Show notes
John Stoltzfus, Oppenheimer Chief Investment Strategist, says the consumer and the jobs market will play an important role in 2024. Elliot Ackerman, US Marine Corps Veteran & Former White House Fellow, overviews the latest in the Middle East and Indo-Pacific as global geopolitical tensions continue to rise. Sarah Hunt, Alpine Saxon Woods Chief Market Strategist, says six rate cuts could indicate a weaker economic scenario. Thierry Wizman, Macquarie Global Interest Rates and Currencies Strategist, advises holding a long position on oil. Doug Kass, Seabreeze Partners President, details the catalysts that could drag down stocks in his '10 surprises of 2024.' Get the Bloomberg Surveillance newsletter, delivered every weekday. Sign up now: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/surveillance Full Transcript: This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keane, along with Jonathan Farrow and Lisa Abramowitz. Join us each day for insight from the best and 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. John Stolfus joints chief investment Strategist at op co Op and I'm our asset management and we speak to him about the bullmarket he nailed last year and continues to nail this year. John, I'm going to take it back to the analog of the middle seventies, a horrific recession, the leap in nineteen seventy five, and then a follow on in nineteen seventy seven. It's twenty twenty four, a follow on bullmarket. I think in many ways it is, Tom. I think the question here really is, or rather the difference is, it's a substantially different background in terms of a digitalized global society for business as a consumer and what was back then, which was essentially an analog world. And I think things get digested much quicker. I think that the data is a better quality. And because we've been in crisis in an out of crisis since two thousand and eight, all the players as well as you know, the traders as well as the investors are more experienced with dealing with volatility. John, I think what's so important here is only Stolphus is talking about last year was a prelude. I just think that's so important. Fifty two hundred price target year rent this year, John, let's build on that. You and I have talked about this a few times in the last few months, and I've appreciate it. Can we just address it right now? How dependent that call is on interest rate cuts from the feder Reserve? Not much really. You know, we're not of the camp it's looking for six cuts this year in twenty twenty four. We're looking for perhaps one or two. And we're not looking for the first half for cuts. We think it'll happen in the second half of the year, and lightly later rather than earlier. In the second half. To us, the Fed has been remarkably sensitive in practicing its mandate. You know, where as able to comy and full employment is described by unemployment between three and four percent, and we think it wants to keep it that way, and so that's what we're looking at A little bit different. We like the Fed. Ironically, very few people do we think the Fed has done. It shows the Ben Bernank legacy carried on through Jerome Powell in the sense of communication and clarity. So it might not necessarily the rally my not be dependent on j. Powell. But how much is it dependent on the Central Bank of Tim Cook? I would have to say, perhaps I'll keep it away from a company specific here, but I would say certainly a business, the consumer and the jobs market will play an important role this year. Keyword to watch for is resilience when we look at economic data, what we're looking at is for things to show resilience, and naturally is a challenging environment when you're making transitions and you have the levels of trouble around the world. The geopolitical risks seems to keep ramping up by the day. But consider where business plays out in this where the opportunities are both this cyclical point where we are on the calendar, as well as the secular trends that are driving potential growth for all eleven sectors. Okay, So in other words, his text still lead me. I guess if that's the question at a time, or that accounted for fifteen percent of the twenty four percent game of the SMP last year at least, I think tech certainly remains a major participant in this, But I think what we need to watch well, of course communications services, which is about fifty percent tech related, you also have when you look at the other sectors, just think about industrials and all the technology in that. And it's a good customer of technology, whether it's it's sensors of robotics or what have you, and the cloud, big data and all that aon. So when we look at this, it's you know, whether it's it's a utility company, whether it's a materials company, whether it's a pharmaceutical or a biotech. Technology is where it's at. So we can but think. The other reason is last year Tech was was fabulous it's performance because it had been so brutalized in twenty twenty two when the Bears sold all of Tech, the long duration they sold because they were worried about red dancings, but they sold the good stuff that was highly profitable positive cash low, create products, and deeply embedded in the lives of business and the consumer. John the cliche is the boat has left the duck. I would guess a very large percent of the surveillance audience feels like they missed twenty twenty three. How do you get back in the game if the boat's left the duck. Yeah, Tom, I would say for the people who missed this, I would say it's a question of layering in. That's not back up the truck. At these levels, consider opportunities that show up when you get some weakness in names that may have gotten away from you. Look for babies that get grown out with the bathwater in downdrafts to add to positions that you're building, and in essence, what you want to avoid is just blindly buying deps. You want to be selective, even within what appears to be a nicely broadening rally. After as Lisa pointed out earlier, I mean we're still back to the future in terms of the prices of stocks. In many cases outside of the magnificent seventy eight there you know they've got it would look like they've got plenty of headroom available to move higher in so many ways. We had a decade in a year. As Lisha and I discussed a little bit earlier on the program, John want to put to catch up with you, sir, Happy new year. John stelfiestet of Oppenheim arrasted management. Right now, we need perspective, and we get it from someone gifted. He's served the nation in the Marine Corps, also a White House fellow, and critically he is a king of speculative fiction with James Travitis, Elliott Ackerman's must read two thou thirty four, boy is out of mustard right now, given the Philippines, given the South China Sea, and we eagerly anticipate two thousand and fifty four that you'll see in March. Elliott Eckerman joins us this morning. Elliott, if this is not speculative fiction, it is reality in the Red Sea. What is lost in the press coverage? I think the one thing that is often lost is we have a tendency to focus kind of specifically on military events while losing perspective that all military events happen in a political overlay. You know, ultimately these are political questions. What's going on in Taiwan? What's going on in Ukraine, what's going on in Israel. And the longer these wars play out, the more and more central the politics of the war it self become. And what the outcome is going to be the heart of your fiction with the Admiral st Vetus is things happen suddenly and then in sequence, do we have the ships in place against these terrorists whatever you want to call them. Do we have the process in place where unexpected bad things can happen in sequence? I think when it comes to the Middle East and the challenges that we're seeing there, yes we do. And that is a situation where we the United States vis the Iranians. We are not facing a peer level adversary necessarily in Iran. And I agree with Terry's comments that the underappreciated conflict here is Taiwan. And when it comes to Taiwan, you know, the United States does not have the forces in place, at least peer level forces in place that could meet Chinese aggression across the Taiwan Straits, and that's one of the huge challenges that we face it. But the Chinese would be fighting that conflict in their backyard and we would be fighting it from across the Pacific Ocean. I want you to elaborate a little bit on the point that you just made that all of these international conflicts have real domestic political implications. What are some of the ramifications that we've seen over the past year, how the conflicts have developed, and how public opinion has shaped the inaction that we're currently seeing in Congress to continue providing aid. I think when we go around the go around the world, if we look at Ukraine right now, I would argue that that's probably a war that's not going to be decided on the battlefield as those conditions stagnate. Is a war that's going to be decided at the ballot box. And I think in Ukraine, in Israel, as we see this war is now extending in two months, I think domestic political considerizations in Israel are going to determine the outcome of their war with Hamas. And I think when we look at the United States, you know, the elephant in the room is we have an election. It's going to occur this fall, and how that election unfolds will be determinatives of those conflicts. And lastly, when we look at Taiwan, I mean, in two weeks the Taiwanese people are having a presidential election, and the outcome of that election will certainly affect China's perceptions on what they should do in Taiwan. How different is the foreign policy of Donald Trump versus President Biden. I think the foreign policy of Donald Trump is much more unpredictable, and I think the foreign policy of Joe Biden, as we've seen it, as much more. It has it much more incremental. So I don't think anyone can necessarily say what Donald Trump's policies would be on any three of these conflicts Taiwan, Ukraine, or Israel, Whereas I think we've seen sort of a more consistent approach that Joe Biden has applied. I mean, I look, Elliott where we are, and it's about public service. There's a lot of people watching this across this nation that have loved ones. That's the loved ones on long tours of duty. I know that the Ford is coming back from the Mediterranean. Are we fit now in our defense budget for multiple wars you mentioned Taiwan. Let's say our war Ukraine, our war Iran, maybe our war China. Do we have a budget near capable of meeting those three threats? I think we're I think we have to take a very very hard look not only at the budget and the financial resources that we're applying, but you know, also the intellectual resources. And that's actually where I have the most concerns. You know, is a what a war against China look like a repeat of the Second World War, in which the coin of the realm and naval battle or aircraft carriers eighty years after the aircraft carrier became the corner of the realm. And I don't know that that is necessarily the case. You know, we've seen in places like Ukraine that the Ukrainians have been very effective in sinking Russian ships of the line with shore based missiles. And so I know, I'm a marine veter in my own service right now is in the midst of doing some real strategic a real strategic reset about what it would look like to fight a revisited island hopping campaign in the South China Sea, and they're restructuring the entire Marine Corps to do that. So I think there's a budgetary question, but there's also an intellectual question of you know, what will the wars of the future look like, and that work needs to be done now, and it's going to force some American military institutions to transform in ways that are going to be very uncomfortable with the war of the future. Elliott, what's a more effective strategy one that's predictable or one that's unpredictable. Well, I think in terms of your battle plans, you always want to be unpredictable. The word I would use is one that is adaptive. Because it's very difficult to predict what the war the future is going to be. It's most essential not to get the prediction right, but to get the prosture right so that your forces can adapt to whatever the next conflict looks like. And to use an analogy from the Second World War, at the outset of the Second World War, in terms of naval warfare, again, the coin of the realm was the battleship, and it had been the corner of the realm and was the central platform for centuries. But as we all know, you know, Pearl Harvard, the entire US battleship fleet was sunk, and we had this new platform, which is the aircraft carrier, and that platform was able to adapt and become the central force around which naval battles were fought, and I think whatever the next war is, we're going to see a similar process of adaptation need to occur. It's going to have to occur very fast, and the side that gets their right will probably be the side that wins oty. Just to finish that, what do you suspect it is. I think it's going to probably be a network of platforms. I think it's going to be unmanned, unmanned ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, our ability to fight both a high tech war and also a hybrid low tech war where many of those high tech systems are taken offline and our forces ability to kind of toggle between the two. So it's gonna be very, very complex, but more of the network centric version of warfare as opposed to a platform center version of warfare built around you know, very big ships and aircraft and things of that. Interesting. Interesting Elliott, thank you, I appreciate your time this morning. Always do Happy New Year, Sir Akman, US Marine Corps veteran whether surround the table. Sarah Hunt, chief market strategist at Alpine Saxon Words, Sarah, good morning and happy New Year. Let's revisit that quote from Berkley's This Morning. We believe the continued period of week results coupled with multiple expands is not sustainable. You on the same page. I think you almost have to be. I mean, you know, the theme for twenty twenty three was all about the FED and what was going to happen, and as soon as the cycle peak, you could be okay. So if we pulled forward a lot of multiple expansion on the back of the idea that rates are going to come down, they're probably not going to come down to that great Financial crisis level. If they come down a couple hundred basis points. Is the multiple expansion already too much? And I think that that's going to be the big tension in a lot of them. And you know, for Apple, which we were talking about, you've got to look at all that consistency and all that cash onlo and that's what people are paying for that and the exclusivity of its Apple, and people will keep replacing those products. It's that assessment true. If the whole market of just a select group of stocks that dominate the market, I think it's more select group. I mean, you have to I think valuations and we keep saying and it's one of like, this is Europe's year, this is valuation's year. It's going to matter this year, right, I don't know when it's going to matter, but at some point it will. I think having money…
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