Why Stocks Get Ahead of the Fed

Michael Zezas: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michael Zezas, Global Head of Fixed Income Research and Public Policy Strategy.

Michael Gapen: And I'm Michael Gapen, Chief U.S. Economist.

Michael Zezas: Today  ongoing effects of tariffs on the U.S. economy.

It is Friday, August 1st at 8am in New York.

So, Michael, lots of news over the past couple of weeks about the U.S. making trade agreements with other countries. It's certainly dominated client conversations we've had, as I'm assuming it's probably dominated conversations for you as well.

Michael Gapen: Yeah  certainly a topic that never goes away. It keeps on giving at this point in time. And I guess, Michael, what I would ask you is,  what do you make of the recent deals ? Does it reduce uncertainty in your mind? Does it leave uncertainty elevated?

What’s  your short-term outlook  for trade policy?

Michael Zezas: Yeah, I think it's fair to say that we've reduced the range of potential outcomes in the near term around tariff rates. But we haven't done anything to reduce longer term uncertainties in U.S. trade policy.

So, consider, for example, over the last couple of weeks, we have an agreement with Japan and an agreement with Europe – two pretty substantial trading partners – where it appears, the tariff rate that's going to be applied is something like 15 percent. And when you stack up these deals on one another, it looks like we're going to end up in an average effective tariff rate from the U.S. range of kind of 15 to 20 percent. And if you think back a couple of months, that range was much wider and we were potentially talking about levels in the 25 to 30 percent range.

So, in that sense, investors might have a bit of a respite from the idea of kind of massive uncertainty around trade policy outcomes. However, longer term, these agreements really just are kind of principles that are set out for behavior, and there's lots of trip wires that could create future potential escalations.

So, for example, with the Europe deal, part of the deal is that Europe will commit to purchase a substantial amount of U.S. energy. There's obvious questions as to whether or not the U.S. can actually supply that amidst its own energy needs that are rising substantially over the course of the next year. So, could we end up in a situation where six months to a year from now if those purchases haven't been made – the U.S. sort of presses forward and the administration threatens to re-escalate tariffs again. Really hard to know, but the point is these arrangements have lots of contingencies and other factors that could lead to re-escalation. 

But it's fair to say, at least in the near term, that we're in a landing place that appears to be somewhat smaller in terms of the range of potential outcomes.  Now, I think a question for investors is going to be – how do we assess what the effects of that have been, right? Because is it fair to say that the economic data that we've received so far maybe isn't fully telling the story of the effects that are being felt quite yet.

Michael Gapen: Yeah, I think that's completely right. We've always had the view that it would take several months or more just for tariffs to show up in inflation. And if tariffs primarily act as a tax on the consumer, you have to apply that tax first before economic activity would  moderate.

So, we've long been forecasting that inflation would begin to pick up in June. We saw a little of that. But it would accelerate through the third quarter, kind of peaking around the August-September period. So, I'd say we've seen the first signs of that, Michael, but we need obviously follow through evidence that it's happening. So,  we do expect that in the July, August and September inflation reports, you'll see a lot more evidence of tariffs pushing goods prices higher.

So,  we'll be dissecting all the details of the CPI looking for evidence of direct effects of tariffs, primarily on goods prices, but also some services prices. So, I'd put that down as tthe first marker, and we've seen some,  early evidence on that.

The second then, obviously, is the economy's 70 percent consumption. Tariffs act as a regressive tax on low- and middle-income consumers because non-discretionary purchases are a larger portion  of their consumption bundle and a lot of goods prices are as well. Upper income households tend to spend relatively more money  on leisure and recreation services. So, we would then expect growth in private consumption, primarily led by lower and middle-income spending softening. We think the consumer would slow down. But into the end of the year.Those are the two main markers that I would point to.

Michael Zezas: Got it. So, I, I think this is really important because there's certainly this narrative amongst clients that we talk to that markets may have already moved on from this.  Or investors may have already priced in the effects – or lack thereof – of some of this tariff escalation. Now we're about to get some real evidence from economic data as to whether or not that view and those assumptions are credible.

Michael Gapen: That's right.  Where we were initially on April 2nd after Liberation Day was largely embargo level tariffs. And if those stayed in place, trade volumes and activity and financial market asset values would've collapsed precipitously. And they were for a few weeks, as you know, but then we dialed it back and got out of thatSo, yeah, , we would say it's wrong to conclude that the economy , has absorbed these tariffs already and that they won't have,, a negative effect on economic activity. We think they will just in the base case where tariffs are high, but not too high, it just takes a while for that to happen.

Michael Zezas:  And of course, all of that's kind of core to our multi-asset outlook right now where a slowing economy, even with higher recession probabilities can still support risk assets. But of course, that piece of it is going to be very complicated if the economic data ends up being worse than you suspect.

Now, any evidence you've seen so far? For example, we had a GDP report earlier this week. Any evidence from that data as to where things might go over the next few months?

Michael Gapen: Yeah, well, another data point on trade policy and trade policy uncertainty really causing a lot of volatility in trade flows.

So, if you recall, there's big front running of tariffs in the first quarter. Imports were up about 37 percent on the quarter; that ended in the second quarter, imports were down 30 percent. So net trade was a big drag on growth in the first quarter. It was a big boost to growth in the second. But we think that's largely noise. So, what I would say is we've probably level set import and export volumes now.

 So, do trade volumes from here begin to slow? That's an unresolved question. But certainly, the large volatility in the trade and inventory data in Q1 and Q2 GDP numbers are reflective of everything that you're saying about the risks around trade policy and elevated trade policy uncertainty.

Second, though, I would say, because we started out the quarter with Liberation Day tariffs, the business sector, clearly – in our mind anyway – clearly responded by delaying activity. Equipment spending was only up 4 to 5 percent on the quarter. IP was up about 6 percent. Structures was down 10 percent. So, for all the narrative around AI-related spending, there wasn't a whole lot of spending on data centers and power generation in the second quarter.

So, what you speak to about the need to reduce some trade policy uncertainty, but also your long run trade policy uncertainty remains elevated? I would say we saw evidence in the second quarter that all of that slowed down capital spending activity. Let's see if the One Big Beautiful Bill act can be a catalyst on that front, whether animal spirits can come back. But that's the other thing I would point to is that,  business spending was weak and even though the headline GDP number was 3 percent, that's mainly a trade volatility number. Final sales to domestic purchasers, which includes consumption and business spending, was only up 1.1 percent in the quarter.

So, the economy's moderating; things are cooling. I think trade policy and trade policy uncertainty is a big part of that story.

Michael Zezas: Got it. So maybe this is something of a handoff here  where my team had been really, really focused and investors have been really, really focused on the decision-making process of the U.S. administration around tariffs. And now your team's going to lead us through understanding the actual impacts. And the headline numbers around economic data are important, but probably even more important is the underlying. Is that fair?

Michael Gapen: I think that's fair. I think as we move into the third quarter, like between now and when the Fed meets in, September, again, they'll have a few more inflation reports, a few more employment reports. We're going to learn a lot more than about what the Fed might do. So, I think the activity data and the Fed will now become much more important over the next several months than where we've been the past several months, which is about, has been about announcements around  trade.

Michael Zezas: All right. Well then, we look forward to hearing more from you and your team in the coming months. Well Michael, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.

Michael Gapen: Thanks for having me on.

Michael Zezas: And to our audience, thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review and tell your friends about the podcast. We want everyone to listen. 

Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Head of Corporate Credit Research at Morgan Stanley.

Lisa Shalett: And I'm Lisa Shalett, Chief Investment Officer for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.

Andrew Sheets: Today a today a concluding look at the theme of American exceptionalism and how it factors into fixed income.

It's Thursday, July 31st at 4pm in London.

Lisa Shalett:  And it's 11am here in New York.

So, Andrew, it's my turn to ask you some questions. And yesterday we talked a lot about equity markets, globalization, some of the broader macro shifts. , But I wanted to zoom in on the credit markets today and one of our themes in, in the American Exceptionalism paper was the constraints of debts and deficits and how they play in. With U.S. debts level soaring and interest costs rising, how concerned should investors be?

Andrew Sheets: So, you alluded to this a bit on our discussion yesterday that we are in a very interesting divide where you have, inequality between very well-off companies and weaker companies that aren't doing as well. You have a lot of division within households between those who are,  doing better and struggling more with the rate environment.

But you know, I think we also see that the large deficits that the U.S. Federal government are running are in some ways largely mirrored by very, very good private sector financial positions. In aggregate U.S. households have record levels of assets relative to debt at the end of 2024, in aggregate the financial position of the U.S. equity market has never been better.

And so, this is a dynamic where lending to the private sector, whether that is to parts of the residential mortgage market or to the corporate credit market, does have some advantages; where not just are you dealing with arguably a better trend of financial position, but you're just getting less issuance.

I think there are a number of factors that could cause the market to cause the difference of yield between the government debt and that private sector debt – that so-called spread – to be narrower than it otherwise would be.

Lisa Shalett: Well, that's a pretty interesting and provocative idea because, one of the, the hypotheses that we laid out in our paper is that perhaps one of the consequences of this extraordinary period of monetary stimulus of financial repression and ultra low rates, , of massive regulation of the systemically important banking system, has been the explosion of shadow banks, and the private credit markets. Our thesis is, they're a misallocation of capital. Has there been excess risk taking? And in that area. And how should we think about that asset class, number one? And,  number two, , are they increasingly, a source of. liquidity and issuance, or are they a drain on the system?

Andrew Sheets: This is, kind of, where your discussion of normalization is is so interesting because, in aggregate household balance sheets are in very good shape; in aggregate corporate balance sheets are in very good shape. But I do think there's a distinct tail of the market. , it's call it 5 percent of the high yield market, where you really are looking at a corporate capital structure that was designed for for a much lower level of rates. It was designed for maybe a immediately post COVID environment where rates were on the floor and expected to stay there for a long period of time.

And so, if we are moving to an environment where Fed funds is at 3 or 4. Or as you mentioned – hey, maybe you could justify a rate even a little bit higher and not be wildly off. Well then, you just have the wrong capital structure. You have the wrong level of leverage; and it's actually hard to do much about that other than to restructure that debt, or look to change it in a larger way.

So, I think we'll see a dynamic similar to the equity market where there is less dispersion between the haves and have nots.

Lisa Shalett: As we kind of think about where there could be pockets of opportunity in, in credit and in private credit, both public and private credit, , and where there could be risks. Can you just help me with that and explore that a little bit more?

Andrew Sheets: I think where credit looks most interesting is in some ways where it looks most boring. I think where the case for credit is strongest is – the investment grade market in the U.S. pays, 5.25 percent.

A 6 percent long run return might be competitive with certain investors’ long-term equity market forecasts, or at least not a million miles off.

I think though the other area where this is going to be interesting is. Do we see significantly more capital intensity out of the tech sector, And a real divide between fixed income and equities is that tech has so far really been an equity story.

Lisa Shalett: Correct.

But this data center build out is just enormous. I mean, through 2028, our analysts at Morgan Stanley think it's close to $3 trillion with a t.

And so there's a lot of interest in, in how can credit markets, how can private credit markets fund, , some of this build out and,  there are opportunities , and risks around that.

And you know, something that I think credit's going to play an interesting part of.

Lisa Shalett: And in that vision do you see the blurring of lines or a more competitive market between public and private?

Andrew Sheets: I do think there's always a little bit of a funny nature about credit where I. it's not always clear why a particular corporate loan would need to be traded every day, would need to be marked every day. I think it is a little bit different from the equity market in that way.

And I think you're also seeing a level of sophistication from investors who now have the ability to traffic across these markets and move capital between these markets, depending on where they think they're being better compensated or, or where there's better opportunities. So, I think we're kind of absolutely seeing the blur of these lines.

And again, I think private credit, , has until recently been somewhat synonymous with high-yield lending, riskier lending, lower rated lending.

Lisa Shalett: Correct. Yeah.

Andrew Sheets: And,  yet, the lending that we're seeing to some of this tech infrastructure is, you could argue, maybe more similar to Investment Grade lending – both in terms of risk, but also it pays a lot less. ,  And so again, this is kind of an interesting transition where you're seeing a, a broader scope and absolutely, I think more blurring of the line between these markets.

Lisa Shalett: So, let's just switch gears a little bit and pull out from credit to the broader diversified cross-asset portfolio. And some of those cross-asset correlations are starting to break down; and we go through these periods where stocks and bonds are more often than not positively correlated in moving together.

How are you beginning to think about duration risk in this environment? And have you made any adjustments to how you think about portfolio construction in light of, , these potentially, , shifting, , changes in correlations across assets?

Andrew Sheets:  I think there are kind of maybe two large takeaways I would take from this. First is I do think the big asset where we've seen the biggest change is in the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar, I think for a lot of the period we've been discussing on these two episodes, was kind of the best of both worlds. And recently that's just really broken down.

And so, I think when we think about the reallocation to the rest of the world, the, the focus on diversification, I think this is absolutely something that is top of mind among non-U.S. investors that we're talking to, which is almost the U.S. equity piece is kind of a separate conversation.

Andrew Sheets: The other piece though, is some of this debate around yields and equities – and do equities fear higher rates or lower rates?

Which one of those is the biggest problem? And there's a question of magnitude that's a little interesting here. Rates going higher might be a little bit more of a problem for the S&P 500 than rates going lower.

That rates going higher might be more consistent with the scenario of temporary higher inflation. Maybe rates go lower [be]cause the market gets more excited about Federal Reserve cuts.

But I think in terms of scenarios where – like where is the equity market really going to have a problem? Well, it's really going to have a problem if there's a recession.

So, even though I think bonds have been less effective diversifiers, , I really do think they're still going to serve a very healthy, helpful purpose around some of those potentially kind of bigger dynamics.  

Lisa Shalett: Yeah that very much the way we've been thinking about it, , particularly within the, the context of, of managing private wealth, where, , very often we're confronted with the, the question, what about 60-40? Is 60-40 dead? Is 60-40 back? Like, you talk about not wanting to hedge, I don't want to hedge, , either. But, but the answer to the question we agree is, is somewhat nuanced. Right?

We do agree that, this perfect world of, negative correlations between stocks and bonds that we enjoyed, , for a good portion of the last 15 years probably is over. . But that doesn't mean that bonds , and most specifically, that five to 10 year part of the curve doesn't have a really important role to play in portfolios.

And the reason I say that, , is that one of the other elements of this conversation that we haven't really touched on, , is valuation and expected returns.

I know that when I speak of the valuation-oriented topics and the CAPE ratio when expected 10-year returns, everyone's eyes glaze over and roll to the back of their head and they say, ‘Oh, here she goes again.’ , But look, I, I am in the camp that says an awful lot of growth has already been discounted and already been priced. And that it is much more likely that U.S. equities will return something closer to long run averages. So that's not awful.

The lower volatility of a, fixed income asset that's returning sixes and sevens has a definite role to play in portfolios for wealth clients who are by and large long term oriented investors who are not necessarily attempting to exploit, , 90-day volatility every quarter.

Andrew Sheets:   Without putting too fine of a point on it, I think when that question of is 60-40 over is phrased, I kind of think the subtext is often that it's the bond side, the 40 side that has a problem. And not to be the fixed income defender on this podcast, but you could probably more easily argue that if we're talking about, well, which valuation is more stretched, the equity side or the bond side. I think it's the equity side that has a more stretched valuation.

Lisa Shalett: Without a doubt, without a doubt.

Andrew Sheets:  Well, Lisa, thanks again for taking the time to talk.

Lisa Shalett: Absolutely great to speak with you, Andrew, as always.

Andrew Sheets: And thanks again for listening to this two-part conversation on American exceptionalism, the changes coming to that and how investors should position. And to our listeners, a reminder to take a moment to please review us wherever you listen. It helps more people find the show. And if you found this conversation insightful, tell a friend or colleague about Thoughts on the Market today.