Is that correct?

Yes, this is one of the longest, nearly uninterrupted periods we've had of market growth.

Obviously, 2020 with the COVID pandemic, that created some consternation and drop in the market.

We had 2022, which was less than 12 months.

it's been 1,000%, more than 1,000% since March 9th, 2009, which was the low following the GFC, the great financial crisis.

So it has been a tremendous upward trajectory for investors, for anybody who's been able to put money into the market sustainably.

And that's one of the reasons that for people who are invested today or have been able to do that over the last few years, their opinions of the economy, of how good things are today, are drastically different than people who have not been able to invest or have been able to invest less.

Tell me all about what reports are coming

What say you here, Stephen?

they knew at that point, the hike, clearly a unanimous decision, seemed to be the right move.

After the adjustment that the Bureau of Economic Analysis made to the inflation numbers, I think that the Fed may have gotten a little bit over their skis in terms of what they expected.

So I think October at this point, both because it's ahead of the election and because those inflation numbers did come in lower than what the Fed expected, there's little likelihood that we'll see a hike in October.

And I think that the market might be a little bit over indexed on what they expect in December.

What are you watching for specifically?

Well, I think it's always important to watch yields just given how high they have become and how quickly they've risen.

I think I would add to what Jed said is that this is going to be a monster earnings season.

Mm-hmm.

And then you see a month like September, 29,000.

Major disappointment.

Wow, the labor market's really struggling.

On a month-to-month basis we are gonna get those kind of yo-yo events, and it's going to, you know, look great and terrible and great and terrible.

We have to look over a longer period of time.

If we look at the 2026 average, so what's the average year to date? Um, that we've added about 68,000 jobs per month.

Yeah.

Steven, what's the correlation now between, uh, the oil prices and the 10-year Treasury yields?

So the 10-year Treasury yields have been rising precipitously over the last few months.

And, you know, one of the concerns is that, uh, that was about the US debt.

We crossed $40 trillion in US debt a few months ago, or that it was about inflation, or it was about the Federal Reserve.

It seems to really be about oil.

Uh, and w- there's, uh, a relatively, you know, consistent study, uh, from the CBOE, uh, Chicago Board of, uh, Options Exchange, um, that shows that oil prices is really driving a lot of this.

That the correlation between the price of oil and Treasury yields is at a 35-year high.

Steven, as we look at Wall Street, uh, uh, you were telling us that there's a decreasing share of, uh, companies that are maintaining that, uh, positive momentum.

Tell me more about some of the components within these reports.

So as far as some of what consumers are seeing, I think grocery prices and restaurant prices are an interesting dichotomy and dovetail a bit off what was just said, because grocery prices are and it did not, rise a tremendous amount, the constraints on many households, I think is keeping that from rising too quickly.

Whereas restaurant prices, those are still rising quickly.

Restaurants have a little bit more pricing power.

They're certainly feeling the squeeze on ingredients and they're able to raise prices.

We saw that that's over 3% on an annual basis.

And when we look at services, So especially services that are impacted by fuel prices.

When you think about what the Fed should or shouldn't do or what they will do, Stephen, let's elaborate on that.

Right.

You know, sometimes we do just have bad days.

Yesterday, you know, th- there was a catalyst for that.

Semiconductor stocks, um, were down, and down a lot.

And going into yesterday's open, uh, in the US, South Korea, which is incredibly exposed to semiconductor stocks, uh, was very negative.

It fell 10%, uh, i- in their market.

That happens before the US market opens, and so that did affect us, and that was one of the reasons that, you know, investors were a bit skittish yesterday.

Are all these trillions of dollars being spent on AI actually gonna earn enough money to justify it?" Is that a question there being-

Right

... always happen.

You know, sometimes we do just have bad days.

Yesterday, you know, th- there was a catalyst for that.

Semiconductor stocks, um, were down, and down a lot.

And going into yesterday's open, uh, in the US, South Korea, which is incredibly exposed to semiconductor stocks, uh, was very negative.

It fell 10%, uh, i- in their market.

... that people are asking?

What's your reaction?

I think I take a bit of a sunnier view, although John is right that we're getting some tailwinds here from FIFA and soccer and a lot of people coming into the summer traveling, taking vacations.

That's helping hospitality quite considerably.

But in addition to this May report, we also got an additional revision upward, 93,000 for both March and April.

So there is some job growth here.

It's not just an aberration.

And overall, we're running at a pretty strong clip compared to where we came from out of 2025. we don't have a lot of immigration coming in.

Do you think we're turning a corner on that?

So that sort of removed a potential hurdle here in Warsh's confirmation?

It certainly does.

I think this paves the way.

Now, it's still going to be a tight timeframe to get that confirmation done.

The Senate is going to have a break in about two weeks.

So it's doable, but it's certainly not a guarantee.

I'm sure the White House is going to be putting pressure on senators to make it happen.

And Stephen, if and when we get this regime change, what are your expectations about what Warsh might do differently based on some of his commentary during his confirmation hearing?

Stephen, some of your thoughts here on next Friday's payroll and what will you be watching? I mean, whether it's the wage print, what kind of jobs are being added and lost?

So I think Corey hit the nail on the head, really.

The volatility of some of these reports is what makes this really hard to predict.

And I think that that is why it's important not to look at any one month or any single report and assume that you're getting the full picture.

We've really got to look at a trend over multiple months to get a sense of what's happening.

Now, I think industry-wise, What we've seen is that health care has really propped up a lot of the job growth that we've seen.

And you take that out, I think in 2025, we were roughly at negative or even just about positive job growth, almost negligible.

Stephen, final quick thought.

How much of the report's improvement actually rests on energy alone?

So that was a big surprise to see all of energy down a percent and a half.

And a lot of that comes not necessarily from gas falling, I think that's something that we've been seeing, but the fact that energy services, that's electricity, that's utility gas, really didn't rise as fast as it had been.

That's something that for consumers out there, they're stinging at their memory of how cheap prices used to be to heat their home.

Electricity prices are up over 6% year over year.

Utility gas up nearly 10% year over year.

So we got a tame reading in January here, but those prices and those price levels have really not abated.

Why do you think that we're seeing that takeaway of such a tepid reaction?

What's with the housing story?

Well, we did see in September and then again during the data from the shutdown that those month over month reports appeared to be relatively depressed.

I think this is more in line with what we expect given the trend.

that we were seeing in slowly cooling shelter inflation, it's not going to snap down full percentage points over any short-term period.

So, we're seeing cooling.

We know that some parts of the country, the Sunbelt, southern cities are seeing negative house prices, year over year in some cases.

So that cooling is happening.

Which one are you, more optimistic or pessimistic? And also, I guess you're counting on some Fed cuts, at least one.