Marketplace - Why did BoA tell investors to "take profits"?

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

Bank of America advised investors late last week that too many red flags pointed to a market peak, and that it was time to “take profits.” In plain English? The stock market could see a downward turn soon, so it may be time to sell. In this episode, why tell investors to sell? Plus: Ongoing war in Iran strengthens oil and gas outlooks, we check in on foreign trade zones operating under new Trump-era rules, and packaged food brands face myriad potential headwinds.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Hey, so here's a question. What do strawberry jam and stock market analytics have in common? Stick around. We'll tell you. From American public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Risd. All it is Tuesday, today, 9 June. Good as always to have you along, everybody. The Strawberry Jam comes to us from the J.M. Smucker Company to which we will get in just a second. The stock market analytics come to us from Bank of America. The setup comes from us, and it goes like this. These are, broadly speaking, heady days in the equity markets. Record highs practically every time you turn around.

Everybody you can think of is filing and go public, and trillion-dollar companies are basically table stakes now. However, comma. Bank of America is singing a different tune. In a note last week, B of A, which I should tell you, advertises with us, said there are, and this is a quote, too many red flags, end quote, pointing to a market peak, and that it is time to, again, I'm quoting because these words matter, take profits. So, Marketplaces Henry Ep gets us going.

Stock market analysts don't really speak in plain English. So when they recommend investors take profits, they're really telling people to sell, but they're trying to do it in sort of a market etiquette way. James Weston is with the Rice University Business School. Bank of America declined an interview request. In the report, its analysts offer a couple reasons why now might be the time to sell. One, there are concerning signs in the real economy, says Weston. We're seeing worsening fundamentals in consumer spending. We're seeing worsening fundamentals in consumer indebtedness. We're seeing a big rise in the price of oil. Two, the value of publicly traded companies is really high right now, especially. especially tech companies. Derek Horsdmeyer is a professor of finance at George Mason University. When we talk about valuations of companies, we usually measure it based on the price of the company to their earnings.

And right now, that's at a very high point. Some tech company shares are really expensive given how much revenue they actually generate, which could mean investors are being overly speculative or that the market is nearing its peak, which is why you have analysts saying it's time to take profits. The problem with making that call says Ben Carlson at Rithold's wealth management is it's really hard to get right. There have been people who have been trying to call the top on this for 10 years now. But the market has just kept rallying.

So yeah, this might be the moment the stock market hits its peak, or it might not. Larry Adam is at Raymond James, another marketplace underwriter. So until we see major fundamental changes to the economy, to corporate fundamentals to what the Fed is going to do. We would not recommend making major changes to a portfolio right now. For those who do think it's time to sell, there's a risk in saying that out loud, says James Weston at Rice. If you tell everyone to sell and everyone all sells it once, that triggers a market crash.

Which is why analysts use language like, take profits. I'm Henry App for Marketplace. Wall Street on this Tuesday, there was a little profit taken. actually we will have the details when we do the numbers. You were promised strawberry jam, so strawberry jam shall there be smuckers, home to Folgers Coffee, hostess Twinkies, of course, and the aforementioned preserves. Reported results today, net sales up 4%. Uncrustibles, it turns out, those frozen PVAs were a standout.

But the company said the year ahead is not going to be as good because of, and this is a quote, I'm doing a lot of quoting today, a dynamic and evolving external environment. And as Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes reports, that's an affliction common to a whole lot of packaged goods companies. One big challenge for packaged food companies, Americans are kind of leading away from eating packaged food. Craig Raleigh is a partner at the consulting firm Corn Ferry.

Many people are thinking about healthier foods, walking away from processed foods. Also, a growing chunk of the population is now taking GLP1 drugs, which means they're eating less food generally. And Raleigh points out people who are feeling stretched financially are more likely to trade down when they're buying a jar of jelly. Many of these people are going to buy the grocery stores private label brand, which can be 10, 20, 30 percent cheaper than a national brand. Raleigh also points out the war in Iran and the high price of oil has pushed up company's shipping costs. Meanwhile, climate change has thrown a wrench

into growing some of the foods that go in these packages. Everything starts in the ground. Even a host is Twinkie, you know, starts in the ground. Phil Lempert is a food industry analyst. If you look at what's gone on with coffee in Brazil because of climate change, you look at what's gone on with bananas. Bananas are susceptible to higher than usual temperatures, and coffee crops in Brazil have been hurt by drought.

Just about all their crops globally really have to be reimagined. Meanwhile, on again, off again tariffs mean company leaders have to make decisions in an ever-changing environment. Ed Johnson is with the late consulting. Three different tariff regimes in the last 12 months have made locking in costs for a lot of package food manufacturers next to impossible. Johnson says to a plan for the future, companies are doing lots of scenario planning. For example, envisioning alternate supply chains. It's all about trying to plan for the different options. or different potential outcomes on the variables that you're aware that are in flux.

Johnson says packaged food companies have had to do a lot of this kind of scenario planning since the pandemic. So while it might be stressful, at least they're kind of used to it. I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace. We talked yesterday about how more people are going to the movies. It turns out that Cinnemark, the theater chain, says it had its highest ever domestic box office last month. That was driven, at least in part, by the runaway success of indie horror films like obsessive. session and more recently backrooms. And yes, of course, the big studio movies, Michael, the Devil Worse Product 2, you know them as well as I do. You will not, however, have found

all of those films at the Belcourt Theater, a nonprofit film center in Nashville, but still we thought this was a good moment to check in with Stephanie Silverman. She is the executive director there. Stephanie Silverman, how are you? Kai Ristall. So nice to talk to you. It's been too long, and it's my bad. I apologize. Ah, always glad to catch up whenever you have a minute. How are things at the bellcourt? You know, things at the bellcourt are pretty good. It's starting to heat up.

The summertime is rolling in. And, like, this is a pretty stacked summer of movies. So we're pretty excited over here. What's playing right now? What are the biggies you got going? Well, right now we've got I Love Boosters. We have been doing a fun series around Twin Peaks, bringing the television series back, but putting it on the big screen,

huge crowds for that. But we're really, like, in the run-up to Disclosure Day. Spielberg's big new movie. We've got the Odyssey coming up. And then, you know, we do our Belcourt thing, which is like we got these great new movies. But then we wrap everything with awesome repertory programming. So we're doing a bunch of summer epics to go around the Odyssey and just a lot of reasons to stay out of the Nashville heat, honestly. Let me ask you, not that you're always thinking about business, business, but let me ask you about the not arts part of your business, but about the actual, you know, selling stuff on.

seen part of the business concessions and all of that. I imagine your cost of goods sold is up just like everybody's. It sure is. Pretty dramatically, you know, we work really hard to keep affordability as kind of part of our mission, but it's, you know, it's getting tougher out here. The pasta goods is putting a herd on us for sure. What's a ticket price? I mean, if I go to the multiplex around here, well, as you know, I'm paying a zillion dollars. Yeah, our top ticket price is $13.50. And then if you're a bell court member, you're paying $9.75 to come to the movie. So, like, we want this to be an accessible place. I think one of the things that's kept us thriving through recessions and other tough economic periods is that we're still accessible in terms of that kind of baseline price point for entertainment dollars. Yeah. Are you, you know, you're a nonprofit right. You go out and raise philanthropic dollars. How is that for you? It's good. We are seeing a lot of generosity from individuals. I would say a little more challenged on the government funding side of things, the foundation side of things. But the flip side is we're seeing a lot of generosity from our audiences. And that's at the end of the day, the most sustainable and meaningful giving for us. We have more members, for instance, than we ever have had in the history of the Belkorn.

Which is how many members? We're about to hit 8,400. Oh, wow. So, you know, that's 8,400 Nashvillians, or at least people from the region, putting money on the table and saying you're an investment that I care about, Belcourt. Yeah, yeah. Talk to me for a second about, you know, backroom and obsession and that versus some of the, you know, the sequels and the IP movies that came out this weekend to, as near as I can tell, sort of, meh? Sort of box office, right? But you know, you got these new young people directing movies and stuff.

Talk to me about that. That's got to be heartening to you. It's the most exciting thing that's happening. I mean, to see these movies come out of the gate with such energy and such enthusiasm is really exciting because, I mean, this is a business at the end of the day. And those ticket sales talk to the studios. And the studios are the folks that we need investing in new voices, in truly a real. original filmmaking, you know, so to see the successes last year, films like sinners and one battle after another rolling right into these new genre movies, that's telling a story

that is pretty undeniable and frankly, incredibly exciting from our point of view. Last thing, and then I'll let you go. Have you seen the trailer for Odyssey yet? Oh, yeah. All right. So look, I've got some misgivings. I've got to tell you. I'm not sure I'm buying Matt Damon in that role. I, so I will just say I also got to see some footage. at CinemaCon, I was blown away. I think it's going to work out. All right. Fingers crossed.

I'm going to call you back if I don't like it. I mean, I know you got thoughts, and I appreciate them, and I will be excited to hear them, but I am optimistic at this point. Stephanie, she runs a Belcourt Theater in Nashville. Stephanie, thanks a lot. It's really good to talk. Great to talk to you, Guy. This next story, I'm just telling you, in advance, is really going to set some people on edge.

Fitch and Moody's, two of the big ratings, agencies. We're out with new judgments on the oil and gas sector this week. If you think about it, you can probably see where this is going. The oil shock from the president's war with Iran has fitch upgrading oil and gas to improving from neutral because of high oil prices. Moody's kept its positive outlook and said corporate earnings in that sector are going to be even higher. Marketplace's Elizabeth Trouval has more now on big oil balance sheets. I want to take you all back to a much different and space. Think Bad Bunny's Super Bowl performance and the Winter Olympics. February 2006. Back then, oil companies weren't exactly in a celebratory move. The expectation was for

oversupply. So there was an anticipation of the crude oil price languishing in the $55 to $60 a barrel range. That's Andrew O'Connor with Morningstar DBRS. But instead of languishing, the war in Iran changed oil and gas markets overnight. And it wasn't a one or two week blip either. The now months-long crisis has meant substantially different outlooks for companies. Dan Pickering is with Pickering Energy Partners. In 2025, West Texas Intermediate, oil prices average $65 a barrel. So far in 2026, they've averaged about $85 a barrel. In other words, these guys are selling a product that's gone up, you know, a third in value, year over year. And so they are making a lot more money by simply doing more of the same. And it's not just crude oil prices that have increased. Across the barrel, across the

product suite, prices have risen. Liquified natural gas prices are up, along with jet fuel, diesel, and gasoline. And North American oil producers have been especially well positioned to benefit from all of this. Andrew O'Connor again. They're a long ways from the conflict and then the refiners that are located in North America are also benefiting. And looking ahead, it's not just that oil

and gas companies are doing well now. Thomas Liles is with Ristad Energy. You know, we do foresee elevated prices over the next two years without a doubt. I think that's pretty much baked into most forecast at this point. So more

cash than expected for these companies. next year too. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace. Coming up. You don't pay the duty in tariffs at that point in time. Been a while since we've done a tariff story, you know, but first, let's do the numbers. Down industrials, up 86 points today, 2 tenths percent, 50, 872. The NASDAQ, down 250 points, that's 1%, give or take, 25,678. The S&P 500, dip 19 points, quarter percent, 73, and 80. J.M. Smucker, It of the Preserves, picked up 10 and 4 tenths percent. Today, General Mills of 1 and 3 quarters percent. Kraft Heinz crept up about a third of 1 percent today.

Millions of sports hands are watching the finals between the Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs this week. Also, no doubt, many of them, perhaps also you are betting on the series. Draft Kings, one of the biggest sportsbooks companies improved 11 and 3 tenth percent. Flutter Entertainment for Stone's Fan Duel, expanded 6 and a 10th percent. Bonds up, yield on the 10-year T-note, down. just a bit 4.5.1%. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. It's been, well, let's just say a very long time since I've written a cover letter. You know what I'm talking about, right? Dear hiring manager, I'm the perfect candidate for the job opening you have in blah, blah, blah.

Well, it turns out cover letters are just one more thing in this economy that's getting disrupted by AI. And Alcheck wrote about it for Business Insider the other day. Welcome to the program. It's good to have you on. Thanks for having me. Tell me, would you, how you came upon this story? Yeah, so this story actually, I got the idea about it about six, seven months ago. I was at an AI conference, and I was sitting next to a Wharton professor who was telling me about his struggle with hiring research assistance at UPenn.

And he was basically saying that he has received, you know, these email cover letters from students. And they're the best he's seen yet. And they all seem like they're written by AI because they're all exceptional. And so he was having a really hard time being able to decipher which was actually top talent, you know, from the ones who just plugged it into chat, TBT and we're sending similar emails to other professors. So he was facing this hiring issue. And I thought it was really interesting back then. And as time went on, you know, I've heard more. We covered a story about how, you know, resumes are being deprioritized.

And that made me think like, wow, the cover letter is probably long gone at this point. We will stipulate here that cover letters can be painful to write. They're no fun. And obviously with chat GPT or AI system of your choice, you just crank them out. So it's not just a quality thing, right? Because you can see when stuff is written by AI and everybody knows it. It's also a quantity thing, right? people are getting drowning in cover letters.

Yeah, definitely. I think hiring is up or, you know, the number of applications that hiring managers are getting is definitely up. People are applying to more jobs on average. And so, yeah, I mean, even this professor I spoke to, he's seen a 20% increase in the last year. But, yeah, so if you're getting more applications and all of them are top tier, it becomes really difficult to tell which ones are the actual top talent that you're working with.

This Wharton professor, as you're saying in this piece, was hiring like what, four or five people to be his research assistant. But there are companies and, you know, not even huge ones, but have to hire dozens, you know, hundreds of people. What are they doing? Yeah. So the companies that I heard from, for example, BCG, they stopped. Boston Consulting Group, right? Big, big company, consulting company. Yeah, Boston Consulting Group.

They stopped requiring cover letters about 10 to 12 years ago in North America. But nowadays, they're doing more behavioral assessments and personality tests. And, you know, so they're adding different tests to the hiring process. We also know that a lot of companies are now asking for verified skills. And we saw that LinkedIn, you know, rolled out this year. They rolled out their verified skills. So basically candidates can, you know, take these tests and show their AI skills with different apps. So I think in this era, employers really want to see your work.

They don't just want to read about it in a resume or a cover letter. You know, a portfolio, those kinds of things are definitely becoming top of mind for hiring managers. They want to see you actually do your work. Right, right. That's actually super interesting. This is none of my business, but did you have to write a cover letter to get this job at Business Insider? I got this job two and a half years ago, so I did have to write a cover letter. And I actually spent, I like really worked hard on it.

Yeah. And I think in journalism, too, it's not going away, probably. because it's such a writing-heavy industry. So no luck there for me. But in terms of everyone else, I think that it's definitely not as prioritized in this day. And I'll check at Business Insider. Anna, thanks a lot. I appreciate your time.

Thanks for having me. Just as for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So too for every law, there is a loophole, or perhaps several. For tariff law, one of the big loopholes comes in the form of what are known as foreign trade zones, FTZs in the lingo, legally defined areas, usually near ports and airports that are generally speaking now outside the reach of U.S. customs and which have historically let companies import goods tariff-free, then use those imports to manufacture their own products with lower tariff rates or even no tariff rate at all. I said historically a second ago because last year the Trump administration, closed that particular loophole. Marketplace's Justin Ho has our story. About a year ago, Aaron Stinner was trying to find a new location for the bike frame

manufacturing company he runs in California. We needed a bigger space. We were getting a lot of influx of potential clients for manufacturing here in the States. Stinner Frameworks was facing threats of tariffs that could have been more than 100% on the components of imports from China and Taiwan. So Stinner's plan was to set up his new location in a foreign trade zone. That would allow us to manufacture the frames here in the States, bring components in from outside, assemble the bikes within the FTZ,

and then when it leaves the FTZ, have that bin be released into the at least North American market tariff-free. Then the Trump administration changed the rules. Stinner wouldn't be able to use the FTZ to reduce or eliminate his tariff bill. So he pulled the plug on setting up shop there. You know, for those of us trying to make stuff here, having a slight advantage in being able to do that, it would be great. At least put us on an even playing field. But when that's not even happening,

it's like, well, what is the point here? Some foreign trade zones have seen interest die down. Drew Rodriguez is with the Port of Wainimi, which oversees one in Ventura County, California. He says inquiries about the FTZ surged after the Trump administration's big tariff announcement last year. But so far this year, only a handful. If people were interested when the tariff craze and hysteria was taking over, they would have already reached out to us by now. where now they know this either works for me or it doesn't work for me. There are plenty of instances where FTCs still make sense. Jessica Misrandino is import manager with AFL,

a company in Duncan, South Carolina, that makes fiber optic cables. It imports a lot of optical fiber from Japan. We have a site in Duncan that is approved as a U.S. foreign trade zone, and all of our manufacturing operations are within that foreign trade zone. Misirondino says the FTC still offers advantage. Because when you import goods into it, you don't pay the duty in tariffs at that point in time. You don't have to pay them until you actually manufacture the goods and ship them out of your zone. Ms. Rendino says that gives the company more flexibility to deal with tariff bills that can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Especially while you're waiting to see what happens with these tariffs. I mean, maybe you want to bring in some material and hold it because you don't know if they're going to go up. You know, you just, you don't know what's going to change day by day at this point. Being able to delay tariff payments allows businesses to invest that money elsewhere. Ryan Twohill is Director of Community and Economic Development with the City of Phoenix. Looking at the companies that are operators within our trade zone, many of them are going through pretty significant expansions. Two Hill says those companies include semiconductor manufacturers, aerospace, and defense companies. As businesses invests, that's more jobs for folks who live in the Phoenix region.

Those businesses are generating revenue that is helping to support all of the public infrastructure and services that we provide as a jurisdiction. Two Hill says the number of businesses using the city's FTZ has steadily increased over the last several years. And so far this year, it's still going up. I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace. This final note on the way out today, which I'll preface by noting that the average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage last week was 6.4.4. 8% down a tad from a week earlier. That's from Fannie Mae. I mention it to get to this. The National Association of Realtors said today the heretofore Moribund spring home buying season seems to have gotten a bit of a mid-season boost home sales in May up 3.2% from April. Jordan Manjee, Zaniel

Maharaj, Jenna Wynn, Olga Oxman, and Virginia K. Smith are the digital team. I'm Kai Rizda. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is 8 p.m. The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance?

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