Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

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• Annex Wealth's Jacobsen: Economic expansion will drive growth at least into '27 17.07.2026 1t 8min

  Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist for Annex Wealth Management, says there are signs of a broad-based economic expansion, which gives him a "fairly constructive outlook for the economy over the next six to 12 months," though he is concerned about policy shocks that could unsettle things. Jacobsen warns that investors should not be too excited about situations where the general feeling is "It could have been worse," such as recent inflation numbers or the impact of the war in Iran, but they should take some positivity from the Federal Reserve and its new chairman Kevin Warsh, who Jacobsen says doesn't really want "to pump the brakes on this economy" any time soon. Scott Brown, chief strategist at Brown Technical Insights, says that the stock market just lived through the best second quarter ever for a midterm election year, which is a bullish sign for the rest of the year and getting through the standard troubles that come in midterm years. Brown says there is upside potential "but you want to be careful about where you are looking for it," warning that semiconductor names are correcting and that there is more downside risk there. Instead, he is looking at industrials, health care and financials as areas with positive potential. In The NAVigator, Ray DiBernardo, portfolio manager for the XAI Madison Equity Premium Income fund, says the stock market's high valuation levels have increased downside risk, making it that nervous investors should consider covered-call strategies, which trade some of the market's potential upside for downside protection. For nervous investors, DiBernardo says the options strategy acts like portfolio insurance, but that it is particularly attractive in the closed-end fund wrapper where covered-call funds generally are at a discount with the market near highs; that discount helps to make up for the upside potential investors surrender when choosing the strategy. In the Market Call, Brian Frank, manager of the Frank Value Fund, talks about absolute-value investing, noting that "nothing in the tech sector really is cheap" on an absolute basis, which has him looking more towards consumer staples and other areas that he says are trading at a discount. he also discusses the important of not just buying stocks on the cheap but having a potential catalyst to unlock that value.
• CFRA's Stovall: Rising volatility creates buying opportunities with a year-end payoff 16.07.2026 1t 2min

  Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research says investors should "be prepared for some additional volatility" at least until and through the midterm elections, but he thinks it represents "a reason to buy, not to bail." Stovall says that he's looking for solid double-digit earnings growth into 2027, and he makes the case that the technology sector has been driving the market higher but remains trading at a relative discount in price/earnings ratio. Traditional summer market doldrums, therefore, set up chances to profit from a rally he expects once the voting is done. Further, he points to the market's expanded breadth which, when combined with a positive first half of the year, historically is a sign that the market will rise over the rest of the year. Stovall's big worry for the economy and market involves the Federal Reserve and the potential for higher rates to lead to stagflation and other condition changes, but he's not expecting the Fed to move rates this year, so he thinks those worries are further into the future. Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, has focused a lot of his recent ETF of the Week picks on actively managed funds, but today he goes with a hot fund based on a technology-heavy index as something that would work well for investors who expect the market's uptrend to continue.  In the Market Call, Manny Weintraub, principal at Cannell & Spears, talks about how he finds "super great stocks that are not going to kill you" and whether stocks in the hottest sectors are being set up to murder investors when market conditions and sentiments change.  
• Freedom Capital's Woods: Block out the noise, be patient during earnings season 15.07.2026 1t 2min

  Jay Woods, chief market strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, says that the market has a "Janet Jackson - What Have You Done for Me Lately" attitude, which has made earnings cycles particularly volatile, and he thinks that will be amplified with the earnings on tap right now powering market moves, especially around market misses. While he believes earnings will be strong, he warns in the Market Call that "prices may not follow them," particularly as the market enters its slowest time of the year around a mid-term election cycle. Woods says that the stock market has seen a healthy rotation, but he expects a pullback before a year-end rally; in the meantime, he warns against chasing rallies. Adam Mead of Mead Capital Management and Watchlist Investing — author of "The Complete Financial History of Berkshire Hathaway" — talks about the evolution of legendary investors Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, how the company they ran is changing with Buffett's retirement and the legacy they will; have in the decades ahead. The new edition of the book was inspired after Mead saw Buffett at Berkshire's annual meeting after the nonagenarian announced his retirement. Plus, Chuck answers a listener's question about hiring a financial adviser and whether working with the brand-name firm that has renewed its nationwide advertising blitz on television would be all that it's cracked up to be. (Spoiler alert: Not exactly.)
• TheoTrade's Bierman: 'Get ready for a spectacular year-end rally' 14.07.2026 1t

  Jeffrey Bierman, chief market technician at TheoTrade — where he runs the Genesis Cog and Burn Signal platforms — says the stock market remains "ridiculously strong," but that won't allow it to sidestep a summer slowdown and a difficult fall, before picking back up with a tremendous rally near the end of the year. He makes it clear that current conditions are not looking like a bear market or a bubble, and while the market has gotten a bit ahead of itself, he's thinking it's mostly choppy with maybe a small setback before it starts the next leg up. David Leiter, who runs The Ultimate Investor website, discusses his new book, "Stop Making Stupid Investments," and gives his take on everything from initial public offerings — and pre-IPO investments — to cryptocurrency and more, and focuses on the emotional control that helps investors avoid the key blunders that can bring a portfolio crashing down. In the Market Call, Max Wasserman, co-founder and senior portfolio manager at Miramar Capital, talks about how everyone is jumping so hard into technology stocks that it's "hard to find a great company at a good price." He discusses where he is finding the right valuations for his dividend-driven investment style, and what kinds of companies fit his long-term buying perspective now.
• Argosy's Stewart: An 'under-housed' country is creating opportunities 13.07.2026 59min

  Andy Stewart, co-chief executive officer at Argosy Real Estate Partners, says that housing affordability issues that have made headlines are real and persistent, but there are some solutions over time, coming from building smaller homes, changes in interest rates and in public policies like the new affordability legislation that became law on Friday. It also means there are big opportunities in the single-family build-to-rent market and more, and those opportunities should be persistent and long-term. Stewart also talks about issues in data center construction — and whether the opportunity is moving too fast — and the continuing evolution of commercial real estate, where he sees "a generational buying opportunity" for patient, long-term investors. Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, says the record domestic IPO for SK Hynix last week and ASML Holdings on Wednesday, should remind investors to balance big numbers with appropriate caution, because the profit potential comes with white-hot volatility. He also looks at how financial and banking stocks could be in for a rough earnings cycle when they start reporting results this week, with their numbers reflecting how right or wrong they were in anticipating how the Federal Reserve and new chairman Kevin Warsh would respond to economic conditions. Plus, he also looks at housing affordability and how new legislation may impact the picture. David Trainer, founder and president at New Constructs, looks at current earnings trends and sees some ugly misses coming during the second quarter, not because companies are sandbagging earnings expectations, but because they're not as solid as the Street believes. He says a number of those stocks — and he singled out Fidelity National Information Services — are headed for trouble when the street figures things out after seeing an earnings miss.
• Stack Financial's Jonson foresees a 'bear market waterfall' ahead 10.07.2026 1t 3min

  Zach Jonson, chief investment officer at Stack Financial Management, says the stock market is  building towards "one of the biggest or largest bear markets of our generation," but he says that decline will impact passive, broad-index investors the most. "We see a true long-term, 12- to 18-month, 45 to 50 downturn, and that's in the S&P; if you look at the Nasdaq, you could really see some losses that are in excess of 70 percent," Jonson said. He's worried about a "bear market waterfall" — where every decline is not met with a quick return back to new highs — that makes it emotionally difficult for investors to buy into dips, but he does say that being patient and strategic should allow investors to find pockets of opportunity amid the decline, positioning them to profit when the pendulum swings back to the upside. Axel Merk, president and chief investment officer at Merk Investments, discusses Saba Capital's activist campaign that recently saw him booted as portfolio manager for ASA Gold and Precious Metals Ltd., a closed-end fund that was up nearly 200% last year and that was at the top of its peer group since Merk took it over in 2016. Still, the activist shareholders labeled it a poor performer, and are working now to capture the fund's discount. Meanwhile, Saba has installed new leadership which Merk says has no experience running a gold fund. He filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and made other efforts to save the fund, but acknowledges that a change in status is unlikely. Merk also discusses his outlook for gold in the interview. Adam Gebler, head of wealth for the Americas at FTSE Russell, discusses the firm's 2026 U.S. Wealth Pulse Survey, which showed that private markets — both equity and credit — are continuing to move into the mainstream with affluent investors, driven largely by financial advisers pushing for their adoption and acceptance in portfolios.
• Evanston Cap's VanGelder: Complicated global picture creates intriguing opportunities 09.07.2026 57min

  Kristen VanGelder, co-chief investment officer at Evanston Capital — a firm that manages hedge funds built out of hedge funds — says that sophisticated money managers have very different sentiments about current market conditions than Main Street investors, noting that where average investors are showing lousy sentiment numbers, sharpies are leaning into the market's increasing "dispersion" and the ability to play one thing against the next to turn volatility into profits. She says that global macro investors "have the glimmer in their eye," because the pressure of war and a complicated global inflationary picture are creating opportunities beyond what investors can fund sticking with fundamental investing domestically. Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, goes away from his long-running trend of focusing on actively managed ETFs and turns to a new Vanguard high-yield corporate bond index fund as his "ETF of the Week," noting that the ultra-low fees on the fund and the outperformance of the index make it something to consider now.  In the Market Call, Tom Martin, senior portfolio manager for Globalt Investments, discusses his earnings-driven investment style and what to make of the volatile market reactions around perceived "sand-bagging," where companies meet profit projections but the Street doesn't think expectations were set high enough.
• Calamos' Freund: 'It's very hard to be pessimistic about the broad market' 08.07.2026 1t 1min

  Matt Freund, co-chief investment officer at Calamos Investments, says a resilient economy is producing "shocking numbers for a mid-cycle economy," powering through problems in a way that puts the Federal Reserve on hold, avoiding interest rate hikes this year and returning to a bias towards cutting in 2027. Freund thinks that it's "back to the future" for the Fed, with new chairman Kevin Warsh bringing the central bank to where less information and guidance makes for more policy flexibility, even if it results in some additional volatility since the policy path will be less well-defined. Freund says the chances of recession in the next year are low, but that investors have to remain cognizant that "every mountain has two sides and, at some point, the string of good years can't go on forever." Meb Faber, chief executive and chief investment officer at Cambria Investments, returns to the show a day after his Big Interview appearance to discuss his new book, "Investing in America: The Rise of a 250-Year Bull Market." He discusses what he expects the future to look like and why the bull market can continue almost indefinitely but why investors may not want to focus entirely on domestic investments in the future. Plus, Chuck answers a listener's question about the cheap, small-dollar life-insurance policies advertised regularly on television and whether seniors are better off going for the convenience of those policies or looking for other ways to protect their families.
• Cambria's Faber: 'The bull market in diversification has begun' 07.07.2026 1t 4min

  Meb Faber, chief executive and chief investment officer at Cambria Investments, says that large-cap domestic stocks have done so well that it has masked the rise of the rest of the investment ecosystem, but now that he expects recent good times to be balanced out by tougher stretches ahead for the Standard & Poor's 500, investors will want to take advantage of small-cap stocks, foreign stocks and more. That's good preparation for bear markets, and Faber makes it clear that downturns are a feature of the market, something that will come around again. Faber — who will return to Wednesday's show to discuss his new book, "Investing in America: The Rise of a 250-Year Bull Market" — says the trend remains "all signs green" for the market currently, but he says investors should be watching for change. Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Hi Mount Research, says that the best environment for the stock market isn't falling rates, but rather rates that aren't moving. That positions the stock market to be in a "boring" and "quiet" environment where it can keep riding technicals which Delwiche describes as being "in pretty good shape" right now, with all 11 sectors of the S&P 500 above their long-term moving averages and more stocks making new highs than are making new lows. Those patterns are creating "strength beneath the surface" that he says can power the market higher. David Miller, co-founder of Catalyst Mutual Funds talks about insider buying as an indicator of corporate strength, monopoly and oligopoly positions as a way to play developing technologies and more in a wide-ranging Money Life Market Call.
• S&P's Gruenwald: Expect a slow, steady economy with rates in 'a hawkish hold' 06.07.2026 1t 4min

  Paul Gruenwald, chief economist at S&P Global Ratings, he expects that the Federal Reserve's next move on interest rates will be a cut, but says it won't happen until 2027, which he described as a one-year delay for the central bank to get back to more neutral levels. Gruenwald says it's a "hawkish hold," with the Fed being prepared to raise rates but hoping to hold off. Gruenwald says that effort is helped by the economy's resilience, driven by business investment and the wealth effect created by the market's return to record levels, which have put a floor on economic growth, allowing the economy to overcome a handful of economic and policy shocks — including the Iran War — in recent years. That's why he recently cut his expectations on recession, cutting the chance of an economic downturn from 33% down to 20%. Vijay Marolia spent the holiday weekend celebrating the holiday and more, and while he says his invitation to the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce wedding extravaganza was lost in the mail, he isn't losing the chance to look at the wild spending on the party and to equate it to what more ordinary folks should do, namely learning how to size their spending so they can live well, while limiting financial regrets. Marolia, the chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, also digs into Amazon and Tesla stock in "The Week That Is," noting that each company had something to celebrate that — when viewed under his five-lens approach to stock selection — will make investors want to have a party in their portfolio. Plus, Chuck answers a recent spate of questions about how the show itself works, and gives a behind-the-scenes look at guest selection, interview editing and more.
• Franklin Templeton's Dover: This market's not 'expensive,' just 'fully valued' 02.07.2026 59min

  Steven Dover, chief market strategist at Franklin Templeton, says there is still more upside to the market, based on earnings growth, noting that the economy and stock market have been resilient due to the "phenomenal" profits companies have been generating. Dover notes that the market is fully valued, but not expensive; "We think earnings this next year could be [up] 15 to 20 percent, so the market could follow that without being more expensive." Dover, who is also the head of the Franklin Templeton Institute, notes that the earnings growth has been greatest among small caps, which is why he is leaning in that direction, and he advocates for fixed income as ballast for portfolios now; ;he had previously lightened up on the Magnificent Seven and other market leaders, and he says that the market has relaxed on those stocks, which may create targeted buying opportunities. Kevin Dreyer, co-chief investment officer for value at Gabelli Asset Management — part of the team running Gabelli Equity Trust and other closed-end funds — discusses how he is finding value looking for names that are "differentiated and not highly correlated" to the stocks that have been leading the market's return to record levels. Specifically, Dreyer says he is looking for businesses that are "A.I. resilient" and able to withstand and/or benefit from the development of artificial intelligence. One area he cited as particularly attractive is sports and entertainment, because " You can't have an algorithm or chatbot replicate the New York Knicks … but you and I can go out and buy MSGS, which owns the Knicks."  Plus, Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, turns to a trending part of the market and makes an actively managed Fidelity small- and mid-cap fund his pick for "ETF of the Week."
• Argent Trust's Stringfellow: Market is rounding out, not signalling big trouble ahead 01.07.2026 59min

  Tom Stringfellow, chief investment strategist at Argent Trust, says the stock market is going through a shift where small-cap companies are coming to the fore, businesses that are adjacent to artificial intelligence or that will benefit from using it are starting to get an A.I. boost and the warning signs feel mostly like distant storm clouds. Stringfellow says he doesn't see signs of recession, worries slightly about a market overheating if interest rates rise, but he thinks signs that more and more companies are showing earnings growth reducing a lot of potential downward pressure on the market. Ben Carlson, director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management, discusses his new book, "Risk and Reward: How to handle market volatility and build long-term wealth," and how he thinks investors can't simply tune everything out -- even if that might be the best long-term results -- because they have a "firehose of information" in their pockets. He discusses how to best filter that information to make it useful without becoming overwhelming. Meredith Mangan, senior editor at Credible, discusses the site's survey on prediction markets, which showed that 1 in 4 Americans already have made a wager on a prediction-market site. In a wide-ranging study looking at investor habits, she noted that more than 60% of Americans see prediction markets as betting, while just under 30% see them as a viable financial tool.
• Wells Fargo's Samana: Technicals are telling investors to 'Play on!' 30.06.2026 59min

  Sameer Samana, head of equities and real assets at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, says that as long as the market keeps making higher highs and lows, investors should use technical indicators as a North Star to stay in the game and ride the market higher. Samana says the market's move to record levels says that broader economy is strong enough to keep the market rolling with a "turbo-boost" from artificial intelligence on top of it providing faster growth, though he does worry about the economy overheating and needing to step back. He says the most likely scenario is for the market to "take a breather" between now and midterm elections, but "starting in November, you'll start the next leg of the bull market and it would not surprise me if that one runs well into end of next year." Kevin Roth, managing director of research for the CFB Board of Standards, discusses the group's recent survey on Americans and financial fraud which found that most people have faced some rip-off attempts, but almost no one discusses it with families or reports it to authorities. Some 55% of Americans expect fraudsters to target them or someone close to them in the next 12 months, but less than 40% are confident they would catch every type of fraud they might face and avoid being ripped off. Plus, Josh Stevens, chief investment officer at CresAlta Investment Management — which in May launched CresAlta Global Dividend and CresAlta Small and Mid-Cap, ETFs based around high-conviction growth strategies — talks stock investing now in the Market Call.
• BNP Paribas' Morris says the big worry now is economic 'overheating' 29.06.2026 1t 2min

  Daniel Morris, chief investment strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management, says that his primary concern right now is the risk that the economy could overheat, thanks to above-trend growth and inflation that could prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in an effort to slow things down. If that fails to cool inflation, the economy could then struggle and the market could step far away from its current uptrend. Morris' base case, however, is for continued earnings growth that can power the market into 2028, noting that while growth will slow down, there is still plenty of room to keep going and not have the economy resemble past bubble times. In The Book Interview, Chad Bown, co-author of "'How to Win a Trade War: An Optimistic Guide to an Anxious Global Economy," discusses how there are reasons and ways for trade-war scenarios to play out well, and the trade-offs today's leaders would have to make for current trade tensions to pass without plunging the global economy into a deep funk. In "The Week That Is," Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, discusses why he will continue to ride with Micro Technology, even as it reports growth numbers that are hard to believe, nt notes that he is giving Nike the boot, especially when he compares it to another popular rival in the public eye during the World Cup, adidas. Plus, he worries about how artificial intelligence may make inflation stickier for longer.
• ChartPattern's Zanger: The market 'needs some Prozac, that's for sure' 26.06.2026 58min

  Veteran analyst Dan Zanger, chief technical officer at ChartPattern.com, says the market right now is showing swings and moves that are reminiscent of the Internet bubble days of 2000. While that doesn't mean the market is headed for the same result, he says it creates more challenges for traders and investors, in part because they are trying to read the market off of wild swings and fast reversals. "It's definitely a very bifurcated market," Zanger says in discussing the tech and artificial-intelligence companies compared with everything else. "It needs Prozac, that's for sure." We go Off The News with Robert Farrington, founder of The College Investor, examining the new  student-loan repayment assistance plan and changes in student-loan lending limits, both of which go into effect on July 1. Farrington says these changes will help students and parents with the personal finances around college education, helping them focus on the value of the degree, noting that the loan limits are a "stop sign," where the government is suggesting that when someone takes on more debt, they are running much higher risk of not earning back the money they put into getting their degree. He notes that this is particularly important with master's degrees, where many grad students pay up for a diploma that doesn't repay their investment in the extra training. With private credit being an increasingly popular part of investment strategies these days, John Cole Scott, president of CEF Advisors — the chairman of the Active Investment Company Alliance — attended the Private Credit Summit hosted this week in New York City by Dechert LLP, and came away with a sense that private-credit markets have not yet gotten to the overheated levels that could turn investor fears of a blow-up into a financial reality. Scott discusses how big business development companies passed "stress tests" designed to show if they would break under severe market conditions, how insurance companies making investments into private credit are raising underwriting standards and thereby reducing the risk in private credit markets and more.
• 3Edge's Folts: Be diversified, because 'It's impossible to game where this goes' 25.06.2026 1t

  Fritz Folts, chief investment strategist at 3EDGE Asset Management, says he has pulled back slightly on equity exposure but gone deeper into a diversified approach because the market has been crazy, driven by investors' fear of missing out, sky-high expectations and more, to the point where the key is to participate and not be wrong because you are taking chances on what amounts to a wild guess. If Folts had to guess, he'd expect the stock market to have a bumpy ride in the second half of the year, finishing roughly flat from current levels. Michael Monaghan, founder and portfolio manager of the Founder ETFs makes his debut in the Market Call, talking about his firm's methodology, which focuses on companies where the original founder remains in the driver seat. Research shows that founder-led companies tend to outperform for several reasons, notably that the entrepreneurs behind them have a long-term vision and are not swayed by short-term market noise or pressured to produce a quarterly profit. Monaghan, who runs the Founders 100 ETF, discusses how founder-CEOs influence giants like Nvidia and Meta Platforms and how a portfolio of these stocks can expect more stable long-term performance.  In the ETF of the Week segment, Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, focuses on a value fund from T. Rowe Price that just hit its third anniversary, gaining roughly 30 percent over the last 12 months
• Schwab's Sonders on the need to diversify your strategy in A.I. 24.06.2026 1t 2min

  Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab & Co., says that "there is so much short-attention-span money driving the market right now ... looking for the shiny new object," that investors want to diversify throughout artificial intelligence businesses, taking profits  and rebalancing especially when specific stocks go parabolic, to capture profits and avoid some of the volatility being created by enormous expectation levels. Sonders says that an "aggregate recession" remains "a ways away," but she notes that there have been rolling recessions, with services weaking currently, coming off a manufacturing decline earlier in the year. As a result, she suggests considering sectors that could be in line for pullbacks rather than expecting a credit crunch or a mistake by regulators to create a broad-based decline. Justin Baer discusses his new book, "House of Fidelity: The Rise of the Johnson Dynasty and the Company That Changed American Investing," and digs into some of the details that turned the notoriously secretive and private company from a firm for Boston elites into a the investing powerhouse whose accounts and funds touch the lives of one in five American adults. Niki Glen, Northwestern Mutual wealth management advisor discusses the latest data from Northwestern Mutual's 2026 Planning & Progress Study, which showed that true financial independence remains beyond the grasp of many Americans. One in five U.S. adults believes they will never achieve financial independence, which is borne out in survey results showing that more than 40 percent of adults — including a surprisingly high percentage of Baby Boomers, who are all at or beyond retirement age — continue to rely on their parents for financial support. More than half of Millennials (who range between 30 and 45 years old) were still dependent on financial help from their family.
• Allspring's Bory: Bond investors should capture the Fed's 'uncertainty premium' 23.06.2026 1t 2min

  George Bory, chief investment strategist for fixed income at Allspring Global Investments, says the market is "overshooting" in expecting considerable rate hikes soon. He thinks the central bank will be patient, and that the Kevin Warsh regime got off to its intended start last week by giving less guidance and accepting more volatility as a result. He suggests that investors should look to capture the current "uncertainty premium" that has been created by a wide dispersion of opinion — with some major players expecting rate hikes while others are calling for renewed cuts — and that will boost intermediate-term yields at least until the rate picture becomes clearer. Tom McClellan, editor of The McClellan Market Report, says that the McClellan Oscillator — the indicator created by the family firm to measure market breadth — "is seeing dead nothing," hovering around the neutral level, suggesting that the market "is in pretty much of a doldrums." He expects to see a seasonal summer decline, especially in a midterm election year, but it's not happening yet, which is why McClellan says there's not likely to be much trend until late October. He sees "a boring market" for the rest of the year but expects 2027 to be strongly positive, barring mistakes from the Federal Reserve. Author Igor Pejic discusses his new book, "Tech Money: A Guide to the New Game of Technology Investing," out today, noting the places where technology investing has changed and how different current times are from the last technology wave, the Internet boom, that drove the market into bubble times.
• StockCharts' de Kempenaer; Don't jump in front of this 'freight train' of a market 22.06.2026 1t

  Julius de Kempenaer, senior technical analyst at StockCharts, says the stock market right now is "technology against the world," and he expects that it will turn and correct, but he's not willing to put his portfolio on the line and move early, because it would put him in the path of a speeding "freight train." de Kempenaer says he can "hear what the bears are saying," and doesn't necessarily disagree with them, but he says he needs to see more signs of weakness -- like the market starting to favor defensive sectors even as it is rising -- to suggest that a downturn is near. Yalena Maleyev, senior economist at KPMG Economics – a member of the Outlook Survey Committee for the National Association for Business Economics – discusses the June 2026 NABE Outlook Survey, released today, which had the economists calling for lower and slower economic growth, higher inflation and a longer time before the Federal Reserve eases interest rates. The median expectation for personal consumption expenditures (PCE), the Fed's preferred inflation measure, rose to 3.6% for the fourth quarter. Despite those worrisome economic numbers, nearly two-thirds of the economists surveyed expect that the U.S. can forestall a recession until 2028 or later. In "The Week That Is," Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, discusses Kevin Warsh's debut as the chairman of the Federal Reserve, which included a hawkish stance, no dot plot or forecasting help, and a terse public statement. He also discusses the news that Charles Schwab Corp. is planning to enter prediction markets, which he says could speed up both public acceptance and regulatory scrutiny of prediction markets, and he gives his take on why the housing affordability problem is worse right now than it generally gets credit for. Plus, David Trainer, founder and president at New Constructs, puts the State Street S&P Kensho Final Frontiers ETF in the Danger Zone, noting that while the fund gets a five-star rating from Morningstar, it is filled with stocks "that are losing money hand over fist, all going after a very trendy topic ... which is hard to quantify," a condition that he says reminds him of the Internet bubble days.
• John Hancock's Miskin says IPO boom could be a sign of a bubbly market 18.06.2026 1t 1min

  Matthew Miskin, co-chief investment strategist at John Hancock Investment Management, says that the current stock market has been driven to record highs on the back of strong earnings that have overpowered economic concerns, but he notes that the stock market bubble that inflated during the Internet boom of the late 1990s grew on the backs of companies with no real earnings. As a result, with IPOs like SpaceX dominating the headlines, Miskin is preaching caution, noting that these attention-grabbing stocks are coming public without profits. Miskin says that's a rising risk, but that inflation is less of a risk than it was just a few months ago, and he believes there may be pockets of downturn or slowdown, but that should push investors to diversify, rather than to overhaul a portfolio or back away from equities. Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, looks at a free-cash flow factor fund that has a stellar track record and that will celebrate its third birthday next week for his ETF of the Week. The birthday is important because it makes the fund eligible for ratings that will signal its stellar performance even more strongly to investors. Ken Burdon, partner in the registered fund practice at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, discusses a recent Supreme Court ruling that's a game-changer for activist investors in closed-end funds.  Critics of activism have long held that professional arbitrageurs used federal courts to pressure closed-end funds into deals that benefit activists' at the expense of the long-term objectives of ordinary shareholders. Burdon says the decision  doesn't stop the activists from pursuing cases but removes a key path that activists took to pursue their actions much more quickly and easily.