Markets Happy Hour Podcast March 28, 2025 - View from Over the Border

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast - which comes to you from over the Canadian Border and Banff, Alberta - we discuss the brewing uncertainty as the market quarter nears. In what has been the worst quarter for the S&P since 2023 we have wrestled with an unprecedented volume of news flow, noise - some of which even contains some "Signal". We look at the inflation numbers within the US which are not quite as reassuring as in Europe, where the next interest rate cut is all but assured. In the US, consumer sentiment is taking a dive, particularly as regards near term measures of income, job security and economic growth, and we cite the same growth uncertainty which has been in place since called out by the Fed at their last meeting. As early April and "Independence Day" nears, meaning the effective date for new tariffs we look at the simple as well as the systems thinking impact of such measures. We conclude with some observations on other moving parts - such as demand for AI-related IPOs (CoreWeave) as well as data centers.