Neil Grossman, G Capital, Danielle Dimartino discussed on Bloomberg Markets

Automatic TRANSCRIPT

We appreciate it. Thank you as always. Neil Grossman former CIO of TK and G capital management. He's here. Danielle dimartino booth quill intelligence. She shared in our Bloomberg interactive broker studio. Second segment with these folks because when we get them in a room, we gotta get as much out of them as we can. So Danielle, are we going to do a recession here? I just had a bunch of transportation companies saying, they don't see it. But boy, everybody else seems to see it. Well, it's ironic that you say transportation companies because truckers are going out of business at the fastest pace since 2018 right now. And transportations in a pickle. But no, I don't think that there should be a debate anymore about whether or not we're going into recession when the conference board queries CEOs and 98% of them say that we are almost in a recession and thereby, you know, therefore they are in cost cutting mode, I would point out that the ISM services survey that just came out a few minutes ago showed that employment actually contraction last month. So if the employment caboose is finally going to come into the station, I mean that's the final nail in the coffin of the recession debate. I'm confused, Neil, when it comes to what you're actually supposed to do in this environment in terms of the trade itself because it kind of felt like the bull case for the equity market and arguably for yields as well was the idea that the terminal rate would stall out at 5% and that was going to be the peak policy rate. But it keeps kind of shifting higher and higher every couple of months. So it kind of feels like there's this consistent upside risk that just doesn't go away. What do you trade in that environment? Well, a couple of things right now. I think number one from a dollar perspective is probably still raises the strength of the dollar at least in the short term. You're seeing, for example, commodities come off today, I think, probably commodity prices have some pressure, which of course is what they what they want. I've been having a rougher time trying to figure out what I would do with the yield curve. I'm looking for a point where I can actually put on a yield curve steep in her. I think the long end of the yield curve is still too low. But you're still fighting with the adjustment at the front of the curve. And from a broader perspective, what I like in this environment, I use, I use optionality because I think with higher volatility prices, even though we have had the haven't had the explosion in volatility that you might like to see, volatility is still high enough that you can put on trades with very, very favorable break-even. So that's sort of what I've been doing. Hey, Daniel, you know, I'm a simple equity guy, and I get the inflation talk. I get the recession talk. I think I've got that. What else am I missing? What's the thing out there that you think maybe investors or people in general are just not talking about enough or thinking about enough? So I think what is getting left behind is any talk or discussion of what's happening in the credit market. You've seen rates volatility. The vix is subdued. Yes. It's buried under a rock. But rates volatility viewed through the move index has just gone ballistic. It's at the highest level since 2007. And it's basically saying there's a credit event lurking out lurking out there and we forget that in 2018, the last time we were trying quantitative tightening that it was a credit event that actually bled through into the equity market at around this time of the year heading into Thanksgiving in the holidays that caused that Christmas Eve sell off in 2018, which by the way prompted the first Powell pivot. Yes, that's right. That's right. So Neil, I mean, again, I'll put it to you. What am I missing? I'm a simple guy. Well, it looks like. Let's go two things for going back. Let's go back to the fed for one moment. There are two things they're watching, employment. And inflation and the employment one is beginning to rise in priority because the unemployment rate is so low. You have to understand, if you went back in history up until COVID and what happened afterwards, the single highest 12 month average job creation was about 330,000 a month. Even after last month's number, we're still at 451,000 a month. So, and historical basis, the general view has been that a hundred to a 150,000 is a static employment market. Now, we have a very low participation rate and so if you can get a large jump that would help bring push up the unemployment rate. But if we're not going to get that to get a four and a half percent unemployment rate, which is talking about is going to take a lot of work. And even that, well, you just have to look at the numbers. It may happen next year this time, but it's not going to happen easily for 6 months. You're going to have to lay off. You're going to have to have losing jobs 200,000 a month for 6 months. Net, to get there. So I'm going to push back a little bit. If you look into the weekly jobless claims data, which appears to be benign on the surface. You'll see that in early September that jobless claims nationwide were down 49%. In the subsequent weeks, up until this morning's data, now they're down 23%, continuing claims bottomed out in early May. They have continued to quietly march upwards, continuing claims this is the one that you should follow more closely because that's people actually week after week collecting unemployment insurance. So that's an early May, low point. I think there's an unemployment rate shock building in this system right now. Just what the economy needs. All right guys, thank you so much for spending this extended period of time with us. We really appreciate it smart discussion. That's what we try to do here. Neil Grossman former CEO of TK and G capital and Danielle di martino booth of quill intelligence both in the Bloomberg interactive broker studio. They are not mailing it in so you guys, you get gold stars here. All right, let's head down to Washington, D.C.

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