Peter Berezin on AI Stock Overvaluation, Small-Cap Struggles, and Recession Indicators
Jul 13, 2024
Michael A. Gayed, CFA
Is the allure of AI stocks overshadowing the perilous reality of small-cap struggles? Join us in this episode as we dissect the intricate landscape of the current stock market with Peter Berezin from BCA Research. We promise an in-depth analysis of the bifurcated performance between thriving large-cap AI-driven stocks and the underperforming small-cap sector. Learn how key economic factors like the ongoing slowdown, diminishing job openings, and the depletion of pandemic savings are contributing to this divergence.
Discover Peter's insights on the prolonged and variable impacts of monetary policy and how the erosion of prior economic insulation is shaping market dynamics. We'll delve into the predictive power of construction job losses and the decline in multi-family housing starts as early indicators of a potential recession. This episode shines a light on how smaller companies, reliant on bank financing and cyclical businesses, face unique challenges that could amplify their struggles in a looming recession. Plus, we critically examine the potential overvaluation of large language models and AI profitability, and whether they can replicate the success of social networks.
We also tackle broader market concerns and sector strategies, drawing parallels between the UK's fiscal turmoil and the current risks facing the US economy. With a 7% budget deficit and low unemployment, we scrutinize the viability of the US dollar during a recession. Can China's economic recovery or a global manufacturing resurgence mitigate these risks? Peter shares thought-provoking perspectives on fiscal policy in an election year, including potential tax hikes and tariffs. Finally, find out where you can follow Peter's work and insights, and explore the long-standing reputation of BCA Research.
The content in this program is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information or other material as investment, financial, tax, or other advice. The views expressed by the participants are solely their own. A participant may have taken or recommended any investment position discussed, but may close such position or alter its recommendation at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction. Please consult your own investment or financial advisor for advice related to all investment decisions.
Is the allure of AI stocks overshadowing the perilous reality of small-cap struggles? Join us in this episode as we dissect the intricate landscape of the current stock market with Peter Berezin from BCA Research. We promise an in-depth analysis of the bifurcated performance between thriving large-cap AI-driven stocks and the underperforming small-cap sector. Learn how key economic factors like the ongoing slowdown, diminishing job openings, and the depletion of pandemic savings are contributing to this divergence.
Discover Peter's insights on the prolonged and variable impacts of monetary policy and how the erosion of prior economic insulation is shaping market dynamics. We'll delve into the predictive power of construction job losses and the decline in multi-family housing starts as early indicators of a potential recession. This episode shines a light on how smaller companies, reliant on bank financing and cyclical businesses, face unique challenges that could amplify their struggles in a looming recession. Plus, we critically examine the potential overvaluation of large language models and AI profitability, and whether they can replicate the success of social networks.
We also tackle broader market concerns and sector strategies, drawing parallels between the UK's fiscal turmoil and the current risks facing the US economy. With a 7% budget deficit and low unemployment, we scrutinize the viability of the US dollar during a recession. Can China's economic recovery or a global manufacturing resurgence mitigate these risks? Peter shares thought-provoking perspectives on fiscal policy in an election year, including potential tax hikes and tariffs. Finally, find out where you can follow Peter's work and insights, and explore the long-standing reputation of BCA Research.
The content in this program is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information or other material as investment, financial, tax, or other advice. The views expressed by the participants are solely their own. A participant may have taken or recommended any investment position discussed, but may close such position or alter its recommendation at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction. Please consult your own investment or financial advisor for advice related to all investment decisions.
My name is Michael Guyatt, publisher of the Lead Layer Report, and joining me for the roughly 35 minutes now, given the shortened time frame, is Mr Peter Berezin of BCA Research. Peter, you and I did a space a while ago and I emphasize to you that I'm a huge fan of BCA Research. But for those who don't know about you and BCA, quickly introduce yourself.
Speaker 2:
Well, bca has been around since 1949. So we're the oldest and largest provider of independent macro research, and I stress the word independent. We're not affiliated with any investment bank. We just do one thing and that's generate unbiased research. And sometimes we're bearish, sometimes we're bullish, but we're always trying to get after the truth.
Speaker 1:
And the truth is, the truth changes every day because the probabilities change every day. The truth changes every day because the probabilities change every day. Let's focus on that point about truth, because it seems like there's two different types of truths that have happened, really, since last year. The first truth is that it's a bull market for large cap market cap weighted stocks right, largely driven by AI not solely, but largely. The other truth is that the vast majority of stocks beneath the surface have not really performed all that well at all, and when I'm referencing that, I'm referencing small caps, because there's many more small cap stocks than large cap stocks. From a historical perspective, is it unusual to have two different messages, like what we've seen, where the small cap side is clearly being held back by higher for longer? There's no real momentum there. It does not look like a bull market for that segment of the marketplace, while the truth of large cap momentum is in place?
Speaker 2:
It's unusual for that to happen, but it's also understandable why that has happened. The economy has been slowing. You can see that in the economic surprise indices, which measure the extent to which economic data is coming in above or below expectations. Most recently, the data has been coming in well below expectations, and so economists have been ratcheting down their growth forecasts for Q2. And that not surprisingly, q2. And that not surprisingly has kept the majority of stocks in the S&P from rising. But there have been a few that have managed to go up for reasons that have very little to do with the economy, and more for reasons to do with hope perhaps unfounded, perhaps founded, we'll see over AI.
Speaker 1:
So let's take a very big top-down view on where the economy is. I have myself argued that the lags are starting to hit, and the thing about lags when it comes to monetary policy is that there's a pretty big range in terms of when the lag starts to hit and as how far out they could hit. What's your view on where the economy is headed? What's your view on where inflation is headed, especially given the data that came out today? And maybe combine all that with a thought experiment, if it's possible. The Fed actually overdid it, and it may only realize it when it's too late.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so the lags we'll term as long and variable lags. I think this time around the lags have been particularly long just because there was a lot of insulation around the economy a couple of years ago. Back then, people were fretting about a recession, but at the time, we were one of the few teams that said listen, a recession is actually very unlikely because of all the insulation around the US economy. Back in 2022, you had huge numbers of job openings, so anyone who lost their job could just walk across the street and find new work. That kept unemployment from going up. You had over 2 trillion in pandemic savings, so money that was just in household balance sheets waiting to be spent. That supported the economy. And you also have the fact that a lot of people refinanced their mortgages during the pandemic, and so they were insulated from rising rates, and it's true for businesses as well. A lot of them refinanced their loans during the pandemic at very favorable rates.
Speaker 2:
Now the problem is fast forward, a couple of years. Things don't look so good. The job openings are basically back to where they were in 2019. We're already starting to see the unemployment rate creep higher. Anyone who loses their job is not going to be able to easily find new work. The pandemic savings are completely gone. In fact, if you look at bank deposits in real terms for the lowest paid 20% of the population, for the lowest paid 20% of the population, they're below 2019 levels. And even in terms of those mortgages and business loans, a rising share of mortgages now are paying over 6%, shrinking shares paying less than 3%. So as more homeowners are forced to buy a home using these very expensive mortgages, that means that monetary policy is slowly working its way through the economy and I don't think Fed rate cuts or, for that matter, even fiscal policy, is going to save the day.
Speaker 1:
I forget who had mentioned this to me before. I haven't looked at this so you may know the answer to it, but historically, if you're looking for a leading indicator of a recession from a jobs market perspective, you tend to see pretty high predictive power in terms of construction jobs being lost first, of construction jobs being lost first, right prior to sort of a broad-based recession, because of how important the housing market is, the long tail of construction, and it seems, from the data that I've seen, that that is happening. Is there something to the makeup of where the unemployment is starting to pick up that is more consistent with what you would see prior to recession?
Speaker 2:
is more consistent with what you would see prior to recession. Well, we're definitely starting to see weakness in the housing market, which is worrisome because, as Ed Leamer famously said, housing is the business cycle. And so if you look at single-family housing starts, they're down 2% year-over-year. Multi-family housing starts are down 50%. It's a massive decline in multi-family starts. They're down 2% year-over-year. Multifamily housing starts are down 50%. It's a massive decline in multifamily starts. And then, outside of the residential area, things look even bleaker. Office starts are at near historic lows, for obvious reasons. The vacancy rate for office space is close to 20% by some measures. They're not building any shopping malls. Haven't been building any shopping malls for years. Even in industrial real estate, we're seeing vacancy rates rise. So the construction sector is not doing well. Home builders are not doing well. They've been going down, whereas the S&P 500 has been going up. That is a worrisome indicator.
Speaker 1:
You had mentioned, the lags have been taking a lot longer to hit, which of course, then makes me think about divergences in markets right, lasting for longer than something I expected. When you have divergences from the economy, the stock market, from large caps to small caps, from different sectors against each other, how do those divergences usually resolve? Meaning, if someone were to say, okay, large caps versus small caps, that divergence resolves in one of two ways Either small caps play catch up or large caps play catch down, right to get to the mean, whatever that mean is. Or you look at economic data and the pace of growth and slowing versus monetary policy direction. That sort of differential Do divergences tend to resolve positively or negatively? I know that's sort of a very large kind of generic, broad-based question, but I think that's important for asset allocators because I think everyone down does notice that it's a very lumpy not just stock market but very lumpy economy that may be now starting to act more normal.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think it really depends on economic circumstances. If the economy doesn't start to reaccelerate, if it continues to decelerate, we're going to have a recession. Recessions are toxic for smaller companies that are often very reliant on bank financing, that tend to have fairly cyclical businesses. So in this case, we're not going to see small caps catch up to large caps. We're going to see small caps do badly and large caps also do badly. Now, what happens to large caps will also be very much a function of whether the profits from AI actually materialize.
Speaker 2:
And my impression, looking at a lot of these large language models, they're all kind of the same. You ask ChatGPT a question, you get kind of the same answer that you would get if you ask Claude or Gemini, and so the presumption that a lot of investors have is that these large language models will generate these incredibly profitable monopolies, just like social networks were able to generate large monopolies. People would use Facebook because everyone else was using Facebook, but these models could turn out to be more like airlines, where they're very useful, but because they're all kind of the same, there's no competitive moat and they don't make very much money. We don't know, but my guess is that investors are going to have second thoughts about the whole AI story.
Speaker 1:
Yeah and I always reference this point that from a behavioral finance perspective, there's this concept called the disposition effect. So when faced with uncertainty and volatility, people tend to not sell their losers first, they sell their winners. And there aren't that many big winners, and we know which ones they are, so those become sources of liquidity when that uncertainty hits. Now the recession argument obviously ties into the yield curve, the inversion being as long as it has been. I always joke that the stock market doesn't care about the inversion until the stocks go down right, in which case then that's when the media talks about it. But is there anything from a historical perspective that suggests the length of time of a yield curve inversion is correlated to the magnitude and depth of a recession?
Speaker 2:
Well, in general, yield curve will invert around 18 months before the start of recession. This time has been longer, and some people were saying that the yield curve is no longer a valuable leading indicator. I don't buy that argument. I think it's still a valuable leading indicator, but the lags are just longer at this time than normally have. A lot will depend on whether consumers continue to spend I have my doubts there out of past income, out of current income or out of future income by borrowing.
Speaker 2:
All three sources of consumption look a lot more challenging now. As I mentioned, the excess savings are gone, so it's going to be more difficult to spend out of past income, since that income is no longer around. If you look at the savings rate, it's almost half of what it was in 2019. So saving out of current income is more challenging because people are already spending almost as much as they possibly can out of current income and then spending out of future income. Look what's happened to credit card delinquency rates. They're now at the highest level that they have been since 2010. The unemployment rate was 9% in 2010. We have the same delinquency rate with the unemployment rate of 4%. So if credit card balances start to shrink as they already are. By the way, that means people are going to be spending less and consumption is 70% of the economy.
Speaker 1:
You've been quoted as saying stocks could drop 30%, which doesn't sound surprising to me. It should not sound surprising to anybody because we just went through that in 2022. But I'm curious why that number? Why is there sort of is that based on some average historical behavior that you've looked at why roughly a third of market cap would be raised?
Speaker 2:
at why roughly a third of market cap would be raised. Well, that would bring stocks down to our net present value estimate of where the S&P should be trading. And to get down to that level, which would be around 3750 on the S&P 500, you only need to make two assumptions. First assumption that you need to make is that forward price earnings ratio drops to 16. And the second assumption is that earnings estimates fall by 10% from current levels. Neither assumptions are that challenging A decline in the PE ratio to 16 would still leave it slightly above the average between 2012 and 2019. The average back then was 15.8%. Of course, that period didn't even include a recession. The 16 PE that I'm predicting is a recession PE and a drop of earnings estimates of 10%. That's a lot milder than what has occurred in the last three downturns. So 37.50 would actually be a relatively conservative estimate.
Speaker 1:
Okay. So let's play that out, because if that happens, small caps, you know they might outperform, they might actually be down less because it goes back to, I think, the source of the selling role even more on the tech side. But that becomes really interesting because if that's the case, I would make the assumption that small caps, for us to do that as the proxy, would actually break the October 2022 lows, which they did in October of 2023 before this rip-off that happened. If that happens, that's a very strange thing historically, isn't it? I mean, you have a drawdown in large caps that was reset with the move higher, but you have the drawdown in the Ross 2000 not reset because you never took out the 2021 highs, so they make new lows before making new highs. I mean that just seems like a very odd dynamic that I don't know if we've ever seen before.
Speaker 2:
Well, I think actually with small caps one has to talk about what index do you want to use. Like the Russell 2000 has massively underperformed the S&P 600 index, which is also a small cap index, the Russell 2000, especially over recent years, has become kind of stuffed with low quality stocks. Companies that don't make very much money have many cases somewhat distressed balance sheets. So I can actually see the Russell 2000 making fresh lows. Don't forget, the Russell 2000 has a lot of regional banks in it, many of which are not going to recover because they've had to dilute their shareholders already. The S&P 600 probably won't retest its lows. It's a higher quality index. So I'm not as bearish on small caps as I am on large caps. Even though during recession small caps normally underperform, I think this time around it'll be more like the 2000, 2001 period, which was also a recessionary period. But when were large caps underperformed? Because they were so expensive going into that downturn.
Speaker 1:
What happens to the dollar in that situation? I mean, that's been sort of the problem for anything anyone trying to invest internationally, it's been the strong dollar. You've had this sort of headwind against unhedged currency investing in Europe or East Asia. Does the dollar weaken there? Stay status quo, Because we are, I think, unusual in the sense that we're a little bit late to the cutting game, whereas certain countries already have ECB obviously has Canada. What's your take on the currency side?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so there's going to be some cross currents.
Speaker 2:
There's going to be some cross currents. On the one hand, the Fed has more scope to cut rates than other central banks simply by virtue of the fact that it raised rates more than most other central banks, but on the other hand, the US dollar is a counter cyclical currency, meaning it typically does well in environments where global growth is weakening, where there's this risk-off push. So my guess is that the dollar will probably strengthen a little bit, but again it's going to be more like the 2001 period where we had a recession. The dollar strengthened, but just a bit. The reason it only strengthened a bit was because, a the Fed was cutting rates dramatically at that time and, b it was also very expensive and right now the dollar is quite overvalued relative to its purchasing power parity estimate. The currency that I like the most in fact, last week was the first time I ever bought this currency for my personal account is the yen. I think the yen is massively undervalued and it's going to have a huge short covering rally later this year.
Speaker 1:
I was hoping you would say that, because I've been on that train. My whole thesis for a credit event which hasn't come yet and may never come, is that there will be a spark from Japan, panicking causing, to your point, a short tweeze in the yen. All that borrowed yen that's deployed in other assets a lot of them might be AI plays suddenly again get repatriated back to Japan. Right, but you need to have a successive series of yen advances against the dollar. Do you think we could be in somewhat of a looming currency crisis? I mean, the way that things have acted here, with the yen in particular, has been pretty stunning. Every single intervention has failed, which to me only means they have to go as hard as possible to spark a squeeze. They have no choice, Otherwise the speculators will keep pushing it.
Speaker 2:
I mean I think it's possible. I mean, typically currency crises are more common in countries where the currency is not issued by the local central bank. So a country like Italy can have a currency crisis because there's no central bank in Italy issuing currency. It's done by the ECB. In Japan and the US it's less likely but not impossible.
Speaker 2:
If you think about the UK, for example, the Bank of England issues its own currency and there was something that kind of resembled a currency crisis a couple of years ago when Prime Minister Liz Truss tried to push a fairly fiscally irresponsible budget. A large deficit and gilt yields rose dramatically. The pound sold off, so we could get some of that, and certainly it's a possibility even in the US that we see that, because right now we have this extraordinary situation where the budget deficit is 7% of GDP and the unemployment rate is only 4%. If we get a recession, then revenues are going to dry up, that budget deficit is going to get even larger and we could have some existential questioning around the future viability of the US dollar as a reserve currency.
Speaker 1:
Which is probably why gold is also hanging in there as somewhat of alternative.
Speaker 2:
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:
Let's take the other side of it, things that could stunt a recession or counter it before it's entrenched. You and I would probably agree. It's debatable that the Fed can get the lags of them cutting right just in time for when the lags of the hiking cycle cause the recession. What about the argument that, for example, what if China starts to recelerate? It's been in its own economic hell for some time? I've heard that argument before that, yeah sure, the US might be weak, but China, from a global growth perspective, because it's not synced in the same way, could pull things somewhat higher. Any chance of that at all?
Speaker 2:
I think there's a chance. I mean, it hasn't happened yet. Why China hasn't stimulated is a bit of a mystery. It might just be the case that in the past, every time they stimulated they got too much stimulus. The housing market would start to surge and then they would kind of regret how much stimulus they pumped into the economy. So maybe they've just been sort of conservative and tried to calibrate the amount of stimulus necessary with what the economy requires and maybe they'll just continue to crank up the dial. We haven't seen it yet. To be quite honest, a lot of people have been calling for stimulus. It hasn't really arrived.
Speaker 2:
If you look at the credit numbers, if you look at the budget spending numbers, they're all fairly weak, but it's possible. It's possible that China will do more. Another possibility is that global manufacturing starts to reaccelerate after close to 18 months now fairly weak data. I've talked about the three-year manufacturing cycle. In the past three years up, typically followed by three years down. We've had a weak manufacturing sector now for a long time and maybe that sector will start to do better because people have finally decided that they need to replenish some of those electronic pieces of equipment that they bought during the pandemic. It's a possibility. We're not really seeing it in the data, but it's something that could extend the cycle. I think we should be at least cognizant of that.
Speaker 1:
As many are probably aware, it's an election year and that term fiscal dominance has been out there quite a bit, at least on the social media side. Independent of who wins, Could the fiscal side counter a recession just in time? It seems to me that there's lags and everything, but maybe the lags of fiscal policy are shorter than monetary, so there can be a much faster reaction to any slowdown order, but the problem is that they might not be invoked Right now.
Speaker 2:
As I said, the budget deficit is already very big. Typically, what happens during recession is that there's some fiscal stimulus, the budget deficit rises, but then it comes back down. Well, we never had that period of fiscal consolidation. Debt levels are rising and will continue to rise for years to come. What I worry about is quite the opposite. I worry that we're actually going to get tax hikes next year. Even if Trump wins Now, he's not going to raise income taxes, he's not going to raise corporate taxes, but he's going to raise tariffs, and the reality is that tariff is a tax on consumers, especially low-end consumers, those companies that are producing goods in China. They're not Chinese companies, they're US companies with manufacturing facilities in China that are producing things there, bringing them to the US. They're going to charge a higher price if they have to pay higher tariffs on those goods, and so that could actually be a situation where taxes rise in the midst of recession, which wouldn't be good at all.
Speaker 1:
I wonder if that explains the weakness in the transportation part of the stock market, the transports which have been very diverged against large caps, even though they're still large cap. I mean, maybe there's some anticipation that's coming and if investors are forward-looking they're starting to discount that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think we're kind of moving from a period where bad news about the economy was good news for stocks because it meant the Fed could ease policy, to one where bad news about the economy is bad news for stocks because it means lower corporate earnings.
Speaker 2:
We're kind of actually seeing that today right. That today right the market rallied when the soft CPI print was released and then it's selling off because I think a lot of investors are starting to say to themselves maybe profit margins are going to go down if prices go down. Profit margins soared during the pandemic because companies could just jack up their prices, but if they can't do that anymore, we're going to get softer profit margins. That's bad news for stocks. So I really do think that we're at a tipping point. I was bullish on stocks last year, but then in the end of June just a couple of weeks ago, now less than a couple of weeks we turned bearish, because I do think that we're in a unique situation where the economy is very, very vulnerable and valuations are very stretched. That's a bad combination for equities.
Speaker 1:
So it's always a question of length and magnitude, right. The difference between a correction and a crash is time, right. I mean 20% decline that happens in a week is very different than 20% decline that happens over a year, so it's really just about the compression of time. Any thoughts on the risk of a tail event? And I say that some people will say I'm a permit bearer for framing it in this way, but it seems to me when I look at some of the positioning data, there is a lot. I've used this line before everyone's on the same side of the boat holding an anvil. You look at leverage positioning, speculative activity. There isn't so much of a counter position. So is there a chance that this plays out aggressively, quickly, different than how 2022 bear market played out?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think that's the big unknown and we're seeing some really weird stuff. Just this morning, right, the Nasdaq. Haven't checked the latest numbers, but last time it checked it was down nearly 2%. The Russell 2000 is up 3%. When's the last time that's happened? I haven't checked the latest numbers, but last time I checked it was down nearly 2%.
Speaker 1:
The Russell 2000 is up 3%. When's the last time that's happened? I don't remember a single time, not in the last 20 years.
Speaker 2:
The whole world is rotating out of NVIDIA into the Russell 2000. That's right, but you know what that means. You know that a lot of people had long QQQ, short IWM trades on and are now oh crap, I need to close those. So the positioning could definitely amplify any move down in stocks. There's been all sorts of vol trades that people have been putting on. Those could go sour very, very quickly. So I don't expect the next recession to be like a balance sheet recession of the way the 2008-2009 recession was. I don't think we're going to get a financial crisis. It's possible, but I don't think so. I think this will be more of an income statement recession. But nevertheless, the fact that stocks are so overextended, the fact that positioning may be very one-sided now, does raise the risk of stocks going down. And, by the way, you don't need a deep recession for stocks to fall. The 2001 recession was a very mild recession. We didn't even have two consecutive quarters of negative growth and yet the S&P still fell 49% peak to trough.
Speaker 1:
Stock sector positioning. That's the case. So typically the recession sectors are the sectors that provide good services that you need utilities. Consumer staples need Utilities, consumer staples. Healthcare Utilities are actually having, as we were speaking, a massive relative move against the S&P, almost like small caps, but with a low beta bond-like sector Utilities are strong from February up until April-ish outperforming. The narrative was it's because of AI. Everyone realized that suddenly you have to use electricity for all these GPUs, then weakened but now showing some very sudden strength. If you were thinking from an equity strategist perspective, do you want to tilt and try to play that momentum relative-wise in utilities? Do you want to consider staples healthcare, how would you think through sort of the sector mix?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So we've been recommending overweighting utilities, healthcare and consumer staples. I would say of the three, I like healthcare the most, partly because that's one of the few areas in the CBI where prices are still rising. Healthcare prices tend to be subject to long-term contracts, so a lot of healthcare providers couldn't raise prices as fast as other prices were rising during the pandemic. But now they're playing catch-up, which is going to be good news for healthcare profit margins and, of course, from a structural perspective, populations are aging. Ai will actually be very, very helpful for drug discovery. So there's some political risks around healthcare, depending on what happens in November. But I do like that sector going into year end.
Speaker 2:
Outside of the classic defensives, you might want to use a bit of a barbell strategy. Perhaps own a few materials, because material stocks typically are late cycle stocks. If the recession happens a little bit later than I'm expecting, we could get a rally in materials. By the way, materials were a great performing sector in the first half of 2008. The recession started in December 2007. We didn't know about it until the end of 2008. So if you want to hedge your risks against a recession happening as soon as I'm calling for one, maybe owning some materials gold miners, for example makes a bit of sense, but in general, I would be moving into a more defensive stance when it comes to equity sector allocation.
Speaker 1:
The big question, and those that have followed me for a while know why I'm asking this question. The question is how would long-duration treasuries behave? There is, to your point, the deficits keep rising, the debt keeps rising. I do think personally, that gold has been a beneficiary of the concerns around government debt, which is why you've seen some defensive posturing there as opposed to long duration treasuries. But do we get back to a place where treasuries on the long end acts like that pristine risk-off asset?
Speaker 2:
I think we do. Actually, now, the question of debt is an important question and it's not entirely actually obvious whether high debt levels are bad for bonds or good for bonds, certainly if high debt leads to the same outcome that befell Italy and befell Canada in the early 1990s, where you just have to go through this very extended period of fiscal austerity and that's not inevitable, certainly not in the US and certainly not given the political dynamics, but it could happen. So I don't have a strong view on the long-term outlook for bonds, but in the near term, if I'm right about the recession call, if I'm right about how CapEx and consumer spending is going to slow, that's fundamentally the good story for ETFs like the TLT, which I've been buying personally.
Speaker 1:
Peter, for those who want to track more of your thoughts, more of your work, where would you point them to?
Speaker 2:
Well, I've got a Twitter presence, linkedin as well, and, of course, visit bcaresearchcom and check out some of our research.
Speaker 1:
Appreciate those that joined this live stream. I will have this as a podcast in a couple of days here, and please make sure you check out BCA Research. I am sincere, I'm a big fan of their work for many, many years. That's a little bit of a family legacy, as my father was too. Thank you, peter, appreciate it.