Karl Mills, partner at Cerity Partners , says investors have survived all kinds of events that seem as bad or worse than anything they are facing now, which is a reason to "stay along for the ride," even if that means moving to the slow lane — where he is positioned now — and being moderately defensive. Mills says he looks at current events "like friction," in that the "don't prevent things from happen, but they make it harder for things to happen" by slowing growth, raising prices and cutting i...
May 20, 2025•1 hr
Fritz Folts, chief investment strategist at 3Edge Asset Management . says the uncertainty about tariff policy — which has pushed uncertainty over interest-rate and monetary policies nearly out of sight — has made it particularly hard for investors to decide where to go with their money now. While the hard economic data is good, Folts notes that the concern is how quickly it may change once tariff chaos hits consumer prices; the result is that he's splitting his equity assets 50-50 between domest...
May 19, 2025•1 hr 3 min
James St. Aubin, chief investment officer at Ocean Park Asset Management, says the stock market is pricing solid corporate earnings and generally strong economic growth momentum, but those gains haven't ended the uncertainty around tariff policies. While the market seems to think the impacts will be muted, St. Aubin says we are in a waiting period to see how consumers, markets and economies are truly impacted by tariffs, and the generally positive view leaves more potential downside risk that in...
May 16, 2025•59 min
Andrew Foster, chief investment officer at Seafarer Capital Partners — manager of the Seafarer Overseas Growth Fund — says emerging markets are poised to thrive in an environment where the dollar is weakening against not only foreign currencies but gold, Bitcoin and "a bag of Doritos." Foster says that the fundamentals are improving for emerging markets, which are showing the potential for a second consecutive year of 12 percent growth in earnings despite tariff and trade concerns. He says stron...
May 15, 2025•57 min
George Milling-Stanley , chief gold strategist at State Street Global Advisors , says he expects gold to trade between $3,100 and $3,500 for the remainder of the year, but is making the bullish case for new record price levels as high as $3,900 an ounce, noting that he believes the new bottom level for gold is $3,000 an ounce, up by $1,000 in the last year. Milling-Stanley says gold has been working well as a geo-political hedge, providing ballast to portfolios that have been whipsawed by curren...
May 14, 2025•57 min
Vincent Reinhart, chief economist and macro strategist at BNY Investments , says that Monday's temporary halt to the tariff battle between the United States and China significantly reduces the potential for a recession, but it doesn't create the clarity that investors and business leaders are seeking. He believes the U.S. will continue to deliver solid results long-term, but warns that the road to those long-term gains is likely to be bumpy, and even notes that "for now, cash looks pretty attrac...
May 13, 2025•59 min
Talley Leger, chief market strategist at The Wealth Consulting Group , says the stock market over-reacted to the downside over tariff announcements and that investor sentiment was so sour that it flashed big buying signals to him. Now that there has been some easing of tariff tensions with the United States and China announcing a deal on Monday, Leger says he thinks the market can push through the trouble, sustain a 2 percent growth rate and work through volatility to end the year with the Stand...
May 12, 2025•1 hr
David Kelly, chief global strategist at J .P. Morgan Asset Management , says that using tariffs "is like throwing a grenade as an offensive weapon when you are in a small room. You are much more likely to damage yourself than anybody else," which is why he is expecting the Trump Administration to back away from its heavy demands rather than go into a trade war. Despite being "one Tweet away from a solution," Kelly worries that the economy will suffer damage — particularly if it's not cleared up ...
May 09, 2025•58 min
Economist Daniel Altman — who publishes the Daniel Altman's High Yield Economics newsletter — says that the Federal Reserve and its chairman Jerome Powell provided more certainty than the market was expecting on Wednesday by effectively confirming that fighting inflation, rather than unemployment, is Job One. That means interest rates will stay higher for longer, with cuts not occurring until late this year or into 2026. Altman worries about the potential for stagflation and says that the job ma...
May 08, 2025•58 min
Economist Steven Durlauf , director of the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago , says that the federal budget deficit is the biggest source of the country's trade deficit, meaning politicians have failed "to seriously address the relationship between what the government wishes to do and how much it costs." If politicians can't cut budget deficits and, potentially, raise taxes, Durlauf says, tariffs...
May 07, 2025•1 hr
Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial , says that while the economy is starting to point towards likely outcomes — an economic slowdown that leads to stagflation but likely stops short of recession — the extremes are still possible. That means the outcomes run from a potential trade war to a no-landing scenario until at least 2026. Roach discusses the challenges faced by international economies and markets right now, as well as whether stagflation or recession is worse for consumers. G...
May 06, 2025•59 min
Odeta Kushi , deputy chief economist at First American Financial Corp. , says she expects the housing market to remain sluggish for as mortgage rates remain above 6 percent; while she expects the Federal Reserve to cut rates during the second half of the year, she's not expecting conditions to change much. That said, she noted that First American's Housing Recession Indicator — based on the trends of eight economic variables — is not flashing red, largely because new home sales have remained str...
May 05, 2025•1 hr
Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Sandler , says that for all of the tumult and headlines, he still believes the market shows signs that it will still reach 6600 on the Standard & Poor's 500, the level he was expecting at the start of the year. That's up by more than 15 percent from current levels. Johnson acknowledges that the voyage will remain more "noisy" than he expected, but he says conditions "are more normal than many people realize." As a result, he's almost fully inve...
May 02, 2025•1 hr
Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, returns to Money Life today as the firm introduces the RSM US Recession Monitor — a comprehensive scorecard relying on more than 20 indicators to track the health of the economy — which is showing a 55 percent chance of recession, a danger level that Brusuelas says will go higher if current tariff and trade policies continue as announced. While he is optimistic about potential rollbacks in those policies, Brusuelas says the current conditions would be co...
May 01, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Money Life celebrates it's 13th anniversary by looking at the past, the present and the eternal, digging into the archives for excerpts from a 2018 conversation with Jack Bogle that remains completely relevant — and perhaps moreso — despite the passage of time. Bogle — the founder of The Vanguard Group — who popularized index investing and was routinely called "Saint Jack" in the investing world, talks about how he invested and built his personal portfolio, saying that he favored the simple and ...
Apr 30, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Steve Rick, chief economist at TruStage , says that he has lowered his forecast for economic growth to 0.5 percent, while raising his forecast for inflation to 3.5 percent; that combination means stagflation, and it's starting to happen now and could turn into recession if the growth slowdown is worse than expected. Rick notes that "No one wins trade wars" and notes that if the current situation plays out into one, that trade problems triggering huge downturns would seem to be a classic 100-year...
Apr 29, 2025•59 min
Everett Millman, precious metals specialist at Gainesville Coins , says that while gold took a big stumble last week, he doesn't believe the strong rally to start the year is over. Further, with gold trading near record highs but oil trading in the range of $70 a barrel, he believes investors will find greater opportunity in gold-mining stocks than in physical gold itself. Coupled with demand behind heightened heightened because gold is historically an asset for uncertain times, and Millman said...
Apr 28, 2025•1 hr
Victoria Fernandez, chief market strategist at Crossmark Global Investments , says investors looking at current market turmoil and the potential for stagflation and an economic recession should remember that "Doing nothing is something," making an active decision to continue with current allocations, which she says is appropriate for anyone who felt balanced when they entered 2025. Fernandez expects current tariff policies to drive inflation above the 4 percent level before it cools, creating a ...
Apr 25, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Francisco Bido, senior portfolio manager at F/m Acceleration , brings his quant-active approach to the Market Call, but notes that mixing the numbers — the quantitative approach — with the art of active management leads him to want a well-diversified portfolio filled with well-known names that stay true to his core investment believes, the kind of thing he would be happy to ride with until there is more certainty and confidence in the market. Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi , puts a...
Apr 24, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Dominic Ceci, chief investment officer at Johnson Financial Group , says that he believes the potential recession that the United States economy could be facing is likely to be "a run-of-the-mill, early '90s type of recession" that stays shallow and lasts a few quarters, but he acknowledges that the signs are murky and that the longer uncertainty around trade and other policies last, the deeper and longer a likely recession becomes. Ceci says that investors should remember that the market is up ...
Apr 23, 2025•1 hr 4 min
Andrew Slimmon, senior portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management , says that with so much investor optimism wiped away by the rough start to 2025, the opportunity for growth now looks better than it did at the start of the year. "Six months from now, I would say there's a good chance the market will be higher," Slimmon says in summing up a conversation that compares current conditions to Covid times, that discusses why looking for defensive names now is bad advice and much more. ...
Apr 22, 2025•59 min
Mike Green , chief strategist at Simplify Asset Management , says that we're living through "a period of genuine uncertainty, and a period in which forecasts that would have been made even three or four months ago no longer seem to have any real validity." He says that the current set up for a trade/tariff war is setting the economy up for a repeat of real troubles, and made comparisons as varied as the Great Depression, the Covid downturn, the Great Financial Crisis and others, and while he is ...
Apr 21, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Joe Ferrara, investment strategist at Gateway Investment Advisers , says that heightened volatility is likely here to stay as the market sorts out rapidly changing current conditions -- and says current market shocks are reminiscent in some ways of the Covid crisis or the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. He says that the current dichotomy between quantifiable potential outcomes from policies that have been announced and the non-quantifiable future and how conditions may change, making it a good ti...
Apr 17, 2025•1 hr 3 min
Rebecca Rockey, deputy chief economist and global head of forecasting at Cushman & Wakefield — an analyst on the outlook survey committee for the National Association for Business Economics — discusses the group's recent "flash survey" of economists which found that since tariff policies were announced on "Liberation Day," more than one-third of economists now believe the next recession is likely to start this year. Another half of the respondents have also raised their chances for a signifi...
Apr 16, 2025•58 min
George Bory, chief investment strategist for fixed income at Allspring Global Investments , says "We are in the midst of a stagflationary environment that's likely to last three to six months," with the question remaining whether a recession will follow. He does now think that recession is likely, though changes to trade and monetary policy could stave it off. Bory also discusses how and why the bond market and Treasury yields are having more impact on the government's tariff policy than the wid...
Apr 15, 2025•58 min
Jeff Weniger , head of equity strategy at WisdomTree Asset Management , seems to only be half joking when he says investors might want to be bullish right now just because they would be the last bull standing, but he also notes that long-term investors, in conditions like these, must bite their lip and keep buying equities. That said, he thinks some of those equities should be international, and he particularly likes Japan right now. In an extended Danger Zone segment, David Trainer, founder and...
Apr 14, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Robert Frick, corporate economist at Navy Federal Credit Union , says that investors should allow the market to settle down and they regain solid footing with their investments, but should use current nervousness and anxiety as a guide on how to remake their portfolio to be more stable regardless of conditions. Frick says he felt that the market was getting scary at the beginning of the year, so he reduced his exposure to stocks and started to prepare against sequence-of-returns risk because he ...
Apr 11, 2025•1 hr
Megan Horneman, chief investment officer at Verdence Capital Advisors , says that despite the painful volatility and the rising potential for recession, investors should be looking for opportunities, particularly in the areas that have been most hurt by the market decline after recent tariff announcements. She notes that global small and mid-cap stocks are in bear-market territory, pricing in a recession, heightened inflation and more. "The times when everybody is running for the doors, that is ...
Apr 10, 2025•1 hr 7 min
Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM , says that unless an off-ramp to current government policies can be found, he expects a recession that is starting now and likely to last nine months. He has raised his likelihood of recession to 55 percent, but said you can see already a pullback in orders, which in turn will lead to a price shock, and then pullbacks in spending and ultimately labor that will complete the slowdown process. Brusuelas expects a 1 to 1.5 percent spike in inflation in the n...
Apr 09, 2025•1 hr 2 min
JoAnne Bianco, partner and portfolio manager at BondBloxx , says that investors should be re-assessing risk and deciding if the market's current moves are an over-reaction that could rebound or something more sticky, and she notes that some fixed-income assets have been the best performers this year. She notes that long-duration Treasuries and U.S. corporate bonds have been stellar and seem to have priced in a lot of the turmoil, and she expects those asset classes to be less volatile than the m...
Apr 08, 2025•1 hr 4 min
