Investing in farmland has historically offered an attractive and stable source of returns, yet it’s not an easy asset class for most investors to access. Carter Malloy founded a platform called AcreTrader in an effort to make it easier to purchase fractional ownership of a farm. He joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss some of the benefits and risks of this type of farmland investing. “You don’t have big, huge up years and huge down years that you do across so many other mainstream asset...

A lot of investors are sitting on piles of cash. In fact, J.P. Morgan Wealth Management estimates its clients are more overweight with cash now than they’ve been in a decade.  But attractive buying opportunities could be lurking, including in fixed income, US mid-cap stocks and European equities, according to Chief Investment Strategist Tom Kennedy.  He joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss corners of the market—in the US and abroad—that look enticing. He also talks about how Europe...

As the US government debt-ceiling standoff heats up and markets grow more volatile, veteran Loomis Sayles & Co. portfolio manager Elaine Stokes has some advice for investors in the corporate-bond market: Get ready to buy. Stokes joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss the opportunities the drama in Washington may create, the potential for a credit crunch stemming from regional-bank turmoil, and how high-yield bonds may not be as risky as they seem, given recession concerns.  “The...

Brace for a US recession to start next quarter and worsen at the end of the year, and don’t bet on the Federal Reserve to react immediately to prop up growth. That’s according to Sarah House, senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co. She joined the What Goes Up podcast to give her appraisal of the economy, and discuss what to expect for the rest of 2023.“It’s likely to be kind of more of a slow drag in terms of economic activity, just given that we also don’t think the Fed’s going to be...

While the drama surrounding regional US banks has largely subsided following the failure of three lenders in March, that doesn’t mean the ripple effects of Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes are over. This is according to Que Nguyen, chief investment officer of equities at Research Affiliates, who joined the What Goes Up podcast to give her outlook on markets and talk about why she doesn’t foresee a soft landing for the economy.“When the Fed raises rates and it breaks something, it rarely...

Runaway inflation. Surging interest rates. Bank failures. For a while it seemed like all of these issues would combine to trigger a US recession. Not so fast, says Morgan Stanley’s Seth Carpenter, the bank’s global chief economist. He joined the What Goes Up podcast to explain why there are signs the US could experience a “soft landing” that averts a major economic downturn.  “It seems hard to avoid the fact that the US economy is going to slow down, and part of the reason why that’s hard to...

Troy Gayeski, chief market strategist at FS Investments, says don’t wait until May to flee the stock market rally—get out now. He joined the What Goes Up podcast to explain why he’s expecting the S&P 500 to bottom out at around 3,200, a roughly 22% drop from current levels.“First of all, the strongest rallies have always been in bear markets,” he says. “Usually they’re driven by technical factors. And then there’s a narrative that’s put together to justify it: the more recent one was...

It’s not just the prospect of deteriorating fundamentals that has Man Group’s Mark Jones skeptical about stocks these days. It’s also the risk of money flowing into fixed-income investments now that they’re sporting attractive yields. Jones, who is the deputy chief executive of the world’s largest publicly traded hedge-fund manager, joined the What Goes Up podcast to give his outlook on markets and explain what strategies have been working well at his firm.“I think the risk-reward in equities...

If there’s one thing that keeps professional investors up at night, it’s being involved in a “crowded trade.” In other words, a position that’s become so popular that there are few investors left to get involved with it, so there’s risk of painful losses for all if the crowd heads for the exits.That’s part of the appeal of microcap stocks for Patrick McDonough, a portfolio manager at PGIM Quantitative Solutions. He joined the What Goes Up podcast to explain his approach to analyzing these...

When Steve Sosnick recalls 2008 and tries to make parallels to the current turmoil in the banking sector, one memory sticks out: riding the elevator with Thomas Peterffy, founder of Interactive Brokers, who offhandedly asked him “what’s new?” “And I said, ‘what’s really interesting to me is the story that I’m reading this morning about how Bear Stearns may have as much as $20 billion in losses at some of their hedge funds,” recalled Sosnick, who’s currently chief strategist at Interactive....

Torsten Slok had been firmly in the “no landing” camp of economists. More positive than a “soft landing,” its adherents say the Federal Reserve will tame inflation without triggering a recession at all. But for Slok, chief economist of Apollo Global Management, that all changed with the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. Now he’s bracing for a “hard landing.” Slok joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss the sizeable role regional banks play in the US economy, and the reasons why SVB’s...

Jeremy Grantham blames the US Federal Reserve for creating a bubble in asset prices—one he says has a long way to go before it’s fully deflated. As a result, stock prices may not reach bottom until late next year, he warns. The 84-year-old co-founder of investment firm GMO joined the What Goes Up podcast to explain what he calls the current, “meat grinder” phase of the market, and why he believes the central bank has “hardly gotten anything right.”  “Since Alan Greenspan first arrived—Paul...

Princeton University’s Alan Blinder is one of the most prominent economists to have expressed optimism that the Federal Reserve can engineer a so-called “soft landing” for the US economy—taming inflation without triggering a recession. But Blinder, who served in the 1990s as a vice chair of the Fed and a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, explains on this episode of What Goes Up why he’s toned down his assessment. A big reason is the change in the way the Bureau of Labor...

Exchange-traded fund managers have seen massive inflows into fixed-income ETFs in recent months. As the dust settles from the bond market’s worst year on record, ETFs focused on safe and simple Treasuries have attracted the bulk of the money. Stephen Laipply, the US head of fixed income ETFs at BlackRock, explains this state of affairs on the latest episode of the What Goes Up podcast.Many investors who follow a standard strategy of investing 60% of their portfolio in stocks and 40% in bonds...

The stock market may be off to a great start in 2023, but investors should be “mindful about not being bullied” by the rally, says Wealth Enhancement Group’s Nicole Webb. She warns that it won’t last. The S&P 500 is up 7% so far this year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 has surged roughly 15%. Webb, a senior vice president and financial adviser at the firm, joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss her views on the market and the speediness of the recovery. “To us fundamentally, does...

ChatGPT has taken the internet by storm, spurring all manner of experiments and examination as to what extent the artificial-intelligence model can supplant humans and daily tasks. But it’s also being used on Wall Street, where a number of exchange-traded fund issuers, including State Street, have grasped onto the concept to help put together innovative products.  Matt Bartolini, head of SPDR Americas Research at State Street Global Advisors, joined the What Goes Up podcast to talk about...

Morgan Stanley’s Jim Caron joined the What Goes Up podcast to dissect this week’s US Federal Reserve meeting and analyze how markets may have misinterpreted the message being sent by Chair Jerome Powell.“This is a guy who’s worried about inflation; this is somebody who’s not done tightening by any stretch of the imagination,” said Caron, the co-chief investment officer of Global Balanced Funds at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. But Powell’s comments triggered rallies in stocks and bonds...

The rare bright spots for investing last year were those strategies that follow trends in markets rather than fundamentals. This successful approach included the AlphaSimplex Managed Futures Strategy Fund, which returned more than 32% for the year. Kathryn Kaminski, chief research strategist and portfolio manager at AlphaSimplex Group, joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss her firm’s strategies, and what she’s expecting in 2023.  “We do really well when there’s massive trends, when...

The stock market got off to a roaring start this year with the S&P 500 at one point clocking a year-to-date gain of more than 4%. Truist Wealth Co-Chief Investment Officer Keith Lerner, however, is skeptical of the New Year bounce. He says the possibility of a recession and dwindling liquidity make the rally unsustainable. Lerner joined the What Goes Up podcast to explain why he’s advising clients to take a defensive posture with investments, and what he believes is the best way to...

Get ready for some bad earnings-season news. That’s the call from Savita Subramanian, the head of equity and quantitative strategy at Bank of America, who is expecting a 10% drop in earnings that will likely keep a lid on the S&P 500 in 2023.She joined the What Goes Up podcast to give her outlook for the market and explain why she thinks analysts’ earnings estimates are too high: “We are going to see those estimates come down, and it's likely to happen after companies guide more...

The US Federal Reserve’s commitment to higher interest rates and the potential for a recession in 2023 will combine to damage corporate earnings—damage that likely will cause the stock market to revisit its bear-market lows, warns Jurrien Timmer, director of global macro at Fidelity Investments.  Timmer joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss his outlook for the year, and explain why he thinks bonds will resume their role as a source of protection for investors in balanced portfolios. His...

Before his FTX cryptocurrency empire collapsed, many of Sam Bankman-Fried’s public statements indicated that he made decisions “as though he had no risk aversion,” according to Victor Haghani, the founder and chief investment officer of Elm Partners Management and a co-founder of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund. Haghani joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss how Bankman-Fried’s tolerance for risk made him highly unusual under the “theory of choice under uncertainty,” and how...

The decades-long trend of globalization has come to an end and the fracturing of geopolitics will have huge implications for capital markets and investing in 2023, according to strategists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Jared Gross, head of institutional portfolio strategy at JPMorgan Asset Management, joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss how everything from supply chains to industrial policy, energy and defense will feel the impact. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Don’t expect volatile equity-market swings to go away when the calendar flips to 2023, says Edward Jones senior investment strategist Mona Mahajan, who advises focusing on defensive and value stocks in the new year. But there is hope for later in the year, she says, when the market will be looking forward to lower inflation and a stabilizing US economy. Mahajan joined the What Goes Up podcast to discuss her outlook for next year and assess the market’s reaction to the latest message from the...

Bonds are back—and they appear to be the preferred asset class as we head into the uncertain economic environment in 2023, according to Gargi Chaudhuri, head of investment strategy for the Americas at BlackRock’s iShares unit. She joined this week’s What Goes Up podcast to talk about her 2023 outlook, next week’s policy decision by the Federal Reserve and the appeal of not only safe Treasuries but some riskier mortgage securities.“It is so exciting, I think, to be in a world where there are...