Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Buck Klintworth, senior vice president at Chase Investment Counsel, says that the market has been turning, to where recent laggards are now coming to the fore and some popular names slowing down. Coupled with mid-term elections, tariff and trade conflicts and war in the Middle East, Klintworth thinks investors may wait for clarity before they push the market higher. Klintworth, who runs the Chase Growth mutual fund, says investors "can't argue with the tape," meaning they shouldn't jump out of the market as it keeps powering through real concerns, but he says that the market's changing tides should have investors looking at whether they should pull back, pursue currently high yields to lock in income, and/or rebalance their portfolio.
Rob Thummel, senior portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital, appears in two different interviews today, reflecting his multiple roles at the money-management firm. In The NAVigator, Thummel — who manages the Tortoise Energy Infrastructure closed-end fund — says current conditions are as favorable for energy companies as he has ever seen in 30-plus years investing in the sector. He notes that "the foundation of the A.I. five-layer cake" described by Nvidia president Jensen Huang is energy and electricity. He says the focus on reliable and cost-efficient energy should have natural gas providers and producers leading the way, as natural gas remains cheap right now relative to other sources of power globally. 
Thummel returns to talk individual stocks in the Market Call, covering both energy and artificial-intelligence infrastructure stocks, because he also manages Tortoise AI Infrastructure, an ETF that opened about a year ago and which is up more than 55% year-to-date.

Jason Vaillancourt, chief portfolio strategist at Columbia Threadneedle, says that while the artificial-intelligence freight train continues to drive the market, investors should recognize that they're "playing with house money, it's time to take some chips off the table." Vaillancourt acknowledges that sometimes the best gains of a cycle come at the end of a cycle and that no one wants to miss out on that, but he suggests doing that by reallocating into income strategies that participate in the upside but also pay out and build stability into a portfolio as the cycle wanes. Vaillancourt also discusses his take on the Fed and its lead on interest rates and whether policy could mess up an economy with a driver as strong as AI expansion.
Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, does two things in the final "ETF of the Week" that was not done in the roughly 750 episodes before it, covering two funds and both of them being single-stock funds, one offering leveraged exposure to Nvidia if you believe the stock is going up, the other providing negative exposure to the same company if you want to bet against it. 
Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management and for the Argent Large-Cap ETF, discusses his focus on "enduring businesses," and what that means as a stock-picker in an age dominated by an emerging industry like artificial intelligence where "enduring" qualities can be hard to identify and find.

Stuart Katz, chief investment officer at Robertson Stephens Wealth Management, says that for all of the attention headline risks are getting, the current market environment is "relatively benign and supportive of equities," and while there are legitimate questions about what could go wrong, he says the resilience of the domestic and global economy is proof that "The market is being thoughtful" and showing signs that this cycle is not near its end. Katz also discusses Treasury yields, and the concern many investors have over their current high levels, but says he believes "We're at a new normal" with the economy being strong enough to sustain Treasury rates near 5% without disrupting economic cycle.
David Rose, chief investment officer at Granahan Investment Management, makes his debut in the Money Life Market Call, talking about small-cap stocks, detailing the firm's focus on "pioneer," core growth and "special situations" companies in pursuit of the traditional higher returns smaller stocks have delivered historically.
Plus, Chuck answers a listener's question about how and why he has used specialty retail credit cards, the kind that currently carry interest rates of 29.99% or more, and discusses how to turn those bad deals into real savings, earnings power and financial flexibility without losing your shirt.

Rob Williams, chief investment strategist at Sage Advisory Services, says that investors are seeing cracks in this seemingly unbreakable market trend, noting that the capital expenditures trends that have been driving the market can't continue forever, but notes that "it's hard to leave the party when the party could go on for another year or two," so he is calling for more sensibly tackling risk rather than trying to beat a downturn by doing a full portfolio overhaul. Williams notes that conditions are suggesting there will be more volatility and sideways bumpt action, but says "it's hard to fight a market where you're pumping close to a trillion dollars in [capital expenditures] into the system and it's trickling across the economy and you have double-digit earnings," so the rally can continue even if it gets more volatility and returns become more muted.
Lawrence McMillan, president of McMillan Analysis, talks technical analysis and says the number to be watching for is 7,600 on the Standard & Poor's 500, which is both support and the high prior to the latest run-up. Typically, McMillan says, market volatility picks up with the arrival of the fall, and he says if that happens and the market drops below 7,600, it could lead "to a full-blown correction of at least 10 percent or so." But lacking that pick-up in volume and volatility, he sees any decline as a garden-variety buying opportunity. Macmillan also notes that from a technical standpoint, the market's charts are not reminding him of bubbles and problematic times of the past, but he adds that "When people are talking about the bubble, it's probably not going to happen."
Plus, Chuck talks with David Cowen, president and chief executive officer of the Museum of American Finance — the nation's only independent museum dedicated to preserving, exhibiting and teaching American finance and financial history — which opened in Boston at the start of July, and which Chuck toured recently. Cowen discusses more than the museum, its mission and how they have made a museum that won't bore all of the people who have no interest in money, to discuss how so much of the financial history of America remains relevant today, even in the face of a $40 trillion national debt.

Veteran Wall Street analyst and money manager Louie Navellier, president of Navellier & Associates, has been saying since the outbreak of war in the Middle East that the domestic stock market and the energy industry would be big winners from the situation, and he says those conditions have played out and will continue for the foreseeable future. While Navellier acknowledges investor concerns over the levels of Treasury-bond yields, the national debt and more, he does not think they are enough to do more than slow an economy that is in the middle of its latest industrial revolution, so while he is not ignoring the worries, he suggests investors not be too consumed by them. 
In "The Week That Is," Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, also weighs in on high yields and the record debt level, but notes that the market and the economy has dealt with and powered through those problems in the past, particularly during times of economic expansion. He looks ahead to Nvidia, whose Wednesday earnings report will dominate markets this week, and examines how hedges funds and institutional investors will soon be able to use prediction markets to generate investment returns, and why this is more an evolution of how things are traded than it is some embrace of gambling.
Plus, Kyle Guske, investment analyst at New Constructs revisits SNAP, a stock which has lost roughly 80 percent of its value since it was first put into "The Danger Zone" a few years ago, but which he says has real potential to go the rest of the way to zero based on its business prospects, cash burn and more.