Please give us a quick review of last year in the market.

Lisa Erickson, U.S. Bancorp: We are on target so far as ending potential level for the S&P at 3,100. I think, though, where we actually got it wrong is the internals underneath. So our original target was based on a multiple of 18 times an earnings target of 175, and while we're still ending up hopefully at the same absolute place, again, the composition is different. The other thing we thought was that it would be a more volatile year, and I think we certainly saw that happen. The calm, complacent markets that we had through much of the prior several years have likely to come to an end, and that did prove to be the case.

Martha Pomerantz, Evercore Wealth: At Evercore, we said last year that we didn't think we were in the last innings of the game, and I think that's proved to be true, that, in fact, we avoided a recession, which was great. Growth turned out to be OK, but not terrific, which we expected. Inflation was low, and the Fed ended up pivoting to begin to get lower interest rates, and it's all those things that helped the S&P achieve such a high goal this year, and it went a lot further than we thought.

Jim Paulsen, Leuthold Group: Well, I think we got very, very close to ending the bull and the recovery last year in the very traditional way of doing it. That is, you reach full employment; you have a synchronized global boom; you overheat the situation; you face inflation; pressure and cost pressures necessitate tightening; you have too much optimism, which leads to very high valuations, 23 times earnings in January; you radically alter the pressures of rates and inflation over a very short window against that optimism. And we cracked it, and we darn near probably killed it. But what we did was cured all the problems that faced us, basically. We paused the overheat. We revalued the market. We gave a good old gut check to overconfidence. And then we brought the full policy cavalry to the rescue, because all the policy officials were just as scared as everybody else. So when you get that combination, I think we bought ourselves another leg. I think ultimately overheat is going to get us, but it's probably a little ways off.

Dave Kuplic, Securian Asset Management: But we've had a very low inflationary environment. We've had very low interest rates, and not only just low interest rates, but credit spreads have tightened a lot through the year, and if you look at your single A, triple B or high yield sectors, any of them, spreads have contracted a lot. What does that do? It provides businesses with very cheap funding. And so from a business standpoint, they're able to roll off higher expensive debt with less expensive debt, and that's a catalyst. And so I think that catalyst helped in some way in building the equity market returns, certainly built on the fixed-income returns.
How are investors responding to climate risk and other long-term ESG (environmental, social and governance) risks?

Mansco Perry, CIO State Board of Investment: I do think that something happened that we took a lot of notice of this year. I do believe CEOs are hearing it. Business Roundtable came out with a proclamation [which redefined the purpose of a corporation to benefit a broader group of stakeholders — not just shareholders, but also employees, customers, suppliers and communities], which tells me that they hear what a lot of people are saying. They just haven't put stakeholders in the caboose at that point, which is causing a lot of problems. And I do think that there's pretty widespread recognition that these issues are important. The difficulty is that they take time to research, implement and put into practice, and we're finding out that younger generations, if you don't do it in a nanosecond, then you need to be [out].

Justin Kelly, Winslow Capital: The big positive here is that there's been a real shift in leading investors' mind-sets that good ESG policies actually make better long-term economic outcomes, and that is just a material guidepost for moving things forward. Our message to CEOs when we dialogue with them is: "Get on board with managing your company for all stakeholders, not just for shareholders, because that will actually result in better long-term economic outcomes."

Todd Hedtke, Allianz: For us, climate risk is going to impact us, obviously, from an insurance business through our entire investment portfolio. And I think, quite frankly, the U.S. has been behind in this space for a number of years, and I think we are finally starting to get it a little bit. The asset-management community is largely driving that, and I have some particular reasons for the economics behind that and why that's happening, but you really do see a shift. And so, I guess I think it's going to change all of our models. For those of us who do take that seriously, do build it in, I think it also presents a lot of opportunity as well.

Carol Schleif, Abbot Downing: Historically, there hasn't been a reliable way to try to get the metrics out of companies so that you could compare them across the board. That's starting to change. There's an awful lot out there.