CFA Society Chicago Macro Matters - equity market thoughts heading into 2025

We continue to explore the themes that are driving markets in 2025. The impact of changing policies in the US and elsewhere is clearly causing investors to reconsider how they will forecast the economy and markets going forward. We are lucky to be joined by Brian Wesbury of First Trust, consistently one of the top forecasters on Wall Street, to discuss the important issues facing investors today

If anything has characterized 2025 it has been the influence of geopolitics on the markets. In this episode, Rich Excell, CFA, CMT is joined by Reva Goujon, a geopolitical strategist and the Director of Corporate Advisory at Rhodium Group. Reva has two decades of experience working with C-suites and government agencies on how to deconstruct risks, assess future scenarios, and make informed decisions.

Continuing on our with our 2025 investment themes, Rich Excell CFA, CMT digs into the fixed income market with two excellent guests: Elizabeth Henderson, CFA the Head of Fixed Income for AAM and Anthony Woodside, CFA, FRM, the Head of Investment Strategy & Head of Multisector Fixed Income at LGIM America

The first of a multiple part series, we are exploring the investment themes of 2025. With so much concern on inflation, we thought the best place to start is in commodities. We were lucky to be joined by Bloomberg Intelligence Commodity Strategist Mike McGlone, a fellow CFA charterholder and friend of the program. We covered the gamut from soybeans to Solana, gold to gas. 

Rich Excell, CFA, CMT is joined by Institutional Investor's #1 Strategist Michael Kantrowitz, CFA from Piper Sandler to discuss the US equity market backdrop. What does the factor performance of the market tell us? Are expensive valuations a problem? What about tight credit spreads? Can small caps finally outperform?  All of this and more

Rich Excell CFA, CMT is joined by Barry Knapp, Managing Partner of Ironsides Macro to discuss what is being priced into the bond market and the stock market, where they agree and where the discuss agree. Barry covered TGA, RRP, Active Treasury Issuance, Negative Swaps Spreads, Inverted Yield Curves and QT. Most importantly, he made all of those terms understandable for those that don't follow the inner-workings of the bond market as closely as he does. 

Fred Goodwin aka Mr. Risk, a senior macro strategist at State Street, is a guest of Rich Excell CFA, CMT.  They have a wide-ranging discussion from leptokurtotic distributions to Chinese stimulus policy to the Rule of 100. When it is all said and done, does it all come down to TINA (There Is No Alternative) again?  Have a listen to find out

Maybe you noticed, or maybe you didn't, but a month ago, the PJM auction results were announced and the cost for energy capacity in the largest region in the US saw prices up 800% yay!  This was enough of a shock that we reached out to the Electirc Power Supply Association (EPSA) to ask them to explain what is going on. Rich Excell CFA, CMT was joined by Todd Snitchler, the President and CEO of EPSA, to walk us through the supply and demand dynamics in the energy market now

Rich Excell CFA, CMT is joined by renowned economic Lyric Hughes Hale of EconVue who is an expert on Asia economies and geopolitics. Lyric last joined Rich to talk about China after the last National Party Congress. Now she is on to discuss the seminal elections in India, what we need to know as investors, and what we might expect from the politicians.    Lyric mentions an article written by her team. This is a link to that article: https://plus.econvue.com/p/indias-dynamic-growth-story

Rich Excell CFA, CMT is joined by Lotta Moberg PhD, CFA, a partner at ViviFi Ventures and Paul Chesek, the Chief Growth Officer at GreenCheck to discuss the recent trends in cannabis & how the rescheduling of cannabis may change the landscape for investors going forward.