Market Fears Grow after President Trump's Auto Tariffs - podcast episode cover

Market Fears Grow after President Trump's Auto Tariffs

Mar 27, 202534 min
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Watch Tom and Paul LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF.
Bloomberg Surveillance hosted by Tom Keene & Paul Sweeney March 27th, 2025
Featuring:
1) Julia Pollak, Chief Economist at ZipRecruiter, reacts to US jobless claims and President Trump's 25% auto tariffs announcement and looks ahead to PCE. The 25% auto tariffs will come into effect on April 3, initially targeting fully assembled vehicles, and will expand to include major automobile parts by May 3. Meanwhile, traders await February PCE data, with Bloomberg Economics writing that Core PCE is expected to show accelerated inflation.
2) Wendy Schiller, professor at Brown University, reacts to President Trump's auto tariffs announcement and how Washington will or will not push back, as well as the Signal text controversy. The EU, Canada, and other countries have criticized the 25% auto tariff implementation, coming April 3. President Trump and top allies are struggling to defend against criticism over the inclusion of a journalist in a Signal chat discussing military attacks in Yemen, after texts showed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth revealing specific operational details.
3) Melissa Otto, Head of TMT Research at Visible Alpha, on recent Mag 7 slides and yesterday's NASDAQ drop, and discusses whether big tech is actually "tariff-proof" or if they'll feel their effects. Tesla inched higher on the news as the Elon Musk-led electric vehicle company could avoid some of the tariff costs due to its US production.
4) Leslie Palti-Guzman, senior non-resident fellow at CSIS and NY University SPS Center for global affairs, joins for a discussion on energy and Russian gas flows as the Trump administration negotiates an end to the war in Ukraine, as well as how Houthi shipping disruptions could change after the Signal text controversy.
5) Ben McMillan, CIO at IDX Advisors, on how equities are reacting this morning to yesterday's tariff announcement and "uncertainty paralysis" in markets. The S&P 500 and other major stock benchmarks fell yesterday as concerns about the impact of a trade war on the economy and inflation resurfaced, driven in part by President Trump's 25% tariff announcement on auto imports.

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Transcript

Speaker 1

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at seven am Eastern on Apple CarPlay or Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 2

Area Pollock, chief e commerce at zip Recruiter, joins us Julia talk to us about how you're looking at the labor market here in the US. Has it changed over the last several months.

Speaker 3

Yes, but it hasn't changed along the margin that people were most worried about, So we haven't really seen layoffs take up, and initial claims have been remarkably stable, even in Washington, DC, Virginia and Maryland, the areas where federal workers are most heavily concentrated. We haven't seen the impact public layoffs on the rest of the economy yet. The unemployment rate seems like it's pretty stable too, and there

are a couple of reasons for that. One is that many of these workers are still on administrative leave, they're still on payrolls. The other what we're seeing at zip recruiter is that when these federal workers, even those who haven't been cut yet, just those who anticipate possibly being cut in the future go out and look for jobs. They're actually faring better than the rest of the workforce.

So among those government workers who were just hired by a new job in the last few months, seventy six percent said the job search went well, compared to sixty percent of the workforce overall. And among those who are still searching, thirty two percent say their job search is going well. That doesn't seem like a big number, but it's three times higher than what we see among other job seekers, only thirteen percent say their job search is going well well.

Speaker 4

That's interesting because I thought with the jobs the A. Jolts number that we heard is that job switchers don't have the upper hand anymore, definitely in terms of salary, and that maybe job switching has to come down at that quick rate, not necessarily as high. That's not what you're seeing.

Speaker 3

We are seeing that overall, but government workers are doing better than most. And it is true though that a pretty large share, about forty percent, are taking a pay cut when they get that new job. We often hear about federal workers being paid so much less than they could make elsewhere, and they're sacrificing and to do public service.

It's not always exactly true. Public sector wages are fairly high. Actually, they're not necessarily lower than what people can get in the private sector, especially when you factor in total compensation, benefits and the sort of value of job security. So people are taking a pay cut in much higher numbers than is ordinarily the case for job switches.

Speaker 2

Julia, what is the ZIP Recruiter Job seekert Confidence Index and what is it telling you that now?

Speaker 3

So we measure job seecret confidence using a battery of ten confidence questions, and then we also ask job seekers every quarter about everything else that involved that job search entails and how they're experiencing the labor market, what they expected to get, what they're actually finding jobs at. Your confidence is almost back at some of the lowest we've ever measured. All of the soft data has gone south recently. There was a brief surge of optimism in the fourth quarter,

but the first quarter data is fairly weak. There's a tremendous amount of anxiety because there is just so much uncertainty in this economy. And then, of course, you know the labor market has slowed over over two years. Hiring is very slow, and so it's a pretty good labor market if you have a job that you love. If you don't and you want to make a change, it's a pretty tough one.

Speaker 4

We take a look at, say, some of the confidence data that we got earlier this week, Julia, and you're starting to see some people worried about their jobs, worried about the future, worried about their pay. Is that justified from what you see?

Speaker 3

So, I think that's a continuation of what we've seen over the last two years, where the lame market has cooled along multiple dimensions. First, hiring slowed and narrowed. So if you're in healthcare or local government, you know there's a pretty strong demand for what you can do. But elsewhere, professional business services have added no jobs of the last two years. Tech has added no jobs over the last

two years. And that's at a time when more and more Americans have actually entered these occupations and trained for them. We have more and more college graduates, We have more and more of those college graduates majoring in computer science, and so the lame market's not absorbing these new people into the roles where they want to be. About fifty percent are having to switch industries to roles they didn't want in order to get hired. And then we're seeing

hours being cut too. So people aren't losing jobs, but they're losing hours. The work week is just thirty four four point one hours. That's a level we usually see in recessions in good times, that usually harvers between thirty four point three and thirty four point six hours. And we're seeing it have effects. We're seeing it cause the share of workers who are part time for economic reasons

to hit the highest level since January twenty nineteen. And also we're seeing the highest number of workers working multiple jobs and they're not making bus This is not just opportunity driven. Yes, we have a very flexible labor market where people are able to cobble together multiple gigs, but it's not people doing that to earn more than they would in one job. They're only coming out just as well. According to a study by the Fed.

Speaker 2

Julia, for the longest time, really over the last several years, it just seems like employers have had a hard time finding and retaining workers. We even talked about hoarding of employees. Is that still a thing?

Speaker 3

So the pendulum has swung back to employers, and most employers now are saying that that's not their biggest struggle. They are especially for for most roles, we actually see pretty large numbers of applications for posting. If you're posting a job for either an HR or for a receptionist or for a PR manager, you are going to get possibly hundreds of applications. There are a few industries where employers are starved for talent. Those are sort of healthcare fields,

physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech and language pathologists, nurses. Those roles are very hard to fill. And then the skilled traits plumbers, electricians, carpenters, those are also very difficult. Fortunately, we're seeing wages go up fastest in those sectors in healthcare and manufacturing right now, and that is that that

information is actually getting through to job seekers. We're seeing more and more people in role in vocational training programs and more and more people enroll in nursing programs.

Speaker 4

All right, we really appreciate Julia. Thank you so very much. Julia Pollock, chief economist at ZIP Recruiter.

Speaker 1

This is the Bloomberg Survey. Alen's podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at seven am Eastern on Apple Corplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa, Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 2

Wendy Schulder joins it. She's a professor at Brown University. If we love checking in with Wendy Shielder, get a lay of the land on all things happening down in DC. So when we look at these tariffs here, they're certainly front center here for us on Global Wall Street. How did the folks in Washington, DC think about this growing trade war that seemingly is being ginned up by this administration across a number of countries and a number of different industries.

Speaker 5

Well, I mean, I think the troministration has announced.

Speaker 6

Really big tariffs and then pulled back or implemented them for a day or two and pulled back, and so far it sort of looks like a negotiating game.

Speaker 5

What can we get? But this is a deeper issue for the trumpministration.

Speaker 6

In the first Trump administration, there was a promise to make America great again and bring back jobs that had been lost from really thirty years more than thirty years of free trade policy.

Speaker 5

You know, manufacturing plants.

Speaker 6

Closed and relocated, primarily in this case to Mexico to some extent to Canada. So you've got a situation where the physical plant is gone or shut down. And you know, Trump did not bring back manufacturing jobs in his first term, so there seems to be a commitment to put a lot of pressure to bring those back. But it takes a very long time to build a new plant or get an old plant up and running again, and it's

cost prohibitive right now and in a global market. So how they do the second part of this is the big question mark slapping tariffs on cost.

Speaker 5

Consumers money in the short run.

Speaker 6

The argument is the long run, it'll bring back jobs to America, but there doesn't even be a plan.

Speaker 5

To do that right now.

Speaker 3

So that's a great question.

Speaker 4

That's a great point because I was asking that at Hugh Johnson just a few moments ago, and I was saying, look, the move away from say a government support or aemy supported by fiscal spend to an economy supported by private spend, is that in general something that is realistic? And what support do you think we need to see to then help those companies and help the private money.

Speaker 6

Well, Alex, something I think you can make an argument that we could reduce the size and scope and footprint of the federal government financially, in terms of people, in terms of regulation. You can make that sound argument, and you could actually try to implement that in a way that's gradual. You can't, you know, it's like weaning off anything else. You've got a full supply of this for

so long. People are quite used to it, and they make decisions based on consumers, households, businesses make decisions about the flow continue on the flow of federal money and free trade. So you take both of those away at the same time, I think you really bring the economy, you know, not to a halt, but certainly do a lot of damage not only to current spending but future planning. And we're seeing consumer sentiment going down. We're seeing people

pull back. Now, if you want to buy a new car, if these if these terrif fold, then it will be more expensive or mind people of the supply chain issues under COVID, when cars cost anywhere from three to six thousand dollars more than they should have, that will slow down consumer spending. And as you say, Alex, consumer spending is still a big engine that drives a US economy.

Speaker 2

Wendy, I'm thinking about where the president's support is here, where maybe some of the Democratic support might be. And I think we've got something coming up in Wisconsin next week, an election for the state Supreme Court. I know Elon Musk has spent a lot of money in there for the GOP candidate. Are you looking to this state Supreme court kind of situation in Wisconsin next week? Is that any kind of referendum on where the president's support might be.

Speaker 5

Well, this is a great question.

Speaker 6

Democrats are trying to really rally their base and they haven't really had anything to latch onto that's hit everybody right.

Speaker 5

There hasn't been a massive national impact on some of these policies yet. But these small elections.

Speaker 6

There's one in Pennsylvania for state Senate Democrat won in a Republican district.

Speaker 5

Florida there's two congressional seats.

Speaker 6

Those polls are looking much tighter than anybody would expect in Republican leaning districts. So this Supreme Court race is getting a lot of attention. If a Democrat or a Liberal wins, then the court stays a little more liberal. If the conservative wins, it reverts back to being more conservative. So it's a benchmark, But there were lots of these benchmarks leading into twenty four and the president won easily. So I don't think it's a big harbinger of national trends.

But I do think that if it starts to build pressure at the local level in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania on Republican members of Congress, particularly Republicans in the House, then signals get sent to the White House that maybe they need to change some of the things that they're doing.

Speaker 5

But we're a long way from.

Speaker 4

That, a long way from that. And also we're sort of moving towards a phase two, right, So you get the tariffs first and then hopefully the tax cuts and deregulation. How soon do we have to get that phase two to calm any sort of underlying chaos.

Speaker 6

Well, I mean, the tax cuts are something that people talk about and they get sort of encouraged about. But remember that's a long process too. When they come in, that's a complicated process. The House and Senate are going to come in very different in their packages. On the tax bill, there's lots of different things, earned income tax credit for example, people who are poor or people who.

Speaker 5

Are low income. You know, is that going to still exist?

Speaker 6

There are things that will affect all levels of the economy, and so it's not clear that it will be a win for the Republicans just to pass the bill. It very much depends obviously what's in the bill and who it's hitting and who it's helping.

Speaker 5

So I think those.

Speaker 6

Effects don't happen really until next year in terms of the psyche of America.

Speaker 5

But you know, the Biden.

Speaker 6

Administration left Trump with high inflation, we can all agree on that, but a relatively robust economy, and now that economy is starting to look very shaky.

Speaker 5

And that's the big question more for the Republicans in the Congress.

Speaker 6

Do you want to wait till that actually happens and you're looking at twenty twenty six right in front of you, or do you want to try to forestall that with the Trump administration now be wedy?

Speaker 2

Is this signal chat situation for this administration?

Speaker 6

You know, I on Tuesday morning, I was talking about it, and I thought, well, people make mistakes, people use apps, they add people by mistake, and I didn't see the Republicans sort of getting riled up about it. But the Senate Republicans in particular Republican senators are very unhappy about this, and Republican hardliners in the House on foreign policy are unhappy about it, and they do.

Speaker 5

Have seemed to have come together to say, clean up your act.

Speaker 6

You know, Trump will not get rid of anybody tomorrow, but Trump will get rid of people if they are not serving him well. And I think this is sort of a signal literally no pun intended, you know, make sure that this doesn't happen again. If it happens again, then people start to think, Okay, we don't have any confidence in the Pentagon or the leadership of the Pentagon and the national security team that affects US worldwide. I think that's something Trump would have to pay attention to.

Speaker 4

When we take a look, say at foreign policy, we just broaden that out then for a moment significant and kind of where are we in the talks between US and Russia about Ukraine? When can we really expect more movement here?

Speaker 5

Well?

Speaker 6

You know, I think I think Trump is basically indicated putin, look, you're gonna walk away. You could walk away with some victory here, you know, if you end it. Then we stop sending the arms, we stop aiding Ukraine, and you know, you walk away with some territory and you're not getting all your people killed, Like this is a good deal for you, and we will get some mineral rights, or we get some natural resource rights, We'll get some steak

in Ukraine. I mean, that's the ideal situation, frankly, for all the parties involved. The United States gets a steak, Ukraine still has the United States on its side, and Russia gets out of a difficult and expensive war. But so far Putin's not biting I think the way that Trump had hoped. But I do think that's a consistent position the United States can maintain. There's enough support in Congress for continued a Ukraine, so Trump wants to keep that going. He can get that permission and that aid

from Congress. It's Trump that's been saying it's not a good deal for the United States. So I think in that way, they're sort of waiting for Russia to decide this is the best they're going to do, and so far we're not getting the signal that Putin thinks that it is the best that he can do.

Speaker 2

Wendy thank you so much for joining us. We always appreciate getting a few minutes of your time. Wendy Schuller, She's a professor at a Brown University.

Speaker 1

You're listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from seven to ten am. He's durn Listen on Apple Karplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 2

Let's talk about TMT here. I want to talk about technology stocks. I'm we got the NASTAC It's down ten percent year today. That's a correction, kids. I don't know. And if you need the tech market to lead this market higher like it has forever, do we have a problem for this market? Melissa Auto joins it. She's head of TMT research for S and P Global Visible Alpha. Melissa, when you talked to your clients, are you positive about

tech these days or not? Has it played itself out at least for the near term?

Speaker 7

Good morning, Great to be here.

Speaker 6

It is.

Speaker 7

Tech is a bit all over the place at the moment. I think there are there's an overhang of uncertainty for companies that have China exposure. There is shifting of tides as companies are moving toward different aspects of AI, and then there are there's a bit of slowing, you know, as companies are more exposed to the consumer. So I think it's you know, it's a tale of multiple aspects there.

Speaker 4

And what I found is so interesting about the MAG seven slide yesterday down three percent is that some of the individual stories for within the MAG seven we're all kind of different, right Like Tdcowan had a note out about Microsoft canceling some data center projects, Tesla was cut to hold, Nvidia might have some issues within China energy rules for chip imports. Google said that maybe extually mean Millennium said that Google could lose younger users to open

AI search like there were different things. That wasn't a theme which is the biggest stresser for these guys right now.

Speaker 7

The biggest stressor right now, I think is whether or not we're going to really see inferencing its scale, and what that means is that there's been so much infrastructure spent.

I mean, I've been on this show talking about the billions and billions and billions of dollars in CAPEX that we've seen from the cloud service providers that have gone into data centers and what is that ultimately going to net what's going to be the ROI of that for all of the companies that are leveraging and using that compute.

And I think that's where we really haven't seen a viable business model for generative AI, where companies are leveling this and then the output of it still remains somewhat dicey, especially for more complex anything that's got a little bit of complexity around it is still not seeing the accuracy that it requires.

Speaker 2

In video, I mean it's down fifteen percent year to date. I kind of and I think a lot of people who don't traffic in this stuff every day, we kind of look at M Video's kind of my litmus for all things AI. It's down fifteen percent year to date. What does that tell you?

Speaker 7

Yeah, that's an interesting one. I mean, they had their big GtC conference last week. Jensen gave his two hour plus keynote. One of the interesting things though from that is that Blackwell is continuing to see really strong demand and it is Yes, it's really a solution. It's chip plus software and some other stuff in there that essentially enhances the compute, lowers the energy, makes it a lot more cost efficient. The critical thing coming out of that

is what's been happening to estimates. We've seen Blackwell B series two hundred be two hundred B three hundred expectations come up fifteen percent for Q one, which tells me that, okay, expectations are getting a little bit more positive coming into next quarter and that maybe we're starting to see a bit of momentum.

Speaker 4

Okay. The other interesting side of this is the infrastructure build out, which leads me to crowd weave and it's IPO.

Speaker 3

What did you Yeah?

Speaker 4

Okay, so I've had a lot of tutorials with ANURAG because I'm like, I got to understand like all the differentiation here, So what do you make about this potential IPO and sort of where it's going to price at? Like what is that going to tell us about the thirst for AI infrastructure?

Speaker 7

Yeah, I mean the valuation is going to be critical, what sort of multiple they come in at? And uh, it's just going to be a temperature check for sure.

Speaker 4

Does that but in terms of what, like is it in terms of how the big guys are spending? Is it in terms of like the inferencing versus the LMS and and training of it. What's it going to tell us all of that?

Speaker 7

I mean, I think right now there's so much uncertainty. There's such an overhang in the market of everybody just shrugging their shoulders and saying, can we get a bit of clarity, Can we have a benchmark? Can we have something out there in the market that's going to give us an anchor? And that IPO may be one of those.

Speaker 2

So what's single best idea right now?

Speaker 7

Single best idea? Wow, that's a good question.

Speaker 2

What I mean, do we just I just you know, when I asked a tech person, I can say if somebody asked me that Microsoft, you know, I mean, I.

Speaker 7

Mean, I will say coming out of GtC And I feel like I said this last year to Alex and ed and the Tech Show, is that Jensen continues to talk about Dell, and you know, we're continuing to see a lot of you know, like closeness in relationship between Dell and Nvidia, Dell and Nvidia, and I feel like that end to end solution at the edge may be something that could be a catalyst for the next upgrade cycle.

And the market's been waiting for this upgrade cycle for like nine months, and maybe we're gonna start to see it in the second half of the year, and that's not really priced in yet.

Speaker 2

All right, good stuff, Melissa Auto, thank you so much.

Speaker 8

Appreciate that.

Speaker 2

As always Melissa Auto, She's had of TMT Research s and p Global Visible Alpha.

Speaker 1

This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at seven am Eastern on Alpacarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 4

Joining us now is Leslie Palty Guzman, Senior non Resident Fellow over at CSIS, which is Center for Strategic and International Studies at NYU University SPS Center for Global Affairs, where I sit. The gas question is quite important. Europe is still buying some Russian gas. If there is a resolution to the war, does it ramp up again to the kind of levels that we saw pre twenty twenty two.

Speaker 9

That's the question. So for me, Russia has been playing the long game all along and has been hoping potentially for the return of more of its commodities, and Europe didn't wait for the US and Russia to start a resets. Some European business interests had already in mind potentially a return of more of Russian gas, especially because of the

competitiveness lack of competitiveness right now in Europe. I think some pro Russian parties in Europe Extreme Ride had already mentioned that we were starting already to see some discussion around it. I think there will be nothing before peace agreement, so it remains very preliminary. But I think utilities in Europe without vocally screaming that they will be happy to get some Russian molecules that are less potentially less expensive and will bring down the prices in Europe has.

Speaker 2

But Europe seems to have done a good job. Les we kind of getting by without the Russian energy sources. Is this something that can be a longer term play. Do they want to not go back to Russia for any reason?

Speaker 6

Excit question?

Speaker 9

Yeah, I think the trust has been broken. It will never come back to the forty percent of market share that Russia had in the European imports of gas, but I think twenty percent is a possibility, and twenty twenty four it was actually a ten percent. Both pipeline and energy imports from Russia, and now it's way down because there is a line via Ukraine that is completely out of serve election. There is no more molecule going through

this line. But the trucks train is still running and the Arctic energy, I mean, the Yama and Chicago are still coming into Europe. So we still have some flows they never left and they could ramp up a little bit more. But again there are many not resolved issues. First, there is a question of trust. Gas Prom has many penalties it needs to sort out with the European utilities. So the gas Prom owes a lot of money to this company. I don't think they will sign again long

term contracts like they did before. I don't know what kind of arrangement can be found, but it's very preliminary and it's going to take time.

Speaker 4

And that's what's so cool about commodities. It'll sort itself out. Right, Like if more gas does come on the market, Europe may not buy it, but it also means that it'll you'll ship the flows around in terms of where are all that energy and gas goes.

Speaker 9

Yeah, and to your question, I think Europe doesn't need the Russian gas, especially twenty twenty six two twenty seven, when we see a much better well supplied global gas market, we have much more supply coming online. So this Russian

gas can actually be displaced by other sources. And this is one of the contradictions from the Trump administration is that the baby Drill agenda doesn't go along with bringing back more Russian molecule into Europe because it's going to displace potentially US energy.

Speaker 4

Before we let you go, I want to talk about the crisis and the Red Sea, which basically when you have vessels into detour around the Cape of Good Hope, that just makes it crazy for freight rates. It makes everything very difficult. Could we see a world where things come down and the Red Sea and things can be shipped through and how do we get there?

Speaker 9

Yeah, so I think twenty twenty five it's not out of the question that we could see a restoration of the of the Red Sea route. However, you know, the who need to be deterred again and the US need to remain very convinced that freedom of navigation is in the interests of the United States but also the rest of the world. And there are many other positive externalities for restoring the roots. You know, for all the goods from the US to Asia, they would really benefit from

the shorter route. And we need to remember that the Panama Canal is also less much less use because of the draw So we have two roots right now that are not at their full potential, the Panama Canal and the Swiss Canal slash Right Sea. So we cannot believe that we're in a better place without this route. And also I think Washington is sending a message to China and to Iran by being aggressive there because China is watching and it's you know, China is looking for itself.

What's going on in the sas China Sea and if the US would be strong there.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I'm Google mapping the Red Sea as we speak. It's important. It looks to me as it relates to the SUSS global trade. So I'm learning a little bit here as about the Red Seat. Leslie, thank you so much for joining us. Leslie Paulty Guzman, Senior non Resident Fellow at the Center First Strategic and International Studies and NYU SPS Center, talking little geopolitics as it relates to global trade.

Speaker 1

This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at seven am Eastern on Apple, Colarckplay, and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal.

Speaker 2

Ben Millen joins us. He's the CIO of IX Advisors, joining us live here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio up from Tampa, Florida, the winter home of the New York Yankees. Opening day here at the stadium, three o'clock, first pitch, so there'd be lots of folks running around the city in their Yankee uniforms. Ben, what are you looking at in this marketplace? How do you seeing kind of what's unfolding here? It's been a tough start to twenty twenty five.

Speaker 8

It has, I mean, you know, like you said, market sat and certainty, this is finance one on one and we're seeing it play out in real time, and you know it's take My big takeaway is kind of the big reversals that we've seen, you know, depending on the headlines. In fact, I think Bloomberg actually broke a story yesterday that some of the auto tariffs might hit, you know, yesterday afternoon and we saw this huge reversal from up in the day to you know down big, and that's

just a continuation. And so we're looking very closely at kind of the engine of the economy, so GDP and the consumer. And this is kind of the conundrum we've seen. You know, the hard data is looking pretty good, the sentiment data not so much. So you know, we're kind of peeling back the layers. And where we want to understand is that sentiment data potentially an early precursor of stuff that's going to show up in the hard data.

Speaker 4

So aside from that, which is the sort of the macro thesis, what do you make of the decline that we've seen in tech and particularly the AI traits?

Speaker 8

What are you telling clients, Well, that's I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. Is this is you know, part of the the hype coming off, you know, and we saw this. I'm old must to remember the dot com bubble where it's like, you know, you put pets dot com and all of a sudden it's this you know, mega billion dollar company. And then you know, people starting to realize, well, all right, a lot of growth is being you know built into that assumption.

And you know, if we have interest rates back up or god forbidter recession, even a mild one, that can really take a lot of that valuation out of the growth trade. So I think that's what we're saying. I think that's also why we're seeing a bid for treasuries too, is just kind of a flight to safety as people reassess how much they want to pay for growth.

Speaker 2

Look at this, I mean, you're look at in a world of hurt out there. Gold up another sixteen bucks.

Speaker 4

Yeah, that's live.

Speaker 2

I mean the Golden Sex call of a month and a half ago with thirty one hundred gold. Boy, that looks good. Is that something you talk to folks about?

Speaker 8

Yes, gold is probably you know, there's it's hard to put conviction in the market like this, especially when you've got you know, kind of different headlines and a lot of what I would call exogronous risk factors. Gold is probably one of the highest conviction that's out there. We think, and in a lot of our client portfolios, you know, putting in positions in gold or telling people they should think about this. And I've been surprised, to be perfectly candid,

a lot of our institutional clients. You know, gold has really not been on their radar. And you know, when you look at the big structural threats out there, not just this year, I'm talking you know, three, four, five, ten years out, you know, gold is really good hedge. And then let's not forget the least not the least of which is all the central bank buying, you know, China, India, now even some of the emerging market central banks are

literally selling treasuries and buying gold. China's even going so far as to kind of obfuscate their buying, to hide it from the marketplace. So that's not a trend we see reversing anytime soon. And we think, you know, we think gold is going to set all time highs, you know, every year for the next few years.

Speaker 4

Is JP Morgan had a great note out on this thatch a look yesterday that looks through the different cycles of gold buying and how what drove gold, say in the last ten years. So it really yields, for example, and the dollar is not necessarily driving it anymore, and driving it more because countries want that gold because of the sort of renationalization and the geopolitical strife and needing to make sure like the money's in the country kind of thing.

Speaker 8

Oh absolutely, yeah. And you know, if you go back ten fifteen years, you know, kind of the biggest marginal buyer of gold was jewelry, you know, especially in countries like India, and then all of sudden the ETFs, you know, started getting more traction and now central banks. I mean, if you look at their gold purchases, it's basically you know, it's up orders of magnitude just really since COVID. And

you made a good point about real yields. Ironically, you know, we're fundamentally a quad shop and we had a real yield gold model that just you know, worked perfectly right up until COVID and then it just you know, the world changed. As Boonlog said, we're in a new normal, and you know you can't price off that anymore.

Speaker 2

Fiction income. What are you doing in the bond market these as are sitting in to your treasury at two percent? Are you taking some credit risk?

Speaker 8

We're a little bit of both. So we've got you know, we've got different products depending on client preferences, but generally speaking, sitting in the short end of the curve. If you're going to take credit risk do it and things that are you know, senior secured, some you know, some good We're big fans of ETFs out there just because of the liquid that they provide. There's some good you know,

triple A clo ETFs short duration credit. But yeah, I mean spreads are starting to widen, and you know, once credit spreads start to widen, you know that's not a highly mean reverting series like something like the vics that can come back down quickly. You know, that's generally indicative of you know, forward looking you know, clouds on the horizon, so to speak. And so we're generally, you know, taking a very cautious approach to approach to credit if at all.

Speaker 4

Interesting, because I feel like that's an area where many say it could be a lot worse. So we want to take that risk to get the yield well.

Speaker 8

And people are stretching for yield. I mean, that's part and that's part of it, and that's part of the client conversations too, is you know, don't necessarily go out on the duration curve. I mean, often, to be candid, we're having more of those conversations about not stretching on duration for yield. But people are really reaching for the credit yield. And so that's another thing when you know we're kind of looking at, you know, kind of you know,

the two different outcomes. Do we have a soft landing you you know, or do we have a productivity you know, growth pull out of this? You know, you really this is where you really, we think, want to be very mindful of the risks you're taking, especially in credit, and then keeping an eye on the tenure. Actually, on Yesterdays show, you had a woman I think from Sockchen who made a very compelling case for ten ure yields going down to three point five. You know, there's a lot of

compelling cases why they could go up five. And I think that's emblematic where we are. You know, it's just there's there's it could go either way with kind of equal probabilities. And so you just got to, you know, really watch the till so to speak.

Speaker 2

Ben, thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it, Ben McMillan, he says, CIO at id X, at Visor.

Speaker 1

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