Latest news with #RichardBernstein
CNBC
19-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
The profit cycle in the U.S. is peaking, says Richard Bernstein
Ryan Detrick, Carson Group and Richard Bernstein, Richard Bernstein Advisors, join 'Closing Bell: Overtime' to discuss whether investors should be defensive or stay bullish,
CNBC
06-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Wobbling economy will push the Fed to cut interest rates later this year, CNBC survey finds
Amid a decidedly stagflationary forecast, including higher inflation and unemployment and surging odds of recession, respondents to the May CNBC Fed Survey still believe the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates this year and next. Asked how the Fed will respond to not only persistently higher prices from tariffs but also weakening growth and employment, 65% of say the Fed will cut rates to address the economic weakness despite the inflation. That's up from 44% in the March survey when the majority thought the Fed would hold in that scenario. Only 26% say the Fed will hold rates when faced with the stagflation dilemma and just 3% believe the Fed will hike rates. The 31 respondents, who include fund managers, analysts and economists, see the Fed funds rate declining to 3.71% by year end and 3.36% by the end of 2026 for a near 100-basis point decline over the period from the current level of 4.33%. The odds of recession in the next year rose to 53%, up from 22% in January for the biggest two-survey increase since 2022. That's when the Fed was just beginning its sharp rate hikes to battle inflation. The consumer price index is seen ratcheting up from the current level of 2.4% to 3.2% by year end, but declining next year back to 2.6%. At the same time, the unemployment rate is expected to rise from 4.2% to 4.7% and hold at about that level in 2026. GDP is forecast at just 0.8% on average for this year, down from last year's 3.1% growth rate. "The Fed must project an inflation fighting stance, but in most circumstances they will react more quickly to labor market weakness," said Lou Brien, strategist with DRW Trading Group. "So, in the current circumstance, when the unemployment rate rises a few more tenths, and/or payrolls decline, the Fed will lower rates and suggest economic weakness will dampen inflation." But those cuts, said Richard Bernstein of Richard Bernstein Advisors, would mean the Fed "giving up on the 2% inflation target, perhaps permanently." Fed officials have insisted they would not adjust the 2% target. The average respondent sees growth rebounding to around 2% in 2026. Some say that's because other, more positive parts of the Trump administration's economic policies will kick in. "By the second half of 2026, we expect that the tax and deregulation policies pursued by the administration will return the economy to a better trajectory of growth," said Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist at Jefferies. Respondents do not believe stocks are currently priced correctly for the more downbeat outlook this year with 45% saying equities are not priced for a recession and 52% saying they are only somewhat correctly priced. Overall, 69% believe the stock market is significantly or somewhat overpriced, up from 56% in the March survey. The average forecast sees the S&P finishing flat on the year relative to current levels but rising nearly 11% by the end of 2026. "Although equity prices are undervalued, the level of stock market optimism remains too high. Most likely there are further declines ahead," said Hugh Johnson of Hugh Johnson Economics. Some of the increased bearishness on the economy looks linked to the increasing belief that some form of a high tariff regime will be permanent. A 63% majority of respondents to the CNBC Fed Survey believe across-the-board 10% tariffs will likely remain on all U.S. imports after the completion of new trade deals. Strong majorities see tariffs as a negative for the US growth, employment and inflation. "Uncertainty surrounding tariff policy and objectives are weighing on planned investment and new orders," said Constance Hunter, chief economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit. Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation adds, "Everyone is worried, not yet sure that anyone can predict the storm path of tariffs and their impact on the economy given so much uncertainty. Hopefully, price sensitive consumers can withstand the potential threatening nature of tariffs." Complicating the outlook: 74% of those who see tariffs as negative for the economy do not believe that promised deregulation and tax cuts from the administration will offset the negative impact of tariffs. Drew Matus chief market strategist at MetLife Investment Management says, "Tariffs should have been sequenced post tax cuts so the negative shock was following a positive shock." Meanwhile, 73% say the combination of the administration's tariff, immigration and foreign policies have damaged the U.S. brand in a way that is negative for the image of companies overseas and 83% say they are a negative for the attractiveness of U.S. assets.
New York Times
02-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
Richard Bernstein, Times Correspondent, Critic and Author, Dies at 80
Richard Bernstein, a former correspondent and critic for The New York Times whose deep knowledge of Asia and Europe illuminated reporting from Tiananmen Square to the Bastille, and who wrote things as he saw them in 10 books driven by unflinching intellectual curiosity, died on Monday in Manhattan. He was 80. His death, in a hospital, was caused by pancreatic cancer, diagnosed less than eight weeks ago, his son, Elias Bernstein, said. Mr. Bernstein lived in Brooklyn. Over more than two decades at The Times, Mr. Bernstein brought deep historical knowledge, a gracious writing style and a stubborn contrarian streak to subjects as various as the meaning of the French Revolution, the nature of Chinese authoritarianism, the 'multitudinous strands' in the 1994 World Trade Center bombing trial, and the significance of parentheses in the politics of academic language. Writing about the Danube in 2003 after a 1,750-mile journey along it, Mr. Bernstein observed: 'Rivers are symbols. You can not think of the Mississippi without also thinking of the American drama of race. The Seine is Parisian elegance; the Rhine, German national identity. The Yellow River is China immemorial.' As for the water on which he glided from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, it was 'the river of exquisite stricken cities of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire,' the 'Blue Danube Waltz' of Johann Strauss, the Holocaust and 'the clanging into place of the Iron Curtain.' His journalism had sweep, an elegiac sense of the tragic inherent in human affairs, and often a subtly crafted argumentation rooted in thorough on-the-ground reporting. Mr. Bernstein, who retained throughout his life something of the nervousness and capacity for wonder of a cub reporter, never tired of working hard. 'I frankly do not like books that start from the premise that matters are too complex to allow for any generalizations,' he wrote in 'Fragile Glory,' his rich 1990 portrait of France, a country 'someplace midway between a certain persistent dream and an immovable reality.' It was a nation, for Mr. Bernstein, that sought to 'glow with the torch of civilization itself' even as it writhed over its 'military and moral collapse in the face of the Nazis.' If cleareyed on the ineluctability of suffering, Mr. Bernstein was also an optimist. The first-generation son of Jewish immigrants from Hungary and Belarus, he grew up on a chicken farm in rural Connecticut, where he learned to sort small, medium, large, extra large and jumbo eggs and was schooled in scrappy struggle. Clothes were hand-me-downs; Hanukkah gifts, modest. The family rule was corn in the garden could not be picked until the water was boiling. At age 9, seated on his father's lap, he would drive the farm pickup truck to collect eggs at the chicken coops. From that experience he took a distaste for posturing, a suspicion of fashion, an impatience with taboos and a deep belief in American possibility. He believed in a fair shake for everyone, including his journalistic subjects. In his view, it was to America, as a postwar power in Asia and Europe, that fell the responsibility to safeguard and extend the freedom from which his family had benefited. 'A Jewish intellectual from a chicken farm, he never swerved from his attachment to what America should stand for,' the author Kati Marton said in an interview. In a dispatch from Beijing, where he had been sent to report soon after the massacre of protesting students on the night of June 3-4, 1989, Mr. Bernstein quoted a saying used in Imperial China to persuade people to inform on traitors: 'For the sake of the great cause, destroy your loved ones.' He pivoted, with the assurance of a China scholar, to ask whether, in this light, the Chinese People's Liberation Army's brutal slaying of hundreds of students was 'a product of 20th-century totalitarianism' or reflective of the country's long tradition of harsh autocratic rule. As often with Mr. Bernstein, it was an attempt to reach beyond the news to the deeper historical currents of events. His conclusion was that there was something new and singular in the government's bald denial of what had happened and in its 'entirely modern campaign of incessant propaganda' against the 'thugs,' as the government called its victims. 'The notion here is that any opposition to the Government is not just wrong,' he wrote. 'It is criminal, treasonous, counterrevolutionary, and those who led it deserve neither respect nor humane treatment.' A Democrat of sometimes conservative views, Mr. Bernstein grappled with America's ideological drift long before cancel culture, gender-norm wars and the current angry fracture of the country over diversity, equity and inclusion policies. In a gently mocking 'On Language' column in The New York Times Magazine from 1990, he wrote of an academic conference he had attended that was advertised as 'Rewriting the (Post)modern and (Post)colonialism,' and observed that the parentheses were a way of making readers think again about meanings 'always taken for granted.' 'The parentheses were placed not only around words but also around parts of words,' he wrote. 'There was one paper titled 'Locating Un(re)presentable Desire: Narrational Transformations and Postmodern Man.' Another was 'It's Not (Post) Until it's Post(ed): (Post)modernism and the Terminological Endgames of Terrorism.'' Drawing from that conference, he went on to note that 'our basic values' were now commonly called 'the dominant discourse,' or even 'the totalizing discourse,' whose reputed ravages were most felt by 'those outside the power structure.' Attached to those increasingly contested basic American values, if aware of their need to evolve, he gave expression to his concerns in 'Dictatorship of Virtue: Multiculturalism and the Battle for America's Future,' published in 1994. In that book, he argued that attempts to promote diversity had often stifled diversity, and through reporting across American boardrooms and classrooms, he chronicled what he saw as a treacherous, feel-good undermining of the nation's meritocratic, can-do vision. It was a book that won Mr. Bernstein more enemies than friends even as it presaged ideological fissures destined to grow. He never shrank from difficult subjects: In 2009, he published 'The East, the West, and Sex: A History,' an exploration of the connection between sex and power told through the encounters of Western explorers, merchants and conquerors with Eastern cultures. 'He believed in truth, no matter where the chips fell,' said David Margolick, a journalist and author. 'Nobody had handed him anything. His integrity was absolute. He wrote what he thought without looking over his shoulder.' Richard Paul Bernstein was born in New York on May 5, 1944, the first of two children of Herbert and Clare (Brown) Bernstein. The family moved soon after to a poultry farm in East Haddam, Conn., after the Jewish Agricultural Society, an organization established to provide farm training to Eastern European immigrants, gave his father a loan. Richard attended an Orthodox synagogue — 'a rickety old building cantilevered over a gully near the soda shop,' in the words of his lifelong friend Donald Berwick — and graduated from Nathan Hale-Ray High School in nearby Moodus, before attending the University of Connecticut, where he earned a B.A. in history. Wanderlust already had a grip on him. He went on to earn an M.A. at Harvard University in history and East Asian languages, a course chosen in part because it offered the possibility of moving to Taiwan to study Mandarin. There was born a passion for Asia that never left him. It led to jobs as a stringer and later correspondent in Beijing for Time magazine before he joined The Times in 1982, initially as a reporter covering metropolitan New York. Mr. Bernstein later served as United Nations bureau chief, Paris bureau chief, national cultural correspondent, book critic and Berlin bureau chief before leaving The Times in 2006. Judy Peritz, his younger sister, recalled how their father had given him a BB gun when he was 11. He would shoot at birds, and one day he hit one, and was appalled to see how the bird struggled and suffered from what he had done. 'He never used the gun again,' she said. A deep kindness accompanied Mr. Bernstein to the end. Although not religious, he joined a Torah study group late in life, intent on exploring the meaning of his Jewishness. In addition to his son and sister, Mr. Bernstein is survived by his wife, Zhongmei Li, a renowned Chinese classical dancer and choreographer. 'We all know death comes,' he told Ms. Peritz just before he died. 'I would have loved to have more, but now understand that I won't. I accept that and am not afraid. I have lived a really wonderful and interesting life.'
The Independent
25-02-2025
- Business
- The Independent
‘Uncertainty is rising': Financial analysts warn that market shows worrisome signs with Trump in office
Wall Street analysts are worried that the U.S. economy is entering a period of turbulence as stock market enthusiasm collides with uncertainty about Donald Trump's agenda. Multiple financial experts have warned in recent weeks that the post-election surge in share and cryptocurrency prices, known as a bull market, may soon stumble. Some also sounded alarms about the potential impact of Trump's autocratic and chaotic mercurial governance style, in which markets may be blindsided by sudden policy swings. 'Uncertainty is rising, but individual investors are completely certain that they know what the outcome is going to be. That's crazy," investment manager Richard Bernstein told Politico. Jim Chanos, a hedge fund manager, likewise said: 'For good or bad, depending on your politics, we're back to the chaos presidency.' He added: "Whatever you might think about the Biden administration, if you were a market participant, you generally didn't need to check your Twitter feed the first thing in the morning when you woke up just to see what was said. But we're back to that, and with that, comes probably more volatility." The S&P 500, which tracks the value of the country's 500 biggest companies, has been climbing steadily off and on since late 2023 and hit record highs on November 11 and February 19. Meanwhile, the price of Bitcoin soared to a height of $105,000 after Trump's election and has remained above $90,000 since then. All of which suggests that Wall Street expects great things from a billionaire-friendly president who has pledged to downsize the federal government and slash regulations while centralizing power under himself. But some analysts are worried, both about whether this enthusiasm is sustainable and about whether Trump's policies — particularly his promised tariffs on foreign imports — will dampen the party. JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon warned in January that "asset prices are kind of inflated, by any measure", adding: "You need fairly good outcomes to justify those prices." And while Dimon has broadly supported Trump's tariffs and budget cuts, others are concerned about the economic impact of laying off thousands of federal employees, and slashing federal contracts. "The incoming economic data remains strong. But we are starting to worry about the downside risks to the economy and markets from the impact of DOGE layoffs and contract cuts on jobless claims, and persistently elevated policy uncertainty weighing on [investment] decisions and hiring decisions," Torsten Slok, chief economist at the investment firm Apollo Global Management, said Saturday. He argued that the total number of layoffs among government employees and contractors could be close to one million, which would have "consequences" for the wider economy. Other analysts have claimed that the stock market is underestimating the likelihood and impact of Trump's tariffs, which have so far remained more bark than bite. Richard Bernstein also told Politico that the high enthusiasm among investors will make them especially sensitive to any negative developments. "It's not like we're in an environment where people are bearish and the slightest positive thing will cause a bull market. This is the exact opposite," he said. "People are really bulled up, and so [the government are] going to have to tread much more lightly than they think they are."
Yahoo
16-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Stocks near record highs as investors await Fed minutes, manufacturing update: What to know this week
The S&P 500 (^GSPC) chugged to a record high last week as new inflation data signaled good news about the Federal Reserve's rate cut plans. For the week, the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) rose more than 2.5%, while the S&P 500 added just under 1.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) added about 0.5%. Corporate earnings season will roll on, headlined by quarterly reports from Alibaba (BABA) and Walmart (WMT). Overall, 46 S&P 500 companies are expected to announce results during the holiday-shortened trading week. The week ahead will bring a quieter flow of economic news. Minutes from the Federal Reserve's January meeting and updates on activity in the manufacturing and services sector, as well as consumer sentiment, will be in focus for investors. Markets will be closed on Monday for Presidents' Day. Last week, two fresh inflation readings for the month of January showed prices increased more than Wall Street had expected, but economists found positive news for markets and the Federal Reserve within the details. When evaluating categories from both the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) that feed into the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumptions Expenditures (PCE) index, it appears that price increases likely slowed in the month of January. Economists now expect "core" PCE, which excludes the volatile categories of food and energy, will likely clock in at 2.6% in January, down from the 2.8% seen in December. This leaves markets pricing in one or two interest rate cuts from the Fed in 2025, little changed from the week prior, per Bloomberg data. And importantly, many economists still think the Fed is closer to cutting interest rates rather than hiking them. "We think the bar for Fed hikes remains high," Morgan Stanley chief US economist Michael Gapen wrote in a note to clients on Friday. "The evolution of inflation expectations and second-round effects from tariffs on services inflation remain key points of emphasis. But, for now, we still think the distribution of Fed policy outcomes skews in the direction of rate cuts as opposed to hikes." Investors will be looking to the Fed's minutes from its January meeting, due out for release on Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET, for any further clues on how the central bank is thinking about the path forward for interest rates. The S&P 500 is back near a record high, and this time around, it's not all about a handful of tech stocks. Yes, Meta (META) stock has risen for 20 straight days and its more than 25% gain this year has contributed to the S&P 500's increase. But Meta and Amazon (AMZN) are the only Magnificent Seven tech stocks to have outperformed the S&P 500 thus far in 2025. Meanwhile, the number of companies outpacing the index's 4% gain has soared to start 2025. As of Wednesday's close, 48% of the S&P 500 is outperforming the index in 2025, in line with the 25-year median and above the 29% seen last year. As Richard Bernstein Advisors CEO Richard Bernstein pointed out in Yahoo Finance's latest Chartbook, the last two years had marked the lowest number of stocks outperforming the index in 25 years. Freedom Capital Markets chief global strategist Jay Woods told Yahoo Finance the number of stocks participating in the current rally shows strength within the bull market but doesn't exactly mean the benchmark index itself will shoot higher. "If we get a bad report out of Nvidia in a few weeks [on Feb. 26], then we could see the market turn lower," Woods said. "But we'll still see rotation, just not into the names that are really making headlines." While many of the Magnificent Seven haven't been the market leaders this year, AI euphoria appears alive and well in markets. AI software company Palantir (PLTR) is the top performer in the S&P 500 in 2025, rising more than 55%, followed by Super Micro Computer (SMCI), which is also up over 50%. Aggressive moves in other AI plays on Friday underscored this theme as investors quickly dumped some stocks and bought positions in others after Nvidia disclosed its latest equity holdings. The AI chip giant ditched positions in Serve Robotics (SERV) and SoundHound (SOUN). Both stocks sold off on the news. Meanwhile, shares of WeRide (WRD), a Chinese autonomous driving play, saw its stock nearly double. Markets are closed for Presidents' Day. Tuesday Economic data: Empire Manufacturing, February (-1 expected, -12.6 prior); NAHB housing market index, February, (47 expected, 47 prior) Earnings: Devon Energy (DVN), Oxy (OXY), Toll Brothers (TOL) Wednesday Economic data: MBA Mortgage applications, week ending Feb. 14 (2.3% prior); Housing starts month-over-month, January (-7% expected, +15.8% prior); Building permits month-over-month, January preliminary (-2.3% expected, -0.7% prior); FOMC meeting minutes, January Fed meeting Earnings: Carvana (CVNA), the Cheesecake Factory (CAKE), Etsy (ETSY), Garmin (GRMN), Toast (TOST), Wingstop (WING) Economic data: Initial jobless claims, week ending Feb. 15, (213,000 prior); Philadelphia Fed business outlook, February (25.4 expected, 44.3 prior); Leading index, January (0% expected, -0.1% prior) Earnings: Alibaba Group (BABA), Walmart (WMT), Block (XYZ), Booking Holdings (BKNG), Rivian (RIVN), Shake Shack (SHAK), Unity (U), Texas Roadhouse (TXRH), Dropbox (DBX) Economic data: S&P Global US manufacturing, February preliminary (51.2 prior); S&P Global US services PMI, February preliminary (52.9 prior); S&P Global US composite PMI, February preliminary (52.7 prior); University of Michigan sentiment, February final (68.7 prior) Earnings: No notable earnings releases. Josh Schafer is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X @_joshschafer. Sign in to access your portfolio
