FidelityConnects: Jurrien Timmer – The global macro view February 23, 2026

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<b>Subtitles are AI Generated</b>

 

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Hello, happy Monday and welcome to Fidelity Connects, I'm Pamela Ritchie.

 

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Markets are digesting not only the tariff story on Friday but the coming

 

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State of the Union address by President Trump, that's tomorrow, geopolitics

 

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of Middle East escalations, data on durable goods, lots of data

 

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on various things, and major players' earnings reports all through

 

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this week and last week. Underneath all these headlines a powerful rotation

 

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in equity markets has been taking place since, really, the last tariff

 

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tantrum and it continues through to today.

 

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The equal-weighted S&P 500 has caught up pretty much to the cap-weighted

 

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index and investors have spread their wings to international stocks as

 

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well. Questions about rate cuts, productivity from AI and growth

 

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appear to all fit in a bullish signal for this new

 

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moment. Our next guest says there are risks to the equity outlook but the

 

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positives for continued broadening continue to stack up as well.

 

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Joining us now to share what is on his radar for investors in the week ahead

 

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and beyond, we're delighted to say he's back, Fidelity Director of Global

 

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Macro, Jurrien Timmer. Warm welcome to you.

 

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How are you?

 

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I've missed you. It's been three Mondays in a row that I was on an airplane

 

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during the show.

 

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Sorry about that, I'll try to pick my flights better next time.

 

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We are just happy to have you back and taking us

 

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through what's going on in the markets.

 

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We'll invite everyone to send questions in for Jurrien Timmer over the next

 

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half hour or so.

 

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Let's go directly to the powerful rotation because there are a lot of other

 

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headlines to go to but you, of course, take us to where the market is

 

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actually moving.

 

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Let's go to slide 1, this just simply shows

 

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the S&P 500 cap-weighted index in the blue and

 

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the equal weighted index in the purple since the bull market began

 

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in October of 2022. That's about 40 months ago.

 

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Obviously, the cap-weighted index because of the Mag-7 has outperformed.

 

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We all know that, of course. Cap-weighted index is up 100%

 

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over 40 months. The equal-weighted index is up 65%,

 

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I believe. But if you look at the lines since

 

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the tariff tantrum of last year, April,

 

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the cap-weighted index is up 40% and the equal-weighted indexes up 36%.

 

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So, really, a closing or a convergence of

 

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those two. You can see, which to me is the best possible

 

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looking chart, is that the broadening ...

 

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you can see how the equal-weighted index is really accelerating higher.

 

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My fear always was that that might happen because the

 

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Mag-7 are going down, if it's a zero sum

 

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type rotation, and if that were to happen the blue line would

 

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not hold because the Mag-7 is 35% of the index.

 

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That has not happened so the S&P cap-weighted has sort of

 

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flattened a little bit but it's still rising.

 

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I mean, we haven't really made a new high in a while but the

 

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slope has flattened while the broader market has broken out.

 

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If we go to slide 2 I'll show you that just in a little bit of a

 

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different way. Again, this is the S&P 500, you can see

 

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upper right corner that the slope is flattening a little bit and

 

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you can see in the bottom that the S&P equal-weighted index is

 

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outperforming the Mag-7 by 12% over the last

 

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three months.

 

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You can see that whenever the equal-weighted index is

 

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outperforming the Mag-7, which means the market is broadening, generally, that

 

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has happened in a down market and only two other times has it

 

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happened in an up market. One was the fall of '24 and

 

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one was the spring of '21.

 

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It's a fairly rare event for that needle to be thread this

 

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way but we're doing it and I'm going to take that as a

 

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win.

 

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I'll just put in the caveat, because there's always a caveat, in the

 

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next slide, 3,

 

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we're in a benign broadening, let's put it that way.

 

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For that to continue the Mag-7,

 

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which is shown here in the top panel, needs to hold support.

 

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You can see there the Mag-7 has not made a new high since last

 

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October. That's quite a while now.

 

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It's just sitting there doing nothing, which is totally fine.

 

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We can't expect these stocks to always go up.

 

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They've vastly outperformed. They're up fivefold since the bull market

 

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began. For them to just sit there and tread water

 

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while the market broadens, and you can see that in the bottom panel, 60,

 

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70, 72% of the stocks above their moving

 

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average, that to me is the ultimate win but we

 

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do need to hold that support.

 

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Nvidia is reporting this week, I don't know what the numbers are going to be,

 

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I presume they're going to be good, but if something breaks in that chart

 

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and the Mag-7 do not hold that tight

 

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trading range then we might see a broadening that happens in

 

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a declining market rather than a rising or steady market.

 

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That is the caveat here.

 

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Take us to some of the other pieces of the story

 

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that have ...

 

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with the broadening you get, obviously, a spreading out of the earnings

 

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story, a spread out of, perhaps, the multiple story

 

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being so important and more dependence on earnings, some other

 

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fundamentals, it's just healthier broadly.

 

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Do you want to just go through some of pieces that go into that that leave us

 

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with a healthier market, I guess, is maybe one term.

 

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Absolutely. Slide 4 shows that earnings are very

 

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much driving the bus right now, and that's, of course, what we want to see.

 

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We're in the fourth year of a cyclical bull market so it's getting out there,

 

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or it's getting up there, so you want earnings to be the

 

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leading driver. You can see here these are the quarterly

 

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squiggles, if you will, and you can see how towards the right,

 

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not to use an unfortunate metaphor, but the hockey stick's up.

 

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That's shows how powerful...

 

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I know, we lost and we're heartbroken about it but congrats to you.

 

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Sorry, sorry. Well, I'm neither a sports person nor a

 

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nationalist sports person so I just want the best team to win.

 

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Anyway, back to that chart, you can see that the last three or

 

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four or five earnings quarters have produced that very

 

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large bump. That shows you that there's a lot of earnings momentum.

 

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If we go to slide 5,

 

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this shows a stacking bar chart since the bull market began

 

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in 2022, of how much of that bull market has been

 

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driven by valuation, dividends, and earnings,

 

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the valuations being the blue bars.

 

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You can see that in the first part, you and I have talked about this many,

 

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many times over the last few years, it was all about valuation.

 

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That's normal because earnings usually take

 

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a while to start participating but that's now happening.

 

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The valuation side really hasn't

 

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done anything since before the tariff tantrum.

 

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That's still where we are now.

 

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About half of the return has come from valuations and half of

 

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it has come earnings and dividends.

 

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That's a good story to see.

 

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It doesn't end there.

 

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We can go to slide 12, as you know and as we've

 

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talked about, this is not just a broadening within the US markets

 

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but it's a broadening globally. We've talked about this for over a

 

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year now. If you look at the year-over-year change in the forward

 

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earnings estimates by region, so US, EAFE,

 

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EM, you can see the US is running at about 16%, That's

 

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in line with the earnings estimates that we've been looking at.

 

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EAFE is around the same.

 

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But look at EM, 31%.

 

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The EM side is really on fire right now in terms

 

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of what they're gaining in terms of earnings momentum.

 

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One new chart I have, slide 13, kind of illustrates

 

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the leads and lags of this story.

 

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On a log scale I've got the EM estimates in the pink,

 

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the EAFE estimates in the green, and the US S&P 500 estimates

 

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in the black, you can see visually, because they're all on the same

 

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scale, how much EM is all of a sudden starting to participate.

 

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So this is why EM stocks are so strong right now.

 

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I's good to see because concentration risk is

 

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a real risk. It hasn't bitten us

 

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yet and right now the broadening is benign but that could change

 

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at some point where inside the US, or the S&P, if

 

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the Mag-7 do start losing or falling out

 

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of that trading range that even though

 

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the market is broadening and three-quarters of the stocks are in uptrends it

 

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may not salvage the S&P beta that otherwise we would

 

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get. That's where international markets really come in.

 

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It's a good story right now. Those regions are competitive

 

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from an earnings point of view, the payout ratio, and, of course,

 

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valuations.

 

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Just to extend what you're saying there, they're reaping sort of a

 

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much more liquid environment. People will buy and sell international stocks

 

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more readily than they did two or three years ago, seeing them as a value trap,

 

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something you couldn't get out of if you wanted to.

 

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It's provided a diversification and options for

 

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investors to go in and out in a more confident way,

 

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would you say?

 

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Yeah, and also the dollar is no longer

 

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the behemoth that it has been.

 

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We've had this long period of US exceptionalism,

 

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of course, the US in many ways still is exceptional in terms of the AI space,

 

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etc., but the dollar's been going down and it hasn't really done

 

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a lot, it's been sitting around at around .97 on the dollar index,

 

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but it's no longer a given that it's going to go up the way it did before

 

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the election.

 

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That, I think, gives people a little bit more ...

 

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actually we can pull up slide 17, there is the dollar ...

 

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I think it gives investors a little bit more sort of permission

 

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to say, you know what, the world is our oyster and we have places

 

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to go and if I go overseas I'm not taking this huge risk

 

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that the dollar is a one-way trade going up.

 

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It may not be going down but it's no longer a given that it's going up.

 

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Here's the dollar index, it is in a down channel.

 

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We are making kind of new lows, although there's not a lot of momentum

 

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there, but I think that's part of the story as well.

 

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Let's talk a little bit about some of the things that are rattling markets, no

 

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question. This has a lot to do with the disruption of AI.

 

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To some extent you have cautioned, and other investors

 

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across Fidelity, this would happen.

 

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We'd see, perhaps, certain sectors getting disrupted and

 

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sell-offs that would come after that.

 

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We have definitely seen that. There are so-called falling knives in

 

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certain sectors.

 

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Software has been hit, and from a variety of different angles, as well as

 

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financials today. Just speak a little bit about what you saw coming,

 

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what we're watching, and I guess a little about what we need to do about it.

 

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Let's go to slide 8.

 

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I remember it was back in October, all of

 

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a sudden everyone was talking about is the AI boom turning into a

 

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bubble. I remember because I was in Palm Beach for one

 

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of our Fidelity Canada events and I was

 

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getting interviews left and right from various media outfits.

 

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That was the

 

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story at the time. I put up this chart at the time saying, okay,

 

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if ChatGPT, which launched in 2022, was

 

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the aha moment that the Netscape IPO was in

 

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1996 then you had a few years where it was kind of

 

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not known and then all of a sudden it started to accelerate.

 

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That's what the blue bars are on that chart.

 

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At that point it seemed, okay, I don't think we're in a bubble now but I

 

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could see that that might happen because we heard all these pie-in-the-sky

 

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stories and this and that.

 

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Fortunately, history did not repeat itself because

 

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rather than just drinking the Kool-Aid, if you will, and not asking

 

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any hard questions investors did start to ask the

 

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hard questions about, okay, how much CapEx is too much CapEx?

 

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Will there ever be an ROI on that CapEx?

 

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right? Just in recent weeks with the earnings releases

 

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there were again, stories about, oh my God, these companies, these hyperscalers

 

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are spending even more than we thought they were going to do and at

 

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what point does that deplete their cash?

 

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Where's their return on investment going to come from?

 

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Will they have money to buy back shares like they used to?

 

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All of these questions started to come.

 

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Then we had the Claude thing that made the

 

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software and SaaS stocks look a little bit worse

 

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in terms of are they going to be commoditized and can anyone just

 

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write their own software.

 

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These are all ...

 

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I don't call them nails in the coffin because I don't think that's what

 

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it is but these are very good things, I think, because I'd

 

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rather have the critical questions now and it prevents this

 

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from becoming a bubble which we know is always going to implode later or

 

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burst later. I'd rather have this and have that bubble

 

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not happen and the market just continues.

 

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Then the focus comes on, okay, the economy is growing pretty well, the

 

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labour market is not but inflation is down to 2.4

 

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% per the latest CPI so maybe this AI miracle of

 

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more growth with less people and less inflation is

 

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actually starting to happen. I think that is part of this broadening trade as

 

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well. Again, it's anecdotal, I don't want to say definitively that

 

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that's what's going on but that would give the Fed maybe

 

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a little bit more room to cut and you would have the productivity boom

 

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that would come from all of this CapEx.

 

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It may not benefit the hyperscalers but it would benefit everybody else

 

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and maybe that's what this broadening trade is about.

 

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Hello, investors. We'll be back to the show in just a moment.

 

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else you get your podcasts. Now back to today's show.

 

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It's so interesting. You sort of have those two things, you're right,

 

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obviously, you're right on these things. Three months ago it was all about the

 

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ROI being the question mark of what would be maybe

 

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a small tipping point, not an ultimate one.

 

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It seems to be more the disruption that is really playing

 

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out in concerns that is a bit of a, as

 

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you say, a small tipping point where questions are being asked.

 

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We're not going over a cliff here but the concerns are more about the

 

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sectors being disrupted.

 

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Critical thinking is a very important life hack and I'm glad that critical

 

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thinking is back in the markets rather than just say, oh my God,

 

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this is amazing, I'm just going to buy whatever moves.

 

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I'll take the former over the latter.

 

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That's really interesting. Let's go to the tariff story.

 

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On Friday I think most of us were watching pretty carefully about the

 

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US Supreme Court's decision on IEEPA and the confusion that

 

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comes after it.

 

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It was immediately followed up with there will be new tariffs and this is how

 

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much they will be and them that actually went up over the weekend.

 

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In any case, many companies have to go back to trying to calculate what

 

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tariffs will be and ultimately what they might be repaid.

 

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It's a confusion.

 

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What is it worth in the markets?

 

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There's a lot of layers to this but I'll start with saying

 

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that the President has a State of the Union address, I think it's

 

17:21.173 --> 17:25.144

tomorrow, and per tradition in the first

 

17:25.144 --> 17:29.181

row are the Supreme Court justices.

 

17:29.181 --> 17:32.317

Boy, they're going to get some hairy eyeballs tomorrow.

 

17:32.317 --> 17:35.587

I would not want to be one of the Supremes tomorrow.

 

17:35.587 --> 17:39.958

Anyway, the market was expecting this.

 

17:39.958 --> 17:43.962

I think the betting markets were 75% that

 

17:43.962 --> 17:48.434

IEEPA would be seen as unconstitutional

 

17:48.434 --> 17:52.638

because Congress needs to be part of this.

 

17:52.638 --> 17:55.374

For the market it wasn't a big surprise.

 

17:55.374 --> 17:59.178

I mean, the market's down today but on Friday it didn't really react.

 

17:59.178 --> 18:02.815

The bond market didn't react. The dollar didn't interact.

 

18:02.815 --> 18:05.684

In that sense it's not a surprise.

 

18:05.684 --> 18:09.721

It is, obviously, very messy because there's hundreds

 

18:09.721 --> 18:13.992

of billions that came in from the tariffs.

 

18:13.992 --> 18:18.130

Tariffs are like a tax, this is like an import tax and

 

18:18.130 --> 18:22.534

those hundreds of billions are going to be reclaimed.

 

18:22.534 --> 18:26.672

There's going to be a lot of legal action, class action

 

18:26.672 --> 18:30.876

lawsuits, or some sort of legal process where

 

18:30.876 --> 18:34.847

companies who have imported stuff from overseas,

 

18:34.847 --> 18:38.917

US companies, and they had to pay for this stuff that

 

18:38.917 --> 18:43.422

there is some avenue for them to get that back.

 

18:43.422 --> 18:47.392

There's an angle to this that all this tariff money was

 

18:47.392 --> 18:49.294

going to help reduce the debt.

 

18:49.294 --> 18:53.298

I never bought that, and we've talked about this, this money

 

18:53.298 --> 18:57.236

doesn't come out of

 

18:57.236 --> 18:59.171

thin air, right? Someone is paying this.

 

18:59.171 --> 19:03.742

This is a tax. We did our own study

 

19:03.742 --> 19:07.880

six months ago, which was later confirmed by the

 

19:07.880 --> 19:11.984

Fed, out of all these tariffs only 10% of

 

19:11.984 --> 19:14.920

them are paid by the exporting country.

 

19:14.920 --> 19:19.324

The president likes to say, well, China is paying for this, no

 

19:19.324 --> 19:23.529

they're not, 90% of the tariffs are being paid by

 

19:23.529 --> 19:27.699

importers or consumers in the US. Now, fortunately,

 

19:27.699 --> 19:31.837

the tariffs were never that big. The effective tariff rate is

 

19:31.837 --> 19:36.008

12% so it was never the big,

 

19:36.008 --> 19:40.312

huge number that we saw on so-called

 

19:40.312 --> 19:42.181

Liberation Day.

 

19:42.181 --> 19:45.617

Of course, there were offsets. Oil prices might have gone down while tariffs

 

19:45.617 --> 19:49.454

went up and it becomes a wash.

 

19:49.454 --> 19:53.058

That all has to be unwound.

 

19:53.058 --> 19:57.596

The consumer has paid, I don't know how the consumer is possibly going to

 

19:57.596 --> 20:01.567

get this clawed back. I think it's going to be mostly on

 

20:01.567 --> 20:05.971

the importer side. I'm sure there'll be some legal process

 

20:05.971 --> 20:08.540

where you can put in a claim at the end of the year.

 

20:08.540 --> 20:12.711

It'll be messy but it will be done.

 

20:12.711 --> 20:16.848

On the international front, of course, you're all in this with

 

20:16.848 --> 20:21.687

the USMCA soon but I think this really

 

20:21.687 --> 20:25.691

benefits the trading partners of the

 

20:25.691 --> 20:29.695

US that the president, and I hate to

 

20:29.695 --> 20:32.998

say it this way, but he's been a little bit declawed, in a way.

 

20:32.998 --> 20:37.402

He likes to shake things up, he likes to do this

 

20:37.402 --> 20:42.374

shock and awe stuff and he just pulls a number out of a hat and says, okay, 35%

 

20:42.374 --> 20:45.644

tariff on you. That's all gone.

 

20:45.644 --> 20:49.781

He can do 15% with the new rule to

 

20:49.781 --> 20:53.752

replace IEEPA but that's only for 150 days and after that it has to

 

20:53.752 --> 20:58.223

be approved by Congress. He has a lot less negotiating

 

20:58.223 --> 21:02.327

room. Of course, there's been many bilateral deals made with countries like

 

21:02.327 --> 21:06.265

Korea and the EU and all of a sudden now they might be like,

 

21:06.265 --> 21:10.302

okay, well, let's renegotiate this. That will be messy but

 

21:10.302 --> 21:14.306

I think for everyone dealing with the president I think this

 

21:14.306 --> 21:18.410

was good news because he can't do this crazy

 

21:18.410 --> 21:21.346

stuff where he just grabs something just to shock everyone.

 

21:21.346 --> 21:25.450

The guardrails are a lot more

 

21:25.450 --> 21:29.121

narrow now and he's limited in what he can do.

 

21:29.121 --> 21:35.127

What about in negotiating a trade deal?

 

21:35.127 --> 21:39.364

Let me just add to that. The reason this is

 

21:39.364 --> 21:43.402

not as big a deal now, this would have been

 

21:43.402 --> 21:47.506

a huge deal eight months ago if it happened in May or April

 

21:47.506 --> 21:51.610

or June with the tariff tantrum still fresh in

 

21:51.610 --> 21:54.046

the rear-view mirror.

 

21:54.046 --> 21:58.550

All the really serious, crazy tariff stuff that

 

21:58.550 --> 22:02.721

the president was rolling out back then, they've already walked

 

22:02.721 --> 22:06.992

back from. The tariff story never

 

22:06.992 --> 22:09.928

became the big story that it could have been.

 

22:09.928 --> 22:13.999

I mean, it is big, especially big for Canada and Mexico, but he already

 

22:13.999 --> 22:18.637

walked back  from a lot the crazier stuff.

 

22:18.637 --> 22:22.574

In that sense I think this is not as big

 

22:22.574 --> 22:25.577

of a deal as it could've been.

 

22:25.577 --> 22:29.448

The biggest one with China, the president has no leverage anyway because China

 

22:29.448 --> 22:33.385

has all the rare earth so that one was already kind of

 

22:33.385 --> 22:37.422

gone away. That's why I think this doesn't have quite

 

22:37.422 --> 22:41.827

the impact that maybe we thought it would have had if it happened sooner.

 

22:41.827 --> 22:46.331

That's really interesting and I'll say good to hear.

 

22:46.331 --> 22:51.002

When you think about the question marks that hang around

 

22:51.002 --> 22:55.307

unfunded tax cuts, is any of that real?

 

22:55.307 --> 22:58.910

For instance, the One Big Beautiful Bill was passed in the summer, this is

 

22:58.910 --> 23:01.713

after the tariff announcements.

 

23:01.713 --> 23:04.383

As you say, some of them have been rolled back but, presumably, if you're

 

23:04.383 --> 23:07.719

paying down debt you have a little more confidence in making some tax cuts

 

23:07.719 --> 23:09.521

elsewhere.

 

23:09.521 --> 23:14.893

Is there any Liz Truss moments in here or we just don't worry about?

 

23:14.893 --> 23:16.728

I don't think so.

 

23:16.728 --> 23:21.133

Again, if the tariffs were at 35%

 

23:21.133 --> 23:25.137

this would be a much bigger deal but the

 

23:25.137 --> 23:29.074

effective tariff rate is 12, it's going to go down a little

 

23:29.074 --> 23:32.911

bit, but it never became the thing that it could have become.

 

23:32.911 --> 23:38.450

As you said, it was quickly overshadowed by the

 

23:38.450 --> 23:41.186

One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the whole AI story.

 

23:41.186 --> 23:45.090

One of the things to remember is these things usually

 

23:45.090 --> 23:49.060

don't happen in isolation. Sometimes they do but it's sort of the

 

23:49.060 --> 23:52.297

old caveat all else being equal.

 

23:52.297 --> 23:56.668

Certainly, nothing else is equal these days.

 

23:56.668 --> 24:00.639

I think in the greater scheme of things

 

24:00.639 --> 24:03.141

it complicates things a little bit.

 

24:03.141 --> 24:07.112

Again, the hundreds of billions earned in tariffs,

 

24:07.112 --> 24:11.049

those have to be paid back so that maybe add

 

24:11.049 --> 24:15.086

to the deficit. There are other things going on that I think are more

 

24:15.086 --> 24:17.522

important. One of them is the Fed.

 

24:17.522 --> 24:22.661

If the new Fed under, presumably, Kevin Warsh,

 

24:22.661 --> 24:27.866

if that Fed is going to work more closely with Scott Bessent, sort

 

24:27.866 --> 24:31.870

of in a new Treasury Fed Accord type of structure,

 

24:31.870 --> 24:36.074

what does that mean? Will that make the debt easier to handle

 

24:36.074 --> 24:40.378

because you have better coordination? This

 

24:40.378 --> 24:44.483

is like a four-dimensional game of chess here

 

24:44.483 --> 24:46.952

and tariffs is only one of the dimensions.

 

24:46.952 --> 24:51.389

Scott Bessent was very visible on Friday and over the weekend.

 

24:51.389 --> 24:55.494

I remember we used to say when big problems happen enter Scott

 

24:55.494 --> 24:59.464

Bessent from sort of the backstage and there he was.

 

24:59.464 --> 25:03.401

He really is the giant in the room.

 

25:03.401 --> 25:06.505

The man's got an enormous amount of gravitas.

 

25:06.505 --> 25:10.909

We used to have a saying, and we still do, don't fight the Fed.

 

25:10.909 --> 25:14.880

When I look at bond yields at 4.1%

 

25:14.880 --> 25:19.084

and the dollar steady, even though we have this ballooning debt

 

25:19.084 --> 25:22.988

problem, I think the mantra now is don't short Scott Bessent.

 

25:22.988 --> 25:26.992

He will figure out a way to make this

 

25:26.992 --> 25:29.995

work, especially if he has an ally at the Fed.

 

25:29.995 --> 25:34.032

They can steepen the yield curve, actually, let's pull up slide 16

 

25:34.032 --> 25:38.703

here, they can steep in the yield curves by cutting rates to 3%

 

25:38.703 --> 25:43.041

and then deregulate the banks by making it

 

25:43.041 --> 25:46.311

more attractive for banks to own Treasuries.

 

25:46.311 --> 25:48.046

I think that is the blueprint.

 

25:48.046 --> 25:52.217

You're going to have the Treasury and the Fed work

 

25:52.217 --> 25:56.721

more closely together, hopefully not at the price of

 

25:56.721 --> 25:59.357

independence because then the markets will respond.

 

25:59.357 --> 26:02.460

That would be a Liz Truss type of moment.

 

26:02.460 --> 26:06.631

For now, if you look at the Treasury holdings of Treasuries and the Fed's

 

26:06.631 --> 26:10.769

holding, and you look to the left of the vertical line, prior to

 

26:10.769 --> 26:14.940

the financial crisis banks would always own more

 

26:14.940 --> 26:18.910

Treasuries than the Fed because the Fed at that point didn't use its balance

 

26:18.910 --> 26:23.048

sheet as, you know, some would say a weapon but as a tool, let's

 

26:23.048 --> 26:26.985

put it that way. Since the dawn of the

 

26:26.985 --> 26:30.956

QE era the Fed has been a much

 

26:30.956 --> 26:34.259

bigger force as a player in the financial markets.

 

26:34.259 --> 26:38.396

A lot of people don't like that because they think that compounds

 

26:38.396 --> 26:42.133

the wealth inequality. Who owns financial assets?

 

26:42.133 --> 26:45.670

It tends to be the wealthier people.

 

26:45.670 --> 26:49.941

If the central bank owns those assets at the expense of the commercial banks

 

26:49.941 --> 26:54.980

who could multiply those reserves into loans

 

26:54.980 --> 26:58.650

that becomes then the story that Scott Bessent has been talking about which is

 

26:58.650 --> 27:01.086

the Wall Street versus Main Street.

 

27:01.086 --> 27:05.991

That's where the theme is coming from in terms of the Fed privatizing

 

27:05.991 --> 27:07.592

its balance sheet.

 

27:07.592 --> 27:13.198

In other words, rather than the Fed owning the Treasuries, and Kevin

 

27:13.198 --> 27:17.168

Warsh is a known critic of the Fed's using its balance

 

27:17.168 --> 27:21.373

sheets, if the Fed steepens the curve, deregulates

 

27:21.373 --> 27:25.343

the banks and makes the banks, basically, swell up

 

27:25.343 --> 27:29.180

their balance sheets with Treasuries rather than the Fed that would be the

 

27:29.180 --> 27:33.284

privatization of the balance sheet. Maybe that's the way to get out

 

27:33.284 --> 27:37.055

of a debt trap because then the commercial banks are buying the Treasuries, and

 

27:37.055 --> 27:39.224

they're getting paid for it because of the steep yield curve.

 

27:39.224 --> 27:43.194

Remember, we were talking about this very thing

 

27:43.194 --> 27:47.165

six years ago when we first started the show that that's

 

27:47.165 --> 27:50.969

exactly what happened during World War II when we had the financial repression

 

27:50.969 --> 27:54.939

back then. It looked different but it was the same idea.

 

27:54.939 --> 27:57.409

I think that is the blueprint going forward.

 

27:57.409 --> 28:01.346

It'll be a balancing act because if Bessent

 

28:01.346 --> 28:05.450

and Warsh overdo it the dollar will take a

 

28:05.450 --> 28:09.587

hit, just like the yen did and just like the pound has in the past, so it'll

 

28:09.587 --> 28:13.525

be a careful balancing act to get this right but I

 

28:13.525 --> 28:15.360

think that is where we're going.

 

28:15.360 --> 28:19.264

That is so important for everyone to know, and that you said it six years ago.

 

28:19.264 --> 28:23.268

Maybe someone in the administration was listening to your discussions back

 

28:23.268 --> 28:25.070

then. That was in the pandemic.

 

28:25.070 --> 28:27.739

There's a question on the consumer, how it's holding up.

 

28:27.739 --> 28:30.275

I want to just quickly get to Bitcoin. Do you think we can do both?

 

28:30.275 --> 28:32.977

How do you think the consumer is? We've got some durable goods numbers out this

 

28:32.977 --> 28:36.514

morning, for instance, but just quickly.

 

28:36.514 --> 28:39.217

I think the consumer is fine.

 

28:39.217 --> 28:41.453

The economy is fully employed.

 

28:41.453 --> 28:45.657

The unemployment rate is 4.1%, people

 

28:45.657 --> 28:50.929

have jobs, their wages are generally keeping up or even exceeding inflation.

 

28:50.929 --> 28:55.734

Consumer debt levels for the most part are not onerous.

 

28:55.734 --> 28:57.936

I think the consumer is fine.

 

28:57.936 --> 29:01.906

I'm glad you asked about Bitcoin because

 

29:01.906 --> 29:07.512

Bitcoin is fascinating. I have a new indicator, page 22, Bitcoin

 

29:07.512 --> 29:12.050

is sort of hovering around what I even last October or

 

29:12.050 --> 29:16.521

November said was going to be the support level around 60,

 

29:16.521 --> 29:20.291

65,000. It's sitting there right now.

 

29:20.291 --> 29:24.295

It could go lower, of course, but if you look at that orange line, that curved

 

29:24.295 --> 29:27.565

line, that is the Power Law support line.

 

29:27.565 --> 29:31.603

Around 60,

 

29:31.603 --> 29:35.573

65,000 or so I think is that line in the

 

29:35.573 --> 29:40.011

sand that if we go much below it the Power Law will be broken and that would be

 

29:40.011 --> 29:43.915

really, really bad for Bitcoin but assuming we hold.

 

29:43.915 --> 29:47.652

What I find interesting is that, of course, we all know about gold and silver

 

29:47.652 --> 29:51.623

and what they've done. In the bottom panel I show the gold to

 

29:51.623 --> 29:55.860

silver ratio in the blue and the gold to Bitcoin ratio in the

 

29:55.860 --> 29:59.931

orange. Gold has now outperformed Bitcoin by so much

 

29:59.931 --> 30:04.102

that in the past three times it was near

 

30:04.102 --> 30:06.471

a low for Bitcoin.

 

30:06.471 --> 30:10.508

I do think that Bitcoin is trying to find its support.

 

30:10.508 --> 30:14.479

We might go below it but this is to me a really

 

30:14.479 --> 30:19.651

interesting place that if you're not in to maybe start looking.

 

30:19.651 --> 30:22.987

Absolutely fascinating to see where it is and where support might be, or even

 

30:22.987 --> 30:25.223

slightly below. Jurrien Timmer, welcome back.

 

30:25.223 --> 30:27.358

We are delighted to see you again.

 

30:27.358 --> 30:30.195

Thank you and look forward to seeing you in the days ahead.

 

30:30.195 --> 30:31.930

All the best.

 

30:31.930 --> 30:33.565

Great. Thank you very much. Have a great week.

 

30:33.565 --> 30:36.201

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