Economic Updates, Advisor Training Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist Economic Updates, Advisor Training Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist

What Did We Learn This Week? (6/29)—Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist

The most important thing I learned this week (besides never grab hold of a skillet on a 500 degree grill) is that the people arguing that Fed will lose their nerve early and Fed Funds wont get over 3% are going to be wrong. I say that even in the context of observing commodity disinflation and continued leading indicator weakness that suggest we are sliding toward recession and curve inversion. Chairman Powell, Cleveland Fed's Mester as well as the Bank of International Settlements, which issued their annual economic report this week, are all singing from the same hymnal.

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Economic Updates, Advisor Training Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist Economic Updates, Advisor Training Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist

What Did We Learn This Week?- (06/27/22)—Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist

The Fed will successfully destroy demand. Gasoline prices may not come down meaningfully anytime soon due to the structural supply issues we discussed last week. Job openings may well stay elevated for months to come and consumer spending will continue to benefit from the dwindling stockpile of savings from fiscal stimulus and the vestiges of QE. But in one very important sector of the economy, the Fed's efforts to cool demand are already playing out. That sector is housing (OER/Shelter) which represents roughly 40% of the data that goes into CPI. To state the obvious, interest rates matter to housing and a doubling of long-term interest rates matters a lot.

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Economic Updates, Advisor Training Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist Economic Updates, Advisor Training Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist

What did we learn this week?-Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist

The Fed will successfully destroy demand. Gasoline prices may not come down meaningfully anytime soon due to the structural supply issues we discussed last week. Job openings may well stay elevated for months to come and consumer spending will continue to benefit from the dwindling stockpile of savings from fiscal stimulus and the vestiges of QE. But in one very important sector of the economy, the Fed's efforts to cool demand are already playing out. That sector is housing (OER/Shelter) which represents roughly 40% of the data that goes into CPI. To state the obvious, interest rates matter to housing and a doubling of long-term interest rates matters a lot.

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Economic Updates, Advisor Training Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist Economic Updates, Advisor Training Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist

June Energy Prices Insights—Tim Pierotti, Chief Investment Strategist

This week, we focused on trying to better understand the potential durability of higher energy prices.

As a reminder, at WealthVest, we have a long-term view that potential GDP growth is going lower. That means, we see a real GDP growth rate that will average below 2% and an inflation backdrop that will be consistently problematic, quite unlike the grinding decline of inflation over the last four decades. For what it's worth, this is an increasingly non-controversial view among academic economists, but not one that is yet embraced more broadly on Wall Street.

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