Transcript 0:00 We manage $400,000, and if I can make sure that $400,000 is being stewarded towards the kingdom, we'll start by just moving it away from places that are against the kingdom, then that's something I, I'd love to do. 0:10 And that's the cool thing about institutional wealth rather than just my own personal small portfolio is that you can actually really make a difference. 0:18 Welcome to the Purpose Driven Capital podcast, where we help you align your money with your mission and maximize your impact. Here's your host, Matt Johns. Today's conversation is a special one for me. 0:31 My guest is someone I've had the privilege to know and work with personally. Carter Hall is a former intern of mine in my investment banking firm, Honeyhive Capital. 0:41 While he was with us, he developed a comprehensive positive and negative screening tool specifically to assess our faith aligned private market deals. 0:50 Now, you'll hear from him, but these deals are much more challenging to screen than traditional public market securities. And he did a remarkable job. But frankly, that's just part of his nature. 1:03 Carter is currently entering his last semester at Liberty University. He's the president of both the Liberty Finance Club and the Student Asset Management Fund, which they affectionately call SAM. 1:14 SAM is a student club that manages a portion of the endowment portfolio. 1:19 He also interned with Morgan Stanley last summer in prime brokerage margin operations, where he got a front row seat to a side of institutional finance that few get to see. 1:29 But what I appreciate most about Carter is his clarity. He's not just interested in finance as a career. He's interested in what finance does in the world, and how Christians like him can think about that responsibility. 1:43 So we talk about screening and stewardship, and even get into corporate engagement. But I'm just excited to give you a chance to get to know him and hear his unique perspective on the finance world. 1:55 Welcome to my conversation with Carter Hall. You've got a lot of ambitious goals, a lot of things coming up ahead of you. Are you even thinking about school this semester? [laughs] Oh my goodness. 2:04 Is that even on your mind? Well, that, it's so funny because I was, I was going through my list of priorities. I try to, like, put out my goals every semester, and, like, the things that I'm prioritizing and everything. 2:13 And it was like school was number four. And I was like... [laughs] It's just been so crazy. But I'm really excited for, like, the clubs, and I'm actually writing my senior thesis. 2:23 So all of those things are, like, kind of above HR management, you know. But, um, you know, I'm still excited, but- And you, you have a 4.0 to maintain here too, right? Yes. Yes. So it's, [laughs] it's a little pressure. 2:33 So school has to be pretty, pretty highly ranked. Yeah. [laughs] So we met, it, it was almost a year ago now, at, at the Kingdom Advisors conference. Mm-hmm. And it was great getting to know you there. 2:42 I knew there was something unique about you just because of your passion. The fact that you were there as a student, uh, you guys had a great contingent from the, uh, the university there. Dr. 2:51 Cornfield had brought a, a number of students like you, uh, all with great energy and, and all that. 2:56 But I knew that when I met you, there was something unique about you because of your passion specifically for this, this area. 3:02 And, uh, I'm, I'm curious to, to get your take now in hindsight, because obviously we started the internship some time thereafter. But what has your perspective been like? 3:10 How has it changed since we met at that conference till now as you're preparing to go off into the real world? You've been... You've had a few unique experiences since then. 3:18 It's a lot deeper than it used to be because, you know, there's 90 of us that go to the Kingdom Advisors conference each year. And- There are 90 of you? Yes, there's 90 of us. Wow. 3:27 Um, 'cause that's what they can fit on two buses. They, they bring two of the- That's right. [laughs]... the football team buses down. 3:32 And so it's, it's very, well, first off, sort of wealth management focused, and that's, you know... I convinced Cornfield to, to take a couple, you know, he... 3:41 I convinced him to take me, but, like, you know, he takes a few finance people. But, you know, he knows that, that I'm more of kind of the investments route than the, the just wealth management route. 3:49 But that's kinda how I got into Kingdom Advisors first, was that I was pursuing wealth management. 3:53 And so I kinda saw it from a, just a personal finance perspective, that you, you know, want to steward your own personal wealth towards the kingdom, and that all the money that we have is the Lord's, and therefore He directs how we use it. 4:07 Which is a great foundation, but following that I went into, you know, I worked a little bit with, with you in private markets, and then went into Morgan Stanley and saw things from a very institutional side, us working in their prime brokerage division. 4:21 And because of that, it's, it's, I've become very interested in the institutional, uh, deployment of capital for the kingdom and, and much more on, on that side rather than personal finance. 4:33 And so that's been really cool because you can do so much more in that sphere because of just the amount of capital that you can use. 4:41 And, you know, it was cool talking with people like the Tebow group and, and people like that that are actually using institutional type capital almost just to, to make bigger investments into the kingdom. 4:54 I think one of the things that stood out to me so much about you personally is that you are very, very focused. 4:59 It's not just on the wealth management, it's not the professional career, but it's what that career, what that actual work can produce in the world for, for a higher purpose. Yeah. And something much- Absolutely... 5:09 higher, uh, as you're pursuing it. And your heart's there, and you see a path to get there through your work to fund your life to make that all be kind of congruent and one thing. 5:17 And I, I, I just thought that was amazing. So, uh, I was so grateful when you approached me and we were able to connect on the, the sort of investment side as opposed to the- Absolutely... the portfolio management side. 5:26 Mm-hmm. And we found a way to work together. And, and what we came up with was just awesome. 5:30 Like, for me, for my firm, and I'll, I'll tell you this very directly, and I, I've told you this, uh, in private, but I'll, I'll share it here in this forum too. 5:36 But what you created for Honeyhive Capital, my investment banking firm, w- was something really special because that's something I was developing on my own. 5:44 You created something that turned it into a machine so that I could put these deals in there and then come out with something on the other side with a real legitimate scorecard of something that- Would tell about the values of these particular deals. 5:58 And, uh, I'm curious to get your experience on that too, because private markets have never been, I, I don't think, a focus for you. 6:03 But it's something you dove right into, especially from the screening side, as you developed these positive and negative screenings for the private market investments, which are relatively hard to do compared to the public markets. 6:14 So tell me a little bit about what that experience was like with you, and I wanna know more about what you built. I want you to share more about what you built, 'cause it really was something special. Sure. Absolutely. 6:23 So it was all new to me. I mean, you were teaching me what a, what a PPM is and all that kind of stuff, just, like, what, what goes into... Like, what I'm screening, and that was initially... 6:33 I remember that was initially a little bit more difficult for me to grasp, is that I wasn't just reading a 10-K, which is what I do for our, our investments, just things at Liberty. And so that was all new to me. 6:46 But the way I saw it is I had to, I had to learn how, how things will be triggered, how different screening parameters will be triggered in a private way rather than a public way. And the wording is different. 6:58 The, the, the verbiage is different. The way everything's written differently. It's not put through the lens of an accountant looking at GAAP standards to put something in a 10-K. It's very different. 7:09 And you get kind of a different flavor of whoever's writing these documents in each, in each company. And so that was all very, very interesting to me because it was all very new. I'd never seen anything like that. 7:22 And so developing the screen was, was totally new. 7:25 And so what I did was I started just, you know, absolute basics and went, what are, what are the things that we see in deploying any kind of capital that we don't want to invest in? And... 7:38 Or what are kind of our, our dimensions, so to speak. And from there I was able to, to build on. So, like, you know, for example, we looked at, you know, human dignity or, or creation stewardship. 7:50 Y- creation stewardship could be, like, mining, the environment, things like that. And so we just kinda took a top-down approach to that. And, and from there I was able to actually develop the screener. 8:02 But, but I needed to know what I was looking for first, and it was different than anything that any of the big screening companies for public securities do because it looks entirely different. Yeah. 8:12 And one of the things when, when you're talking about these public screeners for, for public companies, they're typically going by dollar amounts that are allocated in certain areas. Yeah. 8:20 You had to look at it much more subjectively and turn it into something objective. So for instance, if it was nuclear weapons or something like that. That's, that's kind of the, uh, illustration I like to go to. 8:31 My firm will not work with anything that supports nuclear weaponry. 8:34 And so for you, you had to figure out, "Okay, how do I create language for this, and then how do I create parameters for this so that it's either objective, a, a yes, no, or maybe?" Right? Yeah. 8:45 And, uh, you, you did that exceedingly well and, uh, in a way that the AI engine could actually take it then and- Yeah... discern whether this is a yes, no, or maybe. 8:54 I just thought that was really, really impressive in the way you did that. 8:58 But what, what did you learn from that experience that you think you can carry forward with you and other, other experiences like what you're gonna be doing in the future here? Absolutely. 9:06 Well, just to jump off that real quick, I, you know, I had to... It was an additional thing that was new to me is that they are using specific words that are going to trigger a model. 9:17 And so I had to go through each of the parameters and then first decide whether it's something that is the actual product is bad, like for example, abortifacients, you know, it's an actual chemical used. 9:28 Or it's a means of production, so down the line it ends up getting used in something that we don't agree with. 9:35 Uh, it's a means of distribution, so it is, for example, a web browser that allows you to look at things that, you know, we wouldn't traditionally, you know, accept. And so... 9:46 Or corporate support, so they're putting money towards something that's, you know, what would you call it? Philanthropy or corporate engagement with anything- Yeah... 9:53 um, that we don't agree with and giving money to places or signing agreements or anything like that. 9:58 So because of that, you know, we had to come up with words for each one of those different, like, areas where there could be an issue. And so that was new to me. 10:07 And it, you know, ended up being 70 pages worth of words and verbiage and things. A lot of prompt. Yeah. And so that was all new to me because, yes, it's dollar amounts when we're looking at a 10-K. So very different. 10:18 Mm-hmm. But where I took with that was actually I brought a lot of this back to the SAM Fund, Student Asset Management Fund at Liberty University is our endowment student group. 10:27 And so I was able to take a lot of what I learned just about building a screeners from scratch to taking what we actually believe. So we actually use a separate screening software that was gifted to us. 10:38 But our benchmarks, what we're accepting, what we're not accepting, all of that came through conviction and the research that I did for each one of these things that, you know... And there was way more. 10:49 Traditionally, a lot of these screeners only have 10 to 15 different things. And I believe at one point I had 39 that I came up with, and then we narrowed them down a little bit. 10:58 So there was even more things that I didn't even think could be, you know, an option of something that we would screen out. And so I brought, like, a much more holistic knowledge back to the fund. 11:08 At the time I was a portfolio manager, and then during the internship I became the president of SAM Fund, and then it was my responsibility to make sure that our screens matched what our convictions personally were. 11:21 Yeah. So tell me a little bit more about these screens because you're, you're very passionate about it. 11:24 Why are you passionate about these, and why did the screens help you, I guess, accomplish what you're trying to accomplish with them? Yeah, absolutely. 11:30 So I'm passionate about it ever since, you know, working with people like Kornfeld and reading from a lot of the industry leaders in that space through Kingdom Advisors. 11:41 I realized that where my money is going is actually, is actually a big deal. 11:46 And when you see, I know BrightLight has done a lot of research on this and, and shown it at the Kingdom Advisors conference, how much money is going to different areas of the economy through whether it's retail or institutional capital, and just how much of a difference for the kingdom our money can make when we just take it out of... 12:04 If I can back up, most of the money that's going to these areas is just because it's in a ETF that includes the whole market or includes a sector of the market, and so people never see where their money's actually going. 12:15 And most of us would not be okay with that if we were to look at it. And so these negative screeners, all they're doing... 12:21 And, and we've looked at, you know, not doing a negative screener and doing some sort of impact, or we've looked at doing other things, just more of a positive screener. 12:30 But for us, we're just looking at, at least for the start, and as a fund at Liberty, moving away from investments that we had previously that we weren't happy with w- the way they were being used. 12:43 It's from a place of conviction. Uh, ever since, you know, I saw the, the list of holdings that we had as a portfolio and what they were doing, it was just conviction. That's the only way I can explain it. 12:54 And since then I've, I've... 12:56 You know, we manage $400,000, and if I can make sure that $400,000 is being stewarded towards the kingdom, and we'll start by just moving it away from places that are against the kingdom, then that's something I, I'd love to do. 13:08 And that's the cool thing about institutional wealth rather than just my own personal small portfolio, is that you can actually really make a difference. 13:17 And if all of the money we own is the Lord's, then I want to be able to account for every single penny of it someday when I, when I meet our maker, that I used the money He gave me for His glory. 13:28 And so I just saw that personally, my own fund and with, or my own personal portfolio and then the Student Asset Management fund, and that's why. Yeah. That's where that came from. 13:37 Well, I, I wanna talk more about the SAM fund- Okay... and how it's in- involved with the endowment, because you have a, you have a such a unique view. 13:43 This is, I don't know how many of these clubs there are around the, the country, but your club manages a piece of the endowment portfolio for Liberty University. Essentially. And that's a big, big deal. 13:55 I mean, the, these endowments control a lot of capital around the world, and here you are managing a piece of one of them at, uh, at a very substantial university here in the United States. 14:04 So I'd love to know more about that because you're talking about managing specifically that $400,000 piece, which is a, a substantial amount, uh, amount of money any way you cut it. 14:14 And from what I understand, and maybe you can correct me on this, is that you've taken some of these screens and the lessons you've learned previously from Kingdom Advisors and otherwise, that some of those screens may be applied, too, to the entire endowment, and you've been able to have conversations with them as well. 14:29 So since you've taken the helm here of the SAM fund, as the president of that club, what have you seen move in that time since you've, you've been e- exerting a little bit of this influence? Absolutely. 14:41 So we are managed very separately. Technically, we have a piece of the endowment. We, we don't work directly with them. 14:47 They're a $2.2 billion, actually, last I checked, I'm not sure what it is now, but it's over $2 billion. So they have all of their institutional software and all their things. They're very, very separate from us. 14:56 But we, we have been able to exert influence on our 400 grand that we have. 15:02 And since, s- since I've become president, we've moved probably $100,000 around just in the past few months, moving away from investments that were very against our screeners. And we- we're still not perfect. 15:15 Our screeners still have a few companies that are flagged. But w- we have 40 students, and it's a lot with our, you know, we're a long-term value fund, so it takes a lot of effort to move into a new security. 15:26 And so we're, we're just checking them off the list one at a time, moving away from a security and moving into another one that's better for our screens. So we're taking it once, one step at a time. 15:36 We're exerting influence on ours. 15:37 We're also, though, working with other clubs at Liberty and kind of, you know, we have popularized, you know, we call it biblically responsible investing in, in kind of accordance with what most of the KA people call it. 15:49 And we've kind of been able to bring some awareness to that just in the school. 15:53 So we work with other clubs, the financial planning club, the accounting society, all these different places, that now know, as these people going into finance, what that is because we're doing it every day. 16:04 And we- Mm-hmm... you know, uh, some people can get frustrated at it. That's, you know, to be expected. It's, it's, you know- The screenings... 16:10 [laughs] The screenings because it's a little difficult when you think you've found the next great value stock over the next five years and it turns out they're agreed with a few bills publicly that were, you know, very against what, what we stand for. 16:22 And because of that, they, you know, fall outside of our screens. So there's, there's some frustration with that sometimes. 16:28 But generally, it's been a very positive feedback from other clubs, other students at Liberty, that they never heard of investing with a Biblical lens until, until we started doing it. 16:39 I wasn't the first person to bring it to the SAM fund. It was my predecessors, the last two presidents. 16:45 But we've moved around a lot more capital in the past few months than, than has ever been moved towards biblically responsible investments. It's kinda neat. 16:54 With the, uh, with the endowment, you're serving a couple different purposes. Obviously, you've got the highest purpose in mind with the screenings. But realistically, the endowment is serving your fellow students. 17:03 You're growing this pool of money so that it can be used for more students to attend school or, or to have more, uh, access to whatever the school has to offer. 17:11 I wanna come back to some of these other things you were talking about, but on the endowment itself, what are some things you've learned from sort of an inside view that you think other people from the outside may not know or see as, a- as readily as you have? 17:23 You know what? It's, it is very separate, but we have learned more of just an institutional perspective than I think other people would. 17:32 The university endowment itself is not necessarily, it's not fully biblically responsible investing. 17:37 It's, they, you know, they, I, I believe that they take it into account, but that's not part of their brand or anything to, to, you know, be very specific with that. 17:45 But we have learned just with rubbing shoulders some, with some of those people how portfolio allocation works, how the role of private markets in large portfolio, and things like that have been helpful to learn, especially with, you know, we're 100% equity fund, and we're supposed to be long value, and it's difficult. 18:05 It's difficult to do that in kind of a low-risk way because either way you're 100% equities. And so, you know, learning how to allocate equities appropriately has been helpful. 18:15 But- If I'm completely honest, we haven't really talked a whole lot about our role of faith necessarily in specific investments. That just hasn't come up and, you know, they're, they're managed... 18:27 The university endowment is managed from all over the US with different people doing different jobs. 18:32 We rub shoulders with them occasionally, but our portion of it is, is we have a lot of leeway with what we do with that. They give us a lot of confidence, so... 18:41 Now, one thing that you mentioned last time we talked was that you're getting more into an advocacy kind of m- mindset- Yes... 18:47 with some of these companies where you're, you're exerting a little bit of this influence that you do have with the university backing you and all that, where you can actually get into conversations with some of these public entities that you're either inve- that I, I presume you're invested in or that the university's invested in and you're able to have those conversations about things that, that have tripped your screeners, so to speak. 19:06 So how does that come to be? What are those conversations like? So we haven't been able to actually engage with conversations yet. What we're doing is building the infrastructure in the SAM fund so that we can do it. 19:17 It, it is a little difficult that we have, we have 40 analysts and from an administration standpoint, that's the biggest the SAM fund's ever been. 19:25 And we're also, we also have a quantitative group now and we're building models in Python and we're doing all sorts of different things. 19:31 It's, it's difficult to just add another thing on top of it when all of us are full-time students and also, you know, have pursuing a career as well. So it's, it's a little difficult when that's on top of it. 19:41 So we're just building the infrastructure right now with the goal of, of being able to do actual advocacy this spring. So it is in its infancy, but what we're trying to do is take an active standpoint. 19:53 There's maybe 10... 19:55 Last I talked to someone who had a good industry knowledge of this was a few months ago, and he said that there's maybe 10 student funds in the US that are biblically responsible investing or faith-based investing in some sense. 20:09 But none of them have ever done advocacy or corporate engagement with any companies. 20:15 And we've seen companies that, you know, we love and their fundamentals are great and we'd love to hold them as an investment, or we have held them as an investment, but we haven't been able to engage with them to say, "Hey, we don't appreciate that you signed this thing." 20:27 For example, you know, a bunch of our companies have signed the Equity Act, or actually I forget the exact wording of it, but have signed with a bunch of other companies a agreement that basically says they agree with certain things that we believe are just not totally congruent with, with our faith and what we believe according to our screeners, at least. 20:43 We, we go very- If something's problematic in it. Yes, absolutely. 20:46 So when we're looking at a company, we, we, we bas- basically putting a list together of companies that we are okay holding for a short term to be able to get into conversations or just corporate engagement in general- Mm-hmm... 20:58 as is what we would call it- Yes... with these companies. And so we've just been putting together the companies that we wanna engage with and partner with other firms that are able to get us into those conversations. 21:09 We ourselves, each position is relatively small. If we're only 400 grand, which I mean, is a lot for, for us as students, but, you know, as far as being able to actually get into conversations, it's relatively small. 21:20 And so we wanna make sure that we hold at least a small position in, in a company and then be able to get a seat at the table to talk with them. 21:27 So Costco recently had been selling, I believe it was the Plan B drug or some sort of similar drug at their pharmacies. And we were about to sell them as a fund 'cause we, we held them at the time. 21:41 And they were selling this, this drug and so we were gonna sell them. 21:44 And some people doing corporate engagement, and I believe they were affiliated with Kingdom Advisors they were able to go in and, and advocate on behalf of kind of just a faith-based component, and they took that off the shelf. 21:56 And now they're free through our screeners, which is really cool to see something like that go through, and really cool to see a win, you know, when it takes so much effort for such a small, you know, such a small win. 22:08 And- Yeah... but in the, you know, in the grand scheme of things, that's amazing. Like, just praise the Lord for that. 22:14 Well, and you can- And so we're, we're trying to have small, small victories like that and partner with people who are already doing it. 22:19 Yeah, 'cause it, it's a relatively small contingent to the entire, e- entirety of the US or the world that owns stake in them, right? Yes. But as a shareholder, you get an opportunity to exert that kind of influence. 22:30 And even a smaller group that represents a much larger contingency was able to, to shift that weight into the direction that helped them move [laughs] in the direction- Yeah... that they were hoping. Absolutely. 22:41 So that's amazing. And you're, because you may not be putting the dollar amount, but you're carrying the name, you're carrying a lot of other people a- along with you when you have those discussions. 22:49 So that's, that's really interesting that you from SAM are going to be engaging with them like that. Now, how, how many other student organizations are there like this with endowments around the country? 22:59 Is it like a couple, two or three? Is it like dozens? What, what does it look like? So most, most state schools that I know of have them. Most... Yeah, there's a lot of schools that have student investment funds. 23:11 I mean, just in brushing shoulders with people, other interns at Morgan Stanley and whatever, maybe there was 10 student investment organizations just in our group of interns that were represented there. 23:21 And none of them were... They were all secular. None of them were, were faith-based at all. 23:24 So even in, in the Virginia area with Virginia Tech and UVA, and Liberty is kinda like your main, you know, they, all three of them have investment funds to acknowledge. 23:33 And so even the University of Lynchburg, which is very small, they even have one, and it's comparable to Liberty's. And so, you know, d- different funds look very differently. 23:42 I think the biggest fund is upward of 70 million last I checked. And so there's some large funds out there. But most of the Ivy Leagues have them. 23:51 But we've been networking with some other, other funds as well to try to, at least the faith-based ones, to kinda have a little bit of a, a network and contingent of people that are kind of all striving towards the same thing. 24:03 That's been our, our, one of our themes as SAM Fund is we can't really do all of it ourselves. 24:08 And even with partnering with a firm to do corporate engagement, they get the benefit of having a student on the call, like the next generation of people coming up going, "This is what we feel about... 24:18 You know, as an investor, this is how we feel about what you're doing with your company." Yes. And then, you know, we get the benefit of they actually know what they're doing. 24:24 And we have an idea, but we've never done it before. 24:27 And so we're trying to partner with other firms, partner with other student organizations to challenge each other to actually Have a bigger contingent of people pushing for a faith consideration in our investments. 24:39 Now, with that in mind, I wanna switch over to your, your time at Morgan Stanley because you unfortunately left working with me to go work for this, this tiny, tiny company, Morgan Stanley, right? 24:49 [laughs] And, um, you had, you had an incredible experience when you were there. Uh, you got to be in an area that most people will never, ever see the inside of. 24:56 I'd love to get a chance just to pick your brain a little bit on that, what that was like, what you saw from, from your unique lens, and what, what's something that you would share with others about that, that, that you think would enliven us and help us to understand how this institutional side works? 25:12 Yes. The amount of capital that, that is there is just, it's... You kinda have no reference for how much money it is. There is so much money. 25:21 Now, I worked in prime brokerage margin operations, which is to say we have hedge fund clients that require additional, additional s- considerations. 25:30 Maybe they need to have margin across multiple securities and, you know, borrow against but, you know, have additional surplus and something. And so it's special considerations. 25:39 And if you have enough money, you can pay extra to be a part of the prime brokerage kinda group. 25:45 And because I was in margin operations, I essentially babysat computer systems and looked for errors in anything that had to do with margin or them borrowing against Morgan Stanley or using our securities. 25:59 But the, the millions and millions and millions of dollars that would go through are just... It's, it's insane. 26:05 And so as soon as I feel like, you know, my 400 grand that I, I manage and, you know, that even the, the millions and billions that are in kind of the kingdom advisors and the networks that I've, I've been, you know, blessed to be a part of just feel so small [laughs] with a, with a company like Morgan Stanley. 26:22 Oh my gosh, yeah. You know, it's- It's a rounding error for one trade that you're doing there, right? Yes, absolutely. And so it is, it is kind of unfathomable. 26:29 But it is, it is really interesting because you see the amount of, of opportunity there. Mm-hmm. That those people and those clients are, are massive. 26:39 But you gotta know, like, the, how many of them, you know, even if it's a small fraction, have some sort of faith conviction, or even not a faith conviction, but just a conviction of, "We don't wanna support nuclear weapons." 26:49 'Cause I'm sure that that's a lot of them. Right. 26:51 And so you, you, you can certainly see a component of greed in this, a component of, you know, "We'll compromise each of these things on our list of things we don't want- Mm-hmm... if we can make money on it." 27:01 But, you know, there's tremendous opportunity there. That was one thing I came away with. And even the people there. I, I had a fantastic team. The people at Morgan Stanley are great. 27:09 Obviously it's a secular company, but there's just... There was an opportunity for me to be a light there, and for even me to talk about Jesus a little bit when I was there. And so that was, that was really cool for me. 27:20 And you're, you're among some absolutely brilliant people, too, from the industry because the prime brokerage stuff requires really sharp minds, to be honest, because, because of the volume of what you're dealing with. 27:29 Maybe you can go into a little bit more about, uh, what a prime brokerage is. I don't think that's in the lexicon for most of us. Yeah. So a prime broker is essentially a one-stop shop for hedge funds. 27:38 Hedge funds tend to, to use weird securities, and they, they need, sometimes they need someone to invent a new security for them that doesn't exist yet, and they need to be able to trade crazy volume very quickly and move positions very quickly. 27:55 And for that kind of volume over several companies, 'cause a hedge fund may be borrowing or, or using some sort of security from one company, o- one broker, and then a different broker. Instead of 28:07 working with different teams across even one broker, I mean, the, there's over 100,000 people associated with Morgan Stanley. There's a lot of divisions and a lot of trade support and a lot of different things. 28:19 If they're working with different teams, instead they just consolidate it all into one specialized group. 28:26 And so the prime broker, brokerage team, our front office is up in New York City, and so they deal directly with hedge funds. I was just, you know, support for... 28:35 I was, I was the lowest on the totem pole of support for computer systems. 28:38 But when you bring everything under one roof, you're able to, for example, do something where you, you have an additional debt of one secur- an additional margin of one security, but less margin on another security. 28:50 And so they basically take a consolidated margin across all securities. 28:57 So that's huge if you have kind of a margin limit on one security, but you have a surplus of another one, so you're able to borrow against yourself and against Morgan Stanley. 29:06 So i- there's some really cool opportunities for a hedge fund that's moving a lot of capital in a way that's super risky. And obviously Morgan Stanley gets compensated quite well for that because it is a bigger risk. 29:17 I imagine so. It is a bigger risk for them. Mm-hmm. And also it does require an extra division of people, a lot of people that work in just support. There's a front office. 29:26 There's a, there's a lot for, for prime brokerage. Yeah, and they're, they're probably paying an upfront fee, plus they're probably paying fees per trade and things like that too to get this kind of white glove service. 29:35 Is that right? I'm not entirely sure how their, how their fee structure works- That's okay [laughs]... if I'm completely honest. That's all right. We don't need to be un- unveiling trade secrets right now. 29:43 [laughs] So that's fine. Well, I don't even know. But- They, they don't, they don't share quite, quite a lot with me, just the, the system that's in front of me. 29:49 [laughs] You're gonna work your way up the totem pole for that one, right? [laughs] Yeah. Well, I'll try. [laughs] But, no, you, so you, you've seen the, you've seen some of the biggest of the big. 29:57 Just from your, your, your point of view as a student at Liberty University right now. You're also president of the, uh, finance club, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. 30:05 Now, I understand that you've recently been bringing some new folks in too. 30:08 What have you been learning from, uh, the, the conversations you've been having with some people who've been coming in and, and talking to your organizations? Absolutely. 30:15 Well, it has been really cool to be a president of, of both, because they're, of the SAM Fund and, and we call it the LFC, the Liberty Finance Club, because they do two entirely different things. And the LFC-... 30:27 is a huge passion for me because it's more, more focused on pipeline for students going into their careers. 30:33 And that is a huge, huge passion of mine because originally I had the goal of I'm gonna go into investment banking, I'm gonna be a hotshot on Wall Street and all those things. 30:42 And, you know, the Lord had different plans for me and, and it's a good thing He did because, because I'm, I'm really happy with where He has me right now. 30:49 But the LFC allows us to focus on bringing people in to have conversations about finance in, in a way... Like, Liberty's not a target school. We don't get to- we don't have that many people on Wall Street. 31:01 We don't have that many people that go on to any of the, you know, big bulge bracket banks, even in any capacity, even in operations. 31:08 And so it's really cool that we get to bring experts in to have conversations with not just, you know, not just me, but, but the whole group of students. 31:16 If you're a freshman and you're able to come to these meetings, you get to see this is what so-and-so, who's six years older than me, has done on Wall Street with just some hard work, some determination, and guess what? 31:26 He's gonna be a resource for me. I can reach out to him and I can do a mock interview with him, or I can do whatever, and it's the coolest thing. 31:33 The thing that gets me really excited about it is that they, they all love Jesus. And so at the end of the day, we have people coming in. Recently, someone who was... 31:43 She had just an amazing career, but he was- he worked at Houlihan Lokey and, you know, as a Christian, and, and just learned how to, how to be a Christian in the trenches a little bit. 31:53 And it just, it's the next frontier of, of missions is Wall Street. 31:57 And so he comes in and just absolutely gives a- an amazing speech and talk about just what it means to be a Christian in such a dark spot, and the hard work it takes to get into the industry, but also the hard work it is to just live your faith out with, you know, the kind of people that are on Wall Street. 32:13 And so- Mm... 32:14 it's really inspiring 'cause now for- from my perspective, I get the, the Lord gets to use, or not gets to, but the Lord uses me to equip future missionaries into, into Wall Street or into Y'all Street even. 32:28 A lot of people are going to Dallas, you know? So it's, uh, [laughs] It's really cool. And it just, that is why that's a higher priority on my list above, above school sometimes. But don't tell Liberty that. 32:41 [laughs] Yeah. You're, you're working your way up. They're four right now. They'll w- [laughs] They'll make their way up to maybe number two- [laughs]... at some point in the semester, right? At some point. 32:49 [laughs] Yeah. Before graduation. Well, Carter, w- yeah, before graduation. [laughs] So what's next? So you've got, you've got all this under your belt. You've made some tremendous relationships along the way. 32:58 What are you thinking about next? What's next? So, so I did accept a job offer from Morgan Stanley, so that's, that's in July. Um, so that's the next- Congratulations. Thank you. I appreciate that. 33:09 That's, that's next in career for me. But it's, it's really one step at a time. I'm working on a senior thesis. I'm working on these two clubs. I'm working on school, and then I have some other personal goals. 33:19 And so I'm trying to just take it one step at a time. This is where I feel the Lord has led me right now, and so I, I can't necessarily look at the big picture too much or it's just a little overwhelming. 33:29 But what I do know next is that I'm moving to Baltimore, and I want to leave it all on the field here at Liberty. 33:35 I want to leave the, the, the freshmen and sophomores here with just a, a wealth of knowledge to be able to go and pursue their dreams early on in their, in their school careers. Mm-hmm. 33:46 And so that's what I'm, I'm trying to do with the SAM Fund and with, and with the LFC, and then do my best. 33:52 Excellence is very important to me as a character trait, and so I'm l- just trying to do my best in school and with my senior thesis, and then moving on is just how do I start a life well-lived in the next chapter? 34:02 I, I'm now going to be a very small fish in a very big pond and, I mean, the, the office at Morgan Stanley, the Morgan Stanley office in Baltimore is seven stories tall and, you know, that big glass building right on the Bay. 34:16 And so it's very small fish. How do I start that? 34:18 Well, even when you're an intern, you get the benefit of knowing that you're going to do your best in 10 weeks and then go back to your friends, and it's different when your next step in life involves being 34:30 professional learner for a year, and just learning as much as you can and not being in the way. And then- Mm... and then what's next? I'm not entirely sure. 34:38 Someday I'd love to be out west, but we'll see what, what happens. Oh, sure. I do, I do enjoy Dallas quite a bit, so, [laughs] So Y'all Street may be on the- [laughs]... on the docket here. Someday. 34:48 Now, do you know what division, you know what division you're gonna be in at Morgan Stanley? I asked for the same team and they said yes, so- Oh, okay, great... I, we'll, we'll see. 34:57 It was over the, it was over the, across the table. I, you know, so it wasn't in writing, so we'll see. But, but I, I love my team so much. Well, we'll see where you... 35:04 And, and honestly, I got to network with other teams that I w- that I worked with adjacently when I was there. And honestly, like, I, I'm really content with whatever. The, the, the people there are great. 35:14 They hire amazing, hungry people, especially out of college. And so I'm, I'm really content with wherever they put me. It's gonna be an adventure either way 'cause I'm gonna know nothing about whatever. 35:26 You know, college prepares you- Yeah, well-... to know conceptually what's going on, but everything there is so granular that, yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be a learning curve for sure. 35:35 Well, Carter, one thing I do know for sure- Which is exciting... one thing I know for sure about you is that you will make the most of that experience, whatever it is. [laughs] And you are gonna absolutely crush it. 35:43 They're very, very fortunate to have you. I was very fortunate to have you for the few months that we were together with my firm. 35:48 But, but I, I'm just so glad to hear that you're doing so well, and you're doing so many things, and continuing that upward trajectory of just building and building and building. 35:56 And thanks for giving us th- this little insight to your world through your lens to some incredible things that are shaping our world around us. Yeah, absolutely. 36:03 So I guess, Carter, until next time, really appreciate you taking this time with us today. Absolutely. 36:07 Thank you so much for, for your time and for being willing to speak about things that we're both really passionate about. That's always fun. You bet. All right, take care, Carter. Bye. 36:16 We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Purpose Driven Capital podcast. If you found this valuable, be sure to like, subscribe, and share. Are you ready to align your money with your mission? 36:27 Discover the Purpose Driven Capital framework, access practical tools, and build meaningful connections to grow your movement and multiply your impact at PurposeDrivenCapital.co. 36:37 The views and opinions expressed in this show are solely those of the individuals speaking and do not reflect the views or opinions of Honeyhive Capital, any broker-dealer, investment advisory firm, or its sponsors. 36:49 The content is for informational and entertainment purposes only. 36:52 Nothing in this content or any communications from it should be treated as constituting financial, investment, legal, tax, or other advice of any kind, or as a recommendation to buy or sell an interest with respect to any investment. 37:05 We look forward to you joining us next time.
