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Liz Young

Portfolio > Economy & Markets

Time Is Ripe for a Market Contraction: Liz Young

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“This is a critical juncture in the economic cycle,” argues investment strategist Liz Young. “There’s likely a contraction coming because that’s what resets the business cycle. We’re in late cycle and have been for quite a while.” 

Young is head of investment strategy at SoFi, personal finance company and online bank.

The former director of market strategy at BNY Mellon Investment Management recommends taking it “one week at a time.”

“Wait it out and see what happens through fall and whether or not we get a shakeup,” she advises.

In addition to SoFi members, the recipients of Young’s insights comprise the general public (“A lot of that is financial advisor-based,” she notes), social media followers and listeners to her monthly podcast, “The Important Part.”

The majority if members on SoFi’s investment platform are young individual investors ages 20 to 40.

In the interview, the chartered financial analyst serves up her forecasts on inflation, interest rate hikes, 2024 corporate earnings and consumer spending.

“If the labor market starts to cool off,” she says, “people will get nervous.”

Young’s early career includes working as a portfolio analyst at Baird and as a research analyst at BMO Global Asset Management.

ThinkAdvisor interviewed Young by phone on Sept. 18.

In today’s environment, “getting 5% on a lower-risk investment is a good idea,” she opines.

Here are highlights of our conversation:

THINKADVISOR: What should financial advisors be telling their clients right now, in general?

LIZ YOUNG: This is a period where uncertainty is going to increase. We haven’t seen the full solution to inflation. We haven’t seen the full effects of an [interest-rate] tightening cycle.

There are parts of the market — like money market funds, Treasury bonds, and even some defensive dividend-paying stocks, like utilities and the energy space — where you can get paid to wait and watch what happens.

Getting 5% right now on a lower-risk investment is a good idea. 

Wait it out and see what happens through fall and whether or not we get a shakeup.

What are the odds for a wicked October in the stock market?

There’s a pretty good chance that something could go wrong in September … [with] inflation having come in hotter than expected.

But I think you need to look at it one week at a time.

The biggest thing to remember is that the amount of time that has passed since the beginning of the interest-rate hiking cycle and since the yield-curve inversion, [is] now right at the time when things usually start to show cracks in the economy.

So this is a critical juncture in the economic cycle. 

Do you think that the Fed will announce another interest-rate increase?

They should be done hiking. We need to see what the effects are of the [increases they’ve already made] before they keep going.

They’re going to communicate that they’re ready to go again if they have to — if inflation rears its ugly head. But I think the hiking cycle is all but over.

What’s your overall forecast for the stock market?

Things have remained too high despite the fact that there’s been a pullback. It’s still too expensive, given where rates are and because of how low the VIX is [gauge of market’s expected volatility over coming 30 days]. 

It’s ripe for some volatility to come in if the Fed surprises us and gets more hawkish than people are expecting or if poor economic data starts to come in.

Right now, the stock market is pricing in a soft landing. So anything that starts to look different from that could be a bit of a surprise.

What do you expect in terms of recession, then?

I’m not in the soft-landing camp. I think there’s likely a contraction coming because that’s what resets the business cycle. We’re in late cycle and have been for quite a while.

The average recession starts about 14 months after a yield-curve inversion. Well, this is about month 14 or 15. 

And if you look at the usual lag in monetary policy, that’s about 12 to 18 months. We’re in in month 18 since they started the hiking cycle.

What are your thoughts about inflation?

What happened in the last couple of months and what, I think, is going to continue happening through fall is that not only did oil prices rise, but some of the goods inflation that we thought was taken care of isn’t necessarily all gone.

And the services inflation isn’t completely taken care of either. 

Inflation has come down. But 3.7% is still considerably above above target; and core inflation is still considerably above target, not to mention oil prices being back up.

That mixture of forces, none of which are that great, hasn’t shown through in the economic data as of yet.

When do you expect consumers to start slowing their spending, including charging on their credit cards?

[The latter] has slowed down a bit. But the consumer will spend as long as the consumer feels employed. And so far, the labor market has not been an issue.

We still have plenty of jobs available, though the number of jobs has certainly come down. That’s the first step in labor-market cooling.

The August market pullback wasn’t enough to scare people. When the market is up and inflation is down and consumers are employed, they’re going to feel confident to spend. 

But if the labor market starts to cool off, people will get nervous.

What’s your outlook for corporate earnings?

The United Auto Workers isn’t the only group who feels: “Costs have been passed through, but our wages haven’t kept up with that.”

Companies are stuck in a bit of a predicament: They need workers, but they have to pay these workers in order to attract them. Now, however, they can’t pass prices through as much as they had been. Revenues are down.

So their wage costs go up; and on the lower-revenue numbers, they’ve got a margin problem. 

We’ve already seen margins compressed. We’re going to continue to see that.

The expectation for earnings to be [even] 9% growth in 2024, I think is pretty lofty.


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