January, we had you know, Omicron and the absenteeism that really hit the labor markets. February, Russia invading Ukraine, clearly a big geopolitical shock but that sent ripples through the energy and food markets commodity complex. And then this past Spring, we’ve really had China struggle with the zero Covid policy, the lock downs and China is such an important part of the global economy, part of global GDP both from a supply and demand perspective affecting multiple industries.

And so you kind of stack the ’22 factors on top of the environment that we had in 2021, I think that’s really created some of the issues and concerns that we’re wrestling with today. And some of that I’d summarize as you know, the transitory inflation that we, that the Fed and the markets expected you know maybe a year ago, have not abated. It’s actually accelerated and gotten worse. And so we’ve entered this you know, higher inflation rising rate environment which has impacted the equity markets.

And so going forward you know, what is our outlook and what could you know, we spend time thinking about how these factors can change? Certainly the drivers I mentioned, supply chain labor, they could get better. But at the same time, we’re now sort of wrestling with a new concern or issue which is how is the consumer going to handle this? As you all know with you know, rising gas prices and higher mortgage rates and the consumer is starting to have to make choices of how they spend which is different than, perhaps 12 months ago. These are all kind of the issues that Jeremiah and I and in the Equity team are all researching now.

eCommerce as a percentage of penetration continues to increase and we think Covid certainly pulled forward some of that, accelerated that. But that’s clearly I think, a behavioral change that’s here to stay. Digital payments.

And there, the two common themes are digital transformation. And the reason we think that’s so important is those technology investments enabled kind of enacted deflationary impact on the economy which is certainly important in the backdrop we’re in today with rising inflation and costs.

On the semiconductor side, just look around your daily lives. It’s not just about smartphones, there’s you know, “smart devices” and everything that we see and live whether it’s cars, machinery, buildings and homes, I think there’s just a proliferation of this kind of processing power that’s driving, that we’re seeing in all the products that we see today.