Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

On the 10th anniversary show for Money Life, legendary bond fund manager Dan Fuss, vice chairman at Loomis Sayles & Co., says that the Federal Reserve is "trapped," and will not be able to fully control inflation and that investors will be living with higher inflation and interest rates "for likely the next 10 years." Fuss compares today's bond market conditions to the Korean War era, and says inv...

Craig Johnson, senior research analyst at Piper Sandler, says that the market's current washout is setting up "a very healthy rally into year-end" that could see the Standard & Poor's 500 finish the year above 4,700, a particularly healthy move because the current pain and decline has longer to go before the turnaround begins. Johnson is currently overweight in energy, basic materials and large-ca...

Frank Holmes, chief executive/chief investment officer for U.S. Global Investors, says current economic and socio-political conditions have the market in the middle of a downturn that could grow into a full-blown recession accompanied by a bear market, but he expects central bankers and politicians to print as much money as is necessary to keep economic engines running and to minimize the setbacks...

Thomas Winmill, manager of the Midas Fund, says that while gold has not done well in its traditional role as an inflation hedge over the last year as higher prices have gripped the country, it would be too early to give up on precious metals filling that role, especially as inflation stays in place for longer than was initially expected. Winmill also notes that if the economy heads into a recessio...

Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, says that the stock market has been seeing its various drivers falter since last year, starting with uptrends turning to downtrends in developed markets like Europe, then in emerging markets, then small- and mid-cap stocks, and now domestic large-cap stocks. With less than half of the market sectors showing pos...

Economists -- as judged by the latest Business Conditions Survey released today by the National Association for Business Economics -- do not see inflationary pressures subsiding immediately but they believe the damaging impact to the market of high inflation, rising interest rates and global supply-chain issues will stop short of creating a recession in the United States. Economist Lester Jones di...

Zach Jonson, senior portfolio manager for Stack Financial Management, says that inflationary pressures that haven't been seen in over 40 years and the tightest labor market in history mean that what has worked in recent years will not be panning out so well going forward. That means "This is not your father's market," Jonson says, and investors need to go old school and get more defensive, expecti...

Before even getting to today's interviews, Chuck discusses the fallout from Netflix losing one-third of its value on Wednesday, and how a big popular security being challenged this way becomes the perfect opportunity for individuals to see if their portfolio has passed a key stress test. Also on the show, Tom Lydon of ETFTrends.com picks a new fund highlighting the consumer market in India as his...

Chris Retzler, portfolio manager for the Needham Small Cap Growth Fund, says that current economic conditions impacting growth stocks have weighed particularly heavily on smaller companies, and he expects that pain to continue, worsening about a year out as the economy struggles to digest higher inflation and heightened interest rates. In the Market Call interview, Retzler notes that he expects th...

Chuck plays a recent cold-call conversation in which a representative from "Card Services" suggests that a superior credit history has earned the chance for a credit card that charges zero interest ever, and that offers 20 percent cash back for every purchase. The card may be too good to be true -- though Chuck got multiple offers for it -- but the conversation must be heard to be believed. And it...

Buck Klintworth, senior vice president and portfolio manager at Chase Investment Counsel, says there "are very few glimmers of hope out there" in the stock market right now, noting that the market currently resembles 2007 when it was reaching highs ahead of the major downturn of 2008. With high inflation and rising interest rates, Klintworth says that "We are sort of playing 'Fear Factor, Stock Ma...

Karl Mills, president of Jurika, Mills & Keifer, says that the high-inflation, rising-rate global economy is challenging investors to buy assets "that float and swim," namely stocks and real estate, because bonds -- the traditional safe asset -- sink in these conditions, with "an almost-guaranteed loss of purchasing power." Mills thinks the market has the potential to rise from now to the end of t...

John Waggoner, financial editor at AARP.org, says that the current wave of inflation -- most recently pegged on Tuesday by the government at 8.5 percent -- is not the same as what older investors remember from the late 1970s and early 1980s, but he cautions those older investors to avoid knee-jerk reactions to higher prices, noting that diversification -- buying undervalued securities, investing i...

Leading retail industry analyst Dana Telsey, chief research officer at Telsey Advisory Group, says that the retail industry is poised to overcome high inflation, rising interest rates, supply-chain issues stretched by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and more thanks to culture and structural changes, the closing of struggling stores and lagging shopping centers and a resilient, healthy consumer. Telse...

Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro for Fidelity Investments, says that investors are betting that the current market can be a replay of 1994 -- when the Federal Reserve was raising interest rates to offset inflation and shooting for a proverbial soft landing -- which could mean a sideways path or a holding pattern while the central bank is tightening. Timmer says that while earnings are grow...

Jeff Bishop of RagingBull.com says that gold is setting up on a technical basis for a strong rally over the next year. While gold is often used as a hedge against inflation -- and it has struggled in that role as inflation across the country has reached its highest levels in 40 years -- Bishop says it is currently poised to go "well above $2,000" in the next year. Bishop, who is not typically a go...

Kathy Boyle, president of Chapin Hill Advisors, says she expects the stock market to go through a "very bad period" ahead, the result of a recession that she thinks is brewing right now, a hunch that is supported by an inverted yield curve, high inflation and other conditions. As a result, she says investors don't want to hold long-maturity bonds, and need to be careful about dividend-focused fund...

Bryce Doty, senior portfolio manager at Sit Fixed Income, says that a miserable first quarter and the threat of more interest-rate hikes have bond investors feeling miserable, but he believes that the worst is over for bonds, noting that the rate hikes have already made it that investors can now generate at least a small amount of income from short-term bonds, something that wasn't possible at the...

Chris Vermeulen, chief market strategist at The Technical Traders, says that 'the red flags are in the air that the market is ready to roll over,' and while he sees the current rally continuing for another month or two, any upward moves right now are setting up for a bear market, a downward move of more than 25 percent. "Somebody putting money into almost anything right now is carrying a ton of ri...

David Trainer, president at investment-research firm New Constructs, says that 80 percent of the Standard & Poor's 500 companies are overstating earnings, and he highlighted Illumina as topping the list, saying the company is overvalued as a result. The company is currently trading for about $350, but Trainer put it in "The Danger Zone" because it has an economic book value of "negative two dollar...

Brad Lamensdorf, editor of the Lamensdorf Market-Timing Report and chief executive officer of Active Alts, says that investors can expect a lot of 'sub-surface  volatility throughout the entire year," but all of that chop amounts to the market getting past the bigger-than-expected gains of 2020 and 2021. Lamensdorf says that most market sentiment gauges and indicators are negative but that is crea...

Edward Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research, says that the current wage-price-rent spiral is likely to spur businesses to spend money to increase the productivity of workers. If that innovation and change occurs -- and Yardeni believes there will be a 'productivity boom' -- a decade that started out pretty badly could instead turn into the Roaring 2020s. Yardeni s...

There is nothing about inflation hitting its highest levels in 40 years that makes anyone feel good, but Chuck looks beyond the big number to talk about the actual impact that higher prices are having on people, and concludes by noting that the costs and the choices inflation is creating are uncomfortable but manageable. As a result, while he understands the grumbles -- saying he complains himself...

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, says that the cryptocurrency market's fear over regulation is misplaced, and while threats of regulation send the market into a tizzy, he thinks that worry is misplaced and directed toward heavy-handed regulatory efforts. He thinks the potential for regulation will turn from a headwind to a tailwind, because decentralized finance g...

David Trainer, founder and president of New Constructs, says that HubSpot is worth only about 15 percent of what its stock currently is trading for, and he's putting it in 'The Danger Zone' because it faces stiff competition in an industry that is being commoditized, leaving it littel room to grow profitably, let alone at the incredibly high valuation the market has given the stock for now. We've...