Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.

Welcome to Investing Insights. I'm your host, Ivana Hampton. We are recording this episode in front of a live audience here at the Morning Star Investment Conference at Chicago's Navy Pier.

This studio is super cool, if I don't say so myself.

Joining me today is Dominic Parpolardo, Chief Multi-Asset Strategist and Philip Strill,

chief investment officer for the Americas for Morning Star Wealth.

It's part of a registered investment

advisor, Morningstar Investment Management. Hello, Dom and Philip. I'm so glad you're here.

Great to be here. Thanks for having us. Let's get started. This week's episode is focusing on

whether the international outlook is brighter than the U.S. outlook. But before we examine that, briefly share how

you have viewed the first six months of 2025. Let's start with you, Philip.

Great. Absolutely. It's been, you know, a very interesting first six months, I have to say.

We've seen, you know, significant volatility in capital markets.

And I might share some statistics around that just to kind of remind listeners in terms of

the period we've gone through in the volatility we've seen. People are sort of feeling

warm and fuzzy again with, you know, the S&P 500 being close to record highs again, but we have seen some

pretty significant volatility in recent weeks. And so we have seen two days in April where the S&P 500

lost almost 5% on April 3rd and April 4th. Then we had a day where it recovered, yielded about 9.5%. We have seen the S&P 500 in a

bare market temporarily, down 20%. The max seven stocks between December and April lost about a third

of their value. And we've seen some pretty significant moves, an unusual moves in the yield curve as well

during the period of volatility in April. So it's been an unusual period. We've seen a pretty

sharp recovery in capital markets as well. But I would say the overall arching theme was the

volatility we've seen in the capital markets over this period.

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