Direct investment in physical real estate is discouraged due to its opacity, illiquidity, and tax inefficiency compared to equity-based real estate investment options like REITs.

“My view as an investor and an observer has been that real estate is an extremely opaque market. Extremely opaque. Uh when things do well, most people uh you know buy a flat, buy a house, buy sometimes land. when things turn bad they find it is so illquid that they're stuck in it for years together”

BlackRock is reducing its directional exposure to equities to a neutral position because the market is reacting to headlines in an extremely volatile way.

“So far this week, it's just the latest evidence that we cannot predict the blowby-blow in terms of uh announcements which is why directionally we're flattening exposure to equities.”