← Barron's Streetwise
Barron's Streetwise
The Top CEOs of 2026. Plus, Corning's Wendell Weeks Talks A.I. and Glass.
00:29:38
Jack and Barron's all-star Andrew Bary discuss more standout leaders.
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- [00:01]
A
AI involves a new kind of leadership. Trace the through lines from across episodes to understand how technology leadership is being redefined for the age of AI. Learn more on the season one finale of techfluential, a podcast from Deloitte and custom content from WSJ. Hello and welcome to the Baron Streetwise Podcast. I'm Jack Howe. Today we're going to be talking about the top CEOs issue. Going to be speaking with my colleague Andrew Barry about some of the names that turned up on the list. We'll hear later from One of our CEOs, Wendell Weeks at Corning. That's next. Andrew Barry, as I live and breathe. How are you, my friend? Good to see you.
- [00:48]
B
Good to be here with you, Jack.
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A
Ready to talk CEOs?
- [00:51]
B
Yep.
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A
We have Barron's All Star Andrew Berry to help run us down the list we've got, we do this each year. We have 25 names that we have called out. We start with the screening process, we look for signs of operational excellence and then we get together in a group and we have nominations and debate and so forth. How would you describe the process? Collegial?
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B
Mostly, yeah, I would say collegial. There were some notable disagreements, but I think we came up, I think overall with a good list.
- [01:20]
A
We, we got past it. We came out mostly on friendly terms at the end. So we're not going to run through all 25 of them for that. People can see the, the latest issue of Barron's. Let's do, let's do a few a piece. We each of each of us handled some of these individual write ups. We're going to hear from One of these CEOs, Wendell Weeks at Corning, later in this episode. Start us off with give me a CEO that's on the list that you wrote about that is one of the Barron's top CEOs this year.
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B
Well, I think one of the unquestioned top CEOs in the world is Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase. And he's been at it now for about 20 years. He's 70 now, wants to continue to lead the bank for the next couple years or so. And I think he embodies pretty much everything you'd like to see in a CEO. I mean, committed, sharp, knows the nitty gritty, but also the big picture and is also really an industry statesman and spokesman. And I think, you know, if he weren't 70, I think he might have a political career. I mean, J.P. morgan's had some of the best stock market performance among the major banks in the last, you know, 5, 10, 20 years. So, I mean, he's delivered for, I think, customers and, and also importantly for investors.
- [02:42]
A
Three years, I show a total return for the stock of over 150%. Not too bad. That's, that's almost double the S&P 500. For a bank, you can't complain about that. I understand that, you know, from what I've read, he's hiring, he has been hiring loads of data scientists and just kind of weaving AI. We're going to, we're going to talk tons about AI, I'm sure weaving it all through the bank's operations and, you know, really powering growth. And he's really been out in front of this. There's been a capital markets recovery and he's capturing a good portion of the economics there. Okay, I'll do one now. I, I don't think it'll be any surprise that Jensen Huang from Nvidia is on our list. But let me highlight instead another name, and that's Hawk Tan from Broadcom. Broadcom by now is one of the largest companies in the S P500. People should know this name. I'm not sure that he gets quite as much attention as Jensen Huang. Basically, I would say he has run this company, run it for decades. Early, early on, it looked like kind of a private equity chip business disguised as a corporation. He bought lots of smaller companies with good product margins, stripped out costs, raised, prices grew. The businesses made great money for shareholders even before the AI boom. What's noteworthy now is he has this, this product called Asics Application Specific Integrated Circuits. And previously this was kind of like a, like a niche chip. If you were somebody who, you did a lot of video processing, you did crypto mining, you did one specific thing, then you could custom design these chips to do your thing. And that was a way to get better economics on your chip purchases. Well, that's perfect. In the world of AI, where you have hyperscale companies, many of these companies are going to go to Nvidia for the AI chips. But some of them don't need these general purpose, off the shelf chips. Some of them wanted to design very specific chips for just what they do. They can go to Broadcom for that. They can get better economics on it. And if you look at the stock returns, we don't base the CEOs list on what has happened to the stock over the past 20 years. We're looking more recently than that. However, I'll just note that Nvidia under Jensen Huang, you've made 68,000% over the past 20 years. Broadcom under Hock Tan you've made 32,000%. Not bad. I want to talk about the Knicks. Let's go Knicks. First championship since I was one year old. In a recent episode, I gave sort of preliminary praise to Victor Wembiama. Still think he's a fine player. Made a bit of a heel turn during the Knicks spurs series and Jalen Brunson emerged as the big hero. So I, I'm downgrading Wemby to, to a neutral for now. I want to, want to wait and see. There's a few too many elbows flying at my Knicks during that series. But anyhow, tell me about Knick's owner, msg. There are a few different companies here and the man who runs these companies,
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B
well, you know, I'd say Wemby is a sell. After the championships I thought he, his star really faded big time between some of the sharp bevels, the fouls, and also coming up short in the clutch, I think. But anyhow, James Dolan, though his star is rising big time. He's CEO of three companies. MSG Sports, which owns the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, MSG Entertainment, which owns Madison Square Garden where the Knicks play, and Sphere Entertainment, which owns the Sphere arena in Las Vegas. And so he CEO three companies, his family controls them all. Actually the biggest win for him in the past year and actually the reason why we put it on the list was for Sphere, which is the Vegas arena, which has turned into a big hit for the company. Stock has more than tripled over the last last year or so. That arena has become very profitable. They want to open new ones in, in, in Abu Dhabi as well as outside Washington D.C. they have a very hot show there which is a, their own version of the wizard of Oz which is sold over almost 400 million of tickets. So they did something called Postcard from Earth initially which was kind of a nature oriented documentary, making use of the Sphere sound system and whole like experience. And then they came up and they got the rights to, they made their own version of the wizard of Oz. And when you're, when you're watching it there, you almost feel like you're in a cyclone there with Dorothy. I mean you're shaken. And so it's been very successful. And that really was his baby, Jim Dolan's baby. A lot of people thought it would never make money. It was kind of a boondoggle. The, there were big cost overruns that cost about 2 billion to build, which is about a billion dollars above estimates that's turned into a home run. And he really deserves a lot of credit for that.
- [07:24]
A
Some. Sometimes, sometimes Barron sends you and I on the road to conferences for what I describe is talking to rich people about what other rich people are saying about getting richer. Do you think we'll ever get together and talk at the sphere? Will they ever just take down the whole sphere for you and me?
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B
Well, you know, it's about a 15 or 20,000 seat arena. So it's, it's a lot of people. I don't, I don't think so. But anyhow, on MSG Sports, I mean they've owned the, the Families control rangers for about 30 plus years and I think, you know, Dolan's kind of let his basketball people run the show and
- [07:59]
A
I think it's fair to say that he was a little handsy with the roster making maybe in the past and he's not as handsy now and people seem to like that. Is that right?
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B
Exactly. I think that's probably a fair assessment. I think he's kind of taken a hands off approach. And I mean things, I mean kind of all clicked for the Knicks this year and you know, the guy on top, you know, gets the credit for, for when things are going well and he also gets criticized when things are not going well. I mean he's had somewhat brusque behavior in the past. I mean he was actually viewed as a liability for investors up until about a year or two ago. People talked about the so called Dolan discount on the, on the companies that he basically headed in which his family controlled because the perception was they would put the family interest above those of public shareholders. But this year has really shown that the Dolan's have really delivered for shareholders. MSG Sports has nearly doubled, MSG Entertainment's about doubled and the sphere is up like three or four folds.
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A
All, all three of his companies are beating the market which, which I have described in Barron's as Brunson level scoring right now.
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B
Exactly. So it's been Brunson level performance for Jim Dolan.
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A
Okay, let's talk. I have one more kind of AI related one, but let me talk first about pharma. And I don't think it'll be any surprise that Dave Ricks from Eli Lilly makes the list with this top CEO list. What we try to do is it's not just enough to have to be in the right place at the right time because you laid down the groundwork, you know, 15 years ago. So forth And Lilly is obviously there's a revolution right now with these obesity drugs. Lilly has the best in Class 1, it has another one in development that looks even better than that. So it's in a dominant position for what's probably going to be the biggest pharmaceutical moneymaker of all time. That's a good place to be. However, it wasn't a sure thing that they would be able to get these drugs into the hands of people who wanted them quickly enough. Dave Ricks went on basically a manufacturing Marshall plan at Lilly. He built or upgraded 11 plants. He now has manufacturing space equal to more than 300 football fields, or the way I put it is the largest building in the world, is owned by Boeing and it's used to create widebody planes. And Lilly manufactures drugs out of the equivalent of five of those buildings. So they've done a great job of getting this medicine to the people who want it. They're, they're getting more insurance coverage for it. They have a pill version, they have a direct sales platform that's reducing patient friction. But the key is, what do you do with all this money? Because there's tons of money rolling in. So they're doing buyouts to help diversify the business into things like neurology and oncology and so forth. And I'll just point out that we're at a moment where people are talking about early stage drug research, shifting from test tubes to computer chips, using AI to be able to get a lot more shots at the goal in developing medicines. So it helps to have tons of cash flowing in right now. I think Dave Ricks has set the company up.
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B
Well, yeah, I mean, I would second that on Rick's. I mean they're the leader in the glp, one drugs, leader in the injectables. And now coming up the hills, which could really broaden the market. This is the only drug company that's really in the top league of The S&P 500, kind of with the big boys in terms of all the tech leaders, Berkshire and others. And he's done, he's done a phenomenal job focused on research, not on doing mega merger deals like some of its, like Lilly's rivals. And it's really paid off very well for Lilly's shareholders.
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A
Give us another CEO.
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B
You know, I'll give you one who's not quite as well known is Evan Greenberg. He is the CEO of Chubb, which is the leader in the property and casualty insurance industry.
- [11:41]
A
It's best you're going to get us, you're going to get us fired up about insurance right now.
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C
Right.
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B
I mean, it's a little bit different. Evan Greenberg Chubb is best known for its high end homeowners insurance. They don't, they're the leader in that market with their Masterpiece plans. Many of our listeners may have those are known for being pretty good in terms of paying claims and not being too difficult, unlike some of its rivals who've been criticized for doing that. And he's basically engineered the merger of Ace, which he had held with Chubb about 10 years ago and, and it's really turned into the, probably the best run major property and casualty insurance company. He's the son of a famous insurance executive, Maurice Hank Greenberg, who's now about 101 years old, who's, I mean, had been pretty active in, in the insurance business up until about a couple of years ago. And he's a formidable guy, very intense and he's in his early 70s now. I think he's around 71. And he wants to keep running Chubb for quite some time. And I think he is a big fan out in Omaha. Berkshire Hathaway, which is led by Warren Buffett, is the biggest single shareholder in Chubb. And that's a pretty nice endorsement of the company.
- [12:49]
A
You can't get away from AI I know sometimes readers, listeners might roll their eyes and say, oh, I'm so tired of hearing about AI but it's playing a part in so many of these stories right now. In the, in the case of Chubb, the company has done some layoffs, they've freed up some money, they've invested in machine learning to do better underwriting. And then sort of in an ironic twist, one of the places I hear they're doing, doing very well in getting new business are all these new data centers that are popping up because they need insurance. So they're sort of taking this new underwriting capability. They're going out and they're, and they're winning clients among these, these data centers. So that, that company's certainly been very successful.
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B
I think the returns have been, I think Mark, maybe market beating are good, but not great. I mean, it's an insurance stock and therefore you're not going to generally get, I mean, huge outsized returns from it. It's kind of a steady stock. It's actually pretty defensive. The market declines. I mean, the PNC stocks like Chubb, I mean, should hold up.
- [13:44]
A
I'm looking at a chart of the stock three years you've made about exactly as much as the s and P500, maybe within a point or so. And it's, and you know, you don't, you don't buy an insurance stock. I think because you're looking for blazing returns to beat the market. It's, you're looking for something somewhat defensive. So matching the market with this kind of stock is a good thing. Is that, is that fair to say?
- [14:06]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think you're right about that. I mean it's defensive. I think if the, when the market gets tough and you have actually some declines, actually the chubb often will be, will run counter the market and actually rally. So it's actually a good defensive stock to have if you're in your portfolio, if you have a lot of more offensive risk on stocks.
- [14:26]
A
Okay, I'll do one now. This is someone that we're actually going to hear from. I had a conversation with him recently. We'll hear some of that conversation a few minutes. It's Wendell Weeks from Corning. This is a remarkable company.
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C
100.
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A
They've been in the glass business for 175 years. And they started they want. They once manufactured glass for Thomas Edison's light bulbs. They went into Corningware which people know from their kitchen cabinets are not in that business anymore. Sold a long time ago. They were very prominent during the dot com boom and bust selling optical fiber. They went into smartphone screens. And what we're going to hear from Wendell is he came in after the dot com bust and what he learned from that was a couple of things. Keep researching no matter what and when you come out with new products, try to partner with someone to help hold the risk down. So that when they went into smartphone screens, they, they partnered with Apple for Gorilla Glass. But right now it's all about something called Contour. Basically when you're building these data centers, you have all these blazing fast chips. You have to hook them together. And copper is not very good for that job. Once you get over distances of, let's say a couple meters, you get a lot of, you get a lot of noise, interference, heat problems and the different. With copper, you're basically transmitting data with electrons or electricity. With optical fiber, you're using photons or light. And when you use light, you don't get any of those problems that you get with copper. So you can send this data over longer distances. This is the thing you need right now in order to make these big data centers work. And what one, two weeks has done is taken this basically underutilized capacity that Corning had and turned it into massive production to support this AI buildout. And he actually had his folks design a new type of cable that can greatly increase density so that these people who are building these data centers can put in and of these cables without blocking airflow and so forth. It's been phenomenally successful, but a phenomenal success.
- [16:25]
B
I think it trades for almost 50 times earnings, which is just how, just shows how much the market appreciates and, you know, values these companies. This company's earnings. I think the ticker is GLW, which I think stands for Glass Works.
- [16:37]
A
It's made 426% over the past three years. And to your point, this is something we should point out. This top CEOs list is definitely not a stock picking exercise. So you know, some of these stocks here, it's not only okay to have a stock that looks ambitiously priced, it's actually a good thing. It means that you've done something that investors really like. They've awarded you with a sort of higher stock valuation. So this is, we're not out there looking for stock bargains with this list. If we take a look at the past returns, last year's list of top CEOs, again, not a stock picking exercise. Those stocks underperform the market by a couple of points. But if you take a look at the past three years on the whole, our lists are ahead of the market in the ETF business. They would have, someone would have already put a ticker symbol and a wrap fee on that strategy by now. But that's not what we're looking for here. Any, anything else that you need folks to know about? Any, any summer plans you want to brag about, Any hot tips? Not, not from the stock market, but any, any life coaching that you want to give people? Any. What are people not doing that they should be doing? Or what are you, what are you excited to be doing next?
- [17:44]
B
Well, you know, I'll be spending time in the tony east end of Long island this summer. Out, out and out in the, near the Hamptons. So that's where I know all of Wall street seems to. Some are now. Every, every house seems to be being bought now by someone in alternative assets, private equity, Goldman Sachs. So the, the boom on, the boom on in the tech world is actually flowing over into, into Wall street and that's flowing out to the east end of Long Island.
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A
I love to hear the Hamptons people complaining about all the, all the newly arriving Hamptons people. I mean it sounds like quite a scene. I'm, I'm not a, I'm not a Hamptons guy. You know, I know. I'm up here in the. I'm up here with the squirrels in the woodsy north of Westchester. All right, buddy. Always great to see you. Thanks for your time.
- [18:34]
B
Good. Good to be with you.
- [18:37]
A
Listening in, I think. Our audio producer, Emily, are you there, Emily? I'm right here. So what do you think? Maybe a quick break now and then we'll come back and hear from Wendell at Corning. You want to tell folks what's on tap a little bit for next week? Buckle your seatbelts and check for your exit row because we are going to have.
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B
Oh, dear.
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A
Wait, let me guess. We're talking about tractors. Is it tractors? No, it's footwear. All right, go, go ahead.
- [19:05]
B
Next week, stay tuned.
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A
We are talking to Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian. Very nice. Delta's killing it right now. It's another name from our top CEOs list. Emily, window or aisle? Don't you dare say middle and make it weird. You know, I'm a window person at heart, but I'm an aisle person in practicality. Okay, but you gotta watch out for those knees when the cart goes by. Well, you're not 6 foot 4. But some of us, some of us are in dire danger every time that drink cart goes by. Let's take a quick break. Wendell Weeks from Corning is next.
- [19:45]
B
This episode is brought to you by Massmutual. When people count on financial guidance, they want a company known for strength, stability and trust. With the solutions to fit their needs. Financial professionals can help people move forward with confidence, backed by MassMutual's 175 year legacy. Learn more at MassMutual.com MassMutual.com.
- [20:18]
A
Welcome back. I described earlier in my conversation with Andrew the path that Corning has taken in glass. Constantly reinventing itself every time. Basically the margins in one business falls and a new market opens up. And I even tried to say some fancy stuff about photons. How'd you like that, Emily? When I started to get sciency, it really took me back to seventh grade earth science. I thought you were going to say third. So seventh. Seventh. I'm not doing too bad, but we should hear from someone who actually knows a thing or two about glass and optics and fiber and can can fill us in on what's going on. I had a chance recently to speak with Corning CEO Wendell Weeks, a member of our top CEOs list. Let's hear some of that conversation. Now I look at your company. 175 years in the glass business and totally different businesses, decade to Decade going back to light bulbs and cooking wear, which you're, of course, out of now. And cable for the. For the Internet boom 25 years ago, and smartphone screens and now cable that is making AI work. A cable that's in sort of explosive demand for data centers. Let me start with that. Let me start with this product Contour and with optical fiber in data centers. Let's nerd out for a moment. You can hit me with some big words if you want to. What is it about optical fiber that makes it perfect for data centers? Why can't we just use copper? What has these products so in demand?
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C
Right now, the way in which Generative AI works is literally you're forming a neural network of all of these GPUs that are each linked to every other GPU. There were times when therefore, the amount of GPUs that were involved was a relatively small number, and therefore you could reach them all with copper connections. But now what they found is the more and more compute you put together, the better and better your results are, the smarter and smarter the models get. So now a typical cluster would be 150,000 GPUs all linked together. And so now you've got a whole data center or a whole campus of a data center that is every single one of those GPUs has a path to every other one. So it literally works like your brain in that way. And so if there's a certain amount of distance, it is more effective from a cost standpoint, a power standpoint, and a latency standpoint to link those GPUs with fiber than copper. And so we're at this stage of a substitution curve of fiber optics replacing copper. And more and more and more of the compute for Generative AI, you were
- [23:27]
A
not just in the right place at the right time for this AI explosion. You were in the optical fiber business. But you needed to make some changes in order to prepare yourself for AI demand. What kinds of things did you have to do to get ready to sell as fully as you can into this movement?
- [23:50]
C
Right now, starting in 2018, I began to lead a small team as we thought deeply through what would be the products that we could best develop that could help the folks trying to attack Generative AI? And so we reinvented all of our product sets right down to the basic fiber. We invented the first low loss fiber over 50 years ago, and it's such a capable product, but what we just finished doing is reinventing fiber, reinventing the cable and the connectivity to put it together. So that you can put far, far, far more connections in a smaller space. And so we are now being able to do on the order of four times as much fiber and connectivity in the same space as the previous product. So we started that in 2018. And then we reimagined a supply chain that could serve these very short windows in which our customers have to be able to get the product installed, these networks installed. And then we reimagined the service structure to be able to take pieces of our company that are aimed at tech for OEMs and apply it now to hyperscalers, because really that's more like one big computer. So it's more like when we used to deal with a Dell than it is dealing with an AT&T.
- [25:36]
A
Correct me if I'm wrong here, the.com boom and bust 25 or so years ago, you had a close view of that. You were not leading Corning at the time, you took over several years after that. But there were some things you learned from that that informed how you go about your business. I have heard this about you, that you believe very much in continuously investing in research, no matter the part of the business cycle, and also, where possible, partnering with customers on new products. Are these two things that are relevant right now during this phase that we're in with this ferocious demand for your AI products.
- [26:14]
C
It's taking that same approach where we invest about twice as much in research, development and engineering as any of our peers. And then we apply that by working very closely with these fabulous customers we're blessed to be with. And then what we seek to do is appropriately share the risk and rewards of this. What I learned during.com and also many, many subsequent technology cycles is that it's important in the stage, when you're going through the hypergrowth stage, which is what we're doing right now in AI, that it's very difficult to tell what's going to happen four or five years out because there's new business models have to be created, etc. So what we try to do is share with our customers the risk of how much of our product they're going to take. And then the risk that we take is we're going to develop the most advantaged product in the world. We're going to develop, we're going to deliver it in a low cost and factories that we design and build. And so in this way we seek to appropriately place risk between the various companies, shareholders.
- [27:28]
A
It's remarkable all the things that you've done that your company has done with Glass over the past couple of centuries. What are we going to find out about glass 10 years from now? What's the next trick for glass?
- [27:40]
C
You should never ask the glass guy about glass. That's very dangerous. Okay. What makes glass just such an amazing material is it is like a liquid at the atomic level, but it behaves at the mechanical level like a solid. And this uniqueness is what allows us to be so relevant over time and why we spend. I've spent, gosh, 40 years of my life dedicated to this fascinating material because it is at once behaves like a solid and then again like a liquid. And that's why it can be transparent. Right? But it's not ordered like crystal. So it can have tremendous robustness and formability, thermal and chemical characteristics. And you can make it so pure that we can do what we're doing today in optical communications, where we make a material that is so transparent that if I filled the Indian Ocean with it and you and I walked out together on the surface because it is a solid as well, and you were to look down, you could see the bottom of the deepest points in the ocean clearly. It's just this is such an incredible, wonderful material and I'm blessed to just work with like minded crazy people who just think we can change the world and make it a little bit better with our deep knowledge of this fascinating material.
- [29:12]
A
Nice speaking with you and best of luck in the year ahead.
- [29:16]
C
Okay, thank you so much.
- [29:18]
A
Thank you, Wendell and I want to thank Andrew and our audio producer, Emily. And let's go Nix. And thank you all for listening. You can subscribe to the Barron's podcast at Apple Spotify wherever you listen. And we've been receiving your questions. Thank you. If you have one for us. And if it's related to the subject of finance, I mean, don't ask me about your crossword puzzle or sandwich tips. Maybe sandwiches. Anyhow, you can record it on your phone. Just use the voice memo app and you can send it to Jack Howe. That's H o u g h@barrons.com we might use it on a future episode. Earlier, I asked Angie for any life advice. Do you have one parting piece of wisdom for us, Emily?
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B
I do.
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A
Always leave a party when you think you could stay for 20 more minutes. That sounds like. That sounds like you're talking about this episode and me. Is that a hint? You got five minutes left, Jack. Time to go. Thanks and see you next week. Trading at Schwab is now powered by Ameritrade, bringing you an expanding library of education with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills. Access new online online courses, insightful webcasts, articles, engaging videos, and more, all curated just for traders. Plus guided learning paths with content designed to fit your unique interests. No sifting to find exactly what you need so you can spend your time learning to trade brilliantly. Learn more@schwab.com trading.