Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Andy Wells, chief investment officer at Sanjac Alpha, says he expects the stock market to continue on its positive roll and wouldn't be surprised if it's up by about 6% from current levels over the next six months, but he also says that investors should expect interest rates to go up this year — even as he thinks the Federal Reserve will look to make a cut — because there is so much incoming bond supply driven by the artificial-intelligence boom and the need to fund A.I. projects. Further, Wells says that investors' bond funds are becoming "a tech bet" as the market changes and tries to absorb the massive funding needs behind new technologies.
Matt Harris, chief investment officer at The Hausberg Group, says the current trend can drive the market higher, though the trend would need more breadth and participation to generate more optimism. He says investors should be using volatility to their advantage, especially in areas where consumer sentiment is weak, to buy into sectors that are on sale. Specifically, he is looking for alternative ways to play artificial intelligence, such as with energy companies and other adjacent industries. 
Martha Moore, chief economist for the American Chemistry Council and survey chair for the National Association for Business Economics discusses NABE's latest Business Conditions Survey, released Monday, which showed that corporate economists see shrinking profit margins and, as a result, higher prices being passed along to consumers, which could keep inflation higher for longer. Despite that, the economists remain modestly positive on the next calendar quarter.
Plus, Chuck answers a listener's question about how to view a portfolio that just set a personal peak, but that is overloaded with growth stock funds.

Vince Duffy, news director, Michigan Public, joined Chuck at the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing Conference in Philadelphia to discuss how the media handles its coverage of soft versus hard data and whether those stories — and others — are politicized. Duffy also talks about coverage priorities and the difficulties of balancing news that consumers need with the things they most want.
Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, joins the optimists in his assessment of last week's jobs data, though he does suggest the numbers have room to flex and will make it hard for the Federal Reserve to cut rates quickly or deeply. He also discusses the wild GameStop bid to buy eBay, and revisits Jane Street Capital, the market maker he discussed a week ago, covering why it has become so important and why foreign regulators believe the company may be gaming the system. 
David Trainer, founder and president at New Constructs, looks at the cash burning tendencies of some popular stocks — including two members of the Magnificent 7 — and puts them in the Danger Zone, noting that the burn rates suggest that there are potential troubles ahead.
Plus Chuck gives his surprising takeaway from the SABEW event, one he says he formed mostly during the long drive home, which he interrupted to fill his gas tank at prive levels that were painful.

Erik Aarts, senior fixed income strategist at Touchstone Investments, says the last few weeks have shown a disconnect between stock and bond markets, with the bond markets getting particularly cautious while stocks have raced back to record highs. What the bond market is worried about, Aarts says,  is that higher oil prices will bleed into another round of higher inflation. ... At its base case, that's why yields are up today." Aarts also discusses how high-yield bonds are not living so much up to their label as "junk bonds," and that much of that high-risk exposure has moved to or stayed in private credit markets, changing the risk-reward profile of high-yield bonds and making them more attractive than other categories now.
For his ETF of the Week, Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, goes in an unusual direction, picking an emerging markets sovereign debt fund that gets poor grade from Morningstar but that Rosenblth says fits the bill for a growing group of investors looking for overseas bond exposure that's tied to the dollar. 
Wall Street veteran Anthony Gallea, chief executive at Working Profit and publisher of the Working Profit Investment Letter, adds the twist of finding a catalyst to a Benjamin Graham-Warren Buffett style of value investing. In the Market Call, Gallea discusses how that works and where he sees potential catalysts now.

Parag Sanghani of the Westwood Holdings Group, manager of the firm's Enhanced Energy Income and Enhanced Midstream Income ETFs, says that the ongoing war in Iran has pulled volumes from inventories early, creating synthetic demand that will keep prices higher for several years. That benefits the oil companies and stocks that Sangahni likes, but it hurts by creating a tax at the gas pump, which he expects to remain in place longer than most projections. Sanghani says he currently likes the entire spectrum of energy investments, not just oil and gas, noting that power demands are expected to keep growing beyond current capacity constraints for years to come.
Matt Freund, co-chief investment officer at Calamos Investments, says that productivity, GDP growth and earnings are "what matters," and that the headline risks that are driving consumer sentiment are "distractions" from a market backdrop that is solid. He says inflation remains the big risk, but notes that the investor sentiment is creating opportunities, particularly in closed-end funds where they are reflected in discount trends. 
Plus, Stephen Lubben, a law professor at Seton Hall University, discusses his recent book, "To Protect Their Interests: The Invention and Exploitation of Corporate Bankruptcy," and how the nation's bankruptcy laws have been used in ways that don't protect the broader economy from the failure of big firms but instead protect wealthy power brokers from facing financial consequences of mistakes and misdeeds.

James St. Aubin, chief investment officer at Ocean Park Asset Management, says that the stock market's flirtation with record highs is showing some overvaluation — increasing the potential downside risk — but he only expects that risk to be realized "if the narrative changes, if something comes out of left field that shakes the whole foundation of what is building market optimism today." His most likely candidate for that confidence-breaker is not war or current events, but some change in the artificial-intelligence boom that has been driving spending and earnings growth. St. Aubin says that if negative data on sentiment and feelings winds up showing up in changed habits and spending patterns, it could create economic problems, but until that happens, he says inflation and other concerns are not likely to derail the market's uptrend.
Andrew Chanin, chief executive officer at ProcureAM — which runs the Procure Space ETF (ticker symbol: UFO) talks about how space may be the next frontier in investing, particularly in light of the excitement coming off of the recent Artemis moon mission, which highlighted not only the potential investment avenues but the prospects for private companies to drive the future of space exploration. He explains how concepts like "solar space energy" could help to power Earth-bound needs for more energy, and how satellite changes are impacting communications industries and more.
Plus, researcher Allison Hadley discusses a study conducted for Partnercentric.com, which focused on Americans' impulse spending, which found that more than four in five consumers have made at least one impulse buy already this year, with an average of seven purchases made in the first quarter alone, and a median spend of $50 per purchase.