Money Life With Chuck Jaffe Daily Podcast

Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Asset Management, says the economic data has lined up so that the economy "can cruise through this soft landing, and not land." In the Big Interview, Haworth says that recessions have been held off for longer than expected up to now, but while he could see heightened volatility for the market for the rest of the year or beyond, the glass-half-full economy means that recession is not likely in the next year and a half. Economists -- as measured by the August 2024 Economic Policy Survey released today by the National Association for Business Economics -- seem to agree, though Lester Jones, chief economist, National Wholesale Beer Association  and a member of NABE's survey committee, notes that the imbalance between loose fiscal policy and tight monetary policy has economists worried about how things might turn after the election. David Trainer, president of New Constructs, puts Lyft back into The Danger Zone -- for the fourth time since 2019 --  noting that

Brij Khurana, fixed income portfolio manager at Wellington Management, says that if either political party sweeps the election in November -- winning the presidency and control of Congress and the Senate -- the result will be higher bond yields, because the market will price in greater financing of deficits, but he notes that a divided government, the market will price in a bigger fiscal contraction regardless of who the president is, bringing yields down. Khurana says the Federal Reserve should already have been cutting interest rates but will start next month, although he is expecting a slow, methodical cutting process rather than knee-jerk cuts in response to any data changes. On the stock side of the investment world, Matt Harris, chief investment officer at The Hausberg Group says that the volatility that surfaced early in August hasn't given him any reason to distrust the trend, which remains intact on a long-term basis and which he does not think will be broken despite heightened volatility between now

Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.com, digs into the site's latest credit-card debt survey, which says that half of American credit cardholders are now carrying debt month-to-month, up six percentage points from the start of the year and the higher level since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. 50% carry debt month to month. This figure is up 6 percentage points from January and is the highest figure seen since March 2020. Rossman discusses the current numbers for credit-card debt nationally, noting that while candidates have focused on the total of more than $1.4 trillion, the way the Federal Reserve calculates credit-card debt clearly includes a lot of consumers who are not financially challenged. With the likelihood of interest rate cuts coming as soon as next month, Todd Rosenbluth, the head of research at VettaFi, turns to the municipal bond space to pick his ETF of the Week; Burns McKinney, senior portfolio manager at NFJ Investment Group, brings his style of "modern value investing"

Tim Hayes, chief global investment strategist at Ned Davis Research, says the Federal Reserve has gotten inflation under control and is ready to start cutting, which will create an environment that favors stocks. That should make last week's sudden spike in volatility and nervousness a blip, likely forgotten quickly.  Hayes talks about how the shift from rate hiking to rate cutting will impact investment strategy, noting that the improved environment for stocks should help broaden out the number of securities driving things higher. Susan Fahy, executive vice president at VantageScore discusses the firm's most recent CreditGauge, which shows the country is "reaching a potential turning point in consumer credit health." Plus, Glenn Tompkins, senior global market strategist at VectorVest talks in the market call about finding safe, undervalued stocks that are rising in price in a rising market.

Jeanette Garretty, chief economist at Robertson Stephens Wealth Management, says that the economic fundamentals haven't changed despite recent headlines and heightened market volatility, but she says the time has come for the Federal Reserve to acknowledge that the economy has slowed but that inflation will remain above the 2 percent target for a while. She notes that whoever wins the presidential election likely will be presiding over an economy in recession, though she expects it to be mild, but she does point out that there are potential issues that could make the troubles worse. Gregory Harmon, president of Dragonfly Capital Management, says the market's recent volatility spike was just a summer non-event, and that the real move was the expanded breadth the market saw in July; he expects that to return, potentially bringing the market back to new highs, as the market regains its footing. Sarah Foster discusses a recent Bankrate.com survey in which more than one-third of U.S. workers say they're living pay

Aaron Dunn, co-head of the value equity team at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, says that growth stocks are unlikely to beat value in a higher inflationary environment with higher rates, creating a nice tailwind for value, particularly because he expects inflation and high interest rates to remain sticky. He expects a synchronized rate-easing cycle across the globe, which makes him interested in taking a longer-term look at cyclical areas like energy and industrials. Christine Kieffer, senior director of investor education at FINRA discusses the agency's recent alert warning investors of support-center scams, where investors looking for help from their brokerage or mutual fund company do a search for the firm's help desk and wind up being directed to fake sites where their money and/or data is ripped off. David Trainer of New Constructs puts BILL Holdings back in the Danger Zone, reaffirming the company's status as a zombie stock and a Danger Zone pick, noting that investors should not be fooled by reve

Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide, says that despite the recent fears over economic numbers that sent the stock market scrambling last year, the economy is now set up for "a softer soft landing," especially if the federal Reserve cuts rates by at least 0.75 percent by the end of the year. Phillip Carlsson-Szlezak, global chief economist at BCG, says there is "nothing in the numbers today that is consistent with recession," and he notes that the big sell-off at the start of the week did not signal any sort of change in the fundamentals; that's part of a broader discussion of his new book, "Shocks, Crises, and False Alarms: How to Assess True Macroeconomic Risk," in which he says that current fears look most like a false alarm. Jim Welsh, author of “Macro Tides” and the “Weekly Technical Review,” expects the market to rally for one more new peak before trouble arrives; he notes that 2024 is part of a 17-year cycle of trouble that dates back to 1939, which he says is setting up a recession for 2025

Andrew Foster, chief investment officer at Seafarer Capital Partners, is seeing a recovery in earnings and fundamentals in emerging markets, and that means that current events are creating froth and noise but that emerging markets should deliver over the intermediate to long-term. Foster says that investors looking to make quick trades will get burned in emerging markets, but says that the earnings recovery is broad-based by both country and by sector, which is encouraging. Foster also gives his take on China, on whether international diversification will pay off better during times of great volatility and more. Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at Bitwise Asset Management, checks in on how crypto currency — which was off more than 20 percent as the market was heading into Monday's 3 percent drawdown — has responded, and how investors should consider the volatility of crypto, particularly as they see it traded over the weekends, when most other assets are static. The market's big moves wiped out a few s

Long-time personal-finance journalist John Waggoner says that investors who have been rooting for interest rate cuts and an end to inflation should be worrying about what they will have to go through to get there, because "The best cure for inflation is a recession," and while one is coming at some point, investors need to avoid being too scared during volatile times like now, when the economy is not recessionary.  Also talking off the news, Odysseas Papadimitrou, chief executive officer at WalletHub.com discusses the site's "2024 Google Search Results Study," which evaluates whether Google is really returning the best, most relevant and useful results for users, and puts the results -- which show that most consumers are losing over $200 a year to the results of Google searches -- in the context of this week's headlines over antitrust charges leveled at Google. Plus, finance professor Meir Statman returns to the show to discuss his latest book, "A Wealth of Well-Being: A Holistic Approach to Behavioral Financ

With the market melting down Monday and suffering its worst loss in over two years, Bill Stone, chief investment officer at Glenview Trust, says that wary investors are justifiably nervous, but they shouldn't be distracted from their long-term goals, which means staying diversified and invested and looking for opportunities. Stone does warn that the well-publicized opportunities in artificial intelligence may be a bit overblown now; while he believes AI technology will reshape industry and deliver on its enormous potential, he thinks the market has gotten ahead of itself in terms of valuing AI plays. That sentiment is shared by hedge-fund manager Lukasz Tomicki, managing partner at LRT Capital Management, who says in the Market Call segment that he is avoiding most artificial intelligence plays now, noting that the AI "frenzy" has created unreasonable valuations and expectations. Plus, economist Paul Collier discusses his new book, “Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places,” which was released today

Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at BankRate.com, says the details of Friday's jobs report "were the unmistakable signs of a slowing economy," and while a slowdown was expected based on recent trends in the indicators, the latest numbers spooked the market into thinking "maybe this economy isn't as robust we thought, maybe it's slowing a little more than we thought." He notes that the conditions are still far from anything that could be described as awful — the payroll number was still positive — but now the market wants more data to see if the Federal Reserve will have to take more strident steps to avoid a hard landing. David Trainer, president at New Constructs, puts cloud software provider Five9 Inc. in The Danger Zone, noting that the company just made moves to raise cash and get it off the firm's "zombie stock list," but those moves make it more likely that the company is in a business spiral that it can't escape without changing its history of operating losses. Plus, Chuck answers a question from

Craig Callahan, chief executive officer at ICON Advisers, says that since mid-July the market has been entering a "new market with a new theme and new leadership," rotating towards small-cap stocks and broadening out. Beyond small companies, Callahan's value-driven analysis currently favors dividend-paying stocks, gas utilities, life and health and property/casualty insurers too. In the NAVigator segment,  Duncan Farley, portfolio manager on the Developed Markets Special Situations team at RBC BlueBay Asset Management — the manager of the BlueBay Destra International Event-Driven Credit Fund — says  "We're looking at a multi-year high in default rates" and discusses how that will change the credit markets. Plus, Patrick Healey, founder and president at Caliber Financial Partners, talks stock investing now in the Market Call.

Noah Wise, senior portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments — in one of two interviews focused around Wednesday's Federal Reserve announcement that rate cuts are nearly certain to start next month — says that the economic data has been so strong that it has become "a no-brainer" to cut, which is the ideal situation for making a move in a politically charged environment with a presidential election in sight. He expects the Fed to keep cutting so long as the data keeps moving in the right directions, which positions the current trend to carry well into 2025 without anything worse than a soft landing to disrupt the market. Also discussing the Fed's Wednesday announcement is Dominique Lapointe, director of macro strategy at Manulife Investment Management, who thinks that rate cuts will be a positive but that even if they extend into next year they won't be enough to stop a slow down in the U.S. economy, instead softening the blow of a downturn and blunting its impact when it finally hits. Plus, Todd Rosen

Geoff Dailey, head of U.S. equities at BNP Paribas Asset Management, says in The Big Interview that he thinks "Any pullback should be bought" right now, noting that concerns over the economy, inflation, the strength of the consumer and more will add some volatility but are not likely to derail the market. Meanwhile, he notes that "small-caps in particular are poised for strong performance," noting that a huge valuation gap has emerged between those large-cap companies and the small-cap companies, probably the biggest discount we have seen going back to the financial crisis [of 2008]." He expects the market to broaden out and for small companies to benefit, though he also noted that he prefers large-cap U.S. multi-nationals to going after international investments, noting the market conditions are strong enough to keep domestic stocks ahead of foreign counterparts. Also on the show, behavioral finance expert Meir Statman discusses the emotional issues that have investors ignoring strong economic numbers to see

Marty Fridson, chief investment officer at Lehmann Livian Fridson Advisors, says that while politics dominates the news, it shouldn't be creeping into investors' portfolio moves, as available research shows that market results have proven to be better by riding the market regardless of the party that holds the White House than by trying to strategize around the results of a vote. Fridson also discusses how the current rally in artificial intelligence is reminiscent of the Internet Bubble Days, in that a lot of companies are now benefitting from the market's perception that all AI is good, but that it will soon figure out that many companies getting a boost from the trend aren't the true beneficiaries from it.    Ming Jong Tey, principal trainer at Trade Precise, says the market is at an inflection point, moving away from the Standard & Poor's 500 and the Nasdaq 100 into the small-cap space, and he sees the Russell 2000 currently on a run that shoul;d push it to where it soon challenges previous record hi

Vincent Reinhart, chief economist and macro strategist at Dreyfus - Mellon, says investors should "Never count out recessions," but he notes that the chances of one happening amid current economic strength are low, less than the 15 percent of the time that recessions normally happen. Moreover, he notes that recessions now and in the future may not look the way recessions did before the turn of the century.  New York Times columnist Peter Goodman discusses his new book, "How The World Ran Out of Everything," Bryce Colburn of USA Today Blueprint talks about a recent survey on the "junk fees" that Americans hate the most and, in The Danger Zone, Kyle Guske of New Constructs revisits retailer Wayfair, a zombie stock that may have what shoppers need but which should have investors shopping for alternatives unless they're shopping for a total loss.

Zach Jonson, chief investment officer at Stack Financial Management, says that while the stock market has been moving to record highs, "it wasn't healthy." He says that market valuations are overblown, with concentration in the index being more of a concern than at any time in history, which means that current conditions are lining up with some rare time periods, most notably the tech bubble days of the late 1990s, which ended turning ugly when the bubble burst. That's in contrast with the view from Eric Wallerstein, chief markets strategist at Yardeni Research, who says the Dow Jones Industrial Average will reach 60,000 and the Standard & Poor's 500 will hit 8,000 before the end of the current decade, and while that run could end up ugly at that point, any downturns in the interim are buying opportunities. Plus, John Cole Scott, president of Closed-End Fund Advisors — chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance — provides an update on what's happened with closed-end funds through the first half of

Eric Crittenden, chief investment officer at Standpoint Asset Management, says the market has weakened to where there are no "great, super-strong trends out there," but he thinks the market is entering a transition period where new trends will start and emerge. That transition may not include a recession, Crittenden says, because "the algebra says to me that it's going to be hard to have a recession," due to the government actions that have staved it off and made it hard to forecast what's next. Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, goes with something new as his ETF of the Week focuses on one of the nine new Ethereum funds that debuted earlier this week. Chip Lupo discusses the 2024 Money and Relationships Survey from WalletHub, which showed that nearly 40 percent of Americans have a financial account that their partner doesn’t know about. In the Market Call, Mike Bailey, director of research at FBB Capital Partners, discusses "beat and replace" investing.

Jeffrey Hirsch, chief executive at Hirsch Holdings and editor of the Stock Trader's Almanac — which tracks stock market performance relative to presidential terms and election cycles — says that while the upcoming election is no longer a battle between two second-term presidents, the potential election of a first-term president in Kamala Harris would not result in much change for the market. While first-term presidents historically hit the ground running and make some of their most drastic moves early, Hirsch says Wall Street is prepared to adjust, which leaves him more concerned with how the market will perform late in the term — in 2026 — than he is concerned with what happens close to the election. Adam Rozencwajg, managing partner at Goehring and Rozencwajg — which specializes in investing in natural resources commodities — discusses the recent rally in natural gas and makes the unusual case for it as a play that's adjacent to the artificial intelligence boom. And speaking of "AI-adjacent" investment pote

Dec Mullarkey, head of investment strategy and asset allocation for SLC Investments, says investors are "pretty risk-on," meaning they expect the economy is headed to an environment where rates will settle down at reasonable levels and consumers will keep spending, creating a sound environment for investors. That extends to Europe and some international markets, which will help balance a portfolio that may be impacted by a downturn late in the year, but Mullarkey says any downturn is likely to be a buying opportunity because current conditions can't keep the market down for long. That general market optimism through volatility and a correction is shared by Michele Schneider, director of trading education at MarketGauge.com, who expects heightened volatility but who sees the market likely being higher at the end of the year, with 6,000 — up about 8 percent from current levels on the Standard & Poor's 500 — being a level the market will challenge. Plus, Jonathan Smucker, portfolio manager at Marietta Invest