Podcasts

Since Donald Trump regained the US presidency on 5 November, bond, stock, and currency markets have all repriced yet their direction is unclear. 

To assess what this repricing says about the revised outlook for global growth, inflation, and fiscal and monetary policy, Medley Advisors brought together three in-house market analysts: Nick Stadtmiller, Dan Schwartz, and Phil Tyson. 

"The Trump policy mix adds a significant overhang to what was already a pretty fraught situation and one that's likely to be persistent," says Dan Schwartz. "I think that's what we're seeing unfold ... Certainly yields have moved up but rates markets have been choppy and we've seen big rallies ... yet the dollar's barely budging".

In this final podcast in Medley Advisors’ three-part series about the US election, Madelynn Einhorn talks to Nathan Gonzalez about polls, models, and forward indicators to monitor on 5-6 November.

Nathan Gonzalez is the editor and publisher of Inside Elections, which provides nonpartisan analysis of federal and state campaigns. A 14-year ABC News Election Night Decision Desk veteran, he is a regular expert guest on NBC's Meet the Press, C-Span’s Washington Journal, and Fox News.

Although the polls say this race will be as close as the notorious 2000 election, they only need to be slightly off to deliver either presidential nominee a quick and decisive victory, he says. “If one candidate has just a swing of … it doesn't take four or five, it takes two or three percentage points in one direction and someone could win all seven [swing states]. And that will feel like an electoral-college landslide even though, by the numbers, it's still going to be considered close”.

In this podcast, Madelynn asks the big question going into 5 November: can we trust the polls? After all, in 2020, Joe Biden led Donald Trump by 8 points but won by only 4.5 and by just 43,000 votes across three states. What went wrong?

To answer these questions, she spoke to Michael Bailey, professor of American government at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and author of Polling at a Crossroads.

"The basic problem is that, within the demographic group, you get a non-representative sample," he says. "You just do, because they're non-representative in the sense that they're willing to talk to pollsters versus everyone else". To obtain a 4,000-respondent sample for its March 2024 battleground-states poll, the New York Times had to try 400,000 people. "The people who answered that poll, in layman's terms, they're weird, right?"

With the most consequential US election in decades looming, Medley Advisors are releasing three discussions between Madelynn Einhorn and three renowned electoral-data experts to consider the outcome.

With the most consequential US election in decades looming, Medley Advisors are releasing three discussions between Madelynn Einhorn and three renowned electoral-data experts to consider the outcome. 

In this podcast, Madelynn talks to Lakshya Jain - the co-founder of the Split Ticket election-analysis site. A machine-learning engineer by training, Lakshya Jain (and his Split Ticket colleagues) burst onto the election-prediction scene during the 2022 midterms as the head of a new generation of political-data analysts.

"The wisdom of the crowd is not exactly a fully quantitative approach," he says. "A model doesn't spend all day on Twitter. It doesn't react to news. It doesn't react to insiders panicking and whatnot ... Betting markets are more influenced by news events and narratives about the vibe of the race, whereas models are not".

A four-month decline in commodity prices until mid-September, a chunky opening interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve, and a substantial Chinese monetary ease have raised concerns that a marked global slowdown is underway. Are there early signs of this in the energy and tech markets?

To answer this question, Earl Han, the Head of Medley Advisors, brought together Sung Soo Han and and Kitt Haines. Dr. Han is the CTO of Kolon Group and formerly head of research at Samsung and LG Electronics. Kitt Haines is the Global Crude Lead for Energy Aspects.

Mario Draghi has acquired such mythical status that it was little surprise when his report on “the future of European competitiveness” captured so much media and market attention.

Yet, although the report put together by the former European Central Bank president and Italian prime minister is comprehensive and ambitious, it is only a blueprint. For any of it to be implemented requires the kind of political will and policy coordination that only emerge in the EU at times of acute crisis.

Tim Jones and Pepijn Bergsen from Medley Advisors' European team discuss the report and what, if anything, will happen to it next.

On 10 September, incumbent US Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump will meet for their first (and maybe only) pre-election debate.

In this Medley Advisors podcast, Tim Jones asks Samer Mosis, Madelynn Einhorn, and Michael Redmond for their pre-debate takes on the election and its policy implications.

Before joining Energy Aspects as Head of Fundamentals in April, Samer Mosis worked in the White House on the National Security Council as Director for Energy Markets and, before that, as an economist in the Treasury Department.

Michael Redmond is Medley's US macro policy analyst and "Fed watcher", while data scientist Madelynn Einhorn designed and runs Medley's election model.

As global policymakers head for the annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, all eyes are on Federal Reserve officials and any signal that their easing cycle will begin in September. 

In this podcast, Medley Advisors take advantage of the diverted spotlight to look at two authorities that beat the Fed to the turn: the European Central Bank and the Bank of England. Andrew Besuyen asks Tim Jones and Phil Tyson: What next for Europe's two big central banks?

Since January, the Brazilian real has lost 15% of its value against the dollar as left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (“Lula”) publicly resists public-spending cuts proposed by his own cabinet. 

Now, in the wake of a 15-billion-reais spending freeze unveiled by Finance Minister Fernando Haddad, we bring together Mario Lima, Medley Advisors’ Brazil analyst; Fernando Posadas, head of Latin America; and Ignacio Labaqui, regional analyst, to discuss what happens next.   

Has Haddad tamed Lula? Will the currency and Brazilian assets recover? Will the central bank (Bacen) be forced to extend the pause in its easing cycle?

The Bank of Japan is unique among developed-market monetary authorities. Just as the European, Canadian, and Swiss central banks start their easing cycles – and the US Federal Reserve and Bank of England prepare to join in – the BOJ is tightening policy across the yield curve.

Yet, the market is sceptical – driving the yen down 20% against the dollar since late-2022. Understandably so, says Medley Advisors’ veteran BOJ-watcher Kenichi Nagura. “The BOJ cannot raise interest rates to 2%, 3% like the Fed or ECB; the Japanese economy is not strong enough to accept such high interest rates,” he says in this podcast. “In the beginning, the rate hikes will be slow but, once BOJ can get a sense of the reaction of the economy and the market and politics to the rate hike, then the BOJ can raise interest rates at a faster pace”. 

The underlying problem is that “more than 30% of people are retired, … prefer zero-percent inflation or deflation, and their voting rate is very high” and the scale of Japan’s public debt. “If they can raise interest rates and the inflation rate gradually, then government interest payments will increase gradually … [and] … tax revenue will also increase gradually”. 

The Japanese authorities cannot risk losing control of this process.

By dissolving the national assembly and daring his compatriots to elect a right-wing populist government, French President Emmanuel Macron has revived questions over fiscal stability in Europe that had been buried for more than a decade.

With the first round of the legislative election coming on Sunday, Medley Advisors' European analysts Tim Jones and Pepijn Bergsen discuss the market risks surrounding both likely outcomes.   

On 12 June, soon after the Federal Open Market Committee released its statement, updated projections, and "dot plot", and Chair Jay Powell ended his press conference, Medley's Fed-watcher Michael Redmond discussed what it all meant with Nick Stadtmiller.

On Sunday 2 June, Mexicans will vote for a new president, a federal lower house and senate, nine state governors, deputies for 31 state congresses, and 1,580 municipal officials. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is term-limited but his chosen successor Claudia Sheinbaum holds a substantial lead over rival Xóchitl Gálvez. 

To preview the results and their aftermath, Fernando Posadas, Medley Advisors' Mexico analyst, fields questions from colleagues together with Madelynn Einhorn (election modeller) and Ignacio Labaqui (regional specialist).



For an update on Chinese macro trends and their impact on energy demand, Earl Han (Head of Medley Advisors) brought together Brian Jackson (Medley's China analyst) and Jianan Sun (Energy Aspects' China analyst).

They agreed that, while industrial output is stabilising, its composition is changing. "We also have this compositional shift towards exports," says Brian. "You see that very clearly within one particular industrial sector, which is electronics and computers manufacturing ... That probably has energy implications because it perhaps is going to be less energy-intensive or use different types of inputs, for example, compared to something like cement, glass, steel, etc which are within the construction space".

It's been five months since Javier Milei was sworn in as Argentina's president - a head of state taking a chainsaw to his state with no congressional majority and in a country with a long tradition of street resistance. 

In response to the first stage of his shock therapy, the economy is expected to shrink by more than 3% this year while inflation is touching 290%. Yet the president is sustaining his approval ratings as congress prepares to approve a second dose of therapy.

"Success would be that next year we see 30% inflation and at least 3% growth," says Ignacio Labaqui, Medley Advisors' Argentina specialist, in this edited internal meeting in which he discusses the administration's next steps, IMF support and criticism, labour adjustment, and Milei's approach to China and the US.