What Goes Up

As the US government debt-ceiling standoff heats up and markets grow more volatile, veteran Loomis Sayles & Co. portfolio manager Elaine Stokes has some advice for investors in the corporate-bond market: Get ready to buy. Stokes joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss the opportunities the drama in Washington may create, the potential for a credit crunch stemming from regional-bank turmoil,...

Brace for a US recession to start next quarter and worsen at the end of the year, and don’t bet on the Federal Reserve to react immediately to prop up growth. That’s according to Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co. She joined the What Goes Up podcast to give her appraisal of the economy, and discuss what to expect for the rest of 2023. “It’s likely to be kind of more of a slow d...

While the drama surrounding regional US banks has largely subsided following the failure of three lenders in March, that doesn’t mean the ripple effects of Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes are over. This is according to  Que Nguyen , chief investment officer of equities at Research Affiliates, who joined the What Goes Up podcast to give her outlook on markets and talk about why she doesn’t fore...

Runaway inflation. Surging interest rates. Bank failures. For a while it seemed like all of these issues would combine to trigger a US recession. Not so fast, says Morgan Stanley’s Seth Carpenter, the bank’s global chief economist. He joined the What Goes Up podcast to explain why there are signs the US could experience a “soft landing” that averts a major economic downturn.  “It seems hard to avo...

Troy Gayeski , chief market strategist at FS Investments, says don’t wait until May to flee the stock market rally—get out now. He joined the What Goes Up podcast to explain why he’s expecting the S&P 500 to bottom out at around 3,200, a roughly 22% drop from current levels. “First of all, the strongest rallies have always been in bear markets,” he says. “Usually they’re driven by technical fa...

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 a...

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 Quanti...

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...

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 d...

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...

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...

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 in...

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...

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 Ame...

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...

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 strategi...

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 c...

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 go...

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 think...

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...

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,...

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...

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 bu...

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...

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  pod...