A Comment -- General Comments From an Expert (A Commentary)

The time from now to the Fed announcement of March 15 will be the most dramatic in the market perhaps all year. Bad news is high inflation and the yield has flattened into "a bear flattener" meaning fear in the market that we might make a mistake. Good news: St. Louis Fed president Bullard already freaked us out, so we're pricing in the worst, hawkish situation. So, we might be surprised to the upside if the Fed does (on March 15) less than what Bullard said.

He doesn't see 7 interest rate hikes this year; Goldman Sachs does as they announced today in response to the St. Louis Fed's Bullard hawkish comments. The Fed's Jay Powell is a man of his word and seems to do things at a measured pace. Powell announces what he will do and he always follows through. He himself expects at least 4 hikes this year.

The market is already pricing in a 50-basis point hike on March 15, so the Fed has the option to do that or not. If not (and they hike 25 points instead), then they should communicate that appropriately. She doesn't think they should hike 50 points and to decide by basing it on data. Watch volatility in order to find opportunity in individual names.

Believes interest rate increases will be gradual. US Federal Reserve statement of a 50 basis point increase is posturing. More likely outcome is a 25 basis point increase.

Problem with steep interest rate increase is the large selloff in the market it will cause. Desire to create stable, gradual path back to normality does not include 100 basis point increase. Canada will most likely fallow whatever interest rate path the USA takes.

Investors can protect against rising inflation rates by targeting financial industry. Any value sector such as tobacco or energy are great places to seek protection. Tech sector and fixed income investments are not good for interest rate increases.

Sky-high US inflation and volatility. Extremely important. When rates are this high, and valuations get this high, markets will swing a lot more than normal and more quickly. Seems that supply disruptions will be around longer than anticipated. We'll have this kind of inflation number for another year or so. The markets are figuring out quite quickly where things are at.

Decelerating liquidity. A general definition of liquidity is how fast can you turn an asset into cash? During the pandemic, a fantastic amount of cash was put into the system. The extreme valuations we've seen are a result of that. This year, we have less quantitative easing, interest rates are going up, and no more cheques from the government. So the bubble that was in place last year, is not here this year. The most important thing to understand is how does decelerating liquidity affect the valuation of stocks and asset prices?

Businesses/sectors to focus on. Watch out for high valuation stocks, but at lot of these have already come down in the last 2 months. Think of money moving the way water sloshes around in a bathtub. The money that was all in tech and high valuation stocks is now moving to the other side of the stock market. And that's what he's looking for: consistent businesses with consistent rates of return. You could use the term "value", but these are high quality, established companies. We're not seeing a market meltdown, but rather a movement of money into these more traditional companies.

The story of Nortel. The selloff in 2000 just creamed the market. Nortel was trading at 100x earnings, and it turned out those earnings were fraudulent. It also had a lot of debt, compared to competitors that were debt free. Competitors survived, but Nortel didn't. A company like SHOP isn't really in the same situation.

Hot inflation data and future rate hikes Future interest rate hikes will depend on economic data. Remember that WTI last year this time was $59 and now it's $90, a 35% increase that has a huge impact on inflation. But as we move forward, this rate of change will decline with some hot data (like today) for the next few months, but that will wane. Also, the Fed is still buying bonds now. The next few months will be volatile. She doesn't think the Fed will hike 50 basis points at once. The Fed will be very transparent. Don't forget that the federal debt is $30 trillion, so each 1% increase is $300 billion in interest.

Today's hot inflation number Hikes will happen between March and September, she predicts. Then, inflation will decline. Housing is key, so if housing continues to be strong, inflation could extend longer than expected. Past rate hikes show that the S&P tends to be positive 12 months after those hikes and the market continues growing. There will be choppiness to come, but won't fall back to January lows and eventually CPI will fall back to 3% that the economy can support.

Today's hot inflation number The market has already adjusted to the Fed's aggressive rate hikes to come, so the market is shrugging off today's hot inflation number. For markets to really fall, there needs to be an entirely different catalyst. There is one more CPI announcement before the March 15 Fed meeting when rates are expected to rise, probably by 0.25% and not 0.5%. Even then, markets may not dive on that March hike, because it's been baked in already. Also, profits are growing. The market is likely to rip higher on March 16 after that meeting and expected hike.