The Bears What we're going to do in this bearish video is we are going to take my bullish bias and respond to what some of the Bears are saying we're going to talk about. BlackRock We're going to react to video from a chief Economist interviewed by CNBC and we're going to see what people think about the terminal Fed funds rate. We are going to look at what the financial times thinks about the probability of higher rates and how much higher and we are going to look at some of the pain presented by T.S Lombard and their Parish opinions. So if you are a bear, you want to watch, if you are a bull, you want to watch and if you are a human, you want to take a look at the Saint Patty's Day coupon.

Dare I Say link down below for the programs on building your wealth, lifetime access to the course member live streams, access to all the beautiful content and perspective on building your wealth whether it's through stocks, real estate, being an entrepreneur being employed, how to make more money, tax Benefits, Llc's risk liability everything and Q A with me, take a look at that linked down below. Let's get started. BlackRock and Mr Rick Reader thinks it is reasonable that the Federal Reserve will easily get to a six percent terminal rate markets are presently at the time of this recording pricing in a 5.65 rate and now BlackRock believes it is not only reasonable to get to six percent, but also stay there for an extended period of time potentially as long as a year. The probability of a half Point High increase from the Federal Reserve is now sitting as high as 73.5 percent according to a CME Fed Watch Tools That is not great for the March 22nd meeting and it is a Big Boon to the Bears unless of course we get 25 and if we've been pricing in bearishness then that means Moon Okay, maybe not quite moon, but it would be positive.

Anyway, it does show that the 50 BPI is very much on the table. Uh, BlackRock is really comparing the US to Uh to a chemical like polyurethane. Now I I Think this is sort of a weird comparison, but but he says markets can be stretched, bent and stressed and flexed without breaking. And and really, a six percent rate shouldn't break our financial institutions or our financial systems which are very strong.

So while it's bearish to argue for six percent, it's really saying like the odds of us really breaking something by going to six percent not that high Now it's also worth taking a listen into. what this this particular interview here from CNBC I think is uh, pretty fascinating. So let's let's jump into this here. Hey, this video is brought to you by me.

My courses on building your wealth linked down below where you can learn everything from tax benefits to investing with an LLC or not using an LLC insurances, how to negotiate with real estate agents and vendors and contractors, or even your boss. build more wealth by understanding the perspective of what you're not taught in school. All linked down below Extremely affordable prices. And you can now use the Saint Patty's coupon linked below and we'll listen to this together.

Okay, ready for this Here we go. What we're missing right now: There's some guidance that says how much is going to be enough because Pals clearly said where we are, where we were telling you we're going is not enough and I think the one thing that Steve and other people haven't mentioned is the guidance that the Federal Reserve report itself gave us. It said that given the kind of policy rules that people have been using to assess different types of policies, we need rates somewhere on the order of six and a half. Seven percent to get enough of a Slowdown in the economy.

I I Just like to say what the FED is talking about is this Taylor rule. The Taylor rule, as you can see on screen here, adjusted for current conditions, suggests a Fed funds rate closer to seven percent. If this is basically, the Federal Reserve has about four or five different versions of the Taylor rule they use, and the Taylor rule really says you could be at a terminal rate of five percent. you could be at a terminal rate of over seven percent.

and it just depends on which measure of the Taylor rule you're looking at. I don't know how much it really matters. Back in the covet pandemic, the Taylor rule actually told the Federal Reserve that they should go negative. So when you hear Taylor rule, think about it like a suggestion.

but I would pay more I would give more Credence to what the FED is actually saying which is look hot jobs hot CPI report rates go up softer expected 25 and pause sooner. Simple, We'll see. Let's keep get us back to two percent inflation. Those numbers are not even on the table right now and I think the message is Yet to Come and we might actually see is that this inflation story disappears on us and the economy actually is hotter than we thought we may be seeing six and seven percent numbers.

Uh, between now and the middle of the year. Yeah, we were I Steve and I both thought we were just talking to Professor Taylor about this. not not a couple of days ago I think he was at six percent bill. but um, either way it seems let's talk about kind of the the yield current version: the 10-year yield at uh, uh, four percent now.

I have to like think every time I say these numbers because we've been whipsawing around so much. So you're saying we're going to six, maybe seven percent on the FED funds rate. the 10-year is now at four percent and not going back to the highs we saw in the fall. have.

we started the process whereby the higher the FED funds probability goes, the lower the 10-year yield might go because it's so concerned about where that growth trajectory is taking us. One of the things to keep in mind is that the FED is not focused on the inverted yield curve. They're focused on what it really means for the economy if we have a Slowdown in inflation. If people really adapt their expectations adaptive behavior and we get the kind of soft Landing they're hoping for.

We have lower 10-year rates, but if you have a crash and a hard Landing We also get that the lower 10-year rates the The, The, The, the FED itself of course, prefers that soft landing and they're hoping that through this jaw boning and early jaw boning, they're going to be able to get people to change the behavior early enough so that we avoid that hard Landing. But the The the inversion of yield curve gives us two scenarios and and which scenario is going to be? Let me just pause there before he talks about the two scenarios. Uh, what? What's really important to remember about the 10-year yield curve is the 10-year yield curve crashes housing right? the or the 10-year yield. The more it's around four percent or higher, the more pain you have in real estate.

Now, the Federal Reserve to some extent to some extent wants real estate to soften because as Robert Schiller tells us, the wealth of effect is most affected by real estate. which means, if real estate values come down, people finally stop spending money. What is the Fed always told us they want to control Demand by reining in demand. They can reign in inflation.

They cannot solve supply chain problems. They can only fight demand. The easiest way to do that is Crush housing. So in my opinion, the more the FED teases the idea that we're going to go higher for longer.

The higher the 10-year goes, the higher the 10-year goes. The reason it goes up is because people think well, if we're going to go higher for longer then maybe I should wait to buy bonds less People buying bonds higher yields higher yields more paying for Real Estate. It's simple, the only way that 10-year goes down is when yes, either we are in a recession and the FED has accomplished getting rid of inflation or we're going in for that soft landing and inflation is going away without a recession. But until then, the more the FED says higher, longer, higher, longer, higher, longer, the more these 10-year treasury yields go up, the more pain you you have for housing.

In my opinion, it's very simple. It's very clear. let's keep going upon how credible the FED statements are and how much Wall Street takes it to heart. Probably one of the worst pieces of news.

Steve This week was the unit Labor Costs and Productivity report or maybe it was last week. But when it shows that for the quarter unit labor costs, think we're still six and a half percent. productivity is now falling, so it's now showing evidence of Labor hoarding. You know that firms are just reluctant to let people go, which means inflation is higher uh, for now than it otherwise would have been, and that we could end up seeing more hikes and then a deeper downturn resulting in the next I don't know what the time frame is now.

6 12, 18 months I mean this is going to be a long period of waiting. Waiting and waiting for these conditions to fully set in. Hey, Kelly I've given up a lot of my optimism here, but but one thing I've not quite given up just yet as my optimism on productivity. Um, and and I can we can go through that? and I think you and I probably should do a segment on this down the road.

but right now, there's a lot of volatility in the productivity numbers Because we had this surge of productivity at the beginning of the pandemic, when some of the lower wage and lower productivity workers uh, were let go and now they've come back. So I'm not quite ready yet to give up the ghost. I Think we've maybe had some improvements in productivity from different business processes that have come out of covid. So I'm a little bit I remain optimistic on that front.

I Don't think we're quite giving that up. What does concern me though, is the issue of whether or not we have enough workers in the workforce and that was discussed. and and I think that we are still several million short of where we should be relative to have it. And quick note there this is actually where my talk about women coming back to the workforce from That Wall Street Journal article is really important.

We talked about this idea that a lot of women are stopped working during the pandemic because of child care needs or otherwise or or fear of of Covid because women are more represented in Leisure and hospitality and travel and health care and education and these really affected by the pandemic. However, those folks now fearful that you know their spouse or otherwise could be losing their job in manufacturing construction or Tech might end up seeing themselves go back to work to help prop up their household's ability to sustain during these expensive times and and difficult times which that would actually put downward pressure on uh, the the sort of labor rate of inflation uh, downward pressure on a wage price spiral increasing the supply of labor is is a phenomenal way to ensure that we don't have to get Paul Volckert. But uh, you know it certainly does indicate. Yeah, yeah, going through a little bit of a tougher time, But hey, if we could fill those jobs, we can remove that labor tightness.

Fantastic. The Federal Reserves that much closer to a soft Landing workers to do the job and you know I Thought it was interesting. Bill P is getting asked now more about pockets of the economy where we have problems. We'll talk about this later, but commercial real estate was one of them.

Um, and just this idea of you know when Warren President and he tried to say you know we don't think we have to have a worsening labor market to bring inflation down. but I'm not sure that's true because it's now unit labor costs that are driving inflation higher. This is not about the supply chain anymore. Um, this is directly an issue of the types.

See what Kelly's saying here right? If labor cost is the problem, it's labor cost. Inflation is the problem. How do you solve labor cost inflation? You increase Supply Well, we are seeing a surge of Supply the leading indicators. No matter what that Jobs report says tomorrow, the leading indicators are telling us the supply of labor is surging regardless of whether that's women or men.

Look at the earnings calls from companies whether it's Lyft Uber Chipotle Starbucks right? We've gone through this before don't want to sound redundant. The leading indicators of saying the supply of labor. It's rapidly expanding there, it seems unavoidable. Well, Kelly You have to watch out that the unit labor cost is an aggregate number.

There are some companies that are really doing quite well in keeping keeping their costs down and changing their their business models and and using technology to make workers more productive. Other parts of the economy have lag behind on that and so you have this big spike in um, you know labor costs in part because we have seen the flip side of the huge uh, downward drop in in unit labor costs at the beginning of the Uh of the of the recovery. But one thing you have to keep in mind is that the disinflationary forces have are still in place like that going all the way back to the last 10 years because technology and the changes in globalization are changing the way business models are going about doing their their their business and I think going forward we're going to see that we will have uh, better profits and better Uh results if we can keep up the pace of productivity growth and I think Steve is absolutely right. Productivity is really the heart of what the future is going to hold for inflation.

Yeah, very very good points there. Uh that companies are now and if you read the earnings calls uh or just listen to me, give you the summary of them. Uh, what you'll find is almost every single company I mean even Costco which has a massive labor expenses Uh, every single company that I'm looking at. They're not talking about raising wages, they're talking about.

Yes, wages have gone up, but you know what they're talking about. Uh, we are working on increasing productivity and more automation because we believe if we can have more Automation and more productivity as we will be able to make margins better, right? Uh, that's uh, that's that's a lot of what we're seeing right now, which I think is phenomenal. Uh, and uh, it actually is somewhat bullish now. Uh, we do need to look at uh, a little bit of what um, a TS Lombard is saying.

They are a pretty classic traditional bear here and uh, you know, as much as I like to, you know, put on my bullish hat I have to be realistic. So I always always pay attention to the Bears I like I say you might be a bear, I might be a bull I'll still have beer with you. it doesn't matter and we could have different opinions. Uh, okay, so what do we have here? Uh, the Uh Powell versus reality? Uh, this.

This author argues that the the idea that 50 basis points is even on the table next week according to this bear is a tacit admission that the downshift in Hikes was a mistake. The FED slowed thinking they were closing in on Peak rates. They are in fact no closer to understanding where Peak rates reside than where they were a few months back because they have no idea where disinflation will settle without a recession. February Employment Number Obviously those are coming out here.

Look at this Fed hiking Cycles measured in days and rates heading into a recession and it kind of just shows you sort of different eras here. The 1991, 2001, 2008, 2009 and you can see climb led to recession climb led to recession climb led to recession. climb led to covet. So that was weird.

So what do we? Are we weird? Well, probably or are we going into recession? This is just sort of your traditional bear case here. Anyway, the modify here. We go with this: this Taylor rule again. Uh, see.

This is yet another version of the Taylor rule. Oh, let's look at the modified Taylor rule. Well, if we do the formula, what do we get? Well, we need to get to a 7.7 Federal Funds rate. hey, which, you know what? In Fairness.

Everything the Federal Reserve has told us in terms of projections has been wrong so far. wrong so far. Everything. Every time they give us a summary of economic projections, it's too low, you know? and I remember when the last summary of economic projections came out in December we're like oh my.

God 5.1 percent Fed Funds rate. That's insane. That's that's higher than even the markets price. Again right now and the market sold off.

And and I Remember saying this is actually really bad because the Fed's been low on everything so far. Are they trying to get ahead? or are they going to end up being low on this again? Well, if we had to decide today, they're low. again. Scary.

always wrong. Now, if we get really good labor reports tomorrow and and good inflation reports next week, then maybe that's not that big of a deal. Uh, either way, next week is St Patty's Day and there's an awesome St Patty's Day opportunity for you Linked down below for the programs: I'm building your web. Remember, we don't have any sponsors on this channel, so if you appreciate that we're not talking sponsors, it's just my own products.

Link down below. I Think that the easiest product to sell is the one that you believe in the most. It's usually your own product. so I'm a big fan of of the quality and and what we have there for you.

But anyway. Uh, this is the second headline of today's testimony. Okay, fantastic. Uh, hold on.

There's one more piece from TS Longboard we need to talk about and it has to do with the Bond market. see TS Lombard Continuing with sort of the bear case here, he argues that uh, while while there is some optimism optimism on disinflation, he argues that it is a fantasy to return to two percent inflation without a recession. I Do think this bear is forgetting that it just needs to be two percent average, right? I Think I Really think the FED is just waiting to pull out the uh, the the average argument. We know it's coming.

We know fate is coming because, well, it's fate. Flexible Average Inflation targeting. Anyway to it: Compares Basically to the inversion of the yield curve that we had in 2000 where the FED funds rate topped out at six and a half percent. but inflation was running at two point four percent.

Now, inflation is running at six percent and we're maybe going to top out at 5.1 He's basically like, yeah, right, This is the same person who's like, we're probably going to top out in this seven percent range. Yikes. The 1970s was the last time we actually had this misguided optimism on inflation's course and Fed policy being priced into the yield curve. Remember though, how are things different from the 70s inflation expectations today? and we didn't just leave the Gold Standard like we did in the 70s.

Does give this example for inflation basically always going away through recession but and then specifically refers to the Korean War But the Korean war is actually an example of a soft Landing. So I Wrote this on the side. The Korean war was deemed to be a tiny recession that was actually cheered as solving inflation as a near-soft landing. Unemployment peaked at about 6.1 percent and that recession was really called a v-shaped recovery and it was deemed to be relatively mild and brief.

So I Personally love it when people compare it to the compare us today as a bull here. I Love it when people compare us to the Korean War era and that recession because it was like it was a fantastic recession. Like if you're going to have a recession, that's the one you would hope for. However, as I have regularly said on the channel, hope is not an investing strategy and there if there's no return to two percent inflation without a recession it says this individual, uh, then it's likely.

Well, actually, the individual here suggests we're going to have to see the unemployment rate rise to about five and a half percent. We're probably going to see that reflected in the next updated summary of economic projections coming out on the 22nd from the FED. He does not believe that we are going to see the world mend itself back to what it was, what it was. This is, even though as we just saw in that CNBC interview and what Jerome Powell reiterated, the disinflationary forces that were in effect in the last decade are still in effect today.

Uh, that's that's important to remember. That's at least what Jerome Powell is telling us and institutions are telling us. And I believe that as well, right? The disinflationary forces where you, whether you call it globalization or re-globalization Artificial intelligence, technological innovation, whatever automation, you name it. My mid-year recession call is still a 55 product, a probability rooted in the flip to negative carry for real inventories uh, leading to more layoffs and financial services no longer being able to build on high and Rising Equity prices? Yeah, I'm not a big fan of financial services right now.

I Think they're going to get hit by lower incomes really getting stretched substantially more? But anyway. Uh, the individual here says that the 5 to 10 curve usually usually actually turns positive before a recession. So that implies that we should have to start seeing the steepening of the yield curve before we're actually officially in a recession. Which is interesting because you know what if we get the steepening of the yield curve in like June or July Well, then it reiterates the idea that maybe we won't actually get a recession until like Q1 of 2024, right? six months before.

So I think this is really an interesting sort of leading indicator here. Air travel dropping back to 2019 levels. I Actually thought that was bullish because it kind of suggests that we have this peak of air travel and we're going back to lower levels. Which is good because you put less inflationary pressure on something that's been very much inflating.

A little bit of talk about how we're seeing less financing of inflation. lower loans. We saw a lot of credit being pulled in the middle of 2022, but you're actually actually seeing less financing happening right now. Uh, the market remains convinced that the world will repair itself back to pre-covered levels.

According to this bear, it won't ignore the chatter about no recession needed, you know? I Don't know that we can say that we're definitely not going to have a recession I Just think the question is like what stocks can you hold on to that will do well through hopefully what will be a mild recession. Now everybody says every recession is going to be mild, but so so we don't know how deep it'll get. but I I mean personally, what? I'm just saying with with not only the excess savings people had not to be compared confused with excess savings rates, but also with wealthier folks and businesses spending through the recession. I Think you could really set yourself up with pricing power stocks that'll do well through a mild to moderate recession? I Don't think anything does well in a bad recession, so so that is something to keep in mind.

But yeah, I don't I don't know that we have to believe in Immaculate disinflation which this individual calls a fairy tale. basically a fantasy as long as we have a trend down and we're not getting Paul Volckerd I remain bullish on pricing power style stocks yeah I really like big PP Uh, the bigger PP the better I Just I just want PP all around me uh and I think that's very, very important? Uh, but uh, you know this is this is your bear case and I think the bear case says good arguments. uh I Pay attention to it I don't think those arguments are strong enough like they were in January of 2022. uh, that's that's really when we had leaning indicators letting us know that poopsie dupsy was coming.

But uh. anyway, that gives you a little bit of the bear case in terms of what's going on. What? the Bears.