One of Wall Street's most bullish strategists sees potential for 'bumpy landing'

One of the streets biggest bull sees potential for a bumpy economic landing. John Stolf is this Oppenheimer’s chief investment strategist. He joins us now. John, great to have you with us. You think recession is off the table? Completely correct. I mean, so you must think that those who even utter the word stagflation are kind of crazy. Yeah, I just don’t think that’s where that’s where we’re headed. We’ve had 11 hikes. We’ve had seven. Now the pauses by the Fed, no recession. Earnings growth is substantially better than was anticipated. You’ve got 3 sectors with double digit earnings growth that include communication services. You’ve got consumer discretionary and information technology, OK, all over 20 up to 40% earnings growth. And then and then you have the three bad sectors that are negative earnings growth double digit down our energy, materials and healthcare, believe it or not, it just what it tells us whether we look at that earnings growth, whether we look at the jobs growth that continues albeit at a slower pace. But the history of this Fed funds hike cycle tells us that the Fed has done something right, business has done something right. Likely that AI that’s been talked about that already exists today and it’s being invested in is how business navigate things better. The consumer is navigating things better, likely to just the technology that they have at hand today. And the information that is is much freer delivered than it ever has been in a fed funds hike cycle that I can remember over 40 some years in this market. So it looks pretty good to me, you know, and is there trouble? There’s always trouble all the time. You know I’ve been on the show how many times in the last 12 years that I’ve been with Oppenheimer and I’ve been decidedly positive most of the time. And from the last time I looked I think we were about 1565 when we started and and now we’re at 5100 and change. You know we call you the streets most bullish strategist because your price target is the highest on the streets 5500. But you still don’t rule out a bumpy landing. Does a bumpy landing rule out a a a bear market sort of pull back in the markets. I mean what what does the market you know the the contour of the market rally to hit 5500 look like in that context of a bumpy A bumpy ride, but bumpy ride could be the bond market pricing the 10 year to to yield a closer to five then then closer to 3.8 around where we started this year. That causes concern. Are we gonna, are we gonna see the consumer fall apart or the the business is going to get into trouble with refinancing? What happens to real estate? But this thing just like a few weeks ago, I mean the bears were basically saying it’s the end of the bull market, it’s over, you know kind of thing. And then all of a sudden we look at the economic data we hear from the Fed and it looks like this has longer to move. And a lot of it is that that secular trend of technology that drives all 11 sectors by management. If management of companies want to be a great value company or a great growth company and art and technology, they need the developments which are occurring today. And so they’re investing in it and and the consumer has been remarkably resilient this, this particular cycle as well as been jobs growth. So, you know, bumpiness always a possibility. That’s why we, you know, we don’t rule that out.