Episode summary
Live From Excell With Strider Elass and Sam Rines (Ep. 152)
Facts vs Feelings
· · Hosts: Ryan Detrick, Sonu Varghese · Guests: Strider Elass, Samuel Rines
Summary
The live Excell 2025 conversation focused on a softer labor market, still-sticky services inflation, and how tariffs are changing both growth and company behavior heading into late 2025. The host and guests argued that the recent jobs data, including unemployment at 4.3%, reflects weakness concentrated outside health care, education, and government, while one guest said the Fed is likely playing catch-up with rate cuts after three weak months of payroll data.
On inflation, the panel pushed back on the headline narrative by arguing that real-time shelter measures point to lower underlying inflation than official reports suggest, even as services inflation remains a concern. They also said tariff impacts are still working through the economy: effective rates are below what they think they should be, and companies are already responding with higher prices, fewer hires, and supply-chain adjustments. One guest said the back half of 2025 could see a reacceleration in growth as these tariff effects and policy lags work through.
Despite the macro worries, the discussion stayed constructive on markets. The host highlighted broad equity strength, strong participation, and a supportive Fed backdrop, while the guests pointed to consumer resilience, AI-driven productivity gains, and a portfolio mix tilted to equities with diversifiers like bonds, managed futures, and gold.
Key takeaways
- The guests said unemployment at 4.3% reflects labor weakness concentrated outside health care, education, and government.
- One guest argued the Fed should treat the last three months of weak payrolls as a catch-up case for a September rate cut, with even a 50-basis-point move plausible.
- The panel said real-time shelter data imply underlying inflation is lower than headline CPI and PCE suggest.
- The guests expect tariffs to keep pressuring margins and prices, with effective rates still below the level they believe policy intends.
- One guest said late 2025 could see a growth reacceleration as tariff costs, hiring cuts, and price adjustments work through the system.
- The discussion stayed constructive on equities, consumer spending, AI productivity, and portfolio diversification into gold and managed futures.
Notable quotes
“Unemployment went up to 4.3%, the highest this cycle. market did take it in stride”
“if you adjust for real-time shelter metrics, the inflation number is much lower than the reported number”
“90% has come from those three areas from leisure and hospitality education and health services and government”
“the world economy because of China's exports is very imbalanced and we need to do something to rebalance that”
How the episode opens
Welcome to the Facts Versus Feelings podcast. I'm your host Ryan Dietrich and I'm joined by my co-host Sonu Vargis. Cutting through the noise in 30 minutes each week with Ryan Dietrich, chief market strategist and Sona Vargis, VP global macro strategist.
Taking out the boring and helping investors focus on what really matters. A quick note before we start the show. Investment advisory services offered through CWM LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor.
Carson Partners, a division of CWM LLC, is a nationwide partnership of adviserss. Hi everybody. Good morning.
Good morning. — Thank you for not going golfing. I know a few people went golfing, so thank you for being here. Um, beautiful, beautiful morning. We're excited to be here. The 40th Excel. How about that? Welcome to the pre-day. the investment symposium workshop. Uh just live fun with your investor research team. Sonu, this is episode 152.
We made it. Our first episode was at the week before Excel 3 years ago. — Yeah. From Las Vegas. — It's still here. — It was in Vegas. — Yeah. From Vegas.
In Vegas. 3 years ago. So 152 later.
Uh we're still here. Uh so we're really excited to get to spend most of the day with a lot of you. Um hopefully you get to see all the different things we have planned from the investor research team's point of view.
But we're going to kick it off here. I guess I'm looking down there. We've got, you know, maybe 50 minutes or so.
Uh going to have some fun here with again a live episode of Carson's Facts Versus Feelings. And so we have some special guests on the stage with us.
Yeah. And we love titles around here. So I'll just ask you all to introduce yourselves and we're really excited to have both of you on.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- labor market
- inflation trends
- tariffs
- jobs report revisions
- late 2025 market outlook
Companies and tickers mentioned
- First Trust
- WisdomTree
Watch the episode
Watch “Live From Excell With Strider Elass and Sam Rines (Ep. 152)” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
More from Facts vs Feelings
Facts vs Feelings, this episode and its artwork belong to Carson Investment Research. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
