Podcasts about equities

Our Head of Corporate Credit Research explains why the legal confusion over U.S. tariffs plus the pending U.S. budget bill equals a revived focus on interest rates for investors.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Head of Corporate Credit Research at Morgan Stanley.Today I'm going to revisit a theme that was topical in January and has become so again. How much of a problem are higher interest rates?It's Friday, May 30th at 2pm in London.If it wasn't so serious, it might be a little funny. This year, markets fell quickly as the U.S. imposed tariffs. And then markets rose quickly as many of those same tariffs were paused or reversed. So, what's next?Many tariffs are technically just paused and so are scheduled to resume; and overall tariff rates, even after recent reductions towards China, are still historically high. The economic data that would really reflect the impact of recent events, well, it simply hasn't been reported yet. In short, there is still significant uncertainty around the near-term path for U.S. growth. But for all of our tariff weary listeners, let's pretend for a moment that tariffs are now on the back burner. And if that's the case, interest rates are coming back into focus.First, lower tariffs could mean stronger growth and thus higher interest rates, all else equal. But also importantly, current budget proposals in the U.S. Congress significantly increase government borrowing, which could also raise interest rates. If current proposals were to become permanent. for example, they could add an additional [$]15 trillion to the national debt over the next 30 years, over and above what was expected to happen per analysis from Yale University.Recall that prior to tariffs dominating the market conversation, it was this issue of interest rates and government borrowing that had the market's attention in January. And then, as today, it's this 30-year perspective that is under the most scrutiny. U.S. 30-year government bond yields briefly touched 5 percent on January 14th and returned there quite recently.This represents some of the highest yields for long-term U.S. borrowing seen in the last two decades. Those higher yields represent higher costs that must ultimately be borne by the U.S. government, but they also represent a yardstick against which all other investments are measured. If you can earn 5 percent per year long term in a safe U.S. government bond, how does that impact the return you require to invest in something riskier over that long run – from equities to an office building.I think some numbers here are also quite useful. Investing $10,000 today at 5 percent would leave you with about $43,000 in 30 years. And so that is the hurdle rate against which all long-term investments or now being measured.Of course, many other factors can impact the performance of those other assets. U.S. stocks, in fairness, have returned well over 5 percent over a long period of time. But one winner in our view will be intermediate and longer-term investment grade bonds. With high yields on these instruments, we think there will be healthy demand. At the same time, those same high yields representing higher costs for companies to borrow over the long term may mean we see less supply.Thank you as always, for your time. If you find Thoughts on the Market useful, let us know by leaving a review wherever you listen. And tell a friend or colleague about us today.

After the federal court's ruling against Trump's reciprocal tariffs, and an appeals court's temporary stay of that ruling, our analysts Michael Zezas and Michael Gapen discuss how the administration could retain the tariffs and what this means for the U.S. economy.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Michael Zezas: Welcome to the Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Morgan Stanley's Global Head of Fixed Income Research and Public Policy Strategy.Michael Gapen: And I'm Michael Gapen, Chief U.S. Economist.Today, the latest on President Trump's tariffs.It's Thursday, May 29th at 5pm in New York.So, Mike, on Wednesday night, the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down President Trump's reciprocal tariffs. This ruling certainly seems like a fresh roadblock for the administration.Michael Zezas: Yeah, that's right. But a quick word of caution. That doesn't mean we're supposed to conclude that the recent tariff hikes are a thing of the past. I think investors need to be aware that there's many plausible paths to keeping these tariffs exactly where they are right now.Michael Zezas: First, while the administration is appealing this decision, the tariffs can stay in place. But even if courts ultimately rule against the Trump administration, there are other types of legal authorities that they can bring to bear to make sure that the tariff levels that are currently applied endure. So, what the court said the administration had done improperly was levy tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).And there's been active debate all along amongst legal scholars about if this was the right law to justify those tariff levies. And so, there's always the possibility of court challenges. But what the administration could do, if the courts continue to uphold the lower court's ruling, is basically leverage other legal authorities to continue these tariffs.They could use Section 122 as a temporary authority to levy the 10 percent tariffs that were part of this kind of global tariff, following the reciprocal trade announcement. They also could use the existing Section 301 authority that was used to create tariffs on China in 2018 and 2019, and extend that across of all China imports; and therefore, fill in the gap that would be lost by not being able to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to tariff some of China's imports.So bottom line, there's lots of different legal paths to keep tariffs where they are across the set of goods that they're already applied to.Michael Gapen: So, I think that makes a lot of sense. And with all that said, where do you think we stand right now with tariffs?Michael Zezas: So, if the court ruling were to stand then the 10 percent tariffs on all imports that the U.S. is currently levying, that would have to go away. The 30 percent tariffs on roughly half of China imports, that would've to go away. And the 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico around fentanyl, that would have to go away as well.What you'd be left with effectively is anything levied under section 232 or 301. So that's basically steel, aluminum, automobile tariffs. And tariffs on the roughly half of China imports that were started in 2018 and 2019. But as we said earlier, there's lots of different ways that the authority can be brought to bear to make sure that that 10 percent import tariff globally is continued as well as the incremental tariffs on China.But Michael, turning to you on the U.S. economy, what's your reaction to the court's ruling? It seems like we're just going to have a continuation of existing tariff policy, but is there something else that investors need to consider here?Michael Gapen: Well, I'm not a trade lawyer. I'm not entirely surprised by the ruling. It did seem to exceed what I'll call the general parameters of the law, and it wasn't what we – as a research group and a research team – were thinking was the most likely path for tariffs coming into the year, as you mentioned. And as we, as a group wrote, we thought that they would rely mainly on section 301 and 232 authority, which would mean tariffs would ramp up much more slowly. And that's what we had put into our original outlook coming into the year.We didn't have the effective tariff rate reaching 8 to 9 percent until around the middle of 2026. So, it reflected the fact that it would take effort and time for the administration to put its plans on tariffs in into place. So, I think this decision kind of shifts our views back in that direction. And by that I mean, we originally thought most of 2025 would be about getting the tariff structure in place. And therefore, the effects of tariffs would be hitting the economy mainly in 2026.We obviously revise things where tariffs would weigh on activity in 2025 and postpone Fed cuts into 2026. So, I think what it does for the moment is maybe tilts risks back in the other direction. But as you say, it's just a matter of time that there appears to be enough legal authority here for the administration to implement their desires on trade policy and tariff policy. So, I'm not sure this changes a lot in terms of where we think the economy's going. So, I'm not entirely surprised by the decision, but I'm not sure that the decision means a lot for how we think about the U.S. economy.Michael Zezas: Got it. So, the upshot there is – really no change from your perspective on the outlook for growth, for inflation or for Fed policy. Is that fair?Michael Gapen: That's right. So, it's still a slow growth, sticky inflation, patient Fed. It's just we're kind of moving around when that materializes. We pulled it into 2025 given the abrupt increase in in tariffs and the use of the IEEPA authority. And now it probably would come later if the lower court ruling stands.Michael Zezas: Right. So, sticking with the Fed. Several Fed speakers took to the airwaves last week, and it sounds like the Fed is still waiting for some of these public policy changes to have an effect on the real economy before they react. Is that a fair way to characterize it? And what are you watching at this point in terms of what determines your expectations for the Fed's policy path from here?Michael Gapen: Yeah, that's right. And I think, given that the appeals court has allowed the tariffs to stay in place as they review the lower court, the trade court's ruling, I think the Fed right now would say: Okay, status quo, nothing has changed.So, what does that mean? And what the Fed speakers said last week, and it also appeared in the minutes, is that the Fed expects that tariffs will do two things with respect to the Fed's mandate. It'll push inflation higher and puts risks around unemployment higher, right? So, the Fed is offsides, or likely to be offsides on both sides of its mandate.So, what Fed speakers have been saying is, well, when this happens, we will react to whichever side of the mandate we're furthest from our target. And their forecasts seem to say and are pretty consistent with ours, that the Fed expects inflation to rise first, but the labor market to soften later. So, what that means for our expectations for the Fed's policy path is they're likely to be on hold as they evaluate that inflation shock.And we'll keep the policy rate where it is to ensure that inflation expectations are stable. And then as the economy moderates and the labor market softens, then they can turn to cuts. But we don't think that happens until 2026. So, I don't think the ruling yesterday and the appeal process initiated today changes that.For now, the tariffs are still in place. The Fed's message is it's going to take us at least until probably September, if not later, to figure out which way we should move. Moving later and right is preferable for them than moving earlier and wrong.Michael Zezas: Got it. So bottom line, from our perspective, this court case was a big deal. However, because the administration has a lot of options to keep tariffs going in the direction that they want, not too much has really changed with our expectations for the outlook for either the tariff path and it's not going to fix to the economy.Michael Gapen: That's right. That's, I think what we know today. And we'll have to see how things evolve.Michael Zezas: Yep. They seem to be evolving every day. Mike, thanks for speaking with me.Michael Gapen: Thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure. And thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

APAC stocks were subdued heading into month-end as participants digested a slew of data and amid trade uncertainty; Euro Stoxx 50 futures indicate a flat open.DXY little moved after US President Trump-Fed Chair Powell meeting, JPY benefits after mostly-firmer than expected Tokyo CPI.US appeals court temporarily reinstated US President Trump's tariffs during the appeal and said it needs time to consider filings.US President Trump's advisers are considering a stopgap tariff regime if the court appeal against the tariff block fails, while the effort that the Trump administration is considering would allow tariffs of up to 15% for 100 days, according to WSJ.US Treasury Secretary Bessent said the China talks are a bit stalled but believes they will have more talks in a few weeks and noted the EU's deal is in motion.Germany is reportedly eyeing a 10% digital tax on global tech giants like Meta (META) and Google (GOOGL), according to FT.Looking ahead, German Retail Sales, Spanish, German & Italian Inflation, US PCE (Apr), Canadian GDP, S&P Credit Review on France, DBRS on Germany & Spain, Speakers including Fed's Logan, Bostic & Daly.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

US President Trump's advisers are considering a stopgap tariff regime if the court appeal against the tariff block fails, while the effort that the Trump administration is considering would allow tariffs of up to 15% for 100 days, according to WSJ.US Treasury Secretary Bessent said a couple of large deals are close. Furthermore, he said China talks are a bit stalled but believes they will have more talks in a few weeks and noted the EU's deal is in motion.European stocks opened with modest gains and have continued to build on that, whilst US equity futures are incrementally lower.DXY is firmer and towards session highs, JPY marginally benefits post-Tokyo CPI.USTs marginally lower/flat, two-way EGB action on prelim. inflation prints ahead of Germany's figure and US PCE.Crude is trading with modest gains given the risk tone and into weekend OPEC events, base metals move lower.Looking ahead, German Inflation, US PCE (Apr), Canadian GDP, S&P Credit Review on France, DBRS on Germany & Spain, Speakers including Fed's Logan, Bostic & Daly.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

APAC stocks were mostly higher with sentiment underpinned following NVIDIA's earnings and after the Manhattan-based Court of International Trade blocked President Trump's Liberation Day tariffs.NVIDIA (NVDA) shares rose 4.9% after hours following earnings which beat on top and bottom lines despite incurring a USD 4.5bln charge in Q1; Q2 revenue outlook 45.0bln (exp. 46.4bln).US President Trump ordered US chip designers to stop selling to China, according to FT; US halts exporting aircraft engine technology and chip software to China, according to NYT.FOMC Minutes stated participants agreed they were well positioned to wait for more clarity on the outlook.European equity futures indicate a higher cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures up 1.4% after the cash market closed with losses of 0.7% on Wednesday.Looking ahead, highlights include Spanish Retail Sales, Italian Industrial Sales, US GDP 2nd Estimate (Q1), Core PCE Prices (Q1), Jobless Claims, SARB Policy Announcement, Swiss & Scandinavian Holiday, Speakers including Fed's Barkin, Goolsbee, Kugler & Daly, BoE's Bailey & Breeden, Supply from Italy & US Earnings from Marvell, Costco, Dell, Gap, ULTA, Foot Locker, Best Buy & Kohl's.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Stocks boosted after NVIDIA's earnings and after the Manhattan-based Court of International Trade blocked President Trump's Liberation Day tariffs.NVIDIA (NVDA) shares +6% pre-market following earnings which beat on top and bottom lines despite incurring a USD 4.5bln charge in Q1; Q2 revenue outlook 45.0bln (exp. 46.4bln).US President Trump ordered US chip designers to stop selling to China, according to FT; US halts exporting aircraft engine technology and chip software to China, according to NYT.DXY firmer & havens broadly lag given the risk tone; USTs/XAU both in the red.Looking ahead, Highlights include US GDP 2nd Estimate (Q1), Core PCE Prices (Q1), Jobless Claims, SARB Policy Announcement, Swiss & Scandinavian Holiday, Speakers including Fed's Barkin, Goolsbee, Kugler & Daly, BoE's Bailey & Breeden, Supply from the US Earnings from Marvell, Costco, Dell, Gap, ULTA, Foot Locker, Best Buy & Kohl's.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Our Global Head of Fixed Income Research & Public Policy Strategy, Michael Zezas, shares the answers to clients' top U.S. policy questions from Morgan Stanley's Japan Investor Summit.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Michael Zezas: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Morgan Stanley's Global Head of Fixed Income Research & Public Policy Strategy. Today, takeaways from our Japan Investor Summit. It's Wednesday, May 28th at 10:30am in New York. Last week, I attended our Japan Investor Summit in Tokyo: Two full days of panels on key investment themes and one-on-one meetings with clients from all parts of the Morgan Stanley franchise. During the meeting, Morgan Stanley Research launched its mid year economics and market strategy outlooks. So needless to say there was a healthy dialogue on investment strategy over those 48 hours. And I want to share what were the most frequent questions I received and, of course, our answers to those questions. As you could guess, U.S. tariff policy was a key focus. Could tariffs re-escalate? Or was the worst behind us; and if so, could investors set aside their concerns about the U.S. economy? It's a complicated issue so accordingly our answer is nuanced. On the one hand, the current state of play is mostly aligned where we thought tariff policy would be by end of year. It's just arrived much earlier. Higher overall U.S. tariffs with a skew toward higher tariffs on China relative to the rest of world, as the U.S. has less common ground with them and thus greater challenges in reaching a trade agreement with China in a timely manner. So that might imply we've arrived at the end point. But we think that's too simple of a way for investors to think about it. First there's plenty of potential for escalation from current levels as part of ongoing negotiations. And even if it's only temporary it could affect markets. Second, and perhaps more importantly, even though the U.S. cutting tariffs on China from very high levels recently brought down the effective tariff rate, it's still considerably higher than where we started the year. So one's market outlook will still have to account for the pressures of tariffs, which our economists translate into slower growth and higher recession risk this year. Another key concern – U.S. fiscal policy, and whether the U.S. would be embarking on a path to smaller deficits, in line with campaign promises. Or if the tax and spending bill making its way through Congress would keep that from happening. For investors we think it's most important to focus on the next year, because what happens beyond that is highly speculative. And we do not expect deficits to come down in the next year. Extending expiring tax cuts, and extending some new ones, albeit with some spending offsets, should modestly expand the deficit next year in our estimates; and some further deficit expansion should come from other factors baked into the budget, like higher interest payments. It's understandable these two questions came up, because we do think the answers are key to the outlook for markets. In particular, they inform some of the stronger views in our markets' outlook. For example, slower relative U.S. growth and the related potential for foreign investors to increasingly prefer their portfolios reflect their local currency should keep the U.S. dollar weakening – a key call our team started this year with and now continues. Another example, the shape of the U.S. Treasury yield curve. Higher deficits and the uncertainty about inflation caused by tariffs should make for a steeper yield curve. So while we expect U.S. Treasury yields to fall, making for good returns for high grade bonds including corporate credit, the better returns might be in shorter maturities. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen. And if you like what you hear, tell a friend or a colleague about us today.

Laurence Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University and the founder of Maxifi.com — which helps investors bring economics into their financial planning decisions — says investors who have spent decades thinking the stock market rebounds from every dip and decline could be in for a different story with a coming recession, and he thinks they should be trying to lock in their standard of living rather than focusing on historic rates of return. To that end, he says he has cut his personal equity exposure from 60 percent of the portfolio to 20-25 percent. "I do see only downside risk from what's going on," Kotlikoff says. "Even if there is nothing changed on average, the uncertainty itself is enough to produce a recession and a big drop in the stock market." Ted Rossman discusses a recent Bankrate.com survey which showed that more than half of Americans say they will spend less on discretionary items like travel, dining out and live entertainment, but he also notes how plans to limit spending often fail to translate into action and reality. Plus, Chuck answers a listener's question about how to turn the portfolio of his younger self into something more age appropriate and mature.

European bourses opened mixed but now in the red, US futures also lower ahead of NVIDIA results.USD is fractionally extending on Tuesday's upside, Kiwi leads after RBNZ delivers a hawkish cut.40yr JGB auction weighs, awaiting US supply & FOMC Minutes.Energy markets await JMMC/OPEC+; Metals tread water.US President Trump says Canada joining the Golden Dome is free if they are the 51st State, adding "They are considering the offer!".Looking ahead, US Richmond Fed Index, FOMC Minutes, OPEC+/JMMC, Speakers including BoE's Pill, Supply from the US, Earnings from NVIDIA, Salesforce, Abercrombie & Macy's.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

APAC stocks mostly higher following the Wall St. strength, futures since off best awaiting NVIDIA earningsUS President Trump says Canada joining the Golden Dome is free if they are the 51st State, adding "They are considering the offer!"DXY continues to pick up, EUR/USD tests 1.13 to the downside & Cable lost 1.35, JPY choppyRBNZ cut as expected, but refrained from overtly dovish languageJGBs came under pressure after a somewhat mixed 40yr auction, USTs & EGBs also softCrude marginally firmer ahead of OPEC, gold indecisive, base peers lacklustreLooking ahead, highlights include German Unemployment Rate, ECB SCE, US Richmond Fed Index, FOMC Minutes, OPEC+/JMMC, Speakers including Fed's Williams, Kashkari & BoE's Pill, Supply from UK, Germany & US, Earnings from NVIDIA, Salesforce, Abercrombie & Macy's.Click for the Newsquawk Week Ahead.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Live from the Morgan Stanley Luxury Conference in Paris, our analysts Arunima Sinha and Eduoard Aubin discuss the economic and consumer trends shaping demand for luxury goods.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Arunima Sinha: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Arunima Sinha from Morgan Stanley's Global and U.S. Economics teams.Eduoard Aubin: And I'm Eduoard Aubin, Head of the Luxury Goods team.Arunima Sinha: This episode was recorded last week when we were at the annual Morgan Stanley Luxury Conference in Paris. In it, we bring you an overview of what we heard from companies and investors about the hottest trends in the luxury industry.It's Tuesday, May 27th at 8am in Paris.For several years now, the luxury industry has been riding a post pandemic boom. And the top luxury brands experience 80 percent or greater sales growth between 2019 and [20]24. So Ed, is this trend going to continue or has it started to moderate and why?Eduoard Aubin: No, it has already started to moderate clearly last year. So, the growth rates of some of the leading luxury good brands, you know, over the past, four or five years, was clearly double digit CAGR growth.What we've seen in 2024 – is the market, luxury goods market worldwide has already started to contract. It was very moderate, about 2-3 percent. But it's very unusual because over the past 30 years, the market has contracted only once or twice. So, it started last year already. But we think it's going to, you know, accelerate; the decline could be even a bit more significant this year to low to mid single digit.And there are a number as to – of reasons as to why the market has luxury goods market has moderated. First of all, there's been post-COVID; post pandemic. There's been a wallet shift away from ownership of goods to more spend on experiences such as travel, restaurants, dining out, et cetera.The other thing is that you had a lot of, you know, closets, which were full post the pandemic. People were at home, disposable income was high and there were certainly a lot of, you know, purchase, which was done during the pandemic. And then, and we'll talk about it in a second, there is also this view that maybe luxury good companies have increased prices maybe a bit touch excessively during the pandemic; and potentially pricing out the middle income consumer.Arunima Sinha: This is an incredible conference and we've been talking to a lot of corporates and we've been talking to a lot of investors. What are some of the key debates that you've been hearing about?Eduoard Aubin: So I mean, front and center, it's what's going on in terms of the – from a macro standpoint – in terms of the key, two key markets for the luxury good sector, which are China and the U.S., to put things in perspective, and we look at it on a nationality standpoint here rather than a geographic standpoint.The reason is that there is a lot of cross-border shopping, which is done when it comes to luxury. The Chinese nationals account for about a third of total demand, total spend on the luxury goods market, 32-33 percent. So, they are the number one nationality today, clearly. The number two is the Americans, which account for, who account for about 21-22 percent of the spend.So, combined that's more than 50 percent of the spend and certainly more than supposedly 50 percent of the growth over the next three to five years. So clearly a lot of focus on these two nationalities. What's going on in terms of the wealth effect in China and in the U.S.? What's going on in terms of the health of the middle-income consumer in China and in the U.S.?The other debate related to that is what's going on in terms of international travel? What we've heard from companies during the conference is that there are certainly less Americans now coming to Europe, in this quarter, in the second quarter, and this had been a key driver of the spend over the past few months partially related to the currency.There is also; there are also less Chinese going to Japan, which was also a key – a factor of growth for the industry. Chinese spend about 30 percent of their total spend outside of China, and Japan was the number one market in terms of spend for them in recent years ahead of Europe.And what we've seen and what we heard from the companies attending the conference is that these two nationalities are spending less abroad, which is why we think, the second quarter sales could be a bit under pressure more than in the first quarter.The other debate is about, you know, the middle-income consumers we talked about. Luxury brands have raised prices quite a bit. For some of them they doubled the sales price of the items during the pandemic. And again, there is a debate about the fact that they might have been pricing out the middle-income consumer. And obviously that has come at the time where the discretionary spend of the middle-income consumer, you know, the aspirational customer, has been under pressure.So, it's kind of a double whammy in terms of the propensity of this cohort to spend on luxury goods and for the sector to grow in the medium- to long-term, it cannot just rely on millionaires and billionaires. It has to increase; to recruit, from the middle class. That has been the one of the gross engines of this industry over the past 10, 20, 30 years.And so that's certainly one of the key debate is – when will the products become affordable again? The challenge for the luxury goods company is that you can; there is a cardinal rule in luxury. You can never lower your prices. So, what you can do is you can play a bit with the mix, or you can wait for the discretionary spend to increase and make your product more affordable.But obviously that takes some time. So, these are some of the key debates, you know, that have been discussed at the conference.So Arunima, let's shift our focus from macro to micro concerns. So, we've been talking a lot about the economic outlook, uncertainty around tariffs and currency markets on this podcast. Will these factors hurt luxury consumption?Arunima Sinha: So, this is great timing Ed, because we just published our economics outlooks the global, the U.S., and for other regions. And our basic view is that tariffs, both the levels, the uncertainty around them are going to weigh on growth around the world. They're going to weigh on U.S. consumers quite specifically because here now you have a couple of different ways that tariffs will matter.One, for the general consumer, it's going to be higher prices; so you drive up prices, you're going to drive down real spending. And so, we do have our real spending moderating across the forecast horizon. We go down almost a full two percentage points by the end of [20]25 relative to where we were in 2024. With respect to how we think about consumers spending on discretionary items, we think of labor income being an important factor. We think of wealth; supportive wealth effects and that you already mentioned. And then we also think about just how consumers are feeling uncertain about their prospects for the economy and so on.So, with respect to luxury consumption, we think that it is the last two factors, the supportive wealth effects and how uncertainty was playing out, that's going to matter. So, between 2020 and [20]24, the United States saw some of the largest increases in net worth for U.S. households. So, U.S. households saw $51 trillion in additional net worth being created over this period; that was more than what they saw over the prior decade.And from this 51 trillion pool, about 70 percent went to the top 20 percent of the income cohort, so that's $35 trillion. So, these guys were feeling very positively supported by wealth. And the other factor in this is that it was really tied to financial wealth because that's where we saw some of the largest increases as well.And so, how do we think it's going to weigh on luxury consumers? To the extent that we may not see these very large increases in wealth going forward, given where equity markets, the ride that they've seen over this past year, so far. If we don't have these very large increases in financial wealth, we may not have very large increases in planned consumption for this particular cohort.And so that's driving some of our forecast about the moderation and overall consumption, but it will also translate into just growth for luxury consumption. And the other aspect, of course is uncertainty. So, we do think that there's going to be some resolution of tariff uncertainty this year, but there are other factors in the U.S. that are weighing on policy uncertainty. So where is the fiscal bill going to go? How is immigration going to solve out? So, all of these factors are weighing on the consumer, and they may also be weighing very well on luxury consumption.Great talking with you Ed, we could all find little ways of incorporating luxury in our lives and this conference has really just been an incredible experience. So, thank you and thank you for taking the time to talk with me today.Eduoard Aubin: Great speaking with you, ArunimaArunima Sinha: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review when you'll listen and share with the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

APAC stocks traded mixed with price action contained amid a lack of major fresh catalysts and in the absence of a lead from Wall St.European equity futures indicate a slightly softer cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures down 0.2% after the cash market finished with gains of 1.3% on Monday.DXY is back above 99.00 and attempting to claw back yesterday's downside, EUR/USD is back on a 1.13 handle.US President Trump is said to be eyeing sanctions against Moscow this week, according to the WSJ.Looking ahead, highlights include German GfK, EZ Sentiment, French CPI, US Durable Goods & Consumer Confidence, NBH Policy. Announcement, ECB's Villeroy & Fed's Kashkari, Supply from Netherlands, Italy & US.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

The EU set to focus on critical sectors in a bid to avoid US tariffs, according to Bloomberg sources.Stocks in the green and generally at session highs; NQ +1.7%.USD attempts to atone for recent losses, JPY weighed on by a pullback in domestic yields.Bonds bid and yields slump on MOF sources, Gilts outperform on this & reports that the UK will be shifting to shorter-term borrowing in order to lower its interest bill.Crude uneventful ahead of OPEC+ whilst precious and base metals slip.Looking ahead, US Durable Goods & Consumer Confidence, NBH Policy Announcement, Supply from the US, Earnings from AutoZone.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

US President Trump announced a delay to the 50% tariff deadline on EU goods to July 9th.APAC stocks traded mixed as the initial uplift following Trump's announcement gradually waned.European equity futures indicate a higher cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures up 1.6% after the cash market closed with losses of 1.8% on Friday.DXY has started the week on the backfoot and has slipped below the 99 mark, EUR/USD is on a 1.14 handle, antipodeans outperform.Trump called Russian President Putin "crazy" after Russia launched the largest air attack on Ukraine in the war so far despite the sides conducting a three-day prisoner swap.Looking ahead, the only notable highlight on the calendar is ECB's Lagarde. UK & US markets are closed.The desk will run to 18:00BST/13:00EDT on Monday 26th May, at which point the service will close due to holiday closures. The service will then re-open later that evening at 22:00BST for the beginning of the Asia-Pacific session.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Global trade tensions have eased after a steadying in U.S. policy shifts, leading our CIO and Chief U.S. Equity Strategist Mike Wilson to make a more bullish case for the second half of 2025.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanley's CIO and Chief U.S. Equity Strategist. Today on the podcast, I will discuss recent developments on tariffs and interest rates, and how it affects our 12 month view for U.S. Equities.It's Friday, May 23rd at 9am in New York.So, let's get after it.The reduction in the headline tariff rate on China from 145 percent to 30 percent extended the rally in stocks last week and should help to support both corporate and consumer confidence. More importantly, the 90-day détente came at a critical juncture, in my view, as a few more weeks of what was essentially a trade embargo would have likely led to a recession.Equity market volatility also subsided considerably amid the decline in trade policy uncertainty. In fact, both measures peaked well before the deal with China came together and are now back below where they were pre-Liberation Day. To me, this means trade headwinds have likely peaked in rate of change terms and are unlikely to return to such levels again. This would fit with the capitulatory price action we saw in early April with the average stock in the S&P 500 experiencing a 30 percent drawdown. In short, while the lagging hard data is likely to come in softer over the next coming months, the equity market already priced it in April. In the event of a recession that still arrives, we think the April lows will still hold, assuming it's a mild one with manageable risk to credit and funding markets.As further support for stocks, earnings revisions breadth appears to have bottomed. This indicator has leading properties in terms of the direction of earnings forecasts and is an important gauge of corporate confidence, in our view. The combination of upside momentum in revision breadth and last week's deal with China has placed the S&P 500 firmly back in our original pre-Liberation Day first half range of 5500-6100. Having said that, we think continued upward progress in earnings revisions breadth into positive territory will be necessary to break through 6100 in the near term, given the stickiness of 10-year Treasury yields.Amidst these developments, we released our mid -year outlook earlier this week and updated our base, bear and bull case targets for the S&P 500. In short, we effectively pushed out the timing of our original 6500 price target for the end of this year to 12 months from today. This is mainly due to a less dovish Fed and therefore higher 10-year Treasury yields than our economists and rates strategists expected at the end of last year. We also trimmed our EPS forecasts modestly to adjust for higher than expected tariff rates, at least for now.Looking ahead, we are more bullish today than we were at the end of last year given the growth negative policy announcements are now behind us and the Fed's next move is likely to be multiple cuts. In short, the rate of change on earnings revisions breadth, interest rates and policy changes from the administration are all now pointing in a positive direction, the opposite of six months ago and why I was not bullish on the first half of this year.The near-term risk for U.S. equities remains very overbought conditions and interest rates. With the Fed on hold due to lingering inflation concerns and Moody's downgrade of U.S. Treasury debt last Friday, 10-year Treasury yields are back above 4.5 percent; the level where the correlation between equities and rates tends to move back into negative territory. Ultimately, we think the Treasury and Fed have tools they can and will use to manage this risk. However, in the short term, this is a potential catalyst for the S&P 500 to take a break and even lead to a 5 percent correction. We would look to add equity risk into such a correction should it materialize given our bullish 6-12-month view.Thanks for tuning in. I hope you found it informative and useful. Let us know what you think by leaving us a review; and if you find Thoughts on the Market worthwhile, tell a friend or colleague to try it out!

The latest price moves and insights with VanEck Portfolio Manager Pranav Kanade.To get the show every day, follow the podcast here.VanEck Portfolio Manager Pranav Kanade joins CoinDesk Live at the Avalanche Summit in London with a conversation on the unique dual-focus of the VanEck Digital Asset Alpha Fund on both tokens and public equities. Plus, the potential for stablecoins to disrupt the traditional banking system and insights into the evolving regulatory landscape.This content should not be construed or relied upon as investment advice. It is for entertainment and general information purposes.-This episode was hosted by Jennifer Sanasie and Sam Ewen. “Markets Daily” is produced by Jennifer Sanasie and edited by Victor Chen.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Reed Wommack shares his journey into Bitcoin, transitioning from a role at Swan Bitcoin to running Groundluxe, a company focused on grounding products. He discusses the evolving landscape of Bitcoin treasury companies, the risks and rewards associated with leveraging debt for investments, and the importance of a long-term perspective in navigating market cycles. Reed also emphasizes the potential for Bitcoin to dominate the equity market and the impact of capital gains tax on investment strategies. He encourages listeners to consider their risk profiles when adopting aggressive investment strategies.Takeaways

The latest price moves and insights with VanEck Portfolio Manager Pranav Kanade.To get the show every day, follow the podcast here.VanEck Portfolio Manager Pranav Kanade joins CoinDesk Live at the Avalanche Summit in London with a conversation on the unique dual-focus of the VanEck Digital Asset Alpha Fund on both tokens and public equities. Plus, the potential for stablecoins to disrupt the traditional banking system and insights into the evolving regulatory landscape.This content should not be construed or relied upon as investment advice. It is for entertainment and general information purposes.-This episode was hosted by Jennifer Sanasie and Sam Ewen. “Markets Daily” is produced by Jennifer Sanasie and edited by Victor Chen.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

US President Trump is pushing the EU to cut tariffs or face extra duties with US negotiators to tell Brussels they expect unilateral concessions, according to FT.European and US equity futures are trading mixed and generally reside on either side of the unchanged mark.USD shunned once again after Thursday's attempted bounce; JPY benefits from hot core inflation data overnight; GBP little moved to firmer-than-expected Retail Sales.Bonds are higher as USTs look to claw back recent losses; some downside in Bunds following German GDP but proved fleeting.Crude remains subdued whilst metals benefit from the softer Dollar ahead of US-Iran talks at 12:00 BST / 07:00 EDT.Looking ahead, Canadian Retail Sales, Speakers including ECB's Schnabel, BoE's Pill, Fed's Musalem & Cook.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

APAC stocks were mostly in the green albeit with gains in the region capped following the indecisive performance stateside.US President Trump and Chinese President Xi have not spoken since the Geneva agreement, according to CNN.US President Trump is pushing the EU to cut tariffs or face extra duties with US negotiators to tell Brussels they expect unilateral concessions, according to FT.European equity futures indicate a mildly positive cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures up 0.2% after the cash market closed with losses of 0.6% on Thursday.Looking ahead, highlights include German GDP, UK Retail Sales, EZ Negotiated Wage Rates, Canadian Retail Sales, Speakers including ECB's Lane & Schnabel, BoE's Pill, Fed's Musalem & Cook.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Our analysts Serena Tang and Seth Carpenter discuss Morgan Stanley's out-of-consensus view on U.S. exceptionalism, and how investors should position their portfolios given the current market uncertainty.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Seth: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley's Global Chief Economist.Serena: And I'm Serena Tang, Morgan Stanley's, Chief Global Cross-Asset Strategist.Seth: Today, we're going to pick up the conversation where we left it off, talking about our mid-year outlook; but this time I get to ask Serena the questions.It's Thursday, May 22nd at 10am in New York.Serena, we're back for part two of this podcast. Let's jump in where we left off. We've seen a lot of policy surprise in the last six months. We've had a big sell off in the beginning of April, in part inspired by all of this uncertainty.What are you telling clients? What do you think investors should be doing? How should they be positioning their portfolios in the current circumstances?Serena: So, we are recommending going overweight in U.S. equities and going overweight in core fixed income like U.S. treasuries and like investment grade corporate credit. And we have a very strong preference for U.S. over rest of the world assets, except the dollar. Now I think for us, the main message is that you have global growth slowing, which is what you talked about yesterday.But you know, risky assets can look past the low growth and do well, while treasuries can look forward to the many Fed cuts you guys are expecting in 2026 and rally. But if I look at valuations that does suggest equities and credit have completely, almost priced out, growth slowdown odds. Meaning that I think there is still some downside and we'd recommend quality across the board.Seth: In your judgment then, looking around the world at all the different asset classes, how well, or perhaps how poorly, are those asset classes priced for the sort of macro views that we were just discussing?Serena: So I think the market that's probably least priced for the slowing economy that you and your team have been forecasting is really in the government bond space. I think the prospect of a lot more Fed cuts than what is currently priced into the market will lower government bond yields, particularly starting in 2026.As you know, our rates team has a target of 3.45 percent for U.S. Treasury 10-year yields, and 2.6 percent for U.S. Treasury two-year yields. Meaning that we also get a steeper curve by this time next year. And this translates to more than 10 percent of total returns for U.S. Treasuries – very attractive; in large part because the markets aren't priced for the Fed scenario that you and your team are forecasting.Seth: Let me, then push a little bit on one of the things that I've been talking to clients about, or at least been asked about, which is the dollar. The role of the dollar? U.S. exceptionalism? Is it real?Serena: Yeah that's a great question because I think this is where we are the most out of consensus. If you've noticed, all of our views right now really line up as us being pretty constructive on U.S. dollar assets. Like at a time when everyone's still really debating the end of U.S. exceptionalism. And we really push back against the idea that foreign investors would or should abandon U.S. assets significantly.There are very few alternatives to U.S. dollar assets right now. I mean, like if you look at investible stock market cap, U.S. is nearly five times the size of the next biggest market, which is Europe. And in the fixed income side of things, more than half of liquid high grade fixed income paper is in U.S. dollars.Now, even if there were significant outflows from U.S. dollar assets, there are very few places that money can find a haven, safe or otherwise. This is not to say there won't ever be any other alternatives to U.S. dollar assets in the future. But that shift in market size takes time, which means that TINA -- there is no alternative -- remains a theme for now.Seth: That view on the dollar weakening from here, it's baked into my team's economic forecast. It's baked into the strategy team's forecast across research. So then let me take it one step forward. What does all this mean about portfolio preferences, your recommendation for clients when when they're investing in assets that are not U.S. dollar denominated.Serena: You are right. I mean, if there's one U.S. asset that we just like, it's the U.S. dollar. So, you know, over the next 12 months we expect key factors, which drove the dollar strength. You know, positive growth, yield differentials relative to other G10 economies. Those factors will fade substantially. And we also think because of the political uncertainty in the U.S. currency hedging ratios on exposure to U.S. assets may increase, which could further pressure the U.S. dollar. So, our FX team sees euro/dollar at 1.25 and dollar/yen at 1.30 by the second quarter of 2026.Which means that we're really recommending non-U.S. dollar investors to buy U.S. stocks and fixed income on an FX hedge basis.Seth: If we look forward but focus just on the next, call it three to six months; what asset classes, or if you want, what regions around the world are best positioned, and what would you say to investors?Serena: So, you're right. I think there is a big difference between what we like over the next three to six months versus what we like over the next 12 months. Because if I look at U.S. equities and U.S. government bonds, both of which we're overweight on most of the gains, probably won't happen until the first half of next year because you have to have U.S. equities really feeling the tailwind of dollar weakness. And you need to have U.S. government bond investors to grow more confident that we will get all of those Fed cuts next year.What we do like over the next three to six months and feel pretty highly convicted on is really U.S. investment grade corporate credit, which we think can, you know, do well in the second half of this year and do well in the first half of next year.Seth: But then let's take a step back [be]cause I think investors around the world are wrestling with a lot of the same issues. They're talking to, you know, strategists like us at lots of different places. What would you say are our most out of consensus views right now?Serena: I think we're pretty out of consensus on our preference for U.S. and U.S. dollar assets. As I mentioned, there was still a huge debate on the end of U.S. exceptionalism. Now the other place where I think it's notable is we're much more bullish on U.S. treasuries than what's being priced into markets and where consensus is. And I think that's really been driven by your economics team being much more convicted on many Fed cuts in 2026.And the last thing I would point out here is, again, we're more bearish than consensus on the dollar. If I look at euro/dollar, if I look at dollar/yen, the kind of appreciation we're forecasting for at around through 10 percent, is higher than I think what most investors are expecting at the moment.Now back to Seth. Given all of the uncertainty around U.S. fiscal, trade, and industrial policy, what indicators are you watching to assess whether global growth is becoming more fragile or more resilient?Seth: Yeah, it's a great question. It's always difficult to monitor in real time how things are going, especially with these sorts of shocks. We are looking at a bunch of the shipping data to see how trade flows are going. There was clearly some front-running into the United States of imports to try to get ahead of tariffs. There's got to be some payback for that. I think the question becomes where do we settle in when it comes to trade?I'm going to be looking in the U.S. at the labor market to see signs of reduced demand for labor. But also try to pay attention to what's going on with the supply of labor from immigration restriction. And then there are all the normal indicators about spending, especially consumer spending. Consumer spending tends to drive a lot of the big developed market economies around the world and how well that holds up or doesn't. That's going to be key to the overall outlook.Serena: Thank you so much, Seth. Thanks for taking the time to talk.Seth: Serena, I could talk to you all day.Serena: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

US President Trump's Tax/Spending bill is currently being debated in the US House (passed the Rules Committee overnight), the debate has formally hit the two-hour minimum as of the time of publication; vote time TBC.European stocks trade lower following the Wall Street and APAC losses; US equity futures attempt to recover recent losses.USD mixed vs. peers, EUR and GBP digest PMI metrics, JPY narrowly leads.USTs a little firmer finding some reprieve following 20yr weakness, Bunds choppy following EZ PMIs.Crude pressured amid reports of further OPEC+ output hikes, Spot gold a little lower.Bitcoin extended on gains and printed a fresh all-time high of above the USD 111k level; Texas House approved the bill to create a Bitcoin reserve.Looking ahead, US Flash PMIs, Jobless Claims, Canadian Producer Prices, NZ Retail Sales, ECB Minutes. Speakers including RBA's Hauser, BoE's Breeden, Dhingra & Pill, ECB's Elderson & de Guindos, BoC's Gravelle, Fed's Barkin & Williams, Supply from the US.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

APAC stocks were on the back foot following the sell-off on Wall St where stocks, treasuries and the dollar were pressured amid deficit concerns and a weak 20-year auction.US President Trump said he was feeling very good about the bill in Congress; US House Speaker Johnson said on Wednesday that they were yet to decide on a vote on the tax bill that night or on Thursday but added that the Trump tax bill is moving forward.Bitcoin extended on gains and printed a fresh all-time high of above the USD 111k level; Texas House approved the bill to create a Bitcoin reserve.European equity futures indicate a lower cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures down 0.8% after the cash market closed flat on Wednesday.Looking ahead, highlights include EZ, UK, US Flash PMIs, German Ifo, US Jobless Claims, Canadian Producer Prices, NZ Retail Sales, ECB Minutes, Speakers including RBA's Hauser, BoE's Breeden, Dhingra & Pill, ECB's Elderson & de Guindos, BoC's Gravelle, Fed's Barkin & Williams, Supply from Spain, France & US.Earnings from BT, British Land, easyJet, QinetiQ, Tate & Lyle, ConvaTec, Intertek, Generali, PKN Orlen, Allegro, Julius Baer, Galenica, Autodesk, Ross & Analog Devices.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Daniel discusses why the Hang Seng Index is primed for a pullback, and why we would be buying the dip.Speaker: - Daniel Lam, Head of Equity Strategy, Standard Chartered BankFor more of our latest market insights, visit Market views on-the-go or subscribe to Standard Chartered Wealth Insights on YouTube.

Our analysts Seth Carpenter and Serena Tang discuss why they believe the global economy is set to slow meaningfully in the second half of 2025.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Serena: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Serena Tang, Morgan Stanley's, Chief Global Cross-Asset Strategist.Seth: And I'm Seth Carpenter, Morgan Stanley's Global Chief Economist.Serena: Today we'll discuss Morgan Stanley's midyear outlook for the global economy and markets.It's Wednesday, May 21st at 10am in New York.Seth, you published a year ahead outlook last November. Since President Trump took office back in January, there's been pretty significant policy and economic uncertainty and quite a few surprises. With this in mind, what is your current outlook for the global economy for the second half of this year and into 2026.Seth: So, we titled the outlook Skewed to the Downside because we really do think the U.S. economy, the global economy, is set to slow meaningfully from where we were coming into this year. Let's start with the U.S.As you said, policy changes came in a lot this year since the new administration took over. I would say the two key ones from a macro perspective so far have been trade policy and immigration policy.Tariffs have gone up, tariffs have gone down, tariffs have been suspended. Right now, what we think is going to ultimately take place is that we will see persistent, notable tariffs on China, lower tariffs on the rest of the world, and then we'll have to see how things evolve. What does that mean? Well, it means for the U.S. higher inflation and lower growth. In addition, immigration reform means that growth is going to slow because the growth rate of the labor force is going to slow.Now around the rest of the world, the tariff shock matters as well. When the U.S. puts in tariffs on its imports from other countries, that's negative demand for those other countries. So, we're looking for pretty weak growth in the euro area. Now, I will note, lots of people were excited about possible expansionary fiscal policy in Germany, and we think that's still there. We just don't think it's enough to give the euro area robust growth.In Asia, China's a main driver of the economy. China is a big recipient of these tariffs. We think the deflation cycle that we expected in China keeps going on. This reduction in demand from the U.S. is not going to help, but there'll probably be a little bit at the margin offsetting fiscal policy.So, what does that mean put together? Lackluster growth in China. Call it 4 percent slow growth for yet another year. Overall, the global economy should step down. Will it be a recession? That's one of the key questions that we hear from clients, but we don't think so. Not quite. Just a meaningful step downSerena: Interesting. Any particular regions that seem to be bright spots or surprises -- or perhaps have seen the biggest shift in your outlook?Seth: I guess I'd flag two potential bright spots around the world. The first is India. India has been, for us, a favorite. It will have the highest growth rate of any economy that we have in our coverage area. And because it's such a big economy, that's part of why the global economy can't lose that much steam. India has lots going for it. There are cyclical factors boosting growth in the near term. But there are also longer-term structural policy driven reasons to think that Indian growth will stay solid for the foreseeable future.I guess I'd also throw in Japan. Now its growth rate isn't going to be anywhere near the kind of growth in number terms that we're going to see from India. But this has to be taken in the context of 25 years of essentially zero growth of nominal GDP. The reflationary cycle that we think started a couple years ago remains intact, even with the tariff shock. And so, we're pretty optimistic still that Japanese reflation will continue.Serena: And to what extent are U.S. tariffs contributing to global inflationary pressures? I mean, how do you expect the Fed and other central banks to respond?Seth: The tariffs are imposed by the United States on most of the imports coming into the country, whereas other countries, maybe they have some retaliatory tariffs just against the U.S., but definitely not as broad as the U.S. That means for the U.S. tariffs are going to drive up inflation domestically and drive down growth, whereas for the rest of the world, it's mostly just a negative demand shock. So, they will be disinflationary for the rest of the world and pushing down growth.What does that mean for central banks? Well, outside of the U.S., central banks are going to see this as slowing aggregate demand, and so it's pretty clear what it is that they want to do. If they were hiking, they can stop hiking. If they were going to hold steady, they can lower rates a little bit. And if they were already lowering interest rates like the European Central Bank, well they can probably keep going with that without having to worry. And that's why we think the ECB is going to lower its policy rate to probably 1.5 percent and maybe even lower, which is below where the market is expecting things.Now for the Fed, things are much more tricky. The Fed cares about inflation, the Fed cares about U.S. growth, and both of those variables are going in the opposite direction of what they want over the rest of this forecast. Right now, inflation's too high for the Fed, and history shows that inflation goes up first with tariffs before the growth rate hits. So, the Fed's probably going to wait until the hard data show a bigger slowdown in the economy, a worsening. And the labor market. That is a bigger concern for them than the already too high inflation that is set to rise further over the rest of the year.Serena: And in your view, how does trade policy uncertainty influence business investment, particularly in export-oriented industries or in economies tightly linked to U.S. demand?Seth: Yeah. I think it has to be negative and therein lies one of the biggest challenges is just how negative. And I can't say for sure. But what we do know is that an uncertainty tends to be very negative for business investment spending decisions. If you're trying to make a decision, should I build a new factory?This is something that's going to have a long life to it, and you're going to get benefits hopefully for several years. How big are those benefits relative to the cost? Well, right now it's not at all clear, and so there's an option value to waiting.And we think that uncertainty is depressing investment decisions right now. I think it has to affect export-oriented industries. There's a lot of questions about what sort of retaliatory tariffs, other countries might impose.But it also affects domestic driven businesses because, well, they're going to have to see what their demand is. And some of the ones that are just focused on the U.S. economy are selling imported goods. So, it affects businesses across the board. Serena: Right. And how do U.S. tariff hikes spill over into emerging markets, and how might these countries buffer against these shocks?Seth: Yeah, I think there's a range of outcomes and the range is as wide as there are different countries. If you stay close to home. Take Mexico. Mexico is a big trading partner with the U.S. and early on in this whole tariff discussion, they were actually the targets of lots of tariff threats. That could have hurt them directly because there'd be less demand for their exports to the United States.Now we've got some resolution. We have the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, and most of Mexico's exports to the U.S. are exempt under those conditions. However, the indirect effect is important as well. Mexico is very attached to the U.S. economy, and so as the U.S. economy slows because of these tariffs, the Mexican economy will slow as well.But there's also an indirect effect through currency markets, and I think this is a channel that's more broadly applicable across EM. If the Fed is going to be on hold, like we think holding interest rates higher for longer than the market might currently think, that means that EM central banks who might want to lower their policy rate to support their economy are going to be caught in a bit of a bind.They can't afford to take the risks that their currency will misbehave if they ease too much too far ahead of the Fed. And so, I think there is a little bit of a constraint for EM central banks, thinking about how much can I attend to domestic matters and how much do I have to pay attention to external matters?Serena: Now, I know forecasting economic growth is difficult in even the best of times, and this has been a period of exceptional volatility. How are you and your economic colleagues factoring all of this uncertainty?Seth: It's a great question and luminary minds like Neils Bohr, the Nobel Laureate in physics, and Yogi Berra, everyone's favorite prophet, have both said, ‘Forecasting is hard, especially about the future.' And this time, as you note, is even more so. So, what can we do? We try to come up with as many different scenarios as we can. We ask ourselves not just what's the most likely outcome, because there's uncertainty. The policy changes could come fast and furious. We also try to ask ourselves, if tariffs were to go back up from where they are now, how would that outcome turn out. If tariffs were to go away entirely, how would that turn out?You have to start thinking more and more, I think, in terms of scenarios.Serena:  And does this, in your view, change how much or how little investors should focus on the macro economy?Seth: Well, I think it means that investors have to focus every bit as much on the macro economy as they have in the past. I think it's undeniable that if we're right – and the U.S. economy slows down materially, and the global economy slows down with it – longer-term interest rates are probably going to come down along the lines of what our colleagues in interest rate strategy think. That makes a lot of sense to me. I think the trickier part though is knowing where the macro economy is going.We've got our forecast, but we are ready to make a revision if the facts change. And I think that's the trickier part for investors. The macro economy still matters but having a lot of conviction about where it's going, and as a result, what it means for asset prices? Well, that's the trickier part.Serena, you've been asking me lots of questions and they've been great questions, but I'm going to turn the table. I'm going to start asking questions right back to you.But we probably have to save that for another episode. So, let's pause it there.Serena: That sounds great Seth.Seth: And to the people listening, I want to say thanks for listening. And if you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or a colleague today.

APAC stocks traded with a mild positive bias as the region mostly shrugged off the lacklustre lead from Wall St.US House Speaker Johnson said a Thursday tax bill floor vote is still realistic.European equity futures indicate a quiet cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 future flat after the cash market closed with gains of 0.5% on Tuesday.DXY is extending its losing streak for a third session, EUR/USD is back above 1.13, Cable sits above 1.34 ahead of UK CPI.Israel is preparing a possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, according to CNN; not clear whether Israeli leaders have made a final decision.Looking ahead, highlights include UK CPI, G7 Central Bank and Finance Ministers Meeting, ECB's Lagarde, Lane, Nagel & Cipollone, Fed's Barkin & Bowman, Supply from UK, Germany & US.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

US House Speaker Johnson said a Thursday tax bill floor vote is still realistic.China's Commerce Ministry said US measures on China's advanced chips are typical of unilateral bullying and protectionism.Europe opened mostly lower but now trade mixed, US equity futures are in the red.USD remains out of love, GBP digests hot CPI data, EUR/USD back above 1.13.Bearish bias in play, Gilts lag after hot CPI, USTs await fiscal updates.Energy and gold boosted by reports Israel is preparing a possible strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.Looking ahead, G7 Central Bank and Finance Ministers Meeting, Speakers including ECB's Lagarde, Lane, Nagel & Cipollone, Fed's Barkin & Bowman, Supply from the US, Earnings from Snowflake, Zoom, Target, TJX, VF Corp & Medtronic.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Live from the Morgan Stanley Japan Summit, our analysts Chiwoong Lee and Sho Nakazawa discuss their outlook for the Japanese economy and stock market in light of the country's evolving trade partnerships with the U.S. and China.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Lee-san: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Chiwoong Lee, Principal Global Economist at Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities.Nakazawa-san: And I'm Sho Nakazawa, Japan Equity Strategist at Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities.Lee-san: Today we're coming to you live from the Morgan Stanley Japan Summit in Tokyo. And we'll be sharing our views on Japan in the context of global economic growth. We will also focus on Japan's position vis-à-vis its two largest trading partners, the U.S. and China.It's Tuesday, May 20, at 3pm in Tokyo.Lee-san: Nakazawa-san, you and I both have been talking with a large number of clients here at the summit. Based on your conversations, what issues are most top of mind right now?Nakazawa-san: There are many inquiries about how to position because of the uncertainty of U.S. trade policy and the investment strategy for governance reform. These are both catalysts for Japan. And in Japan, there are multiple governance investment angles, with increasing interest in the removal of parent-child listings, which is when a parent company and a subsidiary company are both listed on an exchange. This reform [would] remove the subsidiaries. So, clients are very focused on who will be the next candidate for the removal of a parent-child listing.And what are you hearing from clients on your side, Lee-san?Lee-san: I would say the most frequent questions we received were regarding the Trump administration's policies, of course. While the reciprocal tariffs have been somewhat relaxed compared to the initial announcements, they still remain very high; and there was a strong focus on their negative impact on the U.S. economy and the global economy, including Japan. Of course, external demand is critical for Japanese economy, but when we pointed out the resilience of domestic demand, many investors seemed to agree with that view.Nakazawa-san: How do investors' views square with your outlook for the global economy over the rest of the year?Lee-san: Well, there was broad consensus that tariffs and policy uncertainty are negatively affecting trade and investment activities across countries. In particular, there is concern about the impact on investment. As Former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke wrote in his papers in [the] 1980s, uncertainty tends to delay investment decisions. However, I got the impression that views varied on just how sensitive investment behavior is to this uncertainty.Nakazawa-san: How significant are U.S. tariffs on global economy including Japan both near-term and longer-term?Lee-san: The negative effects on the global economy through trade and investment are certainly important, but the most critical issue is the impact on the U.S. economy. Tariffs essentially act as a tax burden on U.S. consumers and businesses.For example, in 2018, there was some impact on prices, but the more significant effect was on business production and employment. Now, with even higher tariff rates, the impact on inflation and economic activity is expected to be even greater. Given the inflationary pressures from tariffs, we believe the Fed will find it difficult to cut rates in 2025. On the other hand, once it becomes feasible, likely in 2026, we anticipate the Fed will need to implement substantial rate cuts.Lee-san: So, Nakazawa-san, how has the Japanese stock market reacted to U.S. tariffs?Nakazawa-san: Investors positioning have skewed sharply to domestic-oriented non-manufacturing sectors since the U.S. government's announcement of reciprocal tariffs on April 2nd. Tariff talks with some nations have achieved some progress at this stage, spurring buybacks of export-oriented manufacturer shares. However, the screening by our analysts of the cumulative surplus returns against Japan's TOPIX index for around 500 stocks in their coverage universe, divided into stocks relatively vulnerable to tariff effects and those less impacted, finds a continued poor performance at the former. We believe it is important to enhance the portfolio's robustness by revising sector skews in accordance with any progress in the trade talks and adjusting long/short positioning with the sectors in line with the impact of the tariffs.Lee-san: I see. You recently revised your Topix index target, right. Can you quickly walk us through your call?Nakazawa-san：Yes, of course. We recently revised down our base case TOPIX target for end-2025 from 3,000 to 2,600. This revision was considered by several key factors: So first, our Japan economics team revised down its Japanese nominal growth forecast from 3.7% to 3.3%, reflecting implementation of reciprocal tariffs and lower growth forecasts for the U.S., China, and Europe. Second, our FX team lowered its USD/JPY target from 145 to 135 due to the risk of U.S. hard data taking a marked turn for the worse. The timing aligns with growing uncertainty on the business environment, which may lead firms to manage cash allocation more cautiously. So, this year might be a bit challenging for Japanese equities that I recommend staying defensive positioning with defensive non-manufacturing sectors overall.Nakazawa-san: And given tariff risks, do you see a change in the Bank of Japan's rate path for the rest of the year?Lee-san: Yeah well, external demand is a very important driver of Japanese economy. Even if tariffs on Japan do not rise significantly, auto tariffs, for example, remain in place and cannot be ignored. The earnings deterioration among export-oriented companies, especially in the auto sector, will take time for the Bank of Japan to assess in terms of its impact on winter bonuses and next spring's wage growth. If trade negotiations between the U.S. and countries including Japan make major progress by summer, a rate hike in the fall could be a risk scenario. However, our Japan teams' base case remains that the policy rate will be unchanged through 2026.Lee-san: How is the Japanese yen faring relative to the U.S. dollar, and how does it impact the Japanese stock market, Nakazawa-san?Nakazawa-san：I would say USD/JPY is not only driver for Japanese equities. Of course, USD/JPY still plays a key role in earnings, as our regression model suggests a 1% higher USD/JPY lifting TOPIX 0.5% on average. But this sensitivity has trended down over the past decade. A structural reason is that as value chain building close to final demand locations has lifted overseas production ratios, which implies continuous efforts of Japanese corporate optimizing global supply chain.That said, from sector allocation perspective, sectors showing greater resilience include domestic demand-driven sectors, such as foods, construction & materials, IT & services/others, transportation & logistics, and retails.Nakazawa-san: And finally, the trade relationship between Japan and China is one of the largest trading partnerships in the world. Are U.S. tariffs impacting this partnership in any way?Lee-san: That's a very difficult question, I have to say, but I think there are multiple angles to consider. Geopolitical risk remains to be a key focus, and in terms of the military alliance, Japan-U.S. relationships have been intact. At the same time, Japan faces increased pressure to meet U.S. demands. That said, Japan has been taking steps such as strengthening semiconductor manufacturing and increasing defense spending, so I believe there is a multifaceted evaluation which is necessary.Lee-san: That said, I think it's time to head back to the conference. Nakazawa-san, thanks for taking the time to talk.Nakazawa-san: Great speaking with you, Lee-san.Lee-san: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Send us a textIn this episode of the Retire Early Retire Now podcast, hosted by Hunter Kelly, high-income earning professionals are guided through the five fastest ways to build wealth. The strategies covered include automating savings and securing employer matches, investing in equities, increasing income, practicing tax efficiency, and starting a business. The episode aims to assist listeners, primarily in their thirties and forties, who are in the wealth accumulation phase, helping them move towards financial independence or early retirement. Listeners are encouraged to share the podcast with friends and leave a five-star review to help spread financial knowledge.00:00 Welcome to the Retire Early Retire Now Podcast00:09 Introduction to Wealth Building Strategies01:43 Automate Your Savings and Get Your Employer Match04:27 Invest in Equities for Faster Growth07:43 Increase Your Income for Greater Wealth10:04 Maximize Tax Efficiency11:50 Start a Business for Exponential Growth14:04 Conclusion and Final ThoughtsCheck out the Palm Valley Wealth Management WebsitePalmValleywm.comCheck us out on InstagramLinkedIn FacebookListen to the Podcast Here! AppleSpotify

APAC stocks were marginally higher as the region took impetus from the rebound stateside; S&P 500 and Dow notched six-day win streaksEuropean equity futures indicate a positive cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 future up 0.5% after the cash market closed flat on Monday.FX markets are broadly steady. AUD lags after the RBA delivered a 25bps cut and cut its inflation outlook.US President Trump stated that Russia and Ukraine are to immediately begin negotiations on a ceasefire and an end to the war.US House Speaker Johnson said they are almost there on the tax bill and he is very confident they will get it done.Looking ahead, highlights include German Producer Prices, Canadian Inflation, EZ Consumer Confidence, NZ Trade, G7 Finance Ministers Meeting, RBA's Bullock, BoE's Pill, ECB's Cipollone, Nagel, Fed's Bostic, Barkin, Collins, Musalem, Kugler, Daly & Hammack, Supply from Germany.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

European bourses are modestly firmer whilst US equity futures sit in negative territory.USD remains out of favour, AUD weighed on after the RBA delivered a 25bps cut (as expected) and amid discussion of a 50bps cut.JGBs briefly hit by a poor auction, fixed recovery continues into numerous Fed speakers.Crude choppy on mixed geopolitics regarding Russia/Ukraine and Iranian nuclear talks.Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei said "I don't think nuclear talks with the US will be successful", via Mehr news.Looking ahead, Canadian Inflation, NZ Trade, G7 Finance Ministers Meeting, ECB's Cipollone, Nagel, Fed's Bostic, Barkin, Collins, Musalem, Kugler, Daly & Hammack. Earnings from Home Depot & Bilibili.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Listen to Karen Azoulay, Head of Real Assets, as she tells Chief Market Strategist Daniel Morris that investing in infrastructure fits well with the efforts of the European Commission and governments to boost spending and innovation. The asset class's stable and predictable cashflows can also offer downside protection, she argues. For more insights, visit Viewpoint: https://viewpoint.bnpparibas-am.com/Download the Viewpoint app: https://onelink.to/tpxq34Follow us on LinkedIn: https://bnpp.lk/amHosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Markets have reacted positively to the U.S.-China détente in tariffs. Our Chief Fixed Income Strategist, Vishy Tirupattur, digs into the rallies to better understand potential longer-term outcomes.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Vishy Tirupattur: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I am Vishy Tirupattur, Morgan Stanley's Chief Fixed Income Strategist. Today I'll talk about the impact of last week's 90-day pause in the reciprocal tariffs between the U.S. and China, and the impact on the economy and markets.It's Monday, May 19th at 11am in New York.Market response to last Monday's announcement has been resoundingly positive. The S&P 500 was up 4.5 percent in the first four days since the announcement and the year-to-date returns are back in the black after Liberation Day drove steep declines in April.Credit markets have also rallied, notably with the investment grade spreads tightening by over 10 basis points and high yield spreads by over 50 basis points. And the Treasury market took out 50 basis points of rate cuts in 2025, leaving market implied rate cuts by the end of 2026 at around 100 basis points.While these moves across markets are significant, it is really important to put them into perspective and tease out what this detente in trade tensions implies. And more importantly, what it does not imply.On the positive side, we think that the de-escalation reduces the risk of a sudden stop in trade volumes and a sharp rise in unemployment rate. While this is clearly just a truce and we don't know exactly where the tariffs between the two largest economies in the world will end up, it seems reasonable to infer that tariffs in the vicinity of 125 percent or 145 percent are substantially less likely now. Overall, the probability of a U.S. recession, therefore, has fallen on the margin.To be clear, a recession during 2025 was never really our base case. But the de-escalation shifts risks in the direction of a little more growth, a little less inflation, and keeps unemployment rate at near current levels. If the world before Liberation Day was bimodal and close to a coin toss; it is still bimodal, but skewed towards an expansion, not contraction. Since we were in the expansion mode to begin with, this detente gives us greater comfort in our baseline outlook and strengthens our conviction that the Fed will remain on hold for rest of the year.The positive vibes from Geneva not withstanding, we would stress that it is far from clear that the 90-day pause is an uncertainty clearing event. Trade tensions are likely to remain elevated. The administration is still investigating tariffs on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, copper, and other products. It is also unclear if the template of negotiations between the U.S. and China can work for other regions, especially Europe. Even if U.S. tariffs on imports from China and the rest of the world end up roughly around the current levels, they would still be about four times higher than the levels at the start of the year.This means inflation should continue to move higher into year end, with the surge that peaks in the third quarter. While the impulse inflation from tariffs is likely to be smaller, it still is coming. Likewise, higher tariffs will dampen growth even though recession will continue to be avoided.For risk markets, we think that the detente has reduced the risk of substantial drawdowns. While policy uncertainty about the ultimate level of tariff remains, a return to last month's mind-boggling volatility driven by trade policy is probably behind us. So, it's unlikely that we will see markets revisiting the lows of April in the near term.For credit markets, a lower likelihood of recession is indeed welcome news, especially considering the current strong credit fundamentals. With the market taking out a couple of rate cuts, the all in yields for credit remain in the range to sustain the demand for yield buyers such as insurance companies.Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, leave us a review wherever you listen and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

APAC stocks were mostly subdued following the US sovereign rating downgrade by Moody's which spurred a mild 'sell America' impulse (ES -1.1%).US Treasury Secretary Bessent said countries will get a letter with a US tariff rate if they are not negotiating in good faith and he thinks that rate would be the April 2nd level.The House Budget Committee approved President Trump's tax cut bill to set up a possible vote as soon as this week.Chinese Industrial Production topped forecasts, Retail Sales disappointed, House Prices continued to contract Y/Y.USD is slightly softer vs. peers, EUR/USD stalled just shy of 1.12, Cable sits around the 1.33 mark, JPY marginally outperforms peers.UK and the EU are expected to agree on Monday to a major post-Brexit reconciliation, according to the FT.US President Trump said he will speak with Russian President Putin on Monday at 10:00EDT/15:00BST.Looking ahead, highlights include US Leading Index Change, EU-UK Talks, Speakers including Fed's Bostic, Williams, Logan & Kashkari, Supply from the EU.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Moody's lowered the US's sovereign rating from AAA to Aa1; Outlook Revised to Stable from Negative and warned of rising government debt and a widening budget deficit.US Treasury Secretary Bessent said countries will get a letter with a US tariff rate if they are not negotiating in good faith and he thinks that rate would be the April 2nd level.The House Budget Committee approved President Trump's tax cut bill to set up a possible vote as soon as this week.European bourses lower and US equity futures slip in an initial reaction to the latest Moody's downgrade; ES -1.2%.USD shunned as Moody's downgrade spooks markets, GBP cheers UK-EU "reset" deal.Moody start for bonds after the US downgrade, Gilts lag on Brexit updates and into 30yr syndication.Downbeat trade across oil contracts but precious metals lifted; spot gold eyes USD 3,250/oz.Looking ahead, US Leading Index Change, EU-UK Talks, Speakers including Fed's Bostic, Williams, Logan & Kashkari. Holiday Closure in Canada.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

As market uncertainty continues around the Trump administration's trade policy, our Head of Corporate Credit Research Andrew Sheets reflects on the key takeaways that investors may learn from the ongoing volatility.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Head of Corporate Credit Research at Morgan Stanley. Today I'm going to discuss what we think we can actually learn from all of the back and forth in markets.It's Friday, May 16th at 2pm in London.One of the dominant questions of 2025 has been and continues to be: What exactly is the strategy behind U.S. tariff policy. Are these tariffs simply a negotiating tactic, designed to bring countries to the table in order to strike quick deals. Or are they something very, very different. An attempt to fundamentally reduce U.S. trade deficits, raise significant revenue, and bring production back to American shores.At a recent conference with some of our largest investors, we asked them which of these explanations they thought best applied. Well, about a quarter thought it was a negotiating tactic; another quarter thought it was that fundamental shift. And the remaining half simply weren't sure yet.Now, it's possible that this ambiguity is actually the point designed to keep trade partners guessing in order to secure better terms. It's also possible that very different views on trade exist within the administration, and we're seeing them vie for influence – perhaps almost in real time. So, amidst all this uncertainty and back and forth, it's useful for investors to try to take a step back and think what, if anything, we've learned.First, we think we've learned that markets have a pretty clear view on tariffs. Credit and equities sold off aggressively as tariffs were ramped up. They have rallied back almost as quickly as these same policies were paused or reversed. Second, this back and forth does complicate the economic data and makes it more likely that the Federal Reserve will leave interest rates unchanged, waiting for more clarity. At Morgan Stanley, we continue to think that the Fed makes no interest rate cuts this year.Third, even with the Fed doing nothing and interest rates moving around, bonds did diversify portfolios. Over the last 90 days, a portfolio of high-grade bonds, like the U.S. aggregate bond index has had just one-fifth of the volatility of the S&P 500, while at the same time delivering a higher total return. Yes, we think there is absolutely still a case for bonds to diversify within portfolios.Fourth and finally, the shock of the initial tariff announcement has passed. But there is still very real uncertainty about the economic impact, as even with the recent pauses, U.S. tariffs remain relatively high versus recent history.The next two months should start to give us the true picture of this impact – or the lack thereof – on both activity and prices. That will tell us whether the storm has truly passed through or whether we're simply in the eye of it.Thanks for listening. Let us know what you think about our thoughts in the market. You can leave us a review wherever you get this podcast. And if you like what you hear, share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

 A casual conversation about Equities   Common, Preferred and ADRs

Mixed APAC trade, US futures range bound while European futures point to a marginally firmer open.DXY remains lower after Thursday's data, EUR/USD marginally reclaimed 1.12, USD/JPY found support at 145.00.Fixed benchmarks extended/held on to recent gains.Crude benchmarks remain underpinned by the latest on US-Iran, metals marginally softer.Looking ahead, highlights include US Export/Import Prices, UoM Sentiment Survey, BoC SLOS, Speakers including ECB's Lane, Cipollone & Fed's Barkin.Click for the Newsquawk Week Ahead.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Stocks are broadly in positive territory; US equity futures are modestly higher ES +0.3%.USD on the backfoot but only marginally so, EUR & GBP pivot 1.12 & 1.33 vs the USD.Bonds are firmer but are currently set to end a tumultuous week back where they started.Crude is awaiting geopolitical updates from numerous regions/conflicts, XAU dips.Looking ahead, US Export/Import Prices, UoM Sentiment Survey, BoC SLOS, Speakers including ECB's Lane, Cipollone & Fed's Barkin.Click for the Newsquawk Week Ahead.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Our analysts Adam Jonas and Sheng Zhong discuss the rapidly evolving humanoid technologies and investment opportunities that could lead to a $5 trillion market by 2050. Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Adam Jonas: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Adam Jonas Morgan Stanley's Global Head of Autos and Shared Mobility.Sheng Zhong: And I'm Sheng Zhong, Head of China Industrials.Adam Jonas: Today we're talking about humanoid robots and the $5 trillion global market opportunity we see by 2050.It's Thursday, May 15th at 9am in New York.If you're a Gen Xer or a boomer, you probably grew up with the idea of Rosie, the robot from the Jetsons. Rosie was a mechanical butler who cooked, cleaned, and did the laundry while dishing out a side of sarcasm.Today's idea of a humanoid robot for the home is much more evolved. We want robots that can adapt to unpredictable environments, and not just clean up a messy kitchen but also provide care for an elderly relative. This is really the next frontier in the development of AI. In other words, AI must become more human-like or humanoid, and this is happening.So, Sheng, let's start with setting some expectations. What do humanoid robots look like today and how close are we to seeing one in every home?Sheng Zhong: The humanoid is like a young child, in my opinion, although their abilities are different. A robot is born with a developed brain that is Large Language Model, and its body function develops fast.Less than three years ago, a robot barely can walk, but now they can jump, they can run. And just in last week, Beijing had a humanoid half marathon. While robot may lack on connecting its brain to its body action for work execution; sometimes they fail a lot of things. Maybe they break cups, glasses, and even they may fall down.So, you definitely don't want a robot at home like that, until they are safe enough and can help on something. To achieve that a lot of training and practice are needed on how to do things at a high success rate. And it takes time, maybe five years, 10. But in the long term, to have a Rosie at every family is a goal.So, Adam, our U.S. team has argued that the global humanoid Total Adjustable Market will reach $5 trillion USD by 2050. What is the current size of this market and how do we get to that eye-popping number in next 25 years?Adam Jonas: So, the current size of the market, because it's in development phase, is extremely low. I won't put it a zero but call it a black zero – when you look back in time at where we came from. The startups, or the public companies working on this are maybe generating single digit million type dollar revenues. In order to get to that number of $5 trillion by 2050 – that would imply roughly 1 billion humanoids in service, by that year. And that is the amount of the replacement value of actual units sold into that population of 1 billion humanoid robots on our global TAM model.The more interesting way to think about the TAM though is the substitution of labor. There are currently, for example, 4 billion people in the global labor market at $10,000 per person. That's $40 trillion. You know, we're talking 30 or 40 per cent of global GDP. And so, imagining it that way, not just in terms of the unit times price, but the value that these humanoids, can represent is, we think, a more accurate way of thinking about the true economic potential of this adjustable market.Sheng Zhong: So, with all these humanoids in use by 2050, could you paint us a picture in broad strokes of what the economy might look like in terms of labor market and economic growth?Adam Jonas: We can only work through a scenario analysis and there's certainly a lot of false precision that could be dangerous here. But, you know, there's no limit to the imagination to think about what happens to a world where you actually produce your labor; what it means for dependency ratios, retirement age, the whole concept of a GDP could change.I don't think it's an exaggeration to contemplate these technologies being comparable to that of electric light or the wheel or movable type or paper. Things that just completely transform an economy and don't just increase it by five or 10 per cent but could increase it by five or 10 times or more. And so, there are all sorts of moral and ethical and legal issues that are also brought up.The response to which; our response to which will also dictate the end state. And then the question of national security issues and what this means for nation states and, we've seen in our tumultuous human history that when there are changes of technologies – even if they seem to be innocent at first, and for the benefit of mankind – can often be uh, used to, grow power and to create conflict. So Sheng, how should investors approach the humanoid theme and is it investible right now?Sheng Zhong: Yes, it's not too early to invest in this mega trend. Humanoid will be a huge market in the future, like you said. And it starts now. There are multi parties in this industry, including the leading companies from various background: the capital, the smart people, and the government. So, I believe the industry will evolve rapidly. And in Morgan Stanley's Humanoid: A Hundred Report a hundred names was identified in three categories. They are brand developers, bodies components suppliers, and the robot integrators. And we'd like to stick with the leading companies in all these categories, which have leading edge technology and good track record. But at the meantime, I would emphasize that we should keep close eyes on the disruptors.Adam Jonas: So, Sheng, it seems that national support for the humanoid and embodied AI theme in China is at least today, far greater than in any other nation. What policy support are you seeing and how exactly does it compare to other regions?Sheng Zhong: Government plays an important role in the industry development in China, and I see that in humanoid industry as well. So currently, the local government, they set out the target, and they connect local resources for supply chain corporation. And on the capital perspective, we see the government background funds flow into the industry as well. And even on the R&D, there are Robot Chinese Center set up by the government and corporates together. In the past there were successful experience in China, that new industry grow with government support, like solar panels, electronic vehicles. And I believe China government want to replicate this success in humanoids. So, I won't be surprised to see in the near future there will be national humanoid target industry standard setup or adoption subsidies even at some time.And in fact we see the government supports in other countries as well. Like in South Korea there is a K Humanoid Alliance and Korean Ministry of Trade has full support in terms of the subsidy on robotic R&D infrastructure and verification.So, what is U.S. doing now to keep up with China? And is the gap closing or widening?Adam Jonas: So, Sheng, I think that there's a real wake up call going on here. Again, some have called it a Sputnik moment. Of course the DeepSeek moment in terms of the GenAI and the ability for Chinese companies to show just extraordinary and remarkable level of ingenuity and competition in these key fields, even if they lack the most leading-edge compute resources like the U.S. has – has really again been quite shocking to the rest of the world. And it certainly gotten the attention of the administration, and lawmakers in the DOD. But then thinking further about other incentives, both carrot and stick to encourage onshoring of critical embodiment of AI industries – including the manufacturing of these types of products across not just humanoids, but electronic vertical takeoff and landing aircraft drones, autonomous vehicles – will become increasingly evident. These technologies are not seen as, ‘Hey, let's have a Rosie, the robot. This is fun. This is nice to have.' No, Sheng. This is seen as existential technology that we have to get right.Finally, Sheng, as far as moving humanoid technology to open source, is this a region specific or a global trend? And what is your outlook on this issue?Sheng Zhong: I actually think this could be a global trend because for technology and especially for humanoid, the Vision Language Model is obviously if there is more adoption, then more data can be collected, and the model will be smarter. So maybe unlike the Windows and Android dominant global market, I think for humanoid there could be regional level open-source models; and China will develop its own model. For any technology the application on the downstream is key. For humanoid as an AI embodiment, the software value needs to be realized on hardware. So I think it's key to have mass production of nice performance humanoid at a competitive cost.Adam Jonas: Listen, if I can get a humanoid robot to take my dog, Foster out and clean up after him, I'm gonna be pretty excited. As I am sure some of our listeners will be as well. Sheng, thank you so much for this peak into our near future.Sheng Zhong: Thank you very much, Adam, and great speaking with you,Adam Jonas: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

APAC stocks were predominantly lower following the mixed handover from Wall St, where the major indices were somewhat choppy and small caps underperformed as yields edged higher.US equity futures were lacklustre with participants awaiting comments from Fed Chair Powell and a slew of US data releases.European equity futures indicate a slightly lower cash market open with Euro Stoxx 50 futures down 0.3% after the cash market finished with losses of 0.2% on Wednesday.Iran is ready to sign an agreement with certain conditions in exchange for the lifting of sanctions and would commit to never making nuclear weapons, as well as getting rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, according to a top advisor to the Supreme Leader cited by NBC News.Russian President Putin was not on a list of negotiators the Kremlin published for talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on Thursday.Looking ahead, highlights include German Wholesale Price Index, UK GDP, EZ Employment & GDP, US NY Fed Manufacturing, Jobless Claims, Philly Fed Index, PPI, Retail Sales & Industrial Production, IEA OMR, Speakers include ECB's Cipollone, Elderson & de Guindos, Fed Chair Powell & Barr, BoE's Dhingra, Supply from US.Earnings from Applied Materials, Take-Two, Alibaba, Walmart, Deere, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Allianz, Merck, Thyssenkrupp, RWE, Siemens, National Grid, United Utilities & Richemont.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

European equities are subdued awaiting US data and Fed Chair Powell; US equity futures also tilt lower (ES -0.6%).DXY is subdued and contained whilst havens seen some inflows amid the broader risk tone.Fixed income benchmarks trade slightly firmer into US data and Fed Chair Powell's speech. Crude futures are curtailed by Trump suggesting the US is getting close to a deal with Iran, while metals await data & Powell.Looking ahead, highlights include US NY Fed Manufacturing, Jobless Claims, Philly Fed Index, PPI, Retail Sales & Industrial Production, IEA OMR, Speakers include ECBʼs de Guindos; Fed Chair Powell & Barr, BoEʼs Dhingra. Earnings from Applied Materials, Take-Two, Alibaba, Walmart, Deere.Read the full report covering Equities, Forex, Fixed Income, Commodites and more on Newsquawk

Our strategists Michael Zezas and Ariana Salvatore provide context around U.S. House Republicans' proposed tax bill and how investors should view its potential market impact.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Michael Zezas: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Global Head of Fixed Income Research and Public Policy Strategy.Ariana Salvatore: And I'm Ariana Salvatore, Public Policy Strategist.Michael Zezas: Today, we'll dig into Congress's deliberations on taxes and fiscal spending.It's Wednesday, May 14th at 10am in New York.Michael Zezas: So, Ariana, there's been a lot of news around the tax and spending plans that Congress is pursuing; this fiscal package – and clients are really, really focused on it. You're having a lot of those conversations right now. Why are clients so focused on all of this?Ariana Salvatore: So, clients have reasons to focus on this tax policy bill across equities, fixed income, and for macroeconomic impacts.Starting with equities, there's a lot of the 2017 tax cut bill that's coming up for expiration towards the end of this year. So, this bill is Congress's chance to extend the expiring TCJA. And add on some incremental tax cuts that President Trump floated on the campaign trail. So, there's some really important sector impacts on the specific legislation side. And then as far as the deficit goes, that matters a lot for the economic ramifications next year and for bond yields.But Mike, to pivot this back to you, where do you think investor expectations are for the outcome of this package?Michael Zezas: So there's a lot of moving pieces in this fiscal policy package, and I think what's happening here is that investors can project a lot onto this. They can project a lot of positivity and constructive outcomes for markets; and a lot of negativity and negative outcomes for markets.So, for example, if you are really focused on the deficit impact of cutting taxes and whether or not there's enough spending cuts to offset those tax extensions, then you could look at the array of possible outcomes here and expect a major deficit expansion. And that might make you less constructive on bonds because you would expect yields to go higher as there was greater supply of Treasuries needed to borrow that much to finance the tax cuts. Again, not necessarily fully offset by spending cuts.So, you could look at this and say, well, this will ultimately be something where economic growth helps tax revenues. And you might be looking at the benefits for companies and the feed through to the equity markets and think really positively about it.And we think the truth is probably somewhere in between. You're not going to get policy that really justifies either your highest hopes or your greatest fears here.Ariana Salvatore: So, it's really like a Rorschach test for investors. When we think about our base case, how do you think that's going to materialize? What on the policy front are we watching for?Michael Zezas: Yeah, so we have to consider the starting point here, which is Congress is trying to address a series of tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year. And if they extend all of those tax cuts, then on a year-over-year basis, you didn't really change any policy. So that just on its own might not mean a meaningful deficit increase.Now, if Congress is able to extend greater tax cuts on top of that; but it's going to offset those greater tax cuts with spending cuts in revenue raises elsewhere, then again you might end up with a net effect close to zero on a deficit basis.And the way our economists look at this mix is that you might end up with an effect from a stimulus perspective on the economy that's something close to neutral as well. So, there's a lot of policy changes happening beneath the surface. But in the aggregate, it might not mean a heck of a lot for the economic outlook for next year.Now, that doesn't mean that there would be zero deficit increase in the aggregate next year because this is just one policy that is part of a larger set of government policies that make up the total spending posture of the government. There's already something in the range of $200-250 billion of deficit increase that was already going to happen next year. Because of weaker revenue growth on slower economic growth this year, and some spending that would automatically have happened because of inflation cost adjustments and higher interest on the debt. So, long story short, the policy that's happening right now that we think is going to be the endpoint for congressional deliberations isn't something our economists see as meaningfully uplifting growth for next year, and it probably increases the deficit – at least somewhat next year.Now we're thinking very short term here about what happens in 2026. But I think investors need to think around that timeline because if you're thinking about what this means for getting deficits smaller, multiple years ahead, or creating the type of tax environment that might induce greater corporate investment and greater economic growth years ahead – all those things are possible. But they're very hypothetical and they're subject to policy changes that could happen after the next Congress comes in or the next president comes in.So, Ariana, that's the overall look at our base case. But I think it's important to understand here that there are multiple different paths this legislation could follow. Can you explain what are some of the sticking points? And, depending on how they're resolved, how that might change the trajectory of what's ultimately passed here?Ariana Salvatore: There are a number of disagreements that need to be resolved. In particular, one of the biggest that we're focused on is on the SALT cap; so that's the cap on State And Local Tax deductions that individuals can take. That raised about a trillion dollars of revenue in the first iteration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017.Republicans generally are okay with making a modification to that cap, maybe taking it a bit higher, or imposing some income thresholds. But the SALT caucus, this small group of Republicans in Congress, they're pushing for a full repeal or something bigger than just a small dollar amount increase.There's also a group of moderate Republicans pushing against any sort of spending cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP; that's the food stamps program. And then there's another cohort of House Republicans that are seeking to preserve the Inflation Reduction Act. Ultimately, these are all going to be continuous tension points. They're going to have to settle on some pay fors, some savings, and we think where that lands is effectively at a $90 billion or so deficit increase from just the tax policy changes next year.Now with tariff revenue excluded, that's probably closer to [$]130 billion. But Mike, to your point, there are these scheduled increases in outlays that also are going to have to be considered for next year's deficit. So, you're looking at an overall increase of about $310 billion.Michael Zezas: Yeah, I think that's right and the different ways those different dynamics could play out, I think puts us in a range of a $200 billion expansion maybe on the low end, and a $400 billion expansion on the high end. And these are meaningful numbers. But I think important context for investors is that these numbers might seem a lot smaller than some of what's been reported in the press, and that's because the press reports on the congressional budget office scoring, and these are typically 10-year numbers.So, you would multiply that one-year number by 10 at least conceptually. And these are numbers relative to a reality in which the tax cuts were allowed to expire. So, it's basically counting up revenue that is being missed by not allowing the tax cuts to expire. So, the context matters a lot here. And so we have been encouraging investors to really kind of look through the headlines, really kind of break down the context and really kind of focus on the short term impacts because those are the most reliable impacts and the ones to really anchor to; because policy uncertainty beyond a year is substantially higher than even the very high policy uncertainty we're experiencing right now.So, sticking with the theme of uncertainty, let's talk timing here. Like we came into the year thinking this tax bill would be resolved late in the year. Is that still the case or are you thinking it might be a bit sooner?Ariana Salvatore: I think that timing still holds up. Right now, the reconciliation bill is supposed to address the expiring debt ceiling. So, the real deadline for getting the bill done is the X date or the date by which the extraordinary measures are projected to be exhausted. That's the date that we would potentially hit an actual default.Of course, that date is somewhat of a moving target. It's highly dependent on tax receipts from Treasury. But our estimate is that it's somewhere around August or September. In the meantime, there's a number of key catalysts that we're watching; namely, I would say, other projections of the X date coming from Treasury, as well as some of these markups when we start to get more bill text and hear about how some of the disputes are being resolved.As I mentioned, we had text earlier this week, but there's still no quote fix for the SALT cap, and the house is still tentatively pushing for its Memorial Day deadline. That's just six legislative days away.Michael Zezas: Got it. So, I think then that means that we're starting to learn a lot more about how this bill comes together. We will be learning even a lot more over the next few months and while we set out our expectations that you're going to have some fiscal policy expansion. But largely a broadly unchanged posture for U.S. fiscal policy. We're going to have to keep checking those regularly as we get new bits of information coming out of Congress on probably a daily basis at this point.Ariana Salvatore: That's right.Michael Zezas: Great. Well, Ariana, thanks for taking the time to talk.Ariana Salvatore: Great speaking with you, Michael.Michael Zezas: Thank you for your time. If you find Thoughts on the Market and the topics we cover of interest, leave us a review wherever you listen. And if you like what you hear, tell a friend or colleague about us today.

Our analysts Vishy Tirupattur and Joyce Jiang discuss the health of private credit as default pressures are building for borrowers amid weaker growth, fewer rate cuts and policy uncertainty.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Vishy Tirupattur: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I am Vishy Tirupattur, Morgan Stanley's Chief Fixed Income Strategist.Joyce Jiang: And I'm Joyce Jiang, U.S. Leverage Finance Strategist.Vishy Tirupattur: Today we'll take a look at private credit markets. Will it stay resilient in the current macro conditions? Or a reckoning is ahead of us.It's Tuesday, May 13th at 10am in New York.Tariffs and policy uncertainty are on the top of mind for people with an eye on the economy and markets. Certainly, a frequent topic of discussion for us on this podcast. In this environment, there has been growing concern about the health of corporate credit – and within corporate credit direct lending or middle market segments, where companies tend to be smaller in size and have weaker fundamentals are of particular concern. The business models of these companies are sensitive to slower growth.Joyce, can you map out the risks associated with private credit companies?Joyce Jiang: To your point, risks are rising in private credit, but I think these risks would be measured given the still resilient fundamental backdrop. Looking at fundamental trends, there is no clear sign of leverage building up in the system yet, and multiple data sources actually show that the leverage ratios among direct lending companies have either improved or remained flat. And that's very different from the previous cycles where excessive corporate leverage set the stage for the eventual downturn.So, this time around credit, including both public credit and private credit, is not the source of the problem. But, of course, these direct lending companies would be impacted by higher tariffs. So, Vishy what's your view on the tariff impact?Vishy Tirupattur: So, the direct impact of tariffs, Joyce, we think is likely to be muted. It's quite hard to quantify this exposure, but if you look at a number of different data sources, we find that the direct lending loans are more skewed towards defensive and service-oriented sectors.For example, sectors such as a technology, business services and healthcare account for over half of the loans in typical BDC portfolios or Business Development Company portfolios of direct lending loans. But that said, even though the direct impact could be somewhat limited, there could be second order effects because there is higher uncertainty and weaker confidence, and that could weigh on demand. There could be a tail cohort that could be developing.So, some data from Lincoln International, for example, shows that about 15 per cent of direct lending companies have EBITDA interest coverage ratio below 1x. Another way of looking at tail cohort is by looking at companies generating negative free operating cash flow. According to S&P data, that's about 40 per cent. These tail cohorts are stretched and are weakly positioned to weather macro challenges ahead.So, Joyce, another thing that comes up frequently when we talk about private credit is Payment In Kind interest or the so-called PIK interest. Can you walk us through what is a PIK and why is it a concern?Joyce Jiang: So, Payment In Kind interest – it occurs when the company stops paying interest in cash, but instead the interest is accrued and added to the principal balance. It is quite common for companies under liquidity stress to switch to PIKs for cash preservation, But in many cases, PIKs don't really clean up the company's balance sheet, and the companies may still end up in a conventional default. So, PIK is generally considered as a leading indicator of default by market participants.And to be clear, not all PIK loans are bad. PIK toggles are actually a key feature that distinguishes direct lending loans from syndicated loans because it provides non-distressed companies the flexibility to reallocate cash for other business needs. So, PIKs do not necessarily signal higher defaults. And in fact, data showed that BDCs or Business Development Companies with a higher PIK income don't always see a greater increase in nonaccruals. So, in other words, the relationship between PIK income and defaults is not persistently strong.Vishy Tirupattur: So, to summarize, overall fundamentals are on a relatively strong footing, but risks in private credit are rising, especially if we have a potential economic slowdown ahead. On the other hand, there are a few structural features with the private credit loans that could potentially help mitigate some of the vulnerabilities we've just talked about.First thing, direct lending loans are not marked to market by design, so they have lower volatility and are relatively immune from daily price moves. And really related to that, redemption risk of private credit funds has been fairly contained so far. These funds usually have tools like lockup periods and redemption caps to guard against unexpected large outflows.But of course, the effectiveness of these mechanisms has not yet been tested in severe downturns. Moreover, the capital that is going into private credit is relatively sticky capital. Key investors, such as insurance companies and pension funds are hold-to-maturity type buyers, and they're entering in the space for the attractiveness of the higher yields and to harvest illiquidity premia embedded in these loans. So, with that long-term investment horizon, they would be more willing to support companies through temporary liquidity challenges. Also, small lender groups in direct lending market makes it easier to negotiate restructurings.Joyce Jiang: Lastly, there is also ample dry powder. According to PitchBook, there is $570 billion of dry powder in private debt fund, and another $2 trillion in private equity funds. And this capital can be deployed to backstop distressed companies and help keeping defaults in check. And in terms of defaults, we are expecting syndicated loan defaults to end the year at 4 per cent. And that's our base case.And based on the historical relationship, that implies a like for like default rate for perfect credit at 5 per cent, which means a mild uptake from the current level, but is still below the COVID peak.Vishy Tirupattur: Joyce, thanks for taking the time to talk about this.Joyce Jiang: Thanks for having me, Vishy.Vishy Tirupattur: And to our listeners, thank you for your attention. Let us know what you think of this podcast and the topics we cover. And if you think a friend or a colleague might find this information useful, please share Thoughts on the Market with them today.

Equity markets saw big rallies after trade tensions eased over the weekend. Our CIO and Chief U.S. Equity Strategist Mike Wilson explains why he's optimistic that the worst of the market trough is over.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanley's CIO and Chief U.S. Equity Strategist. Today on the podcast I'll be discussing how to think about the recent tariff negotiations for equity markets. It's Monday, May 12th at 11:30am in New York. So, let's get after it. Over the weekend, U.S.-China trade negotiations made better than expected progress with both sides agreeing to a détente in the trade war that began just one short month ago. The main question I'm getting from investors is whether they should trust this initial agreement, and if it will eventually lead to something more sustainable? From my perspective, this misses the more important point for equity investors. To remind listeners, equity markets trade in the future. Therefore, the question to ask yourself is do you think things will be more or less uncertain in six months and will they be better or worse? The other thing to consider is that stocks trade on the second derivative, or rate of change, in growth. On that score, I believe it is likely we saw the trough rate of change in variables that tend to correlate with stock prices the most. More specifically, earnings revisions breadth showed a meaningful uptick last week for the first time this year. Some of this was driven by a pull forward in demand during the first quarter ahead of the tariff announcements that led to better than feared earnings. In addition, several leading companies posted better than expected results thanks to a weaker dollar. Importantly, the translation benefit for U.S. multinational earnings is likely to be a big earnings tailwind for the next six months. Many of the growth negative things we were worried about five months ago have played out now with Liberation Day marking the point of maximum negative sentiment and positioning. There is an adage that equity markets bottom on bad news, and I can't think of a better example of that than Liberation Day last month. Similarly, markets tend to top on good news and this weekend's better than expected outcome on trade negotiations with China could very well lead to a pause in the rally. Therefore, we would buy dips rather than chase stocks on days like today. Markets can look forward to the possibility of growth positive policy changes that still may be in front of us. Things like tax cut extensions, de-regulation and resolution of the debt ceiling and budget appropriations for the next year. Finally, with the threat of further escalation of tariff rates now diminished, the Fed can also come back into the picture with rate cuts sooner than perhaps what the Fed told us last week. While we don't know exactly how much the tariffs will impact inflation over the next year, it is likely to be front-end loaded. In fact, there is a case to be made that tariffs may hurt demand and end up being disinflationary. The Fed is likely to determine this outcome over the summer and could begin to at least signal rate cuts. Such a move will potentially lead to a more sustainable rotation towards lower quality, cyclical stocks and drive animal spirits in a way that many investors were expecting six months ago but simply jumped the gun. Bottom line, I feel more confident in our original outlook for this year for a tough first half, followed by a strong second one. This outlook was based on our view that AI capex growth was bound to decelerate this year, while policy changes were likely to be growth negative to start. Now, we can look forward to growth positive policy changes and productivity benefits from the spending on AI that has already taken place. After such a strong rally, pullbacks are inevitable but unlikely to be anything like we saw last month. So, buy the dips. Thank you for choosing to listen. Leave us a review, and let us know what you think about the podcast. If you enjoy listening to Thoughts on the Market, tell a friend or colleague about us today.

The initial shock of the U.S. administration's tariff announcements is over, but Andrew Sheets, our Head of Corporate Credit Research, suggests the current calm could still give way to headwinds for the markets.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Head of Corporate Credit Research at Morgan Stanley. Today we're going to discuss whether the worst is over for markets – or whether it's just the eye of the storm.It's Friday, May 9th at 2pm in London.After extreme recent volatility, markets have bounced back, generally unwinding their losses since April 2nd. So was that it? The shock of tariff announcements and positioning adjustments may have now passed through, but the impact on the real economy is still to come. In meteorological terms, we think this may be just the eye of the storm.There are several specific bouts of potentially bad weather that we're looking at, driven by tariffs that may be about to pass through.First is the Federal Reserve. Our economists still see no cuts from the Fed this year as tariffs keep inflation elevated on our forecast. The markets in contrast are expecting more action. A scenario where credit markets face both weaker growth and a lack of central bank support remains one of our top concerns.Second is the data. So far in 2025, measures of consumer and company expectations have generally been weak, while readings of activity have tended to be stronger. Now, we think there's a good historical case that it's the expectations that tend to leave and are thus concerned that actual activity could start to soften – as it starts to be measured in a post tariff period.To this end, we're keenly watching measures like shipping and trucking activity, which could give us a better picture of the real impact. Again, a core driver of our concern, despite the economic data holding up so far, is that the impact of tariffs usually takes more time. As our economists note, tariffs historically have pushed up prices after a couple of months and pushed down growth after a couple of quarters. In short, the full storm of that impact may be yet to pass through.That thinking also lies behind our inflation views. Those more optimistic on inflation, and thus expecting more interest rate cuts from the Fed, note that the latest core inflation readings were generally fine. But in contrast, our economists remain more concerned that tariff price impacts simply haven't yet arrived in the official data, noting little change in the core inflation readings for things like goods that in theory should see the largest tariff impact. This, in our view, suggests that the impact on the underlying numbers that the Fed is looking at is still to come.The initial surprise of the U.S. tariff announcements is behind us. Things feel calmer. And the recent economic data has been relatively resilient. One scenario is this simply speaks to how resilient the U.S. economy is. But another explanation is that there's a gap between the surprise of those tariffs and their ultimate economic impact. And our concern remains that those impacts are real, driving forecast at Morgan Stanley for weaker growth, higher inflation, and later interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve than the market consensus.With credit spreads below average, we'd recommend patience. Those forecasts at these spreads could still drive turbulence.Thank you, as always, for your time. If you find Thoughts in the Market useful, let us know by leaving a review wherever you listen; and also tell a friend or colleague about us today.

Investors were caught off guard last week when the Taiwanese dollar surged to a multi-year high. Our strategists Michael Zezas and James Lord look at what was behind this unexpected rally.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Michael Zezas: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Morgan Stanley's Global Head of Fixed Income Research and Public Policy Strategy.James Lord: And I'm James Lord Morgan Stanley's, Global Head of FX and EM Strategy.Michael Zezas: Today, we'll focus on some extreme moves in the currency markets and give you a sense of what's driving them, and why investors should pay close attention.It's Thursday, May 8th at 10am in New York.James Lord: And 3pm in London.Michael Zezas: So, James, coming into the year, the consensus was that the U.S. dollar might strengthen quite a bit because the U.S. was going to institute tariffs amongst other things. That's actually not what's happened. So, can you explain why the dollar's been weakening and why you expect this trend to continue?James Lord: I think a big factor for the weakening in the dollar, at least in the initial part of the year before the April tariff announcements came through, was a concern that the U.S. economy was going to be slowing down this year. I mean, this was against some of the consensus expectations at the beginning of the year.In our year ahead outlook, we made this call that the dollar would be weakening because of the potential weakness in the U.S. economy, driven by slow down in immigration, limited action on fiscal policy. And whatever tariffs did come through would be kind of damaging for the U.S. economy.And this would all sort of lead to a big slowdown and a kind of end to the U.S. exceptionalism trade that people now talk about all the time. And I think since April 1st or April 2nd tariff announcements came, the tariffs were so large that it raised real concerns about the damage that was potentially going to happen to the U.S. economy.The sort of methodology in which the tariff formulas were created raised a bit of concern about the credibility of the announcements. And then we had this constant on again, off again, on again, off again tariffs. That just created a lot of uncertainty. And in the context of a 15-year bull market of the dollar where it had sucked enormous amounts of capital inflows into the U.S. economy. You know, investors just felt that maybe it was worth taking a few chips off the table and unwinding a little bit of that dollar risk. And we've seen that play out quite notably over the last month. So, I think it's been, yeah, really that those concerns about growth but also this sort of uncertainty about policy in general in the context of, you know, a big bull run for the dollar; and fairly heavy valuations and positioning. Those have been the main issues, I think.Michael Zezas: Right, so we've got here this dynamic where there are economic fundamental reasons the dollar could keep weakening. But also concerns from investors overseas, whether they're ultimately founded or not, that they just might have less demand for owning U.S. dollar denominated assets because of the U.S. trade dynamic. Now it seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, that there was a major market move in the past week around the Taiwanese dollar, which reflected these concerns and created an unusually large move in that currency. Can you explain that dynamic?James Lord:  Yeah, so we've seen really significant moves in the Taiwan dollar. In fact, on May 2nd, the currency saw its largest one-day rally since the 1980s, and over two days gained over 6.5 percent, which for a Taiwan dollar, which is pretty low volatility currency usually, these are really big moves. So in our view, the rally in the Taiwan dollar, and it was remarkably big. We think it's been mostly driven by Taiwanese exporters selling some of their dollar assets with a little bit of foreign equity inflow helping as well. And this is linked back to the sort of trade negotiations as well.I mean, as you know, like one of the things that the U.S. administration has been focused on currency valuations. Historically, many people in the U.S. administration believe the dollar is very strong. And so there has been this sort of issue of currency valuations hanging over the trade negotiations between the U.S. and various Asian countries. And local media in Taiwan have been talking about the possibility that as part of a trade negotiation or trade deal, there could be a currency aspect to that – where the U.S. government would ask the Taiwanese authorities to try to push Taiwan dollar stronger.And you know, I think this sort of media reporting created a little bit of a -- well, not just a little, a significant shift from Taiwanese exporters where they suddenly rush to sell their dollar deposits in to get ahead of any possible effort from the Taiwanese authorities to strengthen their currency. The central bank is being very clear on this.We should have to point this out that the currency has not been part of the trade deal. And yet this hasn't prevented market participants from acting on the perceived risk of it being part of the trade talks. So, you know, Taiwanese exporters own a lot of dollars. Corporates and individuals in Taiwan hold about $275 billion worth of FX deposits and for an $800 billion or so economy, that's pretty sizable. So we think that is that dynamic, which has been the biggest factor in pushing Taiwan dollar stronger.Michael Zezas: Right, so the Taiwan dollar is this interesting case study then in how U.S. public policy choices might be creating the perception of changes in demand for the dollar changes in policy around how foreign governments are supposed to value their currency and investors might be getting ahead of that.Are there any other parts of the world where you're looking at foreign exchange globally, where you see things mispriced in a way relative to some of these expectations that investors need to talk about?James Lord: We do think that the dollar has further to go. I mean, it's on the downside. It's not necessarily linked to expectations that currency agreements will be part of any trade agreement. But, we think the Fed will need to cut rates quite a bit on the back of the slow down in the U.S. economy. Not so much this year. But Mike Gapen and Seth Carpenter, and the U.S. economics team are expecting to see the Fed cut to around 2.5 per cent or so next year. And that's absolutely not priced. And, And so I think as this slowdown – and, this is more of a sort of traditional currency driver compared to some of these other policy issues that we've been talking about. But if the Fed does indeed cut that far, I do think that that's going to put some meaningful pressure on the dollar. And on a sort of interest rate differential perspective, and when we look at what is mispriced and correctly priced, we see the Fed as being mispriced, but the ECB is being quite well priced at the moment.So as that weakening downward pressure comes through on the dollar, it should be reflected on the euro leg. And we see it heading up to 1.2. But just on the trade issue, Mike, what's your view on how those trade negotiations are going? Are we going to get lots of deals being announced soon?Michael Zezas: Yeah, so the news flow here suggests that the U.S. is engaged in multiple negotiations across the globe and are looking to establish agreements relatively quickly, which would at least give us some information about what happens next with regard to the tariffs that are scheduled to increase after that 90 day pause that was announced in earlier in April. We don't know much beyond that.I'd say our expectation is that because the U.S. has enough in common in terms of interests and how it manages its own economy and how most of its trading partners manage their own economies – that there are trade agreements, at least in concept. Perhaps memorandums of understanding that the U.S. can establish with more traditional allies, call it Japan, Europe, for example, that can ultimately put another pause on tariff escalation with those countries.We think it'll be harder with China where there are more fundamental disagreements about how the two countries should interact with each other economically. And while tariffs could come down from these very, very high levels with China, we still see them kind of settling out at still meaningful substantial headline numbers; call it the 50 to 60 per cent range. And while that might enable more trade than we're seeing right now with China because of these 145 per cent tariff levels, it'll still be substantially less than where we started the year where tariff levels were, you know, sub 20 per cent for the most part with China.So, there is a variety of different things happening. I would expect the general dynamic to be – we are going to see more agreements with more counterparties. However, those will mostly result in more pauses and ongoing negotiation, and so the uncertainty will not be completely eliminated. And so, to that point, James, I think I hear you saying that there is potentially a difference between sometimes currencies move based on general policy uncertainty and anxieties created around that.James Lord: Yeah, that's right. I think that's safer ground, I think for us as currency strategists to be anchoring our view to because it's something that we deal with day in, day out for all economies. The impact of this uncertainty variable. It could be like, I think directionally supports a weaker dollar, but sort of quantifying it, understanding like how much of that is in the price; could it get worse, could it get better? That's something that's a little bit more difficult to sort of anchor the view to. So, at the moment we feel that it's pushing in the same direction as the core view. But the core view, as you say, is based around those growth and monetary policy drivers.So, best practice here is let's keep continuing to anchor to the fundamentals in our investment view, but sort of recognize that there are substantial bands of uncertainty that are driven by U.S. policy choices and by investors' perceptions of what those policy choices could mean.Michael Zezas: So, James conversations like this are extremely helpful to our audience. We'll keep tracking this carefully. And so, I just want to say thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.James Lord: I really enjoyed it. Looking forward to the next one.Michael Zezas: Great. And thank you for listening. If you enjoy the podcast, please leave us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

The traditional correlations between some asset classes went haywire in April. Our analysts Serena Tang and Vishy Tirupattur discuss whether, in this environment, investors still consider U.S. Treasuries and the U.S. dollar to be reliable ports in a storm. Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Serena Tang: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Serena Tang, Morgan Stanley's Chief Cross Asset Strategist.Vishy Tirupattur: And I'm Vishy Tirupattur, Morgan Stanley's Chief Fixed Income Strategist.Serena Tang: Today's topic, how investors' perceptions of safe havens are evolving, the impact on correlation between asset classes, and what all this means for your portfolio.It's Wednesday, May 7th at 10am in New York.April was a really challenging month, and some market moves were highly unusual. There was also a lot of investor concern whether U.S. Treasuries would continue to be a safe haven. In fact, this became one of the biggest market debates over the last few weeks.Vishy, let's start here. Prior to this recent sell off, foreign investors looked at U.S. assets as a safe haven. Why is that? And is it still the case now after this turbulent month?Vishy Tirupattur: So, Serena, if you just step back and look at it, U.S. enjoyed positive growth differentials and positive yield differentials with developed markets in the rest of the world. On top of that, there was a consistent policy – not necessarily infallible policy – but there's a consistent policy with a clear sense of demarcation between the executive and the central bank.All of this meant U.S. was a very attractive destination for foreign investor flows. Not only during periods of normalcy where U.S. equities really attracted inflows and performed really well, but also during the periods of economic stress; where even periods where the stress was coming from the U.S. itself, such as the Global Financial Crisis. This correlation between bonds and stocks held and U.S. Treasuries were the safe haven asset as the single largest and most liquid, and highly negatively correlated asset with risk assets. So that really worked.What we are now seeing is that growth differential I talked about may no longer be holding. You know, for these [20]25 and [20]26 U.S. and euro area growth basically will converge – and if our economists' expectations are right, in 2026, euro area will be growing at a faster pace than the U.S.So, growth differential argument is fading. And there are some questions about the continued Fed independence. So put all these things together. Some investors are beginning to question whether U.S. assets will continue to be safe haven assets.So let me come back to you Serena. There've been some recent market moves that have been extremely unusual. That's what created all this debate. In some of – a few days in April, during the periods of sell off, we had both stocks and bonds selling off. And it felt like cross-asset correlations have gone totally haywire.So, can you talk a little bit about which correlations have changed? Which correlations have held up in these sell off?Serena Tang: What was highly unusual, and I think reflects part of the debate on U.S. as a safe haven, is the correlation between U.S. equities and the dollar. It is very high at the moment, about sort of two standard deviation above the five-year average. While it's not unheard of for FX stocks correlation to be high, it is usually more associated with EM or emerging markets rather than DM or developed markets. As a means, investors now require higher risk premium for holding the equities, which is a risk asset; but also holding the dollar, which again, traditionally is not thought of as a risk asset.Vishy Tirupattur: So, Serena, how did the correlation between bonds and stocks hold up in this period?Serena Tang: Surprisingly, the correlation have really, really held up. Stocks and bond return correlation turned very negative during the sell off that we saw, which means that equity losses were actually offset by bond returns. Now, this isn't entirely true across the curve. You saw 2 Year Treasuries being a much effective diversifier than say the 30 Year Treasury. But all in all, I think it means bonds still work as a diversifier.Now on this point Vishy, how do you think policy will impact asset correlations we've been talking about, as well as the perception of U.S. assets as a safe haven.Vishy Tirupattur: So, as I said before, positive growth differentials fade, and we have negative growth differential. And if there are continued questions about the Fed's independence, so some of the attraction of U.S. assets, particularly U.S. Treasuries as a safe haven asset, will be challenged. But that challenge hits the practical reality of the size and the scale of the safe haven assets.So, if you look around, if you add the comparably rated European government bond market and compare that to the U.S. government bond market, the U.S. market is about 10 times as larger. So, more scale, more liquidity, and the ability to deploy capital during the periods of stress is clearly more in the U.S.So, this is what I would say. The status of U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency and U.S. Treasuries as the global safe haven asset have taken a bit of a ding, but not gone away.Serena Tang: Vishy, thanks so much for taking the time to talk.Vishy Tirupattur: Great speaking with you, Serena, as always.Serena Tang: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

With the May FOMC meeting in progress, our analysts Matt Hornbach and Michael Gapen offer perspective on U.S. economic projections and whether markets are aligned.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Matthew Hornbach: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Matthew Hornbach, Global Head of Macro Strategy.Michael Gapen: And I'm Michael Gapen, Morgan Stanley's Chief U.S. Economist.Matthew Hornbach: Today we're talking about the Federal Open Market Committee Meeting underway, and the path for rates from here.It's Tuesday, May 6th at 10am in New York.Mike, before we talk about your expectations for the FOMC meeting itself, I wanted to get your take on the U.S. economy heading into the meeting. How are you seeing things today? And in particular, how do you think what happened on April 2nd, so-called Liberation Day, affects the outlook?Michael Gapen: Yeah, I think right now, Matt, I would say the economy's still on relatively solid footing, and by that I mean the economy had been moderating. Yes, the first quarter GDP print was negative. But that was mainly because firms were frontloading a lot of inventories through imports. So imports were up over 40 percent at an annualized pace in the quarter. A lot of that went into inventories and into business spending. That was just a mechanical drag on activity.And the April employment report, I think, showed the same thing. We're now averaging about 145,000 jobs per month this year. That's down from about 170,000 per month in the second half of last year. So the hiring rate is slowing down, but no signs of a sudden stop. No signs in layoffs picking up. So I'd say the economy is on fairly solid footing, and the labor market is also on fairly solid footing – as we enter the period now when we think tariffs will have a greater effect on the outlook. So you asked, you know, Liberation Day. How does that affect the outlook? Right now we'd say it puts a lot of uncertainty in front of us. on pretty solid footing now. But Matt, looking forward, we have a lot of concerns about where things may go and we expect activity to slow and inflation to rise.Matthew Hornbach: That's great background, Mike, for what I want to ask you about next, which is of course the FOMC meeting this week. We won't get a new set of economic projections from the committee. But if we did, what do you think they would do with them and how would you assess the reaction function one might be able to tease out of those economic projections?Michael Gapen: You're right, we don't get a new set of projections, but New York Fed President John Williams did provide some indication about how he adjusted his forecast, and John tends to be one of the – kind of a median participant.He tends to be centrist in his thinking and his projection. So I do think that that gives us an indication of what the Fed is thinking; and he said he expects GDP growth to slow to somewhat below 1 percent in 2025. He expects inflation to rise to 3.5 to 4 percent this year, and he said the unemployment rates likely to move between 4.5 and 5 percent over the next year. And those phrases are really key. That's the same thing, Matt, as you know, we are expecting for the U.S. economy and I do think the Fed is thinking of it the same way.Matthew Hornbach: So one final question for you, Mike. In terms of this meeting itself, what are you expecting the Fed to deliver this week? And what are the risks you see being around that expectation; you know, that might catch investors off guard?Michael Gapen:I think the Fed's main message this week will be that they're prepared to wait, that they think policy's in a good spot right now. They think inflation will be rising sharply, that the tariff shock is a lot larger than they had anticipated earlier this year. And they will need time to assess whether that inflation impulse is transitory, or whether it creates more persistent inflation. So I think what they will say is we're in a good position to wait and we need clarity on the outlook before we can act.In this case, we think acting means doing nothing. But acting could also mean cutting if the labor market weakens. So I think there'll be worried about inflation today, a weak labor market tomorrow. And so I think risks around this meeting really are tilted in the direction of a more hawkish message than markets are expecting at least vis-a-vis current pricing. I think the market wants to hear the Fed will be ready to support the economy. Of course, we think they will, but I think the Fed's also going to be worried about inflation pressures in the near term. So that, I think, might catch investors off guard.So Matt, what I think might catch investors off guard may be a little misplaced. I'm an economist after all. You're the strategist, you're the expert on the treasury market and how investors may be perceiving events at the moment. So the treasury market had quite the month since April 2nd. For a moment U.S. treasuries didn't act like the safe haven asset many have come to expect. What do you think happened?Matthew Hornbach: So, Mike, you're absolutely right. Treasury yields initially fell, but then spent a healthy portion of the last month rising and investors were caught off guard by what they saw happening in the treasury market. I've seen this type of behavior in the treasury market, which I've been watching now for 25 years. I've seen this happen twice before in my career. The first time was during the Great Financial Crisis, and the second time I saw it was in March of 2020. So, this being the third time you know, I don't know if it was the charm or if it was something else, but treasury yields went up quite a bit.I think what investors were witnessing in the treasury market is really a reflection of the degree of uncertainty and the breadth with which that uncertainty, traversed the world. Both the Great Financial Crisis and the initial stage of the pandemic in March of 2020 were events that were global in nature. They were in many ways systemic in nature, and they were events that most investors hadn't contemplated or seen in their lifetimes. And when this happens, I think investors tend to reduce risk in all of its forms until the dust settles. And one of those very important forms of risk in the fixed income markets is duration risk.So, I think investors were paring back duration risk, which helped the U.S. Treasury market perform pretty poorly at one moment over the past month.Michael Gapen: So Matt, one aspect of market pricing that stands out to me is how rates markets are pricing 75 basis points of rate cuts this year. And just after April 2nd, the market had priced in about 100 basis points of cuts.How are you thinking about the market pricing today? Matt, as you know, it differs quite a bit from what we think will happen.Matthew Hornbach: Yeah. This is where, you know, understanding that market prices in the interest rate complex reflect the average outcome of a wide variety of scenarios; really every scenario that is conceivable in the minds of investors. And, of course, as you mentioned, Mike depending on exactly how this year ends up playing out there, there could be a scenario in which the Federal Reserve has to lower rates much more aggressively than perhaps even markets are pricing today.So, the market being an average of a wide variety of outcome will find it really challenging to take out all of the rate cuts that are priced in today. Or said differently, the market will find it challenging to price in your baseline scenario. And ultimately, I think the way in which the market ends up truing up to your projections, Mike, is just with time.I think as we make our way through this year and the economic data come in, in-line with your baseline projections, the market will eventually price out those rate cuts that you see in there today. But that's going to take time. It's going to take investors growing increasingly comfortable that we can avoid a recession at least in perception this year before, you know, on your projections, we have a bit of a slower economy in 2026.Michael Gapen: Well, it definitely does feel like a bimodal world, where investor conviction is low. Matt, where do you have conviction in the rates market today?Matthew Hornbach: So, the way we've been thinking about this environment where we can avoid a recession this year, but maybe 2026 the risks rise a bit more. We think that that's the type of environment where the yield curve in the United States can steepen, and what that means practically is that yields on longer maturity bonds will go up relative to yields on shorter maturity bonds. So, you get this steepening of the yield curve. And that is where we have the highest conviction; in terms of, what happens with the Treasury market this year is we have a steeper yield curve by the time we get to December.Now part of that steepening we think comes because as we approach 2026 where Mike, you have the Fed beginning to lower rates in your baseline, the market will have to increasingly price with more conviction a lower policy rate from the Fed. But then at the same time, you know, we probably will have an environment where treasury supply will have to increase.As a result of the fiscal policies that the government is discussing at the moment. And so you have this environment where yields on longer maturity securities are pressured higher relative to yields on shorter maturity treasuries.So, with that, Mike, we'll wrap our conversation. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk.Michael Gapen: It's been great speaking with you, Matt.Matthew Hornbach: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Morgan Stanley Research analyst Mark Schmidt and Investment Management's Craig Brandon discuss the heightened uncertainty in the U.S. municipal bonds market.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.For a full list of episode disclosures click here.----- Transcript -----Mark Schmidt: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Mark Schmidt, Morgan Stanley's Head of Municipal Strategy.Craig Brandon: I'm Craig Brandon, Co-Director of Municipal Investments at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.Mark Schmidt: Today, let's talk about the biggest market you hardly ever hear about – municipal bonds, a $4 trillion asset class.It's Monday, May 5th at 10am in Boston.Mark Schmidt: If you've driven, flown, gone to school or turned on a tap, chances are munis made it happen. Although munis are late cycle haven, they were not immune to the latest bout of market volatility. Craig, why was April so tough?Craig Brandon: So, what we say in April, it was sort of the trifecta of things that happened that were a little different than other asset classes. The first thing that happened is we saw a significant increase in treasury rates – and munis are generally correlated to treasuries. We're a very high-quality asset class, that's viewed as a duration asset class. So, one thing we saw were rates going up. When we see rates going up, you generally see money coming out of the market, right? So, I think investors were a little bit impacted by the higher rates, the correlation to treasuries, the duration, and saw some flows out of the market.Secondly, what we saw is conversation about the tax exemption in Washington D.C. What that did is it caused muni issuers to pull their issuance forward. So, if you're an infrastructure issuer, you are issuing bonds in the next year to year and a half; you're going to pull that forward because if there's any risk of loss of the tax exemption, you want to get these bonds issued today. So that's basically what drives technicals. It's supply and demand. So, what we saw was a decrease in demand because of higher rates; an increase in supply because of issuance being pulled forward.And the third part of the trifecta we refer to is the conversations about the economy. So, I would put that, it's sort of a distant third, but there's still conversations about maybe credit weakness driven by a slowing economy.Mark Schmidt: Craig, your team has been through a lot of tough market cycles. Given your experience, how did the most recent selloff compare? And why was it not like 2008?Craig Brandon: I started my career back in 1998 during the long-term capital management crisis. I lived through 2008. I lived through the COVID crisis, and you know, really when I look at the crisis in 2008 – no banks went out of business three weeks ago, right? In 2008 we were really sitting on a trading desk wondering where this was going to end.You know, we had a number of meetings with our staff, over the last couple weeks explaining to them why it was different and how. Yes, there was some volatility here, but you could see that there was going to be an end to this, and this was not going to be a permanent restructuring of the market. So, I think we felt comfortable. It was very different than 2008 and it really felt different than COVID.Mark Schmidt: That's reassuring. But with economic growth set to slow sharply, how does your credit team think the fiscal health of America's state and local governments will hold up?Craig Brandon: Well, remember state and local governments, and when we're talking about munis, we're also talking about other infrastructure asset classes like water and sewer bonds. Like, you know, transportation, bonds, airports. We're talking about toll roads.They went into this with a very strong balance sheet, right? Remember, there was a lot of infrastructure money spent by the federal government during COVID to give issuers money to make it through COVID. There's still a lot of money on balance sheets. So, what we do is we're going into this crisis with a lot of cash on balance sheets, allowing issuers to be able to withstand some weakness in the economy and get through to the other side of this.Mark Schmidt: Not only do state and local governments have a lot of cash, but they're just not that impacted by tariffs, right? So why did muni yields perform worse than U.S. treasuries over the past couple of weeks?Craig Brandon: Right. It really… We're technically driven, right? The U.S. muni market is more retail driven than some other asset classes. Remember – investment grade corporates, treasury bonds, there's a lot of institutional buyers in those markets. In the municipal market, it's primarily retail driven.So, when you know, individual retail investors get nervous, they tend to pull money out of the market. So, what we saw was money coming out of the market. At the same time, we saw an individual increase in more bonds, which just led to very weak technicals, which when we see that it eventually reverses itself.Mark Schmidt: Now I almost buried the lede, right? Why invest in munis? Well, they're great credit quality, but they're also tax free. In fact, muni bonds have been exempt from federal taxes for over a century. You have a lot of experience putting together tax bills, and right now people are worried about tax reform. Do you think investors should be concerned?Craig Brandon: Listen. I'm not really losing a lot of sleep at night over the tax exemption. And I think there's other, you know, issues to worry about. Why do I say that?As you mentioned Mark, I spent the early years of my career working for the New York State Assembly Ways and Means Committee. I spent seven years negotiating budgets and what that did is it gave me a window – into how, you know, not only state budgets, but the federal budget gets put together.So, what it also showed me was the relationship between state and local elected officials and your representatives in Congress and your representatives in the Senate. So, I know firsthand that members of Congress and members of the Senate in Washington have very close relationships with members of the state legislatures, with governors, with mayors, with city council members, with school board members – who are all delivering the message that significantly higher financing costs that could potentially happen from the loss of the exemption, could be meaningful to them.And I think members of Congress and members of the Senate and Washington get it. They understand it because they were all there when it happened. The last time the muni exemption came under fire was back in 2012; and in 2012, a lot of members of Congress were in the state legislature back then, so they understand it.Mark Schmidt: That's reassuring because right now, tax equivalent yields in the muni market are 7 to 8 per cent. That's equal to or greater than the long run rate of return on the stock market. So, whether to invest in the muni market seems pretty straightforward. How to invest in the muni market? Well, with 50,000 issuers, that's a little complicated. How do you recommend investors get exposure to tax-free munis right now?Craig Brandon: Well, and that is a very common question. The muni market can be very confusing because there are just so many bonds out there. You know, over 50,000 issuers, there's over a million individual CUSIPs in the muni market.So as an individual investor, where do you start? There's different coupon structures, different call structures, different maturity structures, ratings. There's so many different variables that go into a decision in investing in muni bonds.I can make an argument that you could probably mimic the S&P 500 with 500 different stocks. But most muni indices are over 50,000 constituents. It's very difficult to replicate the muni market by yourself, which is why a lot of people, you know, they let professional money managers, do the investing for them. Whether you're looking at mutual funds, whether you're looking at separately managed accounts, whether you're looking at exchange traded fund ETFs, there's a lot of different ways to get exposure to the muni market. But with the huge amount of choices you have to make, I think a lot of individual investors would just let a professional with the experience do it.Mark Schmidt: And active managers let you customize portfolios to your unique tax situation and risk tolerance. So, Craig, a final question for you. How do munis fit into a diversified portfolio?Craig Brandon: Munis are generally the stable part of most people's portfolios. Remember, you don't have a choice of whether you're going to pay your taxes or not. You have to pay your taxes, you have to pay your water bill, you have to pay your power bill. You have to pay tolls on highways. You have to pay airport fees when you buy an airline ticket, right?It's not an option. So, because the revenue streams are so stable, you see most muni bonds rated AA or AAA. The default rate for rated munis is significantly below 1 per cent. It's something in the ballpark of about 0.2 per cent*. So, with such a low default rate – listen, we're technically driven, as I said. You see ups and downs in the market. But over a longer period of time, munis can give you generally stable returns, tax exempt income over the long term, and they're one of the more stable asset classes that you see in your overall portfolio.Mark Schmidt: That sounds boring, and I mean that in the best possible way. Craig, thanks so much for your time today.Craig Brandon: Thanks, Mark, happy to be hereMark Schmidt: And thank you for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.*“US Municipal Bond Defaults and Recoveries, 1970-2021” – Moody's Investor ServicesDisclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The returns referred to in the commentary are those of representative indices and are not meant to depict the performance of a specific investment.Risk ConsiderationsDiversification does not eliminate the risk of loss.There is no assurance that a portfolio will achieve its investment objective. Portfolios are subject to market risk, which is the possibility that the market values of securities owned by the portfolio will decline and that the value of portfolio shares may therefore be less than what you paid for them. Market values can change daily due to economic and other events (e.g., natural disasters, health crises, terrorism, conflicts, and social unrest) that affect markets, countries, companies or governments. It is difficult to predict the timing, duration, and potential adverse effects (e.g., portfolio liquidity) of events. Accordingly, you can lose money investing in a portfolio. Fixed-income securities are subject to the ability of an issuer to make timely principal and interest payments (credit risk), changes in interest rates (interest rate risk), the creditworthiness of the issuer and general market liquidity (market risk). In a rising interest-rate environment, bond prices may fall and may result in periods of volatility and increased portfolio redemptions. In a declining interest-rate environment, the portfolio may generate less income. Longer-term securities may be more sensitive to interest rate changes. An imbalance in supply and demand in the municipal market may result in valuation uncertainties and greater volatility, less liquidity, widening credit spreads and a lack of price transparency in the market. There generally is limited public information about municipal issuers. Income from tax-exempt municipal obligations could be declared taxable because of changes in tax laws, adverse interpretations by the relevant taxing authority or the non-compliant conduct of the issuer of an obligation and may subject to the federal alternative minimum tax.There is no guarantee that any investment strategy will work under all market conditions, and each investor should evaluate their ability to invest for the long-term, especially during periods of downturn in the market.A separately managed account may not be appropriate for all investors. Separate accounts managed according to the particular strategy may include securities that may not necessarily track the performance of a particular index. Please consider the investment objectives, risks and fees of the Strategy carefully before investing. A minimum asset level is required. For important information about the investment managers, please refer to Form ADV Part 2.The views and opinions and/or analysis expressed are those of the author or the investment team as of the date of preparation of this material and are subject to change at any time without notice due to market or economic conditions and may not necessarily come to pass.This material has been prepared on the basis of publicly available information, internally developed data and other third-party sources believed to be reliable. However, no assurances are provided regarding the reliability of such information and the Firm has not sought to independently verify information taken from public and third-party sources.This material is a general communication, which is not impartial and all information provided has been prepared solely for informational and educational purposes and does not constitute an offer or a recommendation to buy or sell any particular security or to adopt any specific investment strategy. The information herein has not been based on a consideration of any individual investor circumstances and is not investment advice, nor should it be construed in any way as tax, accounting, legal or regulatory advice. To that end, investors should seek independent legal and financial advice, including advice as to tax consequences, before making any investment decision.The Firm has not authorised financial intermediaries to use and to distribute this material, unless such use and distribution is made in accordance with applicable law and regulation. Additionally, financial intermediaries are required to satisfy themselves that the information in this material is appropriate for any person to whom they provide this material in view of that person's circumstances and purpose. The Firm shall not be liable for, and accepts no liability for, the use or misuse of this material by any such financial intermediary.This material may be translated into other languages. Where such a translation is made this English version remains definitive. If there are any discrepancies between the English version and any version of this material in another language, the English version shall prevail.The whole or any part of this material may not be directly or indirectly reproduced, copied, modified, used to create a derivative work, performed, displayed, published, posted, licensed, framed, distributed or transmitted or any of its contents disclosed to third parties without the Firm's express written consent. This material may not be linked to unless such hyperlink is for personal and non-commercial use. All information contained herein is proprietary and is protected under copyright and other applicable law.Eaton Vance is part of Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Morgan Stanley Investment Management is the asset management division of Morgan Stanley.DISTRIBUTIONThis material is only intended for and will only be distributed to persons resident in jurisdictions where such distribution or availability would not be contrary to local laws or regulations.MSIM, the asset management division of Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), and its affiliates have arrangements in place to market each other's products and services. Each MSIM affiliate is regulated as appropriate in the jurisdiction it operates. MSIM's affiliates are: Eaton Vance Management (International) Limited, Eaton Vance Advisers International Ltd, Calvert Research and Management, Eaton Vance Management, Parametric Portfolio Associates LLC and Atlanta Capital Management LLC.This material has been issued by any one or more of the following entities:EMEA:This material is for Professional Clients/Accredited Investors only.In the EU, MSIM and Eaton Vance materials are issued by MSIM Fund Management (Ireland) Limited (“FMIL”). FMIL is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland and is incorporated in Ireland as a private company limited by shares with company registration number 616661 and has its registered address at 24-26 City Quay, Dublin 2, D02 NY 19, Ireland. Outside the EU, MSIM materials are issued by Morgan Stanley Investment Management Limited (MSIM Ltd) is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered in England. Registered No. 1981121. Registered Office: 25 Cabot Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 4QA.In Switzerland, MSIM materials are issued by Morgan Stanley & Co. International plc, London (Zurich Branch) Authorised and regulated by the Eidgenössische Finanzmarktaufsicht ("FINMA"). Registered Office: Beethovenstrasse 33, 8002 Zurich, Switzerland.Outside the US and EU, Eaton Vance materials are issued by Eaton Vance Management (International) Limited (“EVMI”) 125 Old Broad Street, London, EC2N 1AR, UK, which is authorised and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority.Italy: MSIM FMIL (Milan Branch), (Sede Secondaria di Milano) Palazzo Serbelloni Corso Venezia, 16 20121 Milano, Italy. The Netherlands: MSIM FMIL (Amsterdam Branch), Rembrandt Tower, 11th Floor Amstelplein 1 1096HA, Netherlands. France: MSIM FMIL (Paris Branch), 61 rue de Monceau 75008 Paris, France. Spain: MSIM FMIL (Madrid Branch), Calle Serrano 55, 28006, Madrid, Spain. Germany: Germany: MSIM FMIL (Frankfurt Branch), Grosse Gallusstrasse 18, 60312 Frankfurt am Main, Germany (Gattung: Zweigniederlassung (FDI) gem. § 53b KWG). Denmark: MSIM FMIL (Copenhagen Branch), Gorrissen Federspiel, Axel Towers, Axeltorv2, 1609 Copenhagen V, Denmark.MIDDLE EASTDubai: MSIM Ltd (Representative Office, Unit Precinct 3-7th Floor-Unit 701 and 702, Level 7, Gate Precinct Building 3, Dubai International Financial Centre, Dubai, 506501, United Arab Emirates. Telephone: +97 (0)14 709 7158). This document is distributed in the Dubai International Financial Centre by Morgan Stanley Investment Management Limited (Representative Office), an entity regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (“DFSA”). It is intended for use by professional clients and market counterparties only. This document is not intended for distribution to retail clients, and retail clients should not act upon the information contained in this document.This document relates to a financial product which is not subject to any form of regulation or approval by the DFSA. The DFSA has no responsibility for reviewing or verifying any documents in connection with this financial product. Accordingly, the DFSA has not approved this document or any other associated documents nor taken any steps to verify the information set out in this document, and has no responsibility for it. The financial product to which this document relates may be illiquid and/or subject to restrictions on its resale or transfer. Prospective purchasers should conduct their own due diligence on the financial product. If you do not understand the contents of this document, you should consult an authorised financial adviser.USNOT FDIC INSURED | OFFER NO BANK GUARANTEE | MAY LOSE VALUE | NOT INSURED BY ANY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY | NOT A DEPOSITLatin America (Brazil, Chile Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay)This material is for use with an institutional investor or a qualified investor only. All information contained herein is confidential and is for the exclusive use and review of the intended addressee, and may not be passed on to any third party. This material is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute a public offering, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell for any product, service, security and/or strategy. A decision to invest should only be made after reading the strategy documentation and conducting in-depth and independent due diligence.ASIA PACIFICHong Kong: This material is disseminated by Morgan Stanley Asia Limited for use in Hong Kong and shall only be made available to “professional investors” as defined under the Securities and Futures Ordinance of Hong Kong (Cap 571). The contents of this material have not been reviewed nor approved by any regulatory authority including the Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong. Accordingly, save where an exemption is available under the relevant law, this material shall not be issued, circulated, distributed, directed at, or made available to, the public in Hong Kong. Singapore: This material is disseminated by Morgan Stanley Investment Management Company and may not be circulated or distributed, whether directly or indirectly, to persons in Singapore other than to (i) an accredited investor (ii) an expert investor or (iii) an institutional investor as defined in Section 4A of the Securities and Futures Act, Chapter 289 of Singapore (“SFA”); or (iv) otherwise pursuant to, and in accordance with the conditions of, any other applicable provision of the SFA. This publication has not been reviewed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Australia: This material is provided by Morgan Stanley Investment Management (Australia) Pty Ltd ABN 22122040037, AFSL No. 314182 and its affiliates and does not constitute an offer of interests. Morgan Stanley Investment Management (Australia) Pty Limited arranges for MSIM affiliates to provide financial services to Australian wholesale clients. Interests will only be offered in circumstances under which no disclosure is required under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (the “Corporations Act”). Any offer of interests will not purport to be an offer of interests in circumstances under which disclosure is required under the Corporations Act and will only be made to persons who qualify as a “wholesale client” (as defined in the Corporations Act). This material will not be lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.Japan:For professional investors, this document is circulated or distributed for informational purposes only. For those who are not professional investors, this document is provided in relation to Morgan Stanley Investment Management (Japan) Co., Ltd. (“MSIMJ”)'s business with respect to discretionary investment management agreements (“IMA”) and investment advisory agreements (“IAA”). This is not for the purpose of a recommendation or solicitation of transactions or offers any particular financial instruments. Under an IMA, with respect to management of assets of a client, the client prescribes basic management policies in advance and commissions MSIMJ to make all investment decisions based on an analysis of the value, etc. of the securities, and MSIMJ accepts such commission. The client shall delegate to MSIMJ the authorities necessary for making investment. MSIMJ exercises the delegated authorities based on investment decisions of MSIMJ, and the client shall not make individual instructions. All investment profits and losses belong to the clients; principal is not guaranteed. Please consider the investment objectives and nature of risks before investing. As an investment advisory fee for an IAA or an IMA, the amount of assets subject to the contract multiplied by a certain rate (the upper limit is 2.20% per annum (including tax)) shall be incurred in proportion to the contract period. For some strategies, a contingency fee may be incurred in addition to the fee mentioned above. Indirect charges also may be incurred, such as brokerage commissions for incorporated securities. Since these charges and expenses are different depending on a contract and other factors, MSIMJ cannot present the rates, upper limits, etc. in advance. All clients should read the Documents Provided Prior to the Conclusion of a Contract carefully before executing an agreement. This document is disseminated in Japan by MSIMJ, Registered No. 410 (Director of Kanto Local Finance Bureau (Financial Instruments Firms)), Membership: The Japan Securities Dealers Association, the Investment Trusts Association, Japan, the Japan Investment Advisers Association and the Type II Financial Instruments Firms Association.© 2025 Morgan Stanley. All rights reserved. 4459984 Exp. 19/02/2026