This is Bloomberg Business Wait inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radiog.
The Bird.
All right, everybody, we're going to stay with the jobs report. As we said, the number coming in certainly non farm payroll softer than forecast, the unemployment rate coming in as forecasts, but we did see an uptick when it comes to average hourly earnings and also average weekly hours work. So let's get to it and see what our round table has to say. Matt Elena Schaletiev a senior US economist
at BNP Parrybach. She joins us in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio along with our Steve Matthews, Economics reporter Bloomberg News. He's out there in Atlanta bureau, Steve.
Elena.
Happy Friday, Elena. Great to see you back here at Bloomberg headquarters. So talk to us about the report. Let's go through today before we start looking forward. How did you assess the numbers that we got today?
Well, this was a classic example of don't change your podcast on ADP, right, so that that's the first thing that comes off, right, they were off They track, you know, things differently. But this report is telling us that things are slowing down, they continue to slow down, that nothing is urgent, recession is not imminent. But at the same time, there was signs of weakness in this report. And Matt,
you listed a lot of good things. Let me tell you, like, there were a few weak things in there as well.
So what was the weakest thing?
I mean, if you look Carol's talking about temporary work, which I agree, if you look at that chart at snow Bueno, but what did you what did you focus?
In addition to that, you should look at aggregatao's worked for the second quarter in aggregate, So if you look at that, you see that every getas worked only grew zero point one percent quorer on quarter seasonally adjusted annual rate.
It's because everybody's using AI, we don't have to work as hard. That's disappointment.
Yeah, that's that's a disappointment. That number is correlated really well with GDP growth, So that is telling us that economic growth is slowing down. So we're at one and a half percent in terms of GDP projections for Q two. We'll get the number pretty soon actually, and then you know what happens in the second quarter. We think that we're going to go into a downturn.
And so when you think a second quarter growth is going to show one percent one and a half, which is kind of amazing because it doesn't that feels like nothing or sounds like nothing, but it doesn't feel like nothing, right, Not.
One and a half percent is pretty good. I mean the first quarter was one point three percent until all of a sudden it.
Was two right well, and especially it's an annualized number as well, So you just like divided.
By Steve, jump in here and tell us what you read on this report is with regards to the Federal Reserve that you cover so closely.
Well, the Feds will see this report as basically confirming their plans to hike in July. I mean, they had been pretty much set to hike. And there's nothing in this report that's going to change your mind that you have. You know, job there are, as you laya points out, there are some weaknesses in the report, but on balance, job creation is still running much higher than trend, much
higher than the trend that they want to see. You see the unemployment rate going down, you see wages, average hourly earnings, you know, rising hours for this month rising. So it's like there are like lots of points where you know, the hawks can look at this and say, hey, this confirms our view of where the economy is. The goal of the Fed right now is to create trend growth and that would reduce pricing pressure, and they would like to see some small increase in the unemployment rate.
That's not happening. This report is more consistent with very solid growth and a solid labor market. And so July, you know, absent there being some shock in the consumer price index next week, July is set that they're going to hike by a quarter quarter point. And the real question is what happens in September and November and December. And you know, there's a lot of interest among the FMC in hiking at least one more time beyond July.
I totally agree with Steve that July is right there, there's no question about that, and average earlie earnings growth totally supports that. The question is about what happens next, And I think this Job's report alleviates some pressure that they need to absolutely they need to feel they need to go in September and or November.
Is that?
WHOA?
So I think.
Really they I think they will raise rates.
No, no, no, they alleviate the pressure for them to do that. Okay, So I think that you know that July hike will be the last one. They will reach the terminal rate there and by the time we get to the September and November meeting there will there won't be any need to do more.
Hikes, number of talks and pausing, they'll just be done.
So one and done is You're done.
That's our focus, Steve, in a market environment and a world where I feel like we've been all over the map already here in twenty twenty three in terms of interest rate expectations.
You agree with you, Elena, I think that is a very reasonable take. And in fact that Eric Rosngren, the former head of the Boston FED, who is known as a hawk, when he was at the Boston Fed, which was only I guess two years ago, he was saying one and done. So it's like, you know, that's there is definitely a segment of the FED that will be on board with that, there are one or two people, including Raphael Bostic of the Atlanta FED, who say no
more hikes. So you know, right now there are pieces of the data that you can look at and say, you know, the economy is resilient, it's strong, you know, you're still seeing a lot of momentum, and then there are, as Jolina points out, there are some areas of weakness. So you're going to see some splintering between the hawks
and the doves. It's been amazing that Chair Powell has been able to pull off, you know, this big increase in rates without there being any descents in recent months, and you know you might start to see some splintering as you get near the end of this rate cycle.
And we kind of saw that in the in the minutes a little bit, right, absolutely, So maybe.
I think he's going to want to try and keep decisions unanimous, right, even if they don't agree up until the point that he convinces them to agree for the sake of unanimity, which seems like.
We know there's crimps to me.
But Ylene, let me ask you about the Economic Surprise Index, and we have obviously on the Bloomberg ECSU, but there are other economic surprise indexes, and they're all, you know, sky high. I mean, if you take out you know, the very beginning of the pandemic, when we just started dumping trillions of dollars out of helicopters. We haven't seen the economic surprise index this high since twenty seventeen.
Is that going to turn around?
Now?
Is this the moment?
I think we may be seeing the moment, especially in the labor market. I think there are a lot of questions about how the data are reported, like in terms of seasonality and everything. So one thing we haven't talked about is seasonality of payrolls. We have seen significant support from seasonal factors in the first half of the year, but by definition, if seasonality pushes it up, it should push it down in the second half of the year.
And I think we saw turned intoday's data as the seasonal fact is starting to subject a little bit more. I think we will see more of that in July, in September, and I think we did see you turn in the labor market.
All right, So let's move forward to next week and the CPI report. Steve, how important, I know, you know, I feel like every FED chief has their favorite Inflation Indicator CPI isn't necessarily it, but it's still an important one, right.
CPI is very important. It's not the official target for the FED, but it comes before the PCE index and it's super super important. And what's going to be interesting next week is the overall the headline number is going to come down to maybe if you look at the Bloomberg consensus three point one percent. It could be some have it as low as three percent. These are the lowest numbers in more than two years. The Fed's going to be focused on core inflation, excluding food and energy,
and that has been sticky. The FED has been very worried because core inflation has been very slow to come down in the first half of the year. So this is going to be key in terms of are they going to finally see some progress on core inflation. But for you know, for most Americans, the overall inflation is what matters. And if you get a number that's around three percent, that's getting really close to normal for most people.
And it's like wage gains have been in the area of six percent if you look at the Atlanta Fed's wage tracker. So people are starting with gas prices coming down people are starting to get real wage gains, so it's like that should have some kind of impact on how people feel about you know, confidence has been really bad of late.
And confidence is key, right, I mean, Yelena, how important is the consumer inflation expectation to what the Fed wants to do?
Well?
It's crucial. So and if the Fed seas inflation expectations being contained, that will just help.
They were down when the U of M number came out, right.
Yes, and gasoline prices could help if they go down a little bit from here. I think what we really the crucial point here is the label market. It's you know a little bit about inflation, a little bit about this and that, but what happens in the label market is crucial. You have to keep those you know.
Dollars coming in you have a job.
If you don't have a job, you know, that's it. You're not gonna continue spending. And things we will see will well, they will come.
I can't get I mean, it can't get much better, right, so they can only get worse. But they have to get much worse to really make a difference. I mean, three point six percent on employment.
I'm just gonna say, Barbie would already have it at two percent inflation.
Yeah you think I don't know the Barbie story.
But Steve Matthews, thank you, thank you. Have a great weekend. JOLNISCHELETTI have us so great to have you in studio again. This is Bloomberg Radio.
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Right now that we want to stay with the US labor picture because the Temporary Helps Service.
Payroll, well, yes, should I just round up what we saw in terms of the numbers today, because I think it was still a pretty amazing number. We had a change in non farm payrolls. It was a gain of two hundred and nine thousand, which normally you know, that's big game. We were looking for two hundred and thirty. That was the survey. And remember that we'd beaten in
the last fourteen months. The number beat the survey, so obviously people continue to up their numbers for the survey, and now we finally missed.
And the Temporary Help Service payroll though declined again. It is considered as a leading indicator for the unemployment rate. So let's get some thoughts on that, because with us. Back with us is Richard Walcust He's president CEO of American Staffing Association, a trade association representing the American staffing industry, and he jes us on zoom from Alexandria, Virginia. Richard,
good to have you here with Matt and myself. So remind us of your members and then what you guys are seeing when it comes to the US labor market.
Sure, hello Carol, Hello Matt. So our members are sourcing talent into every industry in the United States, including mgos, and a big piece of the business for the industry is in the government sector. The industry literally sources talent into every occupation in the United States. And you're exactly right, Carol, people take a look at our industry because we are a leading employment indicator, which is to say that traditionally, and of course every economic cycle is a little bit different,
and this one's been very much different. But traditionally, temporary help is a leading indicator when when the economy is beginning to heat back up again and employer confidence is picking back up again. We're a leading indicator as we see economic uncertainty, and so what we've been seeing over the past several months, very typical of this kind of a segment in the economic cycle, is employers have been dialing back on their use of flexible talent as a
first tier strategy. Is they're kind of taking a good hard look at what might be ahead. At the same time, we continue to hear reports that they are adding to their talent benches, and that reflects, I think confidence in what's ahead, whether we've got a bit of a soft landing, a short and shallow recession, they're confident. They want to hang onto the talent that they've.
Got right, so they're pulling back. I'm a little confused they're holding on or they're pulling back.
They're pulling back, so they're dialing back on that flexible outer ring of talent. So these are temporary and contract workers, and so they're they're dialing back on that. At the same time, we're talking to CEOs that say they still continue to get orders for full time talent. I think that the job numbers reflect the fact that we've got job openings in America. The Jolts numbers indicate we've got one point six job openings for every unemployed job seeker.
But here's the other thing, Matt and Carroll. Not everyone that's seeking a job has got the skills that employers currently need. So I'm hearing from our members that the talent is still a scarce commodity in terms of certain skill sets in certain industries.
Are you hearing that people are coming back in the labor force who had been sitting it out during the pandemic. Elena Shiliyev was just with us from BNP Perrybond. She was saying, you know, women especially are starting to come back into the labor force.
Now.
Women have actually been the winners Matt over the last couple of the BLS reports, we're seeing uptick in terms of number of women that are part of the labor force. Labor force participation rates are stagnant. I mean they haven't really moved much in the last several months, and they continue to be well below the levels that we saw pre pandemic, roughly running in the levels we saw in the nineteen seventies. In fact, matters a lot of people
have left the labor force. If we were running the same labor force participation rate as we were pre pandemic, we'd have another two million workers in the labor force or actively seeking work. So, yes, women have been a winner here. Employment amongst the minorities, especially Black Americans is ticked down.
A little bit.
Well yeah, actually, you know, we had some stories that black workers accounting for ninety percent of the recent US unemployment jump. So you know, once again we're seeing as things maybe get changed a little bit, or we start to maybe potentially be at a transitional point, potentially maybe in the labor force that once again, you know, some
of the minority groups being hit the hardest. So, Richard, the reason we like talking with folks like you is you have these industry members and so you get a good cross sampling of what's going on. So do your members talk a lot about recession? Just trying to figure out kind of where As we had a SoundBite from the head of Marathon Asset Management saying that you typically don't see the unemployment rate go up until after we are in a recession. So I'm just curious, are they
talking about recession? Are they concerned about it? Just curious.
So the level of concern always concerned about a downturn that turns into an absolute recession. But the level of confidence in the state of the economy has gone up, I think exponentially, Caroll, over the last eighteen months, people have been talking about that recession. It's going to happen six months from now, six months from now. But between labor markets and consumers spending stubbornly, pieces of the economy
just aren't cooperating with some of the forecasts. Back to the labor of force participation rate, I think what's most encouraging is that in the twenty five to fifty four year old segment considered to be prime workers, that labor force participation rate has actually gone up. But around the people that are on the sidelines, younger workers and older workers.
Way too many of them on the sidelines, and I think that should be a priority for both the public sector and the private sector to find ways to bring these folks back. In regarding minority employees, well.
We had a great piece on the Bloomberg yesterday, the Bloomberg Big Take, I believe it was, and it was just talking about all the factories that are being built in the United States, but that the technical skills you know that there are workers that you know that they're going to be needed in those factories, but they're not going to have the technical skills to take on those jobs. And I'm just is that part of what you guys are working on.
Or absolutely a very big way. So the upskilling and the reskilling the retraining of America has become a priority in most sectors, and our industry is working both with the clients and with government to find ways to make it really a reality. We've given lip service to lifelong learning for as long as we've been part of the labor for us, but we have never seen so many
changes within occupations. And the big change is now that employers are really focusing on skills, not so much job descriptions, not so much degrees that have long been associated with kind of entry level requirements to get a foot in the door, really focusing on skills and within the skill sets, then going in and saying, look, we're going to have
to do some upscilling here. In terms of the impact that technology is having on now we believe, you know, some thirty five percent of jobs, It's going to impact some sixty five percent of jobs over the next few years and it's got to be an absolute priority, all right.
Could I leave it on that note, Richard, have a good week. And Richard Walquist he is President and chief executive officer of American Staffing Association on zoom in Virginia. You know, Matt, you know, we'll see what happens. I feel like, you know, companies have been afraid to let go of workers, right, We've talked about worker hoarding and so and so overk because they're wried about being able to replace those workers. But we'll see. Thinks you to slow down.
Well, the interesting thing I think is hours worked, as Julena Shuley gave it pointed out. Once she did, I started digging a little bit deeper into it. It just haven't hasn't expanded in the second quarter. And I made a little bit of a joke about AI kind of taking some of the productivity away. But that's what you're going to start seeing in yea probably the not too distant future. You know.
I'm also thinking about I was at a store yesterday here in New York City and I checked myself out and it was a clothing retailer that I've never done that before. But it's just I think you have more and more places that just can't find workers, and so they're automating.
Stuff right where they want to do it that way, right.
Yeah, or they want to do it that way exactly. And I thought that was pretty wild.
That is what the clothing store.
I'm not going to tell you.
Oh come on, I'm not going to tell you. All right, well, maybe you'll tell you.
But I actually had to take off the security sense like it was crazy.
That's nuts.
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All right, well today, JP Morgan out doubting that a US bitcoin ETF would be a game changer, Matt. They noted that such funds have existed in Canada and Europe for years already, and that bitcoin funds overall have attracted little investor interest.
And yet, yes, well you know what, there were a ton of inflows to crypto ETFs last month, over five hundred million dollars which doesn't sound like that much, granted, but there were outflows in the year before that, so it's turned around, even if it's not a titanic size yet.
All right, But what they're saying that these things have been around overseas bitcoin ETFs and not a ton of fun a ton of yelo exactly.
I mean, it's not huge, but I'm just saying.
You can see a change in direction. And after Blackrock and others started filing ETF application.
Which is what we want to talk about. We've got a great guest for our weekly look at the World of Crypto with US is Swan Bitcoin Managing director Terrence Yang on Zoom from La Terrence, Hey, nice to have you here with Matt and me. So what do you think of bitcoin ETF and moves by Blackrock and Fidelity and others when it comes to a spot bitcoin and tf ARC has definitely been out there for a long time on that, so.
Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
I think that the JP Morgan's of the world may be underestimating.
How bullish this is.
Why because even though gold dtfs did not cause a big that big of a jump in the gold market cap, when the gold dtfs arrived and Bitcoin with So the argument is the Bitcoin great scale trust.
Right, GBT already.
Has a big market cap and so therefore, if you look at the gold ETFs and compare what Blackrock and Fidelity and Invesco are doing and others, that maybe there's not much room for Bitcoin to grow. I think that's incorrect. Why because gold has been around for thousands of years, It's globally accepted by the time the gold etf came out. For Bitcoin to have this kind of institutional support from the top trad five players Blackrock, Fidelity, Invesco and others is massive.
This comes, by the way, in the face of the SEC.
Going back to back against Coinbates and Finance a month ago.
But not for Bitcoin, right.
I mean, the SEC is after those operators for what they consider to be securities, and I can imagine I can see that point of view. Even if you argue their commodities, you have to admit that they could look
like securities, and a lot of them are just blatant securities. Bitcoin, however, the SEC has been very clear about it is not a security, and I can't understand any reason they would have to fight against a bitcoin ETF unless they think that the price of the underlying commodity is being manipulated, and that is.
The core of the issue.
Bitcoin is a commodity, It does not meet the elements of how we test it's decentralized.
Even Larry Fink.
Who five years ago, the CEO of Blackrock, five years ago said bitcoin was basically garbage, has now come around and said Bitcoin is digitizing goal and is a global
commodity or global asset. On your point about the market manipulation, the SEC Division of Markets and Trading does need to get comfortable that these surveillance sharing agreements that Black Croc, Fidelity and all the others including ARC and Kathy Woods, all their ETF applications, new submissions, resubmissions, they all have these surveillance sharing agreements where they're looking at coin dates, they're looking at Nasdaq to make sure that there's no price manipulation.
Here's the question, is the SEC going.
To prove this in light of the fact that Chinese exchanges, I hate to say it, including Binance, okay Coin, and Hoby, continue to do what looks like significant wash trading and price manipulation.
We'll see.
So I think it's an open question as to whether or not the spot bitcoin ETF gets approved soon. It will eventually happen. But yeah, the key issue is the market manipulation.
So do you think, Terrence, that those.
Organizations you just mentioned are actively men manipulating the price of bitcoin, you know, anymore than some giant banks may actively manipulate the price of silver and gold.
Possibly more so because even though, for example, JP Morgan has been caught manipulating certain precious metals and fined heavily, these are non US entities that use a lot of.
Tricks and ways to avoid.
We should point out that these are these are allegations. It's not there, they are not uncommon.
I would say, I don't conspiracy theory. I don't. I mean that sort of paints it with a nasty brush theory.
But I'm just saying that they're they're allegations because we can't say that, you know, you can't make.
Them for sure.
But if I were a betting man, and I am, I would bet a lot of money that the Chinese exchanges are manipulating the bitcoin price.
It's it's very hard to prove, right, but fight a bet.
Yeah, But so do you think.
Now people went were convicted and like, I mean.
Yes, yeah, for sure. So yeah, you're talking about the JP Morgan or Silver Ye.
Yeah.
But but in terms of the surveillance agreements, do you think that they're gonna be Is surveillance gonna do much here? I mean, if if we can't really pinpoint what's happening in terms of potential or alleged market manipulation, is coinbased surveillance gonna be able to do any better?
Especially since US Chinese relationships are so good right now? Sarcasm I'm sorry, yeah, a little sarcasm.
They can help, right, So the argument is that if you have a surveillance agreement sharing agreement with a big enough exchange such as coinbase having significant market share the bitcoin market, maybe that's enough. I personally think the SEC made is they have an inconsistency right where they approved futures US futures Bitcoin ETFs but not spot, arguing that the futures bitcoin prices were regulated on the CME and
so forth. But at the end of the day, they all link back to bitcoin, and the price if it's manipulated in one sector, does impact another sector. So I think it's going to be short term bullish until the market maybe figures out that a spot bitcoin ETF maybe a little bit further away than people think.
Can I ask your expectation for the price?
I mean, I know it's a silly parlor game, but you did made a very good point. You did make a very good point, Terrence. You know, if if all of the bullish money right now is already in GBTC, you know, then why would someone is massive, a behemoth like Blackrock want a file for an ETF. They must think that thirty thousand is not the limit.
That there's one possibility, a very rational basis for doing so. Another possibility that I think is more probable is Blackrock and the others are betting on the fact the non zero chance a significant risk that the SEC will lose, including on appeal the litigation with Grayscale and GBDC. Right, so, Greyscale is suing the SEC saying we want to be able to have a spot bitcoin ETF, you should let us convert, and the SEC is saying no.
So we'll see what the courts says.
So if the court's rule in favor of Grayscale, that is going to open the floodgates for Blackrock and Fidelity and others to be like, hey, we're much more credible. We've been around longer than Grayscale and very sober and his shenanigans arguable allegedly, And we want our bitcoin ETF.
SPOTYTF approved as well.
Why because they see opportunity, why not file or refile?
Well, like you said about the credibility of something like a black Rock or Fidelity and just got about thirty thirty five seconds. But I do think about those folks going down to DC with their deep pockets and lobbying efforts, I mean, and a lot more influence.
Correct, yes, a lot more influence.
However, I don't expect a spot bitcoin ETF to be approved for anybody, black Rock or otherwise by your end. But eventually, within two years, absolutely it will be approved.
So just a timing issue in my opinion.
Hey listen, great, Yeah, Well I was going to say, great to have you on the program, Terrence, and I hope you'll come on my Bloomberg Crypto show as well.
I'd love to thank you.
That that is weekly Tuesdays at one pm on Bloomberg Television.
Hashtag shameless plug.
Thank you, but we love it. Terrence Yang.
You are great managing director at Swan Bitcoin, joining us on Zoom from Los Angeles, California. No, really smart conversation, right, and very specific in terms of what's going on on there. Brother Mark.
A journal how about you let me drive?
No, no, no, no, who's going to drive?
Honey?
Please, I'll do the riding gravels.
Let's mate, I want to try it. It's a good question.
This is the drive to the globe dot com commute.
We'll buy around on Bluebirg Radio.
All right, everybody, just under eighteen minutes left in today's trading session, getting ready to wrap up the Friday trade as well as the shortened holiday, shortened trading week, and we've had Ecuy's kind of bouncing around here, and same thing for the treasury trade coming off of that monthly jobs report. We've got a great market guest and looking forward to see what he has to say and joining with us. Joining us right now, I should say, is
Vance Howard. He's chief executive officer and portfolio manager at the registered investment advisor Howard Capital Management Management on Zoom. It is a Friday on Zoom from Texas fans. Good to have you back with us, and I should point out several of your funds, the tactical growth ninetieth percent all over the past three years, the income plus fund and the ninety eighth percentile year to date the HCM dividends sector plus ninety six percent all of the past
five years. So some really outstanding performance.
You're killing it.
We like to see performers. We like that real numbers. How's this environment? How do you describe it? Right now?
I think you've reached a new bull market. You know, the trend went higher in January. We're one hundred percent invested.
Now.
I'm bullish, and I'm pretty optimistic about the outcome for the next two quarters.
Of the year.
You know, whenever you have the market up ten percent or more in the first two quarters of the year, the odds are very very hot that the last two quarters will be hiringy from eight to ten to twelve percent. There's a lot of reasons for this, but we're bullish. We'ree hundred percent invested. Now that we're invested, we're starting to rotate our money to different sectors that we think will out perform, are different stocks, and we're very optimistic.
So, I mean, the S and P has already had had a pretty killer year, right, Can it really get much better? Or do you expect, you know, the narrow breadth to simply broaden out.
I think the narrow break going to start to broaden out. I mean, clearly it's been led by five or six stocks, but you could start to see that starting to broaden out now. And you look at you know, breakouts like Visa and other, you know, Boise Cascade broke out in the construction area, and some of those stocks are looking very attractive to us. I think it's going to broaden out. I think I think there's five point five trillion of
cash on the sidelines. You've got enough cash to fuel this thing much much higher than what it is now. I think there's more cash on the sidelines than they're war in two thousand and eight, and coming out of two thousand and eight, you almost had a decade long bullmarket.
Well, let me ask you something, avounce. You know, when you've got a ten year at four oh six, a two year at four nine, so just below five percent, you know, that starts to look kind of interesting, you know, for an equity investor, and maybe without some of the you know, problematic concerns about higher rates and what it does for acid valuation. So what's your argument, you know, income versus the equity play.
Well argument, I mean, I know, I know we've got an inverted deal, Kurt, I see it just like everybody else does, and we may end up having a mild procession. I know, I don't know. Nobody can really predict that. Everybody's trying to gain that right now. But you've got to trade what's actually happening in the market. This is one of the biggest mistakes I think fund managers investors make is they want to predict instead of looking at
what's happening right this minute, because that's all we know. Well, right this minute, the trend's up. You got to be in until the trend changes, you know. Stick with that thesis and I think you'll make a whole lot of money going forward.
So what's the best strategy. You run a number of different strategies. But what do you like right now?
For uh?
Are you looking for games you know, capital appreciation here or are you looking to conserve?
You like dividends? What? What? What? What's most interesting to you?
Well, we don't have a lot of high dividend paying stocks or value stocks, right now because they're just not working as well. They worked well last year in the nasty bear market, but right now you've got to play what's working and that that's that's megacap, that's tech, and you've got to stay right there until that that changes some of the sectors that are working a little bit
over the past handfull of days. Not that we own that much of energy, but again, trade what's work and do more what's working less and what's not and you know, make a CAP's work and text working. And you know, everybody's always trying to find the next silver bullet here, but sometimes the obvious is where you need to be. And that's the obvious.
So why do you need to be in Monster Beverage right now?
You know?
I like the little stock. I think that it did reasonably well. It's had a couple of acquisitions. I think it's a little bit of one of those stocks that appears to be broadening out. I like the technicals on it. And you know, how long will we own it, whether we own it a week, a year, you know, who knows. We'll see what it happened, what happens with that topic.
But you own it now?
Right we have a little piece ships, So you like that, you like Visa. What was the other stock you mentioned, Bioten.
You know, I really like Boise Cascades, Bois cast Cad, little company with you know, symbols, BCC, but it broke out of a nice fifty two week of high. Now I love fifty two week highs, guys, I love them.
I love them. I love them.
Let me tell you why you cannot double your money without a stock breaking out to new fifty two week high all the times. It's pretty pretty hard to do. But they're a construction company. They sell construction supplies. They've got a great balance sheet, well managed. I think construction is going to do well even if we hit a recession ary environment. What happens with building materials, Well, people
have to fix their own homes. They've got to go out and buy different two by fours and paint and calk, and these are the kind of things that they sell.
So it's really interesting because you know, we spend so much time talking about Macro. It kind of makes me a little crazy because who the heck knows ultimately how
it's going to play out. But what you're saying is, look at the technical is look at the fundamentals of some of these names, and I am curious, do you think earnings this earning season is potentially going to be something that can provide some momentum upside downside, because we're going to start getting some more specifics on each of these companies.
That's a great question too. And I think that the earnings came out really quite well over the past couple of months, past couple of quarters, and they do not seem to be slowing down. You know, you had a strong, strong jobs market, so that means plenty of people have jobs out there. There's plenty of money being made, a lot of cash on the sidelines. I don't see that their interest rate being risen the way that it is
is affecting earnings at all. I think that these companies are making money hand over fist, and I think people need to really focus in on that, and I think they really need to try to stay away from the negative and look at the positive, because if we are in a new bull market, the best gains are in the beginning phases of a new bull market.
I got it.
Speaking of bulls, I got to ask you about cattle. We have seen a lot of well the hottest month on record in June. Right, we've seen a lot of farmers rotate out of soy in the cork corn so feed is more expensive, the herds are smaller, and you have.
Some cattle yourself. Right, We've seen the prices just soar this year, beef prices. Have you have a take on that?
I do have a take. I just had four baby longhorns about two weeks ago. So I've got four baby long horns on the ground right now. And yeah, yeah, have prices are doing well cattle. You know, it is hot here in Texas, but you know, cattle new fine in hot weather. We're fine with that.
I was just wondering about because we we look at the price increases, not just for beef but also for pork. It's done really well. Everybody's trying to switch over to chicken right now. They're a lot easier to raise. But I just think this is something that's getting a lot more attention than it typically does on Wall Street.
Well, that's an interesting question. Usually people don't ask me about the ranch.
I could say that's why we love Matt Hey Vance Real quickly, I'm looking at your tactical growth fund. I get it. There's a lot of tech in there, the qqqs and Vidia Meta. I mean, you're really all in on technology, aren't you.
And it's working. It's working this year. You know, we got our first boss signal in January, so we started moving back into the market. We were heavy into cash last year. Last year was a very challenging market to trade do the volatility, and we did our best to trade through it. That did a fairly decent job. But when you look at the relative strength, you've got to
go into tech. You've got to go into a m D. You know, I've been telling people about a video back when there was a one hundred and forty a share.
Yeah, Microsoft, Apple, these are all in that fun Hey listen, I'm always fun to catch up with you and talk tech, her talk cattle. It's always they, I know, Van Howard of Howard Capital Management while joining us on Zoom and Texas. This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
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