Markets Happy Hour Podcast with Aoifinn Devitt

Today’s Markets Happy Hour Podcast is recorded live in St. Louis, just ahead of the holidays, and features a wide-ranging and candid conversation with Stephen Douglass, Chief Economist at NISA.

We begin with an economy “vibe check,” exploring the growing disconnect between headline inflation data and lived experience. From partisan consumer sentiment to the K-shaped reality facing households and businesses, we discuss why inflat...

Today's Markets Happy Hour Podcast is live from Miami, and was kindly accommodated by the ALTSMIA conference in Miami. We start with a discussion of an economy vibe check where one guest describes a basket of identical goods being tracked from Whole Foods, which is up a whopping 30% year on year - significantly higher inflation than is being reported in the data.

We turn then to the seemingly high probability of a US rate cut t...

In today's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we were delighted to feature David Miller, Director of Investments at Conficap based in Finland. David is a long-term commentator and markets expert, having spent years as a portfolio manager, most recently at Quilter Cheviot in London. He has written a regular market newsletter for many years, and currently it is called "Northern Lights" - always a stimulating and riveting read.

We start wi...

In today's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we are celebrating Thanksgiving Day, and noting the many things that US investors have to be thankful for - a market that pulled itself together sufficiently to end the month broadly flat, a likely incoming Fed chairman who is positively inclined towards rate cuts, and an economy that continues to show its resilience. Plus Thanksgiving staples seem to be down in price - which is good news for l...

In this special edition of the Markets Happy Hour Podcast we are joined by Paula Campbell Roberts who is the Chief Investment Strategist for the Global Wealth business and a Managing Director on KKR’s Global Macro & Asset Allocation team

As usual we debate the implications of the shifting inflationary, interest rate and equity market environments for our clients and end with a discussion of the asset mix that KKR espouses fo...

In today's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we feature the legendary Pete Drewienkiewicz of Thoughts from The Loft (TFTL) fame (of Gallagher Benefit Company, formerly Redington in the UK) and a robust discussion ensues. Starting with "Food Glorious Food" and its driver of inflation, we examine whether inflation will rest at the higher 3.6% level in the UK and what trajectory is likely in the US.

We move then to the different apparen...

In today's live podcast from Dublin we do a comparative vibe check on the Irish economy compared to the US economy. We speak about the pressure of inflation on investor portfolios and ask what investors should do to guard against that.

In looking like a now-familiar chart plotting the size of the US stock market v. the rest of the world the question is asked as to whether investors are in fact happy running that level of risk, p...

In today's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we are delighted to host Rich Nuzum, Head of OCIO at Franklin Templeton, for our usual canter through the macro drivers of investor portfolios - inflation, interest rates, equity markets, geopolitics and other asset classes.

We look at inflation firstly - and ask about expectations, which, remarkably, are diverging along political lines in the US. It seems that inflation is very much in the...

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast (our second recorded this week - there will be a special episode featuring Paula Campbell Roberts from KKR released shortly), we focus on recent rumbles in markets around the integrity of the AI story, the increased concern about power costs and how our "discovery phase" around Bitcoin is continuing, with more and more clues added weekly.

We start with the usual inflation analysis and th...

In today's live recording of the Markets Happy Hour Podcast we gathered a group of allocators, hedge fund, private credit and real asset specialists to debate the changing shape of inflation and whether certain assets continued to represent paths to inflation resilience.

We also dug deeper into the private credit landscape and asked whether the recent poor performance in diversified financials firms was merited, and what might b...

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we sit down with Michael Blayney, who is General Manager, Dynamic Asset Allocation at Hesta, an Australian Superannuation fund with $100 bn AUD in assets under management. The sting in the tail is a reference to AI and the "sting" being the job losses that have moved from murmurs to full-blown company announcements, with more to come.

As always we kick off with our inflation discussion,...

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we are joined by Luba Nikulina, Head of Global Strategy for IFM Investors. She is responsible for leading the development of IFM’s global strategy with a focus on private markets solutions that meet the needs of Australian and global pension funds and their members. Luba has always thought in an orthogonal way, finding links between different factors in the economy and trying to apply a fre...

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we dig through some "anecdata" to see what is driving global markets through white knuckle moments and back again.

We are forced to rely on "anecdata" due to the ongoing shortage of data due to the US government shutdown, so are missing official inflation figures and jobs data. Anecdotally, however, CEOs (Walmart in particular) are reporting that consumers remain resilient (notable give...

In this week’s Markets Happy Hour Podcast we discuss alarm bells - where we see them, whether we are finding them where none exist and what we can do about it, if anything. We are joined by former CIO of Royal Mail, Ian McKnight.

A few weeks ago, in a podcast with John Normand of Australian Super, we asked if the US economy was actually stronger than we thought, in that US GDP growth figures looked to be revised upwards and the...

In this podcast we feature snippets from our live conversation in San Francisco where we were joined by guests from across the venture capital, programming and fund management spectrum. Over coffee and donuts we debated:

Whether we feel a disconnect between the economic backdrop and the current equity market strength?

Whether there is a bubble in AI?

What inflation feels like on the ground?

It was a lively discussion with a...

In today’s Markets Happy Hour podcast we focus on Memes and Milestones, in a week that has been filled with news of a government shutdown in the US, landmark deals and valuations and market highs.

The US government shutdown now is reaching its 3rd day, and has been punctuated with odd bursts of meme-ing involving Sombreros and Mariachi bands as partisan shots across the bough continue. This barely called a ripple in the equity ...

In today’s Markets Happy Hour Podcast, we dissect a busy week of news flow including a show down at the UN, growing tensions on the geopolitical front, growing indicators of economic strength and the continuation of the AI big-spending era. We are delighted to be joined by John Normand - Head of Investment Strategy for Australian Super. John's long history in investment strategy and asset allocation gives him a unique way of constr...

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we ask if the Fed has, through taking a "risk based" and "meeting by meeting" approach and making its first cut all year (25 bps) taken a "stitch in time" to avert economic disaster. Inflation remains stubbornly high, and it seems that the Fed is now switching to emphasize the employment side of its dual mandate.

Inflation around the world is not much better, with a rolling 3.8% in the ...