00:00Yes, we are here with Christian Wall, and, you know, I've been looking at all the celebrities walking around here.
00:05Christian, we just saw Russell Westbrook, we saw the Paul brothers and quite a few other folks.
00:10Maybe you can talk a little bit about just the culture of this place.
00:13I mean, you didn't come to Camter until 2017, but you inherited a legacy, and it's a lot different than
00:18what it was 25 years ago.
00:20Sure. I mean, even over the past nine years, it's been very different.
00:23I mean, the culture of this place, I mean, clearly resilience, right?
00:27You don't rebuild the company after a tragedy that happened 25 years ago without instilling resilient DNA in place.
00:35And it's a really, it's a next-up kind of culture.
00:37You saw that over the last year or so when Howard went to commerce, Kyle and Brandon took over leadership
00:43of the firm,
00:44and along with my partners and I have not only moved the firm forward, but it's not just the status
00:49quo.
00:50It's building, it's growing, and it's aggressive, and it's a great place.
00:56And, you know, it's a privilege to work here.
00:59The company has obviously blossomed, and it's coming off of a record 2025.
01:04Give me a sense here, with regards to the business itself, is 2026 shaping up to be as good of
01:11a year as 2025 for Camter?
01:13There's certainly some momentum that was carried over from 2025 to 2026, you know, but the markets are challenging.
01:18You see today, I mean, the rate markets in my world, I mean, the bond markets have been back in
01:23the headlines as of late,
01:24but they came with an adult swim sign this time.
01:27And, you know, it's complicated, it's a complicated space, and there's a lot of activity, but there's plenty of opportunity.
01:32Well, give me a sense.
01:33We talk about those complications, energy prices elevated, long-term interest rates at their highest in a couple decades,
01:40short-term interest rates now seeming to suggest that the Fed is going to have to raise rates soon one
01:46way or the other,
01:47and a hot CPI report that we got this morning.
01:49What is the trading environment around a rate and inflation environment like that?
01:54Well, like, as you mentioned, there's a series of things that are occurring at the same time,
01:59and I think that confluence of events has led to some uncertainty in the markets, which, you know, has caused
02:04some volatility.
02:05I think the real question is, is what is the long-term impact?
02:09And I think, you know, if you think about one of the inputs that you didn't mention, which is the
02:16AI capex spend, right,
02:18the absolute supply that's coming to the market, you know, I think the market is trying to figure out,
02:22OK, we have a new Fed chair, we have a pretty robust economy, yet sticky inflation,
02:29and we have a supply dynamic that people talk about, you know, all day long,
02:34that adds up to a market that is like, well, what's it supposed to look like down the line?
02:41Well, I mean, you run one of, you know, a couple of dozen of the primary dealers out there,
02:46and I am curious, with the new Fed president in Kevin Warsh and the tax that he's taken,
02:52and at least publicly what we know he's taken, as well as some of the moves that Scott Besson has
02:55made,
02:56does that make your job as a primary dealer harder?
02:59No, I wouldn't say it necessarily makes it harder, and it's not my job to opine on the policy.
03:05You know, our job is to say, OK, how are we going to serve our clients in this environment?
03:09You know, higher yields, well, there are buyers and investors who are looking for higher yields and have been active
03:14recently.
03:14You know, what I'm looking for is what's the long-term opportunities, you know,
03:18and are we built as a firm to serve our clients in the long term?
03:24Well, but with regards to those higher yields, it seemed that as yields were going up,
03:27there were a lot of people that were content to buy into that,
03:29the idea that certainly if you were buy and hold or looking for income and coupon,
03:33it was kind of a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
03:36But I am curious, where is that level where that opportunity kind of starts to turn into genuine risk or
03:42concern, I should say?
03:45You know, that's a tough question to answer.
03:47I think really it's sort of like, what's the short-term opportunity and what's the long-term play?
03:51And I really think the long-term play is, what is the growth going to look like on the back
03:56end of all this, right?
03:57We deal with this ourselves.
03:58We're investing in technology.
04:00We're investing in the firm.
04:01What are the revenue results going to be on the back end of that?
04:04And I think that's what you're seeing on a bigger scale, what's going on right now in the market.
04:08Are you seeing, are you interested, I should say, in doing more activity,
04:12specifically in the AI infrastructure space?
04:15Or have we gotten to the point where that sort of investment cycle is looking maybe a little too tight?
04:19Absolutely.
04:20I think that we're still pretty early in that investment cycle.
04:23And if you think about the estimates and what the CapEx spend is going to be,
04:27certainly on the debt side, it's in the trillions of dollars.
04:30The range is in the trillions of dollars.
04:32Nobody knows exactly what that number is going to be.
04:34But it's going to be real and it's going to be big.
04:36And we've been building out our debt capital markets business to mirror what we have on the equity side
04:42over the last couple of years and build on their success to be ready for that opportunity when it presents
04:47itself.
04:48With regards to that, though, I mean, obviously, you know a lot about just structuring products in the debt space.
04:53And we've seen a lot of creative ways to sort of, you know, find this, you know, multi-trillion dollars
04:59that people say we're going to need over the next few years.
05:01Do you think it's being done in a responsible way, not only from your end, but just overall more broadly?
05:07I think it is.
05:08I mean, look, it's going to be a global effort.
05:10I mean, that's the other thing we've been doing.
05:12We've expanded our footprint globally.
05:14We've expanded in Europe.
05:15We opened an office in Abu Dhabi last year, along with our offices over in Asia.
05:20And that's going to be, it's a full toolbox kind of event where you have all hands on deck on
05:25the investor side and certainly on the debt side, some of the things that we can provide.
05:30We were just talking with Brandon and Kyle, and Brandon brought up the recent push into prediction markets.
05:36How does that sort of piece of the puzzle fit into Cantor Fitzgerald?
05:40Well, Cantor has always been on the leading edge of, you know, digital assets.
05:43You know, a couple of years ago, we rolled out a Bitcoin lending business.
05:46I think this is just sort of the next step in the process of other businesses that are going to
05:51come to us that we're just going to build on and keep expanding.
05:55Is there a sense that as markets change, we talk about, obviously, tokenization, prediction markets, blockchain, all of these sort
06:04of relatively new phenomenons, and they've clearly already reshaped financial markets.
06:07Do you anticipate that these things will almost 100 percent wholesale reshape them in a way where they're going to
06:14look a lot different than when you started your career?
06:16I think we're at an inflection point.
06:17Yeah.
06:17I think we're at an inflection point, and I think you're feeling that across all markets, not just the debt
06:22markets.
06:22So, yeah, I think five years when we sit down again and talk about this, we might be having a
06:27different conversation.
06:28And you think that all of that can coexist together in a way that's healthy for the markets?
06:32I do.
06:32Markets have a way of working themselves out in a pretty efficient way.
06:35Yeah.
06:35And in the end, you know, what's best for the market will play out.
06:38Where is, as you look forward and continue to sort of guide this company, where do you think most of
06:44the demand from clients will come from in terms of, you know, what sectors or what pockets of the world
06:50of finance?
06:52As it relates to?
06:54Cantor.
06:55As it relates to Cantor?
06:55Yeah.
06:56Look, the demand is broad-based.
07:00You have real money demand.
07:03You have long-term private capital.
07:07And you have certainly other sovereigns of the world.
07:10So it's literally every inch of the investor base around the gold.
07:15I'm sorry.
07:15Congratulations.
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