Instant Reaction: Jay Powell on the Fed Decision - podcast episode cover

Instant Reaction: Jay Powell on the Fed Decision

Jul 30, 202532 min
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Episode description

Bloomberg's Tom Keene, Jonathan Ferro and Lisa Abramowicz discuss remarks from Fed Chair Jay Powell following the Federal Reserve's latest policy decision on a special edition of Bloomberg Surveillance|

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said interest rates are in the right place to manage continued uncertainty around tariffs and inflation, tempering expectations for a rate cut in September.
“There are many, many uncertainties left to resolve,” Powell told reporters Wednesday following the central bank’s decision to once again keep rates unchanged. “It doesn’t feel like we are very close to the end of that process.”

The Federal Open Market Committee voted 9-2 to hold its benchmark federal funds rate in a range of 4.25%-4.5%, as they have at each of their meetings this year. Governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman voted against the decision in favor of a quarter-point cut.

Traders pared back their expectations for rate cuts as Powell spoke. Interest-rate futures indicated roughly even odds on a reduction at the next meeting in September, down from about 60% earlier in the day. Treasuries extended losses, the dollar surged to the highest since May and the S&P 500 fell.

In their post-meeting statement, officials downgraded their view of the US economy, saying “recent indicators suggest that growth of economic activity moderated in the first half of the year.” The Fed had previously characterized growth as expanding “at a solid pace.”

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2

The Chairman of the Federal Reserve his words, this was one of the better meetings that I can recall.

Speaker 3

Maybe you had to be there.

Speaker 2

In the equity market, we look like this equity's shaping up, as follows, down by about two tens of one percent on the S and P five hundred on the Nasdaq, positive by zero point zero four.

Speaker 3

The game's fading.

Speaker 2

If you check out the bond market two year, ten year, thirty year, and locking this move right here yields up at the front end of the curve by six basis points the two year three ninety three, and when you push that through foreign exchange, you get some real dollar strength.

Speaker 3

Euro dollar down to.

Speaker 2

One fourteen this afternoon and down by one four percentage point. Now, perhaps these market moves to have you more about positioning than it does about the Fed meeting itself. But there is one point attention that I think is very much worth exploring, and it's on the labor market. Governor Wallaer is making the point that this labor market is on the edge. Chairman Powell has a different view of things. Take a listen.

Speaker 4

If you look at the labor market what you see is, by many, many statistics, the labor market is kind of still in balance. It's things like quit's, you know, job openings and let alone the unemployment rate. They're all very by many measures, very similar to where they were a year ago. So you do not see weakening in the labor market.

Speaker 2

Two headlines crossing in the last forty five minutes. I think articulating the Federal Reserve chairs bias a clear bias to wait. One, the totality of the data show you've got a solid labor market, and two, inflation is further from our goal than employment.

Speaker 3

That's a chairman. It wants to wait.

Speaker 5

And that's the reason maybe why on the margins you saw yields rise as he spoke, and you saw stocks roll over. A very confusing statement, I want to say, I was trying to purse through exactly what he was saying. You don't see weakening in the labor market, but you do have downside risks. What are the downside risks? When do you start to see the materializing and what is the difference between growing downside risk and a market that clearly isn't weakening. In his view, Jah and I.

Speaker 6

Agree on the labor front. There's two Americas out there. One's Donald Trump's America, and you know, there's Jerome Powell's America. While he was warbling gaily, I went into the Bloomberg and looked at weeks unemployed back to nineteen sixty seven, past COVID passed a great financial crisis. Weeks unemployed in this country are back to a level of two thousand

and nine, and that kind of pre crisis agony. There's two Americas out there, and these two people are talking to one part here and one part there.

Speaker 3

You mentioned the President.

Speaker 2

I think that's the second part attention, one within the Fed, the other outside of the Fed. There was a note from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve on government boring costs and how the Federal Reserve doesn't take notes of what it costs the government given where interest rates aund right now, that's one of the core arguments coming out of the White House to cut of interest rights.

Speaker 5

Yeah, and it's one that is falling on deaf years as it doesn't necessarily want to be seen as monetizing the debt, right that would cause some sort of inflation surge. Theoretically, in economics, there is this idea, if you have a central bank that essentially is printing money by lowering rates or artificially suppressing the cost of borrowing in order to foster more spending by the government, that that can lead

to longer term inflation. He's pushing back against that. Does that raise the ire of the president?

Speaker 2

My mckaye was in the room. McKay is going to be with us in about five minutes time, so stemp by for that. I want to bring in the former New York Fed President Bill Duntley to join the conversation. Bill welcome to the programs. Is this a federal reserve that has the luxury of waiting?

Speaker 1

I think they have to wait because they're not really sure what's going to happen to the economy, both on the inflation side and the liver market side. And I think they have a reason to wait because, as Paul said, the unemployment rate hasn't changed. So essentially what's happened over the last six months is labor demand has slowed, but labor supply is also slowed because of immigration policy. And he was very explicit about that. He really said, focus

on the unemployment rate. It's basically in the same place as less summer. So I think, you know, the message from this, you know press conference was very clear, we're not in a rush. He also mentioned multiple times it's going to take time to figure out what the effects of the terrorists are going to be. And he also made it very clear that what he's focused on is making sure that any rise in inflation doesn't become persistent.

He really wants to keep inflation expectations in check, and one of the ways you do that is by being patient.

Speaker 5

Bill, how did you understand you don't see a weakening in the labor market, but you do have downside risks and those downside risks are growing. Can you put that together and translate it well?

Speaker 1

The way I would think about it is the payroll employment growth rate has slowed, okay, and so the keep slowing that eventually is going to be a problem. But what it hasn't happened is that labor market hasn't actually loosened up because the unplaying rates exactly where it was. So two things that have been happening together. Labor supply growth is coming down, labor demand growth is coming down. I think they're worried about the downside risk because they

do see this decline in labor demand. But it's not a problem right now because the unemployment rate hasn't moved at all.

Speaker 6

Bill Dudley, Bob Michael go was on with JP Morgan and he floored me with an eighteen percent even twenty percent modeled tariff rate. The people that aren't that sophisticated, they're listening, they're watching, and they're going back the nineteen thirties with those kind of rates. Are we leading to an economy that has the kind of tensions we knew and the nineteen thirties where the have nots struggle even more with they're all in nineteen percent terriff.

Speaker 1

Right, Well, there's a big difference. In nineteen thirties. You have a depression and then you have the tariff wars. Right, this is the tariff wars, and the economy is actually doing okay. So I think you have to think of the depression as quite different because the exwood Holiac was a reaction

to what was happening in the economy. I think it's actually a little bit worse in terms of the magnitude of the terror shock compared to the nineteen thirties because the share of imports of GDP was much lower than than it is now, so this is actually a more sizable shock.

Speaker 6

I'm fascinating to Bill, with your study of history, how our central bank should adapt to a blended nineteen percent tariff? Is there any template for where we're heading in twenty six? In twenty seven.

Speaker 1

You're explaining exactly why the Fed's being quite patient. We don't have a template for this kind of shock. We don't know how quickly it's going to pass through into inflation. We don't know how that's going to affect inflation expectations. We don't know how the uncertainty about the trade policy is going to affect a business fixed investment. So we're

in sort of uncharted territories. And when you're in uncharted territories, you want to be very cautious, and I think that's what the FED is being at this point.

Speaker 2

Governor Waller is making a different point Bill, as you know, in a recent speech, he said a large share of tariff increases won't be passed through to consumers. He went on to say the increase would fade over the next year or so. What is it about his argument that you don't find that convincing?

Speaker 1

Putting too much weight on what's happened so far as opposed to what will ultimately happen. Most of commons believe that most terrorists get passed through to the consumer in the end. That may not happen instantaneously, but that's what has happened historically, So I'm expecting a pass through. Every one percent increase in terrorists is a percent of imports is worth about a tenthuve a percent on the price level.

So if we're going from two and a half percent tariffts of imports to seventeen eighteen percent, that's about one and a half percent on the level of prices.

Speaker 5

Right now, the market's expecting that next year you're going to see a pretty big rate cutting cycle, regardless of the economic data, almost just simply because of there being a new FED chair who has a particular mandate. You can put aside the idea of whether or not you think that that's good or bad. Do you think that that will lead to higher inflation? Given the fact that right now, even if the FED remains on hold, we're talking about fifty basis points and then pushing it into next year, I.

Speaker 1

Think we should be careful not to overste date the fact that the chairman is going to change because there's twelve people on the Federal Open Market Committee, and those people aren't going to do what they think is inappropriate, so the chairman has to sort of bring along the rest of the committee. The second thing I would say is, you know, the disagreement among them in the committee isn't quite as large as people are making it to be. Pretty much everybody expects rates are going to fall over

the next couple of years. It's just a question of timing and magnitude.

Speaker 5

You've been in the committee, You've been in the room for some of these FED meetings. We heard that this was one of the better meetings. That was what FED chair J Powell said, And then he thought that it was a really robust discussion. Can you translate what that means?

Speaker 1

I think what he's saying is that we're all still friends, and we're all still getting on and we respect each other's points of view, you know. So he started he started downplaying the importance of what the descents mean, and I think that's right. I don't think the des sense our big schism in terms of the monetary policy outlook. The fact is if you look at the summary of economic projections, every single respondent expects interest rates to be lower at the end of next year.

Speaker 6

You know, we've gotten through the last hour and a half here, Bill, I have to say we haven't mentioned the dots. That's a good and beautiful thing. What are the dots do forward? Given this exceptional terriff uncertainty? I don't know how, John, how do you create a dot.

Speaker 3

Got away into September? Getting around?

Speaker 6

Well?

Speaker 1

I know, but that's that's one of the problems with the summer of econmic economic projection. It's a modal forecast, but it doesn't really tell you that much about uncertainty around that forecus and the round that forecast. It's quite large.

Speaker 6

Right now, I want to interrupt the show. John, you mentioned to me megdand Decie has died in London, the giant of London School of Economics. Bill Dudley Megnum. Decide's strength was humility. What's the humility we need right now? In two Americas a boom economy and a lot of people really struggling. What's the humility our Central Bank needs?

Speaker 1

Well? I think I think Chairman Paul does have humility. I mean that precisely why he's not cutting rates today is because he's un sure and about what the economic outlook is. So he's not pre judging what's going to happen because he doesn't want to make a mistake. So I think he's showing appropriate humility as the chair of the Fed Reserve at this point.

Speaker 2

Oh, I appreciate your time. Bill Dudley, the former New York Fed president. You mentioned DESI remember that word Hubris, Yeah, And that was the name of the book, right.

Speaker 6

A fabrious book, a short, thin monograph, and what he did with general equilibrium theory does we don't need to do it now, we're too tired from the warning shows. But the answer here is humilities in order the Alarian's unknown unknowns. That's where we are right now.

Speaker 3

We've all been humboard coming out of the pandemic.

Speaker 2

A lot of consensus calls turned out to be very, very wrong, including the Federal Reserves when it came to transitory. Have they been scarred by the transitory tory? Do you think that's why they're waiting that a little bit longer this time around to move again.

Speaker 5

If you believe that they should be cutting you could make the argument that they're not. They're waiting to see more data because they got it wrong, and that is very much what we're hearing from people like Neil Data, et cetera. At the same time, the argument that inflation has remained above two percent for so many years at

this point and you haven't seen it fall. If anything, it's actually firmed up, points out why this is still such a risk for the FED chair and why this is such a compelling artist.

Speaker 6

Just quickly here, you know, we've got to get to Mike. I can't say enough how I disagree with Oh, if we cut rates, it's a path to wherever. Just cut the rates once and see what happens. They can break the green spin.

Speaker 2

This is.

Speaker 6

Just to have a rate cut. Oh my god, I just in this uncertain time, just change your rules because half of America is flat on her back.

Speaker 2

I'm happy to give the Chamman some credit on one particular point. I think he navigates the descend pretty well in that news conference over the last sixty minutes.

Speaker 5

So so I love the interpretation. We're still friends and so you know, we can discuss and disagree, but everyone had well argued points of view. Look, he did navigate that well well by saying this is a time of uncertainty and certainty calls for robust debate, and that is what we had on this.

Speaker 6

Well we see that at Jackson Hole. I think we will.

Speaker 5

I think it will.

Speaker 6

It's going to be maybe one of the most interesting Jackson Holes.

Speaker 5

Out there, with a focus on the labor market, how much is changing and how you measure it in a very new world, not only with the immigration but also.

Speaker 6

With your it's going to be amazing.

Speaker 2

Woman you go around singing around Jackson Hole on a late night fish yeah, canoe save those stories for another day. It's that what's your canoeing impression?

Speaker 3

What was that? That nice?

Speaker 5

But that's he has never done.

Speaker 3

Oh you did like the water? Impret nice? I like that too.

Speaker 2

This comes from wilst Fargo just moments ago. Optionality maintained. I think that's the conclusion of a lot of people optionality maintaining going into the September meeting. Mike McKee was just in the room. It joins us right now for more. Mike, Welcome back to the show, sir. What was your big takeaway from the news conference?

Speaker 7

Optionality maintained. I mean, it's basically j Powell's goal. He maybe has disappointed the markets those who were leaning into a September cut just because we had the two descents for July and because it's going to provide more data between now and then. But Pole tried to make it clear that the data could go either way, and that's I think something that maybe people in the markets had sort of forgotten. The biggest issue for the FED is that the.

Speaker 3

Tariffs have not.

Speaker 7

Taken effect yet in large measure. We just got copper tariffs during this news conference. More are coming, so it's going to be very hard for the FED to know by September necessarily whether we're going to have a large inflation increase or not. Poll seems to think not, and he's still in the camp of those who are looking

at it as a one time move. But he does seem to accept a little bit of the Waller and Bowman argument that we could see inflation rise more if people lose if they lose control of inflation expectations, and certainly the anecdotals or as we get it that companies are raising prices and consumers are noticing it and they're not happy about it.

Speaker 5

Maybe this was a meeting and operation optionality maintained, and it was a successful one. It really through the emphasis on Friday's data on the jobs report, not just necessarily the headline number, but the unemployment rate. Suddenly that becomes the most important number of the week, potentially, Mike, how much did you see a spotlight thrown on exactly that composition.

Speaker 3

Well, it's the.

Speaker 7

Unemployment rate the FED has been looking at for some time because if companies are letting people go, then you have a problem because you lose their salaries their wages, and people stop spending, and then people get afraid that they might lose their jobs too and pull back. But the thing that the FED is looking at is not so much the unemployment rate level, it's how fast it moves.

A number of them have said that if we got to four and a half percent fairly quickly, which in theory could happen by September or maybe the October meeting, then they would be really concerned because that would again that a lot of companies are moving at the same time. If it inches up to four point two percent on Friday as forecast, not going to be a big concern.

We'll look at the size of the labor market of the workforce, and if it inches up to four point three percent and then by September, they're not going to be overly concerned. So watch the rate of change much more than the change itself.

Speaker 2

My great work has always Thanks for dropping back again. Michael McKee there of Bloomberg with the Latest. Just got this note from a Bloomberg subscriber. I read it to you. We want to remain open to different points of views. Here the Fed likely has it wrong. High rates of feeding inflation expectations, high rates of feeding inflation expectations. People

look at the cost of housing, rents and mortgages. If rates come down, so will inflation expectations, because it will unlock housing, and the housing market is most important.

Speaker 5

Well, this seems to be in tantem with what President Trump is arguing that if people feel like they could borrow more cheaply, could unlock the housing market. I'm not sure I'm totally following that aspect of it. I do think though, there is this belief that because of where bond yields are, people in particular savers, which make up an increasing proportion of the population, are getting a lot of income, and that income can go directly back into

the economy. So there could be an argument there unique arguments.

Speaker 2

This is the hope potentially that maybe would unlock some supply, some supply for certain people around this table sitting on mortgages and paying two to three percent interest rates, and that certain person might be choking as week about house.

Speaker 3

I'm something of my wife. I couldn't quite keep it together.

Speaker 2

I want to talk about this equity market. Equities decline in by four tens of one percent on the SMP following the news conference. Bond yields started to shift higher. You push that through foreign exchange, and you started to get some dollar strength on the market. Jeff Rosenberg of Blackrock joins us now for more. Jeff, Welcome to the show, sir. I just want it from your perspective whether these moves tell you more about positioning than it does anything that was said in the news conference.

Speaker 8

Yeah, Jonathan, you say it often. You know, the first move is not necessarily the last move on the data. I mean, I think they're pretty consistent with the headline you talked about just a minute ago in terms of optionality preserved. I think when you look at what Powell came back to many many times was this balance of risk focus and how unique the challenges are that you have an inflation challenge and you have a labor market's challenge and the focus and we'll be back on Friday

to talk about it. The focus on the unemployment rate. Remember, he also said that there's a risk inside of that that the balance that you're getting is because you're getting the offset on the supply side, but that the demand side decline was indicative of downside risk, and that to me was a little bit of a tell of if you see that scenario where the labor market balance of risk starts to move more in favor of cutting, that they'll be responsive to that. Otherwise it is this overshoot

in terms of inflation. He said, at many times they're at target on the unemployment rate perspective, So the labor market's at target and you're off targeted terms of inflation, and that's what justifies the slightly modestly restrictive. But if the inflation piece moves in their favor, meaning it is transitory, the tariff impact moves through, they'll move to cut rates off of restrictiveness.

Speaker 2

Well, Jeff Pus, how long are they going to have to wait before they can make that cool because what you just said doesn't sound like September.

Speaker 8

Yeah, you know, that is the interesting part when we talk about this, you know, inflation passed through and transitory. You know, we're just starting to see in the chairman, you know, address this in the in the press conference that we're just starting to see some of the incidents

in terms of tariff impacts. Now that's not broad based inflation, that's in goods inflation, and so they're going to care about the impact and the balance between services and goods, and he talked about a little bit of that of that trade off. But to your question, it is going

to be a tricky environment. If if the unemployment rate stays stable here and the labor markets don't decelerate, which is Waller's concern, and inflation starts to accelerate, it's going to be hard for them to be cutting rates into

that environment. Remember what he said was, you know, we believe we're modestly restrictive, but we don't know where we're at, and the data tells us, and the data is consistent with less than modestly restricted because the economy is doing well enough despite the setting of a policy rate otherwise being somewhat above their idea of where neutral is.

Speaker 5

Jeff, it seems like the feed is talking about how they engage with monetary policy in a very traditional way. It seems like the market is exploring ideas of whether the rate setting policy has served a different purpose recently. And John was having me explain something that someone sent him, and I lost my breath because I was trying so hard.

But there is this idea that actually keeping rates high is inflationary in and of itself, and that because the growth and the inflation trajectory seemed to be roughly imbalanced, it is appropriate and actually the right course of action to lower rates. That's what President has been arguing. Do you see anything to suggest that monetary policy is just in a profoundly different place in this cycle and serves as a completely different function in the economy.

Speaker 8

Well, I think we have to remember that a lot of the pass through of monetary policy flows through financial conditions. You know, It's interestingly it was hardly mentioned. I think Powell mentioned it very briefly about financial conditions remain accommodative, but that a lot of the impact of monetary policy is not the direct impact into the economy in terms of credit credit rates. A lot more of that is on credit spreads. That's financial conditions and credit spreads are

exceptionally tight. They're more indicative of mid expansion level than any kind of slow down concern, and that the pass through to the housing market, which was I think the question you choked on a bit was, is much more about what Powell said. It's more about term premium and things that the FED doesn't directly control. I think the bigger issue in terms of monetary policy is the financial conditions impact. And financial conditions are both about monetary policy

what they directly say, but other aspects. A lot of the financial condition easing that we've seen is more about the other fiscal policy. The passage of the bill, the passage, the extension, the elimination of the risk of a big increase in taxes, and the tariff uncertainty is also a

big part of the financial conditions easing. So it's not just about monetary policy directly in terms of its contribution, but the overall picture in financial conditions that creates the either easing feature that we're having right now or a tightening feature when financial conditions tightened.

Speaker 5

So to put that into a market call. Does the fact that the FED is remaining on hold give you more confidence to invest in long term treasuries with the belief that this FED is going to try to get inflation under control.

Speaker 8

I think that the longer term treasury impact has more factors associated relative to near term FED policy. I think the short term FED policy and the inflation piece is additive to the long term perspective, but it's challenged by a couple of other things. One, as you're coming into this environment after a long period of a collapse in term premium, you're having a change with respect to inflation

and inflation uncertainty. That is a reflection of the post COVID environment where the pricing of an inflation term premium is resetting higher, and you have a change in the global environment in terms of the level of trade, the amount of recycling, the holding of reserves, and and finally the attractiveness of long term treasuries as a portfolio hedge. We've had a significant structural change in stockbond correlation. It's a reflection of all those factors. In particular the movement

from an environment of too little inflation. We're going on six years of too much inflation relative to target, and that challenges the effectiveness of long duration as a portfolio hedge, which reduces its tractiveness. That encourages an increase in term premium changes. You know how much we want to hold long term treasuries in a portfolio as a result of all those structural changes.

Speaker 6

Jeff, forget two Americas. We got in America float once back. I think Powell talked about that today. The President talks about it each and every day. Look at the housing market. Just as one example, your Carnegie Mellon is going to take in billions and billions of dollars into western Pennsylvania to do AI. How does a central bank prosecute monetary policy given the polarization of America.

Speaker 8

Yeah, Tom, it's a frequent theme We've talked about on the shows We're together, and it's something we look at a lot. The distribution of economic outcomes matters as much as the central tendency. Unfortunately, what we heard a lot from Powell today, and it's the kind of simplification of economic statistics, is it looks at that central tendency and not the distribution, but the distribution matters. The question was raised about you know delinquency rates at the high end,

which was a bit surprising. He said, I don't know what to make of that. I read that too. I read that too. I think we all did. And so those distributions matter, and I think the problem for the FED is setting the interest rate policy in the middle isn't necessarily going to solve the problems at the bottom.

Powell talks a little bit about this in terms of what policy, what monetary policy is equipped to deal with, and what other policies like fiscal policy, are going to be better attuned to address some of the inconsistencies or inequities across the distribution. And that's something that FED policy is just not designed to address.

Speaker 6

Bottle it, John, That's the clearest explanation of a distributional policy I've heard so far. There's two Americas. Maybe it's like England, maybe it's like France. I don't know, but we're living it and Powell's living it in real t HF.

Speaker 2

Let's sit on the market for a couple of baits. You mentioned correlations, messy correlations. Back in April, we had risk breakdown alongside the risk free asset. The dollar didn't strengthen off the back of it, even though we had high up bond you it's how much comfort can you take in some of the developments we've seen cross asset over the last few weeks, the last month or.

Speaker 8

So, Yeah, I would say the last few weeks or so, you've seen a little bit of a return to NORMALITI stock bond correlations kind of coming back in line. It was during that period that you just referenced, that was the Liberation Day, terriff uncertainty. Around April, we saw some dramatic breakdowns in historic correlations of what you expect from traditional hedging assets, whether it be the dollar or gold

or fixed income. And I think that lesson of that shock period has to be learned that a lot of these breakdowns are due to some structural changes. The biggest one of which I talked about a minute ago, and it affects fixed income dramatically, and that is this shift in environment from too little inflation to too much inflation. Where did we hear it today? We heard it today when Powell talked about the balance of risk, and that today, unlike in any prior period, the FED is challenged on

both sides of its dual mandate. There's an inflation challenge and a growth or maximum employment challenge, and that tells you that the FED is more constrained. You can see the constraint. It's in the debate. You've got two dissenters differing in viewpoints of which side of the dual mandate

should we focus on. But what that means for the stockbond correlation in the bond hedge is that the FED can't be as aggressively accommodative as they were in an environment where there was not this challenge on the inflation. When you had too little inflation, you could cut interest rates. It was called the divine coincidence of monetary policy. You could achieve both goals, raise inflation and support growth at the same time by cutting rates. That was the era

of massive heading efficacy of fixed income. We're out of that era. Where is the hedging efficacy. It's going to be more in the short end, it's going to challenge investors. We've got to think about alternative forms of diversification, think

differently about portfolio construction. But that's a structural change, and we saw it a little bit in April, kind of more recently kind of coming back when overlearn the more recent data, and it's more about recognizing the structural change that I think is going to be persistent.

Speaker 5

To be more specific and build on what John was talking about. One correlation that broke down was the idea of higher rates in the US, meaning that there would be a stronger dollar. It seems like as we do see rates go up on the heels of this press conference, we are seeing that ongoing dollar strength and as John nodded to this, partly could be a positioning thing how

underweight people had gotten the dollar versus the euro. But do you think that this is a marketing point in terms of the solid, straight lined downward weaker in the dollar that we saw in the first half of the year is over.

Speaker 8

I think there is a shift, and you can look into the equity markets and into the cross section of equity markets to really see how dramatic that shift is. Certainly you see it in terms of the index performance and the recovery and new highs, but you see it underneath that the performance of cyclicals versus defensives, you know, fully recovering, but you also see it in the kind

of recovery and animal spirits. The reach for risk that we see in say the outperformance of unprofitable companies in the performance that we see in quality versus high quality versus low quality companies. And so I think the shift in the macro narrative around tariffs is really reinforced around We've removed the tariff uncertainty. We're no longer trading off of tariff headlines. Yes, we have the tariff implications still in front of us, but the kind of bigger tail

risk has been removed and associated with that. To get to your question, you know, you kind of return to a bit more of US exceptionalism. A lot alongside the AI trade has come back. It's recovered from the deep seek kind of draw down back in February. So a lot of these under the surface themes have come back, and one of those that is associated with it is this kind of US exceptionalism, and that's been pretty favorable

for the dollar. Away from kind of the macro story around the FED, it's really some of these underlying macro themes, secular themes around AI US exceptionalism.

Speaker 2

Hey, Jeff, well framed as always, We'll see a Friday for payrolls. Appreciate your time, sir, Thank you, Thank you very much. Jeff Rosenberg there of black Rock. I think Jeff articulated things pretty well, just that he sits at a flow monster, and a lot of those flows have come back home to the United States. That's where a lot of the money's been going over the past few months.

Speaker 5

And it's not because of parsing exactly who's going to dissent on the FED and exactly what metrics they're looking at. It's because of what we're going to get in about sixteen minutes time with Amazon well Emmeta and Microsoft today and Amazon and Apple tomorrow. That has been the driver, and that's what we see. Aren't going base.

Speaker 2

Eleven trillion dollars worth of names, four names, one fifth of the market. Company s and P five hundred Big tech is a major piece of the puzzle.

Speaker 6

I'm still getting over Google's numbers. I thought they were absolutely extraordinary, and just see what you know. We'll see what we see here, John. If we stay on another hour, I think we should we'll get d x Y two one hundred. That'd be a good idea.

Speaker 3

You want to stay for another sixty.

Speaker 6

Minutes, think for another sixty minutes, explain.

Speaker 2

To the audience why like d x Y a little higher and you wrote dollar a little lower, whereas you'd like to go.

Speaker 6

Well, we're stening. Sweeney's going to Rome. I think that works out.

Speaker 2

Let's just say one fourteen is better than pushing one twenty, right, Lisa, help.

Speaker 6

Me here, because the land from England is on holiday. You and I go on vacation, which is seventy two hours if we're lucky.

Speaker 2

August and Caprias, I gave up my thirty days and I did.

Speaker 3

I'm fully American. I've been here ten years and I'm going to European. I fully embrace. I fully embrace the culture vacations. I'm off an xt y. I'm exactly summarize it.

Speaker 6

They don't have a life. Watch the x y god one hundred.

Speaker 3

The dollar is a whole lot stronger.

Speaker 2

Equity's pulling back just a touch, But this is a federal reserve that still has a bias to cut interest rates. This is a chairman, though with a bias to wait, and that's a key difference.

Speaker 5

The idea that there hasn't been a weakening in the labor market is really notable and puts him in stark contrast to Chris.

Speaker 3

Waller coming up tomorrow. Stick with Bloomberg Surveillance.

Speaker 2

We'll catch up with Chris Farona strateigas they're appan died at JP Morgan Asset Management, the former Kansas City Fed President Esther George and Ghagi Chowdhry of Black.

Speaker 3

Rock from New York City.

Speaker 2

For our audience worldwide, thank you for choosing Bloomberg TV. This was a Bloomberg Surveillance special.

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