Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Jeanette Garretty, chief economist at Robertson Stephens Wealth Management , says that Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell's message this week was largely positive -- suggesting we're "in a mode to get a soft landing" -- but the market seized on confusing parts where he suggested that the central bank is not afraid of going through some pain. Garretty notes that there are already plenty of "pai...

Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at Channel Capital Research , says the Federal Reserve is putting "arrows in the quiver" to deal with a recession if it happens, but that the central bankers have signaled that "if there's a rough landing ... they won't be so quick to react to it." Roberts says the economy remains strong -- and that the U.S. is still the best market in the world -- despite...

Sir Angus Deaton , a Nobel Prize winning economist and Princeton University professor, says that economic policy for the last few decades has paid little to no attention to "the negative consequences of trade, of disruption, of people losing their jobs to automation to globalization and what-not" and he thinks the Inflation Reduction Act has started to reverse that, though the progress maybe short...

Investigative reporter Zeke Faux, author of " Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall ," discusses his adventures covering the cryptocurrency market, from connecting with Sam Bankman-Fried before the collapse of FTX to attending "ApeFest," convincing his wife to let him spend $20,000 on an NFT as part of his book research and more. He also notes that despite its trading popular...

Andrew Foster, founder and chief investment officer at Seafarer Capital Partners , says that stock prices in emerging markets are depressed -- understandably so -- but he thinks they have been too beaten down, which makes the case for emerging markets as a value play right now. That said, Foster says there is not a strong argument for growth investing in emerging markets now because struggles in C...

Michael Baron, portfolio manager for the Baron Partners Fund , explains how the fund came to have nearly half of its portfolio in one stock -- Tesla -- and how his confidence in the company may lead for those holdings to become an even bigger portion of the portfolio. Just as importantly, Baron explains how the Tesla example highlights the way active management and good stock picking can still bea...

Whitney Tilson, founder and chief executive officer at Empire Financial Research , says he expects the market to be flat to slightly up for the remainder of 2023 -- gaining about 5 percent on top of the 17 percent gains thus far -- and then gaining another 10 to 15 percent in 2023. He expects the "sanguine, strong" economic environment to continue despite the skepticism that has been present -- bu...

Jeff Rosenkranz, manager of the Shelton Tactical Credit Fund , says the economy and rate cycle are both reaching inflection points, making it tricky to make moves in fixed income without risking being wrong and facing punishment that's "severe". As such, he suggests moving up in credit quality, avoiding undue risks and starting to lengthen maturities, planning for rates to start going lower in six...

Michael Kahn, senior market analyst at Lowry Research Corp. , says the trend since October of last year remains up, despite the corrective nature of the last six weeks; that push and pull makes it that Kahn suggests buying only a few solid choices but not buying broadly or getting widely invested because the market's 'just not there at the moment.' Lowry notes that small-cap companies are struggli...

Anastasia Amoroso , chief investment strategist at iCapital , says the biggest surprise in 2023 has been just how resilient the economy has been, but not the Federal Reserve's ability to deliver a soft landing, because economic growth combined with declining inflation and a cautious central bank are the recipe to delay a decline. Amoroso believes there will eventually be a recession, but says it's...

Matt Harris, chief investment officer at The Hausberg Group , says he expects the stock market to continue higher -- until something interrupts the trend and shows a reason to be bearish -- but he acknowledges that the market is climbing the proverbial wall of worry because 'Things are not as bad as people feared.' Conditions haven't been great, but neither have they been awful, and 'not terrible'...

Odysseas Papadimitrou, chief executive officer at WalletHub.com , says that concerns over recent news about the nation's credit-card debt are overblown, in part because the numbers released recently by the Federal Reserve aren't adjusted for inflation. WalletHub analyzed the numbers and found that credit card debit levels relative to assets and other metrics show that the consumer is stronger than...

Greg Martin, co-founder of Rainmaker Securities -- which specializes in initial public offerings and private-market securities -- says the run-up in interest rates has changed the risk profile of potential buyers, and makes it harder for new projects to draw the dollars if all conditions aren't nearly perfect. He also talks about the SPAC market -- which he calls a 'house of cards' and a Ponzi sch...

James St. Aubin, chief investment officer at the Sierra Mutual Funds , says that while conventional thinking has moved away from a recession being imminent, more difficult conditions for consumers in the fourth quarter will create an economic slowdown that is likely to become a mild recession early in 2024. St. Aubin says stocks might tolerate the downturn well, in part because of the bear market...

Dan Zanger, chief technical officer at ChartPattern.com , says he expects the fall to play out the way it has historically, suffering through September and into October before starting a rally into the end of the year. He says the market has struggled since Fitch Ratings downgraded the credit rating of the United States, but that it has also created opportunities where an investor who dials down a...

Meb Faber , chief executive and chief investment officer at Cambria Investments , pounded the table for value investments -- and noted that he never even uses the phrase 'pound the table' -- noting that 'some of the opportunity set that exists today for value-style investments is some of the best we've ever seen.' Despite that environment, Faber is not exceptionally bullish for the market as a who...

Michael Mullaney, director of global markets research at Boston Partners , says the bond market and Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell 'are like two ships passing in the night,' with the bond market expecting the central bank chairman to cut rates sooner than he might want to, but if Powell raises rates or keeps them higher for longer, it will have a big negative impact on the market. Mullaney...

Katherine Krantz, chief executive officer at the Center for the Macro Specialist Designation , says she sees no indicator suggesting that 'This time is different,' meaning that elements like the inverted yield curve and the leading indicators -- which typically take 18 months before the conditions they exemplify hit the economy -- are only now starting to impact the economy. She doesn't like the l...

David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management , says there is a less than 50 percent chance of a recession this year, but adds that it looks like the economy could actually push off the downturn until 2025, with the strong job market and low unemployment basically balancing out bad inflation to keep economic troubles at bay. Also on the show, Sarah Foster of Bankrate.com dis...

David Keller, chief market strategist at StockCharts.com -- president of Sierra Alpha Research -- says that growth stocks are overextended and he expects that to unwind -- especially for the so-called 'Magnificent Seven' -- leading to choppiness for the rest of the third quarter before an end-of-year rally, with longer-term conditions weakening entering the New Year. Keller notes that forecast map...

Jeff Weaver, senior portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments , discusses how the money-market fund business has changed as interest rates have climbed to where payouts are at levels not seen in decades, but cautions against going all-in on the short-term savings instruments because when a recession comes -- something he expects for 2024 -- investors who have not started to lengthen out th...

Mervin Jebaraj, a professor at the University of Arkansas who chairs the Economic Policy Survey for the National Association for Business Economics, says the group's most recent poll of members showed a remarkable turnaround of sentiment from just a few months ago. Two-thirds of the economists polled were confident the economy is headed for a soft-landing scenario now, as opposed to the March surv...

Rusty Vanneman, chief investment officer at Orion , says that while the economy has done better than experts forecasts and predictions of a soft- or no-landing scenario are well-reasoned, the leading indicators -- which take a long time to impact the economy -- show that storm clouds remain in place, at least enough so that investors should be cautious. He talks about diversifying into this market...

Edward Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research , says it is possible that long-term recession predictors like the inverted yield curve and leading indicators may not be right this time, but mostly because the economy has been going through a series of recessions in various sectors. At the same time as those niche downturns, Yardeni says there have been simultaneous r...

Jordan Lopez, manager of the Payden High Income Fund , says that the healthy economy -- which he sees as being able to avoid a protracted and/or deep recession -- has high-yield securities in a good place, able to pay out returns that beat current inflation rates without much additional default risk. He notes that with a lot of high-yield debt currently having intermediate maturities, companies ca...