Ready for the next round of market volatility?

Joe Ferrara: So as we look to the second half of 2025, there's really no shortage of catalysts for volatility. Domestically in the US, we're looking at a debt ceiling that we're still talking about. The big, beautiful bill that's being talked about in Congress. We have negotiations on the tax front, as well as tariffs internationally. On the international front, there's still ongoing conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, as well as in the Middle East. And largely for Gateway, what we're trying to quantify is the implications of all of this and more, really. And largely what it boils down to from an economic growth standpoint, inflation standpoint, and economic impact.

So there's a number of market indicators and economic signals that we monitor at Gateway. Largely for us in our space, we're looking at the absolute level of the underlying asset. And in our case, it's typically the S&P^® 500. We're looking at the absolute and relative levels of inflation, volatility, and interest rates, as well. We would largely argue that in particular to interest rates and volatility are very much in line with long-term averages. And again, this is comparing to the recency bias that a lot of investors have of quantitative easing, where we had rates that were very low for a long time and volatility that was very dampened. We're in a very different situation today. We're keeping a keen eye on all of these different indicators, but would also say that we're not seeing a cause for concern in the markets that we trade.

So we at Gateway manage low-volatility equity strategies. Said a different way, we manage strategies that seek to help investors smooth out the ride of owning equities. When we talk about the economic impacts of some of the negotiations that are happening currently, some of the economic uncertainty that's happening currently, a lot of this leads into the option premiums that we're able to generate and help our clients generate cash flow. The strategies that Gateway manages can largely be put into two different buckets. The first bucket takes that cash flow and puts it right back into the NAV of the product. This can obviously help investor return in an upward trending market. And it can also be the first line of defense in a downward trending market. The second bucket of strategies that Gateway manages distributes that cash flow to the client. This could be a great option for clients that may be in the distribution phase of their life cycle, or just need some sort of income, additional income on a monthly basis.

There are many different definitions to the high-quality factor. Largely, we at Gateway are looking for a few key components. First, I would say as large multinational organizations, these businesses typically have large balance sheets, and in particular, absolute cash flow or cash positions. But also the ability to generate cash flow on an ongoing basis. These companies also typically have low to no debt and financial leverage. These few aspects, along with quite a few others, typically lead to companies that have very diverse business models and can provide their products or services to a number of different client types. So when we talk about economic uncertainty, these are companies that should be able to provide stability in a client's portfolio if we were to enter into a downward trending market, but also provide some nice upside potential if we were to have nice economic growth.