In this episode, we speak to Director of quantitative market strategy Denise Chisholm as she provides her insights on what sectors to keep an on eye on plus what recent data point are telling us about the current market environment. Denise believes we have experienced what she calls a very soft-hard landing and she argues that we are now in the early stages of a recovery. Denise discusses the market’s reaction to recent market volatility and says the market is very data-dependant, but daily data points and moves are not very predictive of market returns. She says it’s important to step back and assess all data and any anomalies. Denise says people tend to focus on CPI movement, but she says it’s more important to focus on the standard deviation of the year-on-year inflation rate, which has fallen to the bottom half of its historical range. Denise highlights shelter costs pointing out that shelter is the main reason inflation remains high.  She adds, outside of shelter, the Federal Reserve doesn't have an inflation problem - the year-on-year rate, excluding shelter, is below 2 percent. So how does the inflation story affect how investors should consider sectors? Denise says interest-rate sensitive sectors like financials and real estate are something to consider as the current risk-reward is skewed to the upside.  She says defensive sectors such as consumer staples, healthcare, and utilities face margin and profitability issues. And she says the technology sector offers both offence and defense with strong free cash flow.

Recorded on June 13th, 2024.

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