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Current economic uncertainty will pass, BlackRock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink says in an annual letter to shareholders. Catalysts host Madison Mills and Bullseye American Ingenuity Fund portfolio manager Adam Johnson take a closer look at the letter.
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BlackRock CEO Larry Fink assuring investors that economic anxiety will pass in his annual letter, writing that history has proved in the long run, we figure things out. Perhaps more notable, Fink didn't say some things. He didn't mention DEI, the company rolling that back earlier this year to a lot of backlash or his sustainable investing frameworks as well. Topics that have often appeared in past letters. The 2025 letter mirroring a broader move away from diversity and climate conscious investments by financial firms under the Trump administration. Also firmly left out here, many of the, uh, conversations about tariffs were not included here. Instead, he traded the use of the word tariffs for private markets. This was the huge focus of the note here and for our audience listening, the good news is you can monitor all of your private market companies on the Yahoo Finance platform. Now, we have an entire page dedicated to private companies. Of course, you've got your open AIs, your SpaceXs on there. So head to the Yahoo Finance platform for that. Uh, but interesting to see the focus on private markets, obviously making sense when you're, when you're, uh, this company. But, um,
Well, he runs, I mean, it's, it's, it's the largest money management company in the world. And you know, we and I talk about or you and I talk about listed stocks because that's what we can see on our screen. But yeah, there's a whole market out there of private companies. There's a huge market for them. Uh, private equity has been, um, arguably, uh, significantly more profitable than the public markets over the past several years. That has started to shift. Um, less so because there were so many hungry bankers, um, chasing after deals that they compress the spreads. But yes, the private markets are incredibly compelling. I mean, think of the number of stocks or number of companies now that are worth more than a billion dollars. They used to be called unicorns. Wow, it's worth more than a billion and it's private. And, and now there are, I mean, I've lost count. There's something like 70, and it's not just a billion, it's 10 billion, 20 billion, 32 billion. I mean, it's incredible.
It's incredible. And, uh, the valuations just are sky high, especially for a lot of those AI names as well.