It’s not just the prospect of deteriorating fundamentals that has Man Group’s Mark Jones skeptical about stocks these days. It’s also the risk of money flowing into fixed-income investments now that they’re sporting attractive yields. Jones, who is the deputy chief executive of the world’s largest publicly traded hedge-fund manager, joined the What Goes Up podcast to give his outlook on markets and explain what strategies have been working well at his firm. “I think the risk-reward in equities i...
Apr 07, 2023•39 min
If there’s one thing that keeps professional investors up at night, it’s being involved in a “crowded trade.” In other words, a position that’s become so popular that there are few investors left to get involved with it, so there’s risk of painful losses for all if the crowd heads for the exits. That’s part of the appeal of microcap stocks for Patrick McDonough , a portfolio manager at PGIM Quantitative Solutions. He joined the What Goes Up podcast to explain his approach to analyzing these smal...
Mar 31, 2023•36 min
When Steve Sosnick recalls 2008 and tries to make parallels to the current turmoil in the banking sector, one memory sticks out: riding the elevator with Thomas Peterffy, founder of Interactive Brokers, who offhandedly asked him “what’s new?” “And I said, ‘what’s really interesting to me is the story that I’m reading this morning about how Bear Stearns may have as much as $20 billion in losses at some of their hedge funds,” recalled Sosnick, who’s currently chief strategist at Interactive. “And ...
Mar 24, 2023•39 min
Torsten Slok had been firmly in the “no landing” camp of economists. More positive than a “soft landing,” its adherents say the Federal Reserve will tame inflation without triggering a recession at all. But for Slok, chief economist of Apollo Global Management, that all changed with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. Now he’s bracing for a “hard landing.” Slok joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss the sizeable role regional banks play in the US economy, and the reasons why SVB’s collapse c...
Mar 17, 2023•40 min
Jeremy Grantham blames the US Federal Reserve for creating a bubble in asset prices—one he says has a long way to go before it’s fully deflated. As a result, stock prices may not reach bottom until late next year, he warns. The 84-year-old co-founder of investment firm GMO joined the What Goes Up podcast to explain what he calls the current, “meat grinder” phase of the market, and why he believes the central bank has “hardly gotten anything right.” “Since Alan Greenspan first arrived—Paul Volcke...
Mar 10, 2023•47 min
Princeton University’s Alan Blinder is one of the most prominent economists to have expressed optimism that the Federal Reserve can engineer a so-called “soft landing” for the US economy—taming inflation without triggering a recession. But Blinder, who served in the 1990s as a vice chair of the Fed and a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, explains on this episode of What Goes Up why he’s toned down his assessment. A big reason is the change in the way the Bureau of Labor Sta...
Mar 03, 2023•44 min
Exchange-traded fund managers have seen massive inflows into fixed-income ETFs in recent months. As the dust settles from the bond market’s worst year on record, ETFs focused on safe and simple Treasuries have attracted the bulk of the money. Stephen Laipply , the US head of fixed income ETFs at BlackRock, explains this state of affairs on the latest episode of the What Goes Up podcast. Many investors who follow a standard strategy of investing 60% of their portfolio in stocks and 40% in bonds h...
Feb 24, 2023•41 min
The stock market may be off to a great start in 2023, but investors should be “mindful about not being bullied” by the rally, says Wealth Enhancement Group’s Nicole Webb. She warns that it won’t last. The S&P 500 is up 7% so far this year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 has surged roughly 15%. Webb, a senior vice president and financial adviser at the firm, joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss her views on the market and the speediness of the recovery. “To us fundamentally, does techn...
Feb 17, 2023•33 min
ChatGPT has taken the internet by storm, spurring all manner of experiments and examination as to what extent the artificial-intelligence model can supplant humans and daily tasks. But it’s also being used on Wall Street, where a number of exchange-traded fund issuers, including State Street, have grasped onto the concept to help put together innovative products. Matt Bartolini , head of SPDR Americas Research at State Street Global Advisors, joined the What Goes Up podcast to talk about using A...
Feb 10, 2023•40 min
Morgan Stanley’s Jim Caron joined the What Goes Up podcast to dissect this week’s US Federal Reserve meeting and analyze how markets may have misinterpreted the message being sent by Chair Jerome Powell. “This is a guy who’s worried about inflation; this is somebody who’s not done tightening by any stretch of the imagination,” said Caron, the co-chief investment officer of Global Balanced Funds at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. But Powell’s comments triggered rallies in stocks and bonds a...
Feb 03, 2023•47 min
The rare bright spots for investing last year were those strategies that follow trends in markets rather than fundamentals. This successful approach included the AlphaSimplex Managed Futures Strategy Fund, which returned more than 32% for the year. Kathryn Kaminski, chief research strategist and portfolio manager at AlphaSimplex Group, joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss her firm’s strategies, and what she’s expecting in 2023. “We do really well when there’s massive trends, when there’s d...
Jan 27, 2023•38 min
The stock market got off to a roaring start this year with the S&P 500 at one point clocking a year-to-date gain of more than 4%. Truist Wealth Co-Chief Investment Officer Keith Lerner, however, is skeptical of the New Year bounce. He says the possibility of a recession and dwindling liquidity make the rally unsustainable. Lerner joined the What Goes Up podcast to explain why he’s advising clients to take a defensive posture with investments, and what he believes is the best way to execute t...
Jan 20, 2023•42 min
Get ready for some bad earnings-season news. That’s the call from Savita Subramanian , the head of equity and quantitative strategy at Bank of America, who is expecting a 10% drop in earnings that will likely keep a lid on the S&P 500 in 2023. She joined the What Goes Up podcast to give her outlook for the market and explain why she thinks analysts’ earnings estimates are too high: “We are going to see those estimates come down, and it's likely to happen after companies guide more aggressive...
Jan 13, 2023•39 min
The US Federal Reserve’s commitment to higher interest rates and the potential for a recession in 2023 will combine to damage corporate earnings—damage that likely will cause the stock market to revisit its bear-market lows, warns Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro at Fidelity Investments. Timmer joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss his outlook for the year, and explain why he thinks bonds will resume their role as a source of protection for investors in balanced portfolios. His take...
Jan 06, 2023•38 min
Before his FTX cryptocurrency empire collapsed, many of Sam Bankman-Fried’s public statements indicated that he made decisions “as though he had no risk aversion,” according to Victor Haghani , the founder and chief investment officer of Elm Partners Management and a co-founder of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund. Haghani joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss how Bankman-Fried’s tolerance for risk made him highly unusual under the “ theory of choice under uncertainty ,” and how t...
Dec 30, 2022•41 min
The decades-long trend of globalization has come to an end and the fracturing of geopolitics will have huge implications for capital markets and investing in 2023, according to strategists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Jared Gross , head of institutional portfolio strategy at JPMorgan Asset Management, joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss how everything from supply chains to industrial policy, energy and defense will feel the impact. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Dec 23, 2022•42 min
Don’t expect volatile equity-market swings to go away when the calendar flips to 2023, says Edward Jones senior investment strategist Mona Mahajan, who advises focusing on defensive and value stocks in the new year. But there is hope for later in the year, she says, when the market will be looking forward to lower inflation and a stabilizing US economy. Mahajan joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss her outlook for next year and assess the market’s reaction to the latest message from the Fed...
Dec 16, 2022•29 min
Bonds are back—and they appear to be the preferred asset class as we head into the uncertain economic environment in 2023, according to Gargi Chaudhuri , head of investment strategy for the Americas at BlackRock’s iShares unit. She joined this week’s What Goes Up podcast to talk about her 2023 outlook, next week’s policy decision by the Federal Reserve and the appeal of not only safe Treasuries but some riskier mortgage securities. “It is so exciting, I think, to be in a world where there are so...
Dec 09, 2022•41 min
Expectations that inflation will normalize to near 2% in the near term will “end in tears,” according to Vincent Deluard, the director of global macro strategy at brokerage StoneX Financial. He contends growth in consumer prices will remain closer to 5% for about a decade. Deluard joined the latest episode of the What Goes Up podcast to explain why he believes inflation will remain stubbornly high and what that would mean for markets. He also reveals what he calls “Silicon Valley’s Seven Deadly ...
Dec 02, 2022•47 min
The implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire dealt a harsh blow to the Bahamas’ ambitions to be a hub for the crypto industry, and it’s causing massive pain for locals who treated the now-bankrupt exchange like a bank. Stephane Ouellette , chief executive of Toronto-based crypto firm FRNT Financial, traveled to the Bahamas to assess the fallout from the collapse. He joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss the bankruptcy’s effect on the island nation it called home, as well as the impact th...
Nov 23, 2022•41 min
The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX cryptocurrency empire was accelerated when the head of a rival exchange announced he was planning to dump holdings of something called FTT—a token created by FTX that afforded some perks to investors who owned it. At one point, the token was one of the 10 biggest coins in the market, which would have made it eligible for the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund. However, Bitwise never added FTT to the fund. Matt Hougan , chief investment officer of Bitwise Asset M...
Nov 18, 2022•42 min
FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange rattled the financial world this week when a crisis of investor confidence triggered a run, forcing the company to scramble for a buyer or bailout to avoid collapse. Joining the What Goes Up podcast to discuss the chaos that ensued are Sadie Raney, chief executive of the crypto hedge fund Strix Leviathan, and Nico Cordeiro, its chief investment officer. The firm said it had a limited amount of funds with FTX frozen. “We’ve been through a number of market crashes,” say...
Nov 11, 2022•42 min
Cryptocurrency news this year has been filled with stories about how institutional investors are embracing digital assets. So if more big players are entering the space, why are prices for Bitcoin, Ether and other tokens so depressed compared with last year’s peaks? Leah Wald , chief executive of digital-asset investment firm Valkyrie Investments Inc., joined the What Goes Up podcast to share her thoughts on the topic. “Institutions have a longer time horizon. They also, as a fiduciary, cannot j...
Nov 04, 2022•46 min
There are better ways to combat inflation than destroying demand with interest-rate increases, according to Nela Richardson , chief economist for payroll giant Automatic Data Processing Inc. She joined the latest What Goes Up podcast to give her take on half-century record American employment, decades-high inflation and signs of softness in the US housing market. “It’s about productivity,” Richardson says. “Productivity grows you out of inflation when more workers produce more output for the sam...
Oct 28, 2022•42 min
The stock market has been getting very volatile as the US Federal Reserve continues its historic effort to squash rising prices. Proclamations from policymakers suggest the central bank won’t let up until inflation is under control—even if it means trouble for the economy. Officials may raise rates by another 75 basis points at their upcoming November meeting, and the same again in December, according to Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at Invesco. “Seventy five is the new 25,” sh...
Oct 21, 2022•37 min
Another hot inflation reading this week underscores the importance of the US Federal Reserve’s campaign to tame decades-high increases in consumer prices, with many market observers evoking the memory of a similar effort by the central bank’s larger-than-life former chairman, Paul Volcker. One key to Volcker’s success in the 1980s, achieved through interest-rate hikes and control of the money supply, was setting the appropriate expectations in the financial markets, according to Christine Harper...
Oct 14, 2022•44 min
Institutional investors are playing a more-influential role in crypto markets as retail traders retreat, and that explains much of the recent range-bound price action, according to Michael Safai of proprietary trading firm Dexterity Capital. “We might have been playing checkers two years ago,” said Safai, whose firm traded more than $1.2 trillion in crypto last year. “We’re playing chess now.” Safai joined the What Goes Up podcast this week to discuss the state of the digital-asset market and ho...
Oct 07, 2022•44 min
UK Prime Minister Liz Truss triggered the latest wave of turbulence in global markets after announcing economic plans that include unfunded tax cuts. The move crushed the value of the pound while sending the already struggling country’s borrowing costs soaring. To Julian Emanuel, chief equity and quantitative strategist at Evercore ISI, the move was reminiscent of US tax cuts imposed under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, what came to be known as “Reaganomics.” In both cases, the policy was at odds w...
Sep 30, 2022•49 min
Sometimes it feels like you need to be a rocket scientist to trade successfully in modern markets. Well, George Patterson used to be one, having began his career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before turning his attention to investing with quantitative strategies. Now he’s the chief investment officer of PGIM Quantitative Solutions, which oversees about $91.5 billion of PGIM’s $1.5 trillion in assets under management. Patterson joined the latest episode of the “What Goes Up” podcast to disc...
Sep 23, 2022•39 min
George Cipolloni’s son is a video-game aficionado, and the teenager’s language has clearly worn off on his father. Indeed, the portfolio manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management jokes he’s found a “cheat code” in the bond market that’s helped his balanced strategy beat its benchmark with a heavy allocation to high-yield corporate debt. But don’t be alarmed: His “code” is really just fundamental analysis used to find bonds with attractive yields, but little risk. Cipolloni joined the latest episod...
Sep 16, 2022•46 min
