Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Craig Callahan, founder and chief executive officer at the ICON Funds -- who correctly called the bottom of the pandemic-driven bear market in March 2020 -- says that there are signs that the stock market has been through the ringer, but it's not yet showing enough signs that it has reached a bottom. Callahan says the market is roughly at fair value, not nearly beaten up enough to create the kind of widespread bargains normally found at a market bottom. the way it typically would be in As a result, he is holding maximum cash, waiting for inflation to start to ease, which should key the market reaction that puts him back in a buying mood. Also on the show, Rich Compson, head of managed accounts at Fidelity Investments talks about "direct indexing" or personalized indexing, and how it is now available to average investors with much smaller account balances; and in the Market Call, Scott Davies, founder and chief investment officer at CDAM, talks about international value investing now.

Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist for the Carson Group, says that while investors are suffering with the struggling market, he does not see a deep, protracted recession, and he says that investors who have priced in a much bigger downturn have created a buying opportunity that people may struggle to take advantage of because of the emotions of the downturn; he cites a number of data points that have him overweight to equities relative to fixed income now, which is a contrary position to many money managers now. Also on the show, Bob Pisani, senior markets correspondent for CNBC discusses his new book out today, "Shut Up and Keep Talking: Lessons on Life and Investing from the Floor of the New York Stock Exchange," and Nicholas Bohnsack, chief executive officer at Strategas Asset Management discusses "macro thematic opportunities" and the stocks that represent those opportunities now.

David Goerz, chief executive officer at Strategic Frontier Management, says that some well-known blue-chip companies are trading at single-digit price-earnings ratios lower than in the last two decades, creating opportunities for investors, but we are in an environment where investors could sell stocks and buy bonds expecting a better return, and the only asset class that he thinks can generate a positive return is cash. Goerz defends holding more cash right now despite an inflation rate that ultimately gives cash investments a negative real return, noting that losing a little ground to inflation is still a better outcome than losing a lot of ground in stocks and bonds. Also on the show, Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree, discusses a survey showing that nearly everyone across the country is planning to celebrate Halloween and plans to spend more money doing it, Kyle Guske of New Constructs puts a stock in The Danger Zone that he says was not rescued by a white knight recently but was instead pushed to the brink, and Manny Weintraub of Spears Abacus talks about finding compounders and other "super great stocks that are not going to kill you."

Warren Pierson, co-chief investment officer at the Baird Funds, says that after a long period where bond payouts were so low that investors had no choice and no alternative but to invest in stocks, things have now moved to where investors should be looking at bond yields because that's where they can find good values now. Pierson says that odds of a recession have risen, and while he does not expect a particularly long or difficult economic downturn, he believes investors should focus on investment-grade, quality bonds to ride it out. Also on the show, Duncan Farley, portfolio manager for the BlueBay Destra International Event-Driven Credit Fund, talks about alternative fixed-income opportunities, Zach Gildehaus of Edward Jones discusses charitable giving and making donations go farther and do more, and Nancy Prial, co-chief executive officer at Essex Investment Management, makes her debut in the Market Call talking about small-cap stocks.

Nick Sargen, senior economic advisor at Fort Washington Investment Advisors, says that investors didn't expect the Federal Reserve to let troubling times linger, but now the central bank can't make a change on a dime, so investors should now be waiting for the Fed to pivot on its strategy, a change he does not think will happen soon. Sargen expects a recession that is "not that long and not that deep," though he acknowledges there is enough uncertainty to make it last longer before those weak spots can be shored up. Also on the show, Tom Lydon of VettaFi looks to an international fund that hedges currency risk -- a hot topic in today's markets -- for his ETF of the Week, Maria Feller of SurePayroll talks about a survey showing that nearly 40 percent of Americans find that subscription services -- managing them and getting the most out of their money -- is adding to their financial stress, and in the Market Call, Justin Carbonneau, vice president at Validea.com discusses the ways in which legendary investors are or would be picking stocks in today's downbeat market.

Anwiti Bahuguna, head of multi-asset strategy at Columbia Threadneedle Investments -- senior portfolio manager of the Columbia Thermostat Fund -- says that the sell-off in stocks has not been the result of bad earnings reports, but rather has been driven by multiple compression, and until investors are willing to pay more for earnings, the stock and bond markets will be muted at best. Investors won't likely come around until the Federal Reserve signals its intentions on whether it will continue or halt its program of interest rates hikes; until that is clear, Bahuguna says there's too much uncertainty to be anything more than neutral about current conditions. Also on the show, Dave Sekera, chief U.S. market strategist at Morningstar, says in the Market Call segment that the market's woes have pushed a lot of stock valuations attractively below fair-value estimates, making stocks like Meta Platforms, Google, the communications industry and much more into attractive buying ranges, noting that while investors may have to be patient to wait for the payoff, he expects patience to be rewarded based on the discounts he says that the market has been applying to many company. Plus, Ed Carson, news editor at Investor's Business Daily discusses the latest IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index and explains why he thinks the measure is showing that investors have reached a point where there is hardly any optimism at all.

Dan Wiener, co-editor of The Independent Vanguard Adviser -- his new effort at tracking the world's largest fund company after his long-running newsletter was shuttered by its publisher -- discusses the value and success of touts, tipsters, newsletters and online services as he shares his plans for how he will continue to independently cover and follow Vanguard. Chuck also goes "Off the News" with Brett Arends, retirement columnist for MarketWatch, discussing his recent piece on how much retirement an individual can purchase for $100,000 and the value of annuities as a tool for retirement planning and living, especially in times when savers are more nervous than ever about conditions that could imperil their future comfort levels. Plus, author Bruce Carruthers discusses "The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power and Credit in America" and the evolution of the lending and credit industries and how the dynamics have shifted from personal judgments of who to trust to quantitative, algorithmic impersonal assessments of who is a good risk.

Kevin Mahn, president and chief investment officer at Hennion & Walsh, says investors should be deciding their current course based mostly on their reactions to current conditions. He believes that the worst is behind us in terms of the pullback in stocks, record-setting inflation and the hawkishness of the Federal Reserve, which has him expecting better days ahead and positioning to take advantage of them, but he notes that investors who disagree and who are still uncomfortable and losing sleep at night should own up to their risk tolerance and be building in more downside protection to their portfolio now. One group that does not necessarily agree with Mahn's optimism is the National Association for Business Economics, which today released its October 2022 Economic Outlook Survey; Ken Simonson starts today's interviews talking about just how pessimistic the economists are and how bad they foresee conditions getting in the recession that most of them foresee for the end of the year and the start of 2023. Also on the show, David Trainer of New Constructs puts Twitter and Netflix in The Danger Zone, noting that the two big name companies are showing street estimates that he considers out-of-whack with reality, making them likely to suffer an earnings miss when quarterly numbers come out soon and, in the Market Call, Christopher Zook of CAZ Investments discusses thematic investing and finding growth at a reasonable price now.

Meb Faber, chief investment officer at Cambria Investments, says that with traditional safe havens not working/protecting against the current downturn, many investors are reaching the point where they can't take it any more, becoming more "emotional and crazy," and that it will get exponentially worse with every additional 10 percent decline -- which he believes might happen before the market can turn around. That kind of panicky behavior, Faber says, is that it keeps them from investing in the solid long-term values that he sees currently around the world. That said, investors might want to head for the cliff after hearing Avi Gilburt, founder of ElliottWave Trader, talking technicals on this show, as he expects the market to have a pop back to record high levels before it embarks on a bear market cycle that he expects to last at least seven years, but which he says could be the predominant trend for two decades. Gilburt says that if the market can't squeeze one more rally out of the long-running bullish cycle, it's a sign that the next wave has begun and that the market could get very ugly -- roughly cut in half from here -- during the downturn he foresees lasting roughly for the remainder of this decade. Also on the show, Robert Bush, director of closed-end products at Calamos Investments, discusses how convertible securities -- built to let investors have their cake and eat it too -- have been underperforming in current conditions, and, in the Market Call, John Barr of the Needham Growth and Needham Aggressive Growth funds discusses the benefits of buying "compounders" even in markets where growth is hard to come by.

Chris Brightman, chief executive officer at Research Affiliates, explains how he believes the British financial system was threatened during a recent pension crisis that forced central bankers there to step in to overcome a liquidity crisis. Brightman says he expects to see similar issues popping up in markets around the globe, noting that "it's really hard to engineer the sort-of global tightening cycle that we're in and not break anything in the financial system." Those troubles, coupled with the strength of the dollar, create buying opportunities for domestic investors, Brightman says, noting that long-term investors "are likely to do much better investing in the U.K. stock market than the U.S. stock market." Also on the show, Tom Lydon of VettaFi.com says that current market conditions call for buying stocks in companies with competitive advantages that will help them weather the storm, which is why he made VanEck Vectors Morningstar Wide Moat his pick as "ETF of the Week," and Mark Yusko, chief investment officer at Morgan Creek Capital Management, says that the market is getting to a point where there are a lot of potential buys; he talks in the Market Call about seeking out the best management talent and finding the right funds and ETFs to deliver above-average performance.