Could Trump’s tariffs push China to the brink and trigger the next global crisis? In this must-watch conversation, market strategist Ed Yardeni joins James Connor to break down the explosive mix of politics, policy, and market volatility shaping 2025. Yardeni explains why he believes U.S. stocks may have already bottomed, why gold is back in favor, and how Trump’s trade agenda could have massive unintended consequences, including rising tension with China and the risk of conflict over Taiwan.
Yardeni unpacks:
- Why April’s lows may mark the bottom for U.S. equities
- Why today’s extreme fear may be a contrarian buy signal
- How Trump’s tariff policy could spark geopolitical shockwaves
- Why China-Taiwan tensions are heating up
- The legal battles challenging Trump’s trade authority
- Why central banks (and Yardeni) are now backing gold
- His revised S&P 500 target and earnings forecast for 2025
- The emotional swing from American exceptionalism to global pessimism
- Whether we’re headed for a recession or something worse
- How North American energy dominance could provide a long-term edge
Yardeni also weighs in on warnings from Ray Dalio, the actions of Warren Buffett, and the lawsuits that could reshape Trump’s tariffs. This is a must-watch if you want a balanced, data-driven perspective on what’s really driving markets in 2025.
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Ed Yardeni 0:00
Everybody’s very, very bearish pessimism is about as rampant as I’ve ever seen it at the bottoms of most bear markets. I mean, just on a sentiment basis alone, from a contrarian perspective, this is a great opportunity to buy stocks. I Ed,
James Connor 0:24
thank you very much for joining us today. How are things in Long Island? Very nice. Thank you. Spring is coming. Yes. Finally, one of the things I love about the financial markets is that they’re always in flux, and sometimes when you have finance, economics and politics meet up, there’s a lot of destruction. And we’ve seen that in the last few weeks, stocks, bonds, the dollar, all got hit pretty hard. And I want to get your view on each asset class, and I want to start with the s, p, it topped out at 6100 earlier this year. Went all the way down to 4900 now it’s hanging around 5400 it’s had a nice little recovery year. In the last few days, the VIX also got up to 60. It’s now hanging around 30. What’s your take on the s, p, here. Do you buy
Ed Yardeni 1:09
it? Yeah. Well, you know, I’m I guess it’s hard not to change one’s mind as often as the president of the united states, states changes his mind. But I am of the opinion that this has been essentially a correction the S, p5, 100. It’s been a bear market in the s in the NASDAQ, but doesn’t last very long. I think we did make a low in the stock market on April 8. So the next day, April 9, is when the President pivoted and postponed most of the retaliatory tariff, except for the ones on China. And the market had a tremendous rebound. So I think the 4900 and the s&p 500 made the low. If you were smart enough to get out on February 19 and back on April 8, then you’re real smart, but it’s been a wicked sell off, obviously mostly related to the tariff issue, but clearly related also to things like uncertainty about AI capital spending. So there’s a lot going on. So
James Connor 2:25
you think we’ve put a low end on the S P, what’s your target on the S P, for 2025
Ed Yardeni 2:31
Well, I started out very optimistic. I think a lot of us did. Maybe we kind of focused on the positives of Trump’s policy agenda, and turned out that the negative tariff is what he’s really started out with. But I started out the year at 7000 on the S, p5, 100 by the end of the year, and I then lowered it a few weeks ago to 6400 then a few, and then about a week after that, to 6000 so I still think the market has upside from here, but it’s basically a flat year. When you look at it on a year over year over year basis, sometimes flat is good. That would be very nice, compared to, compared to the alternatives that people are coming up with.
James Connor 3:18
And so your target is 6000 What is your earnings multiple?
Ed Yardeni 3:23
Well, I’m at this point, I’m using for earnings. I’m using 260 this year, and then next year. I think it’ll be a better year with 300 and then so I think by the end of the year, the market will be looking ahead into next year. Think the market will be discounting 300 and I put a 20 multiple on that, so that’s 6000 and I think the the multiple can can, in fact, rebound in that’s my kind of best case scenario. And it could be worse than that, obviously, if we get a recession, if we get a trade war that continues to escalate, so a lot could go wrong, but that’s why best case scenario.
James Connor 4:06
So q1 numbers have just started, and it’s going to be interesting to see these companies report here. But recently, we’ve seen a number of broker dealers report. Goldman Sachs came out with their biggest quarter ever in the history of the company, $4.2 billion in q1 if you can believe that, we also saw similar numbers, or very strong trading numbers out of Morgan Stanley, they were up 45% year over year. JP, Morgan was up 48% year over year. And it’s kind of ironic, because the administration wanted to make Main Street wealthy again. But what they’ve in fact, done is make Wall Street wealthy even more correct.
Ed Yardeni 4:45
Yeah, that’s absolutely correct. Anyways, the whole idea of focusing on Wall Street rather than on Main Street, is a strange idea, because 60% of Americans do have exposure to the stock market. They are invested. And there’s a lot of people that aren’t rich, this middle class or even lower incomes, and many of them are exposed through 401, K’s. A lot of people own equities through mutual funds or directly. The fact is, Wall Street and Main Street are tied at the hip. They both tend to do well at the same time and do poorly at the same time, just that the stock market tends to anticipate where we go next. Right now, you could argue that the market isn’t looking particularly bright for for Main Street, but the market looks ahead. And I think right now the market is kind of seeing a slower economy going into the second half of the year. But then I think once the market starts to look into two at 2026 you’ll see the market heading higher. The only question is when that will be, and I think we need to probably get through the next 90 days and see whether along the way, all these tariffs that were postponed will, in fact, be negotiated away. But of course, the big one will be the question about the tariff war with China. We clearly need to see that that gets better, not worse. Right now it’s getting worse. So
James Connor 6:21
let’s talk. I want to touch on the bond market now, and bonds have also gotten pounded in the last couple of weeks. The yield on the 10 years gone from a low of 390 to a high of 460 right now it’s around 430 What are your thoughts on bonds in here? Do you buy them or sell them? Yeah,
Ed Yardeni 6:36
I think you hold them. They’re not screaming buys here, but I think four and a half percent is probably the you’re probably gonna earn the coupon over the next 12 to 24 months. I don’t think you’re gonna make a lot of money. I think don’t think you’re gonna lose a lot of money. Of course, the 10 year bond has a lot of competition from shorter maturities. They’re yielding three and a half to 4% so you can get a pretty good yield in the short end. But I’ve been arguing that the bond is where it should be, that it’s four and a half percent is kind of the right level, maybe plus minus 25 basis points. The idea is that the bond yield is normalized. It was abnormally low from 2008 to 2022 because of the way the central bank, the Fed, was pegging the Fed funds rate at zero and then up to push the bond yield down to abnormally low levels. Now that that whole quantitative easing experiment is behind us. I think that the bond deal is going to be around here, which is where it was for several years before the great financial crisis. And kind of adds up to, I don’t know, two, two and a quarter percent on the tips, the tips yield, and two, two and a quarter percent on the expected inflation. So roughly around four and a half percent makes sense to me. And
James Connor 8:09
the Treasury Department wants to get interest rates as low as possible. They have to finance ten trillion with debt this year, so it’s imperative they try to get this, these interest rates down. And I guess one way to do that is to slow this economy down, maybe through these tariffs. Who knows. But what are your thoughts on that? Are they going to be able to get these interest rates lower than where they currently are?
Ed Yardeni 8:32
Well, there are conspiracy theories out there that say that the Trump administration is actually trying to engineer a recession. I mean, politically, that will be suicidal, because, you know, recessions aren’t that easy to fine tune. I mean, I guess ideally they’d like to have a recession that starts now and ends by well before the end of the year, so maybe by by October, and then the economy recovers just in time for the midterm elections. I mean, that’s ridiculous. They’re not going to be able to, you know, engineer that kind of scenario, and they’re taking a huge risk that they’re going to lose the midterm so all this, you know, excitement about what Trump has been able to accomplish, and all the executive orders that’s going to come to a screech and halt if the Republicans lose their majorities in the House and the Senate, Trump could get impeached again. That that’s what the Democrats would love to do all over again. So this, this attempt to implement the Trump 2.0 agenda could really come apart if, in fact, they have a recession. Politically, they should have started with it, with the happy stuff, with an extension of the tax cuts, with deregulation, with some cutback. In government’s spending and kind of won the midterm, and then move on the tariffs, and along the way, prepare for the tariff issues. I mean, they just kind of naively set a very high tariff on China, figuring the Chinese would immediately fold. And the Chinese didn’t immediately fold it. Quite the opposite. They raised the ante on the whole thing recently, blocking exports of rare earths to the United States, which is important for our defense and and so on. I guess I just saw some news that they’re not going to be buying Boeing jets. So there are, there are unintended consequences. When you do something this consequential.
James Connor 10:52
Well, I think when it comes to the Chinese we, we in the West, always forget how patient they are, because we always think like month to month or quarter to quarter, and they’re thinking 1020, 30 years old.
Ed Yardeni 11:04
So yeah, more thinking midterm to midterm is really, you know, mid midterm to election. Midterm to election and mix is very short sighted. But I think our system is a great system. I like checks and balances. Prefer the freedom here than freedom than the lack of freedom in China. And I think we really need to go all the way on kind of letting the entrepreneurial capitalist spirit, you know, carry us forward and help us to out compete the Chinese. We’ll see how this one plays out. The administration, as much as it’s in favor of deregulation, is certainly telling a lot of businesses what they can and can’t do. Yeah, so,
James Connor 11:51
because you brought up conspiracy theories, I got to ask you about China, because they hold $720 billion in US Treasuries, and and I guess there’s a lot of there’s a narrative out there right now that they are purposely selling or dumping their bonds and their treasuries to move interest rates higher. What are your thoughts on that?
Ed Yardeni 12:15
I think that’s just a possibility. Nobody knows for sure. There’s no, no no way to really know they also have, they probably have more treasuries than the one the number you just said, because the data is collected by the Treasury, and we have data on what China holds directly, but apparently they have some stealth accounts in some of the European banking centers, And so we really don’t know what, what their position is in the in the in the Treasury securities or in the dollar. We do know that the price of gold has been going up consistently. And there, there’s data showing that the Chinese are, in fact, the Chinese government and central bank are buying more gold. So presumably, they’re either doing it with money that in the past might have been invested in treasuries, or else they’re just outright selling treasuries and buying gold. But it’s it’s plausible, especially now that you know Trump has gone full bore on the tariffs, a lot of things are plausible. Hate to say it, but it actually increases the chances that China might invade Taiwan, because back in the campaign, Trump was asked by the Wall Street Journal, what’s what’s your position vis a vis Taiwan, will you defend them militarily? Said, No, I’m probably not going to have to do that, because President Xi knows me. I know him, and he knows that I’m blank, blank, blank, crazy. And he then said, besides, if they invade Taiwan, then I’ll just put a tax on them. I’ll put a tariff 150 150% to 200% Well, you know, for a guy who likes to say that he’s got all the cards, he just played his card with regards to Taiwan, and the kind of, kind of wondering what the mainland Chinese now is, is holding them back from invading Taiwan now that he’s played his tariff card with regards to to touch to China. So it’s it’s unsettling, yeah, I think a lot of these issues will be resolved in the next six to 12 months. I still think that the market made a low. People often forget that. You know, we know when Pearl Harbor happened, and the stock market obviously took continue to decline. Even before that it was declining, but a few months later, it made a lower when the US succeeded in Midway so. Um, we could have more geopolitical turbulence here. We could retest the the low. But I would hang on. I’m not telling people to load up here, but I am telling those who kind of been with me and in arguing that it was a bull market since November of 2022 I kind of I’d stick with it. Yes,
James Connor 15:23
you you bring up an interesting point about Taiwan, because if that were to happen, the the consequences would be devastating. And as a reminder to our viewers, Taiwan producers, produces 90% of advanced semiconductors, regardless of who you are, where you are in the world, if you need an advanced semiconductor, you have to go through Taiwan. You know, I could only imagine a company like Nvidia, they actually don’t produce anything. They only design everything’s produced in Taiwan. That company would go to zero,
Ed Yardeni 15:53
yeah, well, that’s why it has been encouraging. I mean, the Trump administration has countered the criticism by saying that they’re a tough love here, they’re bullying, they’re blustering. Has, in fact, brought companies to pledge to say that they will be investing more in the United States. And Nvidia, just yesterday, announced that they’re going to spend a half a trillion dollars and building an AI supercomputer facility in Texas. But these things take, take time. That’s why, you know, I would have preferred to see this tariff card played after the midterms, after they get themselves what they need to to just keep, keep going with their their policies, but it looks like they’re not playing it. I mean, I don’t understand why, why they’re playing it the way they are.
James Connor 16:50
Well, even a company like Apple, 90% of their iPhone production is in China. Like, yeah, that that’s another company that would be destroyed. Yeah. Well,
Ed Yardeni 16:59
again, everything depends on how long these things last. And let’s not forget that I think, I mean, it’s even everything’s controversial here. I think China is more vulnerable to this tariff war than is the United States. We’ll see if that’s we may very well see if that’s correct. Their economy is, is not in good shape. They have a tremendous amount of debt. Their property market is a disaster. They have a huge negative wealth effect in in real estate. And I mean, there could even be some political backlash in in China, with people wondering why this all had to happen. Why did President Xi, you know, basically pick a fight with the United States? You know, it’s probably its most important customer. And you know, if this was all about Taiwan, is it really worth it? If this is all about being the number one Imperial superpower, you know, is that really going to be accomplished? So there’s, there’s a lot of moving parts
James Connor 18:10
here. And so we’ve talked about the stock market, the bond market. Let’s, I want to get your views now on the US dollar, um, if you look at the D, x, y, it is up. It was up 7% in 2024 it’s now down 7% in 2025 Do you think the US dollar keeps falling?
Ed Yardeni 18:30
Well, I think you put it in the right perspective here, it’s been range bound. Really. It’s been just kind of trading sideways for the past year and a half or so. So just because we’re at the bottom end of the range doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re just going to free fall from here. And as you know, a lot of the money that’s not going into the dollar is going into the euro. Like there’s something really positive happening over in Europe, their economy is struggling. Their demographics are much worse than ours, much more geriatric. Their immigration problem is much worse. Their social clash of civilization is certainly much worse. So at some point here, I think people are I think that people are overdoing it. We’ve gone from American exceptionalism making the front cover of The Economist in October to right now, if you ask anybody for America’s exceptional, said no way. But I think we’re just kind of got a lot of emotional mood swings. Go, go on, going on here, and I think, I think that I don’t see the dollar taking a dive from here.
James Connor 19:46
I recently saw an interview with Ray Dalio. He’s very concerned about the economy, and he thinks it’s on the brink of a recession. And he said it could be something much worse than a recession. But what are your views on the. Economy here, the Fed cut their growth rates last month from 2.1 down to 1.7 Do you have any concerns on the economy? Do you see it going into a recession, or does it just look,
Ed Yardeni 20:11
look, I tend to be an optimist, but I have to be a realist. At the end of the day, it’s not, it’s not kind of personality traits that make success, it’s it’s kind of being in the stock market. It’s being objective and and realistic. So you really want to keep your personality out of your investing, if you can. And you certainly want to keep your politics and your religion and anything else that just kind of doesn’t help you make make money or avoid losing money in the market. I mean, Ray Dalio is smart guy. Made a lot of money. He’s he’s a billionaire, so you can’t, it’s hard to argue with a billionaire. But there are a lot of these billionaires going around that have been talking doom and gloom for quite some time. I don’t get it. Do they want to keep the rest of us from becoming billionaires? I mean, you have to be have some optimism, I think, unless you’re really brilliant at shorting things left and right. But, I mean, who’s kidding? Who he’s talking about a depression he’s talking about the 1930s all over again. He’s talking about, you know, people not buying our bonds, and the dollar taking a dive and and just a calamitous situation. You know, I’m not telling you that the that his scenario has got no likelihood. It’s actually looks more likely now because of the tariffs, I I’m not there. I’m I’m not even there, that we’re going to definitely have a recession. I think the economy is going to was remarkably resilient for the past three years. I was one of the few economist strategists that that predicted that the economy would be resilient, wouldn’t have a recession. I was early on and calling the the bull market. But maybe I’m due to be wrong here, and maybe I’m missing the obvious. It’s, it’s, you know, everybody’s very, very bearish pessimism is about as rampant as I’ve ever seen it at the bottoms of most bear markets. I mean, just on a sentiment basis alone, from a contrarian perspective, this is a great opportunity to buy stocks and look, you know, April 2 was Liberation Day. The next two days, April 3 and fourth were annihilation days, where people’s portfolios got annihilated. And then April 9, it was like nevermind, and you got back 10% of what you lost, and we’re still in correction territory in both the S and p5 100 and the NASDAQ. And again, I’m not telling you, we’re not going to retest the lows of April 8. But I do think those were the lows. You may get another opportunity to buy at those lows. But you know, to really short the market, or to just get get out of the market, you’re taking a risk, the same risk you kind of we all saw on April 9, if Trump declares victory over the next 90 days, and he gets pieces of paper from, you know, 60 to 90 countries saying, We will agree to behave ourselves on trade, and he can say, well, you know, I’ve got all these countries that are agreeing with us. And then, you know, starts the healing process. Then, you know, stock market could rebound dramatically. So it’s a tough market to really be out of. And to short, given that it’s kind of all up to the to the decisions of one person, but that one person talks to a lot of people, and he he can be influenced. He does. He certainly doesn’t want a depression. I mean, we saw that on April 9, when he said that he confessed, he said that he was worried about the bond market. And, you know, he’s he, and some people told him that it could be recession or much worse. And he basically said, that’s not what he wants. So put it all together, and I think, you know, we’re all kind of in this. We’re all in this together with Donald Trump, changing the giving us these mood swings, we all have to get neck braces here, because, you know, you can really twist your neck here with the volatility in the markets mostly related to what President Trump is, is tweeting on social, on social media,
James Connor 24:47
yeah, and he got a lot of pushback from a lot of his big supporters, Jamie, Dimon, Larry, Fink, Bill Ackman, all came out, all
Ed Yardeni 24:57
the Silicon Valley people. Certainly not happy with with any of this. Yeah,
James Connor 25:02
even Elon Musk came up and he was quite derogatory about Peter navero. He was the architect behind the whole tariff and trade program. Called them dumber than a sack of bricks. Yeah? Well, then he came out, apologized against the bricks. Yeah.
Ed Yardeni 25:18
I, I agree with that. It, you know, I mean, this is a guy who wrote a book and cited as an expert a guy by the name of Ron varo, which turned out to be a non existent person. The name came, came from Ron Navarro. So he, he made it up, and he said this, like, this guy’s an expert. It’s like, I mean, he shouldn’t be even working in the government, just just for that alone. So
James Connor 25:47
your view, you’re more like Warren Buffet. Never bet against America. Never
Ed Yardeni 25:52
bet against America. And I know people tell me that our brand has been destroyed. And you know, everybody’s going to turn away from from America. But, you know, time heals, heals all wounds. And Trump has created a lot of wounds with the allies, certainly with with Canada and almost all of them needlessly. So especially with Canada and Mexico, was they worked at a, you know, both countries worked out trade agreements with us before, and if, if they needed to be worked on some more that could have been done quietly. On the other hand, that Trump likes, like, likes, like likes to go, you know, get the headlines. And it did work with Mexico that the tariffs about closing the borders, certainly, the Mexican Mexicans responded to that rather, rather quickly. I don’t really understand the auto tariffs. I mean, they they clearly are hurting Canada. And wouldn’t you know it? The President backed off on that and said that he knows it’s going to take the auto industry a little bit longer to figure out how to make things that we make in Canada for our cars and in Mexico. So it’s all it’s all in flux. And in order to kind of stay sane and rational and all this, I think you have to kind of, you know, what do you what do you really believe in? Do you believe that this is all really going to destroy the US economy, the global economy that you know countries aren’t the United States isn’t going to trade with the rest of the world. I mean, you know that the the areas of American exceptionalism, like, like our capital markets, like the size of our country, the real the assets that we have, including oil and gas. Yeah, I put that together with what Canada has in Mexico, and we kind of rule the world when it comes to to energy. So I think a lot of these things are going to going to last look. I’ve learned over the years, maybe it’s not going to work now, but I’ve learned over the years, it’s kind of my mantra is, look how well the US economy and stock markets have done over the years despite Washington. So that to me, Washington, to a large extent, tends to be annoying noise. Now it’s particularly noisy, but this, this too shall pass. And look, we already have some companies filing lawsuits in court against the Trump administration, claiming rightly that these tariffs were imposed with bogus legislative authority, that there probably isn’t any legislative authority to a large extent, and that if that’s if the courts rule that’s the case, then a lot of this, a lot of these tariff issues, will disappear, and the Trump administration will have to come up with some other ways, maybe kinder, gentler ways, to influence things Look. Another thing to keep in perspective is Trump’s background is a New York City commercial real estate developer. And when they when these commercial real estate developers get together with each other to negotiate deals or with unions or politicians, they do it behind closed doors, and they scream at each other, they bully each other, they threaten each other. They it’s not it’s not pretty, from what I understand. And then they come to a deal, and they both come out of the room. Doors open, they they’re smiling, shaking hands, maybe even have their hands around each each other’s shoulders and saying, you know, where we came up with a great deal for both of us, and they’re all happy, as can be. The difference is, is all this is under the Trump administration is being done in public. It’s not pretty to see or hear, but at the end, the goal is to get at the. That makes everybody happy and everybody smile. So I wouldn’t give up on that possibility.
James Connor 30:05
So a couple of points, I agree with you, 100% it’s the men and the women that get up every day and they go to work and bust their humps to pay for the rent and put food on the table, and that’s what makes your country, my country, great. It has nothing to do with the politicians. But the one point I would push back on is that governments and politicians, they can implement policies that can destroy countries. And again, Argentina comes to mind. You know, 100 125, years ago, if you were coming from Europe, you had to make a decision, where do I want to go? The US or Argentina? And because it used to be a great country, and then you got this socialist government in there, and they’ve totally destroyed it. The same thing happened in Venezuela. It was one of the great, strongest countries in South America, massive resources, oil, gold, so and so much more. And once again, you got this socialist government, and they’ve just destroyed that economy. And even to a lesser extent. In Canada, we have a Liberal government here for the last 10 years, and we have an election coming up here later this month. But under this liberal government, because they were pushing social policies as opposed to economic policies, our economy grew by 1.5% over those 10 years, at the same time, the US was growing at two and a half percent. And if you look at the GDP per capita, it’s significantly lower, correct? So you know, governments can do a lot of damage.
Ed Yardeni 31:31
They can do a lot of damage. And as you said, you don’t have to go to Argentina to get a historical analogy. Maybe more relevant right now is the smooth Holly tariff that was passed in June 1930 that I think caused the Great Depression. I did a lot of work on this, so there is a unfortunate sense of deja vu all over again, but then again, I think that the Great Depression serves as a very loud warning, very strong warning, against going down that road. That doesn’t mean that our stupid politicians couldn’t do something stupid. And so you’re right. It’s quite, quite conceivable. I mean, if you think we’re going down that road that you don’t want to be in the stock market, probably don’t want to be in anything other than gold. And right now, gold certainly acting as a an asset that stands out from all the rest. And I’ve I’ve never been a gold bug. I’ve never recommended gold because I’m an old fashioned strategist. I need dividends, I need earnings. I need coupon I need rent something that I can do a present discounted value on. But gold has actually been a kind of almost a no brainer, ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, the United States froze Russia’s assets and the central banks of countries that don’t get along with us, like Russia, like China, Iran, Venezuela, and maybe others, decided, You know what, let’s let’s just buy more gold and lighten up on on the dollar, and maybe even other other currencies. So gold looks like a natural winner here, and I’ve been recommending that you use it as sort of a good way to balance off a portfolio. So if you got stocks and bonds, you I think certainly also want to have some gold in there, in the event that I’m just dead wrong and things just spin out of control. I mean, I’ve been wrong before, but not in the sense that things would just spin a spin out of control, and being an optimist on balance has worked in the stock market, but maybe, maybe it’s just a psychological defect on my part, being a happy guy looking for what, what could go right. And I, I know people accuse me of being a permeable, but I view that as a compliment, because, you know, stock markets have been basically a permeable, at least during the 45 years that I’ve been in the market. Recessions don’t last very long. Bear markets don’t last very long, and bear markets turn out to be buying opportunities. And trying to pick tops is great if you can also pick the bottom. So I think stocks have certainly been for the long run. But look, a guy is one of the smartest investor around, Warren Buffett, six months ago, signaled that he wanted to have more cash. It turned out to be a very smart thing to do, and I don’t hear that he’s buying anything yet. So maybe he’s kind of looking at how things, you know, realistically, looking at, you know, the risks are just too high to just jump in here and buy it
James Connor 34:55
was also interesting to he did an interview last month, and he was down. Asked, asked about the economy, and he declined to answer. But I think if you look at his actions, it’s quite evident when he thinks about the economy, as you mentioned, he’s been raising cash. He’s sitting on, I think, 28% cash, yeah, massive holder of T bills. Yeah, government debt. But,
Ed Yardeni 35:17
and he started doing this before the election results, right? Well, yeah, so, so he basically was saying that a curse on both their houses. He kind of was signaling that whoever wins is not going to be good for the stock market or the economy. And right? I don’t think, I think he did most of his selling before, before Trump won,
James Connor 35:38
and his AGM is coming up next month. I believe it’s the first Saturday in May, so it’s going to be interesting to see if there’s any commentary coming out of that. Have you ever gone to the Berkshire EGM,
Ed Yardeni 35:49
no, I have not. I understand they’re quite a happening. Yeah, I
James Connor 35:53
went once, and it was very cult. Like, yeah, it was well worth the time. I before we sign off, I want to ask you about one more thing, and once again, you talked about how good gold has been doing. Well, if you look at a couple of other commodities, I’m not suggesting gold is a good commodity, but if you look at oil, if you look at Copper, they’ve both been drilled. Oil went from 70 bucks a barrel down to 60 pretty quick. Copper was over $5 a pound, it’s now, I think, around $4 and quite often, these two commodities are barometers for the global economy. What are your thoughts? There? Are you concerned like you? You’re you think the US economy is okay? But you did express concern about China and also about Europe?
Ed Yardeni 36:38
Yeah, I, I know another controversy here has been, is a time to underweight the US and overweight the rest of the world. And we had a nice rally only a few weeks ago and months ago in China and in Europe. And that’s because, ironically, one of the successful consequences of Trump 2.0 is he’s actually stimulated. He’s actually caused the Chinese government to stimulate their consumer This is something we’ve been begging the Chinese to do, is get your consumers to spend more, get them to be, you know, more like Americans, in terms of the way they spend. And maybe there’ll be less of a trade imbalance. And with the Germans, American policymakers, even Trump 1.0 was saying, you guys got to spend more on your own defense. You got to take more responsibility for defending yourself. And looks like they got they only got the message now, but I think there’s, you know, the Germans, the German economy, still faces enormous competition, particularly in the auto industry, from from China. And you know, you know, Germans used to be famous for their engineering prowess, and they’re still great at it, but they, you know, they’re not, they don’t have a monopoly on it. Americans, as we’ve saw with a what Elon Musk has been able to achieve are certainly have some great engineers, and China does as well. And meanwhile, China has got a rapidly aging population as a result of their one child policy. That was a policy that’s 100% due to the disaster. Disastrous policy of the Chinese Communist Party, and then the Chinese Communist Party, let the property market get out of control, creating the biggest property bubble ever, and that, that bubble is burst, and that’s going to weigh on the Chinese economy. So they’ve been they’ve been scrambling to stimulate their economy, but they’ve been doing it with exports. They really haven’t done it with domestic consumption. And I’m not convinced that either Europe or China economy are better than the US economy. I think we’ll we’ll get through this in better shape than than they will. Well,
James Connor 39:05
that was a great discussion. Ed and I want to thank you very much for spending time with us today. If somebody would like to learn more about you or follow you online and learn about your services or read your research, where can they go? Yeah.
Ed Yardeni 39:17
Well, you know, over the years, I’ve learned that you almost have to write daily because things things either change that often, or people you know want to know your opinions about whether what’s going on changes your views. And I’ve been a pretty kind of steady and in my views over the year and over the years, and now I’m finding myself trying to avoid changing my opinion as rapidly as the president changes his mind. But we do keep people posted on a daily basis with a publication called Yardeni quick takes.com so go to www dot yardeniquick takes.com and have a look. And you also have a YouTube. Now, yep, it’s, it’s there as well. And we, we record a webinar on Monday with our institutional accounts, and then we share it with our quick takes accounts on Wednesday, and the YouTube people get it on Friday. So it’s, it’s stale by the time it’s on YouTube. But, you know, paying, paying clients come first as you know, as you know.
James Connor 40:23
Ed once again, thank you and good luck. Thank
Ed Yardeni 40:26
you. Same to you all the best, everybody you.
