Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Simeon Hyman, global investment strategist at ProShares, says that with inflation running above the Federal Reserve's targets — forcing both the Fed funds 10-year Treasury rates higher — there's room for the Fed to cut rates but not much room for the market to respond to it. As a result, he's saying the market has room to broaden out, with small caps likely to be helped out by upc...

Crit Thomas, global market strategist at Touchstone Investments says the market can move higher — though with a path that is more bumpy — and the economy can avoid recession, but he also notes that the market is particularly hard to read because current conditions are dramatically different than many past situations. He cites a lot of reasons — from index concentration to fallout ...

 Alan Gayle, president of Via Nova Investment Management, is concerned about economic sluggishness and "how the world is going to look and who is going to win" after tariff and rate changes fully play out. Coupled with a stock market where he sees equities as overpriced, that leaves Gayle wanting to be fully diversified, including a full allocation to domestic bonds but also inter...

Financial journalist Allan Sloan, a seven-time winner of business journalism's highest honor, the Loeb Award, says in his latest piece for Barron's that no investment strategy works forever, and that time is now up on the Magnificent Seven stocks. Sloan notes that during the first seven months of 2025, NVidia and Microsoft accounted for more than half of the gain of the entire Sta...

Lawrence McDonald, creator of The Bear Traps Report, says that as "tertiary assets" like meme stocks and momentum plays have started to break down in the last week, it's a sign that volatility will pick up and that the market  is "coming into a 10 to 20 percent pullback in the next month to month and a half." McDonald says that the selloff will be part of a rotation, that the mark...

Bill Stone, chief investment officer at Glenview Trust, says that there are signs that the economy is slowing, but he believes rate cuts can help the economy keep earnings growth going and can forestall any recession. "Betting against things to get better over the long run is not a very smart bet," Stone says, so he's suggesting investors don't let worries get the best of them now...

Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at the Carson Group, says that he expects the stock market to go through "a 4% to 6% normal, mild pullback" in short order, a downturn that he says is likely to be good for the market, helping it get ready to benefit from positive economic news and an eventual cut in interest rates. Detrick says that he expects developed Europe to remain stron...

Eric Stein, chief investment officer, Voya Investment Management, says that if the economy can muddle through until the Federal Reserve cuts rates, it will be positive for the stock market and the broader economy, allowing for 2026 to be another year that continues the winning streak for stocks. Stein says that he believes markets "get desensitized to similar news over time," and ...

Jeff Muhlenkamp, portfolio manager for the Muhlenkamp Fund, says in today's Money Life Market Call that one of his big fears right now is in order to deal with government debt, authorities will de-value the dollar, so he has been adding gold and precious metals names to the portfolio to hedge against that potential. He is also looking at deregulation as a possible driver for futur...

Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist for Janney Montgomery Scott, says that with no one talking about recession these days, he says "it is the one thing the market is at risk of having happen right now" because the market isn't pricing in any potential downturn. Recession is not his base case, but he says there is an economic soft patch to get through that will take the econ...

Michael Kelly, portfolio manager and global head of multi-asset at PineBridge Investments, says that the evolution boom in artificial intelligence is the kind of generational market event that only happens "once every 20 or 30 years." He says it will be "very meaningful and we believe very good not only for the economy but for the markets." He is optimistic that the increased prod...

Amanda Agati, chief investment officer at PNC Asset Management Group, says that with the purple haze of fiscal policy uncertainty and tariffs having lifted, the "pace of natural advancement" doesn't have a lot of room left in 2025, but after a slower grind into the end of the year, she thinks that 2026 "is shaping up to be an acceleration type of a year."  She expects broader stoc...

Craig Callahan, chief executive officer at ICON Advisers, says that his calculations on the stock market show that despite being near record-high levels, the market is "slightly underpriced relative to fair value," meaning it has room to move higher from here. Callahan says that a small-cap rally and market changes that started to surface a year ago were disrupted by the tariff ta...

Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro at Fidelity Investments, says that the market has been dealing with "cross-currents," where concerns about tariffs increasing inflation have been offset by declining oil prices, and where a lack of rate cuts has been countered by record corporate profits. It all combines to create a market that Timmer says can get past the concerns to deliv...

Darrell Cronk, chief investment officer at Wells Fargo Wealth and Investment Management, says he expects both the stock market and the economy to face a "soft patch" that will increase volatility and mute returns for the rest of the year, but he believes conditions are strong enough that there will be no recession and that those year-end doldrums will lead to improvement and gains...