Markets Happy Hour Podcast - September 18, 2025 - A Stitch in Time

In this week's Markets Happy Hour Podcast we ask if the Fed has, through taking a "risk based" and "meeting by meeting" approach and making its first cut all year (25 bps) taken a "stitch in time" to avert economic disaster. Inflation remains stubbornly high, and it seems that the Fed is now switching to emphasize the employment side of its dual mandate. Inflation around the world is not much better, with a rolling 3.8% in the UK and an anemic rate of growth that clearly equates to a loose stagflation, while in Europe the rate of inflation is much lower - at 0.8% in France and an average of 2.1% for the whole Eurozone. It has been another "noisy" week, with governments from the UK to France struggling to contain expenses and spending, the US making all kinds of overtures into private companies (e.g. TikTok, Intel (deal with Nvidia)) and an equity market that 58% of fund managers surveyed by Bank of America consider to be overvalued. We end with a look at so called Tail Risks that managers in the survey considered and how their probability has moved over the last quarter. It is interesting that a global Trade War has fallen behind a second wave of inflation as the greatest risk tail risk, and we analyze whether these risks are "real".