Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

It's a wide-ranging show today, with Ben Cook, portfolio manager for the Hennessy Energy Transition and Hennessy Mid-Stream funds, giving his latest take on the energy sector, noting that the industry is well-positioned to at least not be hurt while tariff policies play out, even as the U.S. has become the world's largest oil-producing nation and the OPEC nations are looking to improve their fortunes....

Brendan Ahern, chief investment officer at KraneShares and the author of the China Last Night blog, says that the government of China is "doing the things that Trump wants them to be doing" for domestic policy purposes, which is why he sees the signs of a U.S.-China trade deal in the works. He says in The Big Interview that neither side can win in a trade war, but that both sides ...

Rob Williams, chief investment strategist at Sage Advisory Services, says the economy and market have moved off of potential worst-case scenarios into "this manageable camp," where it must get through potholes and uncertainty as the economy "flirts with stall speed" in growth. Still, Williams sees some powerful tailwinds that could drive the market higher in the second half of the year, but the concer...

Nick Maggiulli, chief operating officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management — the author of the "Of Dollars and Data" blog — says that while recoveries can happen faster now than in the past due to advances in technology and information, investors who always expect the market to bounce back quickly from any setback have learned the wrong lesson. While he is not calling for a protracted downturn, he is sugge...

Jose Torres, senior economist for Interactive Brokers, says that the economy is about to get past tariffs — "the huge negative of the Trump policy mix" — and move to lighter taxation, milder regulations, subdued energy costs, rising factory production and, hopefully, rising employment as well," which creates a bullish outlook for the economy and the stock market into 2026. Torres says he expects the F...

Herb Greenberg, editor of Herb Greenberg's Red Flag Alerts, tells the story of a stock scam that most recently centered on Ostin Technology, a Chinese company traded on the Nasdaq that recently popped to over $9 per share before losing 95 percent of its value in a single day. While the company is a cautionary tale for investors, Greenberg's bigger warning involves similar frauds that spring up around ...

Scott Helfstein, head of investment strategy for Global X ETFs says the fundamentals are strong enough that the market and economy should be in better shape by year's end, provided the wildcards of tariffs and geopolitics don't interfere. Discussing his outlook for the rest of 2025, Helfstein expects different leadership, noting that he favors low-beta strategies, plus the defense technology and cyber...

Rob Haworth, senior investment strategist at U.S. Bank Asset Management, says that the volatility and headline risks of the first half of 2025 haven't changed the outlook for the market and economy, which can grind through the rest of the year and into 2026 with modest gains. Haworth acknowledges "a lot of questions still to be answered," but he says that most of the answers will ...

Dustin Reid, chief strategist for fixed income at Mackenzie Investments, says he expects the Federal Reserve to hold off on rate cuts in July, but to be moved into making a double cut — half a percent — in September, and worries that the central bank may be waiting too long to act, as the labor market is starting to show some cracks. Reid said a bigger cut might be taken as a positive by the market if...

David Goodsell, executive director of the Natixis Center for Investor Insight, discusses the firm's 2025 Individual Investor Survey, which shows that investors were so satisfied with the 20-plus percent gains of 2023 and '24 that they are expecting less this year, but they have only dropped their expectations from roughly 17 percent down to about 12 percent, and Goodsell notes that financial advisers ...

Daniel Morris, chief market strategist at BNP Paribas Asset Management, says he sees continued expansion in the United States and a slowing in Europe and other international markets, which contributes to why he is mostly neutral on allocations, as tariff plays and international stimulus efforts and more creates positive potential around the globe. Morris says a neutral stance makes sense because there...

Stacie Mintz, head of quantitative equity for PGIM Quantitative Solutions, says that equity valuations in emerging markets are at their most attractive level relative to U.S. stocks in decades. That's not a surprise, as emerging markets have underperformed domestic markets for the last 13 years, but Mintz says the time has come for diversification to pay off. While the headline risks of tariffs, trade...

Ed Shill, managing partner at the Wealth Enhancement Group, says he sees the market either continuing to climb the proverbial wall of worry or getting complacent, and he fears that it's the latter after the sharp rebound from April's decline. "Right now the market is overbought," Shill says in the Market Call, where he recommends "putting airbags on," using stops to lock in profits and being prepared ...

Brian Levitt, global market strategist at Invesco, says that he came into the year expecting that the growth and inflation backdrop would support reasonable corporate earnings that could push the market higher. He still believes that -- despite expecting a slowdown, struggles with increased market volatility and higher inflation as a result of tariff impacts -- and said that modest earnings growth wil...

Julia Hermann, global market strategist at New York Life Investments, says she is concerned about market volatility for the remainder of the year, especially as tariff impacts work their way further into the economy and as we see some resolution on their status. While tariffs pose the risk of creating an exogenous shock — precisely what Hermann worried about triggering a recession when she last visite...

It's a tale of two forecasts on today's edition of Money Life, as two experts come to very different conclusions of how 2025 will play out. In The Big Interview, Paul Christopher, head of global investment strategy for the Wells Fargo Investment Institute says he expects the market to drop "5 to 10 percent easily" as tariffs, accompanying inflation and a slowing economy take hold during the third quar...

Brent Schutte, chief investment officer at Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co., says that "Asset classes don't die, they just go to sleep for awhile," and they wake up when there are changes to the macroeconomic backdrop. He says that domestic strategies about trade, tariffs and global defense represent that background change, which is why he's recommending diversification, and considering commo...

Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist at LPL Financial says he expects the market has enough momentum to break through to new record highs, and soon. Led by tech stocks, Turnquist expects the move off the April lows to continue, though he acknowledges that the macro backdrop "is extremely messy." If the market can overcome trade uncertainties, Turnquist says that when new highs are achieved three...

Mitchel Penn, managing director at Oppenheimer & Co. — interviewed at the Active Investment Company Alliance BDC Forum in New York on Wednesday — says that credit losses for business development companies during the first quarter of 2025 were more than double the level they have been at for the last few years. He says some of that increase could be attributed to the market's reaction to government pol...