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It’s a common motto among investors: Cash is trash. But Oksana Aronov, head of market strategy, alternative fixed income at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, says not so fast. “I’ve been hearing about investors losing money sitting in cash, and that cash is trash for as long as I’ve been in this industry,” she said on this week’s episode of “What Goes Up.” “But the reality is that if you have been in cash for the last five years, you’ve essentially outperformed the Bloomberg Barclays aggregate index year to date, over one year, three years, and, depending on the day, yes, even five years.” Aronov says that risks are currently skewed to the downside, and that she and her team prefer to have a lot of liquidity in their portfolio because “it serves as a free option, essentially, on any asset class in the world.” Opportunities will come by, perhaps in the coming months. “For us, this is still a capital-preservation part of the cycle, although I think we’re closer to the end of it than we were a couple months ago.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fiona Cincotta, senior financial markets analyst at City Index in London, joined this week’s “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss what she expects in markets, especially as US investors brace for what some say is the increasing potential for recession. “I think a ‘soft landing’ is optimistic—we’ll put it that way,” Cincotta says, adding that she puts the probability of a downturn in the near future at more than 50%. However, the still-hot American jobs market could ease the sting of any economic contraction. “It could be that the jobs market is actually the saving grace for the US economy,” she says. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Anastasia Amoroso, the chief investment strategist at iCapital, joined the latest episode of “What Goes Up” to discuss the market volatility that followed the US Federal Reserve’s interest-rate hike and how hedge funds are attracting client interest again after years of languishing in the bull market.  “In this environment, where nothing seems to be working, investors are looking for something that is—and right now that is in the hedge fund space,” she says.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s a market environment that Alanis Morissette could write a verse about. Any positive upcoming US economic data may very well receive a poor reaction in the stock market, since it could embolden the Federal Reserve to continue its aggressive campaign to tame inflation. Anthony Saglimbene, global markets strategist at Ameriprise Financial, joined the latest episode of “What Goes Up” to discuss how to navigate a market where good news is bad news again. Isn’t it ironic? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Wenting Shen, an analyst and portfolio manager at Harding Loevener, is traveling through China while navigating the country’s strict Covid-zero policies, visiting executives at the companies she covers to see how they’re faring. She joins the latest episode of “What Goes Up” to discuss what she’s learned on her trip, and how Covid-19 and the trade war begun by Donald Trump have altered China’s economy. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Victoria Greene, founding partner and chief investment officer at Texas-based G Squared Private Wealth, joined the latest episode of “What Goes Up” to discuss the mood of clients and why she thinks the 2022 market selloff isn’t over yet. “Not to sound like a snob, but I need a solid panic,” she says. “We just haven’t seen that solid, absolute capitulation—everything selling off. We aren’t there yet.”  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daniel Yergin was at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2013 when he got a daunting request: Could he pose the first question from the audience to Vladimir Putin? “I started to ask a question, I mentioned the word ‘shale,’” he recalls, referring to a once-unconventional source of oil and natural gas that by then was flowing freely in the US “And he started shouting at me, saying shale’s barbaric.” Yergin, the vice chairman of S&P Global, discussed the incident on the latest episode of “What Goes Up,” along with other insights from his book “The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations.” American shale oil and gas has had a much bigger impact on geopolitics than people recognize, Yergin said. Even in 2013, it posed a threat to Putin in two ways: “One, because it meant that US natural gas would compete with his natural gas in Europe, and that’s what we’re seeing today. And secondly, this would really augment America’s position in the world and give it a kind of flexibility it didn’t have when it was importing 60% of its oil.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As the Federal Reserve’s efforts to tame inflation roil both stocks and bonds, investors everywhere are struggling to figure out the best way to play defense in markets amid concerns that a recession is on the horizon. One of the top executives at Goldman Sachs Asset Management has a surprising idea: Beyoncé. Katie Koch, the chief investment officer for public equities at GSAM, quips that “Beyoncé is ultimately recession-resistant” and so are other popular artists. That’s why the portfolios she helps oversee own shares of live-concert companies in the U.S. and Europe. While Live Nation Entertainment Inc. got hit hard during last year’s Covid-19 lockdowns, she points out that the company actually weathered the previous recession well and managed to grow revenue in both 2008 and 2009. “So the consumer will spend in a recession,” she says, but “they'll be quite selective in terms what they spend on.” Another example is beauty products, she adds. And Koch doesn’t buy the notion that China is uninvestable: “You can buy assets here in the US as well as assets in China that are overly discounted for something that we know is eventually going to work out, which is that the economy will reopen” Koch joined this this week’s episode of the “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss the state of play in markets and why -- despite share prices that have crashed over the past year -- investing in innovative companies is still a good idea for the long term.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s effort to tame inflation with aggressive interest-rate hikes has some investors worried that a recession is inevitable, leading to a plunge in stock prices this year. Not so fast, says Jeremy Zirin, senior portfolio manager and head of private client U.S. equities at UBS Asset Management. Zirin joined the latest episode of What Goes Up to discuss his outlook for markets and the economy, and why he thinks the probability of a soft landing and longer expansion is higher than many believe.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan famously used the phrase “irrational exuberance” to describe the euphoric investor sentiment that sent tech stocks soaring in the late 1990s. And everyone knows what happened next, when that exuberance wore off. Now, history is repeating itself when it comes to some of the disruptive and innovative companies that were market darlings during the lockdown phase of the pandemic, but have since been clobbered by a “dose of realism,” according to Aoifinn Devitt, chief investment officer at Moneta Group Investment Advisors. Devitt joined this week’s “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss this and other hot topics in markets, such as inflation, rates and the outlook for consumer spending. It’s not all bad news for the disrupters of the corporate world, however. They’re still darlings of venture capital markets and, she adds, “I don't think that our fascination and our obsession with innovation is likely to go away anytime soon.” See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Investors have a lot to worry about: Russia’s war on Ukraine, inflation, Covid-19 and China’s lockdowns reigniting supply-chain woes— the list goes on. As a result, many money managers have ratcheted down their expectations for stock returns this year. But what if fears of a possible U.S. recession are overblown, and the second half turns out better than expected? Given still-strong earnings from corporate America, things may not end up as bad as some are predicting. Sylvia Jablonski, chief executive and co-founder of Defiance ETFs, joins this week’s episode of What Goes Up to talk about a potentially rosier future.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s been difficult for even the most-seasoned veterans to discern a market message right now. Oil’s up one day and stocks fall. The next day, crude prices rise and so do stocks. Or bonds rally, and so do equities, and then the reverse happens just a few days later. Peter van Dooijeweert, managing director of multi-asset solutions at Man Group, joined this week's "What Goes Up" podcast to talk about that and the right asset classes to be in as the Federal Reserve continues its fight against inflation. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.