Episode summary
Volatility, May I Meet You? (Ep. 162)
Facts vs Feelings
· · 49 min · Hosts: Ryan Detrick, Sonu Varghese
Summary
Market volatility was traced mainly to a hawkish shift from the Fed after the October meeting, which pushed December rate-cut odds from about 90% to roughly 44%. The host and a guest argued that the tone change from Powell and several Fed officials, combined with the government shutdown’s data gaps, made the central bank look more cautious and left markets flying with less visibility than usual. They said the next payroll reports, especially November data, will be pivotal in deciding whether cuts resume.
The discussion also pushed back on the idea that tariffs are irrelevant to inflation. The guest said a San Francisco Fed study actually found tariffs raise unemployment, lower economic activity, and lower inflation, while recent core-goods data show price pressures in categories like furniture, vehicle parts, and toys. The host and a guest argued that recent tariff rollbacks on items such as coffee, meat, bananas, and tropical fruits amount to an implicit admission that prices have been affected.
On markets, they treated crypto weakness as a risk-off signal, especially for tech-adjacent stocks, while noting that healthcare, utilities, value stocks, and several commodities have held up better. They remained constructive overall, emphasizing diversification, a long-term uptrend in equities, and still-strong earnings.
Key takeaways
- The host and a guest said Fed officials turned more cautious after the October meeting, cutting December rate-cut odds to about 44%.
- The guest said November payrolls will be the key data point because October jobs data were lost in the shutdown.
- The host said crypto’s drop looks like a risk-off signal that has spilled into small growth and speculative tech.
- The guest argued healthcare, especially biotech, has been one of the strongest pockets during the pullback.
- The host and a guest said commodities such as copper, natural gas, silver, and jet fuel remain strong enough to argue against a recessionary collapse.
Notable quotes
“Fast forward two weeks from that meeting and you had like a slew of Fed officials come out and all of them are like, "Yeah, we want to be cautious”
“When it's foggy, let's just be a little careful and slow down”
“We find that a tariff hike raises unemployment lowers economic activity and lowers inflation”
“Bitcoin's down like close to 20% since that more than that”
“healthcare is positive during this period. It's up 4 and a half%”
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. Uh, welcome back everyone. Episode 162 of Carson's Facts Versus Feelings: Volatility.
May I meet you. And if you know what we're making a joke about, then you know we're making a joke about. uh Bill Aman in all his boomerish ways gave a lot of advice to younger people saying to men specifically you should walk up to a woman and say may I meet you now all I'm Is that how you how how'd you meet your wife?
Well, we'll get there in a second. Well, I was going to bring that up. We'll get there in a second.
I did not say that. But there are just disastrous um videos of this. I mean, men are walking up to women all over the place filming it saying, "May I meet you?
Maybe they're, you know, staged, but I don't think a lot of them are. It turns out if you're tall, if you're good-looking, if you're confident, come up to someone and ask them, "May I meet you? They're okay with it.
But if you're not, the the results can be disastrous. Probably like we expected. But anyway, we're having a play on Bill Aman's.
Um, yeah. So, I met my wife, I guess it would have been over 20 years ago, just at a bar.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- fed rate-cut expectations
- labor data uncertainty
- crypto risk-off signal
- sector divergence
- commodity strength
Watch the episode
Watch “Volatility, May I Meet You? (Ep. 162)” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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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.
