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

Start your week with leading analysis in your corner. Join Jurrien Timmer, Fidelity’s Director of Global Macro, to better understand what’s moving the markets around the world and to be better prepared for what may be next.

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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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I wanted to share that here at Fidelity, we value your opinion.

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And don't forget to listen to Fidelity Connects, the Upside, and French

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DialoguesFidelity podcasts available on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever

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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

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tomorrow, and per tradition in the first

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row are the Supreme Court justices.

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

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

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Anyway, the market was expecting this.

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I think the betting markets were 75% that

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IEEPA would be seen as unconstitutional

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because Congress needs to be part of this.

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For the market it wasn't a big surprise.

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

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

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In that sense it's not a surprise.

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

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of billions that came in from the tariffs.

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

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those hundreds of billions are going to be reclaimed.

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

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lawsuits, or some sort of legal process where

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companies who have imported stuff from overseas,

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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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