務轉到多元資產類別業務。我為首席經濟學家工作過，又回歸基本面股票業務，後來還學習量化分析。因此，我在辦公室、國家、城市和業務領域之間頻繁調動。這樣做帶來了兩個好處：首先，我反覆獲得機會成為某個領域中最缺乏經驗的人。這其實是個很好的位置，因為它會讓你保持渴望，敞開心胸學習，不斷擴展技能和能力。其次，這讓你建立起信心，相信自己能以新人之姿，運用過往所學，無論領導哪項業務都能取得成功。因此，關於成為最缺乏經驗者並建立信心的第一部分，我認為是幫助我成為合夥人並領導大型業務的重要關鍵。

The second one is that as you move around an organization, the other thing that you accumulate a lot of is relationships. So I just knew a lot of people across a lot of different business verticals. And when I moved from the multi-asset class business back to equities, I was able to make the multi-asset class business one of the largest clients of the equities business. So those make it become internal clients. But also you just meet lots of senior people doing interesting things in the firm. And those are the people that mentored me and supported me in my career. And in fact some of them were very relevant in getting me a future board opportunities and in fact the opportunity to lead TCW. So it is,
第二點是，當你在組織中四處移動時，另一件你會大量累積的就是人際關係。所以我認識許多來自不同業務垂直領域的人。當我從多元資產類別業務轉回股票業務時，我能夠讓多元資產類別業務成為股票業務的最大客戶之一。這樣一來，它們就變成了內部客戶。但同時，你也會遇到許多在公司內從事有趣事情的高階主管。這些人就是在我職業生涯中指導和支持我的人。事實上，其中一些人在我獲得未來的董事會機會，甚至是領導 TCW 的機會上，起到了非常關鍵的作用。所以，

while you can edit an organization like Goldman that's big and global, you can stay the same place for a long time and still build a portfolio career. And that's for sure. One of the reasons I was able to lead a really big business is the variety of experience, the confidence of doing new things. And then of course these meaningful relationships that you that you build when you work across the firm. How would you say you're background as an investor? How has that shaped your approach to leadership, particularly balancing investment culture versus sales culture? I think you are such your much better at being the CEO of an asset management organization if you have some investing experience because investing Alex, as you know and you look at a lot of managers is very hard. It's extremely demanding. It's predicting the future under conditions of extreme uncertainty. It requires you to have conviction and discipline and to come in every day and be positioned for something at the rest of the world is telling you is not going to happen or isn't happening. And it is psychologically demanding. And so one of the things that you have to do is a leader of an investment organization is to support people through those challenging periods because in investing. So we manage a lot of value oriented portfolios. Usually you are at the point of maximum pain right before you get to the inflection point of the other side and it's critical to have an organizational structure which we can talk more about because I think the private company versus public helps you a lot on that and to have a leadership approach which is long term oriented and highly empathetic to support people through that drives better results for the clients and you achieve better retention of the investor. So I do think having investing experience gives you an edge at leading an investing company. And then you ask something about being an investing culture versus a sales lead culture.
雖然你可以在一家像高盛這樣龐大且全球化的機構中工作，但你可以長期待在同一個地方，同時建立多元的職涯。這一點是肯定的。我之所以能夠領導一個非常大的業務，其中一個原因就是多樣的經驗以及嘗試新事物的信心。當然，還有你在公司內部跨部門工作時所建立的這些重要關係。你會如何描述自己作為投資者的背景？這如何影響了你的領導方式，特別是在平衡投資文化與銷售文化方面？我認為，如果你有一些投資經驗，你會更適合成為資產管理組織的執行長，因為投資，Alex，正如你所知，你看過很多經理人，是非常困難的。它要求極高。它是在極度不確定的條件下預測未來。它要求你有信念和紀律，每天都要準備好面對全世界告訴你不會發生或沒有發生的事情。這在心理上是非常具有挑戰性的。 因此，作為投資組織的領導者，你必須做的事情之一就是在這些充滿挑戰的時期支持團隊，因為在投資領域中，我們管理許多價值導向的投資組合。通常，在達到轉折點之前，你會處於最痛苦的時刻，而擁有一個組織結構（這點我們可以進一步討論，因為我認為私營公司相對於上市公司在這方面有很大幫助）以及一種長期導向且高度同理心的領導方式，來支持團隊度過難關，這不僅能為客戶帶來更好的成果，也能提高投資者的留存率。因此，我確實認為擁有投資經驗會讓你在領導投資公司時更具優勢。接著你問到關於投資文化與銷售主導文化的差異。

We are very aware and speak often about the fact that that's the business we're in the investing business. We're generating results for clients. And so that has primary to see over everything else. And we'll talk more about it. But being a privately held company supports that because you're not focused on quarter to quarter results. You're focused on RU executing your philosophy and process in the way that your client expects you to that will result in great long-term returns. You need the right company environment for that and you need leadership that's supportive of that. But it sounds like you find running a private company more appealing than running a public company. But how does that perspective compare to investing in public companies versus private companies? I had the privileges you said before to run a public equity business.
我們非常清楚且經常談論的是，我們所從事的是投資業務。我們為客戶創造成果，因此這是最重要的事情。我們稍後會進一步討論這一點。但作為一家私人控股公司支持這一點，因為你不會專注於季度業績。你專注於按照客戶期望的方式執行你的理念和流程，從而帶來出色的長期回報。你需要適合的公司環境和支持這一目標的領導層。但聽起來你覺得經營一家私人公司比經營一家上市公司更有吸引力。那麼這種觀點與投資上市公司和私人公司相比如何呢？我之前有幸經營過一家公開股票業務。

That's about $300 billion at G7. And so as one of the things I did in that role was I had the opportunity to meet CEOs of public companies around the world and across multiple sectors. And that was one of my favorite parts of that job. And actually one of the questions I always asked them is what would you do differently here if you were a private company. And they always really appreciated the NASDAQ question and I was always fascinated by the answer whether it was consumer or technology or industrials or financials just across all sectors. People had really thoughtful, creative answers. And there were often things that would be a massive unlock to top line revenue. Something that would allow them to disrupt themselves before they would get disrupted. A new revenue pool opportunity that might be much further out but they could see better than other people could see. But there were worries that they'd have to make this cap-ax investment upfront and the public markets would punish them for that and then your term and so it made them hesitant to do it.
這大約是七國集團的 3000 億美元。我在那個職位上所做的一件事，就是有機會與世界各地、跨越多個行業的上市公司 CEO 會面，這是我最喜歡的工作部分之一。實際上，我總是問他們一個問題：如果你是一家私人公司，你會在這裡做什麼不同的事情。他們總是非常欣賞這個關於納斯達克的問題，而無論是消費品、科技、工業還是金融等各個行業，他們的回答總是讓我著迷。人們給出了深思熟慮且富有創意的答案。這些答案往往能為頂線收入帶來巨大的突破，讓他們在被迫改變之前自我顛覆。可能是一個更遠期的新收入來源機會，但他們比其他人看得更清楚。然而，他們擔心必須先進行資本支出投資，而公開市場會因此懲罰他們，任期也會受到影響，這讓他們猶豫不決。

But there was always something that they would do differently if they were a private company. And I just took away from that that there were some real benefits to running a company in a private manner. And as it relates to asset management, I can't really tell you which is better public or private because I've only been the CEO of a private company. But as it relates to asset management and TCW, I knew that as a private company we would be able to think long-term. We would be able to evolve the platform and transform in ways that might not be possible in public markets. And the other benefit of it was that we have high levels of employee ownership, which obviously tie our interests with our clients and then our shareholders. We have two outside shareholders even though we're private.
但他們若是一家私人公司，總會有些不同的做法。而我從中領悟到，以私人方式經營公司確實有其優勢。就資產管理而言，我無法斷言公開上市或私人持有孰優孰劣，因為我只擔任過私人公司的執行長。但就資產管理與 TCW 而言，我深知作為私人企業，我們能夠以長遠眼光思考，能夠發展平台並進行公開市場可能無法實現的轉型。另一項優勢在於我們擁有高比例的員工持股，這自然將我們的利益與客戶及股東緊密相連。儘管是私人企業，我們仍有兩位外部股東。

One is Carl Algrub where we're owned in a long term fund. And the others need fun life which is Japan's largest life insurance company. And that shareholder structure was really attractive to me. We can talk about it more but I knew that there was a very meaningful relationship to build between asset managers and insurers and the upon life would give us the opportunity to do that. So I was really attracted to this model. I thought it would be a better environment to run the business in and make good business decisions. All of that has turned out to be true. What has been kind of I didn't anticipate but equally impactful is that I think it's just a much better way to run money because when you're not focused on quarter to quarter results that is kind of the only environment in which you can have a highly differentiated philosophy and process that you'll repeat and not be as focused on quarter to quarter flows because you know if you execute on what's worked over the long term, it will continue to work over the long term. And even in places like alternative credit where you're not dealing with that daily market market we have to make a decision every day about whether to deploy capital.
一個是我們長期基金持有的卡爾·阿爾格魯布，另一個是日本最大的人壽保險公司——趣味生活。這種股東結構對我來說非常有吸引力。我們可以進一步討論，但我知道資產管理公司與保險公司之間可以建立非常有意義的關係，而趣味生活將為我們提供這樣的機會。因此，我對這種模式非常感興趣。我認為這將是一個更有利於經營業務和做出良好商業決策的環境。事實證明，這一切都是正確的。我沒有預料到但同樣具有影響力的是，我認為這是一種更好的資金運作方式，因為當你不專注於季度業績時，這幾乎是唯一能夠讓你擁有高度差異化理念和流程的環境，你可以重複這些理念和流程，而不必過於關注季度資金流動，因為你知道，如果你執行長期有效的策略，它將繼續在長期內發揮作用。 即使在像是替代信貸這樣的領域，你不必面對每日市場波動，我們仍須每天決定是否要配置資金。

If you're a public company you can often are feel pressure to sacrifice the discipline of underwriting for the need to deploy capital and have more beach-generating assets and we're just not under that pressure. And so what I didn't appreciate was that yes of course being private helps is I think in many ways run a more successful company for the industry that we're in. But I also it's amazing how much of a formidable competitive advantage I think it is in generating results and returns for clients. I'd like to ask you some questions by leadership. I've learned from experience I great leaders tend to be smart and work hard. Those are table stakes but what really sets some of the part is they tend to be great listeners and effective communicators. Do you agree? I agree with all of that and something my parents used to say to me when we're growing up is that if you're talking you're not learning. Just true because you're listening you're listening yourself speak. And I and I like I always try and think about that and have the right balance of that when I'm meeting people and one of the most powerful things that you can do as a leader is to ask good questions and give people the dignity of being heard and their responses and really be present and whatever they say to you.
如果你是上市公司，常常會感受到壓力，為了需要配置資金並擁有更多能產生收益的資產，而犧牲承銷的紀律，但我們沒有這種壓力。因此，我沒有意識到的是，當然，保持私有在很多方面確實有助於我們在這個行業中經營一家更成功的公司。但我也發現，這在為客戶創造成果和回報方面，竟是一個多麼強大的競爭優勢。我想請教你一些關於領導力的問題。根據我的經驗，偉大的領導者往往聰明且勤奮，這些是基本條件，但真正讓他們脫穎而出的是他們往往是優秀的傾聽者和有效的溝通者。你同意嗎？我完全同意，而且我父母在我成長過程中常對我說，如果你在說話，你就不是在學習。這是真的，因為你在聽自己說話。 而我，我總是試著思考這一點，並在與人會面時保持適當的平衡。作為領導者，你能做的最有力的事情之一就是提出好問題，給予人們被傾聽的尊嚴，認真對待他們的回應，真正地專注於他們對你所說的每一句話。

I get so much rate information out of spending time with our employees and hopefully asking good questions and really hearing them on what they think is working and what they think is not working and what they think is happening. The markets and I really use those conversations as an opportunity to learn. So I do think listening is an incredibly valuable skill and you're not everybody appreciates that because sometimes people feel like the leader needs to be the one doing the talking but you are right. Like great leaders learn to listen and by the way that's a skill I continue to work on. It's something I've gotten better at over time but it's a place where I really try and hold myself accountable that I'm actively and intently listening to our clients to our employees, to people on the board and it's something you have to really cultivate and continue to get better at throughout your life. I'm certainly better now than I was 10 years ago but it's something I really want to continue to focus on and improve on. So on communication by the way that a big part of leading anything is that you have a vision and that you communicate that broadly throughout the organization and so having a coherent logical way of communicating where trying to take the organization why and how you're going to get there is an extraordinarily powerful skill set of leaders. I think it's really tough to lead unless you're a skilled communicator. And really quickly un-listening.
我從與員工相處的時間中獲得了大量的資訊，希望透過提出好問題並真正傾聽他們的想法，了解他們認為哪些做法有效、哪些無效，以及他們對當前情況的看法。市場和我都將這些對話視為學習的機會。因此，我確實認為傾聽是一項極其寶貴的技能，但並非每個人都能意識到這一點，因為有時人們會覺得領導者應該是多說話的那一方，但你是對的。就像優秀的領導者學會傾聽一樣，順帶一提，這正是我不斷在磨練的技能。隨著時間推移，我在這方面有所進步，但我仍嚴格要求自己必須積極且專注地傾聽客戶、員工以及董事會成員的意見。這是一項需要終身培養並持續精進的能力。現在的我當然比十年前進步許多，但這仍是我希望持續專注並改進的領域。 順帶一提，在溝通方面，領導任何事物的關鍵在於你擁有願景，並且能夠廣泛地在組織內傳達這一願景。因此，擁有一種連貫、合乎邏輯的溝通方式，向組織闡明你試圖達成的目標及實現路徑，是領導者極為強大的技能組合。我認為，除非你是一位熟練的溝通者，否則領導工作會非常困難。而真正快速地傾聽同樣重要。

One thing that I've learned through time is if you're trying to get a good sense of what the big picture looks like, you have to appreciate and realize that your perspective is only one angle of that picture. And so part of listening is hearing different people's perspectives of what they view the picture to be and that helps build a more rounded perception of what is actually there, not just your, your narrative view, does that make sense? 100% I mean I think society would be a lot better in general if we listen to each other and took into sentient opinions which as a country we're not excelling that right now but certainly in leading and running a company like you have to be able to really good point that you mean you have to be able to listen. It's easy to listen to people agree with you. That's a beautiful place to be it's very comfortable. You feel smart, you feel good because you're like okay I'm making the right choices, we're headed in the right direction.
隨著時間的流逝，我學到的一件事是，如果你想對大局有個清晰的認識，就必須欣賞並意識到你的觀點只是這個畫面的一個角度。因此，傾聽的一部分是聽取不同人對這個畫面的看法，這有助於建立一個更全面的認知，而不僅僅是你自己的敘述性觀點，這樣說有道理嗎？100%同意。我認為，如果我們能傾聽彼此並考慮到有見地的意見，社會整體會更好。作為一個國家，我們目前在這方面並不突出，但在領導和經營像你這樣的公司時，你必須能夠做到這一點——你必須能夠傾聽。傾聽那些同意你的人很容易，那是一個美好的狀態，非常舒適。你會覺得自己很聰明，感覺良好，因為你會想，好吧，我正在做出正確的選擇，我們正朝著正確的方向前進。

It's actually very difficult to sit with the sentient opinions because it puts tax on the mind. It makes you think that you might not be making all the right decisions so it creates more work, sure having to rethink some of the things that you might have done or conclusions that you came to. It's harder work. It's hard work to listen to people who don't agree with you and have to sentient opinions. And so that's a massive competitive advantage as a leader if you're able to actively listen to people and to sit with and really actually welcome in to sentient opinions. Have the humility to know that you're not right all the time and encourage people to disagree with you and do the hard work that it takes to listen to not just listen to the sentient opinion but work through it and potentially come up with a different world view or a different conclusion. This is this is very difficult work to do but I think if you can do it well it is an advantage and I've been told that that is good leaders are surrounded by people willing to give to sentient opinions and I'm at times drowning in sending opinions here so I guess I've do a good job but truly I feel good actually. I've said this before to people but I feel more comfortable or over time there are a lot of work I've been able to start to feel more comfortable with with the sentient views because I know I'm not right all the time. So if I'm surrounded by a group of people who are reinforcing my world view of either the company or the markets or whatever it else maybe that's actually when I start to get uncomfortable because consensus can be very listening to the sentient opinions and working through them as hard work consensus is can be very dangerous.
與有意識的意見共處實際上非常困難，因為它會給心智帶來負擔。這讓你覺得自己可能沒有做出所有正確的決定，因此需要更多努力，當然還得重新思考一些你可能做過的事情或得出的結論。這是一項艱鉅的工作。傾聽那些與你意見相左且持有深思熟慮觀點的人確實不容易。因此，作為領導者，如果你能夠積極傾聽他人、真正接納並歡迎這些有意識的意見，這將是一個巨大的競爭優勢。保持謙遜，明白自己並非總是正確，並鼓勵人們與你持不同意見，同時付出艱辛努力——不僅僅是聽取這些深思熟慮的觀點，還要深入探討，最終可能形成不同的世界觀或結論。這確實是非常困難的工作，但我認為如果能夠做好，它將成為一種優勢。有人告訴我，優秀的領導者身邊總是圍繞著願意提出深思熟慮意見的人，而有時我在這裡確實被這些意見淹沒，所以我想我做得不錯——但說實話，這種感覺真的很好。 我以前曾對別人說過，隨著時間推移，我對那些有感知的觀點感到越來越自在，因為我知道自己並非總是正確。所以當我被一群只會強化我對公司、市場或其他任何事物的世界觀的人圍繞時，那反而會讓我開始感到不安，因為共識可能非常危險——傾聽那些有感知的意見並努力消化它們才是艱鉅的工作，而盲目追求共識往往暗藏風險。

So I feel more comfortable actually being surrounded by people who are willing to disagree and and obviously when you're going to disagree with someone you have to kind of be able to do it in the right professional way you can build a culture that embraces that I think you're onto something very special. You touched on this earlier but what would you say is a significance of empathy and truly preshating others perspectives? I think empathy is an incredibly important quality of any leader and that's the ability to make people feel seen, make people feel heard, it is the ability to really connect with people and it's a superpower that over time will allow you to earn their fallorship which is obviously the goal of leadership and I recently last summer one of the best books I read was by David Brooks and I wrote down here some looking at it's how to know a person the art of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen. It's a great book and it touches exactly on this topic of empathy and it gives actually concrete advice on how to cultivate that as a skill set and I highly recommend that people read it but this this being empathetic and also being authentic which we can talk about these are really superpowers to earn people to earn people's falloworship. So part of great leadership is getting the most out of people but how do you balance pushing people to their limits versus recognizing their humanity and the fact that they are people with emotions and biases as opposed to machines? Yeah it would be easier to manage machines people. There's people this is challenged and by the way like it's emotionally demanding job to manage people and investing we do fundamental investing across the platform whether it's public or private so we are and the people is a collection of people as what our clients are buying the people in the process and we have over 600 people at TCW to manage and you're asking the right question which is like yes of course I want to push the organization to be ambitious to deliver for our clients and to grow over time but you can't drag people along on that journey you can't push them past whatever their limits are they need to have a source of renewal and a source of energy and so you do have to balance those two things and if you push people too hard you will break them that's true and this is a business where actually you get rewarded for longevity so you want people to be with you on the journey for multiple decades and I think that actually most of the time for me it's not that people I'm usually encouraging people to take the break for as it relates to our investors like and our senior people here they are so ambitious they are so pushing so hard it's not them coming usually to me to ask for is usually me saying to them you know what like take a timeout whether it's like the afternoon or take your vacation or connect with your family because that sort whatever your source of renewal is and you need to know that as a human I know what mine is which is to spend time with my family if you don't have that you are going to burn out and then we're not doing anything right by our clients so it is the right question to ask and I think you don't I think it's important that people know you don't need to sacrifice ambition or achievement in the pursuit of having balance and renewal in fact I don't think you can achieve success over the long term without having that and so it is about encouraging people to live a full life and it's also about looking at things over the very long term because you cannot get it the balance those two things right every day but you really do need to get it right over the long term and I would say you know for me the thing I'm thinking about a lot as I said my source of renewals my family and so I'm always trying to make sure that I am getting the time that I need to feel connected to my children and I have been in a time with my family and I know that if I'm not getting that time it impacts my performance at work so you have to be able to keep hold those two things it doesn't have to be a family for people like I said whatever your source is of renewal but you need to know what it is and you got to create the space for it and it's not weakness it's actually a formidable competitive advantage to know what that is and to be able to tap into it. In the beginning of a conversation you talked about this mindset that you learned from your mom about what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail but how do you take that philosophy as a leader when the risk of failure may impact more than just you.
所以我其實更樂於被願意提出異議的人圍繞，當然，當你要與某人意見相左時，必須以適當的專業方式進行，這樣才能建立一種包容這種文化的環境，我認為你觸及了一些非常特別的東西。你之前提到過這一點，但你認為同理心以及真正理解他人觀點的重要性是什麼？我認為同理心是任何領導者都應具備的極其重要的品質，這種能力能讓人感到被看見、被聽見，它是一種真正與人建立連結的能力，這是一種隨著時間推移能讓你贏得他們追隨的超能力，這顯然是領導的目標。去年夏天我讀過大衛·布魯克斯寫的一本書，是我讀過最好的書之一，我在這裡記下了一些內容，書名是《如何認識一個人：深入看見他人與被深入看見的藝術》。 這是一本很棒的書，它正好觸及了同理心這個主題，並且實際上提供了具體的建議，教導如何培養這種技能，我強烈推薦大家閱讀。但這種同理心以及我們可以談論的真誠，這些確實是贏得人們追隨的超能力。因此，偉大領導力的一部分在於激發人們的最大潛能，但你如何平衡推動人們達到極限與承認他們的人性，以及他們是有情感和偏見的人而非機器的事實？是的，管理機器人可能會更容易。 這份工作確實充滿挑戰，而且說實話，管理團隊和投資是相當耗費心力的。我們在整個平台上進行基本面投資，無論是公開市場還是私募領域，因此我們——以及我們的團隊——就是客戶所購買的核心。在 TCW，我們有超過 600 名員工需要管理，而你問到了一個關鍵問題：當然，我希望推動組織保持雄心，為客戶創造價值並持續成長，但你不能強迫人們超越他們的極限。他們需要恢復精力的來源，必須在這兩者之間取得平衡。如果施加過大壓力，反而會壓垮他們——這在我們這行尤其重要，因為長期堅持才能獲得回報。你希望團隊成員能與你並肩數十年，而就我的經驗而言，更多時候是我主動提醒那些雄心勃勃的高階主管們：「該暫停一下了」。無論是放個下午假、休年假，或是陪伴家人——每個人的充電方式不同，但必須清楚知道自己的能量來源。對我而言，家庭時間就是我的充電站。若沒有這樣的調節，終將導致倦怠，屆時我們也無法為客戶提供最佳服務。這確實是個值得深思的問題，而且我想強調：追求平衡與自我更新並不需要犧牲野心或成就。事實上，缺乏這些根本不可能實現長期成功。關鍵在於鼓勵人們活出完整的人生，並以長遠視角看待事物——你不可能每天都完美平衡，但必須在長期尺度上做到。就我個人而言，我不斷提醒自己要確保與孩子們的相處時間，因為當家庭連結不足時，工作表現確實會受影響。重點不在於具體形式（未必是家庭），而是清楚認知自己的能量來源並為其保留空間。這絕非弱點，反而是種強大的競爭優勢——當你能準確掌握並運用這份能量時。 在對話一開始你提到從母親那裡學到的心態——如果知道自己不會失敗，你會怎麼做？但作為領導者，當失敗的風險可能影響的不僅是你自己時，你如何實踐這種哲學？

First of all, surrounding yourself by dissenting opinions is a good way to do that so I come up with many good ideas and also lots of bad ideas and so luckily I'm sure I've built a team of people both at the leadership level and I get the privilege of working with these extraordinary investors who you know will give their opinions and so it's not single threaded to what I want to do I come up with some ideas but I socialize them with the super smart group of people that are willing to disagree or point out the false in what the ideas are so that's the first step to protecting yourself from a failure that would impact other people. The second thing I would say is that you try and take multiple I'm going to say bets because I can't think of a better word right now but when you're looking out over the next 10 years what I know about this industry and I can only speak to the one that I run a company in is that's evolved very quickly and there's a lot of disruptive power whether it's asset classes which we will talk more about or vehicles I know it's not standing still I know it's changing so therefore I know that we need to hold on to what's really special about us which is our investment culture, our investment edge, our philosophy and our process but that we have to be willing to push the envelope on innovation about what asset classes we want to be in about what vehicles we want to be in about how we want to work with our clients and in pushing for that innovation we're not going to make a single bet to use that word again we're going to try multiple vectors to deliver on that growth and we'll pursue more aggressively the ones that have momentum and we may try some things in certain vehicles or in certain markets that aren't successful and people have to be okay with that and we'll say you know what we tried that didn't work and we'll move on but that will be my answer you you first try and narrow it down to the good ideas by making sure it's not single threaded and you're getting a lot of input and then second when you are pushing for innovation you don't sacrifice you hold on to the things that make you special in our case investment culture process philosophy the edge and then you you you try multiple things that can help you diversify or grow we just talked about something you learn from your mom but your dad taught you to always do the right thing what what is doing the right thing mean investment management in the investment management business the clients are the business and so what that principle means here is you put the clients first and how does this decision impact the clients it's that simple you can make this business really complicated the investment decisions as well as the decisions about products and distribution but you can also make it super simple which is this the client is the business what's in the best interest of the client we will go do that thing I mean you just have to have that north star because a lot of decisions come across your plate and you need to be able to have that framework and so when I think about my dad giving me that advice growing up we do the right thing the way I apply it to this business is what is in the best interest of the client and it can be complicated because revenues are generated by assets under management that's how the fee structure works how or yeah and so so you you could see a spectrum that that I've noticed in the industry where on one end you have people who really in the business of generating returns for their clients and on the other end of spectrum you have businesses that are in the business of generating revenues for the business and everybody says they're the business of generating returns for clients either rather than gathering assets and generating revenues so I always look at what are you doing you know what is the evidence suggests not just what you're saying and so I think a lot and I think it goes a lot deeper than that you're right and it's multivariate actually what allows you to truly focus on investing in differentiative results versus asset gathering so I'll give you my thoughts on that it was one of it was a main motivation to come to this platform with somewhere with a strong investment culture that was focused on great investment results and a yes of course we're ambitious people we'd like to grow the business but the primacy is on the people the philosophy the process and the performance so you know how do I evidence that you and how do we preserve that and why are we able to do that I alluded to it earlier being private helps a lot we're just not under the pressure for quarterly results which allows us to apply our philosophy and process over the long term so that would be number one number two it has to be real in the way that you talk the interactive people and leave the company so we at a town hall earlier this morning the first slide up the first conversation we have as performance it's not about what products we launched have we grew the bit it's what is the performance across all the verticals because that is the business and so I am very conscious in saying to our people all the time we are in the business of investing in performance for our clients full stop that's the business the clients are the business and so we really put that is center of everything that I message out to our people and if you came to our corporate board meeting or a mutual fund board meeting that's where we start the conversation two is around this performance centricity the final thing all point is that out is that incentives matter a lot cultures more important but incentives matter financial and otherwise and so in many of our strategies we do have the you know there is a compensation component well first of all across the whole firm compensation is tied to client performance if you're an investor but then we also have alternative products where there is a component of carry which simply means that they will only earn the bulk of the fee if they outperform the benchmark that they agree to with the client which fully incends them to focus on performance over just scaling the business so those are some ways that we think about it and control for it hard to do if you're not a private company and again one of the reasons that I came to this platform and one of the reasons that I would and what I continue to think is an extreme competitive advantage for us. Yeah so sounds like a big part of it is is instilling that culture and then at the same time aligning everything else along with that culture. Yes and then thinking long term right I don't want to mislead anyone that we're not that we don't aren't ambitious to grow the business our investors have earned the right for to grow these businesses by the results that they put up and we want to deliver for them on that but we're able to think about it over the long term. So as a leader do you agree that the most important decisions are often the simplest once the North Star is clear while complexity may lie one level now? I do believe 100% that the biggest decisions that you make you spend a lot of time on them you delivery over the malat but they usually are very simple and they're usually about some core operating principles that you have applied as a leader over and over again that have worked out for you or even these lessons from parents like doing the right thing putting the clients first and when you look at through look at it through that lens it's a very simple decision. I would differentiate being simple from being easy because actually sometimes you have to make really difficult decisions about exiting a business about parting ways with a valued member of the team because they might not be the right person to take you forward over the next 10 years.
首先，讓自己周圍充滿不同意見是實現這一點的好方法。我會提出許多好點子，當然也有不少糟糕的主意。幸運的是，我確信自己建立了一個團隊，無論是領導層還是我有幸合作的這些出色投資者，他們都會坦率表達意見。因此決策不會只取決於我的單一想法的，我會提出一些構想，但會與這群極其聰明且願意提出異議或指出想法缺陷的人們共同探討——這是避免可能影響他人的失敗的第一步防護。 我想說的第二件事是，你要嘗試進行多重投資，我要說是賭注，因為我現在想不出更好的詞，但當你展望未來 10 年時，我對這個行業的了解，我只能說我經營公司的行業發展非常迅速，並且具有很大的顛覆性力量，無論是資產類別（我們將更多地討論）還是投資工具，我都知道它不會停滯不前，我知道它在變化，因此我知道我們需要堅持我們真正特別，即我們的投資文化、投資優勢、理念和創新，我們不會再使用這個詞，我們將嘗試多種方式來實現增長，我們將更積極地追求那些具有動力的領域，我們可能會在某些投資工具或某些領域嘗試一些東西市場並不成功，人們必須接受這一點，我們會說，你知道我們嘗試過什麼，但沒有成功，我們會繼續前進，但這將是我的答案，你首先會說，你知道我們會得到很多想法，然後當你會？的東西，在我們的投資文化、流程、哲學和優勢的案例中，然後你嘗試多種可以幫助你多樣化或成長的事情，我們剛剛談到了你從媽媽那裡學到的東西，但你的父親教你永遠做正確的事，做正確的事意味著什麼，投資管理，在投資管理業務中，客戶就是業務，所以這個原則在這裡意味著你把客戶放在第一位，這個決定如何影響客戶，就這樣簡單，你可以讓這個業務最符合客戶的利益，我們會去做那件事，我的意思是你必須你要有北極星，因為很多決定都要由你來做，你需要有這個框架，所以當我想起我父親在我成長過程中給我的建議時，我們做了正確的事情，我把它應用到這個業務中的方式就是最符合客戶利益的方式，這可能會運作，有些人真正從事為客戶創造回報的業務，另一方面，你有一些企業從事為企業創造收入的業務，每個人都說他們的業務是為客戶創造回報，而不是收集資產和創造收入，所以我總是看你在做什麼，你知道證據表明了什麼，而不僅僅是你在說什麼，所以我想了很多，我認為這比你說的要深刻得多，它是多變量的，實際上是什麼讓你真正專注於投資差異化的結果，我們是雄心勃勃的人，我們希望發展業務，但首要的是人、理念、流程和績效，所以你知道我如何證明你，我們如何保持這一點，為什麼我們能夠做到這一點，我之前提到過，私有化對我們有很大幫助，我們沒有季度業績的壓力，這使我們能夠長期應用我們的理念和流程，所以這是第一，第二，你與幻燈片這不是關於我們推出了哪些產品，我們成長了多少，而是所有垂直領域的績效如何，因為這是業務，所以我一直非常有意識地對我們的員工說，我們從事的業務是為客戶投資績效，這就是業務，客戶就是業務，所以我們真的把這作為我所做的一切的中心向我們的員工傳達信息，如果您參加了我們的公司董事會會議或共同基金董事會，我們將從那裡開始對話，第二點激勵在我們的許多策略中，我們確實有一個薪酬組成部分，首先，在整個公司，如果你是投資者，薪酬與客戶表現掛鉤，但是我們也有替代產品，其中有一個套利組成部分，這僅僅意味著，如果他們的表現超過他們與客戶商定的基準，他們才能賺取大部分費用，這完全激勵他們專注於績效而不是擴大是我們的極端競爭優勢。 是的，聽起來很大一部分是灌輸那種文化，同時讓其他一切與該文化保持一致。沒錯，然後要從長遠考慮，我不想誤導任何人以為我們不渴望業務成長，我們的投資者憑藉他們取得的成績贏得了讓這些業務成長的權利，我們希望為他們實現這一點，但我們能夠從長遠角度來思考。那麼作為領導者，你是否同意一旦北極星明確，最重要的決策往往是最簡單的，而複雜性可能只存在於下一層？我百分之百相信，你所做出的重大決策，你會花很多時間在上面，在過程中交付，但它們通常非常簡單，而且通常是關於一些核心運營原則，這些原則作為領導者你反覆應用，對你有效，甚至是來自父母的教誨，比如做正確的事、把客戶放在第一位，當你透過這個鏡頭來看時，這是一個非常簡單的決定。 我會將簡單與容易區分開來，因為實際上，有時你必須做出非常艱難的決定，比如退出某項業務，或是與團隊中一位受重視的成員分道揚鑣，因為他們可能不是帶領你未來十年前進的正確人選。

It is simple and you have this framework to help you figure out what to do but it doesn't make it easy and actually part of the job of a leader is to make many many many difficult decisions. What are some of the greatest mistakes you've observed leaders make that perhaps including yourself? I would say avoiding the difficult conversations like I was just saying that you have to you're constantly making difficult decisions and it often leads to difficult conversations and as human beings we just want to put that off. We don't want friction. We don't want to have to engage on a top topic with another individual and so we can delay them and I will tell you someone said to me before I took this job and it's so true. Whenever you get to the end and you make that like I said it might be simple but it's not easy to communicate it. Everyone told me you're always going to wish that you had done it sooner. I don't know if you had that experience Alex of running a vote but that has turned out to be true to me. You figure out what you're going to do but you prolong it because you may not want to deal with a friction of that situation. I think there's corollary to managing portfolios too but in managing people it's always the right thing and I'm getting better at that of doing it earlier of engaging the difficult conversations for sure.
這很簡單，你有這個框架來幫助你決定該做什麼，但它並不會讓事情變得容易，實際上領導者工作的一部分就是要做出許多許多困難的決定。你觀察到領導者犯過哪些最大的錯誤，或許包括你自己在內？我會說逃避困難的對話，就像我剛才提到的，你必須不斷做出困難的決定，這往往導致困難的對話，而作為人類，我們只想拖延這些對話。我們不想要摩擦。我們不想與另一個人就一個棘手的話題進行交流，所以我們可以推遲它們。我要告訴你，在我接受這份工作之前，有人對我說過這樣的話，而且非常真實。每當你到了最後，像我說的那樣做出決定，它可能很簡單，但不容易傳達。每個人都告訴我，你總是會希望自己早點做了這件事。我不知道 Alex 你是否經歷過進行投票的情況，但這對我來說確實如此。你決定了要做什麼，但你拖延了，因為你可能不想處理那種情況下的摩擦。 我認為這同樣適用於管理投資組合，但在管理人員方面，這始終是正確的做法，而且我確實在進步，更早地進行那些困難的對話。

The second thing related to that because it can be a difficult conversation is the willingness to give people feedback and I'm very focused on building that at TCW and everyone will tell you this word we have a feedback culture but giving people feedback real time on what's going well and what they can improve on it just creates a much better culture and it means that you don't have this one momentous difficult conversation because people already know along the way your observations on what's working and what's not working but that would be it just like a reticence to engage in taking the tough decisions and having the difficult conversations. You asked a question before about empathy and that is a super power and being able to tackle those two things because it is possible to take difficult decisions and to have difficult conversations and to do it in a highly empathetic way that is in line with what you want from the culture. Those things are all really related. One thing that I've learned is that you grow by pushing through those moments and you talked about resiliency in the beginning it's related but the growth comes from learning from mistakes and that is best done through somebody pointing it out to you you have a conversation about it and then you learn and then you grow from that experience. 100% I mean that's been so really one of the reasons I've gotten the skill to do that to be empathetic to engage in difficult conversations to create a culture feedback because that was done for me when I was growing up at Goldman Sachs. The most valuable thing that you can get is feedback. I would say that's something that leaders sometimes I've observed some leaders struggle to do writ large globally. I would say from an employee perspective myself included that's an area that not everybody's skill that either is accepting the feedback and the difficult conversation and anyone listening to this that's growing early in building a career. I would say that is like the most important thing to be able to do is first of all have a boss that's willing to engage in difficult conversations give you the feedback you need to hear and then your your ability to hear it. It's tough and I would say you you hire all these high performing people at TCW and elsewhere and many of them haven't had tough feedback they've excelled at everything ever in life.
第二點與此相關，因為這可能是一個困難的對話，就是願意給予人們反饋。我在 TCW 非常注重建立這一點，每個人都會告訴你，我們有一種反饋文化。即時給予人們反饋，告訴他們哪些做得好，哪些可以改進，這會創造出更好的文化。這意味著你不會有一個突然的、困難的對話，因為人們已經在過程中知道你的觀察，哪些有效，哪些無效。但這就像是不願意參與做出艱難決定和進行困難對話的猶豫。你之前問過關於同理心的問題，這是一種超能力，能夠處理這兩件事，因為做出艱難決定和進行困難對話是有可能的，並且可以以一種高度同理心的方式進行，這與你希望的文化是一致的。這些都是密切相關的。 我學到的一件事是，你通過突破那些時刻而成長，你一開始談到了韌性，這與成長相關，但成長來自於從錯誤中學習，而最好的學習方式是有人指出你的錯誤，你們就此進行對話，然後你從中學習並因此成長。100% 我的意思是，這確實是我能夠培養這種技能的原因之一——能夠同理心、參與困難對話、建立反饋文化，因為我在高盛成長的過程中就是這樣被對待的。你能得到的最有價值的東西就是反饋。我會說，這是我觀察到有些領導者在全球範圍內普遍難以做到的事情。從員工的角度來看，包括我自己在內，這是一個並非每個人都擅長的領域——無論是接受反饋還是進行困難對話，對於任何正在職業生涯早期成長的聽眾來說都是如此。 我會說，這就像是最重要的事情，首先是要有一個願意參與困難對話的老闆，給你需要聽到的反饋，然後是你自己聽取這些反饋的能力。這很困難，而且我會說，你在 TCW 和其他地方僱用了所有這些高績效的人，他們中的許多人從未接受過嚴厲的反饋，他們在生活中一直表現出色。

It would appear through sports or academics and college and you come somewhere and I like the reality is that this is going to be new and it's going to be hard and you're going to fail at things. It's really an advantage to be able to do one thing when people give you feedback. There's only one answer which is thank you and I would say very rarely is that the response that people get. So that would be my advice to people to the employee too is just to listen to it and it doesn't even mean you need to agree to it but you have to give it the space you got to take it away you have to reflect on it and you'll really stand out when someone gives you difficult feedback if you just say thank you for that feedback. I really appreciate it. I'd like to ask you some questions about investing and your outlook. So a popular one is your thoughts about active versus passive investing particularly in widely followed market segments like large cap stocks. I think there's a rule for both. I know those groups of people like to fight with each other for what's better. And they're not very empathetic to the other side.
無論是透過體育、學術還是大學，你來到某個地方，而我喜歡的現實是，這將是全新的且充滿挑戰，你也會在過程中遭遇失敗。當人們給予你反饋時，能夠專注於一件事確實是一種優勢。只有一個標準答案，那就是「謝謝」，而我必須說，很少人會得到這樣的反應。因此，這也是我想給員工的建議：聆聽反饋，這不代表你必須同意，但你必須給予它空間，帶走它並反思。當有人給你艱難的反饋時，如果你只是說「謝謝你的反饋，我真的很感激」，你將真正脫穎而出。我想請教你一些關於投資和你的觀點的問題。一個常見的問題是，你對主動與被動投資的看法，特別是在廣泛關注的市場領域，如大型股。我認為兩者都有其存在的價值。我知道這兩群人喜歡爭論哪種方式更好，而且他們對另一方的觀點不太能感同身受。

Yeah, they're not very good. Good void Alex. Do I have a so I'm going to say answer as to the high degree of empathy. I really do think there's room for both and I think it's a great innovation that we have the ability for investors, individuals and institutions who access market beta effectively for free. That's wonderful. It's great. I own some of it in my own portfolio. It can also be true and it's true at TCW that there is ways to extract excess return in those markets and if you can find a manager that can do that repeatedly, net of fees, then it makes sense to add that exposure alongside passive exposure and that's true in public market.
是的，他們表現得不太好。好樣的，Alex。我是否有一個關於高度同理心的答案呢？我確實認為兩者都有存在的空間，而且我認為這是一項偉大的創新，讓投資者——無論是個人還是機構——能夠幾乎免費地有效獲取市場貝塔。這太棒了。我自己在投資組合中也持有一些。同樣真實的是，在 TCW，我們確實有方法在這些市場中提取超額回報，如果你能找到一個能夠持續做到這一點的基金經理（扣除費用後），那麼在被動投資之外增加這種敞口是有意義的，這在公開市場中也是如此。

So I think there's room for both. You mentioned large cap. We have alpha statements in some of these large cap markets. It does require you to run a very concentrated portfolio. And so that creates volatility. And so I would recommend people thinking about owning passive alongside a highly concentrated portfolio in these large markets. The second type of active that we do and I'm using public markets here and then I'm going to end with something on alternatives. And I'm sticking with public equity markets. We do thematic investing. And so that's basically identifying it theme and saying, hey, this is going to disrupt and change the world a lot over the next decade. And it's underrepresented currently in the market index. So let's overweight this theme. It's I don't think it makes sense to implement those tactically. I think you need to hold it for multi years. But there are vehicles that will allow you to implement that. So at TCW for example, we launched an AI dedicated strategy almost a decade ago. So way before everyone was talking about it before chatGBT. But we did identify that theme and obviously people who went along with us on that thesis have done very well because it did end up being a dominant market theme.
所以我認為兩者都有空間。你提到了大盤股。我們在這些大盤股市場中有超額收益的表現。這確實需要你運行一個非常集中的投資組合。因此這會帶來波動性。所以我會建議人們在這些大市場中，考慮在被動投資的同時持有高度集中的投資組合。我們做的第二種主動投資，我這裡指的是公開市場，然後我會以另類投資作為結束。我還是堅持談公開股票市場。我們進行主題投資。這基本上是識別一個主題並說，嘿，這將在未來十年內大幅顛覆和改變世界。而目前它在市場指數中的代表性不足。所以讓我們超配這個主題。我認為戰術性地實施這些主題沒有意義。我認為你需要持有它多年。但有一些工具可以讓你實施這一點。例如在 TCW，我們差不多十年前就推出了一個專注於人工智慧的策略。遠在大家談論它之前，遠在 ChatGPT 之前。 但我們確實識別出了這個主題，顯然那些與我們持相同觀點的人表現非常出色，因為它最終成為了一個主導市場的主題。

And we think it's still in early stages. And we have one focused on energy transformation too. We have a few of them. But that's another form of active. It's active both to identify the theme. And then way that you implemented is active because the beneficiaries and the drivers of that theme will change over time as well. And so you want to be have active exposure to it. And then finally, in the alternative markets and for us, that's mostly alternative credit. There's not really currently a good passive substitution to that.
而且我們認為它仍處於早期階段。我們還有一個專注於能源轉型的基金。我們有幾個這樣的基金。但那是另一種形式的主動投資。它既是主動識別主題，也是主動實施，因為該主題的受益者和驅動因素也會隨時間變化。因此，你希望對其保持主動的曝險。最後，在另類市場中，對我們來說主要是另類信貸。目前還沒有很好的被動替代品可以替代它。

And so I am a believer in alternative investments. And those are by definition active. We are in the active investing business. People who have been successful in passive have scaled to $10, $12,000, that's just not the business that we're in. But it doesn't make it a bad business. Like I said, there's a place where people's portfolios. And we're going to work with people who want access, return on top of the beta and equity or credit markets. Why are you so passionate about alternative investments?
因此，我是一個另類投資的信徒。這些投資本質上就是主動的。我們從事的是主動投資業務。那些在被動投資中取得成功的人已經將規模擴大到一萬、一萬兩千億美元，但那不是我們從事的業務。但這並不意味著它是一個不好的業務。正如我所說，它們在人們的投資組合中佔有一席之地。我們將與那些希望在股票或信貸市場的貝塔收益之上獲得額外回報的人合作。你為什麼對另類投資如此熱情？

I believe that clients, institutions and individuals need to have exposure to alternative investments in their portfolio. And the most simple reason to give that to you is that ultimately buying risk assets, credit or equity, you're really trying to buy a piece of GDP basically of America a long term. You're saying, I believe in growth. I believe in capitalism. I want to compound with this over time. And the reality of the way that markets have changed, the continued to change, is that a lot of that productive capacity sits in the private markets. And so just like I think you can have active and passive, I also think that you need to have public and private in your portfolio to fully capture the opportunity set. In public equity markets, there are 50% less listed companies than there were 20 years ago. And so we've got an example of why, and why is that the case? Of course, there's mergers and acquisitions. But a big part of it is that there's more perpetual availability of private capital companies can scale for longer in the private markets. And clients should have exposure to some of that. As it relates to the credit markets, we're in the much earlier stages of that. But I am seeing that CFOs, who are the borrowers, they're the ones that work with the CEO to issue this debt that can go public or private. They want more flexibility in financing. They want to be able to issue corporate credit debt. They want to be able to issue secure ties debt, secure ties to get in some assets. Even a high yield company can issue IG debt if they secure ties against the right group of assets. CFOs just want that maximum flexibility. And so in order for us to stay relevant to that CFO, we need to be able to lend across public and private markets. And why do we have to be relevant to that borrower to that CFO because we need to be relevant to the client? And so I'm a big believer in that asset class. I think clients need to fully capture the opportunity set. And I think fixing comes in the early stages of evolving to a more complex public private market. And we want our clients to have exposure to that in their portfolios. TCW has been investing in private credit for over 25 years. So early in, but there's a lot of attention on private credit and it's the democratization. And there's been material asset flows into the sector.
我相信客戶、機構和個人都需要在他們的投資組合中接觸另類投資。最簡單的理由是，最終購買風險資產、信貸或股票，基本上你是在長期購買美國 GDP 的一部分。你在說，我相信增長。我相信資本主義。我希望隨著時間的推移與之共同成長。而市場已經改變並持續變化的現實是，許多這種生產能力存在於私人市場中。因此，就像我認為你可以有主動和被動投資一樣，我也認為你需要在投資組合中同時擁有公開和私人市場，以充分把握所有機會。在公開股票市場中，上市公司數量比 20 年前減少了 50%。我們有一個例子說明為什麼會這樣，以及為什麼會發生這種情況？當然，有併購的因素。但很大一部分原因是私人資本的持續可用性，使得公司可以在私人市場中更長時間地擴張。客戶應該接觸到其中的一部分。至於信貸市場，我們還處於更早期的階段。 但我觀察到，那些身為借款方的財務長們——他們是與執行長合作發行這類可公開或私募債務的關鍵人物——正尋求更靈活的融資方式。他們希望能發行企業信用債，也想發行有資產擔保的債券，透過特定資產作為抵押。即使是高收益公司，只要以合適的資產組合作為擔保，也能發行投資級債券。財務長們追求的就是極致的彈性。因此，為了持續滿足這些財務長的需求，我們必須具備橫跨公開與私募市場的放貸能力。而為何我們必須緊貼這些借款方——這些財務長的需求？因為唯有如此，我們才能真正服務客戶。我對這個資產類別深信不疑，認為客戶需要全面掌握這類投資機會。我認為，在邁向更複雜的公私混合市場初期，固定收益將扮演重要角色，而我們希望客戶的投資組合能參與其中。TCW 投入私募信貸領域已超過 25 年，雖屬早期進入者，但隨著私募信貸的普及化，該領域已吸引大量資金流入並備受矚目。

Should investors be concerned or do you see tremendous investment opportunities in this area? It's probably not going to surprise people to say, we see, we see tremendous investment opportunities in this area. I don't think there's going to be a bubble in private credit, which would by definition be this large mismatch between demand and supply. We just we don't have that in private credit. But there are going to be some accidents. And in the last decade and a half, rates have been low to declining to zero to slightly rise. It's just in a very contained territory.
投資者應該感到擔憂，還是您認為這個領域存在巨大的投資機會？說我們在這個領域看到了巨大的投資機會，可能不會讓人感到意外。我不認為私募信貸會出現泡沫，因為根據定義，泡沫意味著供需之間存在巨大的不平衡。而在私募信貸領域，我們並沒有看到這種情況。但確實會有一些意外發生。在過去十五年中，利率從低點一路下滑至零，然後略有回升，整體處於一個非常有限的範圍內。

And so the asset class, 98% of people launch post-school financial crisis, as you pointed out, we're very fortunate to have done this for a quarter century. So it hasn't really been tested for the more challenging macro environment that we're in now. And as rates stay elevated longer than people expect, there is starting to be stress in this market. That is true. The other thing that is true is that we talked about at TCW, we're very focused on discipline over deployment. If you were very focused on the other way around, you would have been lending in markets and doing some underwriting. That's not very rigid because people are competing for these loans. And so they allowed covenants to weaken or disappear entirely. Documentation became weaker. Leverage became higher. And this stuff exists out there now. And so if the macro environment gets a little more challenging, and I would argue, we're kind of there. I'm not calling for something catastrophic, but the operating environment has become more challenging.
因此這個資產類別，98%的人是在金融危機後才開始接觸的，正如你所指出的，我們非常幸運能夠在這個領域深耕四分之一個世紀。所以它還沒有真正經歷過像我們現在所處的更具挑戰性的宏觀環境的考驗。隨著利率維持在高位的時間比人們預期的更長，這個市場開始出現壓力。這是事實。另一個事實是，我們在 TCW 討論過，我們非常注重紀律而非部署速度。如果你過於關注後者，你可能已經在某些市場放貸並進行一些承銷。這並不十分嚴格，因為人們在爭奪這些貸款。因此他們允許契約條款被削弱或完全消失。文件變得更加寬鬆。槓桿變得更高。而這些問題現在依然存在。所以如果宏觀環境變得更有挑戰性，我會說我們已經處於這種情況。我並不是在預測某種災難性事件，但營運環境確實變得更加艱難了。

You're going to start to see some of these problems surface. And it will be, again, for the first time in the history of the young asset class, where it's under that type of stress. And so you'll see some differentiated outcomes. Now for us, we are a highly conservative lender. We have strong covenants. We have extremely strong documentation. We say no most of the time. So we feel good about the loans that we've made.
你將會開始看到這些問題浮現。這將是這個年輕資產類別歷史上首次承受這種壓力。因此，你會看到一些差異化的結果。對我們來說，我們是非常保守的貸款人。我們有嚴格的契約條款、極其完善的文件記錄，而且大多數時候我們都會拒絕貸款申請。所以我們對自己所做的貸款感到滿意。

And if something goes wrong, which by the way, it will, because that's how life works and how investing works. We have the skill set to work out of it on behalf of our clients. So from a relative return perspective and a peer perspective, we're pretty excited about this environment for driving differentiated returns. But for the industry at large, we expect that there could be some accidents. So you talked about being a long-term investor and staying disciplined to your approach. But how do you balance the discipline versus being adaptable, particularly during those inevitable extended stretches of underperformance?
如果出現問題——順帶一提，問題一定會出現，因為這就是生活和投資的運作方式——我們擁有代表客戶解決問題的技能。因此，從相對回報和同業比較的角度來看，我們對這個能帶來差異化回報的環境感到相當興奮。但對於整個行業來說，我們預期可能會有一些意外發生。你提到了作為長期投資者並堅持自己的投資方法。但在那些不可避免的長期表現不佳時期，你如何平衡紀律性與適應性？

Yeah, this is interesting. I think having been in the investing world for 23 years and manage a lot of investors, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what is the real competitive advantage and investing? And I think it's a question clients do and should ask of you what is the advantage? One of the challenges is they want some magical, exciting, shiny answer, which I don't really think is the real reason. Like, I don't think it's better systems or technology. I mean, there's a little bit of that that helps you around the edges or some miraculous model that other people don't have. There's a little bit of that.
是的，這很有趣。我認為在投資界待了 23 年並管理許多投資者後，我花了很多時間思考什麼才是真正的競爭優勢和投資？而且我認為這是客戶確實也應該問你的問題——優勢是什麼？其中一個挑戰是他們想要一些神奇、令人興奮、閃亮的答案，但我並不認為這才是真正的原因。比如，我不認為是更好的系統或技術。我的意思是，這些東西確實能在邊緣上幫到你一點，或是其他人沒有的神奇模型。這些確實有一點幫助。

But actually the biggest competitive advantage is two things. And both are really tough to replicate, hence being good competitive advantages. The first one is just time and having been cycle tested, investing through different economic environments, different rate environments. And the reality is we've had a pretty one-way environment for the last 17 years. So by the way, it's something we worry about think about a lot. It's a company because we look out on the trading force. Like, how many of these people have actually invested through a protractive recession? How many of these people have invested through a stagnation? How many of these people? It's not a lot. You need to be so we're lucky to have a good number of them, but it's not everybody, and that's something if I were a client I would push on a lot because that experience gives you this pattern recognition that is hugely, hugely valuable in investing. And it allows you and gives you the stamina to push through to the other side, to have put the pattern recognition and the stamina.
但實際上最大的競爭優勢有兩點，這兩點都很難被複製，因此成為優良的競爭優勢。第一點是時間與歷經週期考驗，在不同經濟環境、不同利率環境下進行投資的經驗。現實情況是，過去 17 年我們所處的環境幾乎是單向發展的。順帶一提，這正是我們非常擔憂且經常思考的問題——作為一家公司，我們審視交易團隊時不禁想：這些人當中，究竟有多少真正經歷過長期衰退的投資考驗？有多少人曾在經濟停滯時期進行投資？實際數字並不多。所幸我們團隊中有相當比例具備這類經驗，但並非全員皆然。若身為客戶，我會特別強調這點，因為這種經驗能培養出極其珍貴的投資模式識別能力，同時賦予你堅持到底的韌性——既要具備模式識別的眼光，也要擁有堅持到底的耐力。

And the second thing is discipline, which doesn't sound exciting, but honestly it's very rare. It's very rare that people will stick with their discipline process to your point, even when you're coming in and for multiple days, maybe for months, maybe for quarters, maybe for an even entire year, people will tell you that you're wrong. And so I'll tell you just being a value investor in parts of the fixed income market has been tough because we looked at the situation last year and we said credit spreads are at record tights. The market is pricing as if we're never going to need to cut rates. And that positioning persisted for a while, but the team stuck with their philosophy and process and discipline.
第二件事是紀律，這聽起來並不令人興奮，但老實說這非常罕見。非常罕見的是，人們會堅持他們的紀律流程，即使你進入市場後連續多天、可能數月、甚至整個季度或一整年，人們都會告訴你你錯了。因此，我要告訴你，在固定收益市場的某些部分成為價值投資者一直很艱難，因為我們去年審視了情況並表示信用利差處於歷史低點。市場的定價彷彿我們永遠不需要降息。這種定位持續了一段時間，但團隊堅持了他們的理念、流程和紀律。

And obviously this year is a different environment. But that is a tough thing to do to have that discipline. And most like I said, the people often capitulate out at the wrong time. And so if you can find someone who's willing to execute, first of all has the environment, right? So has a company structure and a management team that's supportive of allowing them to persist with that discipline. And you can see them do it repeatedly. I think that's special. But how do you know whether the discipline is outdated or not? Meaning you may have an investment, what you thought was an investment truth, but no longer is the case. So how do you how do you differentiate between those two? To that, I would say I think a value oriented investing will always work about a my take a while for a to work out. Why do I think that is just the center of gravity, like over through the history of time, eventually, prices matter again. It can dislocate for widely, for a while, but eventually cash flows earnings, these things do matter. Just that's been true for a millennia. And I think we'll continue to be true.
顯然今年的環境有所不同。但要保持那種紀律性確實很難。正如我所說，大多數人往往在不對的時機放棄。因此，如果你能找到一個願意執行的人，首先他得有合適的環境，對吧？也就是說，公司結構和管理團隊要支持他們堅持這種紀律性。而且你能看到他們反覆這樣做。我認為這很特別。但你怎麼知道這種紀律性是否已經過時？意思是，你可能有一項投資，你以為是投資真理，但情況已不再如此。那麼你如何區分這兩者？對此，我會說，我認為價值導向的投資總會奏效，只是可能需要一段時間才能見效。為什麼我這麼認為？因為這就像是歷史長河中的重心，最終價格還是會再次發揮作用。價格可能會偏離很遠一段時間，但最終現金流和收益這些因素確實很重要。這已經被驗證了幾千年，我認為未來依然如此。

But there are things that you can do to innovate around that. So for example, take the secure ties market. We've done secure ties investing at DCW, longer and deeper than most people in the marketplace. We have a lot of secure ties to assets in our portfolios, depending on our positioning, 70 and 90 billion dollars of secure ties assets. But there are new things happening in the secure ties space. They're not all queues of listed some of them are private. And so we need to be innovative to incorporate some of those ideas in our portfolios, which we do. So we can maintain a value position in saying cash flow, prices, solvency, like these things will matter over the long term. But then we can be more innovative in terms of the securities that we compete into the portfolio. And we can continue to push on our portfolio construction. So we had an underway position in credit, probably the largest of any of our competitors in our core plus portfolio. That means that we would carry under the index. So we are pushing our portfolio construction to say, like, how do we compensate for that, carrying under the index, and what innovative security selection can we do on that? What sector positioning can we do? It's a compensate for that. So I think there's your right to say that like the world evolves. We keep our value philosophy. That has worked for a thousand years and will work for the next thousand years over long term. But we can avail ourselves of more tools and more creative security selection to be more successful within that framework. By the way, I just want to say you have to have the right partners too. That's just true. Most of our clients really understand who we are and what we do.
但你可以透過創新來應對這些挑戰。以證券化市場為例，我們在 DCW 從事證券化投資的時間比市場上大多數人都要長且深入。根據我們的配置，我們的投資組合中持有大量證券化資產，規模約在 700 億至 900 億美元之間。然而證券化領域正出現新趨勢，這些並非全是上市證券，有些屬於私募性質。因此我們必須創新，將這些新構想納入投資組合——這正是我們持續在做的事。如此一來，我們既能維持價值投資立場，專注現金流、價格、償債能力等長期關鍵因素，同時能在投資組合的證券選擇上更靈活創新。我們也不斷精進投資組合建構策略——例如在核心增強型組合中，我們持有的信用債部位很可能是同業中最大的，這意味著我們會低於指數權重配置。因此我們正推動組合建構策略思考：如何彌補低配指數的影響？又能透過哪些創新的證券選擇來達成目標？ 我們可以進行哪些行業配置？這是一種補償。所以我認為你有權說世界在演變。我們保持我們的價值哲學。這已經有效了一千年，長期來看，在未來一千年也將繼續有效。但我們可以利用更多工具和更具創意的證券選擇，在這一框架內取得更大成功。順便說一句，我只是想說你也必須有合適的合作夥伴。這是真的。我們的大多數客戶真正了解我們是誰以及我們在做什麼。

And we're playing a very specific role in their portfolio. I talked about liquid fixing come, but also I'm private credit. I mean, there are going to be some clients that wouldn't have been happy that they're a manager deployed less than the market last year because they want to get their allocation up to a certain point, right? But if they hire you and they know that you're just a plenty of your covenant heavy and your document heavy or diligent heavy and you're just not going to say, yes to everything, then they're going to give you the patience and the time to allow that philosophy and process to work. So we have to be disciplined and sticking to it. We have to innovate along the way, which is the question, the good question to you ask, which is that yes value can work, but be creative and innovate within that framework and we're doing that. But then we have to be with the right partners that understand who we are and what we do and we'll give us the time frame for the philosophy and process to work out. And that mutual selection of manager to client, I think is very important. And we're fortunate to have a lot of enduring strong partners who have invested with us over multiple decades and that's just the greatest gift that you can have in this industry and that that fallorship of those clients allows us is actually one of the reasons that we can execute with such discipline. As an AI and technology enthusiast, how do you see the most recent tech boom playing out? We've been focused on AI for as a investing opportunity for the better part of a decade here. And I still think we are in the very early innings of it. I do think that there's going to continue to be an enormous amount of capital needed to invest in this, that the hyper scalars will are going to be the biggest drivers of that capex. So these big tech platforms that we all know and they're going to invest in that regardless of the economic environment, big picture in my view, because they need to maintain the formidable competitive advantage that is AI. So of course these stocks are going to go up and down. We can talk more about who owns the stock market. And you know why it might be vulnerable from evaluation perspective, which I think it is a little bit. But if you ask me out long-term, I think the capex for this part of the market is going to continue to be there because these platforms have to be at the leading edge of this.
我們在他們的投資組合中扮演著非常特定的角色。我提到了流動性修復的到來，但同時我也是私人信貸領域的一員。我的意思是，會有一些客戶對於他們的經理去年配置低於市場水平感到不滿，因為他們希望將配置提升到某個特定點，對吧？但如果他們僱用你，並且知道你是一個重視契約、文件或勤勉的人，不會對所有事情都說「是」，那麼他們就會給予你耐心和時間，讓這種理念和流程發揮作用。因此，我們必須保持紀律並堅持下去。我們必須在過程中創新，這是你提出的好問題，也就是說，價值投資可以發揮作用，但在這個框架內要富有創造力和創新精神，而我們正在這樣做。但同時，我們必須與理解我們是誰以及我們做什麼的正確夥伴合作，他們會給予我們時間讓這種理念和流程見效。我認為，這種從經理到客戶的相互選擇非常重要。 我們很幸運擁有許多長期堅實的合作伙伴，他們與我們共同投資數十年，這正是這個行業中最珍貴的禮物。這種客戶間的深厚情誼，正是我們能夠如此紀律嚴明地執行策略的原因之一。作為一位對人工智慧與科技充滿熱情的投資者，您如何看待最近的科技熱潮發展？我們將人工智慧視為投資機會已有近十年時間，而我仍認為這僅是這場革命的初期階段。我確實認為未來仍需投入龐大資金發展此領域，而超大規模企業將成為這類資本支出的主要推手。這些我們熟知的大型科技平台無論經濟環境如何都會持續投資，因為從宏觀角度來看，他們必須維持人工智慧所帶來的強大競爭優勢。當然這些科技股會有所波動，我們可以進一步探討股市持有者的結構，以及從估值角度為何當前市場可能顯得有些脆弱——這點我認為確實存在。 但如果你問我長期的看法，我認為這部分市場的資本支出將持續存在，因為這些平台必須保持領先地位。

It's not an optional technology for them. And then when I think about AI in our business, we announced publicly we have a partnership with Microsoft, who's looking to gain more knowledge and asset management and we're looking to apply more technology. We're a client of a zero that's our cloud provider. And we're doing a lot of work with them in incorporating AI both on the investment side, the point around innovation, using AI to go through, for example, if you do a CLO loan, the document can be 800 pages. So there is good use to take AI and even the basic, not even just basic machine learning, the early versions of AI can actually pretty impactful and going through those documents and helping you focus and have on the key issues. We use it there and then we use it through business development as well. So we're pushing our teams to make sure that we're being as efficient as we can in every task that we do and wherever possible, we're trying to incorporate more AI into how we run the portfolios and how we run the business. Katie, I appreciate your time. I'm just going to ask you one last question. What are your thoughts on the economic and market impact of the recent US election and the major risks over the next few years? So I think that what we've done, we may be at a regime shift here, I think. I'm not going to comment on politics on this podcast.
這對他們來說並非可選的技術。當我思考人工智慧在我們業務中的應用時，我們已公開宣布與微軟建立合作夥伴關係，他們希望獲取更多資產管理方面的知識，而我們則希望應用更多技術。我們是雲端服務供應商 A zero 的客戶，並正與他們密切合作，將人工智慧整合到投資領域——這涉及創新層面，例如利用 AI 審查文件：一份 CLO 貸款文件可能長達 800 頁。即便是基礎版的人工智慧（不僅是基礎機器學習），早期版本在處理這類文件時已能發揮顯著效果，協助聚焦關鍵議題。我們在此領域運用 AI，同時也將其導入業務開發流程。因此，我們要求團隊確保每項任務都達到最高效率，並盡可能在投資組合管理和企業營運中擴大 AI 的整合範圍。Katie，感謝您撥冗受訪，最後請容我再請教一個問題。 你對最近美國大選對經濟和市場的影響以及未來幾年的主要風險有什麼看法？我想我們可能正處於一個體制轉變的時刻。我不會在這個播客中評論政治。

You know, I can do that over a drink sometime, but I will say that we have a new environment in the sense that we had a long period of time with one exception during COVID, but kind of like low rates, low volatility, very one-sided environment consolidating in the equity markets amongst a small group of companies and the credit markets, manifesting itself and record tight yields. And I do think I'm not going to take out the crystal volume predict for you where GDP's going to be at the end of the year. And by the way, I'm not going to predict what the policies are because they probably change during this podcast. You know, they're moving around a lot, but what I will say for you is that volatility is back.
你知道，這種話題或許適合在喝酒時聊，但我會說我們現在面臨一個新的環境——除了疫情期間的例外，我們經歷了很長一段時間的低利率、低波動性，股市和信貸市場都呈現出極度單邊的走勢，集中在少數幾家公司身上，收益率也創下歷史新低。我不會拿出水晶球來預測年底的 GDP 會是多少。順帶一提，我也不會預測政策走向，因為它們可能在我錄製這個播客的期間就變了。這些變動非常頻繁，但我可以告訴你的是：波動性回來了。

That's just quantitatively true. We know that by looking at the vix and other measures of it in the credit markets. And that should be a really fertile environment for active management. So actually volatility, the unknown dispersion, these things are all really good for public and the private markets that we invest in. So this should be an excellent investing backdrop for us and so far it has then. And I would say that the number one thing, if you ask me what I'm concerned about and what we're positioning around, is that while the uncertainty has risen and the volatility has risen and whether or not we're going to go into a recession, we know growth is moderating and we know the consumer is weakening even if it's at the margins.
這在數量上是千真萬確的。我們可以透過觀察 VIX 指數及信用市場中的其他指標來確認這一點。而這應該會成為主動管理的沃土。實際上，波動性、未知的分散程度，這些因素對我們投資的公開與私募市場都非常有利。因此，這對我們來說應是一個極佳的投資背景，迄今為止確實如此。如果要問我最擔憂什麼以及我們如何調整布局，我會說首要考量是：儘管不確定性增加、波動性上升，且無論我們是否會步入衰退，我們都知道經濟增長正在放緩，消費者也正在趨弱，即便目前僅處於邊緣。

Very little of that has been imputed yet into asset prices. So we still are at record valuations for equity and for parts of the credit market. And so if you ask me again, I don't have the crystal ball, but I would say that we don't have a large margin of safety and we have a lot of uncertainty. And so I think those are two things that we really keep our eye on. The last common I would make, at least something, I think about a lot as it relates to the U.S. economy. So in order for us to have real protracted weakness in the U.S. economy, we ought to have a recession. We need to have a weak consumer because the consumer is, I don't know, someone will Google and get me a better answer, but let's call it 75% of GDP. The low-end consumer is already in many cases in a recession. It's been under a lot of pressure. The high-end consumer has held up and 50% of consumption in this country is driven by the top 10% of consumers. And that consumer, that top 10% is pretty much the exact cohort in demographic that owns most of the equity market in the U.S. And one of them, we know that one of the wealthiest demographics out there is baby boomers. So my mom loves it when I talk about her publicly.
目前這些因素還很少反映在資產價格上。因此，無論是股市還是信貸市場的部分領域，估值仍處於歷史高位。所以如果你再問我，我沒有水晶球，但我會說我們的安全邊際不大，而且存在很多不確定性。我認為這兩點是我們真正需要密切關注的。最後我想談談與美國經濟相關的一個問題。要讓美國經濟真正陷入長期疲軟，我們應該會經歷一場衰退。我們需要看到消費者疲軟，因為消費者佔 GDP 的——我不知道具體數字，有人可以谷歌查一下更準確的答案——我們暫且說是 75%。低端消費者很多情況下已經處於衰退狀態，承受了很大壓力。高端消費者則表現堅挺，而這個國家 50%的消費是由前 10%的消費者驅動的。這前 10%的消費者群體，從人口統計學上看，基本上就是持有美國股市大部分資產的那群人。我們知道，嬰兒潮一代是其中最富裕的群體之一。我媽媽很喜歡我公開談論她。

So I'll talk about her here. She's a retired teacher. She has a pension. She has a portfolio, which does great because I manage it for her. But on a serious note, in that portfolio, she's the equity markets, I mean you, I'll explain those from your clients too, they go down 5% they go down 10% my mom feels that. She talks me about it. She feels less wealthy, even though I can show her a short of how much that's compounded wealth over time.
所以我會在這裡談談她。她是一位退休教師，領有退休金，還有一個投資組合，表現相當不錯，因為是由我為她管理的。但說正經的，在那個投資組合裡，她投資於股市——我是說你們，我也會向你們的客戶解釋這些——當股市下跌 5%或 10%時，我媽媽會感受到。她會跟我談論這件事，覺得自己變得不那麼富有，即使我可以向她展示長期複利增長的財富有多少。

It impacts the psyche of that consumer really quickly. And people listening to this probably realize that because now we can all look at our phones and see on a real time basis how much money we have. And so my point of saying that to you is that we've had some weakness in equity markets, it hasn't been pronounced for still at record valuations. In the events or close to them, in the event that we get a real fracture in equity markets, I think the pull through of that to consumption could be quite severe and more so in the past because of the greater concentration of that equity market in this group of people and also the greater concentration within the equity market. So that is something that we think about a lot and it's a reason to just observe and be cautious and be aware around the consumer. They could roll over very quickly. And so we're looking a lot.
這對消費者的心理影響非常迅速。聽眾可能已經意識到這一點，因為現在我們都可以隨時查看手機，即時了解自己有多少錢。我之所以提到這一點，是因為股市雖然出現了一些疲軟，但估值仍處於歷史高位或接近高位。如果股市真的出現嚴重裂痕，我認為這對消費的衝擊可能會比過去更加劇烈，原因在於這群人在股市中的比重更高，且股市內部的集中度也更高。這是我們經常思考的問題，也是我們需要觀察、謹慎並對消費者保持警覺的原因。他們的情緒可能轉變得非常快。因此，我們正在密切關注。

We know the lower-end consumer's been in stress. I wouldn't say it's broad-based yet for the higher-end consumer, but that's something that we're remaining hyper-vigilant around. And I'll just end again by saying no one knows exactly where we're going to go from here. If anyone makes you a prediction at the end of the year, it's a hard part to do. So the idea is not take binary risks. Have a lot of different things lined up in the portfolio that might work, but be taking enough risk for us at least to outperform markets and outperform peers, fill the portfolio in a way where you can survive being wrong.
我們知道低端消費者一直處於壓力之中。我不會說高端消費者已經普遍受到影響，但這是我們仍然高度警惕的事情。最後我要再次強調，沒有人確切知道我們接下來會走向何方。如果有人向你預測年底的情況，這是很難做到的。因此，關鍵在於不要承擔二元風險。在投資組合中安排多種可能奏效的策略，但至少要承擔足夠的風險，讓我們能夠跑贏市場和同業，以一種即使判斷錯誤也能存活的方式來構建投資組合。

And the way that you make money for sure, the best way to make money, time tested in big, big ways is to step up and be a liquidity provider when other people can or won't. And that's what we're trying to do in all these portfolios. Make sure that we have a liquidity and the conservative positioning that we've had some breaks and some opportunities. My guess is the volatility will give us more ahead, regardless of where the exact GDP ends. And we want to have that liquidity to step up and provide that liquidity when others can't or won't as a way to deliver results for our clients. We've done an extraordinary job of that over the 50 years that TCW has been around. And that's something we think this environment's going to give us an exceptional opportunity to do.
而確保賺錢的方式，最好的賺錢方法，經過時間考驗且成效顯著的就是在其他人不能或不願意時挺身而出成為流動性提供者。這正是我們在所有這些投資組合中試圖做到的。確保我們擁有流動性以及保守的配置，讓我們能夠抓住一些喘息和機會。我猜測無論最終 GDP 確切數字如何，波動性都將為我們帶來更多機會。我們希望擁有這種流動性，以便在其他人不能或不願意時挺身而出提供流動性，以此為客戶帶來成果。在 TCW 成立 50 年以來，我們在這方面做得非常出色。我們認為當前環境將為我們提供一個絕佳的機會來繼續這樣做。

This was great, Katie. I appreciate you sharing your insights. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me on Alex. And I want to say again that I thought these were great questions. Very thoughtful. And your interest in leadership and your investment active in the markets is a real gift to your clients. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening.
這真是太棒了，Katie。感謝你分享你的見解。謝謝你加入我們。非常感謝邀請我，Alex。我想再次表示，我認為這些問題都非常棒，非常深思熟慮。你對領導力的興趣以及你在市場中的積極投資對你的客戶來說是一份真正的禮物。謝謝你。謝謝。感謝收聽。

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