Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

George Schultze, founder of Schultze Asset Management and a specialist in investing in distressed companies, says in the Market Call that a "changing and dynamic economy" has left a lot of companies "flat-out over-levered," and as they wind up failing and restructuring and getting out from that debt, they are creating attractive new opportunities for investors. Conversely, the companies with too much leverage are potential short candidates. Schultze explains the difference between "special situations" — something generally considered temporary like the troubles being experienced by Nvidia this week as it navigates a leadership crisis — versus a distress case, where a company has hit rock bottom.
Paula Fleming, chief marketing officer at the Better Business Bureau of Eastern Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island and Vermont, discusses why the current open-enrollment period for Medicare has made consumers particularly vulnerable to scammers, and how to avoid becoming one of those negative statistics.
The NAVigator was recorded on location this week at the Active Investment Company Alliance Fall Roundtable in New York, where Chuck gave the keynote address and presented ideas that would make the closed-end funds more consumer-centric and friendly. He asks industry veteran Mike Taggart, head of closed-end fund investor relations at Aberdeen Investments, to reflect on the ideas presented in the speech, and to discuss whether they are plausible and would represent real progress for the industry.

Joe Bell, chief investment officer at Meeder Investment Management — portfolio manager for the Muirfield Fund, a tactical allocation fund — says that market looks significantly better now than it did at the end of September, and that the scary volatility that has accompanied a sell-off in tech names has positioned a number of defensive stocks that were left behind during a late summer rally to put up gains moving forward. Bell says that 2026 has been the unusual year when there has been strong momentum at the sale time valuations — due to huge earnings — have been contracting, but it is setting up a situation where valuations are likely to grow more slowly next year, and rising interest rates could slow revenue and earnings growth, but the generally strong fundamentals and the rotation should allow 2027 to be another positive year.
Ryan Paylor, portfolio manager and partner at Thomas J. Herzfeld Advisors, sat down with Chuck at the Active Investment Company Alliance Fall Roundtable in New York on Wednesday. Paylor appeared on the show a year ago, when the Herzfeld Credit Income Fund was converting from a Caribbean Basin fund to a focus on collateralized loan obligations, just as the market for CLOs was getting hairy. As a result, Paylor says, the fund has moved more towards other instruments that have helped it weather the storm of CLOs being out of favor. Despite those moves, Paylor acknowledges the fund's deep discount and the potential for it to widen during tax-loss harvesting season, but he also says that any normalization of discounts would create significant opportunity when the calendar turns into 2027.
And speaking of closed-end funds, Chuck answers a question from a listener who has been considering adding them to their portfolio but is still unsure of exactly how they work and how they should be used within an established, diversified portfolio.

Matt Orton, chief market strategist at Raymond James Investment Management, says a robust earnings landscape — with the S&P 500 expected to achieve over 25 percent earnings growth for the third straight quarter — has been remarkably consistent and has positioned the market to power through most concerns, even as the pace of growth must slow because it can't stay so high forever. As a result, Orton says durability of earnings, rather than multiple expansion, should be a key focal point for investors. Orton also says that while the Federal Reserve will hike rates, he does not expect the hikes — or the current levels of bond yields — to be a significant obstacle to the capital expenditures that are backstopping economic growth.
Chip Lupo discusses the 2026 Holiday Shopping Survey released this week by WalletHub, which found that more than two-thirds of Americans say the economy will make the December holidays less festive this year, with 85% of people planning to spend the same amount or less on the holidays this year compared to last, and with that spending not going quite so far due to inflation. Among other findings, the survey showed a high level of gift fatigue, with 67% of respondents saying they would enjoy the holidays more if people didn't exchange gifts.  
Plus, Chuck answers a listener's question about a tough decision facing his son, who wants to eliminate debt and is weighing selling a structured settlement from a car accident versus cashing on a small 401(k) balance to get out from under the debt. Neither choice is financially ideal, so Chuck examines the pitfalls of each and weighs in with a different potential solution that might accomplish the goal with less financial pain.

Jeff Blazek, co-chief investment officer for multi-asset strategies at Neuberger, takes a contrarian view of sticky inflation in The Big Interview, saying that it's starting to turn and ease naturally, meaning the Federal Reserve will hike interest rates just once more, and that by early 2027 the energy shock will be rolling back and investors will be less concerned with rising capital costs and economic stability. Those positives, however, won't diminish volatility, making for a bumpy but positive ride next year, with earnings durability being key to determining the companies likely to lead the market into the next phase of the A.I. evolution. Blazek says he expects the economy to avoid recession and the market to skirt a bear market until 2028.
That sentiment — that a bear market isn't likely until 2028 — is shared by D.R. Barton Jr., director of market research for the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, though he draws that conclusion through technical analysis, as opposed to Blazek's fundamentals. Barton says that the market is "in the strongest part of the cycle" around midterm elections, noting that there has never been a time going back to 1950 that the stock market wasn't up six and 12 months later. He does worry that current sector rotation could disrupt the cycle, but said he sees mostly good signs that the market can keep moving sharply forward amid heightened volatility.
In The Book Interview, Daniel Altman discusses "The Best Decisions You'll Ever Make: An Economist's Guide to Saving Time, Making Money, and Living Well," which was released today and which explores how economics is at the heart of everyday purchases and more, but is largely ignored by the people making those decisions. By factoring economic in, Altman says consumers can make objectively better decisions and raise their happiness level.

Charles Rotblut, vice president of the American Association of Individual Investors and the keeper of the group's  long-running Sentiment Survey, discusses how pessimism among individual investors about the short-term outlook for the stock market increased last week, even before the stock market took a nosedive on Thursday, two days after the midterm elections. Rotblut says that sentiment numbers show that people are unusually at both ends of the spectrum — either highly bullish or bearish — with little action in the middle because the sentiment over the market is polarized between those expecting trouble and investors who expect artificial intelligence to keep carrying the day. Times with little neutral sentiment, Rotblut says, tend to be rare, and tend to be when markets have heightened volatility.
David Trainer, founder and president at New Constructs, put Anthropic in "The Danger Zone" pre-IPO about a month ago, based on the limited amount of information the company had published in regulatory documents before going public. Now, in the fastest turnaround in Danger Zone history, Anthropic is back in the Danger Zone, after Trainer says that subsequent documents showed that the deal is definitely a cash-out, a way for insiders to get liquidity before "a money-losing business model" gets a lot worse. Trainer noted that Anthropic's off-balance sheet debt rose by 88% to nearly $900 billion, while revenue growth slowed and costs picked up. With debt holders being paid first, Trainer says the IPO is practically doomed from the start, as the new shareholders effectively will pay off existing debts before they can ever make a penny.
In "The Week That Is," Vijay Marolia, chief investment officer at Regal Point Capital, talks about election fallout, heightened volatility and fear, and whether the market has already moved on, buoyed by a strong jobs report. He says long-term investors "might be seeing a clearance sale" with the market's post-election volatility, and he is hoping for the market to "bounce up" from here.