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October 24, 2024 13 mins
Want to stay a step ahead of this stock market? Not just in the remainder of 2024, but 2025 as well? Then you should respect one market force, but not ignore another. That’s the guidance shared by Cameron Dawson, Chief Investment Officer of NewEdge Wealth, in this MoneyShow MoneyMasters Podcast segment recorded on-site at our Orlando conference.

Our conversation begins with a recap of Cameron’s past work as a strategist and an industrials analyst, the latter of which she says “lends itself quite well to making predictions about the broader economy and markets.” On that score, she feels we have “whatever the opposite of a ‘toxic brew’ is” right now – with stimulative monetary and fiscal policy PLUS a relatively robust economy. Cameron notes that stock valuations are closing in on their post-Covid peaks, while credit spreads are falling toward their lowest since 2005. But she adds: “We just have to ask the question, ‘How long can it last?’”

The conversation then pivots to the upcoming election and its implications for markets and the economy. She believes we could see a shakeup in the typical pre- and post-election trading pattern on Wall Street. And she offers one key piece of post-Election Day advice for investors. Next, we talk about alternative investments and what investors should keep in mind when getting involved with them. She also names an alternative asset class that looks particularly promising right now. Cameron later outlines the four major “quality” indicators she’s looking for in potential stock plays – as well as which final screen can keep you out of trouble in tough market years like 2022. We end with her revealing what to respect, and what not to ignore.

The next chance to get guidance from experts like Cameron is our 2024 MoneyShow Masters Symposium Sarasota, scheduled for Dec. 5-7 at the Hyatt Regency Sarasota. Click here to register: https://sarasotamms.com/?scode=061246
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi there.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Mike Larson, host of The Money Show, money Master's podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:08):
I'm coming to you from The Money Show Orlando today.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm speaking with Cameron Dawson, chief investment officer of New
Edge Wealth.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
Cameron, how are you.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'm wonderful, Thank you. Happy to be here.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Yeah, I'm glad you could. It's a new show for you,
as I understand, so thank you for coming.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Why don't you talk a little bit about your background
and what it is that New Edge Wealth does.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Sure, so, I've been the chief investment officer at Newedgewealth
for about two and a half years now. New Edge
Wealth is a private wealth manager that is hyper focused
on ultra high net worth and high network investors. We
also have a business called New Edge Advisors as well,
which is a mass affluent platform. We invest across the
asset class spectrums, so everything from traditional equities and fixed

(00:46):
income down into alternatives as well. My background coming into
Newitch Wealth is I had spent a couple of years
as a chief market strategist at another RIA, but then
I spent eight years working for Bank of America, where
the majority of that time I was an industrials analyst.
So I was an equity buyside analyst, getting deep into
the fundamentals of companies and highly cyclical companies, which of

(01:09):
course lends itself quite well to making predictions about the
broader economy and markets.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
There you go, and of course you're here in Orlando.
I your hometown background wasn't hard to get you to
come down, right.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
Most definitely. I'm born and raised in Orlando. Proud to
be so and so happy to be able to come
down and see some family and meet some great people.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Excellent.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Well, let's talk about this market environment. I mean, I
know you're gonna be giving a talk this kind of
big picture. What are some of the themes you're staying
out there and what are your thoughts here as we
apparently keep setting new highs.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, it is pretty incredible, But when you put it
in the context of the backdrop of this market, we
think that it starts to make a lot of sense
as to why we keep pressing to new highs. What
I mean by that is that if you think about
fiscal stimulus, which remains highly supportive and stimulative monetary stimulus

(01:56):
now at the same time that is shifting to a
more stimulative stance all at the same time that you
have a relatively robust economy. That mean you have fiscal
running at full speed, monetary running at full speed into
a strong growth backdrop. You don't see that often and whatever.
The opposite of toxic brew is your perfect scenario. That

(02:17):
seems to be how risk assets are taking it. Because
you can see risk assets like equities trading at twenty
two times forward back almost to the peak we saw
post COVID. You see credit spreads compressing to their lowest
levels since times like two thousand and five. So what
you have is a market that we think is very
much priced for perfection. That has a few implications. It

(02:39):
means that there's not a lot of wiggle room for
downside surprise. It could mean that if growth disappoints or
let's say yields move higher, it could be a source
of volatility. But it also shows you just how beneficial
this backdrop and environment is. We just have to ask
the question how long can it last?

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, no, I understand completely.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Let's talk about a couple of those things rue by one,
the FED and monetary stimulus that you know your thoughts
on the Fed's fifty basis point move and kind of
what you think they're going.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
To be doing as we roll into twenty five, we thought.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
It was an aggressive move. We were looking at things
like growth continuing to remain resilient. Yes, we saw some
fraying around the edges within the labor market. But the
FED has convinced itself that its policy is very tight
and it is weighing on growth activity. And yes, that
is true if you're looking at things like housing, if

(03:28):
you're looking at manufacturing. But when you look at the
data and aggregate, what you actually see is that the
entire time that the FED has had real rates, remember
that's your nominal FED funds rate minus inflation, the entire
time that that real rate has been positive, the US
economy has been growing above trend, and growth forecasts have
been rising. So it's really hard to empirically argue that

(03:52):
you have policy today that is absolutely keeping growth at
a very low level. And the challenge that you have
now is that if the FED actually delivers on all
of the cuts that it's saying it will, remember Austin
Goulsby saying we have hundreds of basis points of cuts
ahead of us, then you would have the deepest, most aggressive,
non recessionary cutting cycle in the last forty years into

(04:16):
an environment where financial conditions are already extraordinary, not extraordinarily loose.
You're a little bit tighter than they were in peak
in twenty one, but still loose and stimulative, which is
why another attendee of this conference at your Denny, has
been talking about the risk of a bubble a melt up,
because you're just throwing lighter fluid on a fire that's
already going.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Absolutely, So let's look at the election scenario. Obviously that's
on everybody's minds as we're meeting. We're only three weeks
out or a little less than three weeks out from
the election. You know, what are your thoughts on how
that's going to shape things? Again, given what both candidates
have talked about.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
It is interesting that typically we see volatiley going into
an election and then a rally coming out of the election.
So we should not be too surprised if we have
low volatility going into this one and possibly some more
volatility coming out. Because whichever way this election breaks, we
know that there are potentially both deficit increasing and growth

(05:14):
dampening policies that could be enacted on both sides. If
we think about it, we have to consider things like
higher corporate taxes, immigration, tariffs, and trade. All of these things,
if enacted by either party, could potentially weigh on growth.
But you also have this promise of higher deficits, as
nobody's talking about austerity. So we think that the election

(05:38):
could end up being volatile or a volatility inducing event
for the bond market potentially. And we do think that
you do have this potential that some of these policies
could weigh on growth. But this all comes with a
really important caveat, which is that all through my career
I have been fielding calls from clients the day after

(05:58):
an election that says, my guy or gal didn't win,
sell everything, I'm moving to Canada, And by definition, that
is the wrong move. And so we think it's really
important that investors take the emotion out of it. They
see that they effectively see the market, whether effectively not
in an election year, to start, keep that emotion at bay,

(06:20):
because yes, it's a personal thing to go through elections,
but the market isn't personal. And so the end result
being is that markets do what they do in spite
of or despite what goes on in Washington. Which is
great news.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
Absolutely absolutely.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Let me ask you this briefly about some of the
alternative investments, things like real estate. That sector obviously was
kind of in a wasteland for a while, seems to
be getting a little more momentum.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
We've seen gold at all time highs and very strong
this year.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Any thoughts on what investors should be doing in sectors
like that, Yeah, we think it's.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
The first step within alternatives is one of making sure
you know what you own and why you own it.
This is absolutely imperative because what we know with alternatives
is that you give up things like liquidity, you do
high higher fees, and so you have to be very
clear as to what role an alternative investment plays in
a portfolio. From there, it's making sure that you are

(07:11):
highly confident in the managers that you're working with, that
have deep expertise, have long histories of being in these
markets through cycles, that can navigate what are as we
know with real estate very choppy cycles. I would agree
with you that real estate is creating opportunities, and we
usually see disruption as a source of opportunity. So because

(07:35):
of high interest rates, because of the overhang of high
prices in twenty twenty one. We know we have potential
opportunities within real estate, which is why we're looking for
opportunistic ways in order to get exposure in being very
careful of where we are within the capital stack of
real estate, preferring more debt versus equity at times, but

(07:56):
if we look overall and broadly, we continue to see
great opportunity. It's within alternatives, but it takes a lot
of due diligence. It's a rather strenuous process because the
need to have high degrees of confidence, mostly in long
life kinds of vehicles seven plus years. It's imperative that
you choose correctly.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
One question I guess I would say in the traditional
stock arena, are there sectors that you're more positive about
for the coming year and less than anything that you
would probably steer people away from At.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
This point, well, we do think that there's opportunities throughout
all sectors, meaning that the way we approach our equity
portfolios is that instead of being top down and saying
we want to overweight one sector versus another because of
some top down view, we let the sector overweights really
be driven by our bottom up analysis, and that bottom

(08:48):
up analysis is all quality based throughout our different strategies,
whether it's large cap, growth, value, SMID, PAP and international.
We define quality in very specific ways, meaning we're looking
for companies that have strong free cash flows, strong return
on invested capital, stable profits through cycles, strong balance sheets,

(09:09):
and that there are times that those kinds of companies
will underperform. Junk does rally. You do have trash rallies
all the time, But what we find is that through
the cycle those quality companies really do prove their worth
by being able to have what we call better downside capture,
meaning they go down less when markets swown, but they

(09:29):
also have really good upside participation, meaning that they're not
sitting on their hands and as the rest of market
is rallying. There's one important point with all of that
is that a lot there are a lot of quality
companies that are very expensive. So that's the last piece
of it, is that we do have evaluation discipline that
we put into our work to make sure that we're

(09:50):
not paying too much for those great attributes, because what
we find is that a year like twenty twenty two,
great quality companies drew down thirty forty fifty because they
got so expensive, so that valuation discipline is a necessary
component of maintaining that kind of quality.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
One last question I think I want to ask is,
you know, it seems like a fairly optimistic scenario, pretty
positive outlook.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
What would you be if you had to say.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
One or two things that could derail that scenario, that
could take the base case and steer us in a
worse direction.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
I think the biggest risk to this market is that
earnings for twenty five and twenty six are not properly calibrated,
meaning that we have to go through an earnings revision
down cycle. And when you're cutting earnings, you get a
double whammy. Typically you get earnings that are being trimmed
and you get valuations that are pulling in because when

(10:39):
you have less confidence about your growth outlook, you tend
to pay less for whatever stock or piece of credit
that you're buying. So, because we're going into twenty five,
price for perfection and growth estimates are high, the thing
that we have to keep a really close eye on
is if you start to see those estimates get cut
in trend, and that exposes you to de rating the

(11:02):
valuation and taking those growth numbers down. And I would
add One last point to that is that if you
look at allocations to equities, meaning you can look at
household allocations or overall fund allocations, they remain near cycle highs,
which just means that everybody is already positioned for stocks

(11:25):
to keep on going and keep on making new highs.
So our base case to be conservative in twenty five
is a bit more of a sideways in Choffee market,
and we actually see that as a good thing. It
means that the bowl market could continue versus going off
and going straight up and kind of dying out in a.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
Flame of some scenario. Too much of a boom, too
much of a good thing. I guess you don't want
to see that.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Exactly, because what comes after melt ups is melt downs.
So we would see a growing into the valuation multiple,
a little bit of choppiness with the the market as
actually something welcome as long term investors, even if it
is something that will be a little bit jarring as
we go through it, because we've been used to this
up into the right market. So the bar is high

(12:12):
for expectations, but at the end of the day, we
never want to bet against the great American might of
earnings growth. It's been incredible, so we think that at
least in the short term, our view has been one
of respect the uptrend, but don't ignore the risks.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Perfect.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
I think that's a great way to end things. Cameron,
thank you so much for taking some time out to chat.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Dinan, thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
We'll have more interviews for you every week, so I
encourage you to subscribe to The Money Master's podcast so
you can stay up to date with the insights from
top money experts. You can follow me on Twitter at
real Mike Larson and follow Money Show for more investing
and trading content on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube at Money Show.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
Thanks for listening, See you next time.
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