We try to look through the moment at the bigger picture: is this a good company, a good industry? We look for weird market dislocations to buy cheaply or where we need to be cautious on valuations.

We really try to disassociate from the five seconds we're in today.

We invest thematically. Highest conviction is in electrification of the US economy. We also look opportunistically when individual stocks get hammered or sectors are out of favor, like software, to find babies thrown out with the bathwater.

When we started investing in electrification companies 5-6 years ago, they were cheap. We saw an opportunity for structurally higher growth and multiple expansion.

I do not subscribe to the view that the whole software sector is in decline forevermore. In any maturing sector with tech innovation (like AI), you will have winners and losers. Some companies have great embedded systems that can use AI to operate more efficiently; others are simple point solutions that will go the way of yellow page assets. Our job is to not buy the yellow page assets.

The market is open for the right companies. Our successful Medline IPO traded well because it's critical healthcare infrastructure the market wants to own. Madison Air is another example - a good business with secular growth, immune from AI dislocation. The market is open for those companies.

Public investors can't find a way to play what Medline offers without buying Medline.

Volatility in stock markets (especially in software/professional services sectors PE invests in) plus a major global conflict/geopolitical situation is not a great recipe for deal doing. That being said, we will see a resumption. We're still transacting. The huge volatility, which will calm, will create conditions for more activity.

We announced a deal in the UK and a few in our energy/electrification business recently.

Hostile conflict involving the United States and key energy markets is not conducive to a lot of deal flow and risk-taking. So I think that will have to calm down. Today it seems like it has; we'll see if it persists.

We don't have urgency to invest; we have a 5+ year investment period to deploy capital.