Labor Market

While we anticipate higher inflation in June, it looks increasingly likely that the price impact from tariffs will be less aggressive and long-lasting than many feared.

The US economy has held up better so far this year than we had expected. For the time being, investors should remain modestly underweight equities. A more aggressive underweight would be justified only once the “whites of the recession’s eyes” are visible.

For now, measures of labor market utilization (like the unemployment rate) are only gradually weakening. But we know from history that these trends have a habit of quickly accelerating in advance of recession. 

I am a structural disbeliever in the US superstar stocks because these winners of the previous technology, Web 2.0, are unlikely all to be the winners of the latest technology, AI. But I would suspend my disbelief if the Magnificent-7 index reaches a new high and the bursting AI-bubble configuration is broken. Plus, a new recommendation is to overweight Global Healthcare (IXJ).