Market is finally starting to adjust to higher for longer, says Ivory Johnson

It’s surprised at all to see futures moving higher after those comments from Jay Powell. No, I think the market is starting to adjust to the fact that we have hired for longer. It’s just going to take a second to recognize that the punch bowl has been taken away. Don’t forget that, you know when CPI came in lower in November, we noticed that the rate hike, the rate cut expectations went through the roof. We thought we were going to get seven rate cuts this year, I think 3 before the July meeting. And and what since happened is we realized that’s not going to come to fruition. In fact, we’ve actually had rate hikes. If you look at the 10 year treasury is at 4.9% back in November, ended up at 3.8% at the end of the year, but now it’s back up to 4.67%. That’s what the mortgage rates are based on. So not only are we not getting a rate cut, but we’re actually got a rate hike. It’s just going to take the market a second to understand this new reality before we get back-to-back to normal. But don’t you think the market already understands, I mean we continue to hear people pare back their rate cut expectations, Morgan Stanley just the most recent voice to say that they believe we’re going to see one less rate cut. And if you also look at the 30 year which is often seen as a read on inflation expectations, that’s moved up since the last CPI. So the market seems to have accepted that inflation is going to be here for a longer time than we previously thought it was. Why are we seeing this rebound today when that’s almost certainly going to push out those rate cuts? Well, well if the the US economy, if you listen to the IMF it’s it’s growing at twice the rate of any other G7 economy. So that’s that’s that’s positive. You’ve also got the wealth effect. So as the stock market goes up, you know from last year, people are more likely to spend more money. And don’t forget that we had negative income growth, negative net income growth and negative earnings growth in both the SAP and the and the Russell 2000 every quarter last year. So our base effects are going to be, you know, easy, easy obstacles. You know, important to note, the IMF also said there were challenges ahead and one of them was the rising debt here in the US, something we talked about yesterday, U.S. debt increasing by $1 trillion every 100 days. But I do want to move on to what you’re bullish about right now. It’s commodities you think right now is a good time to invest in, in in gold, copper, other commodities. We’ve seen a big run up in those commodities. Why do you think there’s more room to run? Well again it’s just the the we’ve got a resurgence in in in growth and you know like you mentioned the market’s telling us that that we’ve got inflation. It’s just it’s just factor exposure right. If you if you if you notice that you know the risk to the market would be higher in inflation then you should you should own that. And so I think that going forward I don’t I’m not so much concerned about what’s happening in the Middle East. I don’t, I don’t, I’m hoping we don’t get a further escalation in the war, but I just think that the growth and and and look at PCI, look at the PMI for global manufacturing, right it it, it collapsed in 2022, it was decidedly negative all year, but now it’s up over 50. So, so global manufacturing PMI is actually starting to accelerate. That’s showing you that we’ve got more growth globally. So not worried that higher oil prices are going to weigh on industrial production. As you mentioned PMI, we do have a report here in the US we got to go but not worried about those higher oil prices dampening some of that rise in industrial production. No, I, I, I, I it’s it’s not going to accelerate it, but but it again if you’re going to have higher oil prices, right own it if, if that’s the risk to the market, that’s how you pet it, you own inflation.