Robertson's Garretty says war has put 'recession' back into conversation

Jeanette Garretty, chief economist at Robertson Stephens Wealth Management, says that rising oil prices and higher inflation have increased the possibility of a recession. While she says the operating outlook for investors is that the war in Iran will last a few more weeks, with oil starting to flow again quickly, which will make current events quickly forgettable as the economy returns to its pre-war growth path. But she notes that the path is uncertain, and the longer war persists and sours economic numbers, the more it draws out potential problems. "The challenge," Garretty says, "is the recovery ... if it doesn't look like what everyone expects."

Veteran technical analyst Adam Grimes, president of MarketLife, says the market has reached "a point where I would want to be raising capital, where I would want to be defensive with long exposure. This is not a point where I want to put capital to work." Grimes says he sees the potential for a bad short-term downturn, noting that "[my] definition of bad is 50 to 60 percent." Grimes acknowledged that he sounds "like the raving crazy person at the top of the mountain," but he says that market cycles and enormous moves do repeat itself and the market is making a big decline a more-realistic possibility, which hasn't made him move out of the market but has made him more defensive.

Mark Burrage, senior vice president at PenFed Home at PenFed Credit Union, discusses the wide range of factors that are making homebuyers uncomfortable, and what families can do to overcome the issues they are facing in buying a home.