Rick Rieder, the Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of Global Fixed Income at BlackRock, responsible for managing approximately $2.7 trillion in assets, recently shared his perspective on the rapidly evolving global landscape and its profound implications for investors. Speaking at the 2025 Morningstar Investment Conference, Rieder emphasized the need to "stretch your brain a little bit, think about things differently," as the world, life, and investing are changing at an unprecedented pace.
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2025 Morningstar Investment Conference - BlackRock's Rick Rieder
The Unprecedented Pace of Change
Rieder highlighted how quickly life has transformed, citing examples like the shift from physical dictionaries and thesauruses to everything being on a laptop. He noted the extraordinary growth of PCs and the decline of landline telephone subscriptions, a technology that took 150 years to become outdated, only to be supplanted rapidly. Today, a "supercomputer in your pocket" (your phone) holds your entire life – travel, wellness, shopping, real estate, and photos.
This rapid change is exemplified by the adoption rates of new technologies. ChatGPT, for instance, achieved 365 million searches in just two years, a milestone that took Google 11 years to reach. This accelerated adoption rate indicates a world shifting at an astonishing speed, one Rieder, with almost four decades in the industry, has "never seen... shift so quickly".
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