This podcast is originally and first published by BFM 89.9 The Business Station for their program called Morning Run. Find the original source at https://www.bfm.my/podcast/morning-run/market-watch/ai-hype-substance-sustainability-tech-stocks-monetary-policy
Investor excitement over AI has been driving up valuations of tech stocks, but to what extent is this optimism substantiated? Tony Nash of Complete Intelligence weighs in on the sustainability of the tech rally, as well as the outlook for Fed monetary policy, among others.
Key takeaways from this episode:
- Fed likely to delay rate cut to July unless significant economic changes occur.
- Market expectations of 3 to 5 rate cuts for the year but unlikely to be as aggressive as initial rises.
- Tech companies like Microsoft and Nvidia driving market rally, but concerns over valuations exist.
- Nvidia’s high valuation raises questions about benefit versus risk.
- US oil production impacts OPEC and Russia’s influence on oil prices.
- Japanese Yen weak against USD, potential for intervention due to undesirable levels.
- Cisco reports revenue decline, plans to cut workforce by 5%.
In this podcast from BFM 89.9, Tony Nash shares insights, indicating that the Fed views the hot CPI number as a sign of strong policy and hints at a potential rate cut in July 2024.
The conversation shifts to the stock market rally and the performance of tech giants like Microsoft and Nvidia. Tony highlights the concentration of the rally in specific stocks, raising concerns about valuations and market dynamics. He questions the sustainability of Nvidia’s growth and the risk associated with its current valuation levels.
The discussion then changes to the oil and gas sector, focusing on the US’s significant oil production and its impact on global supply dynamics. Tony explains how the US’s supply has influenced geopolitical risk premiums and natural gas prices, reshaping the market landscape. The conversation also touches on the Japanese Yen’s depreciation against the US Dollar and potential interventions by Japan.
Transcript
BFM
All right, for some thoughts on what’s moving international markets, we have on the line with us Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence. Tony, good morning. Thanks as always for joining us. So, hotter than expected, US CPI numbers have dampened market expectations of a rate cut. How do you think the Fed will view those figures? And where do you think they’ll place the timing for the first rate cut of 2024?
Tony
Yeah, I think the Fed sees the hot CPI number as their policy just not having enough time to work. So jobs are relatively strong, inflation is reinserting itself. So it’s definitely higher for longer. There had been an expectation of, say, a March rate cut, but that’s definitely gone now. Markets have wanted an earlier cut, which is why we saw so much activity in stocks. So we’re seeing some stuttering in valuations, a lot of the choppiness in valuations at the moment as investors try to figure out where is fair value. So the next rate cut is likely July. So it’s pushed back pretty dramatically from what we expected, unless we see something change. If we see recession come in or job cuts or deflation or something like that. But what we’ve seen over the past couple of years is the Fed has proven that it’s determined and that it’s patient. So they’re not in a rush to cut.
BFM
What does this then mean for the quantum of cuts? Tony, I think market is expecting a range between three, probably now three to five cuts for this year. What are your expectations?
Tony
Yeah, I definitely don’t see cuts coming at the rate at which they started. Meaning, remember, those first two rate rises were 75 basis points. We’re definitely not going to see 75 basis point rate cuts unless we see some dramatic problems in, say, housing or equities or something like that. If it’s really just dialing down because inflation has slowed, then there’ll be minimal rate cuts and they’ll be spaced out over time because we’re really just getting back to kind of a normal rate environment. So we’ve been in a zero interest rate environment for so long that people are not accustomed to actually having a real cost of money, which is what interest rates are. And so we’re probably in a zone between, say, 4% to 5% where they may actually want to keep interest rates in that zone to have a normal cost of money and cost of risk.
BFM
Tony, with this in mind, and the stock market rally that we’ve been seeing in the past couple of weeks or so, along with how well tech companies like Microsoft and Nvidia have been doing, what do you foresee going into the coming weeks as far as the market is concerned?
Tony
Yeah. Companies like Microsoft and Nvidia are really in their own realm. You know, the mag stocks, they’re pulling the entire market. So when we see a rally, it’s not a market-wide rally, it’s largely concentrated in those stocks. Last week, for example, we saw Facebook rise by 21% in one day. That’s unbelievable. And for a company that size to see a 21% rise in their value, it’s really strange. So investors will have to see a dramatic change in news, or they’ll have to see investment funds dump shares before they give up their current positions. One telling factor, maybe Jeff Bezos’s sale of a large tranche of Amazon stock this week. He could be signaling that he thinks the market is at a top, so he’s cashed in for now. So if that’s what he’s communicating to markets, we’ll have to see if investors really receive that and what they do with those tech shares.
BFM
Okay, can I talk about Nvidia? Because that’s another stock that’s just gone gangbusters, right? It’s up almost 50% on a year to date basis. I’m looking at Bloomberg forward P’s of 60 times. It overtook Alphabet and Amazon. In terms of market cap, are we putting too much money and too much faith into AI?
Tony
I don’t think we’re putting too much faith in AI. I think we need to examine the earnings of those AI companies harder to understand the quality of those earnings. If Nvidia is rallying and other semiconductor companies are not rallying, we have to ask why and look really deeply into their value chain and understand what their sales process looks like. I’m not sure that a lot of these investors have really looked that deeply into what Nvidia actually does, what risks they actually have, what their value chain is like, how they get revenues and so on. It’s just that it’s seen as the picks and shovels for AI, which is great, but we all saw what. Well, maybe we didn’t. I saw what happened with Cisco Systems in the.com bubble in 2000, right. And some people were around for that. The underlying theory there was, well, Cisco has the picks and shovels for the Internet, and that’s great until it’s not, and then it loses a lot of value. So I think Nvidia is in a place where people are so bowled up on it. And my problem, I’m not making any investment recommendations here, but how much benefit is there versus the risk of the valuation?
Tony
I don’t know. That’s something that I try to run every day. I run an artificial intelligence software company and I don’t understand the upside left in Nvideo. You know, but maybe there is. I don’t compete with them at all. So this isn’t a jab at Nvidia. I’m just saying I don’t understand these valuations and I don’t understand where that additional alpha comes from with a company like Nvidia. But maybe I’m just missing it.
BFM
Can we turn our attention to perhaps the oil and gas sector, where we see the US is producing around 13 million barrels of crude per day, which is more than any country on the globe, including Saudi Arabia. How do you think this is affecting the influence of OPEC and Russia in determining supply factors such as price? And where do you see oil price trending over the next quarters or so?
Tony
Yeah, I think with oil prices. I think part of the reason we haven’t seen a geopolitical risk premium with the conflict in the Middle East is because of the supply that the US has put on the market. If the US didn’t have, let’s say we were in 2007 or something, and we had the conflict in the Middle East that we have, we would definitely see a larger geopolitical risk in the crude price. I also think that natural gas is a factor as well. So if we look at Europe, for example, the US provides, I think, more than 40% of the natural gas for Europe, which just two or three years ago it wasn’t anywhere close to that because they were taking Russian nat gas. But nat gas prices are declining and continue to decline because the US has put so much nat gas and so much lng on the market. So those prices are somewhat paired in European and Asian markets. And again, part of it is the geopolitical risk premium isn’t there because of supply the US has put on the market. The other part is the US has flooded the market with Nat gas in Europe. The US provides 21% of LNG to China and so on. So this supply has really helped to keep those prices down.
BFM
Tony, can we just look at the Japanese Yen? It hit high knots against the US Dollar. Well, the weakest against the US Dollar not seen since the 1990s. Nearly ¥151 to the dollar overnight. What’s your outlook on this, especially since the finance minister himself did give a warning that what he’s seeing is undesirable. Does it signal some kind of intervention, maybe?
Tony
Yeah, I mean, they’ve signaled that they’re not happy with this a couple of times over the past, say, quarter or so, but they change policy at the edges. They typically don’t make dramatic policy changes. So what I’d see is maybe a small intervention, but I think they’ll likely just talk about it. And I don’t think they’re necessarily going to fight the US data, CPI or other US data. We have to keep in mind Japan is really sandwiched between a booming US and a really faltering Chinese economy. And so they can’t get too tight on monetary policy because China is such a big trade partner for them and there are so many Japanese companies with manufacturing sites and even headquarters in China. And so they have to be really careful to play between the two.
BFM
The GDP data is coming out later this morning. Any idea what we can expect?
Tony
Yeah, it’ll probably be moderately strong. I don’t think it’s going to be crazy strong. If we look at it in Yen terms, it might look very strong. But if we look at it, say, in Dollar terms, I think it will be maybe moderately strong.
BFM
Tony, thanks as always for the chat. That was Tony Nash, CEO of Complete Intelligence, giving us his take on some of the trends that he sees moving markets in the days and weeks ahead.