Markets Happy Hour Podcast August 14, 2025 - with Special Guest Dr. David Kelly

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast - subtitled - Notes from a Laboratory - I am recording from Buenos Aires, which has been described to me as like a "laboratory" for economic policy. However, we are talking much more about the global economic outlook here. As usual we start with inflation, where David shares caution regarding the recent inflation numbers in the US where persistent services inflation may have been masked by falling oil prices. We ask if this is a long term trend, and he suggests that it is not, and that the upward pressure on inflation should limit the US Fed's actions around lowering rates. The other risk to inflation remains of tax rebates in next year's tax season, which could act like a further massive stimulus to spending.

We discuss then the modern-day tortoise and hare scenario - whereby the low growth economy is akin to an aged tortoise plodding along - with still positive but not exuberant growth. The markets, on the other hand, tear ahead and resemble the energetic "hare". We ask whether these two should in fact appear like opposites in this way, and who in fact "wins the race" at the end of the day.

Dwelling a little more on market dispersion, we discuss the growing concentration of markets, and whether the same rules of portfolio diversification still apply. David suggests that they do when it comes to global diversification, but we question whether the outlook for small and mid-cap stocks can be expected to be the same given the dynamics of large caps dominating, tariff exposure and pricing power. Finally we touch on the valuation of the US dollar, and ask it remains too high.