Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Bill Davis, portfolio manager for Stance Capital and the Hennessy Sustainable ETF, says that current events have contributed to some market rotation back towards mega-cap tech names, because the market views them as comparative safe names that are not correlated to oil prices. That represents what he expects to be a short-term reversal in trends because the market had been moving broadening out, with the Magnificent 7 stocks struggling. He expects that trend to resume and continue as the headline risk subsides, when he expects the market to continue moving the market away from communications services and big tech toward more defensive and value-oriented stocks.
   David Trainer, president at New Constructs, focuses The Danger Zone on "residual value guarantees" — which hide debt off-balance sheets allowing companies to spend money and to have liabilities that it mostinvestors will not know about until or unless a problem makes them surface. He says the says the phenomenon is particularly acute with artificial-intelligence companies, where a lot of money is being invested into construction that is backed by residual-value guarantees, and he singles out Oracle and Meta Platforms as two examples where the practice adds to New Constructs' unfavorable opinion of the stocks. 
   Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, says that he expects oil prices to remain elevated until there is more clarity in the Strait of Hormuz, but that prices should snap back quickly to lower levels once the supply chain is clearly restored. In waiting for that clarity, he suggests oil tankers as a play on the situation, noting that it's a picks-and-shovels play on the industry, and that the tankers are making money even as they sit filled with oil waiting for resolution. He also discusses why Microsoft's recent decline is not something long-term investors should worry about, and more in "The Week That Is."

Robert Gilhooly, senior emerging markets economist at Aberdeen Investments, discusses the adage that the first shots of war are a time to be buying investments, and he says investors might want to take more of a wait-and-see approach, at least until they get more clarity on how the war in Iran will impact oil prices. While President Trump has moved to keep the price of oil below $100 a barrel, Gilhooly makes a case that if the tensions drag out, oil could quickly rise to $175 a barrel, a level high enough that it might cause a global recession. In the end, he expects a quick return to pre-war economic activity levels, including one interest-rate cut later this year -- if hostilities subside quickly.
   Guy LeBas, chief fixed income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott says that headline risks are diverting attention from a bond market that, in the long run, should be driven by positive economic conditions and decelerating inflation. The war in Iran is creating what he thinks will be more temporary conditions that scare investors but that don't amount to much long-term change in the market's outlook. LeBas expects corporate profits this year to be roughly 12%, which is strong enough to help the corporate bond market, which he also thinks will be buoyed by the hyper-scalers needing to borrow money to put it to work to keep up in the development race. 
   Bernie Horn, manager of the Polaris Global Value fund, returns to the Market Call to discuss stocks and international markets in the face of current events. Like Bill Smead -- a value manager who was on the show earlier this week -- he talks about how value investing suffered while the stock market was in hot-growth mode led by the Magnificent Seven. Now, however, market valuations are high, which is setting up a rotation that he says will favor value-minded investors moving forward.

Jay Jacobs, U.S. head of equity ETFs at BlackRock, says that the artificial-intelligence revolution has delivered massive spending, but not at levels that have been spent relative to gross domestic product, during other generational shifts like the introduction of the automobile. As a result, while he understands the bubble concerns, he expects AI to continue holding its place among BlackRock's global thematic trends. Also on that list of trends is geopolitical shifts, which were well underway before current events evolved into a war in Iran; because those trends were in place before today's developments, Jacobs says he doesn't expect markets or outlooks to be dramatically impacted by headline events. Jacobs also discusses the new iShares Staked Ethereum fund, a new development in the crypto space, which the firm is launching today.
Wade Pfau,  professor of retirement income, at The American College of Financial Services, discusses his revised, third edition of "Retirement Planning Guidebook: Navigating the Important Decisions for Retirement Success," which includes a new section covering sequence-of-inflation risk. Pfau says that concern -- which financial advisers mostly overlooked -- is particularly important now given growing concerns about sticky inflation, and that it may be as important for retirement savers as sequence-of-return risk, which Chuck typically says is his biggest retirement-savings worry.
Plus, Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, leans into global turmoil this week, picking a diversified international fund as his ETF of the Week.

Bill Smead, manager of the Smead Value fund, says that by nearly every indicator, the stock market is at valuation levels seldom seen in American history, with the Standard & Poor's 500 trading "at more than 220% of GDP, the most dangerous number, virtually, we have ever seen." That does not make him want to get out of the market, however, as he says in the Market Call that "the problem everybody's got is that most of the money is in the place that is likely to do the poorest over the next 10 years, because it has done the best the last 15 years, and that is our opportunity."
   Ed Cofrancesco, chief executive officer at International Assets Advisory, says that investors have good reason to be skittish right now because the market has dropped off of highs, but he doesn't expect things to get really bad so that further market drops are an opportunity to dig in and make tactical purchases. In The Big Interview, Cofrancesco talks about his concerns about inflation — which he calls "an insidious tax on the working class and the poor" — noting that if it stays higher for longer it can change retirement-spending trajectories that investors need to plan for.
   Jennifer White, senior director, banking and payments intelligence at JD Power,  discusses the firm's recent report showing that the financial health of American consumers has reached a 12-month low. She notes that the firm is classifying more consumers as financially unhealthy, in large part due to the stubbornly high cost of consumer goods, noting that current events which could create a spike in oil prices and which threaten more inflation weren't yet factored into the numbers, making the outlook for consumers that much more troubling.

Kevin Mahn, president and chief investment officer at Hennion & Walsh, entered 2026 expecting more volatility from the market and geo-politicla events, and while he "didn't have war in Iran on his dance card," he doesn't think it will change the outcomes all that much. He expects oil markets, for example, to stabilize once investors are certain that the Straits of Hormuz have re-opened, and he thinks there is plenty of opportunity where money has been flowing, into areas like artificial-intelligence infrastructure. All in all, he expects the stock market to celebrate a fourth birthday for the current bull market.
   Veteran trader Peter Robbins discusses his book, "The Trader's Journey: Navigating the Path to Trading Success," covering how important it is for traders — even investors who want to do modest amounts of transactions with a small percentage of their holdings — to find the system that works for them and their lifestyle, and he talks about how technology has changed trading, but how the evolution in artificial intelligence hasn't made it so that individual investors can't find a working path to success.
    Allison Hadley discusses a study she did for PartnerCentric.com study looking at AI shopping trends, where she found that nearly half of Americans tried AI-powered shopping last year, buying an average of more than $400 in eight transactions, and nearly two-third of shoppers expect to embrace AI when shopping this year. Despite that advancement, she notes that only 13% of Americans trust AI completely in its shopping recommendations with more than 80 % of consumers verifying its suggestions independently.