Kathy wood appears to suggest that a recession is coming. Hey everyone meet kevin here in this video, i'm going to break down exactly what three main arguments kathy wood made in her last video and i'm gon na pull up some additional research and color. So that way, we can try to contextualize what she tells us about this coming recession, and we know exactly what to monitor. To see is kathy going to be right or hopefully, are we going to be able to avoid a recession.

Keep in mind, this video is also brought to you by extra go to met kevin.com extra and a get a debit card that can help you build credit without a credit card, go to mckevin.com extra to see exactly how they do it and learn more check them Out, okay, so the first big argument that kathy wood makes is that an inventory buildup is coming and when an inventory build it comes, prices are going to fall now. This is not unique. We've heard this argument before. In fact, we've heard this argument for about nine months now and now it's starting to look like maybe she's right about the inventory build up.

But is she right about the conclusion - and this is where we're going to go to the source, to try to get a little bit more insight. So first she points to research that brett whitton, who has come on this channel for an interview, great guy found it's by the logistics managers index. It's a survey - and it compares inventories this year to prior years and months and kathy wood points out correctly, that the normal seasonal cycle of inventories building up through november and then collapsing into february, has reversed that inventories this year are actually way higher than they were In november, because all of those delayed shipments and all the over-ordering that we did is coming in the ships are coming in, we are now at record levels of inventory and kathy makes the argument that, by the end of the year, we're likely going to see manufacturing Indices like purchase manager indices coming in below 50, to signal manufacturing contraction, and this is going to potentially be bad for a lead up to a recession. Then we start seeing contraction and manufacturing see that fall in demand, and then we go into negative quarters of gdp boom recession.

She gives two reasons one. She believes that companies bought too many products because of fears of supply, chain issues or running businesses, with too little inventory and now they're over compensating and over ordering, as these products come through and the supply chains slowly clear up ordering firms have to pay more for Warehousing to store all this extra stuff or cut prices for their goods - and this creates the assumption that people are going to order less from manufacturers because they got enough inventory. Okay, that's an assumption, but we're going to get to some more details in a moment. Number two kathy believes that the consumer is weakening because we're going to experience the similar kind of demand destruction that europe is seeing.

She believes that europe is already in recession and that china is probably in a recession, but we're unlikely getting the real data from china, and this reiterates the idea that the chinese consumer is saving four times as much money in this january than they did last january. Because they're probably panicked because of the whole ever grant crisis and the destruction of real estate property values which, when property values, go down, what happens when people start getting nervous right and then maybe people start spending less money. In fact, that was a big thing that kathy mentioned as well. Is that look if we want to avoid a recession, real estate markets got to stay propped up and companies got to keep spending money on capital goods and investing which they'll only do if the consumers keep spending money and if those two things go away.

We're screwed. Basically, it's roughly what she said right now. Y'All probably already know my thoughts on the real estate market, because i've done a lot of videos on the real estate market yeah. We got some headwinds coming.

Okay, but what's interesting here, is kathy's setup and which echoes what she's been talking about for nine months, that hey high inventory levels are definitely going to lead to a decline in prices. Let's fact check that or maybe not fact check that, but at least challenge the thesis what if they don't, because it seems logical right, but what i did is i went to the actual report. I always like going to the primary source. I went to the actual report and she's right.

Okay, so we saw substantial substantially high levels of inventory levels, we're seeing a rapid growth in inventory levels and there's really no sign, no obvious signs of a slowdown of growth in inventory levels on the horizon, and here we go. This is interesting. There is some possibility that the surgeon inventories will result in some markdowns. Oh wait a minute, that's literally what kathy's saying wait so she's right, so inventories are going up and if inventories go up that could lead to markdowns right but wait a minute.

They say here. There's a possibility that the surge in inventories will result in some markdowns for durable goods. However, it seems unlikely this will lead to a meaningful break in the inflation that we have observed across supply chains as warehousing and transportation prices remain high due to the continued mismatch in demand and available capacity. So now we have to break this down a little bit.

They're making this argument here that, okay, maybe we'll see declines in prices of things like washers dryers refrigerators or cars - these are forms of durable goods, but we still have a mismatch of supply and demand, and that means, even though inventories are going up in aggregate, we Might not actually see prices come down across the board. Now. That's interesting kathy didn't mention this, but let's keep reading down here we get something. That sounds a little bit more like a kathy woody, an argument - and this is where i mark number three right here - take a look at this firms with these higher levels of inventory will now have to decide what to do with this unseasonably high inventory.

That's what kathy said: that's exactly what she said. Will they be sold at a discount? That is, will products be sold at an in at a discount or stored in increasingly expensive warehouses? Neither option is ideal and it'll be fascinating to observe. Basically what happens. Ah, that's interesting, so the reports basically saying hey, look, a few things can happen here, a we could just see menu for like companies who are ordering things store stuff, even though it's more expensive to store stuff rather than reduce prices, let's store stuff and have inventory On hand, so we never run into these disastrous situations again, where we just can't fulfill the orders.

It's better to be able to have a little bit more inventory and fulfill orders than not have the inventory at all and not be able to service our customers. Because then maybe we lose the customer and we lose that potential lifetime value of that customer because they go build a relationship with someone else now this this is where finance gets a little bit frustrating because it's like dang kathy, told me something that was black and White and here comes kevin and makes it gray. That is kathy, says: inventory levels are going up, prices are coming down, that makes sense, but the actual survey that she was referencing says maybe prices will come down for durables again washing machines, dryers and cars, but yeah unlikely to actually see prices come down for other Goods and services yet because there's still too much demand now kathy makes arguments about demand. We'll talk about that in just a moment, but quite interesting.

Now, here's another thing take a look at this over here. This here says last month there was a question about a drop in sales and shipping delays, and is it possible that recent supply chain challenges may have taught manufacturers, suppliers, retailers and customers? That holding inventory provides an important element of resilience and are not as lean as they once were. In other words, hey, like i just said, maybe companies are okay having more inventory, because it's a form of resilience to make sure they can keep those customers right. This is just sort of expanding on what i just said so interesting, very, very kind of gray report, not as black and white as i thought after watching kathy's video.

I thought this sounds like an interesting report. Definitely going to look it up not as black and white as i thought, so. The report kind of gives a little bit of a counter argument here. What actually ends up happening? Well, tbd.

Now we have to pay attention and i'm going to give you some hints in terms of what to pay attention for uh to so we could try to track and understand. Okay is cathy, going to end up being right. Are we going to see those declines in prices or what? But the next thing we got to talk about is that weakening consumer? So kathy has made this argument in february as well, and she talks about the decline of real purchasing power. She talked about it then she's talking about it now and she talks about how companies are talking about reductions in revenue now.

I personally do believe that at some point in the future, consumers will spend less money. In fact, i'm trying to allocate less money to consumer discretionaries like the clothing stores or not, you know nike lulu under armor whatever, because i do believe that the consumers are going to spend less money that we might follow in the footsteps of the chinese consumer and Start trying to save more money, but at least up to right now april 4th the consumers are still spending money like there's no tomorrow and now they're, either blind, and they don't realize that we're about to walk into a freaking minefield in a recession, and they should Stop freaking spending money and then they're gon na go bankrupt because they spent all their money and they didn't prepare for a rainy day. That's entirely possible, but i'll tell you right now: consumers are still spending money like crazy. First of all, out of q4 earnings reports, even the most recent ones that just came out lululemon under armour they're talking about spending like crazy and raising prices and raising like increasing purchasing power.

The only companies that are actually talking about declines in purchasing power, at least from the reports that i read - were companies like coca-cola and the mattress department at macy's. Those are the only companies that we're talking about yeah. We don't know if we can really keep raising prices here. Okay, so we can't raise prices on coca-cola, and the mattress department at macy's is having problems actually in fairness.

I do think heinz. Ketchup was also complaining about this, like i we're gon na start, squeezing our customers out here, but otherwise every research that every company that i researched, whether it was the clothing companies, whether it was apple, nvidia, amd everybody's talking about pricing power, because the consumer is spending. So much freaking money and the fact is the average consumer today has the average consumer household has or so average household has 16 000 more in their bank account than they did two years ago prior to the pandemic. Now, at some point we would expect.

Maybe this would evaporate right, but i don't know kathy right now, at least from what i'm seeing it seems like people are spending money like there's no tomorrow, even if we look at trends, let's take a quick look at trends. Look at this. This is uh the uh here i'll just hide myself for a second searches for disneyland. We look relative to uh to the pandemic, we're at roughly the highest point for searches for disneyland.

Let's do another one here, let's jump on over to restaurants near me, you know we're not at the absolute highest which we get around summer time, but we're pretty darn up there, we're about that 75 rsi level, that's above levels of 17, 18 and right before the Pandemic, not bad people are going out, people are having fun search terms for cruises are at the highest level during the entire pandemic, in fact carnival cruise lines. I was blown away by this, but carnival cruise lines today came out and they released a report and said we just had our busiest booking week ever in our company's history. The week ending april 3rd was the absolute busiest week for booking ever, and you know with course, members about two weeks ago, i was noticing how search trends. We were doing this research together and i was noticing how search trends for things like home, solar, home battery and home related stuff were going down, but any kind of searches for going out fun.

Entertainment bars near me, gyms near me: costco membership, like all this stuff skyrocketing, costco membership, probably skyrocketing, because maybe people want discounted gas or they want to save a little bit of money on groceries because prices have gone up. I don't know i don't go to costco uh, although i i think lauren orders uh. I think you could like doordash or whatever costco and you pay like a little premium for the membership or whatever i don't know. I don't handle any of that stuff.

But the point is: like searches are going up for this stuff, so people are spending more money on fun and costco. Maybe what costco stock has done so well, which also makes sense, because people trend wise, have been moving away from consumer discretionaries, like institutions and into consumer staples, which costco is probably your most popular consumer staple right now in terms of the stock market, at least so. I can't personally say that at least yet we are seeing a consumer that is saying yeah. No thanks.

We don't want to spend money anymore now kathy used autos, and this was her third big thing. She used autos as a way to say: well, sales are dropping, so this is a sign that the consumer is not spending money anymore, but wait a minute when you look at a company like tesla, we just delivered substantially more teslas in this quarter compared to anyone. I mean we had a record delivery, a record quarter for deliveries and we know there's a massive backlog for tesla's, which maybe that's not fair, but tesla has a perfect control there. Well, maybe not perfect, but has very good control of their supply chains and therefore they're able to deliver because they they entered so many supply chain contracts in 2016, 17, 18 and 19 before the pandemic, betting on an eevee boom.

And so they are profiting off. Of that right now, and so when we look at the other autos like the uh, plunge in the f series pickup this morning, uh and this sort of reiterates what kathy said when she released her video. But this morning we got a report that the f-series pickup truck from ford plunged 31, that ford has sold 26 percent less vehicles this quarter than they did last year in the same quarter. And so, when we see numbers like this, in addition to toyota selling, maybe uh 20 to 25 percent, less vehicles quarter over quarter.

Just like ford, seeing these large declines, we wonder wait a minute. Is that the consumer or wait a minute, ford, blamed supply chains and semiconductors toyota blamed supply chains and semiconductors? They didn't actually blame the consumer lucid's doing it rivian's doing it, they're all blaming supply chains and the semiconductor shortage they're, actually not blaming the consumer. So i don't know if we could use that kathy woody, an argument of saying the consumer is definitely weakening now. I actually - and i've said this before i want to be clear here.

I agree that i do think the consumer will weaken, but just because i'm making the prediction that the consumer will weaken, i'm not seeing it yet like so far, i'm wrong. I'm not seeing the consumer weaken kathy's, seeing that decline in purchasing power, but i don't know i i don't necessarily agree with her rationalizations or sort of reasons for why that consumer purchasing power is going down. So if she were to do another update i'd really like a little bit more concrete examples of where that consumer purchasing power is going down now, look where can you see this, and i think this is going forward, we're going to talk about a couple other things That kathy said as well: where can you see and what is really important to do going forward to measure the consumer well to measure the consumer? The next earnings season going gon na be huge. How did consumers react in q1? I think that's going to be critical.

I want to watch these earnings coming up here, starting in a couple weeks like a hawk. What are the consumers saying about russia and ukraine? Did they spend less money in in q1? Did they spend less money starting february 24th and in march, because gas prices went up did are companies coming in with lower guidance? Is etsy missing? Are the credit card companies missing uh, and so that's going to be a huge guide going forward is: if we get misses, then maybe kathy's right. Maybe the consumers are going to weaken we're going to head towards recession just like that 10-2 yield curve is predicting. Alternatively, if these next earnings reports come out and say, dude still got supply chain issues, pricing power still got it still pumping.

You know: uh profits like crazy and uh. You know we just had a report, for example, that that starbucks is halting buybacks because they're reinvesting in their stores. What they're really trying to say is they need to spend so much more money on coffee and so much more money on employees and so much more money on on, like you know, training people in their stores because of quits and new hires or whatever that they They can't keep buying back their stock, they got to actually spend money on their business right, and this is because consumers keep buying coffee. Even though the price of coffee keeps going up, consumers keep buying coffee.

The starbucks was doing great in terms of consumer demand, with the exception of in china is doing great here in america. In terms of customer demand, the retailers seem to be doing great. The travel companies seem to be doing great and so, in my opinion, everything's going to come down to these earnings here for for q1 and then the forecast for q2. But let's touch a little bit more on what kathy thinks regarding the inversion.

So she thinks the bond market's right that we're going to see a recession, the 10 to yield curve has inverted, and, quite frankly, it didn't get better. Today, even though the stock market rallied the 10-2 uh inversion has worsened, i think we're like negative yeah here. It is negative three basis points right now. You can see that there at the bottom right corner of the screen uh right there there you go, look at that negative three basis points now, yeah and so kathy makes this argument that hey we are going to uh.

Probably see demand destruction at the same time as the federal reserve is raising rates and uh that's going to lead us into a recession, and she does not believe that inflation is the real problem which i kind of agree with her on this long term. I don't think that inflation expectations are the issue. Look at the five-year break-even chart it's plummeting again with the inflation expectations shot up during the war when the war started at the beginning of this ukraine crisis, but look at this they're starting to plummet again, and so what's the bond market telling us well the bond Market's saying, we believe that inflation is going to come back down. That's what we're seeing here in the last few days.

On top of that, we think the fed's going to be too aggressive the market's pricing in that 50 bp hike - i don't think they're gon na - do the 50 bp hike. Neither this kathy, but the market does market thinks with like 70 certainty that we're gon na see a 50 bp hike, and so what's the market pricing in right. Now it's pricing in that the fed thinks inflation is out of control and they're going to raise rates too aggressively. But the market's actually saying but inflation's, probably going to go down the fed's going to have over tightened and pushes into a recession which historically, the fed kind of does now.

Does that mean run away and dump and sell everything? No, of course not because usually the recession doesn't actually come until rates stop going up and then they start going down and then it's like. Oh crap, we tightened too much oops recession so like at the beginning of the rate, hike cycle rate hiking cycle. You kind of want to be in and exposed to the market, but look kathy, really hangs her hat on the bond market and the ten two has always been right. It's always predicted a recession within 12 to 24 months.

Now i did a video on the truth about the coming recession, inverted yields you could type that title and do a youtube and you'll see it. It was this video it had the thumbnail of the playgrounds really really good watch on my thesis on on the yield. Curves and the difference between the 10-2 and like the three-month uh 10-year, which kathy does not like the three-month tenure but look the thing is things are very blurry right now and if i were to give a big bottom line out of everything, it would be this If earnings forecasts beat or meet for q2 we're golden we're, probably doing really really well, if earnings miss and we get revision down down down down, it's not going to be good, not going to be good, and so my strategy is to remain nimble, we're starting to Get to some crazy levels with these market rallies, where we keep seeing the stock market go up up up and up i'm glad i dumped everything i had into the market pretty much. I bought them, but now some of the prices are like well, this isn't fun anymore.

I'd rather pay my taxes than uh, which obviously you should always pay your taxes, but i'd rather pay. My taxes, then then buy stocks right now because because prices have gone up so much again, let's like no give me a little bit more rent, but you know whatever so anyway be careful out there. Hopefully this adds a little bit color and we'll see in the next one goodbye.