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The future of the Federal Reserve’s independence will come into clearer focus this week as the central bank will likely lower interest rates for the first time since December 2024, potentially paving the way for more cuts this year as the labor market weakens and prices keep rising.
But all eyes will be on who votes for a rate cut after the President fired Fed Governor Lisa Cook and appointed Stephan Miran, his former Chair of Economic Advisers.
Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist, helps us understand the importance of this week’s meeting, the future of the central bank, and the real health of the U.S. economy. The stock market might be at record highs but the foundations of American capitalism are shaking.
Links for show notes:
- https://newcenturyadvisors.com/about-us-2/
- https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/putcallratio.asp
Lance Nelson / Getty Images
On this week's episode of the Express, Claudia Sahm joins chats about the upcoming Federal Reserve Meeting.
Full transcript:
Caleb Silver
This episode of The Investopedia Express is sponsored by Invesco, QWW on the Express. This week, more record highs for stocks. This is the overbought rally the Fed faces its most important decision maybe ever. Claudia Sahm, The Economist drops in for a few good minutes to help us straighten that out. The corporate breakup is the new it thing, the Investopedia indicator and what to watch this week, the smoothest ride to success, rides along the Investopedia Express.
Welcome back and welcome aboard. Good to be back in corporate headquarters. Here been on the road for a few nice to be back with you folks from around the world. Thanks to all all of our viewers watching us live from all parts of the planet. I know we got India in the house, as usual, Canada's probably in the house. Good to be with you. Good to be back again. Join the conversation. Chime on in. We'd love to hear your comments. We'd love to hear from you, wherever you are, the smartest investors in the world. Listen and watch the Investopedia Express. Welcome back to the show, and we are back at record highs, NASDAQ and the s and p5 100 hitting new record highs to close out last week, let me get a little air horn. Oh yeah. Love me some air horn there. Record highs, pretty much, when you look across the sectors here, lots of strength, mostly in the big sectors that have been driving the market forward, but also pretty big Mojo, as we say, do your best, Jim Morrison, and get your mojo horizon, because we have momentum indicators, moving averages. There he is, the great Jim Morrison, get your mojo rising, because we have momentum indicators in the green across the boards. The technical analysts like to look at moving averages, right they look to look at moving average, to look at strength in sectors. And when you look at the moving averages, they are all on the green, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ Composite, the nice composite, the Russell 3000 the Dow Jones Industrials and the Russell 2000 that's basically your stock market right there, minus the micro caps. And they are all headed in the right direction. That's what we call momentum there, when they're surpassing their five day moving averages, their 50 day moving averages, their 200 day moving averages. You know, charts are moving up into the right and that's what we've been seeing lately. And why is everyone so bullish? Well, they know what's coming their way, and that, my friends, is lower interest rates. We got a massive Fed meeting this week and a big decision on interest rates. We're going to get into that with Claudia Sahm. But look at this great chart from our buddy Charlie vallell creative planning. This is the market expectations for the Fed's funds rate over the next year. Go to where we are right now, four and a quarter percent, maybe a quarter point cut this week, couple more cuts by the end of the year, by the end of next year, the end of 2026 you could be looking at a Fed funds rate below 3% and that will have a profound impact on the economy and on people's savings, but also on the stock market. Everyone's been waiting for the Fed to cut rates. They haven't cut rates since December of 2024 this could be the beginning of a rate cutting cycle that makes money a lot cheaper for a long time. But what does that turn into us into over buyers? When you look at the stock market, we are over buying like it's 1999 or 2021 all over again. Great chart here from our friends at Bespoke investments.
We've gone from over extreme oversold to extreme overbought in just a few months. Just look at the past year. We've had these extremes in over buying and overselling, and that's just our animal spirit talking to us as investors. You know, we're greedy, we're over greedy. Sometimes we're too fearful. Sometimes, that's just us and the amygdala part of our brain making us react to conditions in the stock market. And there have been plenty of reasons to be fearful this year, and there have been plenty of reasons to be out reasons to be optimistic. But when you just look at the scatterplot of where we've been, where our emotions have been, we've gone from extreme overbought to extreme oversold multiple multiple times this year, and that's probably going to continue. Volatility is the name of the game right now, but everyone's buying, and when everyone's buying, when everyone's buying, you know, things could go the other way pretty quickly here. I'm not saying it's a total contrarian indicator right now. It's been up into the right just look at, just look at where we've been. That's just our a good chart of our emotions that is represented by overbought and oversold conditions, by bespoke investments. There. That's where we're at. We just can't keep it mellow. But if you've done the right thing, if you've played the game right, if you've been a smart, long term investor, then you have been handsomely rewarded. Arthur below again, with a great chart on returns, total returns for the past decade.
How about how about that? Right? How about plus 14%, 14.9% total return? That is your returns from the stock market plus reinvested dividends. I don't know if we'll ever see a period like this again, 14.9% per year. You're welcome if all you did was put $10,000 in the stock market and got cast away like Chuck Noland in in the movie Castaway put 10 grand in this S&P 500, went away for 10 years and started yelling at a volleyball that'd be worth more than $40,000 today. How to quadruple your money invest for the long term. And this period we've just been through the past decade has been sensational for investors. So you could be a castaway like Chuck, put your money in the market, go away for 10 years, or you could do the right thing and keep dollar cost averaging in, maxing out your retirement investing accounts. It's been a great time to be investor. I don't know if we'll see an era like this. Again. You haven't been invested in the past 10 years. You've missed out on some incredible returns. So congratulations to you long term investors that have been playing the game right, keep playing the game right. You don't need to let your animal spirits rule. You get overbought or oversold. Play the game right. Be a steady long term investor, because the rewards are pretty handsome if you just do the right thing. All right. As I said, we got a massive Fed meeting this week, all eyes on the Federal Reserve, not just on the decision from the FOMC, but on the drama going on in side the Federal Reserve and the Fed's independence really at stake here. So let's bring in Claudia som she's going to drop in for a few good minutes to talk about the central bank and its future. You Anna
Claudia, so good to have you back. She's the Chief Economist at New Century Advisor. She's also got the terrific Substack 'Stay at Home Macro', which I'm totally addicted to. Great to have you back on the Express.
Claudia Sahm
Great happy to be here. Thanks.
Caleb Silver
What's at stake besides the path of interest rates, I think the market is fully baked in. Investors have pretty much come to the conclusion that we'll get a quarter point cut here, maybe a couple more beyond the before the end of the year, but this is a much bigger Fed meeting and a much, much more dramatic environment around the Fed right now. Give us your take.
Claudia Sahm
Yeah, so the stakes are very high. I mean, first, just the reality, the economics of it right now. This is the hardest moment for the Fed, for a central bank in the Fed's dual mandate is in conflict, so inflation is above the Fed's 2% target. It's been above 2% for multiple years. Now we're in a lot better place than we were in 2022 but that's still not back to target. So inflation is still a problem, and we've seen the labor market really slow down with the potential that, you know, we could have a real deterioration in labor market conditions. So that's the other side of the mandate. So whenever the Fed has the two sides of its mandate in conflict, like it has one tool, right? So you can't both cut and raise interest rates, so you can't, you know, address both sides of it. So they have to really look through the data, think about the risk, think about the outlook, and then come to a decision, communicate it, right? It is important. Even if they they begin a cutting cycle, they are concerned about employment, they do need to signal that they are committed to still getting inflation to 2% right. So it's a very tricky like everything would have been hard about this week regardless. And then you add on top of it, all of the potential political influence the I mean, this is one meeting where it might actually be more important who shows up to vote than how the vote comes out. Right?
Caleb Silver
We don't know if Lisa Cook, the Fed governor, who the president allegedly fired or fired allegedly because she had a second didn't declare a second property not true, is going to get to vote. Or Stephen Moran, who the president appointed from the Council of Economic Advisors to the Fed, will get to vote, or what the dissension looks like inside the Fed's usually not a dramatic place right now, this is Shakespeare happening right there in Washington, DC. That's got a profound impact on global finance.
Claudia Sahm
Absolutely, because the Fed, as we know it, as we've come to know it in recent decades. It's really on the line right now. So there's been a lot of discussion about fed Governor Lisa Cook, and frankly, the case has been brought against her or the President trying to remove her. It's really not about her. It's about President Trump wants ultra low interest rates. He has been very clear about that, and frankly, you know, it's not that big of a problem if he just says it over and over again and is really angry the Fed doesn't do what he wants to do. Most presidents say that in private and not, you know, in public. But it's still it was when it crossed the line to actually trying to remove fed governors put in place people who were. Loyal to him, then that's that's going in the direction of a fed that basically does what the president tells them to do. And and if, if the President is successful in removing Lisa Cook, and the argument the government is making is that the President can determine what is for cause without judicial review, if he is granted that power, then basically the entire fed governors, they're all at will. They could all and so then you really have a president in charge of the Fed, and that's not, I mean, history tells us that is not a good setup.
Caleb Silver
Yeah, we're looking at charts here from the University of Chicago Booth School survey about whether fed independence would substantially or the loss of Fed independence would substantially increase the overall nominal cost of US government borrowing. Translation, if the Fed is an independent are investors who buy our bonds going to demand more premium, because all of a sudden we look riskier, because all of a sudden the monetary the central bank is under the executive branch control, and they can do what they want with it. They may have alternative motives than price stability and maintaining maximum employment. Is that why we're seeing that reaction?
Claudia Sahm
Yeah, and I would say, you know, in terms of politicians being in control of the Central Bank, the the probably most likely outcome is we end up seeing a lot more inflation and a lot more instability, right? Like, these are not, not standard business as usual. Now, I will warn it is true that the the federal funds rate is a very short term interest rate. And so, you know, we talk about longer term rates, you know, 10 year treasury, 30 year mortgage. Like, that's they, they move some with the Fed funds rate. But not like there are lots of other things going on with long term interest rates. But I would remind everyone that the Fed has more tools, and we have had periods in history where the Fed held down not just the short end but also the long end of the Treasury curve. So it wreaks a lot of havoc. And again, I think, you know, those are situations where you can end up with a lot of inflation. The last time that the Fed had that kind of coordination with the White House was during World War Two, with the express intent of, you know, helping fund the war efforts. And in the early 1950s the Fed said no more, because it comes at a cost with higher inflation. But we just, you know, once you can't, like, once the Fed loses control of itself, like, there's a lot of things that could happen, not saying they're guaranteed to happen, but it just the whole the way we think about the Fed, we think about their tools. You know, all bets are off.
Caleb Silver
Yeah, if you're looking for countries where the Fed doesn't have independence, look at China. Look at Turkey. It gets very interesting over there. I'm sure you saw the letter Treasury Secretary Scott Bess sent to the Wall Street Journal on Friday, pretty much criticizing the Fed, saying it hasn't been flexible enough in some cases, in some cases, it's expanded beyond its mandate. It's hurt its credibility, its credibility. It's threatened. We know. Kevin Warsh, former Fed governor, would like to see Treasury and the Fed get a little bit closer together. Harry Truman, tried to do this to your point, and the 1950s until they set up that accord that actually separated the Treasury and the Federal Reserve officially, even though it was written that way, what's your reaction to the Treasury secretary's letter? Has there? Has the Fed overstepped its bounds. You worked at the Federal Reserve as an economist, as a labor economist there, but do you think through quantitative easing, through the back there, the backing or the bailing out of banks, through tarp, through all the different measures the Feds had to take over the past 20 years of various crises, that it is indeed overstepped.
Claudia Sahm
Secretary Bessan, opinion piece lacked some fundamental context. I thought, you know, the it is the tools, the asset purchases, the quantitative easing, that that was not a tool that the Fed had used for for some time, and that exactly is one of those tools that can get the longer end interest rates down right. So, but in in 2008 the federal funds rate during the the global financial crisis went to zero, and the economy was still in a bad place. It still was too weak. We needed to have more support to it. And so the Fed looked around at what other tools do we have to influence interest rates? And they chose asset purchases. It shows the quantitative easing. So it's not like, Ben Bernanke woke up one day and is like, Yeah, I'm gonna go buy me some treasuries and some mortgage backed securities, right? Like it was trying to solve a problem.
So I am completely open to having a discussion of, you know, there were some side effects to the quantitative easing, and it does start blurring the lines between monetary and fiscal policy. I mean we that those programs, in essence, monetized a portion of the US federal debt. I mean that so it doesn't is correct in that that's something different than the federal funds rate. And you know what? Like the context of, why did we go down this path? And if you don't like those tools, what other tools would you suggest otherwise? Those kinds of critiques of the Fed, to me, aren't about making the Fed better. They're about diminishing the credibility of the Fed as it is right now, weakening it, and then you take advantage of it and change it, I would argue, I think this case that the Fed has lost its credibility is a pretty weak one. You know, we there's been a lot of critiques of the Fed, and I think Ed Powell has also agreed with these, that they were a little slow to start raising interest rates after the pandemic surge in inflation. So probably should have got going in 2021 we still 21 we still would have had inflation.
The world all had inflation from the pandemic, but they could have moved faster. And a lot of people point to that. As you know, the Fed was behind the curve, and this is a problem, but they lost credibility. But, like we don't talk enough about the fact that we had essentially a soft landing, starting in 2020 well, actually in 2020 well, actually in 2022 but particularly in 2023 inflation really came down. Inflation expectations in markets and also in surveys, largely stayed the course. Like Oh, the Fed will get inflation down. We didn't have to have a recession. That was extremely unusual. So, and I think there are people would make an argument, a good argument, that part of that was that the Fed, as an institution, had credibility as an inflation fighter like you. Don't want to be cavalier about it, because, again, the longer we have higher inflation, you might chip away at that. But the idea that the Fed is incredible, I just don't see it. I mean, markets hang on every word coming out.
Caleb Silver
Where would we be without some of those bailouts, without some of those extraordinary measures? It's hard to know, but remember, that was Ben Bernanke and and his team at the Fed years ago. But everyone puts the points the finger, especially the President and Chair Powell. It is a Board of Governors, right? It is an FOMC, and it is a central bank that is also made up of other central banks from around the country. So let's go out on this. You worked at the Fed as an economist. You know well, you study it well, what does the Fed and what does central banks do? What happens among those regional banks that if it went away tomorrow, through the loss of independence, or through some cut from from the administration, if it went away, besides the things that are very obvious to us, which is setting the Fed, you know, the the interest, the the borrowing rates between banks, what would we miss? What? How would we feel it as ordinary citizens and potentially as investors? What's the one thing that's happening inside that we just don't know about?
Claudia Sahm
So the the Federal Reserve System? I mean, it's not a perfect setup, and it's pretty complicated how all the pieces fit together. I do think there's a real benefit from the fact that we have the regional banks. So there, there are 12 banks across the country that feed into Anna portion of their president's vote every every time the Federal Open Market Committee meets, and one of the things that they do is it is a very effective way to bring in perspectives from across the country. The Fed is not just an institution sitting in Washington DC, staring at numbers and like making pronouncements about interest rates. The Reserve Bank presidents, the staff at the Reserve Banks, like they are out in the communities and many of often, you know, there's an aspect of going out running like the Beige Book, which is a it's it's a survey. It's like a conversation with community groups and business leaders in the district that then before every one of the FOMC meetings puts together to kind of give a picture of it.
And the Reserve Bank presidents are constantly meeting, and they also, I mean, this is maybe a little less publicized, but, but the Federal Reserve Banks have, they have a convening function like they, they, you know, get together different community groups and try to work on different projects and community development. So I think that the fact that the Fed has people out in the country like trying to understand what's happening across the country, talking to real people, trying to give a focus to their voices. I think that is a really important aspect of the system that we have in place, that you know. And as we talked about the Federal Reserve independence under threat, so the governors, I mean one, one part of the being the Fed being under threat is all of the Reserve Bank presence. Every five years they have a review, and the board in DC goes through, you know, the candidates, and it's usually a pretty standard thumbs up, did a good job. Here's another five years, if the Reserve Banks locally have, you know, supported the candidate, and there's, there's concerns that if there's a majority, if the President's able to put a majority of his people in DC, that we may see Reserve Bank presidents get booted out. And I think that's really unfortunate, like we need to have those regional perspectives represented in the in the policy making, right?
Caleb Silver
So, so important. It's not just interest rates, folks, and it's not just these meetings that we all obsess about and the market obsesses with. It is this community reach. That's the whole point of the central bank system, and it is unique to this country. Claudia som, the chief economist for New Century advisors and also, also the terrific sub stack stay at home macro. Always appreciate your insights. Thanks so much for joining the Express.
Claudia Sahm
Thank you.
Caleb Silver
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Caleb Silver
All right, let's get into some money in motion. And as I said earlier, momentum is up and to the right. Almost all momentum indicators in the stock market in the green right now, as investors are pretty much betting on higher highs, and you see Wall Street's forecasters and the big institutional investors raising their forecast for the year end targets for the S&P 500 that we're going to trade higher from here. And when I look at this, I want to look and see if anybody's betting the other way. So I like to look at the put to call ratio right. The put to call ratio according to Investopedia measures through the Chicago Board of Options Exchange, the amount of bearish bets basically puts in the options market versus the amount of calls. How many people are betting that the market's going to fall over the next 30 days. And that put to call ratio is super low right now. Chart from our good friends at y charts here, checking that out the put to call ratio. Again, that chart there bought down into the right different from the stock market. When the put to call ratio is anywhere below one and a half or two, that just means everyone's betting that the stock market is going to keep rising from here, and when everyone's betting the stock market's going to rise from here, you got to wonder, who's thinking that it might go the other way. What could go wrong? As long term investors. We shouldn't get too caught up in the day to day trade here, but this is just another indicator of how bullish we are right now, the put to call ratio extremely low, something we're going to keep an eye on in the coming months, and especially after that Fed decision on Wednesday. All right, let's get set up for a very busy week ahead. What's coming on down the tracks this week?
We got that big Fed meeting on Wednesday. The feds meets tomorrow, Tuesday into Wednesday. Fed decision coming on Tuesday at 2pm Eastern time. But probably the most important part of that is going to be the press conference with chair Powell today. Monday, just the Empire State manufacturing survey, highlighting the economic reports. How's things going in the great Empire State of New York? Tuesday, big day. US retail sales for the month of August. Do we continue to spend last month? Or did tariffs, or the threat of tariffs scare us away? We're also going to get the import price index or August as well and industrial production. We know some softening in the economy going on, but all eyes are on Wednesday, fed interest rate decision, Fed Chair Powell's press conference at 2pm right to about 2:15pm right after that. Meta connect 2025 this is the big Facebook meta conference. We're going to hear remarks from Mark Zuckerberg.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO that stock's been raging lately as they've gotten a little bit closer to the White House. Housing starts for the month of August. Nobody was building too much in the month of August, but as interest rates come down, maybe we'll get a reawakening of the housing market. Thursday, initial jobless claims. Usually we don't focus on them week to week, but they spiked to a multi year high last week, more people filing for unemployment as the labor market softens and a good look at the US leading economic indicators for the month of August, we headed to a recession or not, doesn't look like it, but we do have rising unemployment here, and that som rule that Claudia SOM is known for, we get two to three months of rising weekly unemployment claims, usually at. Leads to a recession, but doesn't look like we're headed towards one right now. Friday, actually, a melody. Take some deep breaths after a very, very busy week. All right, let's get in to our indicator of the week, and we're going to do a daily double this week. Why?
We're just feeling a little frisky. We haven't been back in the office in a while. First one are we at PKI? Because if you listened to the earnings calls and the earnings reports over the past quarter here, over the past few weeks, as companies have been reporting their results, we got more almost 300 companies using the word AI throughout their earnings calls. So we might be at PKI, where everyone's starting to use it. A couple years ago, it was blockchain. Everyone liked to say blockchain a couple years before that. It was crypto. Before that, it was cannabis. So there's always some catchphrasing. We know AI is the overarching dominant theme right now across the investing landscape and really across every single sector, but when are we going to hit peak AI when all 500 companies are mentioning it on their earnings calls? Here's another theme we are keeping a very close eye on right now. It's breakup season. I know it seems weird after the summer, but the number of companies that are announcing spinoffs, great chart here by the folks at charter, based on Sherwood news data there, the number of companies spinning out or breaking up is near a decade high. We've already had several announced so far this year. As more and more companies are spinning out divisions or an entire franchises, or the entire entire halves of their company, we've already had some pretty big announcements so far this year, Keurig, Dr Pepper, they're splitting up after Keurig bought another coffee company. I think they bought Peets, so they're going pure coffee there, and Dr Pepper. Be a pepper. There's only one Dr Pepper there, staying on their own. Warner Brothers. Warner Brothers discovery also talking about a split up of the cable networks and the news networks and some of the other divisions there. Great Film Library there.
They also own CNN, my former employer. There's a lot of lot of talk about what's happening next in the big media industry. So we're going to watch that one pretty close to pretty closely. Kraft Heinz announcing that split last week, cream cheese and ketchup going in opposite directions, and Honeywell saying it'll split up into three different companies. Now. Why is this happening right now? Because there's a lot of corporate activists. There's a lot of investor activists that are pressuring these companies and pressuring their boards of directors and their CEOs to generate much more cash flow, to generate much more velocity, sales, velocity and momentum, and a lot of these other divisions may be slowing them down, as we talked about earlier in several episodes, the most important metric right now in the stock market seems to be revenue per employee, and when you have these big divisions in these slower parts of the company that are not producing as much growth as the others, well, they're just getting cut out and put off to the side or spun out into their other company. So corporate breakup season in full effect right now,
Indianapolis is in the building. What's up? Magnate one and m Good to see you again. Hey, I'd look like Maury. Yeah, we'll say that I look like Maury Povich on a skateboard. Maybe I haven't seen Mori on one of those thoughts on moving six monthly reporting will it be good for stocks if we move to a six month reporting season? I'll tell you what the quarterly reporting season is tough for public companies. That's why we have so many fewer public companies today. Companies have to report results every quarter. They got to, like, spend half the quarter preparing for those results, making sure they deliver on those results, trying to beat expectations that might be better. You've heard a lot of CEOs complain about it. It is onerous. But as investors, we want as much information as possible, so I want to make sure I was getting access to the information I needed if I'm not going to have a quarter of the report from those companies. But good question there, my friend, uh, what's up? Liam, that's why behavioral economics has been such a game changer. It exposes our psychological biases, our animal spirits. We all have them. I know I have them.
Made me make some very bad decisions over the course of my investing lifetime, but I've learned to tame them, and I work with a financial advisor right now who keeps me from doing silly things. But, yeah, we have to understand the way our brains work, right? We are animals at heart, very we're fearful, we're greedy, we're scared, we're hungry, we're promiscuous. Makes us make bad decisions. Sometimes you gotta understand the way your brain works. You want to be a long term investor do it right? So thank you for chime in.
And big thanks to Claudia Sahm for chiming for chiming on in, for coming back on the Investopedia Express. She worked inside the Fed. When you get a when you get your own rule named after you inside the Federal Reserve as a potential recession indicator, you know you're doing something, right. So make sure you're following Claudia, her good work, especially her substack, and a big shout out to Invesco QQQ thanks for partnering with us on this end for recipe for innovation. Had a great time at Future Proof, interviewing chef Tom Colicchio, and then again at Atlanta food and wine over the weekend, talking to our good friend chef Kwame Onwuachi and Chef Samuelson, such an incredible program, recipe for innovation.
Thanks for partnering with us. And will we ever be doing a meet again with EYL with earn your leisure.No, of course not. EYL is family. Can't wait to get back on market Mondays. We're going to have them back on this show, but we love our good friends at earn your leisure picture, right there, me and Troy, I mean, Rashad up here on the wall. They are family to us, so make sure you're checking out market Mondays on Monday nights with earn your leisure and thanks again for joining us. This podcast is live every Monday, the live podcast, the Investopedia, express and on demand, wherever you get your podcast throughout the week. Thanks so much for joining us, and we'll talk again a little further on down the line.
