Ask Us Anything: Barron's Answers Your Investing Questions
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This is Barron's Live. Each week, we bring you live conversations from our newsrooms about what's moving the market right now. On this podcast, we take you inside those conversations, the stories, the ideas, and the stocks to watch so you can invest smarter. Now, let's dial in.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Barron's Live, our weekly webcast and podcast. I'm Lauren Rubland, Senior Managing Editor at Barron's. Thanks for joining us today for a market update. My guest is Barron's Deputy Editor, Ben Levison. We're going to try something a little bit different today. After we run through all the companies in the news, all the earnings reports, economic updates and such, we're going to have an extended Q&A session.

I always marvel at how much Ben knows about markets, and today is your chance to ask him anything. It looks like many of you have, and I'm excited to see how this goes. So are you ready for the challenge, Ben? I'll do my best. All right. I know you will. So the first question, Ben, comes from me. There you go. And before we get into the company's making news this week, I wanted to get your take on why the market has been so resilient this year.

Do you think it's a referendum on earnings growth, on economic growth, on something about the new Trump administration, something else? What's behind the market strength? How about all the above? I'll take that. I mean, I think what I find fascinating about this market is that, as you said, there's been all these headlines and.

It's been volatile at times. Every Friday, it seems we get some sort of announcement about a tariff or something and the market finishes the day down and I have to rewrite my column or re-edit a column or re-prepare what I'm going to say when I go on TV. And it gets frustrating.

But at the same time, you know, there's a lot of there's a lot going on. It's not just about tariffs. It's about who's getting hit with tariffs and how much of that really impacting things. It's also about this hope that there is, you know, deregulation that's going to go on.

you know, under President Trump. And I think that's helping things as well. And then you mentioned earnings. Earnings growth has been quite good. I was just actually preparing for this call, looking at how companies have been doing. You know, 6.4% are, sorry, the earnings are beating by 6.4%. You know, you're having your typical 76% of companies beating. They're beating by 6.4%. And earnings looks like they're pacing right now to grow by about 15% in the fourth quarter.

quarter of last year. That's really solid early

earnings growth. I would say even absent the Trump benefit, with that kind of earnings growth, you're going to see a pretty solid market. Right. And I think the key word here right now is solid. You know, we're not quite halfway through February, but, you know, it's the market is for the year up. The S&P is up 3.1 percent about a month and a half, almost a month and a half in, which is, you know, good.

but not great. And if you look at the trailing 12 month returns, we're at 21%, which is less than the market made in all of 2024. So we're sort of on this, if we're looking kind of at the rolling one year returns, those are pulling back a little bit. They've decelerated, but we're still holding it. This feels more like a market that is kind of holding up than sort of this momentum driven market that we had in 23 and 24.

um so i just there's a lot of stuff happening here and there's also a lot that we don't know yet um and we don't know how all this is going to play out um and so you know you are getting these pullbacks these these jumps and uh you know the market goes up it goes down it hits a new high but then pulls back immediately and i think that's kind of to be expected given sort of the uh

I don't know what, let's call it a little bit of uncertainty and chaos that's going on right now. And if you look at it, we've really been kind of in a sideways market since the election. And you know what? I think we could probably all agree that whatever we think about Trump's policies, they do create a level of uncertainty that might make it harder for the market to have initially the same kind of gains that we've had in the past couple of years.

We're just getting started. But I think overall, investors are not throwing in the towel. No, not at all. That to me has been most noteworthy. Yep. They're taking this as, you know, they're adjusting as things happen. They're looking at the numbers. They're looking at what companies are saying. And I always go back to earnings. And as long as that earnings growth is there, markets are usually okay unless they anticipate something hurting those earnings. So we will see what happens.

All right. So let's talk about some of those earnings. We have a ton of companies reporting this week, and I thought we would start with Kraft Heinz. The company reports on Wednesday, the forecasts do not look overly inspiring, and the stock looks like it's been taking one of those weight loss drugs. It's down almost 20% over the past year. So what can you tell us about Kraft Heinz? What's ailing the company and what is the outlook?

Well, I mean, I think part of this is something that's ailing food companies generally is that, you know, Citigroup put out actually a really big note today talking about GLP-1s and this focus on weight loss. And I think that there is a shift happening in America's eating habits that people are, even if we're not using GLP-1s, and most of us aren't, I think a lot of us are eating healthier. There's a focus on,

just eating better. And so that hurts packaged food companies like Kraft Heinz. It also hurts companies like Campbell's Soup and Conagra and Hershey and Smucker.

And so you have this shift going on. And I think it's showing up in Kraft Heinz's earnings. You know, Mizuho actually downgraded the stock on Monday. They lowered the fiscal year EPS to three dollars. That's below the streets. Three oh five.

And they basically think that, you know, they had this idea that the snacks were going to be OK, that these packaged foods could be OK. And I think they're just pulling the plug on that. And I think that's just kind of what is happening right now. And there are better places if you're into snacks.

You know, if you're into this kind of stuff that you want to look overseas. So that's why Mizuho recommends Mondelez, which does the same snack business, but in Europe. And they also recognize companies that do proteins because that's what people want. And it's like Simply Good Foods, which is actually a Barron stock pick.

So, yeah, Kraft Heinz, it's down 11 percent in the last three months, down 19 percent year over year. Its earnings are going to be stagnant. Seventy eight cents is what's expected. They reported 78 cents a year ago. The revenue actually looks like it's going to decline a little bit to six point seven billion from six point nine. So, yeah, it's just in these food stocks. You just have to worry about them a little bit. Is anybody worried about their steady dividends?

I don't think so right now. I think you'd really have to see a bigger drop in earnings. And we're not seeing that yet.

But you do want to pay attention to that because we saw that with Walgreens. Here's a stock that had been paying a dividend for, I forget exactly how long, but a very, very, very long time. And they had to eliminate their dividend. In this case, they do have a 5.5% dividend yield, which is high, but Mizuho at least expects it to be range bound trading right now.

So I think that is probably OK. But, you know, it's something to keep an eye on. 5.5 is nothing to sneeze at. No, that's that is a nice dividend. Right. For sure. All right. So speaking of packaged foods reminds me of drinks. Let's move on to Coca-Cola. The company reports tomorrow. How has Coke fared lately and what is Wall Street expecting from the latest earnings report?

You know, as a staple stock, it hasn't done that bad. It's down 0.1% over the last three months. Staples generally are up 0.2%. And it's gained 7.2% over the last year. Staples gained around 10%. So it's underperforming a little, but not bad. Its earnings are expected to grow to 52 cents from 49%. And its sales are also expected to decrease.

From a technical perspective, it actually looks good. ChartSmarter's Doug Bush thinks that it has support around 60-ish.

And he was recommending buying it near that a newer 200 day moving average. But, you know, again, we have these pressures on GLP ones. But Coke, if nothing else, has less exposure to the US. Pepsi has more. And Pepsi also has that snack business. So if you're looking at Coke, it's probably going to hold up better than Pepsi. But this this GLP one issue is going to be an overhang for it as well.

All right. So snacks and soda. That starts to remind me of my Super Bowl party, Ben, which, yay Eagles. But let's look at another stock involved with the Super Bowl, and that is DraftKings. The company reports on Thursday, was the company a winner on game night? What should investors know here?

Well, it's funny because I think the first take on all this was that it was not good for DraftKings. A lot of the bets actually skewed towards Philadelphia winning. And when you win, when there are more bets on the, when more people get it right than wrong, that's not the greatest thing. Also, it was expected to be a close Super Bowl.

Not at all. Not at all. And so people are people who bet on the, you know, the winning, you know, who wins by how much. And that bet didn't go well either. On the other hand, you know, the way that they make so much of their money these days are, you know, when people bet on events happening, like how many yards is Saquon Barkley going to rush for or how many catches is Travis Kelsey going to have?

And those bets actually paid off quite well because both of these, you know, these are two star players. You know, Saquon Barkley had 2000 yards rushing during the regular season. He's the he's what really makes the Eagles go on offense. And he had he was held to a very quiet game. Travis Kelsey was, too. He didn't have a bunch of catches and not many yards. And so those kind of bets really would have paid off for them.

And so, you know, it's it's again something to, you know, these things are complicated. And I think that the biggest issue here, I mean, the stock is up 0.2 percent today. So the market actually isn't really betting one way or the other on the stock.

I think the interesting thing is really that there's just a lot of competition here. You know, you have MGM is in the online betting game. You have, you know, Fan Duels there. That's owned, I believe, by Flutter Entertainment.

um, you know, and so you have a lot of competition. And so DraftKings actually doing better today than its competition. Flutter is down 0.4. DraftKing is up 0.2. MGM is down 1.4, I think right now, but there's just a ton of competition in this business. And I think that makes it hard, but like Americans are gambling more than ever. Um, it's, it's kind of amazing to the point where like Robin hood wanted to start putting gambling on their, uh,

on their site. And I think they were prevented from doing that. But it's just, it's one of these things where, you know, it's a big business, it's growing, but because of competition, maybe it doesn't pay off in the stocks as well as people had hoped. That's interesting. That was not what people expected originally. So.

Definitely interesting. I want to switch gears entirely now and head to the materials sector. We have BP reporting tomorrow. The company has come under attack, so to speak, by activist investor Elliott Management, which wants to see some changes at BP. So bring us up to date on the situation there.

Yeah, I mean, basically, they want BP to start acting like an oil company. Amazing. So, you know, Jeffrey's put out a note when this news broke over the weekend. They're saying that they think there could be board changes. There are going to be exits from low carbon assets and from certain regions. They think that they're going to prioritize the spending better.

And they're going to focus on free cash flow generation, which basically sounds a lot like wanting to make them look like Exxon. And, you know, that could be very good news. The market thinks it's very good news. The stock is up almost 7% today. But if you look at the chart, the stock has actually been rallying quite a bit since basically bottomed on December 20th and has been rallying since then. It was down at $28.50.

On the 20th, it's now up at 30, almost 35.

So that's quite a rally in a very short period of time. And it really is. It's on these hopes that, you know, Elliott is going to get the company focused back on being an oil company. And that will be mean better margins and just a better, better company, better free cash flow that could go to dividends and things like that. So it's very interesting to watch. We had actually a fairly positive story. It wasn't a pick, but in the magazine,

this last week. We had a very positive story on BP and it looks like this might be starting to play out for the stock. You know, I,

I always worry a little bit when you see a stock move as much as it has in very short period of time, but it's the kind of thing where, you know, if you're interested in it, you wait for it to perhaps, you know, pull back a little bit because it just had a big jump, maybe go sideways for a little while, but to keep an eye on it to, to, to buy on those dips. It sounds like drill baby drill is becoming an international mantra. Well, it's not even drill baby drill. It's just, you know, if you assume, cause I don't think oil companies actually want to drill, you know,

a lot more. That brings oil prices down. No, they don't want to bring the price down. Right. But they want to drill smartly and investors want oil companies to spend smartly because there's a lot of cash flow here that can go to investors if this is done right. And we're seeing that, I think, in the U.S. oil companies. And you might see it transferred over to the European ones as well. How do you manage this in a way that you're profitable, you're able to return cash

cash to shareholders and dividends and buybacks. And you don't end up in this boom and bust cycle that oil has typically fallen into in the past. And I think that's what the oil companies need.

up oil companies want. And they don't want them spending on things that aren't going to end up returning into cash. A lot of these investments are very high risk and aren't going to translate. And these are like the renewable stuff, you know, they're oil companies. And so, you know, that's not really where a lot of investors think the money should be going. And that's going to, I think ultimately that's what's lifting BP right now. It's really a capital allocation issue. It really is. Yeah.

All right. So let's now talk about the gold market. To me, the gold rally is the eighth wonder of the world this year. Bullion is closing in on $3,000 an ounce. What does that mean for Barrick, the gold miner, which reports on Wednesday? Well, I want to first talk about gold itself and why it's going up. Because what I find fascinating is you have three things happening simultaneously. You have gold at a high. You have the stock market near a high. And you have the dollar near a high.

Those three things are not supposed to happen. But what I think it tells you is that what we always hear about gold is that it's a risk off investment, things like that. And it usually goes up when the dollar is falling. If people are saying, oh, I'm worried about a weak dollar, I'm going to buy gold.

But you know what? There are a lot of people in the world that are worried about their currencies getting devalued right now. And so you hear this about the Chinese. A lot of the Chinese are worried about the renminbi going down a lot. So what do they do? They buy gold. And so when you see this strong dollar, people are worried about their currencies. They're looking for other things, other stores of value. And this is there for people who aren't Americans. They're looking at gold to do that.

At the same time, and this is the one that I always come back to, is the decision to freeze Russia's central bank assets, the dollars that they had put their money into, has forced central banks that are in antagonistic relationships with the United States to rethink their asset allocations. They want fewer dollars, and they need something else to put it in. And you can't really put it into the euro.

I'm not sure anyone really wants to put it into the Chinese or Minbi or the Yuan. You got to have something. Right. I mean, or, you know, you have the BRICS talking about a BRIC currency, but that's still not here yet. And so what do you put your dollar? What do you put your reserves into? You put it into gold. And I think that's been a huge part of it as well.

What's interesting is that a lot of the gold miners have not kept up with the price of gold, the stock prices. Even though gold is at 3000, they're not getting any of that benefit, which I find, you know, pretty, pretty wild because normally these stocks would do exactly that. They would go straight up with the price of gold and they're not. And there are some worries about the cost of mining and things like that.

But this is just, you know, just over the last year, gold, the price of gold is up 40 percent, which is an amazing, amazing gain for the precious metal. I mean, it outperformed the stock market. But if you look at gold miners, that's the one I like to look at as the VanEck gold miners ETF. That is GDX.

So GDX, if you look at it over the last year, OK, that's actually I got this all wrong now. The last year has actually been good for it. It's up 50 percent, but it's up only 10, 11 percent annually over the last three years, while the price of gold is up 16 percent annually over the last three years. So there's still a lot a big gap between where gold is now.

And where gold miners are, and there's a lot of room for those gold miners to catch up, especially the big guys. The big ones have been really hurting. So at Barrick, we'll turn to them now. Over the last 12 months, it's only gained 16%. So most of those gains in the gold miners are not coming from Barrick. They're not coming from Newmont.

But RBC is actually pretty optimistic about Barrick. They're supposed to have a profit of 41 cents. That would be up from 27. Their sales are up a lot as well to almost 4 billion from just a bit over 3 billion. But it's going to come down to hitting its operating target.

You know, they have to get their big projects going. They have to show that they're not overspending. And again, going back to that CapEx, are they spending or go back to that capital allocation? Are they spending in the right way to be able to deliver value for investors?

But Rosenberg Research, which is not where I expected to get this note, put out a note today arguing that gold miners just generally remain, and this is their words, a significantly underappreciated equity opportunity. They

focused on the peg ratio for the gold mining sector. The forward PE for gold miners is 12 times, and they're expected to grow 38% a year over the next three years. That gives them a peg of just 0.3 times. Okay. And

Peg is one of the smallest in the market. Yes, it's ridiculously low. And, you know, they put in there for reference, the peg ratio of less than one is considered cheap. One to two is considered reasonable and two or more is expensive. So these guys are bargains. And, you know, it's especially compared to the overall market where, you know, the MSCI world is at 2.5 times and the MSCI US is at 1.9 times.

So there's based on that metric, these gold miners are cheap. And so that there should be more upside as people, I think, start to get more confidence that gold is not. I mean, this rally has been pretty wild as people start to get either more confidence that gold is prices are going to remain high. Or maybe we start seeing a bubble in gold where people start chasing the prices. The gold stocks probably will or should start participating in that rally more.

At KPMG, we make the difference by creating value, like developing strategic insights that help drive M&A success or embedding AI solutions into your business to sustain competitive advantage. KPMG, make the difference. Learn more at www.kpmg.us slash insights. What do you make of the junior gold miners? That's the, I guess, GDXJ?

Yes. GDXJ. I mean, I know less about them. You know, I've always focused more on Barrick and on, on, on Newmont just because they are the, the, the two biggest miners out there. You know, they've,

done very well, even better. They're up 57% over the last 12 months. They've also underperformed over that three year period and they've had a great start to the year. They're up 19%, which makes me think, you know what? We may need to have a little bit of a pause before chasing them higher. But, you know, they're approaching it looks like the top in this is about 55 in the juniors. That's where they kind of peaked and fell back.

And so if you break through that, you're looking at more upside. And I think, you know, GDX, I'm going to pull that chart up right now. But GDX is in a very similar situation. At $42, it's coming up to what had been its high at around $45. And so you're looking for these to start breaking through those levels. I think there's going to need to be a little consolidation first. They've come very far, very fast since the start of the year. But I think there could be a lot of upside in these stocks. You know, I keep thinking of that phrase, the everything rally.

And that's what we have going on here. Well, almost because there are some things that aren't, you know, like consider. I mean, I was going to point to some of the Magnificent Seven. I mean, what's what's great about this in in some ways is that.

Aside from, you know, what you call it, you know, meta is very popular. But if you look at the Magnificent Seven this year and I use the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF, MAGS is the ticker to sort of look at this. They're down 0.2 percent this year. And so it's an everything but MAG seven rally, which is kind of fascinating.

All right. So let's get to some of those listener questions so we can come back to some stocks later. And I'm going to start with Riti, who is number one this week. First question in, what is your thesis on volatility? Are we going to see a lot more of it from tariffs, wars, inflation, other events or just plain old market volatility? What do you think?

I think there'll be more volatility. What's interesting is that more volatility is usually associated with a down market, but not always. You know, we saw in like 1998 and 1999, incredible volatility and yet fantastic outperformance in stocks. And I think that's...

You know, it could be something that we do see in the next year or two that, you know, there's so much going on. There are so many announcements. We're not sure how things are going to play out. And that gives us these days where things look okay. And then all of a sudden, boom, you're down or things are looking fine. Something good happens and boom, you're up.

And so I think that does make I don't think that as long as the earnings are still there and the U.S. economy is still growing. And I think this is important that what separates the U.S. from other countries, it's not growth.

Or at least it's not economic growth. There are countries that grow faster. What is separates us is that we are very good at making our companies get to participate in that growth. They run their businesses, they make money, they return that money to shareholders, and it's the best place in the world for that.

It's why, you know, you look at someplace like Japan. One of the reasons Japan's stock market is actually doing much better recently is because they actually started to think about shareholder value.

You know, not just running these companies to run them, but to actually think about what are shareholders getting in return for investing. And that's helped a lot. And other countries are turning to that as well. And I think as long as the U.S. continues to let companies be companies and to run themselves, you know, federed by the government, restricting things too much and prohibiting them from,

you know, doing their business or returning cash to shareholders. I think it's fine. We're going to be, you know, over the long term will be good, but there is going to be a lot of volatility. I just think it's the world is a much more unsettled place and volatility is going to reflect that.

And it doesn't mean that it's the enemy. It actually creates trading opportunities. It does, but you just have to be ready for it. For sure. All right. So we had a question from Paul. Speaking of gold, what is your projection for gold in 2025? You want to give that a try? I'm not sure I have a projection so much, but here, let me just take a look at one thing. You know, just following like the trend a bit. I mean, I could see...

You know, I'm not sure. I mean, I think I think we could gain another 20 percent this year. You know, I'm not sure that these returns are able to like 40 percent a year or a 12 month period is a lot. And I'm not sure you could keep getting that. But, you know, why not another 20 percent? Why not? You know, we're at three thousand. Why not get to thirty six hundred by the end of the year? That sounds reasonable.

Okay, we're not going to hold you to that, but we'll keep it in mind. All right, we had a question from Ira. What are your thoughts on Honeywell splitting into three companies following the GE example? Do you think Honeywell will have the same road to success? I think part of what made Honeywell

I don't know. I don't think they will. Largely because, you know, they're not GE. I think what's so incredible about GE is just how badly off it was when Culp took over. You know, there really were people talking about a possible bankruptcy at some point, you know, not not a near term one, but that was not it was a non negligible scenario that people were running because

And somehow, you know, Larry Culp came in and was able to sell off businesses, raise cash, get rid of liabilities, do all kinds of things, and then split the companies into businesses that are now able to, that make sense as standalones in ways that we never even imagined. I mean, I think Vernova is the one that has really shocked people because it was the, you

really the problem child of GE. It was that business of, you know, making turbines and things for like, they make gas turbines, they make them for the big windmills and things like that. And the thought was that, you know, this was going to be the problem child, but he

When it split off, he made sure it had no debt. And then it got caught up in the whole power for data centers trade. And the stock has done extremely well. But it was coming off of this thing where

like the changes were massive. This was just not a split. This wasn't just a split. This was a complete, I mean, it's, I think it's one of the greatest acts of, you know, I don't know. Rearrangement. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's amazing. Right. And so none of these companies are in the same spot, first of all, and none of them are in the, like I,

I don't think the sentiment towards any of them are as bad as GE was. And I don't think the outcomes can be as good as GE was on the business side because GE was so messed up, if that makes sense. So there's I mean, there's the the potential variables on the GE side were enormous. And this is I think Honeywell is I mean, Al's a fan of the stock still. You know, we picked it and it hasn't been a great pick.

But Al's still a fan and he thinks the split will end up making a better company. But I just don't think it has the oomph there, the same kind of power to be like a GE, just because GE was almost a once in a lifetime kind of situation.

Interesting comparison and understandable that someone would see parallels, but I think you gave a good analysis. So I want to move on to a question from Sheldon that came in. What two or three sectors are you most bullish on this year? We haven't really talked about sectors. We haven't. And that's an interesting question. I do, I think, still like banks.

You know, the that's so I guess that would be financials. Right. They have been very strong. But if you look at them, they've been so weak for so long that I think perhaps this is starting. We're starting to get to their moment where they get to start outperforming maybe for longer. I mean, think of this.

They only topped their 2008. So I'm looking at XLF, the financial ETF. It only broke above its pre-2008 financial crisis peak in 2021 and is still, you know, it's above that now, but it's not hugely above that. And if you look at a lot of the stocks, I mean, like Citigroup is a great example.

Um, it is, um, it, it still hasn't, um, broken above it's, uh, actually I'm, and I'm looking at the KBE bank ETF. The bank ETF is only now back at its peak and the, um,

And stocks like Citigroup haven't even gotten there yet. And so I think that it's a pretty impressive. I think there's just more room to run that they've gotten there now. And once they break that, people are going to see it. Long term holders are going to see it and it's going to be able to run.

All right. So it seems like Lauren has has dropped. So I'm going to just try to answer some of these myself. Sorry about the silence. I wasn't quite sure what was going on, but hopefully you heard my answer. And I'm going to go to Gordon's question next.

Let's see. Oh, actually, yeah. So we were in the middle of the sector one. So I think banks are really where I'd be looking. The Trump administration, if it continues to deregulate, I think it's going to just be huge for banks. It's just they are probably the most regulated sector out there. And any less regulation is going to be better for margins and things like that. So I would keep watching banks.

All right. I'm going to look at question number nine from, it just says L. With an eye towards long-term investing, what is better at this time, to defang your portfolio because of valuation or to keep overpriced fangs in there or even increase that allocation due to the fundamentals and quality?

It is a really tough question. There's one, you know, today I saw two different notes, one from a firm called Trivariate urging people to start cutting back on the Magnificent Seven, partially because they've become a higher beta sector. That means that their volatility is higher relative to the stock market. And that is interesting.

The that is something that actually makes them not want, you know, not be feel as safe for people and things like that. And that could have a long term impact on things. But you have other people coming out and saying, you know, we should use this underperformance right now to be adding to them.

I think there's such a big part. I think I actually agree with Trivariant more, that these are such a big part of the market. They are such a huge part of everybody's portfolios. There's no reason to sell them all, but there's also no reason to keep chasing them at the expense of everything else, partially because there are so many other things that are starting to work and could work.

that have set out these rallies. So, you know, we talked about gold miners earlier. You know, that could be something. The bank stocks, things like that, that may have a chance to to participate for once. So that's that's how I think about the things. We'll see if that turns out to be a good or a bad call.

Gordon asked, how do I feel now that we are substantially through earnings season? I mean, so far, so good. What we want to see, again, is that we want to see this continue, right? That the companies are having a good Q4. We're now entering a new year. There's new uncertainties. How's that going to play out? The tariffs and things like that. Is it going to end up showing up in earnings? But for now, it seems like they're going to be okay. And

I actually, you know, I think earnings are looking good and we'll, you know, hopefully we'll stay that way. So let's see what, okay, I'm going to go to number 13. This is from John. John's asking, what is the probability of an interest rate increase in 2025? I still see it as a low probability event.

I think the Fed would like to cut if possible. I think inflation is going to is still going to stay moderate, if not moderate for a while. You know, it used to be that we could. Ben, I think I think I'm coming in.

And so, you know, and so, you know, it used to be that we could handle inflation between two and three percent and the Fed may accept that.

without saying that. And so I think that, you know, as long as that inflation stays moderate, then we'll be OK. We're going to get CPI and PPI this week and we'll see what's happening there. But I think, you know, we're probably more likely to be on hold for quite a while. But I still see low probability chance of an increase this year. Let's see.

Okay, so this one's from Ram. As the Trump administration moves forward, does the dollar get weaker and affect foreign exchange rates? If Trump keeps doing what he's doing, the dollar probably gets stronger, which is interesting.

I mean, it's kind of the I guess the irony of his policy because he wants the dollar to be cheaper. He wants it to you know, that makes our exports more attractive to people, more competitive.

But by doing tariffs, that only that makes the dollar stronger. And we are stronger than the dollar is a lot stronger than it's been in a very, very long time. You know, it's really had a rally that sort of peaked in 2022. But we're starting to creep back up near those levels. There was a note that pointed out when you do have the dollar and the stocks and gold performing the way they are.

Gold and stocks have historically kept going up and the dollar has flatlined. And that may be the best case scenario right now. But we'll have to see. I think a lot of it is up to the Trump foreign policy. Do we keep getting tariffs? How real are those tariffs and things like that? And do we keep growing better than, you know, our growth is stronger than most developed markets right now. And that is also an impetus for a strong dollar. So we'll have to see.

Let's see. Let's go on to another one. Okay. We had Terry ask munis versus tips, which is the way to go. That's a good question. You know, Andrew Barry has not been

a big fan um of munis and um i think mainly because you're just not getting enough premium versus treasuries there um i think tips are probably an interesting way to go just because i think that the market that the the economy has shifted out of this period where you know we had this long bull market we had rates go down to you know zero and we had um

And we had this monumentally long bull market in bonds. And now I think that bull market is over and maybe it's a sideways market, maybe yields and rates go higher. But I don't think having some tips would be a bad thing to have right now. And I think with that, I'm going to end this call. I want to apologize for Lauren.

She has had technical problems and the, you know, it's kind of messed things up. And she,

But we'll do the best we can under difficult circumstances. So Barron's Live will be off next Monday for President's Day, but we will be back on February 24th. And we should have a great guest for that. We'll keep you posted. Also, we invite you to register for tomorrow's Barron's Roundtable virtual live event, Retirement Checklist, Savings, Spending, and Security. The link is in the chat.

Lauren will be moderating one of the panels. They have some terrific speakers lined up to discuss asset allocation, retirement planning, and other things like that. So I hope you'll join them tomorrow. That's at noon. So thank you for joining us on Barron's Live. Again, apologies for the technical difficulties.

We're going to do this again because I didn't get to all the questions. There's a lot of them. Lauren wasn't here. So we will try this again. I enjoyed it. Let me know in comments or what I could do better. And we'll try it again. So thanks, everyone, for being here and happy trading. Hello, I'm Ben Rizzuto, wealth strategist at Janus Henderson Investors. We've worked to help clients achieve superior financial outcomes and fulfill our purpose of investing in a brighter future together. To learn more, go to JanusHenderson.com.