Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari says policymakers have yet to win the fight against inflation, and that they will consider more tightening if needed. Neil Dutta, Renaissance Macro Research US Economic Research Head, says a rebalanced labor market could led to a rate cut. Katy Kaminski, AlphaSimplex Chief Research Strategist, expects more potential buying for treasuries in the short-term. Mohamed Younis, Gallup Editor-In-Chief, previews the off-year elections happening across several US states. Nadia Martin Wiggen, Svelland Capital Director, discusses the global oil market as prices fall to over two-month lows.
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Full transcript:
This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Lisa A. Bromoids, along with Tom Keen and Jonathan Ferrow, join us each day for insight from the best in economics, geopolitics, finance and investment. Subscribe to Bloomberg Surveillance on demand on Apple, Spotify and anywhere you get your podcasts, and always on Bloomberg dot Com, the Bloomberg Terminal, and the Bloomberg Business app. This morning, Mike McKay Drumrow, fantastic guests the random type with us to talk about Fed policy. Yes, and thank you very much, John, because we are pleased to welcome Neil Kashkari, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, to the table today. Thank you for coming in making the trip all the way to New York only for us. I'm sure nothing else There would be nothing else this morning, and except for Bloomberg Surveillance. You're kind of known as the guy who is the most hawkish. I don't want to characterize you exactly now, given how things have changed over the last couple of months, but you have left open the possibility of doing more. How much more would you think the economy might need? Are we talking about just that one leftover move from the dot plot in September, or if you have to start raising again, do you have to go farther. Probably. Well, first of all, it's great to see you, Thanks for having me. People are looking for certainty, and I wish I could give that certainty provided there's been so much, so much it's unusual about the reopening of the economy and the dynamics that led to the high inflation, and how long it has taken, and the dynamics as the disinflation process has taken hold. I wish I knew. We have to let the inflation data guide US, the labor market data guide US, just to point out the obvious. Our forecasts have not been great over the past couple of years, and so we just need to We're all committed. Everybody on the FORMC has committed that two percent is our inflation target. We have to get inflation back down to two percent over a reasonable period of time. Ultimately, the economy will tell us how much is needed to get there, And I just don't know. Well, at what point do you think you would believe you have tightened enough or not tightened enough? What is it that you're looking for. Well, I'll give you some good news is that core PC on a three month basis is running about two point five percent, and it's lower than the six month data. It's lower than the one year data. So that suggests that the disinflation is real. If we continue to see inflation numbers of that range two point five percent or lower on a go forward basis, that would tell me, Okay, we are now on a path back to two percent inflation. But three months data is still only three months data, and if we see that start to tick back up again, that would tell me our job is not yet done. Tick back up means what? In other words, we get another couple of CPI reports in a PCE report before your next meeting, a couple of tents higher. The chairman and others say it's going to be lumpy or does it have to be a significant move? In other words, what are you thinking about for December? Well, I think we could look at, as the chairman always says, we look at all of the data. So what surprises Over the past few months, We've been surprised by how strong American consumers have been. Consumer spending is held up remarkably well, we've been surprised by GDP growth. When activity continues to run this hot, that makes me question is policy as tight as we assume that it currently is. So if you saw inflation tick back up and you saw continued very strong economic activity on the real side of the economy, that would tell me, okay, we might need to do more. So it's hard for me to say this one data point needs to be here. I would be looking at the suite of data. Did we outsource doing more to financial markets? In the arts week? Have we outsourced doing more to financial markets? You know, this is a very complicated question on what has been driving the long end of the Yeld curve. Some people point to term premium, and I always joke the term premium is the economist version of dark matter. It's the residual of all the stuff we can't explain. It's not that our models are wrong, it's the dark matter is out there. So that's the term premium. And some people say, well, that's driven by fiscal If it was fiscal driving the term premium, I would have expected to see a week dollar. Usually when investors are worried about a country's fiscal position, their currency weekends our currency has been quite strong. It makes me wonder is it really fiscal driving the term premium. Another possibility is the path of policy over the next few years. That could explain both the stronger dollar and the weaker stock market going into the last meeting. Another one is that maybe the neutral rate is higher, or maybe it's a combination of all three of these. And so these are things that we're spending a lot of time trying to understand what the markets are doing. But just speaking for myself, I'm not comfortable saying which of those three it is, because which of those three it is determines what it means for policy. If it is the term premium, then it is doing some work for the FED. But if it's the neutral rate, or if it's the forward guidance of the path of policy, then we would actually have to follow through to preserve those rates. So how did this line end up in the statement? And I'll share it with that audience. The kind of financial and credit conditions for households and businesses are likely to wound economic activity, hiring, an inflation. Where's that coming from? Oh, that's been there for a long time. I mean, that's been in there since the Silicon Valley bank episode and the banking stresses leading to some tightening of credit conditions across the economy. So I think that that's right. I, for one, don't say that that means the recent moves in the old curve. How fluid is that assessment? Can that change from month to month, meeting to mating, because some of those comments around that has inspired quite a move in this market over the last week. Well, you know, one of the things about the statements, we always have to be careful about putting things into the statement because they tend to be long lived and it's hard to pull them out of the statement because as soon as you take something out, then all of a sudden, people say, oh my gosh, they're declaring that all the banking stresses are over, as an example, and so, you know, I would look at all of the range of commentary that you get, look at what the chairman says, look at his press conference to get a read of the thought of the committee. You said that people want certainty that you can't give it to them, and I understand that, but people don't just want certainty, they also want some sort of guiding philosophy. Do you think that Fed Shir Powell has outlined some sort of guiding philosophy and where the bar is to cut rates and where the bar is to raise them further. Well, I think he's articulated very clearly that we're committed to getting back to two percent inflation. Right. There's been some chatter amongst economists that maybe we should raise the inflation target. I think he's done a great job saying that is not on the table. We're not going to do that. We're going to get inflation back to two percent, and we're going to let the data guide us. We've moved very aggressively. We've made a lot of progress on inflation. We're not done yet, meaning inflation is not back to our target, and if we need to do more, we will. There seem to be a feeling in markets that the bar to cut rates has been lowered over the past week or two weeks. Suddenly not only are we reaching a pause and have we seen a peek in the FED funds rate, but that also the Fed will cut next year, maybe surgically. Neil Dada is talking about that and he's coming up next. Do you want to push back against that? Do you think that the bar to cut is still just as high as it was. I have no idea where market participants are getting that. There's no discussion amongst me and any of my colleagues about when we're going to start preparing to cut rates. The only thing that's been talked about at all is that at some point, when inflation is well on its way back down, if we didn't back off a little bit, then real rates would be getting tighter and tighter and tighter. And that's real, but that's math. But is there enough weakness currently in the market in the economy, I should say to give you that sense at this point, look at the last GDP print. I mean, does anybody look at that and think, oh, my gosh. The economy we for the last twelve months GDP has been very strong. The labor market continues to be quite robust. Yes, the unemployment rate is ticked up to three point nine percent, but we've also seen a huge surge of labor supply, which is really positive come online. So I'm looking at this, I'm seeing consumers that are strong. My air by the way, my airplane that I came here on was one hundred percent full yesterday. It's going to be one hundred percent full today, I'm not seeing a lot of evidence that the economy is weaken Well, whether you go higher or not, you are on board for longer. And so you must have modeled out some idea of how long you would need to leave rates unchanged before you could get down to a level low enough that you could take your foot off the break a little bit. How long do you think you'll be at five point five into twenty twenty four. Well, I think it's going to depend if we continue to see inflation prints similar to the ones we've seen the last few months, you know, and we end up with a year of a year at two point five percent core inflation and it continues to trend down, that constellation would give me evidence to say, hey, we ought to look at should we start backing off just so the real policy isn't getting tighter and tighter and tighter, because we're clearly on our way back down to two percent. But again, I don't want to just point to one data series. We will be looking at the suite of data to try to get a read of where the economy is headed. Well, not just data. You talk to businesses in your district, all the time, What are they telling you now about their view of growth and hiring and pricing going forward. It's moderating. So the labor market is still tight in my district, people especially in the Dakotas, really have a hard time finding workers. But in Minnesota, it's still a tight labor market, but it's not as tight as it was six months ago. It's not as tight as it was a year ago. So that kind of maps to the national data that we're seeing of a gently cooling labor market but one that's still very very warm. Same thing with economic activity. Depending on the sector, they're saying, Hey, we feel pretty good about things. We're a little cautious about the future. Obviously, they watch the news, they read the news. There's a lot of economic anxiety that is reported on that people, you know, factor that into their own thinking and their own business planning. So I think the outlooks are still optimistic, but it's cautious optimists. Well are they still raising prices or think they need to? So it's funny there Still they still buy and large have some pricing power more than they had before pandemic, but not as much pricing power as they had six months or a year ago. Can we finish on housic sure in the space of three years, we've had record low interest rates in the highest rates in several decades. Is this housing market broken? Well? I think since the pandemic, we have structurally underbuilt the number of units that we need to meet our growing population. And that's the factor. And that's really about regulation at the local level that are creating barriers to more supply coming in. The raid environment will settle out over time, but structurally we have to actually bring a lot more supply online to meet America at the time, but it could be like twenty thirty years. I think this is the issue here. The legacy of this FMC could well be a generation of people look down to the housing market. Why do you say that there could be a generation of people with two three percent mortgages that never sound their home. Yeah, I don't know. People end up needing to move. It's funny when people don't tell their home because they're locked into a low mortgage. That's less supply, but that's also one less buyer. Most people who buy homes are leaving another home, and so that affects both the supply side and the and the demand side of That's why I set a generation look down because I'm renting and count by, so I'm not sounding anything, and that's the generation. I'm talking about that generation specifically, you concern that could be the legacy at the FORMC. Now. I think the legacy of this FMC is that we've dealt with the pandemic very aggressively. Then we were surprised by very high inflation, but then we move very aggressively to bring the inflation back down. I want to ask you about a story on the Bloomberg terminal today about all the financial CEOs from the US over in Hong Kong sounding very doer and down about the prospects for the economy. They suggest that things are pretty fragile right now, both in the economy and the markets, given everything that's going on around the world and in the shadow banking system as well as theirs. How worried are you, well, I mean, we're always worried about things that can happen all around the world. We've got teams of people looking at different scenarios around the world. Ultimately, we have to focus on what we can control, you know, geopolitics. When Hamas attacked Israel, the first thing we thought of is what's it going to do to the oil market, what's it going to do to commodity prices. Remarkably, the response so far has been muted. But that's something we're obviously paying close attention to. But the broader geopolitical issues are just so far outside of our bounds of forecasting. You know, we have a hard enough time forecasting inflation trying to forecast where geopolitics is going. We just have to focus what we can control. Oil price is dropped. I mean, that's the crazy thing about the last month. Physically, it doesn't make any sense. And this is the reason why trying to get it right is just impossible. And then trying to get the idea of a FED put and whether they're going to respond. I'm just saying people are talking about that now, so yeah, talking about it in the last few hours. Yes, it's on this program. No, always a pleasure, Thank you, Sirving Neil, Cash County, the Minneapolis FED price Alongstide Plympecks, Mi M chab No Tatsa, the head of US economic research at Renaissance Macron. Nil, good morning to you. Good morning. Let's go straight there because my IB was lighting up with messages from you. We're not thinking about tapering. Two months later, we're a long way from neutral cutting a month later. What do you think is going on within the FBC. Where do you think this is going? Well? I think I agree that it doesn't pay much to forecasts right now. It's important just to look at the data as it's coming to you, and so I do sympathize with that. But at the end of the day, I mean, the unemployment rate is up above the fed's forecast for this year, and that's the first time that's happened since March of twenty twenty two. Now you know we're in. When you're in the thick of it, it's hard to know whether that represents the start of something much more onerous or whether it's just the normalization of the labor market. But I think for the FED, I think the doves on the FMC, and remember you know President Kashkari, he tends to lean on the hawkish side of the consensus at the FED. I think for the doves, they have all the ammunition they need to basically put the hawks in a casket. Okay, I mean, I think that's the way I would think about it. I mean, you can point to the pickup in productivity and what that's done to unit labor costs. You can point to what Powell has said, right, I mean, when when central bankers use proceed carefully risk management, that's code for doing nothing. And you know, finally, I mean the employment report was probably understating payroll growth. That's my view. I mean, there's a lot of strike activity and so far, but at the end of the day, average hourly earnings are running just over three percent at an annual rate over the last several months. So I don't think the hawks on the committee frankly, can use the labor markets as a rationale to be hawkish anymore. So that is over and so I think the doves can basically say that the labor markets have been rebalanced. And if they can say that just implicitly, it means that the door is a little bit cracked open for a cut. And you know, the point I'm making to you is, you know J Powell, it wouldn't be the first time he basically, you know, flipped on a dime. I mean, we're a long way from neutral. I mean a few months later he's cutting rates, We're not even thinking about thinking about tapering or hiking, and then we're hiking and tapering basically in the same month. So you know, to me, the fact that they're not talking about it is irrelevant. It's also in their sep for next year. The question is whether these surgical cuts, what are surgical cuts? Basically a few cuts to stabilize the economy. I mean, I think the issue is is the extent to which cutting quickly translates into rapid economic stable So I mean, for as an example, I mean, let's see what happens with mortgage purchase demand. Over the next couple of weeks. We've seen mortgage rates basically come down to what like seven percent. Okay, I'm trying to wrap my head around this. Six months ago, you were talking about way more economic strength in the US economy than people had expected. Now you're talking about strategic or surgical cuts by the Federal Reserve to stabilize the economy. Are you saying that they are warranted because the economy No, I don't think that they are. Part of the tention, Lisa, is that my job isn't to tell people what I think the Fed should do. My job is to try to get into their head and figure out what they will do. I mean, if I was there, would I be I would probably be more hawkish than the consensus on the FMC. But I'm not there. Well, but does this mean that you think the consequence of surgical cuts to fortify the economy will be prolonged inflation? Yes? Okay, So then how do you sort of arrange around that sort of what is the inflation rate? How do you sort of lean into the rally that we've seen in the bond market and say, wait a second, you guys have gotten ahead of your skis based on the game theory that the FED is playing and the way that they're likely to do Searga, I don't know that the bond market's getting ahead of itself. I think the bond market is sniffing out that the distribution of risks have changed. I don't know what the FED may do next. I mean, that's what I think the bond market is doing, and I think bond market investors are right to do that, because, as I say, you know, you think about it basically three prongs, right, the labor market, inflation, and then financial conditions. If the FED can look at the labor market and say the labor markets are rebalanced. Okay, that's check done. You can't use that anymore as a reason to be hawkish. So, if anything, if the unemployment rate's not going up a little bit, the distribution of risks are that they would cut because the labor markets. And right, if the labor markets are thawing, that's going to give them increased confidence that inflation will thaw and so and then finally, if that's the case, they're not going to be particularly concerned about the easing and financial conditions that you've seen since the last in the last week, which is what we've been talking about through this morning, whether they are going to tolerate the easing we've seen over the last week. And it feels like perhaps they will help me work with me here. It feels like to me that you believe the world might have changed post pandemic versus pre pandemic. Do you sense that they still believe were still in the same old world pre pandemic? I do. I mean, I mean, if you listen to someone like New York Fed President John Williams, even Chair Powell, I mean, there's not much there's quite a bit of reluctance to just say that, you know, neutral rates are higher. I mean, why do you think that, is, Neil? You know, I don't know. I mean I think that maybe in their minds things haven't changed. I mean all, I mean, you saw Powell talk about this at at the press conference last week. I mean, oh, well, if we get to pick up in potential growth, it's a temporary pick up and potential growth, then we'll go back down. So if you don't think that the world has fundamentally changed, then you're going to be more sort of cognizant of overtightening risk. Right Like, So if the unemployment rate is starting to go up, you may have thought, well, maybe you overdid it, so you might be more willing to cut sooner as a result. So are you more bullish on the US economy but also expect inflation to remain higher and the FED When people look back, this will be considered a policy air that they weren't hawkish enough. Yeah, I mean I think that that would be Yeah, I mean that would be something I could be saying in twenty twenty five. What would you point to if you had this conversation right now? And I would love to get you around the table next time I have a FED official to work through somebody's issues. But what would you it sounds dangerous as the number one thing that indicates to you that the world has changed, versus pandemic that ultimately they don't believe it. What would you point to, Well, I mean the first is just look at let's look at the obvious. I mean, you've done a lot, and yet the economy is still kind of hanging in there. I would say that things like household formation rates are running twice the rate they did after the Financial crisis. I mean, to me, I think it's much easier to tell the story about why the post financial crisis period was actually the anomaly than not. So I think we're actually going back to the old normal more so than anything else. Obviously, you think about all those people during the financial crisis period or the years after that, we're saving up for retirement. A lot of them have now since retired and they're now dissaving, which is you know, implies higher neutral rates. You think about income inequality, it was something that we were talking about all throughout the twenty tens. Well, it's coming down now. People at the lower end of the wage spectrum. We're seeing more rapid growth in their wages. You see more increased sort of union activity and unions getting big wins for blue collar workers. I mean, these are not things. I mean, and those folks have a much higher propensity to spend. And so I think it's it's not right in my view to say that things haven't changed. But if that's what the FED believes, then you have to be recognizing what that implies for what they might do later. And so I think just because they're not talking about cuts now does not mean they won't be talking about cuts in three six months. That should be in the realm of possibility, and I think the market's Frankly, I'm not willing to fight the move yet. I mean, okay, no a clinic as always. You know you're one of my favors. I think everyone knows that. No data, every nice loose Macro, No, thank you joining guess now. Katy Kaminski, chief research strategist over Alpha Simplex. Katie, it's the number one question for us. Are you still short treasuries? Yes? Why? Well, this is because for trend falling, it's not just about a couple of days, It's really about persistent trends in the market, and I just want to point out, and this is something interesting, trend falling signals have been net short for nine quarters. This is the first time in many decades that this has been the case. And so the reason I'm pausing right now is because we've been saying short, short, short all year, and for the first time, it's starting to feel like we already got that short come through. What's next? What does the market do now? Buy are coming in because yields are at interesting levels. They're probably thinking, maybe we've finally hit that point. Do you think something changed fundamentally to lead to that in the last few weeks. I do, And then I think that the data has come out to support the narrative for investors. But I also think a narrative that has made sense to me is that investors have woken up to the idea that five percent yields at some point there's a buying point where you think, well, there's a chance this could actually go down. And now you start to see this equilibrium occur where you're seeing the disinverted curve, which is something we've been looking for since the beginning of the year. So Katie just to put a bow on this, are you now not short treasuries and actually starting to see value, particularly if yields get up to that five percent level in the tenure. So we're still short in terms of the overall frequency that we see signals, but we are seeing consolidation in those signals, so there's a reduction in that particular conviction. But what I will say is that I'm seeing more and more positive signals on higher frequency, and so I think on the shorter term you're going to see more and more potential buying for treasuries. But I do want to remind everyone inflation is still an issue. Rates could be higher for longer, so there's still really a good chance that we're going to see a lot of volatility instead of a new trend per se that starts to emerge. Yet this raises this question of which particular data points are going to be the real action drivers, like what we saw over the past ten days. Is it going to be basically every inflation read that we get, or do you really buy into this idea that it's treasury supply that's been dictating a lot of the volumes and a lot of the angst that we felt over the past month. It's really interesting that you bring this up, Lisa, because we've been talking about the supply issue. I mean, how often do people actually talk about supply. They're only talking about it because I think people are trying to understand the equilibrium of where people sit and what yield should cost, I mean, what should be the right yield. And I think from our side on the technical side, what we're looking for is potential breakouts so that we're seeing a steeper curve at some point. Our view is it's going to depend on really what happens with the economic data of whether we end up with tighter conditions or if we actually see something very extreme where we actually saw higher yields. Again, that to me seems very unlikely right now, but I think it's really a point to start watching every data point to see which direction the yield market is going to go or which direction the yields go, because it's definitely an inflection point than Katie, were going to catch up with Nil Kashgari in about twenty minutes time. I think we're all looking forward to this conversation. There is this second paragraph in the statement that they put out last week on kind of financial conditions it reaches follows. I'm sure you're familiar with it. Time of financial and credit conditions for households and businesses are likely to weigh on economic activity, hiring, and inflation. Could you still write that same sentence today? After the move we've seen in the last week, what's that on the movement we've seen in the last month, for the the last six months, what do you think it is? Well? I think the challenge is that these numbers come in at different frequencies. Last week we had a massive buying but this could also be somewhat of a relief rally given how much movement we've seen downward, especially in equities. And let's just be honest, like I said, at a five percent yield started to get exciting, people said, oh I better get in there. So I think there's really still This could just be the tip of the beginning of understanding how serious financial conditions have changed, and if it's enough to actually warrant a point where we might actually have cuts at some point earlier than some would would have thought, like myself, who's been very pessimistic about rate cuts. Hey, Ketty, do you have a decent understanding of the conditions that would lead to those cuts. Well, usually in terms of this, I think we'd have to see pretty severe deterioration in financial conditions to see rate cuts, given the mandate of the FED and the fact that the other factors that are really focused on have not come down to their target level. So the fact that inflation is sticky, and the fact that we have a strong workforce and that we have all of these conditions putting us in a good place. They have been pretty clear that they're going to keep us higher for longer until we can sort that out. On the other hand, if we had some sort of very severe draw down or deterioration and credit that was clear, I think that they would have to act. So that to me would be the situation where we would see those rate cuts. Is if you saw something in the credits markets or something in terms of consumers really struggling that would cause them to actually react. So the FED put still exists, just at a much higher pain point, I would say probably yes. I mean, I think it always exists somewhere, but it's definitely moved a lot compared to what we liked in twenty nineteen and before. Kelly Let's finish what we started. Given the uncertainty you now have about your position, why maintain the shot? That's what I'm going to walk away from this conversation scratching my head about why maintain the short when it can be as expensive as it was on weeks last week. So this is the point of trend falling. Systematic trading is about not double sort of using your emotion in the moment. And I think what works with trend falling is following the data, and we just need more data to know the answer, and over longer periods of time, it turns out the market is actually quite good at giving us indications of where things are moving, and it's particularly short term movements where they disagree. Where you want to lean on your own gut, but you shouldn't, because that's what systematic trading is really about. It's about measuring and falling the markets and allowing the markets to tell you what the market where we're going, as opposed to sort of my own personal view. Unfortunately, Katie, thanks for the clarity on that point. I appreciate it. Katie commenced you that of aphasimplex, two major political parties remain unpopular in the United States, fifty six percent of Americans viewing the Republican Party unfavorably, fifty eight percent saying the same thing of the Democratic Party. Mohammed Junis, the editor in chief at Gallop, joined us now, Muhammad, help us out. I've been rinting through this piece. Neither party is well liked. You guys have pointed out that the GP has an edge on certain issues. Can we just talk about the likability of both parties right now, Muhammed? How unusual is this? Unfortunately, you know at harkens to your Amtrak conversation earlier. We're at a state right now in the United States when both parties are really not doing that great in terms of their favorability. It's nothing new, Unfortunately, It's been quite a while since Americans had a favorable view of either party in the majority. We're also at a time where there's a record high of Americans saying that they'd like to see a third party in American politics. Of course, easy to say I want more. It doesn't necessarily mean that that party would exist or actually be powerful. But we're also at a time, John and Lisa where there's a high of people that identify as independents, and that is important not only in the current moment, but also in our analysis over generations. What we find is that younger Americans today are actually sticking with that independent id much further along their lifespan than previous generations young folks. So, certainly America is highly dissatisfied with national government. We've talked about that a lot. They're really, in some ways most dissatisfied with both parties. That being said, today is a local election. It's really, I know, it's so tempting for us to jump to twenty twenty four. Americans line up today to vote on local issues, and there's a huge difference in the way people perceive local government versus the national government here in the United States. SOMEHOWMA just explain that a little bit more. What is the big difference between the two currently? Basically and coetence. Americans have very low trust and competence in the national government and national institutions. Perceptions of corruption are astronomically high. When you come to local government, though, people have a much more positive perspective on local government, whether it's the efficacy, transparency of local government and corruption, but also how they feel about their local governing officials. So Americans light up at the ballot box today, they're hearing a lot of echo chamber on the national what this means, we're twenty twenty four, but really what they're going to be focusing on our local issues, and the national conversation certainly will inform that. That's why things like abortion, things that implicate attitudes about big and small government, for example, they're on the ballot box. They will be discussed. They're going to be they have been a focus of the campaign. We know in Ohio there's a really big push on abortion. It'll be a really important weather vane in terms of whether or not Roe v. Wades overturning has sort of faded, The impact of that has faded or is still with us. I have to say, as you're talking about local elections and how different they are than the nationals, I think, well, they're probably not on TikTok, the local elections, they're probably not on Facebook. How much is it the social media echo chamber that polarizes people and gives them a worse and expected view of national politics in a way that local politics might be slightly immune. I think that's a great point. Lisa it's much easier to sort of check the bs if you will. On a topic or an issue. When it's about where you live, you know that reality. You have direct information from people you know where you live. You can talk to your neighbors, you can talk to your local religious leaders or community leaders. With national politics, it's a very different thing. It really tends to have now become sort of a war of the propaganda's if you owe both parties where truth is very hard to identify, but both sides are absolutely out there to religiously convict you excuse me, to religiously convert you to their worldview. So that's certainly a factor. But look, when it comes to twenty twenty four, and it's important for us to keep our eye on that mark. Everything that we've done with regards to national elections really comes down to one thing. Americans focus on the economy. The economy is king. It's not only king, it's king, queen and bishop when it comes to picking a president here in the United States. And that's going to be a huge factor in where people place their votes in November twenty twenty four. But as you all know, we are light years ahead from where that is in terms of assessing where the economy is going to be then, and that's going to be the major factor when it comes to party advantages. The Republicans definitely have maintained their historic advantage in terms of Americans viewing them as more competent in keeping the country prosperous, keeping the economy booming, and keeping the country safe. That's said, how much are you looking to Glenn Youngkin today? And maybe there is going to be very much local issues that are decided, but the local issues have implications for their glens might be the Republican con candidate for presidency. Do you think that's a stretch. I think looking at the polls right now, that is a stretch. It's hard to argue that President Trump is not the front runner of the Republican Party. You know, every poll you do, every poll, what we've done. We don't do too many political polls anymore, but there are good polls out there. It's really hard to see somebody sort of astronomically jump ahead of him. Now that being said, we haven't had a president in modern time that's facing the legal challenges that he's facing, and that's a whole other sort of curveball that's being thrown here. It's not clear exactly what his situation will be come real. Kind of rubber meets the road in terms of November twenty twenty four. But you know there are still we heard from David Axelrod this week about the Democratic side. There's still a lot of movement in this race, and I wouldn't rule out any surprises or sudden departures on either side up against the clol kid. Just to squeeze it in and finished where we started. You do mention in the piece of the GP holds advantages on certain issues. Can we just bring some life into that, Mohammad? Which issue specifically? There are really three issues In specific one is keeping the country prosperous. Republicans have a pretty sizable advantage to Democrats in terms of perceptions of keeping the country prosperous. The other one is keeping the country safe. As you know, we're now very focused on too pretty significant conflicts across the world. Hopefully that doesn't become a reality for us here in the United States, but as Americans focus more on security issues, Republicans do have that advantage in our polls. The final one is who's most competent to handle the most important problem facing the country. And what's fascinating about that question is that the most important problem facing the country, as I have said on this show many times right now, is actually poor leadership and government. So Americans identify the quality, the low quality of national le as the most important problem facing the country. So it's the most of our problem. The economy and keeping America safe fascinates in gright. To catch out Mohammed azoh Wis, He's going to say, Mohammed unus of gallop. Everyone's been pointing to oil prices. Why have they not caught up given that there is a sort of existential risk and threat that seems to be escalating every single day in the Middle East? Joining us now to help us understand what exactly to look for. Nadia Martin Wiggan, Director ats fell in Capital, Nadia, I just want to start there. What do you make of the fact that we're seeing crude traded on the NMEX blow eighty dollars a barrel again today despite what's going on in Israel and in Gaza. Hello, great to be on. I think what we saw last week is that Hezbollah and Iran for right now, they're on the sidelines, right, They don't actually want to show an escalation of the war going on in Gaza right now. So that has taken off some of the risk premium. For the last ten days, we actually see the implied volatility in the options market come down. So it's not even something that's happened just today, it's been for the last ten days that trend. I think. In addition, when that premium, that initial shock goes away, as we saw was the case with the war in Ukraine by Russia, eventually you know, the market starts to think about how to work around that. And for example, we've seen that freight rates have gone much higher, and part of that is when you look at it, it's almost like a risk balancing that, Okay, if we can't flow through the Suez and we have to go around, then let's de risk ourselves if things were to take longer. And we see that the freight market has actually priced that in as if they have to avoid the Suez, which they haven't had to do. So as a result, things have come down also in the oil market. Okay, so let's take a step back for a second. Nadia. If you're looking at freight producers, that already come up with alternate roots that avoid the suz Canal to avoid potential or the straits of our moves to avoid potential blowback from Iran. Does this mean that oil prices are actually higher than where they would be at this point if there weren't this geopolitical overhang, because it's actually being priced into the market in a material way. Yeah. If we look at what was happening to the market in oil before the October seventh attack, we could see that prices were coming off right. We had a lot of pressure on refinery margins. We had physical creed trading poorly. You know, we've had the largest overhang in the West African market that we've had in years. We had more than twenty twenty five million barrels unsold out of the November loading program. So we saw that kind of weakening and then this is where the market would like to rebalance. We saw the physical premiums come down for those grades, but the futures market has remained quite strong, and this is where we have to see that kind of reb ballancy. When we look at kind of the momentum and what is happening to pure speculative traders, you know, the CTAs and so forth. That short term momentum has been downwards, right, and that is put pressure bringing us down to where we are now in WTI, you know, just above the two hundred day moving average. If we look at that long term momentum, it's still intact for a strong market, right. So there are still those longs in the market that we've had in since before all of this started. But again, the market is preparing in case something were to happen, because you know, things had been taking along well in the Middle East and we were about to have a deal between Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel recognizing Israel, which would take off potentially a premium right, and instead we've moved in the opposite direction. How much is the US becoming the swing producer at a time where there is consolidation in the shale patch and you are seeing companies try to realize the value from their stores, basically pump the oil while it's still valued in the world. The deal of Exon, for example, buying Pioneer right, that really shows that they are focusing on the Permian right. And what interestingly Exon announced in their earnings call is that they believe that with their equipment and knowledge, they're able to bring in a total of one billion barrels of oil more out of those same assets that Pioneer was able to. So, when we think about the terminal regular production rate in the US, that goes from around fourteen and a half million barrels per day to maybe fifteen and a half million barrels per day, and the question is when do we reach that. Right August production was thirteen point one million barrels per day. It will probably take two years, but of course that depends on the short term oil price and the signals short term meaning monthly, quarterly, and the signals that that yields to shale producers in terms of activity. Right, a weaker oil price will slow that down. A strong oil price we'll speed that up. So right now, given more prices are do you expect more consolidation to be expedited currently or do you think that people are going to wait until prices go up a bit further. Well, prices are reasonably strong, right, the whole oil complex is in a good situation and making money. So when what we saw at the start of October is that demand was starting to get hit, right, we had producers selling crewed for more than one hundred dollars a barrel, and then we saw, for example, companies like India really complaining. Part of that is because Russian crudis continued to flow and we had price caps breached, right, so you were paying more than sixty dollars a barrel, maybe you were paying seventy dollars a barrel, and then on average, facing more than one hundred dollars a barrel was becoming difficult. So I think we've been in a pretty comfortable space, you know, in the eighty dollars range for everyone to make money, so it makes it ripe for consolidation and valuable resources. We don't really need things to move much higher. Do you think that all things being a well, this is going to be the range for the foreseeable future, just because of the pushes and the pulls that seem to be working in equilibrium from a technical level, yes, But of course things can suddenly change very quickly, both in the Middle East, you know, towards the negative towards a positive, so that can really shift things. And the number one thing to keep track of is that inventories were expected to draw quite steeply in the fourth quarter, and so far in October they only drew on land around three hundred thousand barrels per day. So the market is waiting for evidence that actually we have tightness led by these supply cuts and demand isn't waning, Whereas you know, on the other hand, if it continues waiting, then we could see for the falls and price. Nadie Martin Wigan of Spell and Capital, thank you so much for being with us. Subscribe to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live every weekday starting at seven am Eastern on Blueberk dot com, the iHeartRadio app tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can watch us live on Bloomberg Television and always on the Bloomberg terminal. Thanks for listening. I'm Lisa Abramowitz, and this is Bloomberg.
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