Today's show is brought to you by Stepstone to learn more about the risks

in investing in private assets, visit StepstonePW.com.

Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing.

Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading, writing, and watching.

Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson work for RIT Holt's Wealth Management.

All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben or any podcast guests are solely their own opinions

and do not reflect the opinion of RIT Holt's Wealth Management.

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for investment

decisions. Clients of RIT Holt's Wealth Management may maintain positions in the securities

discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben.

It has been a tough year for public market investors. The S&P is down around 15 percent.

Bonds are down, almost as much, actually. Yeah, it's up down 15 percent as well, just to probably

know. We've said many times the stock market is not the economy, it's the stock market. Gas

lighting is a question that I've asked because the economy seems to be doing relatively okay.

If you were just looking at returns in private markets, you would conclude that everything is

more or less okay. Now, the question in there is are private markets out of touch with reality?

Or is the stock market because it's interesting. Everyone's been waiting for a downturn to

happen in the economy and it hasn't happened yet. People think it's going to happen. People

are preparing for it to happen, but it hasn't happened yet. So it would make sense to me that

markets in private equity would still be holding up fairly well. What's interesting about the

conversation that we had is you could say that some of these things that haven't been marked in a

year need to come down, but cash is real. I can't remember the phrase that Bob used, but it's a good

...