Navigating Investing in Today's Markets with John Campbell

Cameron Pickoski: We're here in Fort Lauderdale this week at our National Sales Summit, where the theme is, “Charting the Course.” So, we wanted to talk a little bit about how your team is navigating investing in today's markets.
How does your systematic approach help navigate market volatility, and where is it going to add the most value for clients in 2026?

John Campbell: Thanks, Cameron. I like to think of market volatility as one of those inevitable things like death and taxes. You know it's always going to come around every year. Almost every year, you get at least a 10% drawdown in markets, so you always need to be prepared for it. You never know exactly what's going to precipitate it —if it's going to be like a macro shock or geopolitical event or policy changes. So, the way we look at it from the Systematic team is we have this multi-dimensional view of risk, and so we want to look from the bottom up, the top down—we want to use multiple quantitative tools and some qualitative analysis as well so that we don't get caught too wrongfooted or surprised by the market too much. In 2026, where I think it's really going to make a difference is the AI (artificial intelligence) theme has been dominating markets for some time, and we've seen even just in the last week a lot of volatility around software stocks. You know, there's a whole group of stocks that are considered like the AI enablers. Then there's the AI adopters, but then there's companies that might get disrupted by AI. And so, this last week, there's been a lot of handwringing over those companies that might get disrupted. I think that's going to continue to play out in different ways over the course of the year, so managing your exposure to the AI theme will be paramount.