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Market and Inflation Outlook and a Shocking NYC Victory

2025/6/25
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A
Ali Vaez
A
Alicia Levine
B
Brian Levitt
全球市场策略师,负责开发和传达投资前景和见解,广泛媒体曝光和教育项目参与。
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Fred Neuman
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Brian Levitt: 我认为今年上半年的经济形势良好,但政策不确定性超出预期,导致了对经济衰退的担忧。不过,决策者们普遍采取了退让的态度,至少在关税方面暂停,美联储也可能听起来更加鸽派。因此,市场目前预期政策会逐步改善。尽管经济数据可能让美联储按兵不动,但我认为最终会降息。市场相信短期利率将会下降,我也赞同这一点。增长可能放缓,关税效应可能导致物价上涨,但就业市场和通胀预期稳定,美联储可能会倾向于宽松政策。我认为即使在高点投资,也比持有现金或进行平均成本法更好。投资者应该关注优质企业,这些企业能够经受住我们所面临的挑战。市场可能会扩大,小盘股和价值股可能会表现更好,但这可能需要宽松政策和经济活动的复苏。关税带来盈利风险,因为企业可能需要吸收关税带来的成本,从而影响盈利能力。名义增长环境仍然良好,大约在4%到4.5%左右。消费者和企业可以适应关税带来的变化,我们只需要明确性。在要素方面,质量仍然是一个重要的因素,因为领先指标正在下降。目前更倾向于高质量的环境,但随着政策响应和领先指标的回升,我们将会回到更具复苏感的状态。

Deep Dive

Chapters
This chapter discusses the state of the economy in the first half of 2025, focusing on policy uncertainty, recession fears, and the Federal Reserve's potential response. The discussion includes the impact of tariffs on businesses and consumers and the outlook for earnings.
  • Policy uncertainty led to recession fears.
  • The market expects continued policy improvements.
  • Rate cuts are anticipated from the Federal Reserve.
  • There's earnings risk due to tariffs.
  • The nominal growth environment is around 4-4.5%.
  • Quality stocks are preferred in the current environment.

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This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at 7 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay or Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube. It has been too long. Brian Levitt joins us right now with Invesco with a really interesting and holistic view of tying it together to have confidence to invest. Parked from the University of

Michigan. Can you write a mid-year review right now? June 30 beckons, July 1st beckons. Is it possible to do an Invesco mid-year review? Yeah, I would say the mid-year review is set up for the economy was good. We got...

Policy uncertainty, policy uncertainty got worse than it was expected, led to some recession fears. And then policymakers generally backing off, at least pauses with regards to tariffs, Federal Reserve perhaps sounding maybe a little bit more dovish. And so the market is now set up for expectation of incrementally continued improvements with regards to policy.

How about the Federal Reserve? What kind of policies should we expect from the Federal Reserve here today? It feels like the economic data that they rely upon suggests that maybe they kind of sit on their hands a little bit here. Yeah, they may sit on their hands. I think ultimately we're going to see rate cuts. And so the market, whether that comes in a month or six months, the market believes that interest rates on the short end are going lower. And I suspect that's right. I mean, we all know the Fed's in a little bit of a bind.

because growth is likely to slow, prices are likely to rise as the tariffs effect starts to hit. But if you look at leading indicators for the employment market and for the inflation story, you've got jobless claims ticking up a bit. You've got inflation expectations very stable in the bond market. And so the Fed is likely to err on the side of easing. This is a really important question, folks.

Everybody out there, go to cash. Market timing in that. What is the Levitt prescription to get back in the market when you know you blew it, you feel terrible, you're not telling your spouse, loved one what really happened, you've missed the boat to a record NASDAQ high? How do you get back in the game?

Yeah, it's always a challenge. If you look historically, I mean, people will talk about dollar cost averaging or people will talk about slowly moving back into these markets. Historically, you're better off, even if you're investing at the market high, you're still better off historically than sitting in cash or even dollar cost averaging. So I would advise investors to be

in these markets, what you can do rather than have a time be all or nothing, I'm in or I'm out. And you can focus if you're concerned, you focus more on quality, you focus more on businesses that are able to withstand some of the challenges that we're dealing with, which is really why Nasdaq is is back leading again. Could we see an environment where markets broaden out, where you want to be more small cap, more value, all that? Sure.

probably require some easing and a pickup in economic activity. So, Brian, if the Fed's going to cut maybe once, maybe twice this year, that's about it. So it feels like if the market's going to move higher...

Earnings are going to come to the forefront yet again. Yet, I think most investors feel like there might be some earnings risk out there. How do you think about the earnings outlook here? Yeah, there is some earnings risk with regards to what we're grappling with with tariffs. I mean, everybody's talking about, well, will we see some price shocks? Will the consumer feel it? I think we sort of hope so, because if not, that means businesses are absorbing all of it, which will be a hit to profitability. But

Look, it's still a good backdrop. I mean, if you think of the nominal growth environment, you're looking at somewhere around 4%, 4.5%. That's the missed call of the first six months is nominal GDP. Nominal GDP. Sustained. Sustained. I mean, that's why I say the setup coming into the year was good. The economy was resilient. Inflation was stable. And inflation was stable at the upper end of the Fed's comfort zone. We hadn't seen that in years.

That's a good nominal growth backdrop for corporate profitability. Policy can shift that, and that's why you had a 20% decline going into and following Liberation Day. I think the reality with regards to tariffs is that consumers and businesses can make changes. We can adjust. We're really just looking for clarity. Brian?

Talk to us about, is there anything that screens well for you guys sector-wise, factor-wise? Where are you guys having your conversations these days? Yeah, I would say on the factor side, it's still a quality story. So we're still in an environment where leading indicators are pointing lower and lower.

Typically, when the leading indicators are pointing lower, you're waiting for the policy response. And so right now, it's more of a quality environment. I think we'll get back to more of a recovery feel where we get policy response and leading indicators pick up. But that may take a bit. On the income side, I still like credit. 30 seconds. We didn't have you in here to talk markets. Danny Wolf of Michigan, is he the real deal?

Sure. In the draft tonight? I think he's the real deal. You can never go wrong having seven footers, right? Yeah. How tall is the guy from Duke? 6'9", 6'10". Short. Okay. Brian Levitz, thank you so much. Thank you. With Invesco.

If this government spending in defense goes towards things like R&D that have dual-use civilian purposes, you could get spillovers that actually end up enhancing productivity in Europe and so have a more long-lasting impact on growth.

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with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube. This is a joy in our studios in New York is someone definitive in Hong Kong. He's never gotten over the redo of the Mandarin M bar where they ruined the top of the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong. Frederick Newman is chief Asia economist at HSBC with wonderful Johns Hopkins academics. I'm going to I'm going to steal from Paul here. You walked in the studio and Paul said his Hong Kong changed.

What is the state of Hong Kong today? So the economy is still a bit soft. We have very high interest rates. We have U.S. interest rates. China's economy is not doing that well at the moment. But there is a real buzz there because we have equity markets coming alive. And we had about five years of down markets. And, you know, kind of the

the heart of the city is equities. You see cab drivers with their four phones playing equities all day long. And so if you get the market come up, you got IPO pipeline being full again. That really adds a bit of a buzz. So it does feel really there's optimism coming back into the Hong Kong Financial Center. How does this world of trade...

tariffs, trade policy, uncertainty. How's that impacting Asia Pacific region? Well, it's a huge headache, right? The region was built on exports and a lot of exports to the US. And so there's a lot of apprehension. It's not just the exports we worry about, it's also the capex that's associated with it, right? And so that's the worry. But on the other hand, if you look at China, for example, China's exports to the United States are only 2.5% of China's economy.

It's not the end of the world that slows down. Say that again. It's so important.

China's exports to the United States are only 2.5% of China's economy. Now, many people intuitively would say it's a much larger share. But actually, if you add direct and indirect exports, about 2.5%, maybe 3% if not everything is statistically captured, but it's not more than 3%. I'll give you a statistic, Paul. 112% of Americans don't know what Fred Newman just said. So how are you guys thinking about China here in the short term?

short-term and also the maybe intermediate two to three year term. So look, even if only 2.5% of your exports go to the US, if you knock 50% of that off, that takes a percentage point off your GDP. That hurts in the short run, right? No doubt about it. But there's about 2.5% of GDP fiscal stimulus in the pipeline this year. And you see a bit of that getting traction. So for example, the past couple months, you see retail sales

suddenly accelerating. You see at the companies we speak with are actually saying sales are picking up. And so there's a bit more stabilization coming through on the domestic side, actually.

The rest of it is ex-China here. You know, everybody here in the U.S., we've become a lot smarter about tariffs and kind of where our goods come from. And we've learned really since the pandemic that a lot of stuff is coming from Vietnam, from Malaysia, other parts of Asia here. Talk to us, ex-China, how is Asia doing?

So bigger problem for the other countries. So if you take Vietnam, for example, 11% of Vietnam's depend on the Vietnam's GDP depends on American shoppers compared to 2.5% in China. So Vietnam is potentially much more disruption. So does Thailand, so does Korea, so does Malaysia.

And so these countries worry a lot about the tariff deadlines coming up. Frederick Newman with us with HSBC, their chief economist, their voice of Asia this morning. The zeitgeist, I'm sure when you were on the plane here, is that the tariff pain is being swallowed by Asian manufacturers, particularly Japanese car exports and such. They're eating that large new tariff. Do you buy it? And will that sustain it?

Only to some extent, because the Japanese yen has depreciated a lot over recent years. It seems like they're swallowing it, but really only back to 2021 levels in terms of your profit margins, perhaps. So I don't think necessarily it's that big a burden for Asia to carry.

In other areas, actually, Asia will pass on these costs because China is the single producer of many, many critical items. There's nobody else who can tell you certain medical, pharmaceutical ingredients, for example. Vitamins come mostly out of China these days.

How do other, I'm just, I'm looking at your research report because it's got a table of your forecast from HSBC and the countries I don't think about as often as I do, maybe European, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia. How do those countries interact with China?

Look, they're in some ways on trade caught between a rock and a hard place. China for them, in many ways, is a larger market than the U.S. is. And so when the U.S. says, we don't want your good, we're going to put tariffs on you, then they turn to China.

And so it's in some ways, if we push these countries too much, essentially it drives them probably economically more into the Chinese orbit. Now, they also face Chinese competition, so it's really tough for them to find the right path. I look at your work, Fred Newman, at HSBC, and folks, it is the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation with a heritage that truly goes back centuries. The only equivalent was John Anderson years ago at UBS.

And the basic idea here is our misunderstanding of what's going on in China. And the heart of the matter to me is we have a president who thinks it's deal-making or unilateral or bilateral discussions, but it's truly a multilateral Asia, isn't it? I mean, that's the great misconception in America. It is a multilateral Asia. The supply chains are completely interconnected across the region.

Most of the goods coming from Vietnam have a very significant component to Chinese share in them. So from Malaysia. China is a dominant Asian producer, and it's interweaved with all the other economies. So we're weaned on Japan as the foundation capitalist society of Asia. Is Japan still the dominant provider of finance?

No, no longer. It is an important finance provider, but China exports twice as much capital than Japan does. So in terms of financing the world economy, it's now China that stepped in.

In the Mandarin Hotel is a little cafe. You really like the Mandarin Hotel. Remember downstairs? The little cafe. It was like something out of a Bond movie. You'd have people in there. I would read five newspapers in there. Is that little cafe still there?

At the bottom? They have refurbished it, but they rebuilt it pretty much the same way it was before. So you little cafe will... Like a 50s, 60s thing. It's still very 50s, 60s. It's been redone, but it's still in that old style. And that cafe is still there, and you're still welcome to come and read your newspapers. When you go to the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, they have a huge lobby, which is like a TV set for I Dream of Jeannie from the 1960s.

It's unbelievable. We won't talk about Fullerton's Bar in Singapore, will we, Fred? Yes, no, we won't. We've closed that a few times. Fred Newman, this has been wonderful. Please don't be a stranger. Honored to have you here. He's with HSBC Hong Kong with perspective there, really good perspective there. This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.

You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say, Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. This is a really important conversation right now. He is steeped in the international relations.

of Persia with all sorts of abilities as well. His book, How Sanctions Work, Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare, is noted with important academics, including the University of Geneva. Ali Veiz joins us right now. Ali, what is the number one thing Americans get wrong about the culture, the fabric, the people of Persia?

Well, I think the number one thing is that Persia is an ancient nation. It's a country that has 7,000 years of history. It had a government 3,000 years ago. And it is surprisingly still to this day, despite having an anti-American government in the past nearly five decades,

a very pro-American population, which is almost the reverse of what we get in the rest of the region, which is we have pro-American governments but anti-American population. How representative is the government of Iran of its people then? That's kind of something that I think most Americans really don't understand.

Well, it's not a democratic government. It is an authoritarian government. And even its own surveys show that it's 85% of the Iranian population do not like this regime and would like to see its back. But it has 10 to 15% of its core constituents who are true believers in the system, either for ideological reasons or because they have vested economic interest in it.

And in a way, they are very committed to make sure that the system survives. So I guess one of the issues as we think about the conflict between Israel and Iran and then the U.S. involvement over the past weekend, people have been talking about discussing regime change. Is that something that should be discussed? Is it even a remote possibility in the near to intermediate term?

Well, first thing I would say is that we have to look at our track record of bringing about regime change in that part of the world. And it has been an abject failure after an abject failure. So engineering from the outside is not really something that we should be looking forward to because of our track record.

Second, internally, there is right now no viable, organized, disciplined alternative opposition inside the country or even outside of the country that is able to push this regime over and take power. This is not Syria in 2024 when you had a rebel group in control of parts of the country that could just march into Damascus. Your essay in Foreign Affairs, Don't Give Up on Diplomacy with Iran.

I think just so important to me is the idea of who are we speaking to? Are we speaking to the theocracy? Are we speaking to the military that I believe supports the theocracy or uses the theocracy?

Well, you're absolutely right. There is really not much difference. This is a militarized theocracy. And talking to, you know, like Iran's foreign minister, for instance, was formerly a member of the Revolutionary Guards. There is really coexistence between the clerical establishment and the Revolutionary Guards. It's like the deep state, basically.

Ali, just since the U.S. attack on Iran over the weekend, there's been conflicting reports from various sources, including the Trump administration officials, about the effectiveness of and the damage inflicted by the Americans on the nuclear sites. What are your sources telling you?

Look, the reality is at the end of the day, there's only so much we can all know, whether it's intelligence services or DOD or whichever government agency you look at. Even the IAEA, the UN Nuclear Watchdog, they really cannot judge much by just looking at satellite images.

The only way to get a full picture is to get the inspectors back on the ground to be able to go into these tunnels and see the degree of damage that has been done. But there are two things we know for sure. One, as Vice President J.D. Vance said the other day, the Iranians had moved the stockpile of near-bomb-grade enriched uranium that they had, about 400 kilograms.

And also they have a stockpile of advanced centrifuges. And those two things still provide them with a pathway to a bomb. So that tells me, Ali Vaz, that the determinant here is Israeli intelligence. I think we can all agree that the Israeli intelligence into Iran has been extraordinary. I'm making this up, folks, but stay with me. But Ali Vaz, I mean, that's

And we don't learn this from a presidential statement in front of Marine One. We're going to learn this from traditional espionage and intelligence by Israel, right?

That is correct, but there is also the reality that this kind of intelligence, when you go all out and using it the way Israel used it in its opening salvo of its strike on Iran, you also lose a lot of your assets on the ground. So it becomes harder to do this again and again.

And in any case, even Israeli intelligence had admitted that the military solution would set back Iran's nuclear program by a few months to maybe one to two years at max. Remember, we had a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. That agreement sets back Iran's nuclear program by 15 years without firing a shot. So it's a simple math calculation of which one is more beneficial.

Ali, thank you so much. Ali Veyaz with us, Iran Project Director of the Crisis Group's Iran Project, his recent essay in Foreign Affairs Magazine.

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EasyCater, your business tool for food. To learn more, visit easycater.com slash podcast. How can you grow your business from idea to industry leader? Bring your vision to life with smart business buying tools and technology from Amazon Business.

From fast, free shipping to in-depth buying insights and automated purchase approvals, they deliver everything you need to achieve your goals. It's not easy to stand out from the crowd. Simplify how you stock up to get ahead. Go to AmazonBusiness.com for support. When you're with Amex Business Platinum, going the extra mile for your business pays off.

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This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. Alicia Levine, Head of Investment Strategy Equities at BNY. This is what the show's...

about. You got Sam Stovall with all that heritage. You and I—this is before you were at Brown—you and I worshipped his father, Robert Stovall, years ago with Lou Rukeyser and all that. And Alicia Levine, to bring it over to your rigid and magical mathematics, I think is incredibly important. What is the convexity of this pain trade right now in this new bull market? The accelerated force is shocking.

It's shocking. If I just wrote on a piece of paper in that old-fashioned way of what's going on in the world, a list of facts, dispassionate facts, the fact that the S&P is up this year is actually extraordinary, which tells you the pain trade is higher. The pain trade is higher because there's so much negativity every conference I go to.

every discussion i have is about looming inflation the crushing of growth the the all these terrible policies and the market's telling you that it's not going to be that bad and that we really have to quiet the noise around us in our in our heads and look at profitability of companies which is what we do as investors right so you know the reason that

the tariffs were such a shock to the market and the market sold off 20%, essentially pricing in two thirds of the way pricing in a recession is that original level of tariffs was over 2% of US GDP at $650 billion. Well, that sends a 2% growth economy into recession, right? So that's why the market price in the recession so quickly.

As the tariffs been rolled back, you're back to a growth area of somewhere between one and two percent. And the margins on the S&P are going higher on the tech companies and communication service companies. And so the market's going higher as everybody's wringing their hands and talking about how how terrible it all is.

Do you think there's still earnings risk in this market? Because I think earnings are going to have to be a big driver of market performance if the Fed's only going to give you one or two rate cuts this year, maybe. So I do think that to sustain the market here and move higher, you have to expect earnings moving higher, not necessarily in the next few quarters, but for 2026, right? Because, you know, over the summer, investors start looking at, you know,

you know, four or 12 months, look at 2026 earnings. I think the market's probably telling you that's what's going to happen. The risk here is that we become a little complacent from the blowout earnings of Q1 coming in at 13% when 7% was expected.

It does sterilize the rest of the year in terms of downward pressure on earnings because you can bring that back in for the year. But then we just kind of go to sleep on the fact that there is some earnings risk. And clearly on the retail side, you have seen some demand destruction and you're going to have some margin risk from the imports. Like you can see that.

on the ism numbers exactly and and you see it the inflation levels you know before this whole process they were you know three percent-ish i'm sorry the uh tariff levels were roughly three percentage now they seem to be 10 11 12 13 something in that range not the 20 or 30 or 50 that maybe was the concern but still they're a lot higher a lot higher yeah

Is corporate America just going to take that in the margin? Because it doesn't, I guess that, or they can be passed along to consumers. We're not really sure yet, I guess. I think we don't really know. Okay. Like there's some discussion that also the exporters to us are going to eat some of it as well. I think we actually don't know. But go back to 2018. And of course, the scale of the tariffs are much lower. So maybe it is an imperfect look.

But actually, inflation fell over 2018. Really? Yes, because there was a little bit of demand destruction in the areas which had tariffs. So I think we don't actually know. And in 2018, the exporters ate part of the tariff hit. This is much more extensive. It is akin to a consumption tax. I think there'll be rapid substitution on whatever is being tariffed.

I think you see that fairly quickly, but it does mean that there's going to be some hit to certain sectors of the economy. I think likely tariffs wind up a little bit lower.

Can I go nerd? Sure. Is it okay? It's like hot Wednesday. It's 100 degrees. You know, the beautiful Lego starship in Alicia Levine's living room is melting right now from the heat. It's got its own air conditioner. Dr. Levine, I'm going to go back to your mathematics at Chicago, and I'm going to take it back to game theory. I went back and forth with Mohamed El-Erian this morning, and he is the king of unknown, unknown, and the game theory. I take the market in speeches from the Guadalcanal Law of 1942, right?

You take the Ibsen chart log S&P 500, and you enjoy the leap out of 75. And many people will say the extrapolation of a bull market started 80, 81, 82, off we went. Is that what we're missing right now? Is that kind of log linear lift in equities? It was a surprise in 75, a surprise in the early 80s. So I think...

It's hard for me to see us getting to 3% growth, right? What you had in the 80s was 3% growth. So that's really what you need for nominal earnings, right? Because earnings are nominal and growth is nominal.

The thing here is I just think what everybody's missing is the resiliency of corporate America and the resiliency of households, of households. I have a chart that I use which shows the crushing of the household's balance sheet of debt to assets. It is a crushing from 15 years ago of the global financial crisis. It's basically been cut in half.

are so resilient and they're $53 trillion wealthier than they were five years ago. So your assets, your financial assets are going higher and your liabilities as a percent of assets are going lower. So you've got healthy balance sheets in the household sector. All that debt, of course, was transferred to the government, but the households are resilient and corporate America is resilient. Large cap are resilient.

less so for small cap because they've got floating rate debt. But you're in a place where there's much more resiliency than the conversation we're hearing. Oh, you get one more in here. But the concern on that side, the household income,

More than 50% of U.S. households don't hold assets. That's true. So that's a problem. Yes. Okay. So I'm going to sound ruthless here, but I'm going to say that they don't go into the numbers. Shocker, right? They don't go into the aggregate numbers. It is true that the lower quartile of income has been suffering and they've been suffering since the rate hikes of 2022 when the free money stopped and those households borrow short, not long. Yep. And.

And what sterilized households and corporates is borrowing long when rates were near zero. So we've got 3% mortgages. We've got to leave it here. We're out of time. When you come back next time, I want to do a definitive distinction between log normal and poisson distribution. Oh, that's going to work for the audience. La poisson ou la la. Alicia Levine, thank you so much from BNY. This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Listen live each weekday, 7 to 10 a.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

For enterprise organizations, managing all your food needs is a tall order. But with EasyCater, you get a single workplace food vendor with the tools and resources to make it easy, giving teams across your organization an easy way to order from a huge variety of restaurants, all on one platform. All while consolidating your corporate food spend so you can control costs, streamlining billing and payment and simplifying reporting.

EasyCater, your business tool for food. To learn more, visit easycater.com slash podcast. Thrivent can help you plan your finances for the people, causes, and community you love. What makes Thrivent different? Financial services and generosity programs are combined to help you build a financial roadmap for the future.

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It's not easy to stand out from the crowd. Simplify how you stock up to get ahead. Go to AmazonBusiness.com for support. This is an iHeart Podcast.