Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bridge Wall Streets. Heavyweight banks have kicked off earning season
there and the message is pretty clear US consumer is bending,
but certainly not at this point breaking. Sam Dickey from
Fisher Funds is with me now, Hey Sam, good evening, right,
So where are we at this reporting season? Who's reported
so far? How the result's been looking.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Yes, we're less than ten percent of the way through.
But the big US banks always kick things off, and
they've got a pretty good bird's eye view of the
US and the global economy. And they mostly beat expectations,
which is quite interesting given how bearish sentiment was sort
of two months ago. So JP Morgan and City Bank,
(00:41):
especially two giant banks, beaty expectations and that's probably no
surprise now given stock markets through at all time highs
and bond markets have been volatile, so their trading floors
have been humming and minting cash and.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
How households spending habits going at the moment starting to crack?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yet, yes, that they do have a great view of
that and the answer is not yet. So JP Morgan's
Jamie Diamond said the consumer is resilient still and City
Group CEO said the consumer is holding up nicely. Bank
of America said solid consumer spending data and no signs
of a recession.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
All right, So what rests of the bank's really worried
about here? Sam?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Yeah, so that's a really good question, because everything we've
talked about so far was backwards looking for the first half,
and most sounded notes of caution for the second half.
So Wells Fargo said they expect pressure on borrowing demand
for the rest of twenty twenty five because interest rates
remain high. Jamie Diamond lamented how expensive equity markets looked
(01:48):
and asset prices look pretty high. And as a group,
they all talked about the risks of geopolitics, US government
debt levels and generally higher interest rates pressuring the ability
of the US government to to pay the interest on
that debt, and of course, the uncertainty of tariffs and
whether they'll kick in in August was talked about a
(02:08):
lot by the big banks.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, still a lot of it on setting around that.
What does all this mean for investors? Sam?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
The US economy remains exceptionally robust, and we've seen this
many times since COVID when people expected a recession as
at April for example this year, post Liberation Day and
it just remains very, very robust. But stop market sentiment
is red hot. It's been an incredible run in equity
market since April the eighth. And the only other thing
I would say is it's all about AI at the moment,
(02:36):
and any company with AI and the name is going up.
And it does seem like the US economy is a
little bit of a sideshow at the moment until it's not. So,
I would just say in a note caution there given
the exceptional run that equity markets have had.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
And it has been exceptional, Sam, thank you for that.
Sam Dickey Fisher Funds.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
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