저자: Ale'sWorldofStocks진행자/인터뷰대상LarryFink · 외국인
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Fink 인터뷰(El País) 소개. 이란 전쟁이 1년 지속되면 경기침체 가능, 그 경우 주식 급락 가능하나 이는 밸류에이션이 아닌 환경 변화라고 발언. 시장 장기 상승 기대, 단기 공포 매매 비판. 진행자는 AI로 인한 일자리 위기를 우려하며 AI 수혜주와 물·식량·에너지·부동산 등 AI 피해가 적은 자산 분산 투자를 제시. 진행자는 AMZN·MSFT·GOOGL·NVDA 비중을 언급.
다듬은 글
Hey, welcome back subscribers to My World of Stocks. We've got a very interesting topic for you today because Larry Fink, the CEO of the infamous BlackRock, had just had an exclusive interview with a publication. Actually did a great job, in my opinion, of pressing Fink on numerous subjects, including the Middle East conflict, to the point where Fink basically admitted that it will cause a recession within a year if it continues.
And being that BlackRock is the absolute largest investment um and asset management firm really in the entire world, with over $14 trillion under their belt, if you can believe it. It's like more than literally any other country's entire GDP aside from the US and China. That's how crazy their size is.
Well, when their CEO is saying that a recession is headed our way, that's a pretty big deal that uh yeah, we should probably examine further. So, I'm going to break this interview down for you guys, where the interviewer David asked Fink about the war, the economy, the chance of recession, and even towards the end, he presses Fink on AI, too, artificial intelligence, and the threat of it taking everyone's jobs.
So, it's really interesting stuff here, and I'll be sharing my own opinions along the way wherever I feel necessary. So, smash that like button, and let's just go ahead and jump straight into it, my friends. Okay, so this coming from an interview in Spain, where Fink was doing a European tour, and he stopped by to chat with a local publication called El País, from just a couple days ago.
And it starts with just a quick intro on Fink, calling him the most powerful person in global finance, stating that his business card opens any door, and that political leaders, central bankers, regulators, and business people all listen to him as the so-called man behind the curtain, in reference to The Wizard of Oz.
All of which I agree with, by the way. And just so you know where my personal biases lie, I don't trust any elites, any politician, or any other type of leader these days. I put my faith in God, and that's about it, cuz I just think like everyone is pretty corrupt at this point. But I promise that I will try my absolute best to be impartial throughout this interview, and be logical and fair to all the answers and responses that Larry Fink gives.
Which, by the way, there are actually some points here made by Fink that I can at least understand where he's coming from, too. So, don't think that it'll all be negative here. I give this whole interview a fair chance to hear different perspectives. That's kind of how I went into it. But um you'll see what I mean here as we go through it.
And um yeah, like I said, there's some stuff that I disagree with, but there's also some stuff that I might that I agree with, too. So, anyway, going into it here, the interview starts out with David asking Fink, uh "The war in Iran has disrupted the entire economic landscape. What consequences do you think it will have for global growth and financial assets?" To which Fink responds, "That's a very hard question to answer.
It will depend on how long the conflict lasts. Now, if the war ends, will it mean that Iran will cease to be a country that exports hostility and spreads instability throughout the region, or will it continue to fund s- uh certain groups? Um I'm going to be careful because of YouTube monetization, but um he goes on to say, "There are different outcomes that could have a profound impact on the global economy." So then David pushes, "And which scenario do you think is most likely?" Fink responds, "If the outcome is that we have a more secure region and Iran opens to the world, the future valuation of oil will be much reduced from where it is today.
But if Iran is still a hostile country, that's a very different outcome. Maybe oil will be above where it is today. And so to me, I can't answer what the outcome of the war will be. But I'm an optimist, so I do believe that we'll find a solution, and that Iran can be part of the world community. When the export of energy to the west is allowed, then you could have lower prices." One of the leaders of one of the Gulf countries told me last week that in 1979, Iran was much wealthier than Qatar, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates.
Uh the regime has done a terrible job for its citizens. Hopefully, we can have an outcome in which we we see a rebuilding of Iran for its citizens and for the world." Uh but then David pushes back here again, saying, "Listening to you, it would seem that all the blame falls on Iran. But the United States and Israel initiated the attack.
They must bear some responsibility for the solution, surely." And Fink responds, "Yes, and the United States is taking responsibility. That's why it has presented a plan to achieve peace." Okay, uh I don't know if I agree with that. It doesn't really seem to me like there's a plan for peace here, but rather we just keep kind of bombing back and forth.
In fact, this past week, President Trump said that the US will bomb Iran {quote} back to the Stone Ages over the coming weeks. And I'm not trying to get political or anything like that. I know many of you will have uh different opinions on on this, either agreeing or disagreeing with what's going on.
But I'm just saying that at the on. And rather, it just feels like things have only been progressively getting worse the deeper that we go into this war. That's just my personal opinion on it. Uh but from there, the interview does start focusing more on the economy and a looming recession, for which David asks, "The war broke out at a time of record highs for the stock markets, with many companies trading at very high prices.
Are you afraid that a prolonged conflict will cause the market to crash?" And then Fink responds to that, saying, "If the war drags on for a year, energy prices will rise even further, and the global economy will enter a recession. And in that case, stock markets would fall sharply. But that's not a valuation issue.
That's a change of circumstances." Okay, I actually do agree with that. I don't necessarily see the market falling just purely on valuations alone. I get that a lot of AI tech stocks have soared in recent years, but many have crashed into the ground, too. And even REITs and consumer staple stocks have been heavily beaten down by the high rate environment and inflation and all all that stuff, which those are usually good value stocks to begin with, and yet they've fallen by even more.
So, I don't necessarily think that is expensive right now. I actually think it's kind of cheap in certain areas when you exclude the biggest companies at the very top, like the Mag 7 and others. But if something would be strong enough to scare investors into selling right now, I think it would be something like war and conflict and higher inflation, all leading to an even longer high rate environment than we already have, especially um considering our record levels of debt that continues to be even more expensive to service while rates are not being cut and um you know, stay elevated.
But David pushes back on this, though, and he asks here, "Isn't that too optimistic?" But Fink responds, "No, revenues and profits are growing. Over time, do I believe markets are going to be higher? Yes. I know you need to sell newspapers, but focusing on today and tomorrow instead of focusing on the next 10 years is really bad for most of the population of the world.
If you were in Spain 20 years ago, and you put your money in the Spanish stock market, you'd be two times wealthier than if you had kept your money in a bank account. But everybody's talking about fear, and so people hold on to too much money. What does it mean when a trillion euros are sitting in bank accounts?
When you keep your money in a bank account, you don't believe in your country. Just focusing on today is really bad for the health of the community. How do we make people more prosperous? It's not about if the war lasts one or two more months or whatever." Okay, I don't know about the whole, you know, helping your country stuff, although there probably is some truth to to that.
But just if we look at this from like an investment perspective alone, I do mostly agree with what Fink is saying here, to basically focus on the long-term picture rather than the short-term fear. And again, I am no fan of any CEO, let let alone the CEO of BlackRock, but that doesn't mean that we have to disagree on everything.
And in this particular case, he is making sense to me personally, cuz I see it happen all the time where everyone demands immediate profits and results, but are not willing to put in the work really for long-term success. And it's why short-term traders, on average, almost always lose money in the stock market.
But long-term investors almost always make an actual profit. Like even if you just bought the S&P 500 alone, you would have made giant returns all throughout, and especially if you bought even heavier on the dips, which is something that I always preach. Again, though, David actually pushes back on this, and uh on this point here actually coming up, um I actually do agree with David with what he's saying here, cuz I do think he raises a great point.
And he says, "Many citizens would surely love to think 10 years ahead, as you suggest, but they're too busy just trying to make ends meet." I think that's extremely relevant to our current situation right now, where the economy does look pretty terrible, in my opinion. It really feels like the average person is drowning in credit card debt, and just trying to stay afloat, let alone all the risk now of AI taking, you know, so many people's jobs, and making for really scary times.
And that's why I always say priority number one should always be to focus on your career, and try your best to increase your income as much as possible. I know it's easier said than done, but that should at least just be your top priority. And then from there, that's when you can, you know, start investing whatever you can at the time.
Because um by the way, you can invest, even in small amounts, too. It doesn't really matter. You can just invest whatever you can and keep building that up long-term because like with fractional shares now, with that whole invention and movement that has happened more recently in investing, we can literally invest with even just a dollar at a time and you could still be part owner of even the biggest corporations in the entire world, even with that small amount of money.
So, I do think that you should at least try to be optimistic from that point of view, which is kind of what I think Fink is trying to say here, too, to focus more on the positives, but it is a bit of a what he's going to say here in just a second. I do feel is a bit of a non-answer, to be honest, where he's sort of just kind of ignoring the issue, but let me show you what he says.
So, he says, "Yes, there's a segment that's worrying about their paycheck every month, but you can't tell me that the rise of the middle class hasn't happened. I'm not here to deny that there are segments of society here in Spain or in the United States that are really struggling. That's a fact, but 25 years ago, there might have been a higher share of the population that was struggling.
If you look at the world today versus the world 30 years ago, the world is much more prosperous, but we don't talk about the positives. We only talk about negatives. That's why I'm an optimist because most people are negative and most people are wrong. Again, uh, there while there may be some truth to what he's saying there, it is still a bit of a non-answer cuz he's still not really addressing the issue that that was being brought up by David.
But, anyway, moving on, um, from there, it does start to get a little heated just about politics because Fink says it's something that Fink says he basically doesn't want to talk about. He says, quote, "I'm not here to talk about politics." David kind of tries to push him to it, but he just keeps kind of rejecting that and saying that he won't continue the interview if they talk about politics.
He wants to talk about what he feels are more important issues and topics. And then further into the conversation, they just kind of start talking about BlackRock rebuilding certain countries and their investments, which I don't really want to spend a lot of time on here because I want to get to the AI stuff really quick before we wrap up the video.
So, if we just kind of scroll a little further down to get to the AI stuff, we get David asking, "You've warned that the use of artificial intelligence could increase economic inequality. What needs to be done to prevent that?" And then Fink responds, "We all know that AI is coming. The future is today, but we're not doing anything about it.
We're just spinning. AI is going to reshape society. It's going to create a huge amount of jobs and it's going to remove a lot of jobs. We know that. We see the train. We see it leaving the station. What are we doing about it? How are we responding? We need to address these issues. We need to be forthright, working together with the government and trying to be prepared.
AI is going to be very influential in our lives." And then he adds, "AI requires a lot of power, so we need to be building out our power grids. We need a huge amount of capital for data centers. And for a lot of people, this change is frightening because it creates uncertainty, but we can eliminate a lot of the uncertainty by navigating our society to be prepared for this transformational technology.
That to me is what we need to be doing, not wondering whether the war is going to be a two-week war or if oil prices are $40 or $150 a barrel. That doesn't matter as much as how we're preparing ourselves for this technology that's transforming the world. And the big issue is, if we don't do it, Europe and the United States, uh, China will." So, it's not a question about whether AI will transform our lives, rather it's about who will guide that transformation and how.
Okay, well, I don't know. I feel like that was a bit of a long-winded way of not really answering the question, which is, uh, not so much about having to do with pushing AI alongside the government to ensure America stays ahead of China. We already know that that's going to be like a main talking point for pushing AI, but the real question is, what happens to all the little people when AI and robotics start disrupting everything and taking jobs?
And even when the younger generations, too, get a traditional college degree on huge debt, by the way, only to find out later that no one is hiring in that field anymore. Uh, to be fair, I don't think anyone really has the answer to this right now and it's what makes AI so scary. So, I don't necessarily put the blame on just BlackRock.
I think the whole world is really marching towards this inevitability, but if we're going to talk about this from an investment kind of perspective or standpoint, then I would probably just say that we should at least try to own some of this new technology ourselves because when Fink calls himself an optimist and is focusing on future growth, we know that that growth will likely only matter if we own a piece of it, too, where AI will likely concentrate a lot of the wealth into the hands of people who own the companies.
And therefore, we should probably make sure that we own some of these companies, too. It's why I invest so heavily into stocks like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, and more. And just to be clear, I'm not saying that this is an answer or anywhere close to any type of solution. I'm just saying that if we're choosing to be stock market investors, we should probably consider all of this, which is also why I'm choosing to invest in companies that I don't think can be disrupted by AI, either.
So, I have stocks that benefit from AI, but I also want stocks that can't be disrupted by it, too, that have some separation. So, like water and food companies, um, you know, life is always going to need that type of stuff. Energy that actually fuel AI and even real estate owners because AI can't just go around taking land, apart from like the metaverse, but in real life, it's not something that it can really disrupt or destroy.
AI may be able to be integrated into some of these things, but it's not something it's going to really disrupt or get rid of. So, anyway, uh, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but, um, I would just say that those are kind of my overall thoughts. And again, obviously, that's coming from more of a stock market investor perspective, but that's because this is a stock market investment channel.
So, that that's why I'm giving you that perspective. Overall on AI, I don't have the answer to that and I don't think anybody really does. I think we're all just kind of marching blindly to it and that's why it's so scary. Uh, I'm definitely scared of it. I pray for the best, but, you know, I don't really know where all of this is going to lead to.
Anyway, um, I do think this was a pretty interesting interview to run through and I hope you guys enjoyed it. Let me know your thoughts on all of it down below. Let me know if you agree or disagree with anything that was said or even by me. And, um, I've got more videos coming for you, so stay tuned for those.
And, uh, hope you're all doing well, my friends, and I will catch you guys in the next video. All right, take care, everybody. Bye-bye.
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