Matt Orton explains why dips are viable in the US market

Time of India

26-05-2025

Matt Orton
, Head of Advisory Solutions and Market Strategy,
Raymond James Investment
,
says following a strong rally, the US market's future direction hinges on marginal policy shifts, especially concerning tariffs. Investors should prepare for potential dips, particularly if they missed opportunities earlier. While earnings justify market gains absent tariffs, the market has already factored in a baseline tariff, reacting to specific trade deal developments and future progress.
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Trump's policy is Olive branch and iron fist, then olive branch, and then iron first. What is coming next?
Matt Orton:
What we are going to continue to see is this back and forth. It has been happening since Liberation Day on April 2nd and the market has digested that. At first, the market prepared itself for the worst, very high tariffs across the rest of the world and the rally that we had through the month of April, throughout May has been quite spectacular. So, what the market has realised is earnings, the base from which we are going to come, how the economy has been growing, all of that is in a very solid place. The damage that tariffs are going to inflict is not going to put the economy into a recession. That has never been my base case and the pivots that we have seen from the administration help to confirm that.
But now that we have had this strong rally and since we do not really have the positive catalysts of the earning season coming, I suspect the market is going to be driven by these marginal directional changes of administration. I tell investors to be ready to use some of that downside if they were not as aggressive towards the bottom of the market in April because again the market is going to be able to see through all of this once we start getting increasing clarity.
Are markets already capturing a bit of an upside and are markets already assuming that tariff is not going to be as high as what was indicated in March and April?
Matt Orton
: The markets are baking in some of that. Obviously, the markets are not baking in the entirety of zero tariffs going forward. The market has digested a 10% baseline tariff across the entire world and now the reactions are going to be very much with respect to who is getting more, who is having the trade deal signed, and where we might start to progress in the near future. When you look at earnings, you can justify the move that we have had in the market because absent tariffs is obviously counterfactual, but if we had not had tariffs put in place, we would probably be at 7,000 plus on the S&P 500 after an earnings season that was almost double of what expectations were.
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We have got some big companies like Nvidia reporting this week which are probably still going to be strong. I think the markets have baked in some good news, but they are not overestimating that, which is why I think dips are viable in the US market.
The good news here in India is that we have overtaken Japan to become the fourth largest economy in the world. But talking about Japan, the fact that their core inflation is already at a two-year high could perhaps force the BOJ to hike as well. What are you making of the Japanese economy because there has been a lot of volatility in their bond markets?
Matt Orton:
Yes, there has been and when you look at all of the major global bond markets, there has been a lot of volatility and there has been a lot of steepening of yield curves, long-dated yields not just in the US but across all of the major economies and bond markets have been very elevated. Part of that is idiosyncratic, part of that is the large institutional buyers in those countries just have not been as aggressive. Japan, in particular, has not seen a lot of buying flow from pensions.
If anything, there may have been a little bit of selling from some of the insurance companies that tend to be systematic buyers. But the Japanese economy is tied to trade. There is uncertainty with respect to where that direction is going to go, which is why any sort of trade deal that gets inked in the near future can be a very positive catalyst for that market because before we got into April and before you had the large reciprocal tariffs, Japanese earnings expectations were one of the only countries around the world where you actually had positive and accelerating earnings expectations from analysts.
So, if we can get back to a place where there is more certainty around trade, that will benefit the Japanese economy overall. It is a country to keep eyes on, but don't wade into that too early.
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