Lori Calvasina, RBC Capital Markets Head of US Equity Strategy, says confidence across all sectors in the equity market remains fragile. Andrew Sheets, Morgan Stanley Chief Cross Asset Strategist, says that fiscal support at the federal and state levels is reducing the odds of a recession. Elliot Ackerman, Former White House Fellow, US Marine Corps Veteran & Co-Author of 2034: A Novel of the Next World War, says the urban warfare environment in Gaza poses major challenges to both sides. Terry Haines, Pangaea Policy founder, expects Congress to pass spending bills on Ukraine, Israel, and the Southern border before the end of the year. Tiffany Wilding, PIMCO Economist, North America, says the Fed may opt for future rate hikes.

Get the Bloomberg Surveillance newsletter, delivered every weekday. Sign up now: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/surveillance

Full Transcript:
This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Lisa Abramoids along with Tom Keane and Jonathan Ferrow, joining us each day for insight from the best in economics, geopolitics, finance and investment. Subscribe to Bloomberg Surveillance on demand on Apple, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts, and always on Bloomberg dot Com, the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business app. Lori Kelvacina joining head of US Equity Strategy to RBC Capital Markets. Do you agree with that that when you look under the hood, you're seeing massive breakdowns that are reflective of a great deal of pain that people really gloss over. I think that's fair, Lisa. I mean, I think Jana hit the nail on the head when she talked about small caps making a new low. I always tell people about small caps, even if you can't buy them, they tell you a lot about what's going on in the broader market. And I think what's going on is that they're really taking the brunt of the pain as regards to the big increase in tenure yields that we've seen now. Of course, the tech stocks and the cap part of the market are getting knocked around by that as well. But small caps, it doesn't matter to how many charts I can show people suggesting that the balance sheets are not that bad. People simply don't want to hear it. And there's a view that small caps are simply not going to be able to weather the storm that's created by the surge and interest rates, whether it's ten year yields or fed funds. And again, I have so many charts, Lisa that I've been showing people for the last six months saying, hey, small caps have done a good job of shifting towards long term debt, the variable rates down, the weighted average maturities are really not that bad on average about four and a half years. People simply don't want to hear it, Lisa. There's just been a long adage that small caps don't weather higher interest rates very well, and I think that's one of the big reasons why they're getting punished right now. Laurie, can you talk about sector performance within the small caps sectors, because I do think that the sectors are telling an interesting tale in small caps that maybe we're not picking up in large cups. So if you think about you know, think about it. From evaluation perspective, I will say that most sectors in small cap look cheap relative to their low large cap counterparts. But where it gets really interesting is on some of the cyclical sectors. So it's not just small cap financials that are dragging down the rustle two thousand from evaluation perspective. Healthy sectors from a fundamental perspective, like industrials, also look pretty cheap relative to large cap. In the small cap space, consumer discretionary stocks really look kind of left for dead if you look at valuations there. They're deeply, deeply cheap, and they were actually really down around recession type flows last summer. So we're really seeing that pain very very widespread. And given we are in the midst of earning season, is there anything that you're getting out of earnings that maybe is not getting picked up by the markets, considering the markets are so captivatd like what's happening in these macro indicators, So I think people are really misunderstanding what's going on with inflation moderating and what that does to companies. One of the things that we've seen when we compare our numbers versus the street consensus and we actually, you know, we use the Bloomberg data to monitor the street consensus and it does a really good job of articulating how margin expansion is baked into a number of different sectors next year. Well, in my modeling, we actually don't have margin expansion. We kind of have margins going back to twenty twenty two type levels. And one of the reasons why is that we don't give margins a big benefit from sliding inflation. We simply haven't seen a justification to do that in our back test. And when you go through all the transcripts, what we're really noticing is that companies are picking up on this. So the pricing discussion has simply gotten much much swishier, and companies are saying it's going to be a softer pricing environment. Of course, there are a couple that are out there saying they're going to raise prices to infinity and beyond. That's not really the norm here, And what we're really seeing is that companies are acknowledging that they're not going to have an excuse to push these prices through as the cost environment moderates, and so we're not going to necessarily see this big boon to margin expansion simply from cost coming down and prices staying high. And I think that's really what's embedded in a lot of street assumptions for next year. The Laurie I'd like to build on what Gina was referring to about sectors and specifically sector dispersion amongst large cap names, right. I mean it's usually out of ties sturn periods of distressed I'm thinking two thousand and two thousand and eight. Yet sector dispersion has been very high since the pandemic started. I mean, I wonder what you take from that. I mean, certainly we look at some of the interest rate sensitive sectors and how they've underperformed. I mean, is that going to continue? I mean, what's it going to take to kind of get these correlations the right way? So I'll tell you Damian what I feel like I've noticed in the sector data over the last couple of months. And this is looking at the S and P five hundred specifically, But it feels like anytime there's a part of the market that gets a little bit of leadership, it can't sustain it for that long. And I've described it as you know, sort of this sniper that goes out. Anything good we have just gets taken away. And we saw you know, utilities, you know, for example, was having a really nice moment late in the summer and then all of a sudden, just the bottom fell out. We've also seen energy just really kind of lose that luster, and I think the problem is that the market is losing confidence in any one narrative. We really can't get a rotation going because, on the one hand, tech stocks look expensive, they look crowded, they're earning stam it is starting to fade, and hey, interest rates are not usually a good thing for those stocks, so that's starting to take a toll. But anything the market wants to rotate into just can't seem to maintain its footing for all that long from a fundamental perspective either. So it's just been a real struggle, I think, both to find something to generate intercremental excitement in the market and to really allow that rotation to play out. Well, Laurie, I'm so happy you managed you mentioned utilities, because it's been utilities and consumer staples, those traditionally low beated, defensive sectors that have underperformed. I'm wondering, you know, how do you position defensively in today's market, so I think it's very tough. I've actually got an underweight on consumer staples. I'm neutral on utilities. I'm overweight healthcare. That one's had a tough time getting going as well. But to me, it's got the nicest combination of decent valuations. At least until recently, it's had strong earnings revision trends. We've seen the medtech space sort of take a little bit of a hit, and there's been a concern about the weight loss drugs that emerged. I've been trying to tell people that happened at a time when the medtech stocks looked like they were kind of over their skis from earning revision perspective anyway. But if you look in other areas like pharm a biotech, if you look at the providers in services space, you have a really nice kind of ramp up in earning provision trends that feels like it has more room to run. It's not a perfect story by any stretch, but other than the weight loss drugs, it does feel like it has less macro hair than say, utilities and staples. With staples, I will tell you my analyst is starting to feel a little bit better there, just based on the fact that we did have this big sell loss from the weight loss drugs and valuations, I will admit to you are pretty compelling, but I do continue to worry about that sector from just a pricing perspective. I think it's right at the sort of center of the storm I mentioned in terms of not being able to pass through higher prices for much longer. We're seeing those companies actually really talk about how consumers are pushing back. Laurie, What does it tell you that you can have the right idea in terms of the solidness of a corporate balance seat, that you can have the right idea about historical valuation, and that investors just won't bite that it doesn't actually work in trading practice. I think it tells you that, you know, so, whether it's the Middle East, whether it's interest rates, we're in a sentiment driven market at this point in time, and confidence is just very, very fragile. One of the things we've talked about, Lisa a lot this year is how twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three has felt a lot like twenty ten, twenty eleven, and two thousand and two two thousand and three, which were kind of messy extended post crisis normalization periods. I lived through both of those as a strategist, and what we saw was that confidence was just very fragile. There was a constant fear of the next skeleton coming out of the closet and blowing things up, constant fear of tipping into another economic downturn. And I think that's the environment we've been in recently, and so anytime we have issues that come up, there's just not a lot of confidence that either companies or management teams, or the market as a whole, or the economy is going to be able to weather the storm. And that kind of felt like it was easing over the summer, but I feel like we're getting sucked right back into that messy normalization period again where confidence is low. Laurie Kevesy, No of RBC Capital Markets, thank you so much for being with us. Andrew Sheets, global head of credit research at Morgan Stanley, is going to be on tender hooks parsing through all of this. What's most important for you this week? Thanks? So. I think several things are important. I think that confirming that the FED is pausing, and we do think that the FED will not raise rates, and that that can kind of further reinforce the idea that they are done raising rates for this rate cycle, which we think is important for generating and stabilizing bonds. And I think the earning season remains very important. I mean, again, you had this kind of interesting dynamic where so far the underlying reported earnings are pretty decent, but the guidance has been disappointing. The market's reaction to that has generally been to punish misses pretty severely, and we've seen quite a bit of idiosyncratic risk coming out of earnings single stock risk, which also matters. So those are two things that are at the top of our list. You also mentioned at the top of your list that fiscal policy is key across the US, across Europe, across China. Fiscal policy is playing an elevated role in market dynamics this year. Tell us about your views on fiscal policy. So, I do think the fiscal story is really interesting one that affects the US, it affects Europe, it affects China, and so you know, we focus on it in a couple of ways. I mean, my colleague Chetanaya, who's are head of Asia Economics. Yous just some great charts that show just how much fiscal policy in China and the US have diverged, where China's been tightening fiscal policy while the US has been loosening it. We do think that in order to get more bullish on China, we do need to see a larger response, a larger fiscal response than what we've seen so far in the US. I think the real key is how much can the States pick up the slack on the fiscal response side. I think there's a lot of focus, a lot of right focus on you know, we have these large deficits, these unusually large deficits in the US relative the strength of the economy. But if you go below the surface, the state and municipality spending actually holds up pretty well on our four pass over the next twelve months, and that keeps we think, the US economy out of recession and stable, even as federal spending pulls back a bit. But I think that's also really important and really important of how you can get a soft landing even with so much fiscal support from the federal government. In the rearview, mirror, and then how does this fiscal landscape actually impact your corporate credit strategy. I mean, obviously, as an equity investor, we're sort of engaged in this conversation somewhat, and there is a concern in the equity universe that some crowding out may occur as a result of these extraordinary deficits in high yields. Are you seeing any evidence of that? Is the fiscal landscape impacting your corporate strategy at this point? So? I think so far, ironically, you know what's been happening on the fiscal side, as I think been helping credit, and I think that's an absolute and a relative case. And in absolute terms, the fiscal support at both the federal and state level, I think as reducing the odds of a recession, is supported the economy and that's kind of obviously helpful for credit. But I think also in a relatives I think something that's been weighing on treasury markets has been the income. The carry is low because the curves inverted, you get paid more to hold T bills than extending out the curve. And then supply has been very heavy, or expectations of supply are high. And then if you look at the corporate credit market, it's kind of the other way around that the carry on corporate credit is positive, the credit curve is positively sloped, and issuance has been really undershooting expectations as companies, which I think have more flexibility than the federal government to issue or not are looking at these yields and we think are saying this is expensive borrowing. We're going to try not to do it to the extent we can. So you've seen less supply on the corporate market, especially the investment grade market, which we think is a relatively positive technical supporting that market. Andrew, if you go back to call it late June early July, I think you'd be hard pressed to find one fixed income asse class that was down on the year. But now we look at it and it's a completely opposite pit story. Here. The one asset class that stands out to me that is still up on the air as US high Yield. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that, what's keeping it up and whether or not to consistain its current performance. So that's that's a great point. I mean, I think US Highield has been pretty remarkable in terms of how well it's hold up on a relative and absolute basis anything. I think with hindsight, it's been helped by the fact that yield's been rising, and generally investors, you know, look to high yield is actually a better performing historical sector and in rising yields at somewhat shorter duration. And then you've seen relatively little supply out of that market, especially because it's been so expensive for these more levered issuers, and so that's also helped technicals. But you know, going forward, and I think this has been a really key part you mentioned earlier on the show. You know, you look at what's happening at breadth in the equity market, you look at the underperformance of small caps relative to large caps, and I think that's still actually a relatively troubling signal for the future performance of high yield. I think if the equity market is saying, look, we're we're getting incrementally more cautious on smaller, more levered, more cyclical stocks, as long as that's happening, I think it's much it's hard to see the catalyst to drive further compression or more compression on spreads. So we think spreads decompressed from here. We think that there's already a lot in the price of high yields relative performance, even if we avoid a recession in the US, which remains our base case. Just quickly, Andrew, how concerned are you the Japanese buyers, in particular big corporate debt buyers in the US are going to pull back, especially with some of the adjustments we're expecting from the Bank of Japan. So we think that risk so far is moderate, but we do have to watch it. Again that the return on a hedged basis for a Japanese investor in the US corporate credit is not good, so we do need to watch that. We do need to see still if the flows on an unheedged basis continue. Our base cases that they do, but I think that's something subject to what we might see this week. Andrew Sheets of Morgan Stanley, thank you. There hasn't necessarily been the hardline escalation that some people were expecting with the ground invasion. Joining us to understand all of this is Elliot Akerman, someone with on the ground moots on the ground experience in Fallujah, US Marine Corps veteran, former White House fellow and co author of the twenty thirty four a novel of the Next World War. I hope we are not entering into another World War, Elliott Akerman. I want to get your sense of what you make around the fact that we have not seen a greater escalation and what the chances are for that at this point based on the measures taken. Well, I think what we've seen is very deliberate military movements on the part of the Israelis. I mean, pretty soon, we're going to be a month since the October seventh attacks and we haven't seen them rush headlong into Gaza. And then we've also seen the United States take measures by moving two carrier battle groups and other forces into the Mediterranean to dissuade the Iranians or Hezbolah from coming in from Lebanon and to the north of Israel. So this counter offensive is playing out in a really deliberative manner, and I think that so far we're seeing that that is stopping this war from turning into a regional contagion. Yet it does seem that most of the rhetoric or statements coming out of the region, Elliott, are about the war really continuing or at least get getting started. The ground troops really getting busy now, which would suggest that there's not a lot of endgame in sight. It seems that we're getting going and the assumption is that this is going to take some time to play out. Is there any resolution in your mind in the near term or is this another war that we're going to contend with for an extended period of time and very similar fashion to what's going on in the Ukraine. I think there's a tendency when we look at wars is we focus a lot on the movements of ground troops in the real specific and that that's important, of course, but it's also important to hold in your mind at the same time, you know, the idea that war is politics. It's politics by other means, What are the politic politics of this situation? And this attack on October seventh was, you know, by all accounts, launched as a counter to the Saudis and the Israelis signing a peace deal, a peace deal that would disempower Hamas and put Aroan in a very difficult position in the region, and so by basically forcing an atrocity on the Israelis, Hamas forces an Israeli response that causes that peace deal to collapse. So that's what we're seeing right now. So this kind of poses an obvious question, which is who is the party that actually has the leverage at this point. You know, Israel doesn't have a ton of leverage because they have to respond Hamas is waiting for that response. I would say the people who have the most leverage right now are the Saudis. You know, if the Saudis were to turn around and start renegotiating this peace deal at any point, it takes away all of the leverage that Hamas and Iran have created. And I think we have to as much as where you know, there's a lot of discussion about the fatigue that the world is going to have when we start seeing the Israeli military operating in Gaza and the civilian death toll. I think there's also some fatigue that the Arab world probably has with the Palestinian question, particularly in the context in which Hamas is inflaming tensions and could we see possibly a peace resumed out of the Arab world on this question, Elliott, your former marine five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. The one question I have for you is these tunnels underneath Gaza. How do you infiltrate these tunnels? I mean, what does that look like? I mean, I'm just curious, like, is there any precedent for that? Well, I mean there is historical precedents for that, But I can't emphasize enough just how challenging that operating environment is. You know, a major urban center is the worst place that you want to be fighting. The closest analogy I can come up with based off of my experiences in Fallujahs, it's like being in a knife fight in the phone booth. Everything happens at very close quarters and very very quickly, and many of the high tech weapons systems that armies like ours and like the Israelis Army are invested in they become much less effective because of the close quarters natures of the fighting. And these tunnels make it extremely complicated for the Israelis because they have to go in, they have to map out these tunnels, figure out where they are, and you also have hostages that are being held with these tunnels. So at the tactical level, you couldn't have posed a more challenging problem to the Israeli military. I don't believe it's insurmountable, but it's going to make it very, very slow going, and it forces them to act extremely deliberatively, which I think we've seen so far. Well, you said that it's not insurmountable, and I want to really develop that point a little bit because there are a lot of people saying, what does it mean to beat Hamas ken Israel win this war? What does winning look like? From your vantage point? What does winning look like? Again? I think winning at least is the Israelis have defined it is the destruction of Hamas and then some normalization or stasis in security in the region so Israelis can continue to live in all parts of Israel and southern Israel in particular. Now, when it comes to destroying Hamas, you know that is you know it's going to take some work, but that is tactically viable. I think the question is now, what do you do in Gaza? And do you face a protracted insurgency in Gaza? And I think when it comes to this idea of normalizing relations in the region, that's when we start to get into questions of diplomacy. You can Israel and can Arab partners negotiate with whatever the inheritors are of Hamas. Whatever that palaestin and the authority is to create stability in the region. We haven't gotten there yet. But again, you know what I'm seeing is we shouldn't underestimate the fatigue that also exists in the Arab world with this conflict, because it seems that the war was predicated on Hamas blowing up the best chance for peace that it ever existed. You talked about how Saudi Arabia arguably has the most leverage in all of this. We do have a Saudi official coming to Washington, I believe this week Axios was reporting. I'm wondering what the goal is among some of the Arab nations that have the leverage, have the power. I'm thinking, yes, Saudi Arabia, but also maybe to a lesser extent cutter and also the United Arab Emirates. What do they want? I think they want to live in a region that isn't played by this systemic war in Israel between the Israelis and the Palestinians, to allow peace to finally break out in the Middle East, and to live in a region in the world that isn't When it's spoken the Middle East, we don't immediately think conflict war in a place where security isn't assured, that maybe the Middle East can start to look a little bit more like Western Europe. I think that is probably what they want. I think that's what everybody wants. And again, I think we shouldn't underestimate the fatigue that exists on all sides of this conflict. Just twenty seconds. Do you think that their goal is for Israel to survive or not to survive? I think their goal is for Israel to survive, Elliott. I think it's I think it's difficult for them to say that, but yes I do. Elliot Ackerman, thank you so much for taking the time joining us now. Terry Haynes, founder of Pangea Policy, I want to start with Mike Johnson what we heard out of him over the weekend. How surprised were you to hear some of his points that sound very much like a playbook that comes for another time. Well, I wasn't a bit surprised. Acshually, I've been writing for markets for weeks that the strategy that would get pursued is, you know, breaking all these pieces apart instead of have you know, instead of Biden's idea that they should all be rolled up together. I think what markets ought to notice too, though, is what Johnson doesn't say. What Johnson doesn't say is he's four square against Ukraine Aid. Ukraine Aid shouldn't happen. That it won't happen, none of those things. You know. What we've got here. What I was always fearful about, and I think is coming true, is that this is going to become a fight about how all these things get done, these things being Israeli Ukraine aid, border security enhancements, and that's going to take up most of the rest of the year. But I do think they all get done in the end. So they get done. We continue to fund or support these two wars. Where do we cut spending in order to accommodate them, Well, we don't. Bottom line, we don't. You know. The good news and the bad news is really is that on book spending has really been consistent for the last decade plus, off book spending in our commitments, you know, whether it be to housing or to you A variety of other things that are kind of under the under the line continue to balloon. And that's a big problem. Washington has not yet gotten the memo from the markets that that that the markets, for the first time in forty years, are very concerned about rising debt, rising deficit, and rising US fiscal spending. There isn't a politician in Washington other than Biden himself that's ever heard markets be concerned about that. And you know, Biden's not in a position to care or do anything about it because he's beholden to his left wing who think that endless spending it is the right idea. Okay, so we keep spending. What about with China. There's a lot happening with China this week, which is interesting considering so much happening geopolitically around the world, and yet China Taiwan is lingering in the background. Tell us your views on what's happening with China? Is their meaning behind the meetings this week that we should be reading into, well, Gina, as you know very well, the you know, every time the markets here anything good from a US China perspective, and the a one is the prospect that Biden and President Ju Chiming might might meet on the sidelines of the APEC meeting next month. Uh. You know, the markets think this is a good thing, you know, but in reality, what they've been very China has been very blunt about is really through the National Security Law, through kicking a lot of Western accountants out, UH, now through UH providing through a conference this week more evidence of state control in a variety of areas in financial services. UH is a world that you know, as you all talked about in the last hour or so, where China looks increasingly uninvestable, and so I think the UH, you know, they've kind of the cats out of the bag on China, and even markets are starting to figure out that that there's not going to be any kind of long term rapprochmont between the US and China. The best we're going to get is a situation where the where the competitor and the clashers understand each other well enough not to take the next step into a rising yet again geopolitical risk. Terry former Vice President Penance pulled out of the twenty twenty four election this past weekend. You know, Trump leads the polling in some of these early states. I mean, it's still early days, obviously, but I mean I'm curious, do you believe we're past peak Trump? Is there anyone else in the GOP who can even make a run at him. Well, you know, I'll stick to my earlier views that I think we're a little past peakd Trump. What you've got in the early primary states, Damien, is a situation where you know, the polls right now are basically fifty percent or in favor of Trump, which means fifty percenter against him. You probe into the Trump support a little bit more, and you've got another quarter to a half who can be convinced otherwise. And as you point out, it is very early days. We've got, you know, basically two and a half months before the first almost a quarter of a year before the first primary season. So you know, my advice to markets is really twofold one, stay cool on this till after the first of the year when you have some idea of what's going on. Number one, number two. I think what you do see as a continued winnowing down of the competitors. We're already basically down to three. We're down to Hayley, DeSantis and Tim Scott as the leading challengers. Pence understood he wasn't part of that, so he's very honorably bowing out early. But what you're going to get, I think is a consolidation that happens earlier and provides a much more unexpected from markets perspective challenge to Trump than is now thought. Terry Mike Johnson is Speaker of the House, but is he the leading voice for House Republicans? And you know where I'm going with this, right, I mean, you've got Scalise emor Jordan. I mean, what happens to these to these gentlemen after their unsuccessful runs for Speaker of the House. You know, people people tend to view position new people in positions based on the people that were already there, So Mark, they're very used to that this strong speaker model, this kind of super majority leader position, whether it be Nancy Pelosi or McCarthy or you know, John Bayne or somebody else. In reality, what you've got with Johnson as a situation where the party regulars Scalise Emmer Jordan are more empowered now than they were before and they're really going to be leading the party much more than Johnson. That said, you know, one of the things Johnson also said on the Sunday shows, which bears underscoring, is that you know, they're looking much more seriously at extending government funding beyond November seventeenth than they would have been, say a month ago. So you know, so I have accordingly put my own odds back down to about forty percent. But I think the political situation's volt and I'll be ready to put him back up again, you know, if and when the Republicans fall apart, just quickly. Here we're talking about the Republican side and the nominees for the election. Why was Gavin Newsom in China ostensibly to talk about economic ties and all the rest. Really what he's doing is trying to do what he can to burnish his foreign policy chops. You know, there's a lot of sharks in the water now, and wouldn't surprise me if Biden's feeling like a ramorra a little bit and should they falter. And you saw evidence of that even with Vice President Harris' sixty minutes interview last night. But you know, Newsom wants to put him out out there as the alternative, himself out there was the alternative. Republicans would love that, because Newsom wouldn't get a vote outside the solidly blue states. Terry Haynes and PANGEA Policy, thank you so much. Joining us now is Tiffany Wilding, economist and managing director at PIMCO. So glad to have you on the show. We were talking earlier and Gina made this great point about how she thinks the pain trade is actually to the upside in equity markets. Things go better than expected, earning's coming stronger than expected. Is it the same with economic projections that the economy, if it reaccelerates, that's almost the pain trade right now, given more people are situated. Yeah, I mean, I think some of that has been quote priced into the economics, communities forecasts. I mean, you saw many economists that were penciling in a recession earlier in the year, you know, and obviously if you look at the consensus numbers, those have come up. I mean, certainly that can continue. And it's definitely been a risk that we've been highlighting as well, you know, in particular the consumer. You know, it's certainly possible the consumer remains strong. The consumer did basically re accelerate their you know, their consumption and their purchases into the back half of this year. You know, it's a question of how interest rate sensitive the consumer is, and it's proving to be not that interest rate sensitive right now, which raises a question also, Tiffany, what's the connection between growth and inflation. Is there a sense that if growth accelerates, you can still see the disinflation continue that we've seen so far this year. Yeah, I mean, so this has been a point that we've been trying to really hammer home, which is that it really, you know, there'll be some continued disinflation as a result of you know, the fact that you're still getting you know, the product market side of the economy, so the side of the economy that was impacted by some of these supply chain snags. You're still getting some normalization there, but labor markets are incredibly tight, and you are still seeing a pretty decent amount of nominal income growth as a result of that labor market improvement. And so, you know, we think you probably still need some labor market softening in order to just get inflation, you know, kind of more truly back down to target. Yeah. So if you have an economy that's reaccelerating in a labor market that's strong, you know you should this services X shelter kinds of metrics that the FED is looking at, those probably will start to re accelerate. Tiffany, what is the most important economic indicator you're watching this week. You know, obviously the jobs number, you know, is going to be incredibly important. You know. Now there's going to be some noise around that because there is some strike activity. But I think you know, everybody's trying to figure out what the underlying trend in the labor market is. You know, and as I mentioned, you know, if growth, so the FED or Reserve needs to target growth that's under potential. So that call it like around one percent is what the FED is opening to target in order to cool the labor market off. You know, growth right now looks like it's running at two and a half three, so it is well above that, which suggests the labor market is going to remain strong, you know, so well, you know, obviously we'll be looking at that. The wage number within the labor market report is obviously going to be very important as well. But overall, you know, we've said, if the data flow continues to be as strong as it was in September, you know, certainly the FED is probably going to want to keep its options open to hike more. We think the SEP could maybe even take out cuts for twenty twenty four just to try to keep those financial conditions tight. And where do you think this? What is the impact on financial prices? Then, so you've got the Fed likely to pause, You've got data still coming in reasonably strong. What are financial markets to do with this kind of data? Well, you know, I think, you know, obviously, kind of good news should be bad news in some sense, right, because the Federal Reserve is trying to cool off the economy, and ultimately the way they do that is through tighter financial conditions, and whether that's you know, higher interest rates or you know, a decline in equities, you know, maybe wider credit spreads, all of those things. You know, that's how you cool off the economy. And so if the economy remains strong, you know, then that's what we need more pricing like that in order to cool things off. Tiffany, there's been a lot of focus on the quarterly refinancing announcement. You know, my question for you is a simple one. Is the supply story in US treasuries already reflected in the price? Yeah? I mean I think this is a key question, you know. Now, I think it's actually broader than the refunding. I mean, clearly Treasury has had a big refunding need. You know, they've been trying to increase coupons, you know, as a result of the fact that you know, they have this bigger need and they were really ramping up bills. Now they're moving into coupons. I think the bigger issue here is that good growth, better growth expectations, is actually increasing people's expectations for supply. And that's that's not that's counterintuitive relative to usual experience because usually you have higher tax revenues and you know that reduces financing need. But right now with you have central banks that can just continue to you know, reduce their balance sheet for longer, or you know, the Bank of Japan, which you know really pulls away from you know, from buying jgbs. That results in more expectations for supply globally, and that's increasing term premium. Yeah, you know, so I think that is going to continue with the refunding. I mean, Tiffany or you're right in the wheelhouse here talking about the crowding out effect from Japan to the US, I mean foreign buying of treasuries. Where does the demand come from the Feds no longer backstopping things, you know, talk to about demand for US treasuries on a forward basis, you know, who is that marginal buyer, who's that marginal risk taker? Yeah, I mean that's that's what everybody's trying to figure out, right And the problem, I think, well, one of the issues is is that, you know, you kind of go back to twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, where you had a good amount of bond yields that were negative and really the US was the only game in town. Well, now with interest rates just across the world much higher, it's possible to you know, to get you know, positive yielding assets outside of the United States right now. You know, some diversification of portfolios as a result of that is probably reasonable, you know. So I think it is the question of who's the marginal buyer, But not only who's the marginal buyer, but what price are they willing to pay and what yield do they need to get in order to come back into the bond market. Tiffany Wilding of PIMCO, thank you so much for being with us. Subscribe the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live every weekday starting at seven am Eastern on Blueberk dot com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can watch us live on Bloomberg Television and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. Thanks for listening. I'm Lisa Abramowitz, and this is Bloomberg

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Small Caps Bearing the Brunt of High Rates

Bloomberg Surveillance