Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

It's a wide-ranging show today, with Ben Cook, portfolio manager for the Hennessy Energy Transition and Hennessy Mid-Stream funds , giving his latest take on the energy sector, noting that the industry is well-positioned to at least not be hurt while tariff policies play out, even as the U.S. has become the world's largest oil-producing nation and the OPEC nations are looking to improve their fort...

Brendan Ahern, chief investment officer at KraneShares and the author of the China Last Night blog , says that the government of China is "doing the things that Trump wants them to be doing" for domestic policy purposes, which is why he sees the signs of a U.S.-China trade deal in the works. He says in The Big Interview that neither side can win in a trade war, but that both sides can move forward...

Rob Williams, chief investment strategist at Sage Advisory Services , says the economy and market have moved off of potential worst-case scenarios into "this manageable camp," where it must get through potholes and uncertainty as the economy "flirts with stall speed" in growth. Still, Williams sees some powerful tailwinds that could drive the market higher in the second half of the year, but the c...

Nick Maggiulli, chief operating officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management — the author of the " Of Dollars and Data " blog — says that while recoveries can happen faster now than in the past due to advances in technology and information, investors who always expect the market to bounce back quickly from any setback have learned the wrong lesson. While he is not calling for a protracted downturn, he is...

Jose Torres, senior economist for Interactive Brokers , says that the economy is about to get past tariffs — "the huge negative of the Trump policy mix" — and move to lighter taxation, milder regulations, subdued energy costs, rising factory production and, hopefully, rising employment as well," which creates a bullish outlook for the economy and the stock market into 2026. Torres says he expects...

Herb Greenberg, editor of Herb Greenberg's Red Flag Alerts , tells the story of a stock scam that most recently centered on Ostin Technology, a Chinese company traded on the Nasdaq that recently popped to over $9 per share before losing 95 percent of its value in a single day. While the company is a cautionary tale for investors, Greenberg's bigger warning involves similar frauds that spring up ar...

Scott Helfstein, head of investment strategy for Global X ETFs says the fundamentals are strong enough that the market and economy should be in better shape by year's end, provided the wildcards of tariffs and geopolitics don't interfere. Discussing his outlook for the rest of 2025 , Helfstein expects different leadership, noting that he favors low-beta strategies, plus the defense technology and...

Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Asset Management , says that the volatility and headline risks of the first half of 2025 haven't changed the outlook for the market and economy, which can grind through the rest of the year and into 2026 with modest gains. Haworth acknowledges "a lot of questions still to be answered," but he says that most of the answers will be within degree...

Dustin Reid, chief strategist for fixed income at Mackenzie Investments , says he expects the Federal Reserve to hold off on rate cuts in July, but to be moved into making a double cut — half a percent — in September, and worries that the central bank may be waiting too long to act, as the labor market is starting to show some cracks. Reid said a bigger cut might be taken as a positive by the mark...

David Goodsell, executive director of the Natixis Center for Investor Insight , discusses the firm's 2025 Individual Investor Survey , which shows that investors were so satisfied with the 20-plus percent gains of 2023 and '24 that they are expecting less this year, but they have only dropped their expectations from roughly 17 percent down to about 12 percent, and Goodsell notes that financial adv...

Daniel Morris, chief market strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management , says he sees continued expansion in the United States and a slowing in Europe and other international markets, which contributes to why he is mostly neutral on allocations, as tariff plays and international stimulus efforts and more creates positive potential around the globe. Morris says a neutral stance makes sense because...

Stacie Mintz, head of quantitative equity for PGIM Quantitative Solutions , says that equity valuations in emerging markets are at their most attractive level relative to U.S. stocks in decades. That's not a surprise, as emerging markets have underperformed domestic markets for the last 13 years, but Mintz says the time has come for diversification to pay off. While the headline risks of tariffs,...

Ed Shill, managing partner at the Wealth Enhancement Group , says he sees the market either continuing to climb the proverbial wall of worry or getting complacent, and he fears that it's the latter after the sharp rebound from April's decline. "Right now the market is overbought," Shill says in the Market Call, where he recommends "putting airbags on," using stops to lock in profits and being prep...

Brian Levitt, global market strategist at Invesco , says that he came into the year expecting that the growth and inflation backdrop would support reasonable corporate earnings that could push the market higher. He still believes that -- despite expecting a slowdown, struggles with increased market volatility and higher inflation as a result of tariff impacts -- and said that modest earnings growt...

Julia Hermann, global market strategist at New York Life Investments , says she is concerned about market volatility for the remainder of the year, especially as tariff impacts work their way further into the economy and as we see some resolution on their status. While tariffs pose the risk of creating an exogenous shock — precisely what Hermann worried about triggering a recession when she last v...

It's a tale of two forecasts on today's edition of Money Life, as two experts come to very different conclusions of how 2025 will play out. In The Big Interview, Paul Christopher, head of global investment strategy for the Wells Fargo Investment Institute says he expects the market to drop "5 to 10 percent easily" as tariffs, accompanying inflation and a slowing economy take hold during the third...

Brent Schutte, chief investment officer at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. , says that "Asset classes don't die, they just go to sleep for awhile," and they wake up when there are changes to the macroeconomic backdrop. He says that domestic strategies about trade, tariffs and global defense represent that background change, which is why he's recommending diversification, and considering...

Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist at LPL Financial says he expects the market has enough momentum to break through to new record highs, and soon. Led by tech stocks, Turnquist expects the move off the April lows to continue, though he acknowledges that the macro backdrop "is extremely messy." If the market can overcome trade uncertainties, Turnquist says that when new highs are achieved t...

Mitchel Penn, managing director at Oppenheimer & Co. — interviewed at the Active Investment Company Alliance BDC Forum in New York on Wednesday — says that credit losses for business development companies during the first quarter of 2025 were more than double the level they have been at for the last few years. He says some of that increase could be attributed to the market's reaction to government...

Joe Quinlan, head of CIO market strategy for Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank , says the market "got wrong-footed coming into January," expecting a pro-business administration but stumbling instead due to the tariffs, but he says that as the economy starts to get to the other side and have some clarity, he still sees the Standard & Poor's 500 hitting the same goals his team set for it at t...

Charles Rotblut, vice president for the American Association of Individual Investors — the keeper of the group's sentiment and asset-allocation surveys — discusses how investors are becoming increasingly neutral in their sentiment but increasingly aggressive in their investment plans. Neutral sentiment — the expectation that the market will remain flat over the next six months — has been on the ri...

Dan Carter, senior portfolio manager at Fort Washington Investment Advisors , says that the bond market "is pricing in a very benign outcome for everything that has been going on and all of the risks that are out there," and the stock market mostly seems to be agreeing with that assessment. While Carter's forecast calls for slow growth, he thinks the chances are that it stops short of a recession,...

Technical analyst Willie Delwiche, the founder of Hi Mount Research , says that "New highs are the most bullish thing that stocks can do," and he says investors need to see a return to record-high levels for proof that the current rebound is more than just a bear-market rally. He expects the market to be held hostage by headlines and range-bound — bouncing between the market's February peak and th...

Andy Wells, chief investment officer at Sanjac Alpha , says that investors might want to put a collar on their enthusiasm, whether that involves a hunger for interest rate cuts or double-digit stock market returns. In a wide-ranging Big Interview, he says that he doesn't expect the Federal Reserve to make rate cuts, notes that he thinks international stocks have profited from turmoil but are less...

Veteran market-timer Brad Lamensdorf, manager of the Ranger Equity Bear ETF and of a new market-neutral hedge fund, says that the market's outsized gain of the last few years has set it up for a long period of sideways and heavy volatility while high valuations settle into something more reasonable. He's not calling for a recession — and he thinks there will be plenty of opportunities for savvy st...