Prof G Markets - The 35% Recession Warning Markets Are Ignoring — ft. Ed Yardeni

Episode Date: March 20, 2026

Ed Elson and Scott Galloway are joined by Ed Yardeni to discuss why he recently raised the odds of a recession this year. He also weighs in on the risks in private credit, what he thinks could fundamentally change America, and what’s really going on in the bond market right now. Ed Yardeni is the President of Yardeni Research, a provider of global investment strategies and asset-allocation analysis.  Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Follow Scott on Instagram Send us your questions or comments by emailing [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Find out more at go-transit.com slash tickets. Chances are your favorite websites used to depend on Google for traffic and money. But that's not really working anymore. Now publishers are scrambling for new lifelines. Neil Vogel, who runs People, Inc., says his company figured it out, a couple years ago. You would think, given what everyone said about us, that we would be the guys that would be doing the worst now. We're kind of the guys doing the best now. I'm Peter Kafka, the host of channels, the show about tech and media and what happens when they collide. You can

hear my conversation with Neil Vogel now, wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Today's number, $48 million. Calci's trading volume on Oscars categories hit $48.4 million this year, up 39% from last year and 95% from 2024. Ed, I don't know if you saw the award for participation trophy. You got to have a punchline. Well, Ed, you had to be there. All right, never mind. I got something better.

Maybe that works, but what happened to the time in? That's the problem when I try to go dad, yeah. Oh, fuck this shit. Did you hear about the new category for suicide bomber? No. Unfortunately, he couldn't be with us tonight. Listen to me. Markets are bigger than I.

What you have here is a structural change in the world distribution. Cash is trash. Stocks look pretty attractive. Something's going to break. Forget about it. Ed, I don't know if you heard. Anyways, any questions you want to ask me about anything I did this weekend? Anything you'd like to know about Ed?

Anything on your mind? Anything at the tip of the tip of your prefrontal, if you're still evolving prefrontal cortex? Yes. Now that you mention it, how was the Vanity Fair Oscars after party in L.A., Scott? Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed. I don't like to talk about my personal life. Just this once.

We'll turn this back to me. Oh, my God. Could I be more fucking fabulous? I mean, seriously, I was in Brunello Cuccinelli. I sat next to the, I think her name's Alison Brie. She's a woman. She was Trudy on Mad Men. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And she was in Glow and she's in this new movie.

She couldn't have been more lovely, more beautiful. And then I sat next to the woman on my left was Jessica Williams, the woman in the series shrink. Also super smart, intelligent, interesting. And two seats away from me with Sam Altman. We're going to just gloss right over that. No. And then keep moving around.

I mean, at one point... Are you serious? Yeah, I'm totally serious. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Anyways. Anyways, and then at one point, I was at the bar in between John Ham and Jacob Alodi. And I thought, no chance I'm getting late tonight.

No one's coming up to me. If Emily Radikowsky comes up right now, who was also at the party, chances are she's not going to talk to me. So take us through, I mean, one, why were you there? Two, how was it? I mean, give us just sort of like the play-by-play on this experience. Well, the answer to your first question, why I was there, I have no fucking idea. I'm not exaggerating. I was Googling actors named Galloway because I thought it must have been a mistake.

I think what happened was, in all seriousness, I think someone said, oh, podcasting's a new thing. And they said, who's a podcast? And some 19-year-old intern probably throughout my name. Praise be to that 19-year-old intern, really changed things, yeah. 100%. but I went it starts really early because I guess

some time zones so I went to the dinner you show up like ridiculously early it's like we're 110 years old going for the grand slam dinner at Denny's. So you get there at 3.30

you walk in and it's about 120, 150 people at the dinner. I hung out with Larry David. I'm totally name dropping right now. It was like angry meat, depressed, depressed meat angry.

And it's the collision of detail, style, fabulousness, venue. I mean, I got to be honest, it's arguably the best party I've ever been to. The food was amazing. And then what happens is you go to dinner, then they break down the dinner, you go to a different room for a party, and you do this like photo walk. And before me was Nicole Kidman, and after me was Jeff Bezos. And shocking, no one really wanted to take pictures of me. No one really wanted to take pictures of the dog. So you were in, you were actually in the middle of that viral moment.

I don't know if you saw this, but this is going viral. Lauren's there with Bezos. It's a Lauren and Jeff moment. They're very excited. And then suddenly Nicole Kidman walks right by and the entire, I mean, all of the paparazzi just shifts focus. Suddenly it's all about Nicole. And you can see the pain on their faces.

But I didn't realize you were there too. Well, this is how pathetic I am. So on, what do they call it, the photo line or whatever, there's three X's. and so they can put multiple people out there and you go to one of the X's, they say one X, two, X, three X, and you go there and people take a time. And there must have been 400 photographers there.

I didn't know how it played out, so they said, all right, Mr. Galloway, please go ahead. I stopped at the first X, and everyone's very nice to the professor. They're like, Mr. Galloway, look here, and da-da-da. And then I went to the second X for more pictures and then stood there. And then as if that wasn't enough, I decided to go to the third X. And by the time I got to the third X,

the photographers were like, could you just move along? Could you? And then it dawned on me. You're only supposed to go to one X and sit there for, so literally the rookie lame move of the evening. But Nicole Kidman, actually I'm not that into fashion. She had the most beautiful dress. Anyways, I just had a, I kind of freaked out at about midnight.

I realized I was walking around sort of alone. It was either like, I need to go deep in the pain and get drunk and get a lot more social or I need to go home. And I just had sensory. I was just overstimulated and disqualified. decided to pull the rip cord and actually went home fairly early. Oh, wow. Okay. But it wasn't, yeah, I'm just so thank you to the nice people at Vanity Fair for including me.

It was incredible. It was like one of those. I've peaked, Dad. I've peaked. I mean, you say that sometimes, but this one, this one's a real contender for actually that statement being true. I mean, the vanity, I mean, you just got to make sure you're invited next time. I'm curious.

What did people actually talk about at these things? things. Like, you're standing there, you're taking the photos, you say hi, do people kind of like make new friends or how, I mean, how are the conversations conducted? Everyone's, quite frankly, everyone just couldn't be nicer. Jeff Goldblum came up to me and talked about having sons and he seemed like just this lovely guy, him and him and his wife were super nice. Yeah, I don't. I wasn't, you know, they're just, they're all fairly successful people. Some of the younger actors, I mean, if you're going to be an actor, you've got to be fairly, what's the term? You've got to get a lot of reward, I think, to put up in that industry and try as hard as they do, as talented as they are. You've got to be into, you know, really into me, meaning you've got to get a lot of reward of seeing yourself on the screen. And half the time when I was speaking to a younger actor, actress, I thought they were just staring at themselves in the reflection in my glasses. I think they were literally, yeah, I think for several of them, I was just like, a convenient makeup mirror.

I can see that. A lot of kind of like just not sort of zoning out, not really listening, smiling, and just kind of thinking about the cameras, which is, it's kind of a strange setup. Like it's a weird setup for a party where you're supposed to be having fun, but also you're, you're technically supposed to just be looking fabulous for the internet. Yeah, I had huge expectations and it exceeded my expectations and I felt like it was one of those. And unfortunately, you can't take pictures or selfies. Well, I'm excited for the paparazzi photos to come out where you're standing on three different places.

Absolutely none of them will be of me. I already Googled my name. None of me. Nobody's, it's like, let's either go with, let's either go with Skok Yalloway or Emily Radikowsky. That's a tough call, but we're going to go with Emily. I need to hear more about Sam Altman, the fact that you sat two seats away from him. I mean, he is sort of like the chief villain of our time, whether you actually believe that he's, a bad guy or not. That is his reputation right now. And you were at the table with him. Did you talk to him?

I promised I wasn't going to shitboast to anyone, but come on. It's like, it's like literally inviting a hijacker to an air show. I'm like, what the fuck are they thinking? This guy is literally stealing. He's, he's stealing everyone's watch while they're in the bathroom and their future and their Social Security card and their health plan. And he's there. I did not speak to him. He seems. he looked great, lovely guy, I'm sure. Actually, it's not true. I think he's bad for humanity and I don't know what to say here, Ed. But no, we did not. Figure out your talking points. This is what the people are going to be asking you about. We did not reconnect and bond and resolve our differences. He probably doesn't even know who I am. I just introduced myself. You know, everyone was, I think the nice thing about that type of event is everyone is so overwhelmed by how well it's done and how fortunate they feel to be there, that everyone including me is on their best behavior. Right.

So, but it's a really interesting, I was shocked at how well they curate. It was just some unexpected people from different walks of life. Jane Fonda was there. I mean, it was just very interesting. And the one thing everyone had in common is everyone looked amazing and really takes it seriously. And it's just so fun. I was thinking about one of the wonderful things about our species is, it. I think it's kind of interesting that we spend so much time and attention on fashion and trying

to look good and express art through what we wear. And I met the president of Chanel. She couldn't have been more lovely and it's like out of central casting. She's this beautiful woman who looks perfectly dressed, as you might imagine. And she was helping me out. She said, you look lonely. She was like, I know how to level you up in this room. I'm like, I look that pathetic. It was literally like somebody came over to me as a judge. charity, as a charity, and said, do you want to come sit with us? And this is, you know. Oh, man. Yeah. So, but she couldn't have been more, I don't know, like I said, lovely. And I hung out with my friend, Jamie Patrickoff, who again was like, whenever he saw me alone and hitting the bar and, like,

you know, getting very insecure looking, he would come over and introduce me to people. And I mean, it's tough. You're there alone. You're not there with your squad. You're just kind of entering this foreign universe. I mean, yeah, I'm sure it was kind of tough. Yeah, no, I was not invited with a plus one, so I was at the bar a lot. But yeah, look, it was, it was fantastic. And whatever intern at Vanity Fair fucked up and got me an invite, dude, I owe you. Brother, I owe you. Internship, you want to be Ed's boss? Just give me, give me a call. Shall we get into a conversation with Ed Yardinney? Let's do it. Here was a conversation with Ed Yardinney, president of Yardinney research. Ed, Ed, thank you.

for joining us. I want to get right into it. And I want to start with a quote from a recent blog post of yours and hear some more about it. You said, quote, we raised our odds of a recession from 20% to 35% a few days after the

war started when we concluded it might be longer than widely expected. More recently, we've become concerned that a weakening U.S. economy might exacerbate the cracks in the U.S. private credit market. But in some, you view this war as potentially more damaging than others believe, and certainly than U.S. investors, at least at the moment, seem to believe.

Please take us through your thoughts on what this war has done to the U.S. economy and what it might mean for markets. What's clear is we continue to have a price of oil over on a hundred dollars a barrel. and in the past when we've had spikes in oil prices, that's either cause a recession or cause some slowdown in the economy. And I think it's reasonable to expect that the oil shock we've experienced so far

is going to push inflation rates up over the next few months. Gasoline prices have gone up, so that's certainly going to be in there. And then beyond that, fertilizer prices have gone up because quite a bit of the material that used to make fertilizers has to transit through the Strait of Hormuz, so that could affect food prices. That means that the Fed is most likely not going to be lowering interest rates. We have a labor market that's weak, all in all, and real GDP was growth rate was revised

downwards in the fourth quarter. So the economy has been amazingly resilient during the current decade that I've called the roaring 2020s. I'm not giving up on that, but I'm simply conceding that we've seen this before, particularly in the 70s, when we saw two spikes in oil creating two recessions, creating a stagflationary environment. And that's the concern. So clearly something has changed on the geopolitical front. it's unstable.

On the other hand, the past couple of days, the financial markets have been remarkably calm. I think, you know, as I kind of scratched my head and said, what are they, what am I missing here? I recognize that some of the panic about this war related to the perception that 20 million barrels a day of petroleum accrued was not going to get through the straight, and that's 20% of global consumption. However, along the way here over the past few days, it's becoming clear that it's not a total blockade.

Iranian ships are getting through there. The U.S. is not stopping them. The Iranians have said that any vessel that's not related to the U.S. or Israel can get through the strait. And as a result of that, I think the market's kind of calmed down a bit. And now I think we're looking at something like 10% instead of 20% of global consumption not being met. by flows through the Strait of Hormuz. You mentioned the investors' reaction, markets' reaction. You wrote, quote, so far the war appears to have had no adverse impact on analysts' earnings per share estimates for each of this year's four quarters, which brings up something that I've been sort of puzzling over, which is, I mean, investors just seem to be quite optimistic about this, at least optimistic that markets are resilient, that this will not be a huge problem.

and notably a lot more optimistic than they were, say, a few weeks ago when people started getting worried about AI. And that was enough to completely tank the markets and enough to get everyone concerned. Why are investors feeling so positive on a relative basis about this? Yeah, that's a very good question. And I've been thinking about it and trying to understand what's going on here. What's different about the current environment? And, you know, sometimes when you say this time it's different, it's a curse. And before you You know, it's not different at all. But there are a few things that are different.

In the 1970s, we were much more dependent on oil imports, and we actually had shortages of oil and gasoline. There were lines at the gasoline stations. That's not likely to happen today when the United States is energy independent, so I think that's a big deal. The analysts have been hanging on to, their earnings estimates? Not still early. I mean, the war is about three, we're in, three weeks

into the war. And it may be that when the analysts do their Excel spreadsheets, they'll conclude that they've, their earnings estimates are too strong because companies' costs of energy have gone up and they're not going to be able to pass all of those costs through. But we're not there yet. I mean, the earnings are all-time record high in the fourth quarter and it looks like the first quarter based on analyst's expectations is heading in that same direction. But it's been to the resilience of the economy and the resilience of earnings that both analysts and investors are counting in. And again, they've learned over the years that geopolitical crises create buying opportunities. So rather than getting all panicky about it, if you got any cash around,

you want to look for opportunities in a geopolitical crisis. This, this, one could settle down and sooner rather than later. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to draw a scenario where things become uglier. So, you know, everybody's kind of a military expert here these days, and we're all playing war games. But I think the market right now is remarkably calm. And yet your recession forecast has, your probability of recession has risen to 35%. How do you see that playing out and how bad would that be? recession scenario, what happens, of course, is the price of oil stays here for a while, and that cuts into lower income consumers purchasing power. So they retrenched. Many of them are

already quite stretched with consumer debt and having a tough time, you know, having their paycheck cover their needs through the end of the month. Then upper income consumers might get rather if the stock market just kind of stays here with a lot of uncertainty about potentially going down. Of course, as the stock market goes down substantially, then a lot of the higher income, higher wealth consumers may decide to cash in some of their profits, which would accelerate any sort of correction or even potentially a bare market, and that would depress their spending. So consumers have been really spending money all along here through thick and thin. Think of all the things that have stressed the economy and have not caused a recession.

Instead, GDP is an all-time record high. And the stock market is maybe 3, 4% below its all-time record high of January 27th. We had the pandemic. We had the lockdowns. After the lockdowns, we had supply chain disruptions. Then we had the inflation spike, the war, Russia invading Ukraine. We had inflation going higher. And then the Fed coming in with tightening of monetary policies.

We had a mini-banking crisis in 2023. We had tariffs last year. Underneath it all, we've also had a labor market. which is very puzzling. It's a lot of people, younger people, especially looking for jobs, can't find them. And yet, despite all that, the economy's done very well.

And productivity has been a big story of late. And if it continues to be the story, that I think my calling this, the roaring 2020s, will play out pretty well. It's worked out pretty well so far, but now it's getting stressed us with a potential for a stagnationary scenario. Just in terms of it feels like in the past, it's always the stuff you're not expecting that hits you hard.

And do you see a scenario maybe where some really energy consumptive or dependent emerging markets, you know, a currency decline, dollar-denominated debt? Could that potentially be where this unwinding starts? It just feels as if, I'm old enough to remember, I don't remember this, but it feels like we spent a year obsessing over Greece defaulting. And it didn't happen. Now I wonder if it just feels unlikely that there isn't going to be collateral damage from oil spiking like this. Do you see a scenario where this starts where we don't expect it?

And if so, any kind of long ball predictions here about what we're not focusing on? One of the reasons I went from 20% to 35% on the recession risk, because it's not all about the oil shock. We also have some real issues with cockroaches. That's what Jamie Diamond, the head of J.P. Morgan, said he was fearing that if you see one cockroach, there's usually a lot more in the woodwork somewhere. And we're talking about the private equity and private credit markets. And I haven't been particularly concerned about those markets. I figured that unlike the banking system, when the banks get a lot of bad loans, suddenly bank lending freezes up because their capital is depleted and it forces them to try to shore up their balance sheet and lend less.

And then, of course, they have to recognize where the losses actually are. And you get a credit crunch economy-wide. And the private credit, my thought was, well, you know, what's the big deal? You have sizable institutional investors, big boys and girls investing in these private credit funds. they're doing it because they get a better return on their money, but they also know there's more risk. And if a couple of these loans blow up, that just means that rate of return gets clipped, gets a haircut,

and, you know, life goes on. Nothing terrible happens. But Wall Street decided that just in case things didn't go right, let's share this with the individual investors with retail, and they started making these kind of alternative. alternative asset vehicles available to the public. And I think something like one-third of the financing of private credit has been financed by retail investors through funds.

And all of a sudden, this is making the news that some investors are trying to get out of these funds, and they didn't read the fine print that said, you know, these things are not that liquid, and we can't just, like, accommodate your needs for getting out just because you're getting a little nervous. well then if you get a bunch of people getting nervous, it makes the headlines. And so that can create a bit of a credit crunch in the private credit marketplace.

And they combine that with an economy that's being stress tested by the oil shock, and you have to ask yourself, well, now we've got kind of a layer cake of risks. And I don't know where to take that metaphor, but you know what I'm saying. They can interact. So concerns about the U.S. economy, but if you didn't know what was going on, I'm not sure you would know what was going on.

I'm not sure you'd look at the numbers and say there's clearly some huge exogenous event right now. But with respect to private credit, you have seen some impact. The biz dev firms, a lot of the issuers in the business of issuing private credit, the KKRs, the Apollos, the TPGs. Their stocks have been hammered. Do you think that that, so is this? still a concern, or is it also a buying opportunity across those terms? Because when I look at those firms underlying fundamentals, their AUM, their fees, I see no evidence that they're under strain right now. I think this sell-off isn't confirmed by the actual facts on the ground. The problem,

I think, is the retail investor, because to the extent that the private credit market has been growing with funds coming in from retail investors, and suddenly those funds aren't coming in anymore, and quite the opposite, when they can get out, they are going to get out. That changes the market. It means that credit will be less available to the kind of companies that borrowed in the private credit marketplace. But then the banks might come in. They're always looking for opportunities, and if they might manage the risk a lot better, they have to because as they're regulated, whereas the private credit system is not regulated. So there could be pockets of problems.

But again, I think I'm counting on the underlying resilience of the economy. We have a huge capital market. They're distressed asset funds that are always looking to buy things on the cheap. And so they might get something for 25 cents on the dollar that somebody paid a dollar for. so they took a big hit. But on the other hand, the distressed asset funds has the wherewithal to restructure that asset, and we move on.

So that's one reason to believe that the economy is resilient. By the way, on the consumer side, another reason that the consumers have been surprisingly strong is there's a lot of people like me, baby boomers that are retiring. I'm still working for a living. I enjoy what I do, and I don't play golf, so I don't know what I do with myself,

but my friends are retiring, and the baby boomers collectively have $85 trillion, not billions, $85 trillion of net worth. That includes houses, includes stock portfolios, includes in cash value of insurance. Obviously, it's net worth, so it includes their mortgages with a negative sign, but a lot of them have paid off their mortgages.

And so we've got this, the wealthiest retiring generation, ever. And they're spending their nest eggs. And if the stock market keeps going up, it might be hard for them to spend it and see their net worth go down. The net worth might actually hold in there or go up even as they're spending. And then on the capital spending side, the whole technology revolution, which has really been, it's really been the digital revolution since the mid-1960s. but the pace of technological innovation is increasing quite dramatically in all sorts of areas. It's not just AI, it's electric vehicles, it's robotics, space companies, and so on.

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discharges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at getvcx.com. This is a paid sponsorship. We're back with property markets. When you talk about some of the resiliency that we've seen and all of the large events that happened over the past few years, that turned out to not be that big of a deal, at least from a market's perspective, there is this clashing of viewpoints that I find very interesting in markets right now. And there are the people who kind of believe that nothing ever really happens.

Things change. We might have wars. We might have big catastrophic events. But ultimately, things don't really change. And then there are the people, life goes on. And then there are people will say, no, there are things that really do change things. Things do happen. And I'm always stuck on this question because, you know, part of me believes, yes, of course things happen. Of course things change. But then I also look through recent history and I think, well, maybe it doesn't really. And I guess the question becomes, if things do change in a dramatic way, what would it be if not war, if not AI. What are the kinds of things that you're looking at

that could fundamentally change America? Most recessions were caused by credit crunches. The Fed would raise interest rates in an attempt to slow down inflation. And along the way, some borrowers who thought that interest rates would stay low, suddenly are refinancing at higher rates or they can't get credit.

Something blows up in the financial markets. in one corner of the financial market, and before you know it, it becomes an economy-wide credit crunch. And when you can't get credit, you clearly get a recession. We've also had some of these recessions that were caused by tightening a monetary policy, but coinciding with that was a increase, significant spike in oil prices. We had that in 2008. Everybody thinks that the only thing that happened was the housing market melted down, but we also had a significant spike in oil prices at the time. You know, these commodity price spikes,

you know, they're called spikes for a reason. You know, we saw just, what, a week ago, the price of oil, I think it was on a Sunday night, trading overseas spiked up to $120 a barrel. And then by the next, by Monday, it already had come back down to $100. a barrel. What sounds like a high number, but we've been there before without the economy really taking a dive on that. But I think right now I would say that geopolitics is sort of one of the

more obvious areas of concern. I hope the markets are right, and I'm coming around to the idea that it's kind of like the awful situation in Ukraine with the Russian invasion. I mean, you go outside of Ukraine into Europe, and they're sitting there in cafes and, you know, talking about politics, having their croissants, and, you know, like nothing terrible is happening. A similar situation may be occurring in the Middle East. We've had lots of wars and attacks and bombings in the Middle East, and yet our economy certainly has continued to grow. I mean, it's easy to come up with a World War III scenario, but I'm not going to do that unless you really ask me to, because I tend to be an optimist. But, you know, the sketch of that would be China has us right where they want us, kind of preoccupied in the Middle East. Oh, I guess I am telling you the scenario. I was going to follow up anyway, so.

I figured you might, so I jumped the gun. So, yeah, China must be very pleased to have us the U.S. stuck in the Middle East, where only a couple of years ago we were saying, you know, everything's hunky dory in the Middle East. We're not going to bother there anymore. We're going to focus on Asia, particularly China, particularly Taiwan. And there have been some changes recently in China where President Xi purged four out of five generals. And nobody knows why. They don't know it's because. the generals wanted to attack Taiwan and he didn't, or whether he wanted to attack Taiwan, and they told them the generals said they're not ready to do it, whatever it was, it's a strange development. But, you know, if I was a Chinese communist leader that had promised to bring Taiwan back,

I mean, this is a pretty opportune kind of environment, and that would be an absolute disaster for the global economy because Taiwan is basically has a moment. Monopoly on chips. Then again, the U.S. military forces are right there in the Middle East, and all we've got to do is take over Karg Island, and that's a huge source of oil for China. So, you know, you can wargame this stuff quite a bit. And then, you know, Russia might say, well, you know, the United States is preoccupied in the Middle East. Let's go after Estonia, Latvia, and so on. So I would say geopolitics is really at the top of,

a list of my concerns, and that's very hard to incorporate into an investment strategy. And the markets have learned over the years that geopolitical crises create buying opportunities. I think they've learned it to such an extent that you really don't get the buying opportunity. Look at the current situation. You know, I thought, well, this one will be a buying opportunity. But buying opportunity, to me, means that you can buy the stock market on a correction, 10 to 15%, and we barely got to a 5% sell-offs so far. And nobody seems to be in a particular panic to sell stocks

that suddenly creates a buying opportunity for the rest of us who've learned that, you know, when things look bad, that's exactly when you're supposed to be buying. Two of our big themes for 2026, and this is before the war in Iran, was one, that we would start to, for the first time in 17 or 18 U.S. outflows from the U.S. markets to emerging markets, that we'd been on this incredible 17-year run, and the rivers or the capital flows were about to reverse flow, and that

you needed to be more diversified into emerging markets. Well, since 2010 through last year, I was recommending stay home rather than go global. That didn't mean don't invest at all overseas, but overweight the U.S. and underweight everybody else. And that worked out remarkably well. I was kind of surprised how well it worked out. And I overstayed my welcome because 2025 was a great year to go global. Emerging markets did extremely well. Europe, Japan. I mean, just across the board, the U.S. was a total underperformer. But that's after several years of outperforming. A little ironic because I think it was in 2024, the economist had a three cover stories on why America is exceptional.

And that was kind of the front cover curse, because in 2025 we had the tariffs and a lot of confusion about where American foreign policy was, and suddenly investors were investing more overseas. Now, it's kind of weird, though, because when you look at the actual data that the Treasury collects on net foreign purchases, of assets, securities in the U.S.

They were actually showing that last year, foreigners bought a record $700 billion of U.S. stock. Maybe it was all Nvidia for all I know, but the data belied the notion that people sold the U.S. in order to get into other markets. Maybe just global wealth grows and they kind of rebalance more towards emerging market, Europe, and so on. I mean, from a fundamental perspective, it's hard for me to get real excited about Europe,

but the European banks were outperformers, the defense stocks were outperformers. And, you know, a lot of that had to do with the specific fundamental changes that were going on in the banking industry. And, of course, the geopolitical changes going on in defense. Last December, a little late, I said, okay, maybe it's time to rebalance. And the argument was pretty simple on the domestic front technology and community. communication service has got to be something like 45% of the market cap of the S&P 500. And I felt uncomfortable telling people to overweight something that was already 45% of the entire U.S. market. And the same thing happened to me with regards to thinking about the U.S.

relative to the rest of the world. It got to be 65% of the market cap of the MSCI. And America may be exceptional, but, you know, how can I recommend overweighing something that's basically worked the way I expected it to work, so at some time, point you rebalance. And now with regards to the international situation, the war upended my idea of going global because suddenly the U.S. looked like the place you wanted to park your money, and so the U.S. market is down, but it still outperformed the rest of the world. I think as this war settles down, it may just be kind of a persistent problem in the Middle East as it's been forever. I don't know why it should suddenly change, but if it just kind of becomes less headline news,

then I think we could see the go global working again, particularly with emerging markets. The story for emerging markets was a lot of them have emerged. A lot of them have large middle class. They have large populations. And I can't go country by country kind of figuring it all out. So I either would use the EEM, which is the emerging markets, MSCI, ETF, or I prefer the fund that excludes China. And that, you know, China is a big part of the MSCI index.

But China's been kind of a play on AASI. and I'd rather play in our sandbox than in their sandbox. A lot of people might have heard the term bond vigilante. This was a very important term last year, especially when tariffs were placed, they went into effect. And then the bond vigilantes, the people who sold bonds, which drove up yields, which sort of punished the government.

Some people might not know you came up with that term. That is your term, bond vigilante. It seems to be less of a... topic right now. People aren't really talking about it. But I just want to get your reactions. What are happening in the bond markets right now? Is there anything that is striking to you? And why aren't the bond vigilantes supposedly as active as they were last year? Well, it's been eerie, actually, in the U.S. bond market. It's been kind of stuck in a range between four, four and a quarter, maybe four and a half for the past four years.

been a couple of times when it was above that, a couple of times when it was below that. But all in all, the bond market has been remarkably quiet. I came up with the idea a while ago that bonds normalized. This is where they should be. The aberration was when they were down to 0.5% for the tenure, when the Fed was providing quantitative easing, buying bonds, that was the aberration, that was the abnormality. And to me, an economy that can grow with bonds of four to four and a half percent, that's a good economy.

That's an economy that's providing a good rate of return to bond investors, and that's a bond market that's probably doing a pretty good job of allocating where capital goes. You know, when you have a bond yield of 0.5 percent, it distorts the allocation of capital quite measurably. And so, yeah, I think the U.S. bond market is kind of fine where it is. I've been doing this for over 45 years. And, yeah, back in 83, I came up with the idea of bond vigilantes. I went back in my bookshelf, and I read what I wrote back then, and I said, you know,

if the sheriffs in town, if the monetary and fiscal authorities don't do their job and keep inflation down, the bond vigilance. will do it. They'll push bond yields up to levels that slow the economy down, slow inflation down, and risk causing a recession. And back then I said what the bond vigilantes are concerned about now is $250 billion deficit. So now we're talking about $1.5 to $2 trillion. And we're at 4.4.5%, no big deal. But, you know, over the past year, two years, when people ask me, what happened of the Bonne vigilantes, have said, you know, have you looked what's going on in Japan? During the tourist season, apparently Japan is overwhelmed with tourists.

Well, now they're also overwhelmed by Bonneville Lenties, and I don't think they're there for the blossoming of the cherry trees. They're there because Japan has been a poster child for other developed countries. You know, they were early on and having a speculative bubble burst and having to lower interest rates to zero. And they were early on and accumulating a huge amount of debt relative to their GDP. And over the past year, so the bond market over there, the bond yields have gone up dramatically. But it really hasn't had any significant impact on the Japanese economy. We'll be right back. And for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter

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Upwork.com. We're back with Profi markets. There's been a lot of, I don't know, catastrophizing warnings about the state of the labor market due to pressures from AI. Your thoughts on whether this destruction in the labor force or jobs is overblown or underblown. Or number one, it's overblown. So nobody's going to get fired at the Ardenny Research, or we're just a small, dinky little research firm because suddenly Claude, Claude is allowing us to do stuff we just wouldn't have done before.

For my personal experience, I think AI, instead of requiring coders, requires prompters, you have to really learn how to talk to it, ask the right questions, be very specific about what you want, and then you've got to check it because it's still not perfect.

But I think what's happened over the past year or two in the labor market is AI became so, a big deal that every company basically decided to freeze their payrolls. So we're not going to hire anybody. We're not going to fire anybody. We're going to do a lot of research and we're going to do a lot of trials to see if AI

can make the people we have here even more productive. And I think what a lot of companies are concluding is that in some areas, AI is amazing and it can augment the productivity of the people you have. There's no reason to get rid of them. Just, you know, these people, you know, can be taught if they can't naturally get a feel for how to use AI. And then in other areas, AI is irrelevant. But you know what? We finally looked at this division that nobody's really looked in for, you know, for 20 years.

And maybe let's just sell it. You know, we're not making any money in this division. So I think there's a lot of focus on productivity as a result of AI. And I think, like all technological, I'm not a Luddite. I think like all technological revolutions, there's a transition phase. People are going to kind of have to reinvent themselves. And I think that's what they're doing and we'll continue to do. And I think, you know, the labor market will continue to do well.

If I'm wrong, there's some people talking about universal income. I guess the analogy would be something like the Roman. The Romans, you know, conquered so many people that made slaves out of them that they, you know, didn't have any work to do. Everybody else, everybody they conquered did all the work. And I guess, you know, we could be poets and have parties and all that the way the Romans did. But I don't think it's going to go that way. I think we're all going to have jobs. Earlier in the program, we were talking about things that really shake the markets, things that actually have a dramatic impact.

and you pointed out correctly that what they all have in common is there is a credit crunch. There is some form of credit crisis that stems from too much debt that we cannot handle. So this makes me believe that the thing that's going to bring everything down is ultimately just the U.S. national debt, the fact that we're up to nearly $40 trillion in debt. We are adding to it with the big, beautiful bill, as I said, $4 trillion added to the deficit over the next, decade in more deficit spending. And when you talk to people about Japan, people go, well, I guess Japan's okay. And no one really has an answer as to why it's okay, but we just, they say, okay, it's okay. And so maybe that means America's going to be okay. I'm a little skeptical of this,

and I just like to end with your thoughts on what is the deal with the U.S.'s debt situation, and is it going to come back to bite us? I have to tell you a little story here. You know, one, a fair amount of the people who sign up to our research service, our institutional investors, private wealth managers. They manage money for wealthy individuals. And they particularly like my work, because I tend to be balanced. And when things look terrible, you know,

you read some of my perma bear competitors and you want to, you know, you start reading what they're writing and you want to pull out a gun and blow out your brains, you know, when you wake up in the morning. You can actually read mine without going that far, even during bad times. But so a lot of them over the past couple years have been telling me, you know, I really appreciate your work because it's been balanced because our accounts are very, very nervous. The more the stock market goes up, the more nervously get. I said, what are they nervous about?

Well, first of all, they're wealthy individuals. They're conservative. want to conserve. They want to keep what they got. But on the other hand, they're very happy to see their wealth go up in the stock market. But as it goes up, they say, you know, let's, maybe we should get out of the market. And so, well, what are you so worried about that? They ask. And these wealthy individuals will say, well, I'm, I really, I'm very concerned about the deficit. I'm very concerned about the debt. It's just, there's no way we can keep doing this. So then the manager tells me, so what do they want you to, I ask them, what do they want you to invest in?

So, well, they want to, they just want to be, you know, safe in 10-year treasuries. So I said, you know, you know, here they're worrying about the debt blown up and they just want to be in 10-year treasuries because, hey, what the hell I can always, you know, sit on them for 10 years, you know, even if the, you know, if we get a debt crisis and everything blows up, eventually the rates will still come back down. One of the ways to understand why things haven't blown up is because the world is getting richer and richer. I mean, for all the geopolitical stresses and strains

and crazy stuff going on, the world on balance continues to grow. People are aspirational. If they're prosperous, they want to prosper more. If they're not prosperous, they want to prosper. there's still a fairly heavy dose of capitalism on a global basis. There's competition, and there's companies that are under pressure to provide the best goods and services they can for customers at reasonable prices.

And that's created a tremendous amount of wealth, hundreds of trillions of dollars, and wealth likes to diversify. They don't want to be all in one sector. So, for example, I have a chart that I've been showing these days, showing the S&P 500 versus the price of gold on the same scale. And what's interesting is they are kind of inversely related, which means the gold is really a pretty good diversifying asset for a stock portfolio. Because when the stock portfolio goes up, you take a little bit on the chin for that insurance policy. But when stocks are going down, gold's doing well. That's been true since gold's been set free by Nixon back in the early 1970s.

But when you look at the trend, they're almost the same identical trend. So here in my roaring 2020 scenario, I have the market, the SMP 500, getting to 10,000 by the end of the decade, by the end of 2029. And based on that chart, I'm extrapolating the trends. Gold could get to $10,000 per ounce as well. Why? Because of diversification. And so that's kind of the way I'm looking at it is the world is getting wealthier and wealthier, and that's a good thing. And we want more and more people to be prosperous. We want more and more neighborhoods to be good neighborhoods, aspirational neighborhoods. Certainly want a lot fewer wars, but I guess we can't fight human nature and human history. But I guess I would say that, The one thing that I've often told investors are interested in my point of view and what I've learned is one of the things I've learned over the years is amazing how well the U.S. economy and the global economy, but the U.S. stock market and foreign stock markets have done despite the politicians, despite the dictators and the military and the wars, it's really quite extraordinary. And that's because people are aspirational. So here in the United States, you know,

we're constantly reading the news about the Fed and about the Treasury and the White House. And I say, you know, it's amazing how we keep doing well despite these clowns. And we just kind of take them into consideration when we're going about our business all day and thinking about how can we prosper despite what's going on politically.

Ed Yardini is the president of Yardini Research, a provider of global investment strategies and asset allocation analysis. He previously served as chief investment strategist of Oak Associates, Prudential Equity Group, and Deutsche Bank's U.S. Equities Division in New York City. He taught at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business and was an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He also held positions at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, D.C.

Ed, thank you very much for your time. If I may just say, I am a, entrepreneurial capitalist. So if anybody wants to try the research, just go to Yardinney.com. Yardinney.com. You got it. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Ed. What did you think? Well, Ed Yardinney is a legend in the world of economics and markets. I thought it was great. I thought it was interesting his story about how investors feel about our fiscal situation, our deficit spending and increasing debt, and the fact that you have all these investors who say, I don't know what to do, I think I want to get out of the stock market. Okay, well, what do you want to do instead?

Oh, I want to buy treasuries. I want to buy more U.S. debt, which is a great example of kind of the paradox that a lot of investors are facing right now, which is they know that they're getting too risky because of the amount that we've seen and the amount of run-up that we've seen in the stock market. We know that we keep on spending more money than we should really be spending. But then the question becomes like, well, what is your safe haven? What is your insurance policy? What is your protection? And some people would say it's fixed income. It's treasury. It's possibly people would say it's private debt. Some people would say it's gold or Bitcoin. And in all of these assets, you can also make the case that actually these are quite risky assets as well.

And so I think it's leaving investors in this very tricky place where it's like, no one can agree on what the safe haven even is anymore because there seems to be risk everywhere. But if someone could come up with the asset that is the true safe haven, the Bitcoiners would say it's Bitcoin, we already did it. I don't know if everyone really buys it. I don't think we really believe you based on what we've seen with Bitcoin price movements. But if someone could do that, that guy would get very, very rich. I almost think of it. We need a new term. It's not safe haven.

and it's least fucked up or least dangerous Haven. You know, it's, there's either, there's markets that have, you know, greater debt than us, or there's markets that have less debt than us, but aren't growing. And so we're the, you know, the fastest turtle, if you will. So, yeah, it's, I'm not sure safe haven is the right term. I really, the term he used it, I thought was really appropriate, was balanced. He strikes me as very balanced and so it was good to hear from someone who's not easily, I get the sense that Ed's, you know, seen a few cycles and doesn't scare that easily.

I also thought it was interesting in contrast. I think it's terms about the same size as property media technically were research firms, but's research firms. And he said that they weren't planning to lay off any people because of AI, whereas I'm planning to lay off most of the staff here. Why does that make me happy? I've been thinking about that for the last 20 minutes. No, but he did strike me as very balanced and, you know, quite frankly, doesn't scare that easily. I think he's probably a, I think he's probably one of the few investment

newsletters where you read it and your blood pressure comes down. Whereas everyone else is, you know, the world is falling and credit spreads are going to blow out, et cetera. Anyways, I very much enjoyed. Enjoyed the interview. Does your blood pressure go down when you listen to our content? So speaking of blood pressure, I was diagnosed for the first time. I've told you this. Let's bring us back to me yet. Every year I get a physical, And every year it's like you're superhuman, your good cholesterol is high, your bad cholesterol. I love getting my physical. So this time they told me I've shrunk an inch and I have high blood pressure.

And so I work my ass off. I'm getting my blood pressure down. I'm drinking last. I'm eating no processed meats, you know, trying to do more cardio. And I got my blood pressure below 130 or down to like 127. And all of a sudden the American Heart Association has now lowered what defines or what fits the qualification of blood pressure down 10 points. they move the goalposts on me, Ed.

Anyways. Is that RFK's fault? Whatever it is, it's RFK's fault. No, I don't have measles. That's one thing that I have going for me. That's true. But anyways, that's my high blood pressure story, Ed. Well, I don't have much to add on that.

You were so bored by that. At your age, you don't need to worry about any of this. You don't even, anyways, don't, yeah, you got time still, Ed. You got time. You got time. Keep eating steak, eggs, and raw milk, and I'll be good. Yeah, but I do believe AI is going to replace you. Okay. I have other things to worry about.

This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Jorge Carty. Our research team is Dan Shalon, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen O'Donohue, and Mia Silverio. Jake McPherson is our social producer. Drew Burroughs is our technical director and Catherine Dillon as our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Profitie Markets from Profit Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on Monday. Support for the show comes from Virgin Atlantic.

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