/perspectives/media/podcast-67-outlook-tariff-gray-swan

Macro Markets Podcast Episode 67: Outlook and Strategy After the Tariff Gray Swan

Steve Brown, CIO for Fixed Income, and Patricia Zobel, Head of Macroeconomic Research and Market Strategy, join Macro Markets to review the tariff-related paradigm shift in trade policy.

April 15, 2025

 

Episode 67: Outlook and Strategy After the Tariff Gray Swan
 
Steve Brown, CIO for Fixed Income, and Patricia Zobel, Head of Macroeconomic Research and Market Strategy, join Macro Markets to review the tariff-related paradigm shift in trade policy.

This transcript is computer-generated and may contain inaccuracies.

Jay Diamond: Hi everybody. And welcome to Macro Markets with Guggenheim Investments, where we invite leaders from our investment team to offer their analysis of the investment landscape and the economic outlook. I’m Jay Diamond, Head of Thought Leadership for Guggenheim Investments, and I'll be hosting today. We are recording this episode on April 14th, 2025. Now I have to give the date for our recording because the markets have been so fast moving and so volatile that conditions are radically changing, not just day to day, but hour to hour.

The Liberation Day announcement on tariffs set off extremely strong market reactions in both stocks and bonds, as investors across strategies and asset classes recalculate their outlooks. And while tariffs have been at the center of it all, of course, we can't forget that there are still a host of other policy outcomes that are uncertain on topics such as taxes, spending, immigration and much more.

So here to help us make sense of where we are and where we might be going, are two of the leaders of our investment team. Steve Brown, Chief Investment Officer for Fixed Income, and Patricia Zobel, Head of Macroeconomic Research and Market Strategy. Welcome back, Steve and Patricia, and thanks for taking the time to chat with us today.

Steve Brown: Absolutely. Thanks for having us.

Patricia Zobel: Yeah. Thank you.

Jay Diamond: But let's start with you, Patricia. In brief, just tell us about the tariff program that was outlined by President Trump.

Patricia Zobel: Well, so taking a step back, you know, I think the Trump administration has really been trying to achieve a reset of global trade, you know, reducing trade deficits and bringing back some manufacturing jobs to the U.S. Trump has long said that he views tariffs as a tool to achieve this. And the question on investors’ minds has been whether he would use the specter of tariffs to negotiate down trade barriers globally, resulting in more free trade, or whether the tariffs would be used to put up protectionist barriers.

The former really enhances growth by opening up export markets and reducing excess manufacturing capacity abroad, while the latter can weigh on growth. And although people were expecting reciprocal tariffs ahead of April 2nd, the tariff levies that they saw on April 2nd were just much higher and more broad based than anticipated. Since, these have been pared back but overall effective tariff rates are still quite high, with the Chinese tariff rate at nearly 150%.

So even after some of the exemptions that we've seen for tech this weekend and the dialing back of reciprocal tariffs last week, the effective tariff rate is still similar to Smoot-Hawley tariff rates that contributed to the Great Depression. So there's still quite high. Markets have been responding to these surprisingly high tariffs. But there's still a long way to go in this journey. You know there's room for tariffs to come down and to be dialed back, and I think markets are placing a decent probability on better outcomes to.

Jay Diamond: Now Patricia, one follow up: How are the tariffs actually calculated?

Patricia Zobel: So that's a great question Jay, because I think it's been a key question for investors, and part of the reason it got such a stark reaction in financial markets. The basic framework was a 10% blanket tariff on all countries, but with much larger tariffs on imports from countries holding goods trade surpluses with the United States. But the tariff levels didn't actually align all that well with trade barriers that had been put in place by some countries.

Many of the trade surpluses that were being penalized were related to things like textiles, for example, or bananas, that the U.S. is unlikely to or can't produce in scale domestically and work as a result of trade barriers. So the scale of the tariffs and the difficulty understanding the intent, I think, shifted the economic outlook and kind of shocked financial markets.

But looking through the noise, I think what you come away with is that the administration is open to adjusting policy. They've sharpened the focus on China as the primary target of tariffs, and with tariffs that will substantially reduce trade with China if kept in place. But they also have a plan to negotiate with countries and industries. So uncertainty is still very elevated.

And the administration does still seem committed to what are, relative to recent history, are high trade barriers. But the highest uncertainty, I think, is over. And I think we've seen probably the peak, tariff rates announced to Steve.

Jay Diamond: The market reaction has been just as much of the story, if not more so. Because it's the market that forced the change in course on the part of the policymakers. So how would you describe the market reaction, and did any of it surprise you?

Steve Brown: Yeah, great question, Jay. And you're right. It's been extremely volatile in the what's now less than two weeks since the initial announcement. So at first, even though it's old news, you know, the the market reaction was somewhat normal in that the market started pricing in a much higher, likelihood, of a recession here in the U.S. and then potentially globally as well. So it was really the first order impact that was pricing in, in the bond market, significantly lower yields on appreciation of traditional, safe haven assets like gold and other precious metals, while stocks, of course, and industrial commodities were the ones that were depreciating the most. But it was it was somewhat orderly in those first couple of days, as you just alluded to.

Since then, the reversal and move and interest rates, particularly here in the US, and some of the market functioning issues, frankly, that we saw last week, we think were what made for the initial pivot, and now taking a step back, you see, most risk assets like global stock indices are somewhere between a half and two thirds of the way back to where they were, post the April 2nd lead sell off.

And interest rates, as I just referenced, are actually now a little bit higher, further out the curve, while short term rates and intermediate rates are about flat. So, you know, it's times like these where we really do have to zoom out and take a medium- and ideally longer-term lens into how we think about positioning and strategy. But I'm sure we'll go to that later.

Jay Diamond: We are going to look forward, but I want to just spend one more minute looking at the last couple of weeks and how you prepared for it, and just bring us into your mindset, because Liberation Day was telegraphed in advance. We knew when it was coming, but then the news hit and the tariffs were much higher than expected. So how do you prepare for a possible market event like this? 

Steve Brown: Well, as a platform, we've really been thinking that this period, in particular the beginning of this new administration, would be defined by volatility. Nothing that they've done has been following normal conventional either with timing or magnitude. So we have to expect that at a baseline, the normal resting level of volatility for things like equity markets, rates, and even credit should be a little bit higher.

So what that meant for us is we were and have been a little bit more defensively positioned coming into the year when you saw credit spreads close to all-time tights, equity indices mostly at all-time highs. The combination of that plus and expectation of volatility led us to have a more neutral level of overall risk because at a minimum, as I just said, we would expect price volatility. As you said and as we've experienced over the last week, this was in some ways a disorderly and very fast and ferocious response to what was a bigger than expected policy announcement. I mean, last week, for example, the S&P traded in a 15% range and bond yields traded in 50 to 80 basis points range. So that is a significant amount of volatility.

So the VIX over 50 the move index over 140. So that exacerbates the day-to-day pricing changes and really flows, which is something that we've been particularly focused on and how it pertains in the market functioning. So how did we prepare? We did layer in some tail risk hedges. Again, a lot of the things you're going to be doing to position, even for specific events, are actions and decisions you've made months and even quarters prior.

So having thorough credit underwriting of all the credit we own, having a plan for where to add to risk and at what certain levels are all a part of the ongoing portfolio management and strategy, but in particular in times of heightened volatility and where we think there's event risk.

Jay Diamond: How does a portfolio manager react when the news comes out? The volatility is extremely high. What do you do?

Steve Brown: Well a lot of what we're doing is trying to contextualize the move relative to our expectations, to market expectations and then looking to history for guidance. What we've seen so far is a move in credit spreads, for example, back to the median levels that we've experience, in the period post GFC. We've seen interest rates trade closer to the higher end of their trading range that we've been expecting to not break for the last couple of years.

And then equities, as I briefly mentioned, briefly entered into bear market territory. And so that's meant that we've incrementally added some credit risk. We've been trying to be nimble and do some one off single name trades. But to us the markets have reacted pretty orderly, particularly within credit. Credit spreads are wider. Risk premia are higher, but they're higher and wider for quote unquote, the right reasons owing to the policy uncertainty, the softer economic data, particularly here in the U.S. over the last month or so, and just the ongoing acceptance now that policy volatility is likely here to stay. But so what we do in this environment and every other one is try to map out where we think we would materially change portfolio strategy and do a lot of work relative to historical periods and precedents.

And so we don't think the volatility is over. As Patricia said, we're probably at peak headline risk for tariffs. We're probably at peak tariff rates. How that manifests into the markets is certainly not over. But we've mapped out a plan for how we would take our risk profile if things were to get worse from here. And then conversely, what we'll do in this interim period where we still expect pretty strong performance overall for credit and fixed income in general, but just a higher level of uncertainty premium that's unlikely to erode away.

Jay Diamond: Okay. Now, Patricia, Steve mentioned investors recalibrating their odds of a recession. So if you could single out the impact of tariffs, how is it influenced your economic outlook?

Patricia Zobel: As Steve said, there's so much uncertainty about where tariffs will ultimately land. But what I think we can say is that tariffs themselves are set to slow growth and lift inflation over the course of this year, and we've marked down our growth forecast notably in the last couple of weeks. Taking a step back, overall, the US economy entered 2025 in really good shape. Balance sheets of households and businesses were strong, and that provides some cushion for the economy as it absorbs the shock. Still, after several years of high policy rates, the economy doesn't have the type of tailwinds of prior years that made it almost immune to shocks. The labor market is cooler than it was a couple of years ago. Lower income consumers are struggling and interest rate sensitive sectors are pretty soft.

So the breadth and the size of the tariffs along with what's recently been, as Steve noted, the falling dollar mean that US consumers and businesses are going to see pretty high costs in the coming months. And this creates a real tax on consumption and production. And we expect that to slow growth. And at the same time, financial conditions are tightening, which could be a headwind. And this is meaningful now because in recent years it's been those higher income consumer majors, the ones with large equity portfolios, that have been driving consumer spending. So, you know, with policy uncertainty at elevated levels, tighter financial conditions and tariffs coming down the pike, we expect growth to slow. But we're also cognizant that a lot could happen over the course of the year.

Policy uncertainty could be dialed back, which would stabilize things. Or as Steve said, if financial conditions tighten more from where they already have or there's more policy volatility, we could see something that looks a little bit more recessionary.

Jay Diamond: Steve, as a relates to the tariffs, has your team identified any sectors or industries or credits that are particularly vulnerable or potentially better off in this new trade regime.

Steve Brown: Yes, and that's frankly work that's been ongoing since, you know, since around the time of the election and also draws on experience from the first Trump administration. So broadly, the most exposed industries are and, you know, manufacturing, consumer goods, retail, autos. We've been pretty selective in those categories over the years for a number of reasons. And then the second order impacts on the global supply chain, the consumer, a lot of that depends on how you extrapolate what we think we know now and then what we think could change in the future, which is essentially everything could change.

So we're continuing to be very selective in those industries and sectors that are in the first order impact category, as we try to extrapolate what could happen from here. You know, you mentioned positives, a lot of what the market was trading on, in particular the stock market post the election was, was on some of those positives. And you referenced in your lead and with deregulation with the potential benefits, if you will, maybe not new tariffs of onshoring and reshoring. And so domestic infrastructure defense, I mean financials, with potential regulatory relief coming those positive tailwinds likely still remain. It's hard to quantify, as Patricia said, the exact impact and it's certainly not at the forefront of investors minds now. But there are some both positive and negative tailwinds that have been pretty broadly advertised. And so we are still, you know, leaning into those because frankly, the direction of travel in our mind is a little bit easier to predict than what the exact policy is going to look like on a day to day, hour by hour basis.

So overall, it's still a net positive time to be in U.S. corporates. The U.S. economy was on relatively solid footing, and there's a lot of two-way flow in these markets that allows you to reposition, you know, based on your views, which is a positive.
Jay Diamond: So Patricia, there are many policy areas in play right now other than tariffs that investors still have to think about once the dust starts to settle. So let's just talk about a few of them in brief. And I want to hear what your view is on each. And let's start with immigration.

Patricia Zobel: Speaking to immigration, I think irregular immigration reached a fairly extraordinary peak in 2023, and that reflected somewhat of an uncontrolled process. But from an economics perspective, it eased constraints on labor supply when the labor market was really tight and that supported growth in 2024 and possibly allowed for an easier disinflation. Since then, we've seen a real reduction in immigration flows, both in 2024, prior to Trump coming into office, and with the new Trump measures that's been extended, so much so that we're really now seeing what looks like net outflows of unauthorized immigration versus a peak of over 200,000 per month of inflows.

So this is a market shift in the growth of labor supply in 2025. This is going to be one of the factors that could be slowing growth this year. And we expect payroll gains over the course of this year to moderate as a result. But on its own, it wouldn't necessarily increase unemployment. You know, we have to see how the demand picture looks over the course of the year to say whether it's loosening or tightening the labor market.

Jay Diamond: And what are you seeing on the taxes front?

Patricia Zobel: That's been an area with a lot of developments recently. And as Steve mentioned, that could be something that could help moderate some of the growth worries coming from trade policy. The Senate passed an amended version of the House budget bill recently, but the two are still pretty far apart. What I can say is that extending the TCJA tax cuts is going to keep fiscal policy about the same in terms of its impact on growth. Those tax cuts have already been in place, and so just extending them won't shift the growth outlook that much. 

So the margin of stimulus for us is whether or not there'll be additional tax breaks, like on things like tips that people get from service industries and whether or not those will ultimately be included in the bill. Tariffs also may increase the scope for tax cuts to some degree, but a lot depends on projected revenue, which I think is really uncertain at this point.

Jay Diamond: And just one more for you. Patricia, what do you see on the debt limit, horizon?

Patricia Zobel: I think the ex-date is somewhere late in summer, and that's the date at which the Treasury no longer has extraordinary measures or cash to use to maintain borrowing that they need to do. But an increase in the debt limit is included in the bills that were passed. So what we're really looking for is reconciliation of those bills, and it could be resolved as early as this spring. And for investors, this is important because the debt limit represents a real risk event in markets where any kind of late negotiations or brinkmanship can increase focus on Treasury markets at a time when they've been unsettled anyway.

Jay Diamond: And Steve, we haven't seen the temperature in Washington that have this kind of sway over markets, really, since the financial crisis. So how do you look at this compendium of policies that have yet to be resolved and think about how that might affect markets going forward?

Steve Brown: Yeah, it's a great, great conundrum. And there's a few ways to think about that. One from a bottom-up perspective. You know, we're, we're a very credit intensive fundamental investor group. And so we do a lot of,very detailed underlying credit underwriting before we make any investments in any of our strategies. And, at this point, as you lead in with, you have to assume a very wide range of outcomes.

And we always when we make an investment, try to quantify to some degree what we call the stroke of pen risk. Meaning, is there something that could come out of nowhere, you know, from a regulatory standpoint that would really change your investment thesis? And so while it's obviously impossible to completely root out that risk, we are mindful of it upfront.

And we also incorporate and do a lot of stress testing, in our underlying investments. So our baseline assumption might be that, the underlying fundamentals of a company work or the sector or industry that they're in is relatively stable. But we're always when we think about making an investment, looking for downside risk. And so this current environment of course has introduced essentially some new downside risks and some ones that are, more idiosyncratic in nature or more concentrated, as we already talked about, potentially into certain sectors and industries.

But, it really just, expands the potential inputs and how we think about, credit underwriting. And then from an asset allocation standpoint, an dwe've talked about it already, but continue to be prepared for ongoing volatility, both in the policy and markets. And then look for, you know, sectors, industries, or asset classes that are disproportionately impacted and whether the market is pricing those risks or not.

You know, so far it's been, as I said, pretty orderly, both from a liquidity standpoint, particularly in credit. And then also the reset in valuations has been what you would expect had you been given, say, the equity market reaction. What would you have assumed for credit spreads? It's largely been in line with historical observations. And so it hasn't looked disorderly, nor has one asset class looked particularly richer or cheaper versus another.

So really it's probably continuing to be in a decompression environment. So it pays to be in higher quality, both from an issuer perspective as well as from a rating or asset class perspective. And that's, you know, as I let off with a lot of the bias that we already had when we thought about portfolio strategy entering this year.

Jay Diamond: So one last piece of the puzzle, Patricia, where does the economic outlook really reside? Right now?

Patricia Zobel: We see the combination of rising tariffs, slower immigration, and elevated policy uncertainty as resulting in something that looks like very low growth with an increasing probability of recession. We don't have a recession as a base case yet, as there's a chance that tariffs will be walked back, or fiscal stimulus reduces the drag to growth. But, you know, if there were to be more policy volatility or tightening financial conditions, we could see that come more into focus over the course of the year.

And we're expecting inflation to reverse some of the progress that the FOMC has made in the last couple of years. Our base case is that as tariffs come down the pike we could see inflation in 2025 in the mid threes.

Jay Diamond: Given this baseline economic view what do you think the Fed is thinking right now snd what are our expectations for monetary policy going forward?

Patricia Zobel: So this environment puts the fed in a tough position. Tariffs will lift costs for businesses and prices for consumers, particularly with the dollar weakening, like I said before. At the same time, risks to their employment mandate are also rising as the growth shock feeds through and FOMC participants have been particularly concerned about the inflationary consequences of tariffs, as they've mentioned in several speaking engagements over the course of the last week.

This means they're likely to be reactive to shifting conditions and only easing rates when the labor market softens. Because there's less scope for preemptive rate cuts, this could ultimately put more downward pressure on growth. We still think the labor market will soften later this year and anticipate the Fed will ultimately cut rates 4 to 6 times. You know, the tough decision for the Fed is when to start those rate cuts. And again, they're going to be balancing the two sides of their mandate when they make that decision. If inflation expectations remain anchored, it's our view that a small rise in unemployment would allow them to start to ease policy. But if there's concern about inflation expectations rising, it would probably take a much larger rise in unemployment for them to start cutting rates.

Jay Diamond: Steve, given the economic backdrop and all the things you've said up till now, what are your expectations for the rates marke,t in particular yields, shape of the curve, spreads.

Steve Brown: We expect Treasury yields to stay in the range that they've established really over the last year-and-a-half where the upside is the call it the 23 highs. And then the downside is probably somewhere around where we bottomed in the post-regional banking crisis in the beginning of 23. For that, as you just saw last week, the 30-year, touched 5% for about a second and then has since bounced about 20 basis points. That's the one that's key to watch because it's moving in a different pattern than the rest of the curve. You know, that is some of the risk that the market faces is if the 30 year breached five and violated that trend. But so far it hasn't, you're seeing less volatility, at least in the kind of zooming out perspective in the front end of the curve, which is what we happen to like the most, the two-year yield, we think should, arguably find itself stuck below 4. The five year yield, anytime it's above 420 is a good buying signal to us, because longer term we still expect the curve to steepen, whether that's a combination of what the Fed ends up doing, as Patricia just discussed, or some of those issues that are further out the curve there leading to volatility in longer-end rates. When it comes to spreads, I briefly referenced it, but credit spreads really across almost every asset class are back to around their median level.

So that's, over the long term that's a fine entry point. Importantly to those Treasury yields we just walk through when you bolt them on to spreads, create a relatively high, all-in yield that has historically been quite predictive of your total return. So that's an attractive time to be a total return investor, an all-in yield investor, because rates have the potential to cushion from further spread widening risk.

But as I also said earlier, I think, decompression is a theme. Saying higher quality is likely going to be a good way or safe way to go because volatility is here to stay.

Jay Diamond: So how are you approaching execution of portfolio strategy? And you manage a number of different strategies within our products. But in general, how are you approaching, for example, risk appetite.

Steve Brown: From a credit perspective, still neutral relative to benchmark or our history, although we've been adding over the last couple of weeks in the sell off, but we're not at points where we want to be materially overweight. From a duration perspective, as I just started to outline, we are biased for a steeper curve and broadly for yields to retrace from what are close to the recent highs as we sit here today.

And then leaving liquidity in your portfolio, lagging into positioning. So if we're at 50 and eventually we want to get to 100, you know, on incremental moves in risk assets, making an incremental addition to the portfolio makes sense to us. And then monetizing this volatility, an asset class that we've historically not liked, given it was often very crowded or even manipulated, if you will, from kind of large structural buyers is agency mortgages, where you're essentially selling a call on a bond portfolio and taking in a lot of current income and yield to do that.

And so there are safe places to hide out, click a coupon, and wait for more extreme levels to take a much bigger step into credit if they come and if they don't, based on where we've reset to, there are some really interesting and attractive all-in yields across the credit landscape.

Jay Diamond: In addition to agency RMBS, any other sectors you want to call out?

Steve Brown: We've had the securitized credit, structured credit versus corporates tilt really for about a year and a half, looking for those spreads to compress. And we've done that in pretty high quality underlying subsectors within CLOs and commercial ABS. We're doing a little bit less of that now, adding more into corporate credit. Even if you just look at big six banks other high-quality financials, I mean, spreads are close to the wides that we've seen in the last couple of years.

Higher quality, short duration, high yield look looks pretty attractive. You've actually finally seen some weakness in the loan market. Structurally, we like high yield over loans in general. Don't anticipate that changing. Mostly that's, quality tilt and a relative pricing per unit of credit risk tilt, and so all of the above kind of a continuation of the existing themes, but more of a corporate bias versus securitize when you look back at our positioning over the last six to 12 months.

Jay Diamond: Patricia, are there any other factors that you're looking at right now that we haven't discussed that are on the radar of the macro team?

Patricia Zobel: One thing that we'll be watching in coming months to really assess the extent of the downturn that we might see is the sentiment data. Sentiment by some measures is the lowest it's been in decades. Certainly, the University of Michigan survey last week showed that. But you have to generally be careful with sentiment data. It doesn't always lead to an actual pullback in spending or investment. And this was particularly true during the pandemic when consumers were challenged by inflation and sentiment readings were really poor but the job growth was strong, so they kept spending. So, what I would say is that the deterioration in sentiment this time is a little bit broader. So, it might be sending a stronger signal. The Michigan expectations for employment are actually much worse than they were during the 22 period, and the lowest since the global financial crisis. And so those are the things that we're going to be watching really carefully in coming months, to what extent those indicators translate into the hard data.

Jay Diamond: And, Steve, same question for you. What kinds of things that we haven't really touched on are you and your team thinking about a lot nowadays?

Steve Brown: Yeah, especially in light of the last couple of weeks of volatility is market depth, market functioning, market liquidity, even in, more traditionally stable markets, funding markets, the rates, markets, FX, as Patricia referenced, you need those to be functioning in order for the rest of the capital markets to function in an orderly fashion. And so, so far, everything's held up. And if it didn't there, you know, there are certainly levers that policymakers can pull. But that's where we've been spending a lot of time, particularly with our trading organization.

Jay Diamond: So bonus question for both of you. The dollar's very weak. We've been reading about investor appetite for what would typically be a flight to safety kind of asset to U.S. treasuries. Do you see any real change in investor sentiment that is worrying you in any way?

Steve Brown: So far in our franchise, no. Flows have been very orderly across the industry. You did start to see some outflows last week in some ETFs, some credit ETFs, but that was absorbed fine by the rest of the market participants. I think what you're getting at is a bigger trillion-dollar question, particularly for foreign holdings of U.S. assets. And so far the evidence is not there that there's been any significant repositioning. 

But I think when you look at moving the dollar and you converse that with the counter trend move in yields, you know, obviously the market is unclear, you know, as to what this means longer term. But when it comes to the view on the dollar now that's certainly become a more resounding negative view. So we're mindful right now, in these times of a volatility, of trying to fit a narrative around a two-week pricing move and then acknowledging that policy can certainly change from but after we think it is today because each one of us doesn't have one firm answer on what exactly it is today.

But those are certainly things that bear watching and potentially have some negative headwinds when you think about dollar demand. But there's as we let off, we were talking before this call started, you know, there's a dearth of investable assets out there. The dollar is the reserve currency of the world. These are big, slow-moving themes, but they're leading to a lot of near-term volatility and market indigestion. But time will tell.

Jay Diamond: Joshua, anything you want to add on that?

Patricia Zobel: Well, the only thing I would add is that for many years the U.S. has received strong inflows from abroad, in part related to trade deficits, but also related to a belief in long term underlying U.S. growth. And I think the foundations for the US economy are still there. We have a highly productive business sector. We have deep and liquid financial markets that offer, as Steve said, one of the best places to invest your money.

And so I don't think some of the underlying foundations for the support of flows of investments into the U.S. are yet eroding. I do think that people's near-term outlook for the U.S. has changed, and that could be something that's influencing that. And over the course of the year, we could see a real stabilization in policy. And so it remains to be seen how investors abroad are going to adjust their portfolios longer term. These are typically slow-moving adjustments by investors that have maybe been a little bit overweight the U.S. for some time.

Jay Diamond: Well, thank you all. So much for your time. Great to hear your point of view on these things. Patricia, if you could leave one main takeaway for our listeners, what would that be?

Patricia Zobel: I would say in 2025, expect the unexpected. Certainly, we've seen that coming into the year. As Steve said, volatility coming out of the policy realm was the theme of ours for 2025, and I think it's exceeded our expectations. We're seeing slower growth ahead and rising prices, but we're also mindful that the policy environment is still very fluid.

Jay Diamond: Steve, Patricia had the first word. You get the last word. Final thoughts.

Steve Brown: Thank you. Diversification is a great attribute when thinking about broader asset allocation or more specifically to portfolio strategy, particularly in light of all this volatility. So, I wouldn't get too concerned with specific entry points, but try to keep a balanced approach, and one that focuses on the medium- and longer-term attributes of any given investment.

And thank you to everyone for joining and for your continued support and partnership. Please reach out to us at any time for any needs.

Jay Diamond: Well, thank you again for your time, Steve and Patricia. We look forward to visiting with you again soon. And thanks to all of you who have joined us for our podcast. If you like what you're hearing, please rate us five stars because that helps people find us. If you have any questions for Steve, Patricia, or any of our other podcast guests, please send them to Macro Markets at Guggenheiminvestments.com and we'll do our best to answer them on a future up episode or offline. I'm Jay Diamond. We look forward to gathering again for the next episode of Macro Markets with Guggenheim Investments. In the meantime, for more of our thought leadership, please visit us at Guggenheim investments.com/perspectives. So long.
 

Important Notices and Disclosures

Investing involves risks, including the possible loss of principal. Stock markets can be volatile. Investments in securities of small and medium capitalization companies may involve greater risk of loss and more abrupt fluctuations in market price than investments in larger companies. The market value of fixed-income securities will change in response to interest rate changes in market conditions, among other things, investments in fixed-income instruments are subject to the possibility that interest rates could rise, causing their value to decline.

High yield securities present more liquidity and credit risk than investment grade bonds, and may be subject to greater volatility. Structured credit, including asset backed securities or ABS, mortgage backed securities and closer complex investments, are not suitable for all investors. Investors in structured credit generally receive payments that apart interest in part return of principal. These payments may vary based on the rate loans are repaid.

Some structured credit investments may have structures that make their reaction to interest rates and other factors difficult to predict, making their prices volatile and subject to liquidity and valuation risk. Close bear similar risks to investing in loans directly, including credit risk, interest rate risk, counterparty risk, and prepayment risk. Loans are often below investment grade, may be unrated, and typically offer a fixed or floating interest rate.

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FEATURED PERSPECTIVES

April 08, 2025

Notes on Tariff Turbulence

Update on our macro and market outlook following announcement of new tariff and trade policies.

March 25, 2025

Don’t Let Policy Volatility Overshadow Market Opportunity

Long-term signals are positive for fixed income.

February 19, 2025

Reframing Tight Spreads in Leveraged Credit

Adjusting spreads for fundamental factors.  


Macro Markets


Tune in to Macro Markets to hear the top minds of Guggenheim Investments offer timely analysis on financial market trends. Guests include portfolio managers, fixed income sector heads, members of the Macroeconomic and Investment Research Group, and more.








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