U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell holds a press conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on interest rate policy in Washington, U.S., July 31, 2024.
Kevin Mohatt | Reuters
For all the attention being paid to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s policy speech Friday, the chances of it containing any startling news seem remote.
After all, the market has its mind made up: The Fed is going to start cutting rates in September — and likely will keep cutting through the end of the year and into 2025.
While there are still some questions about the magnitude and frequency of the reductions, Powell is now left to deliver a brief review of where things have been, and give some limited guidance about what’s ahead.
“Stop me if you’ve heard this before: They’re still data dependent,” said Lou Crandall, a former Fed official and now chief economist at Wrightson-ICAP, a dealer-broker where he has worked for more than 40 years. He expects Powell to be “directionally unambiguous, but specifics about how fast and exactly when will depend on the data between now and the meeting. Little doubt that they will start cutting in September.”
The speech will be delivered at 10 a.m. ET from the Fed’s annual conclave of global central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The conference is titled “Reassessing the Effectiveness and Transmission of Monetary Policy” and runs through Saturday.
If there were any doubts about the Fed’s intentions to enact at least a quarter percentage point cut at the Sept. 17-18 open market committee meeting, they were put to rest Wednesday. Minutes from the July session showed a “vast majority” of members in favor of a September cut, barring any surprises.
Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker drove the point home even further Thursday when he told CNBC that in “September we need to start a process of moving rates down.”
A question of guidance
A main question is whether the first reduction in more than four years is a quarter point or half point, a topic on which Harker would not commit. Markets are betting on a quarter but leaving open about a 1-in-4 chance for a half, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch.
A half-point move likely would require a substantial deterioration in economic data between now and then, and specifically another weak nonfarm payrolls report in two weeks.
“Even though I think the Fed’s base case is they’ll move a quarter, and my base case is they’ll move a quarter, I don’t think they’ll feel the need to provide any guidance around that this far out,” Crandall said.
In previous years, Powell has used Jackson Hole speech to outline broad policy initiatives and to provide clues about the future of policy.
At his first appearance, in 2018, he outlined his views on the interest and unemployment rates considered “neutral” or stable. A year later, he indicated rate cuts were coming. In a speech delivered amid racial protests in 2020, Powell unveiled a new approach that would allow inflation to run hotter than usual, without rate hikes, in the interest of promoting a more inclusive jobs market. That “flexible average inflation targeting,” though, would precede a period of surging prices — leaving Powell in the ensuing three years to navigate a delicate minefield of policy.
This time around, the task will be to confirm the market’s expectations while also indicating his impressions of the economy and in particular the moderating of inflation pressures and some concerns over the labor market.
“To us, the key will be Chair Powell’s tone, which we expect to lean dovish” or towards lower rates, Jack Janasiewicz, lead portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions, said in written commentary. “Simply put, inflation continues to trend towards the 2% target seemingly at a rate exceeding consensus. Combine this with signs that the labor market is softening and one gets the sense that there is little need to retain a hawkish stance.”
Listening to markets
The Fed has held its key overnight borrowing rate in place for the past 13 months following a series of aggressive hikes. Markets have mostly done well under the higher-rate regime but rebelled briefly after the July meeting following signs of a deteriorating labor picture and a weakening manufacturing sector.
Powell is expected to give at least a nod to some economic headwinds, as well as the progress the Fed has made in its inflation fight.
“We expect Powell to express a bit more confidence in the inflation outlook and to put a bit more emphasis on downside risks in the labor market than in his press conference after the July FOMC meeting, in light of the data released since then,” Goldman Sachs economist David Mericle said in a recent note.
Goldman is about at the consensus of market expectations: rate cuts at each of the next three meetings, followed by more easing in 2024 that eventually will shave about 2 percentage points off the fed funds rate — a policy path that will be teed up, in very general terms, by Powell in Jackson Hole.
Fed chairs profess to not be sensitive to financial market movements, but Powell no doubt saw the reaction after the July meeting and will want to assuage fears that the central bank will keep waiting before it begins to ease.
“Powell is inclined to support the stock market,” said Komal Sr-Kumar, head of Sri-Kumar Global Strategies. “Time and again, he has indicated rates are going to come down. They haven’t come down, but this time around, he’s going to do it.”
Leading analyst Craig Moffett suggests any plans to move U.S. iPhone assembly to India is unrealistic.
Moffett, ranked as a top analyst multiple times by Institutional Investor, sent a memo to clients on Friday after the Financial Times reported Apple was aiming to shift production toward India from China by the end of next year.
He’s questioning how a move could bring down costs tied to tariffs because the iPhone components would still be made in China.
“You have a tremendous menu of problems created by tariffs, and moving to India doesn’t solve all the problems. Now granted, it helps to some degree,” the MoffettNathanson partner and senior managing director told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Friday. “I would question how that’s going to work.”
Moffett contends it’s not so easy to diversify to India — telling clients Apple’s supply chain would still be anchored in China and would likely face resistance.
“The bottom line is a global trade war is a two-front battle, impacting costs and sales. Moving assembly to India might (and we emphasize might) help with the former. The latter may ultimately be the bigger issue,” he wrote to clients.
Moffett cut his Apple price target on Monday to $141 from $184 a share. It implies a 33% drop from Friday’s close. The price target is also the Street low, according to FactSet.
“I don’t think of myself as the biggest Apple bear,” he said. “I think quite highly of Apple. My concern about Apple has been the valuation more than the company.”
Moffett has had a “sell” rating on Apple since Jan. 7. Since then, the company’s shares are down about 14%.
“None of this is because Apple is a bad company. They still have a great balance sheet [and] a great consumer franchise,” he said. “It’s just the reality of there are no good answers when you are a product company, and your products are going to be significantly tariffed, and you’re heading into a market that is likely to have at least some deceleration in consumer demand because of the macro economy.”
Moffett notes Apple also isn’t getting help from its carriers to cushion the blow of tariffs.
“You also have the demand destruction that’s created by potentially higher prices. Remember, you had AT&T, Verizon and T. Mobile all this week come out and say we’re not going to underwrite the additional cost of tariff [on] handsets,” he added. “The consumer is going to have to pay for that. So, you’re going to have some demand destruction that’s going to show up in even longer holding periods and slower upgrade rates — all of which probably trims estimates next year’s consensus.”
According to Moffett, the backlash against Apple in China over U.S. tariffs will also hurt iPhone sales.
“It’s a very real problem,” Moffett said. “Volumes are really going to the Huaweis and the Vivos and the local competitors in China rather than to Apple.”
Apple stock is coming off a winning week — up more than 6%. It comes ahead of the iPhone maker’s quarterly earnings report due next Thursday after the market close.
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In a year that hasn’t been kind to many big-name stocks, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is standing near the top. Berkshire shares have posted a 17% return year-to-date, while the S&P 500 index is down 6%.
That performance places Berkshire among the top 10% of the U.S. market’s large-cap leaders, and the run has been getting Buffett more attention ahead of next weekend’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s also good timing for the recently launched VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF(OMAH), which holds the top 20 most heavily weighted stocks in Berkshire Hathaway, as well as shares of Berkshire Hathaway.
“It’s a really well-balanced portfolio chosen by the most successful investor the world has ever seen,” Adam Patti, CEO of VistaShares, said in an appearance this week on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”
Berkshire’s outperformance of the S&P 500 isn’t limited to 2025. Buffett’s stock has tripled the performance of the market over the past year, and its 185% return over the past five years is more than double the performance of the S&P 500.
Berkshire Hathaway is one of 2025’s top performing stocks.
In addition to this long-term track record of success in the market, Berkshire Hathaway is getting a lot of attention right now for the record amount of cash Buffett is holding as he trimmed stakes in big stocks including Apple, which has proven to be a great strategy. The S&P 500 has experienced extreme short-term volatility since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Even after a recent recovery, the S&P is still down 8% since the start of Trump’s second term.
“The market has been momentum driven for many years, the switch has flipped and we’re looking at quality in terms of exposure, and Berkshire Hathaway has performed incredibly well this year, handily outperforming the S&P 500,” said Patti.
Berkshire Hathaway famously doesn’t pay a dividend, with Buffett holding firm over many decades in the belief that he can re-invest cash to create more value for shareholders. In a letter to shareholders in February, Buffett wrote that Berkshire shareholders “can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities — mostly American equities.”
The lack of a dividend payment has been an issue over the years for some shareholders at Berkshire who do want income from the market, according to Patti, who added that his firm conducted research among investors in designing the ETF. “Who doesn’t want to invest like Buffett, but with income?” he said.
So, in addition to being tied to the performance of Berkshire and the stock picks of Buffett, the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF is designed to produce income of 15% annually through a strategy of selling call options and distributing monthly payments of 1.25% to shareholders. This income strategy has become more popular in the ETF space, with more asset managers launching funds to capture income opportunities and more investors adopting the approach amid market volatility.
People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025.
Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images
A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday.
The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs.
In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.
Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.
Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.
“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”
“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said.
He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.
“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”
The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once.
“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.”
Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.
Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers.
Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts.