Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Greg Valliere, chief U.S. policy strategist at AGF Investments, says that several interest rate hikes will not sour the economy now, so that if the Federal Reserve doesn't go too far on tightening, there's no reason for a recession. Valliere says that he does expect more recession concerns at the start of 2023, as the economy digests the protracted impact of not just rate hikes but inflation, waning economic stimulus and the offshoots of the war in Ukraine. Also on the show, Tom Lydon of ETFTrends.com makes a trending commodities fund -- sensitive to both the war and inflation -- his ETF of the Week, Catherine Collinson of the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies discusses the savers credit and how a majority of Americans don't know that it exists, let alone how to claim it when filing their taxes, and Stephen Dodson of The Bretton Fund talks value investing in the Market Call.

Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist for Janney Montgomery Scott, says that the market is working its way through a correction -- troubles exacerbated by the war in Ukraine -- but that hasn't dampened the economic underpinnings or deflated the spending desires of consumers, which should help growth in corporate earnings pick up and push the market higher later this year, leading to 'pretty flattering returns for investors' this year. Likewise, Brian Dress of Left Brain Investment Research says that the 'green shoots' of recovery are starting to show, but warns that the recovery will not be V-shaped and fast, requiring the market to return to the normalcy of posting 'good reactions to good news' that has been missing early this year. In the Market Call, Malcolm Polley of Stewart Capital Advisors talks about picking stocks through the lens of 'business perspective investing.'

Marty Fridson, chief investment officer at Lehmann Livian Fridson Advisors, says that the war in Ukraine has become integrated along with other concerns -- most notably heightened inflation -- which may not stop the Federal Reserve from going ahead with planned interest rate hikes this month, but make it likely that any rate moves will be smaller and more controlled. Mish Schneider, director of trading education at MarketGauge.com says that while the stock market has been volatile throughout the first few days of fighting, she expects it to be stuck in a range for a while as the situation plays out and while the potential fallout remains murky. She sees long-term opportunities, but urges caution now. Also on the show, Rod Griffin of Experian explains how 'credit invisibles' now have more and different tools (such as Experian Go) to help build credit and get on the radar screen of the credit bureaus and establish a personal history, and Lance Canon of Hood River Capital Management talks about investing in small-cap stocks during the Market Call.

David Trainer, president at New Constructs -- a data firm that analyzes funds and stocks -- says that the hugely popular ARK Innovation Fund is fooling investors into believing that innovation itself is an investment strategy or asset class, and he notes that many of the holdings are simply early entrants to an industry with little or no competitive edge. That's why a number of the fund's biggest and best-known holdings have been in the Danger Zone, which is where he puts the ETF itself this week, noting that while ARK Innovation has lost about half of its value since the start of 2021, he believes it could fall another 70 percent from here. Also on the show, Chuck talks about how long geopolitical events typically effect the market, Giorgio Caputo, senior fund manager at J.O. Hambro Capital Management, discusses how investors can get through the interest rate and inflation transitions and how to invest once the higher-rate environment arrives, and Adam Coons, portfolio manager at Winthrop Capital Management, talks ETFs in the Market Call.

Bill Nygren, co-manager of the Oakmark Fund -- whose three-decade track record has made him an investment legend -- says that while the video from the Ukraine is distressing and the headlines about interest rates and inflations are worrisome, investors need to stay focused on the long run. Nygren says that he doesn't think 'any of the events we are seeing in the world today will meaningfully affect our estimates of business value,' though he notes that they will move prices to create buying opportunities that will pay off in time. There's also more talk on value investing as Mike Liss of the American Century Value Fund talks 'relative value' and stocks in the Market Call. And in The NAVigator segment, Mike Taggart of Taggart Fund Intelligence and the Active Investment Company Alliance, says that investors seeing discounts widen in closed-end funds due to current market confusion will find that these conditions make it important to buying the underlying asset and not just the biggest discounts.

Eddy Vataru, portfolio manager for the Osterweis Total Return Fund, says that inflation will remain a hot-button topic for investors for several years because the Federal Reserve 'is going to have a really hard time getting 6 or 7 percent inflation down to 2, which is their longer-term target.' Vataru says that how the Fed accomplishes that and the tools they use to reduce inflation will go a long way to determining what the stock and bond markets are capable of achieving and the results they can deliver. Also on the show, there's a new ETF built specifically to take advantage of opportunities in inflationary times, and Tom Lydon of ETFTrends.com makes it the ETF of the Week, and in the Market Call, Christopher Zook, president of CAZ Investments discusses long-term, thematic investing at a time with so many short- and intermediate-term headlines and worries.

Author James Fok discusses his new book 'Financial Cold War,' about economic relations between the United States and China, noting that the longer current tensions linger, the worse the situation gets for both the countries and their citizens. Making the situation worse, Fok says, are that people in both countries are finding it harder to get by, and with politicians glossing over domestic issues and deflecting to an outside enemy, it is stoking the flames of nationalism and making it harder to avoid a damaging economic donnybrook.Also on the show, David Goodsell of the Natixis Investment Managers' Center for Investor Insight discusses a recent survey showing that investors have overblown return expectations that their advisers are struggling to bring in line with reality, and Eric Lynch, managing director at Scharf Investments and portfolio manager on the Scharf Funds talks in the Market Call about balancing upside potential against downside risk.

Both JJ Kinahan and David Trainer gave takes on the Federal Reserve and its influence over the current stock market on today's show. Kinahan, the chief market strategist at TD Ameritrade, says that while he isn't expecting any real surprises from the central bank, the market is craving clarity and guidance before it will settle down and be less volatile and more predictable. Trainer, the founder and president at New Constructs -- who discusses Shake Shack and Carvana in the Danger Zone segment -- says that the Fed 'is not going to take the punch bowl away,' but warns that it will taper its economic relief down to a few drops. Also on the show, Michael Wagner of Omnia Family Wealth talks about how the crisis in the Ukraine will hit home for domestic investors and consumers, and Mark Yusko, chief investment officer at Morgan Creek Asset Management, talks about taking an endowment approach and making innovation an asset class while he discusses ETFs in the Market Call.

Technical analyst Michael Sincere says that the 13-year bear market has set the stage for a bear market on the horizon, though he doesn't know whether the next big decline will be steep and fast or a long, slow, two-bad-days, one-good-day pattern that maximizes the pain. Sincere says he is watching the 50-day moving average and will stay constructive on the market so long as the indexes are above that benchmark. Also on the show, there are discussions about tackling a rising-rate environment and using real assets to help hedge and hold off inflation; the former features Chris Oberbeck, chairman and chief executive officer at Saratoga Investment Corp. talking about business-development companies (BDCs), while the latter interview is with Christopher Huemmer, senior investment strategist for ETFs at Northern Trust. And in the Market Call, Michael Loukas, chief executive officer at TrueMark Investments talks about low-volatility stocks and artificial intelligence and deep-learning plays.

Simeon Hyman, global investment strategist at ProShares, says that the market's rocky start to 2022 has been built around headlines and not the underlying fundamentals, which means that investors should not be changing expectations. He believes that the combination of rising rates, higher-but-controlled inflation and solid economic underpinnings will result in a positive stock market going forward. He does note that investors will want to turn toward dividend stocks to protect against rising rates, but says they will want to avoid TIPS - inflation-protected Treasury bonds - because they don't perform as most people expect during rising-rate environments. Another guest talking inflation is economist Kamran Afshar, who runs the Kamran Afshar Data Analytics Center and uses modeling to help companies forecast and project business conditions, and he discusses how inflation is impacting different groups of people uniquely and that how much trouble it causes an individual turns out to be mostly a factor of the person's age. Also, Tom Lydon of ETFTrends.com revisits a fund that he made 'ETF of the Week' shortly after it opened a year ago, noting that it offers investors a rare ESG opportunity where they can invest in a hot market sector while also doing some good for a charity targeting America's number-one killer disease.